by Cathie Linz
“This table is new,” his mom murmured, running her hand over the rich wood before blinking away sudden tears. “And Tony, he has white hair. He was so young the last time I saw him. So many things have changed.”
Striker hoped his mom wasn’t going to cry. He could deal with enemy fire but he couldn’t handle his mother in tears. Because she never cried. Not in front of him.
She’d had to handle numerous emergencies on her own, from his brother Ben’s appendectomy at age ten to flooded basements and broken furnaces. All because his dad had been away on deployment—in South Korea or the Gulf or wherever else he was needed.
Angela had always managed. She’d always been strong. Until now. Now she looked like she wanted to cry. He watched her cautiously. “Hey, are you going to be okay?”
Her green eyes, so like his own and so like her father’s, met his. “Absolutely.” She blinked the sheen of tears away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all emotional on you this way.” She took a calming sip of lemonade.
Now he felt bad, as if he’d stopped her from doing something she needed to. “If you really feel like, you know…like you have to…uh…to cry…uh…it’s okay.” He’d suck it up and manage somehow.
She smiled. “Thanks for giving me permission, but I’m okay now. I know you’d rather be out there with the men instead of sitting in here holding my hand, figuratively speaking.”
The chirping sound of a cell phone came from Angela’s purse, slung over the back of the pine chair. She answered and spoke briefly before handing the phone over to him. “It’s your brother, Ben. He wants to talk to you.”
“I just saw on the weather channel that several tornadoes have hit the San Antonio area. What are you doing down there, big brother? Sounds like you’ve really ticked off Mother Nature.”
“Very funny. I thought you were heading out on a training mission?”
“We deploy first thing in the morning. Me and two thousand other Marines from Camp Lejeune. Should be a nice party.”
“Try not to get into any trouble. I don’t want you doing anything that would make me look bad.” Striker couldn’t help giving his younger brother a hard time. As the oldest, it was his duty to harass his siblings. They paid him back in kind.
“Hey, I’m not the one playing oil tycoon down there in Texas. You’re the one who needs to stay out of trouble. Because I won’t be there to save your butt when you get in a mess.”
“Right,” Striker scoffed. “Like that happens.” But it was true that Ben was the caretaker in the family, the one who’d always brought home strays when he was kid, the one who always befriended those in need of a buddy.
“Take care of Mom while I’m gone. And listen, it’s fine by me if you want to blow off this entire inheritance thing. I don’t want Hank’s money. Gotta go.” A second later Ben had hung up.
“He told me to look after you,” Striker told his mom.
“And I have no doubt that you’d do a good job of that. Not that I need looking after. After raising five boys and living in ten states in ten years, I can pretty well handle anything.”
“How about seeing Tony in bunny slippers?” Striker teased her. “Are you sure you can handle that?”
Angela reached over to steal a swig of his beer. “Bring it on. After a day like today, bunny slippers are a mere drop in the bucket.”
Kate didn’t get much sleep that night. She could have chalked it up to surviving the tornado. But that was only part of it. A small part.
The major reason she was tossing and turning in her parents’ guest room bed was because of what had happened down in the storm cellar. She’d blossomed from Ice Queen to Sultry Seductress and all because of Striker.
His touch did that to her—made her wild and reckless. Made her confident and confused.
Her body stirred at the memory of how and where he’d touched her. Her breasts were still sensitive, her nipples tightening at the vivid flashbacks playing in her mind of his tongue on her, his mouth surrounding hers.
She licked her lips at the image of her hands on his body, so smooth and powerful beneath her fingertips. How awesome it was to match that masculine strength with her feminine energy, marrying the two together.
During that time she’d stopped thinking, stopped worrying. Instead she’d simply lived, enjoyed, explored, satisfied and been satisfied.
Now that she’d experienced such joy, she wanted more. She wasn’t willing to hide her emotions behind a wall any longer. She’d turned a corner, unsure where the road ahead led but knowing she didn’t want to turn back.
That resolve remained with Kate the next morning as she sorted through a box of her old clothes in the closet. Her mom had told her the night before that she’d kept some of Kate’s extra clothes still stored there. Kate unearthed a pair of jeans, and a San Antonio Spurs T-shirt from the year they’d won the NBA Championships. But she really hit pay dirt at the bottom, where she found a pair of boots.
They were the boots she’d worn that day she’d ridden out to the pond and first seen Striker all those years ago. They were brand-new then. No longer. The leather was nicked and worn. There was no shiny silver trim just for show. Instead the metal had the burnished patina caused by years of use. To her surprise, the boots still fit.
Kate entered the formal dining room more casually dressed than she had since she’d graduated from law school.
Her mother raised an eyebrow at her attire. “You really should keep some clothes here for situations like this.”
“Situations like this?” Kate slid into a Windsor chair and added two pieces of toast to her Wedgwood china plate. “You mean when a tornado hits?”
“No, I mean when you have to stay over. In fact, I still don’t understand why you insist on living in that tiny loft downtown.”
