She smiled at him, allowing him to divide her into features, to take in the sum of her. She did the same. He was beautiful, even more so in the preamble to love. His features were relaxed, unguarded, and open. Rosa quivered at the feelings that surged through her. She could feel her body making itself ready for him. The anticipation of them making love made her melt in his arms.
His mouth clamped down on hers as if he couldn’t breathe the next moment without sharing it with her. Rosa felt the same. She tore at his clothes. He tore at hers, peeling her blouse down her arms. It fell to the floor. Her jeans took more time, but his hands working inside them, sliding them over her hips and down her legs had her clamping her teeth on her lip to keep from screaming at the pleasure of his touch. Waves of delight went through her. She couldn’t step out of the pants because her boots held them on. Sitting down, she pulled them off.
When she looked up, Adam’s boots were gone, too. His jeans joined hers on the floor. His shirt was completely unbuttoned and she could see his dark chest through the fabric. Reaching up, she pulled him down on the bed. His hand went behind her, into her hair. He pulled her head close and kissed her. A moment later Rosa felt the release on her bra give way and Adam’s free hand replaced the fabric with the warmth of his palm. Her nipples grew hard.
“I hope you have a condom,” she whispered.
Her body was hot, burning for him.
Rosa heard the crinkle of foil and looked at the packet Adam was holding. He removed his shirt and they quickly undressed the rest of the way. Rosa stared at him. He was gorgeous all over, not just in the places where the public could see. His muscles were hard and toned. His skin was an even color as if someone had painted it with a single brushstroke. His torso tapered to a waist and long legs, legs that swung over hers as Rosa anticipated their coupling.
He didn’t enter her immediately. His hand traced her skin from shoulder to hip. Then he moved it between them, touching the core of her and watching her reaction as she sucked in air. She could taste the odor of sex in the room. It was pungent and guaranteed to get stronger the further they went with the primal dance.
Rosa tried to hang on to some control as Adam entered her, but it was a losing proposition. The pleasure curve rioted off the scale. Her arms went limp and she raised her legs to allow him greater entry. She took his body into hers full tilt. Biting her lip, she held the moan of pleasure inside.
As he began to move, she went with him, matching his pace. The room filled with grunts and moans. Their bodies writhed in unison. Rosa abandoned herself to the rapture. The pacing increased as Adam filled her time and again. Her body came alive with the heat of their lovemaking. He seemed to know her, understand her need, find the places on her body that would intensify her pleasure. She’d never known anyone like Adam. He was gentle with her, yet he was taking her on an ecstasy trip like she’d never known.
She felt her climax building. She held on, wanting to continue this feeling of being high on a mountain and knowing she would fall, but when she pitched off that mountain she would soar into the unknown with Adam. There was no fear in not knowing. She craved it, grabbed for each rung of the ladder that would take her higher and higher into an experience that she hadn’t thought was possible.
She heard her voice calling Adam’s name. With each hard thrust of his body, she wanted more and more of him. Then the explosion came. Together they burst, having reached a pleasure so high they couldn’t move it a single step higher. Adam flopped down on her. Rosa let out a long breath. She hugged his shoulders, her heart hammering, her breath coming in short gasps. Her body was hot, liquid almost. But she was sated. She didn’t move, never again wanted to move. Rosa wanted to stay where she was, her body still coupled with Adam’s. She never wanted that connection broken.
The bedsheets under Rosa were tangled. It looked like the two of them had had wild sex, and that’s exactly what had happened. Adam would be good in bed, but he never expected her to be perfect. He wanted to make love to her again and their first encounter wasn’t over yet. Rosa’s body was still humming with the aftermath of an erotic experience.
Rosa had never known anyone to make love like Adam. The two of them should be burning up, white hot and molten. She was amazed her skin could hold her body intact. Adam amazed her, but then he always had. Even when she saw him on the tiny screen and had never met him, he did things to her. She knew he was part of the reason she accepted Vida’s invitation to visit. She and Vida were close friends, but Rosa had always gone home to Texas when she needed to rest. Her family helped revitalize her and if she only felt like lying around and reading, they didn’t coax her or force her to get out and join the party.
When Vida had offered her a place to rest for the summer, Rosa found herself accepting because she wanted to meet the sexy reporter she’d seen so many times during her trips. Adam Osborne was a friendly face wherever she was. WNN was broadcast worldwide and she’d come to look at him as her anchor in unfamiliar territory. Then suddenly, two years go, he’d disappeared without a word. Vida was the one who’d told her Adam had returned to live in Waymon Valley. While Rosa told herself she was visiting a friend, she knew she wanted to find Adam.
And she had.
When Adam opened his eyes, he was alone. He sat up in the bed that used to be his. Today it had housed the two of them. At least for the last few hours. Yet Rosa was gone. Damn, he cursed to himself. What had gotten into him? Had his brain lost all touch with his body? He’d dreamed of having Rosa Clayton in his arms, but he never expected to act on that dream. She wasn’t his kind of woman. He’d been with her kind and he never wanted to go there again.
But he had.
