Unforgettable

by Joan Johnston

  She snorted derisively. “You make me sound like a bottle of beer you haven’t finished swilling.”

  His voice was low and seductive. “I was thinking of something utterly soft and incredibly sweet I haven’t finished sampling.”

  Callie felt the flush creeping up her throat but could do nothing to stop it. “I don’t love you anymore, Trace.”

  “Who said anything about love?”

  The Texan

  by Joan Johnston

  Copyright 2001 by Joan Mertens Johnston, Inc.

  Bay caught her breath when Owen Blackthorne stepped into the cool night air. He was close enough to touch. His shaggy black hair looked rumpled, as though he’d shoved both hands through it in agitation. When he started to move off the porch, Bay reached out and grasped his sleeve.

  A second later she was slammed back against the wall, a powerful male hand at her throat choking her. She could feel the heat of him, the solid maleness of him. And panicked. She clawed at Owen’s flesh with her nails and drove her knee upward toward his genitals. He thrust her upraised knee aside, and the full weight of his over-six-foot frame shoved hard against her from shoulders to thighs.

  Bay froze, staring up at him in mute horror. Her body trembled in shock. She tried to speak, but there was no air to be had beneath the crushing pressure of his grip on her throat.

  “What the hell . . .?” He released her throat and grabbed her arms to yank her into the narrow stream of light from the kitchen doorway.

  She gasped a breath of air, coughed, then gasped another, pressing a shaky hand to her injured throat. She wrenched to free herself, but he let her go without a struggle and took a wary step back. She rubbed her arms where he’d held her, wishing she’d approached him more directly.

  “What are you doing out here, Mizz Creed?” His voice was clipped but controlled. The violence she’d felt in his touch was still there in his eyes, which glittered with hostility.

  “It’s Dr. Creed,” she rasped, glaring back at him.

  He lifted a black brow. “Well, Dr. Creed?”

  She opened her mouth to say I need your help. But the words wouldn’t come. There was nothing wrong with her voice. She just hated the thought of asking a Blackthorne for anything.

  “I haven’t got all night,” he said. “There’s an emergency at the barn—”

  “Ruby’s foal has already been delivered safely,” she said. “I made up that story because I wanted to speak privately with you.”

  “You delivered Ruby’s foal?”

  She saw the confusion on his face. “Your sister tried to manage by herself and ran into trouble. Since your vet was out of town, she called me.”

  Owen grimaced, but to his credit, didn’t berate his sister in front of her. Neither did he thank Bay for saving the foal. “You’ve got me here now,” he said. “What is it you want?” His hands fisted on his hips in a way that made her think he was itching to wrap them back around her throat.

  She lifted her chin and met his gaze. Big mistake. His gray eyes had turned into shards of ice. His body was wired tight, like frayed barbed wire ready to snap and tear flesh.

  Her stomach clenched with unaccustomed fear, which she told herself was unreasonable. She’d simply surprised him, and he’d reacted to the threat like the lawman he was. He couldn’t know how frightening it was for her to be imprisoned against the wall by his large, muscular frame. She swallowed past the soreness in her throat and said, “My brother’s in trouble.”

  The Loner

  by Joan Johnston

  Copyright 2002 by Joan Mertens Johnston, Inc.

  “What the hell are you doing back here in Bitter Creek?”

  Billy Coburn heard the challenge in the low, menacing voice but took his time turning to confront Jackson Blackthorne. He set his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, squinting against the smoke that caught under the brim of his Stetson, and stuck his boot on the brass foot rail at the base of the Armadillo Bar. At last he said, “None of your damn business.”

  Billy saw the anger flare in the older man’s eyes and watched his shoulders square as he straightened. Billy almost smiled. Jackson Blackthorne’s six-foot-three-inch height wasn’t going to intimidate him. He was an inch taller than Blackjack, maybe even broader in the shoulders, and a hell of a lot leaner in the hip. His father—it felt strange to use the word, since he was the man’s bastard son—didn’t scare him.

