Big Sky Country

by Janet Dailey

  Jill wasn't concerned that given enough time she could overcome the competition presented by the older woman. The problem was she didn't have much time. In a little more than a week, she and Kerry were due to leave.

  It had become a case of if the mountain wouldn't come to Mohammed, Mohammed had to go to the mountain. Luckily Riordan was fixing a fence close to the house today, so Mohammed didn't have far to go.

  As Jill drew nearer the truck, she ran a hand along the edge of the blouse she had tied around her midriff. There was a light golden quality to the bareness of her waist, courtesy of the hours she and Kerry had lain in the sun. On the surface, the tied blouse was concession to the blazing hot sun overhead, but actually it was intended to draw attention to the slenderness of her waist and suggestive curves of her hips and breasts.

  "Hello!" Jill called, hooking a thumb in the loops of her slacks as she rounded the rear of the truck. "Are you working hard?"

  Straightening from the fence, Riordan glanced over his shoulder, an odd light flickering briefly in his gray eyes. Jill halted beside the truck, the world spinning crazily for an instant. A naked expanse of bronzed torso glowing with the sheen of perspiration met her eyes. Riordan's shirt lay discarded on the fence post.

  "Out for a walk?" There was a substantial degree of cynical mockery in his question.

  Leather gloves were pulled off with slow deliberation to join a pair of pliers in one hand as he moved lazily toward the truck and Jill. His gaze slid to the brown-tinted bottle in her hand.

  There was a roaring in her ears that she couldn't explain. She gladly shifted her attention to the bottle and away from the hypnotic sight of the tightly curling black hairs on his chest. Good heavens, she'd seen her brothers dressed considerably less decently than that. Why on earth was she letting it disturb her?

  "Yes, I was feeling a bit restless and thought I'd walk it off," she admitted, tossing her head back with an air of careless indifference. "Since I had nowhere in particular to go, I thought I'd bring you something cold. The sun is hot today."

  "That was thoughtful of you." He leaned against the side of the truck near Jill, laying his gloves and pliers near a roll of barbed wire in the back of the truck before taking the bottle of beer she offered.

  "I try to be useful," she smiled, attempting to penetrate the smoky veil of his eyes for some reason behind his dry-voiced response. Riordan could be positively impenetrable at times. This was one of those times.

  She watched him unscrew the lid and toss it in back, then lift the bottle to his mouth. As he tilted his head back to drink, she studied the tanned column of his throat, the cords rippling sinewy strong.

  Wiping the mouth of the bottle, Riordan offered it to her. "Have a drink. You must be thirsty after your walk."

  Her throat did feel a bit dry and tight. Accepting the bottle and raising it to her lips, she could almost feel the warmth of his mouth imprinted on the glass as she took a drink of the malty, cold liquid.

  "Where's Kerry?" Riordan asked, his fingers accidentally—or on purpose—touching Jill's as he took the bottle from her hand.

  "At the house." Still insisting that I'm out of my mind for attempting such a thing, Jill added to herself.

  An uneasiness settled over her. She glanced away from Riordan, pretending an interest in the distant mountains sculptured against a wide blue sky. The gray eyes watched silently, leaving her with the unshakable feeling that it had been a mistake to come out here.

  "I suppose I ought to let you get back to your work," she offered, for want of anything better to say.

  "Not yet," Riordan drawled complacently.

  Jill glanced in surprise at the wrist that was suddenly a firm captive of his hand. "I…only came to bring you something to drink. Mary thought you might like a cold beer."

  "Mary thought?" A brow arched quizzically, a dark glitter laughing at her in his eyes. "She must be getting forgetful, otherwise she would have remembered the cooler of beer she sent with me at noon."

  Damn! Why had she allowed herself to be tripped up in her own lie? That was a teenager's mistake.

  "Maybe that's what she said and I misunderstood her," she bluffed. "In either case, I'm keeping you from your work."

  "I'm not objecting."

  The bottle was set half-full inside the truck. Applying pressure to her wrist, Riordan drew her toward him. Short of struggling Jill couldn't resist.

