The admission shocked her eyes open, and she craned her neck to see him. “Was this before or after you stuck pins in my likeness?”
“Keep your eyes closed, or you’ll get soap in ’em.”
She obeyed instantly, but held her breath, waiting for his reply.
“Never got that creative,” Rafe said, concentrating on the feel of her hair in his hands. “Although I admit that in the beginning there were inevitably devious plots of revenge involved.”
“Not exactly what a girl wants to hear from a man whose hands are in such close proximity to her throat.”
Rafe chuckled. “It passed.” Another lie. The pain never had. It still hadn’t.
He flipped the water on again and plunged his hands back into her sudsy hair. His thighs and hips accidentally brushed against the intimately familiar curve of her behind as he bent over her. Good sense warned him to back off, but as usual, he ignored it. Their closeness lost all pretense of accident. With a low, thudding beat, his pulse kept time with the motion of his hands.
Running his fingers up her neck, then down through the silken blond strands, he repeated the action over and over, long after her hair squeaked and gleamed under the overhead lamp. Years ago, he’d done this for her under decidedly different circumstances. There had been a shower involved, and both of them had been naked.
Rafe closed his eyes and tried, without success, to force those thoughts from his mind. Carly was silent under his ministrations, content as a cat being stroked. And for a while, he was content to stroke her.
But when his hands began to ache to stray lower, down her spine and over her breasts, he reluctantly squeezed the excess water from her hair and draped the towel over her head.
When she straightened, her face was flushed. But neither the dusky heat in her eyes nor the confusion in her expression could be chalked up entirely to the hot water. Unsteady, she wobbled against the counter.
Rafe caught her by the upper arms, his hips meeting hers with unplanned inevitability. For a moment, they simply stared at each other, surprised. Her lips parted, and her gaze slid heatedly to his mouth. His best intentions evaporated in that flicker of a moment as his lips found hers and he was reminded of what not even nine years between them had erased.
Elemental as fire, or air, or water, what had collided between them once was still there. He knew it by the way her body swayed into his, losing the rigidness of surprise as his tongue parted her lips. He knew it by the greedy slant of her mouth against his and the way her hands curled into the flesh of his shoulders.
His fingers plunged into the wet hair at the base of her skull. She tasted of mint and honey, and he remembered the rest. No woman’s mouth had ever fit his the way hers did. He drew her closer, pulling her flush against him, until her hip was an intimate press against the hardness at the juncture of his thighs.
A whimper of need escaped her as her breasts flattened against his chest and her arms tightened around him. Their tongues mated with the same desperation their bodies felt, swirling against each other, seeking more.
Like a flame fed by air, Rafe’s control slipped. He forgot everything but the feel of her mouth on his. Backing her up against the counter, he lifted her against him until her feet nearly left the floor and nothing but their clothing separated their heated flesh.
A few seconds later, her mouth was not enough. He wanted...he needed...
His mouth left hers and trailed to the pulse at her throat, where his teeth slid against her skin. He felt the erratic beating of her heart and, from what seemed like a long way off, heard her say his name.
In another moment, he would have taken her right there on the kitchen floor, and sanity be damned. But the sound of his name on her lips—the word tinged with both need and alarm—dragged him up from that place. With his breath a ragged rasp, and his pulse pounding in his ears, he stopped himself with a low, and rather foul, curse.
Carly swallowed hard, shaken to the core by the kiss. But what she saw in Rafe’s eyes frightened her most—confusion and, worse than that, accusation. His gaze bored into hers like a hot shaft of iron left too long in the fire. His hands, still locked around her upper arms, tightened.
“Just tell me one thing.” His voice was low and ragged. “Why the hell were you carrying my phone number in your purse on some dog-eared newspaper clipping about me? Why, Carly?”
Whatever she’d expected him to say, she thought numbly, that wasn’t it. She blinked, listening to the harsh sound of her own breathing. Panic welled up inside her. Of course he wanted to know. There was a perfectly logical explanation. But she couldn’t give it to him. Not without risking everything. Her head was spinning with what had just happened between them. “It’s complicated.”
