by Linda Conrad
What he saw was her need, matching his. When he hefted her delicious breasts and bent double to taste the tips, she closed her eyes and moaned.
It was all he could do not to roll her over and take what he desired most with one swift thrust. But when she opened her eyes again and gazed at him with ecstasy written on her face, he realized what he should’ve known when they’d begun. Her needs came first. He loved her. And if she needed to take control of their lovemaking, he would gladly turn it over to her.
She reached out to run her fingers through the hair on his chest. And he hung on, biting the inside of his mouth to keep still.
Putting aside the odd thought of loving her enough to give her everything, he gave her this. This wonderful, most erotic night of their lives.
She bent over him, licking a path from his chin, down his neck and chest to his nipples. He groaned, more enthralled by the lost look of pure need on her face than by his own growing hunger.
Beginning to pant and moan softly, she lifted her hips while he helped position his rock-hard erection at her moist core. Lord, she was beautiful. Everything she did, every move, was perfection. Better than his wet dreams as a kid, that was for sure.
She sat back a little, giving his tip permission to enter her tight but welcoming opening. She held still then, frozen in place while he hung on the edge of ecstasy. Neither of them took a breath and both tensed their muscles to the breaking point.
Stand your ground, he cautioned his nearly out of control body. Just because he’d wanted her for what had seemed like a lifetime did not mean he would ruin her dreams. He vowed to make this first time for them exactly right for her, the way it would be for him no matter what.
Finally. Finally, she relaxed and he jerked home.
“Lacie.” He called her name on a tortured breath, begging her to pick up speed, to end his need.
But that wasn’t best for her and soon he knew it, too. Tightening a grip on her hips, he lifted his own hips and began to move, building a slow, even rhythm. This was his Lacie and he would give her everything. Anything.
He let her know by each smooth stroke and every velvet touch that he cherished her beyond reason.
As her breathing picked up, he swore he could feel her heart pounding in her chest. She shifted her hips, encircling him with relentless friction and heat, and his torment grew.
When he thought he could stand no more and would explode with the very next move, she finally increased the speed and started pounding her hips against his. Hanging on to his command by a slender thread, he finally dug his fingers into her luscious hair and let her do the work.
The pleasure was all his. Heaven.
Right up to the moment when she cried out, exploding around him. Pulsating internally. Throbbing. Milking him with silky suction. He couldn’t stop a blasted thing then, and came like a volcano explosion. Control was a lost cause.
After she collapsed against him, both of them sweaty and still breathing hard, he wrapped his arms around her waist and rolled to their sides. Cocooning her precious body with his own, he held her tightly against the pounding beat of his heart.
“You are so beautiful,” he murmured. “Rest for now, love. But we are not done here.”
She chuckled, and he actually felt the humor rolling through her as it rumbled against his chest. “More? How can you think of that? I can’t breathe.”
“I can think of plenty more. Next, it’s my turn.”
He amazed them both by being ready again in record time. She’d done something weird to him. Made him feel like a horny teenager again.
For the next couple of hours he took his time, finding everything there was to know about her body. What moves she liked best. Where she was most ticklish. He memorized it all.
While licking the mole on the inside of her upper thigh, he discovered she would squeal with pure delight when aroused. And that made him determined to taste every inch. To illicit every sound and sigh bottled up inside her.
As a lonely teenager, he’d dreamed of the two of them making moves like these. She was his fantasy come to life. And it was all much, much better than he’d ever imagined.
Awakening on his back to bright sunlight coming through the window, he cleared his eyes and glanced at the bedside clock, which said twelve o’clock. He rolled over and found Lacie lying on her side with eyes wide-open.
She gave him a shy smile. “Hi. About time you woke up. I’m hungry.”
Reaching a hand out, he pushed aside a stray strand of hair covering one of her eyes and grinned. “Saying uncle? Giving up?”
She frowned in silence, and he couldn’t stop himself from cupping her cheek with his palm.
“All right, darlin’. Maybe I could use some food, too. And a shower.” Pulling her up beside him to sit at the side of the bed, he confessed, “But I want to say something first.”
She leaned in against his chest and put an arm around his waist. “If you’re going to say you love me, I know. I could tell with every move you made this morning. I love you, too. I guess I have since I was ten years old.”
Her confession sent a thrill up his spine and he leaned down to place a tender kiss against her lips. But right away he realized the true meaning of what he’d left unsaid. Things would be different from now on. He wanted her in his life for good. And protecting her had just become the most important thing in the world. Much more important than anything else in his life—past or present.
Leaning his chin against her hair, he said, “Let’s give up this investigation and leave town. Now. Today. I’ll contact my former boss and try to get my job back. It doesn’t matter where we go. As long as we’re together, we can be happy anywhere.”
She leaned back and gave him one of those half frowns slash half smiles he was learning to recognize. “That sounds like you—but no. We’re getting too close to an answer. I don’t want to leave. It would feel like running away. Besides, I have a job here. And friends. For the first time in my life I belong.”
