The dogs following, he walked into his room, sat down on the edge of his bed, and gazed out the window at the full, chilly moon. For a long time, he’d been content in his mostly solitary life, but that night, he felt downright lonely. Maybe it was the call of the coyotes, but he doubted it. While he was with Hallie and the kids, he’d felt connected, a part of things, Now, he was as melancholy as a stray calf.
He wasn’t a religious man, not in the formal sense of the word, but for some reason he thought of the old McQuarry Bible, which had been printed in Boston before the Revolution. He’d borrowed it from Jessie, who was the official keeper of heirlooms, as well as the self-appointed genealogist for the clan, several weeks before she left on her trip. He’d wanted some solid connection to the distant past, because even though he’d lived at Primrose Creek all his life, he sometimes felt rootless.
Jessie was passionate about family memorabilia; she had a large collection of journals, murky photographs, and the like, and she’d offered to let him look those over too, make copies if he wanted, as long as he promised to guard the stuff with his life. They were stored in file cabinets over at her house, near the computer.
He smiled to himself. Damn the luck. Now he’d have to impose on Hallie O’Rourke, getting underfoot on a fairly regular basis, in order to check out all that material. No sense moving the stuff to his place, risking damage or loss. Hadn’t Jessie told him, straight out, that she’d take a horsewhip to him if he didn’t take proper care of the family papers?
He pulled on a pair of boxer shorts, then went back downstairs to fetch the tattered Bible. The dogs followed, sighing, and plunked themselves down near his desk, eyeing him balefully.
He took the Bible from its place on the shelf and slowly raised the heavy leather cover. There were dozens of names inscribed on the parchment pages allotted to the purpose, the earliest entries in faded copperplate, all sweeping loops and flourishes, with f’s where there should have been s’s. He turned the page, marveling at the parade of generations, spanning more than two hundred years of one family’s history. He found Trace Qualtrough’s name, linked with that of Bridget McQuarry, and smiled. He’d come from these people; their blood flowed in his veins and—sometimes he could have sworn to it—their recollections of life as they’d lived it lingered in the back corners of his brain, intermingling with his own memories. He rubbed his forehead with the fingers of his right hand, and thought of Hallie once more, over there at Jessie’s place, alone except for the kids, fighting off what seemed like a whole platoon of private demons.
He wished he could bring her here, lie down with her upstairs, in the old bed that had been Trace and Bridget’s, so long ago, hold her in his arms, and, yes, make love to her. God, he wanted her so badly that he got as hard and heavy as an anvil every time the notion sneaked into his head. He knew, without having seen her naked, that her skin would be taut, faintly golden with the ripe glow of late summer apricots. And soft. Oh, Lord, she would be soft.
He knew, too, because of the way she’d returned his kiss, that she’d respond, fiercely, vibrantly, to every caress, every nibble, every whispered word. He ached with the need of her—and yet the fantasy wasn’t entirely lascivious, for there was an element of deep tenderness in his desire for Hallie O’Rourke. Oh, yes, he planned to carry her to the heights, to drape those shapely legs of hers over his shoulders and work her until they were both shouting, both soaring. But when it was over, he wanted to soothe her, reassure her, cherish her. Slay dragons for her.
He groaned. If he kept thinking along those lines, he’d have to take a cold shower, and that was not a prospect he favored. He closed the Bible, got into bed, snapped off the light and waited for sleep.
It was elusive. Whatever his fantasies might be, he knew that Hallie was just passing through, that she had a life someplace else, one she’d go back to if she had the opportunity. All appearances to the contrary, she wasn’t the type to leave a lot of loose ends.
Best not let himself care too much.
Hallie felt as though she’d been dragged backward through an emotional knothole. “Get a grip,” she told herself aloud. She got up, brewed herself a cup of microwave tea, then headed for the living room, and the computer. She logged on, found a message waiting from Jessie, smiled when she read it.
