by Lora Leigh
She stood on the edge of the small crowd, toward the back, as the Reverend Mayer said the final prayer over Clyde Ramsey’s coffin.
Rafer Callahan’s uncle and the only member of the family who hadn’t disowned him when his parents had died was laid to rest on a sunny summer day. Twenty-two years to the day that the Callahan brothers and their wives had gone over a mountain cliff, Clyde Ramsey had fallen from his horse and broken his neck.
The coincidence was simply too strong, especially considering that the so-called accident had come only days after he had filed papers with the courthouse that gave his nephew possession of the 450-acre ranch Clyde owned.
A ranch that Cami knew he had had several resort investors contact him over selling or at least leasing part of the property.
She was certain she had heard the sonic boom the second the three barons had received the news.
Now Clyde Ramsey was dead, and the ranch the three powerful families had been trying to buy was about to become the center of yet another court battle for Clyde’s heir, Rafer Callahan.
The battles begun twenty-two years ago after his parents’ death still hadn’t been resolved either. As of six months ago, the inheritance Rafe and his cousins had been entitled to was still frozen as part of the litigation the families of their mothers had brought against it.
Those families were still attempting to deprive their grandsons of everything their mothers had left to them on their deaths. Especially the property, left in trust that had been bought from Rafer, Logan, and Crowe’s grandparents JR and Eileen Callahan. A transaction that their sons, Rafer, Logan, and Crowe’s fathers had sworn their parents would have never signed.
To deflect suspicion, the vast amount of property had been placed in trust for the youngest daughters in each family. That inheritance went to each child on her thirtieth birthday. Those daughters, as fate would have it, had married the Callahan sons whose parents had supposedly sold it. Those three daughters had turned thirty only days before their deaths.
Coincidence.
Cami hated that word.
Corbin County and its three powerful families were haunted by the coincidences of blood and death when it came to those who opposed them or possessed something they coveted. So far, the Callahan cousins had managed to evade the repercussions of that opposition. Evaded it … or perhaps the powerful barons hadn’t yet managed to overcome their consciences to outright murder their own grandsons.
Of course, this was all supposition on Cami’s part. Or her paranoia as her mother liked to say while smiling back at Cami indulgently, if a little absently.
How her mother had changed. Even before Jaymi’s death, Margaret Flannigan had been prone to depression and had lived in a Valium haze. In the ten years since Jaymi’s death, her depression had deepened, especially after her parents had moved to Aspen two years ago. Four years later than they had planned, as Cami understood it.
Her parents had been making plans to move the year Jaymi had died and had been trying to convince her to move as well.
The big day would have come the summer Cami graduated from high school. But no one had mentioned the move to her. Her parents’ way of silently emphasizing the fact that she wasn’t welcome, Cami thought mockingly.
How different families could be.
Her parents rarely acknowledged her presence, and even when her mother did seem to notice Cami, it was with loving surprise. She never doubted her mother’s affection for her, simply Margaret’s ability to deal with the world with her husband in it. On the other hand, Cami’s uncle Eddy and Aunt Ella and had treated Cami like the daughter they never had. They had always been there for her.
They had bought her senior prom dress for her, despite the fact that Cami hadn’t wanted to go. Thankfully, her friend Jack Townsend had had a friend willing to escort her, Archer Tobias, the son of the former sheriff. Archer was now Corbin County’s sheriff. Which surprised her considering the fact the barons had not backed his election.
Her aunt and uncle had helped her get her a loan for college, and when Cami had lost her best friend that last week of college, it had been her aunt and uncle who had dried her tears.
But even more important, when she had lost the one thing she had wanted above anything else in the world it had been Eddy and Ella who had rescued her. They had forced her to move out of her apartment and had brought her into their own home.
Now Cami stood watching another friend being buried.
As the Reverend Mayer drew the prayer to a close and the small crowd began drifting away, Cami made her way to the gravesite and the three men gathered there.
“Rafer.” She stood in front of him, feeling just as vulnerable, just as weak and hungry, in the face of the powerful dominant male she faced, as she ever had.
“Hey there, kitten.” He greeted her softly, the dark remnants of arousal in his voice sending heat flashing through her.
She couldn’t avoid the arms that wrapped around her. She tried. She tried to make herself step back and then tried to make herself stiffen in his arms. She told herself she couldn’t feel this, couldn’t allow it, and she definitely couldn’t have him.
It didn’t work.
She felt herself soften against him involuntarily, and felt her arms go around his shoulders. Her face pressed against his powerful chest as she relished the subtle heat and powerful warmth that eased the chill inside her soul. She drew in the scent of him. Uniquely male, hinting at the dominance, at the sheer male strength that filled his body. Cami could feel her senses coming alive. The dormant warmth and sensuality flaring to life inside her, and reminding her of the pleasure she had once found in his arms.
She let herself relish those seconds in his arms. Let herself revel in them and told herself she wasn’t going to allow anything more.
She couldn’t allow anything more. She had nearly lost her will to survive when she lost their child. She couldn’t risk that again.
“You’re as beautiful as ever, Cami,” he whispered against her ear. “And you make me just as damned hungry.”
