A Stranger in the Family (Book 1, Bardville, Wyoming Trilogy)

by Patricia McLinn

  Loved her. Wanted to marry her. Wanted to have children with her.

  Children like the son he’d come here to find. The son who was part of the family she held so dear.

  He had to tell her.

  He owed her—he owed all of the Westons—honesty.

  Boone rubbed the back of his neck.

  It would never have been easy. Not when he was an absolute stranger. Not after the Westons had taken him into the family. Not now that he and Cambria had made love.

  Angie Lee’s death added another twist to the knot.

  Ted and Irene and Pete are my family. They are what counts in my life. Nothing else.

  Nothing else.

  He wanted to count in her life. He wanted it so badly it scared him. Scared him enough to want to delay telling her and risking that she’d push him away. Scared him enough to know that delay would only make it worse.

  He wouldn’t touch Cambria again until he’d told her the whole truth.

  * * * *

  It was stupid to feel shy after the things they’d done last night—and this morning—but that was how Cambria felt as she opened the door and let Boone into her darkened cabin. They’d made no plans, hadn’t said anything to each other that wasn’t in front of her family and friends. She’d turned off the outside light and everything inside except one soft light in the bedroom...in case. In case he should come and in case anybody was looking from the main house.

  She’d waited. Finally, feeling stupid to be sitting in the near dark fully clothed, she’d taken off her jeans and shirt. When the soft knock came, she threw on her robe and fought a hammering heart to answer it.

  “Cambria, we have to talk.”

  The taut lines of Boone’s face and the abrupt words as soon as he’d entered set anxiety thrumming through her.

  She gave him one wary look. “I don’t want to talk.”

  “God, I don’t, either,” he said grimly. “But we have to.”

  “Don’t start about Angie Lee again, Boone. It’s past. There’s no changing what she did. There’s no changing that she’s dead.” She stepped to him, slowly running her hands up either side of his shirt placket. She felt his response in the tightening of muscles under her touch. “I’ve told you, I don’t want—”

  He stopped her by clasping both her hands between his. “This has to be said, Cambria.”

  Her emotional system had taken several heavy jolts in less than twenty-four hours. The shock of her mother’s death and will. The leap-from-the-high-dive excitement, thrill and fear of taking Boone Dorsey Smith into her bed, and the even more bone-melting, soul-rattling lovemaking once they got there. Finally the recognition that had dawned on her along with this day that she was falling in love with him.

  She felt raw. Certainly not prepared to hear anything like what his grim tone threatened.

  Not now. Not yet.

  She curled her hands within his grip, the nails drawing lines through the material of his shirt. A fine shudder gripped him. Desire changed his eyes to slate.

  “Cambria...”

  Stepping in close, she tipped her hips against his. He released her hands and gripped her shoulders. He breathed out sharp through his mouth.

  With her hands freed, she began undoing his buttons, revealing his chest. It surprised her to find how much that affected her. She had explored his body through the intimate hours of last night, with touch and taste, but as her fingers reacquainted themselves with the sensations of the webbing of muscles and the wedge-shaped sprinkling of hair, she found this renewed connection pulsing a molten languor through her. She kissed the spot where his throat met his jaw, then pressed her teeth lightly there before touching the tip of her tongue to the spot.

  His arms tightened around her.

  “Listen...”

  No. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to hear it. Not now. Not yet. Too much had happened too fast.

  “Boone, I want you.”

  Restraint had beaded sweat on his forehead, the dip between chin and bottom lip.

  “I want you, too.” He dropped his head back. She couldn’t see his expression, but she could feel the tautness in his body. He straightened. “Aren’t you sore? Too sore?”

  “Not too sore.”

  Her heartbeat sounded in her own ears four times. Before the fifth, the rumble of a muttered oath had barely echoed into being when Boone’s mouth crashed down on hers.

  She stepped into the whirlwind. No, she leapt into it, met it, fed it, gloried in it. Let it rip her from her moorings and toss her higher than she’d known she could go.

  And then she gloried in it as thoroughly when it gentled, slowed, drew out to a breeze that drifted over her as softly as Boone’s hand stroking down into the hollow of her back, then up the flare of her hips.

  “You have a great rear end.”

  She smiled into his shoulder. “Please, no detailing of body parts. I just want you to remember the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.’’

  “I love the parts because they’re part of the whole.”

  “Smooth talker.”

  “Not when it counts.”

  She caught an undercurrent in his answer that renewed her earlier wariness. With a noncommittal “Mmm,” she purposely burrowed deeper into the pillow and promptly fell asleep, like a baby who’d had all its needs met, or like an adult whose emotions and mind had shut down from overload.

  They woke with dawn spilling warm air through the light curtains, their bodies already humming with the current of the spooned position they’d assumed in their sleep.

  “It’s going to be a scorcher today.”

  Boone ran his hand from her shoulder down her side, to her waist and over her hip before answering.

  “It already is.”

  * * * *

  Cambria gave the driver of the gravel truck a smile that had him blinking at her in masculine appreciation as she signed the receipt for the load he’d just delivered. The road was drivable because she’d had him pour his load out along its length rather than drop it in one heap. But it would take dusty hours with a hand rake to get it to look good.

