Tricia drifted, finally settled slowly inside herself, like the feather of some high-flying bird riding the softest of breezes back to earth.
Then Conner left the bed, returning long minutes later to stretch out beside her.
“Tears?” he asked gruffly, sliding the side of one thumb across her cheekbone.
Tricia hadn’t realized she was crying until then, and she had no explanation to offer, no way of sorting through the tangle of nameless emotions he’d stirred to life within her.
“Tricia?” Conner pressed, sounding worried. “Did I hurt you?”
She could only shake her head no. She slipped her arms around his neck, though, and held him close, unable to tell her own heartbeat from his.
He watched her, a gentle frown in his eyes. And he waited.
How could she tell him, in words, that he’d opened up new places inside her, broken down barriers she had no recollection of erecting in the first place? How could she explain that their lovemaking had altered her, possibly for all time, in ways that were beyond her power to define—ways that made her feel both triumphant and dangerously vulnerable?
“Hold me,” was all she could manage to say.
But it was enough.
Conner did hold her, and closely, his chin propped on top of her head, his shoulder smooth and strong under her cheek, his arms firm but gentle around her.
There was no telling how long they might have stayed like that if Valentino hadn’t suddenly stuck his cold nose between Tricia’s bare shoulder blades and given a plaintive whimper.
She started and cried out, and Conner chuckled.
“And now back to the real world,” he said, pulling away from her, sitting up, throwing back the covers to get up.
Tricia listened, keeping her eyes closed, as Conner got dressed, spoke a few gruff but reassuring words to the dog and finally left the room.
As soon as she heard the door close, Tricia bolted out of bed, grabbed her clothes and raced, wobbly-legged, into the bathroom. There, she locked the door and started water running for a shower.
And now back to the real world.
Was that ever true. She’d landed smack-dab in the center of reality, with a bone-jarring thunk, too, like a skydiver whose parachute had failed to open.
Of course, her body still hummed liked the strings of a recently tuned violin, and that only made everything worse. She’d given herself to Conner Creed in haste, and now, as the old saying went, she would repent at leisure.
What would happen now?
Tricia couldn’t say, of course, but she was sure of a few things, anyway. She’d crossed some invisible line, entered some uncharted territory, a place she’d never been before. She didn’t speak the language, and she didn’t know the rules. She was adrift.
And worse? There was no going back.
TRICIA DIDN’T JUST LEAVE.
She fled that venerable old ranch house, muttering some lame excuse about a forgotten appointment in town, remembering to take the dog with her but leaving her suitcase behind.
Conner watched through the window over the kitchen sink, a slight smile crooking his mouth up at one corner, as the Pathfinder sped off down the driveway toward the road. Once the rig was out of sight, he poured himself some coffee and fired up the right-front burner on the stove to cook some scrambled eggs. He made toast and sat down to enjoy his solitary breakfast, feeling strangely peaceful, though he supposed Tricia’s quick exit wasn’t an especially good sign.
After he’d eaten, Conner headed to the barn to feed the horses and then turn them out into the corral for some exercise. Brody’s rodeo stock was way out there, on the range, and against his better judgment, Conner worried. There was plenty of water, since the river flowed clear across the ranch, but the grass was getting skimpy, now that it was November.
And Brody wasn’t back from wherever it was he’d gone. Fuming a little, Conner strode to the equipment shed, rolled up the high, wide door, and drove the flatbed truck out, leaving it to idle beside the barn while he climbed into the hay mow and began chucking bales down. When he had a load, he got behind the wheel again and made his way through a series of gates and out onto the range. He attracted a crowd of hungry cattle right away, though the horses kept their distance at first.
Methodically, silently cursing his twin brother the whole time, Conner drove from one part of the ranch to another, cutting the twine around the bales with his pocket knife, flinging the feed onto the ground so the livestock could get at it. After he’d dropped the last pile, he drove back toward the house. All the while, he was conscious of the heavy gray clouds overhead, promising snow. Maybe a lot of it.
