by Tara Janzen
Their angry silence became a palpable presence in the dark, quiet forest. Steps were taken on long strides, heads were held high, branches were broken underfoot with total disregard for marking or finding a trail. She had nothing left to hide but the ownership of the package she held in her arms, and she had no intention of doing that. She stopped and turned suddenly and shoved it into his midsection with a thud. “Carry your own junk.”
Walker barely kept the bundle from falling to the ground, but he didn’t question her statement. He was too busy tying not to yell at her all the way down the mountain. The woman was going to be the death of him, but he still didn’t want to let her go. He should be running in the opposite direction as fast as his feet could carry him. Instead he was following her through the night and wishing he had enough courage to ask her to give him her backpack to carry. He could just imagine what kind of response he’d get, and he wasn’t up for any more of her stubbornness or her colorful language.
At the truck she flung open the door and slammed it shut. Walker got behind the wheel. Blue no sooner had gotten her door closed than she opened it again.
“Stay put,” Walker ordered, getting out of the truck. “I’ll help him.”
Blue closed her door again and waited while Walker lifted her dog into the bed of the truck.
She would have helped Trapper with a boost; Walker just picked him up and set him down inside.
He got back in the cab and slammed his door, too, letting her know she was far from being off the hook. Nothing about the ride home appeased either of them, not the cold, the constant bouncing and jostling, or the bundle of “junk” nestled between them on the seat.
He brought the truck to one last bone jarring halt in front of the cabin and got out without a word. Fine, Blue thought, her mouth grim. She had no intention of fighting with him, or even speaking with him. She was getting the rest of her stuff and getting out.
Once inside the cabin she wasted no time hauling all of her things to the front door, and he let her, without a word of disagreement. When she had it all piled up, she walked into the kitchen, studiously ignoring the canvas bag he’d thrown on the dining table. Curiosity had no place in her life. She wanted, needed, a clean break. To give in to the lure of Lacey’s Lode once more would be a final act of foolishness she was determined not to commit. The lure of Walker Evans didn’t even bear thinking about.
“I’d like to borrow your car . . . please.” The request came hard, the politeness harder still. “I’ll leave it in Walden.”
“Be my guest,” he replied curtly, handing her the key behind his back without even a glance.
She had one more thing to clear up, just so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding. “There’s a letter in the package. Lacey’s Lode belongs to you. It always belonged to you. I won’t be back, and I won’t try to get any of it for myself.” The noble words stuck in her craw, but she’d be damned if she let him see her for the chump she’d been played for by her father. If nothing else, she’d walk out of there with her pride.
“Fine.” He didn’t give a damn about any letters, and at his point he didn’t care who Lacey’s Lode belonged to.
“Fine.” She stomped out of the kitchen and out of the cabin with the key in her hand.
Ten minutes later she stomped back in. The sound of the shower drew her unerringly to the bathroom. She pounded on the door. “Walker! Your car won’t start!”
“What?”
She cracked the door open and was met by a wall of steam. “I said your car doesn’t work.”
“I know.” His voice was muffled by the running water and the shower curtain, but Blue heard him.
“What do you mean, you know?”
“It never starts in weather below thirty degrees. Never,” he added for emphasis.
“Then why—”
“You’re a smart lady. You figure it out.” He cut her off, and she heard the water stop and the shower curtain being pulled back. She quickly ducked out and slammed that door too.
In the living room she was immediately confronted with the canvas bag lying on the table. He hadn’t touched it. The cloth was wet where the snow had melted in little pools, undisturbed by a human hand. The leather straps were still cinched tight.
Trusting fool . . . It would be so easy to take it away from him, to grab the bag and run. She swore softly. Maybe he did know her better than she knew herself. A part of her desperately wanted to take what should have been hers, but underneath the desperation lay her pride. She didn’t want Walker Evans to think her a thief, and she didn’t want him coming after her.
