by Lilian Darcy
She blinked. “Huh?”
“When we make love, I want to be sure you’ll remember it in the morning.”
“I’ll remember,” she told him. “I’ve never been able to forget.”
He picked up her pajama bottoms, holding them out at arm’s length to her.
“No one else has ever made me forget,” she said as she snatched them out of his hand.
“Forget what?”
She stood up abruptly—and swayed just a little when she got to her feet. He started to reach out to steady her, then dropped his hand again, deciding that any physical contact at this point could be more dangerous than Paige falling over.
She unsnapped the button at the front of her jeans and began wiggling out of the snug-fitting denim. He knew he should look away—if not for the sake of her modesty then for his own peace of mind. But the slow, sensual movement of her hips held him spellbound.
“How it felt to make love with you,” she finally answered his question.
When the denim pooled at her feet, she was clad in a pair of pale pink bikini panties with delicate lace trim. He swallowed hard and took a deliberate step back, away from her.
“You’re not the only man I’ve ever been with.” She finally covered up those delectable little panties with her pajama bottoms. Also pink but decorated with fat white cartoon sheep.
“I didn’t expect that I was,” he said. He hoped she wouldn’t name names, because he was wound up tight enough right now to want to hunt down all of her other lovers and beat them mercilessly for daring to touch the only woman he’d ever loved.
She pulled back the covers on her bed. “I thought if I slept with shomeone else, I’d fin’ly get over you.”
He’d fallen into the same trap too many times before he’d accepted the truth: he would never get over Paige. He could build a new life and even have other relationships, but she would always own his heart.
He moved forward now, but only to pull the comforter up over her. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d really rather not hear about your other lovers right now.”
“Lover,” she said, rubbing her cheek against her pillow.
He stilled. “What?”
“Singular, not plural.” She yawned. “There was only one after you.”
He stood there for a minute, trying to make sense of what she was saying. The words were simple enough, but the implications were enormous. And his heart seemed to swell inside his chest, buoyed by the possibility that she might still love him, too.
“I bet you’ve been with lotsa women,” she murmured.
Now that she was snuggled under the blankets, he figured it was safe enough to sit on the edge of the mattress. He gently brushed her hair off of her cheek. “No one who ever made me forget about you,” he told her honestly.
“You shouldn’ta come back.”
“Do you really wish I’d stayed away?”
“No,” she admitted. “I wish you’d never gone.”
“Since I’m here now, will you spend the day with me tomorrow?”
Her eyes were starting to close. “Thas not a good idea.”
“Let’s try a different answer,” he suggested, and brushed his lips gently over hers. “Say, ‘Yes, I’ll spend the day with you, Sutter.’”
“Yes, I’ll spend the day...” The words trailed off as she drifted into sleep.
* * *
Paige awoke in the morning with her throat dry and her head pounding. She eased herself carefully up in bed and pressed her hands to her throbbing temples. A quick glance at the clock revealed that it was almost ten o’clock. Beside the clock was a glass of water, a bottle of acetaminophen and a note: “Take two, drink all the water and call me when you’re up.” Sutter hadn’t signed it, but he had left his cell phone number.
She took the two pills, drank the water and headed to the shower.
There were some fuzzy patches in her memory of the previous evening. Not of the time they were at the Ace in the Hole, but afterward. She thought she’d dozed off on the drive home, then she remembered Sutter walking her to the door.
Had he kissed her good-night?
Her mind suddenly flashed with an image of his hard, strong body pressed against hers. Of those strong, talented hands stroking her skin. Of his hot, hungry mouth devouring hers. Was it a memory or just a fantasy? Either way, the mental picture had her blood racing and her heart pounding, so maybe it was better that she didn’t remember.
And it would be really good if she could clear all thoughts of Sutter from her mind before she walked into church.
Her family was already seated in their usual row when she arrived, but she hovered at the back for a few minutes, waiting until the service was about to begin before taking her place beside Lindsay. She figured her tardiness would save her from any interrogation. In truth, it only delayed it.
When the service was over and everyone filed out again, her parents went downstairs for their usual coffee and chitchat with friends and neighbors. Sometimes Paige and her sisters would join them, but she declined the invitation today and Lani and Lindsay opted to leave with her.
“I didn’t see Alex in church,” Lani noted.
“That’s not unusual,” Paige said.
“I know,” her sister admitted. “But Mom was hoping to invite him to dinner tonight.”
“That would be a little awkward,” Paige warned.
“Why?”
“Because we broke up.”
“When?” Lani demanded.
“A few days ago.”
“Are you seeing Sutter now?” Lindsay asked.
“No,” she replied, immediately and firmly.
“But you were at the school with him yesterday,” Lani noted.
“Yes, because Sutter was bugging me to go out with him, and I suggested that we go to the school as an alternative.”
