by Jodi Thomas
Griffin was probably right. It would work out. They’d handled the fire. Surely they could handle Winston Krown.
Twenty minutes later, she linked her hand in his as they headed out to help with the loading of the remaining horses traveling south to Texas. Griffin’s trailers weren’t as fancy as hers, but they’d handle the long ride with six horses in each.
The sun broke through the clouds as they loaded the last of the animals. A gray mare bolted when she heard the clank of the gate hit the ground. Panic flashed in her eyes, her ears went back and her front legs rose.
Trying to hold the lead, Sunlan screamed as the damp rope slipped in her hands. It happened so fast, she didn’t have time to think, much less react. Wide-eyed, she saw the frightened horse head straight toward her. The only way out for the mare seemed to be through her.
Griffin had been balanced on the trailer gate. When he saw the mare’s only route to freedom, he jumped, grabbing Sunlan in midflight. A moment later, the mare raised and kicked, first at the gate and then at them. Griffin turned so that he hit the ground first and cushioned Sunlan’s landing. With her cocooned in his arms, they rolled out of danger.
It had all happened in a heartbeat.
Elliot and the doc ran after the animal, but Griffin didn’t move. He just held her tight against him. She could feel his rapid breathing. If possible, he seemed even more panicked than she was. But he’d reacted. She’d just stood there.
“You all right?” he asked as he lifted her off him.
She found her footing but couldn’t catch her breath. “I think so.” She touched her forehead where the gate latch had banged against her as they fell. Blood.
Griffin saw it at the same moment. “You’re hurt.”
“No. It’s only a scratch.” She couldn’t miss the worry in his stare.
Sunlan was still repeating her words ten minutes later as Doc, Lloyd and Elliot all stood over her arguing.
“We need to take her to the hospital.” Lloyd sounded like an overprotective father.
“She’s only got a scratch,” Doc added for the third time.
“What do you know, Doc?” Elliot shouted. “She’s not an animal. I say we slip into some emergency room and get an MD to take a look at it.”
Sunlan noticed Griffin hadn’t let go of her.
Kendra finally ended the discussion by announcing that it was indeed a scratch, but it would leave a bruise. She gave Sunlan two aspirin and sent her off to pack while the men finished up the loading.
Sunlan felt fully recovered an hour later as she waved goodbye to the two trailers, knowing she wouldn’t be seeing her horses for three days. She already missed them. Now, with her horses divided between Colorado and Texas, no matter where she was, she’d still be missing some of them.
By midafternoon, she and Griffin were climbing into the plane. She’d purposely planned the trip so that she’d arrive at Krown Ranch too late to have dinner with her father, if he was even on the property. Lately, he was spending most of his time in town. The ranch, which was run by a foreman, was simply a retreat to Winston Krown.
Sunlan glanced over at her cowboy in the copilot’s seat. He’d been so brave saving her life, but now he looked like he might panic and run, just like the mare had.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve been making this journey since I was eighteen, and today, I’m taking no chances with the man who saved my life on board.”
“I just pulled you out of the way. I was up higher. I saw the horse’s reaction before you did.” Griffin seemed to want no part of being a hero. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. They were in the air before he opened them again.
As they leveled off, she took his hand. “It’s going to be all right,” she said, grinning at him. “I won’t tell anyone you’re afraid of flying.”
Griffin shrugged. “Everyone pretty much knows it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Johnsons
THE AFTERNOON SUN sliced across the covers, but Wyatt didn’t move. He looked around at Jamie’s bedroom. When he’d first woken up in it, he’d thought the place dull, boring, nothing special. But now that he knew Jamie, he could see touches of her throughout the room. Calendars tacked behind the door. A whole year of dates sliced between pictures of London and Paris and ten other capitals of the world. Her days off were circled in red. Winter Holiday. Spring Break. A few Mondays off.
He’d bet she’d never been to any of those capitals, but she looked at them every day.
One corner of her room had a pile of quilts stacked with the biggest on the bottom and the smallest on top. A colorful patchwork Christmas tree of almost-heirlooms.
She’d made bookshelves using rough boards and big rocks she must have found by the lake. Shakespeare’s plays, classic children’s books and romance novels filled the shelves.
He moved his hand lightly over the bedcovers, gliding along the curve of her body. They’d made love in a playful way, with her laughing and him feeling awkward for the first time. It hadn’t been that X-rated passionate love scene that he’d thought about, but more a delightful bonding of new lovers.
He’d never had so much fun in bed. For the first time in years, he remembered that he was still young. The army had aged him.
After they’d made love, they’d talked and held each other close. He’d finally drifted to sleep with her head on his shoulder and her warm body pressed against his side.
Wyatt closed his eyes as he relived the moments they’d shared. Funny how it seemed he’d lived a lifetime with her. He drifted into sleep as the real world and his dreams blended.
When he woke to her kissing him, neither said a word. In the silence of late morning, they made love again. This time there was no awkwardness, no hesitance, no playing. There was only a hunger. He saw it in her eyes. In the way she touched him. In the way she made love.
