Breathless Innocence

by Lisa Jackson

  “I heard your story, Heather, but it doesn’t wash. You didn’t have to jump into marriage right off the bat. You could’ve waited.”

  “For how long, Turner?” she asked, tears clogging her throat. “Until you got back to the Lazy K? Until you were through with the circuit? Until you couldn’t ride anymore because you’d suffered too many injuries? I had a baby to think about. I didn’t have any time to waste.”

  His lips curled in disgust and his fingers dug into the soft flesh of her arms. “You weren’t thinking about the kid. You were worried about your reputation. You’d told me often enough about your sister and what she’d suffered in Gold Creek—and then you turn up pregnant, with no husband. You couldn’t face the thought of being a single mother. People would talk. Everyone in Gold Creek would know. You probably couldn’t face your parents!”

  “Oh, Lord,” she whispered, shaking her head. How far apart they were and yet how close. She swallowed the hard lump in her throat and lifted her chin a fraction. “I thought I loved you, Turner. I had myself convinced that you were the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And you walked out. It’s that simple.”

  “Not quite. You were pregnant. I’d say things got a lot more complicated.”

  She felt the heat of his body, smelled the scent of soap on his skin and stared at the small cleft in his chin. Her breasts were flattened against his chest, her thighs imprisoned by his legs. She ignored the tingle that swept through her blood and told herself that he no longer attracted her. He was a broken-down cowboy, cynical and cold.

  “Just what kind of a woman are you?” he asked, but his hard grip loosened a bit.

  “I just want to start over,” she said. “For Adam’s sake.”

  “Like nothing between us ever happened.” His hands moved down her arms to manacle her wrists, and a thrill shot through her—a thrill she refused to acknowledge.

  “I…I can’t forget what happened, Turner, and I don’t expect you to. But if we could just start out without being enemies, it would be best for Adam.”

  His hands, warm as the breath of summer, tightened a little, and pulled her even closer. She noticed the thin line of his lips, and her stomach seemed to be pressing hard against her lungs, her blood heating despite her determination to ignore his sensuality.

  “So what’re you going to do, Turner?” she asked with surprising calm. “Are you planning to keep punishing me for the rest of my life—are you going to try and find ways to make me atone for my mistake?”

  “Is that what I’m doing? Punishing you?”

  His voice was so low, so sexy against her ear that she could hardly respond. But she forced the words past her lips. “I think you plan on making me pay for my mistake for the rest of my life.”

  He stiffened, and she knew that she’d finally gotten through to him. But he didn’t move away, and his body molded over hers as closely as if they were making love. Hard contours pressed intimately to hers and she could hardly catch her breath. The smell of him, the heat of his body, his dark looks as he stared at her assailed her senses, and her mind wandered dangerously backward in time to when she and he had so innocently, so desperately made love. She licked her lips and wondered if he was thinking of kissing her again. Somewhere in the barn a horse snorted.

  “My mistake wasn’t sleeping with you, Turner. My mistake was loving you and thinking I could make you love me.” Her voice was low and she forced her gaze to his. “I was wrong. All you wanted from me was what I gave you—a summer fling. A distraction from hard work at the ranch.”

  His back teeth ground together and she saw the protests forming on his tongue. “I cared about you—”

  “Don’t lie, Turner. It belittles us both and only makes things wor—”

  His mouth slanted over hers and his arms tightened around her body. His hands pulled her tighter still and her breath was lost between her throat and her lungs. Raw passion surged between them, racing hot as wildfire through her blood, pounding in her brain, shutting down all her defenses. The taste and feel of him brought back memories she’d tried for years to forget. Her body responded of its own accord, knowing instinctively that this was the man, the only man, who could arouse a desire so torrid, she lost all reason and abandoned herself to him.

  This can’t be happening, she thought wildly, and yet she was unable to stop the seductive assault of his tongue pressing hard against her teeth, gaining entrance to her mouth and exploring her with exquisite little flicks that caused her to tremble inside.

