Garrett wanted to trace the length of that lovely neck with his lips, the tip of his tongue, find her earlobe and nibble at it, make her moan.
He didn’t move, though. The water did little to cool his blood; in fact, he half expected the contents of that pool to come to a slow simmer around him.
“So,” he said, “are you seeing anybody?”
Are you seeing anybody? Talk about hokey. Why didn’t he just put on a bad toupee, one of those two-tone jobs maybe, hang a slug of gold chains around his neck, and ask what her sign was?
She smiled. “No,” she said, after considering the question for a long moment. That was it, just “no,” and then she left him to dangle.
Garrett might as well have been a kid again, he felt so awkward. Where, he wondered, was the mover and shaker, the bring-it-on guy, the smooth operator who could handle anything?
Someplace else, evidently.
Nobody here but a beautiful woman and a country boy making a damn fool out of himself, he thought.
Being a McKettrick meant never knowing when to quit, a trait that could be a blessing or a curse, depending on the situation. Garrett kept talking, when he might have been better off shutting up. “Maybe—we could—well—do something?”
Julie chortled at that—the sound was warm and throaty, made him imagine waking up next to her, deeply rested after a night of frenetic sex, followed by hours of exhausted sleep. She turned, moved to the ladder and climbed up it. Water sluiced off her in iridescent sheets, and her backside swayed slightly. Things ground together inside Garrett, an achy shift in a place where he hadn’t known there was a place, up to now.
Sitting on the edge of the pool, Julie reached for a towel, wrapped it around her shoulders, idly moved her feet in the water. She was shivering a little.
“What kind of ‘something’ do you have in mind, Garrett?” she asked, in her own good time.
She knew, of course, that she was getting to him. And she was enjoying it.
The single mother, devoted to her son.
The teacher, dedicated to her students and her work.
It amazed him that she was the same person as the offbeat girl he’d known in high school.
Julie Remington was all those things, and a lot more besides. There was mischief in her, and fire, and the rare, lasting mystery that just keeps on unfolding, indefinitely. A man could spend a lifetime, he realized with a jolt, maybe longer, just uncovering all the layers of who she was, what she wanted, what she had to give.
The prospect enticed him and, at the same time, scared the hell out of him. At no time in his life, in no situation, had he ever felt out of his depth.
He did now.
“Garrett?” she prompted, raising one eyebrow slightly.
“I was thinking maybe we could go out to dinner,” he said, and was surprised by his own ability to speak coherently. Inside, all was chaos—collisions, things sparking off each other and igniting. “Maybe to a movie.”
“Dinner,” she repeated, still swinging her legs back and forth. “Where?”
Except for the café at the Amble On Inn, the Silver Dollar Saloon, a snack bar in the bowling alley and a few fast-food places, Blue River didn’t have much to offer in the way of restaurants. “Paris?” he asked.
Julie smiled. She probably thought he was kidding.
The weird thing was, he wasn’t.
He was thinking “private jet.” Sex in swanky hotel rooms with views of the Seine, room service champagne, more sex.
“Be serious,” she said.
“How about Austin, then?” Garrett persisted, though he made up his mind, then and there, that he would take Julie Remington to Paris, sooner rather than later. “Or maybe San Antonio?”
While he waited for her answer, Garrett let himself imagine what it would be like to pleasure this woman. The thought of her buckling against his mouth or under his hips in the last frantic throes of an orgasm turned his hard-on from problematic to out-and-out painful.
Something sparked in Julie’s eyes, putting Garrett in mind of a tigress, living fierce and free in some jungle. He knew in one dizzying flash of insight—or perhaps it was pure animal instinct—that here was a woman capable of throwing her whole self into the fire, of abandoning inhibition, of giving in completely to her own responses and those of the man lucky enough to be making love to her.
If it hadn’t been for the little guy, Calvin, snoozing away in his room in the guest quarters, Garrett figured he would simply have gotten out of the pool, whisked the tempting Ms. Remington up into his arms and carried her upstairs, Rhett Butler-style. He’d have had her in the shower first, after peeling away that clinging wet bathing suit and shedding the swim trunks.
