The Novels of Nora Roberts Volume 1

by Nora Roberts

  “Doesn’t matter around a ranch which way your skin stretches.”

  “Like hell. Every time you go within five feet of young Billy, his eyes cross.”

  She smiled a little because it was pure truth. “He’s eighteen and randy as they come. Saying the word ‘breast’ around him drains all the blood out of his head into his lap. He’ll get over it.”

  “Not if he’s lucky.”

  Feeling friendlier, she crossed her feet at the ankles. “I don’t know how you men tolerate it. Having your ego, your personality, and your idea of romance all dangling between your legs.”

  “It’s a trial. Are you going to sit down and finish your coffee?”

  “I’ve got work.”

  “That’s what you’ve said every time I’ve come within five feet of you the last couple of days.” He picked up her mug, rose, and carried it to her. “You keep working and not eating, Willa, you’re going to end up flat on your face.” He took her chin in his hand and gave her a long, long look. “And the face isn’t half bad.”

  “You’re grabbing onto it enough lately.” She jerked her head, struggling to remain cool when his fingers stayed put. “What’s your problem, McKinnon?”

  “I don’t have one.” To test them both, he skimmed a finger up and over her mouth. It had a shape to it, he mused, even in a snarl, that made a man want a bite. “But you seem to have one. I’ve been noticing you’re jumpy around me lately. Used to be you were just mean.”

  “Maybe you can’t tell the difference.”

  “Yeah, I can.” He shifted, boxing her neatly between the counter and his body. “You know what I think, Will?”

  He had broad shoulders, long legs. Lately she’d been entirely too aware of the size and shape of him. “I’m not interested in what you think.”

  Being a cautious man with a good memory, he pressed against her to block a well-aimed knee. “I’ll tell you anyway.” He took his hand off her chin and gathered up the hair she’d left loose that morning. “You do smell of soap and leather, now that I’m close enough to tell.”

  “Any closer, you’d be on the other side of me.”

  “Then there’s all this hair, a good yard of it. Straight as a pin and soft as silk.” He kept his eyes on hers, drew her head back a fraction more. “Your heart’s pounding. And there’s this little pulse right here in your throat.” He used his free hand to trace it, feel it skitter. “Jumping so hard it’s a wonder it doesn’t come right through the skin and bounce into my hand.”

  She wasn’t entirely sure it wouldn’t happen if he didn’t give her room to breathe. “You’re irritating me, Ben.” It took every ounce of effort to keep her voice even.

  “I’m seducing you, Willa.” He all but purred it, in words like honey. And his smile came slow and potent when she trembled. “That’s what you’re afraid of, to my way of thinking. That I could, and I will, and you won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.”

  “Back off.” Her voice wasn’t steady now, nor were the hands she lifted to his chest.

  “No.” He tugged her hair again. “Not this time.”

  “You said yourself not long ago that you don’t want me any more than I want you.” What was happening inside her? she wondered in panic. The shivering and shakes, the long, liquid pulls. “There’s no point in playing like you do just to annoy me.”

  “I was wrong. What I should have said was that I want you every bit as much as you want me. I was irritated over it. You’re just scared of it.”

  “I’m not scared of you.” What was happening inside her was frightening. But not because of him. She promised herself it wasn’t because of him.

  “Prove it.” Those eyes of his, sharp green and close, lit with challenge. “Right here. Right now.”

  “Fine.” Accepting the dare, afraid not to, she grabbed a handful of his hair and dragged his mouth down to hers.

  He had the McKinnon mouth, she realized. Like Zack’s, it was full and firm. But there the similarity ended. None of the dreamy kisses she’d shared with Zack years before compared to this burst, this shock of having a man’s skillful lips devouring hers. Or the hot, impatient way he used tongue and teeth to simply overpower, to focus every thought, every feeling, every need into that point where mouth met mouth.

  The edge of the counter bit into her back. The fingers she’d twined through his hair curled into a hard, taut fist. And the primal male taste of him coursed through her body and left it in ruins. He hadn’t given her even a moment to defend herself.

