At least, he hoped some part of her did.
One minute stretched into two, then three. He was considering making the choice for her and leaving when she sighed loudly. “Want to come over to the trailer and have dinner with us?”
“Gee, what a gracious invitation.”
Looking up, she batted her lashes and, dropping the trash bags, laid her hand gently on his forearm. The words that followed were syrupy and drawn out into extra syllables in a voice that was pure Southern belle. “Why, Deputy Ravencrest, would you be so kind as to come by the house and share the evenin’ meal with us? I would so enjoy your company, and Aunt Winona, I’m sure, would be absolutely delighted. We’re havin’ baked Virginia ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, succotash and biscuits with honey butter, with the best pecan pie you ever imagined. I baked it myself, from an old family recipe.” She gave him an oh-so-feminine flutter of her lashes. “Please do say you’ll come, Deputy.”
When had it gotten too warm in the room to breathe? When she’d fixed her green gaze on him? When she’d touched him? Or when that incredible sultry voice had wrapped around him? He didn’t know and didn’t care. He just…wanted.
Aware of the tension in the air, Crystal swallowed hard. She removed her hand from his arm and folded both her arms across her chest. “Was that gracious enough for you?” she asked, trying her best to sound combative when, really, all she felt was awkward.
Sloan slowly grinned. “Would you come over here a little closer and whisper that whole speech in my ear? Because if you do, I guarantee you, I will come.”
She acknowledged his double entendre with a smirk—after all, she’d inadvertently set herself up for it—then ignored it. Instead, she picked up the trash bags and gestured toward the door. He held the door for her, then took the bags while she locked up.
“Do all well-bred Southern belles have that effect on a man?” he asked as they headed for the Dumpster around the corner.
“That was Crystal in training to be the governor’s wife someday, maybe even the president’s. Of course, that was before James found out I was more than he expected.”
“What did he expect?”
“The perfect wife. The perfect hostess. The perfect helpmate.” While he tossed the bags into the Dumpster, she tilted her head back to stare up into the night sky. The feeble lights that shone on the parking lot all night and the few lights coming from the trailer couldn’t make a dent in the night’s darkness, couldn’t begin to compete with the breathtaking light of the stars. She turned in a slow circle, just looking, feeling incredibly small and insignificant and, for one moment, incredibly peaceful. Under a sky so vast, what could her problems two thousand miles away in Georgia possibly matter?
Sloan walked away a few steps, noticed she wasn’t coming, and came back to stand behind her. “It’s an amazing sight, isn’t it?” His voice was quiet, only centimeters from her ear. “When I was a kid, my dad and I used to camp out over in the Crazy Mountains. He slept in the tent, but I put my sleeping bag next to the campfire, so I could fall asleep looking at the stars. They always made me feel…”
“Safe,” she finished for him, then hesitantly offered a memory of her own. “After things ended between James and me, I moved to Atlanta for a while, to a tiny apartment with a tinier balcony. At night I would go out to look at the stars, and sometimes I couldn’t even see them. Between the haze and the smog and the glow of millions of city lights, the stars got lost somewhere up there. It made me feel lost.”
“And how do you feel tonight?”
She risked a glance at him. He was standing too close, so close that she could smell his cologne and the clean fragrance of soap on his skin, so close that his murmur raised goose bumps on her neck. So close that all she had to do was turn and she could be in his arms. She knew instinctively it would be a comfortable place to be. She wanted to believe it would also be safe, but she was afraid.
“Vulnerable,” she whispered in response to his question. That was how she felt tonight.
He raised one hand and touched her cheek as gently as a whisper. “I would never intentionally hurt you, Crystal. Can’t you believe that?”
“I believe you believe it.”
“But you can’t believe it because you don’t trust me.”
