Total Package

Grass brushed her feet and clung to them. She kicked slightly to dislodge the damp blades, and he noted the action. “Did you hurt your feet when you walked over the rocks?”

Danya reached to take her foot and draw it into his hands. He smoothed her arch and insole very slowly. A woman who knew how to take what she could get in a single moment of life, because it could be gone the next, Sidney relaxed slightly. She wanted to give him something back. “Hey, want a candy bar?” she asked as she dug into her pants cargo pocket.

“No, thanks.” He carefully drew off her thick workman’s sock, and continued to slowly, carefully rub her feet.

Sidney unwrapped the chocolate bar and munched on it, contemplating Ben’s defection while having her feet warmed and soothed. “I loved him—Ben, I mean. We shared film and lenses and hardships. A thing like that doesn’t go away easy. Now he’s with her, the six-foot-nothing-but-legs-and-boobs blond bimbo. I don’t know what he sees in her. They are planning to multiply and raise ducks. He’s all excited, Mr. Rabbit, so fast you never know he’s been there before he’s gone. Now, I’ve got a reason to jump off that—er, to eat a lot of these candy bars.”

She plopped her other foot into his hands. “Do that one. Talk. Pick up the pace.”

His hands moved slowly, carefully over her feet; his voice was husky and uneven. His thumbs cruised over her arches. “You’ve got small feet.”

She hoped he wasn’t getting ready to cry. She didn’t know how to handle tears, not even her own. Right now, thinking about Ben and Fluffy, Sidney’s eyes were burning. But a Blakely never cries. Bulldog would be shamed. That was why she carried the candy bars and why she’d put on weight—whenever she started to tear up, she’d grab something chocolate and focus on that. “Yeah. Hard to get the right kind of combat boots for my size, but I’m wearing hiking ones now. So what’s your story?”

“My wife died in a car wreck. I was driving,” he said simply.

Sidney swallowed the bite of chocolate. “You feel guilty.”

“Because I lived and she didn’t. A drunken driver met us head-on and crossed in front of us at the last minute. I didn’t come to for days, and when I did—Jeannie was gone. We were both twenty-three.”

“That’s a heavy load. When did it happen?”

“Nine years ago. I still see those headlights…every night when I close my eyes.” Danya lay down, put his hands behind his head and stared at the night sky.

“Wow. And I thought I had it bad.” The companionable thing to do would be to lie quietly and wait for him to talk, so that’s what Sidney did. She had to lie close because it was a single sleeping bag.

She needed to distract him from his grief and refocus him on something else. “I detest being closeted every day and night with these models. I’ll be glad when this gig is over. They won’t leave me alone. I’m just not into girly talk and she-she.”

“You could stay somewhere else.” He reached for her free hand and eased it beneath his shirt. The poor guy needed human touch, she thought as he rubbed her hand over his muscled stomach, and he felt good to touch, she decided.

“Do you ache—I mean, do you have some physical problem that might cause you to want to end it all? If you do, there are all sorts of counselors for pain—and for grief, by the way. Have you tried that?”

“No to the second part, but yes, now I do ache. Your hand feels good. Do you mind?”

“Not if it helps you. I’ve done massage when needed. I’ve been in lots of make-do situations, and most of the time it’s just people helping people, letting them know that someone cares. But I would sure like to escape those models. That’s why I brought my sleeping bag up here—to get away from them since there’s nowhere else to stay besides my room at Amoteh. Where are you staying? With your family?”

“In my family’s cabin along the beach. It’s quiet, private, except for the wind chimes and the waves. It’s pretty plain, one room, no luxuries like at the Amoteh Resort.”

“Sounds like heaven.”

The mist had turned to a gentle rain and Sidney knew she couldn’t stay all night—a photographer with a bad cold could ruin a shoot. Then she sneezed. “Look, I’ve got to go. Come down off this hill with me? We’ll go someplace for a beer and talk some more.”

“Everything is closed.”

“We could go to my room and raid the refrigerator there, but those models would be on you like flies on sugar. They’re man-hungry and you’re in no emotional shape to fight them off. They’re already half mad at me, so I’d have to let them have you—for the sake of the shoot. Now, you wouldn’t want that, would you? A bunch of sex-starved, booby bimbos chasing you?”

