by Caro Carson
Ryan kept his hands in the pockets of his overcoat as he walked up to her, looking sexy and self-contained. Kristen felt a little shiver of nervous awareness. She might be an adult, but six feet of confident, controlled male wasn’t something she invited into her bedroom. Ever. Her past lovers, which numbered exactly two, might as well have never existed, for all that her experience with them had prepared her for a night with this man. Ryan Roarke was in a league of his own.
“Which house is yours?” The bass in his voice struck just the right, delicious note.
She wanted this. Him. Them. So she lifted her chin with a confidence she didn’t quite possess and held up her phone, acting as if she weren’t dying to get him in the door and naked on the floor. “I’ll give you a clue. I told you Jonah was a fanatic about keeping all the original wood. He doesn’t feel that way about the electrical wiring. He’s completely in love with high tech in his buildings. Ready?”
She punched a code into her phone, and like magic, the second house from the corner lit up. A rainbow of multicolored Christmas lights delineated the elegant lines of its arched front porch. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
Ryan shook his head in amusement. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet.”
“Less than two weeks away. Come with me. I have to light up the best thing myself.”
She slid her phone into her pocket as she led the way up the newly installed wood stairs. Just last week, she’d sealed them against the coming winter weather. Today’s flurries were already gone, but she had the satisfaction of knowing the wood had been protected against them.
On the wide porch, Kristen plugged an extension cord into an outlet near the front door. “Ta-da!”
Ryan turned to look at her most treasured garage sale find: a molded plastic Santa that was four feet tall and lit up from the inside by an old-fashioned, sixty-watt light bulb.
“Isn’t he great? He should be in the yard, but I’m keeping him on the porch to protect him from the elements. He’s the real deal from 1968.”
Ryan had gone very quiet beside her, hands still in his pockets.
“He needs a Mrs. Claus, of course. He’s half of a pair—you know, the kind where Mr. and Mrs. Claus are leaning forward to kiss each other?”
Ryan stepped behind her, very close.
“It’s going to be a challenge to find her, but I’ve got alerts set on eBay.”
Ryan pulled up the bottom edge of her coat and set his hands on her hips, his fingertips grazing her middle as he held her firmly to him. The street was empty, but her winter coat would have made it hard for anyone to see exactly what he was doing.
“Until I find a vintage Mrs. Claus, Santa will just have to blow kisses to the people on the sidewalk, even though I don’t have any neighbors yet. Oh, Lord, I’m babbling, aren’t I?”
Ryan bent to kiss her neck, nudging her scarf out of the way with his chin, replacing the material’s warmth with the warmth of his mouth as he tasted the soft skin under her jaw. As her knees turned to jelly, he slid one hand across her stomach, wrapping his arm around her waist for support.
“My keys,” she said, sounding as breathy as a vintage movie star. “Let me just…” She patted her pocket, felt her phone, pulled out her house keys.
Ryan turned her in his arms and kissed her full-on, capturing her gasp in that zero-to-sixty escalation of passion that she didn’t want to slow down. He moved them farther away from the row of colored lights, pressing her back against the door’s deep framing as he kissed her senseless, or nearly senseless. She kept just enough brain power going to fit the key in the lock and turn it.
She fumbled for the antique iron doorknob but his hand covered hers, his breath hot against her lips, his body hard against hers. “I’m not coming in,” he murmured between tastes of her.
“You’re—what?”
“Not tonight. I’m not coming in.” Then he kissed her, hungry, making love to her mouth the way she wanted his body to make love to hers.
“Come in,” she gasped. “Now. Please.”
With a sharp sound of frustration, he jerked her coat up a little farther. Cold air chased his hot hand as he slid from her belly to her lacy, thin bra. He cupped one whole breast, shaping her softness to the contours of his hand. She melted at his touch, sliding down the frame an inch, grasping with her free hand for an anchor until she clutched his coat’s lapel for support.
She tried to say yes, more, don’t stop, but only whimpered deep in her throat. He stopped caressing her, and they stayed locked in that embrace, not moving, not kissing, just breathing.
“This is a bad idea,” he said, panting in a way that made Kristen feel incredibly desirable.
“This is a great idea.” She pressed her head back against the framing so that she could look him in the eye. “This is…powerful.”
He sharpened his gaze, losing a little of that sexual haze. She knew he remembered using that word when they’d kissed in the summer.
“So come into the house.”
“What’s between you and me is not going to disappear,” he said. “It will be powerful tomorrow, and the day after that, and after that.”
Darn the man for using her own summer words against her.
He withdrew his hand and tugged her coat down. He still had her crowded against the door, but she felt that he was creating a deliberate distance all the same.
“If this feeling isn’t going to change, then why not tonight?” Her hand jerked his lapel with her plea, a tiny motion that betrayed her huge frustration. They were so, so close.
He kissed her pouting lower lip, soothing her. Placating her.
She didn’t want that. She wanted him, so she let go of the doorknob to grab his other lapel and pulled him to her with both fists. Her kiss wasn’t soothing. It went from zero to sixty for both of them.
