His Forever Valentine

by Marie Ferrarella

  Without realizing it, he raised his foot off the accelerator just a little, slowing his speed from the acceptable fifty-five miles per hour down to forty.

  After all, there was no real rush to get to the ranch now, was there?

  * * *

  ENTERING THE HOMESTRETCH and drawing close to the ranch house, Rafe was still debating what to do about the sleeping woman beside him. If he left her in the vehicle, she was bound to have a stiff neck when she finally did wake up in the morning. He didn’t really feel right about waking her up, though.

  He supposed he could just try to carry her inside, but he wasn’t altogether certain how she’d react to that once she found out—or worse, if she woke up while he was carrying her. She might just assume that he was trying to get way too personal and take advantage of the situation as well as of her.

  Rafe stopped the car.

  They were here. No option presented itself ahead of the others.

  “So what do I do here, Val?” he murmured under his breath, looking at her.

  To his surprise, although he had kept his voice down when he’d voiced his dilemma aloud, he saw her eyelids flutter—and then her eyes slowly open.

  He’d woken her up.

  Val sighed, stretching. For a moment, there was a warm, sweet haze around her. And then her mind kicked in and she didn’t recognize her surroundings.

  Uttering a disoriented, startled, “Oh,” she jerked her head up and straightened in the passenger seat. Only then did she realize that she’d had her head on Rafe’s shoulder.

  She flushed, at a loss as to whether to apologize or just pretend that she didn’t realize that she’d been asleep. But a pretense like that felt vaguely dishonest, a label she knew people tended to want to slap onto “Hollywood types.” She wasn’t about to aid and abet that image if she could help it.

  “I fell asleep,” she murmured.

  He couldn’t help laughing softly. “Sure looked that way from where I was sitting.”

  She rotated her shoulders, working out the kinks. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  He did his best not to stare or get caught up in watching her stretch like that. “The whole point of driving you out here was to let you get some rest,” he said. “Besides, having your head against my shoulder wasn’t exactly an inconvenience.”

  She blinked and took a good look around. She recognized the building. “We’re here,” she realized. The last thing she remembered was being in the Jeep outside the diner. “How long was I asleep?” she asked, somewhat annoyed with her own lack of discipline.

  “I think I got a chance to put the key into the ignition,” he deadpanned.

  Just as she thought. She’d slept the entire drive to the ranch. Some company she was, she thought ruefully. “Sorry about that.”

  He looked at her. “Why?”

  Val laughed, shrugging her shoulders and feeling a tad self-conscious. It wasn’t a familiar feeling for her. “Seemed like the thing to say. I guess you really were right about my not taking a chance and driving those fifty extra miles. I don’t think I would have stayed awake even if I was driving.”

  “The open road has a way of being less than exciting and if you’re tired, it’s like taking a sleeping pill.”

  She had always had a habit of dropping off and then sleeping like a rock. To be honest, she was surprised that she had woken up when she had.

  “What were you going to do if I hadn’t woken up?” Val asked, curious.

  Luckily, he didn’t have to cross that bridge now. “Well, I was trying to decide what to do when you opened your eyes, so I guess we’ll never know—unless you fall asleep again while I’m driving.” And that didn’t seem very likely, he speculated.

  Unbuckling his seat belt, Rafe opened the door on his side, but instead of getting out, he paused to look at her and asked, “You ready to go in? Or do you want a couple of extra minutes?”

  He’d meant that she might need more time to wake up, but Val obviously took his words to mean something else. She pulled down the sun visor on her side and looked into the mirror she’d noticed earlier. It turned out to be too dark to see.

  “Why?” she asked him. “Do I look that bad?”

  “Val, I don’t think you could look bad if you tried,” he told her matter-of-factly,

  A wide smile spontaneously spread over her face. Despite its size, it still managed to be a tender, private smile.

  “Rafe Rodriguez, you do say the nicest things,” she told him.

  Impulsively, she leaned over the transmission stick that separated them and brushed her lips against Rafe’s cheek.

  At least, his cheek was what she was aiming for. What she wound up making contact with at the last possible second, though, were his lips. And that happened because he’d turned his head to look at her again after she’d said what she had.

  What began as a sweet, friendly gesture wound up turning into something more.

  A great deal more.

  It was difficult to say who was the more surprised of the two.

  Or the more receptive.

  Or who actually made the next move. The first move had been hers—the identity of the second move’s initiator, the move that turned a sweet, innocent kiss into something a great deal more potent, was lost between them as each reacted to the accidental contact with a great degree of awe and suppressed passion.

  Valentine’s breath caught in her throat and her heart stood still for exactly a fraction of a second before both came back with a vengeance.

  She knew that she should pull away, that she was still rather sleepy and thus a great deal more prone to being vulnerable and more open to what he had to offer.

  If she hadn’t just opened her eyes and come to, her guard wouldn’t have been down. But it was down and it was breached. Swiftly and cleanly.

