Dalton's Undoing

by RaeAnne Thayne

  "How's the head?" he asked, his voice a low, seductive whisper in the dimly lit room.

  As if she could concentrate on anything but him! She closed her eyes for a moment to gauge her pain level then opened to meet his gaze. "Better, I think. Still a bit sore but I'm sure I'll survive. I can tell you with a fairly high degree of certainty that I won't be in a big hurry to go sledding again anytime soon."

  He smiled and she felt that same exhilarating, pulse-pounding, toe-curling sensation she'd experienced on the mountain just before she hit that boulder and ruined the ride.

  She pulled herself to a sitting position, ignoring the dozens of little elves hammering wildly in her brain. "Has your brother been back?"

  "No. He said he'd be here about six and it's only quarter to. You were only asleep for forty-five minutes or so."

  "I really think I'm fine to leave now. I just want to go home. I'm sure my father and children are worried about me and I've imposed enough on you and your family."

  He closed his magazine and set it on the table beside him, giving her a stern look as he did. "You have any older brothers?"

  "No. I'm an only child."

  "Ah. Then you have no idea the emotional and psychological torment I would endure if I dared ignore my brother's strict instructions and took you home before he had the chance to take a look at your head again. I'm on strict orders here."

  "Do you always do what your older brothers tell you?" she asked.

  He gave a snort of laughter. "Hardly ever. Just ask them."

  His levity vanished as abruptly as it appeared. "But in this case, I'm not going to take any chances. If Jake thinks you should rest until he checks you out again, that's exactly what you're going to do."

  "All this fuss for nothing."

  "Nothing? You have no idea how awful it was watching you tumble through the air and hit the ground so hard. I've been having flashbacks about it all evening."

  She winced. "It was probably quite a sight, wasn't it?"

  "I'd give you an eight for form and a ten for creativity. I'm afraid your bumpy landing knocked down your overall score."

  She smiled at his teasing. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised this happened to me. I faced the painful truth a long time ago. I'm hopelessly uncoordinated. I would have been valedictorian of my class except I never learned to serve a lousy volleyball and couldn't manage to bring my sophomore P.E. grade up past a B."

  His laughter rang through the room.

  "I'm serious. It's not funny. You have no idea how traumatic it can be for a fourteen-year-old girl who can't shoot a basketball or catch a baseball to save her life."

  "I understand. Believe me. You're talking to the kid who was always chosen last for dodgeball teams—and always the first one out."

  She studied his athletic build, his broad shoulders and muscled chest and pure masculinity. "Okay, now you're out-and-out lying."

  "Ask my brothers! I was small for my age and had asthma. Nobody wanted a shrimp who couldn't breathe on their team."

  "You're not a shrimp."

  He shrugged. "I hit a growth spurt when I was about Cole's age. Before then I was scrawny."

  "Let me guess," she said, with a considering look. "You also started lifting weights around that same time."

  "I didn't need to. When you work on a cattle ranch, every day is a workout. Once my asthma was mostly under control, I could do more around the ranch. It's amazing how much a kid can bulk up hauling hay and herding cattle."

  She tried to picture him a scrawny, sickly boy suddenly getting taller and bulkier. With those chiseled features and those intense blue eyes that seemed to see right into a woman's deepest desires, he had no doubt always been gorgeous. She imagined when he started to putting on muscle and height, every girl in the county probably sat up and took notice of the youngest Dalton brother.

  And they'd been noticing him ever since.

  She tilted her head to study him, wondering how much of that late development—coupled with his health issues as a child—had affected his psyche.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked.

  She would have liked to be the kind of woman who could instantly sling back some sort of witty repartee. She wanted to be quick and funny and self-assured.

  With him gazing at her out of those impossibly blue eyes, with a smile hovering around that sinful mouth, with the lingering scent of leather and pine clinging to him, she couldn't seem to think of anything to say but the truth.

  "I was just wondering if that was around the time you discovered you were irresistible to women."

  As soon as the words escaped her mouth, she wanted to call them back—or at least pound her head against the coffee table three or four times at her own stupidity.

  "Irresistible?" He gave a disbelieving laugh. "Not even close. You, for one, seem to be doing an excellent job of resisting me."

  "Am I?"

  An arrested look flickered across his features and the room suddenly thickened with tension. Her pulse seemed abnormally loud in her ear and every sense seemed exaggerated. As he continued to gaze at her, she became aware of a hundred different sensations she'd barely noticed before—the slick, cool leather of the couch, the nubby blanket he'd thrown over her, the shadows dancing on the wall from the fire's glow.

  She was especially aware of Seth, of his hands strong and square-tipped and masculine, of the slight evening shadow along the curve of his jaw, of the sudden intense light in his eyes.

  He seemed big and dangerous and ferociously attractive to her and she wanted to tell him she wasn't anywhere close to resisting him.

  She couldn't say the words but he seemed to sense them anyway. "This is a mistake," he murmured.

  "What is?" she asked, wondering why her lungs couldn't seem to hold a breath.

  Before the two words were even out, he gave a low kind of groan that sounded as if he'd lost some kind of internal struggle, then he leaned forward and kissed her.

