MATCH MADE IN WYOMING

by Patricia McLinn

  The scent of softness, of her skin and the dark, clashed with the sharp smell of smoke and desire. He eased his lips across the tender skin again and heard her breathing hitch then escape in a stream. His tongue skimmed across her skin, picking up the faint saltiness and tickled by fine, silky hairs, then meeting the slick surface of wax. He moved back for another taste of her.

  She pulled her hand free and put it behind her.

  They stood like that for long enough that his words came out raspy.

  "You'd best put antiseptic on those burns. It's in the cabinet in the bathroom."

  "They'd don't need—"

  "Do it."

  Her lips parted as if she might dispute his order, but then she spun on her heel and headed toward the bathroom, into the dark.

  How the hell she was going to find the antiseptic in the dark, he didn't know, but he wasn't going to ask either.

  Not when he felt like he was the one who'd just been burned inside and out.

  * * *

  Breakfast had been silent.

  She'd tried to make conversation, chatting about Sin's eating habits, the weather, the eggs and toast he'd fixed. He returned grunts when she'd asked direct questions, and remained silent at the rest, until she'd given up.

  Now he was cleaning up; when she'd started to get up from the table he'd told her to stay put and to stay out of his way. She'd gotten up without another word and gone into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

  He'd breathed a little easier until he remembered that the bedroom was the one place he'd never checked for potential damage from whatever had hit the house last night. If it had been something big, she'd have noticed and mentioned it. But it could've been something she wouldn't notice right off.

  He put the last dish in the drainer to dry, strode across the floor and knocked sharply.

  "Come in, Cal."

  He hesitated and that made him mad. He yanked the doors apart and strode in. It was his bedroom, after all.

  She was finishing up making the bed. Bent over on the far side of the double bed, sliding her hands up to smooth the quilt so it would be all the more comfortable to slide into.

  Looking up as she plumped the pillow on that side, she said, "Cal? Did you want something?"

  Only then did he realize he'd stopped dead at the threshold, staring at her.

  "Never checked for damage in here," he growled, crossing to the nearest outside wall, starting a close survey.

  "Oh, of course. Our ghost." Even with his back turned, he could hear the smile in her voice. "You said something about that last night."

  "And didn't do it – so sue me for dereliction of duty." Silence greeted his comment, though Taylor remained where she was.

  The silence endured as he worked his way methodically around the two exterior walls, and even into the closet. She stepped aside as he neared her spot beside the bed, but he was fully aware that she remained in the bedroom, not a yard away from the wide, welcoming expanse of the neat bed.

  He didn't look at her as he continued his examination into the bathroom, though he'd already checked it this morning.

  When he would have walked past Taylor and through the open doorway to the main room, she stepped into his path.

  "I won't ask you what's made you so cranky, because you'll tell me nothing."

  "I'm not cranky." He twisted the word into mockery.

  "Besides," she continued smoothly, giving no indication of having heard him, "I figure it's cabin fever. For someone like you, who's used to such an active lifestyle—"

  "Lifestyle," he snorted.

  "—cabin fever is bound to set in fast. What we should do, as long as we're going to be stuck in here is to do exercises several times a day to burn off some energy. Even simple jumping jacks would help."

  Oh, he could think of exercise that would burn off energy all right, and it wasn't jumping jacks. More like jumping Taylor.

  "That's horse manure. He pulled back from a more earthy description, but still figured she would pout or withdraw, or both. Any of the above would do.

  She gave him a level, considering look. It had no pouting in it. No anger, either. So he was caught completely off guard when she drew back her fist and punched him in the arm.

  "Hey!" He rubbed his arm with his opposite hand. And damned if she wasn't preparing for another swing. He pivoted around to get behind her, catching her arms above the elbows and pulling them back so he could slide his right arm between her bent elbow and her back and grab her other arm with his hand. The grip wouldn't hurt her, but it kept her immobilized while freeing his left hand.

  And he needed that left hand to hold off Sin, who was jumping on Cal's side, pulling at his shirt and jeans, and barking at fever pitch.

  "Quiet, Sin. Sit."

  The puppy wasn't buying it. Cal grabbed his collar with the next leap and held the dog, with his front paws extended against Cal's leg.

  "Hey, you didn't bother trying to come to my rescue," he muttered, making eye contact with the animal.

  "He has a sense of justice." Taylor's words sounded as if they came through gritted teeth. She pulled against his hold but made no progress.

  He ignored her, concentrating on the dog. "Sin, I'm not hurting her. Now, get down." He released the collar. Sin looked from Taylor to him, then dropped to all four feet. "Sit."

  The puppy complied, but with an intensity in his stare and a tension in his body that indicated he remained vigilant.

  Cal lifted his head from watching the dog, and found his mouth bare inches from Taylor's profile as she looked over her shoulder toward Sin.

  Desire punched low and hard in his gut, and there was no dodging this blow, or stopping it from hitting again. That much he'd learned from being around her. And now they were stuck here for who knew how long. How long could he hold out against wanting her? How long should he even try?

