Sam opened a creaking door. When she glanced up, she found him thoughtfully studying her face—but then Cole swept them inside. The ‘saloon’ in Cripple Creek served the best steak in town. It was also midstream in construction. A big brass mirror hung over the bar, but the sanding sawdust still covered the plank floors. Heating was marginal. So was the lighting. The cook was married to the bartender, and the pair were arguing over electrical blueprints behind the bar.
Their argument continued as Cole, waggling his eyebrows, angled behind the bar as if he owned the place and brought back drinks—two coffees and a beer. “Martha really wants her recessed lighting. I don’t know why Patrick doesn’t just give in—Martha’ll make his life hell until he does—but it may come down to my cooking the steaks. It won’t be the first time, but we’ll see what happens when I step foot in her kitchen.”
Sam started chuckling. The moment Cole disappeared into the back room, the frizzy blonde behind the bar shrieked, “Shepherd!” and sailed in after him.
“It gets worse,” Regan warned Sam humorously. “We’ve been in here two other nights. The chances are that he really will help her cook dinner, and any minute now the two of them could start singing very old, very bad rock and roll. They know every dirty lyric in the book and when Patrick joins in…”
She meant Sam to laugh—and he did—but they hadn’t exchanged two minutes of chitchat before he turned quiet.
“Regan...just so you know, I’ll be flying back home after dinner.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “You’re leaving? But you brought a duffel bag and sleeping roll into the house. I assumed you were staying.”
“That was the original plan,” Sam admitted. “Until I saw how it was with the two of you. I guessed what was happening every time he talked about you on the phone, but I didn’t believe it until I saw you together.”
Regan hesitated. Sam’s eyes were walnut brown instead of a rich charcoal gray, but they were almost as shrewd as his brother’s. “We’re not involved...the way you mean.”
“And cows fly.”
Her cheeks flushed and her gaze darted to the kitchen door. “I mean, we’re not...um...”
“You don’t have to spell it out. All I had to do was look at my brother to know what you’re not doing. He’s restless as a crab, tight as a trigger. He brushes past you, there’s suddenly enough static electricity in the air to make sparks. He knows where you are every second, follows every move you make.”
“Because he’s worried about me.”
Sam chuckled as he reached for his mug of coffee. “He may be worried, but that’s not the reason he’s climbing the walls.”
A tenor and a soprano were warming up in the back room. Old Rolling Stones. Cole wasn’t coming out soon. Regan met Sam’s eyes, saw compassion and quiet understanding, yet her voice came out oddly thick, strangely hoarse. “I’m not sure you’re right.”
“I’m sure.”
She said truthfully, “I’m an orphaned cat he found on his porch in the rain. He was stuck with me. That’s complicated everything. I know what I feel for him, Sam, and I know how he is with me. But as things are, I have absolutely no way to know if he’d choose to be with me if the circumstances were different.”
Same warmed his hands on the mug of coffee. “You’re in trouble. Up to your neck. And I’m sorry you’re going through such rough waters, but whether you can understand this or not—my brother needs just what you’re putting him through. You’re not hurting him, Regan. You’re helping him more than you know.” He hesitated. “You know about my father and Rog? That they died, how they died?”
Regan lifted a hand. “I know they died. Cole never told me how.”
Sam quietly filled in those blanks. “After that, Ma cracked. Hell, we all cracked, but Mom...she was dead inside a year. A simple cold turned to pneumonia—nothing anyone has to die of these days—but she didn’t fight back. She just had no fight in her, not then. My parents were close like you couldn’t believe.”
“I had that impression,” she said softly. “And I know how hard grief is, Sam. I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “Cole and I were a mess. No other way to put it. Our family had splintered like a broken mirror. There was no way to put back the pieces. I was in high school, hit the bottle—a stupid way to handle it. But Cole was even more stupid than I was.” Sam jerked his head toward the kitchen door of the restaurant. “He got it in his head to blame Dad. If our father hadn’t been out playing hero, none of the rest would have happened.”