  His hands caught in the silver-blond strands of her hair, forcing her head back farther so that he could kiss her throat and neck, as if he had every right to kiss her, to touch her, to make love to her.

  Stop him! Stop him now! This can only lead to trouble! one side of her mind cried desperately, but another part of her melted against him, thrilled by the sensations he aroused in her, toying with the idea that making love would be a good way to bury the pain of the past, to start a new relationship, to…to conceive a child.

  She yanked herself away. “No!” she cried, and he jerked back, lifting his head. What was she thinking? Conceiving a child. Oh, God, no! She couldn’t deceive him. He already thought she’d used him. She wouldn’t do this…. She was shaking so badly, she had to touch the side of the barn for support.

  “What the hell?” Turner took a step back and shoved his hands through his hair. He kicked at the stall in frustration. A frightened horse whinnied nervously. Outside a dog barked and in the barn bats took flight yet again.

  “I’m sorry, Turner,” she said, then hated the weak sound of her apology.

  “Hell, Heather, I wasn’t going to force you to—”

  “Oh, I know that,” she said, flustered. Her hands trembled as she finger-combed her loosened hair back to her ponytail and felt like an awkward teenager. “I—I—just don’t know if this is such a good idea.”

  His lips twisted into a cold smile. “I understand,” he said, and there was something in his words that forewarned her of dangers to come. “You still don’t want a cowboy.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “Oh, so you do want a cowboy?”

  “Of course not.”

  A trace of sadness touched his eyes. “There’s the problem, Heather. Always has been. You have trouble admitting exactly what it is you do want. You claimed you loved me—yeah, I remember. And you probably believed it yourself. But all along I knew that you thought I wasn’t good enough.”

  “Oh, Turner, that’s not true—”

  “Of course it is! I wasn’t blind, damn it!”

  “I loved you!”

  “You convinced yourself you loved me so that you wouldn’t feel so guilty about what we were doing. You confused love with lust—”

  “I never—”

  “Oh, yes, Heather,” he hissed. “You did. We both did. What we shared, hell, it was the best sex I’ve ever had—the kind of passion that cut right to the bone and turned me inside out. And you felt it, too.” He touched her neck, rubbed the tiny pulse at the base. “You still do. We both do.”

  She couldn’t argue with his logic. Even now, when she burned with fury, his hand touched the hollow of her throat and she wanted to melt. Instead, breathing hard, she swiped his arm away and stepped back from him.

  He held up both hands, as if in surrender. “I’ve never wanted a woman the way I wanted you, Heather. The way I still want you, but I knew, even then, that it wouldn’t work between us. All we had was sex—great sex, but that’s not enough.”

  His words stung as surely as if a dart had pierced her heart, draining it slowly of lifeblood. She ached, because he was telling the truth, at least as far as he knew it. Tears welled behind her eyes and she stumbled forward, her hands brushing against the rail of the stall. She had to get out, ge
t away; coming here had been a vast mistake.

  His voice jarred her. “The problem was, I didn’t have this all figured out then, at least not clearly. I had a gut feeling that you weren’t the right kind of woman for me, but I had trouble convincing myself.” He leaned his back against the stall and closed his eyes, as if willing his passion to rest. “At least I didn’t know until it was too late.”

  “And then?” she asked, her voice quavering.

  “And then I decided I’d take a chance. Hell, why not? It wasn’t as if I had this terrific life or anything. I came back home and you were gone. Married already.”

  “So I was just an alternative to a lonely existence.”

  “I wasn’t sure what you were, Heather, but I couldn’t stop myself from coming back.” He threw a dark look to the ceiling as if condemning himself. “I draw the line with married women—always have. But with you, it was hard. I even thought about kidnapping you away from Leonetti, just to talk to you, but…” His jaw slid to the side at the irony of the situation. “I heard you were pregnant.”

  “Oh, God, you thought—”

  “I didn’t know what to think.”