  Oh, he was good at this, she thought as his warm mouth slid gently over hers. Any attempt at overt seduction, an intense or passionate embrace, probably would have sent her spiraling into panic and she would have pulled away.

  But his kiss was slow, soft as the purest of silk and incredibly erotic. He touched her with nothing but his mouth, but she still felt surrounded by him, consumed by him.

  She should stop this, she thought, for her sanity's sake, if nothing else. But his mouth was so warm and tasted of cinnamon and apples and she felt as if she'd been standing out in the cold forever.

  How could he think for an instant she had the capacity to resist him? she wondered. With a sigh of surrender that somehow didn't seem at all like defeat, she returned the kiss, splaying one hand across the soft material of his shirt and winding the other around his neck to tangle her fingers in his thick hair.

  He was right about this being a bad idea. She knew it, had done nothing but warn herself of the dangers since the day she met him, but she resolved to worry about that later.

  She suddenly thought of her assistant Marcy's theory she'd shared with Ashley that day in the office—The Seth Dalton School of Broncbusting. Just climb on and hold on tight. It probably won't last too long, but it will be a hell of a ride.

  For now, she would just savor the wild punch of adrenaline, she decided, and enjoy the moment.

  * * *

  Calling this a mistake was a bit like calling the Tetons outside his window a couple of pleasant little hills.

  Seth tried to catch his breath, wondering how the hell a simple kiss had so quickly twisted out of his control. He'd only meant to steal one small taste of her, just enough so he wouldn't have to wonder anymore. But the moment his mouth met hers, he felt as if he was the one tumbling head over heels down the mountain out there, as if no matter how he tried he couldn't manage to find his footing in the slippery snow.

  He supposed in the back of his mind, he'd thought perhaps they could just share a quick kiss and that would be the end
of it. One kiss probably wouldn't have sated his curiosity, but at least it might have been temporarily appeased.

  But she had been so soft, so warm and welcoming, and she had given just the tiniest of sighs when he kissed her, and shivered against his mouth.

  How could a man resist that?

  When she returned his kiss and pulled him closer, he had to use every ounce of strength to keep from pressing her back against the sofa cushions and devouring her. The only way he held himself back was remembering she'd just suffered a head injury and was in no condition for anything more strenuous than a kiss.

  When he felt his control fray, he forced himself to pull away, feeling as breathless and lightheaded as he had when he climbed the Grand out there.

  In the fire's flickering glow, she looked soft and lovely, like something in one of those watercolors hanging in the Jackson art galleries.

  "Have dinner with me tomorrow," he said on impulse. "I know this great place in Idaho Falls."

  She gazed at him for several seconds, then she seemed to close up like his mom's flowers at the end of day. She shuttered away all the soft sweetness of her kiss as if it had never been.

  "No."

  He raised an eyebrow. "Just like that?"

  "What else do you need? I know it's probably not a word you're well acquainted with, but I won't have dinner with you. Thank you for asking, though."

  He shouldn't have been surprised by the rejection, but after her response to his kiss, he had hoped perhaps she might have changed her mind about him. Obviously, one kiss was not enough to do the trick.

  Perhaps he also should have expected the bitter disappointment, but all this seemed uncomfortably foreign.

  The silence stretched between them, awkward and uneasy, until finally he spoke, doing his best to keep his voice cool and unaffected.

  "Is that a no because you genuinely don't want to, or a no for some other reason?"

  She pulled the blanket around her more tightly. "Does it matter?"

  "Yeah." More than it should, he admitted to himself. "Humor me. I'd like to know."

  She let out a breath. "All right. I'm attracted to you, Seth. I would be lying if I said otherwise."

  He frowned. "And yet you say that like it's a bad thing."

  "It is a bad thing, at least from my perspective. Or if not a bad thing, precisely, at least an impossibility."

  "Why?"

  She seemed suddenly fascinated by the flickering of the flames. "I'm in a precarious position here. Surely you can see that."

  He tried to make sense of what she was talking about but came up empty. "I guess I'm just a big, stupid cowboy," he said. "Why don't you explain it to me?"

  "Pine Gulch is a small town. If we—if I—gave in to that attraction, people would know. They would talk."

  "You're exaggerating a little, don't you think? Who would know or care what you might do in your personal life?"

  She shook her head. "You're either incredibly naive—which I find rather hard to believe—or you're being disingenuous. Of course people will care! I'm in a position of trust and responsibility, charged with educating their children! And you are…"

  Her voice trailed off but not before he felt his defensive hackles rise. Suddenly he felt ten years old again, on the receiving end of one of Hank's more vicious diatribes. "I'm what?"

  She shifted on the couch and refused to meet his gaze. "A favorite topic of conversation around here, for one thing."

  "I can't help what people say about me."

  "Can't you?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  She closed her eyes for a moment but when she opened them, they seemed more determined than ever to push him away. "You're a player. You never date a woman more than a few times and you've left a trail of broken hearts strewn across the county. By all accounts, your conquests are the stuff of legend and frankly, I'm not interested in becoming one of them."

  She was even better than Jake and Wade at twisting the knife. He wondered if his guts were spilling all over the carpet from that particular jab because it sure as hell felt like it.

