Nothing like putting on a condom, she thought, fingers lingering uncertainly on the zipper of her slacks, to shine the cold light of reality on an insanity like this.
But, looking at it from the other side, how would it be if he came back dressed and ready, so to speak, to find her dressed and not? How embarrassing would that be for him?
Resolute now, and before she could change her mind again, she kicked off her shoes, pulled down the zipper and stepped out of her slacks. One issue decided.
She was still debating the second, standing beside her bed wearing nothing but a scrap of lace and trying to keep herself from shaking like a leaf, when Roan came into the room. She half turned, eyes filled with all the questions she couldn’t ask. And one look at him told her all she needed to know-that he hadn’t changed his mind, that what she was wearing, or he was wearing, or where she waited, in daylight or darkness…none of it mattered at all.
He’d taken off his boots and uniform belt and shirt, but not his pants. His hard, muscular body, pale as a marble sculpture except for the dark V of tan at his throat and a dusting of mink-brown hair, seemed to shimmer in the mist that came suddenly to cloud her eyes. Even so, she couldn’t mistake the glitter of desire in his…or the naked vulnerability.
Her heart gave a leap she feared would send it through the wall of her chest. She had time for one glad cry and then his arms were strong around her, and his body hard against her softness, scorching wherever it touched her. His mouth opened with hers, both of them ravishing…hungry. His heartbeat thumped against her breasts. One big hand scraped down her naked back and skimmed roughly over her hip, taking the scrap of lace with it…then turned gentle as it slipped between her legs. Warm fingers cupped her, found their way between folds already moist and ready for him…stroked, tested…then pushed inside. The sensation tore through her…jolted her…stunned her. He captured her gasp in his mouth.
It had been too long, the sensation was too raw. The penetration brought her almost instantly to shuddering, knee-buckling climax.
She was sobbing when he laid her down…trembling when he coaxed her legs apart, opened her to him and held her there with gentle hands and insistent thumbs…whimpering when he licked into her and stroked her once again to the brink of madness. And when he slid inside her at last, hard and hot and full, she sobbed again as she cried out his name.
Chapter 14
He’d forgotten the feeling. Or had he ever known this desperate, driving need, this lust so savage it was like a wild animal clawing at his belly? The sensation of being wrenched inside-out, hollowed-out, pumped dry? And he’d forgotten, too, the relief that came afterward, relief so complete, exhaustion so overwhelming he wondered whether he would ever move again.
Wished he’d never have to move from where he was at that moment…a woman’s long sleek body beneath him, pulsing warm around him, heart tapping lightly against his chest, hands gliding over his sweat-slicked back, shallow uneven breaths stirring his hair. This woman. Mary.
Mary. The name quivered through him like a seismic shock-wave. What had he done?
He raised himself and looked down at her…mouse-brown hair spread across the flowered bedspread, porcelain skin still stained with the flush of passion and dusted across the bridge of her nose with tiny jewel-like drops of sweat. Her eyes were closed, the lashes clumped together in wet spikes, and her mouth was swollen and glazed with moisture from his kisses. He stared at her…framed her face with his hand and lightly brushed his thumb across her lips…and waited for the regrets to come. What have I done?
What had he done? Made love to a woman for the first time since his wife died, a woman in his protective custody, a woman he’d arrested, a woman accused of cold-blooded murder. Surely, there would be regrets…shouldn’t there?
But all he felt was a tremendous sense of awe, and pride, and yes…of ownership. For Mary he felt warmth and tenderness, and maybe something deeper. Yes…time to admit it was definitely something deeper. And instead of feeling scared or ashamed or guilty about that, he felt…happy.
He leaned down to kiss her and felt her lips curve under his with her smile. “I’m trying to think of something to say,” he said softly between light, brushing kisses. “Guess what I am is speechless.”
“Yeah, me too.” She nudged his lips with hers.
He felt her stir beneath him and instantly tensed. “Am I too heavy?”
