Hidden in a Heartbeat (A Place Called Home, Book 3)

by Patricia McLinn

  “Why would she use his name if they weren’t married? But if they were married why would she have gone back to Dahlgren House and lived like a recluse in disgrace? There are so many questions.”

  She shivered again, and he drew the ends of the afghan tighter around her, holding them in place.

  “It says – here, this sheet in Marti’s handwriting – he was three-quarters Crow Indian, all except his father’s father – that’s where the name Pryor came from. With his being dead, I’ll never have a chance to know about that side of my ... my heritage.”

  “It says no other children, but he might have family – other family.”

  Her eyes came to his face. Deep, dark. “Yes, he might. Family ... I’d ... I’d like to know about the Crow Indians, too. I’d like to learn about all of it. I’ve always felt like I’ve had this gap in me. Now at least I know some of what the gap is. But ...”

  “But?” he nudged after a silence.

  “But all the time there’s this other feeling – I know this sounds strange, but I can’t get the thought out of my head – maybe it explains why I never felt right in Delaware, and then coming here... I know it’s not like it is for you – I don’t know anything about ranching or cattle or Wyoming, but Far Hills feels ... right. I never had someplace to belong – ”

  “You belong here.”

  “Thank you, Luke.” Her hand covered his, still holding the afghan. “I know what Far Hills means to you, and for you to say – ”

  “You’re a Susland, same as Kendra or Grif, so of course you belong here.” He could try to cover his tracks, but that wasn’t what he’d meant. He knew it. He was damned afraid she knew it.

  “Am I? I don’t know. Even if all of Marti’s research is right, my father didn’t want me in the end, and Charles Susland didn’t want Runs at Dawn at the start, so what does all that mean? Am I really a Susland? Or a Pryor? Or a Dahlgren? I don’t know. And my mother and father – ? I don’t know anything. ”

  “Don’t cry.”

  It was like telling the clouds not to rain. And it was equally useless to tell his arms not to wrap around her, not to pull her tight against his chest, not to stroke her hair and rub her back while she sobbed.

  He touched his lips to her hair, feeling the silkiness and breathing in the soft, fresh scent. He remembered that scent from the other times of holding her. It wove through all his dreams of her hair spread on his pillow.

  She gave one shuddery gulp, then a second before she backed off. One more uneven exhale came before she finally looked up.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Luke. I’m so sor – ”

  “Are you starting that damned apologizing again?”

  She blinked and sniffled, but her color was coming back to normal. The afghan had slipped off her shoulders, pulled her top to one side, leaving honey silk skin visible, down to where a faint curve gave promise of the soft, sweet flesh below.

  Without moving his left arm from around her shoulders, he leaned across her to the table at the end of the sofa and snared a box of tissues. He dropped them in her afghan-tangled lap.

  “Thank you.” She blew her nose decisively, then delicately mopped at her face before putting the box aside. “Thank you for everything, Luke,” she said in a stronger voice. “Coming here like this, I never meant – ”

  “I know. If you’d had someone else to go to you would have.”

  He meant it to be light, but he heard the edge. So did she. She looked up, her eyes wide, dark and so deep a man could drown in them with one wrong step.

  “I didn’t mean to – ”

  “Shut up, Rebecca. Just shut up. You’re getting out of here now. Right now.”

  He had enough control to say the words softly. Enough control to pull the ends of the afghan up over her shoulders again. Not enough to keep the surge of heat when the side of his fisted hand brushed her bare skin from pushing a hissing breath out of him.

  Their eyes met. He knew what must be in his – all the things that shouldn’t be. In the next heartbeat he swore he could feel her breasts tightening, the tips of them forming points that brushed against his chest, sending stabs of desire directly to his groin.

  “Luke.”

  He thought she reached for him. It wouldn’t have made more than a split-second of a difference, because he was folding her tight against him and dropping his mouth onto hers.

  Maybe he was trying to scare her. Maybe himself.

  He kissed her with no brakes on what he wanted from her. He spelled it out, with powerful strokes and demanding touches.