  “Turner.” She reached for him then, took his callused hand in her smaller fingers and squeezed. Torment wound through her soul. He’d thought she was pregnant with Dennis’s child. And why wouldn’t he? “I…I’m so sorry.”

  “So am I, Heather.”

  “If I’d known you’d come back…”

  In the half-light, he stared at her with disbelieving eyes. “What would you have done, Heather? Waited for me?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she admitted, realizing that she couldn’t lie ever again. Tears glistened in her eyes and impulsively she threw her arms around the neck of her child’s father. She held him close, refusing to sob for the years they hadn’t shared together, forbidding the tears to drizzle from her eyes. Her lips moved of their own accord, gently kissing his cheek, and his arms wrapped around her—strong and warm and secure.

  Without thought, she closed her eyes and tilted her face upward, molding her mouth to his. A tremor ripped through his body, and his kiss became harder, more insistent.

  His arms held her possessively and her knees turned weak. Heat rushed through her veins and his mouth explored the hollows of her cheek and her ears. Desire spread through her veins like liquid fire. She trembled as his hands found the hem of her T-shirt and touched her skin. Sucking in her breath, she felt the tips of his fingers scale her ribs and move upward to cup her breast.

  “Heather,” he whispered into the shell of her ear, and her legs gave way. Together they tumbled onto the hay-strewn floor of the stall, legs and arms entwined. Dust motes swirled upward and the horse in the stall next door shifted, snorting loudly.

  A thousand reasons for stopping him crowded in her mind, but as he lay over her, his rock-hard body fitting against hers, the reasons disappeared and desire, long banked, burst into flame.

  As he lifted her shirt over her head, he stared down at her and a small groan escaped him. He pressed his face into the cleft between her breasts and he sighed against her skin. Her nipples grew taut as he removed the rest of her clothes and kissed her flesh, sending shock wave after shock wave of delicious hunger through her.

  Her own fingers stripped him of his shirt and trailed in wonder over the hard, sinewy strength of his arms and chest.

  Turner’s mouth covered hers as he tore off her slacks and underwear and he kicked off his boots and jeans to lie beside her. She circled his chest with her arms and kissed the sworling mat of hair that hid his nipples. He groaned again and trembled.

  “I’ve dreamed of this,” he muttered into her hair as he poised himself above her. “I don’t think I can…I can’t stop.”

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered. “Please, don’t ever stop.”

  His mouth slanted over hers and he parted her legs with his knees, hesitating just a second before entering her in one hard thrust.

  “Turner, oh, Turner,” she cried. The sounds of the night faded, and Heather, driven by a desire so hot she was certain she was melting inside, moved to meet the rhythm of his strokes. She clung to him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, his muscles contracting and flexing as she soared higher and higher, like a bird taking flight, rising to some unseen star until the night seemed to explode around them. And Turner, his body drenched in sweat, fell against her, crushing her breasts and breathing as if he’d run a marathon.

  “Oh, God, Heather, what’re we doing?” he whispered, kissing her naked chest. Hay and straw stubble poked at her skin and she almost laughed.

  “Making up for lost time.” She held him close, kissing his crown, smiling sadly as she noticed the stubborn swirl of light hair at his crown—so like Adam’s. Her throat grew thick and tears once again threatened her eyes as she realized that she was now, and forever would be, a part of his life. His lover. The mother of his child. The woman he alternately hated and made love to. But she would never be his wife, would never be the woman to whom he would turn when he needed compassion or empathy or comfort.

  He rolled off her and cradled her head against his shoulder. Together they stared through the darkness up to the rafters. Turner’s voice was still raspy when he said, “This was probably a mistake.”

  “Probably.” Her heart felt bruised.

  “But not our first.”

  “No.”

  “And certainly not our last.” He sighed heavily. “You’ve always been a problem for me, Heather,” he admitted. “I’ve never known exactly what to do with you.”

