To the One I Love: That Old Familiar FeelingAn Older ManCaught by a Cowboy

by Emilie Richards

  No. No, no, no. She needed to stop thinking about that. About him. Hadn’t she promised herself that? Isn’t that one of the reasons why she was spending the month of August in Colman Key with her sisters? Not only to help Grammer close up her family home for good, but to rid herself of futile thoughts and foolish dreams?

  But the lines from the letter that had mysteriously appeared on Grammer’s doorstep just wouldn’t be dislodged. She closed her eyes, easily recalling the contents. Neither the envelope nor the letter inside had borne a name. Nothing identifiable, except that the spare, block writing had definitely looked masculine.

  Neither of her sisters thought the letter was for them, nor had Marti thought it could be for her. But she’d seen the faraway look in Lacey’s eyes, and the speculative one in Deanna’s. Whether or not they said anything, she knew they were privately wondering if the letter was intended for one of them. No doubt, they weren’t really considering Marti as the intended recipient.

  She knew they still thought she was a child. Hardly the type of individual to inspire such heartfelt words as those contained in the love letter.

  She sank down onto a large crate turned on its end and stared blindly at her reflection. She could have told Lacey and Deanna that she had been involved with a man. She figured that Lacey suspected there was more to Marti’s funk of late than just her career dilemma. But Lacey probably assumed it had to do with one of her classmates at college, or a fellow coffee-toting intern at Style, the magazine she’d been working at throughout her university days in New York.

  If they only knew.

  Devlin Faulkner was no boy, and his career had long surpassed anything so trivial as fashion and entertainment magazines. It was a fluke that they’d ever met in the first place. She was little more than the staff flunky at Style. And he was an award-winning journalist; a voice of reason from places running amok with insanity. He was—

  “Out of your life,” Marti whispered. “By your own choice, he is out of your life.” And even if that hadn’t been the case, Devlin would never have written such an emotionally touching love letter. Not to her. She knew it.

  She rubbed her fingertips over her throbbing temples. She was being ridiculous, of course. The letter probably was for Lacey or Deanna. Devlin hadn’t taken her seriously three months earlier; he’d have hardly changed his position in the time since she’d told him she’d never wanted to see him again.

  She stared at her reflection, deliberately avoiding the sheen in her eyes. It was hot up in the attic. Her white T-shirt clung to her back and her red cotton shorts looked as wrinkled as if she’d slept in them.

  From downstairs, she heard a thump. Muffled voices. Probably Big John—the handyman who seemed to belong to the property just as much as the banana trees outside the Florida room—coming by to fix yet another little thing that needed repairing before her father could sell the family home right out from under Grammer. Things like the air-conditioning.

  The heat was sweltering. She yanked off her shirt and kicked off her shorts, slipping the dress over her head. It felt cool and crisp against her hot skin.

  Of course, it dwarfed her, too, considering Grammer was nearly a half-foot taller than Marti.

  “You’re an idiot, Marti Colman,” she whispered to her reflection in the old, cracked mirror. A petite, dark-haired woman, dressed in a too-large dress stared back at her. “Get over it, pompon.” She detested the nickname that her father still called her. “Get over Devlin Faulkner. Your whole life is ahead of you.”

  Pinpricks stung her eyes and she blinked rapidly, determinedly. She was not going to cry over him. Not again. Not anymore. She wasn’t a child, and it was time she stopped acting like one. She shoved a limp lock of hair away from her damp forehead, tugged the gaping neckline of the lovely dress up and over her shoulder, and turned away from the mirror.

  The man stepping into the attic smiled faintly when she spotted him, and for a moment Marti actually felt the world stop spinning. She threw an arm out to grab for something steady, but all she found was air.

  It made her dizzy.

  Or maybe the dizziness was just because she’d merely poked at her breakfast that morning.

  Or maybe the heat had her hallucinating.

  Her fingers trembled. Her heart ached.

  She stared harder, and the apparition didn’t fade. His hair had the same gilded glisten as the dust motes in the streaming sunlight. Yet he was far more substantial.

  His lips tilted a fraction more. “Playing dress-up?”

