Sierra's Homecoming

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Ma!” he yelled suddenly.

  She bolted up the stairs, along the hallway, into his room.

  She found him lying comfortably in bed, wide awake, his eyes shining with an almost feverish excitement. “I saw the boy,” he said. “His name is Liam and he showed me Saturn.”

  “Liam,” Hannah repeated stupidly, because anything else was quite beyond her.

  “I said it was a strange name, Liam, I mean, and he said Tobias was a weird thing to be called, too.”

  Hannah opened her mouth, closed it again. Twisted the hem of her apron in both hands. Her knees felt as though they’d turned to liquid, and even though she’d asked Tobias to let her know straight away if he saw the boy again, she realized she hadn’t been prepared to hear it. She wished Doss were there, even though he’d probably be a hindrance, rather than a help.

  “Ma?” Tobias sounded worried, and his eyes were great in his face.

  She hurried to his bed, sat down on the edge of the mattress, touched a hand to his forehead.

  He squirmed away. “I’m not sick,” he protested. “I saw Saturn. It’s blue, and it really does have rings.”

  Hannah withdrew her hand, and it came to rest, fluttering, at the base of her throat.

  “You don’t believe me!” Tobias accused.

  “I don’t know what to believe,” Hannah admitted softly. “But I know you’re not lying, Tobias.”

  “I’m not seeing things, either!”

  “I—It’s just so strange.”

  Tobias subsided a little, falling back on to his pillows with a sigh. “He told me lots of stuff, Ma,” he said, his voice small and uncertain.

  Hannah took his hand, squeezed it. Tried to appear calm. “What ‘stuff,’ Tobias?” she managed, after a few slow, deep breaths.

  “That Saturn has moons, just like the earth does. Only, it’s got four, instead of just one. One of them is covered in ice, and it might even have an ocean underneath, full of critters with no eyes.”

  Hannah swallowed a slight, guttural cry of pure dismay. “What else?”

  “People have boxes in their houses, and they can watch all kinds of stories on them. Folks act them out, like players on a stage.”

  Tears of pure panic burned in Hannah’s eyes, but she blinked them back. “You must have been dreaming, Tobias,” she said, fairly croaking the words, like a frog in a fable. “You fell asleep, and it only seemed real—”

  “No,” Tobias said flatly. “I saw Liam. I talked to him. He said it was 2007, where he lives. I told him he was full of sheep dip—that it was 1919, and I’d get the calendar to prove it. Then he said if I was eight years old in 1919, I was probably dead or in a nursing home someplace by 2007.” He paused. “What’s a nursing home, Ma? And how could I be two places at once? A kid here, and an old man somewhere else?”

  Dizzy, Hannah gathered her boy in both arms and held him so tightly that he struggled.

  “Let me go, Ma,” he said. “You’re fair smothering me!”

  With a conscious effort, Hannah broke the embrace. Let her arms fall to her sides.

  “What’s happening to us?” she whispered.

  “I need to use the chamber pot,” Tobias announced.

  Hannah stood slowly, like a sleepwalker. She moved out of that room, closed the door behind her and got as far as the top of the back stairs before her legs gave out and she had to sit down.

  She was still there when Doss came in, back from his travels to the smokehouse and the widow Jessup’s place. As though he’d sensed her presence, he came to the foot of the steps, still in his coat and hat.

  “Hannah? What’s the matter? Is Tobias all right?”

  “He’s…yes.”

  Doss tossed his hat away, came up the steps, sat down next to Hannah and put an arm around her shoulders. She sagged against his side, even as she despised herself for the weakness. Turned her face into his cold-weather-and-leather-scented shoulder and wept with confusion and relief and a whole tangle of other emotions.

  He held her until the worst of it had passed.

  She sniffled and sat up straight. Even tried to smile. “How was the widow Jessup?” she asked.

  Present Day

  That night Sierra invited Travis to supper. Just marched right out to his trailer, knocked on the door and, the moment he opened it, blurted, “We’re having spaghetti tonight. It’s Liam’s favorite. It would mean a lot to him if you came and ate with us.”

