by Debra Cowan
The thoughts, the uncertainty tortured her, circling through her mind until she thought she would scream. Staying in her room only plucked at her fear, heightened the sense of helplessness she’d felt since the cemetery and since receiving the photo with her shredded lingerie.
Deliberately blanking her mind, she shook her head and moved away from the bed. She walked to the window and stared out at the setting sun, the shadows stretching across the hills behind the house.
She had tried to call Steve, but he was out. Her sister’s line had been busy. Laurel had probably taken the phone off the hook because the youngest set of twins was asleep. Jenna’s nerves jangled, pricked raw by the fear that needled at her constantly.
The walls closed in on her. Anxiety stretched tight across her chest and the air thinned. She didn’t want to think about Ramsey. Or Linc. She had to get out of this room, out of this house or she would go crazy.
Outside. If she could just get outside. She wouldn’t go far, wouldn’t wander from the house, but she needed some fresh air, some open space, a place where she wouldn’t be watched, a place where Ramsey hadn’t been.
Restless now, and agitated, she left her room and walked into the living area. Silence pressed in on her. A soft stillness pervaded the house.
“Linc?” she called, hoping he wouldn’t answer. He didn’t. Walking to the kitchen, she found it empty.
There was no sign of the dogs or the master. A relieved breath eased out of her. She was grateful for what he’d done, but she needed some privacy. For a few minutes, she wanted to think about nothing more strenuous than the dogs’ whereabouts.
She wanted to walk around the backyard, check on the horses. Sick of her enforced imprisonment, she moved to the French doors and looked out through the windows of the enclosed porch. Caution tempered her impulse to rush outside.
The sun set in a glorious burst of red, orange and gold. Vibrant light spilled through the windows. Jenna touched the door glass, as if she could catch the warmth, the hope in that sunset. She’d lived to see another one. Ramsey hadn’t gotten her. Yet.
Bathed in the glorious flush of late afternoon, it was easy to believe that everything was all right, that she hadn’t seen Ramsey that day at the cemetery. But she had.
A chill crawled over her. Tired of cringing every time his face popped into her mind, she shook off thoughts of him, firmly determined to let her thoughts drift blankly about nothing.
She flung open the French doors and stepped out onto the enclosed porch. Fresh, hot air greeted her and she drew a deep, full breath, the first one that day.
Anxiety rolled from her shoulders and a knot she hadn’t been aware of unraveled at the base of her neck. In the distance, she heard the dogs barking. An urge swept through her to disappear into the woods and never look back. She stared longingly at the screen of thick-leafed oaks and maples and pines, wanting to go, but knowing she wouldn’t.
She wanted the comfort of animals. With them, she didn’t have to talk or put on a front. She could just be. Maybe the horses had wandered up to the fence behind the barn.
She started across the expanse of backyard, enjoying the stretch of her muscles. Her shadow lengthened in front of her. Innately wary, she glanced around, checking around the trees, the side of the house, but she saw nothing.
Relieved, she angled behind the barn. The day’s warmth hovered in the air and she perspired lightly with exertion. It felt wonderful, freeing. She drew in another deep breath, appreciating the scents of rain-soaked earth and grass and the subtle lilt of wildflowers.
Jenna lifted her face to the sun, which glittered over the land in a ripple of amber and scarlet. Warmth rained down on her and she smiled, her busted lips barely twinging. The horses weren’t at the fence and she turned back, skirting the corner of the barn. She strode to the front, working out the soreness in her legs and buttocks and ribs.
She held her injured arm close to her, while swinging the other. Exhilaration moved through her. She checked the urge to glance over her shoulder, refusing to feel vulnerable or exposed. She was safe here, at least for now and the knowledge warmed her.
She reached the front of the barn and drew to a halt. One of the double doors was closed, leaving the interior hazily lit. The odors of hay and manure and dust tickled her nostrils. From the woods, she could hear the distant, excited bark of the dogs, signaling that they’d found a rabbit or a raccoon.
