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“Or maybe he had car trouble,” Sean suggested, wanting to wipe that look of angry humiliation off her face. She didn’t deserve to be stood up just because she was too tall and too smart for her own good.
“No, I finally called his house. His little brother told me he had a date with Amanda Clayton and that he’d already left.” Zoe stared blankly down at the toes of her green high heels.
Amanda Clayton? A babe, if Sean had ever seen one. Little and brunette and cuddly. And dumb as a post. Her longtime steady had rolled his car after a party last weekend, Sean had heard, and was in the hospital down in Durango with both legs in casts. High school dances were like a game of musical chairs, he’d always thought, and this time poor Zoe was left standing. Stork ablaze. “So why didn’t you just…” Call me? He’d have been happy to help her out.
“Stay home? Right, and tell my dad why? He’d have stomped down to the gym and dragged Bobbie out by his ear. Or maybe shot him. I have enough to live down without that, thank you. So I—” Zoe shrugged and turned toward the fire exit. “I’ve got to go.” She spun back again, tottered on her heels, and braced one long arm out against the wall. “Oh, and Sean, do me a favor? You never saw me.”
She must be just riding around, he realized, killing time till it was safe to go home. “Then how about a favor for a favor?” Her embarrassment made him feel bolder. “Could you give me a ride out to the ranch? There’s no hurry,” he added, as she opened her mouth. “You could drop me at my turnoff out on the highway—any time tonight at all.”
She closed her soft pink lips and cocked her head, studying him. Being Zoe, he knew, she saw more than he wanted to show. He shrugged and held her blue-eyed gaze with an effort.
“Yeah, I could do that,” she said thoughtfully, her eyes turning inward in that look that usually ended in another crazy assignment for him—like the time she’d hidden him in the ceiling above the teachers’ lounge to take candid photos. “I’d be happy to.”
TWO HOURS OF CRUISING around in Zoe’s baby-blue antique Mustang. Sean had held his breath when they drove past the small sign out on the highway that said Ribbon River Dude Ranch, 4 miles, Guests Welcome, but Zoe had given him a sideways smile and had kept on driving. All the way to Cortez, where they bought hamburgers and French fries—Zoe’s treat—at the drive-through window in the McDonald’s. They ate in the parking lot while they punched the buttons on her car radio, ceaselessly scanning the airwaves for anything but country music. Sean preferred hard rock, golden oldies, songs that reminded him of the West Coast; Zoe liked anything with a Latin sound. Her mother had been Hispanic, Sean remembered her telling him once while they developed film in the school darkroom. That was another thing they shared, besides their impatience with small-town life: they’d both lost a parent; though Zoe’s mom had died ages ago, when she was six.
Driving back, they passed the Ribbon R again. “You don’t want to go home yet,” Zoe said, and it wasn’t quite a question. She drove almost halfway to town, then flipped on her blinker as they neared the turnoff to the private airport that lay a few miles to the south. Sean felt his stomach jump, then swarm with butterflies. Surely she couldn’t mean to—
But she did. Zoe chose the left-hand fork in the road, which wound around the back side of the airport, and stopped at the far end of the north-south runway, where the road skirted the edge of a bluff. She parked facing the dropoff, with the far-off lights of Trueheart twinkling in the thin mountain air like diamonds scattered in the snow. Two other cars were parked at discreet intervals along the overlook. Sean stole a glance at the one on his right, but its windows were too steamed up for him to see anything.
“I come here in summer to watch the planes take off,” Zoe said, ignoring their neighbors. “Did you ever do that? They zoom right overhead. It feels like they’re going to snap off your antenna they fly so low—then whoosh—they’re out there beyond you and gone.”
“Wow.” His throat was too dry, and his mind a blank. What did she want from him?
“I’m going to fly away like that one of these days. Soon. I just got admitted to Harvard—early admission. Did I tell you that?”
She hadn’t, but he’d heard. The whole school had been abuzz with the news last week. Nobody from their school had ever been admitted to Harvard. And Zoe Montana was the baby of her class, a year younger than the next youngest senior—not even seventeen yet, since she’d skipped a grade of school back in elementary.
“That’ll be neat.” For her. For him it meant he’d have zero friends next year, instead of one. “I wish I could fly away.” His mother’s last letter from the health spa had said he should be patient, finish the tenth grade in Colorado. But after that, surely she’d agree that he belonged with her. If he belonged anywhere.
