“But you just made my point exactly. I don’t like the idea of them wandering in the woods where they can possibly be alone and face temptation. Not to mention sleeping arrangements. It’s a regular house. You can’t exactly separate them by floors. You can’t be responsible for a sixteen-year-old boy and two young girls.”
A tinge of pink crept into Harper’s cheeks. She opened her mouth and closed it again. Cole didn’t think, he spoke.
“Oh, didn’t we say? I’ll be there, too. It’ll be my job to keep an eye on young Nate. There won’t be a problem.”
“Really?” Melanie asked.
“Uh . . . ” Harper stared at him but deftly covered her shock. “Yeah, really.”
“And you two? No bad role modeling for the kids?”
Cole couldn’t believe the words had actually come from Melanie’s mouth—was there anything the woman wouldn’t say? He bit his cheeks hard to keep from teasing her with some snide remark and looked to Harper for support.
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that even a little.”
Well, that wasn’t even close to the kind of support he’d had in mind. She’d sounded entirely too okay with the good role model part.
“I guess if that’s the case, I might be willing to ask Skylar if she’s interested. Is it okay if I bring her in here now? Go over a few rules if she wants to go?”
“Sure.” Harper chirped like a happy canary.
To nobody’s surprise, Skylar was over the moon. Even her mother’s warnings and instructions couldn’t dampen her excitement. It was nice to see—she’d been so down lately.
“All right!” Harper said when Skylar had agreed to all the conditions. “It’s settled. We’ll leave here Friday early afternoon. I’ll e-mail you, Lily, and Nick with a list of things to bring, okay?”
“Thank you!” Skylar threw her arms around Harper’s neck and then shocked the heck out of Cole by doing the same to him. “This is going to be the best weekend of my life!”
“THIS IS AWESOME! Oh my gosh, thanks for bringing us here. I think I could sit right in the house and draw all weekend.”
Lily was the talker of the group, and Harper laughed as the fifteen-year-old entered the half-empty ranch-style house Cole had grown up in and stared around bug-eyed as if it were a fully decorated and functioning mansion. Before she’d passed away, Charlotte Wainwright had shared many a decorating session with her friend Bella Crockett, and they’d both turned out beautiful rooms and décor. Even though the Wainwright house had been unlived in for three years, some of the stylish earth-toned furniture and art remained. Russ had taken only what he wanted and lived frugally in Jackson. Cole kept the house up when he was home, and Sam had used it as a guest house on occasion. There were two empty bedrooms and two still fully furnished, a sofa bed in the den, and one oversized, overstuffed, comfortable couch in the living room. Plenty of space for five people.
“There’s a TV room past the kitchen that way.” Harper pointed. “There’s a pool table in the basement. I have no rules about when you can or can’t use them, but I hope you’ll take this weekend seriously and spend some time creating. I’ve got a couple of art activities for you, so this will meet the criteria of a school field trip. Cole and I will make the meals, but you all have to help clean up. You can stay up all night if you want to, but no wandering around outdoors other than to the edge of the first field to the lookout spot after dark—it can be dangerous at night, as you all know. The rest is up to you guys, okay?”
As Harper expected, there wasn’t much painting that evening. Nate and Skylar played pool while Lily cheered them on. Then she and Skylar watched a romantic comedy while Nate and Cole built a fire in the fireplace and teased the girls about their sappy movie.
Cole moved about the house like a wolf in his home den, confident, alpha, and protective. He took to the kids naturally, doing exactly what he’d advertised to Melanie—making sure there was nothing untoward or dangerous going on. Yet Harper knew he didn’t do any of it consciously. Nate gravitated to him. Skylar mooned over him. Lily talked his ear off. For all Harper had been shocked at his announcement he was coming, it was blissful to have him there.
The smiles he sent her from across a room, the way he role-modeled chivalry by helping with dinner and dishes, the way his movements—hands, back, torso muscles, legs, butt—made for a better movie than anything they could put in the DVD player, gave her a sense of contentment she’d rarely known.