Sunlight wavered into the barn, gleaming on pieces of straw and oats on the dirt floor, bleaching the grayed wood of the inside walls and stall doors.
Peace rippled through her. Out here, she was alone with God and the force of nature. Out here, she could forget Ramsey. Forget the hunger in Linc’s eyes, the disbelief, the denial. Out here, she didn’t have to pretend, didn’t have to think. She could relax, escape Linc and those unsettling sensations he triggered in her body.
A light tuneless whistle sounded, then Jenna recognized the unmistakable baritone of Linc’s voice. It carried from the back of the barn.
She squinted past shadows to where the sunlight slanted through the back wall, angling across his broad shoulders covered in blue denim, trimming one lean jean-clad thigh.
She recalled what had happened the last time they’d been in this barn together, but today she felt no wariness of Linc, no revulsion, no uncertainty. She told herself to leave, but instead she stole closer, her senses narrowed to only him.
He groomed one of the paints. The mare, Dixie. Jenna realized he must’ve gone for a ride without her. Good, no need for them both to stay chained to the house like prisoners.
Murmuring low words to Dixie, Linc rubbed the mare’s nose. Birds twittered in the loft and Jenna could hear the steady whisk of the grooming brush.
Bars of sunlight fell across his hair, gilding the ash brown color with gold. His strong, capable hands worked from the horse’s flank and up her side toward her head.
He shifted into a pocket of shadow, putting the sun at his back. Golden light blurred around him. Powerful, broad shoulders narrowed to a trim waist, lean flanks. She had leaned on those shoulders only days ago. Her throat closed up. He was a beautiful man.
His deep voice rose and fell like a sweet seductive melody, touching off a deep throb inside her, coaxing her closer. A slow burn unfurled in her belly and Jenna walked slowly toward him, unable to tear her gaze away.
“Did you think I’d forgotten you, girl?” he murmured huskily to the mare. “I’ll take you out for another ride tomorrow.”
A shiver, purely sensual, chased down her spine and Jenna savored the feeling, tucked it away to recall when their time together was over.
Linc moved to the horse’s head, and she could see that his denim shirt was unbuttoned down the front. Sunlight played over his chest, skimming over the dusky hair that veed between his pectorals then thinned to his navel.
He lifted his arm to swipe the brush down the horse’s neck. Muscles flexed up his forearm, buckled the taut ridge of his belly.
Licking her suddenly dry lips, she allowed her gaze to roam slowly down his body. His worn jeans were buttoned. They fit snugly, outlining his masculinity, his muscular thighs and sleeking down the length of his legs.
His hands moved over the horse, stroking slowly, steadily, and into Jenna’s mind popped an image of his hands moving like that over her. Caressing, his slender fingers covering her breasts.
She swallowed hard, feeling suspended on a thin wire. In a flash, her breasts grew sensitive and heavy. Warmth tickled the core of her, causing her to squeeze her thighs together reflexively.
In that instant, she acknowledged the chemistry between them, admitted that she wanted him. Wanted to make love with him. Wanted to be normal for him. Wanted to try.
But in the next breath, sanity returned. She hadn’t lied about being frigid. She hadn’t lied about trying before. Things would be no different with Linc.
She remembered his earlier words to her, the refusal in his voice to believe what she to
ld him. Sadness wound through her. He had to believe it. She couldn’t bear to hurt him, couldn’t bear to bruise his ego the way Steve’s had been.
Unsettled now by the raspy quality of his voice, she shifted. She no longer wanted to hear him, couldn’t allow the sensations fluttering at her core.
Linc moved to the mare’s side, his voice low and hypnotic.
“Maybe I can convince Jenna to come out with us. She’d like it.”
Tearing her gaze from his bare chest, she walked toward him. She told herself she was steady, yet her voice came out hoarse.
“I would like it. I think I might want to go riding tomorrow.”
“Great!” He looked up, mild surprise on his face at her entrance. He rested one forearm on the horse’s neck.
Hunger flared in his eyes; his gaze lingered on her lips.
