by B. J Daniels
Her lips parted. As her gaze locked with his, he dragged her against him and kissed her with the passion that had been building up inside him for days. He’d never wanted anyone the way he wanted her. He felt like a man who’d been lost in the desert and now found cool, fresh water. He wanted to drown himself in her.
The front door burst open on a gust of wind and snow.
“Will? Will!” Lamar’s voice carried through the lodge, along with the sound of his boots on the hardwood floor as he headed in their direction.
* * *
WILL GROANED AS they were forced apart. Poppy groaned silently. She’d waited twenty years for this only to have it interrupted. That had been the kiss she’d been waiting for. She’d felt him begin to truly surrender to her.
She stepped away, straightening her apron and turning to her stew as Lamar rushed into the kitchen. She needed a moment, she told herself as she opened the oven door and slid the large pot inside, closing the oven before turning back to Will and Lamar. She knew her face was flushed from the kiss. But Lamar didn’t seem to notice. Clearly he was worked up.
“We need to talk,” the man said, glancing from Will to her.
“Whatever you have to say, Poppy can hear it.”
Lamar hesitated for a moment. “Is there somewhere we can go to discuss this, the three of us, in private?” Poppy saw that he had a large manila envelope in his gloved hand.
“Let’s go up to my apartment,” Will said and glanced at her. Poppy nodded and took off her apron as she followed them upstairs.
She’d never been in Will’s apartment over the lodge. It was at the front of the structure, at the opposite end from her room and Dorothea’s. In the summer months when the guest ranch was at its maximum occupancy, both the men’s and women’s bunkhouses would be full of staff. From what she’d gathered, Dorothea and the cook stayed in the rooms upstairs. Will’s brothers worked the cattle ranch in the valley, leaving the guest ranch business to him.
As she stepped into his apartment, she had to smile to herself. It was all cowboy and all male from the paintings on the walls and the rugs on the floors to the antique spurs on the mantel over the fireplace and the leather furniture. There were books everywhere, which also made her smile. One book was open on the small table next to what was obviously his chair.
Through a doorway, she caught a glimpse of his log bed draped with a homemade quilt and more books on the end table next to it. She imagined the two of them snuggled up in that bed and had to turn away. Just being in his space made her heart beat faster. That old ache was a new, much stronger one after that kiss downstairs. Her blood ran hot. She had yearned for this man for so long...
She’d thought that once he admitted that he was crazy about her that would be all she needed. But now she realized she wanted much more. All the kisses had done was start a fire inside her that only this cowboy could put out.
Poppy moved to the window overlooking the ranch. She could barely make out the barn through the falling snow. Pressing her forehead against the cool glass, she tried to regain control of herself. What about her plan to break Will’s heart? If she made love to him, would she be able to walk away? Because no matter how Will felt right now, once this was over...
Will had said he was falling for her, that he loved her cooking, and clearly he wanted her. But for how long? She knew his history and she warned herself to tread lightly. He’d said he didn’t want to hurt her. Did she need to remind herself that he hadn’t purposely hurt her when they were young? He just hadn’t wanted her when she’d wanted him. What if that happened again?
Or vice versa, she reminded herself. Maybe she was right and all she had to do was make love with him and the spell would be broken. She could get on with her life—
“I found something my father had hidden in his cabin,” Lamar said as Will closed his apartment door. “It’s all of the employee records from the company.”
Poppy turned as Will went to the fireplace, threw on another log and closed the grate before offering her and Lamar a seat. She took the couch, leaving the chairs for the two men.
Lamar was clearly upset. He seemed to take a breath as he tried to calm down. “My father believed that someone was stealing from the company. I’m sure that’s why he brought these documents with him. He’d made notes about tightening security.” He looked from Poppy to Will for a moment. “But I have since learned that someone might have been running a drug business through On the Fly. I think he had a crazy idea that by bringing the suspects on this retreat, he was going to find the culprit.”
“You think he got too close to the truth,” Will said. Lamar nodded. “Well, that could certainly shed some light on what’s been happening up here. But how do you explain Lexi’s death?”
The man shook his head. “I can’t. Unless she saw more than she said the night she found my father in the barn.”
Will seemed to think for a moment. “Poppy and I have reason to believe that someone in your company was threatening Lexi. The day on the hike to the waterfalls, Lexi got hurt running from someone who was either after her or she thought was after her.”
Lamar took off his On the Fly stocking cap and raked a hand through his hair. “I have no idea what was going on at my own company.” Poppy heard the guilt in his voice. “My father and I were involved in a power struggle. He wasn’t good with business. On the Fly is relatively new. He’d already bankrupted several other businesses. He was great with ideas, but terrible at actually running a business, and yet he was the one who realized something was wrong.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Will said. “Someone took advantage of you. Do you have any idea who?”
Lamar shook his head as he looked at the manila envelope balancing on the arm of his chair. “I went through these employee records. There must have been something in them that my father saw that I’m missing. When I went to his room to look for some clue to what was going on, I realized that someone had been there before me. I don’t know what the intruder was looking for, but I suspect it might have been these papers. My father had hidden them well.”
