The Forgotten Cowboy

by Kara Lennox

“We don’t have to wait,” she countered. If they waited, by tomorrow her sensible self might return and nix the whole thing. She simply couldn’t bear that thought.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded, her eyes inexplicably moistening. Then she kissed him, pouring her heart and soul into the kiss. She felt like she’d known him forever. She’d always pooh-poohed the notion of soul mates, her scientific mind rejecting a notion that couldn’t be measured or proven. But if soul mates existed, she suspected she had found hers.

  She didn’t need to know his name. She didn’t need to recognize his face. She knew this man on a deeper, elemental level.

  Still locked in a kiss, Hank scooped her up in his arms and carried her out of the kitchen. She thought they were going to the bedroom, but they didn’t make it that far. He stopped near the sofa and set her down.

  Her dress was already half falling off. She shrugged out of it, and it pooled at her feet. She noticed, in a detached sort of way, how odd it was to be standing in a man’s apartment in nothing but her underthings. But she wasn’t embarrassed. The strangeness of it felt stimulating.

  She shivered.

  “Are you cold?”

  Cold was the furthest thing from her mind. “No. Don’t stop.”

  He nuzzled her neck as he unhooked her bra, struggling briefly with the fastener. She was glad he hadn’t just flicked it open one-handed. She liked to think that he hadn’t unfastened hundreds of girls’ bras before her. Of course, he would have more experience than her. Everyone did. Still, she wanted their lovemaking to be novel for him, as well as her.

  Her bra landed on the floor. Then everything below her waist—slip, stockings, panties—were whisked down her legs. He pushed her onto the sofa so he could pull off her shoes, too. And she was gloriously naked with only her long hair to cover her, like Lady Godiva.

  Not that she wanted to cover herself. Hank’s frank visual perusal of her body was like turning the heat up on the stove. He yanked his shirt the rest of the way off. Belt, pants, boxers, shoes, all dispensed with just as efficiently as he’d gotten rid of her clothes.

  Oh, he was beautiful. Tan all over except around his hips. Just a little bit of blond, curly hair on his chest forming a rough diamond between his flat, brown nipples. And a scar near the center of his chest, still red and puckered.

  Then she looked lower, at the evidence of his arousal, and she was glad she was sitting down because she really did feel faint. She wanted to touch him, to see how really hard he was, to feel him pulsing with desire. She settled for holding out her hand to him, beckoning him to lie with her on the sofa.

  “I have to get something first.” He surprised her by turning and walking away. For the second time that evening she watched his butt as he exited the living room. Only this time it was a naked butt, and all she could do was sigh. In a few moments, those buns of steel would be hers, all hers. She quivered again.

  He returned mere seconds later and set something on the floor by the sofa. Willow realized he’d gotten protection and felt even better about him. She hadn’t even thought of birth control, ample evidence of just how far gone she was. Completely insane.

  She still didn’t care.

  The sofa was big and wide, so there was plenty of room for them to lie side by side. Hank kissed her some more as he stroked and kneaded her breasts, pausing every now and then to kiss her nipples, teasing them to hard peaks with his clever tongue. The stimulation was almost too much for her. She made strange sounds in her throat as he stroked her belly and then the dark curls of her mound. Her entire concentration became focused on those few square inches of her body as, with each stroke, he grew bolder, inching closer to those once forbidden areas. Each time he dipped a finger to caress the soft folds between her legs, she gasped. And then he was gently probing, exploring, as tension built inside her. It felt as if she were breathing in gallons and gallons of air and forgetting to exhale.

  All it took was one innocent brush against the ultra-sensitive nub of her sex, and she exploded. Wave after wave of ecstasy poured over her, shimmering outward in golden ripples. She grabbed a pillow from the sofa and pressed it over her own face to stifle the screams, so his landlords wouldn’t come running in the mistaken belief she was being killed.

