At the feel of his hardness, a thrill of excitement—mingled with a hefty dose of nervous anticipation—shot through her veins like some potent, mind-altering drug, leaving her weak-kneed, shivering with reaction.
Her mouth responded eagerly to his kiss, her hands digging into the skin of his back. She barely recognized herself, this wanton, eager woman who couldn’t seem to get enough of him.
Barely aware of anything beyond that devastating kiss, she let him maneuver them both back toward the couch. He lowered her onto it, but before his body could settle over hers, she pushed a hand between them.
“Wait,” she murmured, her voice breathless.
He froze, blue eyes blazing when her trembling hands went to the buttons of her shirt. With a predatory, hawklike gaze, he watched as she slowly, nervously unbuttoned her shirt.
She didn’t have much in the way of cleavage. Michael had frequently commented on her deficiencies in that area. He’d even tried to persuade her to have implants. Now she found herself half wishing she had given in, just so she wouldn’t have this sense of inadequacy.
It didn’t matter, she told herself. Colt wanted her just the way she was. Right? With a last, ragged burst of bravado, she shrugged her shoulders from her shirt and finally forced herself to meet his eyes. Her heart seemed to stutter in her chest at the fierce desire there, and it melted completely when he knelt by the side of the couch.
Her big rough cowboy said nothing, just touched her reverently, gently, with those hard, nicked-up hands she now could admit she had woven so many fantasies about. They looked beautiful, strong and competent, against the whiteness of her skin.
Her head sagged against the back of the couch, her breathing harsh and ragged as first his fingers caressed her then his hot, searching mouth.
While his mouth drove her slowly, steadily crazy, she dipped her hands into his dark hair, pressing him to her breasts, savoring the feel of the thick silk against her fingers and his rugged scent—sage and leather and Colt—that filled her senses.
He trailed soft barely-there kisses from her breasts, across her collarbone and along the length of her neck to her waiting mouth. While their lips and tongues mated, she fumbled with the buttons of his brushed-cotton shirt, needing to feel his skin against hers.
She pushed it off his powerful shoulders and then he pressed her back against the cushions, his chest hard and warm on hers. The erotic friction of skin against skin was almost more than she could stand.
She felt his hardness pushing against the apex of her thighs through the layers of cloth still between them, and a raw, ancient need began to build to a crescendo inside her. She arched against him, her body seeking, craving, entreating.
His touches took on a new urgency, and he reached a hand between them and slipped it beneath the waistband of her jeans. She gasped at the intimate invasion but her wanton body responded instantly, pushing against his clever, clever fingers.
She hovered on the brink of something incredible, some enchanting, magical place just out of reach.
Just before she found it, before she tumbled headlong over the edge, he withdrew his fingers and she couldn’t stop her soft whimper of disappointment.
“Not yet,” he murmured against her mouth. “Wait for me.”
Quickly, he removed the rest of their clothing then pulled a thin foil packet from his wallet. After making sure she was slick and ready for him, he sheathed himself in her. As she felt the heated strength of him inside her—as an avalanche of sensations rumbled over her—she drew a sharp breath. This was everything she wanted. This was real and intense and wonderful.
He kissed her hard at the same time that he sank into her.
All the urgency of before, when he had been touching her so erotically, returned stronger than ever, and she gripped the muscles in his back, feeling as if her world spun and twirled with each thrust. She could feel herself falling, and she gasped his name.
“I’m here, Maggie. Right here.”
He held her tightly when the world finally exploded in a sharp burst of vivid light and color, then he thrust into her one last tune with a harsh, exultant growl while he found his own pleasure.
After a few moments he shifted his weight from her and would have risen, but she held him tight and moved to accommodate him on the couch. For a long time they stayed there in a silence broken only by their shallow breathing.
Finally he rose up on one elbow. “Maggie—”
“Don’t say it. Don’t say you have regrets.”
Lord knows, she had enough for both of them. They hovered like a murder of crows in the edges of her thoughts, waiting to sweep in with taunting caws of I-told-you-so’s.
She pushed them away. Not now. Now she just wanted to lie right here, with Colt’s arms around her and his heart beating strong and sure beneath her ear.
“I shouldn’t have..” His voice trailed off and he blew out a breath that stirred her hair. “We need to talk.”
“Tomorrow. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” She could hear the pleading note in her voice and despised herself for it, but she couldn’t bear for him to shatter what had been the most magical thing she had ever experienced.
He pursed his lips. “Yeah. I guess it can wait one more day.”
She gave a tremulous smile of gratitude. I love you hovered on her tongue, but she couldn’t say it. She knew he wouldn’t want it, that it would make him feel uncomfortable, or worse, obligated to say words he didn’t mean in reply.
So she contented herself with telling him how she felt with her hands and her mouth and her body.
They made love again, this time slowly, gently, without the fierce urgency of before. For all the softness of the second time, the same torrent of emotions poured through her as she held him and felt him move inside her body. It was still just as overpowering, as devastating.
She tried to store up every touch, every caress, into her memory for the time when he would be gone from her life, but she knew it would never be enough. As sure as she knew she loved him with everything in her, she knew a part of her would mourn forever that this moment was all she would ever have from him.