  “We had a deal,” Blackjack said. “I agreed to put that badge on your chest, and you agreed to stay as far from my daughter and this town as you could get.”

  Billy thumbed a smudge off the silver TSCRA badge that was pinned to a leather folder stuck in his breast pocket. As a result of a deal he’d made with Blackjack, he’d become a field agent for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers’ Association, hunting down modern-day cattle rustlers and horse thieves.

  He laid a hand on the Colt .45 holstered high on his hip, met Blackjack’s stare, and said, “I’ve kept my part of the bargain. I’ve been living in Amarillo for the past two years.” Which was about as far as you could go north and west of Bitter Creek and still stay in Texas. “I haven’t seen or spoken to your daughter since I left town.”

  “What I want to know is why you’ve shown up here now, two weeks before Summer’s wedding. If you’ve got any notion of interfering—”

  “I’ve kept my part of the bargain,” Billy repeated, his blood pounding in his temples as he absorbed the stunning news that Summer Blackthorne was about to be married. “I haven’t seen Summer in the two years I’ve been gone. And I made sure before I left that she hated my guts.”

  That also had been part of the deal.

  As far as Billy knew, Summer Blackthorne still hated him. But he felt an ache inside when he thought of her walking down the aisle with some other man. Once upon a time he’d hoped that she’d be marrying him.

  But that was a long time—and a couple of significant revelations—ago.

  “If you’re not here because of the wedding, what are you doing back in Bitter Creek?” Blackjack said.

  Billy followed Blackjack’s gaze to a booth on the other side of the bar. Summer Blackthorne was sitting there as pretty as you please. And she was every bit as pretty now as she’d been when he’d left her behind two years ago. She was laughing, her head thrown back to expose a long, slender neck. Soft blond curls fell over her shoulders—and onto the male arm that was draped possessively around her. The man must be her fiancé.

  Billy hated him on sight. He felt the hairs on his nape stand on end and fought back the jealousy and sense of loss that made his stomach knot and his throat thicken painfully. Summer didn’t belong to him. Never had and never would.

  “I asked you a question,” Blackjack said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Billy took the cigarette from his mouth, flicked it onto the sawdusted cement floor, and ground it out with his boot. “Like I said, none of your business.”

  “Look, son, I’ve had about as much—”

  “Don’t ever call me son. You haven’t earned the right.”

  Billy saw the irritation flash in Blackjack’s eyes. Maybe it was wrong to blame his father for what had happened. After all, it was Blackjack’s wife Eve who’d arranged to have Johnny Ray Coburn marry Billy’s mother Dora when she turned up at Blackjack’s back door unwed and pregnant—and then paid Dora to keep the truth from Blackjack for twenty-five years.

  But it was Blackjack who’d come with three hard men and beaten Billy badly enough to put him in the hospital when he wouldn’t promise to stay away from Summer. Billy had been lying in the hospital, ribs broken, eyes swollen closed, a dozen stitches in his face, when Blackjack had shown up in his room. Dora had finally told him the truth. And he’d passed it on to Billy.

  I’m your father.

  “It doesn’t really matter why you’re here,” Blackjack said at last. “So long as you’re gone in the next twenty-four hours. If you’re still in Bitter Creek the day a
fter tomorrow, I’ll make sure that badge comes off and the job goes away. Is that understood?”

  Billy said nothing, simply stared back into his father’s cold gray eyes. What could he say? Jackson Blackthorne would do what he had to. And Billy would do what he had to.

  The Next Mrs. Blackthorne

  by Joan Johnston

  Copyright 2005 by Joan Mertens Johnston, Inc.

  Once her eyes had adjusted to the stark light, Jocelyn found herself facing a man every bit as tall and imposing as she remembered. His cold blue eyes were distant and unapproachable. His rangy body was deceptively relaxed. But she had the impression of a wild animal, ready to pounce.

  He was barefoot and wearing a western shirt that he’d apparently just pulled on, because it wasn’t snapped or tucked into his jeans. Which weren’t snapped either.

