He made absolutely no move to either get into his truck or even stop what he was set to do. Applying the back of the hammer just so, he pried off another rotting board, then stepped back to keep it from falling on his foot.
“I am,” he answered as he picked up another length of board.
Ronnie laughed shortly, shaking her head. Arguing with Cole was like trying to argue with a rock and win it over to her side. It just couldn’t be done. “Nothing’s changed,” she told him. “You are as damn stubborn as ever.”
Taking the brim of his hat, he pulled it a bit lower in order to keep the sun out of his eyes as he paused to study her. Stetson not withstanding, she could see humor in his eyes.
“Isn’t that a little like the pot calling the kettle black?” he asked her.
“I wouldn’t know,” she replied coolly. “I haven’t got any talking cookware.”
Cole turned back to his work. “You know,” Cole said as mildly as if he was just commenting on the weather, “Nothing and no one ever made me as crazy as you could—and still do.”
“If I make you so crazy,” she challenged, “what are you doing here on my ranch, working on my fence?”
He spared her a glance over his shoulder, then went on working. “You know, I keep asking myself that same question.”
“And what is it you answer yourself?” she asked.
Stopping, he turned around and looked at her for a very long moment. She could swear she could literally feel him looking. The entire area suddenly felt a little hotter to her.
“That I’d rather be here, being driven crazy by you, than anywhere else, without the added aggravation.” He leaned a length of board against the fence as he began to pry away another broken section. “I guess that means I’ve got a problem.”
If you do, I’ve got the same damn problem. But her expression didn’t give her thoughts away. “I guess people would say that you do.”
“I don’t really care what other people say. Never have.” He wasn’t saying anything she didn’t already know. And then his next question blindsided her. She never saw it coming and was definitely not prepared with an answer. “What do you say?” he asked.
There went her mouth again, Ronnie thought, annoyed with herself. Going drier than dust. She had a feeling that no amount of water would help.
She took a breath, as if to fortify herself. If she had a prayer of functioning, she needed to have him get dressed.
“I say that you’d better put your shirt on before the sun winds up blistering your delicate skin and it starts coming off in sections, like this rotting fence.”
“You always did have a silver tongue,” he commented wryly. The moment seemed to freeze and linger. Just when she was afraid that it would go on forever, Cole laughed. “There you go, always thinking of me,” he said so drily that, once again, she wasn’t sure if he was teasing or being serious.
Pulling his shirt out of his waistband, he shook the shirt out. But instead of putting it on right away the way Ronnie had requested—mandated, really—he bunched it up and began to wipe the sweat off his chest.
It was one hell of a hypnotic sight. “What are you doing?” she finally managed to ask.
The answer was a simple one. “I’m so wet there’s no way this shirt is going on unless I dry off.” He held the shirt out to her. “Here, mind doing my back for me? I can’t reach it.”
She took the shirt from him and steeled herself. He was doing this on purpose, she thought. Well, if he thought that this was going to have her crumbling to her knees in anticipation, he had another damn think coming. “Sure,” she told him. “I can do that.”
But not without feeling hotter all over myself.
Drying off his sculpted back was as close to an out-of-body experience as she’d had in a very long time. Almost never, really. The very last time she’d felt even close to this was that last night she’d spent in Redemption. With Cole.
The night Christopher had been conceived.
She rubbed the length of his back hard. “Here,” she said, thrusting the shirt back at him. “I’m done.”
Cole’s eyes held hers. His mouth curved slowly at her last words. She could almost feel his smile unfurl ing. And as it did, the pit of her stomach contracted. “Whatever you say, Ronnie.”
Her pulse raced. They weren’t talking about something as minor as drying his back anymore.
Chapter Twelve
“Feel free to pitch in,” Cole told her offhandedly, as if he was the one in charge and not the other way around. “Most likely, the work’ll go faster if two of us are going at it. Unless, of course,” he theorized, glancing in her direction, “it’s getting too hot for you out here.”
He thought he could scare her off, she realized. Well, he was in for a surprise. She wasn’t that innocent, smart-mouthed kid she’d once been.
Ronnie drew herself up to her full five-foot-four height. “I can put up with the heat if you can.”
Her own words echoed back to her. She could almost feel the chip on her shoulder. Except that she knew he really could outlast her. Cole had worked on a ranch long before he’d taken on this new mantle of town sheriff. She had worked on a ranch, too, before she’d left to start another life in Seattle. The difference between them was that she’d never felt dedicated about the work. To her it had always been just a way to help her father out, a chore to get over with as fast as possible so that she could move on.
For Cole it was something else. More like a statement, an almost loving assertion that this was the life he would have chosen for himself without any hesitation if it had remained exclusively up to him. He wasn’t without ambition. His was just a different type from hers.
His ambitions revolved around being the best at what he did. Quietly, without fanfare, for his own satisfaction, not for any kind of outside reinforcement or accolades. He didn’t live and die by other people’s assessment of him. That wasn’t the kind of man that Cole was.
