by Sandra Brown
"Were you a runaway?"
He dropped his head forward and studied the concrete floor for several moments. Finally he looked up and said resignedly, "I guess you could call me that, yeah."
"Fifteen," she murmured. At fifteen the biggest crisis in her life had been if she woke up with a new zit. During her adolescence, her brothers had teased her incessantly about her budding figure and any yokel who became smitten with her. Home life hadn't always been grand, but she couldn't imagine leaving her family at that age, walking away from everything familiar and dear. She told Harlan so.
"Well, Sage, consider yourself lucky. Not every kid had it as good as you."
"Was your home life and childhood that terrible?"
"I thought you wanted to know about the irrigation system."
"You're not going to tell me about your past, are you?"
"No."
Now it was Sage's turn to sigh with resignation. She had met her match in being obstinate. She could tell by the determination in his expression that he had divulged all he was going to.
Turning away, she critically examined the pump. "A machine is a machine. They all look alike to me."
"If you're going to sell folks on this idea, you'll have to know what it's capable of doing."
"I only want to know what's absolutely necessary. Keep the explanations simple and in layman's terms. I don't understand the mechanics behind a hair dryer."
A smile spread across his features. "You've got moxie, I'll say that." She tilted her head inquiringly, so he expounded. "Without any prior experience, you convinced your brothers to let you work for them."
"With them," she corrected.
"That took guts. Or desperation." He eyed her keenly. "Do you think that working for Tyler Drilling will get you over Loverboy?"
"I'm already over Loverboy."
"Just like that?" he asked skeptically.
"What you fail to understand," she said loftily, "is that my involvement with Travis wasn't based on passion. We weren't like Chase and Marcie or Lucky and Devon. Those are love affairs of the heart, mind, body, and soul. One would be devastated if anything happened to the other because they depend so much on each other. That kind of marriage rarely works."
"Theirs seem to be rock solid."
"They are, but they're the exception. I would never have thought that Lucky could remain faithful to one woman or that Chase could love again after losing his first wife. Logically, neither of their marriages should have worked. From the outset of our relationship, Travis and I took a more pragmatic approach to matrimony."
"And look where that landed you."
She swiftly gave him her back and stalked away. Reaching far, he grabbed her by the seat of her pants. "Hold on. Hold on. I was just kidding."
"You're not funny," she said slapping his hand off her fanny.
"Sometimes life isn't either."
"Your point?"
"Well, life's full of unpleasantness," he said. "Backed-up plumbing, crabgrass in the lawn, sick kids, bills you can't pay. If you're going to share all those hassles with somebody, it seems to me that the passion you're downplaying could go a long way to make the bad stuff more bearable." Eyes crinkling at the corners, he added, "And it's damn good fun."
She kept a straight face. "Your point is moot because I'm not marrying Travis."
"Did you tell Chase and Lucky?"
"No. I didn't want them hiring me out of pity. I told them that I wasn't sure when I would be getting married, which is the truth. I even used the singular pronoun and not we, as in Travis and I. I told them that, in the interim, I wanted to be productive and work in the family business. By the time they learn my engagement is off, they'll think that the breakup was gradual and mutual, that Travis and I merely grew apart. Mother already suspects that we're embroiled in a lovers' quarrel. No one will be surprised."
"I see you've got it all figured out."
"I do."
He shook his head with misgiving. "You know what they say about well-laid plans. They usually backfire. I'll bet you ten to one that before it's all over, they'll find out that Hot Lips dumped you."
Her temper snapped. "Why is it that every time—"
Laughing, he grasped her by the upper arms and lifted her off the ground, dangling her body so close to his, she could feel each hard muscle in stark detail. Her face was level with his. She feared, and half hoped, that he was going to stop her angry outburst with another bone-melting kiss.
"They'll probably quiz you on all you learned today," he said. "You have a bad habit of talking too much. If you want to impress them, sit down, keep your mouth shut, your eyes open, and listen."
He pivoted on the heels of his boots and deposited her on a high stool. Then, shoving up the sleeves of his faded denim jacket, he began to explain the workings of his invention.
* * *
"So it could be programmed to irrigate certain areas at certain times on certain days, very much like an ordinary home sprinkler system."
Harlan grinned at Sage's basic understanding. "Except it could cover acres. It could be pumped from a reservoir or through a normal water source."
"That would require a lot of pipe."
"Laying the pipe will be a piece of cake. This is what counts," he said, patting the piece of machinery. "The whole system would be controlled from this computerized pump."
"Only you need a computer before you can even lay some pipe and try it out."
"Yeah, at least some kind of timing device. And the company till is empty."
After two hours of intense indoctrination, Sage believed that she had a decent grasp of his idea. She had listened carefully to every word Harlan had said—and not to just what he said, but how he said it.
His vocabulary was extensive. He was articulate. She began to believe that maybe he did have a college degree. Certainly there was more to him than what one saw on the surface. He camouflaged his intelligence with his good ol' boy demeanor. Why? As a defense mechanism?
Possibly. She could understand that. Hadn't she sometimes assumed a bratty posture as a defense mechanism to cover feelings of insecurity and inferiority?
