by Tara Janzen
An unusual grating noise intruded on her thoughts. She stopped in mid-swipe and turned her head toward the rest of the house. The sound came again—from the living room, she was sure. Colt had been rewiring her floor lamp earlier, but she didn’t think he needed to saw it in half. She wasn’t sure she even had a hacksaw in the toolbox he’d dragged out of the garage.
Carrying the cup and the towel, she wandered over to the doorway leading to the living room. One look took all the fight out of her. She leaned her head against the door frame and let the towel trail down her side. He was sprawled across the coach, his head back on the arm, snoring away.
Sighing, she turned back to the kitchen and set the cup and the towel on the table. It was obviously safe to go to bed. She could look at him as wistfully as she wanted and not worry about handling his response.
Sometime later, she woke to the sound of the shower running. A quick glance over her shoulder proved the bathroom light was on. She checked her clock. Not quite midnight.
She must have drifted off, because the next thing she knew she was waking again, rolling over to answer something he’d asked.
“Colt?”
He was silhouetted in her bedroom doorway, one hand dragging through his hair, wearing nothing but his laundered running shorts.
“I had a hell of a night last night,” he said, “out there on the couch. I’d really like to sleep in here tonight, if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure,” she mumbled after taking a few moments to assimilate his request. “I don’t mind the couch.” At least she didn’t think she did. She’d never slept on her couch. She had another bedroom in the house, but lacking another bed, she used the space for storage. Her visitors had always made do with the couch, and thus far he was the only one who’d complained.
“No,” he said, coming inside the room. “That’s not what I meant. I want to sleep with you. I don’t really much care where we do it.”
His voice was husky with an emotion she couldn’t read, but she got the feeling the admission he was making came from a need far deeper than desire. She wasn’t sure what to say.
“Don’t worry,” he went on. “I won’t do what I did the other night. I know I was unfair. I know I pushed you, no matter what you said later. Tonight I just want to hold you, to feel you next to me in the night.”
She lay in the darkness, letting the silence stretch and build between them, wishing she could say no, wishing she didn’t want to hold him too. When she heard him take the final steps to the bed, she didn’t protest. Instead, she rolled over and welcomed him, drawing him close to the place she’d made warm.
He slipped in next to her, pulling the covers back over them. His hand rested naturally on her waist. Their legs slid naturally across each other, fitting together. She felt the beginnings of his arousal when he nestled against her, but he quieted her with a kiss and told her not to worry.
She wasn’t worried.
She brushed her mouth across his cheek and caressed his arm. She touched him and kissed him again, and she put his hand on her breast.
“Colt, please,” she whispered. She wanted to love him and never have him leave. She wanted to get as close to him as possible. She wanted to remember everything they’d ever been to each other and forget everything they weren’t.
He was the only true love she’d ever known. He was the man she’d held in her heart, the only man she’d ever cried over. Loving him had been a burden for ten years, but he was also strength and passion to her. He was an infusion of heat in a life yearning to push the cold emptiness aside.
He was going to leave her again. She knew that one simple truth like she knew the sun was going to come up in the morning. But maybe . . . “Colt, please,” she murmured again, sliding her hand down his belly. Maybe this time he’d leave someone behind for her to love.
* * *
Colt woke with a muffled groan. Sunlight flooded the room, telling him dawn had come and gone without him. He dropped a hand over his eyes. He felt like a truck had rolled over him in the night, but it hadn’t been a truck. It had been Sarah, a hundred and some pounds of unleashed sensuality and eroticism. There was a lesson to be learned there, something about asking to share the beds of nice Wyoming girls and having the stamina to survive the consequences.
A grin eased across his face. He wouldn’t be running ten miles that morning. He didn’t need to; he didn’t have a kink left in his body.
She was going to be late getting the drugstore opened. He lifted his arm and checked the time on his watch. It was only a quarter to eight, and the drugstore was only five minutes away, but he had a feeling she was going to be late.
Her head was tucked under his chin, her breath warm against his chest. Without hardly moving, he wove the fingers of his other hand through the long, silky hair cascading down her back. Some of the golden strands slipped off her shoulder and onto his abdomen. One of her legs was slung across both of his, her thigh strategically placed to caress him with a single move. After last night, he wouldn’t put anything past her, not the deliberate placement and certainly not the move. She’d made moves on him last night that had put a new edge on the word “thrill.”
Just thinking about it made any action on her part unnecessary. With the utmost care, he shifted his weight and rolled her beneath him. He didn’t want her to wake, not yet, not until he was inside her.
He gently stroked between her thighs, a feather touch meant only to invade her dreams and remind her of him. With each succeeding caress, he increased the contact, explored farther and dared more, until he caught the hint of a smile on her lips and felt her woman’s nectar on his fingers. Then he slipped inside, burying himself to the hilt, and waited.
He waited until he saw the color rise in her skin, flushing her to a rosy hue. He waited until her breasts rose and fell with deeper breaths, until her lips parted on a moaning sigh and her eyes fluttered open, gray and luminous, and drenched with the sensations pulsing through her from him.