She wanted to hold onto it forever. But there was Chicago. Now there was Cecelia. And Mia.
Mia. She closed her eyes and made herself analyze the whole sister code intellectually for the first time. She’d always felt it was real—you didn’t date someone your sister had loved.
But, why not? Really, honestly, why not?
The usual list was easy to make: It was wrong to hurt your sister by taking a man she’d left behind and cruelly remind her of a love gone bad; it was wrong to make your sister feel like you’d won someone she couldn’t keep; it was wrong to make your sister wonder if the sex was better with you.
Sister. Sister. Sister.
Harper stopped herself. Why was this only about Mia?
Because where Cole was concerned, she’d always been in Mia’s shadow. Mia was the captured princess. Mia was the homecoming date. The prom date. The girlfriend.
Mia had let him go.
What did she, Harper Lee Crockett, want?
She sat in an armchair in the basement and ogled Cole, who bent over the pool table helping Nate line up a shot. She wanted to stare at him like this without guilt. Kiss him without feeling like she’d stepped out of line with her sister.
She wanted to deserve him.
She’d never deserve him. But couldn’t she enjoy him?
She’d wounded him when she’d said she didn’t want him comparing her to Mia, but whether he did or not wasn’t something she could control. She either trusted him to love her for herself or she didn’t. For her part, she’d never dwelled on his physical relationship with Mia. If she did that, he’d have the right to think about all the men she’d been with.
The truth hit her over the head like a rap with a pool cool. She didn’t care about Mia and Cole’s past. She was worrying about things from her childhood—things she’d conditioned herself to believe were obstacles.
Could it be that simple? Let the past go? Her eyes misted with tears of disbelief. It couldn’t be.
Nonetheless, she balanced her sketch book against raised knees and moved her pencil carelessly and quickly over the paper. A dozen rapid studies of Cole’s body quickly filled four pages, several sketches a page . . . his hands on the cue, his shoulders hunched to take aim, the long line of his back. This one was of his seat and the back of his leg, a firm, muscular, denim-covered curve leading into taut, broad hamstrings. She captured the shapes and then filled in the detail of belt loops, tucked-in shirt, and pocket stitching after he’d moved from his position.
She caressed the drawing with her pencil strokes, adding the folds of denim around his backside from memory, staring at the paper, remembering how safe that body had made her feel a mere three nights before, sleeping on the sofa. She shaded the pocket carefully. She’d snuggle up to this backside in a heartbeat were there no children around . . .
“What are you working on so intently?”
His unexpected voice elicited a full-fledged gasp from her, and her gaze flew to his. With flaming hot cheeks she could only stare a moment, her mouth too dry to form words. And for the first time, she didn’t feel guilt.
“You okay?” Amusement filled his eyes.
“Uh, lost in the moment.” Her voice was raspy. “It happens.”
“Can I see?”
She managed to flip the sketchbook pages slowly, closing it without revealing the embarrassment that would accompany letting him see his rear end in her drawings. “Nope,” she said blithely. “Nobody sees the pre-sketches until I know what I’m doing.
For a sec
ond his smile seemed too knowing, as if he actually had seen what she’d done and was only teasing her. Then he nodded. “Fair enough. Want to play?”
She looked across the room to where Nate was hanging up his pool cue. The very last thing she wanted to do was play. The heat creeping through her body needed to dissipate. That wouldn’t happen sharing the pool table with Cole.
“Thanks,” she said, and uncurled herself from the chair. “But I think I’d like to walk out to the lookout and see if the moonlight is casting any fun shadows. I haven’t worked on a night painting for a long time.”
“Okay,” he replied.
“Maybe I’ll ask the girls, too. You boys have any desire to join us?”
“Nah,” Nate said. “I thought I’d try sketching some things I saw along the trail today from memory.”
“Sounds like an awesome idea.” Harper turned to Cole, raising her brow in question.
“Ask the girls. Maybe I’ll build a fire out back.”
