Her Dakota Man (Book 1 - Dakota Hearts)

by Lisa Mondello

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Hawk shook his head. His older brother had always been an open book, direct and honest. You never wondered where you stood with Hawk. It was something he’d always admired about his brother. Right now, he had a feeling it was just going to piss him off.

  “Now’s not the time for this,” Logan said, rubbing his jaw line of the itch caused by facial hair that had grown too long.

  “You’re getting it anyway. You and Poppy always seemed like you were cut from the same cloth. Poppy was all about laughter and adventure and she brought that out in you. When you got together with Kelly, that all changed. You hold yourself back. Sometimes I wonder what’s driving you to stay there.”

  “I grew up.”

  “That’s a lousy excuse and you know it.”

  Irritation coiled in him. “I have a family and responsibilities.”

  “Yeah, but you also have a life. You can enjoy it once in a while and still be responsible. Let’s face it, you stopped living long before Kelly died, bro.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Hawk hesitated and seemed to look around the corner to see if their mother was watching, just like he’d done a hundred times when they were kids and getting ready for a prank. Except this time there was no prank, just straight talk.

  “Everybody, including me, was shocked as hell when you came home and said you were marrying Kelly. Don’t get me wrong. I loved Kelly like she was my sister. But after the miscarriage…well, I half expected the two of you to split before the year was over.”

  He threw his napkin on the table. “We didn’t. We had Keith.”

  “I know. After three years of fertility treatments. But from where I was sitting Keith was pretty much the only thing you two had in common.”

  “Keith is the best thing in my life.”

  “He’s the only life I’ve seen in you in years. Truth be known, I hadn’t thought much about it for a long time until I saw you with Poppy the other night. Since then I’ve been wondering if you and Kelly would have gotten together at all if Poppy hadn’t left Rudolph.”

  Logan’s jaw tightened. “Poppy made her choice not to come back.”

  Hawk nodded. “Would it have made a difference if she had?”

  He was silent for a moment. He should have been shocked by Hawk’s direct question, but he wasn’t. Truth was Logan had mulled over that very question many times himself.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s not what happened. I married Kelly.”

  Hawk leaned forward in his seat, pushing his empty coffee cup to the center of the table. “Kelly was the real deal. She was a good person, a good mother, and a great friend. Thing is, Logan, Kelly is gone. All I’m saying is maybe you settled for something because you couldn’t have the one you really wanted. And that person is here now.” When Logan started to protest, Hawk stopped him. “I know you loved Kelly. And you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but…were you really happy with her? Were you really in love with her?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you sure? I’ve known you all my life and you’re one of the most honorable men I know. But there was something always missing and I haven’t seen it in you since Poppy left.” He hesitated a minute. “And as ticked off as you say you are that Poppy is here, I saw it again that day at the ranch when I saw you looking at her.”

  #

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The drive back home was filled with haunting memories Logan hadn’t wanted to remember for years. He’d made mistakes for sure. But had it really been as Hawk said? He had loved Kelly, come to love her, but their love had never been a passionate kind of love he imagined people could have. It was comfortable. Steady. But was he happy?

  That was a hard question to answer and he fought to find closure with it as he pulled into the driveway and parked the truck next to Poppy’s rental car.

  He couldn’t face her. There were too many demons in him that he was afraid of what he’d say. Kissing her last night on the porch had been as intense as it had been all those years ago. He could still taste her, feel her softness against him. And he suddenly couldn’t remember the last time he’d kissed Kelly that way, if he ever had at all.

  The thought of what he’d deprived his wife of made Logan sick to his stomach. How could he have been that kind of man to saddle Kelly with a husband who didn’t love her wholly, the way she should have been loved?

  He climbed out of the truck and decided to walk to the pond on the far side of the property, letting the cold March wind whip at his face and bite into his exposed skin. He needed it to feel something other than the emptiness of knowing that Hawk had been right. He’d traded happiness for duty. He hadn’t been fair to either one of them.

  He kept walking until he reached the trail through that woods that led to the large boulder jutting out into the pond. As kids, they used to jump off the boulder into deep water as the rock formation gave them a height of about fifteen feet to jump.

  He stood there for a moment overlooking the water and remembered Poppy swimming the day she’d found out her parents had sold the house. She’d just come from his mother’s restaurant and had been crying. He’d tried to console her, but she’d run away. Only when he’d gone to her house and her parents told him Poppy hadn’t come home yet that he knew she’d come here.

  The March winds whipped at him, but still he looked at the sun shining on the water, feeling the heat of that day as if it were real. He’d come upon her quietly and had ignored the clothes haphazardly dropped on the boulder. It was only after he’d seen her naked wet skin glistening in the sun that he’d realized Poppy was skinny-dipping.

  His initial relief that she was smiling, not crying, had immediately changed to blazing desire.

  “It’s a rite of passage to go skinny-dipping in a creek here in Rudolph and now’s my chance,” she’d said. “Are you going to just watch me swim or are you going to join me?”

