by Cait London
Her blue eyes met his. “Yes, it is. Thank you, Ben.”
“I want you here,” he said, and looped an arm around Carley and Jemma, drawing them close.
“How are you, Dad?” Carley asked, snuggling close, her flyaway straight blond hair almost silver, contrasting with Ben’s crisp, dark blond-and-gray waves.
“Better,” he said, with a meaningful thank-you look at Jemma. “Much better.”
When Dinah exclaimed about the new linoleum floor in the large family kitchen, Ben scowled. The way he settled back into the shadows, reminded Jemma of Hogan.
“Cost a fortune,” Ben grumbled. “I’ll have to sell off the place to pay back Hogan. He likes that, me indebted to him. Why the hell didn’t he stay? Maxi fixed a special dinner, and this is Dinah and Carley’s first night home. Hogan should have—”
“Not beef?” Jemma asked hopefully, hurrying to break Ben’s dark tirade against Hogan. “I really hate the thought of those poor little calves—”
“Beef,” Ben stated firmly, a Montana rancher protecting his life and income against marauding bean-curd vegetarians.
Jemma nudged him with her shoulder. “You’ll have to manage by yourself, handsome. Hogan isn’t here to protect you. I’d really like you to teach me something about guns.”
His blue eyes lit with humor. “Don’t sweet-talk me. I’m not teaching you how to shoot. Putting a gun in your hands would be asking for another missing leg.”
Jemma resented the way Ben could head off her plans. Since Carley and Dinah had gone into the kitchen, she settled into argue quietly. “I’m not that bad, and what if Carley needs me—”
“Carley can handle a gun, if she needs to. You’re too hot-tempered. But don’t let her go anywhere by herself. The boys and I are sticking close— one of us will be with her. Thank you, Jemma, for helping us.”
“I’m good at wicked plans. The Kodiaks are too honest for plotting. I love you, Ben,” Jemma said, meaning it and watched the shy, embarrassed flush creep up his face. She kissed his weathered cheek. “Get used to it.”
Dinah hurried past them, her eyes shimmering with emotions. She peered out of the window. “I have to— Where’s Hogan?” Dinah asked.
“Gone,” Ben stated flatly, bitterness curling around his tone.
“He’ll be back in the morning.” Or I’ll drag him back, Jemma thought. “Let’s eat. I’m starved.”
Mitch grinned and eyed her lean body. “You’re always starved. Where do you put it?”
“Calories can’t move fast enough to catch her. Mine come to stay,” Carley said cheerfully.
“Girls upstairs— Aaron, too. He’s taking the corner room. Jemma, you and Carley have to share a room this trip. Mitch and I will bunk downstairs,” Ben stated. “Go wash up.”
“Great, now I’m with the girls,” Aaron muttered. Everyone but Carley knew his presence was more for protection than for accommodations. The “corner room” had been built as a lookout by the first Kodiak, with a small tower that overlooked the entire Bar K.
“Better be careful, Aaron, or I’ll dye your hair again. You looked snazzy in orange,” Jemma teased.
“I love when you threaten. You get all hot and wicked looking— uh!” Aaron hopped and rubbed his backside. “No pinching.”
*** ***
At one o’clock that morning, Carley gathered her worn flannel robe around her and sat curled in Ben’s chair. The fire had died, banked for the night with ashes, and the old house had settled in creaks and sighs.
Her life as a Kodiak swam before her: two parents, each scarred and hurt by the other, yet loving her. Her brothers, “the Sasquatches,” were men hardened by life, lines and love on their faces as they looked at her.
Carley slapped a palm down on the smooth curled wood of the chair. “You’re never going to forget me,” he’d rasped that night, his hands hurting her budding breasts. He’d jammed himself against her, hurting her and yet not penetrating, though he’d tried. Her body had resisted his and it only angered him more.
He’d torn her mouth, though, bitten and hurt, and his rage had slammed into her. When she was thirteen, those fifteen minutes had been an eternity.
Now, eighteen years later, she was still haunted—
Her hand stopped the soft wounded cry, and she turned to the man moving from the shadows. “Mitch.”
