by Jeanne Allan
Luke slid his lips from her mouth. “Your face is frozen,” he said against her cheek. He lifted his head. Desire and rueful amusement mingled in his eyes. “If we don’t get up right now, I’m going to rip both our clothes off, and we’re going to end up with frostbite in places we could never explain.”
Luke stood, then pulled her to her feet. Briskly he brushed the snow from her clothing. Gradually his movements slowed, the brushing becoming more caressing than utilitarian. J.J. closed her eyes and leaned into his hands, her body craving even this touch. Luke pressed a hard, quick kiss on her lips, then climbed up to the road, pulling her along.
J.J. spoke as they walked beneath the ranch gate. “This is all your fault. I’d be okay if you’d quit kissing me. I don’t want to want you.”
“You don’t have to kiss me back.” The icy snow crunched under Luke’s boots.
She knew she didn’t have to kiss him back. Her mouth apparently did not. “I don’t love you. Don’t take this personally, but you’re just a sex object to me.”
“Do me a favor, O’Brien,” Luke said harshly. “Quit reminding me you want to go to bed with me, or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
J.J. slogged through the snow. “My coming here was a mistake. We’re making things worse. You know we’re incompatible. We want different things from life. We would never have made a go of our marriage.” J.J. stopped, freeing the hand Luke still held. “The best thing is for me to call Burton to come and take me home.”
“No. We made a deal.” He faced her, his hands resting on his hips. “I may not be a lawyer, but I’m sure oral contracts are as binding as written ones.”
J.J. met his steady gaze with troubled eyes. He was wrong about oral contracts, but that was the least of her concerns. She wanted to run. She wanted to find a warm corner of the barn where they could make love. She didn’t know what she wanted. Her lungs filled with cold, dry air. Burton was right to insist she come. Even if it meant staying here three weeks, she had to find the key for breaking the spell Luke held over her. “I’ll stay. But I think we ought to keep out of each other’s way as much as we can while I’m here.”
Shaking his head, Luke tipped up her face with a glove-clad hand. “That’s the worst thing we can do. All we have between us now are bedroom memories. To change that, we need to spend as much time together as we can. Unless we’re sleeping, I want you glued to my side. By the end of three weeks we won’t be able to stand the sight of each other.”
Maybe by the end of three weeks. J.J. furtively eyed Luke as they drove into town. Now, however, he looked sexy as all get out, from his worn boots to his wide-brimmed hat. The parts in between weren’t bad, either. Long, leg-hugging, faded jeans, sheepskin jacket over wide shoulders. A strong-jawed profile as he squinted into the intense sunlight reflecting off the snow.
From this angle she couldn’t see the cleft in his already beard-shadowed chin. This morning his shaving brush and mug had been sitting by the sink when she’d used the bathroom. The smell of his soap had haunted the bathtub-shower enclosure.
Luke rubbed his hand over his chin. “What? Did I miss a spot shaving?” He didn’t turn his head but continued to concentrate on his driving. A snowplow had been over the road leaving a sheet of ice beneath a scraped layer of snow.
He’d felt her staring at him. J.J. reluctantly moved her eyes from his profile and gazed resolutely out the window. Something in the distance caught her attention. “What are those animals? They look like elk. At least a hundred of them.”
“A good-size herd winters there on Sentinel Mountain.”
J.J. watched the elk until she could no longer see them, then scanned the rest of the countryside. The road bridged willow-lined streams and passed ranches of varying sizes. It was easy to see why this area was called a park. The land stretched flatly until it bumped up against mountains on all sides. “Has your family been here a long time?”
“My mom’s family has. The earliest Stirling came over in the late 1800s. He was a second son, seeking his fortune. Lots of English aristocrats bought up land in the west and ran cattle on it, but most of them went back home and left an American, a Westerner, here in charge. The English lords returned now and again to hunt, but that was pretty much it. Stirling was different. He not only stuck around, but he married his partner’s daughter. By the time I came along, the ranch belonged to Zane and my mom. She owns forty-five percent, but leaves the running of it to me, since Zane left me his share.”
“Is your dad from around here, too?”
