by Ryanne Corey
“Heart-attack serious,” Tyler acknowledged.
“You missed your calling when you didn’t become a white knight,” the very dedicated attorney told the very determined ex-cowboy. “Don’t clench your fists—I’m far too civilized to be in a common brawl. Also, you’re bigger than me.” Then, the amusement fading from his voice, “All right, sit down. There’s no quick or easy way to tell this story.”
Jenny couldn’t come up with a reason to leave the bedroom.
Downstairs waited her past and her present. Neither of them knew much about the other. The future was nipping at her heels, spooky and dark. Her too-short time of blissful ignorance was over and gone. And there wasn’t much chance of her developing another blessed case of amnesia. Damn.
Deliberately she let her mind drift back to that magical afternoon, to the revelation of life and love she’d discovered beneath a summer-blue sky. She was glad she’d had that, she told herself fiercely. It would give her something to cling to through the long, lonely days and months and years ahead. Granted, it was a serious deviation from her usual hands-off attitude, but she had no regrets.
Except perhaps the leaving part. That would be harder now. Tyler wasn’t long in coming upstairs. She knew he wouldn’t be. They’d spent such a short time together, but she felt she could anticipate him. Especially now.
The door was open. She’d been in such a state when she’d come upstairs she hadn’t thought about closing it. Why should she? Everything scary was already in the room, in her mind and memories.
Still, when he walked in, tension curdled in her stomach. He knew. One look into his beautiful, somber eyes and the truth was evident. Clearly, the laughing, charming cowboy who’d made love to her that afternoon had been briefed on the lonely red-haired gypsy. Instead of love and passion, she saw sympathy.
“I should shoot Eliot,” she said. “I would have preferred to have been the one who told you. Eliot’s too dramatic.”
Tyler sat beside her on the edge of the bed. Like Jenny, he let his hands dangle in his lap and his gaze fix on the open window on the opposite wall. In the hazy, powdery sunlight, the room took on the quality of a dream. “Is he? Then tell me. In your words. I want to hear it from you, anyway.”
“Why?”
“I want to know what you feel, everything you feel.”
She hadn’t expected that. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to center herself, trying to prepare. It was twice as hard now to push him away, but she had years of experience to fall back on. “Well, you know now I had a twin. We were identical. Her name was Becca. Rebecca, actually, but I always called her Becca. It was just the four of us, mom and dad and Becca and me. It was perfect, like one of those old television series where everybody says and does the right thing. It really was. The strangest things have stayed with me about that time in my life. Not the big, important things, either. Becca practicing the flute. My dad squirting us with the hose when he washed the car. And every night when we went to bed, my mom would tell us stories that starred Becca and me, and they were always cliffhangers, so we couldn’t wait to go to bed the next night and see what we were going to do next. Do you know what I mean?”
Tyler’s throat hurt from the force of his emotions. “I know,” he managed, trying to keep the sadness out of his voice. She wouldn’t appreciate that. In another situation he might have envied her picture-perfect childhood, a far cry from the friction and hostility of his own childhood. But not now, not when he knew how brutally it had all ended for her. “Eliot said your father was a builder, a contractor?”
A whisper of a smile curved her lips. “He called it ‘putting bumps on the horizon.’ Sometimes on Sunday we’d all go for a ride and he’d point out all the houses he’d built over the years. He said it was his heritage, that when I was a mother and had kids of my own, I could drive past those beautiful houses and say, ‘Your grandpa built that.’” Then, once again she took him by surprise. She turned her head, meeting his gaze squarely. She spoke quickly, as if afraid she might falter or, worse still, crumble right there before his eyes. “When I was twelve years old, mom and dad and Becca were killed in a plane crash. They were going to Washington so she could play her flute in a nationwide competition. I had chicken pox, so I couldn’t go.”
Tyler shook his head, a muscle working in his jaw. “That’s too much,” he whispered. “Too much loss.”
She didn’t appear to have heard him. “You know what I regret? I was so angry at them for leaving me. Anger and tears, that’s how I said goodbye.”
