The Devil in the Saddle

by Julia London

  She went around to his side of the bed and carefully placed the cup of coffee beside him.

  Rafe opened one eye.

  “It’s alive,” she said in her best horror movie voice.

  “Debatable,” he croaked, and rolled over onto his back. The sheets went with him, and what was left barely covered him at all. He pushed himself up and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He glanced at the coffee cup. “Is that for me?”

  “Yep. I bet you thought I was useless in the kitchen.”

  “I might have wondered a time or two,” he admitted, smiling.

  Oh, but Rafe was gorgeous when he smiled. His eyes shone with kindness. He was gorgeous naked, too. Hallie sat on the end of the bed, cross-legged, and pulled the covers over her legs. Rafe was left with a sheet.

  “No fair. Come up here.” He patted the bed next to him. “Where’s the mutt?”

  “Chewing on a toy.” Hallie handed him her coffee and crawled up to situate herself beside him. Rafe kissed her shoulder before he returned her coffee to her.

  “Hey, can you ski?” She was fishing—she wanted to know if he still intended to drive back to Texas today, but couldn’t think how to ask him without sounding as if she needed him to stay. She didn’t need him to stay—but she sure wanted him to.

  “Yes. Can you?”

  “About as well as I run.”

  “Excellent,” he said, and sipped his coffee. “I love a good challenge.”

  Hallie grinned. So he was staying. This thrilled her to the point of excessive excitement. “Well, that’s one thing I can provide by the truckload, Mr. Fontana. One challenge after another.”

  He laughed and put his arm around her, drawing her in close. “You don’t have to convince me. You’re about as stubborn as—”

  “Hey!”

  “But so damn beautiful.” He kissed her shoulder again.

  She rested her head on his chest. She could get used to this. She could get so used to this that she was imagining them in a little cottage somewhere, one big enough for just the two of them. It would have a room for her photography, and a room with a ballet barre. And Sulley, of course. Maybe a few cows. A pair of horses. She very firmly but politely ignored the voice in her head reminding her that she’d decided that she was going to get out on her own for once in her life.

  They took their time getting out of bed, languidly exploring each other again, until the brilliant light of sun streaming in the windows and Hallie’s gurgling pangs of hunger convinced them to shower and head to the slopes.

  They had breakfast in town, stopped at the store for a few supplies, and by the time they reached the slopes, the sun had come out and made the day blindingly white. Hallie had her camera, and took shots of them skiing. Well, Rafe skiing. She wasn’t coordinated enough to handle her skis and the camera at the same time.

  They laughed more than they skied. Rafe almost killed himself laughing at how horribly she skied, bent over her poles, her skis in a snowplow. He skied circles around her. He held the camera and took a few shots of her, then skied more literal circles around her. He skied backward just in front of her, encouraging her to straighten up her skis. That proved to be a mistake—their skis got tangled, and they fell together on the slope, sliding off into the trees. They were laughing so hard until Rafe rolled her onto her back and kissed her.

  It was, all in all, an absolutely perfect day on the slopes.

  Later that night, when they dined in town, the waiter, making conversation as he opened the bottle of wine, asked what they’d done all day, and when he heard they’d been skiing, and Hallie had proclaimed it a perfect day, the waiter asked about the powder. Hallie and Rafe looked at each other and giggled. It was mutual—neither of them had noted the quality of the powder.

  The only dip in the road was the slight argument they had when the check came. “I’ve got it,” she said, her hand on the ticket.

  “Nope.” He put his hand on hers.

  “Uncle Chet owns a share in the restaurant, Rafe,” she said. “It’s on the house.”

  He reached into his pocket. “When Uncle Chet invites me, I will consider it. But he didn’t invite me, and I’m not taking a comped meal. Let go.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  He leaned forward, his eyes shining. “Did you have fun last night?”

  She nodded.

  “If you want to have fun tonight, you better let go.”

  “Stop twisting my arm,” she said, and immediately let go of the check.

  That night, they experimented with each other, alternately dissolving into fits of laughter and heavy breathing. To Hallie, it didn’t matter what they did—every moment was sheer perfection and amazing sex. Rafe knew his way around a woman’s body, and he wasn’t afraid to show her.

  The next day, they tried running, but they were both winded. “Altitude,” Rafe said through gasps for breath.

  “Super big hills,” Hallie added as she leaned against him, her hands on her knees. Sulley rushed back toward them, his tail wagging. He was the only one who wanted more.

  That night, they ate in, thanks to Mr. Collin’s wife, who had left lasagna for them. After they’d done the dishes, they prepared hot toddies from a recipe they made up as they went along, and took them into a bath. They lingered there, making sudsy devil horns and mustaches. When the water cooled, Rafe built a fire in the living room.

  Hallie dried her hair and joined him. She was feeling good and stepped into first position, pliéd, and then moved into second.

  Rafe sat on the couch with his arms sprawled across the back of it, his feet propped on the ottoman. “What are you doing?”

  “Dancing. Sort of. Trying out some moves.” She moved into third position, fourth, then fifth, and last, stepped into an arabesque. Rafe watched her with an expression that made her feel strangely self-conscious. As if she’d shown too much of herself. “I know I’m rusty,” she said apologetically.

