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She wasn’t dreaming now. That face and its perfectly symmetrical features struck her as being way too familiar.
“The apron suits you,” he said in a teasing manner that might have been inappropriate since they were strangers outside of her fantastically naughty dreams. Nevertheless, she smiled and ran one hand down the front of the dish towel she’d tied around her waist, glad she had on jeans for this reunion.
Her other hand clutched the gun hidden behind her back.
“I guess you’re determined to stay, ignoring the advice of the locals,” he went on.
“I have business to conclude here.”
“Can I ask what that business is?”
“Cleaning up my father’s things. He lived here on and off until recently.”
The ranger kicked dirt off his boots and looked down, suggesting that he knew what had happened to her dad.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” He glanced up again to meet her scrutinizing gaze.
Nervously, Skylar glanced away. The flutter inside her chest spread to her arms. She gripped the gun tighter so she wouldn’t drop the damn thing.
“Were you watching my father, too? He had an accident, they said.”
Skylar let the word accident hang in the air before continuing. “Was anyone patrolling around here when he died?”
Unable to resist the urge to look at him again, almost as if he requested it, she dragged her focus upward until their gazes connected across the small front yard.
Shudders rocked her with the immediacy of the connection, and she shifted from foot to foot to cover the quakes. He stared back at her with a seriousness that set off more alarm bells. His penetrating eyes were very light against his bronzed skin. Though she was unfamiliar with the dream man’s eyes, she was sure these were his.
You’re a handsome sucker, I’ll give you that.
But how do I know you?
Why have I modeled a dream after you?
If she’d met this guy before, she would have remembered, and yet her treacherous body was responding to him as though he’d stepped right out of her dream and was presenting himself to her now in order to culminate all those pent-up feelings.
While reading body language was a trick both her father and her own classes in medical school had taught her, this situation was different. Meeting his gaze was like sharing secrets without having to speak. It felt weird, and also incredibly sexy in a messed-up way.
“Two of us were on duty that night, but not near here,” he said in answer to the question she’d almost forgotten.
“Night?” she echoed. “Dad was hiking at night?”
“I don’t know that for a fact,” he replied. “Sorry again.”
Even in stillness, the ranger seemed to be moving, evidence of the wild streak he harbored. Chances were good he was a loner, preferring to live on the fringes of the city, communing with trees. Weren’t all forest rangers born with some kind of special calling for the great outdoors?
How about werewolves?
Glad she hadn’t said that out loud, Skylar fisted her free hand in the dish cloth, trying on the word figment for size. This ranger, so like the man in her dreams, was quite possibly a figment of her overwrought imagination.
“You don’t need the gun,” he said in a lowered tone. “Not with me.”
Although his blue-eyed gaze held steady, Skylar also noted a hint of weariness in his features. He might have been up all night. He could have been near here the whole time, either guarding this cabin’s sole resident, or drawn to her for reasons that went beyond being neighborly. Reasons like sharing unusual dreams or offering genuine condolences in person for her loss.
Fingers tight on the gun behind her back, Skylar smiled. “Do all rangers have X-ray vision, or just you?”
He shrugged. “Merely an educated guess since you showed me the gun last night.”
“It’s a precaution. After all, how do I know you’re what you say you are?”
“You’re right to mistrust strangers. That’s a good sign.”
“A good sign of what?”
“Wariness, where it’s necessary. Caution. A healthy respect for self-preservation.”
He pulled a small radio from his belt and held it up. “This is how I check in.” He spoke to the radio. “Harris here, on the eastern slope.”
An answer crackled back from the radio, and Skylar heard enough to make her feel better about believing him. His voice, as he spoke, also made her familiarity with it more unsettling. Disconnecting from the dream was proving to be tough.
Puzzled, she said, “I recognize your voice.”
Ranger Harris nodded. “We spoke last night.”
It’s so much more than that. What though?
“Why did you come back today?” she asked.
“I thought I’d check on you. Make sure everything is okay.”
“Do your rounds take in all of the cabins out here?”
“Usually. But very few people are in residence right now.”
“I passed four cabins on my way to this one.”
“Most folks don’t live in them year-round. And those who do have taken off for a while.”
Breaking the disconcerting eye contact, Skylar looked to the east. “Because of what happened to my father?”
“Your father had an accident.”
“So they say.”
Other than offering a brief nod, he didn’t react to her remark.
“You’re alone out here. I just thought you might like to know we’re around,” he said.
“Rangers, you mean?”
“Yes.”
