by Cathie Linz
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded.
“On a tour of your property,” he replied.
“I suppose it wouldn’t do me any good to tell you that I don’t want to take a tour of my property with you.”
“I know you’re angry with me at the moment,” he began.
“Try furious!” she interrupted him.
“But I didn’t have any choice. You wouldn’t talk to me at the ranch, so I had to find a way for us to get away. If you hadn’t been so stubborn…”
“Me? You’re the one who could give a mule lessons!” She added a disapproving sniff for good measure.
Dylan’s horse, Traveler, carried them both with good-natured ease, the pace a steady one. Dylan was encouraged by the fact that Abigail hadn’t taken it into her mind to try to escape. But he could practically hear the gears spinning in that mind of hers.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked her.
“You don’t want to know.”
“If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked you.”
“I’m wondering what you hope to gain by this ridiculous action.”
“You’re thinking more than that,” he said.
“Oh, so now you know what I’m thinking better than I do? Talk about the ultimate egotist.”
“You’re not scared, are you?”
“Of course not,” she scoffed.
But he felt the slight tremor that went through her.
“You know I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.”
“Yeah, you and Hoss Redkins both.”
Dylan stiffened. “Redkins and I have nothing in common.”
“You’re both bullies who think they can do whatever they want.”
“You know what I want?” Dylan whispered as he nuzzled the sensitive skin behind her ear.
“This ranch,” she retorted.
“Where did that come from? You think this is about the ranch?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Hell no!”
“Then what is this about?”
“This,” he said right before turning her face toward his to kiss her.
You’d have thought she’d be used to his kisses by now—she thought she’d experienced the full spectrum, from teasing to hot. But once again, Dylan caught her by surprise.
This kiss was unlike the others. It was more. More direct, more passionate, more forceful.
Luckily Traveler was well trained enough to manage navigating on his own while his riders were temporarily distracted.
Abigail had no idea how long Dylan’s mouth remained on hers. Decades could have gone by, and she wouldn’t have known it. All she knew was that her lips were clinging to his with wanton acceptance. His arms were all that was keeping her upright.
When Dylan finally raised his head, he also raised his hand, from her waist to cup her breast. “Your heart is pounding.”
“So is yours,” she whispered. “Holy buffalo chips!”
“That good or bad?”
Dylan was both. He looked soooo good, the red bandanna he wore around his neck merely accenting his Gypsy heritage, evident in his high cheekbones and fiery dark eyes.
“Ah, we’re here,” he said, not waiting for an answer.
Here turned out to be a tiny cabin.
“It’s an old homesteader’s cabin,” Dylan said.
Having belatedly recovered some of her missing composure, she retorted, “Is that meant to make me like it?”
“I thought you liked the history of the West.”
“I do. I don’t like being kidnapped on horseback.”
“No? You’ve had it in two of your books.”
Instead of answering, Abigail focused on dismounting from his horse with as much finesse as possible.
When Dylan had first grabbed her, she’d been ready to murder him. Now she wasn’t so sure. Riding double, sitting in the V of his thighs for two hours, had turned her backbone to mush. He’d kissed every smidge of her strawberry Chap Stick from her lips, and she was getting a sunburn on her nose.
“Okay, you got me up here, now what did you want to talk to me about?” she demanded, complete with an impatient tap of her booted foot.
“What’s the hurry?” Dylan countered, absently rubbing his injured leg. “We’ve got time.”
“I don’t. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m on deadline.”
“You’re ahead of schedule, thanks to all the hours you’ve put in at the keyboard the past few days. Besides, those wrists of yours need a break. You don’t want to get carpal tunnel syndrome, do you?”
“How do you know about carpal tunnel?” she demanded. “Have you been talking to Raj? You have, haven’t you! Was she in on this plan?”
“No way. She’s your friend. She’d never betray your friendship.”
“She’s a friend with a weakness for cowboys,” Abigail retorted. “All you’d have to do is dazzle her with some rodeo talk and smile at her…”
“You think I can dazzle, huh? That’s nice to know.”
“You can be charming when you want to be. Heck, you could probably convince a polar bear to buy ice, but that doesn’t mean anything you say is more than just hot air. And I’m not wild about outhouses, either,” she added with a pointed look at the recognizable structure out back.
“A country girl like you should be used to roughing it now and again. Unless you’ve gotten too citified down in Great Falls?”
“Oh, no, I’m not falling into that trap. You think all you have to do is throw out a challenge and I’ll pick up the gauntlet…What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m taking off my shirt.”
“I can see that. Why are you taking off your shirt? Certainly not for my benefit, I hope.”
“Why, how could taking off my shirt benefit you?” he asked with feigned innocence, undoing another three buttons.
“It couldn’t,” she maintained, swallowing.
“Your tongue is hanging out,” he teased her. “Not that it’s not an adorable tongue,” he added. “Velvet soft and sweeter than wild strawberries.”
She couldn’t get her tongue to work anymore, to form words. It was glued to the roof of her mouth—the part that wasn’t hanging out, that is.
