“That’s where you’re wrong. Luke cares for you whether he’ll admit it or not.” Kizzie smiled crookedly, as if trying not to laugh. “Luke and Tyler nearly came to blows over you at the breakfast table this morning.”
“What!”
“Luke warned Tyler to stay away from you. A man doesn’t warn another man, especially his own brother, to stay away from a woman, unless he’s got feelings for her.”
Hope soared in Deanna’s heart, but then she realized Kizzie might have misunderstood Luke’s attitude. “Maybe—maybe Luke didn’t want to see his younger brother get involved with a woman like me. That could be the reason—”
“No. I was there. And I’m telling you that Luke still cares about you and you’ve got to use his feelings for you to help him. Do whatever you have to do to reach him. Use whatever methods are necessary. You go out there to the stables and be waiting for him when he gets through working with the horses. And you tell him about what you’ve remembered. Make him listen to you.”
“I’ll try, but—”
“I don’t know if you and Luke are sleeping together.” Kizzie avoided eye contact with Deanna. “And I don’t want to know. It’s none of my business. But I can tell you this, girl, a man’s at his weakest and most vulnerable when he’s making love to you.” Kizzie smiled then, and her eyes glowed. “I remember what his daddy was like. I knew just how to persuade Baxter to come around to my way of thinking.”
“Are you telling me to seduce Luke?” Deanna asked.
“Do you still love my son?”
Kizzie’s question was direct and honest and she deserved no less a reply. “Yes.”
“Then prove to him that you love him, and if seducing him will help convince him, then, yes ma’am, I’m telling you to seduce him!”
Deanna felt like a voyeur, where Luke couldn’t see her standing behind a tree, watching his every move. Kizzie was right about his special way with animals. He seemed to possess an instinct that enabled him to communicate with the horses.
There was a gentleness in his voice when he spoke to them. A kindness in his touch when he stroked their big bodies. If he could bestow such tender care on these animals, then he was still capable of showing the same care to human beings—to his family and to her. He had simply chosen not to risk being rejected and hurt. Luke was afraid, and he had every reason to be. How many times in his life before and after he came to Stone Creek had he been rejected and scorned? How often had people’s thoughtless words ripped away at his pride and self-worth?
She had come so close to giving up on Luke. She would have left Montrose yesterday if Old Man Cooley’s pitchfork hadn’t triggered the most powerful memory flashback she’d ever had, and this morning she’d intended to tell Kizzie that she was going to pack and leave before nightfall. But after Kizzie’s pleas for her to help Luke, Deanna knew she had to give him one last chance.
Luke removed his Stetson, ran his fingers through his damp hair and gazed up at the hot morning sun. Replacing his hat, he opened the corral door and strutted toward the stables. Luke possessed a regal bearing, tall and straight, his shoulders back and his head held high. Did he have any idea what a magnificent man he was? Deanna’s stomach fluttered wildly at the very sight of him.
When he approached the stables, Deanna slipped out from behind the tree. “Good morning.”
Luke stopped, glanced back over his shoulder and frowned. “It’s nearly noon.” Without another word, he walked into the stables.
He wasn’t going to make this easy for her, but his frosty attitude was what she had expected. The direct approach, she reminded herself. Just march right in there and have your say.
She followed Luke inside, catching up with him just as he neared Cherokee’s stall. “I need to talk to you.”
“I don’t have time,” he told her. “I’m heading out to—”
“Whatever you’re heading out to do can wait. What I have to say to you won’t wait.”
He turned and faced her, giving her a stern, disapproving look. “All right. Let’s hear it. But make it quick.”
“I didn’t sleep much last night. I kept thinking about what happened yesterday before I fainted and then afterward...the memories kept swirling around in my head and I started remembering other things.”
“What things?”
“Eddie knows who killed Daddy,” she said.
“What makes you think he knows?”
“Because he wiped off the pitchfork while it was still...still stuck in Daddy’s chest, and...and he told Mother that they had to make sure there were no fingerprints left on it.”
