by Jeanne Allan
Her words hung in the frigid air. If she could have moved, J.J. would have kicked herself. Because she was aroused by their situation didn’t mean Luke felt the same. She’d shocked him speechless. “Never mind,” she muttered. “It’s just I’m incredibly uncomfortable. You’re taking up way too much room, I think my back is about to break in half and I’m hungry.” Desire jolted her body as Luke changed position, his thigh coming to rest between her legs. Blood drummed in her ears. Closing her eyes, J.J. forced herself to lie perfectly still and breathe slowly. When she felt she had control of her vocal chords, she said, “If you don’t move that leg away from there immediately, I’m going to seriously injure you.”
Luke carefully moved his leg. “I know this is awkward, but it’s crucial we keep warm in weather like this. I’m not going to jump your bones.”
“I know that.”
“Unless you want me to,” he said in a neutral voice.
JJ.’s throat muscles froze. She couldn’t answer because the truth was, she did want to make love with Luke. And she didn’t. She couldn’t make love with the man she intended to divorce. Once, in a weak moment such as the other night was one thing, but to make love again... No matter how much her body ached to become one with his. Physical gratification for purely selfish reasons was wrong, not to mention the unfairness of using Luke again. “I don’t want to want you to,” she finally said.
After an eternity, Luke said, “I’m going to unzip the sleeping bag enough to reach under my seat and grab a couple of candy bars.” He suited actions to words.
Giving J.J. time to think. “I knew if I went about it the right way, I could weasel food out of you.” She took the candy bar he held out to her, quickly tearing open the wrapper.
“Risky business, playing those kinds of games.” Luke unwrapped his candy, took a bite and chewed slowly. “I might have interpreted your ambivalent answer to mean you wanted me to seduce you into making love.” He took another bite. “We both know I could have.”
The candy lost its appeal. JJ. carefully folded the wrapper over the half-eaten bar and set it on the dashboard. “I’ll save this for breakfast tomorrow. Now I think I’ll try to sleep.”
Closing her eyes, she listened to the wind and the snow and Luke’s heartbeat and the sound of his chewing. Luke must be elated at how well her visit to his ranch was turning out. A little over a week had passed, and already his passion for her had cooled off.
If only blizzards and subzero temperatures could cool down the physical attraction Luke held for her.
Paper crumpled near her ear and dropped to the floor with a faint sound. Luke shifted, gave an exasperated groan, shifted again, tightened his arms around JJ. and finally lay still. His deep, rhythmic breathing lulled her into restless sleep.
JJ. woke suddenly. False dawn lightened the sky, but the raging storm kept visibility almost nil. Cold nipped at her nose, but the rest of her stayed toasty warm. Taking advantage of Luke’s deep sleep, she snuggled against him, deriving guilty pleasure from the feel of his firm, masculine body against her.
Long-suppressed memories escaped from their hiding place to replay in her mind the idyllic week she and Luke had shared in the days from meeting to parting. The ending she shied away from, concentrating instead on the tenderness, the exhilaration. She’d loved the way he filled his faded jeans. He’d loved her classic, pastel silk underwear. He’d laughed at her when she said buttered popcorn was fattening and insisted on hand-feeding her popped kernels yellow with butter. She’d licked the residue from his fingers.
She’d stood in front of him wearing a pale aqua silk teddy and repeated the arguments she’d made in court that day. The arguments that had won her case. He’d saluted her with his coffee mug and made love to her on the rich rose Chinese throw rug in front of her gas fireplace.
J.J. tried to transfer the scene to Luke’s living room with its worn beige wall-to-wall carpet and cowhide rug in front of a huge stone fireplace. Her imagination wasn’t that good.
A sound from outside the pickup broke through her reverie, and JJ. realized she’d heard the sound earlier. Someone was stomping through the snow. Her breath caught. Adrian Parker. Then common sense took over, and she knew someone passing had seen the truck through the snow and was coming to investigate. “Luke,” she whispered. “Wake up.”