Her arms tightened fiercely around him. “No-I love the way you feel…inside me. I wish-” She didn’t finish it, but he knew what she meant. He felt that way, too. “It’s been…a very long time,” she whispered brokenly.
His throat tightened. Frowning into her eyes, stroking her wounded cheek with the backs of his fingers, he asked thickly, “Did I hurt you?”
Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “No-oh, no. I’m fine-really.” Her smile was like a flash of sunlight, and he felt it warm his soul as he kissed her.
Then, with the tightness still gripping his throat, he murmured, “It’s been a long time for me, too. First time since my wife died, actually.”
“Really?” Her eyes widened with shock. “Wow-why? I mean, I know why I didn’t, but…”
“Why didn’t you?” He didn’t want to talk about the terrible grief and rage that had left him a hollowed-out shell for so long. He’d tell her someday. Not now. “Surely not…ten years?”
This time her smile was a faint flicker, without any joy. “No, not ten years. At first I wanted a relationship. I was lonely, you know?” She turned her face away from him, so he eased his weight away from her and propped his head on his hand, leaving his other arm draped across her, keeping her close while she talked. “I’d accepted this would be my life from now on, that there was no going back. And I sure didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. So I tried it, a few times. But always…at a certain point there’d be this…I’d have this need to share who I really was, even if it meant breaking security. And I knew I couldn’t do that, so…it was really hard.” Her voice broke, and she jerked back to look at him with shimmering eyes. “It was…like having to wear a mask all the time, even during the most intimate times. It felt awkward…suffocating.” She looked away again and whispered, “In the end, it was just too hard. Intimacy-real intimacy-was impossible. And without it…well, it just wasn’t enough. So…I’d break it off and move on. Eventually I stopped trying.”
There was silence, then, while Roan stared down at her face, lashes quivering on her cheek, moisture pooled in the corner of her eye. He cleared his throat and said huskily, “Well, seeing as how I already know all your secrets-” he bent down and touched his mouth to the tear puddle, dispersing the salty sweetness over his lips and her eyelid like dew “-there’s no mask necessary anymore. Not with me.”
She turned her face to him; her eyes searched his and slowly came alive with wonder. “No…” she breathed, like someone beholding a miracle. “I guess…that’s true.”
He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her deeply, taking a long sweet time about it. Desire for her was welling up hot in him again, like steam in a geyser, and when he rolled onto his back and brought her on top of him, her body already felt familiar to him. Her soft warm body slid over his hardness like an all-over caress, as she settled herself with a pleased little wiggle and a chuckle of surprise.
“Told you it’s been a long time,” Roan growled.
The SUV sped along the two-lane paved road that wound between pastures nestled among foothills studded with junipers and carpeted with wildflowers. Along the summits, pine trees stood like dark sentinels against a pale-blue sky streaked with feathery clouds. Roan drove with the windows down, and the air was warm and smelled of grass and pine needles and grazing cattle and all sorts of new growing things. It teased Mary’s hair and stirred across her skin like a lover’s caress, reminding nerve-endings of sensations reawakened such a short time ago.
Memories of that reawakening blew through her with a blast of heat that took her breath awa
y. She glanced over at Roan, biting her lip to hold back a smile. But he was driving, as he had been since they’d left Hartsville, with one elbow planted on the window ledge, his hand resting across the bottom part of his face, eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses and focused on something far beyond the road ahead. He’d done that on the way back from Bozeman, she remembered-it seemed an age ago now, the day she’d first known she was falling in love with the Marlboro Man-the Sheriff of Hart County, Montana.
Heartbreak County, she thought, and felt the heat inside her dissipate before a wicked little chill of fear.
“Regrets?” she asked softly.
He threw her a quick surprised glance. His eyes were shielded behind the glasses, now, but a smile deepened the little depressions in his cheeks in a way that made her heart wallow drunkenly. “Regrets? Nah…worries, maybe.” Eyes back on the road, his smile grew wry.
“Worries?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, like how I’m gonna keep my hands off you when you’re sleeping under my roof, living with me in my house, right along with my father-in-law and my child.”
