by Lisa Jackson
“If you ask me,” Sheryl said, “Turner took off because of woman trouble.”
Heather’s stomach knotted, and Jill, mixing sugar and cinnamon, shot her a knowing glance.
Sheryl went on. “Oh, his father might have got into some trouble, Lord knows that’s possible, but I’ll bet there’s a woman involved—Oh! Damn.” She dropped the apple peeler and sucked in her breath. “Cut myself.” Snatching a kitchen towel, she blinked back sudden tears, then dashed up the stairs toward the bathroom.
Mazie sighed. “If you ask me, she never got over him.” Clucking her tongue, she picked up the dropped peeler and started stripping the apples of their tough skins. “Turner and Sheryl were…well, I don’t think you’d say they were in love. Leastwise he wasn’t, but Sheryl, I’m afraid she fell for him.” Mazie smiled sadly. “Just like half the other girls around here.”
Jill, suddenly red-faced, handed Mazie the bowl of sugar and cinnamon, then set about wiping down the wood stove, which was only used when the power went out.
Heather bit her lip and kept working, afraid that if she said anything, she’d look as foolish as the other girls who’d thought themselves in love with Turner Brooks.
With her tongue still clucking, Mazie dried her hands quickly and left the rest of the apples to Heather. “Yep, that Turner…he’s somethin’. I don’t know how many girls fall for him.” She grabbed her old wooden rolling pin and a bowl of pie dough from the refrigerator. Measuring by handfuls, she dropped several lumps of dough onto a flour-covered board, then started stretching and flattening the dough. “Well, speak of the devil,” she said, glancing up as Turner’s pickup wheeled into the yard.
Heather’s stomach dropped to the floor as she watched the headlights of the pickup dim and Turner step down from the cab. Averting her eyes, she continued working on the remaining small mound of apples while Jill turned her attention to filling the salt-and-pepper shakers for the next day.
Mazie frowned as Turner started for the house. “He’s got his share of troubles, that one.”
“I heard his dad will spend a year in jail,” Jill said, eager for gossip.
Mazie frowned. “I doubt it. Seems old John’s always slippery enough to get off.” She worked the dough to her satisfaction and folded the flattened crust in half.
“So Turner’s father is an outlaw,” Jill whispered with a deep sigh.
“Nothing so romantic. John Brooks is a drunk and a crook who depends upon his son to get him out of one jam after another.” Scowling, Mazie draped several pie plates with the unbaked crusts. “If he were my brother-in-law—”
“Mazie…” Zeke Kilkenny’s voice was soft but filled with quiet reproof. Heather’s head snapped around and Mazie’s spine stiffened.
She started shaping the edges of the crust as if her very life depended on it. “Well, it’s true, and if you won’t admit it, Zeke, I will!” She finished with one pie, and started working on another, twirling the pan as she cut off the excess crust. “Margaret might have been your sister, but she was my cousin, damn it, and my best friend and that…that drunk of a husband of hers killed her!” Mazie’s chin wobbled, and she turned toward the window, dropping the pie pan and spilling the crust onto the floor. “Oh, God, now look—”
“I’ll get it,” Heather said quickly, grabbing a broom and dust pail and scraping away the ruined crust.
Zeke shoved his hat off his head and ran a hand through his thick white hair. “You girls go on,” he said, as Heather did her best to clean up the fine film of flour on the floor. “You’re finished for the night. Mazie and I—we’ll take care of this.” The look he sent them brooked no argument. Heather didn’t waste any time. She was up the stairs like a shot. She yanked the band from her ponytail and stripped out of her apron. Jill followed her into the room, but Sheryl was missing.
“Wow! Can you believe what we just heard?” Jill said. She walked to the mirror and plucked a contact lens from her eye. “Melodrama at the Lazy K! Just like a soap opera!”
“You hear so much around here, you really can’t believe it all.”
But Jill wasn’t listening. “No wonder Turner’s so…distant. Such a rebel.”
“You’re making more of it than there is,” Heather said, trying to think of a way to change the subject.
“I don’t think so.” Jill removed her second contact and found her glasses. “What do you think? Turner’s dad killed his mother? But how? Did he take a gun and shoot her or beat her or—”
“Enough! I…I don’t think we should talk about this. It’s just gossip!”
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire!” Jill said. “And Mazie said—”
“Mazie talks too much,” Heather replied, inadvertently paraphrasing Turner as she hurried down the stairs. She avoided the kitchen and slipped through the dining room where some of the guests were watching television, or playing checkers or cards.
The French doors were open, and a breeze filtered into the ranch house, stirring the crisp muslin curtains as she dashed outside. Muttso growled from the bushes somewhere, but Heather didn’t pause. She ran down a well-worn path leading to the stables and corrals. Outside she could breathe again. The claustrophobia of the ranch house with its gossip and conjecture slowly ebbed away. Heather slowed her footsteps and closed her eyes for a second. She needed to be calm, because beneath her determination to see Turner again, she felt a sense of dread. What if he rejected her again? Not that she was going to throw herself at him, of course. But he needed a friend. And she was willing to be that friend.
