He leaned over her to initiate a kiss. Maybe she was crazy, but nothing had ever felt so good or so right. Nick made her feel good about herself, and she needed that confidence more than anything.
“You want to think this through?” he asked, holding her by the shoulders now.
“No. No, I don’t.”
“Because if you think about it, you’ll change your mind?”
She pulled away from him and took a step backward. Her body trembled with confusion. “Forget it,” she said, feeling foolish and far too aggressive now that the mood had been broken.
“Is that your solution to everything? Forget it?” he asked. “Because I’m not forgetting. Any of this.”
Shaking, she headed for the car, hoping she’d taken the right path, relieved when she heard his footsteps behind her.
She got in the passenger side and slammed the door.
Nick got in behind the steering wheel and started the engine.
He drove the entire way to Elmwood in silence. Ryanne didn’t attempt to say anything, either, because she didn’t know what to say. Nick steered her car into the drive and carefully pulled into the garage, then switched off the engine. He removed the keys and held them out to her.
Ryanne took them and got out, automatically locking the car doors.
She headed for the house while Nick closed up the garage and fastened the padlock.
“Are you ever going to talk to me?” he called softly from behind her.
“I don’t think so.”
“What are you mad about?”
“I’m not mad.”
“What then?”
“Never mind.” She opened the back door.
He stepped right up behind her. “Are we on for the rest of the week?” he asked.
“That’s probably not a good idea,” she replied. She turned on the kitchen light and got a glass from the cupboard. From the pitcher in the refrigerator, she poured herself lemonade and drank some.
He was studying her, but she refused to meet his eyes. “If you want something, help yourself,” she said.
Nick watched her guardedly. “Not going to play anymore because you’re mad at me?” he teased.
“Shut up, Nick.”
“If I have a memory lapse, will you play with me again?”
She set her glass on the counter with a clank. “Shut up, Nick.”
“Or what? You’ll stop sharing your toys with me?”
“Or I’ll wipe that smirk off your face.”
“I’m shakin’,” he replied.
She reached behind her and grabbed the glass, and before he had time to react, she tossed the remainder of the lemonade at him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE COLD LIQUID hit his chest. Not much had been left in the glass, but it was enough to soak through his shirt in a good-sized blotch.
Her eyes widened with surprise at what she’d done. She studied him with growing trepidation on her flushed face.
“So that’s how it’s gonna be.” He took three long strides, opened the freezer door and jimmied several ice cubes from the plastic bag where she’d stored them.
Ryanne squealed and ran out the back door before he turned around. He gave chase, the door slamming behind him. He studied the back of the house, listened and heard her footsteps moving around the side. The dark slowed him down, kept him from gaining on her, though he knew she was just ahead. His shoes pounded across the pavement of the front walk, then were muffled by grass again as he ran on. When she passed the dining room windows, the light from inside illuminated her perfectly, and he caught her playful, determined expression as she glanced over her shoulder.
The ice was freezing his fingers and had begun to drip through them.
Ryanne shot up the back steps, but he was right behind her. This was a game they’d played hundreds of times in the past. She would try to slam the door now and he’d push it open. The scenario played out just as he anticipated.
Once he got the door wedged open, she was shooting toward the dining room. She would head straight for the front door to escape back outdoors.
Behind her, he slipped on a throw rug and hit his shoulder on a doorjamb before catching his balance and gaining on her. Always before when they’d played this game, she’d been taller, longer-legged, and had escaped. But this time his legs were the longer ones, and he caught up to her as she tried to yank open the front door.
Flattening a palm against the wood panel, he trapped her in the prison formed by his body.
Completely surprised, she spun around, her breath coming in pants, and flattened her back against the door.
Her eyes were wide, revealing her perplexity. A pulse beat at the base of her throat and her feminine scent rose up to envelop him in the hot, humid foyer. She lowered her gaze to his lips for a heated second. Every kiss they’d shared still burned like liquid flame in his veins.
Nick raised the rapidly melting ice. “I’ll let you off tonight, but next time you’re mine.” She raised her palms to the front of his shirt and his muscles quivered under her touch. It was enough encouragement to prompt him to lean forward and kiss her with thorough and mind-numbing tenderness. Somehow, instinctively, he’d known it could be this good with her.
He edged back while he still had his wits about him.
“I should go.” Neither of them had looked at the clock. “I haven’t checked on Jamie, and even though I switched on the intercom to Dad’s room, I need to make sure everything’s okay.”
“All right.”
“Is this really happening, Rye?”
“I think so. Yes.”
* * *
Ryanne smiled at the memory of kissing him and stretched languorously in the bath water. She’d never known such feelings were possible. Never understood the concept of crazy, head-over-heels physical or emotional attraction until this very moment.
Her feelings for Nick frightened her, threatened her sense of independence. She’d never needed anyone, not ever. She’d set out to accomplish her scholastic and career goals, depending on no one but herself, and she would continue to do so.
Even after losing everything and being betrayed, she had pulled herself up and devised a plan to move forward and fix things. Her life was not going to play out here in Elmwood. She had a couple of good job prospects to consider, and in order to pay her debts, she would be taking one of them.
