“That’s pretty easy to fix. I’ll bet the rules will say what kind of finishing you have to do.”
“It would be cool to have my picture hanging in the VA center.”
That confident wish told Harper all she needed to know. Deep inside, Skylar thought maybe she was good, and that was all any artist needed. The feeling wouldn’t always be there—in fact, most of the time it would be replaced by towering doubt. But like with faith, all a person needed was a mustard seed’s worth of belief in herself.
“Give me a couple of days, okay? Things are crazy here—I’ll talk to your mom as soon as I can.”
“She won’t say yes.” Skylar’s dejected face proved she believed the verdict had already come down. “But I can’t believe you’re willing to ask her. It’s . . . thanks.”
“Don’t be so pessimistic.” Harper smiled. “This is a good little battle for us to take on. It’ll keep our minds off of the bad things.”
She didn’t let herself think that if the worst happened, this whole conversation would be moot.
THAT THOUGHT HIT at two o’clock in the morning when Harper’s eyes flew open in the wake of a nightmare that left her gasping and certain her sister had died in the horrible crash. She thrashed in her covers for a few seconds before coming fully awake with a pounding heart.
“Keep her safe. Keep her safe. Please, please keep her safe.” She repeated the prayer like a mantra until her pulse calmed and she could make herself remember that a nightmare wasn’t a prophecy. She buried her head in her pillow, letting the ghostly remnants of the dream fade.
She might have succeeded in forcing herself back to sleep but for the faint sounds of movement in the house below. Curious, she flipped to her back and listened. The slight squeaking of hinges, a drawer rolling out, and definitely footsteps, sent her swinging out of bed.
She slipped on her favorite pair of woolen Haflinger shoes and threw a sweatshirt over her pajama top. The weather had been unseasonably cool in Chicago, and now she knew it was because they’d been getting blasts of Wyoming’s early chilled September air. She shivered and grabbed the extra quilt off her bed to wrap around herself. The person downstairs maybe didn’t want company, but she worried it might be her grandmother, unable to sleep. Not that their super-matriarch couldn’t fend for herself, but she was ninety-four.
The comfort of tiptoeing through her house, following the dim light from the kitchen, drove the last of her dream away. She’d lived in more apartments, with more different roommates, in more different states than she could count. But none of her houses, apartments, or shared living spaces in the past ten years had replaced the home Paradise and Rosecroft still were. The insight surprised her.
The sight of Cole in the kitchen surprised her more.
He stood at the stove, stirring something in a pan, his plaid sleep pants not so baggy she couldn’t get an appreciation for his strong butt muscles and bare feet. A box of hot chocolate mix sat on the counter beside him. She smiled.
“Want a little peppermint schnapps to go with that stuff?”
He started slightly and turned, his slow grin turning her sleep-deprived joints to something soft and weak like Play-Doh. She swore his hair didn’t look a whole lot more disheveled in the middle of the night than it did during the day. It gave him even more of the rakish appeal that had been affecting her cool so strongly in the past weeks.
“Is that your remedy, alcohol?”
“Remedy for what?”
He looked a little sheepish. “Kinda had a nightmare. Poor Coping Skills R Us.”
“Oh, hardly. I’m sorry, Cole. My dream wasn’t so hot either.”
“Then maybe schnapps is the answer.”
“Nah. Virgin hot chocolate is good enough for me.”
“There are so many, many places I want to go with that line.”
Her use of the line had been half purposeful. She wrapped her quilt more tightly around her shoulders and shot him an evil smirk. “Typical. Stupid boy humor again. But in the interest of full disclosure—since we’ve kissed and all—if I’d meant a drink for virgins, I’d have to pass.”
“Not me. This boy is pure as little lamb’s wool.”
“Oh, kill me now.” She laughed.
“Never. I’ve chosen you to teach me the ways between a man and a woman.”
Her heart pounded up into her throat. “You really don’t want that,” she said. “The things I know might scare you.”
