by Nora Roberts
Tomorrow was soon enough for worries, for the fear of what was haunting her ranch, her mountains, her land. Just for tonight she would be only a woman. A woman, she decided, who, this once, would be content to let a man hold the reins.
So she was smiling when he walked back in. And for a moment, just looked.
She’d seen him shirtless before, countless times, and knew those broad shoulders, that strong back. One memorable day she’d caught him and Adam and Zack skinny-dipping in the river, so she’d seen him naked.
But she’d been twelve then, and she wasn’t thinking like a twelve-year-old now. And she wasn’t looking at a teenager, but a man. A powerful one. One that had her stomach flopping around in delighted reaction.
“You look good naked,” she said conversationally.
He stopped pouring the glass he’d brought in with him, turned to stare at her. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”
The fact was, she looked stunning, sprawled over the rumpled sheets without a hint of modesty. Her hair was tumbled, her eyes glowed in the candlelight, and she had one hand low on her belly, idly tapping along with the music.
“You sure as hell don’t look like a novice,” he told her.
“I learn fast.”
Now his smile came, slow, dangerous. “I’m counting on that.”
“Yeah?” She loved a challenge. “So, what have you got there, McKinnon?”
“Your champagne.” He set the bottle on her dresser, where candles flickered. “Have a glass.” The one he brought her was full to the rim. “You may want to be a little drunk for this.”
“Really?” The smile widened into a grin, but with a shrug, she sipped. “Aren’t you having any?”
“After.”
She chuckled, sipped again. “After what?”
“After I take you. That’s what I’m going to do this time.” He trailed a finger from her throat down to her quivering belly. “I’m going to take you. And you’re going to let me.”
The breath backed up in her lungs and it took an effort to push it out. He didn’t look tender now, or flustered. Now with those eyes so dark, so green, so focused. He looked ruthless. Exciting.
“Am I?”
“Yeah.” He could see that pulse in her throat begin to beat and flutter. “It’s not going to be slow, but it’s going to take a long time. Drink the champagne down, Willa. I’ll taste it on you.”
“Are you trying to make me nervous?”
He climbed onto the bed, straddled her, watched her blink in surprise. “Darling, I’m going to make you crazy.” He took the glass, dipped a finger in the wine, then traced it over her nipple. “I’m going to make you scream. Yeah.” He nodded slowly, repeating the process on her other breast.
“You should be afraid. In fact, I like you being just a little afraid this time.”
He trickled the last few drops over her belly, then set the glass aside. “I’m going to do things to you that you can’t even imagine. Things I’ve been waiting to do.”
She swallowed hard as a new and fascinating chill ran over her skin. “I think I am afraid.” She shuddered out a breath. “But do them anyway.”
TWENTY-TWO
I T WASN’T EASY TO TRACK WILLA DOWN ONCE APRIL HIT its stride, and with it the spring breeding season. As far as Tess could see, everything was focused on mating, people as well as animals. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn she’d caught Ham flirting with Bess. But she imagined he had been trying to wrangle a pie.
Young Billy was eye-deep in love with some pretty little thing who worked a lunch counter in Ennis. His former liaison with Mary Anne had hit the skids, left him broken-hearted for about fifteen minutes.
The way he strutted around, Tess could see he thought of himself as a man of the world now.
Jim had some slap and tickle going with a cocktail waitress, and even the longtime-married Wood and Nell were exchanging winks and sly grins.
With nothing disturbing the peace and pastoral quality of the air, everyone seemed ready to fall into a routine of work, flirtations, and giggling sex.
There was Lily, of course, with wedding preparations in full swing. And Willa, when she stood still long enough, had a dopey grin on her face.
It seemed to Tess that the cows were trying to keep pace with the humans. Though she couldn’t see anything particularly romantic about a man shooting bull sperm into a cow.
She sincerely doubted the bull was thrilled with the arrangement either, but he was allowed to cover a few, just to keep him happy. And the first time Tess witnessed the coupling was enough of a shock to make her wish it her last. She refused to believe that the bull’s chosen innamorata had been mooing in sexual delight.
