The Cowboy She Never Forgot

by Cheryl Biggs

  Nothing had assuaged the hurt, or filled the void her absence created within him.

  Whenever he’d heard a certain song that reminded him of Kate, saw a woman walking down the street with brown hair touched by highlights of red, or looked into a pair of blue eyes that held even a touch of green, he’d thought of Kate, and wished she was with him. Then his memories would rise up to haunt him, and the ache in his gut would be back, nearly tearing him in two; and once again he would curse her for choosing her job over their love, over him.

  But those weren’t thoughts for tonight. “It feels good, Red, having you in my arms again,” Shane said, his lips moving over hers, roaming, tasting lightly, teasing softly.

  His deep, velvet drawl wrapped around Kate and drew her further into the sensuous world his arms and kisses had transported her to. Delicious shivers of pleasure rippled through her body from head to toe and instilled her with a gnawing need she’d thought—hoped, had died long ago. The warnings a part of her mind was still struggling to make her acknowledge went unheeded, drowned out by the maddening beat of her heart and swirling ache of pleasure coiled deep within her body.

  He was the only man who had ever made her feel this way, the only man who had ever touched her heart and made her think of forever.

  Shane pulled back slightly and looked down at her. He’d never thought this would happen, and he wasn’t at all certain he was glad that it had...he only knew that he had no control over the feelings churning to life inside him.

  Music and the soft hum of people talking, laughing, filled the room. Couples danced around them, brushed up against them, but Shane noticed none of it.

  His gaze moved over Kate’s face as if comparing what he now saw to the memory he had been carrying with him for the past three years. How many times had he looked at another woman and seen Kate? Heard a woman laugh and turned, expecting to see a flash of red hair and a pair of blue-green eyes, only to be disappointed?

  He studied each delicate feature—the thick lashes that framed those unforgettable eyes, to the high cheekbones that accentuated them, the dramatic and irresistible curve of her lips.

  How many times had he made love to a woman, tried to lose himself within her arms, and whispered Kate’s name?

  Too many, a little voice whispered in the back of his mind. Too many. His arms tightened around her, pulling her back up against him until there was no breath of space separating them. He could feel her desire blend with his now, saw it cloud her eyes, felt it in the slight tremble that sped through her body at his blatant inspection. She was as vulnerable to him as he was to her. He didn’t know if that was good or bad, and he didn’t care. But it was a fact, and it filled him with some sense of satisfaction. Maybe she didn’t love him, maybe she had never loved him, but she desired him, and for tonight, maybe that was enough.

  He reached up and slid his hand through her hair, pushing it back from her shoulder, feeling the silky red-touched strands caress his fingers as they slipped free and fell back into place.

  A soft, ragged gasp escaped Kate’s lips. Whatever control she still maintained over herself threatened to spin from her grasp as desire swept through her on a delicious shiver of need, drawing her toward an abyss of emotion that she knew should be, was, forbidden to them. But self-control and reason were proving elusive, skipping out of her grasp as an overpowering ache to know his touch again filled her with a hunger that was beyond her strength to resist.

  Just one more kiss, Kate told her conscience, just one more.

  Dragging her up against him, Shane’s mouth claimed hers.

  Kate moaned softly as her body betrayed her and the need for him conquered her better senses. Her fingers dived into the hair at his nape, holding him to her as his tongue delved into her mouth, probing, scorching, arousing fires that could both pleasure and destroy.

  His kiss was as gentle as it was savage, as tender as it was feral, and it was everything she had remembered and yearned for. Feelings, yearnings, hungers that Kate thought she had long ago brought under control, forgotten, now flamed to life with such intensity she nearly withered under their assault. Fire flowed through her veins, need ignited within every fiber of her being, and want threatened to leave her no will of her own.

  The internal warnings that had, only moments before, screamed at her from the back of her mind, now struggled merely to whisper. But it was a futile effort, for even as his mouth ravished hers, it also played havoc and destruction with her senses.

  She leaned into him, returned his kiss ardently, and allowed the passion she had denied for so long to muffle her hesitations.

  “Oh, damn, Red,” he murmured, the words half smothered against her lips.

  Before she could even think to respond, his lips covered hers again, more demanding this time.

  The music suddenly stopped.

  “Well, folks,” Jim Hodges said into the microphone, his voice booming over the murmur of the audience, “it’s been a great night, but the band is near worn out, the bar is almost out of everything wet, and we’ve got a rodeo to officially open tomorrow night. So, I’d say we’d all better call it an evening and get some sleep.”

  Shane reluctantly pulled his lips from Kate’s and looked down at her. He would have given everything he owned to have been somewhere else with her, somewhere quiet and private rather than in the middle of a dance floor and surrounded by a couple of hundred people.

  As his lips left hers, Kate felt a sudden sense of desertion.

  She looked up at him and found his eyes studying her, as if searching for something. Apprehension seized Kate.

  “Why didn’t you call me when you quit the police department?” Shane said. He hadn’t meant to ask the question, but it had slipped out before he could stop it, and now it hung between them. In spite of her kiss and the spark of hope it had aroused within him, he was as afraid of her answer now as he had been earlier when he’d shied away from asking, but he had to know the answer.