Her heart battled between relief and disappointment. “Okay. That’ll be a good way to end the night later.”
The girls agreed to go with her and gathered their sketchbooks and cameras. Harper grabbed a carrying case holding her portable easel and a set of paints. With promises to be back soon, the three of them set out on the quarter mile walk across the Wainwright’s old backyard, through a shallow stand of trees and out into a clearing on the top of a small bluff. It wasn’t high enough to pose a falling danger but stood elevated enough to provide a stunning view of every kind of landscape feature this part of Wyoming offered.
Even in nine o’clock darkness, and although she’d seen this view hundreds of times, the scenery left Harper breathless. The waxing moon hung high enough to turn the valley before them into purple-and-periwinkle shadows. The Kwinaa River, which wound through the entire ranch, was at its widest here, circling the base of a bluff taller than the one they stood on. Beautiful pastureland stretched beyond the river, rising slowly into undulating hills that rolled on toward the same part of the Teton Range visible from the main part of Paradise Ranch.
“Tell me what colors you see,” Harper said. “What paints would you pull out?”
Their answers flew. Purple, black, blue, azure, white.
“Do you see the forest green? How about yellow ochre?” Harper asked.
“Red.” Skylar pointed to a near shadow.
“Yes,” Harper agreed. “My point is, you all see this differently. Everyone could paint this scene and not one finished piece would look like another. That’s the magic of art.”
The girls wandered the bluff, ooh-ing over new perspectives, each finally settling in a different nook. Harper set up her easel and a thin piece of canvas board. In the light from a low-watt flashlight, she squeezed six colors onto a paper palette, used an elasticized hairband to affix her flashlight to the easel so it shone on the canvas, and took out a pencil.
For a long time she sketched in basic perspective lines and the rough outlines of a few key features. She glanced at the girls periodically and smiled at Skylar’s attempts to use a rock as a camera tripod. For the most part, however, she lost herself. They’d left things in status quo at the hospital, and Joely’s care was in the doctors’ and God’s hands; the cattle gathering had been rescheduled for next week. For one perfect moment, there was nothing she could worry about. Her first brushstrokes flowed onto the canvas.
The colors began to pop, and the scene emerged—a study in darks from blacks, blues, purples, and greens layered with diamond splashes of brights: gray, yellow, and pink moonlight. She squeezed a final color onto her palette, now smeared with her mixed hues, a bright turquoise she mixed with purple to get the halo around the fat, gibbous moon.
“I don’t know which takes my breath away more, the real scene or what you captured of it.”
She spun in place and stared at Cole, her brain as fuzzy as if she’d been sleeping, not working. Immediate panic shot her pulse rate through the roof, and she stared around wildly for the girls. Understanding dawned horribly. She’d gone into the crazy trance that overtook her when she loved a painting. She’d failed to keep Skylar and Lily safe.
“Oh no, where are they? What happened?”
Cole laughed, its resonance cutting through her panic. “Harpo, it’s fine. Everyone’s fine. Except maybe you. Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“No, no.” She held her wristwatch up to the flashlight and gasped. “Oh my gosh.”
“Yeah. Nearly one in the morning.”
“This is not possible. Oh, Cole, I’m so sorry. What happened to the kids?”
“They’re total lightweights. Sound asleep all of them by midnight. Definitely not natural party animals. I don’t think any of their parents tolerate much hanky-panky.”
She gazed at her surroundings, still stunned that she’d disappeared so completely into her own private world. “I’m really sorry I abandoned you with them. Thank God you’re here. You’re so good with them. They adore you.”
“Because you adore me, too?”
“Dream on.” Relief that all was well started slowing her heart at last. “Thank you, Cole. What kind of chaperone am I? I’d have been in big trouble had I zoned out like this and been here alone. Heaven knows where they would have ended up.”
“Are you telling me you need a keeper, Harper Crockett?”
He took a step toward her, and she brandished her brush at him. “I do. Desperately. But one with a clear head and some self-control.”
