by Nancy Martin
“I...I was. But the coffee.” She tried to summon a smile as she lifted the mug in her hand. “Becky makes pretty strong stuff, doesn’t she?”
Hank turned away, spat in the sink and rinsed his mouth. Then, grabbing another towel, he came out onto the landing where Carly stood. He leaned one bare shoulder against the doorjamb and buffed his wet hair with the extra towel. “Yeah, I had a cup myself.”
“So,” she said, holding her ground just six inches from him. “You’re not very tired right now, either?”
“Not very.”
“Then...”
“Yes?”
“We—I mean—Maybe a few things need to be said.”
“You’re right.” He stopped drying his hair. “Listen, about what I said this morning. It was stupid. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.”
“Oh, that was nothing. I was too touchy. I slept badly, and I was hungry—”
“You looked great,” he said softly.
Suddenly Carly felt as if her brains had turned to mush. “What?”
A ghost of a grin appeared at one corner of his wonderful mouth, and his gaze seemed to pierce Carly’s soul. “Really, you did. You woke up looking very... desirable. A little ruffled around the edges, but you have the most incredible blue, bedroom eyes.”
“I do?”
“And,” he said, leaning imperceptibly closer, “you look even better right now.”
Carly’s mouth got very dry, and she couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say. She stood on the landing, holding a cup of coffee and waiting shakily as Hank leaned closer and closer and closer.
Hank heard alarm bells going off in his head. Every brain cell that was still functioning told him to stop, stop, stop. But the rest of his body was completely ignoring the warning signs, and something instinctive was taking over.
She looked so lovely at that moment. A little dazed, a little flushed from her bath. Her short hair was still delightfully rumpled. And underneath that filmy little robe, she was completely naked, no doubt about it.
Hank quit thinking and kissed her. He found her mouth with his and slipped one hand into the soft fringe of blond hair at the back of her neck. Under his thumb, he felt her pulse quicken. At that, a slow rush of sexual desire flooded his system, and he deepened the kiss to something much more demanding.
Carly resisted for a fraction of a second, her right arm rigidly extended to prevent the coffee from spilling. She froze, but then Hank felt her lips soften against his. And in another heartbeat, she was pressing against him, aligning her slim body to fit against Hank. She slid her free hand up his arm and around his shoulder, lifting up on tiptoe to match the intensity of his kiss. They didn’t breathe, didn’t think. Just melded in a quiet, delicious moment.
But then she drew back. Gently. Turning her head away so that he couldn’t see her eyes, Carly stopped the kiss and took a deep, steadying breath. Hank held her close, unwilling to let her body part from his.
“I had decided to stop this,” she whispered, her face turned away. “Before it went any farther.”
“Stop what?”
“This,” she said. “This thing between us. This sex thing.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Oh, Hank.” She began to quiver in his arms. At first it was very slight, but gradually her whole body was trembling against his.
“Hey,” he murmured, his lips against her temple. “Hey, easy now.”
“I shouldn’t be kissing you.”
“Why not? We’re consenting adults.”
“But,” she said, “we’re not going to have anything else, are we? A relationship, I mean. It’s just going to be a good time. A one-night stand.”
“Well—”
“It makes me sad, that’s all. I like you, Hank. I actually think we could be good together.” She looked up at last, her gaze teary.
She’s right, Hank thought. We could be very good together. And not just in bed. We’re a lot alike.
“But,” Carly went on raggedly, “I’ve come to an important realization. I’ve learned something about myself.”
“What’s that?”
“That I hate the country!” She choked, and suddenly the tears were spilling down her cheeks. “I am a city person, Hank. I thought a ranch would be romantic and...and...wonderful, but it isn’t. It’s uncomfortable and inconvenient and...and...I want to go home.”
Amen! Hank wanted to shout. But he took the coffee cup from her hand and steered Carly into her bedroom. He kicked the door closed behind them and guided her gently down onto the bed where she proceeded to dissolve into great, gulping sobs.
