by Laura Wright
Over the neck of his beer, Deacon asked, “Did shit go south?”
“Depends what you mean by that,” James said, then brought his own bottle to his lips and took a drink. “Cole hitting on the ancient nurse was pretty far south if you ask me.”
Deacon looked from one man to the other. “What?”
“I did not hit on her, asshole,” Cole jumped in caustically. “I was trying to keep her out of your hair so you could question Hunter.” He sniffed. “For all the good it did.”
“You questioned Hunter?” Deacon asked him, his eyes flashing with heat. “What did you find out?”
“Nothing,” Cole said, giving James a pointed glare.
James flipped him off, then turned to Deacon. “Not exactly nothing.”
Pushing back his chair, but still remaining in it, Cole cursed. “What the hell, J? You said the sheriff was just talking nonsense.”
Finishing off his beer, James placed it on the table. “It very well could be just nonsense. Thing is, my gut tells me different.”
“What did he say?” Deacon asked, his own beer completely forgotten.
“Shit like ‘That boy should’ve never come to River Black’ and ‘He ruined everything. She never would’ve broke if he hadn’t come.’”
The two men were staring hard at him; then Deac piped in, “You think he was talking about Sweet and Cass?”
James nodded. “I do.”
Cole had stopped listening when James revealed what the sheriff had said. “I say we go to the vet right now and tell her what he said. Find out if she knows what it could mean.”
“Can’t,” Deacon said, his jaw set. “Because of how you two handled this, she’s getting a court order. Keeping all of us away.”
James cursed.
“She was that pissed?” Cole asked, mystified.
“You mean for going into her office under the pretense of wanting to adopt a dog and looking up her father’s address?” Deacon said.
The fighter shrugged casually. “I liked the dog.”
Deacon shook his head. “You’re still an infant, you know that?”
“I get things done,” Cole fired back.
“I’d watch your back, Cole,” James said. “And maybe your front too. She does know how to neuter shit.”
“So what now?” Cole asked them. “We just give up?”
“Hell no,” Deacon said. “We’re going to find that boy.”
“That’s right,” James agreed. “I got all the newspaper articles from that time already loaded on my laptop. We’ll see who had talked. We’ll see how Sheriff Hunter handled things. We’ll question everyone again. But first . . .” James stood up. “We take a breath. We clean up, make ourselves pretty—Cole, in your case that’s gonna take both days—and give our brother away to a great girl on Sunday.”
Cole was quiet for a moment. Then he reached over and gave Deacon a hard rap on the back. “Can’t wait to get rid of you, buddy.” Then he eyed James. “And two days to look pretty? Please. That’s only a worry if I get into a fight.” He hesitated for a moment. “You think Grace Hunter knows how to throw a punch?”
“Definitely,” James and Deacon answered together.
• • •
Beneath the covers in the guest room, Sheridan heard James walk through the bunkhouse door. She glanced at the clock. It was just before eleven. Her entire body relaxed. She hated it, but she hadn’t been able to fall asleep without knowing he was there. She was really going to need to work on that. Or go back to Dallas.
She heard him walk past her room and go into his own. She wondered what he thought when he saw the bed empty. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t wanted to slip under his cool sheets again. But she’d felt odd about it. They weren’t at that stage where it was definitively her bed too. And after the way dinner had ended, she was feeling unsure about a lot of things.
Just when her body started to relax and she was thinking he’d bunked down for the night, her door opened. Instantly, her heart leapt into her throat. But she didn’t move, didn’t say anything. But then again, neither did he. With gentle hands, he eased back her covers, then slipped his hands beneath her back and knees.
“James?” she whispered.
But still he didn’t say anything. Just lifted her into his arms and carried her out of her room. When they entered his, he oh-so-gently placed her on the bed, on top of the cool sheets. Then he left the room.
Sheridan stared around the moonlit room, listened, trying to gauge what was happening. She heard him in the bathroom. The water running in the sink. What was she supposed to make of this? Was this him being upset or sad? Or just wanting to be close to her? And why wasn’t he talking?
When he came back in, she watched him take off his shirt and boots, but leave his jeans on. He looked amazing like that, chiseled and lean in the moonlight, and she ached for him. Not just for the comfort of his presence, but to connect with him. His eyes met hers then and locked. Behind those incredible blue-green orbs she saw a question—or was it many questions? God, why couldn’t he talk to her? Just let her in a little bit.
The mattress dipped with his weight, and his gaze left hers as his hands wrapped lightly around her ankles, then started raking upward. Over her calves, knees, thighs. Sheridan released the breath she’d been holding. Then drew another in sharp and quick as he moved up her hips and eased down her underwear.
Oh, God, she inwardly groaned as he slipped her panties off and tossed them to the ground. Her skin tingled and her breathing grew erratic. All she was wearing now was her pale blue tank top, and she wanted that off too.
She stared down her body at him, her heart slamming against her ribs, waiting for him to say something. Anything. But he didn’t. His gaze was locked on her sex, which was glistening with arousal, and when he placed his hands on her knees and spread her thighs apart, thinking became virtually impossible.
