Nerd Gone Wild Read online

  “Of course.”

  As she walked into the Top Hat, she wondered if that was how it would be with Mitch from now on—polite agreement, knocking himself out to do whatever she asked. She wanted the other Mitch back, the one who kicked down doors and raided refrigerators and ripped panties.

  But first she had to deal with Uncle Kurt. He was sitting at a table with four officers in uniform. The dashing figure of her fantasies had been reduced to a man who slumped in his chair and looked twenty years older than he had yesterday.

  When she walked in, he leaped up, but one of the officers put a hand on his arm, and he sank back to his seat. “Ally! Thank God.” His eyes glistened.

  One of the officers left his chair and came over to talk to Mitch. Then he and another officer took off and a vehicle started up outside. Apparently they were going to intercept Ernie and the dogsled to take charge of the other prisoner.

  Betsy rushed over to give Ally a hug, and Clyde came from behind the bar to do the same. “Anything you want, Ally. It’s on the house.”

  “Thanks, Clyde. Maybe later. I need to talk to my uncle.”

  “Sure, sure, Ally. You do that.” He patted her on the back and led her over to one of the empty chairs at the table. Ally took the one opposite Uncle Kurt.

  He started talking immediately. “Ally, so help me, I didn’t know what she was up to. I thought it would be little things we’d do to get some money. Sure, she talked about Plan B, but I never thought—”

  Plan B. The plan to kill me. “Uncle Kurt, maybe you shouldn’t be saying anything. You really need a lawyer.”

  “It’s okay.” He waved a hand. “They read me my rights. I don’t care. They can write down anything they want. I deserve whatever happens to me.” He glanced around. “Where is she?”

  “She’ll be along.” Mitch came up to the table but didn’t sit down.

  “Is she… okay?”

  The concern in her uncle’s eyes revealed so much. Poor slob, he really did care about Vivian, who was such a demented creature that she didn’t care about anyone but herself. Kurt had been a means to an end. Maybe he even knew that, and yet he wanted to know she was okay.

  “She’s fine, Uncle Kurt,” Ally said gently. “But she’ll be going to jail.” She thought he would be, too, but no sense in pointing that out. He probably had guessed.

  “She’ll hate that,” he said.

  “So she said. Uncle Kurt, I have to know, did you… did you go along with… with Plan B?” She felt Mitch’s hand on her shoulder and was grateful for that warm, reassuring pressure.

  “I didn’t go along with it, Ally.”

  Relief flooded through her. She hadn’t totally misjudged him.

  “But I didn’t stop her, either, did I? When she left the fifth wheel today, she was in a strange mood. I knew she had a gun in her suitcase. I should have stopped her. I should have warned you. I should have done something.”

  Ally had nothing to say. Yes, he should have. He was a weak man and he would pay for that. But at least he hadn’t wanted her dead. “You’ll probably think this is stupid,” she said, “but I want to thank you.”

  “Thank me?” His eyes widened. “For almost getting you killed?”

  “No, for helping me keep my dream alive. I know you did it all for yourself, but you gave me a reason to plan and scheme. I came up here because of your encouragement. I may not make it as a wildlife photographer, but—”

  “Sure you will.” He reached across the table, as if to squeeze her hand, but one of the officers restrained him. “You will,” he said, his voice cracking. “You’re a winner, Ally. You’ll make it.”

  “Thanks.” She couldn’t sit here any longer or she was liable to start bawling, which was not something she wanted to do in front of these officers of the law. “I have to leave.”

  “We’ll need a statement,” one of the men said.

  “Sure.” She swallowed, not daring to look at Uncle Kurt. What she said could land him behind bars for quite a while. “Could we… do it at the lodge?”

  The officer nodded and got out of his chair. “We can do that.”

  Mitch squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Thank you, Mitch.” She gave him a watery smile. “I’ll take all the help I can get.”