  He didn’t intend to.

  He felt her body jerk, stiffen against the onslaught. And wondered if what was battling through her was even close to what was battling through him. He’d expected heat, or cold. She had both in her. He’d expected power, for she was anything but weak. He’d hoped to find pleasure, as her mouth seemed to have been created to give and to take it.

  He hadn’t known he’d find them all, a rage of all that would slam into him like bare-knuckled fists and leave him reeling.

  “Goddamn it.” He dragged his mouth away, stared into her eyes, so big and dark and shocked. “Goddamn it all to hell.”

  And his mouth came down on hers again to feed.

  She moaned, a sound trapped in her throat, a sound he could feel when he closed his hand over that smooth column and squeezed lightly. He wanted to taste there, just there where that pulse jumped and that moan sounded, but for the life of him he couldn’t get enough of her mouth. And she was holding him now, holding hard, moving against him, hips grinding.

  He closed a hand over her breast, so firm through the flannel. When it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, he yanked her shirt free of her jeans and streaked under to flesh.

  The feel of his hand, hard and callused and strong on her, had the muscles in her thighs going loose, the tension in her stomach pushing toward pain. His thumb flicked over her nipple, ricocheting bullets of heat from point to point through her overtaxed system.

  She went limp, might have slid through his arms like vapor if he hadn’t changed his grip. That sudden and utter surrender aroused him more than all the flash and fire.

  “We need to finish this.” He cupped her breast, fingers skimming, stroking as he waited for her eyes to open and meet his. “And though it’s tempting to go right on with it here, Bess might be miffed if she came in and found us waxing her floor the way I have in mind.”

  “Back off.” She fought to suck in air. “I can’t breathe, back off.”

  “I’m having some trouble with that myself. We’ll breathe later.” He lowered his head, nipped at her jaw. “Come home with me, Willa, let me have you.”

  “I’m not going to do that.” She struggled free, stumbled to the table, and braced her palms on it for balance. She had to think, had to. But she could only feel. “Keep away,” she snapped when he moved toward her. “Keep away and let me breathe.”

  It was the lick of real panic in her voice that had him leaning back against the counter. “All right, breathe. It isn’t going to change anything.” He reached for the mug of coffee beside him and, when he noted his hands weren’t steady, left it where it sat. “I don’t know if I’m too pleased about this either.”

  “Fine. That’s just fine.” Steadier, she straightened, faced him. “You think because you’ve talked a dozen women onto their backs you can just come in here and talk me onto mine. Easy pickings, too, since I’ve never done it before.”

  “Can’t be more than ten women by my count,” he said easily. “And I didn’t have to—” He broke off, eyes going wide, jaw dropping. “Never done what, exactly?”

  “You know damn well what, exactly.”

  “Ever?” He pushed his hands into his pockets. “At all ever?”

  She merely stared, waiting for him to laugh. Then she’d have the perfect excuse to kill him.

  “But I figured you and Zack . . .” He trailed off again, realizing that might not have sat too well with him under the circumstances.

  “Did
he say I did?” Her eyes narrowed to slits as she poised, ready to spring.

  “No, he never—no.” At a loss, Ben dragged a hand out of his pocket and raked it through his hair. “I just figured, that’s all. I just figured you . . . at some time or other. Well, hell, Willa, you’re a grown woman. Of course I figured you’d—”

  “Slept around?”

  “No, not exactly.” Hand me a shovel, he thought. I’m getting tired of digging this hole for myself with my bare hands. “You’re a good-looking woman,” he began, and winced, knowing he could have done better than that. Would have, too, if his tongue wasn’t so tangled up. “I just assumed that you’d had some experience in the area.”

  “Well, I haven’t.” Temper was clearing just enough to let in flickers of embarrassment. “And it’s up to me when and if I want to change that, and who I want to change it with.”

  “Absolutely. I wouldn’t have pushed if I’d realized . . .” He couldn’t take his eyes off her, the way she stood there all flushed and rumpled, with that sexy mouth swollen from his. “Or maybe I’d have pushed different. I’ve been thinking about you, that way, for a while.”