She just wanted to feel.
James’s hands were moving up her inner thighs, slowly, slowly . . . so incredibly slowly. Sheridan tensed, waiting, wanting him to knead her flesh, then slip his fingers inside of her again. She loved him inside her—any way she could have him. But instead of touching her, he slid his hands under her buttocks.
Heat slammed into Sheridan as she realized what he was going to do to her. And as his head dropped and his face disappeared between her splayed thighs, as his mouth closed over her pussy and his tongue flickered over her tight clit, she knew the sweetest, most amazing sensation in the world. She never wanted it to end. Ever. She just wanted to live her life in James’s bed, writhing beneath him, coming with him.
As his fingers pressed into the flesh of her ass, he licked her. Soft swipes of his tongue one moment, then suckling her clit deep into his mouth the next. Sheridan bit her lip, her hands fisting in the sheets at her sides. She didn’t want to come. Not yet. But James was unrelenting in his pursuit of her climax. She could feel it in him. Hungry, needing, consuming, primal. He wanted every drop of her juices, commanded every cant of her hips, drew on every pulse of her clit.
And then he lifted her ass up another inch and pushed his tongue inside her.
Sheridan cried out at the sweet invasion, her hands leaving the sheets and plunging into James’s thick hair. Her fingers burrowed, gripping his skull, and like the madwoman she had now become, she held him tightly against her and started pumping his tongue in and out of her pussy.
She was hot, shaking. She wasn’t going to last long but she didn’t care anymore. Lost to the incredible feeling, she opened her legs even wider for him.
A groan escaped James’s throat, and he drew out of her and took her aching clit into his mouth. Sheridan cursed and writhed, and hardly noticed that James had released one of her ass cheeks until his fingers were up inside her, teasing her G-spot. She bucked against his mouth, rolled her hips. Anything and everything t
o keep the feeling—follow the feeling.
Sensing her impending climax, James pressed his tongue flat over her clit, and as he pumped inside of her, he circled her pussy. It was the perfect pressure, and the perfect pleasure, inside and out. Sheridan was lost, gone. Try as she might, she couldn’t hold on. A volcano erupted within her and she screamed his name, her hips bucking wildly, her mind splintering. It was perfect. So perfect she wanted to weep.
And maybe she did. Just a little. All while he licked her softly and gently. Brought her back down to earth.
When she sagged against the mattress, spent, sweaty, and exhausted, James crawled in after her and pulled her into his arms. She fell asleep that way, half of her body draped over him, her heart calling out to his, and her mind forgetting that he had yet to say a word.
Twenty-two
“You need to understand,” James said, his tone calm as he stood in the center of the Triple C’s riding ring. “In his mind he’s still wild. And that needs to be respected.”
“He won’t even let me get near him,” Kerry Murphy said, standing just outside the arena.
“So don’t get near him.”
She looked confused and worried. “Then how—”
“Not at first. It’s our body language they respond to. You keep going in and he keeps backing away.” Though he spoke to Kerry, he kept his eyes on her horse, Derby. “Just stand still for a moment.”
Hands to his sides, no rope, no nothing, James did just that in the middle of the arena. The flea-bitten gray stallion had run around him hard and fierce for a good ten minutes after being led out of the trailer. And James had let him. He wasn’t looking to break him. Not yet. He just wanted to forge some trust.
“Look at him,” he said to the woman who’d called him early this morning and begged him to meet her—meet her horse, who would do just about anything to get away from her when she approached, including jumping fences. Wood or wire, it didn’t make a difference. He’d been injured four times in the past month, and she was at her wit’s end.
The woman who had pulled him from his bed and the half-naked woman in his arms—the woman he could still taste on his tongue, still scent in his nostrils. For most of the night, he’d lain there with the hard-on of a lifetime, watching her, refusing to wake her up so he could touch her again. Because she’d needed her rest. And maybe because he was punishing himself for what an ass he’d been to her. For what he couldn’t seem to give her no matter how much he wanted to.
In his mind, he could see her face as she woke up. Looking around for him, her eyes hitting on the note he’d written her.
Seeing about a horse.
Be back around nine.
Nothing about the night before. How he’d loved being close to her, making her cry out. How he wanted to do it again. Especially after he’d seen her in the gray light of dawn, naked from the waist down. A hint of arousal still glistening on her shaved pussy. His eyes closed for a moment. He’d wanted to. He’d sat there with the pen in his hand. . . .
“He’s watching you so closely,” Kerry observed, pulling him back to the moment.
“He’s thinking,” James said. “He’s wondering why he should stop running. Because, truly, runnin’s all he knows. It’s what’s kept him safe.”
“Former owner got him when he wasn’t even a year,” she explained in a bitter tone. “The bastard left him in a field by himself. He barely saw humans.” She exhaled heavily. “I was hoping I could help him.”
