by Tara Janzen
The two women gathered up their purses and coats, and Sarah and Karla made quick plans for the next meeting of the Rock Creek Independent Businesswomen’s Association. Sarah was the secretary and treasurer. Karla was the president and hospitality chairman, since they mostly met at the cafe. Amanda Haines had been the vice president. In a small town, losing one person left a lot of emptiness.
The cafe was only a block and a half from Sarah’s house, but Ellen insisted on dropping her off and making sure she was okay. The latter proved either unnecessary or imperative or impossible, depending on a person’s point of view. For when they rounded the corner, the first thing they both noticed was the military jeep parked in front of Sarah’s white picket fence.
“Oh, my,” Ellen breathed, stepping on the brake and stopping behind the jeep. They both looked toward Sarah’s porch and saw his shadowy figure sitting in her swing.
Sarah was speechless.
“Put him on the couch, honey,” Ellen said, “for your own peace of mind. Do you want me to have Danny call him?”
“No.” The mere notion of involving another man in her situation, even a nice man like Daniel Calhoun, was enough to jump-start her voice. Men did things so differently from women. They were thoroughly unpredictable. “I’ll be fine. I promise. The couch is a good idea. Colt and I can talk there.” It all sounded so reasonable, but her heart was racing with a heady mixture of adrenaline, anticipation, and brandy. She was scared to expect too much, but she’d be damned if she’d accept too little.
He’d shown up on her doorstep, though, and that had to mean something.
Colt stood up the instant he saw the car. His first thoughts weren’t good. Just because she hadn’t mentioned a man by name the night before didn’t mean she wasn’t seeing someone. He steeled himself for the worst, knowing he was going to have a hard time if a man got out of the car with her.
No one got out of the car with her. The sedan pulled away as soon as Sarah shut the door, and Colt discovered he liked that even less. If he was heading down a dead-end street, the sooner he figured it out the better. He wasn’t proud of what he’d done. He’d played on her emotions, her memories, her tenderness. She’d always been sweet, and he’d gotten too coldhearted over the years. In his work, winning equated to surviving. Winners lived, and more often than not losers died. He’d won last night, and she’d let him win again this morning. He couldn’t help but think she deserved better than some ruthless son of a bitch who’d left marks on her.
But he’d come back. Knowing all of it, he’d come back.
The gate swung shut behind her, snapping into the latch with the muted clank of metal against metal. The moon lit a path in the pools of rain left on her sidewalk. The storm had blown itself up into Nebraska and South Dakota, leaving the southeast corner of Wyoming floating in mud and ready to bloom.
“Colt.” She spoke his name with an edge, a cool greeting.
He smiled in the dark. Anger he could handle. Challenges were always welcome.
“Sarah.”
She mounted the steps to the porch and walked straight past him to the front door. Keys jingled in her hands for a minute or more before Colt realized she was having trouble. He watched her carefully, noting her awkwardness. Then she started to hum, tunelessly and under her breath. She kept trying keys, unperturbed by her lack of success. She wasn’t angry. She was drunk.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“No. Thank you.” Her voice was curt.
So, she was angry with him after all, he thought, angry and drunk. Perfect.
He shifted his weight and ran his hand through his hair. He deserved this.
“What happened to your friend?” he asked.
“What friend?”
“The one who brought you home, but didn’t wait to see if you got inside safely. The one who got you drunk.”
Her reaction was to gasp and whirl around on him. “Ellen did most certainly not ever get me drunk! What a terrible thing to say!”
Ellen. Better than perfect. He started to relax, but she wasn’t through with him.
“We saw you up here, skulking around. She wanted to call all sorts of people, all sorts, but I told her I could handle you.” She lifted her chin a degree and met his gaze. “And I can handle you, Colton Haines.”
He believed her beyond a doubt.
“I wasn’t skulking,” he said.
“Hummph.” She turned back to her key-rattling business.
“Let me—”
The door opened on a sudden whoosh, and she stumbled inside, leaving him alone on the porch—but not for long. He picked up his bag and followed her inside, where she was already issuing her “handling” orders.