  Only she was dying, in a sense. Petite morte, that was what the French called a sexual climax. Little death. She’d learned that in some literature class, but it only now made sense.

  Hank slid his hands underneath her shoulders and hugged her to him, grinning with obvious delight.

  “Proud of yourself, are you?” she said when she could again form words. “That was a bit sudden. I would have waited for you, you know.”

  “Simultaneous climax is overrated. Maybe even a myth. I prefer going one at a time. That way I can enjoy yours, as well as mine.”

  She threw one leg over his, bringing his arousal into close contact with her. “Then let’s move on to yours.” She spoke the words boldly, but she was still a little apprehensive.

  He kissed her, a sweet, soft kiss, then reached for the packet on the floor. In moments, he’d sheathed himself.

  He coaxed her legs open, not rushing, ever patient. Perhaps he could sense her slight tension. But soon his languid strokes to her thighs and belly relaxed her. And when he moved atop her, she didn’t even blink when he slid inside her, smooth as silk.

  No pain. Not even slight discomfort. Just the exquisite sensation of fullness, of completion.

  Then he began to move, and it wasn’t complete at all. It was just starting and it got even better. With each stroke, she felt him more deeply.

  She opened her eyes, longing to see his face, to know what he was thinking and feeling. But the subtle expressions of his face remained a mystery to her. She could see that his eyes were closed, his brow slightly wrinkled, his mouth firm. She tried to put it all together, but she still couldn’t figure it out.

  So she focused on her own feelings. Pressure was building as it had before, and she wondered if it was possible for her to climax again.

  She’d barely acknowledged the thought when Hank’s strokes became faster, stronger, and she was gasping for breath herself, and all the sudden it did happen again, perhaps not as explosively as the first time but unmistakable anyway. Only this time he joined her, releasing one sharp cry as he released the tension that had built.

  When it was all over, they lay together, still as death, for several minutes.

  Finally, Willow found her voice. “What were you saying about simultaneous—”

  “All right, all right, maybe I was mistaken.”

  “That was no myth. And I can’t believe it’s overrated.”

  He smiled and withdrew from her. She missed him already. She was already wondering when they could do this again. Oh, she was bad.

  She adjusted her position slightly as Hank moved to lie beside her.

  “So it was okay?” he asked.

  “You don’t need to fish for compliments. Of course it was okay. It was fantastic.” She caressed his jaw and kissed him gently.

  “Well, you can’t blame me for being a little worried. I mean, after the last time…” His voice trailed off.

  “The last time what?”

  “You know. I was so stupid and clumsy back then. I might have been a little older than you, but I didn’t have any more experience than you did, and you weren’t ready. I know that now.”

  Willow tried to swallow, her mouth suddenly dry. He couldn’t mean what it sounded like he meant. Was he…was he some guy from college who’d made an unsuccessful pass at her? Yes, that could be it. That had to be it.

  His next words, though, were a cold dose of reality.

  “I was afraid,” he continued. “I just knew you’d go off to California and fall in love with some surfer boy and I’d never see you again. I wanted to be your first. I thought if you—if we made love, we’d be closer.”

  Willow felt a scream of panic building inside her. She tamped it down. How c
ould it be? How could this man be Cal Chandler? She would recognize Cal, of all people. She knew his face as well as her own.

  But there was the problem, right? She didn’t know her own face.

  “Willow, you’re not saying anything.”

  She tried not to let the panic overtake her. She scrambled off the sofa, away from him, snatching up her clothes and fleeing to the bathroom without a word.

  Chapter Four

  “You idiot,” Cal muttered as he searched for his own clothes. He couldn’t leave well enough alone. He’d just had to bring up the past, to remind her of the single most devastating event in her life.

  Still, he didn’t understand the panic he’d seen in Willow’s eyes as she’d bolted from his arms. It was as if he’d just reminded her of something she’d totally forgotten. But he knew she couldn’t have forgotten. No woman could possibly forget losing her virginity in such spectacular fashion.

