“Let me take Amy Lynn back inside, then, and you go find him,” Melissa suggested. “The two of you need some time alone together to make peace.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Laurie shifted Amy Lynn into Melissa’s waiting arms.
“Take all the time you need,” the older woman said. “She’ll be fine with us.” She gazed straight into Laurie’s eyes. “And she’ll be right here whenever you come looking for her. I promise.”
“Thank you,” Laurie whispered in a choked voice. “Not just for taking Amy Lynn. For this talk, for understanding, for everything.”
“You’re more than welcome. Remember, it’s my son’s happiness that’s at stake here, too. I have a vested interest in the outcome.”
Melissa headed toward the house, then turned back. “I suspect you’ll find him down by the creek. It’s where he always goes when he needs to think.”
Laurie smiled. “I remember.”
The creek was close enough to walk to, far enough away to give her time to think. Unfortunately it could have been at the ends of the earth and it wouldn’t have been far enough for her to reach any conclusions about what she should do about the future or even about leaving Amy Lynn behind for a few days.
She’d spotted Val out by the paddock, engaging in a one-sided conversation with the rodeo star. Amused, she had concluded that her assistant very well might not mind being left behind along with Amy Lynn. She could use a new challenge in her life, a personal challenge, rather than the logistical kind Laurie presented her with every day. It was evident from her nonstop chatter in the face of his unsmiling demeanor that Val considered the cowboy a challenge.
Even so, Laurie wasn’t sure she could walk away from her baby even for the few days remaining in the tour.
So, she concluded, she would continue to weigh the option, just as she had promised Harlan Patrick she would. In less than twenty-four hours she would have to make her decision. Something told her it wouldn’t come any sooner, either.
As she reached the stand of cottonwoods along the edge of the creek, she spotted Harlan Patrick, leaning back against the trunk of one of them, his Stetson tilted down over his eyes. Even in repose, there was a tension evident in the set of his shoulders, in the grim line of his mouth.
She eased up beside him and settled down on the ground just inches away.
“You asleep?” she inquired when he didn’t move so much as a muscle.
“No.”
“Thinking?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“What, then?”
“Trying to blank it all out, trying to pretend that you and I haven’t come to this.”
“Pretending doesn’t help much, does it?”
“It might if it worked,” he grumbled. “Can’t say it’s ever worked for me.”
She thought of what his mother had said and made up her mind to tell him everything that had driven her away from Los Piños, away from Texas, away from him.
“Can I tell you something?”
He tilted his hat brim up and slanted a look at her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She tried to find a starting point, but had to go back a long way to find it. “Do you remember when my daddy left?”
He regarded her with surprise. “Your daddy? No, I can’t say that I do.”
“I do, Harlan Patrick. I remember it as vividly as if it were yesterday, and I was only four years old at the time. He and my mama fought that night. I could hear them from my room, the loud, angry voices, bitter accusations that I couldn’t understand. To this day I don’t know what the fight was about, just that it ended everything. When it was over, the front door slammed and, just like that, he was gone right out of our lives. He never came back.” Hot tears welled up, then spilled down her cheeks. “He never even said goodbye.”
Even now the memory was enough to make her ache inside. Loneliness and fear all but swamped her, but as bad as it was, all these years later it was only a sad echo of how terrible it had been back then.
“I’m sorry,” Harlan Patrick said. “You never talked much about him.”
“I couldn’t. It hurt too much.” Swiping angrily at the tears, she glanced over and met his gaze. “But you know what hurt even more?”
“What?”
“Watching what it did to my mama, what it did to our lives. We never had a secure day after that, not financially, not emotionally. I was always terrified that she would leave the same way he did, out of the blue, when I least expected it. I was scared that we’d run out of money and be thrown out of our home. And you know what else that did to me? I vowed then and there that I would never, ever be in that position.”
“You had me, Laurie. You knew I would never desert you, that you’d always have everything you ever wanted.”
“That was later. Besides, don’t you see, my mama thought that about my daddy once, too. Look what happened to them. To me that meant that the only person you could really count on was yourself. That’s why I went to Nashville. That’s why I fought so hard to make it as a singer. I didn’t leave you, Harlan Patrick. I went after the dream of what I could be, what I needed to be to make the fears go away.”
He reached for her then, gathered her into his arms. “Oh, baby, why didn’t you ever tell me this before?”
“I did. At least, I thought I had. I thought you knew everything there was to know about me. It wasn’t until today that I realized that it wasn’t a fair assumption.”
“I should have known,” he agreed softly with her head tucked against his shoulder. “I should have been able to see into your heart.”
“Maybe neither one of us understood that even between the closest of friends, sometimes you have to say the words and not leave anything to chance.” She reached up and touched his face, tracing the familiar angles and planes. “I love you, Harlan Patrick. Please, don’t ever doubt that. I loved you then and I love you now.”
As she spoke, she felt the splash of a teardrop against her fingers and realized that her brave, fiercely strong cowboy was crying. “Oh, Harlan Patrick,” she whispered brokenly. “Don’t. Please, don’t cry over me.”