“You can sleep there, only there,” she said, waving her hand at the couch as she passed through the living room on her way to the kitchen. “And if you’ve got anything you want to say, you can come in here to say it. I’m a little drunk. I need something to eat.”
He dropped his bag at the end of the couch. Pots and pans rattled and rolled as he heard her drop one and then another. He headed for the kitchen, and his heart stopped when he reached the doorway.
“What in the hell”—he skirted the table running—“do you think you’re doing?” He grabbed her with one arm around the waist, holding her where she was perched on tiptoe on a wobbly chair, reaching into the uppermost cabinet.
She turned to look at him and blinked, one hand wrapped around a plastic bottle, the other up against her mouth. She swallowed whatever she was holding and coughed.
“Taking vitamins,” she said. “They’re supposed to help. I think.”
“You keep your vitamins up there?”
“I’m not real good about taking them. They always end up in the least-used spot.”
“Well, the next time you want something up there, ask me.” His voice was still tight.
She slanted him a droll look. “Sure. Like you’re going to be here to get things out of my cupboards for me.”
He was trying real hard, and she was pushing back even harder.
He lifted her off the chair and absently noted that her breasts were even with his mouth. Then the thought wasn’t absent at all. Her hands were on his shoulders as he lowered her to the floor without releasing her. His gaze kept focusing on her mouth, and his thoughts kept getting ahead of his sense. He really needed to get a grip on his hormones, or his emotions, or his . . . whatever. He hadn’t come back just to bed her again, and if he had any doubts about it, she didn’t.
“No,” she said, her voice soft but firm. “There won’t be any of that.”
“No?” He wasn’t sure she knew what she was talking about. He was looking at a woman he’d kissed and caressed a thousand ways in the night. He didn’t think he’d last too long without doing it again.
“No.” She gave her head a slight shake, loosening tendrils of hair from her barrette. “Sex with you is too—too much.”
“Sex?” That hurt. It shouldn’t have, but it did, even if he was the one who had stupidly shaken her hand like a schoolboy. “I thought—” He stopped himself. Thinking was getting him in too deep. She was right. He wouldn’t be there next week to take her vitamins off the top shelf for her.
She’d looked away, but was still within his arms, and he felt the breath she took. When she spoke, her voice was even softer. “Being that way with you leaves me helpless, Colt. It’s not something I can bear too much of, the helplessness. I’m a single woman who runs her own business in a town that’s dying. I can’t afford to want you, especially on a temporary basis.
“I can offer you a place to stay,” she continued. “I’ll let you make my breakfast again, and if you stay long enough, I’ll cook your supper. I’ll go out to your mom’s with you, help where I can. But I can’t give you my whole life to use up until you decide to leave.”
No wonder so many men died in war, Colt thought. They didn’t have the survival instincts of women. Hers were tempered steel with a diamond edge.
After a moment’s worth of reluctance, he released her and took a step back.
“I’ve got a week,” he said, “if you’ll have me that long. I sure as hell won’t last seven nights at the Regent.” And he’d never even considered staying at his mom’s trailer. It wasn’t the one he’d grown up in; it was the one she’d shared on and off with Bull Brooks. Knowing how Sarah had felt about her father ten years ago, he doubted if the man had ever set foot in her home, which suited him fine.
“You’re welcome to stay.” She caught his eye for a moment before turning away.
He intercepted her as she moved toward the stove. “Let me cook tonight before you break something. You can make it up to me at breakfast.”
“I open the drugstore at nine.”
“I’m usually awake by dawn.”
“I close at five, except on Saturdays. Then I close at noon.”
“I’ll have supper ready.”
“Sometimes I have deliveries that keep me at the store late, especially on Mondays.”
“Then I’ll take you to the cafe.”
The conversation drifted into an easy pattern while he made himself at home in her kitchen. He steamed vegetables and poached two thawed chicken breasts in white wine, and she called him “California boy.” He just grinned and sliced an apple to put on their plates.
