Star Valley Winter

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She didn’t need anyone else—she and Dylan managed just fine, dammit.

  Emotions like love were messy and complicated. They made a woman needy and vulnerable and stupid. Like her mother had been, like she had been with Kurt.

  Besides, she had enough on her plate right now, trying to keep the practice alive and food in her daughter’s mouth. She didn’t have room in her life for a man, especially one like Matt Harte who would demand everything and more from her. He wasn’t the kind of man who would be content to stay put in a neat little compartment of her life until she had time for him. He would want it all.

  She could try to convince herself until she was blue in the face but it wouldn’t change the fact that he had somehow managed to sneak into her heart when she wasn’t looking.

  Was it possible to be only a little in love with someone? If so, maybe she could stop things right now before she sunk completely over her head. It would be hard but not impossible to rebuild the protective walls around her heart, especially if she kept her distance for a while.

  She could do it. She had to try. The alternative was just too awful to contemplate.

  She would start by leaving this cozy little corner of the barn and going back to her own house where she belonged. Soundlessly, she pushed away the blanket and planted her boots on the ground, wincing a little as stiff muscles complained at being treated so callously. If she was this sore, she imagined Matt would be much worse when he awoke.

  She thought about waking him up so he could take the cot and even went so far as to reach a hand out to shake him from his slumber, then yanked it back. No. Better to sneak out and avoid any more awkwardness between them.

  She shrugged into her coat and headed for the door. As she passed Mystic’s stall, the little mare nickered softly in greeting, and Ellie stopped, jerking her head around to see if Matt woke up. He was still propped against the wall like one of those old-time wooden dime-store Indians, and she let her breath out in relief.

  It wouldn’t hurt to take a look at the horse while she was here, she decided. She could do it quietly enough that it didn’t disturb Matt. Straw whispered underfoot as she made her way to the little mare’s stall. The door squeaked when she opened it, but Matt slept on.

  “You’re a pretty girl, aren’t you?” She pitched her voice low, running her hands over the horse’s abdomen to feel for the foal’s position. “Yes, you are. And you’ll be a wonderful mama in just a few more months. The time will go so fast and before you know it your little one will be dancing circles around you and tumbling into trouble.”

  The mare made a noise that sounded remarkably like a resigned sigh, and Ellie laughed softly again. “Don’t start complaining now. It’s your own fault. You should have thought about what you might be in for when you cuddled up to that big handsome stud who got you this way. You had your fun and now you have to pay the piper.”

  Mystic blew out a disgusted puff of air through her nose and lipped at her shoulder, and Ellie nodded in agreement. “I know. Men. But what’s a girl to do? They look at you out of those gorgeous blue eyes and it’s all you can do to remember to breathe, let alone keep your heart out of harm’s way.”

  “You carry on heart-to-heart chats with all your patients?”

  She jerked her head up at the rough, amused voice behind her and found Matt leaning his forearms on the top rail of the stall, his hair mussed a little from sleep and a day’s growth stubbling his cheeks.

  As predictable as the sunrise, she forgot to breathe again. “Hi,” she said after a moment, her voice high and strained.

  “Going somewhere?” He gestured to her coat.

  “Home. I’ve stayed long enough. I only wanted to check Mystic one more time before I go. I hope that’s okay.”

  He didn’t answer, just continued watching her out of solemn blue eyes, and her stomach started a long, slow tremble.

  “I’m sorry I took your bed. I didn’t mean to. I must have just drifted off. Yesterday was a pretty rough day all around, and I guess all that stress took its toll on me.” She was babbling but couldn’t seem to help herself. “Anyway, you should have booted me out and sent me home. You must be one big bundle of aches right now.”

  “I ache,” he finally said, his low voice vibrating in the cool predawn air. “I definitely ache.”

  She was suddenly positive he wasn’t talking about a stiff neck. The trembling in her stomach rippled to her knees, to her shoulders, to her fingers. She shoved her hands into the deep pockets of the fleece vest, praying he wouldn’t notice, but she couldn’t do anything about the rest except take a shaky breath and hope her knees would wait to collapse until she made it out of the barn.

  “Well, I, um, I should be going,” she mumbled.

  Nerves scrambling, she patted Mystic one last time, then walked out of the stall. She managed to avoid looking at him until she had carefully closed the door behind her.

  When she did—when she finally lifted her gaze to his—she was stunned by the raw hunger blazing in his eyes.

  She must have made some sound—his name, maybe—and then he ate up the distance between them in two huge strides, and she was in his arms.

  His mouth descended to hers, hot and hungry and needy.

  He devoured her, like he’d just spent days in the saddle crossing the Forty-Mile Desert and she was a long, cool drink of water on the other side. His hands yanked her against him, held her fast.

  Not that she was complaining. She was too busy kissing him back, meeting him nip for nip, taste for taste.

  Somewhere in a dim and dusty corner of her mind, her subconscious warned her this was a lousy idea. If her grand plan was to stay away from him until she had her unruly emotions under control, she could probably do a better job than this.

  She didn’t care. Not now, when her senses spun with the taste and scent and feel of this man she was coming to care for entirely too much.