  He gave her no more than a couple of minutes to collect herself. Then he walked down the hall to the bathroom and stood in front of the closed door. “Willow, are you okay?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Okay, but I should warn you about what’s in the bathtub.”

  Willow shrieked and the door flew open instantaneously. “Why are you keeping a snake in your bathtub?” she demanded.

  “I ran over its tail in the driveway by accident. I couldn’t just let it lie there and die.”

  She shook her head and flounced past him. She was fully dressed now, he noticed, except for her shoes.

  He tucked his shirttails in and followed her. “I’m sorry I brought up the past. I thought maybe after all these years it wouldn’t upset you anymore.”

  She stopped suddenly and whirled around, and he almost collided with him. “You think that’s why I’m upset?”

  “I don’t know what else it would be.” He really didn’t.

  “You and Nana cooked up this whole scheme, I bet. First you took the red flower out of your jacket so I wouldn’t know it was you.”

  “What?”

  “Then she made sure she was gone when I came out to meet you so I’d still be in the dark. You thought if I had my defenses down I’d…I’d do just exactly what I did. Oh, my God!”

  Cal wasn’t following any of this. “Willow, please—”

  “Don’t you ‘Willow, please’ me.” She turned again, marched into the living room, and found her shoes and her purse.

  “Just tell me why you’re mad.”

  She shoved her feet into the sandals, not bothering to buckle them. “You don’t think I have a right to be mad when I just had sex with someone I’ve been thinking of as ‘Hank’ all night long?”

  “What?” he said yet again. This was either the worst nightmare of his life, or he’d dropped into The Twilight Zone.

  “Yeah, Hank. You never talked about the past, so I had no hope of catching on. You even disguised your voice.”

  “What’s my voice got to do with anything? I spent a week with tubes down my throat. My vocal cords were damaged.”

  That stopped her.

  “Willow, are you trying to tell me you didn’t know who I was?”

  She closed her eyes, as if in pain. “Just take me home, please.”

  “Not until you answer my question.” It didn’t seem possible that she wouldn’t know him. Granted, they hadn’t seen much of each other over the past five years, but he hadn’t changed much. He’d grown an inch or two, filled out some, but she’d had no trouble recognizing him last year when they’d run into each other at the Chatsworths’ fish fry.

  Then something awful occurred to him. “Is something wrong with your vision? Your accident—”

  “I can see fine.”

  “Then what?”

  “You honestly don’t know? Nana didn’t tell you?”

  “She didn’t tell me anything.”

  “If you take me home, I’ll tell you on the way.”

  OUTWARDLY, WILLOW had calmed down a bit by the time she climbed into Cal’s truck. Inwardly she still trembled with disbelief and outrage.

  She’d made love with Cal, her enemy for life, the person who would be at the very bottom of her list of men she wanted to have sex with.

  And she’d loved every minute of it. That was the weird part.

  So she told him about her head injury. And she told him again, when he didn’t quite get it the first time.

  “You’re telling me you really didn’t have any idea I was me?” he asked for the third time.

  “No idea.”

  “But how could you—”

  “I don’t know. You dropped enough clues. All the animals, the fact you work at the Hardison Ranch, your fondness for Nana’s cookies. But I’d ruled you out. See, at the wedding you wore that red flower in your buttonhole all night. And the man I’d danced with didn’t have a flower.”

  “Sherry Hardison took it, right before I asked you to dance.”

  Well, that explained that, she supposed. “How come you never talked about the past?” she wanted to know. “Not a single trip down memory lane the whole night.”

  “I didn’t want to bring up any painful memories. I wanted to focus on the future. I thought you’d finally forgiven me and we were having a fresh start.”

  She had nothing to say to that. She wanted to forgive him. She wanted to be the kind of person who could forgive past transgressions. But she couldn’t get past what had happened five years ago. Even now, she was still suffering from the repercussions of that hot summer evening when, thinking they would have the house to themselves for hours, they’d done what they’d been talking about doing for months.

