Redemption Road: Jackson Falls Book 5 (Jackson Falls Series)

by Breton, Laurie

  He held out both hands, and she took them in hers. They were warm and comforting, rough and callused from all that outdoor work. Solid hands, hands that made her feel safe and protected. He drew her to her feet and they stood, in no hurry as they gazed into each other’s eyes, clasped hands swinging idly at their sides.

  “When I first met you,” he said, “I could see that you were hurting, and I’d heard enough about your history to think I knew exactly who you were. I told myself to stay away from you, told myself you were nothing but trouble. Beautiful, complicated, and way more trouble than you were worth. I should’ve known better, because the first time I set eyes on you, I was a goner.”

  “There are things,” she said, “that I can’t tell you. I would if I could, but I can’t. Not now. Maybe never.”

  “Don’t you see what I’m trying to tell you? They don’t matter anymore.”

  And without conscious decision, they melted together. Delicious full-body contact. It had been too long since she’d been held by a man, and this particular man felt warm and hard and wonderfully male. With her arms wrapped loosely around his neck, she rested her head on his shoulder, and he danced her around the kitchen in a modified two-step, their half-eaten dinner forgotten. He smelled heavenly, of musky man and some expensive, spicy cologne. Colleen lifted her head and took inventory of his features. The full lips, the widow’s peak, the crescent-shaped scar near his left eye. Said softly, “How’d you get the scar?”

  “Hockey puck.”

  “Ouch.” Impulsively, she reached up and pressed a kiss to the scar. His skin beneath her lips was hot and smooth. He let out a rush of warm breath that feathered her hair and tickled her neck, and lust, sweet and delicious, trickled through her body and settled, a heavy weight, in her pelvis.

  His fingers captured her chin and tilted her face up to his, and those blue eyes examined every inch of her face. “Seems like forever,” he said, “that I’ve been thinkin’ about this.”

  Of their own volition, her hands tangled in his thick, black hair. “Harley,” she said.

  He pressed a kiss to her neck, and she fisted her hands in that thick mop of hair as he worked his way slowly, exquisitely, to her mouth. The kiss started out slow, then it caught fire. She made a soft sound of acquiescence, and they gave up all pretense of dancing. Tongues entwined in sweet, liquid pleasure, their hot breaths tangled, gusty and ragged, until it was impossible to distinguish his from hers. His hands, those wonderful hands, meandered down her body, leaving fire in their wake. They reached her hips and hauled them hard against his, and she gasped. Pressed pelvis to pelvis, woman to man, it was impossible to misunderstand his intentions. “Bedroom,” he said hoarsely.

  “Yes.” The word came out breathless, almost a moan.

  “Upstairs. You want me to carry you?”

  In spite of her state of arousal, a snort of laughter escaped her. “I’m almost as tall as you are, Atkins.”

  He arched one of those dark brows. “I’m a good six inches taller than you, Berkowitz. Are you implying that I’m not capable of carryin’ you?”

  “I’m not implying anyth—Harley!”

  He’d lifted her effortlessly and flung her over his shoulder. “That’ll teach you to impugn my masculinity.”

  “Put me down!”

  The stairs were steep and narrow, and he hadn’t bothered with the light. As he climbed, she halted her struggle for fear that they’d both go ass-over-teakettle and land in a bruised and broken pile at the bottom. Miraculously, they both survived the trip. In the upstairs hall, she said, less vehemently, “Put me down, Atkins.”

  “I’m not ready to put you down yet.”

  Sure-footed in the darkness, he moved without hesitation to the room that had once belonged to her sister. Thank God he hadn’t taken her parents’ room as his. Even she had standards, and that would have felt too icky. He opened the door, marched across the room, and dropped her unceremoniously on the center of the bed. She lay there, breathing heavily, in a pool of spilled moonlight. Harley knelt beside her on the mattress and, without conscious intent, she reached out to him.

