by Saylor Bliss
Only for me.
I stuffed my hands into my back pockets, knowing full well the move would thrust my ladies front and center. His eyes instantly left my mouth and settled on my chest. My lips curled into a lopsided smile.
Much better.
“It’s been my place since I bought it from Tom going on six years ago.” Let’s just see what he has to say about that.
“I put everything I had into this venture and then some. So, trust me, wherever you take your argument with Bull, it had better be far, far away from here.”
He stared.
His mouth opened, closed again. Finally, he manages one sentence. “You told me the boss was a ball-buster.”
Although I was standing so close that, even in four-inch heels, I had to tilt my head to meet his eyes, I refused to step back. Instead, I leaned closer. “I am,” I whispered with soft seduction in his ear. “You can trust me on that, too.”
As I walked away, my hip brushed him in passing. He shifted quickly out of my way but not before I got a good feel. Since I doubted he was packing a gun… there, I was fairly certain his attention was back where I wanted it.
On me.
Hours after the last patron had headed home and the light in front of the bar had been turned off, I stretched out on my bed in my one-room apartment above Valentine’s. But sleep remained elusive. Still feeling the residual heat from my encounter with Travis McGee, I wore only light pajamas and hadn’t bothered to pull down the covers on the bed.
So, the returning bad boy was Grant McGee’s brother. I hadn’t seen that one coming. And Sissy was definitely going to hear about her omission of that little detail.
I consider Grant’s older brother. Not one mention within my earshot during the six years I’d made Pine Haven my home. What did it take for a town to obliterate someone’s existence from the circle of gossip? It must have been something drastic for the hard feelings to be so enduring, even after such a long absence.
I frowned.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to play up to him during my act. I still had a hard time fitting in, even after years of living in Pine Haven.
Something about Travis intrigued me; something compelled me to want to spend more time with him. Emotions and physical sensations, I hadn’t experienced in years, demanded permission to come alive again.
“Travis McGee.” Into the darkness I whispered his name, testing the feel of it on my tongue.
I wasn’t worried about why he’d left Pine Haven, nor why he had unexpectedly returned. None of that had anything to do with me. On the other hand, my over-the-top response to him confused me. He wasn’t my returning prodigal anything. But something had drawn my attention in his direction from the start, and I wasn’t certain I could back off.
Or if I wanted to.
For sure, he was easy to look at, with his long legs and fit muscular build. Wherever he’d been, he’d spent plenty of time outside. His skin was well tanned, his face not quite shaven. Sun-kissed dark blond hair feathered back and fell straight to touch the top of his collar. I always had been a sucker for that scruffy look.
I was intrigued by the way his expressive green eyes changed color with his mood. And I really liked the way he studied me with those eyes, especially when he knew I was looking back.
Touching him had been daring for me, even in the context of my performance. But I liked the feel of him. Even more, I liked knowing I had thrown him just a little off balance, when I admitted in the heat of my anger that I had been thinking about him.
Tired, unsettled, just at the edge of sleep, I nevertheless found myself wondering if Trav was home to stay or just in for a visit. Either way, I figured my summer had suddenly become a lot more interesting.
With shaking hands, I pushed the button to open the comm again. “Are you there, Mick?”
After a very long pause, the radio squawked and the voice answered, “I’m here. What’s the status?”
I tried to keep it professional. “I’ve been advised you need to check your emergency locator signal. Help is on the way. And you should conserve your radio battery by turning the unit off and checking in every hour.”
A lengthy pause followed. I could hear him breathing. Then I was surprised by a wry chuckle. “Good try, sweetheart. You get points for caring. But I know the score. I’m pretty sure the thing sticking in my back is an office chair, and since we’re in the parking garage, that makes it at least a couple of floors of rubble on top of us.”
A tear slipped down my cheek, and I lost the battle for objective professionalism. “Maybe it’s not as bad as you think. Maybe a furniture truck fell on you instead of the building.”
His laugh in my ear belied the gravity of the situation. “So you’re a glass-half-full kind of gal, huh?”
“More like a grateful-the-glass-holds-anything-at-all kind of gal,” I countered.
He laughed again. “I like you. Got a name?”
“Oh, it’s um, Jocelyn.”
“Whoo-hoo! Ms. Yum-Jocelyn. That’s a mouthful,” he said, exaggerating his Wyoming accent. More softly, he asked, “How ‘bout I just call you Angel? That’s what your voice makes me think of.”
The ground underneath me trembled. Quake! With my racing heart threatening to hammer its way out of my chest, I popped my eyes open. The blanket of blackness eased into shades of gray as my mind adjusted to wakefulness. The ground beneath me became the softness of my own bed. Another tremor rocked me, shaking the mattress beneath me, as shivers wracked my body.
I sighed and watched a sliver of moonlight moving across the windowsill. The dream hadn’t been unexpected. I’d grown used to my memories intruding sometimes. Thanks to the dream, though, I was now wondering if starting something with Travis was a good idea after all. Maybe we could share a meal and it would be the start of a nice friendship. My erogenous centers twitched in protest as I recalled my sexy little dance for him the night before.
Yeah.