  The world jerked back into motion and for a moment, Marti felt queasy. She stepped forward, yanking the dress up over her shoulders again, damning the heat, the task of discarding-or-saving, her heart that ached with the foolish, too-quick-to-stop wish that he was there because he had written the letter they’d found on the porch. The wish that things were different with him. That he’d been different. Or that she’d been different.

  She felt like a ragamuffin and probably looked worse. She was twenty-three and dressed up in her grandmother’s too-long antique clothing. Devlin Faulkner, at forty, was a renowned journalist and at last count had been dating a six-foot-tall paleontologist with cheekbones any runway model would kill for. “What are you doing here, Devlin? How’d you know I was here?”

  “Is that how you greet all your old friends, cupcake?”

  “My name is Marti.” Knowing he called her “cupcake” just to get her goat didn’t mean that she was always successful in shrugging it off. “And you’re not an old friend.”

  “Just ‘old’ then.” His lips twisted.

  Marti lifted her shoulder, proud of the casual gesture. “You’re the one who tended to make an issue out of our ages, Devlin.” It hadn’t bothered her in the least. Not until the end, anyway.

  “Your lack of aging, anyway,” he agreed smoothly.

  She felt the dress slip off her shoulder again. Then felt the glide of his heavy lidded gaze follow the dress’s path as if it were a physical caress. Like some weird animated trick, the attic seemed to shrink, growing entirely too claustrophobic to contain the coiled energy of one Devlin Faulkner.

  She wanted to pull up the shoulder of the dress. To give herself at least the measure of protection offered by the slick fabric covering her skin. Rather ridiculous, considering that the only thing bared was her shoulder.

  He’d seen her in less.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked again.

  “It’s not obvious? Visiting you, of course. Your grandmother let me up here.”

  Her eyes stung. She realized she was crushing a handful of dress fabric in her fist and deliberately loosened her stranglehold. “You came to see me? All the way down here in Florida? From New York City?” Skepticism sounded louder in her voice than pain, and for that she was grateful. A girl had her pride, after all. Particularly a Colman girl.

  “All the way,” he said evenly. His amber-colored eyes were steady on her face, probably seeing everything she was thinking and feeling, while giving away nothing in return. But that was Devlin—observation to the nth degree.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  His gaze didn’t waver. “Have I ever lied to you before?”

  She smiled, humorless. “God forbid.” He’d been brutally honest. Right from the start. Right up to the end. Their relationship had lasted less than six months. There were days when Marti felt as if she’d never recover from it.

  “Then why would I start now?” he asked, utterly reasonable. Utterly impossible.

  She wanted to believe him. Badly, which meant she needed to get away from him, before she did something really stupid. Like admit that she loved him, had loved him from the very first and would take whatever crumbs of a relationship he offered. Or, maybe even worse, forget what his utter, brutal honesty had revealed.

  She focused on the dust motes, but her mind was helplessly envisioning the dark blond hank of hair that had a tendency to fall over his tanned forehead. “Well, now you’ve seen
me,” she said flatly. “And I’m busy, so you need to leave.” She stifled a wince. Dammit. She hadn’t meant to say need. Sure enough, his eyes had sharpened ever so slightly at her slip. Most people might not even notice the shift in his expression, but Marti did. She’d known every one of his expressions. At least, she’d thought she had. Turned out, there was one expression she’d missed until it was too late for her heart.

  Disrespect.

  “Marti, come on down and have some lemonade.” Grammer’s voice floated up into the attic. “Your friend must be thirsty after his trip.”

  Marti glared at Devlin.

  He smiled faintly. “You wouldn’t want to disappoint your grandmother.”

  He was right, of course. That’s what she got for telling him all about her family; about Colman Key. Just another inequity in their brief relationship. She’d bared her heart, her life, her dreams, to him. He’d bared nothing.

  She still felt like a fool.

  “Fine.” She wasn’t Edith Colman’s granddaughter for nothing. Grammer was the soul of graciousness, and Marti would sooner kiss a snake than embarrass her grandmother. Oh wait, she’d already kissed a snake. One with dark, shaggy blond hair and amber colored eyes. “Turn around.”