But Calvin was a reality.
“It would probably be easier,” she mused, “if I just cooked dinner for you.” She bit her lower lip. “Us. You and me and Calvin, I mean—”
She was as nervous as he was. Garrett found that reassuring.
You and me and Calvin…
Garrett shook off the momentary daze he’d slipped into, thinking about Julie naked in his private shower, warm and slick and, unless he missed his guess, hyperorgasmic.
“Wouldn’t you rather go to a restaurant?” he asked. The passing moments, it seemed to Garrett, were marked by the beat of his own heart.
The atmosphere was humid, almost sultry, and the play of lights, having gone through a programmed sequence, slowed and then stopped, throwing the pool and the area surrounding it into something akin to twilight.
“Julie?” he said, low, because she’d been silent for so long, pondering.
She slipped forward, eased back into the water, waited by the side. Either she couldn’t speak or she’d chosen not to—Garrett could guess which one.
He went to her, but slowly. Ever so slowly.
“Kiss me again,” she murmured, when he was facing her.
He pressed his mouth to hers, all but pinning her body against the smooth-tiled wall of the pool. Everything in him ached to have her—here, now—but even then, lost in that second, deeper kiss, he was careful.
No sudden moves, he thought.
When the kiss ended, leaving both of them breathless, Garrett kept the hard angles of his frame close against Julie’s curvy softness, but without pressure. He said her name again, nibbled at the side of her neck, tasted her earlobe, the way he’d wanted to do earlier, delighted in the little moan she uttered.
“Garrett,” she whispered. He felt her palms flatten against his chest, but she didn’t push. “It’s too soon—we have to stop, and I don’t think—I don’t think I can do that if you don’t help me out a little here.”
He drew back far enough to leave a space between them, probably no thicker than the fabric of her swimsuit. His breath was ragged, and he gripped the pool’s edge on either side of Julie, not to trap her, but to keep himself from sinking.
“Okay,” he rasped out. “Okay.”
She planted a wet kiss in the cleft of his chin, then ducked under his left arm, grabbed hold of the ladder again and climbed out of the pool.
He couldn’t bear to watch her this time. That trim waist, that perfect backside—dammit, there was a limit to what one man could take without going crazy.
“Good night, Garrett” he heard her say.
Garrett closed his eyes, rested his forehead against the tile, held on to the pool’s edge with both hands. A verbal response was more than he could manage—he merely nodded once, and listened as she hurried away.
After a long time, he returned to his own part of the house, stood in the long living room, with its row of floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over the darkened range. Although he hadn’t been around a lot since going to work for the senator right after law school, it wasn’t because the quarters lacked creature comforts.
He turned, taking in the huge natural rock fireplace, the full-sized kitchen beyond the dining area. There were two bedrooms, each with its own bath, in addition to the master
suite. The apartment covered nearly five thousand square feet, and it had two exits of its own, one leading to the garage on the lower level, one to a set of stone stairs ending in the yard.
After their folks’ death, Garrett recalled grimly, one of them—Austin or Tate or himself, he didn’t know—had suggested dividing the big house into sections.
The idea had seemed like a good one at the time, Garrett thought now, with a rueful smile. The kind of thing young men tend to come up with, he supposed, when they’ve just lost their folks and feel a need to dig their roots in deeper and hold on to their piece of ground.
Garrett had draped a towel around his waist before leaving poolside, but he was dripping on the slate-tile floors. He made his way into the master bath, opened the shower door and stepped inside.
The space boasted a stone bench and fully a dozen different sprayers that could be angled to suit.
If Julie had been there, he might have done some fancy sprayer-arranging, but since it was just him—dammit—he used only the big round one, overhead. He took off the swim trunks and let them hit the shower floor with a soggy plop, and switched on the water.