  The heat in her eyes that day still made his body react now the way it had as a young man. She’d wanted him. Under her watchful and unashamed eyes, he’d stripped down and jumped into the water. They didn’t come together at first. But he knew they would. His fingers itched to touch Poppy in delicate places he’d only dreamed of in the darkness. And there she was, naked and wanting him like he’d wanted her.

  She swam around completely unfazed that anyone might come upon them. She revealed her beautiful body without any shyness and swam around him as if it was a dance, seducing him and taking pleasure in teasing him with her untamed spirit.

  So many times since that day Logan had imagined the two of them making love in the water or right there on the shore. He felt himself grow hard just thinking about it again. But that had never happened. Kelly had come charging through the woods and discovered the two of them there. He’d been so angry with her for bad timing that day and the fact that she’d stayed there with her hands crossed over her chest telling them they were about to get busted by Poppy’s parents if they didn’t get dressed quick.

  But none of that had any effect on Poppy. She’d just laughed, gave Logan a wink, and climbed out of the water in front of him naked as the day she was born as if she didn’t have a care in the world. And despite her crying fit earlier, she didn’t. That was Poppy. She’d done something to him that day that had stayed with him for ten years.

  Funny how he and Kelly had never come here together in all the years they’d lived here. It was only now that Poppy was spinning his head in circles that he was back to where he was as a teen, all knotted up inside and aching with need for her.

  Logan looked at the creek, and despite the flood, its water level was much lower than it had been a week ago. The watermark on the boulder was a telltale sign of just how high the water had gotten. Debris was pushed up along the banks, clogging the water’s path. He grabbed a long branch that seemed to have wedged itself in a thick pile and pulled it free. That one small move was enough to allo
w the force of the creek to pull a chunk of more branches and leaves free, sending it down stream to where it belonged.

  One small move. That’s all it took to change the course of life. If not for his one small move in a fit of drunkenness, he would have driven all the way to Long Island to convince Poppy how much they belonged together, how much he loved her.

  With a deep sigh, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and checked for messages. There were none. His son was having the time of his life with his best buddy. Everyone in town was busy working on cleaning. And he was reminiscing about a woman a few hundred yards away from him instead of tending to a long list of things that needed to be done on his ranch.

  The sound of an engine growing louder drew his attention to the path back to the house. He turned and saw Poppy out in the back pasture blazing around on the four-wheeler, driving all willy-nilly and at full throttle. The back wheels were spitting up mud all around her but she didn’t let off the throttle. She did some figure eights and then pulled onto the trail toward him stopping just short of embankment to the creek.

  She pulled off her helmet and let her auburn hair fall to her shoulders.

  “I see you found my toys,” he said.

  Her smile was wide and full of expression and excitement. It took his breath away.

  “Toy. There was only one! What gives?”

  Logan shrugged. “I take Keith on it with me sometimes. He loves it. But I haven’t done anything like you just did in the back pasture.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I was eating dirt back there. I can’t believe you haven’t gotten Keith his own four-wheeler yet.”

  Logan sputtered. “He’s four.”

  “Almost five. I’d say we need to put this on the top of his birthday wish list.”

  Logan shrugged, thinking about how much fun it would be to go riding with Keith. “He’s all McKinnon. I have a feeling he’d tear up that pasture worse than you just did.”

  She smiled sweetly. “Sorry about that. I figured it was already muddy. I couldn’t hurt it any more than the flood did.”

  “No problem. I’ll be plowing it under soon anyway.”

  She took in a deep breath and looked around. “When I saw your truck and couldn’t find you in the barn, I figured you must have come back here. I had a hard time getting this thing started though. You don’t use it much?”

  “There was always so much work to be done around here. Never had the time.”

  She eyed him speculatively. “Uh, huh. That’s Kelly talking. She never did like this sort of thing.”

  A week ago that remark would have had him vehemently defending Kelly. But Poppy knew Kelly’s quiet personality so well, and there was no malice in what she said, that Logan couldn’t argue with the truth.

  He recovered quickly, and if Poppy noticed, she didn’t let on. “Not exactly something you'd do in Manhattan.”

  She laughed. “No. Wish I could. It definitely beats breathing in the exhaust in the city. I’d forgotten how much fun this was. Is Keith going to be gone all day?”

  “Until tomorrow. Keith is staying over Skylar’s.”

  “I’ll bet you didn’t have to ask him twice.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  Her smile widened. “Well, I guess that leaves just you and me. Hop on board.”

  He hesitated, which earned him a quick tilt of Poppy’s eyebrow in challenge. “You are not going to tell me you have too much work to do, Logan McKinnon. The sun is shining. There is always going to be work to do around here, flood or no flood, so just give yourself the afternoon off to play.”

  He offered a half grin. “Is that an order?”

  “Damn straight it is. If we do enough runs across the field you might not even have to plow! Come on. We’ll do double duty tomorrow. Unless you’re too chicken to ride on the back of an ATV with a pro dare-devil.”

  He sputtered. “What makes you such a pro?”

  “I’ve mastered riding in a New York City cab. If that doesn’t make me a pro dare-devil, nothing will.”

  He laughed. “That bad?”

  “Let’s say I walk and take the subway more than I should. Get on.” She handed Logan the extra helmet.