With the first touch of dawn, the colors around emerged from the gray, as if the room itself was coming alive. Time for me to come alive too.
I pushed to my feet and smoothed the bed covers. While the rushing water steamed up my bathroom, I drank my coffee and painstakingly selected the makeup I would need in order to face the day. And my impromptu date with Travis McGee. I stood naked in front of my closet for a full ten minutes trying to decide what to wear. I had no idea why I felt like a nervous girl going to my first dance, but I sure hoped the unaccustomed feeling went away, and quickly.
Chapter Ten
Travis
Excitement, worthy of a teenaged geek about to date the head cheerleader, tingled through me as I found myself in the parking lot of Valentine’s a full thirty minutes early. A couple of other cars occupied the parking lot, but either the lunch crowd hadn’t arrived or she didn’t do a large midday business.
My steps slowed as I approached the heavy wooden doors. Just beyond that entrance I would find the woman who’d been on my mind nonstop over the past several hours. It was no use reminding myself that I had no business being here. I knew that, yet here I was.
Christine’s voice was like a siren’s call.
I couldn’t ignore it.
The moment she had crossed my path, everything and everyone else seemed to fade into obscurity. Even the search for the woman who’d once been the most important person in my life. I didn’t understand it, but I was powerless in the face of it.
The brass handle was warm from the midday sun. Drawing a fortifying breath, I pulled the door open and stepped inside.
She was sitting at one of the tables off to the side, concentrating on a red laptop computer. My heart rate picked up a bit, as I let my eyes trail along the curves beneath a form-hugging pale pink tank, tucked into another pair of low-riding blue jeans. One leg was folded beneath her on the chair; a sandal rested on the floor next to her. Purple-tipped toes moved in rhythm to the jukebox music.
Captivated, I tipped back my Ste
tson and lingered against the doorway, watching her. And because I was watching her, I knew the instant she became aware of my presence. Her hand hovered over the keyboard then she pulled it back and sat motionless for a moment. Finally, she angled a look over her shoulder to meet my scrutiny.
Her own gaze swept a fiery path down my body, then back up again and she greeted me with a leisurely smile that steamed my blood. “Have you been there long? I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”
Christine
With lazy movements, he took off his hat and set it on the end of the bar, holding my eyes with his own as he sauntered across the room.
“No hardship.”
When he stood directly in front of me, well inside my bubble of personal space, I had to resist the sudden urge to lean in and kiss that incredibly sensuous mouth. Then thoughts of resisting temptation faded to nothing as he took the initiative.
He leaned closer, paused, then finished his approach. I lifted my face, my eyelids heavy, my breath hanging up in my throat. The first brush of his lips was subtle, a butterfly hovering. Only our lips touched. It was a relatively chaste kiss, but my reaction to it was anything but. I steadied myself with my hands on his waist as little zings of pure wow factor traveled to my brain.
He deepened the kiss only slightly, but lingered with his lips on mine. His hands slid up my arms to cup my bare shoulders, his thumbs drawing tiny circles which sent flashes of electricity rocketing to all the appropriate places. When he drew away, I moaned in protest. My grip tightened on his waist, willing his mouth to return to mine. He eased back another inch, running his hands down my arms to my hands, squeezing lightly before breaking the contact.
“What was that?” I whispered.
He touched a finger to my nose. “If you have to ask, I must not have done it right.”
I laid my fingertips against my lips. “Oh, no,” I breathed. “You did it right.” Maybe a little too right, considering I no longer maintained the upper hand in the encounter.
His eyes lit on my fingers and his roguish grin faded into a look of pure physical hunger which painted fiery brushstrokes of need into my brain. I wasn’t used to needing. But my pulse skipped into high gear with the certainty he’d intentionally shown me his hunger, and just maybe that meant he was feeling as off-balance by whatever was happening between us as I was.
“Fact is, Bluebell, I’ve wanted to do that since about two seconds after you called me a jackass.” The playful grin returned. “Thought I’d get that first one out of the way, so it’s not hanging there between us anymore.”
I felt a little dizzy. “And now that you have?”
He tipped his head and slid a glance over my lips. “I’d like to go back for seconds at some point,” he said softly. “Would that be a problem for you?”
“I’d say there’s a good chance I won’t have a problem with that. In fact…” I pushed my hair behind my ear, leaning toward him. I froze, stepped back and looked up. “What did you just call me?”
Travis winced. “Bluebell. Bad habit of mine, so I’m told. Nicknames.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I remind you of an ice cream brand?”
He shrugged and then smiled one of those devastating, toe-curling, dripping-with-desire smiles. I felt myself salivating and it had nothing to do with lunch.
Chapter Eleven
Travis
Apparently, she wasn’t thrilled with being compared to … anything, let alone an ice cream. “Not the ice cream,” I corrected. “The flower. Your eyes are the same blue as a desert bluebell flower. It’s what I first noticed. Out there on the road the other evening.”
As I stood there, lost again in those eyes, they flashed with something that might have been irritation or arousal, or maybe something else. I wish I knew which, but before I could discern, she was moving off.
I caught her hand and tugged her closer. “Hey, it’s just a nickname. I won’t use it again.”
