Boone turned to Tara as people streamed past all around them, racing for the exits. He sure hoped Slade and the deputies were ready for the onslaught.
“Feel like dancing?” he asked.
Tara leaned forward, touching her lips to his chin. “No,” she said. “I feel like making love.”
Boone felt a rush of joy and no small anticipation. He’d carry his hat to the truck, he decided, instead of wearing it on his head.
“Then let’s get out of here,” he said, squeezing her hand.
* * *
TARA WAS HIGH ON MUSIC, high on love, and when Boone carried her up the front steps and over her threshold like a bride, she reveled in it.
Lucy and Scamp barely greeted them, there in the darkened entryway, before wandering away again, patently disinterested in the oddity of human beings already kicking off boots and peeling off their clothes.
“I can’t wait,” Tara said, “not even until we’re upstairs—”
Boone arched his eyebrows comically, closed his hands over her bare breasts, right there in the foyer, and eased her back against the wall.
He kissed her endlessly, it seemed to her, taking his time before moving on to her neck, her shoulders, her collarbones, her belly, then going back to her mouth again, all the while plying her gently with his fingers.
After what seemed like an eternity, he knelt, running his lips over her thighs, even her knees, and finally—finally—he took her into his mouth.
Tara cried out softly, already in an anguish of welcoming pleasure, and perspiration broke out all over her body. She writhed as he enjoyed her, bringing her to the brink, withdrawing, taking her to new heights but not quite there.
She whimpered, wanting Boone to hurry and, conversely, praying that he’d take his time, prolong the almost unbearably delicious sensation of climbing, climbing toward ecstasy.
Boone enjoyed her at his leisure, brought her to several knee-melting climaxes before he finally stood up again, holding her upright, his hands at her waist, and pressed against her.
“No condom this time,” he warned, nibbling at her right earlobe even as he prepared her for more loving with his fingers. “If there’s a baby, there’s a baby. Agreed?”
“No condom,” she moaned, nodding, jubilant with need, every nerve singing under her skin, her heart skittering, her breath so rapid and so shallow that she was afraid she might hyperventilate.
Boone lifted Tara off her bare feet, and she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist. He looked deep into her eyes, paused for a long moment, and then he entered her, hard and fast, and she welcomed him with a low, frantic croon, her back pressed against the wall. The ferocity of it, the boldness of making love in her entryway, for pity’s sake, took away her breath.
Her body seized with one climax and then another. She moaned Boone’s name, groped for his mouth with her own, flying higher and then higher still.
She waited for his control to break, but it was a long time before he came, with a thrust so hard it sent her spinning into yet another release, sent her spiraling into a vortex of sensations, not just between her legs, but in her mind and spirit, too.
Boone had not just taken Tara; he’d laid permanent claim to her. She was his woman, now and forever, fused to him in ways that seemed almost sacred. Boone’s eruption was a magnificent hardening of his entire body, and he groaned her name as he flexed against her, over and over.
Exhausted, murmuring, they sank to their knees and then lay on the hooked rug, legs entwined, fighting to breathe, as if they were shipwreck survivors, clinging together on a flimsy raft.
Gradually, they recovered, though they remained where they were.
“I can’t believe you just had me against a wall,” Tara said, very glad that he had, as small aftershocks moved through her like a festive trail of descending fireworks against a dark sky. It was so deliciously decadent.
“I can be pretty inventive,” Boone told her, nibbling at her neck.
And he proceeded to prove it by having her again, this time on the floor.
* * *
EVENTUALLY, THEY’D made it as far as Tara’s bed.
She lay sleeping now, her lashes like dark feathers against her cheeks, her breathing slow and deep and even, her lips forming a little smile as she dreamed.
Boone was content just to look at her, for the time being, anyhow. Physically, and in a lot of other ways, too, he couldn’t get enough of Tara Kendall.
She was so beautiful. So smart and so strong and so passionate.
Why in hell had it taken him so long to realize she was the woman for him?
Because he’d been holding on to a memory, that was why. Holding on to Corrie, and everything they were supposed to have had, as though by resisting he could bring her back.
It struck him now that Corrie would be happy for him, happy that her boys were going to have a mother again. Had he been holding her back somehow, mourning so hard for so long?
In that moment, he let go, once and for all, and in the next, he felt a strange, soft parting, and he knew Corrie had finally been set free, and moved on.
Tears burned the backs of his eyes. Goodbye, he said silently.
Tara stirred a little.
Miracle of miracles, she loved him. And that was the greatest gift she could have given him, even if they lived and loved into their old age, surrounded by children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
And he loved her, no doubt about it, more with every passing day, every beat of his heart, every drawn breath.
Presently, she opened her eyes, all fluttery and disoriented for a moment.
“Yep,” Boone said, grinning. “It’s true. You’ve been making love to a redneck sheriff with a double-wide for most of the night. And in some mighty scandalous places, too.”
She grinned back, purring a little in sultry contentment, and punched him lightly in one shoulder, and her eyes glowed, warming him through and through. “It just so happens that I love my ‘redneck sheriff’ with all my heart,” she told him. “And when it comes to scandalous places to have sex, I have a few ideas of my own.”