He soaped and rinsed, but shaving seemed like a waste of time, since he’d have to do it again in the morning.
Scrubbed, smelling of soap and shampoo, Garrett snatched a towel, dried himself rigorously and walked out of the bathroom with the towel hooked around his waist.
He was hungry.
He meandered into his kitchen—since he rarely bothered to stock the shelves or the refrigerator, preferring to cadge meals from Esperanza when he was on the ranch—and checked out the supply situation.
It amounted to meager—or a little less than that.
The fridge was empty except for half a loaf of blue-crusted bread and an egg carton with an expiration date that made Garrett hesitant to lift the lid.
He chucked both items into a garbage bag, nose wrinkled, and headed for the inside staircase, planning to dispose of it in one of the trash bins outside the garage.
Realizing he was naked except for the towel, he paused at the top of the stairs, garbage bag in hand, debating the wisdom of going down there in what practically constituted the altogether.
Running into Julie would be one thing—he took a few moments to savor the fantasy—but meeting up with Calvin or Esperanza would be another. With a sigh, Garrett set the bag down, returned to his bedroom and pulled on a pair of jeans.
Then he took the garbage downstairs and outside, where the chill bit into his bare chest and the soles of his feet, so that he did a hopping little dance back into the kitchen.
He washed his hands at the nearest sink, checked the multiple refrigerators for leftovers, and wound up munching on cold cereal because nothing else appealed to him.
He was just sticking his empty bowl into a dishwasher when the dog padded out on his three legs, wagging his tail.
Garrett acknowledged the animal with a smile, was about to head back upstairs, where he might get some sleep, when Harry pressed his beagle-snout to the crack between the outside door and the frame.
He glanced toward the guest quarters, half expecting—hell, hoping—that Julie would be there.
Only she wasn’t.
The dog gave a benign little whimper.
Garrett sighed. “It’s cold out there,” he protested.
The dog whimpered again.
He bent, checked the tags on the mutt’s collar. “Listen, Harry,” he said, drawing on his negotiation skills, “maybe you wouldn’t mind doing your thing on some newspaper, just this once—”
Harry gave an urgent whine, raised one of his front paws to scratch at the door—he had two legs in front and one in back—and he teetered a little, trying to stay balanced.
“Oh, all right,” Garrett said, steeling himself for a second barefoot, naked-chested venture into the night air.
He waited, shivering, while the dog took care of business.
“I THINK GARRETT ASKED ME OUT,” Julie confided in Libby, bright and early the next morning, when she stopped by with Calvin. She didn’t say it, of course, until her little boy had joined Audrey and Ava, who were playing in the leaves beneath the oak trees on the other side of the yard.
Libby chuckled. “What do you mean, you think Garrett asked you out?” she replied. “Either he did or he didn’t.”
Julie bit back the admission that he’d kissed her, too. Twice. There wasn’t much she didn’t tell her sisters, but she had yet to make sense of what had happened in the pool the night before.
And something had happened.
“He mentioned dinner in Austin or San Antonio,” Julie said.
Libby raised one eyebrow, her eyes twinkling. “And you said…?”
Julie’s face burned. “And I said maybe I should cook instead,” she murmured.
Libby folded her arms; it was chilly that morning. Tate’s truck wasn’t in its usual place in the driveway; he must have gotten an early start, as Garrett had. Watching through one of the kitchen windows at the main ranch house, Julie had seen him drive off before the coffee had finished perking.
“It’s not like you to blush over a man,” Libby pointed out, grinning and giving her a light jab with one elbow. Her eyes rounded with a sudden and delighted realization. “You’re interested in Garrett—sexually, I mean.”
“Libby!” Julie protested, pained.
Libby laughed. Shook her head. “This is so not you. This reticence thing, that is. Of the three of us, you’ve always been the bold one, the adventurous one—and now the idea of making dinner for a man has you turning red?”
