“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Liar,” Jeannie said, coming into the room and closing the door behind her. Less than a minute later, Leeza did the same. They both sat on Corrie’s bed, just as they’d done a thousand times in college and off and on during the years after. Had Jeannie consulted Leeza or had the astute woman just known something was up?
“So, what’s this I hear about you kissing Mack Dorsey?” Leeza asked.
Corrie moaned.
“That’s what I like,” Leeza said mildly, “the short version, no gory details.”
Corrie couldn’t help but chuckle. However, she didn’t remove the pillow.
“How did he make you mad?” Jeannie asked.
“By telling me it wouldn’t happen again,” Corrie said, and had to repeat herself after lifting the pillow. She felt every kind of a fool.
“And I take it you want it to happen again?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
Corrie sensed her friends’ exchange of glances. She felt Jeannie’s gentle hand on her back. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m so embarrassed.”
“About what? That Corrie Stratton actually kissed a man?” Leeza asked.
“No. Well, a little. But mainly because I got mad at him because he hurt my feelings. And then I snapped at him.”
“Guess what, Corrie, it’s about damned time you snapped at something. You’re years behind in that department,” Leeza said mildly. “You’ve always been so busy trying to be a wallflower that you never even noticed that you’re the belle of the ball.”
When Corrie didn’t say anything, Leeza added, “Of course, we can’t fire him now.”
Corrie twisted around and sat up, shoving her hair off her face. “Who said anything about firing him?”
“I’m glad you agree. That would smack of sexual harassment. We are his employers, you know. It’s not really kosher to go around kissing the hired help and then firing them.”
“For heaven’s sake,” Corrie sputtered. “He’s not hired help. He’s—he’s already indispensable around here. The kids would fall apart if he left.”
Leeza chuckled and flicked her cheek with a long, tapered finger. “So make him eat his words…and make him stay. And, whatever you do, don’t apologize for getting angry at him. If anything, thank him. It’s a Corrie Stratton first.”
Mack woke as he always did, with the screams of children echoing in his ears.
His first night on the ranch, Corrie had warned him about ghosts. And just that night they’d both thought they’d seen one. But Mack knew Corrie thought in terms of wraiths, ghostly figures on lonely roads, a wailing woman seeking her lost children.
She didn’t know the first thing about real ghosts. He’d lived with them daily for the past two years. They haunted his every step, his every breath, and screamed when and if he finally managed to fall asleep.
He washed down a couple of aspirin with a gulp of the mineral-heavy liquid that passed for water on Rancho Milagro. Slowly the agonized sound of children’s cries faded from his mind, not disappearing but recessing into the background, ready to come forward again anytime he closed his eyes or let his thoughts drift for a while.
Luckily, he had these children at Rancho Milagro to think about now, living children to concentrate on. And Corrie to try ignoring. The trouble was, if he thought about these new children for any length of time, the faces of the other children would steal in, looking at him with accusation and hurt. Betrayal.
The bigger trouble was that thinking about Corrie seemed to keep thoughts of those doomed children at bay, but thoughts about her were every bit as torturous as the ones he had of the lost children. Without any need to focus his attention on her, he could still taste her, smell her fresh scent and drown in her giving touch.
What would be the harm of just taking what she seemed to so readily offer? She wanted him as much as he wanted her. He knew that with every fiber of his being. But it would be like plucking a rare flower and leaving it without water. He could sense the depth of the woman-child within her and refused to be a party to hurting her. And hurt her he would.
The magic of holding her first stiff, then compliant body against his was just what the doctor ordered. But he couldn’t bear it if she knew what he’d done. He didn’t know which would be worse, if she, like so many other misguided souls, would consider him a hero, or if—as he did—she might damn him for the lost lives.
And yet, after having tasted her, felt what a marvel it was to hold her in his arms, he physically hurt from the longing to repeat it, to just tell her about his past and have her understanding. If her voice was like the sound of paradise, her touch was a healing hand to soothe his brow and her kiss a promise of hope.
But he didn’t believe in promises. God knew, he’d made too many two years ago and had lied to every single child he’d lost. If he continued the path he’d been unable to resist with Corrie, she would soon learn about the scars she couldn’t see, the wounds imperfectly healed.
He’d seen her light burning late into the night. He’d seen the shadows beneath her eyes the following day. And he’d heard the puzzled pain in her voice when she’d asked him not to apologize when he’d tried telling her they couldn’t repeat a kiss that seemed to strike at the very center of his soul.
And he couldn’t offer her the reasons why it had to be that way. He could tell her about himself, his past, and the horror that lingered inside him, but it wouldn’t explain the nightmares, wouldn’t begin to cover the deep well of guilt that dogged him every single day, and would only partially let her glimpse the face of the man he’d been before. Or, making him feel more uncomfortable, the man she almost made him want to be again.
He turned off his light and sat for a while in the darkness, staring across the expanse of grounds at the brightly lit window that separated her from him. Why did she sleep with the light on? And if she wasn’t sleeping, what kept such peace at bay?
And what about that unexpected flare of temper? She’d been right to be angry, and right to call him on it. It had just surprised him. He hadn’t heard an angry note in her voice the entire time he’d been on the ranch. When Corrie Stratton says it’s true, it’s a fact.