Sunlight caught in the pale strands of her hair and cast golden shadows in the curve of her neck. Her shoulders were slender and lightly dusted with freckles. Her breasts were tipped in the sweetest pink and beautifully rounded. How could he tell her how much he loved her? He didn’t know where to begin.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he silenced her with a shake of his head. She started to move against him, but he stilled her with a hand on her hip.
He held her slumberous gaze with his as the seconds passed, watching her, suffering with her the pleasure of being filled without being taken. She was heavenly to hold, more so than the angel of mercy she’d been the first night, more so than any other woman had ever been. Her softness seduced him on the most basic levels. His need to protect her flowed through him with every breath, yet he knew he was the most dangerous thing in her life. She didn’t need his speed with a weapon or his fighting skills, but he needed something from her. He needed the intrinsic connection between them, the healing power of her love, the melding of male and female. No one gave it to him better. No one drew him deeper into the miracle.
She moved against him, and he responded with a slow, deep thrust. His name whispered from her lips. He hushed her with a soft kiss and stroked his tongue along her mouth. He held her until she trembled, until the excitement building in his loins couldn’t be held back. Then he covered her mouth with his and took her with him to the secret place they shared.
* * *
Mid-morning sunlight slanted through the trees, casting long shadows across the road as Colt and Sarah walked toward town, hand in hand. She was already late opening the drugstore, so she didn’t bother to hurry him along. She enjoyed holding his hand too much.
“Daniel called while you were in the shower,” he said, guiding her around a muddy patch in the road. “I thought I’d go out to the ranch tomorrow, help him with branding.”
“That ought to be fun,” she said, mocking him with a roll of her eyes.
He laughed. “
You always were kind of squeamish for a country girl.”
“Squeamish? Just because I don’t like the smell of burning cowhide and the sound of all those calves bawling their little hearts out?”
He chuckled and leaned over to kiss the top of her head. They walked along in silence for a while before he spoke again.
“I met his wife, Ellen, at the church. She seems real nice.”
“She is. She’s the one who didn’t get me drunk the other night.”
“Yeah. I figured that out. Daniel said you two were good friends. He asked if we would like to come to supper this weekend.”
It was a perfectly reasonable invitation, delivered matter-of-factly, but her heart stopped for a second. It was one thing for her and Colt to live in a private fantasy world of no tomorrows, and quite another to let other people in, to become a social “we.”
“What did you tell him?” she asked when she was sure her voice could match his casual tone. She wasn’t about to get her hope blown all out of proportion by a supper invitation.
“I told him it sounded great, but I’d check with you and get back to him, in case you already had plans for the weekend.” He paused for a moment, his hand tightening around hers. “Then I got to thinking that since you invited me to stay until Sunday, you probably hadn’t made any other plans. Or if you had, like going to Gillette or something, that maybe I could talk you out of them and we could go have dinner with Daniel and Ellen. I think it would be fun.”
“So do I,” she said, looking up at him and letting her guard slip another notch.
“Thanks,” he said with a quick grin.
They walked on past the corner, silently agreeing to stick to the outskirts of town until they got to the cross street bordering Atlas Drugs. With each step they took, Sarah felt a change take place in him. He held her hand more gently, caressing it with his thumb, and his manner grew hesitant. Finally he stopped on the edge of the road and turned her toward him. His smile was gone, and his eyes were intent and strangely vulnerable.
“I don’t know how many promises I can make to you, Sarah. I don’t know how many I can keep.”
“I haven’t asked for any promises,” she said, her voice soft with surprise. Then reality took a firm hold. “But you can’t blame me for wanting. You can’t blame me for that.”
A wry smile curved his mouth, and he shook his head. “I wouldn’t blame you if you killed me in my sleep. Believe me, Sarah, I know what you’re giving up to have me around. I haven’t forgotten everything I ever knew about you, about the kind of woman you are.”
“What kind of woman is that?”
“The kind who deserves every promise a man can make.” He pulled her closer as he spoke, until his mouth was even with her ear and his arms were wrapped around her. “The kind of woman who deserves not to have those promises broken.”
He held her for a long time, and she let herself feel secure in his arms, forgetting her own promise not to fall in love, not to let him break her heart.
* * *
After they opened the drugstore, he went over to see Ruby. He hadn’t wanted to—Sarah had felt his reluctance the moment he’d mentioned going over to the beauty shop—but he had an obligation and he’d gone.
She watched him cross the street, spring sunshine turning his hair pale gold, his stride graceful and determined. She knew Ruby, and she knew there would be tears. She only hoped there wouldn’t be any recriminations for his long absence from Rock Creek.
Colt hadn’t abandoned his mother. He’d paid for Amanda to visit him in Europe and at his stateside bases. Sarah knew his mom had seen him every year after the first few years of near-absolute silence. But he’d never come home, and she was starting not to care so much what his reasons had been for leaving the way he had.
He returned to the store in time for lunch, looking worse for wear, by her estimation. “How’s Ruby?” she asked.
“Not so good,” he said, sliding onto one of the bar stools fronting the Atlas soda fountain. She’d stopped serving sodas and shakes a long time ago. There wasn’t enough call for them, and her customers got by with prepackaged ice cream treats out of the old refrigerator’s freezer. “She wants me to go out to Mom’s trailer with her and sort through some stuff, tell her what to do with things.”