“It is warm out here, isn’t it?” he noted with a smile.
She was just about burning up.
“You ever gone skinny-dipping before?”
“When I was about eight, maybe.”
“Then it’s time you did it again. There’s a river right over there with a pool deep enough to swim in.”
“And freeze your bottom off in.”
Dylan just smiled and shrugged, drawing her attention to his shoulders. He didn’t have an extra ounce of fat on him. In fact, he was so lean he was borderline skinny.
Thinking of him as skinny somehow made her feel better. That is, until he reached for the buckle on his belt and the top metal rivet on his jeans.
“You blushing, or is it that darn sunburn again?” Dylan teased her.
Something in Abigail rebelled. She’d had enough of playing the victim here. It was time she gave Dylan a taste of his own medicine.
“Okay, cowboy, you want to go skinny-dipping? Fine.” Reaching up, she pulled an elastic band from her jeans pocket and redid her hair so that it was piled on top of her head. “We’ll go skinny-dipping. And we’ll see who is blushing.”
Now it was his turn to ask “What are you doing?” as she shifted her attention from her hair to the buttons of her shirt, making short work of them.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she mockingly retorted, throwing his own words back at him…along with her red shirt. “I’m taking off my shirt.”
Beneath it, she wore a cotton chemise that made a tank top look like a suit of armor. Dylan saw that, once he’d unwrapped her shirt from his face. The sleeves had wrapped around his neck like a clinging lover.
“What’s the matter, cowboy?” Abigail taunted him. �
�You can dish it out, but you can’t take it?”
“I can take it just fine,” Dylan maintained, his voice regaining that desperado edge to it—hot and dusty and a little dangerous. A little breathless, too? she wondered.
“I believe the next move is yours,” she told him, folding her arms and tapping her booted foot.
Dylan shook his head in disbelief. “You’re something else, do you know that?”
“Getting cold feet?”
“Honey, there isn’t one inch of me that’s cold. Care to test that claim yourself?”
“Nope.”
He grinned at her laconic reply. “Your loss.”
“Are you going to stand there talking all day or are you going to go skinny-dipping?”
Dylan tugged off his boots, first his right and then his left.
Abigail did the same.
“Ladies first,” Dylan drawled with a nod at her jeans.
Telling herself that she wouldn’t be displaying anything that couldn’t be seen in a two-piece swimsuit, Abigail undid the zipper on her jeans and shimmied them down her hips. She could have sworn she heard Dylan groan.
Looking up through her lashes, she saw the startled expression on his face. So, he hadn’t thought she’d do it. Deciding to make the most of the moment, she took her time removing her jeans, running her hands first down her right leg to remove the denim covering and then her left.
All the while, Dylan was practically eating her up with his eyes.
When the jeans were finally off, she took great pleasure in tossing them right at him.
He caught them one-handed, his eyes remaining glued to her legs.
The briefs she wore were durable white cotton, nothing out of a lingerie catalog. But you wouldn’t know that by the way Dylan was staring at her.
“Cat got your tongue, cowboy?” she inquired.
He licked his lips as if he could practically taste her.
“Not that it isn’t an adorable tongue,” she saucily added, once again tossing his own words back at him.
“Enough,” he growled.
“I don’t think so. You’re still wearing your jeans.”
Two seconds later, they were gone. His underwear was also white, the bulging front placket indicating his fully aroused state.
“Looks like you could use a dip in cold water,” she tossed over her shoulder before darting past him to get into the river.
“Cute, very cute,” he said.
“Yes, you are,” she retorted, using the palm of her hand to splash water at him as he stood on the riverbank.
“You’re asking for it,” he warned her.
“Absolutely not. I’m merely trying to make the best of a…rank situation.”
“Rank, huh? Saddle-bronc riders really look forward to rank rides, you know. Have you been brushing up on your rodeo terms? You’ve got try, I’ll give you that.”
A rank ride was one with plenty of fireworks, and try was guts and determination. “So do you,” she returned, trying not to ogle him too obviously as he moseyed on into the water.
She moved backward, nearly falling over in her haste to keep a certain amount of distance between them. The fact that the pool was only about fifteen feet across limited her retreat. The water was cold but not frigid, having been warmed by the sun in this elbow of the river.
She was warmed by his nearness. He’d kept on his briefs, thank heavens. Seconds later, her eyes widened as he tossed his wet underwear back toward the shore. “Ah, that’s better,” he noted. “Don’t you think?”
She couldn’t think. Not coherently, anyway. All she could do was imagine, and drool as she watched the droplets of water gleaming on his shoulders and chest. She clenched her hands to prevent herself from reaching out and following the path of each individual drop from his collarbone down his chest, to his navel.
Moments later, he dived under the water, only to reappear right beside her. His long dark hair hung in wet strands. When he shook his head, he splattered her with water.
His grin flashed like summer lightning, echoing the thunder of her heart. “Enjoying your kidnapping so far?”
She slapped water smack in his face.
In retaliation, he dunked her. And when he let her go, he dived under the water again, this time to snap the elastic waistband of her underwear. The man had no decency! No modesty, either.
