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Once more he moved swiftly. Giving Kaitlin no time to react, he picked her up. The feel of her in his arms surprised him. Thin as she was, he had not expected her to be quite so fragile. Her fragility moved him, touching the edges of the bitterness that had turned him into a driven man: a bitterness that had kept him on course when he might have given up his plans.
And then he was putting her in the saddle. Seconds later he was seated behind her, his arms around her, his hands next to hers on the reins.
Kaitlin swung around in the saddle, her face so close to him that Flynn could see the lights that warmed her eyes, and the small vertical lines on those very kissable lips.
He moved, his thighs closing around hers on the saddle. Kaitlin was still looking at him as his arms tightened around her. For a moment she leaned towards him, and he held his breath, wondering if she meant to kiss him.
At the last moment she pulled back. Flynn could have kissed her, but he didn’t. A low laugh erupted from his throat. Against him, Kaitlin tensed.
‘Get off my horse, Flynn.’ An angry order.
Once more he laughed. ‘Of course—in the stables. I’ll saddle another horse, and then we’ll go and rescue your calf.’
‘Flynn—’
‘And don’t try telling me I don’t know my way to the stables, because I’ll lay you a bet I can still get around this ranch blindfold.’
With that he dug his heels lightly into the horse’s flanks. His arms were still around Kaitlin, his hands next to hers on the reins. Five years had passed since he had left the ranch, but he didn’t waver once, nor did he have to ask Kaitlin for directions. He knew the way as well as if he had ridden the range yesterday.
As they left the airstrip, Flynn found himself swept with emotions he had not felt in a long time. Emotions he had not felt with any of the other women he had known over the years. Emotions he had not expected to feel with Kaitlin, not after the way she had hurt him. Her back was against his chest, her slender legs still wedged against his thighs. Her hair brushed his nose, filling his nostrils with its sweetness: he wondered whether she felt him move his lips against it. He wondered too what she was feeling, and whether she was remembering those long-ago rides through the brushlands.
Flynn knew exactly what he wanted of this woman, what he had always wanted of her. Only this time, whatever happened between Kaitlin Mullins and himself, would happen on his terms. Love would not be a factor in their relationship, for with love came vulnerability, and he would not let Kaitlin hurt him again.
When they reached the stables, Flynn loosened his arms. Lightly he leaped off the horse and reached for Kaitlin.
‘I don’t need help,’ she told him brusquely.
‘I know that,’ he said, and lifted her down anyway.
For a long moment his hands remained on her waist, and his eyes held hers. Quietly he said, ‘Is there something you want to tell me?’
‘Should there be?’ Her voice held a slight tremor.
‘For one thing, maybe you’d like to explain why you’re so thin?’
She slipped out of his hands, and he made no attempt to stop her. ‘I’ve always been thin, Flynn.’
‘Not like this.’ And as she gave an impatient shrug, ‘You forget, Kaitlin, for the last fifteen minutes I’ve had my arms around you. You’re nothing but skin and bones.’
‘How flattering.’
‘Just saying it as it is. I’ve never forgotten the feel of you, Kaitlin.’
‘Flynn—’
‘The scent of your hair, and the pace of your heart.’
‘Don’t,’ she said.
‘So—why are you so thin?’
‘Metabolism?’ she suggested.
‘Metabolism,’ he repeated cynically. ‘Is that what you call it? And another thing, what happened to your hands?’
‘My hands?’ She thrust them behind her back.
‘Why are you hiding them, Kaitlin? I’ve had time to study them—remember?’
‘Right,’ she said slowly, and dropped her hands to her sides.
Flynn. reached for them. The nails were very short and without any polish, and the palms were roughened by what could only be many months of hard manual labour.
‘Not the hands of a Southern belle, Kaitlin.’
‘No,’ she agreed shortly.
‘Your mother used to insist you wore gloves when you rode.’
‘Yes—though I used to take them off the moment she was out of sight.’
‘I remember.’ This time his laughter was warm and amused. ‘Hands were important to your mother.’
‘Right...’
‘ “Katie, darling,” I overheard her saying once, “a lady must be well-groomed, and that includes her hands. Lotion, Katie, never forget your hand-lotion.’ ”
‘Or words to that effect.’
‘I don’t claim that my memories are word-perfect.’
Kaitlin blinked. There was a look of such pain in her eyes that Flynn felt his heart give an unaccustomed wrench.
‘My hands are no longer important to my mother. She... She died fifteen months ago.’
‘So I heard.’