Hazel eyes blinked open and regarded her solemnly. Luke’s mouth slowly curved. “You have a chocolate beauty mark matching the one on the other side your great-whatever-grandmother gave you.” Before J.J. could free her arm from the sleeping bag to wipe her face, Luke bent his head and licked the speck of chocolate. “Cold skin,” he murmured.
Warm tongue, she almost said, catching herself in the nick of time. Her mouth close to Luke’s face, she said quietly, “Someone is coming. Shouldn’t we get out of the sleeping bag?”
Luke tensed and looked over her shoulder, peering sharply into the driving snow. Then he relaxed and chuckled softly. “Move slowly and quietly so you can see out the window on the passenger side. Quiet, now. We don’t want to spook her.”
“Her?” JJ. managed to shift her upper body, only once digging her elbows into Luke’s chest, until she could see out the window as directed. She saw nothing but snow.
“Give it a second,” Luke said in her ear. “Every once in a while the wind shifts direction, and there’s a little break in the snow. There. See her?”
Visible through a curtain of snow stood a large, dark ungainly looking animal. “She’s a moose, isn’t she? A real live moose, right outside the window. Look,” JJ. half whispered, “there’s another one.” The two animals made their way through the deep snow, their long legs moving majestically.
“A cow and her calf from last summer.”
J.J. held her breath until the two large animals moved away, then she emptied her lungs all at once and flopped down on Luke’s chest. “Why do you suppose they were here? Curiosity about what we’re doing?”
“Moose feed on willows, and we happen to be parked right in the middle of a willow-lined creek.”
They lay quietly as the sky took on a lighter cast. Finally Luke reached over and unzipped the sleeping bag. “Pleasant as this is, it’s not getting us home. No, you stay here in the sleeping bag,” he said as J.J. scrambled to get out.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not.” He extracted his long legs from the sleeping bag and quickly zipped up the bag before J.J. could react.
“Give me one good reason why I can’t. And don’t you dare say it’s because I’m a woman.”
“I’ll give you two good reasons. Your shoes.”
As much as she wanted to argue, JJ. admitted Luke had a point. Her sensible loafers were designed for mall-crawling, not for hiking cross-country in snow above her knees.
Luke reached behind the seat and pulled out a pair of mud-encrusted boots and tugged them on. Next he dredged up a black ski mask and fur-lined leather gloves. Shrugging into his sheepskin jacket, he looked at J.J.. “I don’t know how long it will take me to reach the ranch. I’ll follow the fence line. With luck, the moose will be gone so I won’t have to detour around them. Cow moose are notoriously bad-tempered when they have a youngster around. If she comes back, watch her, but don’t talk to her or make any moves toward her. If she gets riled, she’ll take on the pickup. And the pickup might lose.”
“I won’t rile the moose.”
“There are a couple of energy bars under the seat.” He grabbed one and stuck it into his pocket.
“Check.”
He captured her chin with his gloved hand. “Now this is an order.”
“I don’t take orders—”
“You’ll take this one.” He shook her chin for emphasis. “Do not, under any circumstances, leave the truck. If you even think about starting after me...” His fingers tightened. “You don’t know the country. You aren’t dressed for being out in a blizzard. You wouldn’t last thirty minutes. You are to stay right here. Do you unde
rstand.”
“I’m not completely stupid. I—”
“I want your solemn promise you won’t leave the truck and start walking.” He shook her chin a little harder. “Promise!”
“Oh, honestly, all right, I promise,” she said in a disgruntled voice. “I wish you’d give me credit for having at least half a brain.”
Luke’s grasp of her chin eased. “I give you credit for having two halves of a brain, but I don’t always approve of the use to which you put them.”
“I wouldn’t want to do anything a man disapproves of, would I?”
“Don’t turn this into a stupid man-woman contest, O’Brien. I’m not dumb enough to say I’m ordering you to stay put for your own good. I’m ordering you to stay here so I don’t have to explain to Alexander why I allowed you to freeze to death.”