“Okay, that does it,” she growled. “This is war!”
They cavorted like a couple of kids until the water got too cold. She got out of the water first and busied herself getting dried off, using her shirt as a towel, while he got out.
In the end, Abigail couldn’t resist taking a peek at him while he was standing there, dripping wet and stark naked.
“Girls go nuts for cowboy butts,” she murmured under her breath.
“What did you say?”
“That we were nuts to stay in the water so long. It’s cold.”
“I can warm you up,” Dylan offered, ambling closer.
Picking up his hat, she shoved it at his naked body, covering his private parts. “You just stay right where you are.”
“For how long?”
“Until you’re decent.”
“Well, now, ma’am,” he drawled, “that might take a while because I’ve been called many things, but decent ain’t necessarily one of them.”
“Very funny.”
Actually Abigail had to reluctantly admit that Dylan really had been pretty decent to her, offering his help when he saw she needed it on the ranch. Heaven knew that the wages she offered weren’t all that good. But he’d agreed to stay out of a loyalty to her uncle. And that said a lot about Dylan. He was capable of strong feelings—of loyalty, anyway.
“I know what we need to warm up,” he noted as he headed for his saddlebags and some fresh clothes.
“I can imagine,” she said, eyeing his naked bottom until he glanced over his shoulder and shifted his hat there. His telltale grin made her blush.
“I was talking about starting a fire.”
She was already on fire.
“You got any objections to that?”
Abigail didn’t think she had the energy left to object to anything. She shook her head. She was tempted to object when he got dressed, it seemed a shame to cover that body with clothes.
That skinny body, she tried to remind herself…to no avail. No, he wasn’t skinny, he was lean and muscular and just right.
Flustered, Abigail tried to distract herself by focusing on her surroundings. She hadn’t been up here in ages. The cabin had been built by her great-grandfather who’d come to Montana from the plains of Kansas in 1890. Her roots went deep into this land.
As if reading her mind, Dylan said, “It’s beautiful country.”
Abigail nodded, her hair tilting a little and making her look even more endearing in Dylan’s view.
“Family legend has it that my great-granddad picked this location because it was close to water and game,” she said with a reminiscent smile. “But the women in my family always claimed that the real truth was that he picked this place because my great-grandmother saw it and said that this was as close to heaven as she cared to get until she reached sixty or so. She lived to be seventy-eight and never did leave this property. That probably seems strange to a man like you, someone who travels all the time and is always hitting the open road. But she’d found what she was looking for, and was smart enough to know it.”
“I can see where a view like this might tempt a person to stay,” Dylan murmured.
Abigail raised her face to the sunshine, which felt warmer here in the higher elevation. The air was filled with the scent of pine. The rat-a-tat-tat sound of a woodpecker at work reminded her of her last New Year’s resolution to learn more about the birds in her home state. It was something she’d been meaning to do…just as she’d meant to visit the cabin once she’d finished her deadline and had more time on her hands. Her hands…what she really wanted on her hands was Dylan.
Great! Why did all her thoughts lead back to him?
“Getting hungry?” Dylan asked her.
“Starved,” she murmured, her gaze drawn to his sensual mouth and those beautiful male lips that Michelangelo couldn’t have sculpted any better.
“I’ve got something for you, then,” he said.
“Mmm?” she replied, distracted by the way his lips pursed when he said you.
“Dinner.” He triumphantly held up a small plastic cooler that he’d retrieved from the river. “Cold chicken and the fixings.”
“Sounds like you raided the fridge when Raj wasn’t looking.”
“Guilty as charged.”
Noticing the way she was rubbing her hands up and down her arms, Dylan said, “It’s getting cool out here. We better go on inside and get that fire going that I promised you.”
While Dylan did that, Abigail set the unsteady table, sticking a folded, empty matchbook under one leg to help keep it stabilized. She added a small handful of summer wildflowers to an empty mason jar she found on the shelf beside the window.
The same window her great-grandmother must have looked out of. She found herself imagining what it must have been like for her great-grandmother, coming from the vast flatness of the plains to the valleys and rugged mountains of northwestern Montana. The view suddenly turned fuzzy as bellows of smoke rolled across the cabin from the fireplace.
Dylan grabbed her elbow and together they ran outside, coughing and eyes watering.
Abigail was the first to speak. “And here I was, thinking you were an expert at starting fires,” she noted mockingly.
“Starting them, not controlling them,” Dylan countered, feeling like a green-as-grass tenderfoot for not checking the chimney to make sure it was clear and no birds had set up housekeeping in it before he started a fire. He’d tried to plan ahead and had even cleaned up the cabin some before bringing her up here.
“You look like a hoot owl with all that soot on your face,” she said, laughter making her voice quiver. Since he’d been squatting right in front of the fireplace, he’d gotten a faceful.
“Oh, yeah? Wanna see how owls kiss?” Swooping down, he rubbed his nose against hers before nuzzling her cheek, making strange, supposedly owl-like noises. She was giggling so hard she couldn’t even speak. She’d laughed more with Dylan than she had with anyone.