“Yeah,” Zoe murmured without conviction, then said it again, louder and brighter. “Yeah! Boston…Harvard…Everything’s going to be different then. Better.”
He glanced at her, surprised. What was wrong with her life now? She had an overdose of brains. A grudging respect in the school, if not popularity. A rich rancher daddy who loved her—he must love her to have given her this wonderful car. And she was escaping Southwest Colorado, going off to the real world where exciting things happened. She was practically grown up, practically free, while he—he was trapped here in Nowhere City. Trapped by his own age—couldn’t drive, couldn’t drink, couldn’t vote, couldn’t hold a real job. Couldn’t choose with whom he wanted to live. His dad had appointed Dana his guardian, and had never once asked Sean what he thought about that.
“Oh, rats, rats, rats!” Zoe started the Mustang, reversed it hastily onto the road, then popped it into forward gear. The tires slipped on an icy rut, then caught, and they zoomed off around the perimeter road.
“Hey, your headlights!” Sean reached for the switch, and she batted his hand aside.
“Uh-uh! Look behind you.”
Sean turned—to see that a car had stopped behind the first car back at the bluff. A spotlight switched on, illuminating the luckless couple twined together in the backseat. “The sheriff!”
“Nosy Noonan. And he’s a friend of my dad’s.” Zoe passed the first hangar and hung a hard right, driving along the far side of the building toward the airfield, then tucked her Mustang in neatly ahead of a pickup truck set up as a snowplow.
The giant curved blade blocked Sean’s view of the road entirely, provided perfect cover. “Whew!” She was clever.
“Get down, get down!” she cried in a giggling frenzy. “If he shines his light…!” She leaned sideways toward him over the gearshift, her frizzy hair brushing his knees. Sean laughed and hunched down over her, his chest pressed against her quivering shoulder. He stayed there that way, in a state of total bliss, long after the sheriff’s car had cruised past. Her shampoo smelled of lemon and a spice Dana used sometimes in her cooking; rosemary, that was it. Something soft was touching his thigh, and he thought—hoped—prayed—it was her breast.
“Is it safe to come out?” she asked finally in a muffled voice.
“I think…” Except he wasn’t. He was absorbed totally in feeling all the wonderful sensations of a warm girl sprawled across his lap. Zoe. Her giggles made her seem younger, more his own age than an impossible two years older.
She jabbed an elbow gently into his ribs, and he had to sit up. Curling one hand around his thigh just above his knee, she pushed herself upright—then slowly turned her head to look at him over her right shoulder. Their lips were only inches apart.
Every muscle in his legs tensed and hardened. Heat pooled in his lap. Oh, Zoe!
She pulled completely away from him and sat, clutching her steering wheel, staring out through the windshield.
He counted his own heartbeats, dizzy from the lack of blood in his head. What do you want from me, Zoe Montana? Anything, anything at all that she wanted, he’d give—and give gladly.
“Want to see a special place?” she said finally, not looking at him, her voice sounding funny. “My special place?”
TEN MINUTES LATER they sat in the cockpit of a wrecked Cessna, which was parked on the far side of the hangar. Zoe had claimed the pilot’s seat, which to Sean seemed only fitting. She could take him anywhere she wanted tonight.
They even had supplies for their journey. Zoe had pulled two down sleeping bags, and a sack that contained water and granola bars, from the trunk of her car—part of a safety kit her father made her carry in winter, in case she ever was caught out in a blizzard.
“I found this last fall.” Zoe stroked the Cessna’s steering yoke. “Some elk hunter flipped it coming in for a landing. He walked away and swore he’d never fly again. Something’s twisted in the frame. Luke, the mechanic here, bought it cheap from the insurance company. Said he’s going to fix it one of these days. But meanwhile she just sits here, all lonely.”
“Cool.” In every sense of the word. Huddled in his ski jacket, Sean was starting to shiver, partly from the cold, partly from excitement.
“I’m going to be a pilot someday,” Zoe said dreamily. “Dad promised he’d pay for my flying lessons when I graduate from college.”
And his dad had promised that when Sean graduated from high school, he’d give Sean a motorcycle, an old Harley he could fix up himself. That they’d ride together all the way up to Alaska, then back again, the summer after his senior year. Dreams…so fragile that a mound of moving snow could crush them. The snowbound runway beyond the windshield shimmered, then blurred, and Sean blinked frantically. “So tell me about college, what that’ll be like.”
“College…” She tipped back her head and stared up at the dented ceiling. “It’s going to be…different. Very, very…different.”
