by Webb, Peggy
Sometimes a man had to settle for what he could get.
On the plane he forgot about the ring in his pocket. Instead he concentrated on the impending interview. Bolton Gray Wolf prided himself on the excellence of his work, and he wasn’t about to go unprepared for an interview with the indomitable Virginia Haven.
o0o
Bolton liked to get the lay of the land before he announced his presence.
The first thing that caught his eye was the stallion. It was an Arabian, strong, surefooted, white as the crest of the snowy egret and as swift as the north winds that whirled down from the White Mountains and overtook the tribal lands in winter. If he could have a chance to ride that horse, then the trip to Mississippi would be well worth his time.
The second thing he noticed was the woman. Tall and lithe, with autumn sunlight streaking her honey-colored hair, she rode like an Apache.
“Last one home is a rotten egg,” she called.
The wind caught her laughter and flung it carelessly toward Bolton as if it were something ordinary instead of a rich, husky sound.
He shaded his eyes to see her better. She was a striking woman, made even more so by the white stallion she rode. The Arabian was a strong-willed, powerful horse, but even at a distance there was no doubt who was in charge.
Over the ridge behind her galloped another Arabian, a perfect match to the one now in a full stretch just beyond the barn where Bolton waited. The rider was female, as blond as the first but not quite as tall and definitely not as sure in the saddle.
Could they be twins? He’d been told that Virginia Haven had only one daughter, but the resemblance was so strong these two had to be sisters.
The second horse raced to catch the first, but both horse and rider were outmatched. In a whirlwind of dust the first Arabian wheeled to a stop a few feet from Bolton, and the rider dismounted, her hair flying and her face flushed.
“That’s no fair.” The second rider came to a stop a few feet away. “You always win, Mother.”
Mother! Bolton prided himself on judging a thing right the first time around. He studied Virginia Haven to see what he had missed. Suddenly she wheeled toward the shadows where he was standing.
“Strangers have been shot for less than that,” she said.
Virginia Haven strode toward him, leading with her chin in the defiant way of a woman not accustomed to making idle threats. Bolton had been told she hated being interviewed; he hadn’t been told she would be openly hostile.
He stepped into the sunlight. “I can assure you I’m not dangerous,” he said.
Virginia gave him a frank appraisal that would have made lesser men cringe.
“That remains to be seen,” she said.
“Mother!”
Virginia turned to her daughter. “Go on to the house, Candace. I’ll handle this.”
“Oh, brother.” Candace tossed her reins toward her mother, looked as if she might say something else, then changed her mind and headed toward the house.
Nobody in his right mind would call such an imposing layout a mere house. It sat atop a hill in a grove of pecan and oak trees, its wings and gables and porches sprawling in every direction. A garage big enough for at least six cars was attached to the west wing, and a courtyard that might have belonged in Versailles overlooked a six-acre lake.
Bolton was neither intimidated nor impressed. Son of the ever-practical Jo Beth McGill, who preferred canyons to castles, and Colter Gray Wolf, whose taproot was deeply embedded in his Apache homeland, Bolton was a child of nature. For him beauty was the morning sun breaking through the mists of the White Mountains, a fawn wading through a clear brook, an eagle soaring into the vast expanse of Arizona sky. Nature in its untamed state had more appeal to him than fancy houses enclosed with wrought iron fences and protected by security guards.
“I’m Bolton Gray Wolf.”
“I know who you are. In the first place, I asked for you, and in the second, you would never have gotten past the front gate without credentials.”
Holding on to the reins of the two powerful Arabians as if they were nothing more than Shetland ponies, Virginia started into the stables. “You can wait at the house,” she told Bolton as she wheeled past him. “Candace will make you comfortable.”
His blood thundered through him like waterfalls after a spring thaw. It wouldn’t do to let this woman get her bluff in.
“I prefer the stables.”
Bolton stepped in close and took the reins of the Arabians.
“My horses don’t like to be handled by anybody except me.”
Ignoring her, Bolton rubbed the horses and spoke in the ancient mystical cadences of his people. The Arabians proved her wrong by responding to Bolton like children heeding the Pied Piper.
No one had ever dared be so bold with her. Virginia would have put any other man in his place within five seconds flat, but Bolton Gray Wolf was not just any man. Besides looking like something she’d love to eat every morning for breakfast, he had an intriguing aura about him, an aura of mystery and power.
Virginia didn’t want to be intrigued. Especially by a photojournalist.
“If you’re planning to tame me with your virile good looks, don’t even try.”
“It’s not you I hope to tame, but the horses.”
Bolton continued to gentle the horses with touch and sound. He’d never done an interview with a hostile subject, and he didn’t plan to start now.
Just as he’d suspected, Virginia’s curiosity got the best of her.
“Where did you learn how to do that?”
“I was conceived on a horse.”
“What is that language?”
“Athabascan.”
Some of the aggressiveness went out of her stance, and she tilted her head to one side as she listened.
“It’s beautiful. I’d like to learn it.”
“I’ll teach you.”