Maureen was the kind of woman he looked for. Pretty on any given day, beautiful when she dressed up. She was intelligent, caring, and knew what she wanted in life. Maureen had been his friend, not his lover. They never got to be lovers. But before Maureen, there had been Cassie. Cassandra Marteen, aspiring producer, and Corinthia Gleason, Paris bureau chief, women who had torn his heart to shreds and walked away without a thought or care. Both of them had been beautiful. And both of them had used that beauty to get what they wanted. They thought he could help and he’d fallen into the trap like a gullible fourteen-year-old.
Pushing the covers back, he looked over the railing to the wide-open space below. She wasn’t there. There was no sign of her, no presence that she was near. Adam was vaguely disappointed that she hadn’t waited to wake up with him. Going into the bathroom, he showered. Lifting her shampoo, he read the printed label. Violet Rain was printed in script. Instantly he smelled her scent. He recognized the smell of her hair and remembered crushing that hair in his hands. It had been soft and springy and he liked the way it swung when she gathered it into a ponytail. He put the bottle back and turned the water to cold.
He hoped she wasn’t back in the hills. She and her camera worried him. This wasn’t the friendliest part of the country. Dangers lurked everywhere, especially for those who weren’t familiar with the territory. And he didn’t want any mishap to come to her. She’d already encountered one bear, yet he’d found her alone riding toward those hills.
Adam rubbed soap over himself, but he had to laugh. Why was he worried about Rosa Clayton? She wasn’t just beautiful; she could handle three teenage boys, she rode like a champion, and she handled a rifle with cool efficiency. Maybe he was trying to protect the wrong woman.
After dressing, Adam walked back toward the stables. He’d borrow a horse and ride home. He expected to be interrogated by his father about being gone so long, but as he opened the door, he heard the familiar sound of his father’s laughter coming from the back of the house. Adam went toward it. It was a room they rarely used. Mainly their movements involved the kitchen or the large room directly off the kitchen. The room in the back looked out on the property. There was a patio and garden Adam’s mother had tended when she was alive. Medea took care of it now. She called it therapy for having to deal with two men in the house. There we
re large windows that made the room bright.
Adam stopped in his tracks when he saw Rosa sitting in one of the big leather chairs. His heart lurched. Of all the places he expected to find her, the back room of his house would be last on the list. A stronger sensation went through him when he noticed how she fit so well into the surroundings. She had on a western skirt and boots, her legs were crossed, but his mind saw her as she’d been right after they made love. She was radiant, beautiful in the light flooding through the windows. He shifted as he recognized the signs of arousal.
Bailey looked up. “Adam, I was wondering where you were. Medea said you went out riding.”
“I did,” he answered, unwilling to give any further information. “What’s going on here?”
“Your father is telling me stories about the settling of this part of the country,” Rosa explained.
Her eyes were radiant. Her skin had a glow to it he hadn’t noticed before. She didn’t have her hair in the ponytail. Curls framed her face and cascaded down to rest on her collarbones. Adam could spend the rest of the day staring at her.
“Memoirs,” Bailey said.
His father’s voice snapped him out of the daze he was in. Bailey Osborne’s stare swung between Adam and Rosa, yet he said nothing about what he saw there. “I finally agreed to Joy’s request.”
It took Adam a moment to understand what he meant.
“Rosa is going to record and write down what I tell her. And she tells me you’ve agreed to edit it for a book.” Bailey indicated the desk.
Adam saw a laptop computer sitting on top of it. “I guess you could say Rosa gets what she wants.”
Her eyes flashed at him.
“We’ve been working about an hour,” Bailey said. “We just stopped for something to drink. Want some lemonade?”
“Lemonade?” Adam hadn’t moved from his position. His father never drank lemonade. He loved his coffee.
“I wanted coffee, but Rosa insisted that too much coffee is bad for my heart.”
“I’m glad someone can get through to you.” Adam moved into the room then. Rosa’s eyes followed his steps.
He hadn’t wanted their first encounter after making love to be with an audience. He didn’t know that seeing her again would have him wanting to make love to her again. He needed time to think about how to handle the situation. Making love with her had been fantastic, but he knew life wasn’t about sex. She was only here for the summer. She had a life, a career outside of the Valley. And he wasn’t ready for a long-term relationship. The trauma of the past year had drained him of any desire to commit himself to a cause or a relationship.
Bailey handled him a glass of lemonade. Adam thought of the patio at Rosa’s where they’d had lunch. She was a fan of lemonade. He accepted it and drank it in one long gulp. His throat was parched and once he started drinking, he kept going.
“Your father was telling me about his grandmother, Clara,” Rosa said. “Things that weren’t in the diary.”
Adam nodded. He had heard the stories. His great-grandmother had come to Montana from Virginia in 1899. She was a teacher and apparently a lot about Waymon Valley changed with her direction.
She lived well into her nineties, but died when Adam was two years old. You couldn’t grow up in the Valley and not know about Clara and Luke Evans. Adam had taken them for granted until he was twelve years old and a history class on the Civil War suddenly made the hardships she’d endured come alive. Later he wondered what it was like in the early days of the century.
Thankfully, Clara had left a diary. Adam had read it along with several other books on the territory. And thanks to Joy and Rosa, his father was also providing an oral history.
