by Lisa Jackson
Outside, rain fell steadily from the sky; fat, heavy drops pummeling the roof, splashing in the gutters and dripping from the leaves and branches of the old oak tree that stood near her window.
Why hadn’t he told her about Terri Fremont years ago when Bliss was falling in love with him? What was the reason he left Bittersweet without even stopping to say goodbye to her? Why was he back now and why was it so important that he buy her father’s place? And why, oh, please, God, why, was she still thinking about him, wondering at her response to his kiss while hating herself for caring?
“Stop it!” she muttered, punching her pillow in frustration. She reminded herself for the millionth time that Mason Lafferty was nothing to her. Nothing!
So why was she thinking of him? Why? Why? Why? “Because you’re an idiot,” she told herself.
Knowing that sleep was impossible, she slid her arms through the sleeves of her robe and stepped into her slippers. Oscar, who had been curled up beside her, was already on his feet, stretching and yawning. He followed her into the kitchen and waited at the pantry door until she reached inside and tossed him a biscuit. While he crunched on his snack, she heated cocoa in the microwave.
Mason was a problem, but not one she could solve tonight. She needed to forget him and return to Seattle as she’d planned. Her father was recuperating at a rapid pace, and if he and Brynnie could quit fighting long enough to walk down the aisle and say their vows, then Bliss would leave Oregon and get back to her old life.
Her old, peaceful, and somewhat-boring life.
Sliding into a chair, Bliss cradled the warm cup in her hands and let the chocolate-scented steam fill her nostrils and whisper over her cheeks. She’d told herself again and again that she was over—make that long over—Mason, but tonight, while the sky was thick with clouds and the outside air dense with rain, she wasn’t so sure of her feelings.
Seeing Mason, touching Mason and kissing Mason had brought back memories, painful and tarnished. She’d spent ten years repressing her thoughts about him, trying not to compare him to other men she’d dated, hoping against hope that someday she’d never think of him at all, believing that he was just a summer fling—a schoolgirl crush. Nothing more.
Now, she was ready to second-guess herself. “Fool,” she exclaimed, and when Oscar gave out a disgruntled “Woof,” she laughed without any sense of satisfaction. “That’s right, dog, your mistress is a first-class, A-one moron, I’m afraid.”
Old feelings—excitement, anger, hurt and even a trace of first love—resurfaced. She remembered the tumbling, breathless feeling of hearing his voice or kissing him, or swimming nude in the nearby river with him. “Oh, Bliss,” she whispered, stirring the hot chocolate and creating a small whirlpool in her cup, “I thought you were smarter than this.”
The memory of the first time she’d seen him, tall and lean, covered in dust as he’d offered to lift her suitcases and trunk from the back of her father’s truck, haunted her. And tonight, alone in the kitchen of the ranch house, with only the rain and Oscar to keep her company, that memory stretched out vividly before her. It had been ten years ago, but tonight, it seemed as real as if that summer had happened yesterday. . . .
Chapter Six
Bliss sipped her cocoa and remembered that sultry afternoon when she had come to her father’s ranch that summer. The housekeeper had called to John Cawthorne as he’d climbed out of his truck.
“Phone call for you, in the den,” she’d said, standing in the doorway of the house and pushing aside clumps of dry dirt left from boots with her broom.
John, swearing under his breath, had dashed toward the front door and had left Bliss standing alone by the truck in the blistering sunlight. As she stood in the dusty gravel parking area near the garage, harsh, unforgiving rays pounded down on her crown and shoulders. She felt totally alone, a city girl plucked out of her nest and tossed here with a father who usually ignored her. As she reached into the bed of the truck for one of her bags, she silently wished, as she had since she could remember, that she had a sister or brother with whom she could share her misery.
“You must be John’s daughter,” a rawboned, slightly intimidating, cowboy drawled. He was tanned from long hours of hard work under the glare of the sun and his eyes, staring at her from the shade beneath the brim of his Stetson, were a light golden brown. Intense and unblinking, they stared at her in an uncompromising appraisal that caused her breath to catch and warned her that she should run now while she had the chance.
