“That’s a good sign. Shows he wants commitment, even if it hasn’t worked out for him.”
“I think he might have decided not to travel that road again.”
“Well, you said you’d never deal with another cop. People change their minds.”
Thankfully for her peace of changed mind, their aunt Sammie Jo strolled over to their shady nook at that moment. “There you are,” she said. In unison, Carolyn and Taylor started to rise to offer their chairs to Sammie Jo. She waved them back down.
“Sit. Sit. My fanny’s sore from having to sit listening to Mickey going on and on. Lordy, that woman can chatter.”
Carolyn grinned at Taylor, who shifted her gaze to smile up at her aunt. “I’ll bet she never got a word in edgewise. Mel Gibson or Brad Pitt?”
Sammie Jo chuckled in appreciation of the direct hit. “Oh, Brad Pitt today. He’s got the cutest behind. Darn near as cute as that Texas Ranger you’ve got holed up here.”
Taylor laughed outright. “He’d be flattered to know you think so.”
“Not that one. He knows,” Sammie Jo said. “And that’s good. A man who doesn’t know his own worth ain’t much of a man. Remember that.”
Taylor nodded.
“And a woman who would let such a man get away from her isn’t using the gifts God gave a monkey.”
Taylor shook her head. “That cart’s way before the horse, Aunt Sammie Jo. Steve’s only been here overnight and he’ll be leaving as soon as he can. Today, possibly.”
“Don’t let him go,” her aunt said with devastating simplicity and total disregard for anything remotely resembling reality.
But for just a moment, having listened to the comments of her sister-in-law and aunt, the two women closest to her in life, she wished what they believed was possible.
“Are the boys spending the night out at your place tonight, Carolyn?” Aunt Sammie Jo asked pointedly.
Taylor couldn’t help her exclamation of protest, but her sister-in-law serenely nodded. “Yes, it’s my turn tonight. You took the girls last week,” she added, turning a too innocent face in Taylor’s direction. “Remember?”
“They’re fine here,” Taylor said, wondering if she was protesting because she didn’t want to be left alone with Steve Kessler or because she did.
“Nonsense,” Sammie Jo said. “Give the man a break. I love those boys to death, but they’d wear out a dead man.”
“Speaking of dead men,” Carolyn said, lifting her chin in the direction of the highway, her eyes on an ambulance coming from the south. Its lights were flashing, but the driver wasn’t using the siren. Which told all of them all they needed to know: no amount of speed would revive the passenger in the back of that van.
The party at Taylor’s house once again fell silent as the ambulance headed north, returning to Lubbock or Levelland. All eyes shifted back to the south and followed the progress of the black-and-white state trooper unit that came next. And the one after that.
“That leaves two of them still out there, plus your Ranger and that Adams fella from the FBI,” Sammie Jo said, taking inventory. “Wonder who that man was. And how he came to be killed right here in Almost.”
Pete joined them, dropping his hands on Carolyn’s shoulders. Despite the heat of the summer day, he wore a long-sleeved shirt. Taylor knew he did so to hide the death’s-head tattoo on his forearm, the tattoo proclaiming he’d been in prison and had killed there. She smiled as her sister-in-law reached up to lace her fingers through his. Taylor wondered if her leaning her head against the painted forearm was an unconscious gesture or if Carolyn was remembering the days when she hadn’t understood the reason for her husband’s tattoo or his stay in prison, the time she hadn’t known he had been with the FBI.
“Kessler just called,” he said. “He wanted to know if you’d mind if he stayed a couple more days.”
Taylor opened her mouth and closed it again. She thought of Carolyn’s offer to take the boys for the night.
“I told him it would be all right,” Pete said. “If there’s a problem, he can always stay out at our place.”
Carolyn kissed his hand. “The boys are staying out there tonight.”
To Taylor’s relief, Pete didn’t so much as blink an eye at his wife’s obvious matchmaking efforts.
“Well, at least you won’t have to worry what to feed him,” Aunt Sammie Jo said. “There’s still enough food in there to feed an army.”