Each time Kate came to her parents’ home, she heard the same complaints. She tried to ignore the words, but doing so expended a lot of inner energy.
“The guest house here is bigger,” her mother was saying.
Ah, but the condo is mine, Kate thought to herself. She needed some place to call her own, some space of her own.
“And you really should be thinking about your romantic future instead of wasting time on that Marine next door.” Elizabeth was clearly on a roll this morning. “Babs Abbott called me and said that you haven’t returned Rodney’s phone calls. You know the Abbotts are one of the city’s premier families and that Babs plays bridge with me. Your being rude to Rodney has created a very awkward situation for me.”
“Rodney and I have nothing in common.”
“How do you know that?” Elizabeth demanded. “You haven’t even gone out with him.”
“We’ve run into each other several times at various gatherings.”
“Naturally. Rodney is an up-and-coming businessman.”
He was also a stuck-up, self-centered bore. Over the years since Ted’s death, Kate had dated a number of men. But she’d always ended up alone. Because none of them was the right one. And this time she wasn’t going to follow her parents’ dreams and marry the man of their choice.
Throughout this time, her father remained silently ensconced behind his newspaper.
Kate needed to get away from the heavy burden of their expectations.
“I’m going for a ride on Midnight,” she said abruptly. She grabbed some fruit from a bowl in the center of the table on her way out.
“I wasn’t finished speaking with you, Katherine!” Her mother’s disapproving voice followed Kate.
She blocked it out.
It wasn’t until the wind was rushing through her hair as she let Midnight have his way, galloping across the meadow away from the house and stables, that Kate realized how much she missed riding, missed the illusion of freedom.
The horse was older now, and so was she. No longer was she the seventeen-year-old with a secret crush on the sexy newcomer next door. The gelding was no longer as high-spirited, but he welcomed the opportunity to let loose. As
did Kate.
As she rode, she noticed that the storm had indeed missed this section of her parents’ property. There were no trees downed, no fallen branches to block their way. Instead there was only open space in front of her and Midnight.
How tempting it was to just keep riding and not go back.
To leave the responsibilities, the emotional baggage behind.
That wish had gotten her into trouble before. She’d wanted to take off when Ted’s car crashed.
But Kate was tired of dealing with her past. Just for today she wanted to live in the moment. Was that too much to ask?
Stop thinking, she ordered herself. Just be. Without the stress of decision making.
She’d already taken care of the business of her crushed car, calling her insurance agent and making arrangements. That was enough for today. Time for some fun for a change.
The day was sunny and hot. The weather front that had caused yesterday’s violent storms was still perched in the area, with more storms predicted but not until later. A great day to wash her cares away in the pond that bordered their property with Westwind.
Slowing her horse to a walk, Kate headed that way. It wasn’t until she’d dismounted and tied Midnight’s reins around a tree trunk that she realized she wasn’t alone.
Striker was already in the water, skinny-dipping as he had been all those years ago. “Who’s there?”
This time Kate didn’t shirk away. She was no longer an unsure teenager. She was a woman now.
“It’s me.” Confidently strolling forward, she grinned at him before quoting the woman who was very good at being bad—Mae West. “Is that a gun in your pocket, cowboy, or are you just happy to see me?”
Chapter Eight
“I‘m not wearing any pockets.” Striker’s grin was downright wicked. “In fact, I’m not wearing anything at all.”
“I had noticed that.” Her own smile was a tad bit naughty.
“Did you now?”
“I did. But then attorneys are trained to observe little details like that.”
“Hey, watch what you’re calling a little detail. We Marines tend to be sensitive about the size of our…details.”
“A sensitive Marine, huh? Next thing I know, you’ll be wearing bunny slippers like Tony.”
“Yeah, right. That’ll happen when cows give beer.”
Kate cracked up. “You’ve been getting lessons from Tex on good ol’ Texas sayings again.”
“Guilty as charged, ma’am.”
Something had changed when he’d kissed her in the storm cellar yesterday and helped her deal with her claustrophobia. She’d turned a corner somehow. She was tired of being afraid. She wanted to just live, not worry about what could go wrong and instead, enjoy what was going right.
So here she was, flirting with a naked man. And not just any man, but Striker.
He stood, the water level just below his waist. “I’m aimin’ on comin’ out now.” His Texas drawl was good. The gleam in his green eyes was very, very bad.
“Go right ahead.” She met his challenge with one of her own.
“Want to hand me that towel hanging on the branches over there by my clothes?”
She did as he asked, noting that he was a white briefs guy. Then she made the mistake of pausing to take a peek over her shoulder to see what he was up to. Wow. She blushed but didn’t look away, fascinated by the interplay of rippling muscles as he strolled forward with the self-assured step that was unequivocally his. Even when naked as a jaybird.
He took the towel from her and placed it around his hips.
Kate sank onto a nearby log, grateful for its presence since her knees had suddenly given out.
Wow.
She closed her eyes, reliving the moment, but in doing so missed watching him get dressed, which was a good thing. She was still new to this seductress stuff and didn’t want to overdo things her first time out. Even so, there was something seductive about hearing him dress, the slide of his legs into his jeans, the sound of him zipping them up.