  Suspicion flickered in her eyes. “Why?”

  “Damned if I know. It just is. Now that I’ve had my hands on you, I’d have to say I’m going to be thinking more. You’ve got a nice feel to you, Willa.” The humor came back, curving his lips. “And you were doing a damn fine job of kissing me back, for an amateur.”

  “You’re not the first man I’ve kissed, and you won’t be the last.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t practice on me—when you get the urge.” He walked over to take his hat and jacket from the pegs by the door. If either of them noticed that he gave her a wide berth, neither commented. “What are friends for?”

  “I don’t have any trouble controlling my urges.”

  “You’re telling me,” he said, with feeling, and fit his hat on his head. “But I have a notion I’m about to have a hell of a time controlling mine where you’re concerned.”

  He opened the door, gave her one long last look. “You’ve got one hell of a mouth, Willa. One hell of a mouth.”

  He shut the door, shrugged into his jacket. As he circled around the house toward his rig, he let out a whistling breath. He’d thought a little nuzzling in the kitchen would take both of their minds off the trouble hanging over Mercy. It had done a hell of a lot more than that.

  He rubbed a hand over his belly, knowing the knots twisting inside would be there for quite a while yet. She’d gotten to him, and gotten to him hard. And the fact that she had no idea what they could do to each other in the dark only made it more terrifying.

  And arousing.

  He’d always chosen women who knew the ropes, who understood the pleasures, the rules and the responsibilities. Women, he admitted, who didn’t expect more than a good, healthy ride where nobody got hurt, nobody got hobbled.

  He glanced back at the house as he climbed behind the wheel, turned the key in the ignition. It wouldn’t be so simple with Willa, not when he’d be her first.

  He drove away from Mercy without a clue to what he would do about her. All he knew for certain was that Willa was going to have to accept that Ben McKinnon was going to be the one she’d change things with.

  He glanced toward the bunkhouse as he drove past and thought of everything she’d been through in the past few weeks. Enough, he thought, to break anyone to bits. Anyone but Willa.

  Letting out a long sigh, he headed for his own land. He’d be there for her, whether she liked it or not. And he’d take it slow in that certain area. He’d even try his hand at being gentle.

  But he’d be there.

  TEN

  S NOW CAME HARD AND FAST AND EARLY. IT BURIED THE pastures and had the drift fences groaning. Men worked day and night to see that the cattle—too stupid to dig through the snow to grass—were fed and tended.

  November proved to be a poor boundary against winter, and before the end of it, the valley was socked in.

  Skiers came, flocking to Big Sky and other resorts to schuss down slopes and drink brandy by roaring fires. Tess gave some thought to joining them for a day or two. Not that she’d ever been much on skiing, but the brandy sounded fine. In any case there would be people, conversations, perhaps flirtations, certainly civilization.

  It might be worth strapping herself to a couple of slats of wood and tumbling down a mountain.

  She talked to her agent constantly, using Ira more as a bridge to her life than a representative of her work. She wrote, making progress with a new screenplay and detailing daily life in her journal.

  Not that she considered the routine on the ranch much of a life.

  She continued to take charge of the chickens and was actually rather pleased that she had a handle on the job now and could slip an egg from under a broody hen without so much as a peck.

  She had a bad moment, very bad, one day when she strolled behind the coop and walked into Bess, quickly, competently, ruthlessly wringing the neck of one of Tess’s flock.

  There’d been a lot of squawking then—though not from the chickens. Two of them lay dead as Judas on the ground while the women shouted at each other over the corpses.

  Tess had skipped dinner that night—chicken pot pie—but it had taught her the error of assigning names to her beaked and feathered friends.

  Every evening she made use of the indoor pool with its curved-glass wall and southern exposure. And she’d decided there was something to be said for looking at snow while she lounged in her personal lake with steam rising around her.

  Yet every morning she rose, crossed her eyes at the view of snow out her window, and dreamed of palm trees and lunching at Morton’s.