Nick would not be a part of her life.
Beneath the minimal weight of the sudsy water, her chest felt heavy at the realization. She closed her eyes and remembered every divine detail of their kisses. She’d never imagined she would experience anything so beautiful...so humbling and yet so empowering. And never, never in a million years and a million fanciful dreams, had she imagined Nick would be the man to awaken her to the romantic side of herself.
Nick believed she was going back to California. Perhaps to him she was a brief diversion. He’d told her that he didn’t form relationships with women in town because of the gossip it would create, but she didn’t want to believe she’d simply been handy. In her heart of hearts, she knew he cared for her as deeply as she did him.
Could he show her such tenderness and then simply say good-bye? It was his nature to give.
Maybe he gives too much. Maybe you don’t give enough.
The voice of her conscience had her opening her eyes and facing reality. This new discovery was too wonderful to deny herself just because it was temporary. She was too selfish to vow to go back to the way things had been before, even though that’s what her moral sense told her she should do.
Ryanne pulled the stopper to let the water run down the drain and stood to dry off. She wanted this time with Nick. She needed it. She would just have to keep in mind that it would be over soon and enjoy every brief minute while it lasted.
* * *
THE SUN BEAT down mercilessly as Nick chased another turkey across the road and into the tall, dusty grass. Striding forward, he flushed half a dozen more out into the
open and grabbed as many as he could. The one he’d been chasing ran down the highway to join a dozen more of the pathetically ugly creatures.
“Nobody can say this isn’t a glamorous job,” he told the driver of the overturned semi, who’d been taken to the clinic to be treated for a few cuts and bruises and then driven back to help round up the escaped poultry. At least a hundred wooden crates lay broken or open along the roadside, and all available deputies and manpower had been called out to help with the cleanup.
“I came around that turn back there, and smack-dab in the middle of the road were half a dozen cows,” the driver explained yet again with exasperation.
Nick’s deputy, Bryce Olson, hauled a crateful of the pale, sickly looking fowl to the back of a nearby pickup, then grimaced at the smears on his brown pant leg. He glared at the semi driver before descending the bank once again with an empty crate.
“It’s going to be tomorrow morning before they get out here to haul my rig up,” the driver said.
“What are we going to do with all these turkeys in the meantime?” Nick asked. “They can’t sit out here in the sun and fry.”
“I called the farm. They won’t take ’em back,” the harried man explained. Nick concentrated on the white bandage on the man’s forehead and tried to remember this had been an accident.
“I’m trying to find someone to come get them, but nobody wants to touch this mess.”
“I can understand that.” Nick wiped his forehead with the back of a hand and adjusted his hat.
“My guess is they’re going to write this load off.”
“And where does that leave us?” Nick looked around in disgust. “Let me make a few calls.” He climbed into his cruiser, started the engine and cranked up the air-conditioning. On even less sleep than usual, he was functioning at low capacity today, not a good condition for a man with a loaded gun and a low opinion of live turkeys.
Down the highway, Duane Quinn chased a couple of the odious creatures; loose feathers flew in the sunlight.
Taking a drink of sun-warmed coffee from his cup on the console, Nick picked up his cell phone and made a few calls.
By noon the driver had been informed that his guess was correct. Nobody wanted to deal with this, and the shipment was being written off. His freight company couldn’t get anyone out to help clean up until the following day.
Nick put his plan into action, and nearby farmers and businessmen arrived to carry away crates of free turkeys. An assembly line was set up at the Cooper farm, and turkeys were killed and dressed until late that night.
Every citizen who had a freezer soon had it stocked full, as did as the merchants who owned commercial freezers—at the store, the café and the steak house.
Nick got home late that evening to discover Ryanne with Jamie. “Hi, guys.”
“Hi, Dad!” Jamie ran to give his father a hug, but backed away, wrinkling his nose. “You stink.”
“Where’s Pop?” Nick asked Ryanne.
“Helping with the cleanup somewhere,” she replied. “I told him I’d be glad to come stay with Jamie.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. We had dinner a little while ago. I saved you some.”
“As long as it’s not turkey.” He looked her over with new appreciation, hoping she hadn’t had a change of mind or any regrets about the kisses they’d shared.
She blushed under his gaze, then wrinkled her nose. “Go take a shower,” she suggested.
He did, a long one, standing under the spray and letting it pound out the weariness in his shoulders. Jamie sat on the vanity and watched him shave, asking questions, chattering about his own day.
Ryanne had served up a plate of spaghetti for him, with a green salad on the side, and she and Jamie played on the laptop while he ate.
Nick put on a DVD for his son, and after about half an hour, tucked him into bed. When he returned to Ryanne in the family room, she was looking through a photo album.
Nick relaxed into the cushions of the comfortable leather sofa and propped his crossed ankles on the trunk.
Ryanne wore a tender expression when she turned to him. “Some day, huh?”
“My life went from peaceful to crazy in a matter of hours.”
She smiled and moved over to snuggle up beside him. Nick wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple. With the album in her lap, she nestled her head on his shoulder and rested her palm over his heart. Nick picked up her hand and kissed her fingers.