The faint undertone of bitterness in his voice stung her. “It’s not a matter of my trusting you, Sloan. I can’t trust myself. My judgment has been proven to be so flawed that I’m afraid to believe in it anymore. It tells me you’re not like James or my parents or my friends in the ways that count, but I don’t know if that’s true, or if it’s wishful thinking, or if it’s just lust.” She blinked once to clear the moisture blurring her vision. “I let myself down, even more than they did. I found out how incredibly wrong I can be about people. The worst thing that ever happened in my life was my fault, and that’s a really hard lesson to recover from.”
“Well, at least you called me Sloan. And you admitted you want me. That’s a start,” he said with a gently teasing grin. His fingertips brushed her cheek again, then his palm flattened against it, warming her skin, as he brought his other hand to her other cheek. “You’re wrong, Crystal. The worst thing that happened, happened because you loved those people, and loving someone is never wrong. It’s not always wise, but it’s never wrong. The fact that they betrayed your love is their fault, their flaw. Never take the blame for other people’s shortcomings. And never assume that because one man hurt you, the next one will, too. And never—” he bent closer “—ever think you can casually mention lusting for me and walk away without this…”
His mouth covered hers, sending a powerful wave of heat through her, and his tongue slipped between her teeth. Some feeble, fearful part of her thought she should push him away and run screaming for the safety of her bedroom, but her stronger side—a side she’d seen pitifully little of in recent months—refused to even consider such cowardice. She’d been wanting this kiss, this connection, since… Heavens, since she was old enough to want.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he slid his hands to the middle of her back, pulling her close against his hard body. She pressed against him, frustrated by layers of thick clothing, wanting to touch him, to feel him, to see him the way he’d envisioned them both earlier. She wanted to see in reality how her pale skin looked against his darker skin, wanted to learn the differences in their bodies, to figure out where and how he liked to be touched. She wanted him to make her feel womanly and beautiful and desired and safe. He could make her feel safe. If only she could let him.
He broke the kiss, though she wordlessly protested, and held her tighter to still her body’s unconscious movements against his. For a time, she pressed her face against the suede of his jacket, breathing in deeply of leather, cologne and Sloan. When she thought her voice might sound reasonably steady, she ventured an offer that terrified her on two levels—if he accepted and if he didn’t. “We could forget about dinner and go someplace and…”
“Finish what we started?” He sounded aroused, overloaded with sensation and faintly regretful. “You don’t know how much I’d like that.”
“But…?” She knew there was a “but” coming. She could feel it in the suddenly hollow place in her stomach.
“Call me a fool. I’m sure I’ll be coming up with worse insults about three in the morning,” he said wryly. “But I want more from you, Crystal, than just sex.” She moved against him, and he caught his breath, then regretfully added, “More than just great sex. I want you to trust me. I want you to know in your heart that I’m nothing like James, that I would never do to you what he did. I want you to admit that we have a future. I want it all, Crystal, or at least a fair shot at it.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to flippantly ask him to define “all,” to snidely point out that he was probably the only unmarried man in the state of Montana who would turn down great sex with a reasonably attractive woman, to pridefully mention that she could make the same offer in any of th
e local bars and get takers in every one.
Instead she clumsily pulled out of his embrace. “I guess you’re just an old-fashioned guy at heart,” she said, aiming for sarcasm but sounding wistful instead.
“I guess I am.”
Abruptly she shivered and remembered that while he was appropriately dressed for a November Montana night, she’d left her coat at home. “We’d better get inside. It’s cold.”
She got a head start and was halfway to the trailer before he moved. He caught up with her at the porch, though, taking her hand to stop her. “It’ll work out.”
The look she gave him was doubtful. She was too afraid. The risks were too great. Already he was becoming too important. “I don’t know.”
“Aw, come on, have a little faith,” he cajoled, then faked a grimace. “Sorry. I forgot. You’re fresh out. But I’m not. I’ll believe for you, until you’re able to believe yourself. Fair?”
“Foolish.”
“Sweetheart, I turned down the chance to have incredible sex with you tonight. I think we’ve already established that I’m a fool.”
