by Cara Colter
His eyebrows shot up.
Suddenly she didn't need Jenn to tell her what to do. She knew. She just knew.
"I know," she said softly, "how much that wild boy has wanted to do this."
And just like that she kissed him. She leaned forward and touched his lips with hers.
He froze, and for a moment, just a moment, she thought she had overplayed her hand, that her instincts had failed her.
But then he groaned, a groan of defeat, and surrender and wanting.
And his hand trailed down her hair and found the back of her neck, and it pulled her in closer to him.
His lips were not tentative as hers were. She realized immediately that he did not share her innocence.
His lips were experienced, and they claimed hers totally, commanded her. Her mouth parted beneath that command, and his tongue found the warm hollow of her mouth.
She was shocked by how rapidly an innocent kiss could catch fire—and thrilled by the nameless sensations that shuddered through her as his passion deepened.
It felt like all her life she had waited for this one moment.
And for him to share it with her.
This was the place where dreams met reality, and where some dreams would have shattered under the force of the collision.
But that was not what happened to the dream of Holly Lamb.
It took wing. Her love for him took wing. Nothing in her held back from him. Nothing. She gave everything she was to that meeting of lips—her heart, her soul, her fire.
And it felt like he gave everything he was back to her.
In the kiss were all his secrets—a wild passion, a part of him that was untamed and uncontrolled. But it held also the essence of the man. His great will and integrity, his solidness.
What she had never known before was that a kiss was not an ending.
Before, that was all it had been to her. The ending of a wonderful movie, or a good book. The ending of an evening.
But on that knoll with Blake under a mellow sun, she discovered this kiss was not an ending. But a beginning.
For almost as fast as it had filled her, it now left her longing for more, longing to follow its heated path to the core of her own femininity, to the core of her own passion.
Her hands explored him, hungry for that more. Hungry to know him. She touched the hard muscles of his shoulders and his broad back with wonder that became delight that became more hunger. It wasn't enough to feel his back through his shirt. She wanted to touch his skin.
She became aware that his hands too were exploring, not with her urgency, though. Stroking her back, and her neck and her cheek, his power leashed, his wanting curbed.
His hands on her. Her hands on him. Their lips tangled together. It was a type of delicious sensory overload that obliterated all else. Soon sensation became everything.
Even the sky faded, the scent of crushed grass, and trees and the strawberries.
Her mind held only one thought, and it was a thought without words, a thought that went back to the beginnings of time and soared forward into the future.
If it had taken form it would have been: Know him.
In every way.
Know his lips and his touch, know how her own fingers reacted to his skin beneath them, and how that set off a chain reaction of shivers and tingles.
Know him.
Her body, her mind, her spirit united in this quest.
Know him.
In this new and wondrous way, know him.
Boldly, transforming into a woman she had not been before, she tugged his shirt out of his jeans, and sighed when she felt the silk of his skin beneath her fingertips.
"Holly."
It was part groan and part protest and part welcome. Lightly she ran her fingers over the smooth skin at the small of his back, allowed them to trail higher, trace the wings of his great shoulders, the muscles and ridges.
If she was blind, this is what braille would have been to her. The wonder that opened up a whole new world, a whole new dimension.
She would never ever be the same woman she had been ten minutes ago.
And then his lips left hers, and she felt him taking her hands from his back, guiding them away from him.
She opened her eyes and looked at him.
He looked at her, tortured, torn. In his eyes she saw that he wanted her.
And in his face she saw that he was betraying something he held to be true by wanting her so desperately.
"What?" she whispered, stealing by the guard of his hands, touching him again.
He closed his eyes, gathering himself to say no to her.
"Blake, don't—"
But he did. He took her hand and put it gently away from him.
"We can't do this, Holly."
"Why?" She waited in terror. There was someone else. He didn't care about her in that way. He would never care about her in that way.
"It's wrong."
"Wrong?" Wrong as in against his religion. Did he have a religion? How could he call something that had been so right, wrong?
"Holly, I'm your boss."
"Oh. That kind of wrong. Against-your-principles wrong."
"Exactly."
She looked at him closely. Was that all it was? Or was it something more? Was that just his tactful way of letting her know it wasn't the same for him as it was for her?
She knew it couldn't be the same for him, because she could not have stopped it. Not even with the considerable effort it had taken him.
She did not even want to stop it now, her desire at war with her pride. Part of her wanted to ignore him, fling herself at him, capture his lips again, use every bit of her feminine power to dispel his.
But when she looked at his face, she could not.
He was looking away from her, over the valley, something in his expression hard and cold and totally unapproachable.
"It must be hard being inside you," she said, and damned the shaking of her voice. "The renegade and the righteous sharing the same body."
He laughed a little. "It's very hard." Then he looked at her closely. "It must be hard being inside you—the innocent and the passionate sharing the same body."
"What makes you think I'm innocent?" That kiss had tempted something bolder, wilder to her surface. Somehow she thought it might have fooled him.
"Just a guess," he said, not at all fooled.
