The Cowboy Steals a Lady

by Anne McAllister

  Shane had been to the edge of that abyss himself when his own parents had died, but he'd barely allowed himself to look over. Instead he'd left Mace to deal with it, and he'd flung himself into the grind—and the salvation—of going down the road.

  But when he could no longer go… When he had to stop and look around, to take stock, to face the future… When the bull riding was gone…

  Yes, he saw what she meant.

  "It took me some time," Poppy said softly, her gaze dropping to focus on the mug in her hands. "Some groping. Some just plain muddling through, doing what had to be done. So I started doing it. And that's when I began to understand how much I loved flowers. Tending them, spending time with them, nurturing them, caring for them. So that's what I did. I focused on them. They got me through it."

  She raised her head and looked at him, her eyes gentle, understanding. "You'll find something like that. I don't know what it will be, but you'll find something or you'll recognize something that was there all along. And that will be the start and you'll be all right." She reached out and took his hand, folding his callused, beat-up fingers inside hers. "I know you will."

  Shane didn't move. Just sat there. Let the warmth from her hand seep into his. Let her comfort seep into him.

  It was the oddest, least likely situation in the world. The kidnapper and the kidnappee. The bull rider and the flower girl. Had God's punishment become God's blessing?

  Who was he to question it?

  Not just that. This—the first serious conversation with a woman other than his sister-in-law—he'd ever had in his life.

  He guessed Poppy was right. Someday he would find that something else she was talking about. And he would survive not being able to ride anymore. And the future would hold more joy and less of the emptiness it now promised. Someday…

  But for now all he had was today.

  Strangely, it was enough.

  * * *

  Seven

  « ^ »

  That night his bed of nails didn't seem so bad.

  Granted, he'd have rather spent it with Poppy. But he slept all right on the sofa. There were no dreams of judges. And the vague bottomless feeling that he got whenever he contemplated the future didn't seem quite so intense.

  He lay on the sofa and watched the snow fall and murmured, "Keep it up."

  Oddly, this time God seemed to listen.

  At least when he awoke in the morning, the snow was still coming down. The world was whiter than ever. He should have been worried. He supposed in some part of his brain—the small, sensible part he so rarely used—he was worried.

  But mostly, as he looked at the window at the growing drifts and the white sky, he felt the quiet burn of contentment.

  He wanted another day here.

  With Poppy.

  She might not be Milly. But as far as he was concerned, she was better than Milly. She might be Judge Hamilton's daughter, but the judge didn't matter. He was over the hills and far away.

  Only Poppy was here.

  And Shane was pleased. He liked her. He liked her determination and her gentleness. He liked her stubbornness and her understanding. He liked her smiles and her fiery hazel eyes. He liked whatever this was that had begun to develop between them.

  He knew it wasn't going to last. He didn't expect it to. Hell, when had anything in his life lasted longer than eight seconds? But however long it lasted, he was going to take advantage of it.

  And interestingly, too, especially after the passion with which they had kissed, his desire to stay here with her had nothing to do with sex.

  She was Hard-Ass Hamilton's daughter, after all. He would be crazy to even think about having sex with her.

  Well, maybe he could think about it—fantasize a little, imagine what it would be like to have her naked beneath him, to feel her silky skin rubbing against his, to—

  He groaned.

  No, he couldn't even think about it.

  But he could think about the rest of it. It was a little like a game of pretend. Playing house.

  Not the sort of house he'd been forced into playing with Taggart's bossy sister Erin when they were little and their big brothers had ditched them, telling them they were "too little" to play the games the big kids played.

  Playing house with Erin had almost always ended with him punching her, and her punching him back, and their mothers dragging them apart, and him getting swatted for picking on a girl.

  He wondered if Poppy, like Erin, had punched back when she was little. Probably. He grinned. He wondered what she'd been like as a little girl.

  "What were you like as a little girl?" he asked her later that afternoon.

  They were standing in the front yard. He had just finished digging a path to the gate. It was more of an exercise in futility than usefulness. But it kept him busy. And Poppy worked along with him. And while they worked, they talked.

  "What was I like?" she echoed.

  He nodded, leaning on the shovel and watching her as she bent and scooped up handfuls of snow. "Yeah. As a little girl."

  "Like this," Poppy said, smiling—and she hit him with a snowball in the chest.

  "Hey!"

  But Poppy scooped another handful and tossed it after the first. A guy could only take so much provocation. He could only tell himself that he was an adult and ought to behave like one for just so long.

  "Whoa," Shane said, as the second snowball slid down the front of his jacket. "You are askin' for it."

  "You wanted to know," Poppy said and, laughing, she stuck out her tongue at him.

  All the electricity in the world seemed to sing in that moment.

  "Right." A slow smile dawned on Shane's face. He knew an invitation when he saw—and felt—one.

  He scooped up snow in his good hand and with a great deal of joy went after Poppy Hamilton.

  * * *

  It was an act of blatant provocation, and Poppy knew it.

  She couldn't help it. She hadn't been able to sleep all night for thinking about Shane Nichols and seeing his beautiful blue eyes and remembering the way his lips felt on hers. She wanted to see more, feel more, know more.