He chuckled softly, deeply in the night. “No, I sure wouldn’t want that.”

At least his humor was there. Maybe she had done some good after all. Sidney sat up and looked for her socks. Danya took her foot and slowly slid one sock on and then the other. Sidney had the strangest sense that she was being tended somehow.

It was a gentle, but uneasy sensation that caused her to jam on her hiking boots and lace them tightly. “You want to talk at your place, or what?” she asked abruptly as she stood. “If not, then I’m going to have to go back into that bimbo hell and try to find a quiet corner where someone isn’t sobbing over some girly movie, or someone isn’t wanting to give me a facial or pluck my eyebrows. The light won’t be good for shooting tomorrow, so they know they can stay up late—hunting me.”

He handed her the sports bra and her cotton briefs. There was nothing intimate about it, only one buddy helping another. She stuffed them into her sleeping bag and Danya stood. He bent down to roll her bag and lift it over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“I can carry that. Who do you think waits on me?”

“I don’t doubt it a bit. It’s just that you’ve helped me tonight, and I’d like to return the favor…so I wouldn’t be in your debt. You understand.”

Sidney did understand. She never liked to be in anyone’s debt and Bulldog had taught her to be self-sufficient. But if Danya needed that link to keep him off that cliff, she could sacrifice. He carefully led her down the rocky trail from the chieftain’s grave site. Around her smaller one, his hand felt good, strong, and companionable. Maybe he needed that link with her. Maybe she needed it with him. Ships in the night, Sidney reminded herself. At least she wasn’t at the mercy of the models.

Danya held her hand as they walked in the night, down Strawberry Hill and a long walk to the Amoteh Resort’s steps. From there, they moved across a small worn path and down to the shoreline and Amoteh, the town. In the distance behind them, a huge jagged rock jutted up into the night, the waves crashing around it; she recognized the landmark as Deadman’s Rock where boats had been smashed upon the rock and people had died.

She glanced at the man whom she had rescued. He looked big and lethal, hard and soulless, the wind catching his hair. He kept on one side of her, breaking the wind, and handling her sleeping bag as if it were nothing. Sidney hurried to match his long stride, but then she noted that it had shortened, and that he moved with her. She only reached his shoulder, her hand small within his.

The guy was a toucher, needing and giving touches and she could handle that—if it would help him deal with his pain. She’d talk him through the night and in the morning, he’d feel much better.

They passed docking piers, the boats moving in the waves, gently bumping at their moorings, then the long tourist pier filled with shops that were now closed, flags trembling above them.

Then, just as they passed a long margin of driftwood piled on the shore, Sidney decided that maybe Danya really only needed to have sex to make him see that life was worth living.

But not with her. She stopped, jerked her hand away from his, and plopped down on a log. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute—”

Danya loomed above her, the sleeping bag propped over his shoulder. “Problem?”

“I just want to get something straight. No sex. No way. Not with me. You’ve got to promise to think of me as a friend, a buddy, not a woman.” She patted a driftwood log. “Sit.”

“I do not think of you as just a woman,” Danya said slowly, thoughtfully, with that touch of foreign formality.

He eased down to the log and studied her, his face all angles in the mist and eery moonlight. “Good. Just keep thinking of me as your buddy and we’ll be fine. Men usually think of me that way and I’m used to talking straight with them, no female chatter for me. Do you have a sexual problem? Because if you do, I can’t help you there.”

Was he trying not to smile? “Not that I know of.”

“What’s your sexual history? I’m just asking because I don’t want to be jumped by some guy with stored up—some guy needing relief. I mean, have you done it since your wife—you know?”

“A few times. But I didn’t find what my wife and I had and I needed that to feel complete.”

“No offense, but you understand why I need to be careful.”

“You have my word that I will not touch you—like that. But it is nice to listen to you talk. If you would stay with me, it would fill the hours.”

She eyed him and could find no humor in that hard face. “Are you saying that I talk too much? Because I’m just trying to help you, after all.”

“I am saying that I would be pleased if you would share my home tonight.” Again, his formality caused Sidney to be uneasy. But then, she’d met a few European males and though this guy was born in the U.S., sometimes family traditions carried over; he probably even spoke Russian. She’d noticed that same formality in Mikhail Stepanov, and a slight disdain for the models hovering around him.

