Remember Summer by Elizabeth Lowell Page A

There was something in him that she could neither refuse nor ignore, something that called to her in a wordless, compelling language.
    She wondered if he was hearing that same language, feeling the same deep pull. It would explain why he stood as she did, silently, almost stunned, feeling as though the world had been turned upside down and shaken until she fell out and there was nothing real, only him.
    “Cord,” she whispered, reaching out.
    An electronic beeper shrilled before she touched him. She recognized the sound instantly. Her hands jerked and dropped to her sides. Her fingers started to curl into fists. At that moment she admitted just how much she had been looking forward to driving back to Santa Anita and having dinner with Cord Elliot.
    It was a struggle to make her hands relax, but she managed it.
    Without glancing away from her, he reached for his belt. Using his thumb, he punched out a code that acknowledged receipt of the summons.
    Anger at herself swept through Raine. She was a fool to be fascinated by a man who was like her father, a man so involved in his work that he lived his life at the end of an electronic leash. She had deliberately left that world behind. She would never enter it again, no matter what the lure.
    After anger came the quick coiling of resentment. It lasted only a moment. She had had a lifetime to get used to being second, third, and last.
    “You better hurry,” she said coolly. She took the sketch pad and pencil from him and put them away in the rucksack she slid off his shoulder. “The nearest phone is back at the clubhouse.”
    “Raine.”
    He spoke her name so softly that she almost didn’t hear. Then his hands came up to her shoulders, holding her in a gentle vise. He looked at her as though he was afraid she would vanish the instant she was no longer reflected in his eyes.
    “Come back with me,” he said urgently. “Don’t stay out here alone. The world is full of men hungry for warmth, men who would kill for a smile from lips like yours. And some of those men would simply take what they wanted, destroying everything.”
    As she looked up at Cord, she sensed both his power and his yearning, his body trained for death and his eyes hungry for life. Her resentment crumbled, shattered by the same man who had broken apart a safe world she hadn’t questioned since she was a child.
    Tears gathered in her eyes, blurring his outline, leaving only the crystal intensity of his gaze. Abruptly his hands lifted. He stepped back, releasing her.
    “Don’t be afraid of me,” he said angrily, sadly. “I’m not one of the barbarians. I won’t take anything you don’t want to give me.”
    She shook her head, swallowed, and tried to explain past the lump in her throat. “I’m not afraid of you.”
    “I don’t believe you. Why else would you cry?”
    “You’ve risked so much,” she whispered. “You’ve given so much. Yet you’ve never known the warm world you make possible for others. You could die without knowing that world, like a sentry barred from the very hearth he protects.”
    He said her name as he lifted his hands to catch the tears at the corner of her eyes.
    “And I could die, too,” she said huskily. “You made me realize that this afternoon. Life doesn’t last forever—it just seems that way.”
    The rucksack slipped from her fingers as he drew her close. Hands framing her face, he bent down to her, moving slowly, never using his superior strength to hold her captive. If she wanted to avoid the kiss, all she had to do was step away.
    She didn’t. She tilted her face toward his mouth, as hungry to be close to him as he was to touch her.
    In a hushed silence broken only by a whisper of wind, his lips moved over the chestnut arch of her eyebrows, the smooth skin at her temples, the soft hollow beneath her cheekbone, kisses as delicate as a breath.
    Trembling, she leaned closer to him, totally off guard. She hadn’t expected such tenderness, his male hunger