She’d watched Nate and his handler breed his stallion too. She had to admit there had been something powerful, elemental, and a little frightening in that process as well. The way the stallion had trumpeted, reared, and plunged. The way the mare’s eyes had rolled in either pleasure or terror.
She wouldn’t have called the process romantic, and it certainly hadn’t been anything to giggle about. The smells of sweat and sex and animal had been impetus enough for Tess to drag Nate off at the first decent opportunity and jump him.
He hadn’t seemed to mind.
Now it was another glorious afternoon, with the temperature warm enough for shirtsleeves. The sky was so big, so blue, so clear, it seemed that Montana had stolen every inch of it for itself.
If she looked toward the mountains—as she often caught herself doing—she would see spots of color bleeding through the white. The blues and grays of rock, the deep, dark green of pine. And if the sun angled just so, a flash that was a river tumbling down fueled with snowmelt.
She could hear the tiller running behind Adam’s house. She knew Lily was planning a garden and had cajoled Adam into turning the earth for the seedlings she’d started. Though he’d warned Lily it was too early to plant, he was indulging her.
As, Tess mused, he always would.
It was a rare thing, she decided, that kind of love, devotion, understanding. With Adam and Lily, it was as solid as the mountains. As often as she wrote about people, watched them so that she could do just that, she’d never grasped the simple and quiet power of love.
She could write about it, make her characters fall in or out of it. But she didn’t understand it. She thought perhaps it was like this land that she’d lived on, lived with for so many months now. She had learned to value and appreciate it. But understand it? Not a bit.
Cattle and horses dotted the hills where grass was still dingy from winter, and men worked in the mud brought on by warming weather to repair fencing, dig posts, and drive cattle to range.
They would do it over and over again, year after year, season after season. That, too, she supposed, was love. If she felt a stir herself, she blocked it off, reminded herself of palm trees and busy streets.
She had, Tess thought with a sigh, survived her first—and she hoped last—Montana winter.
“There you are.” Tess started forward, but Willa rode straight past her toward the near pasture. “Damn it.” Refusing to give up, Tess broke into a trot and followed. She was only slightly out of breath by the time she caught up. “Listen, we’ve got to get into town tomorrow. Lily’s fitting our attendant dresses.”
“Can’t.” Willa uncinched Moon, hauled off the saddle. “Busy.”
“You can’t keep avoiding this.” She winced as Willa thoughtlessly tramped on the infant wildflowers perking up around the fence posts.
“I’m not avoiding it.” After dropping the saddle over the fence, Willa removed the saddle blanket and bit. “I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to be wearing some lame dress, probably have posies in my hair. I just can’t take off for the day right now.”
Pulling a pick out of her pocket, she leaned into Moon, lifted the mare’s near hind leg, and went to work on her hoof.
“If you don’t go, Lily and I will have to choose th
e dress for you.”
Willa snorted, skirted Moon’s tail, and lifted the next hoof. “You’re going to pick it out anyway, so it doesn’t matter if I’m there or not.”
True enough, Tess thought, and with an ease she wouldn’t have believed possible even a few months before, she stroked and patted Moon. “It would mean a lot to Lily.”
This time Willa sighed and moved to the foreleg. “I’d like to oblige her. Really. I’m swamped right now. There’s a lot to get done while the weather holds.”
“Holds what?”
“Holds off.”
“What do you mean holds off?” Tess frowned up at the clear, perfect blue of the sky. “It’s the middle of April.”
“Hollywood, we can get snow here in June. We ain’t done with it yet.” Willa studied the western sky, the pretty, puffy clouds that clung to the peaks. She didn’t trust them. “A spring snow’s a fine thing, gives us moisture when we need it and melts off quick enough. But a spring blizzard.” She shrugged, pocketed the pick. “You never know.”
“Blizzard, my butt. The flowers are blooming.” Tess looked down at the trampled blooms. “Or were.”