He didn’t look at all pleased with the idea, and his next statement confirmed her suspicion.
“I told her she could do whatever she wanted with the stuff, but she can’t, or won’t, accept that as an answer.”
“She’s right, Colt.” Sarah didn’t know if it was her place to tell him the facts of life and death, but somebody had to explain a few things to the man. “I’m sure there are things out there you’ll want to keep. Things that belonged to your mother, like some of the furniture. And the clothes should be gone through.”
“I’m not going through my mom’s clothes,” he told her with finality.
“The church will be glad to take them, but there might be something special, something—”
“Sarah,” he interrupted, flashing her an angry glance.
“Okay, Colt,” she said after a short pause, her confusion evident from her tone.
“Look, it’s not—” He stopped and swore as he turned away. He swore again and briefly covered his eyes with a hand before he looked back up. “Look, it’s not what you think. I know about death, and I know she’s gone, but I don’t think that means I have to go out there and package up her life and put it all away. I own the land and she left me the trailer. Nobody is going to go out there and take the place. Nobody is going to need her closets.”
Sarah heard every word he said and most of the ones he didn’t say, and calmly took them all one step further. “I’ll go out with Ruby.”
“Thank you.”
* * *
“The Middle East is a mess, easily the most dangerous place I’ve been, with South America running a close second. Except for this little place in the desert north of Tucson.” Colt popped the tops off two bottles of beer and handed Sarah one. They were sitting on her back porch, a screened-in area off the laundry room and kitchen, waiting for the coals in the grill to burn down. The porch door had fallen off its hinges years ago and lay propped against the outside wall. Paint peeled on the empty jamb.
“Tucson, Arizona?” she asked. “What’s dangerous about Tucson?”
The sun was getting ready to set, hanging over the prairie with a tenacious, golden grip before dropping off behind the mountains. Colt angled his chair back and stretched one leg across the edge of the iron patio table as he finished up a long swallow of beer.
“We were crawling across the desert in the middle of the night, no moon,” he began, tilting his head in her direction. “It was pretty slow going, but we were getting close to our objective, when we came up out of this arroyo and I grabbed on to a pile of coils with fangs on one end and a rattle on the other.” He grinned at her shudder of revulsion. “Scared the hell out of me, I guarantee.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, I was pretty young, pretty fresh, and I blew its head off before I even thought about what I was doing. Almost shot myself in the hand.” He laughed and took another swallow of beer. “If you ever hear any of the guys call me Rattler, you’ll know what they’re talking about. The new men always think it’s a cool name, a good handle, but it’s really about me and the snake that almost ate my lunch.”
He laughed again, and Sarah smiled. Despite what he said, she guessed he thought it was a cool name too. He wasn’t so different from the boy he’d been. The arrogance was still there, heightened by the confidence and success of becoming one of the best. But it wasn’t unbearable, and he still had that rare strain of sweetness running through him that had made her fall in love with him the first time.
She only hoped she got the chance to hear one of his friends call him Rattler. As of yet, he hadn’t given her any reason to think she might, and she wouldn’t be the one to broach the subject. She was determined
to hold on to that one bit of pride—and to whatever else the good Lord sent her way.
Her hand absently slid across her tummy. He’d talked about being unfair, but he was no match for her. Her time was right, her body’s cycle turning with the tides and her own fervent wish. The rest was up to Mother Nature.
When the coals were an ashy gray, Colt went inside to get the flank steak he’d been marinating for the last two days. Sarah relaxed back in her chair, but barely got comfortable before imminent disaster caught her eye. She jumped up with a silent curse on her lips as a red-and-white truck pulled off the street and cut across the empty lot between her house and the Davis place. The pickup bounced through the weeds and ruts, tearing up a dust cloud and adding another layer of dirt to the vehicle. There was no mistaking the driver—Hank Cavanaugh, professional rodeo cowboy, saddle-bronc and bareback rider extraordinaire.
He pulled to a stop at her back fence, and the cloud of dust blew on past the truck, heading toward Nebraska. With a natural, easy athletic ability, he stepped from the open pickup door to the top of her fence, and on down the other side into her yard. He was the only man she knew who could juggle and ride a unicycle at the same time. He was also the only man she knew who had tried, or who wanted to do it enough to spend hours practicing the double trick. He swore it made him a better bronc rider, and he was probably right. The only time she’d ever seen him serious about anything was the time she’d been behind the bucking chutes, before he rode a bronc, and watched him work his hand into his rigging. For a moment, she’d seen another side of him, and she’d almost fallen in love. But eight seconds later, he’d been the same wild Hank, looking for a good time and willing to share it with anyone who came down the pike.
“Howdy, Miss Sarah,” he called, a teasing twinkle lighting his dark eyes, his voice a sexy drawl meant to warn her of his mood.
Sarah was tempted to run, actually run, but she knew Hank. If she ran, he’d chase. Mostly he had it the other way, with the women chasing after him. They couldn’t resist his crooked smile and good looks, and his natural shyness with most females.
