Stranger in Cold Creek

by Paula Graves

  Riley immediately shook his head. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  Heath nearly snapped out “Right,” but he knew in his gut that Riley was telling the truth. He wouldn’t do anything like that even if it meant saving his sister from having sex with a guy Riley didn’t think was right for her.

  And Riley was spot-on.

  Heath wasn’t right for her. End of subject.

  “I’ll leave tomorrow,” Heath added. “I just want a chance to say goodbye to Anna first.”

  None of the brothers objected, and Heath wouldn’t have cared if they did. Yeah, it was the pissed-off mood again, but he had to get something off his chest.

  “I know you think I’m a jerk, that I’m here only to try to seduce Anna, but I do care about her. Always have. If I hadn’t cared, I would have never had sex in the hayloft with her nine and a half years ago.”

  There. He’d said it. But they weren’t saying anything back to him. Maybe because Riley and Logan hadn’t known about the sex. Lucky had, of course, because of the pee stick discovery, but even Lucky might have been stunned to silence to hear the de-virgining had taken place in the barn.

  “Anna cares about you, too,” Lucky finally said.

  “She’ll cry a lot again when you leave,” Logan added.

  “She’ll be hurt,” Riley piped in.

  Maybe. Probably, Heath silently amended. Yeah, he was a jerk all right, but he was a jerk on orders, and that meant leaving whether he wanted to or not.

  And he did want to leave, Heath assured himself.

  He did.

  Silently repeating that, Heath went to the guest room so he could finish packing.

  * * *

  HER BROTHERS WERE waiting for Anna when she got home. Hard to miss them since they were on the sofa in the living room.

  She so didn’t have the energy to deal with them now.

  “You’re all grounded,” Anna said, going on the offensive. “Now, go to your rooms.”

  Of course, they didn’t budge. Well, except to stand, and judging from the somber looks on their faces they had something serious to tell her. But she had something to say, too.

  “I already know about Heath’s deployment being denied. He texted me right after he got the news. He was at the base and couldn’t talk, but he wanted to let me know that he’s leaving tomorrow.”

  They stared at her as if expecting her to sprout an extra nose or something. Then Riley’s hawkeyed gaze moved to the Victoria’s Secret bag she was holding.

  “Yes, I bought it for Heath,” Anna admitted. “For me to wear for Heath,” she amended when their stares turned blank. “It’s red and slutty, and if you don’t quit staring at me like that, I’ll give you lots of details about what I want Heath to do to me while I’m wearing it.”

  Logan’s eyes narrowed. Riley’s jaw tightened. Lucky shrugged and went to her. He pulled her into his arms despite the fact she was as stiff as a statue from the mini hissy fit she’d just thrown.

  “I’ve got two words for you,” Lucky whispered to her. “Condom.”

  She pulled back, looked at him. “That’s one word.”

  “If you wear what’s in that bag, you’ll need two condoms. Three if you skip what’s in the bag all together and just show up in your birthday suit. Either way, condoms.”

  In that moment he was her favorite brother. Lucky had always been her champion and not judgmental. Most of the time anyway. Plus, he was the only brother who talked safe sex with her. Or any kind of sex for that matter. He wasn’t just her brother, he was her friend.

  Anna kissed his cheek. “Thanks.”

  He shrugged in that lazy but cool way that only Lucky or a Greek god could manage. It was as if he drawled his shrugs. And his life.

  Lucky returned the cheek kiss and apparently considered his brotherly/friendly duties done because he strolled toward the door and headed out. Logan went to her next.

  “I love you,” Logan said. “And no matter what happens, I’ll be here for you. You can cry on my shoulder all you need. Or if you prefer, I can kick Heath’s ass for you. Your choice.”

  She had to fight a smile, but she didn’t have to fight it too hard because the nonsmiling emotions were just below the surface. “I don’t want his ass kicked, but I might need the shoulder.”

  Logan tapped first one shoulder, then the other. “Any time. They’re reserved just for you, and I swear I told you so will never cross my lips or my mind. You’re a grown woman, and if you want to wear what’s in that bag, then you have my blessing.”

  In that moment she loved Logan best. Logan had been her father more than her brother, mainly because he’d been the one to step up after their folks died. He’d been the one to bust her chops when she needed it and had been a whiz helping with her math homework.

  Logan would walk through fire for her and not once complain. Well, maybe he would complain, but he’d still do it.

  He kissed her forehead and headed off, not out the door but to his old room. Since he lived in town and no longer spent many nights at the ranch, Logan must have wanted his shoulders to be nearby in the event of an impending crying spell.

  Uh-oh.

  It was Riley’s turn.

  “If Heath makes you cry again, I’m hitting him with the shovel,” Riley growled. “And wear a robe with whatever’s in that bag.”

  Anna sighed. The support of two out of three wasn’t bad.

  Riley sighed as well, and he pulled her into his arms. “FYI, Heath did some crying, too, after he left here that summer.”

  Anna wiggled out of his grip so she could see if he was serious or not. He was.

  “I don’t mean he actually shed tears,” Riley went on, “but he cried in his own man kind of way.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked.

