Pumpkins, Cowboys & Guitars

by Patti Ann Colt

  Instead he lay still, held her close and inhaled the citrus scent of her hair. She’d taken care of him last night and for that alone he’d return the favor. She didn’t sleep enough, most times running on high-octane fumes.

  His mama was going to love her, after she killed him for keeping Kendra a secret all these weeks. Plus, he was going to have to tell Kendra soon about the ranch and the family. He was going to have to tear the scab off his rodeo days, off what happened with rodeo clown and friend Bill Fudd and one of the worst decisions of his life. He would have to talk about the details he hadn’t shared with anyone. He’d stalled because of her deep rooted fear of horses and because his family took the gold buckle winner in nosiness – even if it was done out of love and an intense desire to see him happy. He needed to get on solid footing with her before he inserted a bunch of family and painful memories.

  He took a deep breath and futilely willed himself not to remember, because when he did, he could still smell the pungent dirt, could still hear the shrill screams. Surround sound and Technicolor had nothing on his memory for that rodeo day. A series of circumstances converged and he felt responsible.

  He could still see Bill, flying through the air, kicked by the pissed off bucking horse Shane had been riding. Bill had smacked the fence with a force that came close to knocking down the sturdy structure. The blood that streaked down the fence was redder than red against the black and white background of his memory. Things moved in picture frame slow motion. He remembered yelling. He remembered having trouble getting his breath and struggling out of the dirt. He remembered grabbing for the bucking horse to get the animal away from Bill.

  Two months in intensive care. Paralyzed from the neck down. Bill’s life reduced to a hospital bed. He’d known in the minutes before his bareback ride that Demon’s Daughter was edgy and irritable. His only thought had been that it would make a heck of a qualifying ride. He should have stopped and questioned. But he’d kept quiet. He hadn’t managed two seconds before plowing into the dirt face first. The seconds after that lived in his memory with the fierceness of a fire breathing dragon.

  He jumped when Kendra’s lips touched his chest under his nipple. He lifted a hand to caress her face, thinking she was still asleep and luminous eyes gazed back at him. His thoughts scattered.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “I was trying to be considerate.” He pushed her hair behind her ear and struggled to shove the past away from the sweet morning waking.

  “Quit.” She lifted her mouth and kissed him under his chin. The thud he heard in his mind was him landing in the present, hope soaring.

  He took a deep breath. “Kendra?”

  She slid over on top of him. “You talk too much.”

  “Wow, I’ve never had that complaint before. Let me see if I can rectify that.” He slipped a hand behind her neck and pulled her mouth to his.

  She collapsed against him, her body all softness and surrender.

  Need surged between them.

  Seeing as how they hadn’t kissed much, Shane was determined to take his time and enjoy her sighs of pleasure.

  He sank his mouth into hers, sipping, molding, savoring. “God, I love your mouth.”

  “Sweet talker.” She traced the shape of his lips with her soft fingers.

  “You’re the sweet one.” He caressed the length of her back and rejoiced in her tremble. He tapped down on a flash of urgency and persuaded her mouth back to his.

  She resisted briefly, then darted her tongue along his lips. He opened his mouth and tangled his tongue with hers. She swept her fingers through his hair and down his jaw, turning his mouth so she could sink deeper into his kiss. Her gentle, persuading touch shook him.

  He broke the kiss. “God, Kennie.”

  She lifted slightly and gazed at him. He was riveted by the vulnerability and desire pulsing there. “I told you. One touch.”

  He crushed her to him. “Yeah, you told me.” He took her mouth in a sensual dance that left him burning. He sat up, lifting her astride him. He slipped his hands to the edge of her green tank top and pushed it over her head. She helped by raising her arms. She was bare underneath.

  The pale morning light crept through the breaks in the heavy curtains, illuminating the shape of her slender body. Her pale breasts had been sweet temptation for weeks. The crop tops, the tank tops, the sports bra – he was a guy. He wasn’t above checking out the pale sweet spot of her cleavage and fueling a few fantasies about having them in his hands. The reality was far more fulfilling.