  Her eyes locked on the hair-dusted strip of tanned, muscular abs and chest in front of her and arrowed down to jeans that fit like a glove. She flushed and forced her gaze back up to North’s face.

  His eyes had narrowed, and his lips had twisted in a cynical smile. “Still shopping for a man? Or you finally ready to buy?”

  Jocelyn ignored the taunt and waited for an invitation to come in. It wasn’t forthcoming. Finally she asked, “May I come in?”

  North stepped back, but not very far, and Jocelyn’s breasts brushed against his naked chest as she edged into the shadowy kitchen, lit only by the spill of light from the hallway and the porch. She was flustered, but a quick glance upward revealed that North wasn’t as unaffected, or uninterested, as he wanted her to believe.

  Jocelyn watched as his gaze left her face and slowly dropped to her nipples, which had visibly peaked beneath her silk blouse. She felt a frisson of desire shiver up her spine and caught her lower lip in her teeth to keep from moaning.

  He did want her. She could do this. She had to do this. Clay’s happiness, his family’s future, depended on her success.

  “Like what you see?” she asked in a disturbingly breathless voice.

  His eyes moved back up her body slowly until they were focused on hers. Then, in a whiskey-rough voice, he said, “Yes.”

  Jocelyn realized she’d been hoping North would proposition her, so that all she had to do was agree. But his full lips remained sealed as his avid gaze roamed her face.

  “We’re going to let the moths in,” she said at last, as she eased the screen door closed.

  At the same moment, North turned out the porch light.

  Jocelyn felt trapped with him in the darkness. She didn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Her breasts felt achy and her body clenched in sudden desire as she felt his hand close around her breast.

  She gasped.

  “This is what you came for, isn’t it?” he said in a voice that resonated deep in his throat. He backed her against the door, his hips thrusting against hers, so there could be no mistaking what he wanted from her. He was hard and hot, and her body trembled with fear and desire.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  And then, as though someone had thrown a pail of cold water on her, she realized where she was and what she was doing and what she’d said.

  “I mean no,” she said hastily, putting her hands to his shoulders and looking up at eyes that glittered dangerously in the meager light from the hallway. “I mean yes, but—”

  “Make up your mind, honey. I haven’t got all night.”

  Jocelyn had never heard such brutally frank—and unflattering—language from a man. It shocked her. And angered her. “Get away from me,” she said through bared teeth. “Before I—”

  She was free before she could say what awful carnage she would wreak on him for the insult she’d suffered.

  “I’m going to bed,” he said, heading for the hallway. “Shut the door when you leave.”

  “Wait!” she cried.

  He stopped, glanced at her over his shoulder, and said, “What for?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Talk isn’t what I want from you.”

  Jocelyn held out her hands in supplication. “Please. I only need a few minutes of your time. This is important.”

  “There’s only one thing you have that I want, honey. Unless you’ve changed your mind — ”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Jocelyn said.

  He turned around and crossed his arms and spread his long, bare feet wide. “I’m listening.”

  The Rivals

  by Joan Johnston

  Copyright 2004 by Joan Mertens Johnston, Inc.

  Clay had thought the day couldn’t get much worse, but the moment he stepped inside Libby’s cabin, he realized he’d been wrong.

  “Hello, King,” he said when he spied Libby’s father.

  King Grayhawk sat in a studded leather armchair near the fire, like a head of state on his throne, Libby’s three hounds at his feet. Magnum rose and stretched. King had one hand on each redbone hound’s head, and it wasn’t until he released them that Doc and Snoopy bounded over to greet Libby, sad eyes adoring, tails wagging and tongues lolling.

  “Clay.” The older man should have risen to greet Clay, but King used the fact that his left knee was stiff from an old bronc-busting injury, and stretched out on an ottoman in front of him, as an excuse to stay where he was. An impressive, gnarled oak cane with a golden hawk, wings outspread for handle, remained in place, leaning upright against the chair.

  Clay wanted to turn around and walk right back out the door, but Libby was behind him, and it would have looked too much like the retreat it was if he’d tried to get past her. And really, what was the point? This confrontation was bound to come sooner or later. It might as well be now.