Or maybe just a really decent guy. An old-fashioned guy. A forever sort of guy. Exactly the kind of guy she’d always wanted.
So who was really the fool here?
Dinner was over, the dishes done and Winona had retired to her room, leaving Sloan and Crystal alone in the living room. Despite his best efforts, he was too tired to contain his yawns anymore.
Catching one of them, Crystal smiled faintly. “Have a long day?”
“Two of ’em. I think I’ve put about eight hundred miles on my unit the last two days.”
“Then you should have stayed home and rested.”
“And miss dinner with you?”
“I have dinner every night.”
“But you don’t invite me every night.” He didn’t mention that she hadn’t invited him tonight, either. He’d been there. That was what counted.
But the time would come when she would invite him. He was counting on it.
She rose from the rocker with such grace and went to the coat tree near the door, taking his jacket from the hook there. “Come on. It’s time to go home.”
For a moment he remained on the sofa, watching her as she walked halfway back, as her hands smoothed over the suede, then brushed the shearling. Someday she would touch him that way, with gentle, comfortable, pleasurable touches, and then he might never need sleep again.
But that day wasn’t here yet, and he really was exhausted, so he pushed himself to his feet, took the jacket from her and put it on. She walked to the door with him, but, barefoot and coatless, it was obvious she was going no further.
“I enjoyed dinner.”
“I’ll tell Aunt Winona.”
“I enjoyed kissing you, too.”
She had no answer to that except a faint blush.
“I’ve been invited to a friend’s house for dinner Friday. I’d appreciate it if you’d go with me.”
“Why?”
“Besides the obvious? Raeanne—that’s Rafe’s wife—fancies herself a matchmaker. If I show up without a date, she’s going to nag me all night about one friend or another.” He moved a step closer to her. “If you say yes, then I’ll owe you a favor. It’s not a bad thing to have a cop in your debt.”
“I don’t like favors,” she murmured.
Of course not, he thought, remembering too late her comment about James wanting to be governor. Politics cast the practice of trading favors in an ugly light. “All right. No favors. Will you go to dinner with me Friday night? Just a date, plain and simple. You’ll meet some people, have a good dinner and a good time, and I’ll get to kiss you good-night when it’s over.”
She pretended to consider it a moment before agreeing. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”
“My kisses never hurt. Would you like a demonstration?”
Her gaze turned smoky and her breath seemed to catch in her chest. “I don’t think that would be wise,” she said huskily. “Not now. Not here.”
Not wise, maybe, but definitely right. But he didn’t try to persuade her. After clamping his hat on his head, he opened the door, and a blast of cold air blew in on the northwest wind. “I’ll pick you up at six-thirty on Friday.”
She nodded, then hugged herself as she stepped out onto the porch after him. “Hey. Are you okay to drive?”
It was the first real concern she’d shown him. Turning back, he acknowledged it with a grin. “I’m fine. But thanks for asking.”
The scowl she sent his way was almost as fierce as a real one. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you went to my head the first time I ever saw you. See you Friday.”
If not before.
One corner of the back room at the Stop-n-Swap held all the remnants of Crystal’s previous life. She’d directed the movers to leave the cartons and crates there the day they’d arrived in Whitehorn, and she had never gone near them since.
Friday afternoon, she was more than near them. She was right in the middle of them with a box cutter, opening wardrobe cartons, thumbing through the clothes that had filled two large closets in her Boonesville apartment. There were the modest, sensible outfits she’d worn to her teaching job, the slacks and sweaters and summer dresses that had made up her casual wardrobe and, of course, the dressy clothes that had been required for life with James. Ten cartons, and not a pair of jeans or a simple shirt in the bunch.
In the carton she’d just opened was the black dress she’d worn to too many boring dinners. The red-sequined number for last year’s debutante ball. Oh, yes… The iridescent beaded dress bought just for the Johnsons’ New Year’s bash two years ago; the pale peach silk worn to her engagement party; the rich green satin for Christmas dinner with James’s grandparents, and the royal blue eye-popper used to court financial support for James’s campaign from Boonesville’s old money and newly rich alike.