The words didn’t feel quite as funny as she’d intended. Suddenly she’d reminded herself of the all the bad things he didn’t know about her past.
“I don’t think a little bitty thing like you scares me much.”
The unexpected touch of his hands on her shoulders sent ripples of pleasure cascading for her fingertips and toes and the tips of her ears. She shrugged into his hands.
He pushed back the quilt and drew her into his arms. “This isn’t a very romantic way to say the words ‘I want to start something with you,’ but they and hot chocolate are all I have.” He kissed her slowly and then turned back to the stove, dumped two packages of the mix into each of two mugs and added the water he’d boiled. He handed her a mug and added a spoon. “Here, a virgin drink for a new start.” She stirred the cocoa numbly. “Harper, you have to notice, too, that whatever this new thing is between us feels like way more than just something.”
Warmth flowed through her stomach and her heart before she’d taken a single drink of the chocolate.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Doesn’t mean I know what it is, or if it’s okay.”
He grinned but didn’t touch her. She tingled inside anyway and sipped the chocolate.
“Potent stuff here, cowboy. I saw how much mix you put in here.”
“Don’t question expertise. I’ve been drinking this stuff since before you were born.”
“I didn’t say it was bad. I learned this was the way to go in a lot of cold, basement apartments over the years.”
“I think I’d like to hear about Harper Lee Crockett: The Lost Years.”
“No. Really. They aren’t anything to write home about. Which is probably why I rarely did.”
She led the way into the living room, carrying the quilt and her mug. She set the blanket on the back of the overstuffed sofa, and then put coasters on the glass-topped coffee table. Cole settled into one end of the sofa and held out an arm. Gratefully, she snuggled beside him and hugged her mug between her palms.
“Harper Lee,” he said. “Why did your parents name you after her? And why don’t I know this?”
“Because my mother would not let Dad name me Scout from the book, so he named me after the author. He said it was his favorite book of all time. And I never talked about my name at all when I was a kid. I hated people asking me if I’d read the book, if I liked the book, if I’d ever met Harper Lee, if I’d ever written to her. Would you believe, I didn’t read To Kill a Mockingbird until I was twenty-five?”
“Seriously? You didn’t have to read it in school?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m glad, though. I wouldn’t have appreciated it then. On any level. I was too pie in the sky for such a weighty subject.”
“And what did you think once you read it?”
“I was blown away. I think I cried for two days after finishing it. But now I never, ever tell people it’s my favorite book because they all say, ‘oh, isn’t that sweet?’ I’m a walking cliché. But it is my favorite book.”
“Another thing you have in common with your dad.”
“Another? Maybe the only.”
“Are you kidding? You’re so much like him it’s eerie sometimes.”
She pulled away, slightly wounded, and looked at him critically. “That’s not funny.”
“Come on. Why do you think you used to butt heads so often? You’re opinionated, but you know exactly why you hold those opinions. He was very much that way. You love beauty. Your appreciation of it comes out in your painting. His came out in weirder ways—his chicken
coop and his exacting office décor. The way he directed the orientation of this whole house so he could see the view. He had to find acceptably macho ways to express it, but he liked beautiful things.”
“Then he must have thought my art was anything but beautiful.”
“He was always afraid he’d lose you if he encouraged things that would take you from the ranch.”
“Yeah, how’d that work out for him?”
“Not well. He was an idiot about that. But don’t think he didn’t love you. He talked about all his daughters the last three years—probably before that, too, I didn’t work for him then.”
She settled back into the crook of Cole’s arm and sipped the chocolate.
“You said you needed a year to buy back the Double Diamond. If we keep Paradise, is it really an option?”
“Getting the ranch back into the Wainwright name is what’s driven me since we sold it, I guess, but sometimes it seems a little hopeless. Big loans for little guys like me are pretty much impossible. My only strategy is to be debt-free, build a strong four-year work history, and have a decent down payment. That part is up to the famous Crockett sisters now. I know what your father set as the selling price—it may be more reasonable than what you six will need.”
