Chance McCall

by Sharon Sala

  “Chance!” She focused on the Stetson. “Chance!” she called again, only louder. “Wait for me.” She knew he heard her. She saw hesitation in the movement of the hat bobbing above the crowd.

  Chance heard her call, but continued to move through the crowd, desperate to get away from the memories that had been so rudely and unexpectedly resurrected. Then he sighed at the persistent tone in her voice. He knew Jenny. He might as well give up because she wouldn’t. He turned around and tried to pinpoint her location.

  Jenny saw his face. She stopped short and bit her lip, shocked by the pain and anger evident in his expression as their eyes met across the crowd.

  Damn. How long had she been standing there? He felt naked. She’d seen too much of him…of things that were better left buried. He took a deep breath, suppressing all of the old fears that had crawled out of the hole in his mind.

  “Jenny! Here I am!” he called. He pushed his way back toward her. “Happy birthday, girl.” He smiled gently at the way she almost preened. Then he grabbed her hand. “Hang on. I’ll get you out of this mess.”

  Jenny clasped his hand, relishing the feel of hard calluses and gentle strength. She let him lead her through the crowd. She didn’t care where he was going, it didn’t matter. All she’d wanted for the last few years was to follow Chance McCall into eternity. Then curiosity got the best of her.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, as they left the merry-makers and headed toward the stables.

  “Do you want your birthday present or not?” Chance asked, grinning at the expression on her face. This small bundle of nervous energy never bored him. In fact, she’d been the single reason he’d stayed as long on the Triple $$$ as he had. If he’d moved on years ago, who would have taken care of Jenny? It damn sure wouldn’t have been her father. He was always too busy being boss. Chance knew what it felt like to have no one. Being Jenny’s “someone” had given him as much pleasure as it had her.

  “Wait here,” he ordered, then returned before Jenny had time to fully appreciate the sight of his backside in those form-fitting jeans.

  “Here.” He handed her a long, nearly flat box wrapped in bright red paper. “Happy birthday, Jennifer Ann,” he said gently, smiling at her eagerness as she tore the decorative wrappings.

  He’d spent most of one afternoon choosing this gift. It had been all he could do to keep it hidden from her as long as he had. He had no secrets from Jenny, at least not many. There were the women he sometimes took out, but they were just that. Just women for expediency’s sake, never for love.

  “Oh!” The sunlight caught the beaten silver rosettes that decorated the hand-tooled leather of the new bridle. “Chance! It’s beautiful!” She threw her arms around his neck, hugged him tightly, then swept a quick kiss across his cheek just before he pulled out of her arms.

  “Sweet sixteen,” he teased.

  Jenny wiped the smile from his face when she leaned forward and softly finished the rhyme, “And never been kissed.”

  Suddenly all the noise and excitement of the day faded. Chance was shocked by the thoughts that flooded his mind. His body pulsed. For a moment his breathing stopped. Her face imprinted into his memory as if he were seeing her for the first time—pouting, slightly parted lips, with her dark, shoulder-length hair blowing gently in the wind. He was shaken by the need to lay her down in the dust and…

  Startled by his desires, he stepped back, needing to put distance between them. She was just a kid, too young…and so damned beautiful it made him ache. He had to stop his thoughts and the look growing in her eyes before things got out of hand. He suspected Jenny was just trying out her new-found womanhood on the first available man. Little did he know how she longed only for him.

  “Now, that’s not so, Jenny,” he chided, trying to lighten the tension of the moment. “You have been kissed. I seem to remember a certain young man named Melvin some years back. Of course, he got a bloody nose for his troubles. Could be word got around.” He laughed and started to pull her hair, when Jenny caught his hand and cupped it to her face, pulling him close again.

  Chance’s heart skipped one beat, and then another, as Jenny closed her eyes and rubbed her cheek against the palm of his hand. He couldn’t move. Every body part that could, stiffened, including some that had no business doing so. God in heaven, make this stop or never let it end! He wanted to touch her but didn’t dare move.