“Simplify it.”
She glanced pointedly at his ever-tightening grip on her arms. Instantly he let her go, only then realizing that he was hurting her. Raking both hands through his dark hair, he clasped them together behind his head as he moved away from her.
She opened her mouth, closed it, then began again. “After your accident, when you were in the hospital... I called to see how you were.”
As if he’d been jolted by an electric shock, he stopped dead and dropped his hands. “You did?”
She nodded. “Three times.”
He could only stare at her.
She’d surprised him. Surprised herself. She reached for her crutches and tucked them under her arms. “You were all over the L.A. news, of course, and they kept showing that clip of the bull and you, over and over...”
He muttered something crass.
“...and I couldn’t get past the ICU nurse because she was only releasing the same non-information the hospital was giving to the media, so I finally told them I was your sister.”
Rafe’s eyes narrowed. “That was you?”
She nodded.
He swallowed visibly. “That was Gus you talked to. He told me about your call, but I thought you were some rodeo groupie.” The anger leached slowly from his expression. “Why didn’t you give him your real name?”
She looked at her hands. “I—I didn’t want to upset you. I just wanted to make sure you were going to be okay.”
“And you were married at the time,” he said meaningfully, watching her.
Her heartbeat slowed to a dull thud. “That’s irrelevant.”
“Not exactly.”
She didn’t want to talk about Tom now. She wasn’t sure she wanted to talk at all. “I would have called regardless. But as it happens, Tom did know. He was sitting beside me when the news came on that night. He handed me the phone.”
“He was a bigger man than I would have been,” Rafe said with soul deep conviction.
“Tom was a good man,” she said, compelled to defend someone who needed no defense. “He had the uncanny ability to see things as they were, not as they appeared.”
He frowned. “And how were things?”
If only she had a simple answer for that question. “Complicated,” she said at last.
Rafe stared at her for a long moment before pinning his gaze on the darkness outside the kitchen window. “And my number?”
“You’re listed. I must’ve dialed your number a dozen times in the past few years. But I always hung up before you answered.”
Disbelief crossed his face. “Why?”
She chewed on her lip, still able to taste his kiss. “I didn’t stop caring about you when I left, Rafe. I just stopped hoping. I’m going to go find a dry T-shirt.”
Rafe’s gut tightened as Carly headed toward the bedroom and left him standing there alone. Stopped hoping? For what? he wondered. For him to chase after her? To come crawling to her on his knees to beg forgiveness? For what sin? Being an idiot? Hoping that once, just once, someone would believe in him enough to stick around?
And then he cursed himself for wondering what might have happened if he had swallowed his pride and chased after her.
Flicking on the cold water at the sink,
he splashed it on his face. Then, bracing two hands there, he watched the droplets splash against the porcelain. Forget trying to figure it out, he told himself. She’ll be gone soon. And with her, the reminder that his best has never been quite good enough.
Evan fumbled with the looped rope, twirling it in an awkward circle that collided with his knees more often than not. This was the third day in a row Rafe and Evan had worked on spinning. Today, they’d been at it for over an hour already, and the sun had begun to set behind the purple ridge of the San Juans.
“Oh, I’ll never get it,” Evan mumbled, kicking a toe into the dirt.
“Hey, you’re not gonna quit on me, are you?” Rafe coiled the rope one more time.
“It’ll never work. I just can’t make it twirl.”
“Not if you think you can’t,” Rafe said, running his gloved thumb against the rough hemp of the rope. “You know how long it took me to master this?”
Evan shook his head glumly.
“Three weeks.”
Eyes widening, Evan stared up at him. “Really?”
“Yup. Day-in, day-out. All I did was work on getting that darned rope to spin in a perfect circle. Know what happened?”
Evan shook his head.
