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Quint passed the sandwiches and drinks between them and they began to eat.
After Maura had downed a few bites in silence, his expression turned rueful.
“What are you thinking?” he asked. “That the sandwiches are soggy?”
“I couldn’t have made better,” she assured him with a smile, then added thoughtfully, “I was just trying to picture the people who used to live in this little town. I wonder if there were whole families who made their home here? Babies born here?”
He shrugged as he reached for one of the beer cans. “Probably. I think there was a population of about three hundred at one time. There’s another area just to the south of these buildings where you can find old foundations and other signs of houses. Gramps says not long after he purchased the land a fire swept through here, so the home sites might have burned. Thankfully that was many years after this little community died.”
She sighed wistfully. “Well, when the place was booming it must have been an exciting time for people. Each morning they probably climbed out of bed thinking today they’d discover the mother lode.”
He leveled a suggestive grin at her. “Why, Maura, you sound like a gamble excites you.”
He excited her. And he was definitely a gamble, she thought as her heart danced rapidly against her ribs.
“Funny you should say that. I’m considered the cautious little mouse of my family.” Her gaze fluttered awkwardly down to the planked tabletop. “And I suppose I am. I’ve never been one to play the odds—at anything. Out at the mine I told you I wasn’t a scaredy cat, but that was sort of an exaggeration. I’d like to be more adventurous, but I guess I’m just a sure-thing sort of person.”
“You got married,” he said softly. “I’d say you were adventurous.”
A cynical grimace tightened her lips. “Marriage isn’t supposed to be a risk. At least, I thought it wasn’t. I figured I knew all the important things there were to know about Gil. But I guess a person sometimes takes chances when she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it.”
The corners of his mouth tilted into a faint smile. “That might be a good thing. Otherwise, we’d all be living in bubbles.”
Normally, Maura didn’t eat mayonnaise, but as she took another bite of the sandwich that Quint had made, she was surprised at how much she liked the taste. She was even more surprised at how much she was beginning to like him. Which was something completely separate from being swept away by his kiss.
“What about you, Quint? Are you a man who takes chances?”
“Only when I need to.”
His answer was evasive, but Maura didn’t prod him. Today was the most special day she’d had in a long, long time. There was no need for serious talk. This was a day to simply enjoy.
“That was a silly question from me,” she said after a moment. “Ranchers take risks every day. Dad always says that raising horses is like raising children—the job is hard as hell and you never know if any of them will turn out to be worth a damn.” She let out a short laugh. “But he loves us all—the horses and the kids—no matter if we aren’t stars.”
He looked at her quizzically. “Surely you don’t think you’re any less important than your siblings?”
One of her shoulders lifted and fell. “Did I say that?”
“Not in so many words. But there was something in your voice.” He reached across the table and touched his fingers to hers. “I sometimes get the feeling, Maura, that you’re down on yourself.”
The touch of his fingers was like a branding iron, sizzling a fire right through her hand and straight up her arm. He couldn’t possibly know how shaky and vulnerable he made her feel.
“My sisters are special. They’re both very beautiful and spunky. They go at life at full speed. I’m…just drifting.”
He frowned at her. “That’s plain wrong. You have a meaningful, admirable profession. You’re young and intelligent and very lovely. And you’re not drifting—unless you consider seeing after Gramps trivial.”
Surprise parted her lips. “Oh, no! I didn’t mean that at all. Abe is very important to me. I just meant that personally I’m drifting.” She sighed with a bit of frustration, then tried her best to smile. “I’m not down on myself, Quint. Just a little disappointed in the mistakes I’ve made.”
Unable to bear the burning touch of his fingers any longer, she pulled her hand away and reached for a plastic bag filled with brownies.
“Aren’t we all?” he murmured.
Her eyes locked with his and suddenly her heart lifted and a soft smile curved her lips.
“Yes,” she said huskily, then deciding it was time to change the subject completely, joked, “Is there a coffee house down the street? Coffee would be great with all these desserts we have.”
“We don’t have to go down the street, my lady. We can make coffee right here.” His eyes twinkled as he popped the last of a sandwich into his mouth and rose to his feet. “Come here. I’ll show you.”
She followed him to where the long counter separated the front of the room from the back. Behind the L-shaped barrier she was surprised to see a cast-iron potbellied stove and a small metal cabinet filled with canned food and basic staples for cooking. On the opposite side of the space, jammed in an out-of-the-way corner, an army cot covered with a faded Navajo blanket served as a bunk. Clearly, Quint had taken special efforts to make the place comfortable for him and the hired hands.
With his money, he could have gone overboard and rebuilt the whole structure. He could have supplied it with electricity, a bathroom and all the comforts of home. Instead, he’d chosen to keep the old building simple and full of character. He didn’t need or want everything he had to be new or perfect. And she realized she liked that very much about him.
“This is all very neat,” she told him. “Have you ever stayed here overnight?”