  When had she blossomed into this woman-child? Where was the laughing urchin who’d dogged his steps for the last five years?

  A stray gust of wind blew a lock of her black, silky hair across his face. His mouth opened to object and instead tasted the errant strand as it slid across his lips. He shuddered and gripped her arms, uncertain whether to push her away or pull her beneath him.

  Her breasts taunted him, pushing firmly against his shirt. The tank top and coordinating shorts she was wearing accentuated her slender, sun-tanned legs. Chance closed his eyes and swallowed a groan as he imagined those legs wrapped around him. The image was too much for him to bear, and he cursed and jerked away as if he’d just been slapped. This feeling was simply a reminder of what he’d been running from when he’d stumbled into the Triple T. Jenny was still a child. He had no business thinking about her…not like this.

  Jenny opened her eyes and smiled at the expression of pure shock and lust on Chance’s face. Thank God! she thought. Now to give him something else to think about. She leaned forward, slid her arms around his neck before he could move away, and planted a lingering kiss at the corner of his mouth.

  Chance inhaled. The world stopped. Jenny was kissing him. She’d kissed him plenty of times before. But never like this. She’d never moved her lips across his mouth in this yearning, searching motion. She’d never made that soft, almost kittenlike sound of satisfaction as the tip of her tongue traced that old scar at the edge of his lower lip. He was just thinking of turning enough to cover her lips with his own when she withdrew and sighed.

  “Thanks for the birthday present, Chance.”

  She dusted the seat of her shorts and waved good-bye as she walked away, clutching her birthday bridle tightly. She willed herself not to giggle, or run, but the urge to do both was strong, as was her awareness of the fact that she still didn’t have an answer as to why Chance had bolted from the visit with Marcus and his friends.

  Chance valiantly fought the need to help her with her dusting as he watched her hands brushing against her backside. He took a deep breath and swallowed curses.

  Jenny stopped and turned, her curiosity and determination getting the better of her.

  “Chance?”

  “What?” he mumbled, still in shock from the kiss and his x-rated thoughts.

  “Who’s Logan Henry?”

  The look of lust he’d been wearing was replaced by something that Jenny had never seen before. It grew and grew on his face until she became afraid. What had she done? What had she said? Long seconds went by and still she waited for her answer. Finally he spoke.

  “Just a ghost,” he said. His words were harsh and angry.

  “Well,” she announced, “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  Chance stood silently, stunned as her words sank in. When he finally answered, there was no one left to hear. “I wish to hell I didn’t.”

  2

  He moved with grace and power. Bare to the waist in the noonday heat, his jeans loose and beltless so that a scant inch of white from his briefs showed, reminding Jenny that there was more to him than the eye could see. His hat hung on the corner post of the corral, his denim shirt draped between the rails.

  His dark hair curled slightly at the neck, a reminder that he’d missed his last two dates to get a haircut. Sun blistered down upon his bare back, turning his skin to an even deeper shade of brown. Sweat poured down from his hairline, over his sharp, chiseled jaw and down the tight band of muscles across his belly. A powerful man, thirty years old, and in his prime.

  Hidden by the shrubbery that bord
ered the yard, Jenny watched him move, mesmerized by the sensual pull that existed between them…always. She licked her lips; an unconscious movement that mimicked Chance when he tried to catch a drop of sweat that hung at the corner of his mouth. He missed, and Jenny swore softly to herself as she watched the errant perspiration hit his chest and flow down into the waistband of his jeans.

  In the old days, she would have been right beside him, laughing, talking, offering suggestions that he would gently ignore. Jenny blinked back tears. She missed the old days. And she missed Chance.

  She’d learned over the last few years that whenever she appeared, Chance disappeared. At first she’d been dumbfounded. While she’d been growing up, he’d been her rock, her dependable companion. Hurt and anger had followed on the heels of being ignored. Confrontation between them seemed inevitable until Henry, an aging wrangler who’d been more father figure than her father’s employee, had delicately pointed out in his sparse vernacular that Chance didn’t hate the sight of her. She just reminded him of things he couldn’t have.