He turned the full radiance of his smile on her. Virginia felt as if her insides were melting. His voice was deep and rich and seductive.
Oh, he was dangerous all right, dangerous and gorgeous and delicious... and far, far too young.
Virginia shut herself down. Bolton Gray Wolf was off-limits.
“There’s nothing you can possibly teach me that I haven’t already learned.” As she strode toward the house, she flung over her shoulder, “If you want an interview with me, you’d better come on. If not, you can hit the road.”
She was halfway across the barn lot when he called her name.
“Virginia...” Slowly she turned around. “You forgot about the horses.”
It was the first time she’d ever forgotten about her horses. At that moment, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bolton Gray Wolf would surely break her heart.
Chapter Two
If she had a lick of sense she’d send Bolton Gray Wolf back to Arizona and forget about the interview. That’s what she told herself as she walked back toward the stables where he waited with her horses.
His eyes were incredible, as vivid as the wings of a bluebird, and he never took them off her. There was more than professional interest in his stare: There was the hot, bright look of a man aroused. It wasn’t something she imagined; it was something she knew.
Her insides quaked like a teenager’s.
“What am I getting myself into?” she whispered.
“Did you say something, Virginia?”
“Just talking to myself. Everybody knows writers do that.”
“It must be a hazard of the profession, sitting alone in front of a computer.”
“Yes, it’s a hazard of the profession.” She reached for Starfire’s bridle, and her hand grazed his. Shock waves that would have felled earthquake-proof buildings went through her.
Another hazard of the profession, she told herself. Constant isolation caused her to go slightly beserk at the touch of a handsome stranger.
Her hands shook as she tried to remove the bridle.
“Here.”
Bolton covered her hands with his. “Let me help with that.”
She should have told him she didn’t need help, that she hadn’t needed help since Roger had walked out on her fifteen years earlier leaving her with a mountain of debt, a car that wouldn’t run in cold weather, and a five year old daughter to raise.
But she didn’t. It felt so good to have somebody take charge. She’d have to be careful, or she’d get to liking it too much.
“In fact, why don’t you sit over there and let me take care of the horses?” Bolton nodded in the direction of a bale of hay.
“Is this part of your technique?”
“Technique?”
A hot flush came into her cheeks. She turned her back on him and fanned herself before she sank onto the bale of hay.
“Interviewing technique,” she clarified.
His laughter was rich and deep. “No. It’s actually a selfish ploy on my part. I’ve been wanting to get my hands on these Arabians since I first laid eyes on them.”
“I see.” Virginia plucked a strand of hay and broke it into four even pieces. It gave her something to do with her hands. Otherwise she might have had to sit on them in order to keep them to herself.
“I don’t want you to misunderstand why I requested you,” she said.
He cocked an eyebrow in her direction, but his hands never ceased their efficient movements. There was no sound in the stable except the soft scraping of the curry comb and the cooing of pigeons in the loft.
“It’s not because of the way you look. I’m sure women have told you, you’re gorgeous.”
“Not lately.” His smile was guileless. “In fact, not ever.”
“They should have. By the droves.”
“Do droves of men tell you how beautiful you are?”
“No. Not even one, unless you count Eldon Prescott at the post office.”
“He must be a man of good taste.”
Virginia cupped her knees and drew them up to her chest. The sun enhanced the bronze tones of Bolton’s skin and gave his black hair the sheen of a raven’s wing. Except for his blue eyes, he looked every inch the savage, as if he might leap onto the stallion’s back at any moment and ride off with her captive. And she wouldn’t even give a yelp of protest, not a single one.
Her friend Jane would laugh if she could hear Virginia describe the scene. “The thing I like about you, Virginia,” Jane would say, “is that you know how to turn drab reality into pulsating fantasy.”
It would behoove Virginia to get her head out of the clouds and her feet back on the ground.
“Eldon Prescott’s a man of indiscriminate taste,” she said. “He tells every woman in Pontotoc the same thing. ‘Good morning, Miss Ruthie. My, aren’t you beautiful today.’ ‘Hello, Lola Bell, what brings such a beautiful woman out on such a beautiful day?’ “
“And are they?”
“Yes, if you look on the inside rather than the outside.”
“I like him already, and I haven’t even met him yet.”
Virginia tensed. She was making a fool of herself, lolling around in the hay thinking she could have an ordinary conversation with a handsome man. The nature of her profession lifted her out of the ordinary, and Bolton Gray Wolf was not just any man. He was a journalist, that dread breed who probed her as coldly as a scientist then spread her secrets out for all the world to gossip about.
“Yet? Are you planning to ask Eldon Prescott what the real Virginia Haven is like?” She jumped off the bale of hay and dusted the seat of her jeans. “Let me save you the trouble. I’m tough and independent and rich—I’m very, very rich—but I’m not sneaky and I’m not mean. I don’t lie and I don’t pretend. So don’t you ever pretend with me, Bolton Gray Wolf. Don’t you ever pretend to be this charming friendly young man who adores horses when all you want to do is sneak off behind my back and start trying to dig up dirt on me.”