  "Taylor…"

  His murmur stirred the hair near her ear. He felt the tremor that passed through her. Looking over her shoulder to her breasts thrust forward by his hold on her arms, he could see the taut points poking at the material of her blouse. He could cup his free hand over her breast, take the weight of it in his palm, feel that point against his skin … in his mouth…

  She felt the desire, too. He hadn't really doubted that, not since New Year's Eve. But even without knowing the whole story, Taylor clearly had more resistance to Cal Ruskoff than he had to her.

  She turned her head straight ahead, and her voice was determined. "Let go of me."

  "Are you done getting your exercise by beating on me?" He returned her tone the best he could, since the coolness of reason had not yet made much of a dent on the heat in his blood.

  "I didn't beat on you."

  "As long as that's what you think, I'm holding on. I don't want to not get beat on again by you."

  "All right, I shouldn't have punched you and I apologize—" he released her immediately, and she pivoted around to face him "—but it was provoked. You always do that – turn things aside by being rude."

  "I thought I got into a shell," he sneered, because that would put more space between them.

  It didn't cool her head of steam. "You do – rude and too chicken to come out of your shell! I don't know why I even try to make conversation, why I even think I'd want to know what you're thinking, even if I could ever get you to be that honest."

  "You want to know what I'm thinking?"

  He saw that she recognized the challenge, and the danger. He also saw she wasn't going to back down.

  "I said I did, didn't I?"

  So he told her, knowing it would make her keep wide of him – as wide as she could get in this small house. He told her that when she said they needed exercise, he'd been thinking of a very particular kind of exercise sure to get their heart rates up, and definitely using certain muscles. He was explicit and direct.

  Her cheeks looked like the wind had slapped them again. But she didn't look away and she didn't try to inter
rupt. In the end, he had to stop because the images his own words painted had gained the force of pain.

  "So now you know what I was thinking."

  "Oh."

  "Is that all you have to say?"

  "At least you've told me the truth." She had the clearest eyes he'd ever seen in another human being. So clear that he saw the doubt hit them. Then he saw the speculation as she considered possibilities. "If that is the truth, and not just…"

  "It's the truth." He stepped away, dragging open a drawer as an excuse to turn his back. "But no need for you to worry. I'm going out to the barn now, so I'll be getting all the exercise I need."

  When he turned back, holding a turtleneck to add between his T-shirt and his flannel shirt, she was still standing where he'd left her, but both the anger and the wariness were gone from her expression, replaced by worry.

  "The barn? Do you think you should do that? There's so much more snow since yesterday, and the storm's still so bad. It's too dangerous. If you lose your way…"

  "I set up the guide rope before the storm hit. I've done this before."

  "But—"

  "I'm going."

  Do you think you should do that?

  He not only thought he should, he knew he damn well needed to – and fast.

  * * *

  As Taylor surveyed the kitchen, forced to acknowledge that her keep-busy task was as completed as it could he until Cal returned, Sin got up from where he'd finally settled after Cal left, went to the back door, circled around twice and gave two high-pitched whines. Sin had strenuously objected to being left behind when Cal went out, and now he was probably worried about Cal, or at least missing him.

  "Me, too," Taylor murmured without thinking.

  She'd been doing entirely too much without thinking these past twenty-four hours. Falling for Matty's ploy, for heaven's sake. Getting into a discussion about the boy who'd given up Sin. Then kissing Cal in the barn.

  Sensations swept across her like echoes of the originals, and she shook her head, wishing the motion would dislodge a few memories.

  Sternly she returned to her catalogue of errors as she took a seat at the table. The book lying open there was her sop to pretending she was doing something other than brooding over her mistakes. Letting the car run off the road. Failing to rescue herself before Cal arrived. Drinking in the sight of him wearing only a towel, instead of looking away. Coming out of the bedroom last night to find out about the noise.

  Well, in fairness, she had thought about that before she'd done it. The noise had startled her from a light doze to heart-pounding wakefulness. She'd lain there, listening for a repeat of the sound, or movement from beyond the double doors. She'd heard nothing more. But something had awakened her. Maybe Cal was hurt—

  That was the thought that had driven her out of the warm bed. She'd considered putting on the sweatpants she'd folded across the end of the bed, but by that time she had the stub of a candle lit, and not knowing how long it might last, she'd hurried out as quietly as she could – torn between the twin fears that Cal might be hurt and that she might wake him from a peaceful sleep over nothing.

  Letting him fuss over the wax dripping on her hand – that she hadn't thought through. Especially when he removed the wax, then bent his head and touched his lips to her hand. Her other hand had lifted, her muscles following the urgent message of her desire to stroke his hair, to complete the circle of touch.

  There, she had thought before she acted, and so the gesture remained uncompleted. She'd pulled her hand away, mind she'd retreated. With dignity, she hoped, but a retreat nonetheless.

  The retreat being so fresh might have been what triggered her confronting him despite the "do not approach" flags he'd hoisted by way of his surliness this morning. When he'd started to retreat into the deepest regions of his cave, she had punched him.

  She couldn't remember punching anyone since the second grade, when Troy Robell had bustled over to her as soon as her report on butterflies was posted in the weekly place of honor, to tell her that she had misspelled a word. Long ago, she'd figured out Troy had needed to point out her error – and burst her bubble of joy – to make himself feel better because his report had not been chosen.