And he was hard.
His cock pressed against her lower belly and she felt his hunger for her begin to burn. As well as her own. Heat built between her thighs as her clit awakened with a vengeance. Her womb clenched, sending a rush of breathlessness through her as she felt the liquid response to his touch dampen her pussy.
She couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow herself to give in to it.
Drawing back was even harder than slipping from his embrace and his hotel room three years before.
“I’m sorry about your uncle,” she said, stepping back. “He was a good man.”
“He was as unbending as steel and just as rigid.” Rafe was smiling, though, his blue eyes amused at the description.
“But he loved the three of you,” she reminded Rafe softly.
“He tolerated us anyway,” he tried to tease her.
She could see the knowledge in his gaze, though, that she wasn’t returning the warmth, the teasing, where she had always teased back before. She was drawing away from him because she had no idea how to be close to him without wanting him, needing him; without taking everything she knew he would be willing to give her. All she had to do was reach out for it. Reach out for him.
Oh God, it hurt so bad to pull away from the warmth of his arms, to see that flash of hurt and anger brighten his eyes. It was like tearing a chunk of her soul out of her body. And here she thought she had already lost her soul.
She hated how weak she was, and she hated that she had no idea how to take that risk again and survive it. She had lost too many people, too many things in her life that she had loved. Her mother, her father, or rather accepting he had no desire to be her father. And her child.
The thought of allowing herself to weaken that far, to allow his touch again terrified her. The chances of losing Rafe were incredibly high. The chance of standing and watching as his body was lowered into the ground increased every day that he was in Corbin C
ounty.
So she stepped back. Her fingers clutched the edge of her purse as she gazed up at him in regret.
“I just wanted to say hello,” she said softly. “And to tell you how sorry I am.”
His expression closed, when he saw her deliberately put distance between them. His eyes burned with anger.
“You shouldn’t have wasted your time, Cami,” he drawled. “Run on home now, before I show you exactly how I make little girls like yourself admit that you know me a hell of a better than you’re pretending.”
“I’ve never pretended Rafe,” she told him, refusing to hide, refusing to back down. “I’ve simply learned how to accept reality.”
“Whose reality?” he snorted. “The truth or the reality the barons attempt to force feed everyone?”
It was better that he was angry, she told herself. So much better that he hate her. Because any other emotion would just cause her to break the promise she had made to herself. The promise that she would never risk her soul again to the extent that simply surviving seemed an insurmountable obstacle.
And the vow that he would never know what they had both lost. That he would never, ever know exactly how it had destroyed her.
“Good-bye, Rafer,” she said softly. “Take care.”
He didn’t speak as she turned and walked away, but she could feel his gaze on her back. It was like a caress. A dominant, fiery stroke of his hand along her body. A phantom reminder of everything she couldn’t have. Of everything she now denied herself.
CHAPTER 3
Eighteen months later
It was colder than a witch’s tit. The temperature hovered just below zero with the windchill and a hard western wind blew across the mountains with a banshee’s moan. The blizzard had become a whiteout, with the rapidly falling fluff piling fast and hard against the house in heavy pristine drifts.
The weatherman said to expect a blizzard, and he hadn’t been far off track. Problem was, this looked like blizzards combined. The previous year’s mild winter was cashing in interest during this late-season storm.
He was snowed in on a Saturday night watching the snow pile up and wondering what the hell he was doing back in Corbin County. And he was doing it just after yet another funeral. Just after the death of another man who tried to stand against his grandfather, Marshall Roberts, and his two business partners. The group everyone called the barons. He was half-drunk, damned morose, and fighting nightmares from a past he couldn’t seem to shake. And son of a bitch if he wasn’t so fucking horny for one damned woman that he could barely stand it. His dick was iron hard, his balls throbbed. They were so tight and the need to touch her was almost torture.
So it wasn’t exactly hard for Rafer Callahan to convince himself that the woman standing on his doorstep couldn’t be real.
Could she?
After all, why would this particular part of his past show up now, of all times? Hadn’t she already shown him that there wasn’t a chance in hell of ever having her again?
Which was the reason he just went ahead and convinced himself that she was the vision of his most explicit, his naughtiest, his nastiest fantasies.
Sometimes, a man just needed something to hold on to, and she was it for him.
“Hello, Rafer.”
Rafer stared hard at the young woman standing on his porch, watching him expectantly.
He lifted his gaze, checked the position of the moon, and gave a mental nod.
Yep, it was midnight.
Now all he had to decide was if this lovely, too-alluring vision was a figment of his fantasies coming to life or if fate was standing behind the lovely Cami Flannigan, laughing her ass off while he stood there with a hard dick.
Hell, he could always take his chances. After all, he’d made a huge gamble returning once again to the small town that had spawned him, hadn’t he? What was that if it wasn’t the dumbest decision of his life? This one couldn’t be any worse, now could it?
“You’re not naked,” he drawled, deciding to go with the fantasy idea. And boy, did he have enough fantasies where Cami Flannigan was concerned.
Black lace, candlelight, slick, wet flesh, and hungry-feminine-moaning type fantasies that he couldn’t manage to shake. He’d only had her three times in the past five years and the last time was three years ago. It wasn’t hardly enough.