  His eyebrow rose. “So you can kick me down the stairs? Don’t think so.”

  The idea had merit. Too bad that she hadn’t thought of it first. “So I can change.”

  His gaze drifted over her bare shoulder again, then further. And despite the cloying heat of the attic, Marti felt goose bumps form. He, damnable powers of observation as alive as ever, noticed.

  She swallowed and crossed her arms, not caring in the least what he’d make of it.

  He was wearing a faded denim shirt, sleeves folded up his bronzed forearms; wrinkled tails hanging loose over his equally faded jeans. There were dark circles under his eyes, and weary lines radiating from the corners. There was a small part of her—okay, a large part of her—that wondered over it. Devlin was no slave to fashion, and he was used to long, stressful hours. But he looked—

  No. She wasn’t going to let her sympathies be raised for this man. She was good enough to date, to kiss and even try to seduce, but he didn’t think she was capable of doing anything serious with her life.

  Not the way he had.

  And he had yet to turn around so she could slip out of the dress and back into her own clothing. “Turn around, Devlin.”

  “You weren’t so shy a few months ago,” he said.

  “Before I dumped you, you mean?” Doing an admirable imitation of her mother, the Florida state senator, she smiled without a speck of humor.

  “When you came to my hotel room and begged me to make love to you.”

  “A gentleman wouldn’t remind a lady of that.” She didn’t care if she sounded old fashioned.

  His lips twisted. “I don’t believe I’ve ever claimed to be a gentleman.”

  Marti’s smile died. The day they’d met, he’d been a gentleman. She’d been in danger of being trampled. He’d been the only one to stop and help. “Turn around, Devlin.” Her voice was husky. She couldn’t help it.

  Something flickered in his eyes. The slashing dimple in his cheek—the one that was there whether he smiled or frowned—deepened.

  The heel of his heavy, scuffed boots scraped softly on the wood floor as he turned.

  Marti dashed her hand over her face. The dress slipped straight down her torso, puddling around her bare feet and she blindly yanked on her T-shirt and shorts. She pushed the dress toward the save pile and walked across the attic. All she wanted to do was get out of there. To gain some space between them. To pretend that Devlin Faulkner had no effect on her anymore. She passed by him, not daring to breathe in, lest she inhale the scent that was uniquely his, the scent that came to her in her dreams, that kept her lying awake late at night.

  His hand was warm on her arm, stopping her cold.

  She swallowed. Determined not to look up at him.

  Which, of course, is exactly what she did. His eyes were unreadable. His thumb smoothed over her inner elbow, setting off a fresh wave of shivers. “Devlin.” His name screamed through her mind. It was barely a whisper on her lips.

  He made a soft sound. She stared, fatalistically caught as his head lowered, the movement as slow as an unreal movie sequence. “Why’d you leave me, Marti?” His words whispered over her forehead, barely stirring the tendrils of hair clinging to her forehead.

  She swayed. His other hand clasped her arm, sliding up over her shoulder, back down.

  Then he reached for the hem of the T-shirt and she jerked back, all of her defenses snapping right back into place. “Don’t touch me.”

  His eyes narrowed and he lifted his hands peaceably. “Relax, I was—”

  “Just trying to mess with my head all over again,” she said sharply. “For what, Devlin? Is your ego so astronomical that you can’t accept the fact that I called it quits before you did? Why does it even matter, anyway? You’re leaving the country again on assignment and, as you were so fond of telling me, our time together was limited.”

  His head tilted slightly to one side, studying her. “Actually,” he drawled slowly, “I was just going to tell you that your shirt is inside out.”

  He smiled faintly, turned and headed down the stairs.

  Chapter 2

  Devlin stopped midway down the steps when he heard the softly hissed “bastard” followed by the distinct sound of a foot thumping against a wood floor. He smiled faintly, but it was short-lived. Marti Colman was a petite package of heart and verve that he’d had no business trying to unwrap. Yet, for some damnable reason, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head. Maybe because he’d never actually gotten her into his bed.

  “Mr. Faulkner? Is everything all right?”