What he tried not to think about was making love to Tricia McCall. Yes, he acknowledged silently, he’d enjoyed the experience. But it had left him shaken, too, and more than a little confused.
He’d been with his share of women in his time; the mechanics were the same. What wasn’t the same was the way he’d felt, before, during and after. He supposed it could be compared to dying a good death at the close of a long and happy life, or being knocked off a horse on the road to Damascus by a Light so irrefutably real as to be utterly transformative.
He was thinking all those crazy, un-Connerlike thoughts as he pulled up next to the barn, shifted gears and shut down the truck’s big engine. There was no point in putting the rig away in the equipment shed; knowing Brody, he, Conner, would be out there feeding cows, bulls and bucking broncos again, all by his lonesome, come morning.
A light rain, mixed with snow, began to fall as he stepped out onto the running board and leaped to the ground. A sound, or maybe a flicker of movement, drew his attention to the back door of the house, and there was Bill—Valentino—sitting on the step, looking as though his last friend had just caught a freight train for points south.
He walked quickly toward the dog, noting as he approached that the animal’s hide was damp and streaked with mud. Judging by the way Valentino sat, instead of getting up to greet Conner, he was footsore, too.
“Hey, buddy,” Conner said, crouching in front of Valentino and looking straight into those expressive, dog-brown eyes. “What brings you all the way out here?”
Valentino gave a low whine, but he didn’t move.
A chill trickled down Conner’s spine, like a drop of ice water. He glanced around, but there was no sign of Tricia or her Pathfinder.
So he reached out gently and ruffled Valentino’s floppy ears.
Valentino whined again and raised his right foreleg slightly, prompting Conner to examine the dog’s paw. It looked swollen, maybe a little bruised, but there was no blood.
Conner frowned. “Okay,” he said, partly to himself and partly to the dog. “Let’s get you inside. Give you some water and let you rest up a little.”
Valentino permitted Conner to hoist him into his arms, carry him into the kitchen. He set him gently on the bed he’d improvised when the critter first came to stay with him, then headed for the phone.
A glance at the wall clock above the stove surprised him with the realization that it was barely 10:00 a.m. Conner could have sworn he’d lived a lifetime since Tricia had left the house on a dead run.
It occurred to him that he didn’t know her number, either the landline or the cell. So he dialed Kim and Davis’s place and, as he’d hoped, Carolyn answered.
Conner identified himself and asked for Tricia’s number.
Maybe it was something in his voice. Maybe it was just woman’s intuition. In any case, Carolyn was instantly worried, and there was some intrigue there, too. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Probably not,” Conner said, after indulging in a long sigh that wouldn’t be kept inside him. “I’d just like to make sure, that’s all.”
Carolyn hunted up the number, then recited it to him.
Conner thanked her and hung up, but before he could punch in the appropriate digits, the phone jangled in his hand. The unexpectedness of it made him flinch.
“Hello?” he rasped.
“It’s Tricia,” came the answer, at once shy and anxious. “Conner, have you seen Valentino? I took him for a walk, and everything was fine, but when we got home and I unhooked his leash from his collar, he took off like a shot. I’ve looked everywhere, but—”
“He’s here,” Conner said, closing his eyes. Bracing himself against the wall by extending one hand, palm out. “Tricia, are you all right?”
She hesitated before answering. “I’m—I’m fine. What’s Valentino doing all the way out there?”
Conner chuckled, though inside, he was quaking with relief. Nearly sick with it. He opened his eyes, straightened his spine. “I guess you’ll have to ask him that. I went out to feed the range stock and, when I got back, Bill—er, Valentino—was waiting for me.”
“Is he okay?” Tricia sounded anxious.
“I think his feet might be a little tender,” Conner allowed, glancing at the dog. “Must have been quite a hike, from Natty’s place to here.”
She was quiet for so long that Conner started to think the connection had been broken. “Maybe Valentino would rather be your dog than mine,” she said, at long last.