Regan inhaled a long breath. She recalled his Vowed Coward mug, the dozen times he’d warned her against seeing him as a hero, all the time he’d made fun of values like honor, courage, integrity.
“I was Ma’s son. But Cole—he was my dad’s. He was just like Dad in a hundred thousand ways. Taking on people’s troubles. Sticking up for what he believed in, stubborn as a goat even if he was going to get his nose rubbed in the dirt. What my father did to get himself killed—Cole would have been stupid enough to do it, too. So he took it on like a cause to change.”
“I understand,” she murmured.
“He’d lie straight-faced to a nun that he doesn’t care a hoot-hell about anything.”
“I know.”
“He’s not going to catch himself being anything like Dad. You even try and mention that maybe he’s a nice guy, he’ll probably snap your head off.”
“I know.”
“He can be a stubborn, blind, bullheaded jerk.”
“I know.”
“And you’re so in love with him that you can’t see straight.”
“I know.”
As fast as the words slipped out, her gaze jerked away from the kitchen door and back to Sam’s face. His smile started slowly and gradually widened to a crooked grin. “Like I said, Regan...not that I wouldn’t love to stick around, but I think I’ll head home after dinner.”
Cole waited until the plane’s lights were out of sight before striding for the house. There were times his brother was more hardheaded than a baseball bat. No way he could argue Sam out of flying back tonight, but they’d talked a long time. The hour was late. The princess should be asleep by now.
Once inside, he latched the back door with the stealth of a thief and unbuttoned his jacket with numb fingers. The night temperature had been stinging cold. His cheeks were as frozen as his hands. He dropped the jacket, then bent down to unlace his boots.
Regan had left on the kitchen light, but there wasn’t a sound in the whole house. He pulled the light string, then tiptoed in the dark to the living room.
At a glance, he saw the two sleeping bags laid out side by side and the shine of her blond head tucked in one of them. The room smelled of cedar and pine smoke. The old-fashioned fireplace had a six-foot grate, big enough to keep them warm until the dawn hours if the logs were stacked just right. Regan had fed the fire, but not enough. Still, he wasn’t about to add wood and risk waking her now.
Trying not to make a sound, he shucked his socks and jeans, then pulled off his sweatshirt. His hands were still like ice, but he’d never been able to sleep with the constriction of clothes. He was always up and dressed before Regan woke, so it made no difference. Stripped down to his briefs, he knelt down to crawl into the bag.
“Did Sam get off okay?”
Her voice was as soft as melted honey. It nearly caused him a heart attack. His head whipped around. “I thought you were asleep.”
“Not until I knew you were back in. You two talked a long time.”
“Air freight business.” He shimmied quickly under the cover of the sleeping bag. It was true that he and Sam had talked shop, but the lion’s share of the past two hours, they’d primarily been brainstorming how to keep one small blonde safe. The same small blonde who was balancing up on an elbow, her hair as bright as liquid gold in the firelight, with a look in her shadowed eyes that made Cole...worry.
“I liked your brother, slugger.”
“He liked you,
too, but we can talk about Sam tomorrow. We’ll talk about making plans tomorrow, too, but right now you need your rest.”
“You’re tired?”
“Completely beat,” he lied. She immediately fell silent, which should have relieved his mind. Only she didn’t move. She stayed propped up on her elbow, as if she were content to stare at him for the entire night. “All right,” he said patiently. “Whatever you have on your mind, let’s hear it.”
Silence ticked in the dark room, broken only when a log fell in a shatter of sparks in the hearth. And then Regan sighed. “I’m afraid it isn’t something I can talk about. It’s just something I have to do. Try and believe me, Shepherd. I’m doing this for your own good.”
He expected trouble. He didn’t expect her to zip down her sleeping bag and lean over, stark naked, to kiss him.
