Wind River Cowboy

by Lindsay McKenna

  She managed a small shake of her head, her eyes wide and vulnerable-looking. “How long have I been your treasure?”

  Her words were feathery, sounding far away and strained. It slammed into Garret what Kira was really asking him. God, did he dare tell her the truth? All of the truth? She was clinging to his gaze, searching his eyes with a desperation he could feel within himself. If nothing else, Kira deserved his courage and his truth. She’d risked her life to save his. He could do no less for her now.

  “I’ve loved you ever since you came onto the A team, Kira.”

  Garret saw shock roll through her expression. Tears filled her eyes. What had he done? Had he hurt her? Disappointed her? Worse? He didn’t know, but he could no longer sit on the truth of loving her. She made a small, strangled sound in the back of her throat and he frowned, using his thumbs to push the tears off her cheeks. “Talk to me,” he demanded hoarsely. “Why are you crying?”

  Kira managed a choked sound and pressed her cheek into his palm, closing her eyes. “I’ve loved you forever, Garret.”

  Now it was his turn to feel shock punch through him as he registered her barely whispered words. He felt her tears collecting in his palm, felt the firm warmth of her skin against his cupped hand. It took long moments for the dots to connect, to realize that they had both fallen in love from the get-go. His whole foundation rocked and he couldn’t speak.

  Kira lifted her head, pulling out of his arms, trying to stem her tears. Garret sat there, staring at her, wondering if he’d heard right. Maybe he’d made up her response? Hadn’t heard her correctly? He was almost afraid to say anything, to break the precious feeling that made him feel utterly bound to Kira. Everything was so fragile between them right now. So . . . possible . . .

  Kira sniffed and looked up at him. “You’ve loved me from the start? When I first came into the A team?”

  His brow scrunched; her words were halting, afraid. He saw the fear of rejection in Kira’s wide, flawless gray eyes that overflowed with joy and terror. Clearing his tight throat, he rasped, “Yes. From the start. It just happened, Kira. I didn’t expect to fall in love with you.” And then his mouth quirked. “But I did.” Reaching out for her hand clenched in her lap, Garret laid his over hers. “Know this: I never stopped loving you for one second. Not even after the ambush. My memory was gone for six months, but when everything suddenly downloaded and I realized I loved you, I immediately called Les. He didn’t know where you were, Kira.” His fingers tightened over her damp, cool hand. “When you’d call your father, you never told him where you were.”

  “I remember you telling me that,” Kira whispered, her hands pressed against her face. “I’m so sorry, Garret. I-I didn’t know.” Her hands fell to one side and her voice was raw. “I thought—-I thought you didn’t want to reconnect with me. I thought my love for you was one-sided. My side. I loved you, but you didn’t love me.” Her face crinkled and fresh tears fell. This time Kira didn’t try to wipe them away as she hung her head, looking haunted, an apology in her expression.

  “Come here,” he coaxed, his voice low with feeling as he eased her into his arms. Garret sat back and settled Kira against him. To his relief, she didn’t resist. It felt so damn good to have her cheek resting against his shoulder, her arm around his middle. He smoothed the sweater down across her back, his hand coming to rest against her hip. “I love you, Kira. I’ve never, for one second, ever stopped loving you.” He felt her move her head, tipping it back so she could look up at him. Her eyes were stormy and he slid his fingers through her hair, some of the strands damp from her tears. “I’ve sat on telling you so ever since you walked back into my life here at the Bar C. I wanted to tell you, but Jesus, I was afraid to, sweetheart. I was afraid it was one-sided. I didn’t know you’d fallen in love with me, too.”

  She swallowed hard. “I love you, Garret. I never stopped . . . never . . . not even when I couldn’t find you after the ambush. No one would tell me anything.”

  “Because we were black ops, Kira. The Army circled the wagons around us. We disappeared off the radar. I’m sorry . . . so sorry this happened.” He saw the agony in her eyes. “And it must have been a special hell for you, thinking I didn’t care about you. That I’d just walked away from you afterward.” He drew her against him, holding her tightly, feeling her quiver once, her fingers digging into the fabric spanning his chest. Taking a deep, ragged breath, Garret released it, feeling so much relief. Kira loved him. Had always loved him. It had been mutual. His head spun with shock, elation and grief...