“No, he comes from a military family, went to West Point. My mom met him when she went back east to college.”
“And your uncle never married?”
“He married. A college girl my mom brought home on one of their vacations. His wife spent more time visiting back east than she did on the ranch. When she was here, she spent the whole time trying to convince Zane to move back east, said her dad could get him a job in the family business. She never understood Zane’s feeling for the ranch. They divorced after eighteen months. Zane never blamed her. Said it was his own fault for marrying a woman not born and bred to the ranch.”
“You weren’t born and bred to the ranch.”
He laughed shortly. “That was my mom’s fault, which I did my best to rectify. Mom and I lived here during my dad’s two tours of Vietnam, and after that, I couldn’t get enough of ranch living. I spent every summer here from the time I was six. When I got in trouble one time too many in Europe, my folks shipped me back here for my last two years of high school.” He smiled wryly. “Zane kept me so busy, I didn’t have time to get in trouble here.” He turned serious. “This was one place I didn’t want to get banished from.”
“You came here in high school and never left?”
“I left for a while. Look over there, on the ground.” He slowed the pickup. “Sage grouse.”
J.J. looked in the direction of his pointing finger. Large birds, ten of them, dark against the snow, pecked at the brush. If Luke hadn’t pointed them out, she’d never have seen them, they blended in so well with their surroundings. Something she’d never be able to do here.
In town Luke dropped J.J. off and pointed to a diner down the street, instructing her to meet him in an hour. She wandered the short main street, stopping to browse in front of shop windows, reluctant to enter and run the awkward risk of having to introduce herself. Pickup trucks of all sizes, colors and ages patrolled the street. Occasionally a huge logging truck filled with long pine logs lumbered past. Her hour almost up, JJ. picked her way through the snow heaped down the center of the street. Luke pulled into the diner’s parking lot ahead of her. He waited for her at the diner’s door.
Tantalizing smells and hot, moist air enveloped them as they entered. A single counter ran the length of the diner, and several men sitting on tall stools turned at their entry and greeted Luke, eyeing J.J. curiously. A tall, slim woman in blue jeans and a faded red plaid shirt with her blond hair wrapped in a coronet of braids put two heavy white mugs on the counter in front of two empty stools. Steam poured from the mugs.
Luke hung his and JJ.’s coats on rustic hooks by the door and sat on one of the stools. J.J. sat beside him.
“Susan,” Luke said, “Meet J. J. O‘Brien. O’Brien, this is Susan Curtis. Susan makes the best pies in Colorado.”
J.J. made polite sounds as the woman laughed, displaying even white teeth in a beautiful, perfectly made-up face. The mirrored wall behind the woman reflected J.J.’s face, red and chapped from the cold. She ran her fingers through her short, ordinary brown hair, hair hopelessly matted down by her knit cap.
“Only in Colorado?” the woman said in a teasing voice, her marvelous blue eyes flashing at Luke. “Last fall you told some hunters I made the best pie in the world.”
“Yeah, but your head got so swollen, the rest of us couldn’t fit into this dinky little place to eat any pie. The town council made me promise not to say it again.”
J.J. si
pped her scalding coffee and wondered if Luke and this Susan knew how silly they sounded. The woman had no business smiling so coyly at a married man.
Luke turned to J.J. “A trip to town isn’t complete without a piece of Susan’s pie. What kind do you want?” He pointed to a small blackboard propped against an easel on the counter.
J.J. read her choices. Lunch seemed a distant memory. “Banana cream.”
“Sorry. All gone.” The woman didn’t sound the least bit sorry. She slid a plate holding a huge piece of meringue pie in front of Luke. Slices of banana nestled in the creamy filling.
J.J. pretended not to notice and ordered apple pie.
Susan slapped the plate down in front of J.J. “How do you like North Park, Mrs. Remington? It’s not much like Denver.”
“No, it’s not,” J.J. said. Susan Curtis knew who she was. Knew, and from the tone of her voice, didn’t much like it. Luke said he hadn’t slept with another woman since they’d gotten married. Had he slept with Susan before his marriage? Had he confided in her the whole mess of his marriage and looked to her for sympathy? The way she flirted with him was disgraceful. No wonder the men sitting at the counter left.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Susan leaned on the counter in front of Luke. “Ad Parker was in here this morning, spouting off. Birdie’s run off, and he’s furious.”
