Joshua and the Cowgirl

by Sherryl Woods

  Before investigating that, he opened a trunk at the foot of the bed and found several flannel shirts, neatly folded, along with a pair of jeans. He held the pants next to his body and decided they were probably an inch or two short, but they’d do. He went into the bathroom, took a shower in surprisingly hot water, dressed and then took another of the shirts to Garrett.

  “Go change. I’ll watch the coffee.”

  While she was gone, he found cups, then hunted in the cupboards for a can of soup. It had been hours since dinner and they needed to get something more into them besides caffeine. He dumped the chicken noodle soup into a pot and turned on the heat. He’d just gotten bowls out when he sensed that Garrett was back in the room. He turned and saw her standing in front of the fire and suddenly his breath turned ragged.

  Her hair was no longer braided and the golden waves fell halfway down her back like a splash of sunlight. The flannel shirt skimmed over curves to end just above her knees, leaving a provocative amount of slim, bare legs to tempt a man. Deliberately turning his back on her, he said in a choked voice, “Maybe you ought to wrap yourself in one of those blankets.”

  “I’m fine. It’s plenty warm in here now.”

  Warm. It was maybe five degrees cooler than hell itself. All of Joshua’s good intentions had been shot down with one glimpse of those heavenly, long legs. Those legs could wrap around a man and hold him prisoner until he drowned in a sea of wild sensations. Images, dangerous images, flashed through his mind, lingered, tempted and then were determinedly banished. Only to return again. And again.

  A smart man would go outside and fling himself facedown in the snow. A wise man would sit down at this kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup and forget all about temptation, if he had to methodically count noodles to do it. Joshua told himself all about being smart and wise as he crossed the room and stood beside her. When she turned to face him, her cheeks flushed from the fire, her hair shimmering, his heart slammed against his ribs. God, she was gorgeous, desirable.

  “Even after everything we’ve been through tonight, you look beautiful,” he said, his voice husky.

  She lifted her head and hesitant, troubled eyes met his. She took a deep breath, then blurted, “Joshua, I’ve been thinking.”

  “About?”

  “We’re stuck here for the rest of the night, maybe even longer.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want you to think…I mean, just because we’re alone here…”

  “I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to do,” he said, brushing a strand of still-damp hair from her face, his fingertips lingering against the flushed, soft-as-silk skin.

  “No. Of course not,” she said hurriedly. “It’s just that I think things should be clear.”

  She was being so serious, so intent. His lips twitched in amusement. “Absolutely.”

  “So I’ll sleep on the sofa,” she announced firmly.

  “You’ll sleep in the bed.”

  “You can’t possibly sleep on that sofa. It’s too short.”

  “It probably converts to a bed.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “I’ll manage.” He grinned. “Unless, of course, you could be persuaded to share.”

  Her expression clouded over. “Didn’t you hear a word I just said?”

  “All of them, as a matter of fact. Soup?” He went back to the kitchen area and began ladling the soup into the bowls, telling himself it was a damned good thing one of them had some willpower. He sure as hell didn’t.

  “We really need to talk about this,” she insisted.

  “Why? It’s all settled. You sleep in the bed. I sleep on the sofa. It’s only one night, after all. I’ve slept on worse.” He couldn’t actually recall when. “Eat your soup.”

  “I don’t want the damned soup. I want to discuss this.”

  “Why? Is there some reason you’re obsessed with our sleeping arrangements? If you want, I could put a cord down the middle of the room and drape a blanket over it. They did that in a movie once. Of course, it was back in the thirties or forties.”

  “If you’re implying that I’m being old-fashioned and prudish—”

  “If the shoe fits.”

  “I just think it’s better to spell things out from the beginning, so there are no misunderstandings.”

  “The winner of the National Spelling Bee couldn’t have done it any better. Your soup’s getting cold.”

  Glaring at him, she sat down at the kitchen table and began to eat. The silence throbbed with tension, a sexual awareness that all of his glib words and her rules hadn’t cooled one whit. Damn it! In her attempts to warn him off, she’d only succeeded in making him want her more. Whatever happened between now and morning, he could not sit by and watch her crawl into that lonely single bed. It would be such a terrible waste. It would also be sheer torture.

  He picked up the deck of cards and shuffled. Suddenly he was propelled back thirty years, to the endless days when he’d been confined to bed with nothing more than a game of solitaire between him and awful, mind-numbing boredom. With a glint in his eyes, he dealt the cards.

  “Five card stud,” he announced tersely.

  “Joshua, I’m exhausted.”

  He glanced significantly across the room. Her gaze followed his, saw the now-controversial bed and returned to the cards before her. Picking them up, she glanced over them, chose two decisively and dropped them on the table.

  His eyebrows rose. “Just two?”

  “Two,” she confirmed, her expression grim.

  They played until the cabin began to fill with the first muted light of dawn. Garrett yawned, glanced at the score sheet she’d insisted on keeping and announced, “You owe me four thousand, seven hundred and twenty-six dollars.” She squinted at the paper. “And thirty-two cents.”

  “You cheat.”