“Different how?”
She turned to fix him with her wide, light eyes, and was quiet so long that he wondered if he’d said something really stupid. “I’m freezing,” she said at last. “Want to get into the bags?”
They zipped themselves into the puffy down bags and sat shoulder to shoulder in the wide, flat space in the rear that once must have held passenger seats.
“Much better,” Zoe murmured, leaning against him. She sighed contentedly. “Mmm…how will college be different? Well, for starters, nobody’s going to call me a brain, or a grind or a teacher’s pet at Harvard. I won’t be a freak. I’ll be normal.”
Just as he had been a normal kid, back in San Diego, before Dana married his dad and lured them off to Colorado. “That’s good.”
“Yeah…and maybe I’ll throw all my clothes away and start over. No more thumbing my nose at the cowgirls and the cheerleaders. I want a whole new image—sleek, elegant, sophisticated. I’m going to scout the campus for a day or two when I get there. Before I check in. See what everybody’s wearing…”
He was so used to Zoe’s rebel tomboy looks that it was hard picturing her dressing to blend in, but Sean knew what she meant. You got tired of fighting, but what else could you do? Once they had you pigeonholed, they’d laugh at you even harder if you tried to change. If he broke down and bought a Stetson and boots like the cow-patty crowd wore, that wouldn’t get him accepted now. They’d brand him as a phony—and a coward.
“And maybe I’ll switch to using my middle name. Elena.” She gave it the Spanish pronunciation, making it sound rich and exotic.
I’d miss “Zoe.” But he nodded gravely. A fresh start; it was what he wanted, too. “Elena—it’s pretty.”
“And…” She tipped her head down to rest it against his shoulder. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“I swear.” He drew a shaky breath and, holding it, put his arm around the soft, puffy expanse of her waist. When she didn’t stiffen, didn’t pull away—actually seemed to settle a little closer against him—he felt as if the Cessna had taken off. He was floating, flying…“I swear I won’t.”
“I’m thinking of dyeing my hair. Black. Or maybe an auburn so dark it’s practically black.”
He loved her crazy red hair, loved the fact that, in her own way, she was a freak like him, a fish in the wrong pond. Even holding her, he felt a wave of loneliness wash over him. She was soaring away, off to somewhere she’d fit in, while he—
“You think that’s crazy?” Zoe demanded in a tiny, dubious voice.
While he—he was her friend. Here to back her up, even when she was crazy—and dyeing her fire-engine-red curls was the worst kind of crazy crime. “No…No, I don’t think so. I think you’d look wonderful with black hair,” he lied. “Or maybe…um…auburn? That might be an even better idea.” At least, less of a crime.
“Good!” she laughed delightedly. “I’m so glad you think so!” Somehow she’d slipped down to half-lie across his lap—the nylon bags were slippery. She squirmed around to rest her head across his thighs, smiling up at him. “And that brings me to one last little thing I mean to change.”
He stared down at her, helplessly, hopelessly enthralled. “W-what?”
“I thought maybe you could help me with this…” She stared up at him, smiling no longer, then reached up to finger the collar of his jacket. “You see…the problem is…I’m still a virgin.”
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN MITZY BARLOW invited him over for Saturday supper, the first week in June, Rafe Montana had gone gladly, anticipating an evening of hot, no-holds-barred sex.
Instead she’d served pot roast.
She’d served it up with such a hopeful, fluttery smile—fussing over the homey details like candles on the table, bran rolls she’d baked herself, glazed carrots just like the ones he’d enjoyed in the restaurant last week when he took her out on their first date—that Rafe realized immediately, with a sinking heart, that this wasn’t to be a simple night of fun between two healthy, sensible adults who knew precisely what they wanted.
Oh, no, this was an audition. Along with the peas, pot roast and carrots, Mitzy was dishing out all the unspoken reasons she’d make a good—no, a perfect—wife. His perfect wife.
How could a man so misread a woman’s intentions? Rafe wondered, scowling through the windshield as his headlights fled before him up the valley. He would have sworn from the way she talked last week—hell, from the way she came on to him—that they were in complete agreement. After dinner they’d danced, and you couldn’t have wedged an ace of hearts between them, the way she’d melted into his arms. And later, when he’d walked her to her door, Mitzy had made it crystal clear what she wanted. While he kissed her good-night, she’d drawn the hand he’d placed lightly on her shoulder down to her breast—then held it there while she moaned and squirmed against him. He’d felt plain apologetic, when he came up for air, explaining that he couldn’t stay. That since he hadn’t presumed to make arrangements for someone to sleep over with his daughter out at Suntop Ranch, he had to go home to Zoe.
