Star Valley Winter

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Partly. Funny thing,” she said pointedly, “but the rest of the ranchers around here don’t seem as convinced as I am that I wasn’t responsible.”

  He looked uncomfortable, and she regretted sounding so bitchy. “As I said,” she went on before he could respond, “although I’m considering leaving, I haven’t made any final decision yet. I don’t know why Dylan would have told you otherwise.”

  “I think she’s worried about you. She said you were sad.”

  A child shouldn’t have to worry about anything more earthshaking than whether she’d finished her homework. She hated that Dylan had spent even a moment fretting about her mother, about the future.

  For that reason, if nothing else, maybe she needed to give up this selfish desire for autonomy and take her daughter back to California, where she could make a safe and secure living, even if she found it suffocating.

  She also hated that Dylan had blabbed to Matt about her melancholy. She didn’t want to talk about any of it, so she turned the subject to him.

  “I can’t figure you out.”

  “What’s to figure out?”

  “Why would you pass up homemade pizza on New Year’s Eve to come give me a lecture about perseverance? You don’t even like me.”

  “That’s not true. I like you plenty. Too much,” he muttered under his breath.

  Before she could figure out how to answer that growled admission, he went on. “I care about you. When Dylan told me you were moving to California, I was furious.”

  His gaze locked with hers, his blue eyes burning with emotions she couldn’t even begin to decipher, and he reached for her fingers. “All I could think about was how much I would miss you if you left.”

  She drew in a shaky breath. “Matt—”

  “I know, it’s crazy. I don’t understand it myself. But I haven’t been able to think about anything else except how right, how completely perfect, you felt in my arms. And how I want you there again.”

  She closed her eyes, helpless against the tumble of emotions cascading through her. Listening to this big, gruff man speak words of such sweetness, words she knew would not come easily for him, affected her more than a hundred love songs, a thousand poems.

  How could she ever have been stupid enough to think she could lock her heart against him? She had no defenses against a man like Matt Harte. He might seem arrogant and authoritative most of the time, but he cared enough about her to drive out on a snowy night to try to prevent her from making what he considered a grave mistake.

  Why was she still fighting against him when she ached to be with him more than she had ever wanted anything in her life?

  She loved him.

  The sweetness of it seeped through her like hard rain on thirsty earth, collecting in all the crevasses life had carved into her soul. She loved this man, with his rough hands and his slow smile and his soft heart.

  When she opened her eyes, she found him watching her warily, as if he expected her to kick him out of her house any minute.

  “I’ve thought of it, too,” she answered, barely above a whisper.

  “So what are we going to do about it?”

  “What else can we do?”

  With a deep breath for courage, she stepped forward, wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted her mouth for his kiss.

  For just a moment after she stepped forward and lifted her mouth to his, Matt couldn’t move, frozen with shock and a fast, thorny spike of desire.

  He never expected this. Never. She made it pretty damn clear the other day that she didn’t want any kind of relationship with him. He hadn’t liked it, but what could he do when she wouldn’t give him much room for any kind of argument?

  If he’d been thinking at all when he rushed over here after Dylan’s little announcement—if he’d been able to focus on anything but his anger that she planned to leave Star Valley—he might have expected Ellie to throw him out the door after he finished giving her a piece of his mind.

  Not this. He definitely wouldn’t have predicted this soft, searching kiss that was curling through his insides like grapevines on a fence or her arms wrapping around his neck to hold him close.

  Just when he was beginning to wonder if he’d ever be able to move again, he felt the whisper-soft touch of her tongue at the corner of his mouth. That’s all it took, one tiny lick, and he was lost.

  Need exploded through him like a shotgun blast. With a ragged groan, he yanked her against him and devoured her mouth. She smelled like strawberry shortcake and tasted like heaven, and he couldn’t get enough.

  He’d missed her these few weeks. Missed her laugh and her sweet smile and her smart mouth. He’d wanted to call her a hundred times and had even dialed the number a few times, but had always hung up before the call could go through.

  She told him she didn’t want a relationship and had obviously been going out of her way to avoid him. And he had too much bitter experience with rejection to push her.

  He should have, though. Should have pushed them both. If he’d known she would greet him like this, that she would welcome him into her arms so eagerly, he damn well would have been knocking down her door to get here.

  In the background, Miles Davis played some kind of sexy muted trumpet solo. Matt’s subconscious registered it with appreciation, but all he could focus on was Ellie and her sweet mouth.

  Her hands were busy pulling off his coat, which she tossed on the floor. His hat went sailing after it, then she raked her fingers through his hair, playing at the sensitive spot at the nape of his neck.

  He wanted to have her right now, to tangle his fingers in her silky clothes and rip them away, then thrust himself inside her until neither one of them could move.

  “I’m not stopping this time,” he warned. He would somehow find the strength to walk away if she asked it of him, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

  To his vast relief, she didn’t argue. “Good,” she breathed against his mouth. “I don’t want you to stop. In fact, I’d be really disappointed if you did.”