  “What can’t he have?” Jenny remembered asking.

  “You,” Henry had answered.

  Suddenly everything had fallen into place. Jenny had lived with the love of Chance McCall for so long, it had become familiar property in her heart. She’d taken it for granted that when he finally realized she’d grown up, his reciprocation would be automatic. The idea that Chance saw boundaries between them was appalling to her. She lost sleep at night trying to figure out ways to get past his overdeveloped sense of propriety but it was useless. The more she tried to get past his walls, the higher they became.

  Finally, in despair and disgust she had begun to ignore him. It had been the single most difficult thing she’d ever done in her life, and it accomplished nothing. She had circles under her eyes and had begun to lose weight she couldn’t spare. Juana had noticed Jenny’s pallor and had sent her outside into the sunshine to soak up some of the Texas summer. All that did was put her right back in the vicinity of the man who had stolen her heart. And so she watched him, mesmerized.

  Chance held the long length of water hose in one hand and a soft, soapy sponge in the other as he moved back and forth along the length of his pickup truck, methodically washing away the week’s worth of dust and grime from the exterior. It was Saturday, the fourth Saturday of the month. Tonight he would go to town and lose himself in the wild atmosphere of a local bar. He had no preferences. One time it would be one club, the next month another. Sometimes he’d meet a woman, sometimes not. They weren’t important, but at times, necessary. He’d spent the better part of the last seven years trying to forget that he’d fallen in love with the boss’s daughter on her sixteenth birthday. And he’d lost sleep at night wishing that it was Jenny beneath his hot, aching body and not a damned, lumpy mattress.

  Memories of his past and the secrets that lay between them always kept him at a distance. Yet nowhere on the Triple T could he work and not come face to face with reminders of her presence. She was an integral part of his life. Telling her how much he loved her would be impossible, though. Just as impossible as facing how much she loved him.

  Her life with her father had not changed. Marcus seemed to care for Jenny, but he was never around when she needed him.

  When she’d graduated from high school, it had been Chance who’d stood at the foot of the stage with camera in hand, mingling with parents of the other graduating seniors. Jenny had accepted her diploma. He’d snapped the picture. And the smile on her face as she’d walked toward him had nearly stopped his heart.

  Marcus had missed her graduation, as he’d been away on one of his constant trips. He’d refused to cancel, though he’d offered to hire a professional photographer to commemorate the occasion and then presented her with a new car as a graduation present. Jenny had refused the offer of a photographer but calmly accepted the car and his off-hand apology. She didn’t need her father. She had Chance.

  College had loomed on the horizon, an ominous reminder that Jenny would leave the Triple T…maybe for good.

  Chance had alternated between dismay that she would be out of his sight and relief that it was what he needed to put their relationship back into perspective. Only that hadn’t worked. After one semester, she’d transferred to a school closer to home and commuted.

  He hadn’t realized until after she’d come home that Christmas, how she’d suffered from the distance between them, and how much he’d missed her company.

  “Somethin’ smells good,” Henry said, shutting the kitchen door with a slam. He raced Chance for a place by Juana’s fireside.

  “Jenny’s coming home today,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  Chance’s stomach knotted, reminding him of something he’d spent a sleepless night trying to forget. Jenny!

  Her first semester at college was finally behind her. Houston seemed a lifetime away. The lines around his mouth tightened as he stepped closer to the warmth of the free-standing fireplace in the corner of the room. How was he going to get through the next three and a half years without seeing her? And then a worse thought arose: What if she fell in love with some college boy and never came back at all?

  “Where’s Marcus?” Henry asked. “Chance saw a pack of coyotes yesterday when he was out checking on that new crop of calves. Reckon we should hire that hunter and his dogs like we did last year and get rid of them varmints before they get rid of them new calves?”

  Juana shrugged. “He called about an hour ago. He’s going to stay over in Dallas again tonight.”

