Thunder Canyon Homecoming

by Brenda Harlen

  As the final credits of The Empire Strikes Back scrolled on the screen, Erin’s stomach began to grumble. Glancing at the glowing numbers on the DVD player, she was surprised to realize how quickly the afternoon had gone and it seemed natural to invite Corey to stay for dinner. Though she hadn’t consciously thought about it while she’d been grocery shopping the day before, she’d picked up all the necessary ingredients for her mom’s famous enchiladas and Corey seemed pleased by her invitation and happy to eat with her.

  After dinner, they tidied up the kitchen together, but when Corey suggested that he should head out, Erin was the one to protest. She wanted to know if Leia succeeded in rescuing Han, to which Corey reminded her that the movie was about a lot more than a romantic subplot. But, of course, he put the third movie on.

  It was late by the time he finally said good-night, and several inches of snow had fallen. Erin cringed at the sight of the white stuff covering her car and her driveway, but she decided to ignore it until the morning. Corey wouldn’t hear of it though and, after locating a shovel in the garage, insisted on clearing her steps and driveway. Although she appreciated not having to do it herself, she wasn’t sure how she felt about his insistence on taking charge.

  Not that she was really surprised—she’d instinctively known that he was the type of man who liked to be in control of any situation—but she didn’t want him to think that she couldn’t take care of herself. She prided herself on her self-sufficiency and independence. She didn’t really want to battle with him over clearing snow, but she wanted him to know that she was capable. However, as she watched Corey clear her driveway, effortlessly tossing shovels full of snow aside, she had to admit that there were worse things than having a strong, handsome man around to perform such chores.

  When he finished shoveling, she invited him to come back inside for a cup of hot chocolate to warm him up. He declined the drink but did come back inside to kiss her goodbye, and she couldn’t deny that the heat they generated between them was—

  She jolted as his ice cold hands slipped under her sweater and splayed against the bare skin of her back. Corey laughed and reached for her again, but she stepped away.

  The wicked light in his eyes made her heart pound with anticipation; the sexy curve of his lips made her knees weak. She dodged around to the other side of the table, he feinted to the right and caught her when she turned in the opposite direction.

  They were both laughing when her cell phone chimed.

  Corey frowned. “Who would be calling at this hour?”

  “It’s a text,” she said, reaching for the phone to check the message. “From Grant.”

  His hands dropped away and he reached for the jacket he’d hung over the back of a chair.

  “Carrie called in sick for tomorrow, so he just wanted to give Trina and me the heads-up that we’ll be on our own,” she explained.

  “Didn’t you cover for Carrie yesterday?”

  She nodded. “She wanted the morning to get ready for a big date.” Which made her suspect that her coworker wasn’t sick at all but was simply having too much fun with her date to want it to end just yet.

  “So she’s probably not sick at all,” Corey surmised.

  Erin just shrugged because she knew she wasn’t in any position to judge. Her own reasons for playing hooky the previous week might have been different, but she’d still called in sick when she really wasn’t.

  “Does that mean you’ll have to work later tomorrow?”

  “Only if someone on the afternoon shift calls in.”

  “Or if Grant needs you to fill in somewhere else around the resort,” he guessed.

  Was that an edge she heard in his voice, or was she imagining it?

  “Since I started at the resort, I’ve never turned down any overtime that was offered because I never had any reason to. But if I have plans, I am allowed to say ‘no’ to extra shifts,” she told him.

  “Then you should know that we have plans for tomorrow night.”

  He was taking charge again, and she wondered if she should protest. But she wanted to see him, so there really wasn’t any point. Instead, she asked, “Are you going to tell me what those plans are?”

  “As soon as I figure them out,” he said, and slid his arms around her waist again. She stiffened, remembering the shock of his icy hands against her skin, but he kept his hands on the outside of her clothes this time. “Right now, I only know that I want to be with you.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” she told him, and tugged his head down to hers.

  She’d never initiated a kiss before, and she could tell that she’d surprised him by doing so now. He kissed her back, but he let her set the pace, and when she withdrew, he let her go.

  As she watched him drive away, she was already anticipating seeing him again, and that worried her—more than a little.

  They were spending a lot of time together and people were beginning to talk. Corey didn’t seem to care and Erin knew that she shouldn’t either, but it bothered her that being seen with him seemed a noteworthy event to the residents of Thunder Canyon. For months, she’d managed to avoid speculation and scrutiny by mostly keeping to herself. And in the space of a week, he’d managed to thrust her into the spotlight.

  She could have stopped seeing him. She didn’t have to answer his calls, she didn’t need to accept his invitations and she certainly wasn’t under any obligation to respond to his kisses. But she enjoyed talking to him, she had a good time when they were together, and the passion he stirred inside of her refused to be ignored.

  The problem was that spending so much time with Corey meant she didn’t have any time to search for the answers she’d come to Thunder Canyon to find. Yet she’d waited almost twenty-six years already, so there wasn’t any pressing urgency right now. And because she didn’t know how long Corey would be staying in town, she was going to enjoy spending every minute with him that she could.

