Rachel froze. Unwelcome memories of that awful day and the police officer at her door surged through her. He’s gone, ma’am, in a head-on collision with a tree. I’m sorry.
Resurrected shock held her immobile.
The man lay unmoving.
Rachel stared. Please, not another death. Abigail. Davey. No.
A groan from across the small highway galvanized her.
Rachel ran over, the only sound her pounding pulse.
He still hadn’t moved. Oh, dear Lord, please don’t die.
Kneeling beside him, she checked his body for signs of injury. Hard to tell through the leather. She touched his shoulders, arms and legs, feeling for broken bones. Under layers of solid muscle everything seemed fine, but what about internal injuries? She didn’t know how to check. With a wail of frustration, she tore into herself for never having taken first-aid classes.
One arm moved, raising the visor of his helmet.
Her frantic glance took in his face. He was conscious. Deep-set blue eyes watched her steadily, silently.
He reached up to remove his helmet. She stopped him with a hand on his wrist, feeling a strong pulse, thank God. “Should you do that? Is your head injured?”
Her voice shook. So did her hands.
“I’m good.” He took off his helmet, and she gasped.
Travis?
Of all people—What—? How—?
“Are you okay?” Her voice emerged reed thin.
He didn’t respond, just stared into her eyes, then touched her bottom lip with a glove-clad finger.
“Only one,” he murmured.
Huh?
His eyes met hers again, mesmerizing. She could fall into that blue gaze for hours. The moment stretched out. A smile, sweet and broad, curved the corners of his mouth.
Oh my-y-y. What did Travis use for toothpaste? Moonbeams?
He sat up slowly, his body coming close enough for her to feel his heat even through his leathers. She sat back on her heels.
She should tell him to be careful, to check for injuries, but couldn’t find her voice.
His hand brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, the leather soft against her skin. Grasping the tips of his glove with his straight white teeth, he tugged it off, then did the same with the other. Still mesmerized, Rachel stared, swallowed and stared some more.
Again he reached for her hair and ran his fingers through it, massaging her scalp. Rachel almost purred like a cat.
“Soft,” he said. “Calf’s ear.” He wasn’t making sense, but Rachel was too captivated to question him while he touched her with such gentle grace. Her traitorous desire overrode her common sense.
She moaned low in her throat.
He moved his hand to the back of her neck, urging her close to his chest. As pliable as a rag doll, she allowed it. His lips touched hers with velvety moisture and a faint exhalation of coffee-scented breath.
She hadn’t touched a man since Davey. Davey. Her late husband. Her eager, playful lover.
Pull back, Rach. Don’t allow this. Davey is only six months gone. You should—
He deepened the kiss. Taking his time, he caressed her tongue with his. His skill. Oh, his earnest, deep skill. Yes, to his awesome finesse. She’d known it would be like this. Heavenly bliss.
Rapture. Joy.
Need simmered inside her. In the months since Davey’s death, what she had needed most was his touch, his soothing physical support, one last endless night of blazing lovemaking.
A woman should be allowed to say goodbye to her husband. Rachel’s anger wrestled with her guilt and desire.
Fireworks blazed. Buried dreams came to life. This man’s touch, his mouth, soothed away aching, aching grief.
Rachel sighed and lost herself in his kiss, exploring his mouth with her ardent tongue.
She’d never kissed, had never been kissed, so slowly and intently. Her mind went blank and her body limp.
Elizabeth announced her presence with a hard kick to Rachel’s belly.
She pulled back. “Ouch.” She’d been kneeling too long.
“Ouch?” Travis’s voice sounded lost in a sensual fog, echoing how she felt.
“The baby kicked me. I need to stand up.”
“Baby?” Coming out of his daze, his eyes widened.
Horror spread across his features. “Sorry! God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You’ve had a shock,” she managed to bite out, while she really wanted to blurt, Don’t be sorry. I’ve never been kissed like that in my life. I needed it. After all of the turmoil, and the crazy worries about the future, I needed something for me. Purely, selfishly, for just me.
But that was a daydream that required a hasty burial. Just me was not possible these days.
She eased away from him and rubbed her belly to soothe Beth.
“Are you okay?” she asked, striving to pretend she hadn’t been rocked by a stranger’s kiss, that this was nothing out of the ordinary.
“Yeah.” He nodded with a perplexed frown.
Did he understand any better than she what had just happened?
“Should I call an ambulance?”
“No ambulance. No hospital. I’m good.”
The cowboy she’d met a short while ago was gone, replaced by a motorcycle rider. “No head injury? You were out cold.”
“Naw. Not out cold, just winded.”
“But you didn’t move when I was checking you for injuries.”
“No, I didn’t.” His jaw hardened, so briefly she barely caught it. She didn’t have a clue what was going on.
He stood and winced. “This head’s pretty hard. I’ve survived worse. Gonna be bruised tomorrow, though.”
Rachel struggled to get to her feet. Travis rushed to help her. “You shouldn’t be kneeling in your condition.”