“I’m so ashamed of myself,” she went on. “I’m such a coward and a feeble, weak—”
“No, you’re not.” Hank sat down beside her and set the mug of coffee on the window ledge. “You’re anything but weak.”
“I loved the scenery, but I’m just not cut out to live in it. Do you understand?”
Unable to hold back a smile, Hank said, “More than you know.” He smoothed her hair back from her face. He kissed her wet cheek. “It’s nothing to cry about, Carly.”
“But...but...I like you. Yesterday was—it was good, wasn’t it?”
“Better than good.”
She hiccuped. “And now I just want to hold you and—Oh, hell, why not say it? I want to make love with you for hours. Isn’t that crazy?”
His lips had found her jawline, and Hank began tracing its length with feathery kisses. “Crazy? No. Maybe an idea worth trying, though.”
“It’s wanton or something.”
“It’s nice. Makes me feel...”
She used the fingers of her left hand to stroke his face. “How?”
He grinned. “Like making love for hours.”
“You don’t think I’m some kind of horrible hussy?”
He couldn’t stop a laugh. “Hussy?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Carly,” he said patiently, “I’m a guy. In a situation like this, I think you’re anything but horrible. In fact, I’ll nominate you for goddess status if you’ll let me take this robe off.”
She laughed unsteadily and closed her eyes. “I want to pretend we’re in a lovely penthouse suite with room service just a phone call away and my manicurist just a block down the street and—”
“What about a steam room?”
“Do you like steam rooms?”
“Love ’em,” Hank mumbled, his lips moving down her soft throat.
“Is it like a sauna?”
“Yep.”
“I...I like saunas.”
He had the tie of her robe in one hand and tugged it loose. Without pause, he skimmed kisses across her collarbone and down the smooth skin of her chest. He could feel her heart leap beneath her breast as his lower lip made contact with the nipple. It bloomed against his mouth, and Hank couldn’t hold back an incoherent mutter.
Carly sighed and arched her back involuntarily. “Maybe we should just live for the moment, especially since Becky’s away doing some errands.”
“Once in a while,” he murmured between swipes of his tongue, “living for the moment...is a good thing.”
She laced her fingers in his hair and held Hank’s head. “Ohh, that’s wonderful.”
“This?”
She blew another long sigh. “Oh, Hank.”
Carly eased down on the bed, drawing Hank with her until they were stretched out on the bedclothes together. The bed made a quiet sound under them. Lying there was definitely more comfortable than on a blanket spread out over rocky ground, Hank thought with pleasure. And Carly felt soft and curvy beneath his hands, more potent than wine beneath his lips.
Hank slid out of his towel. Carly arched out of her robe, and he rode into the curve of her body. The friction of their bare skin was almost more than Hank could stand.
Carly smoothed her hands around his shoulders, across his back. Her fingertips traced dizzying designs on his back.
“Another mi
nute and I won’t be able to stop,” he whispered, nuzzling her softness. “Are you sure about this?”
“Oh, yes.” Her thighs parted. “I can’t wait any longer.”
“Then I’ve got to go back to my room for a second. I think I’ve got a condom—”
“There’s one in my suitcase,” she said with a smile that was half ashamed, half pleased with herself. “I checked before I took my shower.”
Hank laughed, liking her very much. He stretched for her nearby suitcase and dragged it closer to the bed. Turning over on her side, Carly reached over the edge of the bed and flipped open the case. She rummaged for only a second before coming up with a foil packet. By that time Hank had begun to nibble the back of her neck.
In another moment they were tumbling on the bed. Carly’s caresses were erotic, her kisses playful. She laughed in the back of her throat when Hank made his desires clear, and shortly he was out of his head with the sensual games she could play with her mouth.
They didn’t take much time to explore or tease, however. There was more urgency in Carly’s whispers than there had been yesterday. More tension sang in the muscles of her body. Hank obeyed her wishes and soon found himself poised and ready above her.