“And after you finished at the school?” Lindsay prompted.
Paige sighed. “Obviously you know someone who saw us at the bar last night.”
“Half the town saw you at the Ace in the Hole last night,” Lani informed her.
“We were at the school late, and we were both hungry when we finished, so we went to grab a bite to eat.”
“Did he kiss you good-night?” Lindsay asked.
“I’m not getting involved with Sutter,” Paige said firmly.
Her sisters exchanged glances.
“He kissed her good-night,” Lani decided, not sounding the least bit happy about it.
She sighed. “Yes, he kissed me. But that’s no reason to make it into something bigger than it is.”
“I still can’t believe you dumped Alex,” Lani grumbled. “He’s a great guy.”
“He is a great guy,” Paige agreed. “And I didn’t dump him.”
Her sister rolled her eyes. “I doubt he dumped you.”
“It was a mutual decision,” Paige told them.
“So he wasn’t heartbroken?” Lani challenged.
“He definitely wasn’t heartbroken,” she confirmed.
“Did you want him to be?”
“Of course not,” Paige denied. “But considering that we’ve been dating for a few months, I didn’t expect him to be so...unaffected.”
“Which, I guess, tells you everything you needed to know about that relationship,” Lindsay noted.
“I did really like Alex.”
“But he’s not Sutter.”
“Will you stop trying to make this about Sutter?”
Lani shook her head. “Will you stop trying to pretend this is about anything but Sutter? If he hadn’t come back to Rust Creek Falls, if he hadn’t kissed you and made you remember what the two of you used to have together, you’d still be with Alex.”
“We’re just worried about you, Paige,” Lindsay said gently.
Paige understood that her sisters were thinking about what was best for her—and no doubt remembering how completely heartbroken she’d been when Sutter had left Rust Creek Falls five years earlier. “I appreciate that,” she told them. “But I assure you, there’s no reason to worry. I’m not going to get hung up on Sutter again.
“Yes, I’ve kissed the guy a couple of times. And yes, he is a fabulous kisser. But I have no illusions that a few kisses are going to lead to anything else, because I know that Sutter isn’t going to stay in Rust Creek Falls.”
“And if he asks you to go to Seattle with him again?”
She just shook her head. “He’s never even hinted in that direction, and he knows that my life is here.”
“I know that’s what you said five years ago,” Lindsay agreed. “Because you were trying to convince Sutter to stay, and because you didn’t want to be too far away when Gram was so sick. But even when he packed up and left town, you waited for him to come back. You didn’t believe he would stay in Seattle for five months—never mind five years.”
She was right. Paige hadn’t expected that Sutter’s move would be permanent. She hadn’t believed he would stay away from his family. She hadn’t wanted to believe that he would stay away from her. But when she’d refused to go with him, he’d taken that to mean that their relationship was over. She’d tried to explain all the reasons that the timing wasn’t good, but he was determined to go—with or without her.
And still she’d thought he would return. But the days had turned into weeks, the weeks into months and the heart that had felt so battered and bruised by his decision to leave Rust Creek Falls had shattered into a billion pieces.
She’d thought about going after him—more times than she wanted to admit. She’d thought about packing up and following him to wherever he was. Because her life felt so empty without him, because she felt incomplete without him.
But even after her grandmother had finally lost her battle with multiple sclerosis and passed away, Paige had had her pride. It hadn’t kept her warm at night, but it had refused to let her chase after him. Besides, she’d believed that what she’d told him was true. He had to make peace with his family, and he was never going to do that from five hundred miles away.
And truthfully, she’d been more than a little insecure about their relationship at that point, and terrified by the thought of leaving everything familiar to start a new life in unfamiliar surroundings. It was a testament to how much she’d loved Sutter that she’d even considered it, but his willingness to leave his family in the face of conflict made her wonder if some kind of disagreement might cause him to leave her, too. In the end, that was exactly what happened—they’d had differing opinions as to how he should handle the clash with his family, and he’d left.
The fact that he’d come home now, that he’d heard about the flood and had come back to help his family, gave her hope that he hadn’t turned his back on Rust Creek Falls completely. But if he thought his return meant that he could just pick back up where he’d left off with Paige, he was sorely mistaken. She wasn’t going to give him another chance to break her heart.
The problem was, she enjoyed spending time with Sutter. She felt comfortable with him—maybe too comfortable. Because she inevitably let her guard down around him, which meant that she would have to make a concerted effort to avoid him. A more difficult task than she’d imagined when she turned onto her street and saw his vehicle parked in front of her house.
The shiny new truck with the Washington State plates stood out from the more weathered pickups that most of the locals drove and was a tangible reminder of how far he’d gone since he’d left Rust Creek Falls—and proof that he’d chosen to make his life somewhere else and without her.
With that thought in mind, she steeled her resolve and met him on the porch. “What are you doing here, Sutter?”