  Too bad Cal Ruskoff wasn't a second-grader with self-esteem issues.

  At least with Troy, punching him had made her feel a little better … until her mother heard about the incident.

  With Cal, the urge to punch was born of frustration. At that point it had seemed entirely plausible that emphatic physical contact, which sounded so much better than a punch, could jolt him out of his shell, something words had completely failed to do.

  What she hadn't stopped to consider were the unintended consequences.

  She'd totally missed the possibility that he would wrap her up in such a way that she couldn't move and couldn't see him, while both his powerful presence behind her and the warmth of his breath against her ear made her fully aware of the tightening of her breasts and a corresponding coiling heat low inside her.

  And it had made her angry, because she didn't want to feel that for him. She didn't want to feel as if her bones were evaporating when he kissed her. She didn't want to remember the way her body had fit against his in the barn. She didn't want to imagine his hands on her.

  And then he'd told her what he was thinking.

  Oh, my.

  Never had words alone affected her so strongly. They certainly hadn't been romantic, sugarcoated words, and that was part of their effect. The stark, raw power behind his action verbs had revealed more than he could ever have intended. Nothing he'd described could be done from inside a shell.

  Clearly he'd intended the words to make her scurry as far from him as possible. Putting it bluntly, he'd intended to scare her.

  What he hadn't intended was for her to realize he was frightened, and what frightened him was a stark, raw desire that matched his words, power for power.

  His desire for her.

  And that did scare her.

  The stakes were no longer kisses. The stakes were exactly what he'd said in earthy, unvarnished detail.

  He'd set them out clearly. If she didn't stay away from him, this was what he was thinking about. It had nothing to do with emotion or caring about each other, and if she mixed those elements in, she did it at her own peril.

  Sin jumped up and barked, his tail wagging at high speed. In another moment, Taylor heard muffled treads on the porch, then the outside door opening.

  She drew in a long breath of relief at Cal's safe return, and let out a short one of exasperation for worrying about him. He'd said he'd be fine; he wasn't a man who indulged in braggadocio.

  As Taylor went over to him, Sin swiped a paw at the still-closed door.

  "Sorry, Sin, if I open this door before he closes the other one I'll get yelled at for letting out some of our precious warm air. But as soon as…" The outside door thunked closed, and Taylor swung wide the inside door, letting Sin bolt through. The snow-encrusted form in front of her looked up. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes were rimmed by snow, despite the protection of his hat.

  "Are you okay?" She couldn't stop herself from asking.

  He grunted an affirmative. His lips were tinged toward blue.

  "Everything okay in the barn?"

  "Good enough."

  "I made hot chocolate. I'll turn the burner up and by the time you get out of those wet overclothes, it should be heated through."

  His gaze followed her as she went to the kitchen. How she knew that with her back turned was a matter she wasn't prepared to examine. She hoped the hot chocolate was decent, considering the tin she'd found looked as if it might have been young when Matty's ancestors homesteaded this ranch in the late 1800s.

  "Don't knock me over," Cal muttered from the entry-way.

  She turned to see Sin jumping around him, whining again.

  "Poor Sin, he's been whining like that for a while."

  In the act of shrugging off his jacket, C
al groaned, pulled it back on and reached for the snowy slicker.

  "What are you doing?"

  "He has to go out."

  Laughter bubbled up and out of her.

  "What's so funny?" He growled the words, but she could see the grooves in his cheek deepening as he fought a grin.

  "I thought he was whining because you were gone. I thought he was pining for you."

  Like I was.

  She didn't speak the words, but they still had enough impact to dim her laughter.

  "Well, he was pining for something," Cal said. He dipped his head. "C'mon, Sin."

  Had he really been smiling? A genuine smile, with no sneer, no twist, no irony.

  Taylor went to the sink, pulled the curtain back from the window, propped her hands on the edge of the counter and leaned forward to look to the right. Through the swirl of wind-driven snow, she could make out the form of a man with his back to the storm, holding the sides of his slicker wide to give the dog a protected area just beyond the back steps.

  She straightened, smiling broadly.

  Forget Sir Walter Raleigh putting his cape over a mud puddle for Queen Elizabeth. This was true chivalry.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  Curled up on a couch, with a fire in the fireplace, an afghan to snuggle under, a good book, and a sexy man nearby. All the elements of Taylor's idea of heaven.

  She was miserable.

  The fire, the afghan and the book were all fine. It was the two other elements that had her restless.

  The couch was old, but that wasn't the cause of her discomfort. No, the cause was an entirely juvenile and idiotic preoccupation with the fact that she was sitting where Cal had slept last night.

  Not, of course, that she'd seen him stretched out on the couch, except in her mind's eye. But she had seen, when she'd come into the living room last night, that his pillow had been at this end. Once her eyes had adjusted, she'd seen the dent left by his head on the unoccupied pillow, sad the way the blankets were thrown back by his impatient hand. In the wrinkles and creases, exaggerated by the firelight, she could almost imagine a pattern left by his body.

  What would he look like asleep? Would it soften his features? Lower his guard? Make him look boyish?