  The initiative of any embrace was supposed to have been at her invitation and not this soon. She let her legs carry her reluctantly toward him, almost sighing in relief when he let her stop a scant foot from him. At the moment her senses were clamoring too loudly at his nearness. She needed a few seconds to regain her sense of objectivity before coming in physical contact with him.

  His superior height forced her to tilt her head back to meet his hooded arrogant gaze. "Riordan, I—"

  A hand touched her cheek, halting her words as effectively as if it had covered her mouth. "How many men have told you that your eyes are the color of the sky?" he mused cynically. "A Montana sky, vivid blue and pulling a man into the promise of heaven beyond."

  No sooner was Jill aware of her wrist being released then she felt his hand on the bare flesh of her waist. The strong male scent of him was an erotic stimulus she didn't want to feel.

  "Please!" Her effort to appear indifferent was thwarted by the involuntary catch in her voice.

  "Didn't you wander into this meadow with the intention of bestowing some of the honey from your lips on me, butterfly?" Riordan taunted.

  A tiny gasp parted her lips. His hand curved around the back of her neck, drawing her upward to his mouth. The naked chest was satiny smooth and sensual beneath her fingers, hard muscles flexing as he molded her against him. Her lips moved in response to his to deepen the kiss until a wild, glorious song burst in her heart.

  The melody raced through her veins. Jill was only half aware of Riordan pressing her backward. Spiky blades of grass scratched her bare back as his weight pinned her to the ground. The caress of his hands was arousing, exhorting her to give—and to plead with her body to receive—more in return.

  The tails of her blouse were untied and the buttons undone with careless ease. Her nipple hardened under his touch and she moaned in surrender. The reason she had come was completely lost under the spell of ecstasy flaming through her.

  When his head raised from hers, she locked her arms around his neck to draw him back. His fingers closed over her wrists and firmly pulled her hands away, his mouth twisting harshly.

  "Sorry, butterfly. I'm not satisfied either, but we are about to have company," Riordan mocked the glaze of desire in her eyes.

  Rolling to his feet, he stood above her. Dominated as she was by raging primitive emotions, it took a full second for Jill to realize the significance of what he had said. The sound of a car engine could be heard crossing the meadow and drawing nearer. She scrambled to her feet, cheeks flaming at her complete lack of control, and turned away from his taunting gaze to hastily button her blouse.

  The task was barely completed by her shaking hands when the car stopped beside the truck. Self-consciously brushing golden hair away from her face, Jill turned. She wanted to scream in frustration at the sight of Sheena Benton.

  "Am I interrupting something, Riordan?" Sheena drawled archly, leaning against the steering wheel of her car, fingers curling like unsheathed claws over the wheel.

  "It'll keep," Riordan shrugged, slanting a mocking glance at Jill's still flushed cheeks. "What can I do for you?"

  "I wanted to remind you about tonight." Her statement was directed at Riordan, but the hatred in her eyes was solely for Jill.

  "I hadn't forgotten," Riordan assured her smoothly, an intimate dark light entering his eyes.

  "If you can get away, why not come early?" Sheena suggested. A purring entered her voice at his look. "You can check the accounts over dinner."

  "I should be able to arrange that," he agreed aloofly, and was rewarded
with a dazzling smile. Nausea churned Jill's stomach.

  "I won't keep you," Sheena murmured, shifting the car into gear and glancing with feline archness to Jill. "Can I give you a lift to the house, Jill?"

  "No, thank you," she retorted coldly. "I prefer to walk."

  The coral red mouth tightened with displeasure. "Suit yourself," Sheena clipped with a toss of her chestnut mane. Blowing a kiss to Riordan, she reversed to turn back the way she had come.

  "Are you going back now?" Riordan asked with insinuating softness.

  "Yes," Jill answered decisively, wishing the heat in her cheeks would ease. "Right away."

  "I would suggest before you get back to the house to fix your blouse," he jeered. "You've buttoned it crooked."

  A mortified glance at the front of her blouse confirmed his statement. There was not the slightest chance that the sharp-eyed Sheena had not noticed it. "Thanks, I'll do that," Jill retorted defiantly, refusing to show any guilt about her action.