And when the pearly light of dawn shone through the window, she rose from his arms and stood watching him sleeping. He looked younger in sleep, not so hard, and she tried to burn the picture into her mind, like one of those Broken Spur brands.
Then, with one last kiss against the warm, rough skin of his forehead, she slipped away.
“What do you mean she’s gone?” Colt slid from Scout’s saddle to the ground, staring at his foreman.
“She left not long after you took off.” Joe leaned over to pick a blade of meadow grass and stuck it between his teeth. “She said she had a lot of things to do and wanted to get off to an early start. Oh, yeah, she said to tell you thanks for everything and she’ll see you in Utah tomorrow.”
Damn. How had she given him the slip like that? He’d only been gone for an hour. One measly hour, just long enough to ride away from the ranch house so he could check in with Beckstead.
He should have known she would try something like this. The shadows he had glimpsed in her eyes the last time they had made love should have warned him.
She must have started packing just as soon as she left him this morning.
He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. He didn’t need this. Not now. He had just spent a half hour on the phone with Lane, avoiding the SAC’s pointed questions about the progress of an investigation—or lack thereof. He hadn’t had one single concrete thing to tell him.
So much for his plan to tell her he was FBI after breakfast. He grimaced. Could he screw this assignment up any worse?
“Why didn’t you stop her?” he growled to Joe.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize she was under house arrest.”
Colt hefted the saddle from Scout with more force than necessary. “She’s not. She hasn’t done anything wrong. I told you that. But I still don’t like the idea of her heading off to God-knows-where b
y herself. Why didn’t she wait for me?”
Joe shrugged. “Don’t ask me. All I know is that she thanked me kindly for my hospitality, said she thought my ranch was the prettiest spot in Montana, then drove that rattletrap pickup down the road in a cloud of dust. Seemed in a real big hurry to be on her way, too.”
A big hurry to put distance between them. He didn’t need to have it spelled out. When a man spends the night making love to a woman and a few hours later she runs away like her shoes are on fire, he’d have to be crazy not to realize he’s the cause.
He blew out a hard breath. He couldn’t say he was surprised. She’d had “goodbye” written all over her that last time he’d held her. What did shock him was the hurt scratching at his heart.
“You going after her?”
“Have to.”
“You going to tell her the truth when you catch up with her?”
He scowled. “Yeah. I’m planning on it. Is that okay with you?”
Joe ignored his sarcasm. “It’s about time. It would seem to me, she’d be a pretty hard woman to lie to.”
“Tell me about it.”
Joe was silent for a moment, and Colt could almost swear that was sympathetic understanding he could read in his friend’s normally hard expression.
“For what it’s worth, I like her,” he finally said. “Not every woman would be willing to pitch in to help around here like she did with the cooking. Especially not some bigcity doctor. If you were smart, you’d hang on to that one.”
He wanted to. Dammit, he wanted to hang on to her with every ounce of his strength. “I’m going after her because it’s my job. That’s the only reason. She’s the subject of an FBI investigation, our link to DeMarranville, and that’s all she’ll ever be.”
“If you say so.” Joe pulled the blade of grass from between his teeth and launched it over the fence.
He glared, knowing he wasn’t fooling either of them, then decided the wiser course would be to change the subject. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were staying with Annie.”
Joe glanced at the small foothill that marked the boundary between the Broken Spur and Annie’s spread, the Double C. “She made me leave this morning. Said she was fine now.”
“And you believed her? That son of a bitch brother of yours beat her half to death. Hell, she had a broken arm. She can’t get over a beating like that in twelve hours, then just get up and take care of her ranch.”
“She never wants me to stay the next day.” Joe’s voice was expressionless, like his features. Stony and cold, like the top of Coyote Peak. “She’s says it’s not proper, a bad example to set for the kids. Besides, it just ticks Charlie off more to have me around.”
Colt swallowed his words of sympathy, knowing they wouldn’t be welcome. It had been no secret to any of them that Joe had been in love with Annie since they were kids. Although he never talked about it, Colt knew how much his friend had grieved for his lost dreams.
“How are we going to get her out of there?” he asked quietly.
“The only way she’ll be free is for him to die.”
At the determination in his voice, the eerie calm that had come over his expression, Colt shot him a look. “You’re not going to do anything crazy are you?”
Joe didn’t answer, just continued looking out at the foothill between the two ranches.
“You’ve already ridden that trail.” He stared hard at his friend. “You know what it’s like in the system. And as much as I might agree with you that Charlie’s a drunk bastard who ought to be rotting six feet under for what he’s done to our Annie, I’m sworn to uphold the law. If something happens to your brother, I’m going to have to come looking for you.”
“Lucky for you, you’ll know right where to find me, right?” Joe shoved away from the fence and headed toward the barn. “You’d better hurry if you’re gonna catch up to the doc.”
Colt watched him go, the spot between his shoulder blades itching. Trouble was brewing. He could smell it, taste it.
Surely Joe was too smart to follow through with his implied threats, wasn’t he?