  “Because I’m the one who drove him to his basic training.” A muscle flickered in his jaw. A sign that he was remembering that day as unfondly as she was. Some of the anger returned. “Heath asked me to make sure you were okay. Can you believe it?”

  “The bastard,” Anna joked.

  “He said it as if I needed to be reminded of it. I didn’t. Not then, not now. If you need someone to make sure you’re okay, I’ll do it. As long as I don’t have to hear any sex details. Or see what’s in that bag. And I’ll do that—minus the exceptions—because you’re my sister.”

  Anna blinked back tears. In that moment, she loved Riley best. Yes, he was hardheaded, and they had a history of sibling squabbles. Plus, there was the time when he’d ruined all her dolls with camo paint and duct-tape combat boots, but still she loved every stubborn, camo-painting ounce of him.

  Riley wasn’t her father or her friend. He was her brother.

  And sometimes, like now, that was exactly what a sister needed.

  Chapter Six

  HEATH PACED. CURSED. He figured this much debate hadn’t gone into some battle plans, but a battle plan would have been easier than trying to figure out what to do about Anna.

  Or better yet what to do with Anna.

  If he went to her room, sex would happen. Then tomorrow he would leave—just as he’d done nine and a half years ago. That hadn’t turned out so well, what with all the crying and her brothers wanting to shovel him.

  If he didn’t go to her room, sex wouldn’t happen. But then he would have to leave things unsettled between them—again—as he’d apparently done before.

  He was screwed either way, so Heath decided he might as well go for it. He threw open the door and nearly smacked right into some idiot wearing a hoodie and an army-green vinyl poncho.

  Except this was no idiot. It was Anna, and in addition to the garb, she was also carrying a blue sock.

  She practically pushed him back into his room and shut th
e door. “Shhh,” she said. “Della and Stella’s book club is meeting tonight.”

  He was still wrapping his mind around the fact that Anna was there, that she had come to him, and maybe that’s why Heath couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the book club or the poncho.

  “There are six of them in the living room, and I had to sneak past them,” Anna added when he gave her a blank look.

  When Heath kept that blank look, Anna pulled off the poncho, and he saw the hoodie. No pants. No shoes.

  Just a pair of really tiny devil-red panties.

  He was sure his blank look disappeared because his mouth dropped open. This was the best kind of surprise.

  “I didn’t have a robe here at the ranch, and the plastic poncho felt sticky against my skin so I put on the hoodie,” she explained. Then she unzipped it.

  No top. No bra. Just the Be My heart locket dangling between her breasts. Heath thought maybe his tongue was doing some dangling, too.

  “And the sock?” he asked.

  She smiled and emptied the contents onto the bed. Condoms. At least a dozen of them.

  “I took them from Lucky’s bathroom,” Anna explained. She was still whispering, but it had a giddiness to it. “The poncho and hoodie didn’t have pockets so I put them in the sock. I only brought the normal-looking ones. Some had pictures on them and some were glow in the dark.” Anna looked at him. “Why would a man need that?”

  Heath didn’t have a clue. He didn’t need any illumination to find anything on Anna’s body. His most vital organ agreed. In fact, it wanted to go on that particular search mission right now.

  But there was a problem.

  “You got my text saying I was leaving, right?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Tomorrow. That’s why I didn’t want to wait until after the book club left. Sometimes they hang around until midnight if Della breaks out the tequila, and we don’t have much time.”

  Not if they were planning on using all those condoms, they didn’t, but Heath had to make sure that Anna was sure. She stripped off the hoodie, and he was sure she was sure.

  At least he wanted her to be.

  He wanted that even more when she slipped into his arms and kissed him. Heath was stupid and weak so it took him a moment to break the kiss.

  “Anna, I don’t want you hurt,” he said.

  She frowned. “I think that ship’s sailed. I’ll be hurt, but I’ll get over it. And tonight you’ll give me some really good memories to help me get over it, right?”

  Yeah.

  Whether they had sex or not, Anna would be hurt. Or at least she would be sad to see him go. Ditto for him being sad to leave her. But at least this way they’d have new memories, and they didn’t need glow-in-the-dark condoms to do it.

  Now that he had a clearly defined mission, Heath pulled her back to him to kiss her. One of those kisses that reached scorch level pretty darn fast. But Anna was aiming for fast, too, and not with just the kisses. She was already going after his zipper.

  “We’re going to play that scale-of-one-to-ten game,” she insisted.

  Maybe. But the way she was tugging at his zipper, it was possible she was also trying to finish this all way too fast. Tonight, he didn’t want the kissing game, and he didn’t want fast.

  Heath stopped what she was doing by catching on to her wrists and putting her against the wall. He liked walls because it gave him some control...

  Damn.

  He had no control. Anna ground herself against him, sliding her leg up the outside of his so that the millimeter of red lace was right against his crotch. Apparently, the orgasm she’d had earlier in the barn hadn’t done anything to take the edge off because she was going for another one very quickly.

  Again, Heath tried to slow things down. With her leg still cradling his, he turned her, intending to put her against the dresser, but he tripped over the poncho and fell onto the bed.