“If you didn’t find anything in them,” Will said, “I really doubt I would.”
“I agree. I doubt the sheriff will be able to make heads or tails of them, either. I took some notes on what I found, but I was hoping you could keep the papers somewhere safe. I’ve had them hidden in my cabin but...”
He didn’t need to say more, Poppy thought. He was sharing the cabin with his brother. At this point, he probably didn’t trust anyone with the information.
“I would be happy to,” Will said. Poppy could tell that Lamar had come here for another reason.
“When you say drug business...” Will said.
“It’s possible my father had found out that the company was being used to distribute heroin.”
He let out a curse. “So we aren’t talking petty theft,” Will said.
“Possibly not,” Lamar agreed as he got to his feet. “It might explain why someone is willing to kill to keep the secret.”
Poppy couldn’t help being surprised. She could see that Will was, too. This changed things. She wondered where Lamar had gotten his information, but figured that was for the sheriff to ask.
“I appreciate you coming to me with this,” Will said as he rose, as well, to take the large envelope the man handed him. “I’ll put this in my safe.” He walked Lamar to the door, told him to be careful and, closing the door, turned to face Poppy.
His gaze locked with hers. “Poppy.” He said it all in that one word, his voice raw with emotion. She knew he could see all the yearning in her gaze just as she could see desire firing his brown eyes.
But the way he said her name, it was also a question. Was she all in even knowing what was at stake?
She rose on trembling legs as he locked his apartment door and moved toward her. She didn’t have to t
ell him that she wanted this as much as he did. He closed the distance between them and took her in his arms again.
The kiss was as hot as the blaze crackling in the fireplace. His tongue probed her mouth, finding the sensitive places that made her weak. She parted her lips, surrendering to his kisses as heat burned at her center.
With a moan, he pulled away from her mouth to trail kisses down her throat.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered, his lips setting her skin to blaze.
Slowly he began to free each button of her shirt as his lips and tongue caressed more accessible bare hot flesh. She shuddered against him, burying her fingers in his hair.
As he reached the swell of her breast, he freed the last button and slipped her shirt off one shoulder to get to the hard, aching nipple straining against the fabric of her bra.
She moaned in pleasure as his mouth suckled her breast through her bra before he slowly slipped her bra strap off her shoulder. Her breast spilled from the bra, her nipple hard and large and hot and damp from the wet heat of his mouth.
He dropped his head to her breast and sucked hard at her nipple. She arched against his mouth as he lathed her breast with his tongue until she cried out with need. Will freed the other breast, cupping them in his large, rough hands to kiss and caress the tender flesh. Molten fire raced to her core.
She buried her fingers deeper in his hair as his lips made their way down her rib cage, then her stomach. She felt his nimble fingers release the first button on her jeans. Achingly slow, he released another button and another. When his fingers found her center, she was hot and wet with throbbing need for him.
She thought she would die if he stopped as he touched her softly, slowly. Her legs went weak and she would have collapsed if he hadn’t lifted her onto the arm of his leather chair. She grabbed the back of the chair, needing to hang on as his fingers worked their magic to the point that she was about to erupt.
An explosion filled the air, making them both jump.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WILL LET OUT a curse as light flashed orange at the large window overlooking the ranch. “What the hell?” He released her to rush to the window in time to see someone running along the side of the barn. Kirk Austin. Kirk ran through the snow toward the cabins, disappearing in the storm as the barn was quickly engulfed in flames.
Poppy joined him at the window, pulling her shirt around her nakedness as she did. “The horses!” she cried an instant before Will saw Huck and Slim racing to the corrals to open the gates so the horses could go into the pasture and away from the flames.
He looked at her, torn between his need for her and finishing what they’d started, and rushing to the burning barn.
She must have seen the pain in his face. “Go!”
He nodded and headed for the door.
“What can I do?” she asked behind him.
“Stay here.” He stopped for a moment to look back at her. She smiled and nodded. And he was out the door, racing down the stairs toward the burning barn, his mind racing, as well. What the hell had happened? A barn didn’t suddenly explode into flames. Someone had done this. Done this to hide the evidence since Big Jack’s body was still inside.
He thought of Kirk running away from the scene of the crime.
Grabbing his coat by the front door, he burst out into the storm. Snowflakes whirled around him in a flurry of white, icy cold. He could feel the heat before he was even close to the barn.
Huck came out of the smoke against the blazing background. “We can’t get near it.”
“The horses?”
“Slim has them all moved into the far fenced pasture.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Huck said. “We have no way to put it out.”
He was saying what Will already knew. The barn was going to burn to the ground. They couldn’t get near it as hot as it was burning. Fortunately, it was far enough from the bunkhouses that they should be fine.
A few guests had come out of their cabins to see what was going on.
“What do you think happened?” Huck asked over the roar of the blaze and the storm. Will met his gaze. They both knew what had happened. One of his guests had caused the explosion, although he could only guess how. What he thought he knew was who. While the rest of them had run toward the burning barn, Kirk had been running away.