When they were both exhausted, they lay side by side, not touching, as their breathing and their hearts slowed.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She laughed softly. “I think I went to heaven there for a moment.”
He smiled. “Me, too.”
Then, without another word, he lay his hand over hers, and she drifted into sleep. As he listened to her slow deep breaths, he kissed her gently so she wouldn’t wake and whispered, “I think I’d forgotten how to feel. Thanks for waking me up.”
They slept the day away. He figured neither had gotten much sleep the night before; the bedroom door had been between them. That, and a mountain of words that should have been said.
Much later, he shifted, and she cuddled back against his side. Tugging on a strand of her hair, he pressed his lips against her ear. “We have to get up.”
“No. I’m asleep.”
He tugged again. “Well, I’m starving.”
She finally opened one eye. “Food?”
“It’s already cooked. I say we raid the refrigerator.”
“Sounds like a plan.” She grabbed his shirt while he tugged on his trousers, and they ran to the kitchen.
As they ate leftovers at the tiny table, they watched the sun lower near the lake. He grabbed the blanket from the couch, wrapped her in it and carried her out to the hammock so they could watch the sunset.
She was wrapped and warm, resting on his chest as the hammock rocked them gently. For once she didn’t talk, and he wondered if she felt like he did. They’d had their one more day.
He didn’t want to shatter the perfection.
Finally, when it was dark, they hurried back to the warmth of their blanket on the couch. Neither brought up the dying day or the fact that he had only a part of one day more, if he took a late flight. In two days, he’d be thousands of miles away. Their time would be over with no promise of ever sharing another day.
Wyatt felt like he was already stealing time.
He’d never had this kind of peace. This kind of happiness.
There were probably things he should be saying. Maybe tell her how he felt or ask what she was thinking. But for once in his life, all he wanted to do was feel alive. He wanted to memorize every part of her body. He wanted to hold her so close he’d be able to feel her against him for days, maybe months, to come.
He wanted to take her to heaven one more time.
Finally, long after midnight, when the fire had grown low, she stood and took his hand. Silently, they walked to the bedroom, and she pulled him down into the covers.
Logic told him he should slow down. He didn’t have the time to make a life with her, and a woman like Jamie deserved a life. A real marriage. Children. Someone to grow old with.
He had none of that to give. Not with the mission he’d already signed on to do as soon as he got back.
But he couldn’t leave without letting her know how he felt. He could give her that much before he vanished. She needed to understand that for a few days she was his world. She was all he needed. All he wanted.
She’d never be just the affair he had one time when he was on leave. She was the one time he’d lived a normal life. He’d had a wife. He’d known peace. He’d loved one woman with all the love he had in him. She’d given him a lifetime in less than two weeks and he had to tell her.
Tomorrow they’d talk about how he felt. Maybe she’d drive him to Lubbock or Wichita Falls. They could spend the night in a hotel, eat out at some fancy restaurant. Then he’d tell her just how much this time had meant to him.
Then...he’d leave.
She’d get over him. She’d go on with her life. And he’d always hold her memory close. The one time his dream of home had come true, if only for a few weeks.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Krown Ranch
GRIFFIN WASN’T PREPARED for the view or the size of Krown Ranch. Hell, he could see the huge Krown brand over the main gate from the air. Winston must have truly thought himself a king.
Sunlan circled the plane over the land, showing him the headquarters that looked more like a country club estate than a ranch. Griffin thought he saw golf carts lined up next to the barn, and a swimming pool that should belong to a fancy hotel.
The ranch was farther south than Maverick, so everything still had a hint of green to it.
He stared out the window. “Sunlan, I swear that grass looks mowed.”
“It is.”
Griffin studied her as if he thought she was kidding. “What kind of idiot mows grass on a cattle ranch?”
“Your future father-in-law.”
“Oh.” He turned back to the window. “Hope it’s not a hereditary defect.”
When she began heading down to land the plane, he closed his eyes. She did her best to keep from laughing, but she failed.
Griffin didn’t open his eyes, he just growled at her.
The landing was smooth, but he didn’t look until she patted him on the leg.
“You all right, cowboy?”
“Yeah, just resting,” he lied, deciding he liked flying, after all. It was just the takeoffs and landings that bothered him. “Why’d you learn to fly?”
“My father insisted. If I was going to keep checking up on my grandfather in Colorado, I needed to be able to get there and back when I wanted to. Since I ended up going to school near Granddad, it worked out. He put me in private lessons before I was eighteen and turned a deaf ear to my mother’s screaming. I often wondered if he would have pushed me so hard to learn if she hadn’t been so against the idea.”
When Griffin looked toward the house, he saw a cowhand in one of the golf carts pulling up beside the plane. Griffin was sure she heard him growl again.
Sunlan cut the engine and unbuckled. “Time to meet my father, if he’s here. I’ve known him to be the last person to step into a party.”
“Good,” was all he said.
They climbed out and walked the half mile to the house. The cowhand followed in the cart with her two bags and Griffin’s one backpack full of dirty clothes.