"I don't plan to be that way forever." It was possibly the boldest thing she had said in twenty-seven years. An unmistakable invitation.
Blake got off the blanket as if it had been invaded by ants, and began to pack things away. He wouldn't look at her.
Holly was devastated. There. She had tossed all the dice, she had not one single thing left.
And the answer was still no.
He glanced at her, and she saw the pity in his face. Pity. Just what every woman who had just brazenly offered herself to a man wanted to see.
"I have to do the ethical thing," he told her gently. "Do you understand that?"
"Of course," she said, getting up, turning away from him, pretending to brush crumbs from her clothing, when she was fighting not to cry.
"Holly, we can't do this. Do you understand? How can we work together, in the same office if we follow that path we were just on?"
"I understand perfectly." Somehow her moment had slipped away from her. She could see the resolution on his face, the determination.
Set against her.
She wondered if she crossed the distance between them if she could change that. With her lips, her body.
But suddenly she felt very uncertain herself, and did not feel strong enough to withstand another blow. She let him go ahead down the path, watched the grace of his walk with a longing that was intensified now that she had tasted him and touched him.
As they walked silently back toward the ranch, they could see from above a car pull into the driveway.
A white car. A big car.
Stephen Darce.
&n
bsp; Blake's face was blacker than thunder.
"You can't have it both ways," she told him quietly. "You can't not have me, and have me, too."
"I know that."
"Then you have a decision to make."
"It's already made."
She looked at the strength in his face, the torment.
"I didn't tell him to come here," she said.
"It's okay. I know the feeling. He probably can't stay away."
She would not let that enigmatic statement give her hope. She would not. It was over. Before it had really begun, it was over.
Ten
Blake tried not to let his fury show as they approached the office, and Steve Darce stood waiting for them, leaning his fanny against the side of his car of his snow-white luxury car.
Blake slid Holly a look, trying to see how she felt about the banker. Or the car.
Her face was carefully blank.
But the banker's was not. Steve, who had that fresh-scrubbed boy scout look that Blake would never attain, not if he was respectable for a million years, looked from Holly to Blake to the picnic basket and back to Blake. Blake did nothing to dispel the uncomfortable understanding that dawned in Darce's eyes.
"I've come at a bad time," he said.
Blake said nothing.
But Holly, always the kind one, rushed to put him at ease. "Of course you haven't, Steve. But what are you doing here?"
"I called your office earlier. When there was no answer I started to worry. You know with the water thing still unsolved—"
Darce's concern for Holly blackened a mood Blake would have sworn ten seconds ago could not get any darker. Plus, he wondered what exactly Holly had confided in Darce about the water. Had she told him about the bad dreams? Had he done more than pat her shoulder?
"Blake and I were just out of the office for a bit."
Blake shot her a look. Her hair was scattered around her head, her cheeks were on fire, and there were little bits of grass stuck in her sweater. The picnic basket was obviously depleted, and the neck of the bottle of wine stuck out of it. If Darce was dim enough not to get it, then he was going to go and withdraw all his money from the bank. Bankers were supposed to be smart.
"Thank you for being concerned, Steve," she said softly.
As if any man's brains could be expected to work properly after that.
"Look, since I'm here—" He shot Blake a look that let him know this was personal.
Blake stubbornly folded his arms over his chest and planted his feet apart.
"I need to talk to you." When it was obvious Blake wasn't moving, he leaned closer to her. "I got some tickets to 98 Degrees. They are very hard to come by. I wondered if you might like to go."
Blake was dimly aware, from working with teenagers, and teenage girls in particular that 98 Degrees was what was known as a "boy band." Good-looking guys who sang romantic music that gave girls the entirely erroneous impression that guys thought of relationships all the time, when in fact guys thought mostly about football stats, and motorcycle parts, and only managed to squeeze in the odd thought about women on the off chance that they might get lucky.
He hoped Holly would have the sense to know that band was not only too young for her, but that the message of that kind of music was hopelessly naive.
Steve Darce, however, looked like he might be thinking about Holly more than motorcycle parts, which made Blake want to go over to him, lift him up by his lapels and slam him against the car.
Even though, come to think of it, he had been thinking about her more than motorcycle parts himself.
She hesitated, and studied her toe rather than look at either of them. "When is it?"
That didn't sound like the out-and-out no Blake was hoping for. At all.
Steve named a date three weeks away, which Blake contemplated. It might be a good thing, in that Steve wasn't enthusiastic enough to be asking her about tonight or tomorrow. And it might be a bad thing in that Steve was obviously thinking about Holly long term.
"Can I think about it and get back to you?" she asked.
Steve gave Blake an accusing look as if he had spoiled a nice moment. Blake looked back at him unflinchingly. It gave him a certain satisfaction that Steve blinked first.
"Sure. That would be fine. And by the way, tomorrow is—"
Blake knew if he stayed here a moment longer he was not going to be responsible for what happened next. At least Darce had his glasses on today. Somewhere in that code of ethics that was causing Blake such grief, there was a rule about dealing with guys in glasses.