  The moonlight softened his features, and she caressed his cheek, his brow. How had he managed to so thoroughly break down her defenses? He pressed his lips to her hand, then leaned to kiss her mouth. Already, the taste of him was familiar. They broke apart, and their eyes met. He reached out a hand and opened the top button of her shirt. She lay watching the delight on his features as he worked his way south, one button at a time, revealing inch after inch of her eager flesh. He removed the shirt and flung it onto the floor. Colleen raised herself on her elbows, reached behind her, and unclasped her bra. Tossed it aside. “Jesus Christ,” he breathed, and she wasn’t sure if it was curse or prayer.

  In no hurry, they undressed each other slowly, exploring with hands and mouths, revealing each other’s most intimate secrets. His body was beautiful. Smooth, muscled chest. Hard, flat abs. Was it wrong to think of a man as beautiful? “Do we need protection?” he whispered.

  She’d been on the pill during her marriage, but she’d stopped taking them after her husband died. Before that, she’d been celibate for a long, long time. “Yes,” she said.

  He rolled away from her, opened a drawer in the bed stand, and took care of business. Returned to her, settling his weight on her slowly, deliciously. “Sweet, sweet Colleen,” he drawled. “You pretend to be tough, but I can see right through you.”

  “Then you must know what I’m thinking.”

  The smile started in his eyes and moved slowly to his mouth, shattering her. She opened to him, wrapped a leg around him as, hard and slick and stunning, he eased inside her. “Oh,” she breathed.

  His eyes watched hers as they moved together in slow, exquisite motion. With her fingers wrapped around hard biceps, she arched her back, locked her legs around him, and watched those blue eyes go soft and smoky. All she’d wanted was to scratch an itch, but this was something altogether different, something light years beyond anything she’d ever experienced. “Harley,” she whispered.

  He kissed her, sweetly, and then not so sweetly. As their movements quickened, everything around them was boiled down, reduced to its most elemental quality. There was no more outside world, no more Colleen, no more Harley, nothing but the rock-hard pleasure of his thrusts, nothing but her soft sounds of encouragement in response. Her breath, his breath, her cries and his, mingled and combined with a single, searing intent, growing harder, faster, louder, until she shattered into a million pieces and took him with her over the cliff.

  Stunned, she lay beneath his heavy weight, breathless and incoherent and utterly destroyed. A tear escaped from the corner of her eye. How had she let this happen? The timing was all wrong. The man was all wrong.

  So why had nothing in her life ever felt so right?

  He raised his head. Brushed at a tear. “You’re crying,” he said. “Why’re you crying?”

  She closed her eyes, shook her head, unable to explain it to him when she couldn’t even explain it to herself.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sorry we did this?”

  She opened her eyes, reached up and touched his face, tenderly, with a depth of emotion that terrified her. “Of course not.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “I’m not a psychic, sweetheart. If there’s a problem, you have to tell me or I can’t fix it.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she said again. “There’s nothing to fix. If there’s any problem at all, it’s that everything is so very right.”

  ***

  Harley opened the door to the microwave and took out a plate. “Careful,” he said, setting it down in front of her. “It’s hot.”

  “Thanks.”

  He returned for his own plate, sat down in the chair closest to hers. “I’m sure dinner was better the first time around.”

  “Don’t worry about
it. I’ve eaten plenty of nuked leftovers in my time. This doesn’t faze me in the least.”

  He picked up the salt shaker, poured far too much of it on his food, and offered it to her. She held up a hand and shook her head. Harley set the shaker down and took up his fork. “So let me make sure I have this right. His will left everything to you. But the kids decided to contest it, and they threw you out and changed the locks. Without a single piece of paper giving them permission to do so.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Sweetheart, what they did wasn’t legal. If the will was solid, that house is yours unless and until a judge states otherwise. In writing. Why didn’t you call a lawyer? Why’d you just roll?”

  “It didn’t even occur to me. You don’t know what life was like for me after Irv died. I was heartsick. I’d given up. And they blindsided me. Just showed up with no warning. They gave me fifteen minutes to get out, while the locksmith waited in the driveway. Made me turn over my checkbook, told me my assets would be frozen until the court made its ruling. I was too tired to fight it. Too tired to find out if what they were saying was true. I didn’t want the damn house anyway. With Irv gone, I had no reason to stay there, and I figured that if they wanted his money that bad, they could have it.”