  Travis grinned. Evidently, he’d been changing clothes, because his shirt was half-unbuttoned. “If you’re trying to make up for almost running over me backing out of the garage this afternoon, it’s okay,” he teased. “I’m still pretty fast on my feet.”

  Sierra was doing her level best not to admire what she could see of his chest, which was muscular. She wondered what it would be like to slide her hands inside that shirt, feel his skin against her palms and her splayed fingers.

  Then she looked up into his eyes again, saw the knowing smile there and blushed. “It’s more about thanking you for taking the Christmas tree downstairs,” she fibbed.

  “At your service,” he said with a slight drawl.

  Was that a double entendre?

  Don’t be silly, she told herself. Of course it wasn’t.

  “There’s wine, too,” she blurted out, and then blushed again. At this rate, Travis would think she’d already had a few nips.

  “Everything but music,” he quipped.

  Afraid to say another word, she turned and hurried back toward the house, and she distinctly heard him chuckle before he closed the trailer door.

  Liam was strangely quiet at supper. He usually gobbled spaghetti, but tonight he merely nibbled. He had a perfect opportunity to talk “cowboy” with Travis, or chatter on about his first day of school; instead, he asked to be excused so he could take a bath and get to bed early. At Sierra’s nod, he murmured something and fled.

  “He must be sick,” Sierra fretted, about to go after him.

  “Let him go,” Travis counseled. “He’s all right.”

  “But—”

  “He’s all right, Sierra.” He refilled her wineglass, then his own.

  They finished their meal, cleared the table together, loaded the dishwasher. When Sierra would have walked away, Travis caught hold of her arm and gently stopped her. Switched on the countertop radio with his free hand.

  Soft, smoky music poured into the room.

  The next thing she knew, Sierra was in Travis’s arms, close against that chest she’d admired earlier at the door of his trailer, and they were slow dancing.

  Why didn’t she pull away?

  Maybe it was the wine.

  “Relax,” he said. His breath was warm in her hair.

  She giggled, more nervous than amused. What was the matter with her? She was attracted to Travis, had been from the first, and he was clearly attracted to her. They were both adults. Why not enjoy a little slow dancing in a ranch-house kitchen?

  Because slow dancing led to other things, especially when it was wine powered. She took a step back and felt the counter flush against her lower back. Travis naturally came with her, since they were holding hands and he had one arm around her waist.

  Simple physics.

  Then he kissed her.

  Physics again—this time, not so simple.

  “Yikes,” she said, when their mouths parted.

  He grinned. “Nobody’s ever said that after I kissed them.”

  She felt the heat and substance of his body pressed against hers, right where it counted. If Liam hadn’t been just upstairs, and likely to come back down at any moment, she might have wrapped her legs around Travis’s waist and kissed him nuclear-style.

  “It’s going to happen, isn’t it?” she heard herself whisper.

  “Yep,” Travis answered.

  “But not tonight,” Sierra said on a sigh.

  “Probably not,” Travis agreed, grinding his hips a little. His erection burned into her abdomen like
a firebrand.

  “When, then?”

  He chuckled, gave her a slow, nibbling kiss. “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “After you drop Liam off at school.”

  “Isn’t that…a little…soon?”

  “Not soon enough,” Travis answered. He cupped a hand around her breast, and even through the fabric of her shirt and bra, her nipple hardened against the chafing motion of his thumb. “Not nearly soon enough.”

  After Travis had gone, Sierra felt like an idiot.

  She looked in on Liam, who was sound asleep, and then took a cool shower. It didn’t help.

  She would come to her senses by morning, she told herself, as she stood at her bedroom window, gazing down at the lights burning in Travis’s trailer.

  She’d get a good night’s sleep. That was all she needed.

  She slept, as it happened, like the proverbial log, but she woke up thinking about Travis. About the way she’d felt when he kissed her, when he backed her up against the counter…

  She made breakfast.

