“How can you say that? Running out on you was unforgivable.”
“No it wasn’t. You broke my heart when you left, I won’t lie about that. But broken hearts eventually heal, even if they never quite fit together perfectly again.” She was quiet for a moment, then she grabbed his hand. “If you had been killed, Zack, I never would have recovered.”
* * *
After her low admission, he didn’t say anything for several moments, just gazed at her with a bemused kind of wonder in his eyes, then with a muffled groan he reached for her.
The kiss was soft and sweet and so full of tenderness she melted against him, her bones dissolving inside her skin.
They had shared dozens of kisses in this last week. Hundreds of them. But she sensed something deeper in this embrace, as if they had both crossed some invisible line.
A heavy tractor trailer passed them, and its wake rattled the windows of the Range Rover. Zack groaned and pressed his forehead against hers. “I don’t deserve you.”
“You deserve whatever you want out of life.” She touched his cheek. “You always have.”
“You’re what I want. Whether I deserve you or not.” He drew away suddenly and shoved the Range Rover into gear. “Come on. Let’s go buy a pickup truck.”
A little disoriented by the shift in the conversation, she blinked at him. “You’re serious? I thought you were only teasing!”
His lopsided grin left her as breathless as his kiss. “Sweetheart, I wouldn’t joke about something as important as this.”
Driving with one hand, he grabbed her fingers suddenly with the other and pressed a kiss on her palm. “Seriously, Cass. I know nothing I do will bring back the last ten years. But I’d like to re-create at least one thing from that time.”
“You’re crazy! You can’t just walk into a dealership at two in the afternoon on the Fourth of July and walk out with a new pickup truck!”
“Watch me.”
She did just that. Not that she had much choice. The sales manager at the small dealership didn’t quite know how to deal with an immovable force like Zack Slater with his mind set on something.
The two of them—Cassie and LeRoy Thomas, his nametag read—just stood back and watched, while Zack quickly perused the inventory on the lot.
“What’s your favorite color?” he asked her at one point while he peered under the hood of one big beast.
“I don’t know,” she answered helplessly, unable to believe he was actually doing this. “Um, I like the sage color of this one.”
She didn’t think he would appreciate the observation that when he stood next to it, the color perfectly matched the green flecks in his eyes.
“Sage it is, then,” he said, poking his head up. “LeRoy, my friend, let’s talk.”
A half hour later, after some hard-core negotiations that made her head spin, Zack was the proud owner of a hulking three-quarter-ton pickup with all the extras and a price tag that left her feeling slightly ill.
He took her to a late lunch at a pizza place in Idaho Falls. On the way out of the restaurant he offered her the choice of driving home the new truck or the sleek Range Rover.
Home. She really liked the sound of that. Pretending to consider, she cocked her head, looking at both vehicles in the parking lot. “You take the truck,” she finally said. “It’s your new toy.”
He grinned with such boyish excitement that she fell in love with him all over again.
She loved Zack Slater. The sweetness of admitting it to herself flowed through her like pure honey.
She loved his strength and his laughter and his decency.
As certain as she was that this was right between them—that she wanted to take this next step with him—by the time they drove under the wooden Lost Creek Ranch sign, her nerves were stretched thin, her body taut with restless anticipation.
When she parked the Range Rover next to the shiny new truck that gleamed in the late afternoon sun, she was chagrined to realize her hands were shaking, just a little. She climbed out, then shoved them in the pockets of her jeans to hide her nerves.
“Let me just grab a couple of…of quilts.” She felt herself blush furiously. “I’m afraid I, um, don’t have any strawberries.”
“That’s okay.” He smiled. “Strawberries aren’t what I’m hungry for, anyway.”
Her mouth went dry and she had to grab the railing of the porch steps to steady herself. He followed her up the steps, and she was almost painfully aware of him as she unlocked the door.
Inside her little cabin he seemed to take up all the available air, leaving her breathless and a little dizzy.
She cleared her throat. “I’ll just grab those quilts.”
She turned away and nearly jumped out of her skin when he reached out and rested a strong hand on her shoulder. The heat of his fingers scorched through the soft cotton of her shirt as he turned her to face him.
His eyes were intent, searching, and she knew all her sudden anxieties must be glaringly obvious on her far-too-transparent features.
“Do you want me to leave?”
She shook her head fiercely.
“We don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for. Slow and easy, remember? That’s what I promised. I meant every word. We don’t even have to go anywhere. We can sit right out on your porch swing and watch the fireworks from here, okay? You can always make me go jump in the cold stream out back if I start misbehaving.”
While he spoke, her nerves slid away. She had nothing to be afraid about. Not with Zack. A soft smile captured her mouth at the sincerity in his eyes. He probably would march right to the stream out back if she commanded him.
“You are a very sweet man, Zack Slater,” she murmured.
He snorted. “You know me better than that. I just want to do everything right this time.”
“So far you’re doing a pretty darn good job.” She smiled again, sultry this time, and stepped forward to press a kiss to his strong jaw where a hint of late-afternoon shadow rasped against her mouth. She liked it so much she kissed him again. And once more.