“I’m not having sex with you—just getting that straight upfront. Been there, done that, with Mr. Rabbit, and it wasn’t fun. What happened to these other women you’ve had?”

Danya looked out to the black waves. “Correction—a couple of women, each for a brief time. It seems that I am a good matchmaker. Through me, they met someone more suitable than myself.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. So you were dumped. Danya, you can’t think of yourself as a life’s loser just because you were dumped.”

“That is good advice. I’m tired and my cabin is just a little bit farther. Do you want to go on, or back to the resort?”

Sidney yawned and thought of the primping models waiting to give her facials, pluck her eyebrows, share intimate girl-talk and discuss silly fashions. “If I could pull up a piece of your floor for my sleeping bag, I’d be grateful.”

He nodded and stood. Exhausted now, Sidney yawned again and looked down at the big hand extended to help her to her feet.

Bulldog wouldn’t like her accepting help, but since this guy needed lots of touching to get him through the night, what did it matter?

In her lifetime, Sidney had had to make quick decisions and always trusted her judgment. Now it told her that she could trust this man. He needed companionship for the night and she needed rest.

It would all work out, she decided as she walked with him to his cabin.

And then her artistic photographer’s mind added an enticing thought—he was gorgeous and just maybe she could get some really good shots, a portrait in black and white would really emphasize that rugged face.

That long lean body wasn’t that bad, either, she decided, and it would be perfect for some excellent shots, maybe for magazine ads. She might even be a factor in changing his life, in starting him in new successful directions, in giving him a new and beautiful slant on life.

Hey, when opportunity raised its beautiful, profitable head, who was she to deny it?

Two

Sidney Blakely fascinated Danya; every sensual molecule in his body had fastened onto that small curvaceous body.

He really should feel guilty—after all, if he hadn’t been enjoying her so much, he would have worked harder to correct her “jumper” image of him. But the need to explore Sidney Blakely more was too irresistible to ignore.

She had absolutely no idea how appealing she was, nor how she had aroused him…he concluded as she mounted the steps to the cabin ahead of him.

His hands ached to cup her bottom, to feel that softness, as the scent of her tightened every muscle in his body. The immediate need to stake his claim on this woman surprised him.

She was not wearing any underclothing.

On the cabin porch, she looked around to see the wind chimes made of spoons, and a delicate fingertip reached to toy with them. A woman who had lived with men, communicated on their no-nonsense level, Sidney liked to keep her options open. “I could sleep right here, listening to the ocean.”

He wanted her in his bed—now. “It will rain soon. You’ll keep drier inside, and you could sleep in—if you’re not shooting tomorrow.”

“Oh, that sounds so good. I’ve been missing sleep.”

He understood perfectly; Sidney had come to Kamakani’s grave site to discuss her ill-fated love for “Mr. Rabbit.”

Danya thought of making slow, soft love to her, of waking up to her and moving into her, and his body tightened painfully. After all these years of emptiness, why this special woman? Why tonight?

Inside the cabin, Sidney looked around at the Spartan furnishings—the big solid Stepanov bed and dresser, a plain table and two chairs, a kitchenette. She walked to the tiny bathroom and peeked inside. “Great,” she stated approvingly.

“Sid?” Danya unfurled her sleeping bag and placed it against a corner of the room. He could see her plainly now, the practical short hair cut. Her eyes were dark brown and large, almost like a fawn’s, her lashes sweeping shadows down that pale soft skin. She wore no cosmetics, and he ached to taste that slender throat, to nibble on those small ears.

His body knew it had been years since he’d made love to a woman, awakening now to the twin peaks of her breasts, nudging the heavy sweatshirt.

“Yeah?” She was stretching and yawning and Danya ached to hold that small shapely body tight against him. She rotated her head and bent to touch her toes several times and the cargo pants tightened over her curved backside.

He ached to be inside, filling her—

“I thought you might like this.” He reached down to a laundry basket on the floor and pulled out a folded T-shirt, tossing it to her.

Sidney came close to study the framed picture on the dresser, a young Danya and his bride, just after their wedding. “I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching to touch his back and when she looked up at him, her eyes spoke more than words. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yes, very beautiful. A treasure of the heart. I will keep her always there,” he said solemnly, meaning it.