  The following Tuesday afternoon, Corey was feeling bored with his own company so he called Dillon and asked him to come out to the Hitching Post for a beer. He didn’t re ally expect his newlywed brother to accept the invitation, but Dillon—abandoned by his wife and daughter for Holly Clifton’s baby shower—said he’d be happy to meet him.

  They opted to sit at the bar and within minutes were settled into their seats with frosty glasses of beer in front of them.

  “I heard you’ve been spending a lot of time with Erin Castro,” Dillon said.

  Corey didn’t bother to ask where his brother had heard. In a town the size of Thunder Canyon, rumors spread faster than a bushfire in July.

  “I like her,” he said simply.

  But something in his tone must have given him away because Dillon’s gaze narrowed. “You’ve only known her a week.”

  A week and a half, actually, but he didn’t think the clarification would mean much to his brother. “Sometimes you just know.”

  Dillon shook his head as he munched on a pretzel.

  “I think she might really be the one.”

  “You think every woman might be the one.”

  Corey couldn’t deny that he’d made the same claim once or twice before. When he was younger, he’d trusted in the basic honesty and goodness of other people—and of women, in particular. As a result, he’d fallen in love readily and frequently. Then he’d met Heather, and he’d learned that people weren’t always what they seemed. Although that experience had made him wary, there was something about Erin that urged him to open his heart and trust again, something about her innate sweetness that made him want to believe not just in her but in the way he felt when he was with her. “So I’m an optimist. But this time, it’s different. She’s different—she’s more real than any woman I’ve ever known.”

  “Just…be careful,” Dillon cautioned.

  He laughed. “You’re warning me to be careful of Erin?”

  “You don’t know her very well,” his brother reminded him, casting a pointed glance at the p
ortrait of the town’s original “Shady Lady” hanging over the bar. “In fact, no one in Thunder Canyon really knows Erin that well.”

  Corey didn’t like the implication. “Why are you so suspicious? It’s not as if entry past the town limits is by invitation only.”

  “I’m…uncertain…of her reasons for coming to Thunder Canyon,” Dillon clarified.

  “Maybe she just wanted a change of pace.”

  “Is that what she told you?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is.”

  Dillon tipped his glass to his lips, drank. “A rather vague response, don’t you think?”

  He hadn’t thought so at the time, but his brother’s question had him frowning now. “I think that she’ll tell me more when she’s ready.”

  “Whenever that might be.”

  He picked up his beer. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that she seems to ask a lot of questions without giving away any information about herself,” his brother noted.

  Corey had noticed the same thing, and he’d admired her ability to draw out other people. It was a valuable skill for someone working in the hospitality industry, and it irked him that his brother was turning it into something negative.

  “What have you got against Erin?”

  “Nothing,” Dillon insisted. “I’m just suggesting that you take your own advice and look before you leap this time.”

  He took a long swallow from his glass and tried not to wince at the “this time.” His brother was right—he had a habit of wanting to believe the best of people, and he’d ended up getting burned because of it. Maybe learning the details of Heather’s job hadn’t broken his heart, but the truth had dented the hell out of his pride and her lies had destroyed his trust.

  But Erin was different. He was sure of it. “Maybe we should talk about something else,” he suggested.

  “Anything in particular on your mind?”

  “The resort.”

  “What about it?” Dillon wondered.

  “It’s obvious that the recession has taken its toll on Thunder Canyon, and the resort is no exception.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know,” Dillon said.

  Corey reached for the bowl of pretzels. “I will,” he promised, and proceeded to outline the basic plan he’d worked up to attract new investors and capital to the resort.

  Corey had late meetings on Wednesday, so Erin didn’t see him again until Thursday when he stopped by the reservation desk to ask her if she wanted to go out for dinner that night. She was conscious of Trina and Carrie watching and growing weary of the talk around town, so instead of accepting his invitation, she offered to cook for him at her place again.

  Corey said that he would bring wine and dessert, and he showed up promptly at seven o’clock with a bottle of pinot noir and a bakery box containing two wide slices of DJ’s turtle pecan pie.

  She’d marinated strips of steak in teriyaki sauce and stir-fried the meat with red and green peppers, snow peas and carrots, then served it on top of hot basmati rice. It was a favorite recipe of Erin’s because it required little time to cook and even less to prep, but Corey obviously enjoyed it as much as she did, as evidenced by the second helping that he finished as readily as the first.

  “So why Montana?” Corey asked, tipping the last of the wine into Erin’s glass. “What brought you here?”

  Their conversation during dinner had mostly touched on inconsequential topics, so his question now seemed to come at her out of the blue. But she’d been regretting all the secrecy and evasions that had been part of any conversations she’d had since coming to town, and she was almost grateful for this chance to tell someone the truth. Or at least part of it.

  “I was born in Thunder Canyon,” she told him now.

  “No kidding?”