And how much more? her mind niggled, but Heather shoved that nasty little thought aside. She pressed her palms to her cheeks and waited for the heat to disappear from her skin. Her breathing was normal again, though her heart was pounding about a thousand beats a minute.
She found him in the stables, pitching hay into the mangers of the brood mares. He’d taken off his jacket, and the sleeves of his work shirt were rolled over his forearms, showing off strong muscles and tanned skin. He didn’t look up when she entered, but his muscles flexed, his jaw grew tight and he hurled his pitchfork into a bale of straw. The seconds ticked slowly by. Heather hardly dared breathe.
“Didn’t you get the message?” he finally asked as he turned and faced her. His eyes were the color of flint and just as explosive.
“I didn’t think we were through with our lessons.”
He let out a long, low breath and forced his eyes to the rafters where barn swallows swooped in and out of the open windows.
Again the silence stretched between them—as if they were awkward strangers. Heather fidgeted.
Turner hooked a thumb in his belt loop. “You know enough about horses to get by.”
“Do I?”
He trained his eyes on her, and his expression was a mixture of anger and desire. “Look, Heather, I just don’t think it’s such a good idea—you and me.”
“All I was asking about was riding lessons…” Her voice drifted off when she noticed the tic at the corner of his eye. The lie seemed to grow between them.
“Don’t play dumb,” he said, his jaw shifting to one side. “’Cause I won’t buy it. You and I both know what’s going on here and I’m just tryin’ to stop something that you’ll regret for a long, long time.”
Unconsciously, she bit her lip. “I didn’t come here to try and seduce you, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
A thin smile touched his lips. “Good.”
“I just thought you could use a friend. Someone to talk to.”
“And that’s what you want to do. Talk…oh, and ride, of course.”
She shrugged. “Why not?”
“I can think of a million reasons.” But he didn’t voice any of them, and despite all million, he muttered a curse under his breath, threw he
r a dark, brooding look and saddled their two mounts. “I should be hung for this,” he said, as he led the horses from the barn and swung into the saddle.
“Not hung. Shot, maybe, but not hung,” she said, offering a smile, and Turner laughed out loud. Some of the strain left his features as they headed through a series of paddocks to the open pastureland.
Soon, the horses were loping along the westerly trail, skirting the pastures and keeping to the edge of the forest.
“Where’re we going?” she asked, hardly daring to break the companionable silence that had grown between them.
Turner’s grin widened. “Wait and see.”
“But—”
He spurred his horse forward, and Heather had no choice but to follow. The path thinned as it wound upward, through the hills and along the rocky banks of Cottonwood Creek.
Turner didn’t say much and Heather didn’t dare. The night was too perfect to be broken with words. The moon, full and opalescent, hung low over the hills and thousands of stars studded the sky like tiny shards of crystal. Every so often, a shooting star would streak across the black heavens in a flash of brilliance that stole the breath from Heather’s lungs.
The hum of traffic along a distant highway melded with the chorus of frogs hiding in the shallow pools formed by the creek.
All the while they rode, Heather couldn’t take her eyes off Turner. Tall in the saddle, his shoulders wide, his waist narrow, his hips moving with the easy gait of his horse, he rode as if he belonged astride a horse. She imagined the feel of his hard thighs pressed against the ribs of the horse and her mouth turned to cotton.
“Here we go,” he finally said, when the trees parted to reveal a clearing of tall grass and wildflowers. A lake shimmered, reflecting the black sky and tiny stars. Moonlight streamed across the surface in a ghostly ribbon of white, and fish jumped at unseen insects, causing splashes and ripples along the glassy surface.
Lithely, Turner hopped to the ground and tethered his horse on a nearby sapling. The animal snorted, then buried his nose in the lush grass.
“What is this place?” Heather asked, mirroring Turner’s actions by tying Sundown to a scraggly pine.
“My mother’s favorite spot in the world. She brought me up here a lot in the summer.” He stared across the night-darkened landscape and a sad smile crossed his lips. “The Lazy K was where she and Zeke grew up. It was just a working ranch then—no boarders or tourists. But then my grandparents died and left the place to Zeke.” He glanced over his shoulder. “They cut Mom out of the will because she married my old man.”
“Oh,” Heather said weakly.
“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” Turner shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “You heard some gossip about me and you want to know what’s true.”
“No, I—I just wanted…”
He turned and faced her, his hair ruffling in the slight breeze, his face taut and hard. “What, Heather? You wanted what?”
Time seemed to stand still. The air became suddenly quiet aside from her own frightened breathing. Swallowing hard, she decided that she had to be honest with him. “I just wanted to be alone with you,” she whispered, feeling an odd mixture of shame and excitement.
“Don’t you think that’s dangerous?”
No time for lies. “Probably,” she admitted.
“I don’t get involved—”
“I know, Turner,” she snapped. “Listen, I didn’t want to like you and I hated the first few times we had lessons, but…day after day, I started to look forward to being with you.”
“Because you’re bored.”
Licking her lips, she shook her head. “I don’t think so, Turner. I think I…I think I’m falling for you.” Her voice, though a whisper, sounded deafening.
He didn’t move. Aside from the breeze tugging at the flap of his shirt, he stood stock-still, as if carved in stone.