Mitzy had caught him off guard on their first date. But this Saturday, when she’d insisted in a husky voice that it was her turn to entertain him, he’d come prepared. At his pointed suggestion, Zoe was sleeping over in Trueheart tonight with her best friend, Lisa Harding. And yesterday he’d stopped by the barber’s for a trim, a week before his usual cut. Plus he’d shaved for the second time today, just before setting out. And along with a thirty-dollar bottle of French wine, he’d brought a wallet full of condoms.
But then Mitzy served pot roast—her great-grandmother Barlow’s recipe. Rafe had sat there at the table with his expectant grin fading on his face, wondering if he should tell her how he felt before the meal. Or after.
Like all men, he was a coward when it came to hurting a woman, so he’d opted for after, praying with each bite of overdone beef that he was wrong. That Mitzy just liked to cook. Or that maybe she was building up his strength for the evening’s entertainment.
No such luck. Along with the strawberry shortcake, their limping conversation had taken a turn for the worse. Mitzy had started quizzing him on Zoe. How had he ever managed, raising a small daughter alone out on a ranch miles from anywhere, without even a neighbor’s wife to give him advice?
She’d shaken her head and smiled knowingly when he’d insisted they’d managed just fine. Seeing that smirk, he’d felt his temper rise. No one had better hint to him that he hadn’t done his best for Zoe. He’d shaped his whole life around her from the very start.
And he hadn’t been fool enough to try to raise her alone, though he owed Mitzy no explanation and so had given none. He’d recruited Mrs. Higgins to be their live-in housekeeper after Pilar’s death, and that arrangement had worked out fine.
At least it had up until last year, when Mrs. Higgins had fallen head over heels for the new county agent and, after thirty years a widow, remarried. Since then, she could only come three days a week to cook and clean, but neither Zoe nor he would have dreamed of trying to replace her. After all these years, she was family. Besides, by this time Zoe hardly needed constant supervision.
“But if it wasn’t so bad before,” insisted Mitzy, “what about now, now that she’s…um…a young lady?” Didn’t Rafe find himself at a loss dealing with sex and the other issues a young woman faced?
“When it comes to the birds and the bees, ranch kids learn most of the answers before town kids think up the questions,” Rafe had observed dryly. As to other issues—things a teenage daughter wouldn’t care to discuss with her own father—she could take those to Mrs. Higgins.
Besides, though this was nothing he’d share with Mitzy, Zoe was maturing late. That date earlier this spring, for the St. Patrick’s Day dance, had been her first real night out. And apparently nothing had come of it. The kid—what had his name been—Bobbie?—must not have measured up. Which hardly surprised Zoe’s father. She had been chosen valedictorian of her class this spring, just as he’d predicted. He’d been so puffed up with pride, watching her give the graduation address last week, he’d thought he might burst. But where was a girl like that going to find someone to match her in a small town like Trueheart? It was one more reason he’d pushed her to apply to Harvard.
“But now that she’s interested in boys, don’t you think she needs advice on how to dress, how to behave…how to flirt?” Mitzy demanded.
“She’s not interested. Not yet,” he said to close off this line of inquisition. He felt his teeth come together with a click when Mitzy burst out laughing.
“At sixteen? Of course she is, Rafe! And if you think she isn’t, that just shows how out of touch you really are.”
He kept the edge out of his voice with an effort. “She’s been pushing herself hard in school these past four years, Mitzy. Really hard. She has won national awards four years running in the science fairs. And then with her extracurricular work—the yearbook and choir. And volunteering down at the hospital in Durango—”
“But I suppose Zoe knows you’d disapprove of her choice,” Mitzy mused, ignoring him entirely. “I imagine any young man who dared to date your daughter would have to pass a pretty fierce inspection at the door.”
She had that double-damn right, at least. But that was beside the point. As yet, there were no randy young studs sniffing after Zoe for him to check out. Zoe was too busy being a tomboy and a scholar. “That doesn’t leave much time for boys,” he finished, and smacked down his coffee cup. End of subject.
“Oh, there’s always time for boys,” Mitzy purred, rising from the table. She came up behind him, and, resting one hand possessively on his shoulder, reached around him for the dessert he’d barely touched. Her forearm drew across his chest, and her breast brushed the back of his arm.