  His hands were on her everywhere, impatient of clothes, sweeping them aside without bothering to take them off. Her hands were less bold, but still on his bare skin, under his T-shirt, urging him as he yanked it off.

  She was partly across his lap, where she could surely feel the urgency of his need, and they were both sliding deeper into the sofa’s cushions with each touch. He filled his hands with the soft, smooth warmth of her breasts. Then gave them to his mouth, while his hands explored lower, deeper. Her pants and panties slid down one hip under the stroke of his hands. She was hot, damp, welcoming.

  If this didn’t stop now, he was going to take her right here on the sofa. He had to get her out of here.

  He made himself stand, and pulled her up with him. They stood there, holding onto each other’s arms, maybe a foot of space between them. Both breathing hard.

  She had to leave.

  He took her face between his palms and made sure they were looking eye to eye to tell her so.

  “Don’t expect any stopping to come from me, Rebecca.”

  “Okay.”

  A small word in a soft voice, but no hesitation.

  He wanted to swear. He wanted to whoop and holler.

  He took her wrist and towed her through the living room, into the bedroom, to the bed. He flung the covers back with his free hand, not caring or noticing which layers he caught and which he left. He took the hem of her top and pulled it up over her head, at the same time releasing the bra he’d unhooked earlier, so there was only her honey flesh before him now. The way he’d dreamed since that day it rained and she’d peeled those few discreet layers off in the old truck.

  He paused to kiss each nipple, but no more, as he slid her pants and panties down in one sleek motion, pressing his lips just below her belly button as he helped her step free.

  Then he laid her on his bed.

  He followed, halting with one knee between her legs to take her hands and lead them to the waistband of his jeans. He had to know.

  Her hands fumbled, but didn’t falter. He watched her concentration as he drank in the sight of her below him. Then the snap came loose and the zipper lowered, freeing him. The sound of her pulling in a breath upped the ante to the point that if she touched him now – He caught her hands just in time.

  “Not yet.”

  He hardly recognized his own voice. He shoved off the jeans, grabbed a condom from the bedside table, and put it on. It took all the concentration he had.

  When he came back to her, he saw the shyness rising up in her again. She put her hands over breasts, and started to draw her legs together. He covered her with his own heat and desire, kissing her – slow, deep explicit. He felt her hesitation ebbing, felt her answering.

  “Put your hands on me, Rebecca. Touch me.”

  Almost before the words were out, he felt her touch on his shoulder and back.

  He knew how to please her. He wanted to do that, He wanted to know her, all of her, but they were rocking against each other. So close.

  Now.

  The word might have come from her. Might have come from him. It surrounded them. He made it a reality, pushing slow, unrelenting into her sweet, sleek heat. Her hands pressed him tighter against her for an infinite second of absolute stillness as he rested fully inside her.

  That infinite second turned to motion, time expanding and collapsing with each stroke of their bodies against each other, with each other.
Pumping, straining, he gripped her hips, trying to bring them closer together than reality allowed. There was no way to bring these two separate bodies closer, to join them more than one inside the other. One surrounding the other.

  And then it happened. Infinity shattered, scattering reality into tiny shards with it. They fused, merged, shimmered. Exploded.

  * * * *

  Rebecca concentrated on the rhythm of Luke’s breathing. It was the only thing her senses could understand.

  His breathing was nearly steady when he abruptly rolled out of the far side of the bed and went into the bathroom. A shudder passed through her, an astonishing aftershock of sensation that rippled through her core.

  She blindly reached out, finding a loose corner of something and pulled the top sheet over her body. As if she could hide from herself. As if a sheet could hold out the sensations – or was she trying to hold them in?

  The door to the bathroom opened. She closed her eyes. Her mind still saw his powerful, naked body – her body still felt it.

  He sat on her side of the bed, the dipping of the mattress pulling her eyes open against her will. He touched a cool, damp cloth to her forehead, then under her eyes, still swollen from her earlier tears. He wiped gently across her cheeks, following the new tracks from tears wrung from a body that hadn’t known, had no idea of its own potential.