They sat that way, comfortable, comforting, for a long, easy time. Finally, Ryanne shifted, sitting up and turning her attention back to the photographs.
“What are you looking at?”
“I found a stack of old albums, and I brought a few over to show Jamie. Here’s us.” She lifted the book and showed him a photograph of the three of them—Ryanne, Nick and Justin—playing on the beach at Lake Okoboji. In the shot beside it, they rode brightly painted horses on the old-fashioned carousel at the amusement park. “We went there several summers, didn’t we?”
Nick nodded.
“My dad spent all his time near the cabins reading, but your dad took us fishing and boating.”
Nick had avoided pictures of his younger brother, avoided the painful memories they dredged up. Ryanne turned to him, intuitively understanding. “This is painful for you?”
He nodded.
She closed the album and set it on the floor. “Maybe if you talked about it, about Justin, it would help.”
“Like you talk about Mason?”
That shut her up, though Nick hadn’t intended to be cruel. She meant well, but she hadn’t shared much about her life while they’d been apart, and there were things he didn’t want to talk about, either.
“Birdy called me today,” Ryanne said, changing the subject.
“Yeah?”
“We’re having lunch tomorrow.” She nestled back into Nick’s embrace. “It seems really weird seeing her after all this time.”
“Seemed weird seeing me, too, didn’t it?”
“That’s because you are weird.”
She’d made him smile, and he hugged her with appreciation for understanding his need for privacy. “Like Birdy’s not.” He nuzzled Ryanne’s cheek, and she turned her face to his.
She ran her index finger over Nick’s lower lip; he ducked his head to give her a quick kiss.
Being a woman with a will of iron and a fierce independent nature, she found that needing someone was foreign to her. Therefore Ryanne didn’t understand this wild urgent wanting she felt for this man. How he instinctively knew the measures of delicacy and strength that wound her tighter and tighter, she couldn’t fathom, but he proved it again with his kisses.
His mouth left hers and they breathed the same air. “I can’t leave tonight for our drive,” he said. “My dad’s not here.” He kissed her, and just as acute disappointment threatened to wash over her, he suggested, “We can watch some old movies and eat popcorn instead?”
“Sounds perfect.”
“Let me check on Jamie first. Would you mind grabbing my phone off my dresser? I think I left it there.”
While Nick headed to Jamie’s room, Ryanne stepped into Nick’s darkened room. Not locating a switch on the wall, she made her way by the moonlight filtering in through the window and turned on a bedside lamp.
No trophies lined the bureau or the shelves above it. The stuffed lizard and model cars were gone. The furniture was contemporary oak—a wide king-size bed, not too tidily made, and an open armoire revealing a TV and a stereo. A comfortable overstuffed chair sat near the window with two stacks of books on the table beside it.
Ryanne picked up the one on top: A Sleep Manual, written by an M.D., Ph.D. The one beneath it was a mystery novel by a popular author. She spotted a Blue Book of auto prices, and another car book. On the other stack, the title Mars and Venus in the Bedroom leaped out at her. She flipped it open and noted that the receipt being used as a bookmark was only two days old.
A smile inched up the corner of her lips. An ink pen and a tablet lay beneath the book, and her fingers itched to unearth it and see what was written.
She found the phone where he’d left it and turned to find Nick approaching.
Ryanne set down the book. “He’s asleep?”
“The kid sleeps like a rock.”
“You’re an eclectic reader.”
His gaze flickered to the stack of reading material and back to her. Nick reached for the lamp and plunged the room into darkness. “Come on, it’s movie time,” he said, taking her hand and leading her downstairs.
CHAPTER NINE
DAWN CREPT THROUGH the drapes Nick had never gotten around to closing the night before, turning the inside of his eyelids a rosy hue. Without opening his eyes, he sensed the difference in the room. The delicate familiar scent was overpowering his senses. Thinking back to his last memory, a jolt of surprise brought him to wakefulness.
He’d fallen asleep.
Nick opened his eyes, almost disoriented in his living room. Sitting in the easy chair, he remembered nothing of trying to fall asleep, no thoughts, no relaxation practices. The last thing he remembered was watching a Cary Grant movie and the joy of being with Ryanne.
She slept on her side, her honey-blond hair a riot of waves across the sofa cushion and one side of her face. She was beautiful. Her golden-dark lashes rested against creamy, fair skin, and her lips were pink and deliciously puffy.
He’d fallen asleep!
Nick tried to remember what time it had been. Not later than eleven—twelve at the very latest. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept that many hours in a row, and he’d never awakened feeling so rested and at peace.
He glanced at the clock in the predawn light. It would be at least another hour or so before his dad or Jamie roused.
Without disturbing Ryanne, he used the main floor bathroom; she was still sleeping when he returned. He kissed her head, inhaling her scent, branding it on his brain so he’d never forget when she was gone.
She stirred and opened her eyes. Recognition swept over her and her cheeks tinged a rosy pink. A woman who blushed. He took her hand and kissed her fingers. “Sorry I fell asleep on you.”
Hometown Sheriff Page 10
