He glanced at the dog, now splayed out on the floor. “I’ll go check to make sure the gate is latched before I leave so he doesn’t escape on you again.”
“Thank you.”
He left through the back door, grateful for an excuse to put a little badly needed distance between them. The high mountain air cooled his face and he filled his lungs with it. He should never have walked into that house. He should have just brought back her grumpy little dog, left him on the porch and headed back to his own space where he could be safe.
He had lived among despicable thugs for months, but he found Claire Bradford far more frightening than any of them.
He took his time walking around the backyard, steeling his will against making a stupid move. Finally he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer and he returned to the kitchen to find she’d cleaned up and was closing the dishwasher door.
“You’re right, the fence was ajar. I latched it now, so your escapee should have a harder time making his break.”
“Great. Thank you.”
“Good night, then. Thanks again for dinner.”
“You’re welcome,” she said as he headed out onto the back porch. “Oh, wait. You forgot the cinnamon rolls.”
Keep them, he almost said but he knew she would insist on his taking them.
He stepped inside while she walked back to the kitchen for the container, then she returned and held it out for him.
“There you go. Throw in a coffee from Maura’s place in the morning and you’ve got the breakfast of champions.”
He managed to return her smile, although he kept one hand tight on the doorknob and the other gripping the container of cinnamon rolls like it was loaded with C-4 ready to blow.
“This was nice,” she said. “See? We don’t have to throw away a perfectly good friendship just because…”
Her voice trailed off and she blushed a little.
He closed his eyes. “Because I can’t spend sixty seconds near you without wanting to smear Angie’s frosted cinnamon rolls from your head to your toes and then lick it off inch by slow, delicious inch?”
She gulped and her eyes darted to the rolls, then to his mouth, then back to the pastries. With a defeated groan, he threw the box on the counter and grabbed for her, shoving the door closed with his foot.
He devoured her mouth, tasting cinnamon and coffee and a lingering hint of rosemary. Her lips parted and he dipped his tongue inside, sliding along the length of hers. She made a sexy little sound and buried her hands in his hair, pulling him closer, and he lost his grip on the last tangled thread of his shredded calm.
The kiss was wild, heated, tongues and lips and teeth, full of all the pent-up frustration and longing of the past two weeks.
Somehow through the urgent ache, he held on to one semirational thought, that he couldn’t leave her standing here when her leg was in a cast. If he wanted to continue kissing her—and did he!—he would have to move her to a more comfortable position.
Without breaking the connection of their mouths, he scooped her up into his arms. She gasped a little but didn’t pull away—instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as he carried her through the kitchen and into the family room.
He lowered her to the sofa, but she didn’t release her hold around his neck and he had no choice but to follow her down, careful even in the midst of the wild hunger scorching through him to take care with her injuries.
They kissed for a long time, stretched out side by side on her sofa while the old house shifted and settled around them. He lost track of everything but her softness and heat, the welcome of her mouth, of her body.
“I haven’t been able to think about anything else but this for two weeks,” she murmured against his mouth. “I dreamed about you every night and hated waking up alone and aching.”
He closed his eyes while the silky heat of her words slid down his spine like the flick of her finger.
What was he supposed to say to that? She might have dreamed about it for a few weeks, but he’d been thinking about her for years.
He kissed her, overwhelmed all over again that Claire Tatum Bradford was here, in his arms, kissing him as if she couldn’t get enough.
That sentiment he certainly shared. None of this was enough. He should have known it wouldn’t be. He wanted more, he wanted their bodies tangled together, he wanted to lose himself in the sweetness of her skin, every lush curve and angle.
He eased up on one elbow, entranced by the fluttery pulse at the base of her neck. Thinking only to steal a taste, he dipped his head and flicked his tongue there. She gasped and arched her back a little. The cotton of her shirt was soft, warm from her body, as his fingers moved to the first button and worked it free, revealing more of that delectable lace of her bra underneath. Taking a chance, he unbuttoned the next one down, leaving the shirt only fastened by two or three buttons near the bottom.
His body was hard and heavy with need as he brushed his mouth along the slope of her breast above the lace. The scent of her here intoxicated him, strawberries and wildflowers, and he wanted to sink his face into her skin, drunk with her.
She made a tiny sound of arousal and he slid his mouth to the edge of lace, licking and tasting as he went.
“More,” she murmured, her voice low and throaty, and with one hand she worked the fastenings of her front-clasp bra and pulled the sides away.
The world receded, everything else fading to nothing except for Claire and this moment and the surge of his blood.
He dragged his gaze away from those alluring curves and found her watching him with a shadow of nerves in her eyes. “I’m thirty-six and I’ve had two children. Just keep that in mind,” she whispered, a hint of color dusting her cheekbones.
“You’re beautiful,” he growled. “Look at me. I’m shaking, you’re so beautiful.”
He lowered his head and kissed first one peak and then the other, then he took his time there, flicking a tongue over the rosy nipple, tasting and exploring.
She made that sexy little sound again and gripped his head, holding him in place, her body shifting restlessly on the sofa.