All the outfits held a memory, most of them bad. She should give them away to someone who could put them to good use. There were a couple she should burn over an open flame, offered as sacrifices to the powers-that-be that had saved her from that life, those people, that marriage.
Whatever their fate, she wanted the clothes out of the Stop-n-Swap and out of her life. She would never need them again, would never be that desperate-to-please woman again.
With a sigh, she moved on to the final carton, slicing the tape, unfolding the flaps. If that carton wasn’t hiding something suitable, she would have no choice but to borrow Aunt Winona’s truck and go into town. She hated to go shopping—she, who had been raised a blue-ribbon shopper—but if the occasion demanded it, and tonight’s dinner with Sloan’s friends did, she would bite the bullet and go.
In that box, though, she struck gold…or silver, at least, with a pair of gray wool trousers, a delicate gray cardigan and a camisole woven of gray with an occasional shot of metallic silver. She pulled the garments from the overstuffed box, sniffed them and found only faint hints of the herbal moth repellent, then went digging for black shoes and a handbag.
With her arms loaded, she went into the main part of the store where Winona was chatting with her friend, Homer Gilmore. The gossips in town said the old man was crazy, but, having heard the same thing said about herself, Crystal wasn’t quick to believe them. He might be a little odd—after all, he did believe he’d had numerous encounters with UFOs—but he was harmless and sweet, and Winona considered him a dear friend. That was a good enough endorsement for Crystal.
“Oh, how lovely,” Winona remarked when she spied the outfit Crystal had unearthed. “I was wondering just how casual you were going to be about this date tonight.”
“Hello, Mr. Gilmore,” Crystal greeted him politely before turning to her aunt for at least the tenth denial since telling Winona her plans. “It’s not a date. It’s just dinner with friends.” Of course, Sloan had used those exact words. Just a date, plain and simple. But she could split hairs if she
felt like it, and at the moment, she did.
“Dinner with your friends might be just dinner,” Winona pointed out. “Dinner with his friends is a date. Isn’t that right, Homer?”
The old man murmured something that might have been agreement, but didn’t jump into the conversation. Crystal had seen him probably two dozen times, but she’d never really talked to him. He seemed shy around her, and she’d been too wrapped up in her own problems to try drawing him out.
Whatever he said, Winona took it as support for her side. “See? We both think it’s a date, and I’ll bet if I ask Sloan, he’ll agree. That makes it three against one.”
“Yes, but since I’m the one, I don’t have to change my opinion unless I want to,” Crystal said in a triumphant so-there tone. “Do you mind if I take off early and get these ready?”
“Of course not, child. Go on. Make yourself beautiful for your beau.”
Crystal rolled her eyes but didn’t let herself get drawn back into that argument. Besides, honesty forced her to admit as she stepped out into the sunny, cold afternoon, she kind of liked the idea of having a beau. It sounded so much better than friend, boyfriend or gentleman friend, and was so much more accurate than lover—though maybe not for long. It was sweet, steeped in the innocence and grace of an earlier time. It was old-fashioned. Like Sloan.
By six-fifteen she was ready. The silver-and-gray set was soft, feminine, not too dressy but not too casual, either. Her makeup was perfect, her perfume on long enough to be subtle instead of too much, and she’d even done her nails. She’d settled on a pair of silver earrings and a simple silver chain around her neck. Her hair—well, it was too short to do anything with, but it looked fine.
The only discordant note was the chunky gold ring on her index finger. She’d pulled it off a half dozen times and put it back on every time. Mixing gold and silver jewelry was a definite taboo in Marabeth Cobbs’s world, and that alone was reason enough for Crystal to do it. But tonight, on this, her first date—there, she’d admitted it!—since James broke her heart, she needed the reminder of the ring.
Big Sky Lawman Page 9