Handful of Sky

by Cates, Tory

  Shallie wanted to ask more questions, but she felt she’d already overstepped some sensitive limits. I’m better off not knowing, she told herself, and not having anything further to do with the world of the McIver men. Clinging to that thought, she settled back in the leather-upholstered seat and resolutely turned her attention to the shadowy silhouettes passing by her window. As they approached Austin, the silhouettes became more clearly defined by the city lights.

  “We’re passing over the Colorado River now,” Hunt informed her. A thick ribbon of water slid through the heart of the town. The reflections of multicolored lights danced across its surface like water sprites at play.

  “And that’s the Capitol Building.”

  To her left a domed structure cut a massive, ghostly figure spotlit in the night sky.

  Shallie struggled to keep her attention on Hunt’s guided tour, but the true object of her interest lay much closer. Hunt McIver was what she wanted to know more about.

  “Quite impressive,” she commented limply as they circled the University of Texas, her spirits inexplicably sinking as they hurtled through the night, drawing ever closer to the moment of parting. It’s for the best. She drummed that thought through her mind like a drill chant for unruly soldiers. The quicker I remove myself from Hunt McIver and all reminders of him, the better.

  At the airport, Hunt pulled smoothly up in front of the terminal and turned off the engine. He turned to Shallie, started to speak, then stopped. Instead he glanced away and rapped his fist against the leather-wrapped steering wheel as if dismissing the thought he had started to communicate. He retrieved her bag from the back and stepped out. The moment was lost, and he would soon dismiss her as easily as the unspoken thought. Shallie pulled a shaky breath into her lungs, fighting a sadness of a magnitude she had no reasonable explanation for. While she fumbled with the craftily designed door handle, Hunt opened it and she joined him on the walkway.

  “Don’t bother coming in,” she said. “You might get ticketed.”

  A brief nod served as Hunt’s answer.

  Shallie drew herself up, trying to shake off the sudden torpor that weighed her down. “Thank you for everything,” she said, briskly sticking her hand out for a quick, businesslike shake.

  Hunt took her outstretched hand in both of his. “Not a handshake,” he murmured as if her gesture had pained him. His lips descended with no further warning. The movement had the effect upon Shallie of watching slow-motion footage of a building being blown up so that it crumbles inward. By the time his mouth was on hers, the demolition of the facade she had constructed was complete. The truth she had attempted to wall in was laid bare. She could not escape it with comforting lies about how it was best that she would never truly know Hunt McIver.

  “Hunt, I—”

  “I know, Shallie,” he finished her confession for her. “You can’t leave.”

  Shallie, never one to second-guess decisions that came from her instincts, slid back into the Porsche. She was determined not to look back and not to lie to herself anymore. No matter how foolish, how irrational, or what the eventual cost might be, she wanted Hunt McIver, whatever the price. She pulled her cell phone out and called her uncle to tell him she’d be in on the first flight in the morning.

  As they pulled up to the canopied entrance in front of the Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin, an older man in a uniform heavy with gold braid sprung gimpily forward to take the wheel of the Porsche.

  “Hunt, I thought I recognized your car.” The parking valet greeted Hunt, taking the keys from him and sweeping the door open, then hurrying over to Shallie’s side to help her from the car.

  “How have you been, J.T.?” Hunt inquired of the older man.

  “Can’t complain. How about you? You over your run of bad luck yet?”

  “Can’t say, J.T. I hope so. Guess we’ll find out in Albuquerque next month. That’s the first show this year I’m entered in. Doctors have been keeping me out of the chutes. They tell me I shouldn’t ride at all this season. But if I don’t get back in there this year, I never will.”

  “I’ll be cheering for you.”

  “The way I’ve been riding, I’ll need it.”

  “No you won’t.” J.T. shook his head to emphasize his statement. “You have the magic. Just like your daddy and your granddaddy had it. I’ve seen all the great ones ride, but none of them had it like you. No, you don’t need my cheering, or anyone else’s. Just ride your horses the way I know you can.”

  “Thanks, J.T. I’ll be trying to do just that.”

  “Who was he?” Shallie asked after the car pulled away.

