Until now.
This was a moment she’d have to hold onto, she knew. After he was gone, this would be all she would have.
She pushed those thoughts, and the pain they brought with them, aside. She was determined to enjoy what little time they did have. Three days. Less than seventy-two hours. She intended to make every minute count.
Slowly she stretched, rose on her elbow to gaze down at him. His eyes were closed and his breathing had steadied.
“Blackwolf, if you fall asleep, so help me, I’ll pluck your chest hairs out one by one.”
He opened one eye on a grimace. “So you’re into torture, are you? I never would have thought it. Holly Douglas, Mistress of Pain and Earthly Delights. Has a nice ring to it.”
“You’re impossible.” Shaking her head, she spread her fingers over his chest.
He lifted a finger to her cheek, then lightly traced a path across her jaw. “And you are incredible.”
The simple touch of his fingertip made her tingle from head to toe. She wanted to believe him, believe that what had just happened between them was as special for him as it had been for her. But was she being naive? she wondered. Did she want so badly to believe it, that it clouded her thinking?
Perhaps ignorance was bliss, she thought. Maybe there were times it was better not to know the truth.
It would be easier for both of them to keep things simple and easy, she decided. Determined to do just that, she smiled and softly raked her fingernails over his chest. “Blackwolf,” she murmured. “Such a nice Irish name.”
“My father was Cherokee, my mother was from Naples. They met when he was in the Air Force and she was waiting tables in a nightclub. I don’t remember much about her, except that she was beautiful and she used to yell at me, ‘Guitano Antonio Blackwolf, you such a bad boy. I tell you papa when he comes home.”’
“Guitano Antonio, is it?” Holly smiled, slid her hand below his rib cage to his flat, solid stomach, then lower still. “And were you a bad boy?”
Suddenly she was on her back and he was grinning down at her with a wicked look in his eyes.
“Very bad,” he murmured roughly and brought his mouth to hers.
His kiss was long and deep and surprisingly gentle. She wrapped her arms around him and let herself go completely. As the fever built between them again, as it swept them away, she did something that she’d never allowed herself to do before.
She fell in love.
When Guy woke four hours later, the sheets and pillow beside him were as empty as they were cold. He sat, swiped at his face, gave his neck a twist to the left until he heard a crack, then swung his legs over the side of the bed.
The green display of the nightstand clock switched from 4:32 to 4:33. Way too early to be up, Guy thought. Not just because it was Sunday and Holly’s store was closed, but because neither one of them had gotten much sleep last night. They’d been just a little bit busy.
He smiled, remembering in precise detail how they’d kept each other busy.
His smile faded. He was such an idiot. He’d had some foolish notion that once they’d made love the need that had been clawing at his insides would ease. If anything, now that he knew what her skin felt like under his hands, the way she came alive when he touched her, the way her soft lips parted and her eyes darkened when he slid inside her…
How could he know these things, remember all that, and not want her again and again?
But there was no place for him in her world, or for her in his. He flew in and flew out at a moment’s notice, was gone most of the time, usually in remote areas. He wasn’t a picket fence, nine-to-five kind of guy. He’d seen how she was with those kids at the school. She’d be a great mother. And he’d be a father who was never home. He knew what that was like for a kid. He’d been there, and it was a lousy place to be.
Sighing heavily, he slid out of bed and pulled on the slacks he’d worn last night that were still on the floor. He dragged his hands through his hair, then found her in the kitchen.
She stood at the window, her robe belted at her waist, staring out into the early morning. With her hair long and tousled around her shoulders, her skin flushed and her lips still rosy from his kisses, he thought she’d never looked more beautiful. He wanted to know what she was thinking, what she was feeling, but somehow, he didn’t think he had the right to ask.
He waited a moment, until he could breathe again, then moved behind her. “Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey, yourself.”
Relief poured through him when she leaned back against him. Only now did he realize that he’d been afraid she would have turned away from him. Afraid that she would have regrets.
He wrapped his arms around her and they stood there in the early-morning silence, neither one of them speaking, a transition from the passion of the night before and the reality, the uncertainty, of a new day.
“I spoke to him once,” she said softly. “In my whole life, just once.”
Her voice had an empty, hollow tone to it. Guy knew that the “him” she referred to was Cameron Fortune.
“I was only eight at the time.” She continued to stare, unblinking, out the window. “My mother had been drinking and she called him, was pleading with him to talk to her, to come and meet me.”
Guy wanted to stop her, to turn her in his arms, kiss her, make love to her again, anything to make her forget, if only for a moment, all the bad times. But he knew instinctively she needed to tell him. Not for him, but for herself.
“They were arguing,” she went on after a moment. “When my mother started to cry I grabbed the phone and begged him to come be my daddy and take care of me and my mommy.”
Outside, a pickup with fishing gear in the bed rumbled by. “That’s Jim Turner and his son, Skip,” she said absently. “They go out on the lake every Sunday morning before church.”
Guy pressed his lips together, waited, then she turned slowly and stared at his chest. “Do you know what he said to me? He said, ‘Tell your mother never to call my house again.’ Then he hung up.”