  With Anna on top of him.

  “Let’s play a game,” she said. Definitely not a virginal tone or look. “I’ll use just my tongue to find all your special spots. You don’t have to give it a number rating. Just a grunt for pleasure. A groan for find another special spot that’s more special.”

  “Men only have one special spot,” he told her. Heath took her hand and put it over his sex.

  She laughed. Not a humor kind of laugh but the sound of a woman who’d come to play. Or maybe give a little payback for the things he’d done to her in the tack room. Well, Heath wanted to play, too. After all, he had a nearly naked Anna straddling him, and her breasts were making his mouth water.

  He managed a quick sample of her left nipple before she moved away. Anna didn’t waste any time. With her hand still on his special spot, she went in search of others. His earlobe.

  He grunted, but Heath didn’t know if that was because, at the same time, she started lowering his zipper.

  “That wasn’t a loud enough grunt,” she said and went after his neck.

  Heath grunted. Again, mainly because she lowered the zipper, and when she did that, her breasts got closer to his mouth again. She didn’t grunt when he kissed her there, but she did make that silky sound of pleasure that Heath would never tire of hearing.

  He would have kept on kissing her breasts, but apparently it was special-spot search time again because she scooted lower and ran her tongue over his own left nipple.

  Oh, yeah. He grunted.

  Grunted some more when she circled his navel with her tongue. All that tonguing and circling though didn’t stop her from getting his zipper all the way down, and as he had done to her earlier, she shimmied his jeans lower.

  “You really do go commando,” she said.

  “Yep—”

  He might have added more. Something clever or at least coherent, but her hands were on him. The condom, too. Heath wasn’t sure when she’d opened one of the packets. Nor did he care. The woman had clever hands after all—

  Hell.

  He grunted loud enough to trigger an earthquake when she dropped down onto him. That’s when he figured out really, really fast that the panties were crotchless and that he was in her warm and tight special place all the way to the hilt.

  “That’s not your tongue,” he said through the grunts.

  “So, I cheated.”

  The woman was evil. And damn good. Heath usually liked to be the alpha when it came to sex, but even more than that, he liked taking turns with Anna. Apparently, she was going to make the most of her turn, too. She had the whole ride ‘em, cowgirl motion going on. So fast that Heath knew this would all end too soon.

  Of course, sixteen hours was going to be too soon.

  As if she’d read his mind, she slowed. Anna put her palm on his chest and, still moving against his erection, leaned down and kissed him.

  “After this,” she said, “I want you all the way naked.”

  Heath thought that was a stellar idea. He wanted those panties off her, too, even though they fell into the why bother category of women’s undergarments.

  The locket whacked him in the face, but even that didn’t put a damper on the moment. Heath just pushed the locket aside, gathered her close and let his cowgirl screw his brains out.

  Chapter Seven

  ANNA WISHED THERE were some kind of anticry shot she could take. Even one that worked for just an hour or so would do. She figured she’d do plenty of crying after Heath had left, but she didn’t want any tears shed in front of him.

  Or in front of her brothers.

  She wanted Heath to remember her smiling. Or maybe naked, since that’s how he’d seen her for a good portion of the night. It was certainly how she wanted to remember him.

  With that reminder/pep talk still fresh in her mind, Anna left her bedroom and went in search of Heath so she
could give him that smiling goodbye she’d practiced in the mirror. But he wasn’t in his bedroom. Or the living room. Or the kitchen. In fact no one was, and she figured they’d all cleared out to give her a chance to have a private goodbye with Heath.

  Or maybe they’d cleared out because Heath was already gone. She had several moments of panic when she sprinted to the back porch to make sure his rental car was still there.

  It was.

  And so was Heath.

  He was at the fence pasture, looking at some cows that’d been delivered that morning. He made a picture standing there with his foot on the bottom rung of the fence, his cream-colored cowboy hat slung low on his face.

  He must have heard her approaching because he turned, smiling. It looked about as genuine as the one she was trying to keep on her face. Until he reached out, pulled her to him and kissed her.

  Then the smiles were real.

  “How soon before you leave?” she asked.

  “Soon.”

  That reminder made her smile waver. Anna wasn’t sure how far to push this part of the conversation, but there was something she had to know. “Are you feeling any better about the instructor job?”

  “I’ve accepted it. Sometimes, that’s the best you can do with crappy lemonade. Sorry,” Heath added when she frowned. “It was just something Riley said. An analogy of sorts.”

  Riley not only needed a new threat, he needed new analogies, as well.

  Since their time together was about to end, Anna reached into her pocket and took out the “gift” she’d gotten him on her shopping trip the day before. She hadn’t wanted it to be a big gift because that would have made this goodbye seem, well, big.

  Which it was.

  But she didn’t want it to feel big to him.

  She took his hand and dropped the smashed penny in it. “It reminded me of your dog tags, and it’s supposed to be good luck.”

  He stared at it, gave a slight smile. “Thanks.”

  “I was going to give you the red panties,” she added, “but I thought it would look strange if the TSA went through your luggage.”