Rafe felt himself stiffen all over. He went too long between women. Managing a spread the size of Suntop Ranch, he had little time or energy left to go courting in town, where the available women were. And bringing a lover back to the ranch, with his daughter living there, had never been an acceptable solution. At least that would be changing soon, when Zoe went off to college.
“Let’s have our brandy in front of the fire, shall we?” Mitzy said from the counter, lifting two balloon glasses.
Rafe sighed and followed her to her big couch in the living room, which he’d noted with approval only an hour ago when he first arrived. One reason he went a long time between lovers was that he refused to play the games that some men played. He couldn’t stomach stringing a woman along, pretending to agree with her dreams when he was after something else entirely.
Still, though he believed in straight talk, he hesitated. Telling another person that you knew what she wanted, before she’d declared herself, felt downright rude. On the other hand, maybe these tippy-toe hints were as close to a declaration as Mitzy could come.
She handed him his brandy, then clinked her glass against his. “To us,” she said softly, and held his gaze over the rim as she drank. She licked her upper lip, then smiled a slow invitation.
But Rafe was stuck back on “us.” There was no “us” yet, as far as he was concerned. “Us” sounded like a matched pair in harness trotting down the long, long road together. No, thanks, Mitzy. She was moving way too fast. “To good times,” he said firmly.
“What about you?” Mitzy murmured, snuggling back into the hollow of his shoulder. “With your chick leaving the nest in September, won’t you be terribly…lonely?”
“No.” He finished half his glass in a gulp, and straightened the arm she was leaning against along the top of the sofa, making himself into a hard, unbending corner. “I won’t be.” At least, he thought not. “You’ve got to understand, Mitzy. I’ve been sitting on that…nest for almost seventeen years.” Hatching his one fabulous, freckled egg for the past ten years all by himself, except for Mrs. Higgins. “I was nineteen when Zoe was born.”
“That must have been so hard,” she said softly. “But I suppose the good side of it is, now you’re still a young man. Why, you even have time to start a second family, if you feel like it.”
“What I feel like, after all this time of being a responsible, hard-working daddy, is taking a break,” he said bluntly. “Being footloose and fancy free. Free to come and go as I choose, when I choose.” To chase one woman or twenty, or none at all.
She was right; he was still a young man. But he’d missed most of the good times that a young man enjoyed. Those wild and crazy times that made the best memories, that a man could look back on with rueful pleasure when he reached his settle-down years. So far, Rafe had had to live his life backward, and though he didn’t regret it—look what he had to show for his hard work—still…If this wasn’t his time now, when would it ever be?
“Oh,” Mitzy said in a small voice.
Good, she was getting his message.
“Do you mean to…travel much?” She tipped her head to gaze up at him.
“Some,” he allowed cautiously. As manager and part owner of one of the region’s largest ranches, he’d never be able to travel far or long. But he’d finally found himself a good foreman, and he paid the man well enough to keep him. Anse could take up the slack if Rafe wanted a week or two away in the off-seasons.
Though it wasn’t as if Rafe had any particular plans. He wasn’t one of those middle-aged idiots desperately trying to recapture the lost years and live them now. At thirty-five, he was too old, too stiff, to hit the rodeo trail, although that had been his intention before he and Pilar had made a baby.
And he was too wise to chase the girls he’d missed out on seventeen years ago—the pretty rodeo queens, the spunky barrel racers, the sassy waitresses. Somewhere along the line his tastes had changed. To him, those girls all looked like slightly older sisters of Zoe, staying up way past their curfews. No, nowadays when he wanted company, he wanted a warm and knowing woman in his bed, not some giggling child.
The warm woman leaning against him stirred. “I’ve always wanted to travel, too. I’ve been thinking about flying down to Cancún, sometime this month. Laze around the beach, drink too many margaritas, take a lo-o-ong siesta every afternoon.” She arched her back and smiled up at him then, and hooking an arm around his neck, leaned backward. “Want to come with me?”
If there hadn’t been so many strings attached…Rafe had shaken his head regretfully, resisting the urge of both gravity and nature to follow her down on the cushions. “June is branding month, moving the cows up from the home pastures…” And he was a full-time father for one last summer, before he could cut loose.
She pouted prettily. “What if I waited till July?”
“I don’t think you should wait for me,” he’d said in all truth. Any woman who dreamed of starting a second family with him would have a long, long wait, indeed.