“Now,” she murmured. She told Hank in breathless phrases exactly what she wanted, and he sank inside her with a single thrust that was more powerful than he intended. Carly eagerly rose to meet him, though, and shuddered with pleasure when he was deeply inside. Her eyes were alight, her mouth curved in a warm smile.
Looking down at her, Hank felt a pang of emotion in his heart. She felt so good, so perfect. For him, it was as if he’d come home—not to a ranch, but to woman. The right woman at long last.
He wanted to tell her that. He wanted to say the words, to explain everything. But she was too exciting, too insistent, too aroused. Carly wrapped her long legs around his hips, holding him inside her as she settled her shoulders firmly into the bed. Then she arched upward and began to rock. Languidly at first. Then with greater passion.
She was molten lava, and Hank moved with the deep waves she created. Beautiful, powerful sensations washed over him like ocean surf. He tried, but he couldn’t hold back the urge to quicken the tempo, to strengthen his thrusts.
Carly gasped, but met each of the thrusts with growing abandon. The rhythm grew, mounting steadily. Thrust after thrust. Cry after cry. Hank lost all sense of time and space. He forgot to be gentle.
At last Carly shuddered powerfully. She gasped his name and opened her eyes wide. Hank drank in their expression. He saw the ecstasy that boiled over inside her. And the emotion. She cried out and quivered beneath him, and Hank felt his soul implode at the same instant. Together they were suddenly suspended in the universe.
Then the world burst into a thousand stars.
Hank had Carly wrapped in his arms. She was wound around him like a delicate wraith. For a long time, that was all he knew. They seemed to float back to reality with the same drifting speed as a windblown leaf returning to earth.
He rolled onto his side, drawing Carly with him so that they lay for a long time with noses touching. Carly’s smile was warm and sleepy. Hank knew he probably looked just the same way—exhausted and satisfied.
No words were needed.
But he murmured, “Where have you been all my life?”
Warmed by his words, Carly closed her eyes and listened to Hank’s breathing steady and gradually get long and relaxed. He fell asleep a little while later, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
What had attracted her to this man in the first place? The way he looked—tall, lean and handsome with his Marlboro Man mustache and heavenly shoulders? Or his easy laugh, the calm drawl in his voice? The sometimes wicked gleam in his sky blue eyes?
No, perhaps it had been something even less obvious that appealed to Carly at first.
A cowboy came with fewer complications than a man from the real world in L.A., Carly thought. He ought to be easy to get along with. He didn’t come with a lot of excess baggage. He rode his horse, drove a rattletrap pickup truck while listening to country-western music, looked after his cattle and didn’t worry about issues that plagued the rest of the world. The fantasy man had spun around in Carly’s s imagination for weeks. She had his personality created before she knew him.
But is that Hank? Carly frowned to herself. Is he the fantasy cowboy I dreamed up?
Maybe not, she reasoned. He wasn’t a cardboard cutout of a man. He wasn’t shallow and emptyheaded.
He was real. With a sometimes short temper, an intolerance of discomfort, an easy way of finding out about Carly’s life and family. He was smart and capable, not to mention definitely an accomplished lover. It was hard to believe he’d lived all his life isolated on a South Dakota ranch, especially given some of the references he’d made on their camping trip.
But suddenly Carly’s brain was too fogged to puzzle through that thought. She dozed off, smiling.
Seven
L ust isn’t love, Carly told herself the following day. But it certainly feels the same sometimes.
Her entire being felt consumed by Hank Fowler. She even forgot to wish for cigarettes. One addiction had been traded for another, and this one was wonderfully tempting.
The day had dawned sunny and cool, perfect weather for working in the corral, Becky had declared at breakfast, giving her brother a stern eye.
Carly spent some time with Chet Roswell learning how to care for Baby, but her mind wasn’t really able to concentrate. Not with Hank floating in and out of her imagination as frequently as he did She found herself looking over her shoulder every few minutes to see what Hank was doing on the other side of the corral.