“Darlin’, I never cry,” he said, his voice husky.
Smiling at the predictable denial, she rose to her knees and knelt facing him. She cupped his cheeks in her hands, then brushed her lips across the salty dampness on his skin. When she claimed his mouth, he moaned softly, then dragged her against him, his hands swift and sure as they roved intimately over her.
Like a summer brushfire, need exploded between them. Memories that needed refreshing responded to each caress as if it were new. His touch was impatient, inflaming her with its urgency. With her breath already coming in ragged gasps and her blood racing, she clasped his hands and held them tightly.
“Wait,” she pleaded.
He stilled at once, but there was torment in his eyes as they clashed with hers. “Wait?”
“Slow down. That’s all. Just slow down. It’s been a long time, Harlan Patrick. I want to savor every second.”
He grinned and reached for her again. “Couldn’t we hurry now and savor later?”
“Oh, no,” she said, slapping away his hands, then reaching for the buttons on his shirt. “You just sit still and leave this to me.”
That drew a spark of interest. “Leave it to you, huh? Sounds fascinating.” He locked his hands behind his neck and relaxed back against the tree. “Do your worst, woman.”
She chuckled. “Oh, I promise you, it will be very clever and it will be my best, not my worst.” The first button on his shirt popped free, exposing a V of bare flesh with just a hint of wiry dark hair. She pressed a kiss to the spot, noticing that his skin was feverishly hot already. The pulse at the base of his neck leaped.
“Promising,” she assessed, grinning at him.
The next button opened and
then the next, exposing more and more of that wide, sexy chest for her increasingly inventive kisses. Oh, how she had missed this. She had missed the tenderness, the laughter and intimacy, the sensual games that only two people who loved and trusted could play.
When she reached the last button above his belt buckle, she tugged the remainder of the shirt free, then dropped a daring kiss on the bared skin where dark hair arrowed down toward the evidence of his arousal. He jolted at that and clasped her shoulders tightly.
“Careful, sweetheart. You’re starting to take risks.”
“I thought you were a man who liked to live on the edge.”
“Not me. I’m just a stay-at-home, old-fashioned kind of guy.”
With her fingers already at work on his buckle, she hesitated at the description. It cut a little too close to reality, when she was trying to recapture the fantasy.
“Need some help with that?” he asked, obviously unaware of the alarms his words had set off.
She drew in a deep breath, then shook her head. “Nope. I’ve done this before, you see.”
“Not with anyone else, I trust,” he said lightly.
She lifted her gaze to meet his and realized that despite the joking tone, the question was dead serious. “Never with anyone else,” she said softly. “Only with you, Harlan Patrick.”
There were plenty of men in her new world, record-company executives, fans, actors. She had thought about some of them, wished she could fall in love with one of them, wished she could want them as she wanted the man she’d left behind in Texas, but Harlan Patrick had always been right there in her head and in her heart. She sang about one-and-only loves a lot, because she had found hers years ago.
“Only with you,” she repeated as she slowly slid down the zipper of his jeans and reached for him.
At the glide of her fingers across his arousal, he gasped and reached for her wrists, cuffing them with a grip that stilled any movement.
“Okay, darlin’, you’ve had your fun,” he said. “Now it’s my turn.”
“But I was just getting started,” she protested, laughing at his refusal to leave her in control.
“And now I am,” he countered.
Before she knew it, he had flipped her over until she rested beneath him on the soft, sweet grass. Somehow he managed to keep her hands neatly immobilized above her head, while his free hand began its own magical journey over fabric, resulting in chafing caresses that left her skin sensitive and burning. He didn’t waste time on finesse. When he wanted to touch bare skin, buttons popped, scattering everywhere. Her bra clasp was dismissed as easily, and then his tongue was soothing the very skin he’d inflamed only seconds before.
Her nipples ached with the pleasure of it, and that was even before he took each one into his mouth and sucked, sending waves of delight rippling through her. Her hips, pinned to the ground by the weight of him, bucked ever so slightly, causing yet another delicious friction.
“We’ve still got on too damned many clothes,” Harlan Patrick murmured in frustration, freeing her hands so he could use both of his to dispense first with his own clothes and then hers.
When she was naked, the soft, sultry breeze kissed her skin and made her nipples pucker just as his touches had.
“You are the most gorgeous creature God ever made,” Harlan Patrick said, his heated gaze studying her as if she were brand-new to him.
“I have stretch marks,” she protested.
“From carrying my baby,” he said, touching the faint white marks on her belly with gentle reverence. “That only makes you more beautiful.”
She grinned. “How could any woman not love you? You always know the right thing to say.”
“I always tell the truth,” he insisted.
“Truth or the view through rose-colored glasses, I appreciate it,” she said.
Even though she was the one who’d urged a slower pace, she reached out to stroke him in a gesture guaranteed to shock him into action.
“Now who’s impatient?” he taunted.
“Please, Harlan Patrick, make love to me. Make love to me now.”
“With pleasure, darlin’. With pleasure.”
With the wicked skill of someone who knew her body intimately, he skimmed touches over perspiration-slick flesh, then dipped into the moist folds at the apex of her thighs, finding the tiny nub that sent her off into rippling waves of ecstasy.