  Took Liam to school.

  Zoomed straight back to the ranch, even though she’d intended to drive around town for a while, giving herself a chance to cool down.

  Instead, she was on autopilot.

  But it wasn’t as if she gave up easily. She raised every argument she could think of. It was way too soon. She didn’t know Travis well enough to sleep with him.

  She would regret this in the morning.

  No, long before then.

  The truth was, she’d denied herself so much, for so long, that she couldn’t stand it any more.

  She didn’t even bother to park the Blazer in the garage. She shut it down between the house and Travis’s trailer, up to the wheel wells in snow, jumped out, and double-timed it to his door.

  Knocked.

  Maybe he’s not home, she thought desperately.

  Let him be here.

  Let him be in China.

  His truck was parked in its usual place, next to the barn.

  The trailer door creaked open.

  He grinned down at her. “Hot damn,” he said.

  Sierra shoved her hands into her coat pockets. Wished she could dig her toes right into the ground somehow and hold out against the elemental forces that were driving her.

  Travis stepped back. “Come in,” he said.

  So much for the toehold. She was inside in a single bound.

  He leaned around her to pull the door shut.

  “This is crazy,” she said.

  He began unbuttoning her coat. Slipped it back off her shoulders. Bent his head to taste her earlobe and brush the length of her neck with his lips.

  She groaned.

  “Talk some sense into me,” she pleaded. “Say this is stupid and we shouldn’t do it.”

  He laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “It’s wrong.”

  “Think of it as therapy.”

  She trembled as he tossed her coat aside. “For whom? You or me?”

  He opened her blouse, undid the catch at the front of her bra, caught her breasts in his hands when they sprang free.

  “Oh, I think we’ll both benefit,” he said.

  Sierra groaned again. He sat her down on the side of his bed, crouched to pull off her snow boots, peel off her socks. Then he stood her up again, and undressed her, garment by garment. Blouse…bra…jeans…and, finally, her lacy underpants.

  He suckled at her breasts, somehow managing to shed his own clothes in the process; Sierra was too dazed, and too aroused, to consider the mechanics of it.

  He laid her down on the bed, gently. Eased two pillows under her bottom. Knelt between her legs.

  “Oh, God,” she whimpered. “You’re not going to—?”

  Travis kissed his way from her mouth to her neck.

  “I sure am,” he mumbled, before pausing to enjoy one of her breasts, then the other.

  He kept moving downward, stroking the tender flesh on the insides of her thighs. He plumped up the pillows, raising her higher.

  Sierra moaned.

  He parted the nest of moist curls at the junction of her thighs. Breathed on her. Touched her lightly with the tip of his tongue.

  She arched her back and gave a low, throaty cry of need.

  “I thought so,” Travis said, almost idly.

  “You—thought—what?” Sierra demanded.

  “That you needed this as much as I do.” He took her full into his mouth.

  She welcomed him with a sob and an upward thrust of her hips.

  He slid his hands under her buttocks and lifted her higher still.

  She was about to explode, and she fought it. It wasn’t as though she had orgasms every day. She wanted this experience to last.

  He drove her straight over the edge.

  She convulsed with the power of her release—once—twice—three times.

  It was over.

  But it wasn’t.

  Before she had time to lament, he was taking her to a new level.

  She came again, voluptuously, piercingly, her legs over his shoulders now. And before she could begin the breathless descent, he grasped the undersides of her knees and parted them, tongued her until she climaxed yet again. Only, this time she couldn’t make a sound. She could only buckle in helpless waves of pleasure.

  And still it wasn’t over.

  He waited until she’d opened her eyes. Until her breathing had evened out. After all of the frenzy, he waited until she nodded.

  He entered her in a long, slow, deep stroke, supporting himself with his hands pressing into the narrow mattress on either side of her shoulders, gazing intently down into her face. Taking in every response.

  She began the climb again. Rasped his name. Clutched at his shoulders.