  Just love me, she silently cried, but knew her sentiment was foolish, the product of an emotion-wrenching day mixed with the slumberous feel of afterglow. “All I want from you is what you’ve already agreed to do,” she said softly. “You don’t have to worry about anything else.”

  “But I will want my time with him. You’ve had him a long time. Now it’s my turn.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Shh.” He said, kissing her again and stoking the long-dead fires to life once more. Heather couldn’t stop herself, and saw no reason to. She’d leave a little later, resume her life in San Francisco and deal with the aftermath of making love to Turner then. But for now…she pressed her lips to his.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TURNER THREW A CHANGE OF clothes into a battered old duffel bag and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He didn’t look any different than he had a week ago, and yet now he was a father…or at least it was beginning to look that way. And he was involved with Heather Tremont—make that Heather Leonetti—again. Even now, at the thought of her lying in his arms, his loins began to ache.

  He forced his thoughts away from her lovemaking and concentrated on her tale about him fathering Adam. He couldn’t see any reason Heather would lie, no angle she could play for her own purposes. He still didn’t trust her, but he did believe that she was telling the truth about the boy—and that, yes, he was a father. He also didn’t doubt that she loved the boy very much. He’d recognized the fire in her eyes when she’d talked of saving Adam’s life, seen the fear tighten the corners of her mouth when she’d thought Turner might try to take the boy away.

  He’d considered it, of course. For hours on end. His initial shock at having learned he was a father had given way to a quiet rage that swept through his bloodstream and controlled his mind. She’d had no right, no friggin’ right, to keep Adam’s existence from him.

  And then to marry Leonetti and pass the kid off as his. He’d thought a lot of things about her in the past, but he hadn’t really blamed her for their breakup. He’d been the one who had taken off, and though he’d been furious to find out that she’d gotten herself married before he returned to Northern California, he’d felt as if he’d asked for it.

  H
e had felt a little like a fool, for he’d half believed her when she’d vowed she loved him six years ago. She’d seemed so sincere, and she’d given herself to him without any regrets, so he’d been confident that he’d been first in her heart.

  Then she’d refused to answer his letters or return his calls and within weeks married the boy she’d sworn she didn’t care a lick about. It had seemed, at the time, that she’d only been experimenting with sex, sowing some wild oats with a cowboy before she turned back to the man and the lifestyle she’d always wanted.

  But he’d been wrong. Because she’d been pregnant with his kid. Her pregnancy didn’t change the fact that she hadn’t wanted anything more to do with him—hell, she admitted it herself that she would have kept Adam’s parentage a secret for a long time if it hadn’t been for this illness. This damned illness. He’d read up on leukemia and it scared him to his very soul.

  It seemed too cruel to believe that he would be given only a short time with the boy and then have him snatched away.

  Turner didn’t believe in God. But he didn’t disbelieve, either. He’d been raised a half-baked Protestant by his mother, but had developed his own reverence for the land and nature after her death, blaming God as well as John Brooks for taking his mother from him. In the past few years he hadn’t thought about religion much one way or the other, but now, when his son’s life was nailed on the hope of a team of doctors in San Francisco, Turner wanted very much to believe in God.

  Frowning at the turn of his dark thoughts, he grabbed his duffel from the bed and tossed it over his shoulder. He shot a glance to the sturdy oak frame of the double bed he’d slept in for as long as he could remember and tried to picture Heather lying with him on the sagging mattress, beneath the faded old patchwork quilt his grandmother had pieced. Heather with her calfskin shoes, diamond earrings and expensive suits. No, that mirage wouldn’t come to life before his eyes. He was just being foolish.

  He walked down a short hallway to the kitchen where Nadine was scrubbing an old kerosene lamp he used when the power went out. She’d tied her hair back into a ponytail and her cheeks were flushed from working on the floor and counters. Seeing his reflection in the brass works of the lamp, she smiled. “Thomas Fitzpatrick called while you were in the barn.”