He stood motionless while she tasted his skin and meandered her way to his mouth. He wanted slow and easy. She could give him slow and easy. She brushed her lips across his, then back again with leisurely attention to every centimeter of his mouth.
His eyes fluttered closed and he leaned into her. Under her hands, his heart pounded hard and fast in erotic contrast to the unhurried pace of their kiss.
He seemed content to let her take the lead in the kiss, and she reveled in the heady power of his response. As she explored his mouth, she could feel the hard jut of his arousal at her hip, feel his breathing accelerate, grow labored.
When she gripped a handful of shirt and licked at the corner of his mouth, he groaned and parted his lips slightly, just enough for her to slip her tongue inside. But still he didn’t move.
She knew the exact moment when his thin hold on control snapped apart. One moment he was motionless under her sensual onslaught. The next, he shuddered and his arms whipped up, twisting in her hair as he gripped her head and ravaged her mouth.
With a sigh of surrender she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body to him.
She couldn’t wait another hour, another moment, another second. She wanted him now, right here.
The dying sun sent long, stretched-out shafts of light through a break in the curtains to dapple the furniture and wood floor as she grabbed his hand and pulled him into her small bedroom.
He dug his boot heels into the floor just inside the doorway, his eyes intent and searching on her face. “Are you sure, Cass? There’s no going back after this.”
She smiled. “I couldn’t be more sure than I am right this moment. Kiss me, Slater.”
His mouth quirked a little at the order but he promptly obeyed, his hands busy untucking her shirt and exploring the sensitive skin above her hips. She shivered as those hard, rough hands moved closer to her breasts, to her nipples that
ached and burned for his touch.
The next few moments were a flurry of buttons and snaps and zippers yanking free.
Finally no barriers remained between them. All her nerves came fluttering back like a flock of magpies to chatter noisily at her.
No man had ever seen her naked except him, and that had been a decade ago. She was suddenly painfully aware of all her imperfections, every single extra calorie she had ever indulged in over the years.
He didn’t appear to notice. At least not judging by the stunned expression on his face.
“I thought I remembered everything about you in exquisite detail,” he murmured. “Every curve, every hollow. I can’t believe I forgot the sheer impact of the whole package.”
“Oh, stop.” Hot color saturated all those curves and hollows as he gazed at her with stark longing in his eyes.
He grinned. “Get used to it, sweetheart. I’m just getting warmed up.”
She decided the only way out of this was distraction. “That’s too bad,” she murmured. “Because I’m already very, very warm. And getting warmer by the second.”
“Let’s see.” He stepped forward and kissed her, skimming one sneaky hand from her shoulders down her back to the curve of one rear cheek, pulling her against him. She gasped as fluttery little nerve impulses rocketed through her everywhere her skin brushed his.
“Mmm. You’re right. Very warm,” he murmured against her mouth.
They stood that way for a long time, wrapped together and rediscovering each other while the room darkened around them.
At last he lowered her to the bed. His hands were strong and hard and clever. He knew exactly how and where to touch her—where to linger, where to tease with fleeting caresses.
She closed her eyes, lost to the swirl of sensation and the steadily building heat he stoked so adroitly. When she opened them, she found him watching her, his eyes heavy with passion. Their gazes locked and stayed that way while his hands caressed her intimately. A restless, aching need gripped her and she curved into his fingers, nearly crying out from the tangle of emotions that bound them so tightly.
Still watching her, he lowered his mouth to hers. The kiss was fierce and possessive and demanding—and she found it every bit as arousing as his hands on her flesh.
“Please,” she begged, unable to stand the slow, exquisite yearning another instant. His thumb stroked a particularly sensitive spot just then, hidden in folds of flesh, and she sobbed his name as she climaxed in a wild tumble of color and light and sensation.
He entered her while her body still seethed and shivered. She gasped as tight, unused muscles had to stretch to accommodate his size.
Muscles corded in his neck as he eased deeper. She wasn’t sure if his growled words were an oath or a prayer. “You’re so tight.”
“I’m sorry. I just haven’t done this in a…in a long time.”
He froze, his hot gaze piercing the soft, satiated fog enveloping her. “How long?”
She flushed and focused on the hard blade of his collarbone. “Oh, ten years. Give or take a month or so.”
He blinked but not before she saw the stunned disbelief in his eyes. “You haven’t been with anyone at all?”
Did they have to talk about this right now, when she could hardly find her breath? When he was invading every inch of her soul? Apparently so. She knew that stubborn look in his eyes and knew he wouldn’t let it drop.
“I’ve been a little busy raising my niece,” she retorted. “When was I supposed to fit in any torrid sexual encounters? In between changing her diapers or before I picked her up from school? I’m sorry. It just wasn’t a priority.”
The stunned look in his eyes began to give way to something else. Something that looked like an awed kind of wonder. “It shouldn’t matter to me. It doesn’t. I would have understood, Cass, if you had been involved with someone else. You had every right.”
“Yes, I did. I just don’t view making love with someone lightly. It was…never the right situation with anyone else.”
