by Lisa Jackson
But John Cawthorne’s phone call was the one that bothered him the most. Because of Bliss. Mason couldn’t shake her out of his mind no matter how hard he tried. He’d always prided himself on being able to put each portion of his life into perspective, to give appropriate attention to the most pressing problems while letting others simmer until he was ready to deal with them, but Bliss dominated any other thoughts. Where she was concerned, he was beyond a fool.
“Get a grip,” he growled as he squared a hat upon his head. He grabbed his jacket from a hook on the brass hall tree and decided to call it a day. It was after six and he needed a drink. A stiff one. Maybe even a double.
He yanked open the door and there she was. Bliss Cawthorne in the flesh. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes troubled.
“I tried to stop her,” Edie, his receptionist-secretary, apologized helplessly, as if there was no way she could deter the intruder. Edie’s earphones were still in place, the cord to her transcriber dangling from the headset.
“It’ll just take a minute,” Bliss said.
Mason doubted it. A minute? No way. An hour? He didn’t think so. Whatever was weighing heavily enough on Bliss’s mind to prod her down here looking for him, it would take a long time to hash out. “It’s all right, Edie.”
“But—” the secretary stammered, her feathers obviously ruffled.
“I’ll handle it,” Mason assured her as she glanced at her watch. “You can go on home. Just lock the door and have the answering service pick up.”
“Are you sure? It’s just that I have to pick up Toby.”
“I know.” He held the door to his office open and Bliss, looking suddenly as if she regretted whatever impulse it was that had driven her here, stepped inside. A cloud of her perfume trailed after her, but Mason refused to be affected by anything remotely feminine, even a scent that reminded him of long-ago years.
He closed the door softly and she nearly jumped.
“What’s going on, Bliss?” he asked.
“I—I came down here because of Dad.”
“You’re sure about that?” He couldn’t hide the skepticism in his words.
“Of course.” She cleared her throat and her spine visibly stiffened as she impaled him with those incredible blue eyes. “I want you to back off, Mason.”
“Back off?”
“Yeah, with Dad and his ranch. Surely there’s another parcel you could buy.” She tossed her hair over her shoulders. “Dad doesn’t need this now—all this pressure. He’s already had one heart attack and he doesn’t need another. He and Brynnie are at each other’s throats because of this mess. Because of you.”
He propped himself on the corner of his desk and folded his arms over his chest. There was more to this than money and land; he could see it in her eyes and the set of her chin.
“I told you before, Brynnie wanted to sell,” he reminded her.
“That was Dad’s land.”
“Which he had already deeded over to her.”
Bliss took a step forward, placing herself directly in front of him and nailed him with a look that caused an uneven thumping in his chest. “You know, Mason, for years I’ve stuck up for you whenever Dad tried to pin that horseback riding accident on you.”
“Did you convince him?” he asked dryly.
“Never. But he knew what I thought.”
He lowered his gaze to the semicircle of bone at the base of her throat where there was a pulse throbbing erratically. “And what was that, Bliss?” Mason asked boldly, painfully aware that her body was placed squarely between his legs, should he close them. His throat was so dry he had trouble concentrating. “What did you think?”
She paused and her gaze shifted. “I was the one who rode out in the storm. You saved me.”
“Did I?” He wasn’t convinced. Too many years of carrying a load of guilt around.
She didn’t answer and through the frosted, pebbled glass of his door, he noticed the lights dim in the outer office. Edie had left. He was alone with Bliss. His palms began to sweat. His thighs, straddling the corner of the desk, began to ache.
“Just stay away from Dad and Brynnie, okay? Don’t cause trouble between them.”
“You want them to be together?” he asked. “Given all the circumstances, I would have thought—”
“I want my father to be happy,” she interrupted. “That’s all. He’s . . . he’s already had one heart attack.”