He crouched in front of her chair, and, still filled with her terror, she pulled her hands from his. “Baby,” he said so softly that the sound of her beating heart almost buried it. “Baby, I’m here.”
Firelight gleamed off his bare angular shoulders, the old scars he never explained. His black waves were rumpled as if he’d been running his hands through them.
He stood suddenly, a fit angular, beautiful man, dressed only in jeans and brooding by the fire. He turned too suddenly, surprising her. “Damn it, Carley. He’s won if you keep up like this. He meant to hurt you, and you’re letting him.”
She pushed away that wave of anger, then let it roll over her. “How would you know?” she shot at him. “How would you know what it feels like?”
“I’d know, honey,” he said, reminding her of the scarred youth Ben had adopted.
“You don’t know this. You don’t know how I feel.”
His answer cut like a knife. “It’s written all over you. You’ve pulled your life into a hole. I saw it in Seattle. I saw how you shrank back when a man came near you, someone you didn’t know. You’re afraid to be a woman.”
“Oh, well. Now that’s something you’d know about— women. You’ve had your share.” Mitch’s attraction for women was legendary; he was so smooth, so easy as he drew them to him.
She’d never know that flirtation, didn’t want to. Didn’t want to be under a man’s body again or hurt and told how dirty she was—
“I like women. It’s natural, Carley. Your fear of men isn’t. If you need someone to talk to—”
“That’s right. Pull out those big psychology degrees. I do not want to be your study, Mitch. Leave me alone.”
“That’s just the problem, Carley. Everyone has left you alone. I don’t intend to. I just wanted you to see me coming.”
She shot to her feet. She was smaller than Mitch, but raised with the same hard steel. “Ben won’t have it.”
His smile was cold and tight, and there was nothing left of the boy who had been her brother all those years. “That’s right. Hide behind Ben.”
“I’m not hiding behind anyone.” Carley knew she sounded like a Kodiak, and only Mitch could taunt that steel out of her.
“You’re hiding from yourself,” he said sadly, and reached to tug her hair. “Darling, you’re still a virgin, hoarding yourself. I’ll bet you haven’t had a kiss yet.”
“Why, Snake,” she cooed, fury licking at her. “Not everyone kisses and tells.”
He chuckled at that, then in a lightning change of expression, frowned down at her. “Talk to me when you want. It’s killing them to see you like this, like a scared little mouse, fear in your eyes when a man comes too close.”
To prove him wrong, she tried not to flinch as Mitch curled his hand around her nape, his fingers stroking her skin.
She’d known him for most of her life, saw him change from street-smart “Snake” to a man. But she couldn’t stop the tremble that moved up her body, the quick edging away from him. “Don’t play the do-gooder with me, Mitch. I have a life and I like it. Ben is—”
“He wants you here, and you came. That’s family, Carley. Let me help.”
Because she couldn’t bear more, those soft concerned eyes, the way his body gleamed in the firelight, Carley tipped her head. “I’m going upstairs. Good night.”
“You’re running, Carley, and we both know it. You have to do this for yourself. I can help. I’m trained to help.”
Carley’s eyes were clear, glinting in the firelight. That fine Kodiak tempered steel in her would see her through life— if she’d let it. “You know where you can stuff your h
elp, don’t you, Mitch? I’m not buying.”
After she had gone, the house settling again, Mitch placed a hand on the rough-hewn wooden mantel and stared at the banked fire. He’d given her too much time to grow up, to shed the damage done to her at a tender age.
There would be hell to pay when Ben discovered Mitch had always wanted Carley.
“Some way to pay Ben back, by craving his daughter,” Mitch muttered darkly, and damned the stalker for hurting her all those years ago.
Then he remembered the steel in Carley’s tone, that quick slap of her temper, and knew she remained a Kodiak beneath the layers. “She just hasn’t been pushed, and I intend to push plenty. She’s wallowed in that night enough.”
He wanted the woman within— that sweet tender bud that had been nipped too soon and too harshly would have been more woman than— Was he pushing for her sake? Or for his own?
*** ***
Hogan was home before he realized he wore Jemma’s black ruffled band around his wrist.