In her condition. For a brief moment, she hadn’t been a pregnant woman, but a desirable one. He’d looked past her circumstances to her.
She stared at him. “Are you serious, Travis? I thought you were unconscious. I needed to check you. You could have been badly hurt.”
“I appreciate your concern,” he said, his hands strong beneath her elbows, lifting her as though she weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. “I’ll be stiff the next few days, but that’s all.” He made sure she was steady on her feet, took her hands in his and squeezed before he released her, his rough calluses a jolting return to reality.
She needed reality, needed to get her head back onto her shoulders. So, he hadn’t been knocked out, but maybe he’d been in shock. How else to account for that kiss? He hadn’t known he was kissing her. Maybe he’d thought she was an old girlfriend. Or a current one? After all, she was nothing to him.
His leather jacket had a tear along one arm. Travis could have been killed.
On a dime, those awful memories raced through her again. Davey, Davey, Davey.
Her blood arced and swooped through her arteries. Her pulse skittered worse than on a caffeine high. “You sure you don’t have internal injuries?”
“No injuries. Everything feels fine. Good thing I slowed down to take the turn.”
Rachel reached down to swipe dirt and gravel from her knees. A fine tremor ran through her. Anger overtook the fright he’d given her.
She couldn’t fend off images, thousands of Davey carefree and laughing, and that one horrifying imaginary picture of him broken by the side of the road thanks to his damned obsession with motorcycles. Because of them, he was gone for good, and her children were fatherless. What was it with men and their stupid, dangerous toys? Unfair, Rachel. A motorcycle is just a tool. Davey’s reckless speed had been the real problem.
Common sense held no sway, only anger. “Maybe you should sto
p riding motorcycles. They’re dangerous.”
At her sharp tone, he shot her a hard look. “Not if you know what you’re doing. Was that your cat that ran out in front of me?”
“No, it was Abigail’s.”
“Who’s Abigail?”
Rachel pointed to the aging Victorian. “That was her house.”
“Right,” he said. “I thought the owner died months ago. Who owns the cat now?”
“Ghost turned feral after her death.” Rachel drew a breath to steady her quavering voice. This man’s decisions were no concern of hers. Who was she to judge what he did with his life? She modulated her tone. “She won’t come near anyone. I’m worried about her.”
“She’s gonna get herself killed.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
He strode to his bike and lifted it onto its tires, the machine as light as a bicycle in his capable hands. He was strong, but then again, she already knew that.
Where Davey had been tall and lean, Travis was maybe five-eleven and heavily muscled.
He turned the bike toward the house.
Those memories of Davey still haunting her, she couldn’t help but ask again, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
His soft smile eased her anger, a bit. “Yeah, I’m good. Honest. How about you? You good?”
“I’m fine.”
He touched a couple of fingers to his forehead in a casual salute—no wedding band, not that she was looking—and then limped up the driveway toward the Victorian.
“Wait!”
He turned back.
“Why were you riding a bike? Where’s your truck?”
“Left it in the garage for a checkup. It’s been running rough, and I want it ready for winter.”
“Where’s your horse and trailer?”
“Udall’s letting me leave them on his ranch till I’m set up here.”
Here? At Abigail’s?
“Why are you going to Abigail’s house? Won’t you be bunking in the worker’s quarters on the Double U?”
“Nope. I’ll be living here.” He parked his bike at the side of the driveway. She followed him.
Living here. In Abigail’s house, which she hadn’t even heard had been rented. Travis would be living across the road from her, where she would have to see him every day and remind herself that no amount of makeup or dresses could change what she was...an ungainly woman who was a month and a half away from giving birth. No amount of dolling up would make her as attractive to him as he was to her.
But he’d kissed her.
He’d been stunned, dazed, that was all. She would probably never know who he’d really been kissing while he’d put his lips to hers so sweetly.
“No one told me the house had been rented.”
“Rented? No, ma’am. I bought the place.” He mounted the stairs to the veranda.
Bought—? Her house had been sold? When had it been listed, and why hadn’t she heard about it? This was a small town. Everybody’s business was an open book, for God’s sake, and not one person had thought to tell her the house she craved had been sold?
What do you expect, Rach? You kept that dream close to your chest, didn’t you?
True, she had. She hadn’t wanted people, not even Davey, to think poor Rachel McGuire was crazy enough to believe she could actually find a way to buy a house.
Maybe she hadn’t heard him properly.
She chased after him, stood at the bottom of the stairs and stared up at him.
“You’re joking, right?”
He frowned down at her from the top of the steps. “Why would I joke?”
“You’re not supposed to be living here. No one’s supposed to buy this house.” She sounded like a lunatic. She didn’t care.
Her house, the only thing she wanted more in life than her children’s health and happiness, had been sold.
The air became thin.
She panted. Stars danced in front of her eyes. Her vision narrowed. A moment later, she found herself sitting on the bottom step with a hand on her back urging her head between her knees. Hard to do with a nearly full-grown baby in the way. The cowboy squatted in front of her and chafed the backs of her hands.