Taylor felt as if an army had just taken over her life. An army of well-intentioned, utterly misguided loved ones.
“Mom! He’s coming!”
“Steve’s back!”
The boys and Carolyn’s daughters raced down the strip of grass outside Taylor’s fence and slid to a halt at the gate as Steve pulled his rental car to a stop in front of Taylor’s house.
“Steve!”
“Did you find him, Steve?”
“Was it the same guy?”
“Was he still wearing that watch?”
“Was he really dead this time?”
“What’s his name?”
“Who shot him?”
A strange expression crossed Steve’s face as he looked down at the boys and their cousins. To Taylor, he appeared to relax slightly, as if in relief, and a smile tugged at his lips as he raised his hand to subdue the clamor, only to lightly rest that giant hand on Jason’s head, then Josh’s.
“We found him. Yes, he’s really dead. He’s already on the way to Levelland to the county hospital. Yes, he was still wearing his watch. And he has at least four different names. And it was thanks to you boys that Delbert Franklin found the man.”
“Yeah?”
“Way cool. Hear that, Jenny? We’re famous.”
“He didn’t say you were famous, he said—”
“Was he all gross?”
Steve shook his head and pushed through the five kids and the gate. He looked around, not as if for help, but the way a drifting boat might seek an anchor. His eyes linked with Taylor’s and she saw him relax yet another notch.
He looked back down at her sons. “I owe you boys a big apology,” he said. “I’m afraid I didn’t believe you right away yesterday.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Jason said magnanimously. He waved his hand and released an admission of his own. “Mom warned us a long time ago about the boy who yelled wolf. I guess that’s kinda what we did, huh?”
“Did he have, like, lots of false IDs?”
“Yeah, like, he did,” Steve said, smiling down at Josh.
“Cool. Way cool.”
Steve’s grin broadened. He looked up and met Pete’s gaze. “And to answer your earlier question...I’d say our boy was very likely involved in the shenanigans that went on here last spring. Think you could remember the guy who ran with the Wannamacher brothers? The Canadian?”
Pete nodded solemnly.
Steve dug a large plastic bag containing the four passports from his jacket pocket. Using the plastic to open one of them, he held out the photograph for Pete’s inspection. “This the guy?”
“That’s him,” Pete said. He lifted his hand to rub his jaw. “I remember him rather well. He had a punishing left hook.”
To the entire party’s disappointment, Steve slipped the plastic bag back into his pocket. He looked over at Taylor then and smiled crookedly. “Any objection to my hanging around here for a few days?”
She had a thousand of them, she thought, her heart beating too rapidly. “Of course not,” she said aloud.
The boys dashed to the front porch to spread the news to the assembly gathered there. Over the exclamations of surprise and wonder, and the loud recapitulations of her sons’ activities both the day before and that morning, the entire crowd distinctly heard Jason’s smug pronouncement. “And he kissed her last night. You know what that means. Now he has to marry her.”
Chapter 11
Taylor’s chair creaked as she rocked slowly back and forth. Darkness had finally come to Almost, masking the town, c
ooling down speculation and curiosity. Now that everyone was gone, the townspeople to their own homes and beds, the boys to Carolyn’s and Steve into the bathroom for a shower, Taylor should have been able to relax.
Instead, with every motion of the rocking chair, the tension within her seemed to spiral another turn tighter.
In the heat of the afternoon, with Steve out in Delbert Franklin’s field monitoring the discovery of the dead man, she had more than half believed Carolyn and Sammie Jo’s faith that Steve would somehow transform into the kind of man who would want to spend his life in the middle of nowhere with a widow and three identical boys.
And somehow, sitting in the shade of the elm tree, listening to neighbors chatting, laughing and arguing good-naturedly, she’d thought it was possible to simply relax and believe that wishing for something could make it so.
But with everyone gone and Steve alone in the house with her, at this very moment naked in her shower, she was all too keenly aware that wishes were a far cry from the real McCoy.
