by Gigi Moore
“Maia, they are just dreams. Not visions.”
“Dreams and visions can sometimes be the same thing. You just have to know how to interpret them. And you know that gifts run in fam…” Desiree started to shake her head, but Maia put up a hand, palm forward in a stop sign, before continuing. “Ah, ah, ah. Don’t try distancing yourself from your heritage or go knocking my visions. I was right about our missing sister, wasn’t I?”
Desiree opened her mouth to speak then shut it because she couldn’t argue with the truth. She wanted to, though. “Tamara wasn’t exactly missing,” she finally whispered.
“Sure, Mom knew where she was. But did we? So that makes her missing.”
Desiree sighed. She didn’t want to remind Maia that up until her vision, neither of them had known Tamara existed until they got confirmation from their mother. She was too tired to argue with her sister’s logic anyway, especially when it made a weird sort of sense. She just wanted to squeeze some more sleep into what was left of the night.
More like get back to that dream to see what those men have planned for you.
Oh God, since when had she become a freak? Was this what nearing thirty did to a woman? Was she turning into a nymphomaniac?
Maia had been teasing her about turning the big three-oh just months before Desiree’s twenty-ninth birthday last summer, claiming she couldn’t wait until Desiree’s hormones finally caught up with her and kicked her in the ass.
“Honestly, Des, sometimes you act like a woman twice your age. You really need to take it easy and get laid once in a while.”
Maybe Maia was right, and her hormones were punishing her for keeping them so carefully in check all these years.
Not that she was frigid, despite what a couple of her past lovers implied, and despite what one in particular had taken from her.
“You know what I think,” Maia said, and Desiree silently thanked her for interrupting the direction of her thoughts. She did not want to entertain the possibility that Maia and some of her past lovers might be correct about her underused libido. She did not want to believe that she was now damaged goods. However, she had a feeling that Maia wasn’t really going to give her a reprieve, and her sister’s next words confirmed this. “You’re sublimating.”
“I’m what?”
“I’ve seen the way you watch those night wranglers ever since we’ve been here. Lord knows I’ve noticed them.”
She knew of which night wranglers her sister spoke. And all she had to say on that subject was that a woman would have to be in a coma not to notice Carson and Sam Quarry. Not that she’d say anything to her sister. She didn’t want to give the girl any more ammunition than necessary. “You’ve seen one cowboy, you’ve seen them all.”
“Now you’re just trying to blow smoke up my ass, sis, but I’m not buying it. Ain’t nothing ordinary about those two, and you know it. In fact, there’s something decidedly out of the ordinary about them, if you ask me.”
Desiree would admit nothing. It was bad enough those two haunted her dreams as much as the wolves and the…Sheesh, she was stupid! Were those two the faceless men in her dreams?
She closed her eyes, picturing the two tall, broad-shouldered brothers. The oldest had raven-black hair and emerald-green eyes, and the younger one had chocolate-brown hair and golden-honey eyes. Each was gorgeous in his own right.
She compared her vision with the memory of the two figures in her dream and realized that though she couldn’t see the dream-men’s faces, they and the cowboys were incredibly similar in appearance.
Was she sublimating? Was she having sex dreams about the two cowboys because the idea of having actual sex with them proved plain unacceptable to her in any way, shape, or form?
Desiree opened her eyes to see her sister staring at her with a gleam in her espresso eyes.
“Must have been some wet dream, though I’m not sure where the wolves come in.”
“It wasn’t a wet dream.”
“Uh-huh.”
Desiree sighed and flung herself back on the bed, shaking her head. “Just get out of here and stop psychoanalyzing me, Freud.”
Maia chuckled and reached to caress Desiree’s face, expression changing from amused to serious. “Do yourself a favor, girl, and just go for it.”
“That’s what you would do.”
“You better believe it. Just so happens I haven’t seen anything on this ranch worth my time or energy.”