When he couldn’t think straight another moment, he slid his hands across her abdomen, loving the way the muscles there contracted under his touch. He needed to touch her, to feel wet, silky heat. He slid a hand to the waistband of her skirt, but just before he would have worked the buttons free, she shifted restlessly and he caught a flash of navy blue.
Her cast.
The sight of that hard, bulky casing on her leg hit him like a bucket of snow dumped over his head.
He sat up abruptly, his breathing ragged and his heart racing and his body just about howling with frustration.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her eyes huge and slightly unfocused.
He scrubbed his face. “I… We can’t do this.”
She blinked a little and he thought he had never seen anything as beautiful as Claire half reclined on her sofa, tousled and undone, her lips swollen and her gorgeous full breasts white and lovely in the lamplight.
“You have a broken leg and a broken arm. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re a creative guy. I’m sure you can come up with some clever way to work around them.” She gave a tiny, sensual smile. “Those aren’t the critical regions anyway.”
All those delectable curves, that luscious expanse of skin, made him want to whimper.
“I can’t, Claire. Right this moment, I’ve never wanted anything more in my life. You are…everything.”
“Then why stop?”
He sighed. “Haven’t we been through this a few dozen times? I don’t think either of us wants to face the consequences.”
Her smile faded and after a moment, she grabbed the edges of her shirt and tugged them together. She eased up a little higher on the sofa. “Why do there have to be consequences?”
“Because that’s who you are, Claire. A woman who needs, I don’t know, some kind of a commitment before
she takes such a step.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be that woman anymore,” she said a little wildly. “I’ve been alone for two years. Maybe I’d like to be the kind of woman who wears something besides boring white underwear. Who makes love under the stars or…or who lets a man lick whipped cream off her.”
“You are. You absolutely should do and be those things. Just not with me,” he said quietly, although the thought of her with another man gutted his insides worse than a prison shank.
He forced himself to rise and move away from the sofa, away from all her sweetness and warmth. “Claire, I feel things for you I’ve never felt for another woman. Never wanted to feel. The truth is, I’m more than halfway in love with you. I think I have been since I was too stupid to know the prettiest girl in town would one day grow into a smart, kind, incredibly sexy woman.”
She stared at him and he saw a hundred emotions flit across her expressive eyes. Shock and uncertainty and the remnants of that hunger. And, he thought, a sharp flare of joy, quickly hidden. “Riley—”
“I love you, Claire. But despite how incredible I know it could be between us, not this—” he gestured to the sofa “—but all of it, some part of me can still only think about running, just like my old man did. Like I’ve always done when anyone gets too close. I won’t hurt you like that. I can’t.”
“What do you think you’re doing right now?” she asked, her voice low and filled with pain. “Do you think I would be here with you like this if I didn’t care about you, too, Riley? I haven’t been with another man in my entire life except my ex-husband. My plan was to wait until the kids were a little older and things were more settled before I even thought about…about letting another man into my heart. And then you came home and everything changed.”
He had never hated himself as much as he did in that moment, never wanted so desperately to be a different kind of man.
He wanted to tell his conscience to screw off so he could just take what he wanted. But the images of all the women he’d failed in his life seemed to be crowding his brain, starting with Lisa Redmond, pregnant and scared at sixteen. He thought of Oscar Ayala’s chica, killed in front of him while he did nothing, of his sisters and his mother.
Of Layla.
If he did this, indulged himself in her arms and her body, Claire would expect things. That was the kind of woman she was. The hell of it was, he wanted to give her those things. He had a crazy vision of living with her here in this house, of helping her raise her children, of cuddling in bed at night while the January snows blew under the eaves and piled up on the driveway.
That picture seemed rosy and wonderful right now, but how long would it take for him to start panicking and edging toward the door?
Better to just do it now before he could do serious damage.
“I can’t, Claire. I’m sorry. So sorry.”
FOR ABOUT TEN SECONDS after the front door closed behind Riley, Claire sat clutching the edges of her shirt, stunned and achy and still trying to cope with the jarring shift from delicious heat to this icy, terrible cold.
What just happened here? She drew in a shaky breath and tried to button her shirt with fingers that trembled. After a moment she stopped with a frustrated cry and just whipped the whole thing off and picked the soft knit throw off the back of the sofa. She huddled in it, shirtless, limbs trembling.
Hot tears burned her eyelids, but she refused to let them escape. Damn him. Oh, damn Riley McKnight straight to whatever hell that had spawned him for doing this to her. How could he tell her he loved her with one breath and then walk out the door without looking back again, leaving her lost and reeling?
It’s not you, it’s me. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but his meaning had been the same. She wasn’t buying it. She felt old and desiccated, about as appealing as a frost-killed flower garden.
Covering her face in her hands, she rocked for a minute there on the sofa, aching and more lonely than she’d been one single moment since her divorce.
The worst part of all of this? She was in love with the idiot. Somehow Riley—with his solid strength and his blasted charm and his innate ability to make her laugh—had slipped into her heart, filling all those cold, empty corners.
What was she supposed to do now?