Hi, Hallie. I’m in Dayton, Ohio. How is everything in Primrose Creek? Don’t forget to use up that food out in the freezer. I don’t want it to go to waste. I meant to caution you about Trojan, my miniature horse, too. He can be testy with men, when he’s bonded with a female of any species; I guess it’s a territorial thing. One time, he bit Doc Whitman, the vet, right in the gluteus maximus. Here, Hallie paused, and chuckled in spite of sympathy for the unfortunate doctor. Doc had a bruise the size of South Dakota. By the way, call him immediately if any of the animals get sick. His number’s on the kitchen blackboard, along with Chance’s. Better go, as this is running on. Best, Jessie. P.S. How IS Chance? I haven’t heard from him in a few days.
Hallie hit the reply button, then took a few moments to think, sipping tea as she mused. Her reply was brief. So far, Trojan is behaving himself. I appreciate your generosity; we’ll use what we can from the freezer. As of this evening, Chance appeared to be fine. She didn’t mention the movie they’d gone to together, or supper at the Chinese buffet. It wouldn’t do to give Jessie any wrong ideas.
“You’ve got mail!” announced a cyber-voice, startling Hallie so that she sloshed some of her tea down the front of her shirt. Frowning, she clicked on the appropriate icon, and a whole list of messages came up. Most were junk, with subject lines like Live Naked Men and Triple Your Income in 30 Days. Hallie deleted those, weeding them out until only two remained. One read, Thanks for the Memory, while the other simply said, Let’s Do Lunch.
Holding her breath, Hallie opened the first message. I can’t sleep. Can you? I had a great time today. Chance.
Warmth spilled through Hallie’s heart, and she was too tired, too vulnerable, to resist replying. So did I. Had a good time, I mean. Thanks. Sleep is overrated anyway. How did you get my e-mail address? Hallie. She hit Send, then opened the remaining message.
Hi, Hallie. It’s Katie. I was hoping we could have lunch together tomorrow. Let me know.
I’d like that, Hallie typed, in response to the lunch invitation. She had Monday off, and the girls would be starting afternoon classes at Evie’s school, though she planned to map out some lessons for them to work on, too. The home schooling was a temporary arrangement, a means of avoiding Joel’s notice, since she would be leaving Primrose Creek and settling somewhere else in the near future, but she took the task seriously. What time? With that, she signed off, went upstairs, and started a bath.
She was just sinking down into the hot water when she heard a shrill snarling sound, practically beneath her window, followed by a high-pitched scream that plunged into her middle like a knife. She bolted out of the tub, grabbed a robe off the hook behind the bathroom door, and yanked it on. Her children were safe in their beds—she checked to make sure—their sleep undisturbed. She heard the shriek again, a death cry she would never forget, and rushed down the back stairs.
She was outside, in the moonlight, the grass cold beneath her bare feet, before it occurred to her that she’d acted rashly.
A mountain lion bigger than any she’d ever imagined crouched beneath the clotheslines, devouring a rabbit. Stricken, maybe even a little mesmerized, Hallie stood perfectly still, her heart pounding in her throat, bile roiling in her stomach. The cougar wasn’t more than twenty feet away—a couple of good bounds and it would be on her—and when it lifted its bloody face to peer at her, she figured she was next on the menu. She managed a step backward, conscious of the open door behind her. Every primitive instinct she possessed, and she realized now that there were many, compelled her toward that blessed space.
The cougar growled, stretched, haunch muscles poised to spring. Hallie stood still again, thinking of Chance’s insistence
that she learn to use a rifle. Repellent as the idea had been at the time, it had a certain appeal now, when she found herself face-to-face with an obviously hungry cat. She loved animals, though she had only a nodding acquaintance with most of them, but this was no house pet.
“Mommy?” the voice was Kiley’s. Hallie knew, though she didn’t dare turn and look, that her daughter was standing on the threshold of the kitchen, a silhouette, a clear target, with the light glowing behind her. “Is that the cougar?”
“Yes,” Hallie said, as calmly as she could. “Stay back, baby. Whatever you do, don’t come out here.”
“But the cougar might eat you!” There was a note of hysteria in the child’s tone, and a little awe as well.
“Close the door,” Hallie insisted quietly. Evenly.