“Call the police if he bothers you.”
“He’s looking for her.”
Luke shrugged and forked another piece of pie.
“He said when he finds out where she is, someone’s going to be sorry,” Susan said.
J.J.’s experience with clients told her the fewer people who knew where Birdie was, the better. Before Luke could divulge Birdie’s whereabouts, J.J. dropped her fork. The tiny thud as it hit the vinyl-tiled floor reverberated around the small diner. “Sorry,” she said. “Could I please trouble you for a clean fork?” When Susan silently handed her a fork, J.J. said, “Luke’s right. This pie is wonderful. Have you lived here long, Susan?”
“Three years.”
“You and Luke must be good friends.”
“We haven’t slept together if that’s what you’re asking.”
Luke choked on his pie and grabbed his mug and drank deeply.
“I wasn’t asking, but it’s interesting you felt compelled to tell me. Luke’s love life before he married me doesn’t interest me,” J.J. lied. “Luke isn’t the type to be unfaithful.” She had no idea how she knew that, but she would have bet five years’ salary on it. She flushed as she saw Luke watching her in the mirror, his eyes narrowed as he contemplated her above his mug. She gave him a saccharine smile and concentrated on her pie.
Susan refilled their mugs. “Since we’re speaking frankly, Mrs. Remington—”
“Call me J.J. And I use my own last name. O’Brien.”
“As I was saying, Mrs. Remington, Luke’s a damned fine man, and he deserves a damned fine woman.”
“Susan, mind your own business,” Luke said flatly.
“My friends are my business. And that’s what Luke and I are, Mrs. Remington. Good friends. Very good friends. But we’re not lovers, never have been lovers, and won’t ever be lovers. You want to know something else?” She steamrollered over JJ.’s negative answer. “If I did want to roll in the hay with Luke, I wouldn’t worry a second about competition from a cold-blooded, stuck-up city woman who thinks she’s too good for him.”
J.J. carefully put down her mug of coffee lest she fling the contents into the beautiful blue eyes coldly condemning her. “I’ll wait for you in the truck, Luke.” Stopping at the door to grab her coat, JJ. turned to face Susan Curtis. “You should worry about me, Ms. Curtis, because having rolled in the hay with me, as you so quaintly put it, Luke will never be satisfied with secondbest. You’d find it extremely difficult to make him happy.” She slammed the door on her way out.
Luke exited on her heels. “What the hell was that about?” he snarled, getting into the pickup.
J.J. snapped her seat belt shut and yanked her knit cap down over her ears. “Why ask me? You’re the one who blabbed the details of your version of our marriage all over Colorado.”
“Damn it, O’Brien.” Luke clamped his hands on the steering wheel. “People wondered why I kept disappearing from the stock show last year. If I’d known you were going to kick me out days after our wedding, I wouldn’t have told any of my friends I intended to marry you. People asked questions when I came back alone. I had to say something.”
“That something being your cold-blooded, stuck-up city wife thought she was too good for you?” The cold made her nose run.
He manhandled the pickup out of the parking lot. “I said things didn’t work out, so we separated. If Susan chose to put her own interpretation on the situation, it wasn’t my doing.”
J.J. sniffed.
A slight wind had come up. Luke wrenched the pickup around a small drift of snow along the edge of the road. Silence reigned in the cab of the pickup. Finally Luke said, “I thought you two would like each other.”
“I’m sure Susan is a delightful person. In fact, I have a brilliant idea. After I go back to Denver, you and Susan can come down and double-date with Burton and me.”
Two days later, faced with Burton’s reproachful gaze from the bedside chest, J.J. continued to revamp Monday afternoon’s scene in the diner so she came out less like a jealous harpy and Susan Curtis came out more like a troublemaking busybody.