  With a groan, he framed her face with his work-rough hands and pressed her back against the wood stall as he had the first time he’d kissed her. She felt his arousal press against her hip, and her body responded instantly, leaning in to him, desperate to be closer.

  She almost cried out in protest when he slid his mouth away, but the sound swelling in her throat shifted to something different, something earthy and aroused, when his lips trailed across the curve of her cheekbone to nip at her ear. His ragged breathing sent liquid heat bubbling through her.

  “I think about you all the time,” he growled softly into her ear, and her heart gave a couple of good, hard kicks in her chest.

  “No matter what I’m doing, you’re there with me. I hate it,” he went on in that same disgruntled tone. “Why won’t you get out of my head?”

  “Sorry.” Her voice was breathless, aroused. “I’ll try harder.”

  His low, strained laugh vibrated along her nerve endings. “You do that, Doc. You do that.”

  He dipped his head and captured her mouth again in another of those mind-bending kisses. She wasn’t aware they had moved from Mystic’s stall until the edge of the cot pressed behind her knees, and then he lowered her onto it, the hard length of him burning into her everywhere their bodies touched.

  “I hope this thing holds both of us,” he murmured against her mouth, and she laughed softly, a quick mental picture flitting through her mind of them tumbling to the ground.

  Before she could answer, his mouth swept over hers, his tongue slipping inside her parted lips. She lost track of time, lost in the wonder of Matt, of being in his arms again. She wanted to hold him close and never let go, to cradle that dark head against her breast, to share a thousand moments like this with him.

  She wanted him.

  The knowledge terrified her. She wanted Matt Harte the way she’d never wanted anyone—never allowed herself to want anyone.

  She was supposed to be so independ
ent. So strong and self-sufficient. How could she know she had this powerful need inside her to be held like this, to feel fragile and feminine and cherished?

  There it was, though, scaring the hell out of her.

  But not scaring her enough to make her pull away. She needed more. She needed to feel his skin under her fingertips. He must have untucked his shirt before he fell asleep, and she found it an easy matter to slip her hands underneath, to glide across the smooth, hot skin of his back, loving the play of hard muscle bunching under her hands.

  She was so enthralled with his steely strength that she was only vaguely aware of his busy, clever fingers unzipping her fleece vest until he caressed the curve of one breast through the knit of her shirt. Desire flooded through her, and she felt as if she were swimming through some wildly colorful coral reef without nearly enough air in her lungs.

  She went completely under when his fingers slipped beneath her shirt and began to slowly trace the skin just below her bra. For once, she was impatient with his careful, measured movements. All right, already, she wanted to shout, suddenly sure she would die if he didn’t put those hands on her.

  Finally, when she didn’t know if she could stand the sensual torture another instant, she felt his hands working the front clasp of her bra, then the raw shock of his fingers skimming over her breasts.

  She closed her eyes against the overwhelming sensations pouring through her one after another.

  “You are so beautiful,” he murmured, his voice rough with desire. “The first time I saw you, you made me think of a sunset on a stormy August evening, all fire and color and glory.”

  To a woman who had spent her whole life feeling like an ugly, scrawny red-haired duckling, his words caressed her more intimately than his fingers. No one had ever called her beautiful before, and she had no defenses against his soft words.

  This time she kissed him, lost to everything but this man, this hard, gorgeous cowboy. She arched against his fingers, begging for more of those slow, sensuous touches. He pulled away from her mouth, but before she could protest he slid down her body, pushing her shirt aside so his mouth could close over one taut nipple.

  A wild yearning clawed to life inside her, and she closed her eyes and clasped him to her, her fingers tangled in his silky dark hair. He shoved one of his muscled legs between her thighs, and the hard pressure was unbearably arousing. While his mouth teased and tasted her, she arched against him, desperate for more.

  He slid a hand between their bodies, working the snaps of her jeans, and her breath caught in her throat as she waited for him to touch her, to caress her there. Just before he reached the last snap of her jeans, though, he froze, his breathing ragged.

  He pressed his forehead to hers and groaned softly. “Stop. Dammit. We have to stop.”

  She didn’t want to listen to him, lost to everything but this wild, urgent need pouring through her. With her hands still tangled in his hair, it was an easy matter to angle his mouth so she could kiss him again in another of those long, drugging kisses.

  He cooperated for a moment, his tongue dancing with hers, then he groaned again. “Ellie, I mean it. We have to stop.”

  “Why?”

  He pulled away from her, and she shivered as cold air rushed to fill the space he had been in, to dance across her exposed skin with icy fingers.

  Matt raked a hand through his hair. “A hundred reasons. Hell, a thousand. The most urgent one being I don’t have any protection.”

  Her mind still felt fuzzy, and for a moment she didn’t know what he was talking about. “You…you don’t?”

  “Sorry,” he said wryly. “It’s not something I generally stock in my barn.” She flushed, suddenly jerked to reality, to the grim fact that she was less than a scruple away from making love to Matt Harte on a hard canvas cot. In his barn, no less, with a dozen horses as witnesses, where any of his ranch hands could stumble upon them any minute.