  “Who told you?” Clay asked as he took off his coat and hung it on an antler hook by the door. He stopped to help Libby take off her coat, then hung it beside his own.

  “Hello, Daddy,” Libby said as she crossed into the living room.

  Clay noticed she made no move to touch her father, not to hug him or kiss him or greet him in any familiar way. She headed directly to the crackling fireplace and stood there, her hands held out before her, as though its heat could warm the cold inside her.

  Clay knew better.

  There was no love lost between King Grayhawk and his eldest daughter. Clay didn’t know all the details of what had transpired between them when Libby had finally told her father she was pregnant, but he knew King had struck her, because he’d seen the bruise on her cheek.

  Someday, he’d vowed, he would repay King for that injury.

  “North called me,” King said, his eyes focused on Libby in condemnation. “I expect to be told when something as monumental as the disappearance of my only granddaughter occurs.”

  “There isn’t anything you can do that we aren’t already doing,” Libby said.

  “You’re wrong,” King said. “As usual.”

  Clay saw the flush rise on Libby’s cheekbones, saw the firm set of her lips as she bit back whatever retort had sprung to them. He opened his mouth to defend her but was never given the chance.

  “I’ve hired private detectives to backtrack Katherine’s steps,” King said. “They’ve already discovered—”

  “They’ve found her?” Libby exclaimed, taking a step toward her father in her anxiety to hear good news about Kate.

  “No,” King conceded.

  Libby stopped in her tracks.

  King continued, “But they’ve got an artist’s rendering of the man who apparently kidnapped her, which they’re circulating among—”

  “The police have already done that, Daddy,” Libby said scornfully. “We’ve talked to everyone, we’ve—”

  “You didn’t issue an Amber Alert,” the old man contradicted.

  Clay watched Libby’s eyes brim with tears that she fought not to shed.

  “You know how few roads there are in and out of here,” she said. “They were all blocked by police within hours of Kate’s disappearance.”

  “That do
esn’t mean someone couldn’t have taken Katherine across state lines,” the old man said stubbornly. “I’ve got a nationwide Amber Alert in place.

  Clay was grateful for any effort that might help locate Kate, but he’d be damned if he’d thank the old man. “What has your investigator found out?”

  The old man snorted. “Not much! But I have every confidence that—”

  “Why did you come here?” Libby interrupted.

  It was plain to Clay that, far from finding comfort in her father’s presence, Libby seemed irritated by it.

  King Grayhawk seemed impervious to his daughter’s rebuff. “I’m here to find my granddaughter.”

  “I don’t need you here,” Libby retorted. “I don’t want you here.”

  “I have no intention of going anywhere until—”

  “This is my home. You’re not welcome in it.”

  “I’ll be at the Big House,” the old man said. “I thought you might want to know—”

  “I don’t care why you left that Big House of yours at Kingdom Come and showed up here. I don’t care what you think you can accomplish. I want you out. Get out!”

  Clay could see she was on the verge of hysteria. King apparently realized the same thing, because he reached for his cane, eased his left leg off the ottoman, and shoved his way upright. Clay had forgotten how tall he was, how imposing he looked. King Grayhawk was wearing what any cowboy might wear, jeans and a flannel plaid Western shirt and boots. But he looked far from ordinary.

  The face above the clothes bore snakelike, unblinking eyes, a hawk nose, and sharp cheekbones etched into stone by wind and weather. The shirt did little to conceal broad, powerful shoulders, and the jeans revealed a wiry leanness that came from years in the saddle. The tooled leather belt, with its broad silver buckle, cinched a narrow waist, and the boots were scuffed and crusted with dirt that made it clear this man stood his ground.

  King Grayhawk was not a man Clay admired, but he recognized a powerful adversary when he saw one. Clay had grown up with a father very much—almost exactly—like the man he faced now. They were two giants cut from the same rugged cloth, both shaped by the vast, unforgiving frontier.