  “I never actually lived here, but my parents were visiting my great aunt Erma when my mom went into labor ahead of schedule.”

  “Does your aunt still live here?”

  She licked the last bit of caramel from her fork and then pushed aside her empty plate. “She’s the one who recently passed away.”

  “Is that why you came here—to remember her?” he asked gently.

  She gathered up their dessert plates and carried them to the counter. She heard the scrape of his chair legs against the tile floor as he pushed away from the table.

  “I came here—” she hesitated, still not sure how much to reveal. She needed to confide in someone and she wanted that someone to be Corey, but she really didn’t know him well enough to even guess how he might respond. “I came here because it was what she wanted.”

  “But why did you stay? I mean, a quick visit would have honored her wishes.”

  She washed and dried her hands before turning back to him. “I stayed partly because I don’t yet have the answers I’m looking for and partly because I fell in love with the town the first minute I stepped into the Hitching Post.”

  “Love can happen like that,” he agreed, settling his hands on her hips and pulling her closer. “Hitting you like a ton of bricks when you least expect it.”

  Corey could tell that Erin didn’t know how to interpret his statement never mind respond to it, and he mentally cursed himself for not censoring his words. While he’d realized that the feelings he had for her were stronger and deeper than he’d expected, he shouldn’t have assumed that she would feel the same way.

  “I guess you’re right,” she said, looking at the button at his throat rather than at him. “Although I’ve never really experienced anything like that before.”

  Which wasn’t an admission that she was experiencing anything like that now, but it also wasn’t a rejection of his feelings.

  “I know we haven’t known each other very long—”

  “Not even two weeks,” she interjected hastily.

  “You think I’m rushing things?”

  “I think—” she sighed. “I don’t know what I think. I have feelings for you—feelings I didn’t expect to have. But—”

  He could be satisfied with that, at least for now. And not wanting to hear whatever limitations or conditions she was probably going to put on her feelings, he silenced her words with his lips.

  Her mouth softened beneath his, her lips parted.

  He loved kissing her. She was so warm and passionate, so incredibly responsive. His tongue danced with hers, and his blood surged in his veins. She sighed and shifted closer.

  His fingers made quick work of the buttons down the front of her shirt, then his hands slipped inside, cupping soft, round breasts encased in delicate lace. His thumbs stroked over her nipples, and they responded immediately to his touch. He circled the rigid points, felt her tremble.

  His lips eased away from hers to trail kisses across her jaw. He touched his tongue to the rapidly beating pulse point at her throat, and she moaned. His mouth moved down her throat, toward the hollow between her breasts, and she shuddered.

  He unhooked the clip at the front of her bra and filled his hands with her breasts. Her skin was so soft, so lush, so irresistible. He lowered his mouth to take one turgid peak between his lips. He swirled his tongue around the nipple, then suckled hard. She gasped. Her fingers sifted through his hair, holding him against her, silently urging him to continue.

  He was more than happy to comply. He took his time, savoring the flavor of her flesh, learning what she liked by listening to her moans and sighs. As his mouth pleasured her breasts, his hands moved lower. He unfastened the button of her pants, slid down the zipper and dipped inside. Her panties were lace, like her bra, and he could feel her heat and wetness as he stroked her through the fabric. She moaned and arched into his palm, shuddering when he stroked her again.

  Then, suddenly, her hands were on his chest, and she was pushing him away.

  “No. We have to stop. I can’t do this.” Though her words were unequivocal, he heard the anguish in her voice and knew that she hadn’t really wanted to push him
away.

  But Corey didn’t have any trouble understanding “no” and, although he might regret that the war between desire and conscience had been won by her conscience, he couldn’t deny that it had. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans so that he wouldn’t be tempted to touch her again, not until he had his own raging desires under control.

  He caught a glimpse of tears in her eyes before she dropped her gaze, and he felt like a complete louse. “I’m sorry,” he said, and winced at the inadequacy of the words.

  Erin shook her head, her fingers trembling as she refastened the buttons on her shirt. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to let things go so far. I’m not the type—”

  He touched a finger to her lips, halting the flow of words. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. I was rushing you,” he admitted. “I can’t seem to help myself. I want you, Erin. Every time I see you, I want you more.”

  “I want you, too, Corey, but I’m not ready for this.”

  He leaned his forehead against hers, frustrated beyond belief but unwilling to push her. He needed her to want him as much as he wanted her, and until then, he would try to be patient. “Then we’ll wait until you are,” he said simply.

  “That might take some time,” she warned him. “There’s a lot going on in my life right now, personal issues that I’m trying to figure out, that I need to figure out, before I can even think about getting involved.”

  “We’re already involved,” he said again.

  She sighed. “Only because you’re stubborn and persuasive and far too charming for your own good.”

  He smiled at that. “And you admitted that you have feelings for me, so I’ll be satisfied with that for now.”

  “I do have feelings for you,” she acknowledged. “But I’m not sure what to do about them.”