And how could he sit in a car with her the next morning and not drag her into his arms again and kiss her as senseless as she made him?
Nevertheless, shortly after dawn, after a hurried conversation with Chance and hearing that the marshal hadn’t seen so much as a sign of the woman in black, he joined Corrie at the Bronco.
Her eyes skittered to his, only to veer off to his shoulder. She was wearing a thick woolen poncho and tall leather boots that somehow made her look like a kid dressed up in her mother’s clothes, instead of the strong ranch woman the clothing implied. Her glorious hair was caught up in its usual twist-cum-ponytail and her darkened eyes told the story of a night as restless as his own.
“Would you mind driving this time?” she asked. “I want to watch out for her.”
He refrained from pointing out that she was a lot more familiar with the ranch roads, merely holding the passenger door open for her. She shied away from his proffered hand and he pulled it back as if she’d slapped him.
Once behind the wheel, he all but ground the gears, forcing the car to do his frustrated bidding.
“This shouldn’t take long. We’ll either find her and talk her into coming back to the ranch, or have to send someone out to take her into town.” she said.
He was vaguely surprised she was talking to him at all and was grateful that she’d picked an utterly neutral topic. “Unless she was a ghost,” he said with a slight smile. “Chance didn’t find her and he wasn’t too far behind us.”
When she merely responded with a faint and wholly distant smile of her own, he asked, “Is there really an abandoned place there?”
“Really.”
“A ranch house?”
“Or something. It’s mostly ruined
walls and an old fireplace now, adobe, what’s left of a couple of mud walls.”
Mack felt like grinding his teeth. He’d wanted neutral, had hoped for it. Now that he had it, he wanted to shatter it, break through her reserve and talk about the night before. He had to bite back an apology for his words following the kiss. He’d been speaking nothing but the truth, and yet, because he wanted her so badly it hurt, he’d done the one thing he hadn’t wanted to and caused her pain.
Her reaction wasn’t too tough to figure out. It didn’t take a rocket scientist. Rejection was a tough call at any time, and minutes after a mind-shattering kiss, it was the cruelest act of all.
“Corrie—”
“There’s the track,” she said, cutting him off.
He almost flipped the car, taking the turn so abruptly onto the narrow dirt track.
“Now, around this next curve we should hit an arroyo. After that, the ruins.”
Mack didn’t say anything, forcing the car to stay on the rough excuse for a road.
As she’d said, after the washed-out arroyo, they cleared a rise and below lay the abandoned half structure of a former small home. He pulled to a halt beside what was left of it.
Everything about the place spoke of emptiness. No birds called, no trees, even denuded by winter, lingered around the place. Even the brisk breeze that had been blowing earlier seemed to avoid this shallow valley.
“Corrie—”
“She can’t be here,” Corrie interrupted, and, despite her assertion, climbed out of the car.
Mack swore beneath his breath but followed suit. When Corrie would have stepped through the remnants of what had once been a doorway, he deliberately held out his hand and moved in front of her. He walked beneath a leaning lintel held upright by a couple of strips of charred wood. A fire had taken this place down, he thought, his heart scudding in his chest. He could hear the faint wail of children crying for help.
He kept his hand outstretched to keep Corrie from following until he could make certain the place was indeed empty. And safe.
To his left he could see the crumbled remains of a fireplace and an adjacent wall. These bits of a former house stood like a triangular gravestone in the middle of a rectangle of desolation.
“She’s not here,” Corrie repeated in a near whisper.
“No,” Mack agreed, though his eyes were locked on something bundled in the corner beside the fireplace. “But she’s been here. I can see why Chance didn’t see this last night.”
“What is that?” Corrie asked, her hand curving around his arm, much as she’d done the night before. Her touch sent a shock wave through him, making him draw a harsh breath.
“I believe it’s your coat,” Mack said through a constricted throat.
Corrie waited while Mack retrieved her coat and gloves. He shook them out before handing them to her.
“They’re cold,” she said. “She must have left them behind first thing this morning.”
Mack didn’t say anything, his back rigid and his face grim. His icy eyes were focused on the dirt floor of the ruin.
“What is it?” Corrie asked, but even as she questioned him, she knew what he was looking at. His footsteps were clearly visible in the early morning light—a set of Saucony tennis shoe prints going to the corner to retrieve her coat and a matching set coming back. No other marks disturbed the many layers of silt and sand.
She stretched out her own boot and pressed it into the ground, much more lightly than she would have trod. She pulled it back. A perfect toe print marred the earth floor.
An atavistic sense of wrongness gripped Corrie, and she wanted to toss the expensive duster and gloves that Leeza had given her to the ground. A dimly held precept that one didn’t deliberately throw away good things or gifts was all that kept the items in her hands.
“She could have walked around behind the walls.”
“Yes,” Corrie said with a little more enthusiasm than the suggestion warranted. “That would explain it. The lack of footprints.”
“She could have just tossed them there, figuring we would come looking for her in the morning.”
“Or she could have had a car waiting for her outside the walls and just dropped them there.”