  She kept up her horseback riding out of sheer stubbornness. It was true that she didn’t climb whimpering out of the saddle with muscles screaming now. And she’d developed a certain wary affection for Mazie, the mare Adam had assigned her. Still, riding out into the wind and the cold wasn’t her idea of high entertainment.

  “Jesus. Jesus Christ.” Tess stepped outside, hunched inside the thick wool jacket, and wished she’d pulled on two pairs of long underwear. “It’s like breathing broken glass. How does anyone stand this?”

  “Adam says it makes you appreciate spring more.”

  To ward off the wind, Lily wrapped her scarf more securely around her neck. Yet she appreciated the winter—the majestic, powerful sweep of it, the way the snow seemed to freeze the peaks into sharp relief against the sheer wall of sky. The dark belt of trees that clung to the rising foothills was so prettily draped with snow, and the silver of rock and ridge formed shadows and contrasts, like folds in a stunning blanket.

  “It’s so beautiful. Miles and miles of white. And the pines. The sky’s so blue it almost hurts your eyes.” She smiled at Tess. “It’s nothing like a city snow.”

  “I don’t have much experience with snow, but I’d say this is nothing like anything.” She flexed her fingers in her gloves as they walked toward the horse barn.

  At least the ranch yard was negotiable, Tess thought. Paths to and from paddocks and corrals had been plowed. And the roads had been scraped off as well with a blade attached to one of the four-wheelers. Young Billy had done that, she remembered. He’d appeared to be having the time of his life.

  She watched her breath plume out in front of her and was tempted to complain again. But it was beautiful, coldly beautiful. The sky was such a hard, brittle blue she expected it to crack at any moment, and the mountains that speared into it were so well defined in the clear air that they seemed to have been painted. Sunlight danced off the fields of snow in glittering sparks, and when the wind rushed, it lifted that snow and those dancing lights into the air in thin drifts.

  Palm trees, warm beaches, and mai tais seemed light-years away.

  “What’s she up to today?” Tess pulled out sunglasses and put them on.

  “Willa? She went out early in one of the pickups.”<
br />
  Tess’s mouth thinned. “Alone?”

  “She almost always goes alone.”

  “Asking for trouble,” Tess muttered, and stuck her hands in her pockets. “She must think she’s invincible. If whoever killed that man is still around . . .”

  “You don’t think that, do you?” Alarmed, Lily began to scan the fields as if a madman might rise up out of one of the drifts like a grinning gnome. “The police haven’t come up with anything. I thought it had to be someone camped in the hills. With this weather, he couldn’t still be here. And it’s been weeks since—since it happened.”

  “Sure, that’s right.” Though she was far from convinced, Tess saw no reason to set Lily’s nerves more on edge. “Nobody’d camp out in this cold, especially some itinerant maniac. I guess she just gets under my skin.” She narrowed her eyes at the rig heading toward the ranch from the west road. “Speak of the devil.”

  “Maybe if you—” Lily broke off, shook her head.

  “No, go ahead. Maybe if I what?”

  “Maybe if you didn’t try so hard to irritate her.”

  “Oh, it’s not so hard.” Tess’s lips curved in anticipation. “In fact, it’s effortless.” She changed directions as the rig pulled up. “Been out surveying the lower forty?” Tess asked, as Willa rolled down her window.

  “Are you still here? I thought you were going to Big Sky to soak in a Jacuzzi and hustle men.”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  Willa shifted her attention to Lily. “If Adam’s taking you out, go soon and don’t stay long. Snow’s coming in.” She flicked her eyes toward the sky, the telltale clouds piling together in thick layers. “You may want to tell him I spotted a herd of mule deer northwest of here. About a mile and a half. You might like to see them.”

  “I would.” She patted her pocket. “I have my camera. Can you come with us? Bess sent plenty of coffee along.”

  “No, I’ve got things to do. And Nate’s coming by later.”

  “Oh?” Tess lifted an eyebrow, struggled to sound casual. “When?”