  * * *

  What a class act. If Mitch hadn’t been hooked on Ally before, he was after watching her deal with her uncle and then, without flinching, sit at Betsy’s kitchen table and tell the trooper everything he needed to know to build a case against Kurt. She’d played it straight, something Kurt hadn’t done.

  And neither had Mitch. Oh, he’d told her some of it, but not the whole story. He could hide behind her grandmother’s skirts and say that was the way Madeline had asked him to handle the assignment. That much was true, but Madeline wasn’t around and she’d told him to use his best judgment. He’d decided to keep up the masquerade as long as possible.

  His reasons weren’t all that honorable. He’d been afraid if he told Ally the truth, she wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Sure, that would have impacted how well he could do his job, but that hadn’t been his major concern. Staying close for personal reasons—sexual reasons—had been his primary motivation, no matter how he’d tried to rationalize otherwise.

  Maybe if he’d come totally clean about bis purpose in following her to Alaska, he might have done a better job of protecting her. Maybe if he hadn’t spent so much time dreaming about her body, he might have considered that Tanya Mandell was an imposter in league with Kurt Jarrett. Maybe he would have done his damned job instead of spending most of his energy enjoying the perks, as Ally had phrased it.

  All in all, he was very impressed with Ally’s behavior and pretty much disgusted with his own. He had an idea of what he might do to make it up to her, but that, too, he would have to keep secret, because he might fail. If he failed, he didn’t want her to know. She’d suffered enough.

  Finally the officer finished with his questioning and left. Ally sat in the kitchen chair, staring at her hands.

  “You did the right thing.” Mitch was afraid to touch her, afraid his touch wouldn’t be welcome. If someone had treated him the way he’d treated Ally, he wouldn’t be all that friendly.

  She looked up, her expression bleak. “I think he regrets what he’s done, but I’m beginning to realize that he could turn around and do the same thing again, if somebody stronger comes along and talks him into it.”

  “Unfortunately, I think that’s true.”

  “It’s really the pits when your last remaining relative has no moral fiber, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  She glanced at him. “I don’t think you can relate. I’m guessing your family members aren’t likely to get involved with a crazy person who might decide to kill you.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “Some people get all the money, and some people get all the luck.”

  “Ally, for what it’s worth, I don’t think you need a cheerleader. Kurt was right about one thing. You’re going to make it, and make it on your own. You’re a winner.”

  She gazed at him for several seconds, not commenting one way or the other. “So what are you, really? What’s your bio say about Mitchell J. Carruthers, Jr.?”

  “I’m embarrassed to tell you, considering how I fouled this up.”

  “You found out who she was within twenty-four hours. That’s quick. The only bad part is that she was quicker. She moved to Plan B in less than twelve hours. Even Uncle Kurt didn’t know that would happen, and he was in on the whole scam. So what’s your job description, Mitch?”

  “I’m a combination PI and bodyguard.” And didn’t he feel stupid telling her that. She might have been impressed before today.

  She leaned her chin on her hand. “Not a geek.”

  “Yeah, I’m obviously still a geek, too, in spite of how I’ve tried to outlive that label.”

  “So you’re a reformed geek.”

&nbs
p; “Right. That’s why I was so perfect for what your grandmother wanted. The geeky side of me could handle the details of the estate. The PI and bodyguard persona could look out for your safety. At least that was the idea.”

  She slapped her hand down on the table. “Will you stop? I don’t know how you found out that Vivian was a fake, but you did find out, and then you came to the rescue.”

  “I was almost too late.” The scene would figure in his nightmares for many months to come. “And if Ernie hadn’t decided to shoot himself something for dinner—”

  “If you hadn’t organized the troops, Ernie wouldn’t have been there. Nobody would have been there. I’d be underneath ten feet of snow, and Vivian would be on her way to South America, or wherever she planned to hide out until Kurt got his mitts on the Jarrett fortune.” She put her hand over his. “I owe you, Mitch. And although I wish you hadn’t lied like a rug, I—”

  “About that.” Since she’d started the touching stuff, he decided he was safe to hold her hand in both of his. “I should have told you everything from the very first.”