Only then, when she was still trembling in the aftershocks, did he part her legs and ever so slowly enter her. The reunion was a stunningly sweet reminder of the past, a swirl of present-tense sensations and then an urgent journey into the future.
Past, present, future—love was there for all of it, making the throbbing tension and exquisite release seem unique to this moment, even as it echoed a haunting familiarity and held the promise of unending repetition.
Curved securely into Harlan Patrick’s arms, Laurie wanted to believe in now and forever. She wanted the fantasy to last, but in no time at all reality intruded.
“Marry me,” Harlan Patrick whispered, his hand resting against the curve of her breast, his voice thick with need. “Marry me, Laurie.”
This time it was her tears that fell, splashing against his bare skin as her heart split in two yet again.
“I can’t,” she said, her voice choked. “Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? It wouldn’t work.”
“How can you say that? We’re perfect together. We’ve always belonged together.”
Icy cold and trembling, she pulled away and began frantically gathering her clothes, yanking them on with haphazard abandon until she was dressed, but still quivering in front of him. When she couldn’t get her blouse closed because of the missing buttons, he silently handed her his shirt. She put it on, then tied the ends with trembling fingers.
“Explain it to me, Laurie. Tell me why it won’t work, when we’re so good together.”
“Like this, we’re perfect together,” she agreed. “But the rest?” She gave an impatient, all-encompassing wave of her hand. “It hasn’t changed, Harlan Patrick. I’m going back on tour tomorrow and you’re staying here.”
His mouth firmed into a grim line. “I’ll get used to being separated.”
“You won’t.”
“Then I’ll come along.”
“You’d hate that even more. And before too long, you’d hate me, too.” She bent down and touched his lips one last time. “You know I’m right. In your heart, you know it.”
Scooping up clothes, she left before he could counter that, but she’d gone only a few paces when she realized that he hadn’t even tried.
Eleven
Harlan Patrick was mad enough to tear the whole blasted ranch apart, to say nothing of what he’d like to do to Laurie. How could the woman make sweet, passionate love to him one second and then walk away from him the next? It was insulting, demeaning.
Then again, he ought to be used to it. She’d done it often enough to be downright skilled at it, and he ought to be smart enough by now not to be taken by surprise.
While he wrestled with the black mood she’d left him in, he took his time walking back to the main house. Even though he had no desire to face Laurie again anytime soon, he had every intention of sticking as close as possible to his daughter. If Laurie refused to relent and leave Amy Lynn at White Pines while she finished her concert tour, then he was going right back on the road with her. It gave him a great deal of satisfaction to know that she was really, really going to hate that.
He was almost back to the main house when he crossed paths with one very surly, out-of-sorts Slade Sutton.
“Keep that woman away from me,” the hand said, squaring off in front of him defiantly.
Even with his own problems fresh in his mind, Harlan Patrick couldn’t stop the grin that tugged at his mouth. “Problems with Val?”
“She never shuts up.” Slade scowled. “Next time you invite somebody out here who needs baby-sitting, get somebody else. I’m here to work with the horses. You decide to change the job description, I’m outta here.”
There was little doubt he was serious about it, too, Harlan Patrick concluded. Val must have proved herself to be a real handful. Trying not to let his enjoyment of the situation show, he said, “I figured you’d be so used to breaking fractious horses that one little old filly wouldn’t give you a moment’s trouble.”
“She’s not a horse. She’s a blasted nuisance,” Slade growled, and stalked away.
Harlan Patrick hooted as he watched him go. “Made quite an impression, did she?” he commented under his breath. “I’ll have to see what I can do about getting her back here.”
He chuckled at the devious schemes already forming in his mind and concluded that there was a whole lot more of his granddaddy in him than he had ever realized. Matching the cantankerous former rodeo star with Val had been a stroke of genius. In fact, it might be the only good thing to come out of this whole damnable trip to White Pines.
In the midst of his laughter, he paused thoughtfully. If Val had a reason to want to spend more time in Texas, she was exactly the kind of woman who’d find a way to make it work. And if Val could make it work, wouldn’t Laurie begin to see the possibilities, as well? It was something that bore thinking about, he concluded, and he would do just that, right after he made sure she hadn’t stolen his pickup and hauled his daughter back into town or straight on up to Ohio and her next concert date.
To his relief he found Laurie inside, Amy Lynn sound asleep in her arms. The two of them were still surrounded by family. Val had joined them at last but was sitting by herself on the fringes, clearly trying to remain unobtrusive. Harlan Patrick went over and pulled a chair up beside her.
“How’d your tour of the ranch go?” he inquired innocently.
She shot him a wry look. “What tour? I could tell you exactly how long it takes to clean a horse’s hooves. I could tell you exactly what shade of red Slade Sutton’s neck turns when he’s given a compliment. I could even tell you how much feed each horse gets. All of this is from my own personal observation, by the way. Mr. Sutton doesn’t have a lot to say. And beyond the stables, this place remains a mystery.”
West Texas Nights Page 13