  Her pulse raced and refused to settle down. Instead, it climbed ever higher as she sank into the delicious, arousing promise that was just beneath the surface of Rafe’s kiss.

  Push him away! Push yourself away! Just do something to stop this before you can’t. Before you reach that point of no return.

  That little voice in her head that always made such sense fairly screamed at her now and she knew, knew she should listen to it or she’d live to regret her rash action soon.

  Extremely soon.

  Think, damn it, Val. Think! You can’t do this. There are consequences...

  She had to work with these people, she couldn’t just melt into one of them, no matter how tempting he was, or how much his mouth made her crazy. She couldn’t let this happen.

  Otherwise, if she did continue the way her freshly awakened inner core was begging her to, as a consequence “awkward” was going to hit new highs—or lows, depending on the interpretation.

  She had to stop and she was going to stop—

  In a second...

  Any second now she’d pull her head back, murmur something witty or droll—anything but sigh—and this, as well as her about-to-break-the-sound-barrier pulse, would all be just pleasant history very, very soon.

  Any second now...

  And then, suddenly, she could feel air against her face—and there was space between her and Rafe. Space to slip more than just an envelope through.

  Val blinked, trying very hard to get her bearings—and to wrap her head around what had just happened.

  And why it had stopped happening.

  Most of all, she waited for her wildly beating pulse to settle down to a normal rhythm.

  “I’m sorry,” Rafe said. His voice was low because he didn’t quite trust it not to crack or squeak just yet.

  Somehow his two words filled the entire interior of the Jeep, growing so ominous they threatened to split the cab wide open.

  “I don’t
know what came over me,” Rafe confessed with an all-but-helpless shrug. “I didn’t mean to force myself on you like that,” he was saying. His eyes caressed her face. “It’s just that you really make it so hard to just back away.”

  Val stared at him for a moment, making an effort to absorb the words coming out of his mouth. Holding them to her. Because from where she’d sat, she had started to think that it was all her, that she was the instigator, the one responsible for what had just transpired—and here he was, saying the exact same thing and apologizing for it.

  Really? He thought he was the one behind that absolutely explosive kiss?

  Well, maybe he was a little, she conceded, but there was no way on earth that the blame fell squarely and only on his shoulders. She wasn’t some innocent bystander. She was as involved in this as he was.

  Worst-case scenario, it was a shared responsibility. Because that sounded good to her, Val decided to go with that.

  Touching his face, she said, “You didn’t.”

  It was his turn to feel lost. He looked at her. “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t force yourself on me,” she clarified. “I’m a big girl now, Rafe, and I am very capable of fending off unwanted attention.” She paused, taking a breath. “At the risk of being too honest—yours wasn’t.”

  Had to be the intoxicating effect of her mouth. His normally able, intelligent brain wasn’t absorbing much. Whole sentences were sliding down the sides of his brain like so many slippery soap bubbles.

  “Mine wasn’t what?” he was forced to ask.

  “Unwanted. Your attention wasn’t unwanted,” she told him softly just before she turned in the seat and swung her legs out of the passenger side of the Jeep.

  There was no sense in leaving herself open to temptation any more than she already had, Val silently lectured herself.

  “Let’s go tell your dad about his unwanted house guest,” she urged. She wanted to get into a house with lights and other people milling around before she suddenly decided to throw her arms around his neck and pull him to her again.

  This was not the proper way to conduct business, she silently asserted.

  “You’re not,” he told her as he walked a step behind her to the front door.

  She turned to look at him. It was like being in an eternal tennis match except that rather than balls, they were lobbing comments at one another. Comments that seemed to hint at the people beneath them.

  “Not what?”

  “Unwanted,” he answered.

  She nodded after a moment, suddenly feeling as if she was living on borrowed time, biding her time until the inevitable finally happened.

  And, unless she completely missed her guess, the “inevitable” that was going to happen to her involved Rafe.

  Chapter Eight

  “You’re absolutely sure that this is all right?” she asked as Rafe reached inside the dark room and turned on the light for her. The empty bedroom had some feminine touches throughout without being traditionally “girlie.”

  “I’m absolutely sure,” he answered. “This used to be Alma’s old room. Dad likes to keep things the way they were, just in case there’s need for an overnight stay.” He saw the skeptical look in her eyes and illustrated his point. “Last Christmas Eve, every room was filled. Dad likes having all of us over for dinner and then we all open our gifts at midnight—like we did when we were kids. Dad’s very big on tradition.”

  “How is he on uninvited guests?” Val countered.

  “Dunno,” he replied honestly. “Because all our guests were always invited by someone and I invited you. End of debate.” He could feel the strong, wiry feelings unfurling within him and all but reaching out to her. If he didn’t walk away soon, he wasn’t going to be able to. He didn’t want her thinking he’d invited her for a little grab-and-feel session—no matter how tempting that notion might be. “See you in the morning,” he told her and then very deliberately pulled himself away. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” Val echoed.