“You can look now.” There was more than a hint of laughter in his voice.
Her eyes flew open. He’d put on a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt but hadn’t bothered to button it up. He looked yummy enough to eat.
No, yummy was too cute somehow. Striker wasn’t cute. He was so much more than that. There wasn’t a pretty-boy bone in his awesome body.
Okay, she had to think about something else or she’d start drooling here. She needed a moment to regain her composure. Time for a change of subject.
Something neutral. His parents. The ranch. Yes, those were good topics. Go ahead, Counselor. “How are things at Westwind today? Are things getting back to normal?”
“If you call my dad sleeping out in the RV instead of coming into the house normal, then yeah, things are back to normal at Westwind.”
“Was it too hard on your mom being back after all this time?”
He sat beside her on the log before replying. “My mom stayed in the house. It was only my dad who refused to step foot in Hank’s house. My mom claims she slept like a baby.”
“Do you believe her?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Both my parents are acting strange. How about yours?”
“My mother disapproves of acting strange. It’s not something that a former Miss Texas does.”
“I didn’t realize your mom was a former beauty queen.”
“Do me a favor and don’t use that terminology at dinner tonight. She doesn’t like the term beauty queen.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Why not? She struck me as the regal type. Is that where you get it from?”
“Me?” Kate shook her head. “I’m nothing like my mother. She looks perfect in any situation.”
“And you don’t? The first time I met you I wanted to take your hair down out of that fancy perfect twist you had it pinned up in.”
“You were glaring at me as if you wanted to throttle me.”
He smiled wolfishly. “I definitely wanted to get my hands on you.”
She wasn’t about to act like a prim miss. She didn’t blush or look away. Instead she asked, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you want to get your hands on me?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned forward to nuzzle her throat with the tip of his tongue. “Why do you want my hands on you?”
“Because it feels good.”
“Yeah, that would be my answer, too.”
The kiss began in the middle of her forehead and gradually took in her eyes, the curve of her cheeks, the tip of her nose before hovering over her mouth. He gently caught her bottom lip between his teeth, drawing it into his mouth to suck and nibble, priming her for the deeper thrusts of his tongue that were yet to come.
His hands were equally seductive and creative, tunneling beneath the golden mass of her hair to gather the strands in one fist while his other hand slipped beneath her T-shirt to trail up her spine. He was in no hurry. His leisurely pace educated her senses about the infinite pleasures to be had by going slowly.
She had no idea. He explored every inch of her bare back, pausing to fingerpaint invisible paintings on her skin, a swirl here, a line there. Every place he touched hummed with excitement.
And all the while his mouth continued its passionate play—tempting, exploring, sharing.
Striker felt as if he’d stumbled into the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. He’d come out here to the pond to be alone. To think. To remember how good Kate felt in his arms.
And then she’d shown up. In her sexy jeans and Spurs T-shirt. Ready and more than willing to meet him halfway.
It was as if the tornado yesterday had swept away the old Kate and replaced her with the new one, the one who gave as good as she got.
There was no resisting her now.
She slid his shirt off his shoulders and ran her fingers over his bare skin. He groaned. Who knew it would be this good? Who knew it could be this good?
&nbs
p; He released her hair to tug his shirt off and pull her closer. The thin cotton of her T-shirt provided little protection. He felt the familiar brush of her taut nipples against his flesh and longed to touch them again.
But before he could do so he was interrupted by the feel of something cold and wet pressed against his back, almost knocking him right off the log.
“What the…!” Striker leapt to his feet only to turn and find a huge black horse glaring at him
“Midnight must have gotten lonely,” Kate said. “I tied him up but he must have gotten loose. He has a thing for apples. Don’t you, big boy.”
It took Striker a second to realize that she was calling the horse big boy, not him. Then he registered the rest of her comment.
“You brought food?”
Kate nodded, patting the backpack she’d dropped on the ground when she’d first arrived.
“I’m starving,” Striker said. “I left without eating breakfast.”
“Me, too,” she confessed.
“Yeah, well, with our parents both acting weird we may have our hands full at this dinner tonight. My dad told my mom to cancel. She told him to grow up. Those were the last words they spoke. I left after an hour of being intermediary. My dad wasn’t real pleased with me anyway.”
“He wasn’t?” She handed Striker an apple.
She looked like Eve sitting there with her lips swollen from his kisses, her face flushed by passion, her golden hair rumpled by his hands. A smart footloose man would recognize trouble when he saw it and walk away. Before things got out of hand. Before he got in over his head.
But Striker had never been one to back away from trouble. He took the apple.
“Why is your dad upset with you?” Kate asked.
“He doesn’t approve of this entire situation. Me being at King Oil. The inheritance. He doesn’t want any of us to accept any money from Hank’s estate.”
“And what do you want?”
“To kiss you again.”
Striker tasted like apple. He’d barely begun kissing her when Midnight butted his head against Striker’s bare back once again. “Your horse is jealous.”