  But guilt hounded her steps all the way back to the house. She had intended to entrap Riordan with his physical attraction for her. Despite the way he had aroused her in previous encounters with his lovemaking, she had never expected he would awaken her inner desires and the extent of her womanhood. In all honesty, her confidence was badly shaken.

  Riordan wasn't at the dinner table when she entered the dining room with Kerry and Todd. She left it to Mary Rivers to explain where he was. There was a noticeable lack of desire to mention her meeting with Riordan that afternoon and she avoided the questing look from Mary.

  The perfectly prepared meal was utterly tasteless, but Jill forced down nearly everything on her plate. She didn't want to parry any questions about a lack of appetite. After the meal, she retreated to a corner of the living room with a book, ostensibly affording Kerry and Todd some privacy.

  Her thoughts were as jumbled and confused as they had been earlier. The printed lines on the book page blurred. She simply couldn't concentrate…on anything. The only thing that seemed to register was the portrait of the copper-haired woman with sparkling hazel eyes that hung above the mantelpiece. A butterfly like herself.

  Suddenly restless, Jill snapped the book in her lap shut, drawing startled glances from Todd and Kerry. "I think I'll go and see if Mary needs some help in the kitchen," she said in explanation.

  But the kitchen was sparkling clean and the housekeeper was nowhere to be seen. With the half-formed idea to take a walk outside, Jill wandered down the back hall towards the rear entrance.

  A closed door drew her hypnotically. She knew it was Riordan's room. Mary had mentioned it one day in passing, but Jill had never been inside. Curiosity surged to the forefront, a sudden need filling her to see his room.

  Cautiously she opened the door and walked into the room, touching the light switch. The small light overhead left the corners of the room in shadows. Jill stared silently around her, taking in the single bed against one side of a wall with a small table beside it and the chest of drawers against another wall. A rigid, straight-backed chair occupied one corner.

  Compared to the quiet elegance of the rest of the house, the stark simplicity of this room was unexpected. It was almost monastic. Very quietly Jill closed the door behind her, aware that she was trespassing but unable to leave.

  Riordan was a man of basics. She had always guessed that. Yet, walking to the single bed, she couldn't stop wondering why he had chosen to shun the more luxurious creature comforts offered by the rest of the house for this. Did he need to sleep here to remain hard and cynical? Was he avoiding the gentle, feminine touches she had noticed in the rest of the house?

  Fingering the agricultural book on the bedside table, Jill smiled at herself. She was crazy to come in here. The room revealed no more about Riordan than he did himself. She was being overly imaginative to believe otherwise.

  A striped Hudson Bay blanket covered the bed. Without being consciously aware of what she was doing, Jill sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress was firm without being rock hard, a fact she noticed absently as she gazed about the room.

  A movement caught her eye, and freezing with cold dread, she saw the doorknob turning. She couldn't breathe and as the door opened, she offered a hurried prayer that it would be Mary Rivers she saw. It was much too early for Riordan to come back.

  But it was his broad-shouldered lean-hipped frame that filled the opening. Gray eyes met the startled roundness of her blue ones. Jill's heart was in her throat. She couldn't think of one legitimate reason she could offer as an excuse for her presence in his room. With a speculative glitter, his gaze swept over her.

  "This is an unexpected invitation," Riordan murmured dryly, stepping into the room and closing the door.

  Heat flamed through her cheeks as Jill suddenly realized she was sitting on his bed. She rose hurriedly to her feet.

  The hard line of his mouth quirked mockingly. "There's no need to get up. I would have joined you."

  "I…I was just going," Jill stammered.

  "You don't need to slip into something more comfortable." His steel gray eyes studied her with lazy intensity, lingering on the trembling parting of her mouth, the pulsing vein in her neck and finally the vee of her blouse.

  Her hand protectively covered the vee. "You don't understand," she protested nervously. "I didn't expect you back so soon. I thought you…I mean, Sheena…" There simply wasn't any way she could put into words exactly what she thought he and Sheena would be doing.