“Same thing as you. I almost lost my nerve. Thought I’d never get it. ’Course, that was before I found my, uh...my lucky dime.”
“You have a lucky dime?” Evan said with a doubtful look.
“Luckiest dime I ever found. Yup. Found that dime in the street one day when I was walking in town, and I figured if a penny was lucky, a dime must be ten times as good,” Rafe said. “Well, I’ll tell ya, soon as I put that dime in my pocket, the strangest thing started to happen.”
“What?”
“I started working with that rope again, and darned if it didn’t start spinning just right. Just like that.”
“Nah,” Evan said with a half-convinced grin.
Never, Rafe thought, had the boy reminded him more of Carly than at that moment. He couldn’t be sure if it was the way the corner of Evan’s mouth lifted in a mischievous, hopeful smile, or the sparkle in his eye. But something tightened in Rafe’s chest as he set the rope spinning in lazy circles around the two of them.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Pretty soon, I was lassoing everything I passed. Doorknobs, fenceposts—girls....”
Evan laughed, but a moment later his expression faded.
“But I don’t have a lucky dime.”
Rafe let the rope spin to a stop and pulled a thoughtful expression. “Right. But hey, it’s not critical to have a lucky piece.”
“But maybe it would help,” Evan said hopefully.
“Hey, maybe you could use mine.” Rafe brightened as if he’d only just thought of it.
“Yours? Really?”
Rafe reached into his pocket, praying he had one. His fingers met the warm silver gratefully. He pulled it out and flipped it with his thumb toward Evan, who caught it awkwardly between his arm and his chest, then turned it over in his fingers, examining it for signs of magic. “It looks just like any old dime.”
“Ah, that’s the thing about lucky charms. Looks can be deceiving.”
“But...maybe it’s just lucky for you,” Evan said at last.
“Maybe. But luck has a way of passing from person to person. Ever notice that?”
He shook his head again.
“Well, trust me. You take this dime, and before you know it, you’ll have that rope doin’ just what you want.” He grinned and added, “The girls’ll be running when they see you comin’.”
Evan made an appropriate horrified-eight-year-old sound. “I don’t wanna rope any girls.”
Just wait, Rafe wanted to say, but he only smiled. “Whattya say? Shall we give it another try?”
The boy tucked the dime in his left pocket, patted it for luck and reached for the rope again. At first the spin was as awkward as the last, bumping against his knees and sailing every which way. Then, gently, Rafe covered Evan’s small hand with his own and cocked the boy’s elbow higher, guiding the rope in a larger circle until it formed a perfect. O.
Evan gasped, eyes wide. “Whoa, awesome!”
Rafe grinned broadly and released his hand. Evan kept the motion going for a full five seconds before the rope collapsed.
“I did it, huh, Rafe? I twirled it!”
Rafe put his hand out. “Gimme five, pard.”
Evan slapped his open palm with the authority of a kid who’d just mastered a mountain. “Wait till Mom sees. She won’t even believe it!”
“She’ll be proud of you, kid,” he said, ruffling Evan’s blond hair. I’m proud of you, came the thought, unbidden.
With a suddenness that nearly stole his breath, Evan collided with Rafe’s waist in an enormous hug. Stunned, he absorbed the sensation of the boy’s small body molded against him. Rafe’s arms hovered just above the boy’s back. He was afraid to touch him. To let himself get that close.
A weird sensation tumbled through his chest. He’d never imagined, never suspected, how sweet it would feel—a child’s absolute affection. Slowly he dropped his hands to Evan’s back and returned the hug, his throat thick with emotion.
“Thanks, Rafe,” Evan said against his shirt. “For the dime.”
“Hey, you did it, kid. Remember that. Dime or no dime, you’ve mastered it now. Keep practicing. Someday you’ll pass that dime on to somebody who needs it more than you.”
Evan nodded wordlessly against his chest, and then he was off and running with his rope, toward the house and his mom.
Carly.