“But—”
“Kiley Anne Royer, close the door.”
“You’re supposed to call me Kiley Ann O’Rourke, remember?”
“Kiley.”
Several charged moments passed, and then Hallie heard a soft click. She let out her breath. She was still in danger, but at least the twins were safe inside the house. The cat would not be able to get at them as long as they stayed where they were.
The cougar continued to study her, still as a snowy morning, and she stared back. Waited. The cat stretched again, languorously, and took a step toward her. Hallie felt a thrill of fear and thought she’d be sick, right there on the ground.
“Go away,” she said.
She heard the horses in the barn, kicking up a fuss, and realized they’d been carrying on like that all along. She’d simply been too mired in fear to realize it. Her gaze strayed in that direction. Was there another cougar? Did these creatures hunt in pairs? Hallie couldn’t have said. In point of fact, she was so scared, she could barely think straight. Her palms were sweating, and she felt light-headed. She risked another step back, and the cat took another step toward her.
A scream rose into the back of her throat, raw and spiky, and she swallowed it. By that time, her heart was beating so fast, and so loudly, that she barely heard the bleating sound of a car horn. The cat perked up its ears, sniffed the air, sized Hallie up once more, and then turned and trotted off into the darkness just as a vehicle came to a gravel-flinging stop somewhere nearby. She felt the small stones strike her, and her knees gave out.
Only seconds later, Chance, carrying a rifle in one arm, scooped her up in the other and half-carried, half-dragged her into the house, lowering her into a chair at the kitchen table.
Kiley and Kiera rushed to her, and she took them into her arms, nearly blind with shock, and held them close.
“Kiley called 911!” Kiera cried.
Hallie chuckled, though she still felt like vomiting, and lifted her eyes to Chance. He was wearing blue jeans, a misbuttoned chambray shirt, boots, and a jean-jacket. She wanted to crawl into his lap and cling to his neck, but of course that wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t afford the luxury of letting go like that.
“Thank you,” she murmured, addressing him, her brave little daughters, and the universe, all at once.
Chance filled a glass at the sink, his motions angry, and fairly shoved it at her. “Drink that,” he ordered. “All of it.”
Under any other circumstances, she would have tossed it in his face, for having the nerve to talk to her in that tone, but he’d just saved her life, after all. And besides, she felt as though every cell in her body had been freeze-dried. She consumed the water, reconstituting herself.
“You girls did a good job,” Chance told the kids. “Why don’t you go upstairs and find your mom some slippers and maybe a blanket?”
Kiley and Kiera scampered off to obey, and Hallie was perversely irritated by that. She often had to cajole the twins to mind her, but one word from Chance Qualtrough, and they were rushing to comply.
“What the hell were you thinking of?” he demanded, in a husky whisper, the instant they were alone.
Hallie set the empty glass down, her hand shaking visibly as she did so. “If Kiley dialed 911,” she stalled, “how come we got you?”
“Jase took the call, and he called me because I live close by,” Chance answered, the model of grim impatience. “Jesus, Hallie, do you have any idea what almost happened out there?”
She laid one hand to her chest, willing her heart to slow down to a reasonable rate. “Oh, yeah,” she answered, with a flippancy she didn’t feel, “pretty much.”
He crouched in front of her, took her hands in his. Her gaze strayed to the rifle, which he’d left lying on the kitchen counter, then to the one over the door, and she shivered. His tone was calmer now, and kinder. “Are you all right?” he asked.
Hallie bit her lower lip, nodded. “I heard it scream—”
“The cat?”
She shook her head, her eyes clenched shut, and shuddered again. “The rabbit. Oh, Chance, it was a terrible sound—”
“You went out there to save a rabbit?”
“I went because I heard a scream. I didn’t think beyond that.” She strained, but could no longer hear the horses kicking and neighing in the barn. “Trojan and Sweet Pea and Dolly—”
Chance laid a finger to her lips. “I’ll look in on the horses in a few minutes. Right now, I want to make sure you’re not going to keel over from shock.”