  He had to close his eyes, awed at the gift she was offering him. On the heels of his amazement came niggling worry. He hadn’t done this in a while, and his body wasn’t in any kind of mood to take things slow. It throbbed and ached, eager for hot, steamy passion. Writhing bodies. Heated explorations. Feverish, sloppy kisses that lasted forever.

  But Ellie deserved to be wooed, and woo her he would, even if it killed him.

  “You smell divine,” he murmured, trying fiercely to get a little control over himself.

  “Strawberry bath beads.” She sounded breathless, aroused. “I just got out of the tub right before you showed up.”

  He had a quick mental picture of her lithe little body slipping naked into hot, bubbly water—and then climbing back out—and groaned as his hard-fought control slipped another notch.

  She would smell like strawberries everywhere, and he suddenly wanted to taste every single inch.

  While she was busy working the buttons of his shirt, he trailed his mouth down the elegant line of her throat to whisper kisses just under the silky neckline of her shirt. Her hands stilled, and she arched her throat, unknowingly exposing a tiny amount of cleavage.

  He took ruthless advantage of it and pressed his mouth to the sweetly scented hollow, licking and tasting while his hands worked their way under her shirt. She had nothing on under her thermal silk, he realized, and heat scorched him as his fingers encountered soft, unbound curves.

  Her breath hissed in sharply when his thumb danced over a tight nipple, and she seemed to sag bonelessly against him. He lowered her to the soft, thick carpet in front of the fireplace, and she responded by tightening her arms around him, by pressing her soft curves against him.

  She had somehow managed to unbutton his shirt, and her hands splayed across his abdomen, branding him with her heat. H
is stomach muscles contracted, and she smiled and shoved his shirt down over his shoulders.

  While the music on the stereo shifted to a honey-voiced woman singing about old lovers and new chances, they undressed each other, stopping only for more of those slow, drugging kisses.

  As he removed the last of their clothes, he leaned back on an elbow and stared at her, her skin burnished by flickering firelight. She looked like some kind of wild-haired goddess, and his heartbeat pulsed as equal parts desire and that terrifying tenderness surged over him.

  He hadn’t wanted this in his life, had done his best to push her away and pretend he wasn’t coming to care for her. The scars Melanie had left him with still ached sometimes, made him leery to risk anything of himself.

  But Ellie wasn’t anything like his ex-wife. He knew it, had known it from the beginning. He just hadn’t wanted to face the truth. It was much easier to focus on the few inconsequential things the two women had in common than the hundred of important things separating them. That way he could use the ugliness of his past as a shield against Ellie and her courage and her generous spirit.

  Somehow this woman had sneaked into his heart. Now that she was firmly entrenched there, he wondered how he’d ever survived so long without her.

  He wanted to take care of her. It sounded macho and stupid, and he knew his fiercely independent Ellie would probably smack him upside the head if he said it aloud, so he tucked the words into his heart along with her.

  He wouldn’t say them. He would just do everything he could to show her she needed him.

  * * *

  Why was he looking at her like that? Ellie squirmed, wishing his expression wasn’t so hard to read sometimes. She felt vulnerable and exposed lying before him with her hair curling wildly around her. At the same time, she had to admit she found it oddly erotic having him watch her with those blue eyes blazing.

  Finally she couldn’t stand the conflicting emotions anymore. She reached out and pulled him to her, nearly shuddering apart as his hard, taut muscles met her softness.

  This was right. Any lingering doubts she might have been harboring floated away into the night as his body covered hers, as his calloused hands skimmed over her, as his mouth devoured her.

  She wanted to curl up against him, wanted to let his strength surround her.

  “I’ve thought about this since that first time we kissed in the barn.” His voice was low, throaty. “Why have we both been fighting this so hard?”

  “Because we’re crazy.” She smiled a little and pressed a kiss to the throbbing pulse at the base of his throat.

  “If I’m crazy, I know exactly who to blame. I haven’t had a coherent thought in my head since a certain unnamed little red-haired vet moved into town.”

  He tugged gently on the hair in question so their gazes could meet. His words and the undisguised hunger in his eyes made her feel fragile and powerful at the same time, beautiful and feminine and wanted.

  Fresh desire pulsed through her, liquid heat, and she drew in a ragged breath and reached for him.

  Their kisses became more urgent, their caresses more demanding. The jazz on the stereo shifted to something haunting, sultry, as he teased her breasts, as his fingers slid across her stomach to the aching heat centered between her thighs, and she shuddered, lost to his touch, to the music weaving sinuously around them.

  He pushed one long finger inside her, readying her for him, and she gasped his name and arched against him eagerly.

  “You’re killing me, Ellie,” he growled. “I can’t handle much more of this.”

  “You’re the one taking his dear sweet time.”

  His low laugh sounded raw, strained. “I was trying to go slow for you.”

  She shivered again as his finger touched on a particularly sensitive spot, and she thought she would die if he didn’t come inside her. “Don’t do me any favors, Harte,” she gasped.

  His low laugh slid over her like a caress. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Doc.”