“And you will.” James started to walk. He took the half circle on the other side of the area. Kept his body calm, his voice calm. “It’s just that he feels your frustration, Kerry. Your impatience with him. He knows you want him to put aside how he was livin’ and survivin’, and just be your boy. But they’re like us. Fear and loneliness and distrust can run thick. It takes time to break that down.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
James continued to walk his half of the arena, real slowly, stopping every so often to let Derby get a look at him. After about half a dozen times, with the sun overhead turning dawn to morning, Derby walked in his direction. Not all the way, but close enough that James could see into his eyes.
I hear you, friend. I’m trying to let go of my past too.
Slowly, James turned around and started walking. He didn’t know right away if Derby was following him. But when he caught sight of Kerry’s face, he smiled.
For the next hour, he just walked and let the stallion follow him. “Start like this,” he told Kerry. “Only this for a week maybe. Don’t talk to him. And don’t even think of trying to get him under saddle.”
“No,” she said as James started walking over to her. “Of course not.”
“And you need to learn to control your emotions. You think you can do that?”
She nodded just as his phone vibrated against his hip.
“I’m going to take this.” Could be Sheridan, he thought with a kick to the heart. He slipped through the fence and called back to Kerry, “You might as well start now. Get in there and give it a try.”
Nerves glittered in the girl’s expression, but she did as he instructed. It would take some time—a damn good amount of it—but the horse would heal its insides and fall in love with her.
James pulled out his phone as he walked a ways off so the stallion wouldn’t be spooked. He grinned. Maybe Sheridan had tried to cook breakfast.
But it wasn’t Sheridan. Wasn’t even close.
“Finally,” the woman said. “You are very difficult to get ahold of.”
California accent, pushy, Hollywood all the way. He knew exactly who was calling. “You’re very stubborn, Miss Dupree.”
“I just go after what I want,” she replied evenly. Then amended, “No, what the people want.”
“Frankly, I don’t care about the people.”
“That’s fine.”
“And I’m not interested in money.”
That gave her pause. Maybe she’d never met anyone who’d said that to her before. “What are you interested in?”
“Finding a ranch for my mustangs,” he said dryly. “Can you do that, Miss Dupree?” He chuckled. Of course he hadn’t meant to say something so ridiculous to her. He should just be saying no, thanks and hanging up.
But she wasn’t finished yet.
“Yes, Mr. Cavanaugh. I can find a ranch for your mustangs.”
“I don’t think you understand. I’m not talking about fancy cars here.”
“Oh, I know that. You have several hundred wild mustangs on your late father’s ranch property,” she said matter-of-factly. “And you want to move them.”
What the hell? “How could you possibly know that?”
“It’s my job,” she answered simply.
This was nuts. He couldn’t even believe he’d been on the phone with her this long. He didn’t want to be on television. Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted at the moment. “Listen, I got work to do.”
“And I wouldn’t dream of keeping you from it,” she said quickly as though she was used to dealing with people who tried to evade her. “But just think about it. No reality show. No Hollywood. It would be ten to twelve episodes taking on difficult cases. You’d be helping horses and people who would never normally be able to afford your services. We can film it in Texas if you’d like. Frankly, that would even be better. We’ll purchase the ranch property of your choice. The mustangs can live there forever. You could even bring on more if you’d like.”
James stood there blankly. No reality show. No crazy bullshit. Just what he already did. And the mustangs get off Triple C land. His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
He could practically hear her smile. “It’s good television, Mr. Cavanaugh. Plain and simple. Think about it. I know you have your brother’s wedding tomorrow. I’ll get in touch in a few days.”<
br />
Wedding! How did she know— “How the hell—”
“Again,” she cut in. “It’s my job. Good-bye.”
She disconnected quickly, and James was left staring into space. Ever since he’d come back to this godforsaken ranch, his life was just up and down and sideways. Maybe he needed to get away from it for a while so he could think clearly.
He was stuffing the phone back into his pocket, when he heard someone coming up behind him. He turned to see Sheridan walking his way.
“Morning,” she called out.
Lord in heaven, he thought, drinking in the sight of her. Was there ever a moment when this woman didn’t look stunning? She was wearing faded jeans, what he believed to be an old pair of Mac’s boots, and a gray tank top. Her face was rosy and makeup free, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She made his goddamn heart race.
“You’re up early,” he said, wanting to remedy that by taking her right back to bed.
She came to stand beside him at the fence. “Got your note.”
“Found it on my pillow, did ya?” he asked, trying to sound light and teasing.
The stallion in the ring twenty feet away nickered.
Sheridan didn’t even glance his way. Her eyes were fixed on James. And they were serious. Too serious. “So the waking up alone in your bed thing is starting to freak me out. No, wait,” she corrected. “Not freak me out. Insult me.”
“Oh, honey,” he began apologetically. “That’s the last thing I want you to feel. I got a call from Kerry here. Her horse needed some help.”
“I understand. I just would’ve loved to watch you help him.”
He was such an idiot. The woman was trying here. Trying to be a part of his goddamned life. “I’m sorry, Sheridan. Christ, I would’ve liked that too.”
“I’m not looking to be the overbearing chick here. It’s just confusing. One moment we’re together—like really together—and the next you treat me like a stranger. Like someone you don’t think you can trust.” Her gray eyes searched his face. “Can we talk about last night?”