Her head jerked. ‘You did?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where? From whom?’
‘Someone I know.’
‘And obviously you don’t want to tell me. Well, never mind. Do you also know—’ she swallowed hard ‘—that Dad died too?’
Flynn nodded.
‘Not very long after Mom. Of a broken heart, I think, although it seemed like an accident at the time. I don’t think he could exist without her.’
A broken heart? Maybe that was part of it, though according to sources Flynn had no reason to doubt, the bottle had contributed more than a little to the death of Kaitlin’s father.
Eyes narrowing, Flynn looked down at Kaitlin: his lovely girl, his beautiful Kaitlin, always sparkling, forever laughing at some joke or another. This new vulnerability of hers touched that deep inner core which had been frozen inside him since the day he had left the ranch.
His arms lifted. He was about to pull her towards him when he remembered that whatever changes there might have been, they were probably superficial. Kaitlin Mullins was still her parents’ daughter. That had not changed. His arms dropped to his sides.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘You’re so intent, Flynn. The way you’re staring at me. As if you’re trying to read me.’
‘Read you?’
‘What you see is what there is, Flynn.’
He doubted that. He gave a short laugh, hard and unamused, and Kaitlin took a quick step backwards.
‘I really do have to see about that calf.’ She sounded hurt.
‘I said I’d go with you.’
‘I don’t need you, I can manage perfectly well on my own.’
‘I’m going with you all the same.’
‘You’re a stubborn man, Flynn. But if you insist, I guess we should get a horse saddled.’
‘In a moment.’ He reached for her left hand. ‘You’re not married, Kaitlin.’ He had known that, of course.
‘No.’
‘Why not? There- must have been dozens of interested men.’
‘A few.’
‘Well then?’
‘I refuse to marry anyone I don’t love.’
‘Are you telling me you’ve never been in love?’
Her eyes shifted. After a moment, she said, ‘You ask too many questions.’
‘Do I?’ he drawled.
‘Yes.’ She paused, and looked back at him. ‘How about you, Flynn ? Did you never marry?’
‘I did.’
An expression crossed Kaitlin’s face, but it was gone before Flynn could make anything of it. ‘You didn’t think of bringing your wife with you today?’ she asked politely.
So she didn’t care that there had been another woman in his life. Foolish of him to have thought otherwise.
‘Didn’t have a reason to,’ he said lightly. And when she looked at him questioningly, ‘We’re no longer together. The marriage didn’t last.’
Another one of those expressions appeared in Kaitlin’s eyes, though slightly different this time. ‘Yes, well...’ was all she said.
She jerked when he touched her chin, enfolding it in his fingers, brushing slowly once up and down her throat with his thumb.
‘No questions, Kaitlin?’
She shrugged. ‘Should there be?’
‘Not at all interested in what I just said?’
‘It’s your life, Flynn, not mine.’
‘True. But we were friends once. More than friends.’
‘That’s the second time you’ve reminded me.‘ For some reason her eyes left his once more. ‘I don’t know why you keep dredging up the past. Whatever there was—and it wasn’t really that much—it all happened so long ago.’
Dam the woman. She could have shown at least a little interest in his marriage, He said as much.
Turning back to him, Kaitlin said brightly, ‘I’m sure the story of your shattered relationship is fascinating. But right now I’m a lot more concerned about a little lost calf.’
Like her mother, Kaitlin seemed to know just how to put a man in his place.
Flynn’s hand dropped. ‘Which horse shall I take?’ His voice was hard as he moved away from her.
Kaitlin suggested a tall stallion, and Flynn saddled it. It was some time since he had worked as a cowboy, but his passion for horses had never lessened. The horse, temperamental by nature, seemed to sense it was in the hands of a person who was more than its match, and stood still as Flynn got it ready for riding.
They were walking the horses side by side through the brushlands when Kaitlin turned in the saddle. ‘When did you learn to fly, Flynn?’
‘A while ago.’
‘Did your new employer teach you?’
He grinned at her. ‘I don’t have an employer, Kaitlin.’ ‘You don’t?’
Her eyes were so wide that Flynn laughed. ‘You seem to find that more amazing than the fact that my marriage didn’t last.’
‘Not really,’ Kaitlin said after a long moment. ‘You have the look of a man who stopped taking orders from other people.’
Flynn was careful not to show his surprise at her perceptiveness. ‘I found out some time ago that I needed to work for myself.’
‘What do you do, Flynn?’
‘This and that.’
‘Not much of an answer, and well you know it.’