  “John Thomas Whitfield. Pretty fair saddle bronc rider in his day, from what I hear. Sad to see him end up this way, but there aren’t any pension plans in rodeo.”

  At the desk Hunt was again greeted by name. “Good evening, Mr. McIver. I trust your grandfather is well.”

  “He is,” Hunt replied to the clerk. Shallie shrugged off the uncomfortable feeling that Hunt was no stranger to this, and probably a large number of other hotels. And that he hadn’t frequented them alone. Shallie surveyed the lobby as Hunt filled in registration forms. Crystal beaded chandeliers, wallpaper of an intricately brocaded salmon silk, marble floors, and brass fixtures all spoke of the stately hotel’s long history as host to cattle barons, oil magnates, and presidents. When Hunt held out his hand, Shallie took it and followed him up the curving marble staircase.

  “This is where LBJ conducted a lot of the wheeling and dealing that landed him in the White House,” Hunt explained as the door to their suite was unlocked. He dismissed the bellboy, burdened only with Shallie’s overnight bag, with a generous tip.

  The two-bedroom suite was sumptuously appointed in antiques. Memorabilia from the Johnson years hung on the wall. Shallie tried to focus her attention on the pictures of the quintessentially Texan president, but all she was really aware of was Hunt closing the door behind them, of his gaze flicking over her like an art connoisseur standing back from a masterpiece so as to better take in the sweep of its genius. The moment lengthened and Shallie grew uncomfortable. Then his eyes caught hers and her uneasiness melted away. She joined him in exchanging what amounted to a visual caress. Her eyes lingered over the sensual curve of his mouth, the sweep of his dark lashes, the expanse of his chest. Down to the gold Finals buckle strapped over his flat belly.

  He came toward her like a sheik who has scrutinized all the female slaves at the market and made his choice.

  “Shallie, I—”

  Her hand went to his lips, silencing him. She couldn’t bear to have him think that she wanted to hear the easy lies that would justify their being together. “We have tonight. Just this one night together. I don’t want or expect anything else from you.”

  His lips bore down upon hers. It was as if the passion they’d both restrained since last night had been swollen by denial. She met his urgency, feeling it flicker between them as his tongue sought possession of the soft, dark burrow where her own waited to twine around his in an ecstasy of greeting, welcoming him to the intimate exploration.

  Shallie felt the thunder of his heartbeat against her breast. She inhaled his clean, masculine smell, heard the gasp of his breath against her ear as his mouth found the shivery spot at her neck. Shallie’s own breath came quickly as her hands sought out the hills and valleys of his back. She clung to them, a mountain climber scaling granite that had the slightest bit of give. The muscles of his thighs, pressed hard against her own, had not even a hint of pliancy. Shallie gave herself over to the luxurious sensations of Hunt’s male richness. She tugged at his shirt, pulling it free from the waistband of his jeans. She had already unsnapped the lowest of the buttons before Hunt’s hand slid over hers.

  “Wait,” he urged huskily. “If I’m only to be allowed one night with you, I want it to be one neither of us is soon to forget.” With that he turned to the buttons on her blouse and pulled the first one loose from its anchor, kissing the spot where her
pulse throbbed beneath the thin gold chain she wore around her neck. His lips trailed soft kisses that hesitated to both taste and smell the honeyed flesh he bared. At the expanded neckline of her blouse, he nuzzled softly, his tongue darting beyond the borders formed by her sheer clothing.

  His hands slid up beneath the aching swells of her breasts and met at the button at their cleft. With a torturing slowness he freed the button and slid the blouse over Shallie’s shoulders. His mouth returned to the swollen mound below, pressing it upward toward his hungering mouth with a pressure so intoxicating that Shallie felt herself strain against the gossamer fabric of her brassiere. As if to tantalize her beyond endurance, Hunt’s tongue traced around the periphery of the lacy undergarment. Then it was gone and his tongue was at the electric center of her breast. It probed with a gentle savagery that sent tingling waves racing out to obliterate thoughts, regrets, hesitations, leaving only the immediacy of the moment. Shallie’s lips parted. Her head lolled dreamily back on her shoulders as she surrendered to Hunt’s expert ministrations.

