by Janzen, Tara
She hesitated for a second, then said, “Sure. Just give me a minute. Do you want a soda?”
He shrugged. “My truck is in the alley.”
“I’ll be right out.”
She brought more than sodas when she came. Her hands were full of cookie and cracker boxes, a few candy bars, and a whole six-pack of cold cola. She also brought two sandwiches she must have made up in the kitchen in the back. He wondered what her uncle had thought of that.
“You’re not letting me eat you out of another paycheck, are you?” He tried to grin again. He could afford a smile now that he had her on his turf. He hadn’t felt welcome in the drugstore, because he wasn’t welcome anymore. Tobias and he had gotten along real well up until a few weeks ago, when for reasons Colt hadn’t understood until today, Sarah’s father had told everybody that Colt wasn’t supposed to see Sarah any longer, for any reason. Neither he nor Sarah, though, had considered for a minute that they’d give each other up. They’d just gotten careful.
“I’m hungry too,” she said, shoving the food across the seat before crawling up into his pickup truck.
Her booted feet had barely left the ground when he scooted over and wrapped his hands around her waist, pulling her across the seat and onto his lap.
“Colton Haines! What do you think you’re doing?” She slanted him a provoked glance and reached over to pick up the boxes being crushed by her legs. “You’re smashing the creme cookies.”
“Kiss me, Sarah.” The words were spoken low, with a seriousness that captured her attention.
Her gaze returned to his, and she searched his crystalline-blue eyes, the color of a Wyoming sky, until his dark lashes lowered and his mouth lifted to hers. She met him halfway, not knowing what to expect, but suddenly reminded of the look she’d seen on his face in the drugstore. Colt was hurting.
She kissed him sweetly, her lips soft but closed, and he didn’t press for more. But then his hand slid to the nape of her neck, his legs spread apart, and he pulled her between his thighs. That was when the kiss changed, growing mysterious, and darkly exciting, and confusing all at once.
He bit her lips gently, something he’d never done before. His other hand settled on her hip and pulled her closer against him, causing him to groan and her to catch her breath. His mouth came back to hers and he pushed his tongue deep inside, caressing her with slick, even strokes.
Sarah started to tremble, but she couldn’t move away. She clung to him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her mouth open and responsive. She knew what he was doing, what he was pretending to do, but she didn’t know where it would lead, not in broad daylight in the alley and not between them, even if they’d been parked on the prairie in the middle of the night.
She couldn’t move away, though, and he didn’t stop. He only held her tighter. Her breaths grew shallow. His grew rough. She knew when he became aroused, and guilt slipped in next to her confusion and gathering excitement.
“Colt . . . Colt,” she whispered, breaking away and burying her face in the crook of his neck.
Colt tilted his head all the way back to the seat, his eyes closed, his teeth clenched. Frustration gnawed on his insides. He was angry, angry at himself for letting go and getting half crude on her, and angry at a nice girl’s code when he needed her so badly.
He felt her leave him and slide over to her side of the truck. Her hand came back and rested on his arm in a touch of comfort he didn’t acknowledge. He didn’t want her young-girl comfort. He wanted the woman inside her. He wanted her beneath him, around him, all over him, until he couldn’t think.
“Let’s go to the river,” he said, and didn’t wait for a reply as he pushed himself back behind the steering wheel and started the truck.
The engine was slow to turn over, but Colt was an expert at getting the ancient pickup going and keeping it going. He’d had years of practice and damn little hope of getting a newer or better vehicle. The truck finally fired up, and he pulled out on the prairie side of the alley, to catch the highway on the outskirts of town.
Miles of road and pale amber bluffs ran past them to the horizon, the bluffs breaking into a stretch of cliffs as they neared the river. She was quiet on the other side of the barrier she’d absently built out of boxes of cookies and crackers. She offered him a can of soda, which he accepted without thanks. But he wasn’t quiet inside, and he knew what her little wall meant even if she didn’t.