“That’s right.” Why did her tongue want to trip all over itself?
His grin was a slash of white against bronzed skin. “He’s proud of you, let me tell you.”
“Is he?” She smiled back, then blushed. This guy was way too old for her and she wasn’t one to flirt, but there was something about him that made her want to linger. “Bliss Cawthorne,” she said boldly, extending her hand and remembering the manners her mother had drummed into her head from the time she was a toddler.
“Lafferty. Mason Lafferty.” He dropped the trunk and covered her soft small outstretched palm with his bigger, callused hand. His fingers were rough, covered with dust and warmer than the breeze that swept through the grassy acres. He tipped his hat and didn’t apologize for the dirt that he left smudged on her skin.
“You work for Dad.” There was something about him that nudged her curiosity; something that set him apart from the rest of the men who called John Cawthorne their boss.
“Most of the time.” He hitched the trunk onto his back and started for the porch.
“And the rest?”
He glanced over his shoulder and winked at her so slowly she felt her knees turn to jelly. “Raisin’ hell, if you believe the stories in town.”
“Should I?” Lugging her suitcase, she struggled to keep up with his long, easy stride.
His gold eyes glinted. “Every word. Hey, don’t carry that—I’ll get it.” He cocked his head toward the bag she carried.
“I can handle it.”
“Can you?”
She knew she was being baited and she flushed. After all, this guy wasn’t a boy; he was a man and he scared her more than a little. “I can handle a lot of things,” she said, tossing her head. Margaret Cawthorne might have taught her daughter to be a lady, but she’d also instilled a fervor in Bliss to carry her own weight and be independent enough not to have to rely on any man, especially not a cowboy.
John walked out onto the porch. “Damned mechanics,” he grumbled, then noticed Mason. “Take the trunk and the rest of her things into her bedroom—down the hall, second door on the right. Next to the bath.”
“I can show him. I know where it is,” Bliss said, feeling the fiery rays of the sun beating against the back of her neck. Heat shimmered in waves across the pastures, and dust, kicked up from the movement of cattle and horses in nearby fields, floated in the air. She was beginning to sweat and her blouse was sticking to her back and her heart was pounding so loudly she was sure everyone within ten feet of her could hear it.
“Good.”
“When you’re finished with the luggage, Lafferty, run down to the machine shed. The combine’s acting up again, according to Corky, and the shop in town is overloaded. No one can look at the machine for three weeks at the earliest. Holy hell, how can you run a ranch like this?” Scowling and grumbling to himself, her father strode across the parking lot toward the machine shed.
Mason’s jaw hardened. He held the screen door open for Bliss. “Your old man is gonna give himself a stroke if he doesn’t calm down a little.”
“It’s just his way,” she said, but felt an unspoken tension in the cowboy walking beside her. His muscles were suddenly strung tight, his knuckles showing white around the handle of the trunk.
Hurrying through the cool interior of the house, she bumped shoulders with him a couple of times and nearly tripped over her feet at the contact. Being alone with him was nerve-racking. She reminded herself that he was just one of her
father’s hands—a worker on the ranch. Right? So why did she feel instantly that there was something about him, something primitive and sexual, which bothered her and caused her already-flushed skin to break into beads of anxious perspiration? “You can put the trunk in the corner,” she said, opening the door of her room and indicating a spot near the small closet.
“Whatever you say, princess.”
She bristled at the name. “I’m not a princess.”
His lips twitched. “Hmm. Coulda fooled me.” He dropped the trunk on its end and hesitated long enough to make her uncomfortable. There was something in his eyes, something wickedly intriguing that warned her he was the kind of man to avoid; the kind of man a woman in her right mind wouldn’t trust. “Anything else?”
“No, uh, I think I can handle the rest.”
“You sure?” His voice was low and a little raspy, as if he’d breathed too much dust or smoked too many cigarettes.
