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“It’s…a beautiful day, don’t you think?” Oh, Lord. How lame could she get?
“Steph…” His eyes said he couldn’t make up his mind between reaching out and grabbing her—or jumping up and running clean away from her as fast as he could go.
“A beautiful day…” She said those lame words again and that time, she swayed toward him. He stiffened. She landed against his chest and looked up at him longingly. “And it’s just you and me, all alone on this blanket under the trees…” She put her hand over his heart. Oh, it felt so good. So perfect, just leaning against him. Her breath was all knotted up in her throat. She wanted to stay right where she was, forever, yet she was absolutely certain that any second now, he would push her away.
But he didn’t. With a low groan, he gathered her close. “Damn it, Steph.”
She laid a finger against his wonderful mouth. “Shh. Okay? Just…shh.”
He stared down at her. She could feel the warmth and the strength of him, the shape of him, so hard and manly. And cradled close against him like this, she could feel his heart, too, beating away in there, firm and deep. He said gruffly, “I can’t…think, when I touch you.”
“Good,” she told him, feeling braver now, her love and her yearning leading her on. “Because you don’t need to think. I don’t want you to think.”
His lip twitched. It was almost a smile. “Always so damn sure of yourself.”
“Oh, no,” she cried. “I’m not sure of myself at all. But I am sure about how I feel. Sure about…what I want.”
“This is crazy.” But his arms tightened around her.
“Oh, no. Not crazy. Right. Exactly right.”
“You smell like sunshine,” he whispered, the sound rough, as if it hurt him, just to get those words out. “And the way you feel, in my arms, when I touch you…”
“Just kiss me,” she whispered back, lifting her mouth to him. “Just kiss me and the rest will take care of itself.”
“Shouldn’t…” The single word came out on another groan.
“Oh, yes. You should…” So…heady. This magic. This power she was finding she had over him. The magic of wanting. The power of desire.
Who knew it could be like this between a man and woman? She never would have guessed. Every nerve in her body seemed to be singing. She was shivery—but with wonderful, heavy, lazy heat.
“Damn. You’re killing me, you know that?”
“Oh, Grant…”
He took her by the arms then, and she was sure all over again that he would set her away from him.
But in the end, he only grabbed her closer as his warm mouth swooped down and covered hers.
Oh, it was amazing. Her senses swam at the feel of him, pressing her close, his hands stroking her back as his tongue traced the seam where her lips met. With a sigh, she let them part for him.
He speared his tongue inside. She sucked on it, boldly, and when he retreated, she followed him, into the warm, hot cave beyond those wonderful lips of his.
She clutched his shoulders as he guided her down onto the blanket. He kissed her more deeply, still, his tongue delving in, sweeping along the edges of her teeth, stroking her own tongue in a long, wet glide.
Oh, it was heaven.
Just as she’d dreamed it might be.
His hand cupped her breast. Beneath her shirt and bra, her nipple hardened, aching. She moaned and lifted her body toward him, wanting more.
Wanting everything. Ready to have it all, at last, right there, on that blanket, in the lovely, shadowed, private place beneath the birch trees…
To have it all with Grant, as she’d always dreamed. To be fully a woman at last, with the only man she’d ever loved.
He kissed her chin, nipping it, whispering her name against her eager flesh. He kissed the side of her neck, opening his mouth there, licking her skin, making her shiver in the most delicious way…
He kissed the hollow of her throat and she stretched her neck back, spearing her fingers into his hair, cupping his head and cradling him close, urging him to kiss her some more, to keep on kissing her.
To never stop.
“Oh, Grant,” she whispered, “Oh, Grant. Yes. Please. Yes…”
His warm hand trailed downward. She wanted… more.
To be closer, to have his hand there, where she was aching and yearning, hot and eager. To have him, completely. To be with him in the most passionate, intimate way.
She moaned his name again.
And then, out of nowhere, for no reason at all…he tore himself away from her. With a low groan, and a guttural, “No!” he was gone.