  “No, not from the first.” She looked into his eyes. “I would have thrown a fit. But you should have told me before we had sex.”

  “Yes.”

  “But then we might not have had sex.”

  He sighed. “And that’s why I didn’t tell you. You complain about lack of moral fiber in your one remaining relative. If I’d had any moral fiber, I would have told you why I was in Alaska that night, before the poker game.”

  “Do you regret not telling me?”

  He gazed at her and remembered the way she’d shuffled those cards, how her breasts had danced with each movement, how wet she’d been when he’d ripped away her panties. He’d promised himself there would be no more lies between them. “No,” he said. “God help me, I don’t regret it.”

  She stood and held out her hand. “Then how about once more for old times’ sake?”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  So their brief affair was about to end. Mitch had said he was leaving the job—essentially leaving Ally. She accepted that, but she knew this had been more than just a job to him, and she wanted to give him a going-away present. Besides, after nearly dying today, she needed some solid evidence that she was still very much alive.

  Once they were in her room, she didn’t play games. She was more than ready for hot, glorious sex with a guy who knew his way around that subject. She started stripping off her clothes when she noticed that he was standing there, watching her.

  Maybe he was thinking that this would be their last roll in the hay. She’d thought that, too, but she didn’t care to dwell on it, and didn’t want him to, either. No point in getting morose. It might dampen the mood, and she wanted the mood to be sizzling.

  “Hey, Carruthers, last one in bed’s a rotten egg.”

  “I was just thinking…”

  “Uh-huh. Exactly what I was afraid of. No thinking. Action.”

  “Ally—”

  “We’ll talk about our goodbyes later,” she said gently. “Afterward. Right now I need to live in the moment.”

  He nodded and started taking off his clothes. He even managed to find a condom he’d thrown on top of her dresser the night before. Seeing Mitch naked, aroused, and in possession of a condom was enough to make Ally’s day.

  “You left that out for Betsy to see when she cleaned the room?” Ally glanced at the foil envelope he tossed onto the pillow before climbing in next to her. Betsy must have loved finding that piece of evidence.

  “Your room,” he said, gathering her into his arms with a smile. “Your responsibility. I had enough troubles hiding all my James Bond stuff.”

  “Speaking of James Bond stuff.” She cupped his face in both hands. “You put a bug under my bed.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but I took it out again before anything interesting happened on that bed.” He stroked her hip.

  “Something interesting could have happened before you showed up, mister.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  The more she thought about it, the more the concept of him bugging her bed turned her on. “Yeah. What if I’d decided to masturbate that first night? Would you have listened?”

  “I had to keep track of your actions, didn’t I?”

  “So you would have listened.” She was on fire for him, and yet all he’d done was lazily stroke her hip while they talked about his surveillance equipment. His other piece of equipment, the deep probe attached to his body, pressed against her thigh. He might find the topic of masturbation of interest, too, judging from the condition of that piece of equipment.

  “Of course I would have listened.” He slowly dipped his head and teased her nipple with his tongue.

  Such a whisper of stimulation, and yet she’d begun to tremble in anticipation of a climax. “And then what?” She arched her back, lifting her breasts higher, inviting more. He continued with soft licks, applying no real pressure. He was driving her nuts. “Would listening have aroused you?”

  “Yes.” His breath was hot against her breast.

  “What would you have done?”

  He licked a circle around her nipple. “Ally, are you getting kinky on me?”

  “Who’s kinky? You were planning to listen to me masturbate.”

  “Only if you actually did it. There was no reason to think you would.”

  “But did it cross your mind?”

  “Maybe.” He nipped her lightly.

  “It did!” Her breathing grew shallow as she quivered in his arms. “Sex was on your mind, even then, wasn’t it?”

  “Guess so.” He took her nipple into his mouth and played with it a while.