He swore hotly under his breath, pulled her into the circle of his arms and held her close. Guy wished to God that Cameron Fortune was alive just so he could have one good solid swing at the bastard.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said softly. “Maybe I am afraid to meet the Fortunes. Afraid they might reject me, too.” Her eyes were bright when she looked up at him. “Maybe it is time to face that fear.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, wanting nothing more than to take her back to bed. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying—” her gaze held his “—that I’m going to Texas.”
His hand stilled. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“All right then.” He sighed. “I’m going with you.”
“I’m a big girl, Blackwolf.” The smile she gave him was crooked. “You don’t need to go with me.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I do need to.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then nodded as she moved back into his arms. “Thank you.”
This was what he’d come here for: to change her mind about meeting the Fortunes. The only reason he’d come. So why, now that she’d finally agreed, did he want to tell her not to go?
Damned if he knew.
Confused, he simply held her. And told himself that if even one member of that family hurt her, he’d deal with them himself.
Nine
The Texas Holly knew hadn’t changed much in three years. The town of Gibson had a new, ten-store shopping center with a Box Office Hits Video and Williams Grocery Mart, but other than that, everything else looked pretty much the same. The gas station on Henley Avenue and Ford Street still had faded green siding; the red, white and blue barber pole still turned in front of Billy’s Barber Shop and the Mustang Diner still had a large flashing neon sign in the shape of a horse.
As a child, Holly had always been fascinated by that sign. The
legs flashed to simulate movement and the horse, with its mane flying in the wind, ran and ran and ran. Then one day, just four weeks after her mother had died, Holly stared at that sign and realized that for all its effort, the horse never went anywhere. It just stayed where it was, like a hamster on a wheel.
Two days later she’d packed everything she could fit into her car, quit her job at the drugstore and headed for Alaska and became an entrepreneur.
And now she was back, standing in front of the small white trailer that she’d been raised in. The new owners had done some upgrades: a fenced-in porch and new siding, plus a flower bed in front filled with bluebonnets and black-eyed Susans that didn’t seem to mind the scorching afternoon sun.
“You okay?”
She turned at the sound of Guy’s voice. He’d been waiting for her in the black Taurus they’d rented only an hour ago at the airport, but now he came up behind her and slipped his arms around her.
She smiled at him. “I’m fine.”
It seemed like a lifetime had passed since yesterday when they’d flown out of Twin Pines with the insurance adjuster after he’d pronounced Guy’s airplane a total loss. They’d spent the night in Seattle at Guy’s apartment, caught an early-morning flight from Seattle to the airport in San Antonio, then driven to Holly’s hometown where they’d checked into a room at The Gibson Motel.
Tomorrow she would meet with Ryan and Miranda, but tonight she’d wanted to be here, in the town where she’d been raised, where she could be close to what was familiar to her.
Where she could be close to Guy.
She knew her time with him was temporary, but she refused to let that undermine the pleasure she felt when they were together. Only later, after she flew back to Twin Pines and he went home to Seattle, would she allow herself to think about and then deal with the inevitable pain. For now, she wanted only to remember these moments of sharing, of togetherness. The moments of intimacy, of being loved and feeling loved. She would cherish each precious moment.
So for now, she would think only of the present. And that’s what it was, she realized. A present.
Smiling, she leaned back against him, then pointed to a thickly wooded area about a hundred yards from the trailer. “There’s a creek and fishing hole behind those oaks and boulders over there. When I was twelve, I used to go swimming in there with Timmy John and Billy Ray.”
“Timmy John and Billy Ray?”
She chuckled at the you’ve-got-to-be-kidding tone in his voice. “The Thompson brothers. They lived three trailers down from mine. They were twelve and thirteen and the only other kids in the park close to my age at that time. For the year that they lived here, they let me tag along with them sometimes.”
“Yeah?” He raised a brow. “They do anything I have to find them and beat them up for?”
“They were perfect gentlemen.” She gave a delicate sniff. “In fact, Billy Ray swore in front of me one time and Timmy John gave him a black eye and made him apologize. I fell madly in love with T.J. after that and followed him around for the next two months. Then they moved and I never saw either of them again.”
“Good.” His arms closed tighter around her. “I can’t picture you still living here with someone named Timmy John and a pack of Timmy John Jr’s. tugging on the hem of your cotton housecoat.”
“Is that so?” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “And just how do you picture me?”
“Wearing black silk,” he said and nibbled at her ear. “Stretched out on white satin sheets, with diamonds at your throat and perfume that costs a thousand dollars an ounce.”
She knew he was teasing, but his words seduced her as much as his lips on her ear. Since the night they’d made love, there had been no question that he wanted her or that she had wanted him right back. No games, no pretending, no guile. They made love with an openness, an honesty, and an intensity she wouldn’t have thought existed.
She would cherish every moment with him, she told herself. No regrets.
When his lips grazed her neck, she shivered. “Thousand dollar an ounce perfume? Where would I find that?”