The words bruised Conner’s heart in some deep and private places. “I could bring him back,” he offered, after a long time.
“Conner—”
He sighed. Shoved a hand through his hair. “Look, if you regret what we did this morning, Tricia, I can deal with that. What I won’t do, under any circumstances, is pretend that nothing happened.”
She was silent for a while, but this time Conner knew she was still on the line, because he could hear her soft breathing. “I’m—I was vulnerable last night, and I didn’t mean—I don’t want to—”
“It’s all right, Tricia. If you don’t want things to go any further than they already have, I’m okay with that. But, as I said before, I won’t accept business as usual, either. We did go to bed together. It was better than good. Beyond that, you can put any spin on this that works for you.”
Again, she didn’t answer right away. “Lonesome Bend is a small town,” she said, finally. “If you—well, if you kiss and tell, Conner—”
He huffed out a snortlike chuckle, a sound completely devoid of amusement. “If you think I’d brag about our getting together, Tricia, you don’t know me very well.”
“Exactly,” she said, after a long time. “I don’t know you very well, Conner. And you just said you weren’t going to pretend—”
“With you,” Conner clarified, annoyed. Even a little hurt. “I’m not going to pretend with you. But neither do I have any intention of announcing to the whole town that we slept together.”
A low whistle of exclamation made Conner whirl in the direction of the kitchen door.
There stood Brody, wearing a grin as wide as the Mississippi River. His timing, as always, was rotten.
Conner swore under his breath, roundly and with considerable creativity.
Tricia, being a woman, instantly took offense. “I beg your pardon?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Conner told her, so calmly that he amazed himself. He glowered at Brody, who ignored him, crossed to Valentino, and crouched to stroke the dog with a sympathetic hand. “Listen, Tricia—I’ll bring your dog home in a little while. We’ll talk then.”
“What if I don’t want to talk to you?”
“Well, I guess that’s your prerogative. I could always keep Bill. Obviously, he likes it here.”
“Who’s Bill?” Tricia wanted to know.
“Bill,” Conner replied patiently, “is what I called Valentino before you decided to take him back.”
“Oh,” Tricia said.
“Yeah,” Conner said. “Oh.”
On the other side of the room, still on his haunches beside the dog, Brody chuckled and shook his head. “God almighty,” he told Valentino, in a voice just loud enough to carry, “no wonder my little brother can’t score with a woman. He has all the subtlety of a Brahma bull at a church social.”
“What if you bring Valentino back and he runs away again?” Tricia asked, her voice soft and sad, echoing faintly with losses he knew nothing about. “He could be hit by a car, out there on the road, or attacked by coyotes—”
Trying to ignore Brody, who was still inspecting the dog for injuries, Conner thrust out a sigh. “Here’s the problem, Tricia,” he said quietly. “The road goes both ways. He could just as easily take a notion to take off for your place.”
“What are we going to do?” Tricia asked.
“Keep an eye on him,” Conner answered, wanting to offer her solutions but having none to offer. “That’s all we can do, right now.”
Brody, getting to his feet and ambling over to the refrigerator, where he no doubt hoped to find that his favorite foods had materialized by magic, had evidently gotten the gist of the conversation by listening in on Conner’s end of it. And he jumped right in there with his two cents’ worth, unasked, like always.
“That poor dog,” he said mildly, “will run himself ragged going back and forth between the ranch and town. If he’s with you, Conner, he misses Tricia. And vice versa. He’s only going to be happy when both of you are under the same roof.”
Brody’s remark made a certain amount of sense, to Conner’s irritation.
“Stay out of this,” Conner said, adding, at Tricia’s indrawn breath, “Brody.”
Brody shrugged. He’d shaved recently, and his hair was still fairly short. Furthermore, he was either wearing Conner’s clothes again, or he’d gone to a Western store and outfitted himself with similar ones. What the hell was going on with him, anyhow?
“So,” Tricia interjected, “are you bringing Valentino back or not?”