  And so she threw the snowball.

  She knew what would happen—what she wanted to happen. For Shane to pick up the gauntlet she'd thrown down. For Shane to stoop and pick up a handful of snow and come after her.

  Poppy shrieked. She ran.

  But not fast. And not far.

  Just around the corner of the house. Then she bent to gather more snow into a ball, but she didn't get up quickly enough.

  And that was where he caught her.

  The snowballs came first, lobbed to land in her hair, tossed gently to splatter against her back. And when she turned, laughing, and threw the one she'd made, it caught him square in the jaw.

  "Oh, dear!" She turned and started to run again. Three long strides and he grabbed her. Tackled her. Down they went in the snow, Poppy laughing and kicking, Shane rolling over, so that when they came to rest, she was on top and he lay looking up at her.

  Her breath came in gasps, in giggles. His came in desperate gulps. Their eyes locked.

  And the world seemed to stop.

  The moment crystallized. All her senses sharpened. Shane's eyes seemed deeper, bluer. His expression more urgent. His body taut. Aroused.

  And yet he made no move. He held himself absolutely, perfectly still. Only his eyes moved, watching hers.

  As if the future was up to her.

  Her own body trembled. Not with the cold, though the snow slid down the back of her neck and that caught between their bodies melted there. No, she trembled with heat, and warmth and need.

  The need to be close. The need to touch.

  "Shane?" Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

  He answered only with his eyes. He needed it, too.

  She got off him. She held out a hand to him, pulled him to his feet, wrapped his fingers in hers, and wouldn't let go. He wrapped an arm around her sh
oulders and drew her hard against him.

  Together, arms around each other they walked back to the house.

  Only when they were inside, did he speak. He shut the door and leaned against it and looked right at her.

  It was her chance to smile, to say something light and clever, to defuse the situation.

  But she couldn't. Wouldn't.

  Because somehow in the space of two days, she had fallen in love with him.

  It was insane, and she knew it. It was foolish, and she knew that, too.

  She had promised herself that she could enjoy these days—these moments—with him and still walk away, because God knew—and she knew—that was what Shane intended to do.

  She had enjoyed them, more than enjoyed them. That was the trouble. She had found a man she could talk to, and listen to, and laugh with and play with—and love.

  She didn't know why she felt so strongly that they were soul mates. They were as different as a brash, showy amaryllis from a sweet backyard violet. And yet they connected, too.

  She wanted to know the fullness of that connection.

  She would let him go when she had to.

  But once … just once … she had to know.

  She slipped her jacket off, then stepped toward him and lifted her hands to his chest. Slowly, carefully, she drew the zipper of his coat down.

  He didn't move, except to swallow. But as she slid her hands inside, she could feel his heart pound. The coat undone, she slipped it off his shoulders and dropped it on a chair. Then she put her hands back on his chest, touched the buttons of his shirt and looked deeply into his eyes.

  "Poppy?"

  Her mouth curved. She touched his cheek. She nodded. "Yes."

  She took him with her into the bedroom. She lay with him on the bed. She wrapped her arms around him and savored the feel of his arms around her. She was beneath him this time and looked up to see the serious, intent look on his face.

  "Poppy?" he said again.

  And again she said, "Yes," and slid her fingers up into his hair.

  He bent his head and, slowly and deliberately, Shane touched his mouth to hers.

  It was as if every moment of her life so far had been spent merely waiting, as if life hadn't really started until now.

  So this is what it's all about, she found herself thinking, when she managed to think at all.

  No wonder Milly had looked so dazed and starry-eyed whenever she'd come back from a date with Cash. No wonder she'd been distracted, distant, barely deigning to speak at all.

  How could you, Poppy wondered, when you'd just been kissed like this?

  But it wasn't just kissing. It was touching. It was the feel of his callused fingers lifting the hem of her sweater and skimming lightly over her heated skin. It was the heavy weight of his body pressed hard into hers, proof of his attraction to her, a testament to his desire.

  "If you're gonna stop me, stop me now," Shane said as he fumbled the sweater up and bent his head to lay moist kisses on her abdomen, making her squirm and shiver.

  And Poppy said, "No." She couldn't have stopped him. She couldn't have stopped herself. She let her fingers rove over the soft short hair that capped his head. She traced the curve of his ears and then clenched her fingers at his nape when he pressed a kiss right above the button of her jeans.

  He lifted his head, looked at her. His expression was a combination of need and desire and the agony of indecision. "I shouldn't—" he muttered.

  "You should." She loosed her fingers and touched his cheek with one. "We should. Please."

  She saw him swallow, felt something like a shudder run through him. He shut his eyes briefly, then opened them and looked straight at her once again. She thought she could drown in the deep blue of his eyes.

  Then, "Whatever you say, Ms. Hamilton," he said.

  She knew the words were meant to come out in a soft, lazy drawl. They didn't. They were ragged and intense. They sounded the way she felt. She grasped his shoulders and tried to pull him up against her. Without his willingness, she couldn't have managed.

  But he was willing. He was ever so willing.