  Instead of starting now, she headed to the cabin where Boone and Pete were preparing the tops of the walls to hold a roof.

  She couldn’t fool even herself any longer that she worked on the cabin to protect Pete’s teenage ego from Boone’s demanding ways. Oh, he’d been impatient with Pete at times. But never nasty, and always instructive.

  No, she returned to the cabin—with a side trip to the house for a pitcher of lemonade and cups—for her own sake.

  “Just in time,” Pete yelled as soon as he spotted her. “I was about to go in and get ready for practice. Now I won’t die of thirst between here and the house.”

  “Florence Nightingale with a pitcher!” Boone hailed her from the platform he and Pete stood on while they worked. Both were shirtless. Tan and sweat gilded their shoulders and chests, one broad and muscled, one still filling out from a boy’s thinness.

  “I think that was Molly Pitcher,” she said with a grin.

  “I don’t care if you’re Clara Barton or Richard Burton, just give me some lemonade,” her brother demanded.

  She filled a plastic cup and handed it up, but her eyes were on Boone. His answering look remembered the past two nights’ sultry heat and promised encores that could boil a thermometer.

  Boone hunched his shoulder to wipe his sweating forehead, then ran a hand through his hair. “You know, Irene might have something with all this talk about getting a haircut. If this heatwave continues—” he gave Cambria a significant look as he took a filled cup from her “—I’ll have to get a crew cut to try to stay cool.”

  Grinning, she turned to Pete. “See, Mom was right about getting your hair cut.”

  “Maybe it’s a little cooler because it’s not on the back of my neck. But if Mom would let me grow my hair, I’d look really—”

  “You’d look just like Boone, and no self-respecting mother around he
re would let you date her daughter.”

  Boone’s smile at her teasing gibe seemed a bit thin, but Pete laughed.

  “Yeah, but the girls would all go crazy for me.” Pete split a sly glance between his sister and Boone.

  “All right, all right. I don’t know how my personal life got mixed up in this discussion of Pete’s hairstyle, but let’s keep to the important stuff.” Boone thrust out his cup toward Cambria. “More lemonade.”

  “Me, too.”

  Laughing, she filled both cups to the brim, emptying the pitcher.

  “Looks like I better get a refill.” But she made no move to leave, caught by the sight in front of her. Boy and man, side by side, with the same hip-tilted stance, each turned three-quarter profile toward her.

  They raised their cups simultaneously, an unconscious synchronization as they closed their eyes under heavy brows and tilted their heads back to pour the cooling liquid down identically working throats. The sinking sun was behind her, glaring strong into their faces, washing out color and leaving only structure.

  Identically working throats. The thought circled in her head. Identically...Look just like Boone...just like Boone...

  She remembered Boone and Pete in front of the campfire Saturday night, and her own certain vision of what Boone had looked like as a boy. It had been so clear because she had seen it...watching Pete grow up.

  A hundred clues from a score of days surfaced as if they’d been lying in wait for this precise moment. Her early sense of deja vu. Boone’s intense interest in the family. Her lingering sense of familiarity sidetracked when she’d likened him to Tony. His patience with Pete. Her uneasiness. His evasiveness. All those, and the rest of the hundreds of glimpses and nuances and shadings of voice and one-sided grins and distinctive eyebrows, realigned themselves, forming a pattern, a possibility, a likelihood. Then clicking firmly into place... and she knew.

  Oh, God.

  For one stark instant of weakness she wished with all that was in her to be transported back just a few minutes, before she knew, before two cornerstones of her life had taken such a devastating blow—the security of her family and her relationship with Boone. And that in itself was too frightening to even consider now—that Boone had so quickly become a cornerstone of her life.

  How could he have kept this from her? That agonized demand quickly made room for another. What did he want?

  She might wish she hadn’t seen, but she had. She might feel a turmoil inside of regrets and wishes. But what she had to do was very clear: look out for her family. That was what was important. That was what counted. That was what would get her through this.

  She had to think of them. Of Pete and Ted and Irene. Family.

  “You better get to practice, Pete,” Boone advised in his easy drawl. “And I better get back—”

  The pitcher crashed against a cement block left on the ground, shattering in a splash of glass fragments on the hard ground beside her.

  “Cambria, are you okay? Did you get cut?”

  She heard Boone’s questions. They sounded tinny and distant against the roaring in her ears. She gave no response, but he must have satisfied himself with a look that she wasn’t cut because he didn’t ask again. He moved quickly to just outside the circle of broken glass.

  “Cambria, what happened?” Pete demanded.

  “I...It slipped.”

  “Be careful, those shards can go right through your shoes,” Boone said. “I’ll get a board you can step on. Don’t move.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to respond.

  Pete’s brow creased as he considered her. “You want me to get something to put the glass in? And maybe some gloves? Or I could—”

  “No. No, you go on ahead to practice, Pete.” She tried to make it firm, but her voice might have edged toward urgent.

  Pete’s brow remained creased as he looked from her to where Boone checked the thickness and length of boards on a nearby stack.

  “Go on ahead, Pete,” Boone said.