  He didn’t increase his pace.

  She pumped, growing more and more frantic as the delicious friction increased, degree by degree, toward certain meltdown.

  The wave crashed over her like a tsunami, and when she stopped flailing and shouting in surrender—and only then—she saw him close his eyes. His neck corded, like a stallion’s, as he threw back his head and let himself go.

  His powerful body flexed, and flexed again, every muscle taut, and Sierra almost wept as she watched his control give way.

  Afterward he lowered himself to lie beside her, wrapping her close in his arms. Kissed her temple, where the hair was moist with perspiration. Stroked her breasts and her belly.

  She listened as his breathing slowed.

  “You’re not going to fall asleep, are you?” she asked.

  He laughed. “No,” he said. He rolled on to his back, pulling her with him, so that she lay sprawled on top of him. Caressed her back, her shoulders, her buttocks.

  She nestled in. Buried her face in his neck. Popped her head up again, suddenly alarmed. “Did you use…?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She snuggled up again. “That was…great,” she confessed, and giggled.

  He shifted beneath her. She felt some fumbling.

  “We can’t possibly do that again,” she said.

  “Wanna bet?” He eased her upright, set her knees on either side of his hips.

  Felt him move inside her, sleek and hard.

  A violent tremor went through her, left her shuddering.

  He cupped her breasts in his hands, drew her forward far enough to suck her breasts. All the while, he was raising and lowering her along his length. She took him deeper.

  And then deeper still.

  And then the universe dissolved into shimmering particles and rained down on them both like atoms of fire.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sierra slept, snuggled against Travis’s side, one arm draped across his chest, one shapely leg flung over his thighs.

  Travis pulled the quilt up over them both, so she wouldn’t get cold, and considered his situation.

  He’d been to bed with a lot of women in his time.

  He knew how to give and re
ceive pleasure.

  He said goodbye as easily as hello.

  But this was different.

  Different feeling. Different woman.

  He’d been a dead man up until now, and this trailer had been his coffin.

  Rance had sure been right about that.

  Sierra McKettrick, who had probably expected no more from this encounter than he had—a roll in the hay, some much-needed satisfaction, a break in the monotony—had resurrected him. Probably inadvertently, but the effect was the same.

  “Shit,” he whispered. He’d needed that all-pervasive numbness and the insulation it provided. Needed not to feel.

  Sierra had awakened everything inside him, and it hurt, to the center of his soul, like frost-bitten flesh thawing too fast.

  She stirred against him, uttered a soft, hmmm sound, but didn’t awaken.

  He held her a little closer and thought about Brody. His little brother. Brody would never make love to a woman like Sierra. He’d never watch the moon rise over a mountain creek, the water purple in the twilight, or choke up at the sight of a ragged band of wild horses racing across a clearing for no other reason than that they had legs to run on. He’d never throw a stick for a faithful old dog to fetch, watch Fourth-of-July fireworks with a kid perched on his shoulders or eat pancakes swimming in syrup in a roadside café while hokey music played on the jukebox.

  There were so many things Brody would never do.

  Travis’s throat went raw, and his eyes stung.

  The loss yawned inside him, a black hole, an abyss.

  He’d thought losing his brother would be the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, but now he knew it wasn’t. Dying inside was easy—it was having the guts to live that was hard.

  He shifted.

  Sierra sighed, raised her head, looked straight into his face.

  It was too much to hope, he figured, that she wouldn’t notice the tear that had just trickled out of the corner of his eye to streak toward his ear.

  If she saw, she had the good grace not to comment, and the depth of his gratitude for that simple blessing was downright pathetic, by his reckoning.

  “What time is it?” she asked, looking anxious and womanly.

  Real womanly.

  He stretched, groped for his watch on the little shelf above the bed. “Twelve-thirty,” he answered gruffly. He wanted to say a whole lot more, but he wasn’t sure what it was. He’d have to say it all to himself first, and make sense of it, before he could tell it to anyone else.