“Okay, so I’m interested,” Julie blurted. With a slight motion of her head, she indicated Calvin, happily plunging in and out of the gloriously colored leaf piles across the yard. “I can’t just have a fling with Garrett McKettrick—I have to think about my son.”
“As if there’s any danger that you won’t think about Calvin,” Libby said gently. “You’re a great mother, Jules. The little guy knows you love him, knows you’d go to the wall for him.”
“It was just a kiss—okay two kisses—but Libby, the things Garrett made me feel….”
Her voice fell away.
Libby smiled, gave her a brief, tight hug. “I know all about what a man can make a woman feel, Jules,” she said. “A McKettrick man, anyway.”
Julie gnawed at her lower lip for a moment, watching Calvin and the twins and the happy dogs, frolicking in rustling mounds of orange and yellow and crimson leaves, scattering them in all directions. “Garrett and I live under the same roof,” she reminded Libby. “Things could get really awkward, really fast.”
Libby’s blue eyes were alight with love as she watched the kids and the dogs. “So much for the two hours I spent raking the yard yesterday afternoon,” she said good-naturedly. Then she turned and looked directly at Julie again. “Is this my frankly sensual sister speaking? The one who lamented, not all that long ago, the lack of hot stand-up sex in her life?”
She was going to be late for work if she didn’t hurry.
Hedging, Julie got into the Cadillac and turned the key in the ignition until it made a grinding sound. Then she gunned the engine a couple of times before responding to what Libby had said. “I’m going to lose my mind if I think about stand-up sex, hot or otherwise, so don’t remind me, okay?”
“I think stand-up sex is always hot,” Libby speculated mischievously.
Julie couldn’t help laughing, and that expelled some of the tension that had been building up inside her since the night before.
Temporarily, anyway.
“And of course you speak from experience,” Julie teased, making Libby laugh. “You lucky woman.”
With that, she shifted the Caddie into Reverse, tooted the horn in farewell and waved to Libby and to the kids jumping in the leaf piles under the oak trees.
Calvin was too busy having a good time to wave back.
HAVING APPROPRIATED AUSTIN’S battered old red pickup from the g
arage at home, since the Porsche wasn’t suitable for the kind of day he was bound to have, Garrett pulled up behind Tate’s blue Silverado, parked across the road from the downed fence line the two of them had spotted from the airplane the day before, late in the afternoon.
A pair of horses grazed nearby, while Tate and two of the ranch hands crouched, examining something in the dirt.
The sinking sensation in Garrett’s gut told him it was nothing good, even before he got there and saw the tread marks sunk into the soft dirt on the shoulder. They’d been left by a big rig, those tracks, not a car or a pickup.
The dirt around the fallen fence was churned up, pocked with the impressions of a few hundred hooves.
Seeing Garrett approach, Tate straightened, stood.
“Well,” he said grimly, “it’s official.”
“Rustlers,” Garrett confirmed, with a nod. “Any idea how many cattle we’re missing?”
Tate sighed. “Henson and Bates are running a quick tally right now,” he answered, gesturing toward two distant men on horseback. “Offhand, though, I’d say fifty to a hundred head.”
Since even a semi wouldn’t hold that many cattle, the thieves must have made several trips, maybe even over a period of days. The Silver Spur rambled on for miles in all four directions, like a giant patchwork quilt spread over a lumpy mattress, and while there were great, grassy expanses of open range, there were also stands of oaks and other deciduous trees hiding shallow canyons and old wagon trails and even a dry riverbed.
A crew arrived to repair the fence, began setting the posts back in their holes and packing dirt and rocks in around them. Once that was done, they’d secure them with cement and then string new wire.
Tate put a call through to Brent Brogan on his cell phone, walking toward his truck as he explained the situation to the lawman and gesturing for Garrett to come along.
When the call ended, Tate had the driver’s-side door open and one foot up on the running board. “Let’s take that plane of yours up again, have another look around. Maybe we missed something last time.”
Garrett nodded. “Meet you at the hangar,” he said, turning and sprinting back to Austin’s pickup.
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