He turned off on a dirt track at riverside, following it through two gates and up through the pastures before driving back down to the river. He parked in front of an old barn used officially for winter hay, and unofficially by him and his friend Daniel Calhoun as a fishing shack. Daniel’s father owned the ranch, and it was taken for granted that Daniel would own it someday. Colt had often wished his future was as securely mapped out. Instead, it had taken another vicious twist he was going to have to fight damn hard to accommodate.
“Do you want to go swimming?” he asked, the edge still in his voice.
She shook her head, not meeting his eyes. He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t in much of a mood to face himself either.
He got out of the truck and started for the river, leaving her behind. He’d ground gears getting to her; he’d kissed her as he’d never dared before, he’d dragged her all the way the hell out there—and then he’d walked away. He didn’t know what to think.
But he knew he hurt less because she was with him. He knew his thoughts were evening out because she was near, within touching distance if he needed her. He took off his hat and with a snap of his wrist sent it sailing across the pasture to the pussy willows crowding the river.
Sarah watched the black Stetson float through the air and land on a willow branch. When he shrugged out of his shirt and went for his belt buckle, she looked away. She had enough problems without watching him strip down to his underwear. Or so she told herself just before her glance strayed back to where he’d sat down by the riverbank to take off his boots.
Sunlight caught in his white-blond hair and shone along the hard brown length of his arms. His chest was sleekly muscled, his belly ridged and tight. He finished taking off his boots and rose to drop his jeans. She unconsciously held her breath for an instant, capturing her bottom lip with her teeth. The pants came down.
He was hopelessly beautiful, and she loved him beyond reason. The pent-up breath released on a pained sigh. With Colt, the lines between right and wrong grew so damned thin, it was hard to think straight.
Strong legs corded with muscle carried him to the river’s edge. His buttocks moved in graceful rhythm beneath the white cotton of his shorts. She watched him dip in and stretch out in the shallows, then kick off and slide deep beneath the water to where the brown trout reigned.
She wanted to know so much about him, everything. She wanted to know how he breathed in his sleep, and what made him so elemental, able to slip into the river and rise again, water flying from his hair, freezing like anybody would, but somehow not minding.
He didn’t last too long, though, and soon he was padding back across the strip of pasture between the river and his truck, his shirt flapping open, his jeans damp in spots from his wet legs, his boots hanging from his fingers.
With one lithe movement of bunched biceps and tensed thighs, he levered himself into the back of the pickup, where she had laid out their impromptu picnic.
“Thanks,” he said, sitting down and accepting the sandwich she handed him. “You always make the best sandwiches.”
It was a compliment of sorts, and Sarah hid her quick grin. Truth was, Colt would eat anything that didn’t eat him first, no matter what it tasted like. She was still pleased. For being so crazy in love with him, she had the strangest surge of maternal instincts with him. She didn’t want to be his mother—she had enough mothering with four younger brothers—but she sure liked taking care of him.
“How was the river?” she asked.
“Cold.” A small smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.
She laughed. “Didn’t seem to bother you.”
“I’m tough.” His gaze caught hers, and the moment of lightness passed. His darkening eyes, filled with a hundred messages, held her motionless beneath the flickering shade and muted sunlight sifting through the cottonwood trees. “I’m leaving, Sarah.”
She’d known the words before he’d spoken, and the answer she’d built in her heart was quickly on her lips. “No.”
He shrugged and lowered his gaze to take a bite of sandwich.
“No, Colt,” she insisted, feeling strong and right. “Nothing can be that bad. There’s no reason to leave.”
“There’s no reason to stay.”
She would have hit him for the thoughtless insult, if she could have hit him at all. Instead, she got to her feet, angry and awkward in her haste to get away. He just as quickly pulled her back down, holding her on her knees in front of him. The bed of the truck was hot through her jeans. His hand was tight around her upper arm, his gaze piercing.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation, glaring at him, her anger unabated.
“Will you leave with me?”
“Yes.” There was nothing to hold her in Rock Creek except a lifetime of memories, some good, some not so good, and some downright bad. She was signed up for college in the fall, but she wouldn’t lose Colt for college. She wouldn’t lose him for anything.