  As she closed the door she realized that she’d done a complete one-eighty. While her eyes had been too heavy to keep open earlier and she’d actually fallen asleep in his Jeep, now every single nerve ending she possessed was amped to its maximum level—and then some.

  There was no way she was going to fall asleep soon, or easily, she told herself. The hour was late, but it was earlier back home in Los Angeles. Val decided to check in with her mother.

  She had a great relationship with her mother. Despite the fact that the woman had a full-time career, Gloria Halladay wasn’t one of those women who handed her child over to a housekeeper or a nanny and then pretended to listen to progress reports every so often. She was a very “hands on” mother. The trouble, if anything between them could be labeled “trouble,” was that at times her mother forgot just how to take her “hands off.”

  But they were working on it, Val thought as she flopped on the bed and took out her cell phone. And, she smiled to herself, they really were making progress on that front.

  Sort of.

  She heard the phone on the other end being picked up after one incomplete ring. Which meant that her mother was all but sitting on her own cell phone. That, in turn, meant that her mother wasn’t about to take her lack of communication yesterday in stride.

  Val suppressed the desire to sigh. Instead, she cheerfully said, “Hello,” the second the phone on the other end was picked up.

  Her mother obviously recognized her voice and instantly pounced. “Ah, the prodigal daughter finally remembers her mother’s cell phone number. I was beginning to get really concerned, Valentine.”

  Val braced herself. Here it comes.

  “And I don’t have to tell you that it was all I could do to keep your father from putting together some of his old buddies and forming a search party. He threatened to fly out to Texas with them and go looking for you. You know how he is.”

  And I know how you are, too, Mom.

  Val closed her eyes. She could just see the scenario her mother was alluding to, she thought, embarrassment claiming both cheeks and marking them with a none-too-flattering pink hue. You could see the flush from outer space, but all she had to do was look in the mirror. The joys of being an only child meant that her parents were involved in her life big-time. She knew she should be grateful that they cared about her to this extent, but not for the first time, she wished there’d been a sibling so her parents could feel as if they had a spare in case something didn’t pan out with their first born. Maybe then she would have had a little leeway to make a few mistakes and not feel as if the world might come to an end if she didn’t call in on time.

  Humoring the woman on the other end, the woman who she did love dearly, Val apologized. That, ultimately, was a lot better than arguing long distance, she told herself philosophically.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call yesterday, but I got caught up in things.”

  “This ‘thing’ you got caught up in,” her mother questioned, “does he have a name?”

  Val rolled her eyes. She should have known it would go this way. It seemed that every other conversation she had with her mother these days seemed to revolve around the question: Did you meet anyone yet? Anyone was not just a vague reference to humanity in general but to a potential mate, specifically. It didn’t matter that she’d already been married once, widowed once. All that mattered was that she was steadily approaching the age of thirty, never mind that she still had three years to go. What if those three years turn out to be as barren as the past few had been? Thirty was equated to being doomed to dying single, with an empty womb, according to her family, not medical certainty.

  Her mother really was old-fashioned in certain ways, she couldn’t help thinking.

  “My job, Mom, I got caught up in my job,” Val stressed. “I’m scou
ting a location for Jim Sinclair’s new movie, remember?” It was a rhetorical question, seeing as how her mother had been the one who’d done the casting on this movie for Jim.

  “I remember,” Gloria said, dismissing that part of her daughter’s protest. “I also remember that you always call to let us know you’re all right, so when you didn’t...”

  Maybe if she drew up her own emancipation proclamation, put it in writing so that her mother had something to read before each phone call, they wouldn’t have to waltz around the same basic issue every time.

  “I love you to death, Mom, but I’m a big girl now, remember? Remember all those candles I blew out on my last birthday cake?” she stressed. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”

  “Sorry, that’s not what’s in my contract,” Gloria informed her daughter. “I get to worry about you for the first hundred years. After that, you’re on your own, kiddo.” And then her voice grew serious. “And besides, no matter how old you get or how many times you’ll feel compelled to throw an ever-increasing number in my face, you will still always be my little girl and I will still always be thirty years older than you. That gives me seniority—and the right to worry. Your father feels the same way.”

  “Mom—” Val began, a definite warning note in her voice.

  Gloria cut her off. “Oh, I can’t wait for you to have kids of your own, Val. Then you’ll understand this conversation from my side of it. And apologize for it.”

  “If you say so, Mom,” Val said wearily. Her mother worried too much, there was no two ways about it.

  “I say so. And I know so,” Gloria said with conviction. Her voice grew just a little softer as she added, “I’d apologize to your grandmother for all the grief I gave her now that I see things from her seat, but unfortunately, she’s not around.”

  This was something new. “You gave Grandma grief?” Val asked, immediately intrigued. “Care to unload any details?”

  “That’s not the part you’re supposed to latch on to, kiddo,” her mother chided. “And no, I’m not about to unload any details. But you might want to enlighten me as to where you are and why you haven’t called me until now? Is everything all right?”