“Might as well,” Conner said lightly. If Brody hadn’t been right there, he’d have reminded her that she’d left her suitcase behind, though he was pretty sure she must have realized that by now. “I’ve been feeding my brother’s livestock,” he added, putting a point on his words and raising his voice a notch, “so I have to shower and change first. See you in about an hour?”
“Yes,” Tricia said, rallying audibly from some distraction all her own. Her tone and her words were formal. They might have been business associates, or mere acquaintances, the way she talked, instead of two people who’d been wound up in a sweaty tangle together just a few hours before. “Yes, that would be fine.”
Frowning, Conner said goodbye and hung up.
Brody was still rummaging through the fridge. “Don’t you ever buy food?” he complained.
“Don’t you?” Conner countered.
Brody closed the refrigerator door briskly. His jaw tightened as he studied Conner, but then mischief twinkled in his eyes.
“You slept with Tricia McCall,” Brody said. “Little brother, I’m proud of you.”
Conner gave a ragged laugh, but he wasn’t amused. “Brody?”
“What?”
The dog lifted his head off the blanket-bed and looked at them curiously.
“Stay the hell out of my private business.”
Brody leaned back against the counter, in that old, familiar way, folding his arms, tilting his head to one side and planting the toe of his right boot on the other side of his left one. “Thanks for feeding my stock,” he said idly. “But it wasn’t necessary. I made arrangements with Clint and Juan before I left, and I figured on being back in time to haul out a load of hay this morning. Which I was.”
Conner was still annoyed, but the subject they were on was better than kicking around what had gone on between him and Tricia—by a long shot.
“Well, I didn’t have any way of knowing that, now did I?” he asked.
Brody sighed, looking put upon and sadly amused, both at once. “Those critters belong to me,” he said. “And I’ll take care of them. If I need your help, Conner, I’ll ask for it.”
Conner cleared his throat. Looked away. Momentarily, and with a stab of pain so sudden and so fierce that it nearly stole his br
eath, he wondered what things would be like by now, between him and Brody, if Joleen had never come between them.
“I want to get along, Conner,” Brody said, surprising him. “But you’re not exactly making it easy.”
“Imagine that,” Conner snapped, but the truth was, the grudge was starting to weigh him down. He was getting tired of carrying it.
Brody huffed out another sigh. “I’m heading for town to pick up some grub at the grocery store,” he said. “If you want, I could drop the dog off at Tricia’s and save you the trip.”
Conner felt a whisper of distrust, fleeting and foolish.
He wanted to see Tricia again, and any excuse would do, but he knew she needed space, and time to think.
“Okay,” he said, secretly pleased to see that Brody had expected him to refuse the offer out of hand.
Conner crossed to the dog, crouched beside him. “You be good, now,” he told the animal. “No more running away.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE OLD VICTORIAN HOUSE literally echoed all around Tricia, whenever she made the slightest sound.
Natty was gone. So was Sasha. Even Winston and Valentino had bailed on her.
She finally sat down in front of her computer, sorely in need of distraction, but when she booted up, there was Rusty, filling the screen saver, grinning a dog-grin. And there was her younger self, still shy, but with luminous eyes, full of hopeful expectations.
Her eyes scalded, and she swallowed. Touched the image with the tip of one finger, watching as pixels spread out in a tiny radius, like still water disturbed.
Instead of sorrow, though, she felt a soft surge of happy gratitude for Rusty, and for his devoted friendship. He’d bridged the gap in some important ways, she realized, between her and her feuding parents.
She smiled and clicked her way online. Her inbox was full, and she spent a few minutes weeding out once-in-a-lifetime offers, then scanned the list of incoming messages.
Two from Diana. One from Sasha. Seven from Hunter. And, finally, one from her mother. Her mother?
Tricia couldn’t resist opening that one. She and her mom weren’t close, so they didn’t chat or swap instant messages and silly forwards. When one of them made the effort to get in touch with the other, there was a reason.
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