He ripped it from him and tossed it to the living-room floor on his way to the bedroom. The room was stark, the flat pillowless bed covered with a lush woven blanket, Native American in style. The large baskets held much of his work, a clutter of sketchbooks by his bed for the hours he couldn’t sleep. Hogan clicked on the sound system and tried to let the notes of a solitary flute soothe him. He tried to concentrate on paperwork, to return his e-mail messages and failed.
Whatever stirred inside him now had nothing to do with his commercial drive. It had to do with finding his soul—
He toyed with the carnelian beads he would use in his designs. The dark red shade reminding him of Jemma’s hair....
Jemma. All bold, fast-talking, pushing woman, an outsider who wouldn’t allow herself to be, easily blending in with the rest of the Kodiak family.
Sunlight had caught in her hair, the strands layered in deep waves. There was that proud, defiant lift of her chin, steely anger in her gray eyes. All passion-ripe, heat pouring from her, Jemma could fill his needs, but the consequences would be dear. She wasn’t an easy woman, filled with pride and needs that almost devoured every breath. Her love for Carley redeemed her, and the bond to Dinah was clearly strong.
“Damn her.” Jemma would keep her promise to invade his privacy— his “lair.”
She grated on his nerves; she excited him on a sensual level.
He damned his need to touch and stroke Jemma’s body. Brittle with emotions, Hogan crouched to build a fire and spotted the ruffled band lying on the gleaming wood floor.
He picked it up, and, in the firelight, a long fiery strand of hair erotically slid along his dark skin. He wrapped it around his fingertip, smoothing the silky texture with his thumb. After all the years he’d known her, he knew little about her. What drove her to mend the deep tears in his family? Why was she so desperate, jabbing away at calculator buttons and figuring profit and losses the moment she latched on to an idea?
Jemma had haunted him for years. Hogan had filled his body’s hunger with other women, but the need for her was still there, ripe and hot and waiting.
Hogan padded to his sleek uncluttered office, apart from his studio to keep from business distractions. If Jemma wanted to dig at his family roots, it was time to learn about hers. At his uncluttered glass-and-chrome desk, Hogan picked up the copies of the stalker’s notes to Carley, included in Jemma’s file. Cut and pasted letters would be hard to trace.
Hogan remembered Carley’s scream that night and Jemma’s startling, too-adult rage. There was more to this than a protective friend, much more.
He rubbed his scar and prayed that Carley would not be hurt.
*** ***
All the Kodiaks were gathering around sweet Carley, and now she was so close to being his Celestial Virgin.
He’d always hated the Kodiaks and the mongrel, Mitch, that Ben had adopted.
Now he would tear the very heart from them. Dear, sweet, virginal Carley would be his. He had to have her, the virgin she remained after all these years, waiting for him. She would be pure, he knew, but the others weren’t. They’d shared their bodies, pretended to be virgins to the world, but they weren’t and so they’d had to die.
Only Carley would be unique, perfect, clean, and pure.
He’d changed her. Since that night other men hadn’t been interested in her with her frumpy clothes and shy temperament. The added weight was appealing, because he knew that was a protection to keep her for him. His research of her records, easily obtained, had revealed few male friendships.
He’d watched her grow into an adult, a professional, dedicated to her work, running the temporary employment service. She was very good, very thorough, his Carley. But then he deserved this perfect virgin he had created, who had waited for him— an intelligent, pure woman.
He frowned, hating the Kodiak men, tall tough men bred to the West. Mitch, Ben’s adopted son, was just as physical. Women loved them, of course— stupid women. But they couldn’t have Carley— because she was his.
Because his darling, perfect virgin had waited to give her body to him.
*** ***
Chapter Five
“Jemma got Hogan to come to the breakfast table. She’s smart and tough, just like my son. They’re a good match,” Ben said to Sagebrush, a sturdy, ordinary-looking brown quarter horse. Sagebrush responded to Ben’s uninjured leg better than any other horse, but when tested, Sagebrush had a fighting spirit, just like his sons.
