With a hidden sigh, Janna decided that Raven was probably like most men, drawn to blondes who had big mysterious eyes and more curves than a mountain road. The old cliche about gentlemen preferring blondes was quite true. So did jocks, thugs, poets and nerds. Forget women with brown hair, no matter how great their sense of humor.
Nobody ever cared if a blonde had a sense of humor, great or otherwise.
„You never answered my question about breakfast,“ Raven said. He looked over his shoulder and checked the progress of the water heating in a kettle on the small galley stove that was just across the aisle from his bunk. „Are you hungry?“
„Are you kidding? That isn’t thunder you’re hearing, it’s my stomach,“ she announced, waving her hand dramatically, only to have to make a wild grab for the drifting blanket.
Raven glanced away quickly, not wanting Janna to realize that she had inadvertently shown him a firmly curved breast topped by a nipple that was such a velvety pink that he had to clench his hands against reaching toward her.
The teakettle whistled, offering Raven a much-needed distraction. He lifted the kettle and poured water into two mugs, wondering how Janna would react if he told her how perfect she had felt stretched out along his body. Soft. Resilient. No hard edges or angles. But if he said anything like that to her, it would sound like the opening gambit in a bid for sex. He knew that she didn’t want that anymore. He had seen the desire fade from her after he had tucked in the blanket around her shoulders. The shimmering veils of passionate emotion had gone as though they had never existed, leaving only laughter in her clear gray-green eyes.
He wondered why that made him feel both sad and very angry, as though he should have taken what she had offered when she had offered it and not had any scruples about why she wanted him. Other women had wanted or not wanted him, and it hadn’t mattered in any real way. Except for Angel. Her rejection had made pain a part of his everyday life. Finally, long before Miles Hawkins had met Angel, Raven had understood that some things were not meant to be. For him, Angel was one of them. He could either accept that, or he could destroy himself over it.
In the end, he had accepted it as he accepted storms and elusive fish and the powerful body that made men and women nervous. Life was what it was. He was what he was. Love was what it was.
Beyond his reach.
Chapter 3
„Do you have a knife?“ muttered Janna. Raven heard the disgust in her muffled voice. Beneath his black mustache, his lips shifted into a smile at the picture she made. She was kneeling over the freshwater creek and wringing out her soapy hair. The long, curving lines of her body were revealed through the water-splashed flannel of one of his shirts. Below the trailing ends of cloth, her calves were pale and smooth, tautly curved, glowing in the misty light that was characteristic of the Queen Charlottes.
„Yes,“ Raven mumbled. „I have a knife.“
„Good. Cut off this mess, would you?“
„I have a better idea.“
„Shaving it off?“ she retorted. „Sold!“ Janna felt as much as heard Raven’s laughter when he knelt next to her on the moss-covered ground. His chest rubbed against her back as his fingers slid into the soapy, slippery mass of her hair.
„I didn’t mean that you had to wash my hair.“
„Your arm is still sore, isn’t it? Rest. I’ll take care of it.“
„I’ve done nothing but lie around and let you take care of me since you fished me out of the inlet,“ Janna protested.
„A whole thirty hours,“ Raven said gravely. „Such laziness. I’ll have to report you to the tourist bureau.“
„But-“
„Hush,“ rumbled Raven. „I love a woman’s long hair. Let me play with it.“
Janna couldn’t have answered if her life had depended on it. She was too caught up in the feel of Raven’s big, gentle hands massaging her scalp. Chills went shivering over her flesh in response.
„Are you cold?“ he asked, concerned. To him the day wasn’t chilly, despite the wind that blustered and shredded clouds into sudden bursts of rain.
„I’m fine,“ Janna said quickly, suppressing another shiver. And it was true. She wasn’t cold despite the fact that she was wearing only two layers of clothes – both of them Raven’s.
The soft cotton T-shirt held in her body heat and the heavy flannel shirt turned aside the occasional gusts of wind that reached the forest floor. It was Raven’s touch that made her shiver, not the temperature.
„I’ll hurry,“ he said.
Janna caught herself just before she told Raven to take his time, that she hadn’t shivered because she was cold. In the end she said nothing, because she was afraid to open her mouth. If she did, she would probably whimper from the sheer pleasure of feeling his hands so strong and gentle as he washed her hair.
Your brains really must be at the bottom of the inlet, she told herself in disgust.
Her brains, yes. Her nerve endings, no.
Think of Raven as one of your brothers.
Janna tried to take her own excellent advice. It didn’t work. The only times her brothers had had their hands in her hair was to give it a good yank. Never had they massaged her scalp with strong, slow, sensual motions.
So think of Raven as your hairdresser. He has his hands in your hair all the time.
Janna tried to think of Raven as her hairdresser. It was impossible.
Raven was… Raven. He was the most intriguing man she had ever met. Beneath his rough exterior he was a man capable of tenderness, laughter and the kind of silence that made her feel peaceful rather than uneasy.
And in him there was a promise of male sensuality that sent tiny streamers of fire through her. It should have frightened her. He should have frightened her. She hadn’t been attracted to anyone since her divorce. She had been too vulnerable, too uncertain. Too afraid. Despite the assurances of her family and Mark’s family, that none of it had been her fault, she still had the deep, never-spoken belief that if she had somehow been more of a woman, Mark would have been more of a man. It had taken almost two years before she could look in the mirror without silently asking herself if she had been bigger or smaller, lighter or darker, fatter or skinnier, Mark wouldn’t have somehow been more attracted physically to her.
She had just gotten to the point where she could see herself in the mirror as a woman who might sexually interest a man, when she had found herself upside down and sinking fast in a cold sea. She had awakened naked in the arms of a man who was also naked. In short, she had had the best chance to attract Raven that any woman ever could, and what had happened?
He had all but chucked her under the chin, that’s what.
Janna bit her lip against the thought that maybe Mark and her family and Mark’s family had been wrong. Maybe there was just something lacking in her when it came to arousing a man.
Pale, slender fingers dug into the moss until Janna’s knuckles went white. She forced herself to stop thinking about Mark and the sad mistake of their marriage. It was in the past. All of it. Mark had accepted what he was and was not and had made a better future for himself. She had to do the same.
Streamers of cool lather fell softly into the creek and dissolved immediately, vanishing. The lather that stayed behind on Janna’s face was equally biodegradable, but it was running in the wrong direction. She swiped ineffectually at her cheek, angry at herself for fighting battles of self-esteem that she thought she had won or, at the very least, had stopped fighting herself over. She had a lot to offer a man. She could talk intelligently, cook very well, clean well enough, and identify things that crawled and swam on beaches all over the world. She was healthy, had all her own teeth, loved children and animals – and she had a great sense of humor.