“We grow them hardy here—those that we grow. I wouldn’t put that long underwear away just yet. Hold, Moon.” With that order, she hefted the saddle again and carried it toward the stable.
“There’s other things.” Determined to finish, Tess dogged her heels. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you alone in days.”
“I’ve been busy.” In the dim stable, Willa stored her tack and took up a grooming brush.
“With this and that.”
“Which means?”
“Look, so you’re making up for lost time with Ben. That’s fine, glad you’re happy. And you’re busy impregnating unsuspecting cows all day, or ruining your hands with barbed wire, but I need to know what’s going on.”
“About?”
“You know very well.” Cursing under her breath, Tess walked back outside, where Willa began brushing Moon. “It’s been quiet, Will. I like it quiet. But it’s also making me edgy. You’re the one who talks to the cops, to the men, and you haven’t been passing things along.”
“I figured you were too busy playing with one of your stories and talking to your agent all day to worry about it.”
“Of course I’m worried about it. All Nate says is there’s nothing new. But you still have guards on.”
Willa blew out a breath. “I can’t take any chances.”
“And I don’t want you to.” To soothe herself, Tess stroked Moon’s cheek. “Though I admit I’ve had a few bad moments waking up at night hearing people walking around outside. Or you pacing around in.”
Willa kept her eyes on Moon’s smooth coat. “I have nightmares.”
More surprised by the admission than the fact, Tess moved closer. “I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t been able to talk about it, and wondered now if that was a mistake. So she would see. “They’ve gotten worse since going up to the cabin. Realizing that girl was killed there. No doubt of that now that they’ve matched her blood to the towels and rags I found under the sink.”
“Why the hell didn’t the cops find them?”
Willa shrugged her shoulders and continued to groom her horse. “It’s not the only cabin, the only shelter in the hills. They looked around, saw nothing out of place, everything as it should be. They didn’t see any point in poking into dark corners and overturning buckets, I guess. They sure as hell have gone over the place now, every inch. Hasn’t helped. Anyway, I think about that, and the time up in the hills with Adam shot, and bleeding, and not knowing.”
She gave Moon a slap on the flank to send her into the pasture. “Just not knowing.”
“Maybe it is over,” Tess put in. “Maybe he’s gone off. Sharks do that, you know. Cruise one area for a while, then go off to another feeding ground.”
“I’m scared all the time.” It wasn’t hard to admit it, not when she watched Lily walk around the side of the house laughing up at Adam. Fear and love, she’d discovered, went hand in hand. “Work helps, keeps the fear in the back of the mind. Ben helps. You can’t think at all when a man’s inside you.”
Yes, you can, Tess mused. Unless it’s the right man.
“It’s that three o’clock in the morning thing,” Willa continued. “When there’s nobody there, and nothing to hold it off. That’s when the fear creeps up and snaps at my throat. That’s when I start wondering if I’m doing the right thing.”
“About?”
“The ranch.” It spread out around her, her life. “Having you and Lily stay on when we can’t be sure if it’s safe.”
“You don’t have any choice.” Tess hooked a boot in the fence, leaned back into it. She couldn’t see the land through Willa’s eyes, doubted she ever would. But she’d come to admire the pull of it, and the power. “We have minds of our own. Agendas of our own.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll tell you what mine is. When my time’s up here, I’m going back to LA. I’m going shopping on Rodeo Drive and I’m having lunch at whatever the current hot spot is.” Which, she knew, would certainly not be the hot spot she’d lunched in that past autumn. “And I’m taking my share of the profits from Mercy and putting it toward a place in Malibu. Near the ocean so I can hear the waves day and night.”
“Never seen the ocean,” Willa murmured.
“No?” It was hard to imagine. “Well, maybe you’ll come visit sometime. I’ll show you what civilized people do with their days. Might just add a chapter to my book. Willa in Hollywood.”
Grinning, Willa rubbed her chin. “What book? I thought you were writing another movie.”