  He tossed that cloth on the beat up table beside the bed and picked up another cloth. With his free hand, he pulled the sheet off her. While she was still gasping at that, he crawled over her to the empty side of the bed, and pulled the sheet back over both of them.

  Slowly, he slid the warm, damp cloth down her far side. When the track of his touch lowered and slanted toward her core, she started to squirm. He stilled her with a “Hush.” He enraptured her with his gentle thoroughness.

  He brought her to a slow, sweet climax with his hands and his mouth and his patience.

  When she woke much later, in the deepest dark, and reached out, he was there.

  They made love again. Taking time to explore, to test experiences, to memorize responses. Taking it easy. Slow. Right up until the end when there was no chance of taking it slow.

  * * * *

  He woke to daylight before she did. No surprise. He was a ranch riser, she wasn’t.

  He didn’t move right away. That was different. Usually in the mornings, he rolled out of bed as soon as his eyes opened, cutting the temptation to burrow deeper and let the pre-morning dark ripen toward light.

  This time he neither rolled out nor burrowed in. He simply laid there, feeling her against him. Feeling the rise and fall of her breathing, and its flutter across his ribs. Feeling again the sensations of being inside her. Wanting them again.

  That probably was natural. He rarely wakened with a bed partner – not once since he’d returned to Far Hills – so rarity provided a reasonable explanation. He supposed even what happened last night fell under the category of reasonable, given the pull between the two of them. They’d tried to ignore it and that just let it go stronger. But they’d settled that now.

  As long as it didn’t happen again.

  He wasn’t fool enough to think that nothing had changed. But he’d sorted out what was best, and that hadn’t changed.

  What also hadn’t changed was what could happen if certain folks found out she’d spent the night with him.

  * * * *

  Rebecca woke in full awareness of where she was, what she’d done and who she’d done it with. She also woke to the smell of eggs and coffee, and hungrier than she could ever remember being.

  She searched the floor for her discarded clothes. She found her panties and her shoes. Period. Luke’s T-shirt, though, was available. With her panties it was almost decent.

  She trailed the smells out of the bedroom, and spotted Luke through the open doorway to the compact kitchen. He was at the stove with his back to her – his bare back – with his jeans, apparently not closed, hanging loosely on his hips.

  Suddenly not sure how to proceed, she halted, idly fingering items on the bookshelves along the living room wall.

  Well-worn paperback spy thrillers. Thick tomes with obscure titles where an occasional “Irrigation” or “Animal husbandry” indicated they had to do with ranching. CDs with a bent toward country, with a strong dash of Latin. And then, on a lower shelf, old vinyl albums. She bent down to look more closely. Every one classical, mostly Chopin.

  She pulled out one and saw looping feminine handwriting at the top right-hand corner: Polly Albright. The next one had the same name in the same handwriting. And the third. She checked five more, spotted around the collection. It was unanimous.

  Straightening, she moved to the kitchen doorway. He was emptying a carafe of water into a coffee maker. Around the sour-tasting lump of unfamiliar jealousy and all-too-familiar uncertainty, Rebecca forced out a light tone.

  “Who’s Polly, and why do you have all her records?”

  With the water carafe suspended over the top of the coffeemaker, he held still, except for a tremor in a muscle under his shoulder. The quick, sharp hiss of a drop hitting the heating element seemed to bring him out of suspended animation. He put the pot in place. Then, without turning, he said without emotion, “A cousin, and because nobody else wanted them when she died.”

  “Oh.” His answer was so unexpected, her single syllable sounded the way she felt – as if she’d been hit in the gut. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. It convinced her of pain rather than indifference. And that brought his answer into focus.

  “She was the one who introduced you to Chopin?”

  “Yeah, she loved all that stuff.” He snagged his work shirt off the back of a chair, pulled it on, and started buttoning it, still with his back to her.

  “Was she a musician?”