“You didn’t know.”
Jenny shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. I didn’t have any family left to speak of. Eliot was a family friend and he’d been named as guardian. The poor guy has been tearing his hair out over me ever since. Not only does he have to keep track of me, but also of my money. I had a huge settlement from the airline.” She forced a brittle smile. “Does that match his version? Probably not. Eliot has a hard time separating his emotions from his work. He tried to be a trial lawyer, but his genuine goodness kept getting in the way. You know, I keep getting the feeling I should have arranged weeping violins for this story.”
“Stop it,” Tyler said flatly.
She raised her eyebrows. “Stop what?”
“You’re acting like all this is casual. Easy. You don’t have to pretend for me. You can say what you feel.”
“I am saying what I feel,” Jenny told him. “It’s been a long time, more than ten years. Believe me, I’ve had time to get adjusted. We’re all crucified in one way or another, Tyler. None of us gets through life unscathed. I found ways to cope. Maybe I have some trouble connecting to other people, putting down roots, but that’s just the way I am now. That’s how I got through it all, that’s how I keep getting through it all. I just keep moving on. Heart and soul, I just keep moving. Was your childhood perfect?”
“No.” But it wasn’t impossible. Hers had been impossible. And the only thing he could think of to say was, “I care about you, Jenny. I care so much…”
She flinched as if he had struck her. “You’ve only known me a few days.”
Softly he said, “Sweetheart, all I needed was a few minutes.”
Damn, she was starting to cry. “Don’t. I’m not going to complicate things. I can’t…I can’t, Tyler.”
“I’d never hurt you, Jenny.”
Her eyes flashed with tearful intensity. “You can’t promise me that. No one can. When we care about someone, we run the risk of losing them and being hurt. I can’t lose anything more, Tyler. I can’t hurt anymore. I wouldn’t survive it.”
“You still have a future, Jenny.” Tyler forced the words through his desert-dry throat. “Your family would want you to find happiness—”
“Maybe I don’t want happiness! How could I? They’re gone, Tyler. Do you want me to just forget that? They deserve more than that. No one can take their place. Not you, not anyone.”
“I’m sorry, Jenny.” It was his cue, Tyler thought dully, to be sensitive. Instinctively he knew she wouldn’t welcome his touch right now, so he decided to give her the only thing he could. His absence. He forced himself to stand, moving to the door in thick slow motion. “Eliot’s checking into the Cotton Tree tonight. He said he had jet lag. He’ll be over to see you first thing in the morning. Right now you ought to get some rest. I’ll check on you later. And, Jenny?”
“What?”
He looked at her over his shoulder. She fell into his eyes, those crystal-blue eyes that hinted at strength and humor and so much life. “I want to be a part of your life,” he said. “I’m not going to give up. You’re going to have to find a way to cope with that.”
Before she could respond, Tyler closed the door between them.
Nine
The house settled into a strange, rather fragile quiet. Obviously Rosie had taken the boys home, or the walls would still have been shaking. Apparently Eliot had gone to the infamous Cotton Tree, and Jenny hadn’t seen hide nor hair of T
yler since he’d brought her dinner—chicken noodle soup and toast. “Not homemade,” he told her, “but just pretend. Chicken soup is good for the soul.” He gave her a brief, sexless kiss on her brow. “Sweet dreams, Jenny.”
And that had been that.
The old restless spirits had taken hold of Jenny again. She limped around the room, sat at the window seat, got into bed then limped around the room again. She was tired in so many ways. Her body felt achingly weary, still warm, soft and sensitive from Tyler’s lovemaking. Her mind was taut, fragile, buzzing, weary. Still she couldn’t sleep.
She picked up the dog-eared copy of American Cowboy, reading the article about Tyler three times. One paragraph in particular caught her fancy:
More than one jaw has hit the ground in amazement at this man’s incredible talent. His work ethic is uncompromising—he’s eaten more dirt than anyone else and then some. Be it saddle bronc, bareback or bull riding, Cook shows more determination to win than cowboys who have devoted their entire careers to just one of the rough stock events. This guy has shown the rodeo world that he means business.