“That’s good,” Boone said in a voice rumbly with emotions he couldn’t quite contain. Didn’t need to contain, because he could tell this woman anything, let her see into his very soul. “Because I’m pretty crazy about a certain pseudo chicken rancher myself.”
She touched a finger to the tip of his nose, sending a thrill through him as easily as that. “Remember your promise,” she said.
“You can take it to the bank,” Boone told her. “Along with every other promise I ever make.” A pause, during which they both choked up. Then, “When are we getting married?” he asked. “Only being able to make love when none of the kids are around is going to be tough.”
That was part of the agreement, until they were husband and wife.
“You’ll just have to improvise, Boone Taylor. It would be absolutely indecent to have a wedding in less than six months.” She smiled a sexy smile. “In the meantime, I think we ought to get in as much practice as we can.”
Boone sighed. “All right,” he agreed. “Six months.”
She kissed him, snuggling close. “I’ll make it up to you,” she promised.
* * * * *
Look for THE MAN FROM STONE CREEK, coming from Harlequin HQN in March, as well as Linda Lael Miller’s next original novel, BIG SKY SUMMER, on sale in June at your favorite retail outlet.
Keep reading for an excerpt from BIG SKY COUNTRY and BIG SKY MOUNTAIN by Linda Lael Miller!
Love Awaits in Parable, Montana…
If you loved Big Sky River, don’t miss these titles from New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller.
Big Sky Country
Big Sky Mountain
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CHAPTER ONE
Parable, Montana
“YOU WEREN’T AT THE funeral,” Slade Barlow’s half brother, Hutch Carmody, accused, the words rasping against the underside of a long, slow exhale.
Slade didn’t look at Hutch, though he could still see him out of the corner of one eye. Both of them were sitting side by side in a pair of uncomfortable chairs, facing what seemed like an acre of desk. Maggie Landers, their father’s lawyer, who had summoned them there, had yet to put in an appearance.
“I went to the graveside service,” Slade replied evenly, and after a considerable length. It was the truth, though he’d stood at some distance from the crowd, not wanting to be numbered among the admitted mourners but unable to stay away entirely.
“Why bother at all?” Hutch challenged. “Unless you just wanted to make sure the old man was really in the box?”
Slade was not a quick-tempered man—by nature, he tended to think before he spoke and offer whatever response he might make with quiet deliberation, traits that had served him well over the several years since he’d been elected sheriff—but the edge in his half brother’s tone brought heat surging up his neck to pound behind his ears.
“Maybe that was it,” he drawled with quiet contempt as the office door whispered open behind them.
Hutch, who had just shoved back his chair as if to leap to his feet, ready to fight, thrust a hand hard through his shock of brownish-blond hair instead, probably to discharge that rush of adrenaline, and stayed put. He all but buzzed, like an electric fence line short-circuiting in a thunderstorm.
Slade, though still confounded by his own invitation to this particular shindig, took a certain grim satisfaction in Hutch’s reaction. There was, as the old saying went, no love lost between the two of them.
“Good to see you haven’t killed each other,” Maggie observed brightly, rounding the shining expanse of the desk to take the leather chair behind it. Still gorgeous at fifty-plus, with short, expertly dyed brown hair and round green eyes, usually alight with mischievous intelligence, the lawyer turned slightly to boot up her computer.
“Not just yet, anyhow,” Hutch replied finally.
Maggie’s profile was all he could see of her, but Slade registered the slight smile that tilted up one corner of her mouth. Her fingers, perfectly manicured every Saturday morning at his mother’s beauty shop for the last quarter of a century, flicked busily over the keyboard, and the monitor threw a wash of pale blue light onto her face and the lightweight jacket of her custom-made off-white pantsuit.
“How’s your mother, Slade?” she asked mildly without glancing his way.
Maggie and his mom, Callie, were around the same age, and they’d been friends for as long as Slade could remember. Given that he’d run into Maggie at his mom’s Curly Burly Hair Salon just the day before, where she’d been having a trim and a touch-up, he figured the question was a rhetorical one, a sort of conversational filler.
“She’s fine,” Slade said. By then, he’d gotten over the urge to commit fratricide and gone back to mulling the thing that had been bothering him ever since the formidable Ms. Landers had called him at home that morning and asked him to stop by her office on his way to work.
The meeting had to be about the old man’s last will and testament, though Maggie hadn’t said so over the phone. All she’d been willing to give up was, “This won’t take long, Slade, and believe me, it’s in your best interests to be there.”
Hutch’s presence made sense, since he was the legitimate son, the golden boy, groomed since birth to become the master of all he surveyed even as, motherless from the age of twelve, he ran wild. Slade himself, on the other hand, was the outsider—born on the proverbial wrong side of the blanket.
John Carmody had never once acknowledged him, in all Slade’s thirty-five years of life, and it wasn’t likely that he’d had a deathbed change of heart and altered his will to include the product of his long-ago affair with Callie.