The vision of creamy flesh and blue-ringed velvet gray eyes blinked back at him before narrowing in feminine offense. “I have to be naked to knock on your door?”
There was a sudden snap to her tone that had a smile wanting to curl his lips. Damn, he surely did love that tone in her voice. It just made his dick harder, just made all his little perverted fantasies push to the forefront of his mind. But it also made him doubt that it was possible this was a fantasy. Only the real version of Cami spoke to him with that snap in her voice.
Yes she was acting less and less like a figment of a fantasy by the second. Especially when she propped a slender hand on her cocked hip and glared back at him as though he had crawled from beneath a rock. When had Cami begun looking at him like that?
A sigh of resignation escaped his chest. A man could dream, couldn’t he?
“It depends on why you’re here,” he still answered her, though, and he still kept to the program.
Fantasy. Erotic. Hard dick.
That little frown brewing between perfectly arched — plucked or waxed? he wondered — dark brows tightened.
Was her pussy still waxed? The first time he’d glimpsed those perfectly bare folds he’d nearly come in the sheets rather than her snug little pussy.
“I can’t imagine the reason why it would matter. Did one of those bulls you breed butt your head a little too hard or something? I’m stuck in the snow, Rafer. Why else would I be standing in the middle of a blizzard on your front porch?”
For his hard dick?
The words almost slipped past his lips.
“What did you say?” She blinked back at him in outraged amazement.
Oops, maybe he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
He smiled back at her, still not certain. “I said something?”
He arched a brow. He’d learned early that the gesture tended to throw most people off and he used it shamelessly.
Hell, maybe he’d just drunk too much damned whisky. That was always a possibility.
Suspicion filled her eyes, narrowed them, and thinned her lips. “I’m pretty certain you did,” she informed him between clenched teeth. “And I’m really certain it was uncalled for.”
Well, he didn’t know how uncalled for it was. It was honest. A man could hope.
“I might be drunk.” He cleared his throat as she continued to stare, anger beginning to shadow her gray eyes. “Can I blame it on the booze?”
Hell, she did have pretty eyes. They looked like the finest dark gray velvet with a narrow ring of dark blue. He’d always said Cami Flannigan had the prettiest eyes. Anyone could just ask his cousins, Logan and Crowe, they’d tell it; Rafe said it often. So often sometimes that they told him to shut the fuck up.
“‘Might’ hardly describes the situation,” she snorted with ladylike charm. “You reek of booze, Rafer.”
Cami called him Rafer sometimes, rather than the shortened version, Rafe, that most people used. He liked the sound of it on her lips. Especially when she was moaning it. She wasn’t moaning right now.
“That could be possible.” He nodded as his gaze raked over her shivering body. “It just seemed the night for it, I guess.”
He’d only just realized she was shivering, hard. Her hand had dropped from her hip and she was once again huddled against herself. She was obviously cold, dressed in nothing but jeans, boots, and a heavy hooded sweatshirt that proclaimed: Teachers Rock.
He wondered if she would let him warm her. He knew exactly how to do it. How to touch her so her eyes darkened in passion, how to make the juices slicken the delicate tissue of her tight pussy.
“Stop undressing me with y
our eyes, Rafer,” she ordered. “Could you at least let me in where it’s warm? Or perhaps drive me home? My car is stuck in the snow out by the main road.” She waved her hand toward the drive, now covered in nearly a foot of snow in less than an hour. “Surely you still have a four-by-four?”
All his fantasies came crashing down on him. No fantasy. She wasn’t there for his hard dick, candlelight, or black lace. She was there because her car was stuck in the snow.
Lifting his gaze again, he stared into the blizzard. The whiteout conditions were only increasing. Travel would be impossible, let alone getting the car out of wherever it was stuck.
So this wasn’t the erotic fourth chance of a lifetime standing on his doorstep. The first three chances hadn’t been nearly enough to satisfy him, let alone to sate the hunger he had for her.
“Rafer, are you all right?” Suspicion laced her voice. “Are you smoking something you shouldn’t be as well as drinking too much whisky tonight?”
He snorted at that as his gaze dropped back to her. Short, sassy layered strands of dark brown hair framed almost kittenish features as big gray eyes blinked back at him. Suspicious gray eyes. She thought he was high?
He wasn’t that lucky.
“I told you, I might be a little drunk.” He sighed, glancing at the snow again. “But not too drunk to know we’re not going anywhere in this storm.” He turned back to her, arched his brow, smiled. “Looks like you’re stuck here with me, Cami-girl. Unless you want to take your chances in the snow?” He nodded toward the storm outside the porch. “Personally, I’m not willing to take that risk with my truck or my life.” And especially not with her life.
Rafe watched her still for the briefest second before turning to look out at the storm herself.
Her shoulders seemed to slump, as though whatever weight she carried was too much for her. He wished he could see her face, look in her eyes and read her thoughts as he had when she was younger. But hell, it seemed those days were gone. When she turned back to him, all he saw in her face, or in her eyes, was weariness — weariness and resignation.