There had been an element of teasing humor in her voice. There was none in her kiss. Her lips honed on his with dead serious intent, a whisper of softness, then a taking. She drove her tongue inside his mouth, slowly, sweetly, until his head started spinning. There was light in her hair, on her face, on the golden slope of her shoulders. She tasted like mint toothpaste. She tasted warm and wet and like no other woman had ever tasted, not for him. She tasted like liquid love.
His hands clenched her shoulders. He meant to push her away. He wanted her like a headache that wouldn’t leave him alone, like a clawing in his soul, like an ache that had seeped under his skin. He was afraid of it. He couldn’t seem to be near her, not anymore, without feeling an explosion of power, magic, something as absurd and ridiculous...as love.
Regan was the one prey to illusions, not him. Maybe sex would exorcise the obsession he had for her, but Regan would be hurt when he took off. The one thing—the only thing—he’d done right for her so far was not hurt her.
“Honey—”
“Don’t waste your breath arguing. I’m going to have my way with you and that’s that. Stop worrying. I’ll be gentle.”
A wisp of a smile curved his mouth. It died when he felt her lips drift kisses down his throat. “Honey—”
“If we don’t do this, I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life. Do you want that on your conscience? Do you?”
“Honey—”
“I’m not asking for a commitment from you. I don’t even want one. No one on earth is ever going to know this happened but you and me, and I won’t tell. It’s just sex, slugger. What’s so scary?”
It wasn’t just sex. It never had been and never could be, not for her, and Cole wasn’t fooled by her sassy teasing or her brazen aplomb. Her voice had a quaver and her shoulders were covered in gooseflesh. She was anticipating a rejection, already bracing for it. Worse yet, she was going to freeze her bare tush unless he did something.
He made a quick choice—the wrong one. A fair number of wrong choices had dominated his adult life, but most of them were minor peccadilloes. This one was disastrous. He scooted her sleeping bag closer and unzipped his, and in the process of trying to save her behind from the cold floor, he kissed her.
It wasn’t a gentleman’s I’ll-never-hurt-you kiss of comfort.
It was a hot, wild well of a kiss that came from three days of being good as a monk, a thousand hours of wanting her more than he could stand and ten years of suppressed emotions that were supposed to be in permanent cold storage.
He could have regained control—hell, he’d never lost that kind of control—but unfortunately the princess responded with suicidal fervor. She was pushing at his briefs before he’d barely touched her, skimming her soft white hands everywhere she could reach. Charlie had been as ready to shoot as a hardwood arrow for days. At the speed Regan had in mind, spontaneous combustion would take place in less than thirty seconds.
That wouldn’t do.
He tore his mouth from hers and ducked his head. She was going to regret this. He knew damn well she was going to regret this...but not the loving part of it. There was no magic in life, but there was pleasure. If he was going to be a bastard, he was going to do it right. She would remember the loving part of it as uncontestably good or he’d take a razor to his wrists.
Cream. Her throat was as milky as cream and just as vulnerable. He laved the length of her throat with kisses, then again, and then cupped her small breasts together and buffed their tips with his tongue. He shanghaied her left nipple between his teeth and sucked, gently.
Not that she liked that, but her spine arched clear off the quilted bag and a restless hiss of air soughed out of her lungs. He gave her right nipple equal attention, taking his time, going slowly, ignoring the time bomb ticking in his chest. He trickled warm, wet kisses down her ribs, raising pebbles on her skin. She called his name.
He dipped a tongue in her navel at the same time he caressed the length of her hip and thigh with long, languorous, intimate strokes. She called his name again.
There weren’t many things he was good at. Making love, pleasing a woman, was supposed to be one of them. This shouldn’t have been different, but it was. Since the room had become hotter than a furnace, there was no fathomable reason why his hands were trembling.
It was her doing. Her fault. The scent of Regan was intoxicating, her kisses ransoming his sanity, the sweet groan in her voice affecting him like a magical witch’s spell.