Suddenly in a panic about the possibility of someone really hurting her, he slid to his knees in front of her. “Marry me. I love you. I’ll make you feel at home somewhere else. Anywhere. Come away with me, please.”
She scooted back and stood. “I’m not giving up the investigation, Colt. I have to know the truth. If you want to leave, I’ll find a way to go on without you.”
The sudden ache in his chest nearly doubled him over as she turned her back and walked to the bathroom. He’d asked her to marry him, something he had never pictured himself doing, and she turned him down. His love wasn’t strong enough to keep her safe.
But he loved her, damn it. He could not—would not—allow her to come to any harm. It would kill him. If she wouldn’t go now, he had to stand beside her, in front of her if necessary, and make sure she lived through it.
Then, she would come away with him. She couldn’t turn him down after her stepfather met his justice. After their investigation revealed the truth and everything had been finished and done, they would find a new home—together.
Feeling stronger, more sure of himself and his ability to keep her safe, he strode toward the bathroom, too. Maybe she would invite him into the shower with her. That just might take away some of the sting of her rejection.
Happier and pleased his leg no longer hurt this morning, he began humming a little song. Everything would be fine. After all, it had only been a temporary turn-down.
She’d said she loved him. He would get the girl in the end.
*
After eating, while still sitting at the kitchen table, Lacie felt relieved that Colt was no longer insisting they leave town. He’d actually said he would stay in Chance to continue their investigation. She wanted to spend as much time with him as possible before he left.
She sat watching him finish his meal, searching his face for any clue to what he might be thinking. Torn between wanting him to stay and wanting to keep him safe, she wished to hell he wasn’t so tempting.
Things were
infinitely worse now that they’d made love and she loved him more than ever. “What did Travis say when you called to tell him we would keep up the investigation?”
“He suggested we go through Mom and Dad’s papers. Sam apparently stashed most of them in file boxes in Dad’s library upstairs years ago. I’d almost forgotten that Sam had mentioned them to me.”
“That’s a good idea. You never know what we might find. Can we go up now?”
Colt scraped back his chair. “Might as well. Travis said he’d be sending another truck for us to use later this afternoon. We’d have to stay put until then anyway.”
The two of them stood side by side next to the table. She felt a little uncomfortable with him now that she’d told him she wouldn’t be leaving Chance. But he seemed to have settled into the idea better than she could’ve hoped.
She took his hand. “Did he mention anything else about the Texas Rangers?”
Colt led the way toward the stairs. “Oh, yeah. His friend the captain and a few of his men are already here. Seems they’d been following the trail of these gunrunners for quite some time and had chased them down to the next county over.”
Lacie didn’t like the idea of Texas Rangers showing up in Chance County without the sheriff’s department being informed. It went against all her training. But she bit back the urge to call the information in and followed Colt to his father’s office on the second floor.
In a few minutes they’d found what they sought in a storage closet and had several of the boxes already opened. Folders and papers were spread all over the room.
With a file in hand, Colt asked, “What should we be looking for?”
Her previous investigative training gave her a head start on their search. “Skip bills and anything that looks like accounts pertaining to the ranch. But double-check any legal papers and especially look for personal correspondence. We’re most likely to find anything that looks odd there.”
Colt nodded and sat down at his father’s desk with a storage box full of files on his lap. A ray of sun from the open window caught in his light brown hair and shot reddish highlights through to the shaggy ends.
She tried to keep her breathing even, but for a moment she could only manage to sit and stare. The man she’d longed for, prayed for, dreamed about for as long as she could remember, now claimed he loved her. That idea seemed almost too painful and ironic when she also knew they would never be together in the end.
He was only beginning to see that the two of them wanted different things from life. But that was something to deal with later. For now, she would keep him close to her heart. Nothing would happen to him just because she refused to run away from her stepfather’s secrets.
Bending her head to her own file box, Lacie prayed to find a smoking gun among these papers. Something to legally require reopening the case.
A couple of hours later, she heard Colt getting to his feet and coming toward her.
“I need you to look at these,” he said as he held out several yellowing sheets of paper. “I think I know what they’re saying, but I… Give me your opinion, please.”
She took them in hand. “Where’d you find them?”
“In a file labeled in my mother’s handwriting and marked Correspondence.”
The minute she looked down at the scratchy writing, she knew what they were. “Letters. From my mother to your mother.”
“That is your mother’s handwriting then?”
“Definitely.” She remembered learning how to make these same scratches on notes supposedly from her mother to the high school. “It’s still as illegible as ever.”
“I managed to decipher a few lines. They’re not dated, but clearly sent before my mother died. Can you read them?”
Clearing her throat, she picked the one on top and began to read aloud.
“Ellen Chance,
Stay away from him.
You have so much. Money. Land. A man and children who love you. Don’t take the one thing I’ve ever had for my own.
Leave him alone!!!
Mrs. Edith McCord”
Lacie wanted to scream. Instead she said, “My mother thought your mother was trying to steal her husband.”
“Check out some of the others.”