  “What would you have done if I had? Tell me.”

  “Oh, I dunno. Turned up the volume on my recorder?”

  She groaned, moving her hips restlessly, wanting him to place his hand, the one stroking her hip, several inches to the left.

  “Do you want to know if I would have masturbated, too?” he asked softly.

  Thinking of that nearly gave her a climax on the spot. “Uh-huh.”

  “The answer is yes.” He lifted his head from her breast and feathered a kiss over her lips. “Yes, I would have masturbated, and wished I could walk through the door between us and replace your hand with mine, like this.” At long last, he touched her.

  And she exploded with embarrassing speed, crying out wildly, her hips thrashing as he stroked her with his knowing fingers.

  “I love how you come apart so fast.”

  She gasped and trembled in his arms. “You… talked me… into coming.”

  “You talked yourself into it. You’re the most exciting woman I’ve ever known.” His kiss was deep and thorough, submerging her once again in lush sensuality.

  She loved hearing that she was a standout in his experience with women. Maybe he wouldn’t forget her right away. Maybe she’d stay on his mind for weeks or months. She wouldn’t mind being a permanent memory, but that might be too much to ask. Now that she realized who he really was, she could imagine him with plenty of affairs.

  But she wouldn’t think about that now. This was her time. As she opened her mouth to receive his tongue, she drew it in, letting him know what she needed more than anything else, even more than another orgasm.

  He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Yeah, me, too.” He picked up the foil packet from the pillow, tore it open and took out the condom. “Last one of the vending-machine variety.”

  “Uh-oh. And us with a long Alaskan night ahead of us.” She was prepared to raid Betsy’s medicine cabinet. Betsy knew what was going on, anyway.

  He put on the condom. “Notice I didn’t say we were out.”

  “We’re not?”

  “There’s a little pile on the dresser, right next to where I found this one.”

  “Oh.” Heat rushed through her as she imagined using that little pile all through the night. “Compliments of the management?”

  “Looks like.” He
moved between her thighs.

  “Any objection to using that supply?” If he had any, she’d find a way to overrule him.

  “No objection.” He angled his hips and thrust deep. “A guy can only stand on principle for so long before he cracks.”

  “Glad to hear it.” She cupped his firm butt and looked up into his eyes. They’d turned that warm, liquid brown again. Lust was there, certainly, but she glimpsed something more, something he might not want to admit.

  She wouldn’t push him. He wouldn’t want to get tangled up with a woman who planned to make her mark in the wilds of Alaska. She’d settle for this and be grateful for one more night of Mitch’s brand of outstanding sex.

  He eased back and thrust forward again. “At least this time I didn’t have to beat you at poker to get you naked.”

  “You didn’t beat me.” She lifted her hips and matched his rhythm. “I lost on purpose.”

  “Mm.” He picked up the pace, making the bedsprings squeak in a steady tempo. “I’ll bet you shuffled that way on purpose, too.”

  “Nope.” The squeaking grew louder as they bounced against the mattress. “That move was unplanned.”

  “I like this game the best.” His breathing changed, becoming rough.

  She gripped him tighter and gulped in air. Oh, this was going to be very good. “What… game is it?”

  “It’s called ‘making Ally come’.”

  “Then deal me in.”

  And he did. She went off like a rocket, and he followed right after, shuddering and moaning in her arms.

  In the end, they used most of the condoms and staged another refrigerator raid so they wouldn’t have to leave the lodge for food. Betsy didn’t come home at all during the night. Ally suspected she’d decided to leave the lodge to the two of them, which was fine with Ally.

  Eventually, toward dawn, they slept. As light filtered through the frosty window the next morning, Ally woke up with a start to find Mitch no longer in bed with her. But she heard him moving around in his room.

  Pulling the sheet off the bed, she wrapped it around herself and went over to see what he was up to. She found him completely dressed in his nerd clothes. His suitcase was packed.