Will was just thankful that Kirk had turned the horses out first. They’d been in the stalls, but when he’d looked out, they were all out in the corral. Destroying evidence, whatever evidence against him might have been in the barn, Kirk had at least not stooped to killing the horses.
He wasn’t too worried about finding Kirk. The man couldn’t get far, and the last Will had seen of him, Kirk had been running toward his cabin. He wouldn’t know that he’d been seen so Will figured that was where they would find him.
A thought struck him at the same time it did Huck.
“The other body—” Huck barely got the words out before they both turned and ran toward Lexi’s cabin.
* * *
POPPY COULDN’T JUST sit inside. She told herself that there must be something she could do. After Will left she’d stood in his apartment trembling all over. They’d come so close to making love. She could still feel his mouth on her skin, his fingers inside her. She shuddered with both longing and disappointment in herself.
She had wanted Will Sterling to make love to her. But at what price? Caught up in her desire for him, she hadn’t cared when his hands and mouth were on her. Now she was coming to her senses. She’d reeled him in with her cooking—just as she’d planned. She had more than his attention. She had him where she wanted him. She’d seen the burning desire in his eyes, felt it in his kisses and caresses.
He wanted her. But, she thought with a groan, she’d wanted him just as badly. Unfortunately, now that she’d calmed down, she also realized that she wanted more than a one-night stand with him. She knew the man’s reputation. He was a confirmed bachelor. They wanted two different things.
Standing in his apartment with the male scent of him still filling her nostrils, she warned herself. If she wasn’t careful she was going to let him break her heart again. Only this time, she would have only herself to blame.
Straightening her clothing, she headed downstairs, sickened by what she’d seen from the window. Also she couldn’t help worrying that Will might do something foolish like rush into the barn to get Big Jack’s body out. Surely he wouldn’t do that. The body! That had to be why someone had set the barn on fire. Barns didn’t just explode, did they?
As she looked out, she caught a glimpse of Huck and Will running through the deep snow toward the cabins. Grabbing her coat and pulling on her boots, hat and gloves, she rushed out after them. Running was next to impossible in the deep snow. She lumbered through it even though she’d lost sight of the two men.
Cabin doors opened. She heard someone yell, “What’s going on?” She kept going, reminding herself belatedly that one of the guests had a butcher knife. All the cabins were a good distance apart. Each set back in the pines.
She could see Huck and Will rushing toward Lexi’s cabin.
The explosion drove them both back. Smaller than the one that had set the barn aflame, this one blew out the windows in a shower of glass that fell darkly on the fresh white snow. She heard the glass sizzle and realized she’d stopped in her tracks and stared dumbly at the burning cabin. The killer had managed to destroy any evidence left behind with the bodies of Big Jack and Lexi.
Poppy turned away, unable to watch as flames licked through the cabin as the wind whipped both snow and smoke around her.
* * *
LAMAR HAD BEEN in his cabin when he heard the explosion. It had hardly registered with him, he’d been so shocked from his own discovery.
After he’d taken the manila envelope to Will and told him everything he knew ab
out what was going on, he’d gone back to his cabin. Earlier, he’d taken notes on all the employee files his father had hidden.
He looked at the information so many times that he was ready to give up when one of them struck him as odd. It was one of the employee’s birth dates. Why did it seem familiar? He knew he’d seen it written down somewhere before. Closing his eyes, he tried to remember. Not in the files. Before they’d flown up here for the retreat? Yes, on his father’s plane ticket. It hadn’t meant anything but now he recalled Big Jack telling him that he’d had to get a new cell phone.
4-11-1990.
He felt the weight of his father’s phone in his pocket at the same time he felt a chill move through him. Slowly, he took out the phone, telling himself it was just a coincidence. He had to be wrong. He turned on the phone, and when he couldn’t open it again, he put in 4111990.
The passcode didn’t work. He let out the breath he’d been holding, relieved. He told himself that all the crazy thoughts that had been going through his head were just that: crazy.
Then he looked back down at the phone and typed in 041190.
Bingo.
His heart dropped as the passcode opened his father’s phone. For a moment his heart was beating so hard that he did nothing.
But after a moment he checked his father’s messages. There were numerous ones from Ruby. He scrolled down them until he found the one he was looking for. He stared at it, shock making him numb. So many secrets. So damned many secrets.
At the sound of voices outside his cabin, he stepped to the window and saw Will and Huck. Both were wearing sidearms as they started past.
* * *
WILL AND HUCK were headed down to Kirk’s cabin when Lamar came out of his.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I want to help,” he said as he quickly pulled on his boots and grabbed his coat.
Will didn’t argue. Right now he’d take all the help he could get. He had no idea what kind of fight Kirk might put up. Nor did he know if the man would be armed. As they reached cabin number six, Will motioned for Huck and Lamar to hang back. He stepped to the side of the door to knock. He knocked again louder.