Skylar crossed her arms over her chest, bringing the gun front and center. If nothing else, she needed the weapon to protect her from herself. This guy’s gaze made her feel naked, though he didn’t appear to be staring at anything other than her face. Outwardly, he acted like a gentleman, the warden of this place, but the sparks tickling her insides weren’t appeased by his surface calm, his coolness or his distance.
Hearing him had set off a chain reaction. Too many of her fantasies were built on that voice. In the flesh, this guy, whoever he was, stranger that he might be, was like catnip to a serial dreamer.
Skylar reached for the flush creeping up her neck, hoping to stop it from reaching her face.
“How did they find him?” she finally asked.
Ranger Harris tilted his head to ponder the question.
“Who found my father’s body?”
“Hikers, I believe,” he replied.
“Near here?”
“On the other side of this hill.”
“At night?”
“He was found sometime after sundown, I heard.”
Skylar lowered the gun. “He was barely recognizable.”
“Then I hope you didn’t have to see that, Miss...”
“Donovan. Skylar Donovan.”
He nodded.
“No one in my family saw him. His partner at the hospital identified his body, and she believed it best we didn’t see him...under the circumstances.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sorry for what? she thought. For my father’s death? For making me want to forget we’re strangers?
Pressing back a strand of hair that had slipped from her ponytail, Skylar remembered how Danny preferred her hair shorter than she wore it. He hadn’t liked her in jeans like the ones she wore now. Her cop had been critical about so many things she liked to do and certainly never would have approved of her being out here alone. Control freak would have been a good description of his personality.
She had gone along with Danny’s preferences for the sake of trying to appear normal, feel normal, be part of a couple...when she had always known it wouldn’t work out in the end.
Her next shiver was in the bastard ex-fiancé’s honor.
“Are you okay?” the man across from her asked.
“Yes,” she lied. “Anyway, I suppose accidents happen.”
“Too often,” he agreed.
“Especially in this kind of terrain?”
“The trails are tricky,” he concurred. “Moreso when wet.”
He hadn’t budged from his position near the gate. Skylar wondered if he wanted to but was afraid he’d frighten her. Realizing how nuts it might be to trust him at all, she said, “Would you like something to drink? I’ve got lemonade.”
“Lemonade would be nice. Thanks. It’s been a fairly warm day, despite the end of summer, and I didn’t take time for lunch.”
“Come in, then. We can sit on the porch.”
“I’d like that. Mind if I wash my hands?”
“There’s a hose by the corner of the cabin, and a bar of soap in a pail.”
The ranger opened the tiny gate and closed it behind him. Having him on her side of the fence gave her an unanticipated thrill, despite the fence being no more than hip high and easy enough to knock over with one good shove.
The closer he got, the more her body reacted to him. She wanted to get close to this guy, feel him, smell him. She wanted him down and dirty, filthy hands and all.
That damn dream...
Ranger Harris was a delectable mixture of all the things that made a man a man. Equally rugged and elegant, he moved with the casual, effortless grace of an animal, sinew and muscle seeming to work without the impediment of an underlying bone structure. Predatory animals moved like that. Tigers, lions, cheetahs.
Wolves.
Skylar nearly dropped the gun and fumbled to secure it in her grip. Hell, did she have to distort everything?
This guy, with his badge and radio, was not the creature of her dreams. He wasn’t a creature at all. Her idea that he could be one virtually screamed of her desire to get over what had happened with Danny. Her imagination was twisting situations to match wishes that were nothing more than a bunch of dangling loose ends.
“There’s a towel on the rack,” she called out.
“Thanks.” He crouched down to lift the hose, his green shirt stretching across his shoulders and threatening to tear at the seams. His dark hair, thick with a slight curl, brushed against the back of his collar when his head tilted forward.
She had always loved hair like that. Hair made for running fingers through. Hair that would tickle bare skin in moments of intimacy, and provide something to hang on to.
Skylar cringed, and gave herself a stern silent reprimand.
I will not take this guy to bed.
No way was she going to indulge in her first one-night stand in the middle of a forest, even if he were willing to take her up on what she was thinking.
That’s what her mind said.
Her body told her otherwise. There had been far too many erotic thoughts about rugged men lately to ignore what was right in front of her. And he was interested in her. He couldn’t hide that fact any more than she could hide her interest in him. He kept looking her way.
Something came to life within her as she watched him. The sensation wasn’t familiar, and was centered so deep down inside her body it mimicked the feel of a rising sexual climax.
Working hard to keep from sliding a hand between her thighs to ease the pressure building there, Skylar withheld a sigh that might have given away her fanciful state of neediness. Everything about this cabin and what happened around it was strange. She felt strange...and very much like the predator here.
How’s that for a switch?