The very last thing she’d wanted in the world was to fall in love with another law enforcement official. The boys might idealize the profession, as she perhaps had encouraged them to do. But she knew the pitfalls on a far too intimate level.
And yet, she had the sneaking suspicion that his very profession was one of the attractions for her. He laid his very life on the line every time he walked out the door.
The boys had said all it would take was one kiss. Just one.
They hadn’t come up with the notion from television or videos. They’d heard the story of their father kissing her one night after a school dance. And they’d heard the story of how she’d fallen in love with their dad during that kiss. How he’d fallen in love with her.
That was how she had known Steve was wrong the night before, when he’d kissed her and then said that a person couldn’t fall in love after a single kiss. She’d done it herself. And had spent some fifteen years in a wonderful marriage to a lovely man and had three great kids to show for it.
Now, she was more than half-certain she’d gone and done it again.
She’d never felt as lonely as she did right then. Not even the day Doug was killed had she suffered such a feeling of utter isolation. She didn’t believe a chasm of different needs and wants separated her and Steve; she suddenly felt an entire universe yawned between them.
And she’d never missed Doug as much as at that moment. Strangely, she wanted to hear his opinion of Steve, what he thought about his old college roommate—and what he thought about her feelings for the Ranger. She wanted to hear her husband’s advice. Most of all, she ached to hear him utter a benediction, an acceptance, as if he would stretch out to her after all this time and give her the go-ahead to live life again.
The screen door creaked behind her and Taylor closed her eyes in sudden fear. Her heart jolted then beat threadily. She gripped the arms of the rocking chair with a painful grasp. What was she so scared of?
“Taylor...?”
That’s who she was afraid of, she thought wildly. Herself, Taylor Leary-Smithton. She was afraid that the lonely woman inside would demand freedom that night...solace and companionship. Maybe even love. And she was afraid she wouldn’t have the strength to deny those wants.
He let the door softly close behind him. She could smell the scent of his soap, his shampoo. It was a clean, sharp odor, and it made her inhale deeply and frown at the hunger that leapt up in her. She knew that if she touched him, his skin would still be warm from the hot water, his face would be smooth after a shave, and his hair would be damp against her fingers.
A ray of light from the kitchen fell on her profile. Steve held his breath as he took in her closed eyes, the long lashes fanning across her rounded cheeks, the slightly parted lips, the frown on her forehead.
Something twisted inside him, a painful wrenching sensation that propelled him forward and forced him to bend over her rocking chair. For a last sane moment, he hesitated, remembering Houston, remembering his long-ago vows to avoid the dangers of another involvement, remembering his failures, telling himself that he didn’t dare take the leap again because this time, all safety nets would be gone.
Women like Taylor Smithton were one in a million, and if she took the same route as his previous wives, he would be left in ashes, no longer a phoenix, this time never to rise again. Then his final vestige of reason fled as he lowered his lips to her furrowed brow, slowly, deliberately trying to kiss away the frown.
She sighed and stiffened slightly. Then, as if suffering something similar to his internal struggle, she suddenly lost whatever inner war she’d waged. She raised her face and opened her eyes. Her gaze was steady and her eyes a silvery blue in the shadow cast by his body. She seemed to appraise him for a moment, then a soft, almost sad smile curved her lips. “Do you want to hear the reasons why you shouldn’t kiss me? Why I shouldn’t kiss you again?”
“No,” he said honestly. He knew all the reasons. Every one of the thousand and two reasons he should stand up straight and go back inside her house, pack his things and head for a sterile motel room in Lubbock, or even relinquish the investigation, as the FBI wanted him to do, and fly all the way home to Houston. “No,” he repeated.
“Then, please...would you kiss me again?”
Her simple question inflamed him as easily as a match set to kerosene-soaked paper. He knew he should discover what she believed were the reasons not to go ahead, because they had to be vastly different from his own, but he told himself he could taste her now and still draw back, still walk away intact. He lied to himself, convincing himself that he still had the strength to call a halt before he plummeted headlong over the cliff she represented.