  "After this afternoon, did you honestly think I would prefer the scratching of a jealous cat when I could have the fluttering softness of a butterfly?" Teeth flashed white with his wolfish smile as he took a step toward her.

  "No!" Her breath was fast and uneven. "I know what you must be thinking, finding me in your room and all," she rushed wildly. "I only came in because I was curious." The grooves around his mouth deepened. "It's not at all what you're thinking, I swear."

  "Don't bother to bat those innocent blue eyes at me," he taunted. "Or deny that your visit this afternoon was designed to implant your image in my mind when I went to see Sheena tonight. You were maneuvering again, Jill. We both know it."

  She opened her mouth to try to protest the truth of his statement. It would be futile. There were too many disturbing emotions stirring inside her for her to lie convincingly.

  "Excuse me, but I really must go," she murmured unsteadily, keeping her eyes downcast as she started toward the door.

  "Now what's the game?" Riordan was in her way, blocking the path to the door. "Are you playing hard to get?"

  "I'm not playing anything. Please let me by." There was room to pass him, but Jill didn't trust him.

  "I see." He was laughing at her, silently, but the cynical amusement was in his eyes. "You simply flitted into my room by accident, drawn only by curiosity. Now you want to fly away, is that it, leaving me with the teasing picture of you waiting on my bed."

  "Riordan, please!" Jill swallowed tightly.

  Trading words with him was useless. She had to escape before she became enmeshed in the backlash of her plans. At this moment she was too unprepared to cope with Riordan or her wayward reactions to him.

  On legs quaking like aspen leaves, she started for the door. As she drew level with him, she held her breath, flinching when his hand moved. But it didn't reach out for her. Instead it snapped off the overhead light, throwing the room into darkness.

  Stopped by the unexpectedness of his action and her own momentary blindness, Jill wasn't able to move. The suggestive intimacy of the bedroom, isolated from the living area of the house, washed over her like shockwaves.

  "Once you trap a butterfly—" his low voice was closer, a soft and seductive weapon, and she gasped at his hands gripped her shoulders "—you must take it by the wings."

  "Let me go!" she cried breathlessly, frightened by her sudden desire to lean submissively against his chest. She tried to wrench free of his grip, but Riordan used her twisting motion to pivo
t her around, easily drawing her unbalanced body against his.

  His dark head bent and he brushed his mouth against the sensitive skin below her right ear. Jill couldn't control the shudder of delight. The heady male scent of him enveloped her, earthy and clean. Tilting her head to one side, she tried to elude his provocative caress, but only succeeded in exposing more of her neck to his exploring mouth.

  "No," she pleaded, shaking back the feathery length of her gold hair and increasing the pressure of her hands that strained against his chest.

  Riordan laughed softly, a deep delicious sound that shivered down her spine. His mouth lifted to the averted line of her jaw.

  "Isn't this the way you planned it, Jill?" he taunted. His warm breath fanned across the already hot skin of her cheek.

  "I didn't plan this," she protested in a desperate whisper. Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the softness of the starlight streaming through the windows.

  "You didn't plan to make me want you?" Riordan jeered. Jill breathed in sharply. "I know you did. The idea has been in the back of your mind since the first time we met. Everything you've done has been calculated to blind me with desire for you so you could twist me around your finger, take what you wanted and fly away."

  "No," Jill gulped.

  She bent her head backward, trying again to escape the disturbing nearness of his mouth. Strong fingers spread across the small of her back, molding her arching body more fully against the male vigor of his. A dizzying weakness spread through her limbs. Her tightly closed lashes fluttered open, focusing her gaze on his rugged features. Half-closed eyes studied her upturned face with a silvery fire that stole her breath.

  "You look like some pagan goddess," Riordan murmured deeply, "with that passionate mouth and those eyes sparkling with starfire."

  "Please!" she begged to be released.

  A hand curled its fingers in the long silken hair at the back of her neck. Jill knew his mouth would tantalize her lips no longer and she started to struggle against the inevitable. But the hand on her neck wouldn't allow her to avoid his kiss. Her hammering fists glanced harmlessly off his chest and shoulders.