“That’s beautiful, Danya. But you’ve got to live your life. If I go to sleep, you won’t do anything rash, will you?”

He shook his head. “I’m too tired. Emotions, you know. I don’t suppose you could—no…I won’t ask.”

Danya almost felt guilty—but not quite as Sidney’s expressive eyes filled with him. “What, Danya?”

“Could I hold you?”

Instantly she was alert and stepping back warily from him. “Whoa, champ. I’m not the girl you want.”

She was exactly the woman he wanted. “Sorry. I get the need sometimes to hold a woman. Just hold her, and I don’t know why, but women get ideas and the next thing you know—”

She seemed to relax. “Human touch, right?”

Sidney stepped closer with the determined air of one who is sacrificing. “Hold me. Do it, now. You’ve got thirty seconds.”

Danya eased her against him, rested his chin over hers, and inhaled her fragrance and closed his eyes, focusing on the fit, the feel of her in his arms. Inside, where his heart had been cold and hurt, the warmth of pleasure and delight began—

“Time’s over,” Sidney said, pushing away.

He forced himself to release her. “Thanks. I feel better now.”

“Yeah, well.” She cleared her throat and backed away, her expression wary as she bent to collect her things. She turned and hurried into the bathroom.

Danya rubbed his stubble-covered jaw. At three o’clock in the morning, there was nothing he wanted to do more than cuddle Sidney Blakely. With a sigh, Danya turned off the lights, undressed and slid into his lonely bed.

Inside the bathroom, Sidney quickly undressed and slid on her comfortable boxer shorts and Danya’s overlarge T-shirt. She was shaking.

She’d wanted to nail him, to stake him out on that big bed and have him. Sexual impulses didn’t come to her often—maybe never. Sex with Ben, her only lover to date, had been too fast and had left her simmering.

The poor guy was thinking about suicide and mourning his wife, and Sidney was thinking about how good he felt up close and that just maybe she might get a good photo layout of him. She was scum to even think about nabbing him and curling up to that nice big hard warm body—She shook her head. There was no way she would take advantage of a sweet man like that, using him for her own satisfaction.

She was just tired and emotional, she decided as she left the bathroom and found the main room dark and cozy. A pillow and a sheet lay on her sleeping bag and it looked like heaven.

Danya’s broad back was turned to her and Sidney spread the sheet over the bag, slid onto it, and folded the rest of the sheet over her. She punched the pillow into shape and with the ease of someone who took what she could get on the spot, quickly dropped into sleep.

Danya listened to her deep easy breathing and turned to look at the slight, curved shadow on the floor. The sheet had slid from her bare leg and her hands were up by her face, almost like a child’s.

He eased from his bed and walked to crouch and study the woman who had no idea how much she fascinated him…. Her lips were generous and soft, slightly parted; her lashes swept shadows down that fine pale skin.

A compassionate woman, she’d endangered herself to rescue someone she thought might leap to his death. Unfamiliar with caresses or letting her body rest against a man’s, she’d still let him hold her; she’d touched him because she thought he needed the warmth of another human.

But on the rebound, Sidney wasn’t in the market for romance, and that was just what Danya had in mind.

It would take all his willpower to treat her as a friend, when he really wanted to make love with her. He scanned the curved line of her body beneath the sheet, his hand aching to skim that warmth.

Very little kept him from carrying her to his bed, where she belonged; very little kept him from holding her safe and warm, to cherish her.

To move into a relationship with this brusque, but caring woman, would be no easy task. She’d been wounded by a former lover and was wary of men, but Danya intended to be very patient and he intended to have her as his own….

Sidney awoke to the scent of coffee and the sight of Danya, holding a cup and staring off into the morning rain battering the cabin’s window. He wore only his jeans, his back broad and tanned in the dim light. The pose, the blend of shadow and light would have been wonderful for a photograph, that waving hair softening his hard profile, that jaw darkened by stubble. He looked thoughtful, grim and fierce.

“So how’s it going, buddy?” Sidney asked after yawning and stretching. “Feeling better?”