  Chance frowned. Dammit! He was doing it to her again! Jenny would come home…and no one would be there for her. The selfish son-of-a-bitch! It was Christmas, for God’s sake!

  Henry sidled over to the cabinet and snuck a couple of Juana’s freshly baked oatmeal cookies, stuffing one quickly into his mouth before she could catch him.

  “Figgers he wouldn’t be here,” Henry muttered, bent on talking and swallowing at the same time. “Shuda’ took care of it on our own anyway.”

  Juana glared. “You’ve had enough cookies.”

  Henry grinned.

  “I’ll call the coyote hunter myself,” Chance said. “Mind if I use the phone in Marcus’s office? I think the man’s number is in his Rolodex.”

  Juana nodded and handed Chance a cookie as he walked past her.

  Henry frowned. “How come you told me not to eat no more and then gave him a cookie?”

  Juana’s eyebrows rose. “Because you’re already three ahead of him. That’s why! I saw you sneaking cookies earlier. I’m no fool, Henry Thomas. You go on with Chance and get out of my kitchen. I want things special for Jenny.”

  Henry grinned and then the smile faded. “Don’t know how special it’ll be when she comes home to a damned empty house again. I know you’ll be here, but you know what I mean.”

  Juana nodded. “Es verdad,” she said softly, and then looked in the direction that Chance had gone. “But Jenny won’t mind…not as long as that one is here.”

  She and Henry stared at each other, absorbing the truth of her words. They’d long been aware of the affection Jenny had for Chance. And they’d watched it grow from a child’s dependence to a woman’s love. Henry, more than anyone else, knew how much Jenny meant to Chance. But he didn’t understand the man. There was a line in the big man’s mind that he couldn’t seem to cross.

  Only Chance knew what made him keep Jenny at arm’s length.

  “The man’s on his way,” Chance said, as he walked back into the kitchen. “Come on, Henry. I told him we’d meet him at the west pasture.”

  Henry nodded and grabbed one last cookie on his way out the door.

  Juana frowned as she watched them leave. But she wasn’t frowning at the fact that the old cowboy had sneaked another cookie. She was worried about the silence that had enveloped Chance when Jenny’s name had been mentioned.

  It was spitting snow. Tiny flakes mixed with minute pellets of ice that bit i
nto Chance’s already frozen cheeks as he parked the ranch’s four-by-four truck and made a run for his quarters. Having a house to himself, however small, was going to be a welcome respite tonight. It had been rough spending holidays alone in the bed-lined bunkhouse when he’d first signed on at the Triple T. Then he’d had to face the fact that everyone on the ranch had someone…somewhere…except him. Now, because he was always alone, tonight would be like any other.

  He pushed the door open, and it slammed itself shut as he made a beeline for the fire burning in his stove.

  “Merry Christmas,” Jenny said softly, letting her eyes feast on the tall cowboy who’d just come in from the cold.

  He spun around in surprise. She stepped out of the shadows and walked toward him. He forgot to speak. My God, how she’d changed! Too much! He didn’t know what to say to this Jenny. The girl who’d gone away to college had come back a woman.

  “Here, let me help you out of that coat,” she said, and began unfastening the heavy sheepskin jacket, brushing away ice and snow as her fingers journeyed from button to button.

  Her blue eyes burned as clear and hot as a summer day. His hands caught her fingers as the last button came open just below his belt buckle.

  She looked up, trying to get her gaze past his mouth but failing. Those lips, usually so hard and unyielding, had softened and curved into a smile of welcome.

  “Merry Christmas, yourself, Jennifer Ann,” Chance whispered as he slid her arms around his waist and wrapped her inside his coat. Her cheek lay against the steady rhythm of his heart as his arms enfolded her. She inhaled sharply and blinked back tears. She was home!

  “I missed you,” he said softly.

  Jenny swallowed hard, twice, before she trusted herself to speak. “Don’t tell me that,” she teased, her eyes flashing a warning he didn’t want to interpret. She leaned back, bracing herself against his arms. “I know all about those women in town, mister. You don’t have time to miss anyone.”