  Logan eased himself onto the back of the ATV and wrapped his arms around Poppy’s slender waist. It was amazingly intimate to feel that close to her body and incredibly distracting, so he grabbed the handles on the sides of the seat instead.

  Poppy glanced over her shoulder before putting on her helmet and said, “Chicken.” Then she laughed and revved up the engine, taking off full speed ahead toward the connecting trails that made their way through the grounds around the creek and the farms, slowing only when she saw debris on the trail or a low-lying branch.

  He didn’t know when it had happened during the ride, but he found himself laughing. The pleasure of the day seeped deep into his soul as they rode around the farm, passed the horses grazing in the drier pasture on high ground, to the lower fields where he’d plant his spring crops as soon as the earth dried. For now, it was their playground. Poppy remained fearless no matter how fast she was going. Logan finally had to wrap his arms around her waist to keep himself firmly in the seat.

  Snug up against her body, feeling her auburn hair whip around him and breathing in her sweet scent with the fresh air was pure heaven. Hearing Poppy’s musical laugh as she drove through the fields, spitting up mud all around them, it was hard to feel anything but happiness. It suddenly dawned on Logan what Hawk had been trying to say to him earlier. He’d been numb inside for a long time, long before Kelly had gotten sick.

  All of the best things eventually have to come to an end and Logan was disappointed as the ATV started sputtering. The four-wheeler died in the middle of the muddy field.

  “I think we’re out of gas,” Poppy said. “We’re going to have to walk through all this mud to get to the barn. Do you have any gas left in the gas can?”

  “No, I used it for the generator.” He climbed off the ATV and extended a hand to Poppy as she stumbled climbing off. “It’ll be fine here. I’ll get some gas in town later.”

  She looked at him for a long time, the corners of her moist lips tilted up to a slight smile, her eyes sparkling in the sunshine. Beautiful didn’t even cover it in his mind. Then her expression turned devilish, catching him off guard. But not before he noticed the pile of mud in her hand.

  “Don’t you dare,” he warned.

  “What difference is it going to make? You’re already a mess,” she said as she hurled the mud at him.

  He ducked to get out of the way, but still got hit on the arm. He laughed as he looked at the mess it made.

  “Don’t go pouting on me,” she said, backing up quickly. “You’re already covered with mud from head to toe.”

  It was true. Mud was in Poppy’s hair, on her face, and her clothes. The only part of her face that was still clean was the part where the helmet shielded her from spraying mud. Her boots sank into the mud on the ground as she moved away from him, laughing as she did.

  Bending over he scooped up a handful of mud and quickly threw it at her. She screamed with laughter as she clumsily ran toward the house. He followed quickly, but trying to run on slippery ground thwarted his efforts. Still he kept right on her heels until they both spilled through the kitchen door, laughing hard and looking a mess.

  They stood there staring at each other, and with each breath Logan took, he knew something had shifted. Things had changed.

  It had been hard to see the woman he’d been so taken by in his youth, the friend that had been everything to him until life had put a wedge between them. Now he no longer remembered the details of what happened. Or maybe he just didn’t give a damn anymore. Life had changed them all. And right now he was standing in front of a woman who was covered in mud, who took his breath away because her smile lit up his heart.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I am. But to be honest, I’m not r
eally interested in food.”

  Neither was he.

  She touched her cheek and looked at the mud on her fingers. “I feel like Kristy Dorning must have felt when Tommy Gillis released those homing pigeons during home coming dance and Kristy got christened with bird poop.”

  He laughed with the memory. “Kristy’s face was priceless. All things considered, I prefer mud to poop.”

  She laughed and suddenly he was lightheaded just listening to the sound of her. He’d missed it.

  Tendrils of hair stuck to her cheek, along with the spray of mud, and made her look irresistible. Without consciously thinking about it, Logan reached up and wiped the smudge off her face.

  He chuckled softly. “I made it worse.” And still he didn’t move his hand from her cheek as she gazed up into his eyes. Every bit of his body came alive with that one touch. He wanted to kiss her, take her in his arms and melt with her, as much as he wanted and needed his next breath.

  Her sweet lips parted and turned into a slight grin. “I think the only hope for us is to clean off in the shower.”

  Poppy turned on her heels and pulled off her jacket as she made her way through the kitchen, leaving him cold and frazzled in the seconds that passed. She draped the mud-splattered jacket over the back of the kitchen chair and turned back, looking at him over her shoulder.

  “I’m going to leave the bathroom door unlocked, Logan.” She gave him a half grin and then left him alone in the kitchen. He heard the creak of the stair tread as she made her way up to the bathroom. A few seconds later he heard the water running and he realized he was still standing in the kitchen like a lovesick teen, hard and aching with need for a woman that left him dying. Except Logan couldn’t ever imagine ever wanting Poppy Ericksen like he did right at that moment.

  It was ridiculous. He was a man. Poppy was a beautiful woman. And facts were facts no matter how much they hurt. He was no longer married. And he wanted Poppy. More than he ever had. The thought of her naked body slipping into the tub, getting soapy and wet, was driving him crazy. His groin hardened just thinking about it. And he’d be damned if he was going to stand there and just think.