  Kira whispered, “Don’t be sorry, Garret. You didn’t do anything. You were injured.” She moved her hand across his powerful chest, feeling his flesh tighten beneath his clothing. “It must have been a shock when I showed up at the Bar C.” She lifted her head, meeting his somber gaze.

  “Helluva shock,” he admitted. “But the best damn shock I’d ever gotten. I couldn’t believe you were there at the table with Shay. At first I thought I was seeing things.” He smiled a little, grazing her cheek. “It was the happiest day of my life.”

  “When I saw you, I about came unglued. I didn’t know you were here. I thought I was seeing a ghost. I didn’t know what to do . . . what to say.”

  “You seemed pretty unflappable from where I was standing,” he said wryly, leaning down, kissing her brow. “I was pretty close to fainting from the shock of it all.”

  Kira nodded. “That made two of us, believe me.” Kira searched his eyes. “What now, Garret?”

  He shrugged, holding her and never wanting to let her go again. “Move forward? We know what we have has already stood the test of time.” His mouth curved faintly. “Four years we’ve loved each other even though we couldn’t speak about it or act on it. Kinda reminds me of the Victorian era.” He saw the corners of her luscious mouth tip upward, some of the darkness leave her eyes. Each time her hand moved across his chest, he wanted to groan with pleasure. How long had he waited to have her in his arms like this? To be able to freely speak of how he felt about her? And the biggest bombshell of all was that she loved him as much as he loved her.

  “We couldn’t act on it while we were on the team and we both knew it,” Kira said quietly. “We knew better.”

  “Yeah, it wouldn’t have worked. It would’ve broken the team’s back.” He slanted her a tender look. “But I’ve got to ’fess up, Kira, I damn well was glad you were living in that small house with me. You have no idea how much I enjoyed our private talks, getting to know you. I’ve got all those memories back and they kept me company even after we were wounded and separated.”

  She looked at the coffee table, her voice warm. “I had my journal.” And when she looked back up at Garret she saw guilt in his expression. “What?”

  “I have another confession to make.” He gestured to the journal. “I came in here last night to see how you were and you were asleep on the couch. When I got closer to you, I glanced at the coffee table and saw a sketch of me in your journal.” He gave her an apologetic look. “Curiosity got the better of me. I should have controlled myself, but I wanted to see it.”

  “Oh no,” she muttered.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I read what you wrote. About the kid getting its leg stuck in that rock pile?” He saw Kira press a hand over her eyes.

  “You read that I loved you,” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  Kira sighed and pulled her hand away from her eyes. “Then . . . you knew . . .”

  “After getting over the shock, I tried to think my way through it all,” he admitted, frowning. “That entry was dated nine months into your first deployment with us. I didn’t know if you still loved me in year two, three or after the ambush.”

  Kira pulled out of his arms and said, “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

  Garret watched her slide off the couch with that feminine grace of hers, his body burning with need for her. She walked quickly across the living room and down the hall. He knew she was retrieving he
r journal. When she returned, he saw the happiness in her eyes. She sat down next to him, opening the huge journal so it lay across his lap as well as hers. Fingers moving through the thick, creamy pages, she stopped at one.

  “I have ten sketches of you in here,” she admitted shyly. “Twice as many as any of the other guys. This is the first entry, three months into my first deployment with you and the team.”

  Garret looked at the pencil sketch. She had drawn him as he slept on his sleeping bag on the floor of the mud-and-rock hut they’d lived in in the village. He was in his tan T-shirt, mouth partly open, sleeping deeply, his hands around the pillow. Kira was incredibly talented; he saw all the tiny details in the large drawing. His gaze drifted to her scrawl beneath it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Kira felt her heart swelling with euphoria as Garret sat quietly with her. She turned the pages until she found the second drawing of him. “This was sketched three months later.” She gave him a rueful look. “By that time I knew I was in love with you. I fought it at first, but by the end of the first six months, I knew you were the man I wanted in my life forever.” She saw his eyes narrow on hers with an intensity that made her body clench with need. She pulled her gaze from his, moving her hand lightly across that sketch and the next page, where she’d poured her heart out.