What did Harlan have to be defensive about?
He glanced toward the wide doors. There was a cloudy sky, and it would be growing dark soon. "We'd better close up shop for the day. You've got a lot to absorb. Your mama'll get worried about you if you're not home by dark."
"Did your mama worry about you when you split?"
His eyes cut to hers sharply. "No. She didn't."
That's all he said before clamming up. Sage waited for him inside his pickup truck while he closed the garage, checking everything meticulously before padlocking the door. Her brothers had entrusted him with securing their building, a responsibility he took seriously.
"Mind if I stop at my trailer for a minute?" he asked as the truck chugged down the narrow road that led to the main highway.
Instantly suspicious, she asked, "What for?"
"I'm gonna ravish you." He laughed when she jumped reflexively and turned her head so quickly her neck popped. "Don't get your hopes up, Sage. I need to pick up a book."
"You have a warped sense of humor, Mr. Boyd."
"It may be warped, but at least I have one."
He was justified in putting her down. Even to her own ears, she sounded prissy and prim. Why couldn't she just laugh off his jokes? He continued teasing her only because her reactions were always so violent. Hadn't her mother advised her to ignore her brothers when they became their most obnoxious? It was a lesson she had never learned and, therefore, couldn't exercise now.
"My sense of humor is one of the many things you don't like about me," he said. Looking at her across the ramshackle interior of the pickup, he added, "One of these days, I'm going to get you to admit all the things you do like." His voice was soft, the words spoken like a warning. Sage was the first to look away.
His trailer was parked in a vacant, uncultivated field not too far from the
Tyler Drilling Company office. They reached it within a few minutes of leaving the garage. Sage wasn't surprised that the Streamline looked like it was barely holding together at the seams. A coughing generator provided it with electricity.
"You can stay put or get out. Suit yourself." He got out and jogged up two concrete blocks serving as steps. The doors weren't even locked. He opened them and disappeared inside. Through the curtains hanging over the narrow windows, Sage saw a light come on.
Her curiosity got the best of her. She left the truck and moved up the steps. The screen door squeaked when she pulled it open. She winced, but pushed on the metal door and stepped inside.
She expected it to be a disaster, littered with girlie magazines and empty beer cans. Instead it was rather cozy and very neat. The furnishings were tacky and cheap, but everything was clean. He did have some reading matter, quite a lot in fact, but it ran more toward news periodicals and current fiction paperbacks, bestsellers mostly. There was one respectable copy of Playboy.
Without being obvious, she nosed around, looking for family photographs, mail with return addresses, anything that might give her clues about his background. There was nothing. She had no inkling of what he'd been doing before he came to Milton Point.
She sensed his presence before she heard him and turned to face him. She didn't think before she spoke, but asked the question at the forefront of her mind. "Have you always lived alone?"
"Yes."
"Have you ever been married?"
"You asked me that already."
"I asked if you'd ever been a bridegroom."
"That's splitting hairs, isn't it?" Seeing her ill-concealed annoyance, he said, "I've never been married."
"Children?"
His lips twitched with the effort of suppressing a smile. "No."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-nine. Going on thirty soon."
He looked older, as old as Lucky who was in his early thirties. "Where's your family?"
"I don't have a family."
"You have a mother. You said she hadn't worried about you when you left, so you must have had one."
He laid aside the book he'd brought from the back room and took a step closer. By doing so he seemed to reduce the size of the trailer by half. "Why are you so curious, Sage?"
"I don't know. I just am."
"Besides my family, what else are you curious about?"
"Where you came from. What you did before you met Chase in Houston. Why you don't bother locking your doors. Why, since you're college educated and intelligent, you choose to live like this."
He gave the dim surroundings an assessing glance. "What's wrong with the way I live?"
She floundered, not wanting to state the obvious at the risk of sounding unkind.
"I like the way I live, Sage. Very much. I don't lock my doors because I don't own anything anybody would want. When you don't possess anything, you can't be possessed by things either. You don't have to worry about somebody taking something valuable from you. I like being free from all that."
He took another step, closing the distance between them. The toes of his boots grazed the toes of her shoes before he widened his stance and placed his feet on either side of hers, a stance that tilted his hips slightly forward.
His nearness in the quiet, still trailer overwhelmed her. Because he was looking down at her so intently with those laser-beam blue eyes, she was a little afraid of him. Or was she afraid of the marshy feeling she got in the pit of her stomach every time he stood this close to her?
"Ask me something else, Sage."
"You answered all my questions," she said breathlessly. "There's nothing else I need or want to know."
"Yes, there is."
"What?"
"You want to know when I'm going to kiss you again.
"I want to know no such thing! What gave you that idea?"
He wasn't the least bit fazed by her hasty rebuttal. "You're like a cat, aren't you, Sage? Always scratching and clawing and hissing in self-defense. Every time anybody gets close to the real Sage, you arch your back." His eyes moved down to her mouth. "If you gave yourself half a chance, you'd purr."
She swallowed with difficulty, wanting to move away, but unable to, wanting to look away, but incapable of it. "You'll never know. I'll never let you kiss me again."
"Yes you will. You liked it too much."
"I didn't like it at all."