Preoccupied with self-justification, at first J.J. paid scant attention to the voices coming from below. Then Birdie, her voice edged with hysteria, exchanged shouts with a loud, coarse-voiced man. JJ. sprang to her feet. Birdie’s husband had returned. Starting down the stairs, J.J. heard a low rumble, which sounded like Luke. She debated what to do. The three in the kitchen wouldn’t welcome her interference. Birdie’s shrill scream froze J.J. halfway down the stairs.
Luke’s voice traveled clearly from the kitchen. “Put that away, Parker, before you do something you’ll regreet.”
J.J. slipped out of her shoes, and tiptoed down to the front hall. Detouring through Luke’s office, she strained to hear how serious the situation in the kitchen was. If things had reached a critical stage, she’d phone 911 and report an emergency. On the other hand, if Luke had things under control, he wouldn’t appreciate J.J. bringing the police into this.
Stealing softly to the office door, J.J. cautiously peeked around the corner. Ad Parker stood with his back to her, facing Luke. Parker was laughing, a most unpleasant sound. About ten feet from Parker, Luke leaned against the refrigerator, his thumbs in his jeans’ side pockets. He might have been watching a mildly interesting sideshow. He didn’t deceive J.J. for a minute. Even from the office doorway she could tell every muscle in Luke’s body stood at attention. Waiting for something. For what?
J.J. looked and found Birdie. The younger woman sat on the floor near Ad Parker, huddled against a cupboard, her hands curved protectively around her stomach. A bright red patch the size and shape of a man’s large hand colored her check. Her eyes were enormous as she stared fearfully up at her husband.
J.J. flicked her gaze back to Parker. Just then he moved his hand, gesturing. The ceiling light bounced off the huge knife he held in his hand. A knife pointed at Luke. Blood roared in J.J.’s head, blotting out the men’s conversation. She retreated to Luke’s office.
It was too late for 911. JJ. spun around, searching the room for a weapon. Anything to give Luke the edge. Words beat at her head. Hurry, hurry. How long before Parker got annoyed with Luke’s refusal to show fear? How long before Parker interpreted Luke’s indifferent attitude as the contempt for Parker it was? Panic clawing at her, she looked desperately around Luke’s office again. No shotgun, no hand gun, no sword. J.J. grabbed the only things available and crept back toward the kitchen.
“Yessir, after I take care of you, Remington, I’ll look for that sweet mouth you say you’re married to.” He slurred his words. “You�
��ve had Birdie, turnabout’s fair play.” Parker lashed backward with a booted foot at Birdie’s involuntary gasp. Birdie crumpled to the floor.
Parker’s knife pointed straight at him, Luke didn’t so much as flinch. Only the muscle throbbing in Luke’s jaw told JJ. how furious he was. She took a deep breath, said a silent prayer the floor didn’t squeak and padded quietly into the kitchen.
Sobbing, her face buried in her arms, Birdie didn’t see J.J. Luke’s gaze passed over J.J. as if she were invisible. “My wife is a total idiot,” Luke said in a bored voice.
“Don’t waste your energy.”
J.J. almost tripped over her own feet. How dare he? Just in time she prevented herself from lambasting him. Were her brains addled? Luke was distracting Parker so Parker wouldn’t see J.J. sneaking up behind him.
She was close enough to smell the alcohol Birdie’s husband had obviously guzzled before he came. Her heart pounding so loudly she thought surely Parker must hear it, J.J. rammed her weapon into his back. At the same instant she bashed his knife hand with Luke’s cordless phone, yelling, “Drop the knife!”
CHAPTER FIVE
LUKE slammed the office door behind them.
“I don’t know why you’re so annoyed.” The sheriff had gone, taking a sullen Ad Parker with him. Birdie was tucked into bed. Adrenaline still surged through JJ.’s veins.
“I. Am. Not. Annoyed.” His forbidding gaze pinned J.J. to the office sofa. “I am furious. Do you have any idea how close you came to getting one of us killed?”
“Killed! I rescued you! All you were doing was lollygagging against the refrigerator while Parker bullied you. You didn’t blink an eye when he kicked Birdie.” J.J. knew she was being unfair, but Luke wasn’t being fair, either.
“I thought,” Luke said from between clenched teeth, “Birdie would prefer cracked ribs to a knife sticking between them.”