“Because,” he said, a long minute later.
It took her a second to realize he was answering her question.
“Not tonight, because you don’t know me. Not well enough for this.”
“That’s crazy. You’re all I’ve thought about for four months. I didn’t believe in love at first sight, until I met you.”
After a long moment, Ryan bowed his head. He nodded, even as he turned from her and took a step away, putting real physical distance between them.
She’d put the word out there. Love.
Her heart thudded, hard.
“Until a few hours ago, that love at first sight was for a rodeo star named Ryan Michaels. That’s not me.” His voice sounded harsh. The look in his eyes was…hurt.
So, he must have left the rodeo, something that had been a huge part of his life. He was no longer a rodeo star, and it bothered him. She didn’t know how to help a man leave a career behind. To make it worse, she’d called him by the wrong name today, a name that reminded him of the worst time of his life. That, at least, she could fix.
“Your last name doesn’t change my feelings. Ryan Michaels grew into the man Ryan Roarke is. You’ve been you all along.”
He looked at her across three feet of porch planking as if he were looking at a woman who was far out of his reach. “Trust me on this. You should know me better before we make love. I do mean make love, because as powerful and crazy as this is, it’s real. It would gut me if we made love and you came to regret it.”
But there is a chance you might.
The implication was clear. So was Ryan’s expression, his stance. Everything about him as he warned her off seemed straightforward and sincere.
What could she learn about him that would possibly cause her to regret having slept with him? She didn’t regret sleeping with her college sweetheart, even though the relationship hadn’t lasted. Then there was Captain Two-Timer—
She regretted that one. Ryan was right; there were a few po
ssibilities that would be showstoppers for her.
“Okay, then. In the interest of avoiding any future regret, can I ask you a few questions?”
“Yes.”
“Are you married?”
Surprise flickered across his face. “No.”
“Involved with another woman? Is there another woman in another small town who thinks you are coming back for her?”
“No. I’m not using you to cheat on anyone else. It goes without saying that I’d never cheat on you.”
“It goes without saying.” She still felt like a fool for not having realized the truth about her pilot sooner. “But it’s still better to have that one laid out as a ground rule.”
“It sounds like there’s a man out there, somewhere, who’d be better off not crossing your path again. Or mine.” He crossed the gap he’d put between them, and brushed a few loose strands of hair away from her cheek. His fingers were cool in the night air. “No other women. An easy promise, one I’ve been keeping since the day I met you.”
She shivered at his touch and his words, and let her eyes close.
Kiss me, kiss me.
He put his hand back in his pocket. “Did you have any other questions?”
She opened her eyes, disappointed. What else could cause her to regret sleeping with Ryan Roarke, whom she’d dreamed about for months, who’d traveled the length of the country just to see her again? “Do you have a disease?”
“Fair question. No. Do you?”
“Oh, you mean…no, not those kind of diseases. I mean, I’ve got nothing, uh, contagious. That wasn’t what I was asking—but we should be asking, of course, I just wasn’t, and…” She could beg him to make love to her without blushing, but everything else seemed to make her cheeks burn.
She took a deeper breath. “I meant, are you dying of any disease? Am I going to regret making love to you when I find out you have an inoperable brain tumor or something? Not that I wouldn’t still care for you, though. If our time is short, I’d want to make love to you all the more, really.”
“I see.” His lips twitched into that almost-curve. “Nothing that I know of.”
“Don’t laugh at me. It would be horrible. Those are my least favorite movies. You can’t drag me into a theater to watch heartbreak like that.”
She was glad to see his sense of humor returning, anyway, his expression relaxing into a smile, although he maintained his stiff posture, hands in his pockets. As his chuckle made his breath puff out in little white clouds, it occurred to her that he might be cold. They’d had some flurries today, and he was used to the weather in Southern California, not at the Canadian border.
“We could go inside to talk. It’s pretty cold out here. I promise not to seduce you.”
“I can’t make the same promise. Every minute we talk makes you more appealing.”
She wrinkled her nose. “What turned you on? The talk about diseases or my sorry history of being cheated on?”
“It was the way you made yourself blush, and the way your past experience makes me feel so protective of your heart.”
Thud. The man could stop her heart with his words.
She threw up her hands in frustration. “You know, Ryan, if you’re going to talk like that, you have to take me to bed.”
He smiled a bit, but he had those sad eyes again. “Let’s give it a little time. Are there any other showstoppers you’d like to ask before I admit that I’m freezing and say good-night?”
“Showstoppers. That’s exactly the word I was thinking. We’re so alike.” She looked around at her Christmas lights and her plastic Santa. “I’m drawing a blank here. I can’t imagine what you’re afraid I’ll find out about you. Unless…”
“Unless?”
“You don’t have any sexual fetishes I should know about? You’re not into, like, Roman orgy reenactments or anything?”
Ryan crossed his arms over his chest and leaned one shoulder against the wall. “I’m not that cold, after all. Let’s discuss this. Roman orgies are out, then? What other sexual fetishes are off the table? Or on?”