She moaned a little as his lips brushed hers, and he heard an answering groan coming from deep within his own throat. His kiss deepened even as she pressed upward. For all the sorrow in her voice, for all the doubt etched on her face only moments before, her lips let him know that she’d crossed some Rubicon of hesitation.
This kiss tonight was no shy, I’ve-been-alone-a-longtime meeting of lips. This was a kiss to drown in, a kiss to bring a man to his knees. And Steve felt his weaken.
Instead of sinking to the wooden floor, he cupped her face in his hands and buried himself in her flowered scent, in the heady taste of her mouth, flicking her tongue with his, then warring with it in a driving, demanding rage of hunger. He could feel her trembling beneath his touch and knew he was shaking, too. With want, with need. With fear.
And he realized he’d wanted her, had dreamed of this exact, precise moment since the first time he’d glimpsed her shining face in the frame on Doug’s nightstand all those years ago. And he realized why he’d been struck the previous afternoon by his ex-wives’ resemblance to Taylor; he’d been drawn to them because they’d vaguely looked like the glowing girl in his fantasies.
He felt a tear escape from her eye and withdrew to look at her. He didn’t know why she cried, but ached for her because of the hot tear snaking down the side of his hand. It seemed to scald his skin.
“What...?” he asked softly, pressing his lips to the tear, tasting the salt, trying to absorb whatever pained her. And yet a part of him—perhaps the part that tried to understand the tears, that long-restrained part of him that understood that wanting a shared life meant sharing vulnerabilities, frailties—knew why she cried, knew why something inside him felt flicked raw.
She shook her head, her damp cheeks touching first one of his palms, then the other.
“Please?” he murmured, lightly brushing her lips with his own. “Taylor...I really want to know what you’re thinking. What you’re feeling.”
Instead of answering, she returned his kiss with fervor, capturing his mouth this time, thrusting her tongue against his, arching upward as she raised her hands to his chest.
He growled softly as she ran her palms across his fresh shirt, and groaned when she thrust her fingers through a gap between buttons, long, tapered tips br
ushing against his bare chest. He raised his head to pull at the night air, half-certain he was dying in his thirst for her.
She looked up at him with glazed, half-closed eyes. Her tears, and perhaps whatever had caused them, were absent now, though her gaze was liquid and trapped somewhere between confused and shockingly determined.
“Will you tell me why you cried?” he forced himself to ask.
She sighed and deftly unfastened a button on his shirt. Then another. Her eyes lowered to her task.
“Taylor...?”
“Because I want you so very badly,” she said simply. “And I’m scared.”
She freed a third button before sliding her trembling hands across his upper chest. “Oh... I knew you’d be this warm.”
Even if he had wanted to stop now, her hands touching him, her candid words and the tears that had preceded them would have made it impossible. He all but dragged her from the chair, leaving it rocking madly behind her as fast as his heart was racing in his chest.
He pulled her into his arms, aching for the feel of her against his chest, needing to draw her against his full length, to press into her, to arch her body to his. And to press his lips to the throbbing pulse at the base of her throat.
Gripping his shoulders, she arched back, allowing him access to her collarbone, to her velvet skin, to her full, firm breasts. He fumbled with the buttons of her blouse, forcing himself not to rip the material apart in his need to touch her, to see her.
Finally he had the blouse opened, and he closed his eyes as he pressed his hands over her sharply defined nipples, feeling them jutting against his palms through the lace of her bra. Bracing her, keeping her pressed to him with one hand, he slid the other beneath the wisps of lace at her shoulders, pushing the straps from her shoulders.
Her head lolled back making her defenseless, guileless. Wholly woman and, because of that, wholly vulnerable. Reverently, he pressed a kiss to the bare column of her slender neck.
A childish part of him wanted to beg her not to hurt him, even as the protective side of him ached to assure her he would do everything in his power to shield her from any more pain in her life. “I’m here,” he said, and thought the words illogical, no matter how important.
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