“I’m here to pick you up.”
“Why?”
“Because you got to choose what we did yesterday, so today it’s my turn.”
“Except that I never agreed to do anything with you today.”
“Actually you did,” he told her.
She frowned. “When?”
“Last night. When I brought you home after dinner.”
Since her memories of last night were still a little fuzzy, she couldn’t say for certain that she hadn’t. “You had to know that I had a little too much to drink last night.”
“How is the head today?”
“Fine.” Now. “But I’m a little bit...hazy on what was said after we left the restaurant, which means I can’t be held responsible for any agreements I might have made. And if you were an honorable man—”
“If I wasn’t an honorable man, we would have had this conversation several hours ago—in your bed.”
That snagged her attention. “What are you talking about?”
“You invited me to spend the night with you.”
Her cheeks flamed as the fantasy/memory of their bodies pressed close together shimmered in her mind again.
“I did not,” she said, but her denial lacked both strength and conviction.
“You did, too,” he told her. “Lucky for you, I realized that you weren’t thinking clearly and I didn’t take you up on the offer. But I was more than a little tempted.”
“I wouldn’t have let anything go that far—I don’t sleep around.”
“I know.”
The simple, matter-of-fact statement made her wonder. “Did I tell you that last night, too?”
“Yep,” he agreed.
Three beers and she apparently lost not only her inhibitions but control of her mouth. “Did I admit that I’ve only slept with half a dozen other guys since you left?”
“Actually you said it was only one.”
His words made her humiliation complete. Not only had she been intoxicated enough to throw herself at him, but her lack of a sex life since he’d been gone was tantamount to an admission that she’d never gotten over him.
A change of topic was definitely in order. “My parents are expecting me at their house by five o’clock for dinner.”
“I’ll make sure you’re back before five,” he promised.
“So what did you want to do today?”
* * *
He took her to the Triple T.
Paige should have suspected they would be going to the ranch when Sutter suggested that she change her clothes. She swapped the long skirt she’d worn to church for a pair of jeans and tugged a thick sweater on over her blouse, then tucked her feet into a pair of cowboy boots.
When she realized where they were headed, the nerves inside her belly started to twist into knots. She had more than a few reservations about their destination, mostly because there were so many memories for her at his family’s ranch and she didn’t want those memories dredged up. Or maybe she was more worried about the feelings evoked by those memories.
He drove past the family homestead and parked his truck by the barn. There were a couple of horses saddled and tethered in the closest paddock. “Obviously Rusty got my message,” he said, guiding her toward the waiting animals.
Just the sight of the gorgeous palomino with the golden coat and luxurious blond mane and tail made Paige’s throat tighten. Buttercup was the mount that she’d always used when she’d gone riding with Sutter at the Triple T, and she’d sincerely missed the horse when she’d stopped going out to the ranch after he’d gone.
“Do you remember Buttercup?”
“Of course,” she admitted, stroking the animal’s muzzle with easy affection. “But I don’t recognize her companion. Where’s Maverick?”
“I took him to Seattle with me.”
“Oh. Of course.” She should
have realized that. Maverick had been Sutter’s pride and joy. He’d raised him and trained him, and it made perfect sense that he would have taken the horse with him when he left.
“I wanted to take Buttercup, too,” he told her now. “Because the two of them were accustomed to spending a lot of time together, but I couldn’t do it. It seemed like I’d be taking her away from you.”
“So who’s this?” she asked, nodding her head toward the bay gelding with the white blaze on his forehead.
“Toby,” he said, and the horse whinnied in acknowledgment.
“Smart,” she noted.
The horse nodded his big head; Paige chuckled.
“I packed a picnic lunch for us,” Sutter said, checking the saddlebags to ensure it was there. “I figured we’d both be hungry after being out in the fresh air for a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“I promised to have you home before five o’clock, and I will,” Sutter assured.
“I wasn’t thinking about the time so much as I was thinking about my butt,” she admitted. “I haven’t been on the back of a horse in a long time.”
The statement seemed to surprise him. “You used to love riding.”
“I loved riding with you.” And when he was gone, it wasn’t the same. Besides, it wasn’t as if she could just take a drive out to the Triple T and saddle up one of the horses to navigate a familiar trail. Her brothers had horses, but again, it had never been the riding she’d enjoyed as much as the company when she’d been with Sutter.
“Do you want to do this?”
“Right now I do,” she said. “But I’m well aware that some long-neglected muscles might regret that decision tomorrow.”
“I’m more than willing to give you a full-body massage to help loosen up anything that feels tight when we’re done.”
“That’s an interesting offer—” and more tempting than she was willing to admit, especially when being close to him had her feeling tight and achy all over “—but I think I’ll pass.”
“Well, if you change your mind...”
“I’ll let you know,” she promised him.
Chapter Nine