  His voice was soft, but Kate didn’t miss the thread of steel in his words, nor the shadow of hurt that edged them. Her heart faltered in its beat as she turned her gaze away from his. “I didn’t qui—” She stopped herself just in time, before she blurted out the truth, nearly biting her tongue in the process. When the case was over, when there was no longer any chance her career would be in jeopardy, that he would be in jeopardy, then she could explain, but not now.

  “Kate?”

  “I—there are things I can‘t—you don’t understand. I don’t—I can’t...”

  Lord, why hadn’t she just stayed away from him as she’d planned? Guilt assailed her, overriding all the feelings of desire his embrace and kiss had aroused. The emotion was so intense she could almost feel it weigh her down.

  I won’t have a cop for a wife, Kate. Give it up and marry me, or we’re through.

  His mere presence was torture. Being a cop was part of her heritage. It was what the Morgans had always done as far back as anyone could remember. It was what she’d been brought up to do, what she had always wanted to do.

  He cupped her chin tenderly between his thumb and forefinger and brought her head back up, forcing her to look at him again.

  Shane saw the hesitation in her eyes, and suddenly didn’t want to hear her answer. Pulling her close, he turned and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car.”

  They moved through the crowd, saying good-night to some, nodding to others.

  Kate had never experienced self-loathing before, but she was experiencing it now, in spades, along with an intense fear that once they reached her car he would press the issue, insist on an answer.

  And if she gave it, if she told him the truth? She could very well lose her job, or at least her chance at a promotion, she would hurt and disappoint her father, and Shane would leave her again. That last thought pounded through her head, remorselessly, over and over. He’d leave. He’d leave. He’d leave.

  Her fingers trembled as they ne
ared her Cherokee and she dug her keys from her pocket. Nervousness rippled through her like never ending waves moving through a tidepool. She couldn’t let him pull her into his arms again, couldn’t let him kiss her. If she did she knew she would never be able to resist him...and she had to. Her heart couldn’t stand loving him and losing him again. And that’s exactly what would happen.

  He’d leave, that little voice in the back of her mind reminded her cruelly.

  Yet even as those thoughts filled her mind, as fear and desire wrapped around her heart, something told her it was already too late for caution. She steeled herself against the urge to slip back into his arms and reached for the door of the Cherokee, yanking it open and climbing in before Shane could stop her. Once in her seat, she turned back to him. Torment chewed at her insides, battering her resolve. “Well, good night, Shane.”

  He held on to the open door, one foot propped on the running board. There was a question in his eyes, but she ignored it and reached for the door.

  He released it and stepped back, feeling the distance she was trying to put between them. Shane nodded. “Good night, Kate.”

  The roar of the Cherokee’s engine filled the night.

  Shane watched her drive away, and wondered what had just happened.

  Chapter 4

  Shane lay on his bed and stared at the moon through the window set over his small trailer’s “dining table.” He needed sleep, but thoughts kept invading his mind, refusing to let it shut down even for a little while. Images of Kate floated past his mind’s eye, memories nagged at him, and desire refused to vacate his body and let him relax.

  In the bunk overhead, his younger brother Cody snored softly and steadily.

  Aggravated with himself, and the world in general, Shane swung a leg up and slammed his foot against the bottom of Cody’s mattress.

  “Wha—?” Cody grumbled, jerking up, then rolling over and pounding a fist into his pillow before slamming his head back down onto it.

  “You’re snoring,” Shane snapped.

  Cody swore incoherently, rolled over again, and immediately drifted back into sleep.

  Shane cursed him silently for even being able to sleep when he couldn’t, and went back to staring through the small window. It had felt so good to hold her again. Too good. He swore softly. Why hadn’t she called him when she quit the police force? The question nagged at him.

  They’d had their differences, but they could have been worked out. The main thing between them, the reason he’d finally left her, had been her job. He couldn’t handle her being a cop, the danger of it, he couldn’t face going through every day waiting for someone to call and say that a lunatic had just shot his wife...that she was on the way to the hospital...that she was dead. How many times had they argued about her job? More than he cared to remember. Nevertheless, he’d always thought that when he proposed, she’d give it up.

  “But I was a cop when you met me.”

  And it had always scared him silly. From the very first time he’d met her and found out what she did for a living, he’d told himself not to get involved with her...but something in him hadn’t listened. Maybe he’d figured he could handle it then, maybe he’d figured it wasn’t going to be a serious relationship, so why worry about it. But of course it had turned serious, and he had worried about it.

  He’d tried to explain his fear for her, and she’d thrown statistics back at him, saying they proved her job wasn’t all that dangerous, that more people died in traffic accidents than cops on the job. The numbers hadn’t impressed Shane or changed his mind. He hadn’t told her why he felt that way. He’d never been able to tell anyone until last year, when he’d finally told his little sister. It hadn’t mattered though, because Kate had never asked.

  But there had been more to the reason he’d left her, more to the reason he hadn’t called her even though there had been so many times he’d wanted to, so many times he’d ached with such loneliness he thought he was going to die. Her job had stood between them, but it was the fact that she’d chosen it over him, over the life they could have had together that had sliced through his pride, and his heart, more than anything else.