  The remaining buttons were undone and the blouse and bra floated down, falling from her wrists. Shallie was weak from the sensual onslaught and still it continued to mount in intensity. His hand slid down over the tiny ridges of her ribs, unfastening her jeans. He knelt at her feet and gripped the base of her boot while Shallie pulled her foot out. Both jeans and boots crumpled to the floor like a deflating beach toy.

  Shallie gloried in what she read in Hunt’s stormy eyes as they passed over her body. Her skin was a creamy white where the sun hadn’t burnished it. Her long legs accounted for a disproportionate share of her height. She had never before been made so aware of her desirability. Hunt’s awed, almost reverential gaze was like an act of homage. He stepped back.

  “Now you may undress me.”

  Shallie approached him slowly, as if moving through a thick cloud of desire. Her hands reached up to undo his buttons. As she did so her breasts grazed the silken wiriness of his chest. His blood throbbed in a heated torrent, making the jugular vein at his neck pulse to his desire’s maddened rhythm. Shoals of muscle rippled beneath the pampa of springy hair. Shallie buried her face in its heady, musky odor. Her hands stole downward to the heavy gold buckle at his waist. Then the zipper. The buckle clunked softly against the richly carpeted floor. She felt like a sculptor who had just unveiled her most perfect piece.

  She knelt in front of him as he had knelt in front of her, and tugged his boots free. Then her sculpture came to life. He stepped out of the puddle of clothing at his feet and bent toward her. His arms were as firm as any statue’s. When they scooped her up, she was encircled by a ring of warm steel. Still holding her, he pulled down the spread with one hand and laid her against the cool, clean sheet. She nestled in the freshly laundered burrow, every inch of her slender body caressed by the ironed cotton.

  Hunt slid in beside her and rolled her onto her side to face him. Only the most sensitive tips of their bodies intersected. She felt the mat of hair on his chest. It was a meeting that sent flaming demands for more pounding through both of them. Hunt pulled her closer. Their voracious bodies called out for still more. His hands pressed her even closer. Shallie’s softer flesh conformed to his hard contours, melting and swirling about Hunt’s firmness in a lapping tide of need. Still she wanted, needed, to engulf him even more completely. Her mouth shaped itself to Hunt’s tongue. Hunt understood the request Shallie hadn’t even been aware she’d made.

  Her legs slid apart beneath him and he entered her.

  “Hunt.” She whispered his name in the moment when his flesh became a part of hers. But the name that had resonated like a shriek in her ears was a whisper lost to Hunt’s.

  The blood sang in his ears, stirred by the exquisitely maddening feel of the liquid warmth encasing him. As much as he wanted the sensation to continue forever, urged on by Shallie, Hunt was driven to the swift, sure strokes that would end it. Shallie’s shuddery gasps signaled both her own and the culmination of his pleasure. Still clinging to one another, they were sucked into a swirling black void of sleep.

  Shallie jerked awake what she thought was moments later, surprised that she’d fallen into such a deep sleep. Beside her, Hunt’s chest rose and fell beneath the covers. She remembered calling out his name. It didn’t require any effort of memory to recall what she had come so close to telling him; the words had dominated her consciousness since the moment he’d kissed her at the airport and she’d stopped evading the truth.

  “I love you.” She whispered it so softly that the regular cadence of Hunt’s breathing wasn’t interrupted for even a second. What she had spoken was the truth. It had been burned even more deeply into her soul by the heat of their shared passion. She studied his supremely masculine face. It wore an expression that reflected how utterly at ease Hunt McIver was with a satisfied female body lying beside him. What they had shared had been a pinnacle for Shallie, something she had never known before, nor ever again hoped to experience.

  If Hunt’s masterful knowledge of lovemaking hadn’t already tipped her off, the blissfully nonchalant look he wore as he slept would have told Shallie that what had passed between them had been pretty standard fare for Hunt McIver. Thank God she hadn’t blurted out her deepest, most tender feelings. She had to accept what she’d had with Hunt for exactly what it had been—an intensely pleasurable experience that would never happen again.