“Which is the reason why Brynnie sold.” He rubbed his knees with his hands and felt a tightening in his groin, the start of arousal. He should just cut the lights and escort Bliss and her air of self-righteousness out the door. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Being alone with her—so close that he could smell her skin, see the faint freckles bridging her nose, witness the sweep of her honey-brown lashes against her cheeks—was his undoing.
Her eyes narrowed a fraction. “They’ve been fighting about it, you know.”
“No one twisted Brynnie’s arm.”
Her eyes locked with his, and he felt a catch in his throat “What is it with you, Lafferty? What is it you have against my father?”
He should have been prepared for the question and been able to deal with the silent accusations in her gaze, but he wasn’t. Damn it, whenever he was near her, rational thought slipped away and he saw her as he remembered her best, naked as the day she was born, swimming in the rippling current of the river, her hair dark and damp, her skin flushed from the icy water, and her nipples, round pink buttons visible beneath the shimmering surface.
“What is it you have against me?”
“What?”
“You’re not here because of ‘dear old Dad,’” he said, seeing a spark of passion and the hint of pain in her eyes. “You’re here because you wanted to see me again.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Lafferty.”
“Admit it, Bliss.”
“I came because of the ranch—”
“Bull. You just don’t know what to do with me.”
“What?”
“Strangle me or kiss me.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Is it?” he asked, his heart thumping, his body hard with arousal. The scent of her perfume was tantalizing, the smell of her hair damned near drove him out of his mind. “You’ve never married.”
She froze and the color in her face drained quickly. “Does it matter?” she demanded, then shook her head. “Listen, don’t answer that. It’s not important—”
“It is to me.”
His words echoed through her soul, and she reminded herself to tread carefully, that this was a man to be wary of, a man she couldn’t trust, a man who had stolen her heart years ago, only to ruthlessly toss it away.
She stepped away from him and rubbed her arms at the sudden chill in her bones, and he, as if understanding the need for distance between them, stood and walked around the edge of the desk to the window. Still, he was waiting for an answer. So why lie about being single? “Okay. Just for the record, Lafferty, I never found the right guy, okay? I’ve dated, sometimes seriously, been asked a couple of times, but never felt that I wanted to throw away my independence on some guy who . . . whom—”
“You didn’t love.”
Oh, God, it was as if he could read her mind, so she turned her back to him, tried to think. “Yes . . . I suppose that’s it.” He always had a disconcerting way of slicing right to the point. She heard him shift and leave his place at the window. His footsteps thudded dully on the carpet. She felt his hands upon her shoulders, his breath warm against the nape of her neck, and she stiffened. Her idiotic pulse had the nerve to skyrocket. Worse yet, his hands, work-roughened but gentle, felt so natural as they gently rotated her to face him.
“So why didn’t you fall in love, Bliss?” he asked in a whisper that wafted through her hair and reverberated through her mind. Oh, Lord, he was too close and oh, so male.... She noticed the shadow of his beard, dark gold and rough against his square, uncompromising jaw.
“I asked, why didn’t you fall in love?”
I did. A long time ago. With you. And you hurt me. Oh, God, Mason, you hurt me so badly. She swallowed hard and licked lips that had become dry in a second. “I, uh, I guess I’m picky.” Dear God, was that her voice that sounded so breathless—so filled with a desperate yearning she didn’t want to name? “What—what about you?”
“I fell in love with the wrong woman.”
Terri Fremont. His ex-wife. Of course. “I see.”
“Do you?”
He was too close, way too close. She needed to escape, but her feet wouldn’t move.
“Terri and I are divorced.” His lips turned downward and a private pain pierced his eyes. “We have been for a long time. Ours wasn’t exactly a marriage to write home about.”
Her heart squeezed even though she’d told herself over and over again that she didn’t care about Mason Lafferty, that he could rot in hell, that he was a selfish bastard. “I suppose not.”