Her stomach was quivering with something that felt oddly like butterflies, and she didn’t reply.
After a moment Roan threw her another glance, this one without the smile. “Truth is, Mary, I don’t know quite what I’m gonna do about you.” She couldn’t think how to answer that, so she didn’t. He faced front again and gave a gusty sigh. “I don’t know if you have any idea how you’ve complicated my life.”
“Your life!” It burst from her on a gust of incredulous laughter. “What about mine? I’ve got a hitman after me and a murder charge hanging over my head!”
“Yeah,” he growled, “and I’m the one that’s got to keep you safe and at the same time find some evidence that’ll clear you.”
Happiness burst inside her and spread through her whole being. She felt breathless with joy and hope. “You believe me? That I’m innocent?”
“Well, yeah, I thought I made that pretty clear a little while back.” He glanced at her, forehead creased in a puzzled little frown, then shifted as he faced forward again, as if the seat was getting uncomfortable for him. “Never did think you were guilty, to tell the truth.”
“Then why-” She shook her head, unable to finish it. Her lips felt numb. Her face and throat ached. She couldn’t think of that dreadful humiliating time without feeling sick.
“Why did I arrest you?” This time the look he gave her was dark with anger, though she felt fairly certain it wasn’t directed at her. “Because,” he said in a quiet and dangerous rumble, like the grinding of rock, “if I hadn’t, someone else would have.” And she watched his face-the part she could see-close up as dramatically as if a curtain had been whisked across it. After a moment he said in a voice as expressionless as his features, “I figured if I did it I’d at least have some control over how it was done. How you were treated.” He flicked her another brief glance. “Hope it wasn’t too bad for you. I tried to spare you where I could.”
There was an ache in her throat she couldn’t explain-unless it was a response to the emotions she could sense simmering beneath the surface of his icy calm…intense emotions she couldn’t begin to understand. There was hurt, there, too.
She opened her mouth to answer him, but the words weren’t there. What she really wanted-desperately longed to do-was reach across the console between them and take his hand…touch his arm…rub the back of his neck. But she didn’t know if she had the right to such a gestures of intimacy.
Intimacy. They’d shared a kind, certainly-the physical kind, thoughts of which made her whole body blush even now. But this was different. Emotional intimacy…intimacy of the heart and soul. The difference between sex and love. For a long time she’d thought the two were one and the same. She knew better now.
She gave her head an ambiguous shake and looked away.
Roan cursed himself in silence. Helpless fury simmered in his belly. Hope it wasn’t too bad… Yeah, right. If he’d had any hopes of kidding himself about how bad it had been for her, being arrested, processed and jailed for murder, the memory of Mary’s pinched, pale face would have set him straight.
He knew one thing: He couldn’t let her go back to jail-and it would be state prison, next time, not Hart County’s relatively friendly lockup. He couldn’t even let himself think about that.
One more thing he knew: Whether or not he’d gotten her into the mess she was in, he for damn sure was the only one who could get her out.
Simple enough, really. All he had to do was get the guy who wanted her dead, put him away and find Jason Holbrook’s killer.
As he thought that, the SUV topped the last rise before the long sweep down to the ranch. He heard Mary’s breathing catch, then a long soft sigh, and his heart lifted under his ribs at the thought that she was seeing it the way he did every day of his life, only for the very first time…foothills layered with pine and aspen rolling away to hazy purple mountains capped with snow even in the dead of summer. He never got tired of that vista. Erin had loved it, too. Was it too much to hope for, that he might find another woman who would love it as much? Who’d be as happy here as Erin had been?
The road dropped away beneath the wheels of the SUV, but the hollow sensation in Roan’s stomach was from something else entirely.
It was too much to hope for. So far out of the realm of possibility he was a fool even to think about it. Mary Owen was a woman living in exile. She’d had a life and a career she loved in the big city and would undoubtedly wish to return to it, if she could. If he made it possible. And what bitter irony, he thought, that by eliminating the threats hanging over Mary’s head and giving her back her life, he was sure to lose her.