  "I suppose that's clear enough," he said quietly.

  Her eyes darkened and he thought he saw regret there, but he couldn't swear to anything. "I can't afford a complication like this, Seth. Not now. It would be career suicide."

  He forced a laugh he was far from feeling. "A little dramatic, don't you think? I only invited you to dinner, not to have wild monkey sex on the front lawn of the school during recess."

  She flushed but held her ground. "I can't afford it," she repeated. "Surely you can see that. I am perfectly aware that when the school board hired me, some people protested hiring an outsider—and a divorced woman at that. I haven't had time to prove myself yet. If I were to jump into something with you, it will forever define me in the eyes of my faculty and the parents at my school. Those voices who spoke out against hiring me will become a cacophony of protest. I'm trying to build a new life here for me and for my children. I can't risk anything that might threaten that."

  He wanted to argue, to find some way around her refusal, but before he could form the torrent of words in his head into anything coherent, the doorbell rang and an instant later, Jake walked into the room without waiting for him to answer it.

  Lucy woke up with a start and yipped a welcome.

  "Sorry I took a little longer than I'd planned," Jake said, shrugging out of his coat and picking up the puppy. He seemed oblivious to the thick tension in the room, a fact that Seth could only view with gratitude. He was not in the mood for another lecture.

  On the other hand, he wouldn't mind pounding on something right about now and Jake seemed a convenient target. The only downside to that he could see would be facing the wrath of Magdalena Cruz Dalton, who scared him a whole lot more than her husband.

  "Caroline decided she couldn't wait to put her tree up so we were all helping her decorate it and I lost track of time," Jake went on.

  "You didn't need to return at all," Jenny said briskly in that prim schoolmarm voice Seth was finding increasingly adorable. "I'm perfectly fine, I promise, and more than ready to go home."

  Jake studied her carefully and something in her tone or her features had him shifting his gaze back to Seth, his eyes suddenly hard. Seth stared back, hating that his brother could make him feel as though he was sixteen years old again.

  "She slept most of the time and has only been awake for the past fifteen minutes or so." He hadn't meant to sound defensive but he was very afraid that was how his words came out.

  Jake met his gaze for a long moment then turned back to Jenny. "Good. Rest is just what I would prescribe for you. I'm going to recommend taking it easy for the next few days. You're going to feel like you've been hit by a bus at first, but that should only last a day or two."

  "All right. Something to look forward to, then," she said, making Jake smile.

  "Maggie and I will give you a ride home. We're ready to go back into town and can drop you off with no problem."

  Seth started to protest that he wanted to stick to the original plan and be the one to take her home. He would sound ridiculous if he did, he realized, so he opted to keep his mouth shut.

  "Thank you," she said without looking at Seth. She managed to avoid his gaze the entire time Jake helped her into her parka and led her toward the door.

  He thought she might leave without a word but just before she left, she turned around, her eyes shuttered. "Thank you for inviting us today. My children had a wonderful time."

  Her children. Not her.

  "I'm sorry it had to end on a sour note," he said.

  "So am I," she said, her voice low, and they both knew they weren't talking about her tumble down the mountain. "Goodbye."

  He stood on the porch, the icy air cutting through his clothes, as Jake led her down the steps to his waiting Durango. For a long time after their taillights disappeared down the hill, he stood in the cold, watching after them and wondering why
he was the one who felt as though he'd been hit by a bus.

  Chapter Nine

  He hadn't missed her. Not a bit.

  That was what he tried to tell himself, anyway.

  For two weeks, he and Jenny Boyer had successfully managed to avoid each other. Not exactly an easy task in a community as small as Pine Gulch, Idaho.

  Now, as Seth drove Cole home after a Saturday spent in the garage working on the GTO, he wondered if this would be the one time he might catch a glimpse of her—or if she would remain frustratingly elusive.

  He might not have physically seen her since the day they went hunting Christmas trees on the Cold Creek, but she had never been far from his thoughts.

  It was just because she had rejected him, he told himself. She represented the unattainable, the impossible. So naturally, he couldn't focus on anything but her.

  For all that he hadn't been able to stop thinking about her, he wasn't completely sure he was all that eager to see her again, not when he was still nursing his wounds from their last encounter. He tended to veer between anger and hurt at the brutal way she had shoved him away after a kiss that to him had been sweetly magical.

  She was definitely avoiding him—that much was obvious. The handful of times Cole had come out to the Cold Creek to work on the car or the horses, he had taken the school bus out and his grandfather had picked him up.

  She couldn't run from him forever—and she didn't need to. Her message came through loud and clear. He certainly understood rejection when it reached out and slapped him across the face, though that didn't make it any easier to accept.

  Cole wound down his monologue about the work they had done on the GTO when they reached the outskirts of town. "Thanks again for giving me a ride," he said.

  "No problem. I needed to pick up some things at the store in town anyway."

  The only thing in his house was a bottle of Caroline's strawberry jam and a solitary egg and he was out of laundry soap. But he supposed it was safe to admit deep in the recesses of his heart that he'd offered Cole a ride half hoping he might see the boy's mother.