  “What?” She shifted to cover herself. He grabbed her hands and eased them back down.

  “Beautiful. Utterly beautiful, honey.” He shifted her closer until he could kiss the slope of her right breast. He hated that he’d made her self-conscious in his male stupidity.

  He took his time with a warm breast in each hand, stroking, molding and learning. She bit her lip, her breath ragged. They were a perfect shape and fit his hands like a blessing. He celebrated when her shoulders relaxed and shifted the plump flesh more fully into his hands.

  When she moaned, he took that as his cue to pull the rosy nipple into his mouth. His tongue caressed the tight bud, sucked and pulled. Better than raspberry delight.

  He slid his hands along her hips and inside the waistband of her shorts. She shifted off him to remove her shorts and panties. Instead of getting back on his lap, she coaxed him to lift his hips and dragged his shorts down his legs. “Now we’re even.”

  Even was fine with him. He helped her back to his lap, palming her sweet ass and smiling at his first memory of her running down the trail. Her knees landed on either side of his hips and she pressed her mouth to his, rife with pent up need. She shifted her knees and settled her core over his hardness.

  He sucked in a breath and deepened the kiss. She was wet and hot and ready.

  But he didn’t want a quick meet and greet. He shifted aside. “Not yet, honey. I’m not finished.”

  He sat up, drew her closer and sucked the other nipple until she rocked against him. She smoothed her hands over his shoulders with soft, lazy strokes. Her touch stirred the fire in his gut.

  He broke away from her breast and lifted his mouth back to hers. They came together in a flash of lips and tongues. Control fractured. In one forward motion, he fell back against the soft mattress, pulling her with him. Her skin against his reverberated and soothed sore spots.

  “Condom.” His voice came out a desperate rasp.

  “Pill.”

  “Thank God.”

  The puff of her laugh feathered across his skin. She turned her lips to the pulse at the base of his neck, then kissed across his collarbone and down to his chest. He arched off the bed when she licked her way from nipple to nipple. Sweat broke out on his skin. Her orange citrus scent wrapped around him, binding to his memory. He lifted a hand and swept her hair from her face, desperate to see her eyes.

  They were half closed, the glow of her face giving away her pleasure.

  He tweaked her nipples and took immense pleasure in her sudden pause, the flash of teeth against her lips, the surge of her hips against him.

  A ragged moan was all the warning he received before she shimmied to center her hot core and rubbed against him in intense, hard strokes. His sanity scattered to the far corners of his existence and he tapped down on the need to come.

  He slid his hands to her hips and encouraged the sensual glide, willing to do anything for her at that moment if she wouldn’t stop. “Top or bottom?”

  “Top is working for me.” Her hand stroked down his side, slid between them and wrapped around his hard thickness. He silently whistled through his teeth, sure his head was about to explode with pleasure. He put a hand on top of hers. She guided him to her center and teased him with the heat there. He let her have her moment, then pushed her hand away and entered her in one slow glide, making them both moan.

  If the touching was a blast, then the entering was a nuclear event. Every n
erve discharged fireworks that skittered along his skin. He struggled against her tight liquid warmth, trying for containment, but her mouth and hands drove him past redemption.

  Kendra’s deep green eyes locked with his. “More.”

  He put his hands on her hips and helped set a rhythm to satisfy them both. His hips thrust deeper, harder with every sigh, every delirious expression on Kendra’s face. Thought faded, focused on the sounds of their lovemaking, skin-against-skin, sigh-for-sigh. She tightened around him and he was caught on a cusp a satisfaction so deep he cracked inside, defenses falling.

  She laced her fingers through his and pushed her hips into a frenzied movement. He let go and thrust harder, pounding into her until she ground onto him, stopping their rhythm. She sobbed softly and came.