No, Slade thought, Carmody hadn’t had a heart, not where he and his mother were concerned, anyway. He’d never so much as spoken to Slade in all those years; looked right through him when they did come into contact, as if he was invisible. If that stiff-necked son of a bitch had instructed Maggie to make sure Slade was there for the reading of the will, it was probably so he’d know what he was missing out on, when all that land and money went to Hutch.
You can stick it all where the sun never shines, old man, Slade thought angrily. He’d never expected—or wanted—to inherit a damn thing from John Carmody—bad enough that he’d gotten the bastard’s looks, his dark hair, lean and muscular build, and blue eyes—and it galled him that Maggie, his mother’s friend, would be a party to wasting his time like this.
Maggie clicked the mouse, and her printer began spewing sheets of paper as she turned to face Hutch and Slade head-on.
“I’ll spare you all the legal jargon,” she said, gathering the papers from the printer tray, separating them into two piles and shoving these across the top of her desk, one set for each of them. “All the facts are there—you can read the wills over at your leisure.”
Slade barely glanced at the documents and made no move to pick them up.
“And what facts are those?” Hutch snapped, peevish.
Pecker-head, Slade thought.
Maggie interlaced her fingers and smiled benignly. It took more than a smart-ass cowboy to get under her hide. “The estate is to be divided equally between the two of you,” she announced.
Stunned, Slade simply sat there, as breathless as if he’d just taken a sucker punch to the gut. A single thought hummed in his head, like a trapped moth trying to find a way out.
What the hell?
Hutch, no doubt just as shocked as Slade was, if not more so, leaned forward and growled, “What did you say?”
“You heard me the first time, Hutch,” Maggie said, unruffled. She might have looked like a gracefully aging pixie, but she regularly chewed up the best prosecutors in the state and spit them out like husks of sunflower seeds.
Slade said nothing. He was still trying to process the news.
“Bullshit,” Hutch muttered. “This is bullshit.”
Maggie sighed. “Nevertheless,” she said, “it’s what Mr. Carmody wanted. He was my client, and it’s my job to see that his final wishes are honored to the letter. After all, Whisper Creek belonged to him, and he had every right to dispose of his estate however he saw fit.”
Slade finally recovered enough equanimity to speak, though his voice came out sounding hoarse. “What if I told you I didn’t want anything?” he demanded.
“If you told me that,” Maggie responded smoothly, “I’d say you were out of your mind, Slade Barlow. We’re talking about a great deal of money here, in addition to a very profitable ranching operation and all that goes with it, including buildings and livestock and mineral rights.”
Another silence descended, short and dangerous, pulsing with heat.
Hutch was the one to break it. “When did Dad change his will?” he asked.
“He didn’t change it,” Maggie said without hesitation. “Mr. Carmody had the papers drawn up years ago, when my father and grandfather were still with the firm, and he personally reviewed them six months ago, after he got the diagnosis. This is what he wanted, Hutch.”
Hutch snapped up his copy of the document and got to his feet. Slade rose, too, but he left the papers where they were. None of this seemed real to him—he was probably dreaming. Any moment now, he’d wake up in a cold sweat and a tangle of sheets, in his lonely, rumpled
bed over at the duplex where he’d been living since he came back to Parable ten years ago, after college, a stint in the military and a brief marriage followed by a mostly amicable divorce.
“I’ll be damned,” Hutch muttered, his voice like sandpaper. He was dressed for ranch work, in old jeans, a blue cotton shirt and a pair of well-worn boots, which probably meant he’d had no more notice about this meeting than Slade had.
“Thanks, Maggie,” Slade heard himself say as he turned to leave.
He wasn’t grateful; he’d spoken out of habit.
She got up from her chair, rounded the desk and pursued him, forcing the printout of his father’s will into his hands. “At least read it,” she said. “I’ll set up another meeting in a few days, when you’ve both had time to absorb everything.”
Slade didn’t answer, but he accepted the paperwork, felt it crumple in his grasp as his fingers tightened reflexively around it.
Moments later, as Slade opened the door of his truck, Hutch was beside him again.
“I’ll buy your half of the ranch,” he said, grinding out the offer. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the money—I’ve got plenty of that anyway—but Whisper Creek has been in my family for almost a hundred years, and my great-great-grandfather built the original house and barn with his own hands. The place ought to belong to me outright.”
The emphasis on the phrase my family was subtle, but it was an unmistakable line in the sand.
Slade met his half brother’s fierce gaze. Reached in to take his hat off the passenger seat where he’d left it earlier, resting on its crown, before heading into Maggie’s office. “I’ll need to give that some thought,” he said.
With a visible effort, Hutch unclamped the hinges of his jaws. “What’s there to think about?” he asked, after another crackling pause. “I’ll pay cash, Barlow. Name your price.”
Name your price. Slade knew he ought to accept the deal, and just be glad John Carmody had seen fit to claim him, albeit posthumously. All he had to do was say yes, and he could buy that little spread he’d had his eye on for the past couple of years, pay cash for it, instead of depleting his savings for the down payment. But something prevented him from agreeing, something that ran deeper than his utter inability to act on impulse.
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