He chuckled as he shoved a few sticks of wood into the stove. “Once. About a year ago when Jake and I first started building the ranch. The two of us got caught out here in a blizzard and we ended up sleeping on the floor in our bedrolls and freezing our behinds. After that, we decided to fix this place up.”
He stuck a match to the kindling and when tiny flames began to lick at the sticks of wood, he shut the door on the stove and turned the damper wide.
“You’re very close to Jake, aren’t you?”
“He’s like a brother to me,” he said as he fetched a sack of coffee from the metal cabinet.
“Is that why you have him working for you?” she asked.
A faint grin touched his mouth as he filled the granite pot with water from his canteen. “I have him working for me because he knows everything there is to know about horses and cattle and can do more than three men put together. He was making good money at the track, working as manager over the training barns. But I was fortunate enough to talk him into helping me.”
“Hmm. From what I can see, you two are so different. How did you get to be such good friends?”
He poured a hefty amount of grounds into the water, then set the pot on the stove.
“In kindergarten and grade school we constantly whipped up on each other. He was always lipping off, daring me to do something I shouldn’t do. And I was the quiet one who exploded when he pushed too far. After a while, we both realized that neither could beat the other one up and we earned each other’s respect.” He looked at her and chuckled. “Thankfully, we don’t test each other anymore. Now that we’re grown men, I’m not sure who’d win. But I do know we’d fight for each other.”
She gravitated toward him and the heat that was now radiating from the stove. “I wish I could say I had a friend like that. But I don’t. In school, I guess you could say I was a loner of sorts. I had friends, but I didn’t build deep bonds with them. I saved all that for my sisters. The three of us are very close.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. My sister is my buddy, too. Although I don’t get to see her much now that she’s moved to Texas. Abe is trying to lure her and Jonas back, but I don’t think he’ll get that done. You see, Jonas is a Texas Ranger.”
“Abe tells me that you’ve driven him to San Antonio a couple of times to visit them,” Maura said. “If I remember right, he said the two of you made the trip to see Alexa and Jonas’s new daughter shortly before he started suffering from vertigo. That’s a long drive to make.”
Quint shrugged. “Gramps won’t fly. He says he doesn’t want to get any higher off the ground than a horse’s back. And when he dies he wants it to be with his boots on. But I don’t want to think of him dying in any fashion. I want to think of him living to be a hundred.”
Maura smiled gently. “And he’s just ornery enough to do it.”
His gaze met hers. “Yeah. He is.”
Something in his eyes, the softness in his voice, drew her to him in a way that was somehow even deeper and stronger than his kiss.
It was a strange sensation and so unsettling that she finally had to turn away and draw in a calming breath.
Behind her, she heard him move away, then the scrape of cans being pushed around the metal shelf. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that he was putting away the sack of coffee grounds. Nearer to her, in the corner of her eye, she could see part of the makeshift bed and though she tried to keep her mind off it, she couldn’t stop herself from imagining how it might feel to lie with him here in the quietness, to feel his hands and lips moving over her body.
“Oh, hell! It’s going to storm!”
Quint’s exclamation had her spinning around just in time to see a huge gust of wind ripping through the doorway and snuffing out the candle on the table. Except for the light coming from outside, the space around them suddenly went dim and shadowy.
“I’ll get the door!” he shouted as he rushed around the counter and hurried to fasten the door.
Maura raced after him and peered through the slatted boards covering the empty squares that used to hold glass windows.
A wall of blue-black clouds was descending upon them at a rapid rate. Cold wind was tearing down the street, ripping clumps of dry sagebrush from the soil to send them rolling in erratic trails toward the opposite end of town.
“Oh, my, Quint, this looks like it’s going to be nasty!”
She’d hardly gotten the words past her mouth when a streak of lightning bolted across the sky and sent her leaping backward from the rickety window. Deafening thunder followed and she wrapped her arms protectively around herself as she waited for the sound to subside.
With the door latched as securely as he could manage, Quint walked over to her. Her face was pale with alarm and he instinctively reached out and circled his arm around her shoulders.
“We’ll be fine,” he tried to reassure her. “And the horses are safely sheltered away from the lightning. So we don’t need to worry about them.”
She looked up at him and tried to smile, but he could see her lips were quivering with the effort.
“I’m okay, Quint. I’m not normally afraid of storms. But in this flimsy old building, the force of it just feels closer.”
He gave her an encouraging grin. “Just think of it this way, Maura. This old store has been here for more than a century. Why should it crumble around us now?”
“Why indeed?” she asked, then just as she was trying to laugh at their predicament another clap of thunder rattled the roof far above their heads. “Oh!”
Grabbing her hand, he urged, “Let’s go to the back. The building is studier there. And the coffee is boiling over. I’ve got to get the pot off the stove.”
By the time they rounded the counter, rain was driving against the old walls with a shuddering force. Behind them, water began to pour through the cracks in the roof and pelt the food they’d left lying on the table.
“You stay here by the stove,” he ordered after he’d dealt with the coffeepot. “I’ll gather up our food from the table.”
“No!” she cried, clutching his arm. “Please. Stay here with me. We don’t need the food!”