  Pete did.

  And her numbness sank under its own weight in a crest of anger and hurt that had her quaking.

  “This isn’t quite long enough, but the others are either too thin or too warped.” He laid down the board. It stopped two feet short of her. “Here, take my hand and step on this.” He came out on the board and extended his hand. “Then we’ll—”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  His head jerked at her tone. “Cambria? What is it?”

  “Back up. Out of my way.”

  He hesitated, then complied. Steadying herself with her left hand against the building, she stretched her legs to span the area littered with glass to reach the board. She crossed it, then took several steps away from the cabin and Boone before his quiet voice stopped her.

  “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

  She spun around to face him. “Why don’t you tell me what it’s all about?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tension undercut his patience.

  “I’m talking about you and why you came here.”

  She wasn’t imagining it. He flinched.

  She wrapped her arms around her waist. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it when it was staring me in the face.” She gave a mirthless choke of laughter. “Right in the face. God, I even thought you looked familiar.” She went ramrod straight. “I want to hear you say it. Why did you come here?”

  “I think you know why.”

  “Say it.”

  “Pete’s my son.”

  Even expecting it, she recoiled from the words.

  “God, what a fool I’ve been,” she murmured. “You were lying all along. Did you get a kick out of that? Did you—”

  “That wasn’t how it was. Cambria, listen to me—”

  “Listen to you? I was a fool to ever listen to you. To ever trust you. But I won’t be a fool anymore. I want you out of here. Clear your things out of the cabin, get off Weston land.”

  “If you won’t listen to anything else, listen to this, Cambria. I would never purposely hurt you or any of your family.”

  “Get out.”

  “Cambria—”

  “I said, get out. And stay away from Pete.”

  “I have a right to—”

  “You have no rights. None. Pete’s the one with rights. He had the right to be happy and stable and loved. You can’t come waltzing in here after staying away his whole life and try—”

  “I didn’t know, Cambria.” That stopped her for a moment. “I didn’t know until three months ago that I even had a son. As soon as I found out, I started looking. This isn’t like your mother walking out on you—”

  “I didn’t say anything about that.”

  “You didn’t have to. It’s obvious what you’re thinking. And feeling.”

  “You don’t have any damn idea what I’m thinking or feeling. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. It has to do with Pete. And what’s right for him. And for Mama and Dad. For our family. Pete doesn’t need you, he doesn’t want you. So just get out of our lives. You’ve done it all for nothing. Coming here, using me, staying—”

  “No.” The force of that single word stopped her again. They stared at each other through three heavy heartbeats. When he spoke again, he said the words slow and deep, giving each full emphasis. “I never used you. What happened between us was between us. Only us.”

  “I don’t believe you.” She couldn’t believe him. “You once accused me of looking at you like an ax murderer, like somebody who’d beat old ladies and steal their last dollar. I wasn’t that far off the mark, was I?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Isn’t it? You come in here, prepared to turn a boy’s life upside down—why? So you can feel better? So you can feel satisfied you finally did the right thing? Or fill some emptiness in yourself? That’s about as low as it gets, Boone, using a kid to make yourself feel better.”

  Under the tan, his face had turned gray. Li
nes dug deep grooves into the skin at the corners of his eyes and his mouth.

  “I’ll leave the ranch, but I’m not leaving Bardville. I’m going to stay nearby. I’ll still be around. I’ll be right on your doorstep. So what will you tell everyone? Ted and Irene? Pete? You’ll have to tell them the truth.”

  Before she could stop it, a vision of her telling her brother sliced into her. Her second thought brought nearly as much pain. What would this do to Irene and Ted?

  She had to protect them. Her pain was like a blow to the soul, nearly doubling her over. But she had brought it on herself—she had allowed herself to trust without cause, she had allowed herself to love without complete trust. But her family...they were innocent victims in this. And she would not let them suffer.

  “You’ll have to tell them the truth,” Boone repeated.

  “There’s another kind of truth. I’ll tell them we’ve fought, and you’re leaving because of that.”

  “A lovers’ quarrel?”

  “Yes.” She bit it off.

  “I do love you, Cambria.”

  She hadn’t known he could be so cruel. “Get out. Within the hour. Before Pete comes home.”

  She didn’t look at him as she started to leave.

  “Cambria.”

  She stopped, but didn’t turn around. So his familiar voice came from behind her. “Lovers’ quarrels are rarely the end of the story.”

  Chapter Ten

  Bardville boasted no motels. Boone got a room in a place this side of Sheridan with no pool, no cable and no room service. The vintage fifties strip of identical rooms did offer a bed, shower, desk, chair, phone and electrical outlet. That was all he needed to get back to work.

  He threw his bags on the bed and set up and turned on his computer and fax in the first fifteen minutes after renting the room. He sat at the desk and pulled the phone toward him. But he pressed no buttons. He didn’t know how long he sat like that, leaning his arms on the desk with the phone between them as if he were a dog with a bone. The blank-faced machinery around him hummed with energy but no purpose.

  All he could see was Cambria, hazel eyes wide with shock, face pale, arms wrapped around her middle as if she were sick to her stomach.