“I’m all right,” she insisted, but her eyes stung with tears, and every tiny muscle in her body seemed to be twitching.
Kiera and Kiley returned, bringing the requested items. Chance, still crouching, put the slippers on Hallie’s feet, Prince Charming style, and then wrapped her in the blanket and sat down on a chair, settling her on his lap. His arms were strong and warm around her, and though she knew she shouldn’t let him hold her, there was nowhere else she wanted to be, just then, but inside his embrace. She let her head rest on his shoulder.
“Is my mommy okay?” Kiera asked, her voice very small.
Kiley elbowed her. “She’s my mommy, too!”
Chance’s tone was calm, quiet, fatherly. As soothing as Lou’s had been, when she was a child, frightened by a bad dream. “Your mother is just fine,” he said, “and she’s got two of the bravest, smartest little kids in the world, bar none.”
The twins’ eyes were wide and luminous, and they basked in the compliment. How resilient children were, Hallie marveled. A few minutes ago, they’d been terrified, and no doubt they would have a nightmare or two because of the cougar incident, but for the most part, they seemed to have taken everything in stride. Hallie herself wasn’t sure she’d ever get the image of that slavering mountain lion out of her mind.
“What you probably ought to do now,” Chance went on, still talking to the kids, “is go back to bed. Agreed?”
Kiera and Kiley both nodded solemnly.
“What about our mommy?” Kiera wanted to know.
“I’ll take care of her,” Chance promised. His arms tightened around her, just a little and, against her better judgment, Hallie allowed herself to be held.
“You won’t let her go outside?” Kiley persisted.
“Absolutely not,” Chance replied.
The twins looked at each other in consultation, communicating silently, as they often did, then kissed Hallie on either cheek and trundled back up the rear stairway.
“How do you do that?” Hallie asked.
Chance patted her rear end, through the blanket. “What?”
“Get them to obey like that.”
“Charm,” he answered. And he hooked a finger under her chin, lifted her face, kissed her. It was a light kiss, and brief, probably intended to comfort rather than arouse, but it did both.
She whimpered, stirred a little.
“I’m spending the night,” he announced.
She didn’t answer. In fact, they sat in silence for some time. Then, still holding her, the blanket trailing like a bridal train, he stood.
“There’s a spare bedroom through that doorway,” he said, with a nod to indicate the d
irection.
“I know,” she replied.
He didn’t put her down. “What I’m thinking is, I want to take you in there, lay you down on the bed, and make love to you.”
She trembled in his arms, nodded under his neck. She was a fool, and she knew it, but she’d just come so very close to dying, and everything within her, body and soul, clamored for celebration. She was alive, and that was reason enough.
He flicked off the kitchen lights with his elbow as they passed the switch and entered a faintly musty hallway. The door of the small bedroom was open, and he closed it with one foot, once they were over the threshold. The latch made a faint metallic sound as it caught.
The bed, an antique with a white chenille spread, was awash in moonlight. Chance pulled back the covers and laid Hallie down. She didn’t resist when he unwrapped her from the blanket, then divested her of her bathrobe, too.
“I knew it,” he breathed.
She felt ravishing, lying there, naked and willing. “What?”
“You’re beautiful,” he replied, unfastening his jeans, slipping them down, kicking them aside. Somewhat to her surprise, he was wearing underwear, as well, though she couldn’t see it clearly in the poor light.
He stretched out beside her, making the bed sag in a soft, portentous squeak of springs, and threw the covers off the end of the mattress. That done, he lay on his back, and rolled Hallie on top of him, and kissed her.
She was lost, even then. The kiss sent fire streaking through her, and the size of his erection, pressed between their bellies, took her breath away. She wanted him inside her, without further delay, and wriggled to indicate the fact.
He broke the kiss, chuckling. “Oh, no,” he said. “Not yet.”
She whimpered, and he moved again, on top of her now. He kissed her eyes, her ears, the line of her jaw, the length of her neck. Despite the chill in that little room, a fine sheen of perspiration broke out all over Hallie’s body.
He found her breast, teased the nipple with the tip of his tongue.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, pressing him closer with both hands.
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