  He looked down at Edith Colman’s friendly face and figured there was probably some special place in hell for grown men who lusted after the innocent granddaughters of women like Edith. “Right as rain,” he said, heading down the rest of the steps. The attic was on the third floor. “Particularly if that offer for lemonade is still good.”

  “Devlin’s already said he has only time for one glass, Grammer,” Marti said from above him. He looked back at her, but she avoided his gaze, skipping down the stairs on bare feet. A narrow gold ring on her second toe glistened in the light with her quick movements. She slipped around him, smelling warm and sweet, and tucked her arm in her grandmother’s, leading her into the Florida room off the kitchen where she settled the woman into a chair at the white, wicker table.

  Devlin had barely pulled out a chair for himself when Marti plunked a glass on the table and sloshed lemonade into it from an icy crystal pitcher. He was pretty sure that if her grandmother weren’t present, she’d have invited him to choke on it.

  He picked up the glass and took a long drink, stifling a sigh.

  Mrs. Colman, Grammer as Marti called her, was watching him with a politely curious expression. “So, Mr. Faulkner, what brings you to Colman Key? Do you and Marti work together?”

  “Call me Devlin,” he said easily, fully aware of the daggers that were shooting from Marti’s deep brown eyes. “And, no, Marti and I don’t work together.” He ignored the stifled snort that came from Marti’s general direction. “We were…friends. I was in the area, so I decided to drop in and see how she was.” And work on getting her out of my head once and for all.

  Grammer looked even more confused. If Devlin had ever doubted it, he was certain now that Marti hadn’t told her family that they’d been involved. “Marti told me often what a great place Colman Key is,” he said.

  “I see.” But clearly, Grammer did not.

  He watched Marti gently lay her hand on her grandmother’s shoulder. “Devlin and I met at the fashion shows in New York,” she said. “Remember, I told you my boss, Steven Potter, had called for me to run him out some notes—”

  “And you were pushed down when a group of women went screaming afte
r some movie star.” Grammer nodded. “Such rude behavior.”

  “Well,” Marti went on, “Devlin stopped to help me.”

  Grammer sent him a luminous smile. “You’re the one. Well, Mr. Faulkner—Devlin, we do owe you our thanks. Marti dear, why don’t you show your young man around the key?”

  Devlin watched Marti. She looked everywhere but at him. “Oh, I hardly think…the attic, Grammer. I’m not nearly finished up there.”

  “You’ve been cooped up there all morning, dear, and the attic isn’t a pleasant place under the best circumstances. Take a break. Go swimming, cool off. You just got in night before last. We’ve the entire month to take care of the sorting and packing. You don’t have to accomplish it all today.”

  Marti finally looked at Devlin. “I’m sure Devlin has more important things to do, Grammer.”

  “No.” The lie came immediately. He did have somewhere to be. But he preferred facing Marti’s barely veiled antagonism to dealing with the situation awaiting him in Tallahassee. “My time is Marti’s.”

  Grammer smiled, obviously pleased. “Well, then, I’ll leave you to it.” She pushed to her feet. If she noticed that Marti’s smile was wooden, she hid it well as she left the room.

  Marti’s smile, such as it was, died. “You never said how you knew I was here.”

  “I’m a journalist. I investigated.”

  “Why bother? What do you really want, Devlin?”

  “You.”

  Her throat worked. Her lips parted. She stared at him, a pained expression filling her eyes. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a game player.”

  “I’m not.”

  Her lips twisted. “Devlin—”

  “You left me, Marti. Is it so hard to believe that I’d come after you?”

  “Three months after the fact?” She snatched up his glass and went into the adjoining kitchen where she dumped the remains in the sink, then rinsed it out with jerky movements. “Did Dr. Longlegs bore you so quickly, then? Or maybe she wasn’t serious enough for you, either.”

  Dr. Jessica Longhitano was a noted paleontologist who was as jaded as the rest of his usual crowd. She was intelligent and sophisticated, and in the couple of years he’d known her she’d never once tied him in knots the way Marti had. Being seen with Jess the past few months had been nothing but convenience for both of them. “You sound jealous.”