She wasn’t sure of anything. “Yeah. Don’t worry about it.”
With a wink that bordered on something far more sexual than she’d ever experienced, he left the room as quickly as he’d come in. She set her suitcase on the bed and opened the window. Suddenly the tiny bedroom seemed airless and hot. In the old mirror over the bureau she caught her reflection and nearly died. Her cheeks were a bright shade of pink, her blond hair wild, her eyes wide with an anticipation she’d never seen before.
The breeze that moved the curtains and filled the room didn’t help much. Nothing did, she came to find out. Whenever she was around Mason, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath or even untangle her thoughts.
* * *
In the days that followed, that summer ten years ago, she saw Mason enough, though most often from a distance. He roped steers, he branded stock, he castrated calves, he shoed horses and strung fence wire. The muscles of his back and shoulders, tanned from long hours laboring in the sun, moved fluidly as he worked, straining, then relaxing and drawing her eyes to the faded jeans that rode low on his hips. Dusty and torn, they offered a glimpse of a strip of whiter skin whenever he stretched, and that tantalizing slash of white, coupled with the curling golden hair on his chest, caused a warmth to invade the deepest, most private part of her, and she had to force her gaze away.
“You’re being silly,” she told herself on Tuesday evening when she was walking toward the stables and spied Mason leaning against a car—a yellow sedan—she didn’t recognize. The driver was a pert woman with short dark hair, an upturned nose and doelike brown eyes that gazed upward through the open window to Mason’s face. The car idled, exhaust seeping from the tailpipe, the thrum of the engine competing with the sounds of warblers and sparrows singing in the trees and fields.
Mason, wearing sunglasses and an irritated expression, shook his head, and though Bliss’s ears strained to hear the conversation she only caught snippets.
“. . . waited all night,” the woman said.
“No one asked you to.”
“. . . we had an understanding.”
“Did we? Wasn’t my idea.”
“Mason, please—” The woman cast a sidelong glance at Bliss who increased her pace as she walked to the stables. The sun was hovering low in the western sky and the air was breathless and still.
Bored with listening to her tapes and reading old magazines, Bliss had decided to go for a ride. Her father had already pointed out the docile horses he wanted her to saddle, but Bliss had other ideas.
“Lousy son of a bitch!” The woman’s voice blasted through the hot air.
Bliss turned toward the car.
The driver gunned the engine. Gravel sprayed. Mason leaped away from the fender as the car took off at breakneck speed down the lane.
Swearing under his breath, Mason swung his fist in the air in frustration. “Damn, fool—” He caught his tongue and threw his hat on the ground. Then, turning on a worn heel, he caught Bliss’s eye. Rather than be the target of his wrath, she ducked around the corner of the stables and snagged a lead rope coiled around a peg near one of the doors. The last person she wanted to catch in a bad mood was Mason Lafferty. No way. No how. The man was enough trouble when things were going right.
Squinting against a lowering sun, she eyed the horses grazing quietly in the shade of a stand of oak. She wasn’t interested in the docile palomino mare or lazy roan gelding her father had pointed out to her, and smiled when she spied the animal who had unintentionally captured her heart—a feisty pinto three-year-old. His eyes were an unusual pale blue—the only blue-eyed horse she’d ever seen—and he was a show-off in front of the mares, always hoisting his tail high, tossing his head and snorting as he galloped from one end of the field to the other.
“Okay, Lucifer, I think it’s time you and I got to know each other,” she said as he snorted and pawed the dry earth. “Come on,” she cooed, uncoiling the vinyl rope. “That’s a boy.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes suspiciously. He was wearing a leather halter. All she had to do was get close enough to snap the tether to the ring under his chin.
“It’s all right,” she assured him. She was only three feet away. One more step and—
He bolted. With a high-pitched squeal and a toss of his brown-and-white head, he galloped from one end of the pasture to the other, kicking up a cloud of dust in his wake. His odd eyes sparkled in the sunlight, as if he knew he was taunting her.