“Is there anything I need to know before I meet the great Winston Krown?”
“No. He’ll like you, I think. You’re taking his bothersome daughter off his hands. After he finishes complaining that he wasn’t clued in to the idea earlier, he’ll probably ask you why you’re willing to take me on.”
“And I’ll answer that you’re smart and beautiful and fool enough to agree to marry me.”
She laughed. “He’ll probably have you declared insane. That is not at all how he sees me. My mother told me once that he wanted a boy, and as the years went by and he didn’t get one, she claims he resented me more and more. In truth, I never noticed any change. Everything I did, he expected the best.”
“Sounds like a hell of a guy.”
Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Now and then he brings some suit home and tells me he thinks of the stranger like a son. I get the feeling he wishes I’d marry the guy just so my father could have him in the family. They’re usually lawyers climbing the political ladder.”
“You ever tempted?”
“No.”
“Why?”
She grinned. “They weren’t you, Griffin. I think I’ve always had in my mind what I’d like in a man. I knew if you lived up to the sisters’ bragging about you, you were the one for me.”
He knew she was lying, but it felt good to hear anyway.
They reached the house, and Sunlan was greeted by a housekeeper who obviously didn’t know her. The middle-aged woman wasn’t friendly, but did tell Sunlan to call her Mrs. S. “Your father told me to expect you and a plus one. He also said he wouldn’t be able to make it in before tomorrow afternoon.”
“That’s fine,” Sunlan answered politely, showing no emotion. “This is Griffin Holloway. I told my father he was coming so there is no need to refer to him as the plus one.”
“I got the library suite ready for you and...Mr. Holloway.” Mrs. S. glared at Griffin as if he were a pet Sunlan had brought along. “You do know where it is, Miss Sunlan?”
“I know.” She smiled that smile he’d seen before. It had no warmth. “And, Mrs. S., please ask the cook to prepare a tray. We haven’t had lunch or dinner. I assume the fridge in the suite is stocked?”
“Of course.” Mrs. S. looked bothered. Griffin thought about borrowing one of the golf carts and driving until he found a Dairy Queen. But this was Sunlan’s call. He was only the plus one.
While Mrs. S. yelled for the cowhand in the golf cart to set their luggage on the porch, Sunlan whispered to Griffin, “I had so many housekeepers growing up that I started calling them by their number. I think we were on about twenty-three by the time I was in college.” She smiled. “They must be working through the alphabet now. The ones my father doesn’t run off, my mother fires when she flies by on her broom now and then.”
“Did you ever come back here after college?” Griffin followed her down a long hallway lined in Western artwork that looked like it belonged in a gallery somewhere.
“Only for a night now and then. Father wants me here when he’s throwing big parties, and sometimes in Austin, if he wants everyone to believe he has a family. I haven’t had my own room here in years. He just puts me up in one of the guest rooms, usually the one he calls the library suite. I told him that the one he calls the library was my favorite. I’m surprised he remembers.”
They reached a double door, and Sunlan opened the right half. “This is usually my hideout when I visit. Two rooms really, with a small library in between. I used to think he put me here in case my mother dropped by, which she hasn’t done lately. She wouldn’t want to share even a suite. They’re still married. He doesn’t want to split his land with her. It’s cheaper to simply pay her bills.”
Griffin suddenly understood Sunlan a bit better. This ar
ranged marriage of theirs was nothing new to her. For Sunlan, it must seem normal.
She closed the door to their apartment. “I’ll take the right bedroom. You can have that one. It’s got a nice view. I prefer the view of the barns. I’m afraid we’ll have to share a bath.”
“All right.” Images danced in his brain he’d probably have to scrub out with soap later.
Before he could move away, they heard the doorknob turning. A heartbeat later, she moved into his arms.
An old cowboy carrying their luggage caught them kissing. Just like Sunlan had planned.
“Sorry.” Griffin managed to look like he wasn’t sorry at all.
The old cowboy smiled. “No, sir, sorry I interrupted. It’s good to see Miss Sunlan happy. If she were my girl, I reckon I’d kiss her any chance I got.”
She smiled at the cowboy. “How are you doing, Sam?”
“I’m getting by. Arthritis finally took me off of a horse, but I stay busy.”
Sunlan faced Griffin. “I’d like you to meet the man who taught me to ride. Griffin Holloway, Sam Fenton.”
Griff turned loose of her long enough to shake hands. “Nice to meet you.”
A woman, who had to be the cook, bumped her way in with a tray of food. She didn’t bother to apologize. She simply waddled into what Sunlan had called the library and set the tray down. “You missed dinner, but this should work. If not, come to the kitchen. I’ll be cooking for tomorrow till midnight.”
“Thanks,” Griffin said. “I’m starving.”
The cook looked at him for the first time. “You’re welcome, Griffin Holloway. Heard you were coming. My man says you’ve got a great spread up north.”
“He did?” Griffin would have never thought anyone on this ranch would have any idea who he was.
“Yeah, he worked up near there a few summers. You still running wild horses on your ranch?”
“I don’t have much choice. They were there before any Holloways were.”