  He shook his head. “You have no idea how gorgeous you look.”

  She smiled gratefully. “My ballet teacher used to complain that I moved like wood and not water.” She swept her extended leg in front of her and lifted her arms overhead.

  “Your ballet teacher was either blind or crazy.”

  Hallie laughed and dropped her leg. “Come here,” she said.

  “What?”

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him up. “You’re going to be the hunter. I’m the swan.”

  “I’m the what?”

  She positioned him, his weight on one hip, his right foot extended and pointed. Except that Rafe couldn’t really point his foot—his toes did not seem to want to bend in a downward position. Hallie laughed as she bent one arm behind his back, then extended the other arm. She put her hand in his. “You are the hunter and you have captured me.”

  “There is no way I captured you standing like this,” he groused.

  Hallie did a double pirouette, then leaned toward him, her leg extended backward. “I bet you’ve never done this.”

  “I bet you’re right.”

  She moved into a backbend, then pliéd again before lifting her other leg and extending it backward. She leaned forward again.

  “You never said why you quit dancing. Why did you stop?” he asked.

  She pirouetted. “I’m not sure, really.” Pirouette. Plié. Relevé.

  “An injury?” he suggested.

  “No injuries.”

  “Well, I have one. Can I stop now? My foot is cramping.”

  Hallie paused to reposition his feet into first position. He complained that now he looked like a penguin. She stood on her toes and swanned toward him.

  Rafe caught her by the waist when she twirled off center and very nearly crashed into him. “You should dance again, Hal. You love it so much.”

  Hallie stopped spinning. Her
feet were beginning to ache. She needed pointe shoes to do this right.

  She put her hands on her hips and studied him a moment, then took his hands and set them on her waist. His caramel eyes settled on hers. He pressed his lips together, as if he were biting back words. But then he caught her waist and suddenly lifted her overhead, eliciting a squeal of surprise from her before he put her down. Hallie slowly moved backward, her hand on his, bending as far as her stiff back would allow.

  “Hey. You’re going to fall,” he said.

  “Then don’t let go. See how that works?” She lifted up and smiled.

  He smiled, too—adoringly.

  “This is the first time I’ve really danced since college.”

  “Seriously, why have you waited so long?”

  “Good question. I don’t know how to answer other than to say I wanted it for so long that when I washed out of ballet school, and then dance in college, I felt like I’d washed out of life. I couldn’t face it.”

  He nodded. “I can understand how disappointing it must have been.”

  Could he really? He was right—her life was different. He probably had no idea how easy it had been to fall back to the usual. A life of privilege. Someone on hand to take care of everything. Some man’s arm to take.

  “I used to watch you,” Rafe admitted quietly.

  Hallie smiled curiously. “You did?”

  “When I worked for my dad, you’d come out on the east lawn and practice those jumps and twirling around.”

  “Grand jetés and pirouettes.”

  “You were the most elegant, graceful thing I had ever seen. It was like a spot of beauty and wonder in a world where there were only men and scrub brush and animals.”

  No one had ever said anything like that to her. A smile was building in her chest and radiating outward. “I never knew you saw me.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to.” He caressed her arm. “But I used to live for those glimpses of you dancing on the east lawn.”

  He had loved her, and she hadn’t known it. It was amazing to her. She rose up on her toes and extended her leg, then bent the knee and pirouetted, and fell into Rafe’s arms.

  “Did you do that on purpose?” he murmured, and kissed her temple.

  “Busted.”

  They made love in front of the fire in the living room on the bearskin rug. And later, again in the kitchen. It was as if neither of them could be satisfied.

  Much later, when they were in bed, and Sulley was on the floor with a new bone, and both of them had a book from her box, Rafe put his aside and traced a line between some freckles on her chest. Hallie smiled. She set aside her book, too. “We’re ravenous, have you noticed? It’s like we’ve been penned and we’re just getting out.”

  When he lifted his gaze to hers, she saw something in them that made her shiver. She’d struck a chord—Rafe had been penned somehow.

  She was still thinking of it the next morning when they went into town for breakfast—that he’d been penned, and she didn’t really know from what, but she thought maybe from wanting her, and that astounded her. She couldn’t imagine anyone feeling that way about her for so long. She’d never thought of Rafe as anything but a friend until the first time he came back from Afghanistan, and he was filled out with the hard lines and shadows and curves of muscle.

  How was it for him, she wondered, when Chris had come along? Hallie had taken the path of Chris because she thought it was the path she was supposed to take, and it wasn’t until her father died, when she’d called Rafe, and they’d begun to talk again, really talk about things that mattered, that she began to wonder if maybe she’d had it wrong all along. Had she been wrong about every single thing in her life?

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked, staring at her curiously from across the table in the pancake house.

  Hallie looked at his eyes, his two-day growth of beard, and his lips. Those soft, pillowy lips that had touched her in places she didn’t even know she had. Was she wrong now? “You really do get me, Rafe, do you know that?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, a little, maybe.”