“Yet you throw two of the most eligible cowboys at me? What’s the matter? They’re not good enough for you? Or should I say wild and reckless enough?”
“They’re more than good and wild enough, but they don’t belong to me.”
Oh God, was Maia saying what Desiree thought she was? Was she about to spout the soul mates jazz in which she so fervently believed?
It wasn’t that Desiree didn’t believe in commitment and love, she just didn’t like the idea that she wasn’t in control of her own destiny. She had choices. She could choose to be an irresponsible, reckless adult, or she could choose not to.
“I know what you think of my visions and my ideas on love and romance, but before you knock it—”
“I’m not knocking anything. I just don’t believe in soul mates.”
“You should, since I have a feeling yours are closer at hand than you know.”
“Are you insinuating what I think you are?” Okay, she knew her little sister was a practicing Wiccan and tended to have some pretty liberal ideas about some things, especially where sex and nudity were concerned, but a threesome?
Desiree shuddered now, remembering the first time she’d walked into Maia’s bedroom without knocking and found her sister skyclad—or naked, to the layman. Maia had been home from college for the Christmas break. She’d informed Desiree that she no longer celebrated Christmas as the family traditionally celebrated it. Instead, she recognized the winter solstice, in the Wiccan tradition.
Maia’s nontraditional spiritual practices were one thing, but when Desiree came out to Colorado and discovered her long-lost older sister involved in a ménage a trois she started to feel like Alice plummeting down a carnal rabbit hole.
Desiree wasn’t judging anyone, and she secretly applauded both her sisters for flouting convention to follow their hearts. She just didn’t think Maia’s or Tamara’s lives were for her. She was much too square for the New Age stuff Maia followed, and she had enough trouble trusting and being intimate with one man, much less two.
Maia grinned and patted Desiree’s hand now. “I know, for me to even suggest that my responsible, staid, and skeptical older sister would even consider taking up with a younger man is just too farfetched, much less two younger men.”
Two men who very well might be werewolves.
Desiree’s heart stuttered at the preposterousness of that thought and the intensity of her sister’s gaze. The combination of the two proved powerful enough to force her from the bed. She needed air immediately, or she might just spontaneously combust.
Desiree stumbled across the room to the veranda none too gracefully, as if she were starving for oxygen. She hastily flung open the French windows.
The first thing she noticed when she tilted back her head and took a deep breath was the full moon dominating the indigo sky. She shuddered. She wasn’t sure if she reacted to the wolves in her dream, the two night wranglers, or the cool evening breeze that stirred her hair and the curtains behind her. After almost a year in Colorado, she’d learned that even in the summer evenings could be downright arctic. She needed the cold, however, to shove her firmly back to reality and away from risky, fanciful thoughts of hot, sexy cowboys turning into dangerous, feral wolves.
“Des, are you okay?”
No. “Of course I’m okay.” She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths before lowering her head and opening her eyes to see the two shirtless men emerging from the surrounding woods. She caught herself grinning at the way they playfully shoved each other and roughhoused as they o
therwise soundlessly traversed the well-lit grounds toward one of the ranch’s many family houses.
It wasn’t the first time she had seen the two young men traipsing the ranch grounds. It was, however, the first time she’d seen them so close on the heels of waking from one of her wolf dreams when the memories and her arousal remained so fresh.
Desiree’s heart sped at the view of their partial nakedness, the drops of water glimmering on their tanned skin beneath the moonlight causing more moisture to gather in the already drenched crotch of her panties.
God, she couldn’t get away from them! First the dreams, now the very virile cowboys, walking and breathing in the flesh.
Flesh that’s bound to catch pneumonia!
How could they be out in this cold, obviously having taken a midnight dip, and not be freezing to death?
As the men neared the main house, just crossing beneath her window, Desiree noticed the younger one frown and sniff the air right before he glanced up to catch her looking at him from the veranda.
Desiree jerked back, hiding behind the jamb like a giddy schoolgirl who had been caught staring at her crush.