“Any of those things are possible,” Mack said.
“Anything’s possible.”
“Like for you to forgive me for last night?” His voice, deepened by emotion, seemed to slice through her. Her eyes cut to his and the rough demand in his blue eyes snared her completely. She must have looked confused because he added, “For the stupid things I said?”
“I should apologize, too—”
“No,” he said firmly, taking a step forward. “You had every right to be angry. You’ve been nothing but wonderful from day one. I’m the one who’s been slinging a bushel full of mixed signals.”
“You were pretty clear last night,” she said. Her voice felt rusty, her jaw stiff.
“Yes, if you mean my wanting to kiss you. And liking it. And wanting to do it again.”
“You do?”
“God, yes,” he said, and reached out as if he would touch her face, only to pull his hand back and drag it through his hair instead.
Every instinct in Corrie told her to retreat, to be silent, to literally leave well enough alone. Every adage she’d been raised with clamored at her to let her gaze fall from his and just walk away. All’s well that ends well—Shakespeare. Can one go upon hot coals and his feet not be burned?—Proverbs. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen—some crazed coward.
“Please kiss me, then,” she said. Her heart beat a jagged rhythm in her chest; her breathing seemed tangled in her throat. She suspected her hands were shaking and knew full well her knees were. And yet she continued to stand exactly where she was, her eyes linked with his, her request hanging in the air between them. “Please.”
Even if he drew her into the hell he lived, even if he hurt her immeasurably in the far distant next ten minutes, Mack could no more have resisted Corrie’s request than he could have stopped himself from running into that burning hallway two years ago.
The two feet separating them disappeared in a single step forward. He plunged a trembling hand into her amazing hair and used the other to sweep the coat and gloves from her grasp and draw her body to his. As his lips lowered onto hers, capturing her very breath, he told himself to stop, to hold back, to remember the myriad reasons he shouldn’t be giving in to this fierce demand. But as her lips opened to him, as her hand stole around his neck to pull him even closer, all rational thought evaporated.
He was a man and she was every man’s dream of a woman. And in a force as primal as tides, moonrises, and as turbulent as hurricanes and thunderstorms, he lost himself in the wonder of holding her close, tasting her, drinking in her scent, drowning in her moans of acceptance.
Corrie felt awash in contrasting sensations. An icy breeze teased at her fingers while Mack’s fiery-hot lips sparked a raging fire within her. She seemed mindless, yet had never thought more clearly in her life. As his hands tangled in her hair, making her moan with a wanton lust, she understood how long she’d been standing on the outside of life. Maybe it took feeling fire to know it could burn. Maybe it took tasting a man’s unbridled hunger to know how to give it in return.
His free hand roamed her back, then slid beneath her warm poncho. She gasped as his cold fingers grasped her body and sighed when they created a blaze in her loins. Her already trembling knees gave way, and it seemed she was floating in his rock-hard grip.
If La Dolorosa had led them there, if she was an apparition only of lonely nights, then she’d blessed them by abandoning them by day, leaving this place empty of all but a thick duster and a pair of gloves.
As if reading her thoughts, Mack groaned aloud and lowered her to the duster he’d spilled to the ground. Like a magician, he swung it open, creating a bed with a wave of his hand.
He cushioned her head in the crook of his arm and gently swep
t her hair from her face. Cold fingers—hot touch.
“Corrie…”
“Please,” she said, unable to voice anything else but sheer want, utter need.
“Look at me, Corrie,” he whispered.
She felt as if she heard his voice from far away, his touch already having taken her as far from earthly ground as possible.
He was bent over her, his eyes clouded with want, his lips moist with her kisses. “You make me crazy,” he said.
“Welcome to the nuthouse,” she quipped, and was amazed at how naturally the light banter slipped from her tongue. A minor miracle.
He swept her poncho up and it pooled around her neck. He lifted her slightly and slipped it from her head, letting it become a pillow. His hot gaze burned through her thin layer of clothing, heating her.
He said raggedly, “Corrie, if you want to stop, tell me now. Because God knows in half a second there won’t be any turning back.”
“If you stop now, I’d probably die right here,” she murmured, and thought that in another place or time she might have blushed at her own temerity. As it was, she reached for his jacket and slid her hands into the warm interior, making him draw a sharp breath.
“I don’t have protection,” he rasped.
Corrie couldn’t help the rush of desire his simple words brought her, nor hide the sudden flare of color in her cheeks.
He lowered his lips to the pulse throbbing just above her collarbone. He deftly unbuttoned her blouse, spreading her blouse open, and ran the tips of his fingers across the swell of her breasts.
“In—in the pocket of my duster,” she gasped out.
He gave a rough chuckle, his hot breath fanning her breasts. “Prepared?”
She squirmed beneath his touch, his fire-kissed lips. “I’m—I’m the sex education teacher.”
He gave a muffled chortle in the hollow between her breasts. “They must love your classes.”
She answered his chuckle with a gasp as his hand freed a breast from the confines of her bra and his fingers took a hardened nipple in a swift, sure capture.
Molten liquid coursed through her and she arched upward, her hands automatically seeking his face to draw him down to her.
At Close Range Page 10