  He reached for something in his jeans—his wallet, she realized—then pulled out a foil-wrapped package. A moment later, he knelt between her thighs. His gaze met hers, and the fierce emotion there settled right into her heart, and then an instant later his mouth tangled with hers again as he entered her.

  Love for this man—this strong, wonderful man—expanded in her heart then flowed out, seeping through every cell. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, wishing she had the words to tell him her feelings for him—or that she had the courage to give him the words, even if she managed to find them.

  His movements started out slow, but she wasn’t having any of it. She arched against him, begging for more, for fire and thunder and out-of-her-head passion.

  He drew back, his breathing ragged. “Slow down. I don’t want to hurt you,” he growled.

  “You won’t. I’m not fragile, Matt.”

  With a harsh groan he drove into her, deep and powerful and demanding, and she shivered even as she met him thrust for thrust. He must have held himself under amazing control, she thought. Now that she’d given him permission to treat her like a woman instead of a china doll, he devoured her, kissing and stroking and inflaming her senses.

  He reached for her hands and yanked their entwined fingers above her head so that only their bodies touched, skin to skin, heat to heat.

  She never would have expected this wildness from him, the fierce desire that blazed out of him in wave after hot wave until she thought she would scorch away into cinders from it.

  A wild, answering need spiraled up inside her, climbing higher and higher with each passing second. She had never known anything like this, this frantic ache. She gasped his name, suddenly frightened by how close she was to losing control, to losing herself.

  He groaned in answer and kissed her deeply, tongue tangling with hers, demanding everything from her, then reached between their bodies to touch her intimately. Just that small caress, the heat of his fingers on the place where she already burned, and she shattered into a thousand quivering pieces.

  “I can’t get enough of you,” he growled before she could come back together again.

  He kissed her fiercely, branding her as his, then with one more powerful thrust, he found his own release.

  Afterward, she trembled more from reaction than the cold, but Matt reached up to the couch behind them and pulled down the knit throw there. He spread it over them both and pulled her against him.

  She snuggled close. “And here I thought I was in for another boring New Year’s Eve.”

  His low laugh tickled the skin at the back of her neck. “Boring is not a word I would ever dare use in the same sentence as you, Doc.”

  She lifted her gaze to his. “Are you complaining?”

  “Hell, no. Even if I had any strength left to complain, I wouldn’t dare.”

  She smiled and settled against his hard chest. He held her tightly with one hand while the other stroked through her hair.

  “I used to tell myself I was happy with boring,” he said after a few moments. “That’s what I thought I wanted. A nice, safe, uneventful life. Then you blew into my life, and I discovered I’d been fooling myself all these years. Safe and uneventful are just other words for lonely.”

  His low words slid over her, stirring up all kinds of terrifying emotions, and she tensed. Not knowing how to answer—and not at all comfortable with this yearning inside her to stay curled up against him forever—she chose to change the subject. “Cassie and the girls will be wondering where you ran off to.”

  He studied her, and she had the awful suspicion he knew exactly how uneasy his words made her, then he shrugged. “I doubt it. At least Cass won’t. Apparently my little sister knows a lot more about me than I’d like to think she does. More than I know myself. She asked me to invite you out to the ranch for the rest of the pizza party, if the girls hav
en’t eaten it all by now.”

  “Oh. That was very kind of her.”

  “You could stay over in the guest room.”

  She thought about spending the evening not being able to touch him and she sighed. “I’d better pass.”

  “Why?”

  “We have to tread carefully here, Matt. Really carefully. Think about the girls.”

  “What about them?”

  “They can’t know about…about any of this. How would they react?”

  She saw understanding dawn in his eyes, and he winced. “Right.”

  “This can’t affect them. I don’t want either of them hurt.”

  Dylan would build this into a happily-ever-after kind of thing, something Ellie knew was impossible. She knew perfectly well that her daughter pined for a father, and she’d be over the moon imagining Matt in that role. Ellie didn’t want to see her heart get broken.

  “What are you suggesting?” he asked quietly. “If you’re going to tell me some bull about how you think this was a mistake that won’t happen again, I might have to get mean.”

  If she were stronger, that’s exactly what she would say. Letting this go any further would only end in heartache. For all she knew, she’d be moving back to California in the next few months. How much worse was it going to be to say goodbye now that she knew the wonder of being in his arms?

  Still, she couldn’t seem to find the words to push him away. “We just have to be careful,” she said instead. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  They stayed that way together on the floor for a long time, wrapped around each other while the soft music flowed around them. She couldn’t touch him enough. His rough hands, his hard chest, the ridged muscles of his stomach. Eventually their caresses grew bold again, and she gasped when he picked her up as if she were no heavier than a runty calf and carried her to her bedroom.

  There he made love to her again—slower this time, as if he planned to spend the whole new year touching her just so, kissing her exactly right, then he entered her and each slow, deep thrust seemed to steal a little more of her soul.

  Afterward, she lay limp and boneless in his arms, content to listen to his heart and feel his arms around her. If the house caught fire just then, she wasn’t sure she could summon the energy to crawl out of bed.