Luke looked at her coolly, giving nothing away. “You just remembered this? Last night? This morning?”
“About four o’clock this morning,” she said, realizing Luke still didn’t trust her.
“So, are you saying that Eddie Nunley killed your father?”
“No, I’m just saying that he knows who did.” She took a tentative step toward Luke, her hands reaching for him.
He eased away from her, avoiding physical contact. “Okay, so you’ve told me the urgent news. Now, leave me alone. I’ve got work to do.”
He was dismissing her! Damn him! He was dismissing her and her memory as if neither was of any importance to him. Did he honestly think she was pretending that she had just remembered? “Don’t you see that this means we’re one step closer to knowing the truth? If we confront Eddie...if I tell him that I remember what he did and what he said—”
“You think he’s going to admit that he killed your father, or that he covered up for whoever did?” Luke laughed, a chilling, cynical laugh.
Deanna sensed the war raging inside Luke. He was torn between his desire to believe her and his fear that she was lying to him. “You aren’t going to help me, are you? You don’t care. You honestly don’t care—about clearing your name, about the pain you’ve put your family through, about me and what I’ve had to endure because of what happened that night. All you care about is hanging on to your hatred and anger and self-pity.”
Luke grinned and Deanna’s heart stopped. Instinctively, she stepped back, sensing danger. “You can always ask my brother to help you. I’m sure Tyler would be more than happy to listen to your miraculous memory flashes. Hell, he’d probably even drive you over to the Circle A and question Eddie himself, if you asked him real nice.”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“You’re still the same spoiled girl who always had to have her own way. The little flirt who had a dozen boys panting after her, just waiting for her to snap her fingers. I’m sure if you made Tyler the same deal you made me, he’d keep his end of the bargain. Kizzie’s son has a sense of honor that I lack.”
Deanna raised her hand. Luke caught it in mid-air. They glared at each other, their gazes locking.
Luke released her arm. “Don’t ever try that again.”
“You deserve to be slapped,” she said. “You deserve a swift kick in the butt. You’re stubborn, mule-headed—”
“Call me all the names you want to. It won’t change the facts.”
“And just what are those facts?” Deanna rubbed her arm where Luke’s big hand had gripped it so tightly.
“You tell me. Just how many conquests have you made over the years? I might have been the first to get in your pants, but I sure as hell wasn’t the last, was I? In fifteen years, there must have been dozens of guys willing to do anything for you. How many unsuspecting men have you caught in your sweet trap, Little Miss Black Widow?”
The anger welled up inside her like lava on the verge of erupting from a dormant volcano suddenly brought to life. She had been a fool to think Luke McClendon could be helped, that he even wanted to be saved from his sad, lonely life. Agreeing to his terms had been a mistake. Coming to Montrose had been an even bigger mistake. Even if she remembered everything from the past, including the identity of her father’s murderer, nothing would change between Luke and her.
Kizzie had been o
verly optimistic in thinking Luke still cared about her—the girl who had betrayed him—and she’d been dead wrong assuming that she and she alone possessed the power to save Luke’s black soul. Only a miracle could save Luke now and Deanna was afraid she was fresh out of miracles.
She wanted to hurt Luke the way he kept hurting her. She wanted to rip out his heart and feed it to the buzzards.
She moved toward him, defiantly, determined to show him that she didn’t care about his feelings any more than he cared about hers. Looking him square in the eye, she said, “You want to know how many men there have been, how many lovers I’ve had since you?”
He stared at her, his jaw clenched, his body taut. She could smell the musky, manly scent of his perspiration. Could hear his quick indrawn breath. Could see his nostrils flare. Could feel the tension radiating from him.
“Nothing to say, big man? Maybe you really don’t want to know about all my many sex partners, about all the men who have kissed me and held and caressed me and whispered sweet nothings in my ear.”
The vein in Luke’s neck throbbed. A slight flush of crimson brightened his deeply tanned cheeks. Involuntarily, unknowingly, he gripped his hands into fists.