  Garret studied the sketch. She had drawn him with several little Afghan boys around him as he crouched down near one of the fruit tree orchards. There was a skinny mongrel of a dog with them as well. She’d drawn it looking toward him, the boys with their hands on his massive shoulders, a third child kneeling down in front of him. They were all smiling. “I remember this,” he said quietly. “That’s Ahmad on the right side of me.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I was walking toward you, going to help you with the ditch digging to improve the village’s irrigation system when I saw this happen. You knew your size and height scared the kids and you were always either kneeling on one knee or crouching down to make yourself look less threatening to them. Ahmad had just been beaten by his father and you’d seen him crying and trying to hide it. You put your arm around him and tried to make him feel better. The other boys came over later.” Kira gave him a soft smile. “I mentally photographed that moment, and that was when I knew, for certain, that I had fallen in love with you.” She reached out, touching his hand. “You’re a gentle giant. For those three years, those boys got so much love from you. Ahmad adored you. I can’t even begin to know how he felt when we were ambushed. I’m sure he doesn’t know if you survived or not.”

  Shaking his head, Garret rasped, “I loved that kid. His father never stopped beating him. It tore me up. I wanted to kill the bastard. He was abusive, like my old man.”

  “You did what you could while you were there, Garret.” She searched his pained expression. “That’s one of the many reasons I fell in love with you. Despite your size, you were incredibly gentle with the kids, with me . . . everyone.”

  Sitting back, he said thickly, “Cal’s a big man. I knew what it was like as a thin, skinny kid, how threatening he looked to me. I knew from that experience how the kids saw me. I didn’t want them to be afraid of me like I was afraid of Cal.”

  Her heart tore a little and she saw the memories in his eyes. She gently closed the book, knowing that for him to see the other eight sketches would simply be too much to digest. Over time she would show them to him. They could be a catalyst to help him unload the grief he held. “You’ve had a rough life,” she said quietly. “I realize how lucky I was to have my mom and dad. I had a happy childhood in comparison.”

  Garret nodded and placed the closed journal on the coffee table. He looked into her eyes. “This Christmas has turned into nothing but one shock after another.” A corner of his mouth hooked upward. “But good shocks, Kira. We need to talk now that we know the truth about how we feel about each other.”

  She studied him in the silence. “This is the best Christmas ever.”

  “Yeah,” he teased, “you got your D7 back.”

  “No,” she said, “I got you.” Kira reached out, sliding her hand into his, seeing it swallowed up. Fearlessly, she held his gaze, rife with emotion. “The best gift of all will be if you’ll let me come to bed with you, Garret. I want to be with you, lay with you, love you, if you’ll have me. You have no idea how much I wanted you when we were in Afghanistan. Look but don’t touch. Never, ever speak of how I felt about you. I could do nothing, and it about killed me.” And then she rolled her eyes. “Well, you know what I mean.” She saw his hazel eyes, the gold in their depths, intensify as he studied her. There was a delicious warmth embracing her and she now knew it was his love surrounding her.

  “I want the same thing, Kira. Are you sure? Do you want more time?”

  “I’m very sure. Maybe you need the time? To think this through?” She saw him give her a wry look, his fingers closing firmly around hers.

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life, Kira.” He stood up and pulled her gently to her feet.

  Kira felt as if the world and all its troubles, pressures and demands, melted away beneath the hungry look in Garret’s narrowed eyes as he drew her to him. She nodded and slipped her arm around his waist and they walked through the living room and toward the hall. To his bedroom. His bed. For so long she’d visualized this moment, dreamed about it, and now . . . it was real.