  Giving up on sleep, Shane threw the covers aside, climbed from his bed, and began pacing the narrow confines of the trailer he’d bought his second year on the road. He pulled a beer from the refrigerator, decided the moment he jerked off its top that he didn’t want it and put it back. The gesture was repeated a moment later with a can of soda, and then the coffeepot.

  She’d chosen her job over their love. Over him. That fact had stuck in his craw for three years, and it was still there. Maybe even more intense after tonight. Shane grabbed his brother’s pack of cigarettes from the kitchen counter, then remembered he’d given them up five years ago. She hadn’t called him. She’d quit being a cop, and hadn’t called him. Cursing softly again, he crumpled the pack of cigarettes in his fist and threw them back down. “So, who cares?” he grumbled. “It would never work anyway.”

  “Would you either shut up and go to sleep,” Cody grumbled into the darkness, “or go do your swearing at the damned bulls?”

  Shane sat down, then rose immediately and walked toward his bed.

  Cody turned over, with a vengeance, causing the bunk to squeak in protest and the trailer to actually shake.

  Shane stared at the bed, then knelt down in front of it, opened the drawer built in below the cot, and pulled out his small traveling bag.

  Cody grumbled something vile, and rammed his pillow over his head.

  Shane took a small plush-covered box out of the bag, then sat down on the floor. He flipped the box open. Moonlight instantly reflected off the diamond ring that sat nestled on a bed of black satin.

  I can’t give up being a cop, Shane. Not for you or anybody else. I won’t. Ever.

  But she had given it up. Not for him, not for his love, but for someone, or something. Emotions warred within him; hope, wariness, optimism, disbelief...and anger. He had to know why she’d left the police force.

  Shane stared at the ring. He’d kept it with him constantly for the first year after he’d left her, because he’d kept thinking they’d get back together, that he’d look up one day and she’d be there, smiling at him, holding out her arms to him. Yet even when that dream had died, he hung on to the ring. Finally he had decided to pawn it, yet every time he started out to do it, once even getting as far as accepting a ticket from a pawn shop, he found he couldn’t let it go, and he didn’t even know why.

  Shane pulled the ring from its bed and held it up. Even in the low light filtering softly through the thin curtain covering the window, the diamond’s facets danced merrily, filled with a myriad of colors.

  Maybe, foolish as it was, and without even being aware of it, he had always hoped there was still a chance for them. Sighing, he laid his head back against the edge of the bed and closed his eyes. Within seconds he was asleep.

  Dawn had barely broken over the horizon, but Shane had already exercised Samson and was half done brushing him down and checking over his tack. He knew he’d pay for his lack of sleep later, maybe even ride badly that night, but there was nothing he could do about that now.

  After the passing of another hour he’d also washed the road grime off his truck. He returned to the trailer, showered, and changed into a clean pair of Levi’s and a plaid shirt.

  Cody rolled over and peered at him from between sheet and pillow as Shane was tugging on his boots. “What the hell are you doing now?” With a few colorful curses he pulled the blanket back over his head. “It’s not even morning yet.”

  “Sun’s up.”

  Cody groaned. “Good for it. Where are you going?”

  Shane reached for the black Stetson that hung from a nearby hook and settled it on his head. “Out. You need me, I’ll leave the cell phone on in the truck.”

  “Terrific. Call and wake me about five-thirty.”

  Shane grabbed his keys and opened the door. “It’s almost seven.�
��

  “Five-thirty p.m.,” Cody shouted after him.

  Shane stepped from the trailer and headed for his truck. Apprehension gnawed at the back of his mind, but he ignored it. A stick flew through the air, grazing the brim of his Stetson. Shane ducked and whirled around.

  Josh Lawyler grinned and shrugged as a rangy-looking dog bounded after the stick. “Sorry,” he mumbled at Shane. “Just exercising Bones. Didn’t see you there.”

  Shane nodded, then noticed a small pool of oil beneath his truck. Dropping to his knees he looked for the source, but found nothing. After checking under the hood, he decided the puddle must have been there when he pulled the truck into that spot.

  “Watch your aim, kid,” he called out to Josh, then climbed into the pickup. Moments later he pulled onto the freeway heading south. He only hoped he remembered how to get to where he was going, especially once he realized they’d built an extension to the freeway.

  The turnoff for Virginia City came up before he knew it. Shane swerved the pickup into the left lane and turned. In no time he was three thousand feet above Reno on the snaking, narrow mountain road, and still climbing.

  The landscape turned from sagebrush to scraggly pines, and back to sagebrush. After rounding a series of especially sharp curves, the road finally leveled off. Shane saw Kate’s unique shingled mailbox with the prancing carved horse on top, and the words Sky High Ranch emblazoned upon it. As he turned into the drive, the tall, two-story yellow house with white window shutters came into view; it was just as he remembered it, a cross between a Victorian farmhouse and a utilitarian working ranch house. The wide, covered porch was perfect for whiling away a leisurely afternoon, or watching the sun go down behind the mountains on the opposite side of the valley, both of which he’d done numerous times there with Kate.