Bracing herself against the sensual web spinning between them, she said briskly, “But right now, I’m going to call Mace, see if he can take me to the office. Since it looks like I’m going to be here for a while longer, I also need some more things from the house.”
His gaze stroked over her. “I can take you.”
“There’s no need. Mace can—”
“I don’t want you to go without me.” He straightened, steel threading his voice.
Jenna halted about a foot from him, her gaze holding his. In all honesty, she didn’t want to go without him. Which was exactly why she should. “You’ve had to baby-sit me all day. I’m sure you’d like a break.”
“You mean you’d like one,” he said flatly, giving the horse one last stroke with the brush. “I’m coming.”
His tone was too possessive, too authoritative, and it made her bristle. “Suit yourself.”
He gave a curt nod. “Just let me put Dixie out and I’ll be ready.”
“Fine.” Jenna turned on her heel and walked out, alternately annoyed and glad. Of course she couldn’t go alone, but she found herself depending on him entirely too much.
It was too easy to turn to him, to take comfort and strength from him. She couldn’t allow herself to become used to it. When this was all over, they would go their separate ways. Why couldn’t he see that? Why wouldn’t he respect the distance she tried to place between them?
Jenna admitted that her frustration stemmed from her own inadequacies. She wanted more than protection from Linc Garrett, but she couldn’t ask for more, couldn’t reach out and take the promise of the attraction that shimmered between them. Because she couldn’t give him what he needed in return.
Despite trying to forget him, forget the hunger in his eyes, being with Linc was preferable to dwelling on Ramsey. Still, pressure closed like a giant fist around her. Ramsey wanted her life.
Linc could take her soul. She wasn’t ready to give up either one.
She sat on the passenger side of Linc’s truck, hugging the door. He had done nothing except what she wanted, yet she found herself tortured by a nagging frustration. She didn’t know what to make of it.
Irritation wound through her. She wasn’t annoyed at Linc, exactly. She slid a sideways glance at him. He drove with one wrist resting over the top of the steering wheel, his body comfortably sprawled in the seat, making his jeans stretch taut across his thighs.
She tore her gaze away and looked out the window, but it didn’t diminish her awareness of him. The bench seat of this truck was entirely too small for two people, she decided. Even from here, she could feel his heat reaching out to her, smell the clean sweat from his body, the faint odor of horseflesh. Erotic, arousing, it tapped against those buried sensations she had more and more trouble ignoring lately.
She felt his gaze on her and steadfastly studied the passing fields and fence posts as they drove east on Danforth from MacArthur. Resolutely she focused on the white faces of newbom calves and the sight of the occasional horse. Despite keeping her gaze averted from Linc, Jenna could feel his on her as if it were a brand.
A flush rose beneath her skin and her breasts grew heavy. Her lips tingled.
With a fresh burst of annoyance, Jenna realized it wasn’t Linc who perturbed her. It was her. Or rather her body’s reaction to him. Watching him in the barn a moment ago had sent a shower of flame through her, of such heightened awareness that her nipples had peaked.
Just being this close to him wore at her resistance. She couldn’t let herself be seduced by the stirrings of her body or the fierce hunger in Linc’s eyes.
She crossed her left arm over her right, gripping the cast to remind herself why she was with Linc in the first place. Thoughts of Linc, of her and Linc, were starting to stalk her every bit as much as Ramsey. They were deceptive, coaxing her to believe things could be different with Linc, that she could be different with him.
She knew better.
She told herself she felt only gratitude for him, but when she thought about the kiss they’d shared, she was not grateful. She was... aroused.
Tentatively, her gaze slid to him again. He watched the road now, instead of her. Jenna’s gaze traced the smooth planes of his face, the stubborn jaw, those sculpted lips. Her body softened in a flood of weakness. Since that kiss, her body had hummed with a renewed vibrancy, vitality. It exhilarated her. And unbalanced her.
She didn’t want to respond to him this way, yet she could no longer deny it. She wanted him to kiss her, wanted him to make everything disappear and make her believe that she could be whole.