  Chapter 9

  Shallie.” The sound of his own voice brought Hunt fully awake. He reached a hand out and contacted only a rumpled expanse of sheet. “Shallie?” He sat up, struggling to orient himself after what he was sure had been only a few minutes of hard sleep.

  “I’m here, Hunt.” Shallie stood in front of the mirror, the morning light streaming in to turn the curls she was fluffing up into a golden cloud floating around her face. Even more surprising than the obvious fact that it was morning, meaning that he must have slept for hours rather than minutes, was the sight of Shallie fully dressed, her pert behind once again encased in those awful jeans.

  “What are you doing with your clothes on, woman?” he demanded with mock anger. “Come over here.”

  But Shallie didn’t move. “I called the desk. It’s already 5:30. If you’re going to have time to take me to the airport and get back to the ranch before your rodeo school starts, you’d better be getting dressed yourself.”

  She turned crisply away without seeing the rapid series of emotions—surprise, disappointment, resignation, and finally anger—which flickered across Hunt’s face. As he rolled out from under the covers and padded to the bathroom, the two of them could have been strangers stuck by accident in the same hotel room.

  * * *

  Once more, Shallie tried to convince herself that it was better this way. It was better that she had been the one to pull away first, rather than wait for Hunt to remind her that she had a plane to catch and he had a rodeo school to teach. She couldn’t have stood that. It was better this way.

  Shallie was repeating the words that had become her chant to ward off the inevitable pain as the Albuquerque-bound plane bore her high over the arid expanses of West Texas. She looked out of her window without seeing the clouds floating regally below. Her senses were turned inward, where she once again experienced Hunt McIver.

  She tried to divorce herself from the turmoil of pain and longing that rose in her by concentrating on what she was certain Jake McIver’s grandson was feeling at that moment—nothing. Undoubtedly old Jake had taught his grandson well that women were nothing more than bright, shiny ornaments, like the kind you hauled out at Christmas, then packed away or threw out when they’d served their decorative function. Certainly Hunt must have been infused with the old man’s philosophy or he wouldn’t have been able to coexist with him for all these years.

  Her struggle against a confusion of emotions ended the moment she saw her uncle’s gentle face amidst those waiting to pick up passengers at the Albuquerque Sunport. But he was not weari
ng his usual expression of bemused tranquillity. He was clearly upset and Shallie was pretty sure she could guess why.

  “How could you have let Jake McIver swindle you so bad?” He didn’t allow Shallie time to answer his opening question. Instead he plunged ahead with his own explanations. “Oh, it wasn’t your fault. That old horse thief could sell a milking machine to a dairy farmer and take his cows for a down payment. When that Petey fellow told me, or rather wrote me, what had happened, I knew I should have gone. If only my damned old knees—”

  “Uncle Walter . . . Uncle Walter.” It took two tries before Shallie could break into her uncle’s headlong frenzy of self-recrimination. “I wasn’t swindled. It was Jake McIver who got the rough end of this deal.” Shallie felt like Jack coming home with a handful of beans and trying to convince his mother that they were magic.

  “Shallie, honey, I know you’re as good a judge of horseflesh as anyone in stock contracting, but even if you bought another Midnight he’d hardly be worth the difference between what you got for those steers and what they’re worth. Besides, Petey tells me the horse hasn’t even been bucked out yet. You bought a pig in a poke.”

  “If I did, Uncle Walter, it’ll be the first pig ever to compete in the National Finals.”

  Walter Larkin, his face speckled red both from the sun and his agitated state, fell silent. “How can you be so sure of that?” he asked warily.

  “Because I have seen Pegasus ridden.”

  “ ‘Pegasus,’ is it? So this is the horse you’ve been holding that name in reserve for, eh?” He cocked his head sideways, still not convinced but somewhat mollified.

  “Just trust me, Uncle Walter,” Shallie pleaded, “until you see him ridden. Or rather until you see someone attempt to ride him.”

  A ferocious spring dust storm was blowing outside. It drove sand and grit into every exposed pore as they made their way across the airport parking lot. Shallie forced herself to stay with her uncle, walking at his halting pace. They slammed the pickup truck doors, relieved to be sheltered from the blasting winds.