“And this is right, isn’t it? Between us?”
She nodded, helpless to do anything else.
“I love you, Cassidy Jane.”
The gruff words stole what little breath remained in her lungs. If she’d had any left, it wouldn’t have lasted long as he surged deeply inside her, his body taut and hard.
She gasped and rose to meet him, clinging to him as the need spiraled inside her again with each deep, steady movement.
“I love you,” he repeated, and the words sent her soaring over the edge once more. An instant later he followed her with a low, exultant moan.
While she floated, featherlight, back to earth, he switched their positions so she was sprawled over him, listening to his ragged breathing while his hands stroked her skin.
A few minutes later, just as she thought she might be able to think straight again, she heard a tremendous boom and saw a sparkle of red and gold through that slim spear of open curtain.
She gasped. “Oh no! We’re missing the fireworks!”
His hand curved over her hipbone. “I wouldn’t exactly say that.”
“But your new truck. You wasted all that money for nothing!”
Hard muscles rippled against her as he shrugged. “We’ll use it next year. Make it our own annual tradition.”
Would they have a “next year” together? She wanted fiercely to believe it. But even here in the sanctuary of his arms, she couldn’t shake the niggling voice warning her that nothing lasts forever.
She had learned that lesson all too well.
In the meantime she needed to do all she could to protect whatever tiny remnants of her heart he hadn’t already snatched for his own.
* * *
It worked.
He couldn’t believe she was here, in his arms. That his weeks of planning, of hoping, had paid off.
Zack watched her sleep, fascinated by the steady rise and fall of her chest under the sheet, the fluttering of her eyelids, the little half smile that played around her mouth.
She was here. And she was his.
He had to be the luckiest son of a gun who ever lived. When he arrived at Salt River three weeks ago, he figured nothing short of a miracle could have convinced her to give him another chance.
Heaven knew, he didn’t deserve one.
Yet here she was, warm and soft and cuddly as she slept curled against him.
Somehow she had turned to that steely core of courage inside her and taken a huge leap of faith into his arms. He could only guess what it must have cost her. If she had left him a decade ago like a thief in the night—without any kind of explanation—he wasn’t sure he would be so willing to let her back into his life. Especially if he believed all that time that she left with another man.
She was a far better person than he was. He had always known that. Loving and generous and sweet.
For a man who had lived most of his life in a hard, unforgiving world, was it any wonder Cassidy Harte had been irresistible?
She was still irresistible, even though the years had changed her. Now that optimistic, artless girl had become a woman. A little less optimistic, maybe. A little more wary, but still as loving and generous as she had been when he lost his heart to her.
He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. Not to wake her, simply because he still couldn’t believe she was here.
She stirred, then her eyes fluttered open. A dazed kind of smile tilted that luscious mouth a little as their gazes met, then color flared across her cheekbones.
“What time is it?” She tried to peer around him to her alarm clock.
“Early. About four-thirty.”
She groaned and buried her head under the pillow. “I have to get up in an hour to make breakfast.”
“Or, since you’re already awake, we could find something more interesting to do for an hour.”
She pulled the pillow away and squinted at him. “You’re inhuman. I figured four—or was it five?—times would
be enough for you.”
He couldn’t stop the pure, sinful smile stealing over his mouth. “No. I’m very, very human. And I don’t think I will ever get enough of you.”
The disgruntled look in her eyes began to fade as he reached for her. It didn’t take him long to make it disappear entirely, replaced by soft, dreamy desire.
Afterward, he held her tight, her head tucked under his chin.
“Marry me, Cassie.”
The words slipped out of him like horses over downed barbed wire. Why had he blurted it out like that? So much for waiting, taking the time and effort to repair the damage he had done by leaving her.
He could tell the words shocked her. She went deep-water still and slid away from him. “Wha-what?”
He couldn’t go back now—it was too late for that—so he plodded gamely forward. “I love you. I never stopped loving you. I fell for you all those years ago. For ten years the memory of that time has stalked me. Haunted me. I love you. I want to marry you.”
She jumped out of bed as if the sheets were ablaze and scrambled for a silky robe tossed over a chair.
Panic skittered around her, through her. “Don’t do this to me, Zack. This is not fair. You can’t just blow back into town and expect everything to be the same.”
“I don’t. I hope we can build something even better than what we had before.” He sat up, the sheets bunched at his hips and that wide, hard chest bare, looking so gorgeous her mouth watered. She jerked her gaze away, to something safe like the pale-pink dawn breaking outside her bedroom window.
How could he throw this at her? It was far too much, far too soon. She was still a little light-headed about having taken this giant step and spent the night in his arms.
“Slow and easy. Wasn’t that what you said?”
“Yeah. That’s what I said.”
“This is not slow and easy! This is jumping straight from hello to picking out china patterns together. I…I need more time, Zack. I’m sorry. I’m just not ready yet.”
A cold, hard knot of terror lodged in her throat at the very idea of committing to a future with him. She was being a yellow-bellied coward and she hated herself for it.
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