  A smile teased at the corners of her mouth. “Joshua, you do not tell a cowboy he’s cheating at cards unless you have proof or a gun.”

  “Then it’s a good thing you’re a girl, isn’t it?”

  She frowned at once. “A cowgirl,” she corrected. “And I may not have a shotgun with me, but I would hate to have to tell Mrs. Mac that you’re the kind of man who welshes on his debts. She has a shotgun.”

  “By her bed. Yes, I know. She told me. You realize, of course, that I wouldn’t be a bit of use to her if she shot me.”

  “Her aim’s pretty good. You’d still be able to add and subtract.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s all she has in mind for me.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I think she has plans for the two of us.”

  Pink stole into Garrett’s cheeks. “I can’t imagine what gave you that idea, but you’re absolutely wrong.”

  “I don’t think so. She’ll probably be waiting for us with that shotgun, but not for the reason you think. She’ll probably insist on my marrying you now that I’ve besmirched your honor by spending an entire night alone with you in this cabin.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be the first to correct her impression.”

  He grinned. “I don’t know. My masculine pride’s at stake here, too.”

  She tossed her cards on the table and stood up. “Go to hell,” she said with feeling.

  He got slowly to his feet and leaned across the table until he was within mere inches of her delectable mouth. “But this is so much more fun,” he said, his gaze locked on her lips. His breath snagged. “Damn it, I want you, Garrett,” he said, his voice a mixture of regret and yearning.

  “It’s not me you want,” she said, but she didn’t back away.

  He was touched by the haunted look in her eyes. He told himself that she needed proof, longed for it, but would never in a thousand years admit it.

  “It is you I want,” he said emphatically. Cupping her chin in his hand, he proved it by touching his lips to hers. “So soft,” he murmured. “So sweet.”

  Her mouth trembled and her eyes suddenl
y lit with a flare of pure longing. In one swift move he shoved the table aside and drew her to him, claiming her mouth with a hunger that raged through him like wildfire. All the fears of the previous night fueled him with desperation. He could have lost her, lost himself without ever knowing the sweetness of her, without ever savoring the way she was melting in his arms.

  By the time his fingers looped under the hem of the flannel shirt, she had abandoned herself to the feelings she’d kept banked through the night. Shyness and self-denial seemed to vanish on a wave of passion that took them both by surprise with its primitive force of raw need.

  “Hurry,” she told him when his fingers found her heat at last. She arched her back, moving against his hand, pleading with him. “Joshua, please hurry. Please.”

  With slow deliberation, he pulled back. “Not yet. Not yet.”

  Not until he could strip away the shirt that hid her from his gaze. Not until he could take the rosy tip of each full breast into his mouth, thrilling at the responsiveness, the faint gasp of pure pleasure. Not until he could caress the taut flesh of her belly, the gentle curve of her hip, the silky flesh of her thighs. Not until his own body was hard and throbbing with need as her hesitant fingers became bolder and bolder. Not until he could banish the last, lingering doubt about the consequences of what was happening between them and give himself over to the wild sensations that made his blood pulse with pure fire.

  With one last shred of sanity, Joshua found protection and slipped it on, telling her with that instinctive, caring gesture that there would be no repeat of her past, no lingering regret for her to manage in the years to come. Whether she understood all that was beyond him. He knew only that he needed her in some elemental way that was both wonderfully simple and terrifyingly complex. Those were things he would have to sort out later, after he’d made love to her, after he’d gentled her like a skittish filly and made her his own.

  Damn, he thought as he lowered himself to the bed beside her. It was going to be Garrett, after all. There didn’t seem to be a damn thing he could do to stop the loving, the unexpectedly sweet emotion that crowded his heart. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

  With slow, deliberate kisses he stirred her again, his own body responding instantly, this time demanding fulfillment. Eyes locked on hers, he entered her with one slow, tormenting stroke. As her silken heat closed around him, a deep sigh of astonishing contentment shuddered through him. Then he was moving, each thrust binding them together, sealing their fate in a way that should have terrified him, but instead filled him with a sense of completeness he had never known.

  Watching her, he saw the excitement build in her eyes, felt the tension in her body as it strained toward that moment of pure ecstasy that lurked again and again just beyond them. Then with one final, deep stroke, he felt her control shatter, heard her exultant cry. His own body splintered into a million sparks of dazzling light. He cried out her name and then, as they floated slowly back to reality, he murmured it again.

  “Garrett, my love,” he whispered with a sigh. “Oh, baby, I love you.”

  He felt her go absolutely still beneath him.

  “What is it?” he asked at once. “What’s wrong?”

  Propping himself on an elbow, he studied her face, still glowing with the thrill of their lovemaking. There was no missing the troubled expression, the tiny flicker of panic that sprang to life in her eyes. Guessing at the cause, he said gently, “I do love you, you know.”

  “You can’t,” she said matter-of-factly, avoiding his gaze.

  “Oh, but I can.”

  “You and I would be a disaster together.”

  “You call the last hour or so a disaster?”

  She flushed. “It was a release, that’s all. It could have happened between any two people who’d been through what we’d been through tonight.”