  He thrust again and followed her, exulting in the white heat that rolled over him. She dropped her face against his neck and took several choppy breaths. He smoothed a hand down her back, holding her close to keep the moment, struggling with his own pounding heart and lack of oxygen.

  His emotions back flipped and then skidded, making a stop on the love word. The force of thought made him cautious, if only because he’d never visited this intensity before and he was reluctant to put words to the myriad feelings jumbled inside.

  She rested against him for several minutes, then raised her head. Her worried eyes swept over him.

  The emotion was so unexpected, he cupped her face and gave her a gentle kiss. “What’s wrong?”

  She bit her lip and took in a shaky breath.

  His mind separated, rebuilding a protective wall. “Kendra? Are you okay?”

  She lifted his hands and kissed his fingers. “Yes, I’m okay. It’s not this.” Her finger did a me-you sign. “I wasn’t expecting to want this so bad. Not right now.”

  She slipped away from him and opened a drawer, pulling on a long t-shirt.

  Shane rose up on his elbow, not bothering to reach for his shorts. “We’ve known each other a couple months, Kennie. If not now, when?”

  She bit her lip and gazed at him with more anguish that was necessary. They were two adults who enjoyed each other, in day-to-day life and now in bed.

  “I need to tell you some things.” She sat back down on the bed.

  Shane raised a hand and ran his knuckles down her cheek. “I don’t need to know about old boyfriends. I don’t care about old boyfriends. It’s you and me, right here, right now.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Okay? What then?”

  She closed her eyes and swallowed. “I should have told you this first.”

  “Would this news have made that much of a difference?”

  She opened her eyes and reached for his hands. “God, I hope not. Really, Shane. Please understand. This had nothing to do with me.”

  “What had nothing to do with you?”

  She took a deep breath, then another. “My name is Kendra Eileen Dawson.”

  “I know this.” He raised her hands and kissed her knuckles. “So?”

  “My father is Albert Dawson.”

  He could see from her expression that she expected the name to mean something to him, and it did, in a why-do-I-know-that-name type of way. He shook his hand. “Honey, it sounds familiar, but I don’t know why.”

  “The FBI arrested him six months ago on security fraud charges for embezzling from his clients.”

  He vaguely remembered snippets from the newspaper, but his extra money went back into the family ranch to help it grow. He didn’t invest and didn’t care to.

  She pulled her hands away when he stayed silent.

  “Wait.” He pulled her hands back to his and kissed them. “Give me a minute here. I only vaguely remember reading about this. How is this supposed to affect you and me?”

  She moistened her lips, her eyes a depth of sad that made his heart ache. He pulled her against him and kissed her forehead. “Babe, that’s him not you.”

  “You’d be in the minority. People think my mom and I knew about what he was doing. We didn’t. I didn’t. Dad’s business wasn’t something he talked about with anyone unless they were going to invest money. I didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “I believe you.”

  The tension let out of her like air from a balloon. “I need to take this thing between you and me in slow gradual steps, Shane.”

  “As opposed to what? The super-fast way we’ve already been going?”

  She swatted him. “I don’t speak to my dad. Haven’t spoken to him since the FBI told me what he’d done. I have this deep rift in my trust now. I am so angry and devastated and sometimes that comes out. I don’t want to ever take that situation out on you.”

  “How about someone to talk to, to lean on a bit? We can take this at whatever speed we need to, just so you remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “I’m the last person who will judge.” He leaned in to kiss her. He should tell her. Now. While they her honesty was fueling an openness he craved.

  But everything inside him shrank at the idea. In her situation, the crime had been her father’s, not hers. Stealing a man’s money was not the same thing as what he’d done. What was she going to say when she found out he’d crippled a man? Destroyed his life?

  He could get on a bucking horse. He could walk into a burning building. But he didn’t have the guts to face her condemnation when he told her the truth.