“Don’t make me chase you,” she warned.
“Why not? He loves a good fight. Especially with a female.”
She stiffened at the sound of Mason’s voice. Glancing over her shoulder, she ignored the sudden jump in her pulse and shot him a glance guaranteed to be as cold as ice. “Seems like you should know,” she said.
“Can’t argue with that,” he admitted, though his jaw was hard as granite.
When he didn’t stroll off, she asked, “Was there something you wanted?”
He was leaning against the gate, his arms crossed, elbows resting on the worn top board, eyes still shaded by aviator glasses. His hat was resting on a post and his hair, sun-streaked and ragged, brushed his eyebrows and the tops of his ears. “Just watching you.”
She lied and told herself that the absolute last person on earth she wanted observing her was this sarcastic cowboy.
“Don’t you have something more important to do? You know, like work? Isn’t there a cow to be branded, a horse to be shod or something?”
“Not just now. Besides, I wouldn’t want the boss’s daughter to get herself into some kind of trouble.”
She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “Don’t worry about it.”
He didn’t bother to respond. Nor did he move. Bliss gritted her back teeth together and inched her chin upward in pride. She’d die before she’d let him witness her humiliation from this headstrong piece of horseflesh.
“Want me to help?”
“No!” Damn the man, he was enjoying this and making her so nervous she was beginning to sweat. “Give me strength,” she muttered under her breath as she approached Lucifer again. In a louder voice she said gently, “Come on boy. That’s a good—”
In another whirlwind of dust the colt again thundered away, bucking and showing off as if he and Mason were privately conspiring against her.
“Son of a—” she bit back a curse and stomped a foot, sending up her own pitiful puff of dirt and Mason, damn his soul, laughed outright. “I suppose you could do better,” she challenged, then cringed as the words escaped her lips.
“Yep.” In one lithe movement he vaulted the fence and gave a sharp, terse whistle.
Lucifer stopped short.
Another commanding blast from Mason’s lips and the colt, ears flicking nervously, reluctantly turned. He hesitated, his nostrils flared, and Mason whistled a third time.
To Bliss’s complete mortification, the colt trotted docilely to Mason, pressed his nose against the man’s chest and was rewarded with a piece of apple.
“Isn’t that cheat
ing?” she asked as Mason grabbed Lucifer’s halter and with his free hand, slowly motioned for Bliss to approach with the lead rope.
“Everything’s fair in love and war and taming horses.” He glanced at her from behind his tinted glasses. He was so close she could smell his aftershave as well as the dust and odors of horse and leather that seemed to cling to him. His jaw was gilded with a day’s growth of beard and his sleeves were shoved above his elbows to show off tanned forearms where veins and hard muscles stretched beneath his skin.
Swallowing against a suddenly arid throat, she turned her eyes back to the horse.
“You have heard the expression before, right?”
“It was a little different.” She snapped the lead onto the metal ring on the colt’s halter.
Mason lifted one dark eyebrow. “Well, around here we make expressions fit the situation.”
“So I see.”
“Be careful with Lucifer.”
“I can handle him.”
“I hate to give you advice, but if you call what you just did ‘handling him,’ you’re in for a couple more lessons from this guy.”
“Am I?” She tossed her hair over one shoulder.
Mason patted the pinto on the shoulder. “You want me to saddle and bridle him for you?”
Her smile was cool, though her hands were sweating on the tether and her heart was beginning to pound erratically. “I’ll be fine,” she said, clucking to the colt and heading to the stables where she’d already picked out a saddle, blanket and bridle. She didn’t need any more help from the sexiest ranch hand on the place. All she wanted to do was ride to the river that cut through the north end of her father’s property where she planned to take a long, leisurely swim. Nothing more . . .
* * *
But, of course, looking back on it now, she’d gotten way more than she’d bargained for. That night was the night she began to fall in love, the night when all the trouble really started.