“That’s it, ma’am,” Chet coaxed. “You hold that bottle with your right hand and the little sweetheart in your left arm. Here, let me—yeah, that’s right as rain. Later on, we’ll give her some solid food, too.”
“Thanks, Chet I appreciate your help.”
“Oh, sugar pie, I’d do anything to help out a cute little lady like you.”
Normally Carly would have thrown a temper tantrum at any man who called her a cute little anything. But Carly hardly listened to a word Chet said to her.
Across the corral, however, Hank was in a very different mood.
“Who does that slime bucket think he is, touching her like that?”
Becky looked up from the calf she was trying to examine for signs of blindness. “Will you hold that rope steady, please, Henry? And hug his neck tighter. I don’t want to get my toes broken because you’re too busy keeping an eagle eye on your girlfriend.”
Hank gripped the small calf as snugly as he could. “She’s not my girlfriend. And she’s certainly not his, either!”
“What have you got against Chet?”
Hank tried to hold the struggling calf as Becky had instructed, but he couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder at Carly, who seemed engrossed in every nuance that Chet was preaching about. She didn’t shrug off Chet’s hand when ‘he held her arm. “I haven’t got anything against Roswell.”
“You’ve hated his guts since elementary school,” Becky returned.
“He used to bully everybody in Miss Hardwick’s third-grade class,” Hank mumbled.
“Wait a minute. I thought you were the one who got kicked out of that third-grade class.”
“For punching Chet Roswell,” Hank snapped. “I couldn’t take it anymore. He was picking on Julie Goodman.”
“Oh-ho, Julie Goodman!” Becky laughed. “The tough girl with the stubby pigtails. Who could forget her? You always had a soft spot where she was concerned, and I never understood that Julie was mean.”
“Not mean, just a girl who knew her own mind.”
“She owns a car dealership now.”
“Good for her.”
“And now you’ve got a soft spot for Carly. Why? She doesn’t need protecting, either.”
“I guess I like strong women.”
“So you can
have a worthy opponent when it comes to stubbornness. Okay, turn him loose. I’ll have the vet check him on Friday.” Beclry dusted off her gloves and watched the freed calf go bounding back to his mama. “Don’t you like Chet Roswell at all, Henry?”
“No.”
Becky squinted up at him in the sunshine. “Why not?”
“Because he’s everything I was supposed to be,” Hank said, unable to stop a laugh. “He’s a big dumb cowboy who never read a book, but slept with his horse at least once a week. Pop always liked having Chet around—so did you, for that matter, if I remember correctly.”
“I still like having him around,” Becky said, sounding strange.
Hank took her elbow and spun his sister around so that he could gauge her expression. She looked away quickly. He raised one eyebrow, releasing her arm. “What’s that supposed to mean, exactly?”
“Nothing. Well, maybe something.” Becky took the rope from him and strolled to the fence. “He’s been coming around these past few months. He lost his own ranch a couple of years ago, you know.”
“He’s a lousy businessman?”
“No, just bad luck, I think. Now he’s—well—he’s changed, Henry.”
“What do you mean? He’s not tormenting little girls anymore?”
“I’m not saying Chet doesn’t have faults. He has a lot. He’s immature and competitive—but we’re working on those things.”
“We?”
“Chet and I.”
Hank saw the truth at last and exploded. “Oh, hell, Becky, you’re not going to marry him, are you?”
Becky’s swift upward gaze was flinty. “What’s it to you if I did?”
Hank caught the words that nearly escaped his mouth. He didn’t want to hurt Becky—certainly not because of a childhood relationship that hadn’t mattered much to him. One look at Becky’s face told him that she had come to know Chet Roswell better in the years since Hank had left the ranch. Surely Chet had grown up. If so, there had to be a way for Hank to put the past behind them.
He mustered a wry grin. “Oh, great You’re going to force me to spend every holiday with the guy who got me kicked out of the third grade—the class with the prettiest teacher in the whole school?”