There weren’t many men around like Cole. He was in a class all his own.
It only stood to reason that by now some enterprising young woman living in Redemption would have snapped him up. But no one had. If so, her father or his mother would have mentioned it by now if for no other reason than to make small talk.
“Why aren’t you married?” Ronnie suddenly asked him as she threw down another length of wood she’d gotten from the back of her Jeep.
His eyes swept over her before he went on with what he was doing. “I had someone in mind once, but she took off on me.”
Ronnie blew out an impatient breath. “Besides that,” she pressed pointedly. “Wasn’t there ever anyone else?” He was far too good-looking for there not to have been.
The jealousy at the very thought of that, of Cole with someone else, making love with someone else, came bolting out of the shadows, sharp and prickly, all but taking her breath away. She wasn’t accustomed to that feeling and she didn’t like it.
Jealousy spiked higher as she listened to his very next words.
“I got engaged to Cyndy Foster a while back,” Cole told her, displaying no more emotion than he would have if he had recited all the things he’d had to eat in the last month.
Ronnie almost dropped the hammer in her hand. “Cyndy Foster?” she echoed, struggling not to appear stunned.
They’d all gone to school together. Cyndy had been in their small graduating class. She vividly remembered Cyndy, who had been one of the school’s cheerleaders. Back then, Cyndy’s hair had been too blond and, in her estimation, her clothes had been a size too tight. Half the guys in high school would have given their right arm just to go out with her.
Cole stopped working to look at her. He was mildly amused by the way Ronnie had said the other woman’s name. “Yes. What?” he questioned. “She doesn’t meet with your approval?”
Ronnie shrugged carelessly. “Not my business to approve or disapprove.” She paused, knowing she wasn’t going to be able to work if he didn’t tell her
why he wasn’t still engaged—or married. Knowing, too, that he wouldn’t tell her unless she asked him. She held out all of ten seconds before the question finally burst out of her.
“So, what happened?” she asked. “You didn’t marry her, did you?”
Oh, God, did that sound as hopeful to him as it did to her own ears? She didn’t mean it to, even though a cloud of disappointment waited to descend—depending on what his answer was.
Had he married Cyndy and then divorced her?
“No,” Cole answered after a beat, “I didn’t marry her. We were engaged for a year and a half, but it didn’t seem right, marrying someone when part of me was somewhere else,” he said matter-of-factly. “Cyndy deserved better than that.” He laughed softly to himself. “When I told her that, she broke it off.”
Cole shrugged. It was all in the past now and he wanted to leave it that way. He should have never gotten engaged to the other woman in the first place. It had happened because he’d thought that would be a way to finally get over Ronnie. He realized now that he never would be over her. Not entirely. He’d resigned himself to that.
“She’s better off that way,” he added after a beat.
She knew him, instinctively knew that Cole had orchestrated it so that Cyndy would be the one to break off the engagement, enabling the other woman to save face and get the opportunity to tell her friends that she’d been the one to end the relationship.
But for now, Ronnie kept her theory to herself. Obviously Cole didn’t want to be prodded. “Sorry to hear that.”
He raised his eyes to hers and paused, his hammer suspended in midair. “Are you?”
Why was it he could always see right through her? “Okay, I’m not sorry to hear that,” she admitted, giving up the pretense. After another few seconds had gone by, she told him with certainty, “But Cyndy wouldn’t have made you happy.”
Ronnie was probably right, he thought. Still, he pointed out one glaring difference between her and the former cheerleader. “Maybe not, but at least she wanted to try.”
Okay, she needed to have this out with him, Ronnie thought. He deserved it after everything that had happened. “Cole, I’m sorry about the way things ended. I’m sorry I just ran out that way. But I knew that if I’d said anything to you about it, if I told you that I had to do this, you would have talked me into staying.”
“And would that have been so bad?” he asked her quietly.
She could feel helpless, angry tears sting her eyes. Damn it, she wasn’t going to cry about this. He wasn’t going to make her cry. She’d done the right thing—for both of them. And for Christopher, too, once she’d realized that she was pregnant.
“For me, yes,” she retorted firmly. “At the time, I couldn’t stay. I would have felt horribly trapped and resentful.”
“At the time,” he repeated. Did that mean she’d changed her mind? Had the lure of the city worn off for her? “And now?”
That was an unfortunate choice of phrasing, Ronnie thought. She wasn’t in the mood to get sucked into an argument.
“And now I have to get this fence finished. There’s a whole list of things waiting for me to get to. Wayne’s doctor is keeping him at the hospital a little longer because he’s worried Wayne will start to push himself too hard once he’s home. On top of that, if I have a prayer of getting that payment from Bart Walker, I’ve got to have the quarter horses checked out one last time before we get them ready to be sold.”
She was throwing up a smoke screen. It wasn’t the first time. “Still trying to lose me in the shuffle?” Cole asked.
Ronnie tossed her head, dismissing his question. She avoided looking at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The hell she didn’t.