  “No, you do. You’ve made me open my eyes—”

  His phone suddenly rang, startling them both. She gestured, indicating that he should answer. She herself had not turned on her phone since Rafe had appeared on the drive. She didn’t want the world to intrude.

  “Hey, Jase, what’s up?” he asked. He frowned. “I can’t hear you, man. Hold on.” He covered the phone with his hand. “I’m going to step outside.” He slipped out of the booth.

  While he was gone, Hallie pulled her phone out of her purse and turned it on. When it came to life, up popped dozens of texts from Chris. For heaven’s sake, he hadn’t paid her this much attention in all the time they were together. What was his problem? He was the guy who suddenly became interested in a girl once she stopped returning his calls. Well, Hallie had no patience for that. To think she’d been so close to marrying that man made her feel a little sick. She would have walked up to the altar in her perfect dress, determined to make their life perfect, even though it wasn’t perfect for her. Sometimes Hallie scared herself with how willing she was to ignore what she needed to be—

  “Hallie.”

  With a start, she looked up from her phone. Rafe slid into the booth across from her. He sighed, looked out the window at the clouds that had begun to gather over the mountaintops. He sighed again, wearily, and said, “I’m gonna have to head home.”

  “What?” Hallie hadn’t even thought about the end of this yet. All she thought about was the next day, and the day after that, and all the things she wanted to do with Rafe, and all the ways she wanted to touch him. “Why?”

  “Something’s come up in Chicago, and I need to get home to handle it.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah. I think. Just a problem we’ve run into.”

  Hallie nodded. She tried to think of what to say, but she was frozen. She couldn’t grasp that this dream would come to an end. “When?”

  Rafe grimaced. He looked at his watch. It was only ten. “Probably should go today.”

  “Today?” she repeated incredulously. This was it? This wonderful, soul-cleansing interlude of love was ending today? She wasn’t ready for it to end. She couldn’t absorb it, not like this, not so suddenly, not in a pancake house.

  She buried her face in her hands.

  “Hallie?”

  “Don’t mind me, Rafe. I just need to cry about something,” she said, and bit back her bitter tears of disappointment.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Hallie insisted on driving home with Rafe. He didn’t see any reason for her to rush out of this bit of paradise. After all, Nick was looking for an excuse to fly. He was waiting on the call to pick her up.

  “He’s not expecting to hear from me for a few more days. And I don’t want to stay here without you.”

  She was standing in front of him, dressed in jeans and snow boots, a puffy vest and a knit cap. It was hard as hell to say no to this woman.

  “It’s a two-day drive, Hallie.”

  “I don’t care if it’s a five-day drive. Why do you have to go right now, anyway?”

  Because he was enough of a Luddite to have not set up PayPal or Venmo, or to trust any entity but a bank to send money. And Jason needed money. A lot of money. They had to come up with three thousand dollars to get the plumbing inspected and passed.

  “Wait, what?” Rafe had asked when Jason first told him.

  “What can I say? You gotta grease the palm.”

  “Yeah, but I thought we’d already greased that palm.”

  “Are you kidding, Rafe? They won’t even come look at it.”

  It wasn’t the money, although Rafe did not like spending his hard earned money on bribes. But he’d been as determined to save money as he was to keep
his feelings for Hallie hidden from the world, so he had a lot. And he got that sometimes these things happened when you were building a new business. But something was beginning to feel a little off here. It seemed like too much palm greasing for a gym.

  “I’m not at home,” he’d said. “I’ll get back to you in a couple of days.” He also needed to get to Chicago and check things out for himself.

  He was trying to convince Hallie. “I told you—we’ve run into a problem in Chicago that I need to deal with. Hallie, listen to me—stay and enjoy yourself.”

  “This place will never be the same without you. So Sulley and I are going with you. Unless you tell me no.”

  Rafe didn’t see how in the world they would roll up to Three Rivers like nothing had happened. But he couldn’t look this woman in the eye and tell her no. Frankly, he had the opposite impulse—to do whatever it took to make her happy. “Are you sure?” he asked her once more.

  “I’m sure.”

  They made quick work of tidying up Uncle Chet’s house and were on the road by noon. On the way down the mountain, they stopped at the caretaker’s house. An old man with rheumy eyes and large-knuckled hands walked out to the truck. Hallie handed him the key. “We’re taking off, Mr. Collin.”

  “I’ll let Mr. Applewhite know.”

  “Actually,” Hallie said, holding up a finger, “would you mind if I let him know? I want to surprise him.” She smiled.

  Rafe thought that was an odd request. Surprise her uncle with what?

  Mr. Collin shrugged. “If you say so.”

  “Thank you!” she sang out, and waved as Rafe put the truck in drive.

  He looked at her sidelong as they continued on. “What was that about?”

  Hallie pretended to be digging in her purse. “Oh, I think it’s probably best if he doesn’t tell Uncle Chet I took off with a man in a pickup truck.” She turned a smile to him. “You know.”

  He wondered if she meant she didn’t want her uncle to know she’d left with him. This was precisely the sort of thing that should have worried him, but for the last few days, he’d pretended none of that was real.