During dinner they swapped college stories. Sarah had gone straight through and gotten her pharmacist’s license. Colt’s education had been more haphazard, and he’d let the Navy pay for most of it. He had a good degree, something the Navy required and something saleable in the civilian world.
“Math?” She didn’t believe him. He’d always been smart, but not brainy. She remembered the gung-ho math majors at the University of Wyoming, the guys with ink stains on their pockets and calculators full of hieroglyphs.
“Sure. It comes in real handy for figuring stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” She still wasn’t sure if he was pulling her leg or not.
“Explosives. Time, distance, speed. Plotting positions. Navigation. Practical stuff.”
“Oh.”
“Then there’s the philosophical stuff, like chaos, and how far away are the farthest stars, and where is the beginning?”
She was still stuck on explosives. She picked up her knife and cut off a piece of chicken. “I’ve thought about what you do, a lot. I guess I always figured as long as I didn’t hear you were dead, then you were fine.”
“I’m practically desk-bound now. I’m getting old.”
She expressed her opinion of his statement with one succinct word. He laughed.
“It’s true. The only way I’m going to get hurt is if my office chair slips out from under me. You don’t have to worry.”
She wasn’t going to admit to doing that anyway, but she didn’t have any problem with calling him a liar.
“You don’t have the look of the perpetually desk-bound,” she said.
“We train a lot.”
“What else do you do?”
“Most of the rest of what I do is classified.” He was serious, but there was a teasing glint in his eyes. “I’m real good at keeping secrets, if you’ve got any you want to tell.”
Sarah politely declined his offer and got up to clear the dishes. She was determined to keep to herself any secrets he hadn’t discovered the night before, which she was sure didn’t leave her with too much to hide. One half-broken heart would probably be able to hold it all.
“Let me do that,” he said, rising and taking the plates from her. “You look tired, and I have a feeling I’m going to have a hard time getting to sleep tonight.”
If it’s any consolation, she thought, I feel the same way. But she didn’t tell him.
Eight
Sarah was wrong: She slept like a log. She did wake up wrapped around his pillow, but she wasn’t going to give the fact any more importance than she had to. Since nobody else had noticed, she figured she was safe. She did entertain thoughts of Colt coming in to wake her, but she sensibly delegated those thoughts to the fantasy file.
Moaning sleepily, she rolled over and checked her clock, then groaned. She didn’t have time to waste if she was going to get Atlas open anywhere near nine o’clock.
She found his razor in her bathroom, coffee in the kitchen, and a note stuck to her refrigerator—I’ll bring lunch. Colt—but the man himself was nowhere in sight. She’d meant what she’d told him, but she hadn’t meant to scare him off, even if that might be the smartest move.
His uniform was hanging in her front closet, and his jeans and shirt were neatly folded on the couch, proving he’d definitely moved in. She wondered if she would have been so generous with her home if it hadn’t been for the brandy. His jeep was parked outside her gate, and he’d left his black shoes and fancy cowboy boots side by side at her front door. She didn’t really think he was running around outside naked and barefoot, but she knew he only had the two changes of clothes. He hadn’t expected to stay more than a day and a night.
The mystery remained until she got to the drugstore and the phone started ringing. Tom Jenkins needed a refill on his niacin and added that he’d seen a man just after sunrise that morning, running down the Kent Divide road. He’d looked just like Amanda’s boy.
Tom didn’t mention anything about the man being naked and barefoot, which was a great relief to Sarah. Then the phone rang again. Phil Dawson had seen him, too, come up on him kind of quick like on that big turn where the Divide road skirted away from the river, and he was just calling to tell Sarah to tell Colt he was damn sorry. He’d have done so himself, but Colt had waved him on and Phil had gotten the idea he hadn’t wanted to stop his running. She knew about jogging and all that, Phil was sure, people taking their pulse and whatnot.