He glanced at her and she looked quickly away, fixing her eyes on the telephone poles that sped past the window.
“Are you okay? About what happened this morning, I mean.”
She didn’t want to talk about Ramsey or the package she’d received. But she couldn’t bring herself to discount Linc’s concern. She nodded. “I’m glad for the chance to do something normal. Go over the charts Steve left. Get some extra clothes from the house.”
She felt his gaze on her, steady, probing, but he didn’t pursue his questions about Ramsey. He braked at a four-way stop sign.
“Your bruises look better today.”
Her gaze swerved to his. Concern burned in his eyes, but also something else, something sharper. Desire, she realized.
He reached toward her slowly, deliberately. She didn’t flinch when his fingers floated gently over her throat. Instead she wanted to arch her neck, give herself over to his touch. She wanted his fingers to trail over her throat, her breasts.
She bit her lip and looked out the car window, squashing the tantalizing thoughts, thinking she shouldn’t have come with him. She should’ve waited for Mace. “It’s your turn.”
Linc accelerated through the stop sign and the truck picked up speed as they continued east.
His large hand settled lightly on her left thigh. “How’s the arm doing today?”
“Fine,” she replied choking out the words. She couldn’t get a full breath. A spiral of heat worked from her leg to her belly. He was simply checking on her medical progress, she told herself. Still her heartbeat raced at a ridiculous rate.
The road stretched before them, empty still before they reached the city limits of Edmond. Sunlight glittered off the truck’s mirrors, bouncing along the blacktop.
Again she felt Linc’s gaze on her and she bit back a demand that he watch the road.
His knuckle grazed her chin and turned her face toward him. His gaze roamed her features, his eyes dark and mysterious with a banked light. She told herself it was professional concern in his eyes, not heat.
His gaze dropped to her lips and he rasped, “Your mouth looks good.”
She swallowed, her heart kicking against her ribs. She knew he meant that the swelling had gone down and the cuts had started to heal, but that didn’t douse the want that flared to life inside her. She resisted the urge to close her eyes, to slide over on the seat next to him.
She tried to ignore the growing heat in his eyes, the unmistakable desire. Yet she couldn’t misread that sensual gleam in his eye, the way his voice dropped to a husky r
asp that primed her nerve endings.
Shifting against the awareness he stirred, she said sharply, “If you’re going to examine me, maybe you should stop the truck first.”
He grinned. “If you’re asking for a full exam, I’d be more than happy to do it.”
“No,” she said quickly, stunned by a sudden, fierce craving to feel his bare skin next to hers, feel his lips on her breasts.
He chuckled as if he’d read her mind. Part of her wanted to play along, but she couldn’t tease him that way. She couldn’t allow him to think things would be different between them when they wouldn’t. No matter what amount of attraction between them, she could never be enough woman for him.
He’d said he accepted that she was frigid, that he wouldn’t try to convince her that she could be different with him. So what was he doing?
Frustrated, she blurted, “Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Would you let me?”
Her breath lodged in her chest. Did he want the answer for future reference? Or was he asking permission—for now? She shook her head. “You said—”
“I know what I said.” He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. “There’s a real big part of me that wishes I’d never promised to leave you alone.”
She closed her eyes, regret, reluctance chasing through her. “But you did promise. It would never work.”
“I don’t agree.”
“Linc—”
“I don’t agree, but I said I wouldn’t push. And I won’t.”
She glanced at him, seeing his features tighten as he stared straight ahead at the road. “Thank you.”
“Dammit.” He looked out his own window.
They rode in silence the rest of the way. Jenna swallowed more than one apology, but she knew this was right. If things escalated between them, it would be a disaster, just as it had been with Steve.
They turned at the stop sign on Coltrane and drove north about a mile then Linc pulled into her clinic’s gravel parking lot. Up near the side of the building, Jenna noticed a patrol car.
A balding man who looked vaguely familiar stepped out of the black-and-white unit. Jenna remembered him now as the policeman who had spoken to her in the hospital, Officer Sikes.