“You don’t have to belabor the obvious. I said I’d stay.”
“You promised you’d stay,” he reminded her.
“Okay, I promised.”
He covered her cheeks with his gloved palms. “I could be gone only a couple of hours, could be most of the day. I don’t know how tough the going will be.” The ski mask, which covered all but his mouth and eyes, turned him into a sinister stranger. Until J.J. saw his eyes. Hazel eyes, which focused intensely on J.J., as if memorizing every pore of her skin. “I know waiting won’t be easy, but no one’s going to be out on this side road during a blizzard, and no one will be looking for us. Jeff and Dale will assume we stayed in town, and Ev will think we made it home. I’d rather not leave you, but I don’t have much choice.”
“Would you be this concerned about leaving me if I were a man? I’ll be fine.”
“I know you will, and I’ll be back for you, so stay here.”
“If you order me to stay one more—”
Luke took possession of her mouth. The frigid air had chilled his lips, but his kiss warmed her to the bottoms of her stockinged feet. He straightened up. “Okay, O’Brien, stay—”
“Don’t you dare say it!”
He grinned, a lopsided grin framed by the mouth opening of the ski mask. “Stay bundled up.” Arctic air rushed in as he stepped outside, battling the wind as it grabbed for the door.
“Luke!” J.J. scrambled to reach the door before he shut it. When he turned, she struggled to find the right words. “Being snowbound with you wasn’t so bad,” she finally said. The wind caught her words and flung them into the blizzard.
Luke cupped his wrapped ear with his hand. “What?” “Be careful,” she shouted, exaggerating the shape of her mouth so if he didn’t hear, he could at least read her lips.
Luke nodded and slammed the door shut.
The snow that had entered with his departure drifted slowly downward to land softly on the blanket. Gently JJ. picked up a snowflake with the tip of her gloved finger. The six-pointed star glittered in the half light of the storm. So perfect, so beautiful. The stellar crystal melted into a tiny damp spot on JJ.’s glove. So short-lived. Snowflakes, Jike marriages, needed the right conditions to survive.
Snuggled deep in the sleeping bag, little besides her nose peeking out, J.J. had long ago concluded Luke had decided she wasn’t worth returning for. She’d read people could survive almost anything as long as they had water. She had plenty of that. She wasn’t as warm without Luke’s body heat, but she didn’t think she’d freeze to death. No, a skilled coroner would determine her death had been caused by a caffeine deficiency. She’d do anything for a cup of coffee.
She heard the horses first. The jangling sounds of harness roused her from her self-pity, and she struggled to sit up. She was still fighting with a recalcitrant sleeping bag zipper when Luke pounded on the locked door. Scooting along the seat, she managed to reach the lock.
Snow and polar air blew into the truck as Luke stuck in his upper body. Snow coated his head and shoulders. Tiny clumps of ice clung to his eyelashes. “Think I’d forgotten you?”
She’d never seriously doubted he’d return. “You stopped to eat breakfast, didn’t you?”
“Bacon and eggs, hash browns, waffles, pancakes, toast,” Luke teased in an obvious lie. Seeing J.J.’s battle with the zipper, he reached over and worked it down. “Put your coat on, and I’ll zip you back inside.”
“I’m not going to wear a sleeping bag.” She slid her arms into her coat.
“Sure you are. It’s the latest style.” Before she could argue further, he yanked the zipper up to her neck, effectively binding her arms to her sides.
“Undo this zip—” She spit out fabric as Luke pulled a knit balaclava over her head.
He adjusted it so she could see, then added the lined cap with ear flaps. “Ready?”
“Ready for what?” The balaclava muffled her words. Her answer came as Luke pulled her from the truck into the storm. Holding her close to his chest, he bumped the truck door shut with his shoulder, then labored through the deep snow to the hay sled. Icy crystals beat painfully against the exposed part of J.J.’s face, forcibly demonstrating what Luke had endured on his long trek back to the ranch.