No, she thought on a heavy sigh, lowering her chin to her chest and briefly closing her eyes. She didn’t want him coming after her again. Twice was enough. He’d won, and she was right back where she’d started from, broke and alone. In truth, more alone than she’d been before—before he’d kissed her, before he’d shared his home with her.
Get out, Blue. Get out before you miss what you have no right to want. The search was over, and all she’d found was more of what she needed and less of what she could have. Walker Evans, with his passionate kisses and strong arms, wasn’t for her. His life revolved around the mountains and the seasons, her mountains, the seasons she felt changing with every sunrise, but he wasn’t for her.
She slumped against the back of the couch, splaying her legs and letting her hands fall to her lap. The muscles in her thighs began to tremble, and she planted her boots more firmly on the floor, trying to stop the outward sign of physical weakness. He’d pushed her too hard, too damn hard. Her gaze slid to the hallway. Go, Blue. Go. There’s nothing here for you.
But she didn’t leave. She waited, and she watched the hall, and she fought her silent battle of loss and need, of impossible want and painful denial. Love didn’t enter into her equation. Her experience with the emotion had been too limited for her even to begin to work with it. Love was a labyrinth, and no one had ever given her a good, reliable map.
A moment later he emerged from the bathroom, still buttoning his jeans, a towel draped around his neck. She pushed off the couch and retreated farther into the living room, turning her back on him. One look had been enough.
“May I borrow your truck . . . please.” Politeness didn’t come any easier with practice, especially with him half naked behind her. She’d caught a glimpse of his tight abdomen and the golden shade of his skin, and all the hard muscle beneath both, and her mouth had gone a bit dry, making it hard to sound as angry as she was trying to feel.
“No.” He strode by her, barefoot, seemingly oblivious to the effect he was having on her. His jeans weren’t tight, not nearly tight enough. She was afraid any second they might slip off his hips. The slight gap between the cloth and his body drew her attention with each step he took. And when he returned from the kitchen with a cup of coffee, she found her gaze riveted to a hand’s span of distance above his jeans, the distance between where a silky arrow of sable hair started at his navel to where it disappeared beneath the soft gray-blue denim. A heat she didn’t feel on the outside built inside, flushing her cheeks.
“I . . . I can’t walk out of here tonight, Walker. I’m too tired.”
He knew that. He could tell just by looking at her, and it made him mad all over again. “Then I guess you’re going to have to wait until I’m ready to take you.”
“When will that be?” Dark eyes lifted from his stomach to his eyes. He felt the slow rise of her gaze like a touch. He felt the effort it cost her. He knew what she was thinking; it was written in the soft parting of her mouth, in the weakness she was fighting, and that, too, made him mad.
“Maybe tomorrow morning. Probably not.”
“Why?” she asked, confusion evident in the slight tilt of her head, a confusion he wasn’t buying anymore.
“You know why, Blue. Go take your shower, get warm, get into dry clothes, then I’ll take care of your face.”
“What’s wrong with my face?” She lifted a hand to her cheek
and winced at the tender bruise she found.
There were a lot of things wrong with her face, mostly that looking at it broke his heart. A face like hers should have been framed by something soft and pretty instead of layers of worn-out flannel, a ragged old cowboy hat, and a faded bandana. He, who had always known what his looks were and what they could get him, and found it not much of lasting importance, had fallen in love with a woman who didn’t know she was beautiful.
“I left plenty of hot water,” he said gruffly, and turned back into the kitchen.
Blue pulled her hat off her head and dragged a hand through her hair. There was no winning anymore, not in her life. She was cold from the inside out and the outside in. Her body was bruised and battered, stretched to its limit, and she’d left the last of her spirit halfway down Bays Back Ridge. She needed more than a shower to put things right, but it was probably the only thing she was going to get. Sighing, she dropped the hat on the end table and turned wearily toward the bathroom.
When she was clean, warm, and dry, everything he’d told her to be, she flicked off the bathroom light and prepared herself to face him. She knew what she had to do and hoped she had enough guts and civility left in her to do it without making a bigger mess of everything.