“In Paris,” he murmured. “You’d fly in on your private jet for breakfast in Versailles, then shop in the afternoon.”
“And at night?” Her eyes drifted closed when his mouth slid back up to her ear. “What would I do at night?”
“Well,” he whispered, “you’d have to be back home in time to make dinner for your husband and eight kids, of course. A man’s gotta eat, ya know.”
“Good try, Blackwolf.” Laughing, she leaned back against him, letting herself enjoy the moment. “But I don’t cook, remember? You sure you aren’t fantasizing about Marcy Pruitt on those satin sheets?”
“Nope.” He turned her to face him, brushed his lips with hers. “Come back to the motel with me, Holly, and I’ll show you exactly who and what I’ve been fantasizing about.”
Smiling, she touched his cheek with her fingertips. “Okay.”
When Guy slipped the key into the motel room lock, he heard the sound of the phone ringing from inside. He looked at Holly, watched the smile that had been on her lips fade as she stared at the phone. “You want me to answer it?” he asked.
She shook her head, then walked to the phone on the nightstand beside the king-size bed. She hesitated between rings, drew in a deep breath, then picked the receiver up.
“Hello?”
She glanced at him, and Guy’s gut tightened at the flash of fear in her eyes. When she turned her back to him, he clenched his jaw and shoved his hands into his pockets to keep himself from reaching for her. He knew that she would want to do this herself, that she needed to do this herself.
“Yes, that would be fine,” she said into the phone, then picked up the motel pen on the nightstand and wrote something on the notepad sitting there. “All right. I’ll see you then.”
She hung up the phone quietly, stared at it for a long moment.
“Is everything all right?” Guy asked.
“That was Miranda. My—” She hesitated. “My father’s sister. She said that Ryan is still in the hospital and that he’s doing much better, but the doctors want to observe him a few more days. She asked if it would be all right if I met with her at the ranch tomorrow at two-thirty. She has some business matters to handle for Ryan.”
She turned then, reached for her suitcase that sat on the valet stand beside the bed. “I got directions,” she went on. Her voice was strained. “I wasn’t sure if you’d ever been to the ranch. I hear it’s really something.”
Guy watched her zip her suitcase open and busy herself with the contents inside, moving things around while she rambled. “Or if you’d prefer to stay here, I can take the car and be back in time for dinner. Or I could drop you off somewhere and you could—”
“Holly.” He closed the distance between them, took hold of her shoulders and turned her to face him.
“What?” Her eyes were wide and innocent, but in spite of her light chatter and easy tone, he saw the edge of apprehension.
“It’s okay to be a little nervous,” he told her.
“Don’t be silly.” She laughed dryly. “I’m not nervous.”
“You’re trembling.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, you are. Come sit down.”
She shook her head. “I can’t sit down.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I think I’m going to throw up.”
Chuckling, he tugged her stiff body into his arms. “Just take a deep breath,” he said and eased her down to sit on the side of the bed.
She gulped in some air, then slowly released it.
“Better?”
She nodded slowly. “You must think I’m a big baby.”
“No, I don’t think you’re a baby.” He combed his fingers through her hair. “I think you’re probably the bravest woman I’ve ever met.”
“Right.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s why it feels like there’s a blender inside my s
tomach.”
“The fact that you’re afraid doesn’t make you a coward,” he said gently. “But refusing to face that fear would. Like Zachary.”
“Zachary?”
“Zachary Zebra.” He smiled at the surprise on her face. “The story you read to the kids the day I was taking a walk and just happened by.”
“Just happened by?” She lifted one brow. “Right.”
“Anyway—” he took her hands in his; her fingers were like ice “—you were terrific.”
“It’s the kids that are terrific.” Her cheeks flushed at his compliment.
I adore you, he almost said, but caught himself. The words would have been easy to say if he was teasing or flirting. But the fact that he truly meant them, that his chest ached with a feeling so unfamiliar to him, made him hold back. Startled him.
And yet, for that moment, it made him wonder, too…
Later, he told himself. He’d think about all this later. Right now he simply wanted to hold her, to warm her chilled hands and erase the worry in her eyes.
When he tugged her gently into his arms, she rested her cheek on his shoulder. “She didn’t sound like a horrible person,” she said quietly.
“Miranda?”
She nodded. “I always thought of them, all the Fortunes, that way. Guilt by association.”
“You had a right to be angry.” She’d stopped trembling, he noted. He brought her hand to his mouth, kissed each knuckle in turn and felt the warmth return to her fingers.
“At Cameron Fortune, yes.” She sighed, relaxed her stiff shoulders. “But to assume anyone and everyone connected to him was bad, was hardly reasonable. When I went to Alaska, I’d somehow convinced myself that my life in Texas never existed. That every snide remark that had ever been made to me, every sideways glance, every pitiful look, would simply disappear from my memory. When that first letter came, I was so furious they’d contacted me in Alaska, I burned it. There were three more after that, I sent them all back unopened. I thought they would give up and leave me alone. I wanted them to leave me alone.”
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