  “That hardly qualifies as a disaster, then, does it?” he said, barely tempering his anger.

  “No, but I’d say the description fits all the other hours since you and I have known each other.” She said it flatly, as if emotions could always be fit into tidy little compartments, separated as black or white. Didn’t she know about the grays? Didn’t she understand anything at all about the power of love?

  “Okay, I’ll admit we have a few little differences we’ll need to work out,” he conceded.

  “That’s like describing the Rockies as a couple of puny little hills.”

  “The pioneers made it across the Rockies. We can get past our differences.”

  Uncertainty seemed to replace rock-solid conviction. The wistful expression in her eyes made his heart ache.

  “I’ll prove it to you, Garrett. Give me time and I will prove it to you.”

  “There are not enough years in a lifetime for you to prove that to me,” she said, her tone utterly bleak.

  This defeated attitude threw him. Where was the woman who was certain she could conquer the world and do it alone if she had to? Or was that the problem? he thought with sudden insight. Was she convinced that she had to go it alone? He tangled his fingers in her hair and pressed kisses to her cheeks, her bare shoulders, stopping just short of the temptation of her breasts.

  “Who made it impossible for you to believe in love? Was it Casey’s father?”

  Her eyes closed, but not before he’d seen the pain. “He didn’t help,” she admitted finally.

  “Then who?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t like remembering.”

  “Sometimes that’s the only way to banish the memories once and for all.”

  “My God, now the man thinks he’s Dr. Joyce Brothers,” she said with forced levity, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Where did you get your degree in psychology, Dr. Ames? Did it come with your business degree? Or was it in a cereal box?”

  “Your sarcasm only proves I’m right.”

  Glaring at him, she jumped out of the bed and grabbed for her shirt. Holding it protectively in front of her with one hand, she reached for a blanket with the other.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the sofa to sleep. It’s what I should have done hours ago.”

  Joshua snagged a corner of the blanket and reeled her back, tumbling her down on top of him. She sat up fighting mad. “I am not sleeping in this bed with you.”

  His gaze pinned her. “Why not? Sleeping with me seems pretty innocuous compared with what we were doing in this bed a few minutes ago.”

  “A gentleman would not remind a lady of indiscretions she’d rather forget.”

  “I told you long ago that I’m no gentleman.”

  “I can see that.”

  Her irritation amused him. Taming her would be a delightful challenge. Capturing her heart would require all of his ingenuity and charm. Understanding her might be the most complicated—and rewarding—test of all.

  With one final glare in his direction she lay down on the bed, turned her back to him and pulled the blankets up to her chin. Defiantly, Joshua lifted the blankets, fit himself to the curve of her, lowered the covers and draped an arm over her waist. He waited, then, for the inevitable explosion. Instead she merely sighed, a tiny whisper of sound that could have been resignation or exhaustion. And then she was asleep.

  “Round one,” he murmured victoriously, then wondered what the hell he was going to do if he actually won the fight.

  Chapter Six

  Garrett couldn’t figure out why she couldn’t move. Irritably she kicked at the blankets and felt them give, but only slightly. She tried again to roll over and realized she was pinned between the wall and some equally immovable object. A warm, breathing object. An object that seemed to draw her like a magnet.

  Joshua!

  Oh, Lord, she thought with a muffled moan. She really had done it this time. She had violated the single rule that had guided her life for the last thirteen years. With her hormones whizzing like an adolescent’s, she had tumbled into
bed with a virtual stranger. Why? Why after all this time? Why this man? It must have been the fear, the dangerous night they had survived. Surely it had been no more than a desperate need to reaffirm life. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d told him as dawn had stolen into the cabin?

  Unfortunately she seemed to be the one who didn’t quite buy that. Garrett knew deep inside that she had responded to some inner yearning for the promised comfort of his arms. That need she’d felt last night for the first time in years was ultimately far more dangerous than the passion. It warned her that her defenses were weak. She was not immune to Joshua’s rare combination of strength and gentleness. She needed to get out of this bed, into her clothes and back to the ranch where she’d have the protection of Casey, Mrs. Mac and a dozen cowboys to keep her from making yet another dreadful, weak mistake.

  She would do just that, too…in a minute. First, she wanted to take one last, lingering, intimate look at the man whose touch had filled her with life. His dark blond hair was mussed in a way that would probably have appalled his barber. The line of his jaw was shadowed with stubble, giving him a rakish, sexy look. Even in repose, his muscles were taut and well defined. The mat of hair across his chest arrowed down, narrowing to a faint line as it disappeared below the sheet that was tangled provocatively low on his hips.

  Lord he was gorgeous, she thought with a sigh. She tried to drag her gaze away but couldn’t. She was fascinated by the textures of his skin, by the play of light across his body. Maybe it wasn’t just Joshua. Maybe she would have been equally fascinated by any masculine form. It had, after all, been a very long time since Casey’s father had taken her to bed. Her eyes followed the line of Joshua’s out-flung arm, ending finally at his hand, a hand that she knew from experience could caress with daring, bold strokes or tease with utmost subtlety. Just the thought of those expert touches filled her again with dangerous yearnings.