I’m in big trouble, Jenny thought.
The last time Tyler had looked at the digital clock on his bedside table, it read 2:00 a.m. He hadn’t slept a wink yet, and didn’t really plan on sleeping anytime in the immediate future. There was too much going on in his mind, too many conflicting emotions. He continually restrained himself from going to Jenny’s room and checking on her. It wasn’t so much her health he feared for any longer. It was his health. What would he do, how would he feel if he went across the hall and found her bed empty?
And so he lay stretched out on his bed, clad only in low-slung boxers, arms hooked behind his head. What was he feeling? Frustration that someone he loved had been stripped of all her security at such a tender age. Anger—oh, there was definitely anger, but he didn’t know who inspired it or what to do with it. He also knew fear, fear that her scars ran too deep to allow him to become necessary to her. And, oddly enough, apprehension about his next move. What was in Jenny’s best interest here? Clearly she wasn’t prepared for a life like his. So many things had been decided about his life a long time ago. He had his job, his sister, the twins and Ella to look after. Without him, Justin and Jamie had no father figure, and Rosie had no one to fall back on. Tyler was well and truly a permanent fixture in Bridal Veil Falls whether he liked it or not. Jenny was as much a product of her childhood as he was, with the opposite results. Where he had finally become a stickler for responsibility, she had become an ardent fan of perpetual freedom. From what Dearbourne said, she had always held back from taking happiness as her due. She felt she wasn’t entitled to it, as if it somehow betrayed her lost family. Any way Tyler looked at it, it would be a major undertaking for her to rearrange the entire course of her life. After discovering all she had endured, he knew why she would be reluctant to even try. We’re all crucified one way or another, Tyler. None of us gets through life unscathed.
Still, the door they had opened that afternoon hadn’t closed for him. Every emotion he had felt then, he felt now. Even his body seemed to be remembering, his skin prickling and hot as though he had stayed in the sun too long. He’d never felt so alone.
It had been five hours since he last saw her. He missed her.
Then, as if his thoughts had conjured her up, he saw her in the doorway. She was framed in shadows, covered from head to toe in Rosie’s pink nightgown. Her eyes were round and unblinking, her hair loosely braided down her back. In her hands she carried the little stuffed sheep-wolf. She looked like a character from Little Women.
“What are you doing?” he whispered hoarsely.
She put her finger to her lips, shaking her head. “Don’t ask, Tyler. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He sat up, his heart kicking into double-time. Limping only slightly, she crossed the room toward him, holding the stuffed animal against her chest like a security blanket. It actually occurred to Tyler that he had fallen asleep finally and this was his reward—a wonderful dream. That was fine with him. He’d take Jenny Maria Kyle any way he could get her, dreaming or awake. “I don’t know what to do, either,” he said. “Jenny, I’m lost.”
“That’s all right. Tonight at least we’ll be lost together.” She looked down at her stuffed animal, then handed it to Tyler with a strange little smile. “Hold him, please. I didn’t mean to bring him along…I was cuddling up with him for comfort when I decided I had to see you.”
Head spinning, Tyler automatically took the toy. “Had to see me? Why?”
In one fluid motion Jenny pulled an enormous amount of pink flannel up and over her head. She wore nothing beneath but a few fading bruises. The hazy light of a full moon slanted in the room, casting an ethereal glow on her copper hair and luminous skin. If she was self-conscious, she gave absolutely no sign of it.
“I love you, too,” she said. And if Tyler hadn’t known better, he would have sworn there was as much sorrow as there was sensuality in her soft brown eyes.
His heart slammed into his ribs. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Then come and get lost with me.”
They came together hotly, rolling like children on the bed, giving openmouthed, scattered kisses wherever their lips could reach. There was an urgency about tonight, as if they both expected the real world to come tapping them on the shoulder with the news: “Time’s up. Back to your lives you go.”