Apparently still deep in thought, he nodded. Sidney rose to her feet, shuffled to the kitchenette to pour herself a cup of coffee. She took a sweet roll from the plastic container, and walked to stand beside him. “Thanks for last night…letting me crash here, I mean.”

“Sure.”

Rain pounded the windows, the dim light outside casting shadows on Danya’s hard face; his mood seemed to match the elements outside. “Are you going to be okay today?”

“Yes. Alexi and I are remodeling, adding a family room onto a house. You can stay here, if you want, Sid. I mean, you can move in with me, if you want, to escape those models. It’s up to you. But there could be gossip. People might think that we were lovers.”

She studied the shadows beneath his eyes, the look of a man who had been through hell, who had been on some invisible edge, fighting the tethers that bound him. “I’ve bunked with men before.”

Danya inhaled suddenly, then released his breath slowly. He looked at her and his eyes were the color of blue ice. “This is different. I don’t want you to have problems.”

She’d heard that the Stepanov males were very gallant, but manners and female-male role playing weren’t for her; they just cluttered up life and took time she didn’t have. “The only problem I am going to have is that darned windup dance and social thingie at the end of this shoot. Marvelous Calendars insists on it. All the bigwigs are going to come down and I’ve got orders to look like a woman—put on a dress and makeup and everything. I’m supposed to bring a date.”

“That is rough.”

“Real rough. You’d think if I do a good job—and I do—that would be all that was required, but oh, no. I have to mix with the brass and schmooze with the models and be one of the girls. I am going to have to dance with the execs—in dress shoes, not boots.”

“Torture,” he agreed softly.

“You know it. If the weather clears, we’ve got about two, three days fast shooting and then I’m doomed.” Sidney yawned and stretched and settled into enjoy her momentary reprieve from the models. She ate the sweet roll and sipped her coffee, then she licked her fingers. Danya had been studying her intensely and his body was tense next to hers; his breathing seemed to be controlled, rather than natural. She’d been remiss not to offer him a bite; she was used to sharing whatever was at hand. “Want some?” she asked, holding up her sweet roll to him.

His hand wrapped around her wrist as he bent to take a bite, but his eyes never left hers. They were vividly blue and shadowed with heavy lashes. He straightened, still studying her, his thumb caressing her inner wrist. “About Ben. You loved him?”

Sidney was uncomfortable with that slow caress, but if the guy needed contact, she could give him that. “I still do, the rat. I’m going back to bed, if it’s okay with you.”

“My bed,” he said quietly, watching her. “I’ll be gone. You might as well use it. You’ve got sugar on your fingers—shame to waste it.”

Sidney watched, riveted as Danya’s dark head bent and his warm mouth closed over each fingertip, sucking it.

The quivery sensations shot up her arm and down her body to lodge low in her belly; her mouth dried and her throat tightened as she stared at him. When Danya’s head lifted, he smiled at her and her heart did some flip-flop thing. “No finger licking,” she said unevenly.

“But it would be a shame to waste, would it not?” His voice was deep and intimate, his phrasing formal.

“I guess it’s okay this time.”

Danya had kept her hand, holding it as they turned to watch the dim morning, rain slashing the windows.

Sidney held very still. She was very aware of him, of how large his body was to hers, of his body heat, of his hand, rough against hers. “So, chum. Are you going to be okay today? I mean, if I go to sleep, will you be okay?”

“Of course. I have work to do. Work is good. You are welcome here.”

“Thanks. Maybe I will sleep in. A good morning for that.”

He seemed to tense, and those blue eyes flashed down at her. “Yes,” Danya said unevenly, “A very good morning for staying in bed.”

Danya tried to focus on the cabinets his brother and he were installing into the family room addition, but his mind was on Sidney—lying in his bed.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, the day was clearing, and he’d already had several calls on his cell phone from his obviously amused family—Sidney had seemed concerned for him and was hunting him. She’d been to the Stepanov Furniture factory, talked with Fadey and Viktor, Danya’s father, who had found her to be fresh and delightful. She’d taken pictures of Fadey and Viktor in a spirited folk dance, and she’d joined them in it. Danya’s father said he had hugged her—a traditional big bear hug, kissing both sides of her cheeks, and “she felt like a sweet little bird in his arms, before she squirmed away.”