  Before “the incident,” she’d been slated to attend Stanford University, and her parents were going to foot the whole bill. But that offer had been jerked away. Five years ago, they’d told her that a girl who could throw all her parents’ wise counsel and advice out the window and betray their trust in their own home could damn well work her way through college. They’d never wavered an inch from their earlier decision.

  It had taken her five years to work her way through college—first junior college, then a state university. Because she’d been working three jobs, her grades had not been the best. She’d had to give up visions of Harvard Medical School. A dozen less prestigious schools had rejected her. It was a minor miracle she’d been accepted at UT Southwestern.

  Her relationship with her parents was still strained.

  “Well, I can’t change the past,” Cal said with a fatalistic sigh. “If it’s not in you to forgive, or to at least try to understand my side of things, then we have nothing left to talk about.”

  Willow realized he’d pulled up in front of Nana’s house. A few minutes earlier, she’d been so eager to escape Cal she would have clawed her way out through the wall of his apartment. Now she felt an odd reluctance to leave.

  “Thank you for dinner and the cruise and…” Her face burned. “Well, for everything.”

  He made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat, and he wouldn’t look at her. “Maybe you better just go.”

  She did. She felt she should have said something else. It didn’t feel right now, just walking away. Maybe she should have listened to what he had to say in his own defense.

  But then she hardened her heart. He had no idea the hell she’d gone through to get to the brink of a medical career. How could she possibly forgive him?

  She heard his old truck chug away as she stuck her key in the front-door lock.

  WILLOW HARDLY SLEPT at all. She lay on her girlish twin bed and relived every moment—all that she could remember, anyway—of what would have been the best date of her life, if she could just lop off the last few minutes. She managed to finally drift off, then ended up sleeping late into the morning.

  When she awoke at almost ten, she immediately felt a heavy sense of dread settle around her heart. She didn’t want to confront Nana, who’d already been in bed asleep when Willow had arrived home from her date
.

  Really, how could her grandmother do something like that to her? Sending her off, blissfully ignorant, on a date with Cal Chandler. It was unconscionable. Willow loved her grandmother, and she knew Nana had good intentions. But she’d completely crossed the line this time. Willow needed to let Nana know the consequences of her meddling.

  However, the house was quiet and the kitchen dark when Willow came downstairs. There was a note on the refrigerator: Had some errands to run. Errands, right. Nana was avoiding Willow. P.S. Don’t forget lunch at Miracle Café.

  With a gasp, Willow grabbed the notebook she kept on a cord around her neck. She wrote down everything and consulted it frequently—it was the only way she could function with her short-circuited memory. She flipped frantically through the pages. Oh, shoot, there it was. Lunch with Mom and Dad, noon Monday, Miracle Café.

  Willow groaned. Though her parents both had hovered near her bedside when she was in critical condition after the accident, she hadn’t seen them at all since coming home from the hospital. They’d all agreed that since they both worked full-time, Willow should recuperate at Nana’s. It hadn’t occurred to either one of them to take off a few days from work to take care of their daughter who’d almost died.

  They just weren’t the nurturing, warm-and-fuzzy type. Willow had long ago realized and accepted that. But they’d given her many other things for which she was grateful, she reminded herself. She’d inherited a keen intellect from both of them. They both had advanced degrees from prestigious institutions. She’d also learned her work ethic from them. Idle hands hadn’t been allowed in her parents’ house. They’d encouraged her to be the best she could and not to settle for mediocrity.

  Unfortunately, along with the encouragement came a lot of criticism. They’d been especially tough on her ever since “the incident.” It was as if they’d completely lost their trust in her and now expected her to make stupid decisions.

  She could just imagine what they would say if they knew about her date with Cal. But Nana wouldn’t breathe a word. Her grandmother was the soul of discretion and far more open-minded than Willow’s parents.