“Do you want to hear about how I felt, what I did, what I said? Do you want me to describe in detail how they undressed me. How they ran their hands over my body. How they tasted every inch of me. How they—” Deanna ran her hand over her breasts “—pleasured me until I begged for them to take me completely.”
Luke grabbed her shoulders and shoved her up against the stable wall. She cried out in surprise. Hot anger shot from his eyes, searing her to the bone.
He shook her soundly, then lowered his head so that his lips were almost touching hers. “Damn you for making me feel like this!”
Her heartbeat roared in her ears like a cyclone. Luke’s powerful body surrounded her, encompassed her, consumed her as if she were a vaporous form. His sex pressed against her intimately, big and hard and demanding. She had wounded the lone wolf and now he was preparing to attack.
“Then you can still feel, can’t you? You aren’t completely dead inside.” She tried to lift her arms to his neck, but he held her against the wall with the strength of his body while he grabbed her arms and pressed them back against the wall.
“Show me just what your legions of lovers taught you,” he said, his voice a growling threat. “At the motel, you acted like you hadn’t learned anything, that all you knew about sex was what I’d taught you.”
“But you know better, don’t you, Luke?” She ran her tongue quickly over his lips. She smiled when he sucked in his breath and his sex pulsed against her. “You know that a girl who loved sex as much as I did never would have spent the past fifteen years without a man...without dozens of men.”
“That’s right, babe.” Luke nuzzled her throat as he leaned into her, rubbing himself against her. “I remember how you couldn’t get enough of me. How you wanted me over and over again. You were a little wildcat.”
“I wouldn’t have needed love, would I, before I gave myself to a man? He wouldn’t have had to mean anything to me before I took him into my body. After all, I didn’t really love you, did I? It was just sex for me with you, just like it was with all those countless other men, just like it was only sex for you with the women you’ve had.”
“You’re lying! Damn you, you’re lying. You loved me and I loved you. If I don’t know anything else...if I don’t believe anything else, I believe that.”
“And how many other women have you loved since me?” She squirmed, moving her body against his, but she wasn’t sure any longer whether she wanted to escape or get closer.
“I’ve never loved anyone else!”
He took her mouth then, with all the savage fury burning inside him. While he ravaged her lips, he eased his tight grip on her arms, allowing her to lift them up and around his neck. She stood on tiptoe, deepening the kiss herself, plunging her tongue into the fray. Giving as good as she got. Taking his heated passion and returning in full measure. Luke cupped her buttocks in his big hands and lifted her up and into him, only the barrier of their jeans separating his throbbing arousal from her aching femininity.
When he broke the kiss, both of them coming up for air, he licked a path from her lips to her throat. She quivered as urgent needs raced along the nerve endings throughout her entire body.
“Oh, Luke, you must know that there hasn’t been anyone else. I couldn’t give myself to a man without loving him.”
He gave her neck a tiny love bite, then buried his face in her hair that lay across her shoulder. She grabbed a handful of his hair at the back of his head and forced his face up, making him look at her.
“And how could I love another man, when I’ve never stopped loving you?”
“Ah, babe. Don’t...” He let the rest of his words trail off to nothing as he lifted her in his arms and carried her toward an empty stall in the back of the stables.
Deanna clung to him, breathless with anticipation, ready for anything and everything. Luke laid her down in the clean straw, then came down beside her. Hurriedly he unbuttoned her blouse and spread it apart, then undid the front hook of her bra and exposed her breasts. The moment his mouth touched her, she bucked up and against the hand he had slipped between her thighs.
There was no anger, no rage in Luke now, only passion. Only desire that equaled hers.
She worked frantically at the snaps on his shirt, finally releasing all of them. She slid her hands up under his shirt and over his back. Her hands stilled instantly when she felt the uneven texture of his skin in the scarred areas. Scars left by the sting of her father’s horsewhip. She wanted to cry. Wanted to seek out his scars and kiss each one. He had endured the brutal whipping because of her, and yet he hadn’t blamed her. Not then. He had come to her, begging her to run away with him. To marry him.