His mouth twisted and his hands, still upon her shoulders, didn’t move. “You know, I never meant to hurt you—”
Oh, no, he was going to apologize! Again! This man who could barely admit to making a mistake. Bliss couldn’t take it, didn’t want to hear anything he had to say about what had happened between them. “Don’t, Mason,” she begged, staring into eyes as gold as an October sunset. “Just don’t, okay?”
“I thought I should explain what happened.”
“I know what happened, and guess what? It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said, her tongue tripping over the untruth. “I said what I wanted to say.”
“Liar.”
“Pardon me?” she asked, inwardly telling herself it was time to leave, to get away from him.
“I think you have a lot more to say. More questions that beg to be answered.” He stepped even closer, touched the side of her face with one callused finger. Just being alone with him and breathing the same air he did caused her chest to constrict and her heart to pound in a silly, useless cadence.
“Bliss—” His hands captured her shoulders. His expression, harsh only minutes before, seemed suddenly haunted and weary. “Just . . . just believe that I never meant to hurt you.”
She swallowed against a sudden lump in her throat as she witnessed a ghost of pain cross his eyes.
“I am sorry,” he whispered.
“I know.” Oh, Lord, now tears were burning against her eyelids but she forced them back. She’d wasted too many tears on this man years ago. “Believe me, Mason,” she said, lying through her teeth again as anger overcame sadness, “it doesn’t matter. It wasn‘t that big a deal. If you think I spent years or even months pining for you, you’re dead wrong. I went home to Seattle, pulled myself up by my bootstraps and was dating Todd Wheeler not long after you finished saying ‘I do.’ So don’t flatter yourself into thinking I cared a whit about whom you married or even when.”
She tried to pull herself from his grasp, but his fingers clamped possessively over her arms. His amber gaze—hot, wanting and intense—pinned hers. No, she thought desperately. No! No! No! This was wrong. So very wrong, and yet, despite the denials screaming through her brain, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could only stare at his lips—blade-thin and hard. It took little effort to imagine what they would feel like against hers, how his mouth would open and his tongue would slide so easily past her own lips and teeth, searching, seeking, touching . . .
“If I could do things over—”
“What?” she asked, tearing her gaze from that sexy slash that was his mouth. “What are you saying, Mason? That you’d change the past? How? Sneak around so that I wouldn’t find out about Terri? Keep me from riding out to the ridge in the storm?” Make love to me like I begged you to? Oh, God. “What?”
“No, I—”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Now she sounded like a spoiled teenager, but she didn’t care. She had to find a way to break away from him, away from the sweet seduction of his touch. This was all happening way too fast and much too late. “Look, Mason, as I’ve said, it just doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Like hell.” Their gazes clashed—innocent blue and rugged gold. Like metal striking metal.
“No—Oh, Mason—”
He dragged her against him and as she gasped, his lips crashed down on hers. Urgent. Wanting.
She voiced a soft moan of protest that went unheeded. His mouth was hard and warm and molded so effortlessly against hers. He smelled of leather and aftershave, musky and male. A part of her let go—after ten long, heart-wrenching years.
His lips were as sensual and insistent as they had been years before, and she was just as lost to him now. In the warm interior of his office, a decade had melted away.
Don’t do this, Bliss. Don’t let him use you again!
But she couldn’t stop herself.
His mouth moved over hers with a wild abandon that touched the deepest part of her. Within a heartbeat her traitorous body began to respond, and desire, hot and long-slumbering, awoke with a vengeance. She could hardly breathe, her knees threatened to buckle and her mouth opened willingly under the sweet, gentle pressure of his tongue.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she was making a horrid, life-altering mistake, but she didn’t care. For the moment, she only wanted to close her eyes and drown in the seductive whirlpool of his taste, his smell, his touch.
With a moan, she started to wind her arms around his neck. Then, as his fingers toyed with the hem of her T-shirt, she realized that she was falling into the same precarious trap that had snared her ten years earlier.
He used you before.