He was seated at the kitchen table, sprawled back in a chair with one leg up on the table. The riches of Lacey’s Lode were spread out in front of him, a tarnished melange of sterling silver and fine turquoise. Firelight reflected the dull shine of a squash-blossom necklace tangled in his fingers, the delicate workmanship contrasting with the weathered roughness of his hands. She followed the piece as he lowered it to the table, then, unbidden, her gaze drifted to the arch of his bare foot. Her eyes traced the curve up his leg and thigh to the forest-green shadows of his shirt and the bronze highlights in his hair. The play of light in the darkened corner of the room made him appear half real and bigger than life. The tight expression on his face added to the intimidating illusion. One piercing glance from his narrowed eyes told her it was no illusion. The man was madder than hell and barely controlling the emotion.
Expediency and escape, she decided, were her best moves. “I want to apologize.”
“Then do it.”
The harshness of the command took her by surprise, but she struggled forward with the words she’d memorized under the shower spray. “I shouldn’t have lied to you. I know I wasted a lot of your time, and I’m sorry, but in my position you would have done the same thing.”
“I was in your position, and that’s not good enough.”
To hell with civility, she thought, feeling the hackles rise on the back of her neck. “I’m trying to apologize, and you won it all. That’s going to have to be good enough,” she spoke each word succinctly, her hands clenched at her sides.
“You’re not even close.” He swung his leg to the floor and slowly rose, his hands gripping the edge of the table.
“I don’t know what in the hell else you expect of me, and I really don’t give a damn.”
“Expect?” His voice lowered to a dangerous level. “I’ll tell you what I expected.”
“Sorry. I’m fresh out of time. I’ve decided I do have the strength to leave tonight, with or without your help.”
“You’re not running out on me again, Blue.” He came around the table, and she backed off a step.
“The hell I’m not.” She wasn’t afraid of him, but neither was she a fool.
“I’m tired of fighting with you, and I’m through with giving you enough rope to hang yourself.” He came closer with each statement, stalking her slowly across the room. “Your face is scratched and bruised. You look like a strong wind would blow you away, and if you think you can throw a few trinkets at me and walk out of my life, you better think again.”
“Trinkets?” She felt the couch on the backs of her legs and stopped, forcing her head up to meet his gaze.
He didn’t stop coming until he’d passed all the boundaries of personal space and common courtesy, until his thighs brushed against hers, until he towered over her and held her chin in the palm of his hand. Golden flames reflected in his eyes, burning away the last of her courage. Her pulse began to race and her muscles to quiver.
“I expected you to be rough around the edges, and you are,” he said, growling. “I expected you to be trouble, and you’re more than I bargained for. I expected you to tell the truth, and you didn’t. And somehow, Blue”—he rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip, slowly, ever so slowly, and his voice lowered to a desperately soft drawl—“somehow, through all of it, despite most of it . . . somehow, I expected this . . .” His voice trailed off as he lowered his mouth to hers and pressed her back against the couch, flanking her with his long, hard legs.
The blatantly sexual action stole her breath and made her knees weaken. The tender invasion of his tongue into her mouth sent a wave of heat pouring down her body to settle between her thighs. She sunk against him, wrapping her fingers around the waistband of his jeans to keep from falling.
Walker wasn’t going to let her fall. He held her with his hand at her nape. He held her with his arm around her back, reveling in the enchantment of her sweet mouth and the even sweeter pressure of her small, strong body against his. Beneath the rough edges, past all the trouble, lay the woman he’d dreamed her to be, warm and passionate, uniquely formed to give him pleasure.
He moved his mouth over hers and felt her rise against him, molding her soft curves to his hard angles. He lifted her higher into his arms, one hand sliding down her leg and wrapping it around his waist. Behind his back he tugged her boot off and let it fall to the floor, and he pressed harder into her.
“Ah, Blue,” he said with a groan, laying a path of kisses up the contour of her cheek to her hairline. He buried his face in the thick flaxen strands, shifting her weight against him and working off her other boot. “Say yes.”