Reading quickly through them, Lacie found other notes with much stronger sentiments. “She threatened to kill your mother to keep her and my stepfather apart. God, she was crazier than I realized. And I thought her only cold and absentminded. She was really nuts.”
Colt came to stand next to her chair and placed a strong arm around her shoulders. “Remember all those rumors? I’m sure she must’ve heard them and her imagination ran wild.”
“No wonder she and my stepfather got into so many arguments. Do you think he might’ve ended up believing the same thing? That your mother wanted him?”
With a deep sigh, Colt shrugged a shoulder. “It’s possible. And that could also be why he came after my mother that day. To make her confess her love for him.”
“And when she didn’t, he killed her in a rage? That sounds a lot like my stepfather.”
“I’m sorry.” Colt pulled her up into his arms. “I thought it would feel great to find proof he killed her. But now… It’s only sad.”
Leaning into him, Lacie buried her face in his neck. “This isn’t the smoking gun we were hoping for, Colt. It’s not proof. My mother was and is insane. She can’t help us. And whatever she wrote at that time was the raving of a lunatic.”
He gently patted her on the back. “It’s enough to confront him. If we take him by surprise, he might give us something better.”
“Uh, that’s too dangerous. He’d as soon kill us as not.”
“But we’d be ready for him, and we’d be wearing wires like they use during justice department stings. We’ll have plenty of backup.”
Typical Colt. He didn’t know what was involved but would jump in headfirst anyway. Oh, how she loved him.
“Call your brother,” she said against her better judgment. “We need to meet with the Texas Rangers.”
She wanted her stepfather put in jail badly enough to chance dying for it. But what about Colt? Somehow she would find a way to leave him out.
He must stay safe. He must.
Chapter 9
“I could’ve driven myself, you know.” Lacie sat in the passenger seat of his new SUV, staring out into the darkness past the windshield at Bar-C ranchland.
“I know.” Colt was not letting her out of his sight from now on. “But this won’t take long. We’ll be in town for only enough time to pack a few more of your things and then we’ll be on our way. Nothing to worry about. We’re not supposed to meet with Travis’s Texas Ranger buddy for another couple of hours.”
She’d folded her arms across her chest, her duffel sat at her feet. Even dressed in her sheriff’s uniform, because she had nothing else left to wear, Lacie looked like a sexy dream. He’d never thought of making love to a lawman before. But right now that was all he had on his mind.
“I want you to remember what we talked about,” she said as she turned her head. “You are not trained in law enforcement. Whatever sting we can arrange with the Rangers to corner my stepfather, you have to stay out of it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Colt, I’m serious. Let us handle it.”
He kept his mouth shut and continued driving. This sting had been his idea. He would be participating no matter what she said. He wanted Sheriff McCord to face justice more than anyone.
“Well…hey! Just look at that.” She was pointing out the window. “It’s that same light we saw the other night. Do you think that could be gunrunners on the Bar-C?”
“Let’s find out.” He cut the wheel and downshifted into four-wheel drive, heading out across the open range.
“For heaven’s sake,” she muttered while hanging on to the handle above the passenger door. “Just call Travis or Barrett and have them call the sheriff’s department. If this is some kind of criminal
activity, we are not equipped to confront them.”
“You’re armed, aren’t you?” He located the gravel utility road he’d been looking for and doused his headlights. “And my shotgun is behind the seat. Besides, I don’t want to confront them. I just want to find out what’s going on.”
“Stop. You can’t drive across open range at night with no lights. Cattle could be lying in the road and you’d never see them. Anybody raised here should know better than that.”
“What I know is there aren’t any animals being kept on this part of the range because it’s been so dry. The Bar-C moved them all farther south to preferable pasture weeks ago.” Still, he let up on the gas, belatedly thinking of the potential for wild animals crossing the road.
Despite not being able to see very well, he kept the SUV inching toward the spot where they’d last noticed the lights disappear.
“You think the gunrunners know that, too?”
Ah-hah. He’d finally gotten her attention. “Probably. It’s no secret around Chance. Everybody knows the ranchers are hurting and that any Bar-C business concerns the whole county.”
When he reached the spot he’d been seeking, he brought the SUV to a stop, put it in Neutral and pulled on the brake. “We shouldn’t drive any closer. I’m already worried that they might have heard our motor running. Let’s get out and walk from here.”
“I don’t see any lights.” But she reached into the duffel at her feet and pulled out her gun and holster.
“There could be a good reason for that,” he offered. “The cattle road they must’ve been using runs right through an old dry creek bed. If I remember right, the bottom of that wash is probably ten to fifteen feet below the surrounding range. And it’s nearly a half mile away from here.”
“What do you think they’re doing there?”
He opened the driver’s door and quickly doused the overhead light. “No telling. Camping. Meeting up. Could be anything. No one from the Bar-C has been across that land for weeks.” He grabbed his shotgun before easing the door shut again.
Lacie climbed down on her side, while at the same time buckling her holster around her waist. “We can’t make any noise. Sounds travel long distances at night on the range.”