Kristen crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the wall, too. “Describe yours for me, and I’ll decide.”
She’d managed to keep a straight face, but Ryan just about doubled over with sudden laughter. She was laughing, too, when he kissed her softly, then stepped back before she could test his willpower with a more passionate kiss. “On that note, I better leave. I’m already not going to be able to sleep tonight.”
“Will I see you tomorrow?”
“What’s the earliest possible time I can pick you up?”
It was so lovely to be with a man who was as eager to see her as she was to see him. “Actually, I have to work tomorrow at the Circle D. I’ll be there by six.”
“In the morning?”
“Of course. Why don’t you come? You could check out our horses. I’ve got one who’s an absolute nightmare to get trailered. You must know tons of good tricks about transporting animals.”
Ryan’s smile faded.
“Or maybe that’s a really dumb idea. I’m sorry, I forgot this is your vacation. You probably don’t want to muck out a stall on vacation.”
He rubbed his jaw, then nodded as if he’d come to a decision. “The Circle D is a part of who you are. I’d like to see it. I’ll pick you up and we can drive to the ranch together.”
“Actually, if we showed up in the same rig before sunrise, my family might jump to some conclusions about how we’d spent the night. I wouldn’t mind doing the time if I’d done the crime, so to speak, but why don’t you just meet me there? Anytime after six will be fine.”
“All right. I’m looking forward to seeing a genuine cowgirl in her natural habitat.”
“Whatever you say, cowboy.”
Ryan’s smile didn’t touch those sad eyes as he left without risking another kiss.
* * *
A cowboy.
Ryan threw his coat on the log bed of his hotel room. Throwing a well-tailored length of blended wool was a completely unsatisfying outlet for his frustration. A punching bag or a sparring session in the boxing ring would be better. Instead, he had to prepare to spend tomorrow with a bunch of horses.
He didn’t know squat about horses, but Kristen was going to expect him to give her advice. She’d talked about love at first sight tonight, but she’d meant love at the first sight of a cowboy.
He was no horse whisperer, but his brother-in-law was. Ryan called Jesse.
Maggie answered, of course. Being both a lawyer and his sister, she was doubly direct.
“Did you straighten things out with Kristen?”
Ryan yanked off one boot. “I’m working on it, Maggie. Let me talk to Jesse.”
“Working on it? You didn’t tell her the truth?”
“We’re getting there. She knows I live in Southern California now. She knows my name is Roarke.”
“Roarke the rodeo star? Or Roarke the attorney?”
“Let me talk to Jesse.”
“You’ve got to tell her. The longer you let this go on, the more hurt she’s going to be when she finds out the truth.”
He yanked off the other boot. “I never told her I was a rodeo star.”
“But you’re letting her believe it. She’s going to hate you for that when she finds out the truth.”
She’s going to hate you…
He couldn’t stand the thought. He hated the very words. God, he wanted only for her to love him.
“Ryan?”
He set the boot down carefully, lining it up neatly beside the rough-hewn leg of the rustic chair.
“Ask Jesse to call me when he gets a chance.” His voice sounded calm. His hand was steady when he tapped the button to end the call.
&
nbsp; She’s going to hate you…
He dropped his head in his hands and gave in to the shudder that racked his body.
Tonight, she’d said she loved him—or, at least, that she believed it was possible to have fallen in love with him at first sight. She didn’t seem to resent him for being gone for months, and so far, she wasn’t upset that at least two of her assumptions about him had been wrong. A name and a home state, those she could forgive—because she loved him?
Love should be unchangeable. He should be able to tell Kristen everything: Ryan Michaels, Ryan Roarke, cowboy, attorney. None of it should matter, but he had an old Christmas memory that proved otherwise.
Love was not unconditional, no matter what fairy tales others believed. A mother could decide she didn’t love a little boy anymore. Nothing good lasted forever. He had to be careful with Kristen, and handle the possibility that she loved him with care.
He had a good plan. Kristen had pieced together one picture of him, and he was going to replace the wrong pieces, one at a time. Some day, Kristen might think his skills in a courtroom were impressive, but tomorrow, he’d be in a stable. He didn’t want to look like an ass. When the phone rang, he knew what he had to do.
“Jesse. I’ve got a hypothetical situation for you. It’s six in the morning, and you walk into a stable full of horses. What’s the first thing you do?”
CHAPTER TEN
Ryan entered the stables with trepidation.
His brother-in-law had said the first thing he did was walk the entire length of the barn, once through. “You can get a feel right away if the horses as a group are calm. Then I look for any one horse who seems out of sorts.”
According to Jesse, every barn had its own feed and care routine, so Ryan should follow Kristen’s lead and respect the routine of the Circle D—as if Ryan might have a different routine in mind.
“You don’t need special training to dump feed into a bucket or skim loose hay out of a water trough,” Jesse had said.
“If she asks me to do anything more complex than that, what’s your advice for a man who last touched a horse at eighth-grade summer camp?”