Ben settled back in the saddle, letting the horse pick his way up the fir-and-spruce-studded knoll to the old line shack. As a teenager, Hogan had stayed at the shack more than he stayed at the house or bunkhouse. As a teenager rebelling against old Aaron, Ben had stayed there, too.
He smiled briefly and checked the gasoline can tied to his saddle horn. From the sounds behind him, he knew another horse followed. “That would be Hogan, coming to set the rules of this fandango, Sagebrush.”
Like Ben, Hogan liked emotional boundaries, used them to protect himself. Ben smiled again and raised his face to the clear Montana sky, letting the scents drift into him. This son was a tracker, bred to it, and could follow a cold-dead trail through a midnight rain.
Hogan would know that the shack would provide a perfect overlook to the ranch. To keep Carley safe, it had to be destroyed.
“He’s a hard son of a gun,” Ben said, admiring his son. “Went his own way. Made his life and fortune. An artist—what do you think of that, Sagebrush? Would you think that a Kodiak could have that in him? He reached for the stars, and got them, too.”
Ben acknowledged the pride in his voice. “Ah, he’s a lonely man, Sagebrush. And if he doesn’t watch it, he’ll throw away his chance for happiness, just like I did mine. We’re alike, you know, and the trail is set too deep. Dinah has hope in her eyes that things will change between us, but I ruined it once, and I could do it again.”
He slowed Sagebrush just that small bit, to let his son’s Appaloosa gelding come alongside him. His son had picked a fine strong horse with good lines; Moon Shadow was probably out of Mike Blue Feather’s herd.
Hogan always knew horses, how to pick them. He knew how to talk gently, touching and gaining the horse’s trust and acceptance of a rider. There was nothing like seeing Hogan ride in the rodeo, except seeing him with the horses, how they came to him. Animals knew a good heart, and Hogan’s was true.
Ben’s heart skipped a beat and went sailing into the sunlight; it felt good to ride beside his son, clean cold Montana air upon his face and the horse riding over Kodiak land. His family was together again, and a man couldn’t ask for more—
Dinah. Ben lifted his face to the breeze scented of pines and the earth that lay waiting for his tractor. Dinah still filled his heart every time he thought of her, coming home to him, just as she had as a bride. Of how she felt in his arms, all soft and sweet, how her blue eyes looked up at him as if he was all she could see or feel.
There was that quick glance t
o the shambles that had been her pride, her garden. The slow drift of her hand over the old furniture that had belonged to his mother. As a bride, she’d stripped away the black varnish, and the wood gleamed new now, the old claw-foot buffet, and the sprawling spool-leg table. In the bedroom, she’d babied a freestanding closet into life— an “armoire,” she called it.
There would be plants and flowers in the house this summer, silly little things that showed a woman’s touch.
Ben swallowed the emotion tightening his throat. Before his accident, she’d just started a little business, pouring jam into pretty little jars, sealing them, and placing gingham cloth over the lids. She’d loved herbs, wanting to share her little pots of chives and oregano.
He’d wanted to provide for her, to give her everything, and couldn’t. Sunlight died in him the moment Dinah had walked out of his house.
He pushed away a smile, the good and the bad memories twisting inside him like a horsehair lariat. She’d seduced him into agreeing to let his wife be a businesswoman, to make a little profit, his lovely Dinah.
At first, he’d been uncomfortable with a woman’s touch, the changes in his life—putting his dirty clothes in a hamper and not dropping them on the floor, going to church on Sunday morning, and going to dances and potluck dinners.
His mother had abided by old Aaron’s strict rules; she’d died young, used and empty, leaving Ben with a harsh father. Ben gripped his saddle horn with one leather-covered fist. He should have known what a boy like Hogan needed.
Moon Shadow came alongside Sagebrush and from the corner of his eye, Ben admired the fine loose Western way his son sat in the saddle, commanding the horse. It was a fine feeling riding beside a grown son and Ben’s heart filled with pride. They rode together in silence, neither acknowledging the other.
At the shack, Hogan dismounted, already striding inside the cabin before Ben could ease his prosthesis to the ground. He admired his son’s movements, prayed that nothing would happen to that young, strong body— Hogan had enough pain.