Skin against skin, they yearned together, legs kicking at the sheets and arms tangling around one another. His hands were everywhere, on her face, in her hair, on her breasts, lower. She pulled his head blindly downward until his mouth was on her nipple, working dark magic. She was lost in sensations, discovering that everything they’d felt that afternoon had only grown hotter, stronger, better. There was no hesitation tonight. No questions asked or answered. He kissed her eyelashes, her neck, the sides of her temples. He touched her with hands and lips wherever he could.
Jenny was mindless and shivering almost from the first moment of feeling her naked skin against his. This was what she wanted, a moment out of time to forget. One more chance to know what it felt like to be held and loved unconditionally. She gave Tyler back equal measure, feeling no shame or embarrassment as she explored his body with her mouth and fingers. Her experiences with men were limited to an ill-advised, quietly disappointing night while in college. It was curiosity more than anything, but she discovered she preferred abstinence to disappointment.
But Tyler Cook was different. He seemed to know her soul as intimately as he was coming to know her body. He knew her sensitive spots, knew what things made her wild and what things made her desperate for relief. Floating in a square of moonlight on the bed, she memorized his image above her—the bright, love-hazed eyes, the shimmer of passion on his hard muscles, silky dark hair tangled and damp. Roses in winter, she thought, memorizing.
He made short work of his boxers with an endearing lack of grace. There was no clothing to separate them, no doubts. They both wanted this as badly as they wanted their next breath. Or perhaps even more. Tyler’s body was incredibly beautiful to Jenny—the shadowed hollows that defined his muscles, the fire and steel that came beneath. Painfully vivid sensations doubled and redoubled in her body, bringing her even higher.
Tyler’s fingers splayed over her breasts as he slowly positioned himself within the cradle of her hips. He saw the wild desire in her eyes and heard her gasping his name over and over. His name…hearing it on her wet, swollen lips made him feel more loved than he had ever been in his life. Then her eyes fluttered closed and she gasped as he pressed himself intimately against her. “I want you to look at me,” he told her in a ragged voice. “Look at me now, Jenny.”
Through a haze of desire, Jenny barely heard the words. She forced herself to focus on him, to cling to the wild blue eyes above her. She was caught there, suspended in the emotion she saw. She couldn’t have looked away if her life depended on it. The nerves beneath her skin felt as
if they were rapidly beginning to fray, while at the same time, the unrelenting need of her body kept urging her on, steadily climbing higher. More pain, more comfort, more tension, more pleasure…she wanted and felt it all in a cacophony of physical sensations. Her body and her mind were both entranced.
Above her, Tyler’s light-filled eyes darkened to the color of the ocean after a storm. Perspiration shimmered over his hard cheekbones. Jenny was possessed by the weight and strength and scent of this man. At some point, they had ceased to be individuals. They were one, looking for the same answers, the same relief. They were moving in rhythmic unison, moaning and writhing on the bed in a seizure of intimate need. Jenny’s fingers dug into his shoulders, her lifeline as she stood on the edge of an exquisite precipice. She was spiraling out of control, first toward a sky of blazing fireworks, then swirling into a maelstrom of sweet release. And through the midst of it all, she held fiercely to his eyes, knowing, for this moment at least, she wasn’t alone.
Thank you, she thought. Thank you.
In his not-so-long-ago glory days, Tyler Cook had faced down half-crazed Brahma bulls, seriously disturbed mustangs and man-hungry rodeo queens with big hair and itchy ring fingers. Through it all, he’d never once experienced even the slightest case of the jitters.
Those days were over. Right now he was absolutely terrified.
The problem was, he’d woken up alone. He hadn’t been aware of Jenny leaving him in the night, which troubled him even more. Had she deliberately sneaked out? Had she left the house, as well as his bed? Though she had surrendered to her need for him last night, he couldn’t shake the feeling that his hold on her was fragile. Possibly because he knew in his heart it was. Even in the deep, sweet recesses of passion, he knew she was holding something back.
He found jeans and scrambled into them as he crossed the room, hopping first on one leg and then the other. From his doorway he could see the clown room. The bed was made. No Jenny.