  “Piano.” He shoved the shirt’s tails into his waistband and zipped his jeans. “Look, I – ”

  Seeing the door between them starting to close, she hurried to get through it. “What happened, Luke?”

  He slammed it anyway. “She died. I got her records. Look, I got work to do. There’re eggs on the stove. Help yourself to coffee, anything else you want.”

  She didn’t move. He slid his feet into boots left by the back door, pulled on the denim jacket and took his hat from a shelf. Fully armored, he paused, then glanced over his shoulder toward her for the first time.

  “No need to hurry. Take your time.”

  His final mumbled “See you” was almost covered by the sound of the door softly closing. No need to slam this one – that would have been redundant.

  * * * *

  A large, unfamiliar car with Wyoming plates was in Helen’s driveway, blocking Rebecca’s access to her usual spot. So Rebecca parked in the street.

  The walk up the driveway felt like a thousand mile hike. Going up the stairs put an ascent to Mount Everest to shame. She just hoped that when she crawled into her own bed her mind and memories would be quiet long enough that she could sleep.

  The doorknob turned under her hand.

  She’d locked it, hadn’t she?

  She pushed the door open, and faced two women, one standing, one seated. Both looked disapproving, only one also looked avidly interested – that was Helen Solsong.

  The other one was Antonia Folsom Dahlgren.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Grandmother! What are you doing here?”

  “I am here to find out what you are doing.”

  “I ... I...” A memory of Luke’s body over hers, his face intent, his eyes hungry flashed not only through her mind but across her nerves and into the core of her being. The heat of it should have made her blush, the intimacy of it should have made her stammer more. It didn’t. “I’m working.”

  “With your grandmother looking for you last evening,” said Helen, “I thought it my duty when you didn’t come home to call her this morning, and she came right down from Sheridan.”

  Rebecca swung around to Antonia.
“You arrived last night?”

  “Yes. You were not here – ” She cast a cold eye around the apartment. ” – so I returned to Sheridan, which is the closest community with even adequate accommodation. You may go now, Helen.”

  It was not only a dismissal, it was dismissive. Helen cast another look at Rebecca, then reluctantly left.

  “Would you like coffee?” Rebecca’s move toward the kitchen area ended abruptly with the answer.

  “No. Banks is preparing coffee downstairs – ”

  Rebecca knew Antonia wouldn’t have traveled alone. Until she heard the name of the Dahlgren driver, she hadn’t realized how much she was hoping Helmson might be on hand.

  “ – After you make yourself presentable, we will attempt to obtain an acceptable meal. Wear your gray suit.”

  Rebecca didn’t move. “It’s wonderful to see you, but this is not the best time. My work for the historical site commission – ”

  “Since the other project you have taken on is outside of your career path, you can take time from that to spend with me. Why you would associate with a farmer I can not fathom, when you could be Mrs. Simon Locksdale if you made the least effort.”

  “Grandmother,” she said with all the patience she could muster, “Simon is not interested in marriage to me. He’s gay. And my client is Far Hills Ranch, one of the state’s oldest and most successful.”

  “We shall discuss this after we have eaten. With your whereabouts unknown I have, naturally, not eaten since yesterday.”

  Rebecca doubted that. Still the jab of guilt – unreasonable as it might be – at being away while her grandmother looked for her, spurred her toward the bathroom.

  The mirror brought her up short. Her clothes were rumpled, her hair was mussed, and her mouth swollen. Despite the jarring note of their parting, she looked to be exactly what she was – a woman who had spent a spectacularly satisfying night in Luke’s bed.

  * * * *

  She had to be out of training.

  Where once Rebecca would have smoothly deflected Antonia’s dictums, she found herself bridling that long, long Sunday. Although she said nothing, it dulled her edge in maneuvering her grandmother. Antonia made it clear – without stooping to saying it – that there was precious little she approved of at the historic site, in the town of Far Hills, probably in the state of Wyoming and perhaps west of Delaware. The encounter with Vince was the worst.