Seeing she was becoming really frightened, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tightly against his chest. “All right, Maura,” he said close to her ear so that she could hear him above the deafening sounds of the storm. “I’ll stay right here. Close your eyes, honey. Imagine you’re somewhere nice and sunny. Like on a beach. In a bikini. With me rubbing oil on your back.”
After a moment her shoulders began to shake and when he eased his head back and looked into her face, he could see she was trying to laugh through her fear.
“That’s a wicked thought, Quint Cantrell.”
He kneaded her back while the heat of her body snuggled up against his was a damn sight hotter than the crackling fire in the stove. Even hotter than the lightning crackling around the old building.
“Hmm. A very nice one, too.”
Her head tilted back from his chest and as he looked down into her eyes, he felt something sweet and hot and protective sweep through him all at the same time.
“I—The lightning, Quint. A bolt of it hit too close to me once when I was out riding with my brother Brady. I was knocked from my horse and wasn’t breathing. If he hadn’t known CPR—”
She broke off with a shudder and he didn’t ask her to finish. He didn’t have to. He understood her fear and admired her for not falling completely apart.
“I’m not going to let anything hurt you. I promise.”
Her arms slid around his waist and clung tightly, her face buried into his shirt. The fact that she trusted him, that she was seeking him for comfort and security, swelled his chest and touched his heart in a way that it had never been touched.
“I know,” she said, her voice muffled. “Just hold me.”
Quint gladly obliged her request and after a few minutes, the lightning began to subside, even though the rain continued to pour. With the thunder drawing farther and farther away, he could feel Maura began to relax in his arms.
And then everything suddenly began to change. Her hands started to move against his back, her head tilted backward, her lips parted. Something deep and hot and primitive began to beat inside him, and with a needy groan he dropped his head and covered her mouth with his.
Quint didn’t know if the storm had charged the air around them, or if the desire between them was setting off sparks. Either way, the fire inside him had already ignited and he wasn’t about to try to extinguish it.
The kiss he gave her was long and hungry and by the time their mouths finally parted, they were both breathing heavily and staring at each other in shocked wonder.
Finally, Maura lifted her hand to cup the side of his face. “Oh, Quint,” she murmured. “Being with you—like this—is.special. So special.”
Feeling raw and naked and unexpectedly emotional, Quint thrust his fingers into her hair and against her scalp. Then holding her head motionless, he lowered his lips back to hers.
This time he gentled his searching mouth and took his lazy time drinking in her sweet taste, while an ebb and flow of desire rushed through him like a high tide threatening to drown everything in its path.
When he finally broke the kiss and lifted his head, his insides were shaking with a need like he’d never felt before. “I want to make love to you, Maura.”
Apparently his kiss had already told her what he wanted, because there wasn’t so much as a flicker of surprise to be found on her face. Instead, her green eyes were dark and smoldering, telling him that she needed him just as badly. The notion left him drunk with anticipation.
“I want that, too, Quint.”
He didn’t question her a second time. He didn’t want to give her the chance to change her mind, to turn away from him and the consequences this might bring upon them tomorrow. Loving her. Being inside her was all he could think about. It was all that mattered.
Groaning with need, he swept her up into his arms and carried her the few steps over to the cot. After lying her gently atop the blanket, he immediately joined her on the narrow mattress, then reached for her.
With a sigh that was lost in the sound of the rain, she moved into his arms and their lips united over and over in a swarm of kisses that grew deeper and bolder with each passing minute.
Eventually their clothing became an annoying barrier and Quint reached for the buttons on Maura’s shirt. Once it was out of the way, he quickly followed it with her jeans and boots, then stood to deal with his own clothing.
Peeled down to nothing but two lacy scraps of lingerie, Maura sat on the side of the cot and as she watched Quint fumble with the buttons on his shirt, there was only one thing on her mind. And that thought had nothing to do with the right or wrong about making love to this man. Instead, she was wondering what he was thinking as he looked at her.
No doubt he was accustomed to having far younger women than her in his bed. And even though her body was firm and curved in all the right places, she felt self-conscious as his blue eyes slid slowly over her.
She swallowed as his jeans dropped to the floor, then tried to speak as he shoved them and his boots out of the way. He was all long, lean muscle, a man in the prime of his young life.
“I—” Heat bloomed pink on her cheeks as she unwittingly touched a hand to her messed hair. “I must look horrible,” she said huskily. “I’m sorry.”
Groaning, he knelt before her and drew her into his arms. “Oh, hell, Maura. You’re the most sexy and gorgeous woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
Her head twisted back and forth against his bare shoulder. “There’s no need for you to go overboard.”
A low chuckle rumbled from deep in his throat. “I went overboard that first night I kissed you. I haven’t been able to think of anything else since. I’ve been wondering, imagining how it would be to make love to you. And now—”
Cupping her face with both his hands, he looked into her eyes and Maura felt her heart swell with a longing that had nothing to do with physical desire and everything to do with an emotional bond.