Dropping the hammer he’d been holding, Cole crossed to her so quickly, she didn’t even realize what was happening until he was right there, his hands on her arms.
His hold was gentle, but firm, meant to keep her in place as he talked.
“Tell me you don’t feel anything for me, Ronnie,” he challenged. “Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t feel anything for me.”
She couldn’t do it and they both knew it. “Whether I feel anything or not isn’t the issue.”
“Then what is?” he demanded. “What the hell is the issue?”
They couldn’t start walking down a road that still wouldn’t lead them to the same destination. Especially after all this time. He had to see that. “We have different lives now, Cole. You’re the sheriff here and I’ve got a career waiting for me in Seattle.”
“And a man?”
She stared at him. “Excuse me?”
How much clearer could he make it? “Do you have someone in Seattle?” he asked, enunciating each word carefully.
It was an excuse. A way to end this. She knew that all she had to do was say yes and he would back off. He was too honorable not to. But that would mean lying to him. Skirting around the truth was one thing, but outright lying didn’t sit well with her. She couldn’t bring herself to do it, even if it did ultimately save her some grief.
She chose an evasive reply. “Not anyone right now,” she told him.
“Right. Christopher’s father,” he naturally assumed. The way she had worded it had him drawing his own conclusion. “He’s still in the picture.”
Oh, God, Cole, there’s no right way to tell you the truth. She looked away. “No, not really.”
“Fakely?” he asked sarcastically.
He was still holding on to her. Angry, upset, Ronnie tried to yank away and found she couldn’t. His hold was too strong. But then, she already knew that.
Frustrated, she cloaked herself in her anger. “Look, if you want to help, help. If you don’t, then go. But either way, damn it, let go of me!” she demanded.
“You don’t think I would if I could?” he fired back, his emotions breaking through. They were running just as high as hers were.
Cole had no idea how he went from point A to point B. It was almost as if those emotions that he had kept under control had just staged their own jailbreak and then took over the very prison that had incarcerated them for so long. One second he and Ronnie were shout ing into each other’s faces, the very next second, he was kissing that same face. Kissing her for all he was worth.
And she was kissing him back with enough fervor to set an iceberg on fire.
Oh, God, she had missed this, Ronnie thought, sinking into the sensation his lips created for her. Missed this, craved this.
Wanted this.
That taste she’d had the other afternoon, in the doorway of the boarded-up bakery, only served to remind her how celibate and deprived she’d been these past six years.
Because her knees had gone weak and threatened to buckle beneath her, rather than pushing him away, Ronnie threaded her arms around Cole’s neck to keep from crumbling as well as to strengthen the connection.
Leaning her body into his as the kiss flowered and consumed her seemed to be merely a natural progression. Everything within her sang. It was as if she’d finally come home. Cole had been her first love and her first lover.
He was also her only lover because there had been no one since she’d given birth to Christopher. All her emotions were focused on the son that she’d had and adored.
Over the past six years she had managed to talk herself into accepting a life without romance, without intimate male-female interaction of any sort. To talk herself into believing that she didn’t need that part of life to be happy. But all it had taken was just the smallest of connection with Cole to show her just how wrong she could be. And to show her how very incomplete she’d been until this very moment.
Even as the power behind his kiss fed her, Ronnie could feel the fire within her very core consuming her, begging for more. Desire seized her in its grip, ripping away her common sense and leaving behind a trail of ragged, raw and throbbing emotions. She ached for him.
As if reading her mind, Cole ran his hands al
ong her body. They felt wonderful as strong fingers caressed every curve, every dip. She raked her own hands over his body, as if to assure herself that he was really here with her now and not just another one of her dreams. The initial years without him had been hard on her. She’d dream of him incessantly, filling her dormant nights with him even as she wasn’t able to fill her days.
But this was no dream.
Cole was real. His body was hard beneath her touch. Hard and demanding. She felt the pull as her body longed to be possessed by his.
With the crystal blue sky above and a carpet of grass beneath her, she ripped away the cloth barriers that kept him from her. All the while, her mouth went questing over him, over his face, his neck, his upper torso, singeing him with the contact, needing more.
Cole groaned as desire filled him. The control that had kept him functioning, had kept him sane all these years, had cracked badly under this last assault. His resolve was no match for the desire that had remained trapped within him for so long. That now soared out of his every pore.
Once released, he could only follow its lead, availing himself of the opportunity that had suddenly opened up before him and presented itself at his feet. The taste of her skin as he pulled the layers of clothing away from her was tantalizingly tempting and sweet.
He wanted to be everywhere at once, touch everything at once, kiss everything at once.
The excitement that throbbed through him was at a level that he’d never experienced before, not even that first time with Ronnie. It was as if he felt that if he ceased going at this breakneck speed, he wouldn’t be allowed to go at all. Something would happen to derail this. But as much as his body begged him not to stop, to take what was before him, he couldn’t continue without knowing that she wanted this as much as he did.
Struggling harder than he had ever struggled before, Cole pulled himself back and searched her face. Looking for an answer he didn’t quite see in her eyes.
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