by Ann Major
It would be so easy to take her right here.
Her mouth was full and luscious and suddenly he wanted to kiss her, to dip his tongue inside and taste her. Would she open her mouth and let him?
The heat in her gaze was generated from some emotion. Maybe she felt what he did.
“What?” She had gone still. Her eyes never left his face. “Let me go!” Her voice was shallow.
“You don’t want me to do that, and you know it.” In the grip of a need too fierce to deny, his voice was raspy.
His gaze moved hungrily lower. She had soft, lush breasts. Hell, he wanted way more than a kiss, and he wanted it very badly. She was Jesse Ray’s daughter, so she probably wanted it, too.
Feeling justified in testing a girl of such easy virtue, he gripped her shoulders and pulled her closer. Before she could react, he lowered his mouth to hers so he could take his first taste of her. His lips were hard and demanding because he expected easy compliance. And for an instant she responded just as favorably as he’d imagined, by gasping and sighing and clutching him closer. Her lips did part, and he felt her tongue, if only for an instant. Then almost immediately she stiffened. Recoiling, she balled her hands and began to pound at his chest, thrashing wildly.
When he didn’t immediately let her go, her face flushed with anger. “You wouldn’t treat Lizzie like this! You wouldn’t try to take her in a barn like she was something cheap and easy without ever even having a single conversation with her!”
“Well, you’re not Lizzie Collier, are you? You’re Jesse Ray’s girl.”
“And that makes me too low to have feelings like you and your kind? Well, I do have feelings! And I’m not like my mother, you hear! So, go find your precious, saintly Lizzie Collier, and leave me in peace! She’s your girlfriend. Not me! And I wouldn’t ever want to be!”
But the last was a lie. The quick tears of shame and desolation in her lovely eyes and the thick pain in her ravaged tone told him so. She wanted him, but on equal terms. She didn’t want to be someone cheap in his eyes. Her pride, as well as her longing for him, tugged at his heart and made him feel ashamed even as it made his desire for her increase a thousandfold.
He hadn’t misread her. She had wanted him, badly. But Jesse Ray’s daughter had as much self-respect as Lizzie Collier did any day.
For a long moment, she gazed at him as if pleading for something he was at a loss to give even as her look tore his heart. Then, with a desperate cry, she pushed free of him and ran out of the barn. As he watched her retreating across the pasture, he was stunned by her grace and vital beauty and by how much more he wanted her than he’d ever wanted Lizzie. He was baffled by how low and ashamed he felt by that fact. She was just Jesse Ray’s girl. Why the hell should he feel such an overpowering need for her, such a need to apologize to her?
For weeks afterward, he’d tried to put the scent and softness and taste of the spirited and unsuitable girl out of his mind, but she’d been too lovely, too passionate, too brave, too forthright—too sexy. He’d dreamed of her, dreamed of making love to her.
He tried to forget her, but then his friends began to tell him stories about Maddie—marvelous stories he’d hungered to hear. How Maddie raced with the other kids, mostly the boys, in the pastures outside town. How she always won on the back of that prancing demon, Wild Thing. They said that she’d tamed him, that she was fearless, that she would ride bareback, that the pair could jump anything.
Why, one day after school when Cole’s friend Lyle had been smoking in his vintage Mustang with the top down, she and Wild Thing jumped over him and the car.
“Crazy horse came so close to my head I dropped my cigarette in my crotch. Burned a hole in my best pair of jeans,” Lyle had complained.
Such stories had impressed Lizzie, but they’d merely proved to Cole that Maddie was a headstrong fool—and brave, stubborn and determined. Even if the older generation in Yella wouldn’t change their minds about her because of her mother, some of the kids began to think she wasn’t as bad as they’d been taught. Maddie was smart in school, too, and Miss Jennie, whose approval was hard to win, thought she was as good as anybody.
For all that, Cole knew his mother would never approve of Maddie as his girlfriend. After his mother had married into the legendary Coleman family, she felt her children had a position to uphold. Still, despite his better judgment, his fascination with Maddie began to consume him. Thus, it hadn’t been long before Cole started coming home from the university every weekend to seek her out.