“Will you make love with me?” His voice grew more intense, his grip tighter. “Now?”
She stared at him long and hard, then jerked her arm free. “Is this some kind of test?”
He swore and dropped his chin to his chest. When she made a move to leave, he grabbed her again, his hand wrapping around her wrist too tightly for comfort. “No, Sarah. This isn’t a test.” His lashes slowly lifted, and she saw all his hurt return. “This is real. I want you. I want to make you mine, because I’m leaving and I’m going to lose you.”
“You won’t lose me, Colt,” she promised, her tone softening.
A shuttered look of defeat shadowed his face. “Can’t have you. Can’t lose you. What in the hell am I supposed to do?”
She felt helpless. “What’s wrong, Colt? What’s happened?”
“My mom—” He paused and took a steadying breath. “My mom has a new boyfriend.”
“Is that so bad?” She didn’t understand. If anybody deserved a little happiness, it was Amanda Haines.
“He’s married.”
“Oh.”
“And I think she owes him money.” He didn’t think it, he knew it. The man was the landlord of his mother’s beauty shop, and there was never enough money to spread over the bills.
Dammit all. He worked two jobs besides running their small herd of stock. She could have his money, his school fund. All she had to do was ask. Or they could sell the damn ranch. It wasn’t much of a place to begin with and once he went to school, they wouldn’t be able to keep any stock on it at all.
It took Sarah a minute, but she finally pieced together what he was getting at. The awful truth didn’t change her reaction, except to make it sadder.
“I’m sorry, Colt.”
His eyes snapped up to hers, flashes of white burning in the cerulean depths. A sneer curled his lips. “My mother is a whore and you’re sorry. Thank you.”
She would have slapped him then for calling his mother a whore, but he was too fast, rising to his feet. She grabbed his arm instead and stumbled upright to stand in front of him.
“You’ve got no call to go—”
He silenced her with a quick shake of his head, but had nothing to say—nothing he could choke out around the growing lump in his throat.
Sarah saw the change in him and reacted immediately. “Colt, you’ve got it all wrong. Hell, half this town is sleeping with the other half, and they’re all married to somebody else, and it’s not just this town. My aunt who works in a bank in Cheyenne, she says those folks are fooling around all the time.”
“It’s different when it’s your mother.” He spoke the words as damning fact, not opinion.
“Different for you,” she said. “Not different for your mom. She’s just like everybody else, looking for some love.”
The look he gave her tore through her with searing heat. “Just like me, Sarah?” he asked, moving closer. “Looking for some love from you?” He slid his hands down over her hips and pulled her tightly against him, claiming her with the action.
“Colt . . .” Her voice trailed off, tremulous.
“Marry me tomorrow,” he whispered roughly, lowering his mouth to hers. “But be my wife today.”
* * * * * *
Continue reading for an excerpt from The Dragon and the Dove
The Dragon and the Dove
One
It was a shame, really, Jessica Langston thought, that anyone besides herself had their days held hostage by her eccentric employer. She cast another surreptitious glance over her desk at the Oriental woman waiting in the reception area of Daniels, Ltd. Two hours earlier the woman had given her a card identifying herself as Dr. Sharon Liu and had said she was there to see Cooper Daniels. When Jessica politely explained the futility of such an endeavor, the woman had only smiled and sat down to wait in the richly appointed office, sinking her elegant form into a wingback chair and balancing her slippers on the cinnabar-colored carpet.
Jessica could have told her again that she was wasting her time, but she had already implied as much twice since their initial conversation. Her employer did not see people without an appointment. For that matter, her employer did not see people with an appointment. Truly, she doubted if her employer saw people in any capacity. Jessica had worked for Cooper Daniels for two weeks and he had not seen her.
She hadn’t seen him either—unless she counted the dusty oil painting stuck up on the wall in the darkest corner of the office.