“Something wrong?” Maia approached the veranda and Desiree caught her by the arm and pulled her back behind her. “What?”
“It’s them!”
“The wolves?” Maia teased.
Yes! “No. You know who.”
“Let me see.” Maia pulled out of her sister’s grasp to go out onto the veranda and lean over the stone balustrade. When she waved and addressed the cowboys, Desiree gasped. “Hey, boys. Nice night, huh?”
“Sure is, ma’am.”
Just hearing the man’s deep drawl raised goose bumps on her skin. Or maybe it was the cold. Yeah, that was it, the cold. “Why do you have to be so incorrigible?” Desiree whispered.
“A little chilly out, though,” Maia said, ignoring her sister.
“Reckon we’re getting used to it.”
Still the younger brother speaking, she could tell. As tight-lipped as they both were, the older one was the least talkative—the strong, silent type, if she paid attention to that sort of thing, and she definitely wasn’t, no way.
Despite the “reckon,” Desiree detected the Cajun accent buried beneath the drawl, a decidedly lazy and romantic quality. Not that she was a dialect expert or anything, but she had a good memory, a sensitive ear, and she’d heard similar accents when she’d visited Louisiana for Mardi Gras during spring break almost a decade ago.
Was he intentionally concealing his natural accent, or was his current accent a result of being in Colorado around so many cowboys for a time? Desiree wondered. She didn’t know how, but she’d always suspected the wranglers weren’t native to Colorado, even before discovering that they had come to the ranch not much before she and her sister and mother had. There remained something decidedly not…local about them. With their rarely heard accents and dark coloring, they seemed more exotic than the native Coloradans.
Her suspicions had been confirmed once she’d begun hanging around the cookhouse and made the acquaintance of Helena, The Double R’s head chef, several months into her stay.
Desiree wondered about where they had come from and why they’d all left. Had they just needed a change of scenery and fresh start, like her, Maia, and their mother? Or had their reasons been more life and death?
Curiosity getting to her, Desiree peeked from behind the jamb just in time to see the younger brother, Sam, touch the brim of his Stetson.
“You have a good evening, ma’am. Don’t catch cold.”
“You do the same. And I told you before, you can call me Maia.”
“Will do…Maia.”
Desiree noticed the way Sam’s tongue caressed her sister’s name and wondered how her name would sound on that very same tongue. She also noticed that during the entire exchange the older brother, Carson, didn’t even look their way, just kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, his chin proudly tilted up, and his steps purposeful.
What was his problem? Did he think himself too good to talk to the Yankee interlopers? Not that Desiree wanted his attention or cared about his moods or apparent rejection one way or the other. She didn’t. She just remained curious why he seemed so cantankerous and unsociable when his brother seemed the total opposite, always had a friendly—some like Maia would call it flirtatious—and ready smile for everyone.
Desiree watched as her sister wiggled her fingers at Sam when the two men finally disappeared from view. “Sheesh, I can’t take you anywhere.”
Maia stepped back into the bedroom with Desiree and closed the French windows. “Just being friendly. You should try it sometime. We’ve been here long enough.”
That was just it. She had already gone against her nature to move out here. Desiree didn’t think she had it in her to go any more against her nature to be a friendly extrovert like Maia. Despite living here close to a year, Desiree still felt like an outsider living on the edge, one foot firmly in Colorado and the other in New York. It wasn’t like she had all that much going on back in the Big Apple to hold her there.
She’d taken her accounting degree and CPA license from the cutthroat corporate world and had been providing consultation services for a while now. With reciprocity from New York to Colorado, the Internet, and her exceptional computer skills—some like Maia would call her a geek—she was able to take her work with her and get a job with Tamara’s law firm in Eagle County. Once Maia and their mother decided to pick up stakes and join Tamara in Colorado, it had been a no-brainer for Desiree and normal for her to follow her close-knit family’s lead. For anyone who knew her well, Desiree wasn’t too much of a maverick or one to rock the proverbial boat, not like her sisters. She liked to follow the rules, color inside the lines as Maia was always saying. It made life much simpler.