He’d go to the barn and watch her train Lizzie’s horses, especially Wild Thing. Maddie worked hard, giving more than she should to that monstrous beast, who now behaved like a docile pet to please her. Not that she said “I told you so” when Cole admitted he’d been wrong about her horse-training abilities. She simply basked in his praise, and he’d realized how much she enjoyed being admired rather than scorned. She was sweet when he apologized for kissing her, too.
Cole broke up with Lizzie and, with immense determination, began to court Maddie—but secretly.
He decided the gossips were wrong. Although she resembled her mother physically, she had a different character. Yes, mother and daughter shared the same jet-black hair, the same smooth, pale skin and the same lavender eyes that could turn blue when impassioned. Yes, their curvy bodies and sensual natures had been designed by God to drive men wild. But unlike her mother, Maddie was sweet and true.
Then she’d jilted Cole for Vernon Turner and left town, proving his assessment wrong. She was just as feckless and promiscuous as her mother.
If she was trash, why couldn’t he forget her? Why did he care if she was back in Yella?
She doesn’t matter anymore. Hell, she never should have mattered.
So why did every nerve in his body feel taut? Why was his heart racing at the possibility of seeing her again?
Women like Maddie Gray, women who roared into a man’s life and then left him like so much roadkill when they’d finished with him, were a dangerous breed. A smart man learned his lesson the first go-round and steered the hell clear of them.
So why was he standing up and slinging his jacket over his shoulders?
Cole had about a million things to take care of on the rig, like dealing with that crooked driller. He didn’t have time for an unscheduled trip to Yella. Nevertheless, he scooped his cell phone and the keys to his Ford Raptor off his littered desk. Then he grabbed his sweat-stained beaver Stetson and rushed out of his trailer. Scanning the well site, which reeked of acrid fumes, he hollered for Juan.
After the air-conditioned trailer, the thick summer heat felt suffocating. Briefly he informed Juan that there was a problem at Coleman’s Landing, his family’s legendary ranch on the southern tip of the Texas Hill Country. Cole said he had to get down there fast, but that he’d be back soon. He told Juan to get the water well drilled and to damn the expense.
Then Cole was in his truck. Tires spinning, gravel and dust clouds flying, he set off for Yella.
After three miles of graded dirt road, his tires hit the main highway. He drove down that straight stretch of asphalt through parched, open country of scrub oak, mesquite and huisache like a madman, hating himself for being so all fired up to see her. She’d ruined his life…or at least several years of it, and she’d hurt sweet Lizzie, too.
Lizzie had loved him with every bone in her body, but because of Maddie haunting him, hard as he’d tried, he hadn’t ever been able to love Lizzie as he should have. Or at least he’d never craved her, if that sort of cravin’ counted for love—not the way he’d craved Maddie, with every fiber of his being.
Even Lizzie’s dying words had been about Maddie, and he’d hated Maddie for distracting him at a time when he should have been concentrating solely on Lizzie.
But he had to see Maddie again. Hopefully all he needed was closure to get her out of his system. Something about the way she’d left him six years ago—without even so much as a goodbye—bothered him.
Who was she: The bad girl her own mother and the town claimed she was? Or the sweet, pure girl he’d fallen in love with?
He hoped to hell he wasn’t fool enough to chase after a dream again.
Two
If Maddie felt nervous and out of sorts just being back in Yella, she felt even worse to be chasing Miss Jennie’s dog onto Cole’s wooded land. What if Adam was wrong? What if Cole came back to town before he was supposed to?
She dreaded seeing him more than anyone else in Yella, which was ridiculous. How could his rejection and contempt still hurt so much after six years, when she’d told herself repeatedly that the past—that who she used to be—no longer mattered?