  ∞∞∞ ∞∞∞

  CHAPTER SIX

  Shane saw his brother as soon as he entered the Low Down Saloon and Restaurant. He hadn’t wanted to leave Kendra. She nervous and antsy since they’d made love and she’d confessed about her father. Even more so, he needed to be close to her while he tried to find a way to tell her what he’d done.

  But his brother’s urgent text message couldn’t be ignored. Sully Johnson, his cousin and owner of the place, was sitting in a booth at the back across from Jess, talking and waving his arms. He walked to the bar to give Sully a chance to wind down and ordered a beer from Fancy. The raven-haired, petite bartender had worked in the restaurant since Sully bought it. She slid a draft across the bar top.

  “Is it safe to go over there?” Shane took a sip.

  Fancy shrugged. “Anybody’s guess.”

  “Thanks. That helped.”

  “He’s your cousin.” She winked at him and went back to cleaning the bar. Then he had no excuse not to walk to the table.

  Sully stood. “Slide in here, Shane. I gotta get to the kitchen. Want something to eat?”

  “Yeah, could you get me a burger and some fries? Haven’t had time for lunch today.”

  “Done. I’ll have Fancy bring it when it’s ready.”

  He sat down across from his brother, removed his fire department ball cap, and took a sip of beer. “What was Sully’s problem?”

  “Giving me hell for saving Amy Rose’s horses and damn near getting myself killed, according to him. Apparently he talked to Amy Rose.”

  “Took the words right out of my mouth. You ever run into a burning barn again I’ll beat you black and blue. That’s what I get paid for. I have the equipment and the protection and the training. Don’t do that ever.”

  Jess gave him an irritated, yet indulgent look. “Noted. Would do it again. But next time I’ll wait for you to go ahead of me with a hose. If we have time.”

  Shane glared at him, tempted to give a bigger lecture, but what would be the point? Sully had already delivered a harangue that Jess hadn’t listened to. He could tell that from across the room. “So what was so important that you had to have me here now?”

  Jess raised a brow at his testy tone. “Well, seeing as how I haven’t seen you since the fire a couple days ago, and Amy Rose and I are getting married a week from Saturday…”

  Shane leaned back against the booth and grinned. “Honest?”

  “Cross my heart.” Jess grinned back.

  Shane reached out and shook his brother’s hand. “About damn time. What’s the
hurry? Figured Mom would talk you into a big wedding with all the trimmings.”

  “Uh, no. Can’t wait that long.”

  “Come again?” Shane took another sip of his beer.

  “Amy Rose is pregnant.”

  Shane choked and covered his mouth to keep beer from spewing across the table. “I know I told you to marry the girl and go forth and multiply. I didn’t mean to do it all at once.”

  Jess had a goofy, happy expression on his face. “I know. Isn’t it great?”

  Shane slapped his forehead. “All that not feeling well she’s had since she came back? Morning sickness?”

  “Uh, yeah. Pretty bad case of that. So will you be my best man? You’re off next Saturday, right?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. You didn’t even have to ask. Yes, I’d be honored to be your best man.”

  Jess heaved a sigh.

  Shane twirled his glass on the table. “What? You thought I’d say no?”

  “No, I wasn’t sure you weren’t working.”

  “I would have traded with someone, man. Come on! How often does a man’s brother get married?”

  Jess paused for a minute, some debate crossing his face. “You going to bring Kendra?”

  “To the wedding?” He shook his head, shuddering at the thought. There would be family filling every seat and crevice, all of them ready to blab his life from naked bathtub days to trophy winning. Holy smokes, fireman. No. “I don’t think so.”

  Jess leaned back in his seat and took a sip of his soda. “You’ve gone a couple months now keeping her to yourself. What do you think mom’s going to say when she finds out?”

  “She’ll kill me. But, I’ll die a happy man, because if I’ve made it to the point where I feel like introducing her, she’ll be mine.”

  Jess ran a hand over his face, doing a lousy job of covering his surprise. “That serious, huh?”

  “You recognized how I felt.”

  “I did?”