Johnny and Hondo stood patiently in front of the sled. Clouds of vapor poured from their nostrils and snow covered their bodies. Small icicles hung from their noses.
Luke put JJ. down behind a row of hay bales stacked four feet high at the front of the sled, then set bales on either side of her in a kind of cocoon sheltering her from the worst of the storm. He jumped from the sled and disappeared in the direction of the truck. Returning in minutes, he dropped a plastic bag beside her. “Your shoes and purse,” he shouted.
The wind stole J.J.’s shouted thanks.
With a grin and with a flourish, Luke pulled a sack from out of the baled hay. He squatted down beside J.J. and took an insulated cup from the sack.
The fragrant smell of coffee mingled with the steam pouring from the drinking hole in the lid. “Coffee,” J.J. said gratefully. She couldn’t get her arms out of the sleeping bag.
Luke took a sip of the steaming beverage. “What will you give me for it?” he teased in a voice loud enough to be heard over the storm.
“Anything,” she shouted.
Unzipping the sleeping bag enough to allow JJ. to free her arms, he wrapped her gloved hands around the mug.
J.J. closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the fragrant aroma. She pulled the balaclava down below her mouth. The coffee warmed and soothed and satisfied all the way down. She opened her eyes. Luke’s face was inches from hers. His lips moved, but the wind and the snow stole the sound of his words. No smile curved his mouth. The teasing light had disappeared from his eyes. Standing, he gathered up the reins and shouted at the horses. The sled lurched into motion.
J.J. took another sip of coffee. She might not have heard Luke’s response, but she’d had no trouble reading his lips. After she’d told him, “Anything,” he’d said, “I might hold you to that.” As the horses struggled through the snow, J.J. shivered, though the sleeping bag and the shelter of hay bales kept her warm enough. “Anything” covered a lot of territory. Reason told her he’d been joking. She swallowed more coffee and wondered what she’d do if Luke tried to collect by ordering her into his bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
YESTERDAY’S storm seemed a distant memory, the sun warming the air while huge puffy clouds sailed serenely across a sapphire sky. J.J. could hardly believe that less than twenty-four hours ago she’d huddled in a sleeping bag while the huge draft horses had fought their way through the tail end of the blizzard to haul her and Luke back to his ranch house. She wished she were back on the sled now.
Luke reined in his horse. “There’s something you don’t see in Denver.”
J.J. followed the direction of his gaze. Two enormous brown birds took off from the ground and spiraled aloft. Rabbit tracks dotted the pasture land beneath the horses’ hooves, and J.J. avoided looking at the furred object the birds abandoned on the snow. “What kind of hawks are they?” she asked, shifting uncomfortably in her saddle.
With the birds’ departure, JJ.’s thoughts returned to her aching muscles. “I told you I’d never ridden a horse. You could have given me one I didn’t have to do the splits to ride.” Standing gingerly in the stirrups, she rubbed her bottom. “This has got to be the fattest, most inappropriately named horse I’ve ever seen. No offense, Fawn—” she patted the shaggy mare’s neck “—but I’ll be crippled for life.” Fawn snorted a cloud of vapor into the air.
Luke laughed. “C’mon, greenhorn, we still have missing cattle to look for. If any fence came down in the storm, the cows could have drifted down the valley.”
“We weren’t all born on horses, you know,” JJ. groused, bouncing along like a sack of grain, slipping and sliding all over the saddle. Resentfully she eyed Luke’s loose, easy way of riding. “I thought pickups had replaced horses.”
“As you should know by now, pickups run better on plowed roads than in unplowed pastures.”
After calling the sheriff to report the accident and Adrian Parker’s part in it, Luke had used the tractor to pull the pickup from the creek. Which raised another point. “Your employees use the tractor to feed these cows. They don’t have to ride horses.”
“Jeff said when he fed this morning the count was short. Using the tractor to ride the fence line is expensive and inefficient.” Luke nodded toward a small nearby rise of ground. “I’m going up there to look around.”