Sarah was halfway through her weekly order when the phone rang again. Martha Tully didn’t mean to pry, but she’d been a good friend of Amanda’s and she’d just seen Colton Haines running by her place when she’d gone down to the road to check the mail. Two of her kids were sick—remember? She’d come in Friday morning for that antibiotic and she hadn’t had time to get the mail since, and did Sarah think Colton was okay? Being five miles out of town with nothing but a water bottle and a skimpy pair of shorts and a T-shirt?
Sarah assured Martha on all fronts. Colt Haines did a lot of physical training for his job with the Navy. The man could probably run all day with nothing but a water bottle and a pair of shorts, even skimpy ones. And yes, he was staying with her for the week while he took care of his mother’s business. Sarah was sure Ruby was going to keep the beauty shop the same way it had always been. Sarah didn’t know if Ruby was going to hire another hair stylist, but she agreed it would be nice to have a manicurist in Rock Creek.
She hung up after checking to see if Martha’s kids were still running a fever. They weren’t.
Sarah smiled as she rested her hip against the pharmacy counter. California boy. Running across Wyoming like it was a beach or something. She allowed her smile to broaden. He hadn’t caused this much of a stir the whole twelve years he’d lived in Rock Creek, except with her.
* * *
Colt had raided the R C Grocery for lunch fixings. He made sandwiches out of tenderloin and salad out of fresh fruit, and he put a flank steak in the refrigerator to marinate for tomorrow night. He was trying not to think too much about what he was doing living with Sarah for the week. It wasn’t a subject he felt could handle analysis, especially since sleeping together had been wiped off the game plan. Not that he was in the habit of using sex as an excuse for anything, but he’d sure been known to use it as a reason.
He wanted to be with her, a simple enough motivation. It was the why behind the wanting that he was avoiding. On the other hand, he didn’t really think they could go all week without making love. It was too good between them. But she’d sounded awfully sure, and she had damn good reasons for not wanting to mess around with him too much.
He finished wrapping the last sandwic
h and packed the whole lunch into one of the grocery sacks. Truth was, he knew what he was doing. He just wasn’t ready to admit to it, because he wasn’t sure he believed it. He couldn’t have given a guaranteed definition of love if his life depended on it.
He thought about taking wine for lunch, then decided otherwise. She’d just call him California boy again, even though he’d told her he’d spent about the same amount of time in Virginia. He knew it wasn’t actually the state she was referring to with her teasing. He’d changed from the boy she’d known, and some of the changes were hard to ignore. He’d seen the world, and she hadn’t gotten any farther than Laramie and the University of Wyoming.
He dropped a bag of potato chips in next to the sandwiches. He may have seen the world, but he’d never seen anything as compelling as Sarah asleep with her arms wrapped around the pillow he’d used, a smile playing across her mouth. He’d wanted the right to get in bed with her and make love and babies, not have “sex,” as she’d put it. He wanted children, wanted to be a little girl’s daddy, wanted to help a boy grow into a man.
He knew losing his mom had shaken up that part of him, had him running scared, but it wasn’t just her unexpected death. He’d figured out a couple of years ago that he wasn’t immortal. After the shock had worn down, he’d started thinking about his future, but hadn’t gotten much further than knowing he didn’t want the Navy to be his permanent occupation. When he’d come back two days ago, he hadn’t expected Wyoming or Rock Creek to pull on him so hard, to look so much like home. He hadn’t expected Sarah.
If he could keep himself from killing her father, they might have a chance.
* * *
Sarah checked the clock and eyed the candy counter again. If Colt didn’t hurry along, he was going to find his lunch date knee-deep in chocolate bar wrappers and dusted with cookie crumbs.
It was crazy what they were trying to do. Truth be known, she didn’t really have as much selfless compassion as she’d been showing him. Yes, she felt badly for him, losing his mom and all. And yes, she was foolishly, powerfully drawn to him. If he gave her even half a reason to do so, she’d probably throw herself at his feet. But he’d left her ten years ago without a word, and what they’d done the other night didn’t fit into any decent relationship she knew of. They weren’t friends anymore, not the way they’d been before they’d been lovers.