“Have you finished?”
“Not quite. Don’t think you can weasel your way into my good graces or my bed with all that Apache charm. I have no intention of being a conquest. Not yours, not anybody’s.”
Bolton had never met a woman with such a sharp stinger. The problem was, he’d long ago ceased to think of Virginia Haven as an interview. When she’d sat on that bale of hay with the sun in her hair and on her fair skin, he’d thought of her as all woman, all desirable woman. As a matter of fact, he’d lost his professional detachment about the time she’d dismounted from the Arabian and stood in front of him with her hair whipping around her face. She reminded him of sunshine and roses. More than that she set off a fire in his blood, a fire of such proportions, he knew it wasn’t a fluke, and that it wouldn’t go away no matter what she said or did.
With her feet wide apart and her hands on her hips, she waited.
“Well, aren’t you going to defend yourself?”
He smiled at her. “No.”
“I suppose you’re going to pack up your cameras and hightail it to the nearest airport.”
“No.” He draped blankets over the horses and led them to their stalls.
Some of the starch went out of Virginia. She’d never met a man she couldn’t back down. And she’d certainly never met a journalist who didn’t grovel at her feet for the sake of a story.
“What are you going to do?”
“Do you want me to answer that question, Virginia, or have you already decided what my answers will be?”
“Don’t play word games with me. You’ll lose.”
“I never lose, Virginia.”
His eyes cut through her like brilliant blue lasers. She felt exposed, as if he’d stripped away her skin and left nothing behind except bare bones and a heart beating too hard and too fast.
There was a slow and easy grace in the way he moved, as if the act of retrieving cameras and gear was some ancient, ritualistic dance. With any other man she’d have said his movements were carefully calculated, but Virginia was not dumb. If she’d learned anything in the last few minutes, it was that Bolton Gray Wolf was definitely not just any man.
The sun turned him to some kind of god as he stood facing her with cameras slung over his shoulders. She’d read about bones melting, had even written about it, but until that moment she’d never understood the concept. Feeling behind her with one hand, she slowly sank back onto the bale of hay.
“When you’re ready for this interview, call me. I’m staying at the Ramada in Tupelo.” He scrawled the number on the back of his business card and handed it to her. She refused to reach for the card, and he placed it on the hay. Though he never touched her, she could feel the heat of his hand as if he had slowly and deliberately caressed her hip.
She looked up at him and became trapped in his intense gaze.
“And Virginia... when I come to your bed, you won’t be a conquest. You will be an equal.”
He walked away with the same silent grace he’d used in rubbing down her horses. She wrapped her arms around herself and watched him go. She was still sitting that way when Candace came to the barn.
“What are you doing, Mother?”
How could she tell her daughter that she had no earthly idea? That she’d been turned inside out and upside down by a man who had boldly declared he was going to be her lover.
“What are you doing, Candace?”
“I came to tell you that Jane called to remind you about dinner tonight... and to lead you to the house in case you’d forgotten the way.”
Laughing, Virginia stood up and put her arm around her daughter’s waist.
“Am I that bad?”
“Sometimes. But I’ve decided to keep you anyhow.”
“Good, because I’ve decided to keep you, too.”
They started toward the house arm in arm, their heads close together as they talked.
“Did you finish the interview?”
“No.”
“Mother! You didn’t run this one off, did you?”
“No. He’s not the kind of man who can be run off. Besi
des, these interviews take longer than one afternoon.”
“How long?”
“A few days, I expect. Maybe even a week or longer.”
“Good. Maybe he’ll still be here when I come home next weekend. Marge will think he’s a dreamboat.” Candace glanced at her mother. “I thought I’d bring her home with me, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
Marge’s home was in Montana, and weekends on the college campus were very long for her. Sometimes Virginia felt as if she had two daughters instead of one, which was fine with her. In fact, better than fine. It was good to have young people around. It kept her from thinking too much about the severe limitations of her social life.
That evening over catfish and fried dill pickles at the Front Porch in nearby Tupelo, Jane reminded her.
“You need to get out more, Virginia.”
“I am out.”
“Oh, poop. Not with me. With somebody handsome, well hung, and loaded.”
“Jane, a man would have to rob a Brink’s truck to have more money than me, and I’m not interested in some brainless jock.”
“You have not been interested in any man since Roger dumped you.”
“That’s not true.” Virginia dragged the appetizers closer to her plate. “You’re hogging all the dill pickles.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“I certainly am. I can think of nothing more boring than my social life.”
“See. That’s just what I told you. You spend too much time at your computer, Virginia. Computers can’t hold you close at night, and they certainly can’t give you orgasms.”
“Jane, did I ever tell you that you have a one-track mind?”
“Yeah. Every day since we turned sixteen. If you weren’t rich and famous, I’d hate you.”
“And if you didn’t have freckles and red hair, I’d hate you. It’s hard to hate somebody who looks like Orphan Annie.”
Laughing, Jane patted her pouf of red hair. “Do you think it looks natural? Lola tried a new color on me today. It’s called siren-red.”