Maddie hadn’t been back to Yella since the night she’d run away because there were too many memories here, both good and bad. For years, she’d made the future her focus and only rarely looked back. Besides, coming here meant she’d had to leave Noah, who was enrolled in a summer day camp on Town Lake, with a dear friend. She missed him, but she wouldn’t have people here judging him because of her—or noticing how much he resembled Cole and putting two and two together.
She’d only come back now because she owed Miss Jennie for everything good in her life.
Maddie wiped her damp brow with the back of her hand. Had Yella always been this suffocatingly hot in the summer? Of course it had. She just hadn’t noticed when she’d been a skinny, fearless kid wearing a thin T-shirt and shorts, running wild in the woods.
Today, with the sun beating down out of a bright sky, the heat felt thick and ferocious, and it wasn’t even noon yet. Strands of her long black hair had come loose from her ponytail and stuck to her cheeks and neck. Her T-shirt and cutoff jeans felt as if they were glued to her perspiring body.
Still, despite the oppressive heat and humidity and a faint sense of uneasiness, she loved the scents and sounds of the woods. The smell of grass and dust, the chorus of insects that hummed along with the birds, made her remember some of the brighter moments of her youth. Long ago she’d ridden in these woods. Here, on horseback, a slim, despised girl had acquired the magical power that riding a powerful horse could bring. Riding had taught her to be brave and strong.
Most of all she remembered riding here with Cole.
Don’t think about him.
Better to fret about her company’s fundraiser than Cole. Even though she dreaded the annual event and the stress of dealing with wealthy donors, especially the women who knew how to dress and where to shop and where to lunch, she preferred worrying about all of that to thinking about Cole.
He’d rejected her, had made her feel more unworthy than anybody else here ever had. Why couldn’t she simply forget him? Even after Greg had come into her life last spring—solid, reliable Greg, who didn’t know her secrets, who approved of her and wanted to marry her because of who and what she was now—she remained confused about her obsession with Cole, who’d never seen her as his equal.
He’d rejected her soundly—so why couldn’t she let him go? Why was she so afraid of seeing him?
When she’d fled Yella six years ago, she’d been too traumatized to ever imagine coming back. In Austin, she’d tried to better herself, tried to live down the mother who hadn’t wanted her, the sorry trailer in Yella where she’d been raised, the terrible night that had driven her away. Most of all, she’d fought hard to be a better mother to Noah than her mother had been to her.
Not that juggling single motherhood while working full-time and going to college had been easy. Especially not when the nagging fear that she really was what everybody here had believed—no good—had remained.
Then, five days ago, just when she’d been on the verge of setting a date for her wedding to the man who valued her, Miss Jennie had called from the hospital and said she’d fallen. Miss Jennie was the one person in Yella who’d always believed in Maddie, the one person who’d been there when Maddie had been terrified and desperate. So, when Miss Jennie had mentioned she’d just love it if Maddie could come for a few days because her niece, Sassy, lived in Canada and needed some time to wrap up her affairs before she could fly to Texas, Maddie had agreed to come.
Not that Miss Jennie’s neighbors hadn’t all offered to fill in, but Miss Jennie had made it clear that she would prefer spending a little time with Maddie…if only that were possible. “Time seems more precious as you get older,” she’d said, her voice sounding frail.
Still, since Miss Jennie had helped her relocate and had lent Maddie money to go to college, there was no way she could say no, even if it meant facing Cole and the prejudiced town.
Up ahead Maddie heard the jingle of dog tags. Just as she was about to call him, Cinnamon barked exuberantly from the sun-dappled brush. Her heart sank as she realized that he’d set off for the swimming hole on the Guadalupe River where she and Cole used to secretly meet. Where they’d made love countless times. Of all the places she would have preferred to avoid, the icy green pool beneath tall cypress trees on his land topped her list.
For here she could be too easily reminded of Cole, of their brief affair. Back then she’d been young and in love and filled with anticipation for their every meeting. She’d been so sure that he’d loved her and would love her forever, and that his love, once known publicly, would change other people’s opinions and she’d gain the respectability she’d craved. Even when he’d insisted on keeping their relationship a secret from everyone important to him, especially his mother, she’d believed in him.