  He pushed open the door to his bedroom and she saw he’d made the bed. How like a military man to ensure his room was clean and picked up. She remembered sleeping on the hard-packed dirt floors with their sleeping bags and blankets. In summer, there was no air-conditioning and in winter it was always cold.

  He shut the door and turned to her. She lifted her chin, drowning in his dark, intense gaze, his fingers sifting through her hair, gentle, making her scalp race with tiny shivers of delight. “We may need to stop before we start,” he told her wryly. “I don’t have any condoms on me, Kira. Never thought I’d need them. I’m clean; no diseases.”

  She heard the amusement in his lowered tone and rested her hands against his chest. “We’re in luck, then. I just finished my period three days ago. I’m clean, too.” Garret’s expression lightened and she saw naked hunger in his eyes, sending a deep wave of longing through her. He’d settled his hands on her shoulders and she rested lightly against the front of his body, more than a little aware of his erection. It amped up the starvation she felt for Garret. “I’m okay with it if you are.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Me too,” she whispered, easing away from him, pulling the sweater over her head. She wore no bra, just a white silk camisole. Kira felt no shyness about being naked in front of Garret. She’d waited too long and wasn’t going to be detoured. There was appreciation in the look he gave her.

  “You always were a wild child,” he murmured with a grin, beginning to undress himself.

  She smiled and removed the camisole. Instantly, Garret’s eyes warmed, his gaze lingering on her small, upturned breasts. It made her feel desired.

  Kira walked over to the bed, shimmying out of her denim skirt and hanging it over the back of a nearby chair. “I’m close to nature. I don’t see myself as a wild child.” She watched him undress far more quickly than she had. There was a night-light on the wall near the door. It shed just enough luminescence in the room to show the outline of his powerful body.

  The cooler air caressed her breasts, puckering the nipples. Heat thrummed through her lower body as she removed her panties and set them aside. Garret stood unmoving, watching her, but it was his eyes that told Kira everything. If it were possible, he looked more like that huge, shadowy wolf, primal, raw, his hard body powerful, calling to her. And he wanted her. There was no denying that.

  “Come here,” she whispered, holding out her hand to him. As he started to walk toward her, she added in a low voice, “I haven’t had sex in years, Garret.”

  He took her hand and guided her onto the bed. “That makes two of us
.” He lay her down on the bed, coming to her side. “We’ll take it slow and easy,” he promised.

  She had dreamed of this moment for so long. His weight depressed the mattress as she lay stretched out on her side, the pillow beneath her head. She watched the economy of his body, the muscles tight and honed. He was beautiful. Utterly, mouth-wateringly beautiful. As Garret stretched out beside her, less than a foot between them, she felt the heat rolling off his body and inhaled his male scent like an aphrodisiac.

  “You look worried,” he rasped, moving his hand lightly down her arm, across her hip, then stopping.

  “A little,” she admitted, somewhat breathless, her heart pounding in her chest. She saw the glint in his eyes soften and felt his callused pads move in a soothing motion across her hips.

  “We’ll go slow, Kira. Just talk to me, all right? I’m not a mind reader. I need to know how you’re feeling, what you want.”

  “I will. I’m just a little . . . well . . . nervous. It’s one thing to dream about making love with you, another when the dream becomes reality. You’re here beside me. Really here,” and she gave him a slight smile, reaching out, allowing her fingers to drift across the fine, dark hair sprinkled across his chest.

  “From where I am, I see the most beautiful woman in the world. You’re perfect, Kira. You’re more beautiful than I’d ever imagined.”

  Her smile deepened as she held his burning gaze, feeling incredibly desired. She felt her breasts tighten as his gaze swept across them, felt as if Garret had caressed them physically. The heat and gnawing in her body was almost too much to bear because she wanted him so much. To feel him moving into her, take her, make them one. “That makes me less nervous.”

  His brows moved down and he sat up, his hand gliding gently over the puckered scar where the bullet had gone through her slender calf. “I’ve never seen this scar,” he murmured, worry in his tone. “Is it still painful for you?” and he hitched a look in her direction.