Those tears pressed harder and she wanted nothing so much as to give in to them, just sprawl here on this sofa and weep and sob and rail against him.
Chester chose that moment to nudge her leg with his nose. His eyes drooped at her with such empathetic sorrow that, conversely, she gave a shaky laugh and buried her face in his warm, furry neck.
For some strange reason, Claire suddenly remembered that silly horoscope she’d read the morning after her store was robbed, minutes before Riley came back into her life.
Fun and excitement heading her way. That’s what the thing had claimed.
Stupid freaking horoscope.
Right now she was pretty sure she would prefer to spend the rest of her life staring down excruciating monotony if it meant she could avoid this agonizing sense of loss for something she’d never had in the first place.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THIS WAS WORKING. SOMEHOW, despite the crazy hours, the logistical nightmare, the conflicts and confusion, they had managed to pull it off.
By 3:00 p.m. the Saturday of what would have been Layla Parker’s birthday, it was apparent the town’s first-ever Giving Hope Day was an overwhelming success.
Claire sat at a worktable outside the community center with her leg propped up on a crate and her hands deep in dirt, transplanting flowers donated by the nursery into containers.
They couldn’t have asked for better weather. Someone had definitely been smiling on them. It had rained on and off the previous week and she had been praying they could escape another storm. Much to her relief, only a few high, puffy clouds marred the vast blue perfection of the Colorado sky. The June afternoon was lovely, warm and sunny and beautiful, the mountains a brilliant, gorgeous, snow-topped green.
The scent of dirt and petunias and the sharp, sweet tang of pine mingled on the breeze. It smelled fresh and new and, corny as it sounded, rich with hope.
Vehicles had been coming and going all day from the community center, which had become command central. Even though she’d witnessed the endless stream of people all day, she still couldn’t believe the turnout. Everywhere she’d been today, the crowds had overwhelmed her. Seniors wielded paintbrushes alongside teenagers at the high school as they repainted the flaking old bleachers. Little kids carried tools and nails and water bottles for their parents as they worked to build a new playground on land donated by—surprise!—grouchy Harry Lange. Inside the community center, a dozen quilts at a time had been set up for gnarled hands to tie for the children’s hospital in Denver and Claire had even seen two sworn enemies, Frances Redmond and Evelyn Coletti, smile tentatively at each other as they snipped yarn.
She smiled at the memory, pulling out another plant start from the flat on the worktable. She rotated her shoulder, aching everywhere, but it was the kind of satisfied exhaustion she loved.
She couldn’t regret any of it, not the long hours of preparation, not the paperwork, not the sleepless nights of worry.
The day wasn’t over yet—the dinner and auction were still several hours away—but even without that, she thought maybe the goals of she and the others planning this day had been met. The people of Hope’s Crossing were talking to each other more, reaching out to neighbors, working together to lift and help those in need.
The Angel of Hope, whoever it might be, must be smiling right about now.
She picked up the trowel, savoring the feel of it in her unencumbered hand. Three days after her cast had been removed, she still felt strange without it. Although she was a long way from regaining full use of her arm, at least the skin had lost a little of that shriveled, puckered look.
She was setting in the last start of this container and packing down the dirt when a voice
spoke behind her.
“This is a good thing you’ve done for Hope’s Crossing.”
Claire jerked her head around with a little cry of happiness.
“Katherine!” She instinctively reached to hug her friend, forgetting all about her grimy hands.
“Oh, dear,” she said when she pulled her hands away and saw the dirt streaks she left on the older woman’s pale peach sweater set. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Now you’re all dirty.”
“It will wash. Don’t worry. It was never one of my favorites.”
Claire gave a rueful smile, shaking her head. Katherine never changed. If someone burned down her house, she would probably claim she had been thinking about moving anyway.
“How wonderful to see you!” Claire exclaimed. “I never expected you to make it, with everything you have going on. How’s Taryn?”
Katherine’s normally graceful features looked haggard, the lines etched a little deeper. Her hair was a few weeks past needing a color and trim and Claire wished she could bustle her away right now to a hair salon for a quick pick-me-up.
“Things aren’t going as well as we’d hoped, to be frank,” Katherine said. “I guess we had some quixotic idea that once she finally started to come out of the coma a few weeks ago, things would quickly turn around.”
Claire and Alex had visited the hospital in Denver the day after that last devastating encounter with Riley two weeks earlier and both of them had been heartened to see Taryn’s eyes open, although the girl had still been largely unresponsive. She had wanted to visit again, but pinning down all the necessary details for this daylong event had sapped her time and her energy.
All that seemed unimportant now. She should have made the effort, figured out some way to make it happen. A visit would have been a much better pick-me-up than a hair color, especially if Katherine had been struggling with this discouragement on her own.
“I thought she was improving.”
“Every day is still a struggle.” Katherine’s elegant chin wobbled briefly and she made an obvious effort for control. “I’m afraid we’ll soon have to accept she’s never going to be our same Taryn.”
RaeAnne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One: Blackberry SummerWoodrose MountainSweet Laurel Falls Page 26