“I am.” Flustered, Tess dipped her hands in her pockets. “I’m just playing with a book. Just for fun.”
“And I’m in it?”
“Pieces of you.”
“It’s set here, in Montana? On Mercy?”
“Where else am I going to set it?” Tess muttered. “I’m stuck here for a year. It’s nothing.” Her fingers began to drum against the rail. “I haven’t even told Ira. It’s just something I’m fooling around with when I’m bored.”
If that was true, Willa thought, she wouldn’t be so embarrassed. “Can I read it?”
“No. I’m going to go tell Lily you’re dodging the shopping trip tomorrow. And don’t complain if you have to wear organdy.”
“The hell I will.” Willa turned around and studied the mountains again. Her mood had lifted considerably, but as she watched more clouds roll in, gather, and cling, she knew it wasn’t over. Not winter, not anything.
T HE DINNER PARTY WAS LILY’S IDEA. JUST A SMALL. Intimate, casual dinner, she’d promised. Just the three sisters, and Adam, Ben, and Nate. Her family, as she thought of them now.
Small, intimate, and casual perhaps, but exciting for her. She would be hostess, a position she’d never held in her life, at a party in her own home.
Her mother had always planned and managed social events when Lily was growing up. And so efficiently, so cleverly that Lily’s input or assistance simply hadn’t been necessary. During the brief time she’d lived on her own, she hadn’t had the funds or the means to host dinners. And her marriage certainly hadn’t been conducive to social occasions.
But now things had changed. She had changed.
She spent all day preparing for it. Cleaning the house was hardly a chore. She loved every inch of it, and Adam wasn’t a man to toss clothes everywhere or leave beer bottles cluttering the tables. He didn’t mind the touches she’d added—the little brass frog she’d ordered from a catalogue, the pretty glass ball of melting blues she’d fallen in love with at first sight in a shop in Billings. In fact, he seemed to appreciate them. He often said the house had been too simple, too empty, before she’d come to him.
She’d pored over recipes with Bess and settled on a rib roast, which she was just sliding into the oven when Bess poked her head in the kitchen doorway.
�
��Everything under control in here?”
“Absolutely. I prepared it just as you told me. And look.” Proud as a mother with twins, Lily opened the refrigerator to show off her pies. “Didn’t the meringue turn out nice? All those pretty sugar beads.”
“Most men got a fondness for lemon meringue.” Bess approved them with a nod. “You did just fine there.”
“Oh, I wish you’d change your mind and come.”
Bess waved a hand. “You’re a sweet girl, Lily, but when I got a choice between putting my feet up and watching my movies and sitting around with a roomful of young people, I’m putting my feet up. Now, you want a hand, I’ll give you one.”
“No. I want to do it myself. I know that sounds silly, but—”
“Doesn’t.” Bess wandered over to the window where Lily had herb pots started from seed. Coming along well, she thought, just like Lily. “A woman’s got a right to lord it over her own kitchen. But you call me if you run into any problem.” She winked. “Nobody has to know you had a little help.”
Bess turned as the back door opened again. “Wipe your feet,” she ordered Willa. “Don’t you be tracking mud in here on this clean floor.”
“I’m wiping them.” But under those eagle eyes, Willa gave them a few extra swipes on the mat.
“Oh, aren’t those lovely!” Lily pounced on the wildflowers Willa was clutching. “That was so sweet of you to think of it, to pick them for me.”
“Adam did.” Willa passed them over and considered her mission complete. “One of the horses pulled up with a strain, so he’s busy treating it. He didn’t want them to wilt.”
“Oh, Adam did.” Lily sighed, and her heart melted as she buried her nose in the tiny blooms. “Is the horse all right? Does he need help?”
“He can handle it. I’ve got to get back.”
“Couldn’t you come in for a minute, have coffee? There’s fresh.”
Before Willa could refuse, Bess jabbed an elbow in her ribs. “Sit down and have coffee with your sister. And take off your hat in the house. I’ve got laundry to do.”