“No, no, it’s okay. You can call me whatever you want. If I don’t like it, I won’t answer. I was just thinking about how much energy you’re gonna take.” She shot him a considering look. “And I’m trying to figure out if it’s sweet that you compared my eyes to a wildflower or disturbing that you know the name of one.”
Self-consciousness was an unfamiliar feeling, made me itch between my shoulder blades. “I know the names of a lot of wildflowers,” I admitted, fighting the need to squirm the itch away. “My mom liked flowers. She spent a lot of time teaching me and Grant about things other than cattle.”
“She sounds amazing.”
“She was. She’d have liked you.” When Christine raised a disbelieving eyebrow, I nodded. “She would have liked your independence and admired your… spirit.”
Christine laughed. “I guess spirit’s one way of putting it.” With a pointed look at his hand on her arm, she added, “If you want to eat, you’d best let go.”
Oh, I wanted to eat, all right, but it wasn’t food on my mind. Reluctantly, I slid my fingers along her palm, lingering where our fingertips met. She drew a sharp breath as I dropped her hand, and I smiled. When she ambled off toward the kitchen, I unabashedly followed her smooth sensuous walk with my eyes. Hell yeah, it was going to be fun. When was the last time I’d allowed myself anything solely for pleasure?
And how would Christine do in the city? The thought was a mood-killer and I frowned. Did I really want to go back? Maybe it was time to stop doggedly pursuing a dream that was proving too elusive.
I pushed back the thoughts that dampened the moment and looked around the bar. Being nearly deserted gave it a different feel from the evening before. I wandered over to her computer. An expensive digital camera sat next to it, connected by a thin white cord. I didn’t know what I expected to find. Maybe she was just doing the weekly accounting or balancing her checkbook. When I looked at the screen, though, I was immediately grabbed by the photo of a group of bison trekking single-file across a valley.
Technically, it was a good photo. Artistically, it was great. A still picture, yet it conveyed a sense of unrelenting lumbering forward. Curious, I rolled the mouse over the album, bringing up the next picture, a close-up of a bison in profile, lazy and unconcerned. I flipped through image after image, prairie dogs playing, a mother moose and her twins, black bears, grizzly bears, foxes, coyotes, rock formations, cloud formations, dead trees, budding trees, snow-kissed mountains, and a powerful red sunset over Diamondback Bluffs.
The pictures pulled me in. The pieces of home I’d missed. Over and over her images captured the Wyoming I’d once described to someone else with the hope of one day bringing her home with me. Once again past and present began a battle centered in the region of my heart, and I considered making my excuses and leaving. Instead I clicked the mouse on the next picture.
Then the next.
I was so caught up in the images, I didn’t notice Christine’s return until she spoke. “House specialty burgers and fries coming up.”
Heat swamped my face and I slowly turned away from the computer, expecting to see anger or at least irritation. Instead, she was setting up the table for our meal, completely unconcerned about my snooping.
I gestured toward the computer. “Sorry. I should have asked.”
A gentle smile curved her lips, and her eyes, those amazing eyes, glittered with humor. “If it was something personal, I would have turned off the computer. They’re just pictures from my rides with Cloud. I was wondering about framing some of them. Still a few bare spots on the walls.”
I took a moment to study the bar’s framed pictures I’d seen, but hardly paid attention to, the evening before. “Those are yours?”
“They are,” she acknowledged ruefully. Then she shrugged. “Just a few personal impressions of the area since I moved here.”
“A woman of many talents.” It didn’t seem quite the right time to ask what other talents might be in her repertoire, but my body reacted to the fleeting thought. “They’re really good. They remind m
e of everything I missed while I was away. Do you sell many?”
Her hands stilled in the middle of arranging silverware. She blinked a couple of times in surprise. “That’d be a no, since they aren’t for sale. They’re just something I play around with.”
Her tinkling laughter tiptoed across the air between us and settled against my ears with a little sigh. “I’d buy them.” I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until she chuckled.
“Just tell me which ones you like and they’re yours.”
I found myself grinning along with her as she told outrageous stories about shooting the photos. I rolled the mouse over another album, surprised when I found pictures of wild mustangs. She had caught them running, grazing, with foals. There was even a series of photos illustrating a disagreement between two stallions.
“I know where this is,” I said, lightly tapping the screen with a forefinger. “This is Hawk MC high pasture.” I frowned. “We got mustangs running there?”
She shrugged. “Apparently. At least they were there last week. I wanted to stay longer, but it’s a long ride and Cloud was getting ornery.”
I snorted. “When isn’t that horse ornery?”
“He’s a good horse,” she insisted.
“He tried to take a bite out of me.” I chuckled then related my experience mucking stalls.
Christine
“He… might be a little touchy,” I admitted. Why did I have to feel so damn defensive? Better to change the subject. “Anyway, I want to go back to see the mustangs. But I’m afraid of Cloud starting trouble with the bay stallion.” I stopped talking when I noticed Trav had stopped going through my photo albums and was sitting, chin propped on one hand, watching me as though entranced.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” He asked.
“Not a lot,” I drawled. “What are you doing tonight?”
He just stared.