If only she’d taken the chance and gone with him. If only!
She caressed his back, his broad shoulders, his powerful arms and then she ran her fingers through the tufts of black hair in the center of his chest. He undid her jeans and eased down the zipper, his tongue moving downward, across her belly and to the edge of her bikini panties. She wanted this—needed it badly. Luke making love to her. Wild, sweet love. Hot and all-consuming.
She trembled when his mouth moved upward again to torment her breasts and then to seek out the pleasure of her mouth. A mouth eager to mate with his once more. He covered her body with his as his lips ate away at hers and he tugged on the waistband of her jeans, dragging them down to her hips. She struggled to unbuckle his belt. Luke shoved her hands aside, undid his belt and unzipped his jeans.
There was no time for words, only for action. No time for pleas or vows, only time for making love. At that precise moment, Deanna didn’t care what came afterward—all that mattered was the here and now. Luke above her, on her, around her. Luke inside of her!
He eased her jeans and panties slowly downward, over her hips, down her thighs, over her calves and ankles. The moment he jerked them over her feet, he tossed them aside, then reached inside his briefs and freed his sex.
Deanna reached up for him, welcoming him, opening herself up for his invasion. He positioned himself over her, bracing his big body with his hands on either side of her shoulders. Lifting herself up to meet him, she inserted one hand between their bodies and encompassed his shaft. Luke groaned, low and deep, the sound guttural and animalistic.
“Luke! Luke, where are you?”
Kizzie’s scream froze Deanna and Luke instantly.
“Luke, son, where are you?” his stepmother called out again.
“Damn!” Luke lifted himself up and off Deanna, zipped his jeans and started buttoning his shirt. He was aching. Hurting bad. What the hell was going on? It wasn’t like Kizzie to scream her head off for nothing.
He glanced down at a disheveled and utterly sexy Deanna, who lay before him like an offering to the gods. She gazed up at him, puzzlement an
d unfulfilled longing in her eyes.
“I’ve got to answer her,” Luke said.
“I know.” Deanna nodded, then grabbed her panties and slipped into them.
Leaving her in the stall, Luke hurried out of the stables and called to his stepmother. Kizzie ran toward him, her face flushed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Fire! The south pasture’s on fire!”
Deanna stood in the stable door, nervously buttoning her shirt. Luke glanced over his shoulder at her.
“You’ve called the fire department?” he asked Kizzie.
She nodded. “Just as soon as Bud called in. But you know it’ll take them a good thirty-five or forty minutes to get here. By that time we could lose a thousand acres.”
“We’ll have to create a firebreak. I’ll take one of the tractors and get Jim to take the other one. What about the cattle? Is Bud—
“He and Herb are moving them. You go on, I’ll come out in your truck.”
“I want to go too,” Deanna said. “Please.”
Luke stared at her for a split second, then said. “You can ride out with Kizzie.”
Chapter 11
On their way south, Kizzie and Deanna met up with Bud and Herb herding the cattle northeast. Kizzie waved at them and they returned her greeting. Deanna smelled smoke. Leaning over slightly she looked up and out the windshield. Her mouth opened on a silent gasp when she saw the dark, billowing clouds rising high into the sky.
Kizzie pulled Luke’s truck to a halt, gazed out at the raging fire consuming the land and sucked in a deep breath. “Dear Lord,” she exclaimed. “How did this happen? Couldn’t have been lightning on a day like this and none of our hands smoke, so it couldn’t have been a cigarette carelessly tossed aside.”
Deanna had heard about grass fires, of course, but she’d never actually seen one. Thick, charcoal rolls of smoke rose from the earth, covering the blue sky like a hazy gray blanket. The roar of tractors hummed in her ears. Searching for the source of the sound, she saw Luke on a tractor to her left and the ranch hand she’d heard called Bud on the other tractor.
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