She took a tentative step forward, walking close enough to touch him.
“What about the guy in Gold Creek?” he asked.
“I told you. It’s over.”
Biting her lip, she reached upward, touching the thin curve of his lips. With a groan, he grabbed her hand, holding it away from him. “You’re playing with fire here, Heather.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“I don’t mess with women who are involved with other men.”
“I’m not!” She turned beseeching eyes up to him. “Believe me, Turner. Just trust me.”
He wanted to. She could see the passion stirring in his night-darkened eyes. And yet he held back, his fingers surrounding her wrist in a death grip, his emotions twisted on his face. “Don’t play with me.”
“I wouldn’t,” she said, and all at once his arms were around her, his lips molded over hers in a kiss that robbed the breath from her lungs. His lips were warm and supple and his tongue gained easy access to her mouth when she parted her lips.
Her thoughts swirled and blended with the night and a warm ache started somewhere deep in her abdomen. He explored and tasted and she moaned softly, unconsciously winding her arms around his neck, pressing her body closer still, feeling her nipples grow taut.
Groaning, he dragged them both to the ground, to the soft bed of bent grass and fragrant flowers, and still kissing her, he slowly removed her T-shirt, kissing the tops of her breasts, rimming the circle of bones at her throat with his tongue, creating a vortex of heat in her center that she didn’t protest as his hand slid beneath the waistband of her jeans and toyed with the lacy edge of her panties.
“You’re sure?” he asked, his breath ragged against her ear.
She kissed him hard on the lips and he let out a deep sigh, the flat of his hand pressed intimately to her lower abdomen.
“I mean it, Heather, because if we don’t stop now, I won’t be able to.”
It was already too late for her. The fires within her had been stoked and now were white-hot and ready to explode. She pulled his head back to hers and kissed him with parted lips. “Don’t ever stop,” she whispered into his opened lips.
His hand slid deeper into her jeans, teasing the apex of her legs, creating a liquid need so intense that she was squirming and writhing beneath him. In the darkness, he smiled. “Take it easy, darlin’,” he drawled, kissing the beads of sweat dampening her forehead. “We’ve got all night.”
His lips found hers again, and he began his magic. Hands, callused and rough, were gentle as they unclasped her bra and held her breasts, pushing the soft mounds together, kissing her skin and causing her nipples to turn to hard little nubs.
“That’s a girl,” he whispered before his mouth closed over one dark peak and he teased and played, his tongue and teeth nipping and laving until the pressure within her was so hot she bucked beneath him.
He stripped her of her jeans, his large hands sculpting her buttocks, his face buried in the soft flesh of her abdomen.
Heather’s mind was spinning; she’d never been so reckless, never wanted more of the touch, feel and taste of any man. He guided her fingers to the buttons of his shirt, and she quickly undressed him, her hands running eagerly over the sinewy strength of his muscles.
His fingers tangled in her hair and she ran her palms down the springy hair that covered parts of his chest. His lips were on hers again and he kicked off his jeans. The back of her throat tightened at the sight of him—she’d never seen a man completely naked before. A warning pierced her mind, but she ignored it.
“I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you skinny-dipping in the river,” he admitted, kissing her eyes, her lips, her throat and moving lower still.
“And I wanted you,” she whispered, her mind racing in romantic fantasies of a cowboy and his lady. She wound her arms around his
neck as he settled over her, gently prodding her knees apart.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked again, though his voice shook and his control seemed held by a rapidly fraying thread.
“Oh, yes, Turner. Yes.”
He kissed her forehead and eyes before his mouth claimed hers with a possession that reached to her very soul. She felt him shift, the tensing of the muscles of his back as he entered her. She cried out, for the pain was blinding, but he didn’t stop, and with each thrust thereafter the pain lessened, balmed with pleasure, driving all thoughts from her mind as she gazed up at him. His hair fell over his forehead and his body was backdropped by the jewel-like stars. She met each of his strokes with her own increasing tempo, and without realizing it, she clung to him, her fingers digging into his shoulders.
With a shivering explosion, he climaxed. She, too, convulsed in a shattering, dizzy burst of color and light that erupted behind her eyes and sent shock waves through her limbs.
“Heather, sweet lady,” he whispered between tattered breaths.
“Oh, Turner, I love you,” she cried, holding him close, listening to the wild cadence of his heart, smelling the earth and water and wind on his skin.
“Shh.” He kissed her so tenderly that she thought she would die.
Tears sprang to her eyes for the cowboy and all the pain he’d suffered. She would change things—change him. No longer would he have to wear a cynical shield…she would be there.
Slowly he rolled off her and cradled her in his arms. Together, without a sound, they watched the shooting stars streak through the heavens and listened to the soft sounds of their horses plucking grass, bridles jangling quietly, hoofs muffled by the thick turf of the meadow.
“You didn’t tell me you were a virgin,” he finally said.
“You never asked.”
“I just assumed that…” His voice drifted off.
“You assumed that because I’d been engaged, I’d experimented with sex,” she finished for him. “Well, it didn’t happen.”
“Why not?”
She levered up on one elbow and stared down at him. “Does it matter?”