"Holly," he snapped, "I'm taking the rest of the day off. Cancel my afternoon appointments. And the conference call." He managed, just barely, not to be sarcastic about her conducting her personal business on the ranch dime, but only because they had just been consuming wine and exchanging kisses on the ranch dime themselves.
She gave him a surprised look, as if she was astounded he had a personal life.
Which he didn't.
Blake bypassed his office and went up the stairs to his apartment. His black leather jacket hung way back in his closet. There was dust on it. He slipped it on, and it felt like coming home.
She was at her desk, when he came back down the stairs, Darce nowhere in evidence. She was looking studiously at something on her computer. She raised a hand absently in farewell, then did a double take, looked quickly away, a blush rising in her cheeks.
So, she thought he looked great in black leather. She wasn't the first woman to share that weakness.
"I didn't know you had a motorcycle," she squeaked.
There. She didn't know the most important things about him.
"Didn't you?"
She shook her head. "I always wanted to try that."
Temptation reared its ugly head. Ask her. Ask her to play hooky with him, and spend a splendid day, with her arms wrapped around him, the wind tangling in her hair, her laughter in his ears.
Fallon, he told himself, you've played quite enough hooky for one day.
He managed to get out the door without giving in to the temptation that wrestled with bearlike strength within his brain. And moments later he had his big bike out of a back shed. It throbbed comfortably to life, just as if it had been yesterday he rode it, instead of six or seven months ago. He rode flat-out down country roads, losing track of time, outrunning the chaos and confusion inside of him. It was getting dark by the time he turned toward home, and he ached with weariness, a passable imposter for serenity.
Passing a little roadside bar that had excellent food, he saw Rafe's vehicle, and on impulse pulled over and went in. The lighting was dim, but he spotted Rafe at a booth in the corner.
He'd forgotten that Libby was a part of the Rafe equation now. They were just finishing dinner. Blake wanted to talk to Rafe. He really didn't want a woman's take on the events of the afternoon. He turned to leave, but Rafe suddenly spotted him and did a double take that reminded him of Holly's earlier.
"Hey, Renegade!" Rafe motioned him over. "Are you out on your bike? I can't believe it. I haven't seen you ride that old hog for ages."
Libby seemed to sense Blake's need, because after a minimum of chitchat she glanced suddenly at her watch and gave a little cry of dismay.
"I have an appointment," she said. "Rafe, I'll see you later. Blake, good seeing you again."
Something smoldered in both their eyes, and Blake had the feeling that Rafe was thinking way too much about things other than football stats and motorcycle parts himself. Blake felt this furious flash of envy that tonight Rafe was not going to bed alone.
And if he had played his damn cards right he wouldn't be either.
"You want to talk?" Rafe asked, gesturing to the abandoned seat at the booth.
"No," Blake snapped.
"Okay, you want to play some pool?"
"That sounds more like it."
It was after Blake had missed every shot that Rafe said, "You might as well tell me."
"Tell
you what?" Blake said defensively.
"You haven't missed shots like those since you were nine years old."
"So, I'm having an off day."
"And I haven't seen that particular look on your face for a long time either."
"What look is that?"
"It's a kind of I'm-looking-for-an-excuse-to-bust-somebody's-face look. Along with the black leather, it's a pretty menacing combination. It seems to have scared Libby into the next county."
"Sorry," he muttered.
"Just tell me. It can't be any worse than some of your other stuff. I know everything bad there is to know about you, remember? You can't shock me, offend me or scare me."
Blake leaned on his pool cue. "I kissed my secretary today."
Rafe flubbed the shot, turned and looked at him over his shoulder. "Was it good?"
"That's not the point!"
"It's not? You're up."
Blake took a clean miss on a simple bank shot. "A boss can't kiss his secretary."
"You mean, there she was filing papers and you snuck up behind her and whirled her around, bent her over backward and kissed her while she screamed and flailed at you?" Rafe chalked his cue, blew the dust off, regarded Blake over the top of it.
"No. We were, um, on a picnic."
"A picnic?"
Neither man was even pretending to play pool anymore.
"She packed a picnic." He put enough swear words between "a" and "picnic" to make a sailor blush.
But Rafe only laughed. "She packed a picnic?"
"Yeah."
"Like what? Peanut butter sandwiches?"
"Not exactly."
"Tell me. Exactly."
"Cheese, strawberries, wine. Stuff like that."
"I'm no expert, but if Libby packed me a lunch like that, she'd expect me to kiss her."
"Holly isn't Libby."
"Same species."
"Even if that is what she expected, that doesn't make it right."
"In what way?"
"I'm her boss."
"Wasn't this bugging you at the dance the other night?"
He wanted to deny it. He couldn't.
"I'll tell you again, Blake, you're taking the Dudley-do-Right thing a little too far. You've already outrun your misspent youth. And just because your dad took a shot at somebody doesn't mean you have to keep proving you're lily white. We all know you aren't capable of doing anything even remotely naughty from littering to going too fast on your motorcycle to kissing your secretary."