“Are you all right?”
She straightened, still struggling for air, but not so dizzy.
“Are you hungry or something? You fainted. Good thing I caught you.”
She’d fainted and he’d caught her? The man moved fast.
“Wait a minute. Back up.”
When Travis started to pull away from her, she grasped his hands, craving his solid comfort as her daydreams slid into nightmare. He squatted on his haunches and watched her with a steady regard.
“I didn’t mean get away from me,” she said. “I meant, back up in the conversation. Please tell me I misunderstood. You did not buy this house.”
“I bought the house.”
“No.” It came out a croak, with tears clogging her throat. This house was supposed to be hers.
He watched her with pity. Great.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that she was Cindy Hardy’s daughter and a widowed, single mother with a bun in her oversize oven and a three-year-old daughter with no father, and that they lived in Cindy’s tin can, but now she had also lost the chance to own the only house in the county she could have ever hoped to afford...and the only one she’d ever dreamed of owning.
Sure, her itty-bitty down payment would buy a small trailer, but after the childhood she’d had, the thought made her sick. She wanted more for her children. She wanted a real home.
The man who had bought her house watched her as if he was afraid she would faint again.
A terrible rage arose in her.
She didn’t want pity. She wanted a knock-down, drag-out fight, to pound something hard and not stop for a good month.
Bursting with the unfairness, she pushed against the cowboy squatting in front of her. Travis fell onto his butt in the dirt.
“Hey!”
Rachel had never touched another person with violence in her life.
She stood. Her belly might make a swift exit impossible, but she couldn’t stay here.
He jumped to his feet and grasped her upper arms to stop her. “Why’d you do that? I’ve done nothing to you.”
She kept her mouth shut because, if she didn’t, she would start to scream and never stop.
His big hands still gripped her arms. She hated him. She didn’t want him to stop touching her.
She put her hands against his chest to push him away, but her outrage deflated. If she could fall into the earth and disappear, she would. He was right. He had done nothing to her. Life had. As hard as she fought, she couldn’t get ahead.
Stuff happened.
She was tired of stuff happening.
She would just have to work harder. And harder. And harder. God, she was tired.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her palms soothed by the solid beat of his heart beneath his worn denim shirt.
Despite his confusion, despite how she had just treated him, he watched her with concern. Travis was kind and good, and she was behaving like a child.
“I truly am sorry.”
“It’s okay. I can see you’re upset.”
She started down the driveway to go home, or what passed for a home.
“You’re shaky,” he called. “You need some help getting across the road?”
Cripes. The day had started so well. For a short while, he’d found her super-duper attractive. Now, he was treating her like an invalid.
“I can manage by myself,” she answered with a touch of irritation.
She managed to make it inside the front door before the first tears fell.
After five minutes of the worst pity party she’d thrown for herself since Davey’s death, she rinsed her face and called her friend Nadine.
Rachel brought her up to speed on everything that had just happened.
“I’m angry, Nadine. Mad to the soles of my shoes. Life has to start turning around for me sometime soon.”
Nadine said, “I hear you, sweetie. You’ve had a rough go of it. How can I help?”
Nadine wrote for the local newspaper. She was handy with research and a computer.
A need for...something...burned inside Rachel. Vengeance, maybe? Or perhaps just to learn that Travis was not the perfect man he appeared to be? That he was flawed and unworthy of her attraction? That he didn’t deserve her house? It would be so much easier to think of him as her enemy if she didn’t like him so much.
“Find out about him,” she ordered Nadine. “You’re a great reporter. You do research for your articles. Find out who Travis Read really is and then let me know.”
“Will do, honey. I’ll get back to you soon.”
Rachel wished Tori were home right now. She would give her daughter the biggest hug, but every Friday morning, Cindy and Tori had a standing date for a few hours of shopping and then lunch at the mall.
Cindy worked at the hair salon in town and had disposable income. Cindy cared more for clothes and perfect nails than she did about improving her living situation.
Every week, she gave Tori the treats that Rachel could not afford and, every week, Rachel rose above her own regret and envy to be happy for Tori.
The new mall out on the highway twenty miles away was a monstrosity into which Rachel refused to set one foot. She liked the shops on Main Street, thank you very much.
Her mom loved the mall, but then, she had no sense of loyalty to her town at all.
Rachel missed Victoria. They’d only been gone a few hours, but Rachel needed her daughter something fierce.
Tori was goodness and light and the antidote to every disappointment life had visited upon Rachel.
She took her straw cowboy hat from the hook beside the door. She’d embroidered the bitterroot flowers on the band herself, as well as the ones on the secondhand shirt she wore. She set it on her head defiantly, then sat on the porch step to wait for her daughter to come home. She shouldn’t be wearing straw at this time of year, at the end of October for Pete’s sake, but Davey had given it to her after their first date. ’Nuff said.
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