  Dear heavens. What had she been thinking?

  She hadn’t been. She had been so desperately hungry for him that she hadn’t been thinking at all, had completely ignored the warning voice yelling in her head.

  What had she done? This was absolutely not the right way to go about yanking him out of her heart. She was supposed to be grabbing hold of a branch to keep herself from falling any further in love with him, doing her best to hoist herself to safe ground, to sanity. She wasn’t supposed to gleefully fling herself over the edge like this.

  She was too late.

  The realization shuddered through her. She had been so stupid to think she could stop things in mid-step. She was already in love with him.

  “I have to go. I really have to go.” She stood up and frantically began putting her clothes in order, snapping and tucking and zipping.

  He saw her fingers tremble as she tried to set to rights what his hands had undone, and he had to shove his fingers into his pockets to keep from reaching for her again.

  She was mortified.

  He could see it in her eyes, even though she wouldn’t look directly at him, just around and over him as if he didn’t exist, as if he weren’t standing here in front of her, frustrated and aroused.

  He didn’t know what to say to make it right, to ease her awkwardness. There was probably nothing he could say.

  All he knew was that he still wanted her, that his blood pulsed thick and heavy through his veins just looking at her, all tousled and sexy from his hands and his mouth.

  As awkward as things were, he had to stop it. He had no choice. They would make love—he suddenly knew that without a doubt—but this wasn’t the right time, the right place. She deserved better than a quick tussle in a dusty old horse barn. She deserved flowers and candles and romance, things he suddenly wanted fiercely to give her.

  She jerked on her coat and started for the door, but he reached a hand out to stop her. “Ellie—”

  “I hope everything turns out all right with your horses,” she said quickly. “As soon as I hear from the lab on the test results, I’ll let you know.”

  He sighed. He was still hard enough to split bricks, and she was going on about test results. A vast, terrifying tenderness welled inside him. As much as it scared him, he knew he couldn’t walk away from it. And he couldn’t let her walk away, either.

  She was in his system and had been since she’d first blown into town. Trying to ignore it had only heightened his attraction for her, made him more hungry than ever. It was the mystery of her, he told himself. The fact that she was off-limits. Like that kid he was thinking about before who had been denied a scrumptious ice-cream cone, suddenly that was the only thing he could think about.

  Maybe giving in to it, spending more time with her, might help work her out of his system so he could have things back the way they were before she whirled into his life.

  “Are you busy tonight?”

  In the process of slipping on her boots, she blinked at him suspiciously. “What?”

  “Have dinner with me. I know this great place in Jackson Hole that’s not usually too overrun with tourists this time of year. I’m sure I could arrange it with Cassidy to watch the girls. Or we could take them with us, if you’d rather.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Yeah. Or we could go to a movie, if that appeals to you more. If you don’t want to go to the show in town, there are a couple of theaters in Jackson or we could drive over to Idaho Falls. I’m sure we could find something we’d both enjoy.”

  She narrowed her gaze suspiciously. “Are you asking me out on a date, Harte?”

  “I think so. At least that’s the way things used to be done. I’m a little rusty at the whole dating thing.”

  “Why?” she asked, her voice blunt.

  He shrugged. “I just haven’t done it in a while. But don’t worry, I’m sure it will all come back to me.”

  She gave him an im
patient glare. “No. I meant, why are you asking me out?”

  “The usual reasons people go out on a date.” He cleared his throat and looked away. “I’m, uh, attracted to you. I guess you probably figured that out. And I’m not a real good judge of these things, but I think you’d be lying if you said you were immune to me. I think we should get to know each other, since it’s pretty clear where we’re heading with this thing between us.”

  Everything about her seemed to freeze. Even the vein pulsing in her neck seemed to stop. “To bed? Is that where you think we’re heading?”

  He shifted, suddenly feeling as if he were walking barefoot across a pasture full of cow pies. “Uh, it sure looked that way five minutes ago.”

  “Yeah? Well, that was five minutes ago. Things change.” She started toward the door again.

  He plodded valiantly forward. “So you’re saying no to dinner?”

  “Right. No to dinner or to a movie or to any friendly little roll in the hay.”

  By the time she reached the door, his temper had flared, and he stalked after her. “What the hell did I do that’s got you acting like a wet hen all of a sudden? All I did was ask you out on a date, for crying out loud.”

  She stopped at the door, her back to him, then she turned slowly, green eyes shadowed. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Matt. You didn’t do anything. This is just a bad idea for me right now. Yes, I’m attracted to you, but I don’t want to be.”

  “Yeah, well, join the club,” he growled. “I’m not too thrilled about it, either.”

  “Exactly my point. Neither of us wants this. I can’t be interested in any relationship with you right now beyond vet and client, and now we don’t even have that.”

  “I already told you last night I was sorry for the way I jumped down your throat yesterday. I’d still like to keep you on as my equine vet.”

  “Despite everything that’s happened?”

  “Yeah. Despite all of it. Mistakes happen. Whatever you did to the horses, it wasn’t intentional. Consider yourself rehired.”