  Poppy didn't stop to think about the consequences. Whatever they turned out to be, she would handle them. Whatever they were, they would be a small price to pay for this—for his loving her.

  She supposed Shane might call what happened between them nothing more than a mutual sharing of pleasure. She supposed he might call it "having sex" or "going to bed" or simply "doing it."

  But if he did, he would be wrong.

  He made love to her.

  She felt it in the gentleness of his hands, in their soft touch, in the unsteady tremor of his fingers as they caressed her heated flesh. She saw it in his eyes, in the way they roved over her body slowly, learning its valleys and hills and memorizing each one. She heard it in his quick eager breath, in the urgent sound he made at the back of his throat as he stripped her shirt over her head. She tasted it in his ever more insistent kisses.

  And she loved him, too.

  Her father would despair of her. In her saner moments—presuming she ever had any again—she would most likely despair of herself.

  But not now.

  Now she didn't despair, or think. She simply loved.

  She gave of herself. She'd heard the pain in his voice last night. She'd seen the fear in his eyes, the hopelessness he felt when confronting an unknown future. She remembered that fear; she empathized with those feelings. As she'd told him, they were so much like her own feelings when she'd faced the world without her mother.

  She'd wanted reassurance then, someone to share with. Someone to take her in his arms and tell her she wasn't alone.

  She'd had her father. And her flowers.

  Shane had nothing. No one.

  But her.

  And so she loved him. Not just because she was there. But because she wanted to.

  And after a moment's pause, when he seemed to give her one last chance to call a halt, which she did not take, he nodded his head, the way Poppy imagined he would nod his head before he began a bull ride.

  It was the moment of commitment. The moment of no return.

  She was already there.

  They moved together, with purpose now, not desperation. Their movements as they shed their clothing and touched each other's bare flesh were eager, their urgency real. But there was nothing frantic about their coupling.

  It was passionate. It was intense. It was deep.

  And as he moved above her, parted her, entered her—and she welcomed him—it was the most real expression of love she'd ever known.

  The pain of it was lost in the wonder of the moment.

  On her.

  Not on him.

  She felt him tense, halt. Curse.

  The top of his head dropped to rest against her breasts. He heaved a breath, held himself rigid. Refused to move.

  Poppy, tense, too, from the sudden pain she'd felt and the shattering feelings that accompanied it—him!—didn't move, either, for a long moment. But her body did. It eased, softened, accommodated itself to him.

  She sighed. Then breathed again. Slowly. Carefully. Then more deeply, fully. The pain was gone. The fullness remained. She settled, wrapped her arms around him, drew him further in.

  A breath hissed out of him. "Poppy!" He started to pull away.

  She held him fast. "Come to me."

  "I already did," he said through his teeth. But he hadn't yet. Not fully. She knew that, knew he was still trembling. Shaking with the effort not to press harder, to move quicker, to ease his need in her.

  "No." She shook her head. "You haven't. Not yet. Come to me."

  "You're a virgin!"

  "Was a virgin," she corrected him softly.

  He shut his eyes and cursed again under his breath. "You shouldn't have! We shouldn't have!"

  She lifted a hand away from his sweat-slick back and touched his face, tipped it up, made him look at her. "I wanted this," she told him gently.
<
br />   "Why?" His voice was anguished. He still didn't move.

  "I wanted … I want … you."

  The words were soft, simple. Honest. And they broke the only control he had left.

  He dropped his head again. A shudder ran through him. And then he began to move.

  He was an urgent lover, but at the same time, a gentle one. She knew he craved his own release. She could feel how tight a rein he kept on himself, how hard he worked to hold himself back—to share, to give, to love her the way she needed to be loved.

  She wasn't surprised.

  It was the kind of man he was. Impulsive. But never selfish. Everything she knew about Shane Nichols told her that. He did what he did not for himself, but for others.

  And his loving her was no different.

  She tried to love him the same way. She wasn't as skilled as he. She wasn't as experienced. But she seemed to know instinctively how to fit her body to his, how to move with him, how to wrap him in the safety of her arms and her body and bring him the comfort, the release—the love—he needed so much.

  And she must have done something right, because his movements became more urgent, his trembling more intense. She felt his need build and build until finally he shattered within her.

  And as she held him close, Poppy felt her body tighten, tighten, tighten and then ripplingly release around him. And then she shattered, too.

  Broken, yet whole. Splintered, yet somehow forged anew and stronger than she'd ever felt before. She kissed his ear, his jaw, his cheek, the side of his nose, his mouth.

  "Thank you," she whispered. "That was beautiful."

  He sucked in an unsteady breath. "I'm the one ought to be thanking you." He rolled off, but not away. Propping his head on his hand, he lay quietly, looking at her. He didn't speak. He didn't seem to know what to say.

  Poppy didn't, either. Her heart was full. Her mind spun. She felt glorious and bereft at the same time. She had experienced a love, a closeness, a sharing that she'd never felt before. She'd never felt anything more wonderful.

  And she was never going to feel it again.

  You knew that, she told herself.

  And, of course, she had. You said you'd deal with the consequences, whatever they were, she reminded herself.