Desiree didn’t bother to respond to her sister’s little jibe, too tired to explain why she didn’t want to get friendly with the locals even if she, technically, proved to be one now. She really didn’t want to explain why she remained too cautious to get friendly with Carson and Sam Quarry, because she wasn’t sure if fear remained at the root of her feelings toward the two cowboys or something else entirely.
Maybe she gave them an entirely undeserved bad rap, keeping her distance, and maybe she would be safer with the imaginary wolves than she would be with the two real cowboys.
What she did know for certain? She had to protect herself from both to maintain her sanity, because no one else on this ranch could or would.
Chapter 2
Her scent snuck up on him so suddenly, Carson thought he’d drown in her sweet vanilla fragrance before he reached the end of the chow line.
Damn. Even his mother’s mouth-watering, Cajun-Western cooking couldn’t block out the maddening woman’s smell.
Yep, she was maddening, but sexy as hell and definitely off-limits.
Carson didn’t even want to turn from his place on the line, knowing he’d lay eyes on her, which would just intensify her effect on him, and that had to be avoided at all costs for him to keep his sanity. Not to mention keep a raging hard-on in check. Bad enough he’d woken up this morning to his usual wood, but his sheets had been moist from yet another wet dream in which Ms. Desiree Jensen had been the star.
His mouth started to water, not from the scents of hush puppies, French pain perdu, and fresh beignets, but from the enticing scent of vanilla musk and woman.
An aroused woman no less. Merde.
Not that there wasn’t more than a few of these in the dining hall at that moment—newlyweds still smitten with their husbands, or even older couples rekindling their romance, for instance. Desiree’s arousal, however, was unique to her. Over the last several months, he had learned to distinguish her arousal from all the other female ranch guests’ and employees’. Carson hadn’t decided yet whether this distinction was a good or bad thing. His skill in identifying Desiree’s scent certainly hadn’t helped him avoid her. Indeed she continually managed to sneak
up on him like no other woman ever had or could. She haunted his waking hours as well as his dreams since she’d arrived and taken up residence at The Double R.
“What’s got your britches in a twist all of a sudden?”
Carson gritted his teeth against his instant reaction to Desiree’s appearance and turned to his brother behind him on the chow line. He couldn’t help but smile at Sam’s question. He loved the way his brother had picked up the local vernacular, not that it was that much of a stretch from some of their own colorful, natural patois. “Nothin’ Mama’s hush puppies and quiche lorraine can’t cure.”
“I think our girl would agree. She keeps dropping by to pick up pointers about Cajun cooking. She must like spicy things.”
Carson rolled his eyes at his brother, trying to ignore Sam’s innuendo.
It figured that someone as sensitive to Carson’s moods would know what really stayed on his mind, and that it wasn’t their mama’s cooking. That, and of course Sam had probably caught his own delectable whiff of the irresistible Yankee, if he hadn’t outright spied her entering the dining hall, unlike Carson.
Sam had said “our girl,” and Carson didn’t know why it had sounded so right to his ears, but he couldn’t deny that as much as he wanted and tried to keep his distance, he felt a certain amount of possessiveness where Ms. Jensen was concerned. He guessed he suffered a bit of the dog—or in this case, wolf—in the manger syndrome. He didn’t want her, shouldn’t want her, but he didn’t want anyone else to want or have her, either.
Just as he thought this, the subject of his and Sam’s conversation traversed the dining hall, past the buffet line on her way to the kitchen where, he knew, she would be warmly welcomed by his mama and the ranch’s other cookhouse staff. Since she’d made it known how much she loved to cook and loved learning new things about exotic and regional cuisine, Mama and the rest of the staff had taken her under their collective wings, much as it was rumored that the main house’s housekeeper had formed a motherly relationship with Desiree.