He couldn’t spend any more time fretting about it now, though. One problem at a time. For now he had to concentrate on Maggie and Nicky and keeping them safe from DeMarranville.
With one eye on the small, sparse play area where Nicky worked out his excess energy after the long drive to Utah, Maggie dialed the number to Rosie’s house, not far from the little apartment she had moved into after leaving Michael.
The early-evening sun cast long, stretched-out shadows across the campground that was part of the Ogden rodeo grounds. Daylight lasted a long time here in the summer—it probably wouldn’t be completely dark until nine or ten, another two or three hours.
“Look at me, Mom!” At Nicky’s call, she peered over the side of the phone kiosk and her heart plummeted to her toes. Her little gymnast had shinnied up the monkey bars and was now hanging upside down, his hands flailing several feet above the ground.
“Be careful,” she said, fighting her maternal instinct to race over and yank him back to earth. She couldn’t protect him from everything. If she tried, she would smother him and would only end up hurting him worse than any tumble from the monkey bars ever could.
“I’m always careful,” he responded cheerfully.
Still, she breathed a sigh of relief when he swung forward and grabbed the bars with his hands again. Crisis temporarily averted, she turned her attention back to the call. No answer. After a dozen rings, the answering machine picked up.
“Rosie, it’s Maggie,” she finally said, after debating what kind of message to leave. “I’m okay. I’ll try to call you again.”
She hung up and gazed at the phone. She was probably working. After Michael’s death, Rosie would have had to find another job somewhere.
What now? She chewed on her bottom lip. She had been so consumed with talking to Rosie about what had happened after her frantic flight—about whether any real police officers had showed up that night—that she hadn’t given a thought to what she would do if her friend wasn’t home.
During the whole endless drive from the Broken Spur, when she had ached with regret, with loss, she distracted herself by concentrating on the thought of putting an end to this nightmare.
She wanted to go the police, but she was afraid they would suspect her in her husband’s death if she didn’t have all the details from that night, if she couldn’t explain why she ran away.
She drummed her fingers on the metal of the phone kiosk. Who would know where Rosie could be reached? Teresa! The name slipped into her consciousness. Teresa, Rosie’s daughter, would surely know where Maggie could find her mother.
She fed a few more coins from her precious roll into the pay phone and dialed information to find Teresa’s number, then added a few more to make the call. To her relief, Rosie’s daughter answered on the second ring.
There was a long, drawn-out moment of silence on the other end after she identified herself. “Dr. Prescott?” Teresa sounded distraught. “Where are you? Are you all right?”
She glanced at the Wasatch Mountains, hesitant to give her location. “I’m fine.” She decided to ignore the first question. The less Teresa knew the better. “Look, I’m trying to reach your mother. Do you know where I could find her?”
Again there was an awkward silence. “She’s still in the hospital. I’m hoping to bring her home today.”
Cold fingers crawled down Maggie’s spine. “In the hospital? What happened?”
“A few days after Mr. Prescott died, she was attacked.”
“Attacked? Where?” She didn’t have to hear Teresa’s answer. She knew. Somehow she knew.
The other woman’s answer only confirmed her gut instinct. “At your apartment. She was there by herself cleaning up a few things, and somebody broke in. They ripped the place apart and beat her until she was half-dead.”
“Dear God.” Her knees wobbled and she would have fallen e
xcept for the support from the phone booth.
“Dr. Prescott,” Teresa said softly, “they were looking for you.”
She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth. She should have thought about Rosie, should have realized she might be in danger. If she had thought about anyone but herself, she would have taken steps to protect the woman she loved so dearly.
Later there would be time for this crushing guilt. She forced herself to organize the chaos of her thoughts as the doctor in her rushed to the forefront. “What was the extent of her injuries?”
“Bad.” The other woman’s voice trembled. “For a while there, we didn’t know if she would make it. She had a couple of broken ribs that punctured a lung.”
Her fault, her fault, her fault. The words seemed to scream in her ear and she pressed a hand to her stomach where nausea suddenly churned. Rosie had been a figure in her life as far back as she could remember, first as her mother’s cook, then after Helen died, Maggie had hired her over Michael’s objections to be a housekeeper at their house.
She had been like a second mother to Nicky, had watched over him during the days she worked at the clinic and had been a listening ear to Maggie during the worst of her marital troubles.
She thought of her soft arms, her sage advice, and had to struggle to clear the tears suddenly clogging her throat. “Is—is any of the damage permanent?”
“Too early to say. The doctors think she might have permanent hearing loss on one side, and she’ll probably always limp a little. She’s made a lot of progress in the past few weeks, though.” Teresa paused. “She’s wondering what this is all about. I have to tell you, Dr. Prescott, I’m wondering the same thing. First Mr. Prescott is killed, then you take little Nicholas and disappear, then somebody breaks into your apartment and rips it apart. What kind of trouble are you in?”
While she was trying to form an answer, a computerized voice ordered her to deposit more change. She looked in frustration at the empty roll in front of her. She didn’t have any more change. “I have to go Teresa,” she said quickly. “Tell your mother I love her and I’m sor—”
The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom Page 16