“Oh, my head is clear. One hundred percent. Give me a test that measures clear-headedness and I’ll pass with extra credit.”
She didn’t get another word out before he grasped her wrist, removed the brush from her fingers, and took her paint-smeared palette from the other hand. He set both on the ground and straightened.
“Are you going to tell me you don’t want this?” he asked.
Her head spun with all the thoughts from her evening’s introspection. She knew she’d still have to talk to Mia sometime, but it was going to be a very different talk than she’d once thought. She closed her eyes and leaned into him.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Chapter Seventeen
HE STOLE HER breath with the kiss—a claim-staking lock of his mouth onto hers. How he could be powerful and gentle at the same moment baffled her, but she lost the ability to analyze the question as soon as her brain had asked it. The muscle-weakening, bone-liquefying invasion of his tongue, and the resulting hot dance against hers sent fireworks surging through every nerve in her body. She pressed back with her own tongue and set off another wave of sparklers and cherry bombs.
With a groan she thrust into his mouth and tasted him, warm and savory and familiar now, like her new favorite wine. She withdrew and let her head fall back when he nipped lightly at her bottom lip. Shivers ricocheted through her stomach. He kissed down her chin and beneath it, traveled down her neck and flicked his tongue into the hollow of her throat.
So softly she barely felt anything but the electricity, he ran a thumb over her breast, kissing her ear when she gasped.
“Like that?” he whispered.
“Stupid question,” she whispered back. “But this isn’t safe. I might not be able to control myself. I have a history with you now.”
“Trust me then.”
“Oh no. You said that before, and I ended up sleeping with you.” She smiled in spite of herself.
“Probably shouldn’t happen tonight.”
He pushed her backward three steps until her back met the face of an upright boulder marking the edge of the bluff. She relaxed against it gratefully and arched her back until she curved into his body, meeting the hard outline of his obvious arousal with her pelvis.
“Is that a pool cue in your pocket—?”
“No. I’m just very glad to see you.”
“ ‘Trust me’ he says.”
With a little moan of desire, she grasped his seat through the denim of his je
ans, squeezing and caressing the solid curves she’d drawn and dreamed of touching just hours before. The pressure brought him fully against her, and he rocked slowly upward. Heat exploded through her core.
“Oh, Cole. We really, really have to stop soon.”
“Yes. I know.”
He captured her mouth again, and she tugged harder on his hips. Once more he traveled down her body with his lips, and this time he unzipped her sweatshirt and delved beneath the hem of the turtleneck underneath it, pushing the soft fabric up and over her bra. A moment later, the satin was out of his way as well, and he closed his lips over the tip of her breast.
“Oh, I really don’t trust you now.” Her breath came in a rush, and she released his seat and lifted her fingers to his hair, diving into the soft spikes.
He lifted his head, pressed a kiss on her nipple and then moved his lips to the valley between both breasts. “Think how silly you’ll look when you find out you still can.” He nibbled on the second soft swell of skin. “Trust me, that is.”
He assaulted her already rubbery bones with equal treatment of her second breast, and when he stopped he ran his hands up her sides and placed a thumb on the tip of each, circling the damp skin with butterfly-light rotations.
“You really are beautiful,” he whispered.
“You make me feel that way,” she admitted, reveling in the cool air on her skin while his hands, with their reverent touch, drove hard shivers through her body. “I don’t very often.”
“Why not?”
“Age-old insecurities. Comparisons to my sisters who all got the long, tall, model bodies. I got the five-foot-four body.”
“You got the sexy body with the curves in all the right places. Don’t you dare be one of those gorgeous women who says she’s fat.”
“I’m not fat; I know that. I’m the cute one, not the elegant one. That’s a direct quote from my father, by the way.”
“Your father didn’t have the tact God gave a bull in a crystal shop. Don’t listen to his voice in your head anymore. You’re different from your sisters—you’re the most beautiful.”
The Bride Wore Denim Page 22