“I think Adam gets some of his strength from her, but he doesn’t remember much about her when she was strong,” Bailey said. “There are times I can see a lot of her in him.”
“What a compliment,” Rosa said. She glanced at Adam and it took all his resistance to remain where he was.
“I never knew my biological mother,” Rosa stated. “Or any relatives for that matter.” Her gaze went back to Bailey.
“How so?” he asked.
“I was adopted by a doctor in the hospital where I was abandoned.”
“Her entire family was adopted,” Adam further explained. “Remember the story of that woman who found her birth parents after being kidnapped thirty years earlier?”
Bailey was nodding. He turned to Rosa. “That couldn’t be you. You’re not thirty years old.”
“She’s my sister-in-law now. She was the biological daughter of my adoptive parents. So you see why I find it so interesting that you know your history back to the 1800s.”
“Have you ever tried to research your own history, to find who your parents were and what happened to them?”
“I thought of it, but I never did,” she said. “Two of my brothers are biologically related. They found their birth mother several years ago. I thought of my mother then, trying to find out something about her. After my adoptive parents had both passed on, I thought of it again, but realized I was so lucky to have them as my parents. My family is my family. They’re the only ones I’ve ever known. I love them all as if we were blood relatives. I don’t want to know that there was another alternative, another road I could have taken.”
“Alternative? It doesn’t need to be that,” Bailey said.
“It would plant the seed in my mind. My mother abandoned me and she died. There could have been aunts, uncles, even sisters and brothers. But no family could be more loving and supportive than the one I have.”
“That’s wonderful,” Bailey said. Adam noticed he glanced at him when he said it. “And it’s a good attitude. Although they couldn’t help being proud of you and what you’ve accomplished.”
“It’s not a path I’m willing to pursue,” she said. “The Claytons are enough.”
She was decisive, Adam thought. His father pushed himself up out of the chair. “I’ll be back in a moment. I have to go take a pill.”
He left them alone. Adam took a seat in front of Rosa. She hadn’t moved since he walked in, only uncrossed her legs and pushed herself up in the chair. He leaned forward, buying himself a moment to try to determine what he wanted to say.
“I didn’t expect to find you here,” he started.
“I had an appointment.” She looked toward the door that Bailey had used.
Her voice was soft and quiet. Sexy, even, Adam thought. He remembered it against the pillow of her bedroom. “You could have told me.”
“You were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you,” Rosa whispered conspiratorially.
Rosa lifted her lemonade and took a drink. She set it down on the table next to her and looked him directly in the eye. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Wrong? There’s nothing wrong.”
“You have regrets,” she stated. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“You’re blind, then,” he replied. “I don’t regret a single moment of today.”
“But…” She led, trailing off, waiting for him to tell her what was on his mind. “You’re not going for that way-you-look story again. It would be a little thin at this point.”
“Rosa, today was…” He didn’t know how to express it. He was used to reporting what other people thought and felt, not himself. “Today was unbelievable. But there was nothing behind it other than sex and lust.”
Rosa stood up. “What makes you think it was more than sex and lust for me?”
She turned to leave.
“Rosa, don’t.” Adam stopped her. “We need to talk about this.”
“What is this? You had a little fun today. But it’s over now and you don’t want me getting any ideas about the great Adam Osborne. You’re a man who travels alone, and no woman with a pretty face is going to tie you down. Well, here’s a news flash, you jerk, you’re not the only man on the planet.”
She left him, her steps sure as she crossed the carpeted room and passed through
the door where generations of his ancestors had walked. She didn’t look back, only held her shoulders level and moved as if there was a runway in front of her.
Adam felt as if his insides were being ripped out. She had gotten to him. She was in his blood and he knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get her out.
Rosa took a horse and rode into the hills again. She didn’t go to the usual place, the place where this day had begun, where Adam had found her and where they’d eaten and started making love. She didn’t want to go to that place ever again. Yet her eyes insistently looked in that direction. Even the horse seemed to want to go that way. She had to steer the filly differently.
She walked the horse for several yards before she came to a clearing. She needed a place where the sky was open and the wind was calm. Dismounting, Rosa took her laptop from the backpack she carried and sat down on the ground. As it booted up, she wrapped her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth as if she were doing a routine from her daily workout. She wasn’t. Her body was tight to the point of breaking a spring. She was trying to work Adam out of her mind and all the other places he’d infiltrated. Talking to her family would help with that. In all her travels she’d never met another person who stayed in touch with family the way she did with hers.
The computer beeped as it went through the last set of security checks. She looked down at the screen. Her customized wallpaper of the last family wedding, Dean and Theresa’s, played over the screen. Everyone was smiling. They were a growing clan, looking out from the machine. The photo made her smile as it always did.
She plugged in the headset and fixed it over her ear. In seconds she had a signal and the screen changed.
“Hi,” Dean said as his face filled the screen. “How’s it going in Big Sky Country?”
“It’s great,” she lied for the first time that she could remember when talking to her family. “I came out here so you could see a little part of the sky.” She angled the camera up at the sky.
“Looks pretty much like any sky,” he said.
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