In the three days since he kissed her, they’d exchanged little more than polite conversation. As she’d improved physically with each passing day, he’d pulled back, spending more and more time out on the fence lines, away from her. When they did see each other, the tension between them was so high it practically crackled in the air.
He was the coward: She had wanted to talk—had tried to talk every time he got near. But he hadn’t let her. He supposed he was afraid to hear what she had to say: that he shouldn’t have kissed her. That they should leave well enough alone. That she was grateful that he’d let her come here to stay, but as far as anything else...
And she’d be right. He’d brought her here to get her memory out of his life, not to drag her back in.
The damnedest thing was, he still wanted her. Right now, last night, the night before. Desire burned like a coal inside him, and he couldn’t shake it, no matter how irrational he told himself he was being. He could still feel the way her body had swayed into his, and the way her lips had slid against his, as if she’d forgotten the last nine years. Most telling of all was the way his body responded at the very thought of holding her again.
He told himself there was only one logical explanation for his attraction to Carly—he needed a woman. Any woman. He’d been so busy with the ranch, it had been months since he even thought of sex.
There were a half-dozen he could call right off the top of his head. There was Ellie Monaghan over in Oxford. Or Kathy Lynn Rimmer, over near the Las Platas County line. She’d never turned him away.
Then there was Millie Cahill. He and Millie sort of had an agreement. No strings, no ties. He’d bring a bottle of good wine and a handful of daisies, and she never complained when she woke up in the morning alone.
Or there was always Ruby Winston, the brown-eyed cocktail waitress over at Ludie’s in Durango. She was always game, and a terror under the sheets, and—
And she wasn’t Carly.
Rafe closed his eyes. A man didn’t mess around with a woman like Carly. Kiss Carly Jamison, and irrational thoughts about settling down and raising up a family started bubbling up, no matter how much a man denied them.
Nine years ago, he’d come close to settling down with Carly. Closer than he’d come with any woman, before or since. But he hadn’t been much good at it. In fact, he’d stunk.
Buying the ranch was as close as he figured he’
d ever come, and his plans had never included a woman as a permanent fixture. As far as fatherhood, his only role model had drunk himself to death by the time Rafe turned twelve. Rafe had survived five years bouncing around the foster-care system before he came to the conclusion that the fairy-tale family he dreamed of as a boy didn’t exist and, for someone like him, never would.
But Carly had wanted it all. Kids, a ring, a picket fence; all of it, and him, too. She’d wanted the perfect package, all tied up with a bow. She deserved that. But he hadn’t been the one to give it to her....
Rafe fingered two hands through his hair, took a deep, shaky breath of sage-scented air and stared at the broad swell of land he called his own. Walking to the corral fence, he draped one arm over the rail and dropped his chin against his hand.
In the distance, his cattle grazed, like black smudges of ink against a backdrop of gold. The barn, the house—all of it was his. Four years of sweat and blood had gone into building it. Like a piece of a half-done puzzle, this place had satisfied that long-ago dream of building something he could call home.
Yet it had never kept his bed warm at night or listened to his troubles. It had never made him feel like he could do anything—like that hug from Evan just had.
Rafe was thirty-three years old, and all he had to show for his life was a piece of land, a few head of cattle and a handful of silver-plated trophies that said he had once been the best at what he did.
He wondered what it would have been like if his life had taken another path. What it would be like to know a kid like Evan from birth. To watch him come into the world. To hold him for the first time...teach him to throw a ball, rope a cow...
“A penny fer yer thoughts.” Gus’s voice came from beside him.
Rafe jumped. He’d been so caught up in his own thoughts, he hadn’t even heard the older man coming. Gus wrapped his arm around the rail beside him.
“They aren’t worth that much,” Rafe said. “Just thinking of things that can never be.”
“Lotta that goin’ around,” Gus muttered meaningfully.
Rafe sensed a lecture coming on and offered a diversion. “Did Pedro bring Red-Eye up from the south pasture?”
To Love A Cowboy Page 8