“Are you sure this is going to be all right with, um…the rest of your family?” Mary asked as the SUV rolled past corrals, feed silos and majestic cottonwoods wearing the soft new green of spring.
The thumbprint in Roan’s cheek deepened with a smile. “You mean Boyd, I imagine-you know Susie Grace is going to be tickled, uh, pink. She’s been pesterin’ for a week to have you over for dinner.”
“All right, Boyd, then.” She drew an uneven breath; the quivering in her stomach was definitely butterflies. She’d never met Boyd Stuart, but she knew who he was. Original owner of this ranch, father of Roan’s murdered wife. And how was he going to feel about his son-in-law bringing a strange woman into his daughter’s house? His granddaughter’s? A woman accused of murder, at that?
Roan’s grin widened as he pulled the SUV to a stop in the shade of another of those giant cottonwood trees. “Ah, hell, don’t let Boyd scare you. He might be crusty on the outside, but his insides are pure puddin’.” He took the keys from the ignition and turned to look at her. “He knows all about you, by the way-thinks you’re innocent, too. Calls you ‘that little ol’ gal.’”
Mary touched the back of her hand to her lips to contain a helpless gurgle of laughter. Roan took off his sunglasses and tucked them in his shirt pocket, and the softness in his eyes, so different from their usual piercing glitter, brought an unexpected sting to hers.
He jerked his head toward his side window. “Well, here it is. It ain’t the Ritz, but for the next little while you’re gonna be calling it home.”
She ducked her head to look out the window and saw a handsome house trimmed with white siding and natural stone, with a wide and welcoming porch skirted with holly and evergreens across the front. Lilacs bloomed along the split-rail fence that separated the yard from the driveway. “It looks lovely,” she said. Then, because of something she’d heard in his voice…seen in his eyes, she looked at him and added quietly, “Actually, I’ve never been that fond of the Ritz.”
There was a pause while they looked into each other’s eyes, and Mary wondered whether he was any better at figuring out her feelings than she was his. Then Roan said brusquely, “Well-no sense in sitting here in the car.” He opened the door, but paused a moment before getting out to nod toward the
front of the car. “Here comes the welcoming committee.”
Oh dear, Mary thought. Much as she’d have liked to accept Roan’s assessment of his father-in-law’s nature as gospel, she couldn’t see any part of the man ambling toward them down the shade-dappled lane that might be described as “puddin’.” Crusty, yes. That part she could definitely believe.
Boyd Stuart was angular and rawboned, small in stature-very likely smaller than he’d once been, thanks to decades of having his spine pounded on by a hard leather saddle. He walked with the bent-over, bandy-legged cowboy’s gait she’d grown accustomed to seeing in the years she’d been living in the Great American West. He wore the rancher’s uniform of boots, Levi’s, long-sleeved blue work shirt and a sweat-stained baseball cap with a tractor manufacturer’s logo on it. A pair of mottled gray cattle-herding dogs trotted along beside him.
“Oh, Cat’s going to love this,” Mary said as she gathered her courage, opened her door and climbed out of the car.
“What, you mean the dogs?” Roan threw her look across the roof of the SUV. “They’re used to the barn cats. They won’t bother him.”
“Tell that to Cat.” She could hear a loud growling sound emanating from the back seat as the dogs came ranging up to lick Roan’s hands. Having said their hellos, they then ambled over more slowly to check her out. She stood still, murmuring hopeful reassurances, while they sniffed her avidly-smelling the cat, no doubt. Having evidently decided she was Friend, they bumped and snuggled against her legs, begging to be petted. She bent down to oblige them with pats and coos and ear-fondles, and when she straightened up, Boyd was coming to a halt a few yards away.
The rancher took off his cap, wiped his pale forehead with his shirtsleeve and put it back on again. He flicked her a glance and a nod, then looked at Roan and gestured toward the sheriff’s department SUV. “What’s the law doin’ out here this time a’ day?” His growly voice reminded her of Roan’s, only rustier.
The Sheriff of Heartbreak County Page 21