Crotchety old man, she thought, giving the picture a bored glance. The artist certainly hadn’t been paid to glamorize her employer. Cooper Daniels looked stern, unforgiving, wrinkled up, dried out, and like he could kick off at any moment.
Squelching a sigh of irritation, she went back to flipping through The Wall Street Journal. She hadn’t gone for an MBA on top of an undergraduate degree in accounting and subjected herself to six weeks of intensive testing and interviewing by a gray-haired harridan of a headhunter named Mrs. Crabb to spend her days reading. She was supposed to be Cooper Daniels’s assistant, not his receptionist.
She shouldn’t complain, Jessica told herself. She was certainly getting paid as if she were assisting the owner and founder of Daniels, Ltd. in his Pacific Rim wheeling and dealing, as if she were tracking high-end real estate investment opportunities, which she’d been educated to do.
Dr. Liu rose from her chair and walked over to the large oak-framed windows overlooking Powell Street and the Bay, drawing Jessica’s attention away from her newspaper. An olive-colored silk pantsuit with designer origins hugged the woman’s slender figure; her hair was drawn back in a severe but regal chignon. Jessica wondered how long she would wait before she finally gave up and left. The other woman’s patience made her think Dr. Liu knew something she didn’t, and that unnerved her. Any normal person would have taken her hints and left an hour ago. But that was the pot calling the kettle black. Any normal person wouldn’t have spent the last two weeks working for a man whose very existence was becoming doubtful. Sometimes she wondered if he’d died and nobody had remembered to tell her.
“Ms. Langston, Cooper Daniels here. Please send Dr. Liu in.”
The blue band of light blinking on her intercom and the accompanying masculine voice catapulted Jessica’s pulse into overdrive and paralyzed her from the neck down. A barrage of questions spilled into her mind, adding to the general confusion: How had he gotten into his office without her seeing him? How long had he been in his office? What was she supposed to do?
Respond, came the answer. Regrouping quickly, she leaned
forward and pressed the response panel on the intercom.
“Yes, Mr. Daniels. I’ll send her right in.” She turned to the woman standing at the window. “Dr. Liu? Mr. Daniels will see you now.”
Jessica waited for Dr. Liu to retrieve her medical bag, then with as much grace as she could manage, considering her heart was pounding a mile a minute, she rose and stepped over to the ornate doors leading to Cooper Daniels’s private office. Dragons with fangs bared and claws showing, wings spread and flames rolling, faced each other in frozen flight on the carved wooden panels. Surprisingly, the doors opened when she turned the handles. They never had before when she’d tried them, and she’d tried them many, many times—even going so far as to put her shoulder to the job and wiggle a bobby pin or two in the lock.
“Thank you.” The Oriental woman slipped by her with a small smile that suggested, “I told you so.”
Jessica responded with a tight little smile of her own, conceding defeat. The woman had known something she hadn’t known. Dr. Liu had known Cooper Daniels was alive and well and in residence.
Before closing the doors, Jessica glanced into the office, intending to give the old man a nod of acknowledgment. He wasn’t anywhere in sight. The only indication of his presence was the sound of running water coming from an open door off to the left, the sound of a lot of running water, as if someone was taking a shower.
After spending so many days looking at Cooper Daniels’s portrait, she refused to dwell on the picture her last thought brought to mind, let alone take the time to imagine what Dr. Liu was doing there. Instead she made a quick study of the rest of the office, noting an ancient private elevator against the south wall—which answered one of her questions—the massive desk commandeering the north wall, and the elaborate arrangement of flowers and foliage cascading over a large, low table that anchored a circle of chairs.
She had turned to leave when a glimmer of gold caught her eye. She looked down and her next heartbeat caught for a second, captured by the dragon woven into the carpet. A hundred shades of bronze, yellow, copper, and brown edged the scales that began at the tail, where she stood with her feet perfectly placed in the heart-shaped point. Startled, she moved off the creature and looked up toward its head. Fierce emerald-green eyes warmed in the late-afternoon sunshine. Blue smoke curled out of the winged beast’s nostrils. Flames of red and orange danced upon its tongue.