  “But a portion of that money is yours. Maybe not all of it, but it should be split up between you and his kids. How much was he worth?”

  She played with her food. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. We never discussed it. Money’s never meant that much to me. That’s not why I was with him. I fell in love with Irv before I knew he was rich.”

  “I’m not licensed to practice law in Florida, but I have a colleague down there. I could make a call to him, see if we can find out what’s going on with the case. If you don’t want the house, that’s fine with me, considering that I now have a vested interest in keeping you here. But you’re still entitled to your share of the estate. Let me nose around a little.”

  “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

  While they ate their reheated dinner, they talked. About her son. His daughter. About his plans to turn one section of pasture into crops. Maybe barley. Maybe soybeans. He was still doing research, and hadn’t made up his mind yet. Wholesale milk prices had taken a painful drop, and he was considering cutting the milking herd to a more manageable level, making up the monetary difference by raising some kind of crop that was more lucrative than milk. Times were changing. Small dairy farms were failing left and right. A man had to do whatever it took to survive.

  The one thing they didn’t discuss, the one topic they danced around, was the two of them. Their relationship. The significance of what they’d just done. They both knew that what had happened between them was more than just sex. Now they had to figure out what the hell to do about it. Colleen was loath to give it a name, and she suspected that Harley knew better than to push it. She needed time to think this over, time to revisit her priorities.

  Time to consider why it was that life kept blindsiding her like this.

  When she noticed that the clock read eleven-thirty, she shoved back her chair and said, “I didn’t realize it was so late. I have to be going.”

  “Don’t leave. Stay the night.”

  She managed to skirt him, and was already in the process of tugging her boots on. Zipping them, she said, “I can’t, Harley. I have a son at home.”

  “Mikey’s eighteen years old. Call him. He can’t possibly expect his mother to be celibate for the rest of her life.”

  She shrugged on her coat, wound her scarf around her neck, fished in her pockets for her gloves. “I highly doubt that Mikey has given any consideration whatsoever to my sex life. There’s too much of an ‘ew’ factor involved. Parents aren’t supposed to do that kind of thing.”

  He got up from his chair and stood in front of her. “Damn it, Colleen. I’m trying really hard to figure out how to make something of this—this—whatever the hell it is—between us. But it’s damn difficult when you might as well have a sign that says ESCAPE tattooed on your back!”

  “Harley, stop.” She feared she was conveying her anxiety to him, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. “I had a lovely evening, the most lovely evening of my life.” She took a step forward, gave him a gentle kiss. “And now I have to go home. We both have to work in the morning.”

  He wrapped a warm hand around the back of her neck, drew her to him, and kissed her properly. “You are a maddening woman. You’re aware of that, aren’t you?”

  “If I didn’t keep you on your toes, you’d lose interest.”

  He brushed her jaw line with his thumb. “So, will you still respect me in the morning?”

  She kissed the inside of his wrist and escaped his hold. Opening the door, she flipped the end of her scarf over her shoulder and said, “What makes you think I ever respected you?”

  And she shut the door behind her.

  Colleen

  She didn’t know why she’d agreed to this. It was her sister’s idea to become a sheep farmer, and Colleen wasn’t even sure how Casey had managed to drag her into the ordeal. But here they were, chugging down the road in the Vega, headed for A Fleece of Heaven, where her sister had finagled an invitation to tour the facility. The name was stupid. The whole idea was stupid. It wasn’t as though Casey needed to start a new business for the money. She was loaded, and most new businesses didn’t make a profit for the first couple of years, anyway. Instead, she’d be sinking money into this puppy, money she would probably never recover. Besides, between taking care of Paige and Emma, running the household, and working with Rob in the studio, her sister was already so busy she barely had time to go to the bathroom. Emma was showing signs that she’d be walking soon, and there’d be a new baby next fall. How the hell was Casey supposed to take on another responsibility? Especially one as involved as this? There was no way she’d be able to pull it off by herself. As if mucking out stalls for a herd of sheep wasn’t enough, was her sister also planning to learn shearing? Spinning? Dyeing? Packaging and marketing and merchandising? All of those took time and energy. Did she plan to sell her product direct to the consumer, or try to place it on store shelves? If she did go the store shelf route, would she be prepared to ship orders in bulk? The more she thought about it, the more mind-boggling the whole thing became. Casey couldn’t do it alone, not if she intended to produce in bulk. She’d need help. A worker drone or three. At a bare minimum, she’d need a business manager.