“What makes you think we’ll need any particular amount? The biggest thing for you is the same thing it is for us—can you make the ranch viable even if you can afford to buy it back? We’re all in the same leaky lifeboat here.”
“Which is why it sometimes feels hopeless.”
Harper reached around him to set her mug down and rested her cheek against the soft, white V-neck T-shirt that constituted his pajama top. “I don’t like to think of you feeling hopeless. You’ve always been unflappable. How can I be freaked out about things if you already are?”
His chuckle vibrated sexily beneath her head. “There’s a difference between feeling down and being freaked out. It’s not like we’re talking spiders here. I won’t die if I can’t buy a ranch.”
Laughter, welcome and healing, spilled from her, and she clung to him even harder. “You have to be the only person on the face of the planet who would compare running into spiders to losing a family ranch and have the spider end up as the worse outcome. Who tortured you with spiders when you were in your formative years?”
“I don’t know. I was born with a fear so deathly I can’t look at a realistic picture. You know that kid’s song about the spider in the water spout?”
Harper giggled again, twisted in his arms and made the eensy-weensy spider with her fingers. He forced her fingers apart.
“Terrifying,” he said. “You can’t even kill a spider with a flood. It doesn’t get any worse.”
“The Lord of the Rings must have given you nightmares for a year. Oooh and Harry Potter . . . ”
“Do you know people show those movies to children?” He wrapped her tightly again. “You’d better do something to atone for dredging up all these horror images.”
“Hey, buddy, if you’re not afraid of little old me, I doubt a seven-foot spider would pay me any attention at all. I’ll throw shoes at it, but you might have to run and get Grandma Sadie to help, too.”
“And Kelly, and Leif, and probably Skylar.” He yawned and pulled her closer yet, dragging the quilt off the back of the couch and wrapping it around them both. “My little burrito. No more talk of spiders. I’m trying to maintain the illusion of the unruffleable super hero.”
“Not Spiderman, I’m guessing.”
“He wouldn’t even be my friend.”
Silence enveloped them along with the warmth from the quilt, and Harper tried not to let herself lapse back into guilt. Cole was fine with this. He claimed Mia should be, too. Harper wanted the same freedom.
“Doesn’t this feel even a little bit weird to you?” she asked, feeling for emotional footing.
“No. This feels right for the first time in a very long while. It’s kind of chick flick romantic, I’d think. The start of a love affair. Aren’t you going to get all mushy about it?”
“No.” She pushed herself away again. “I can’t do this if I look at it as a love affair. I’m not stealing you from anyone. I won’t—”
“Harpo!” He grasped her upper arms. “Since when does a love affair have to be something illicit? My father had a love affair with my mother until the day she died. And your mother and father were the same. Give us a break here.”
“But . . . love? It’s a scary word.”
“That’s enough.” He threw off the quilt and turned on her. With a serious light in his eyes that startled her, he pushed her backward onto the couch cushions and covered her with himself. Once he’d stretched fully atop her, he pulled the quilt up as well. “I have loved you as a friend for as long as I can remember. Is it weird that my body and my head can no longer see the tomboy I used to think of as my coolest buddy? No, it’s a miracle. Stop throwing up roadblocks and reasons we shouldn’t try this. Love isn’t scary, Harper. It’s an adventure—we’ve had a lot of them. Let’s take another one and see where we end up.”
As always, he freed her by tearing through the constraints she put on herself as if they were no more than paper.
“Okay. You’re right.”
She kissed him—her idea, her initiation, her excitement—and dragged the quilt over their heads to make a hot cocoon where all she could do was feel in the dark. He tasted of chocolate and smelled like soap and sheets and heat. He let her play against his mouth with her lips, biting the soft skin lightly, dotting kisses around his face, seeking out his tongue. But he only allowed her to maintain control for those first few moments of exploration before he pulled away and started his own assault. Trills and shivers of excitement radiated from her mouth to her stomach as he delved with his tongue, turning the kiss from exploration into warm, wet plunder.