The raw need in his voice shot through her with heart-stopping intensity. She heard her boot fall, and she felt the hot warmth of his breath on her neck, sensitizing her skin and making her yearn for more. His hand on the buttons of her shirt, and the remnants of her pride, compelled her to speak before she forgot who he was, the son her father never had.
“Walker . . . no.”
“Yes, Blue.” He lifted his head and bracketed her face in his large hands. The callused pads of his thumbs traced the tender skin below her eyes; his palms cupped her cheeks. “You’re staying tonight, staying with me. No posse is going to ride up and take you away. Your dog isn’t going to rescue you. There’s only me, and I’m not letting you go.”
She listened to his proclamation, breathless, feeling his hand slide down her throat and pause just above the opening of her shirt. The heat of his touch spread across her chest, and farther when he pushed the first button through its hole. “Please don’t.”
“Please don’t what, Blue? Please don’t want you? Impossible.” The second button slipped open. “Please, don’t make you want me? That’s almost too easy, isn’t it?” He freed the third button, then the fourth. “Or are you trying to say please don’t leave me, Walker? Don’t steal my dreams and push me back out into the world alone? Well, I’m sorry, Blue, but I am going to steal your dreams. I’m going to steal your kisses, and if I get lucky tonight, real lucky, I’m going to steal your heart the same way you’ve stolen mine.”
“I haven’t stolen anything,” she whispered, thoroughly aware of what he was doing with her clothes and unable or unwilling to stop him. The distinction seemed beyond her, the decision even more so. He was moving too fast for her to keep up with logic, and her instincts hadn’t recovered from his kiss.
“Yes you have. You’ve stolen my time, but every hour with you is twice as good as the hours without you. You’ve stolen my privacy and the loneliness of my days”—he freed the final button, his hands lingering where the cloth gaped before disappearing inside her jeans—“and my nights, Blue, what you’ve stolen from my nights is unforgivable. You’ve filled th
em with crazy thoughts and a deep-down ache only you can heal. Fight yourself if you have to, but I know you can’t fight me.” He tugged her shirt out of her pants and slowly spread it open, his hands brushing across her breasts. As he held her gaze his eyes half-closed in longing and his jaw slackened with a shallow breath. His unconcealed desire filled her with the same deep-down ache he’d confessed. It welled up inside her, dragging panic in its wake.
“I don’t want to feel like this . . . to want you,” she said, desperate to explain. “I don’t want to give myself away.”
“Then let me give myself to you,” he urged softly. “You can take, Blue. I’ll give you everything. Nothing I’ve got is doing me any good if I keep it to myself.” Still holding her gaze, he slid his palms up to cup her breasts, the roughness of his hands moving over the satin of her skin. Then he lowered his eyes and released his breath on a ragged sigh. “Lord, you’re pretty, Blue.”
When he whispered his soft words, Blue knew why she had waited. Through all their days together, and all their nights close but apart, she’d dreamed of him saying those words again. No trace of a lie echoed in his deep voice, no hidden reservations obscured the reverence in his eyes.
The gift alone weakened her need to fight what she felt when he caressed her. She’d tried so hard all her life not to need anyone, to protect herself from the pain of loving. She’d carved out a narrow space to hold herself and her goal, but Walker Evans had been slowly, surely, chipping her walls away. She wanted to hate him for making her feel her loneliness.
But he touched her, and when he touched her, she had no room for the hate, only the want of more of him. His lips teased her doubts away, gnawing a tantalizing trail back to her mouth, where he captured her for his own. She didn’t want to be alone any longer, for reasons she didn’t understand. Walker had become the man she needed.
“Hold me, Blue. Make me believe you want me,” he commanded huskily, reaching down and releasing the snaps on his shirt one by one.
The heated silkiness of his skin and the hard muscles bunching in his chest teased the peaks of her breasts, and when he tossed his shirt aside and pulled her close, crushing her against him, the teasing turned to wanton need.