He’ll use you again.
He never loved you and never will.
“I—I can’t,” she managed. “W-we shouldn’t . . . Oh, Lord, this—this isn’t a good idea,” she whispered, lifting her head and feeling dizzy. Her eyelids were at half-mast, her blood flowing like lava.
“I know.” He kissed her—a soft, teasing brush of his lips over hers.
She melted deep inside. “I don’t think—”
Another feather-light kiss to the corner of her mouth. “Don’t think.”
Sweet heaven, how she wanted him. Her legs turned wobbly. “Listen, Mason, please, l can’t do this.” Forcing the unwanted words over her tongue, she pushed him away with all her strength. She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling with each breath, her anger pulsing in her ears. “What we had was over a long time ago. I thought you understood that a few minutes ago, but if you missed the message let me give it to you loud and clear, okay?” Somehow she found the strength to say what her heart so vehemently denied. “I don’t believe in reliving the past.”
“How about changing the future?”
Her heart stopped for a crazy minute and in her mind’s silly eye, she saw herself walking down an aisle in a white dress, swearing to love him for the rest of her life, becoming his wife and bearing his children. Mason’s babies. A part of her heart shredded when she remembered he already had a child, one that had nothing to do with her. Tears touched the back of her eyelids and she said dully, “We have no future.” And that was the simple truth. They both knew it. “Look, don’t . . . don’t you have an oil well to drill, or some tractors to sell, or some livestock to brand?”
A slow, sexy smile spread across his face. “I was just about to call it a day.” Reaching behind her head, he snapped off the lights. “Maybe you and I should have dinner or drinks,” he suggested, and a part of her longed to be with him, to forgive him, to be confident enough to make love to him without the need to think of becoming his wife.
“I—I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”
“Scared?” he taunted, and a spark of amusement flared in his eyes.
“No way.”
“Then, why not go out with me?”
Because I can’t take a chance. I don’t want to get hurt, and I can’t trust myself when I’m arou
nd you! “I . . . I have plans.” Even to her own ears, her excuse sounded feeble.
“With Dad.”
He hesitated, his silence accusing her of the lie. His jaw slid to one side. “Then I’ll take a rain check.”
“Fine. Right.”
“I’m serious, Bliss. Any time you want to see me, drop by.” Amber eyes held hers for a second. “You know where I live.”
“Yes. At Tiffany’s.”
He nodded and touched her lightly on the arm. “Any time.” A tremor stole through her at the thought of being alone with him at his place. He opened the door and she walked through with as much dignity as she could muster, but all the way down the stairs to the first floor, she felt her lips tingle where Mason had kissed her and her cheeks, where the stubble of his beard had rubbed against her skin, were slightly tender. Oh, Lord, what was she getting herself into? She shoved open the front door and heard Mason’s keys jangling in the lock but she didn’t wait for him to follow her.
Quickly, she hurried outside to the sidewalk. The flow of traffic was lazy in the late afternoon and in the town square across the street, women pushed baby buggies or watched their children play on equipment in the park. She thought she spied Tiffany Santini pushing her daughter on a swing, and again her heart twisted at the thought of children.
Tiffany threw her head back and laughed as the imp in the swing said something she found hilarious. Tiffany’s black hair gleamed in the sunlight, and mother and daughter seemed carefree and incredibly happy.
Someday, she silently told herself. Oh, sure, and when is that going to happen? Remember, Bliss, you’ve got a long way to go. You’re twenty-seven years old and still a virgin.
Chapter Nine
“So tell me, Lafferty, what is it you’re afraid of ?” Jarrod asked. He peeled the label from his bottle of beer while some old country ballad wafted through the smoky interior of the bar. From the back room, billiard balls clicked while conversation at the few odd tables scattered around the room was punctuated by laughter. A television mounted high over the bar was tuned in to a baseball game, which the bartender watched as he polished the battered old mahogany with a white towel.