His hands came up and framed her face. His thumbs took turns sweeping across her lips. "We both know you're a liar, Sage. A lousy one at that."
Then his mouth settled on hers. It was warm, soft, undemanding, fluid. She allowed the contact for several seconds, but when the tip of his tongue touched the tip of hers, she recoiled and turned her head away.
"Harlan—"
"That's it. Say my name."
His lips captured hers again. Her whimper of protest was feeble and thoroughly disregarded. When he introduced his tongue this time, she obliged him, greeting it with a stroke of her own.
He slipped his arms around her waist and drew her up against him as he angled his head to one side and deepened the kiss. Sage's ears rang with a cacophony of sound, and she realized it was the pounding of her own heart and the rushing-wind sound of consuming lust. She had never heard it before, yet she recognized it immediately. A tide of heat rivered through her body, pooling between her thighs.
He tasted her again and again, sending his tongue deep into her mouth for samples. When they had to either breathe or die, he buried his face in her neck, kissing it madly. He worked his way to her ear. Sage felt the warm, damp stroke of his tongue and gave a soft cry. Her knees buckled and she stumbled backward onto the sofa.
He followed her down, partially covering her body with his. She plowed her fingers into his hair and pulled his head down to her. She needed this. She needed a man's weight crushing her, his desire hot and hard for her, his mouth stealing her breath.
She kissed Harlan as though she were starving for his love. She bent one knee up and pressed the inside of her thigh against his hip. It felt so right, so good. His erection was firm against her cleft. She moved her hips, rubbing against it, wanting more.
Harlan slid his hand inside her sweater to caress her breast. "Sage, do you want me to touch you like this?"
She raggedly sighed an affirmative answer while randomly kissing the features of his face, which, she now admitted, had mightily appealed to her from the first time she'd laid eyes on him.
His hand scooped her breast from the cup of her bra. He caressed the raised nipple with his fingertips. Sage moaned and arched her back, begging for more.
"Honey, baby, Sage." Sighing miserably, he withdrew his hand and tried to stave off her ardently seeking lips.
At last she realized that he was no longer fondling her and wanted her attention. Her thrashing head came to rest between his palms as she gazed up at him through wide, golden eyes cloudy with passion. "What's wrong?"
"Not a damn thing," he replied thickly. "You're perfect. You look perfect. You feel perfect. You taste perfect."
"Then why'd you stop?" she asked, her voice husky.
"I like your brothers, Sage. They like and trust me. I don't want to do anything to betray their trust."
Still restless, she shifted slightly, lodging him more comfortably between her thighs. He closed his eyes and groaned softly. When he opened his eyes again, they were exceptionally bright. The lines on either side of his mouth were tense. His breath was short and shallow.
"I never should have kissed you again. I didn't think it would go… I didn't think you would be so… Aw, hell." He grimaced as though in pain. "Believe me, Sage, I'd love nothing better than to have my mouth all over you right now. You know where I want to be. Inside you. Deep inside you." Again, he shut his eyes briefly and sucked in an uneven breath.
"But before we go any farther, I've got to know that you know what you're doing and want it as much as I do. I don't want to be used to sal
ve a spoiled little girl's ego."
She wouldn't have believed that any emotion could override the desire pumping through her. However, when his words registered, she discovered that outrage could conquer anything. With a growl of pure fury, she pushed him off her, almost dumping him onto the speckled linoleum floor of the trailer.
She scrambled off the sofa and shoved her disheveled hair out of her eyes. "You won't have to worry about any retribution from my brothers," she shouted. "One day I'm going to kill you myself."
Having issued the threat, she threw open the door, jumped over the steps and marched off into the darkness. She'd gone about a quarter of a mile on foot when he pulled the pickup along side her.
"Get in," he said through the open window.
"Take a flying leap straight into hell."
"What are we going to do, swap invectives? Stop acting like a brat and get in. It's starting to sprinkle."
She came to an abrupt halt and confronted him. "I'll walk. I'd walk a hundred miles through a torrent to keep from riding with you."
"What'll you tell your family when you show up hours late for supper?" She paused to consider that. Harlan pressed his advantage. "Are you prepared to tell them what held us up?"
She glared at him through the gloomy dusk. He looked away from her, toward the horizon. His regret was evident. When he looked at her again, all traces of his characteristic arrogance were absent.
"I take full responsibility for starting something today that shouldn't have got started, Sage. I apologize for ever laying a hand on you. After what happened in the barn on Christmas Day, I should have known better than to touch you again. But," he continued softly, "you've got to accept part of the blame for where it went from that first kiss, and where it would have gone if I hadn't stopped it."
Sage, remembering how wantonly she had writhed against him, privately acknowledged that he was right, though she would rather have her tongue cut out than admit it. Her present behavior only demonstrated to him how upset she was that he had called off their lovemaking. That was untenable. Besides, Chase had asked him to bring her home. If he didn't, her family would want to know why.
Walking stiffly, she rounded the hood of the truck, opened the passenger door, then climbed inside the cab. The window hadn't been replaced, the opening was still patched with cardboard. Since that didn't offer a view, she stared stonily out the front windshield.