He found her neck, the skin behind her ear, and the hollow of her throat. Trills turned to full-fledged waves of desire, twining down her body and building, layering her in heat. Awareness of their thin night clothing, the lack of any barriers but two layers of cloth between her suddenly aching body and his hardening one, hit her like a sledgehammer. It would take nothing to turn this into much more than the start of an adventure. The equivalent to hitting Class Five white water was two sets of sleep pants away.
“Cole,” she whispered, the words thick.
“Shhh. Trust me.”
“Fine, but I don’t trust me.”
“Good.” He laughed softly against the hollow where her neck met her shoulder. “It’ll make me look like a hero when I don’t take advantage of that.”
She couldn’t help but giggle.
“Doesn’t mean I’m a Boy Scout kind of hero, though,” he continued. “I lied about that virgin hot chocolate.”
“Oh dear, really?” She held his head and groaned as he tickled the spot behind her ear with tiny nips of his teeth and nibbles from his lips. A million mini electric shocks burst through her body. “So I don’t need to teach you how it is between a man and a woman?”
“I think we’re both pretty capable.”
He pushed himself down her body and lifted the hem of her pajama tank top to expose her navel. With soft kisses, more tiny scrapes of his teeth, and moist strokes of his tongue, he drove her senseless by working his way up the skin of her stomach to her breastbone and to the sensitive flesh of her left breast. He spanned her waist with his hands, slipped them beneath her and slid up her spine to cradle her back. Gently, he lifted her upper body to his kiss.
The tip of his tongue flicked against her nipple. Arching in pleasure, she bit her lip over a groan, conscious, barely, of her grandmother’s bedroom on the far end of this main floor.
“I’ve been imagining this for far too long,” he said.
Every inch of skin flushed with erotic pleasure at the idea of him picturing her body. “You thought about this?”
“Imagination is a guy’s best friend. Girls have the advantage. Unless we’re
on a beach, you can see a lot more of us than we can of you.”
“Like during spider attacks.” She wriggled beneath him, loosening his hold and scooting downward until she could grasp his hips and yank them to her. There might as well have been nothing between his long, hard erection and her body. With a sharp sigh she nestled him against her and wrapped her legs around him. “I’ve relived that half-striptease you did for me too many times to count.”
“What? Girls are shallow, too?”
“Oh yeah.”
She rocked beneath him, knowing it was putting a match to tinder but unable to stop herself. He slid along the perfect sweet spot and groaned right over her whimper of delight.
“I told you I couldn’t trust myself,” she said.
“You don’t have to. I’ve got this.”
She closed her eyes and gave up the fight with herself. “Trust me,” he’d said. She was beyond being able to do anything else.
Two glorious minutes later she knew she’d been wrong to trust anything. Her body poised at the moment of no return and there was no way to back away from the cliff.
He coaxed her with a whisper. “Sweetheart, let go.”
She crashed into her orgasm at the mere vibration of his words in her ears. Wave after wave buffeted her, but she was safe in his embrace and the wildness couldn’t break their contact. She rode the slowly undulating crests time after time until finally, slowly Cole brought her to the end of the ride’s crazy heat.
“See, I told you I couldn’t trust you.”
“I’m sorry,” he replied.
He kissed her on the eyebrows and on the nose. Languid heaviness spread through her limbs, and all she felt were his arm beneath her neck, his hand on her cheek, and her knee between his thighs.
“What about you?” she asked dopily. “Your turn?”
“In a minute. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t think you’re a real cowboy. A real cowboy wouldn’t be this patient.”
“It’s the nice guy alter ego, remember?”
“I do. But now I want the bad cowboy.”
“I’ll see if I can find him for you.”
“Git along little doggie.” She mumbled the words, and her eyes felt incredibly heavy. “Although that doggie’s not really very little.”
The Bride Wore Denim Page 18