He rolled her on top of him, reveling in the weight of her, the soft cushion of her breasts, the pressure of her thighs against Charlie. Torture shouldn’t feel this good. The crazy thought lunged through his mind that if he had to die, he wanted it to happen now. Just like this, where there was nothing on earth but Regan and firelight and the power of intimacy he felt with her as he’d felt for no one else.
He twisted her beneath him again, sliding a hand between them, over her taut stomach and down. Her leg catapulted around him when he found the soft bud nestled in springy damp curls. He inserted a finger in the silky folds, leaving his palm free to rub—reverently, tenderly, gently— against her sensitive nubbin.
Her teeth closed on his shoulder.
She wasn’t half as gentle as he was.
Somewhere in the ridiculously huge room were his jeans. There was a foil packet in his pocket, not because he ever planned this, not because he ever anticipated it, but because Cole had never fooled himself about being a born sinner. Should there come a time when he went stark, raving mad, he wouldn’t risk Regan.
He was going stark, raving mad. He found the packet, but couldn’t get it open to save his life. Regan, instead of being distracted by the short diversion, was taking merciless advantage of it. She trailed warm, wet kisses down his ribs.
Dipped a tongue in his navel. Stroked the length of his inner thigh. How she’d suddenly come up with those specific brazen ideas momentarily startled him. Until he recognized who’d given her those very bad ideas.
Him.
He ripped the foil with his teeth, saved Charlie from the reverently slow rubbing she was giving him, and leveled her flat. Even though his ears were roaring, even though he was burning up from the inside out, he said, “Princess, I can still stop.” Then wished he’d bitten his tongue. He prayed fast that he could keep that promise.
“I’ll shoot you if you try.” Her hands urgently splayed on his hips, pulling him down, her legs already wrapping around him. “I want you, Cole. Now. With me. In me. Part of me.”
She was so small he was terrified of hurting her, and he told himself to go easy, easy, but it was like being squeezed in a fist of warm honey. Her teeth grazed his throat, not helping. She cried out something willful and wild, and that didn’t help, either. Moisture beaded his brow; his muscles tensed tighter than coils, and still he moved slowly, penetrating deeper and deeper until he was completely embedded inside her.
“Yes,” she said fiercely.
If he ever had control, he lost it then. Every time he’d touched her had been building to this. He knew from her physical responses that she was unfamiliar with passion, yet it was Regan who laid her heart o
pen, Regan who reeled him into her warmth and fire. He increased the rhythm of strokes until she made sweet-wild sounds that burned light in all the dark places. She wanted this—she wanted him—with an honest joy that took his breath away. Her body was as seal-slick as his own, her lips stunned-red and wet, but the smoke in her shimmering green eyes was love.
He knew it, felt it, could feel himself enveloped and immersed in the transfusion of emotion that emanated from her.
All this time he’d been wrong.
There was magic.
Not in life, but in Regan.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Not that Regan had vast experience, but she was fairly sure it was usually the woman who was nervous the morning after.
When she woke up, Cole was lying next to her. Early-morning sun silvered through the windowpanes, illuminating his abandoned clothes and the still hearth. Although the room was cold, he’d zipped the sleeping bags together the night before. Tucked against his side, the weight of his arm securing her closeness, Regan had never felt warmer. They’d made love three times in the night, each more erotic and emotionally compelling than the last. She was sure he’d sleep wonderfully.
One glance at his face, and Regan doubted he’d slept at all.
Even before Sam explained his background, she’d had clues to help her understand why Cole backed away from emotion. Loving deeply carried the potential risk of being deeply hurt. Slugger had lost so much. Maybe too much for him to take that risk again.
She’d made love with him knowing that a single night could hardly erase the kind of pain he’d been through, the kind of private demons he lived with. And she had never expected avowals of love this morning...but she’d hoped that he’d waken with a slightly different expression than that of a trapped coyote. Beneath her palm, his heart was galloping like a cornered buck’s. The muscle in his sandpapery cheek was clenched tight. The frown on his brow looked rooted there.
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