  A niggling suspicion gnawed at the periphery of her consciousness. Colleen glanced over at her sister, but Casey was sitting comfortably, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes focused on the passing scenery, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. If she did have an ulterior motive, she wasn’t divulging it.

  Frowning, Colleen turned her attention back to the road. As if touring a smelly sheep ranch wasn’t enough, they were capping off the day with a visit to Aunt Hilda. That, too, had been her sister’s idea, to kill two birds with one stone, since A Fleece of Heaven and Aunt Hilda’s house were located in the same general area. Rob and the girls could survive dinner without her, Casey had declared, and she’d gone ahead and accepted Hilda’s dinner invitation for both of them. Gripping the steering wheel, Colleen sighed. Casey was a powerhouse, and once she got an idea in her head, there was no talking her out of it.

  “I’m surprised Rob didn’t squawk about you being gone for dinner,” she said.

  Her sister turned to look at her, eyebrows raised. “He’s capable of cooking dinner. He lived alone for years. You should try his moo goo gai pan sometime. Out of this world. And I’m a grown woman. He knows better than to try to put his thumb on me.”

  Colleen didn’t respond. The picture her sister painted of her man cooking dinner brought back images of Harley taking those chicken breasts out of the oven. Which led to other, less G-rated images that heated her skin and made her tingle in places she’d just as soon not think about.

  As Rob liked to say, Jesus
Christ on a popsicle stick.

  A Fleece of Heaven was located about twelve miles out on a two-lane blacktop highway that meandered cross-country toward Rangeley. They were greeted warmly by Elsa Lundqvist, a sixtyish woman in overalls and a shapeless brown barn coat. The woman looked as if she hadn’t combed her long, graying tresses in weeks. But her operation was modern and clean and impressive. She gave them an hour-long tour of the production facilities, explaining everything and answering questions along the way. To Colleen’s surprise, her sister had clearly done her homework. The questions she asked were intelligent and on-topic. So this wasn’t just some impetuous idea Casey had picked up somewhere and blindly run with. She was serious.

  They ended their tour in the barn, where dozens of sheep milled about their enclosures, curious about these unfamiliar humans who had come to visit. The animals were as clean as could be expected, given the fact that they lived in a barn and slept on a bed of hay. The smells weren’t particularly offensive to a woman who’d grown up on a dairy farm and was well acquainted with the fragrance of freshly spread cow manure on a hot summer day. At one end of the building, a pen held a half-dozen ewes with their lambs. “Oh, they’re so precious!” Casey said. “Can I hold one?”

  Colleen held her sister’s dress coat over her arm while Casey sat on a wooden box and held a squirming, bleating lamb in her arms. Her sister buried her face in soft, springy fur, then glanced up at Colleen in wonderment. Casey was the most maternal person she’d ever known. She mothered everyone, from lambs to babies to grown men. The woman had a true knack for recognizing neediness, then emanating mega doses of love and healing. She’d tried to do it with Colleen when they were motherless teenagers, but Colleen had rebelled. Hurt and angry, still reeling from Mama’s death, she hadn’t wanted her older sister trying to run her life. All she’d wanted was to be left alone, so she’d spurned her sister’s advances every time Casey tried to close the gap between them. She’d eventually gotten what she wanted. Casey had left with no warning, had run off to marry Danny Fiore without ever looking back. Her sister had abandoned her, and what was left of her world had crashed down on top of her head.