It had taken a crisis of the worst magnitude to make her see him for what he really was—a typical boy in lust out for a few cheap thrills with the town’s bad girl, a boy who’d never respected her and couldn’t be counted on to save her. No, she’d had to save herself.
Maddie had had six years to deal with the trauma of the past. She was all grown up now. She knew that life wasn’t a fairy tale, that she needed to get over the hurt that Cole and his mother had inflicted on her.
The last thing she wanted or needed now was to see him again and reopen all those old wounds. If she were lucky, Cole would keep to his oil fields while she was here with Miss Jennie.
Maybe then she would escape Yella unscathed.
Three
Two hours after he’d left the drill site, Cole pulled up to Miss Jennie’s white house on the edge of town where her property backed up to a corner of his own estate. Miss Jennie’s house, with its sagging wraparound porch, was a sorry sight in the middle of an overgrown, brown lawn. Not that Cole’s mind was on the lousy condition of her house and yard as he slammed the door of his big, white truck and strode up her walk.
He was a little surprised when Miss Jennie’s fool of a dog didn’t race up to him, yapping. Whenever Cole rode on this part of his ranch he usually ran into the mongrel. On hot summer evenings Cinnamon loved nothing better than lying on a shady rock along the bank where the river was spring-fed and icy cold.
That particular swimming hole had often been Cole and Maddie’s secret meeting place.
All he could think of was Maddie.
He knocked impatiently, but when the screen door finally opened, it wasn’t a reluctant Maddie prettily greeting him, but sharp-eyed Bessie Mueller from next door.
Cold air gushed out of the house around her as she set fists on her solid hips. Her wrinkled face was brown from working outdoors. She had a way of standing that made her look bolted to the earth.
“Your mother told everybody you weren’t coming home till tomorrow, so, what has got you planting your dusty boots on Miss Jennie’s doorstep today?”
It went without sayin’ that everybody in Yella knew everybody else’s business.
“Ranch affairs,” he drawled, hating the way the lie made heat crawl up his neck. “Is Miss Jennie
doing okay?”
“She’s just fine, but she’s restin’ for a spell. She’s had so much company this mornin’—all male. She’s plumb tuckered out.”
“And Maddie Gray?”
Bessie grinned slyly. “Oh, so, it’s her you’ve come to see…like every other man in town?” The knowing glint in her black eyes irritated the hell out of him. “Well, she’s out looking for Cinnamon, if you have to know. That’s why I’m here. I told Maddie it wasn’t no use chasin’ that mongrel. When that fool dog isn’t barking loud enough to wake the dead, he’s after my poor chickens or diggin’ up my pansies. He always comes back—when he takes a mind to.”
Like all mammals, human or otherwise, living in Yella, Cinnamon had acquired a reputation.
Cole tipped his hat. “You tell Miss Jennie I’ll be back a little later, then.”
If Maddie was chasing Cinnamon, he knew where to find her.
* * *
When Cole tugged lightly on the reins, Raider snorted and jerked his head, stopping just short of the small creek that fed the river where ancient trees grew in such dense profusion they were almost impenetrable.
“The brush is too thick from here on,” Cole said, “so this is where I’ll leave you.”
On a hunch that Cinnamon would lure Maddie to the pool by the dam, he’d saddled his large, spirited bay gelding and set off.
Dismounting, Cole looped Raider’s reins over a fallen log near the rushing water and left the horse grazing in the shade.
Pushing back a tumble of wild grapevines that cascaded from the highest branches of a live oak, Cole made a mental note to get his foreman to send a hand out to clip the vines before they smothered the tree. Then, as he stalked through the high brown grasses toward the emerald pool, memories of Maddie played in his mind.
He and Maddie had ridden these trails together. When they’d dismounted they’d often played hide-and-seek. How he’d loved catching her and pulling her slim body beneath his. She would smile up at him, her flushed face thrilled and trusting in the pink glow of a late-afternoon sun.