“Grant?” She opened her eyes to see him sitting back on his bent legs, his strong hands on his knees, face flushed, mouth swollen, eyes heavy with the same need that made her legs and arms feel weighted, that made her body so lazy and hungry and hot. She lifted yearning arms to him. “Come back here. Back here to me…”
He swore. “No. This is all wrong. I didn’t come here for this.”
“But I don’t…”
“Damn it, Steph. Listen. Listen to me.”
Stunned, punch-drunk with longing, she dragged herself to a sitting position. “I don’t understand. What’s the matter? What happened?”
He rocked back on his stocking feet and rose above her. She stared up at him, so tall and strong, glaring down at her, the leaves of the birches rustling above his head, the blue, clear sky beyond…
A sudden chill swept through her. She wrapped her arms around herself against a cold that came from deep inside. “What? Say it. Whatever it is, just please, say it. Now.”
And at last, he did. “I came out here to tell you I’m selling Clifton’s Pride.”
Chapter Five
Grant stared down into her flushed, bewildered face. Right then, there were no words to describe how thoroughly he despised himself. As he watched, the hectic color drained from her cheeks and her mouth formed a round, shocked O.
On a husk of breath, she pleaded, “No…”
He forced a nod. “Yeah. It’s true. I’m selling the ranch.”
She gaped some more, then whispered, “When?”
“I’m signing the contract today, at four-thirty.”
She swallowed, caught her upper lip between her teeth, worried it, let it go. “Today.”
“That’s right.”
“When…do we have to be out?”
“By the end of August. The new owner wants to take possession September first.”
She seemed to consider that for a moment. “Not quite two months, then… Who?”
“What?”
“Who will be the new owner?”
“Her name’s Melanie McFarlane. From out of town. She wants to make it a guest ranch.”
“A guest ranch,” she repeated as if the very words made her sick.
Grant felt like something squirming and loathsome, something you’d find buried in sour soil under a giant rock. He made himself confess the rest. “I meant to tell you Sunday,” he said, as if that mattered. As if that made any difference at all.
“Oh,” she said. “You meant to tell us. But you… forgot?”
“I was…distracted.”
Color stained her cheeks again and he knew that she knew why he hadn’t. Because he’d seen her down by the creek, seen her as a woman for the first time. Because his senses, his mind, all of him, had been filled with her. No room left to remember what he should have done.
She hitched in a hard breath. “Distracted. By me?”
“Yeah.”
“And again, today, right? It’s all my fault…”
“I didn’t say that. Of course, it’s not your fault.”
“You met me here to tell me you were selling the ranch. And I distracted you again.”
“No. Wait. You’re getting it all wrong. There’s no excuse for my not telling you. I know there’s not. I’m not blaming you.”
She only stared at him. And he saw it all, his own complete culpability, right there in her upturned face, in those amazing leaf-green eyes of hers: the kiss on Sunday. And worse than that, what he’d almost done just now, out in the open beneath birches, where anyone might ride by and see them. He’d been too busy kissing her to tell her the thing she most needed to know, too absorbed in the feel and the taste of her, too stupefied by his own lust for her, to be straight with her.
His throat felt like two angry hands were squeezing it. Still, roughly, he made himself say the things he’d planned to say before he made such a complete mockery of her innocent trust in him. “It’s time to move on. To let go of the past. The world is changing, Steph. The day of the small, family ranch is over. Thunder Canyon isn’t the sleepy mountain town it once was. Growth and change are inevitable and we all need to get with the program, we need to—”
She put up a hand. “Wait.”
“Uh. What?”
“Don’t give me a load of that progress crap, please. The last couple of years, it’s about all I’ve heard. I don’t need to hear anymore. Bottom line is you’re selling Clifton’s Pride. I get it. It’s your ranch, after all, and your choice to make. You can let that buyer of yours turn a fine working ranch into some silly showplace where city people can play at being cowboys if you want to.”
He winced. “Look. What matters is, you’re going to be okay. I’ll see to it, I swear to you, we’ll get you a good job. Your mom, too…and I meant what I said about college. If you think you might change your mind, now you’ll be leaving the ranch, I’ll be glad to foot the bill…”
She just sat there, staring up at him. It was damned unnerving. He couldn’t tell what she might be thinking—he only knew it wasn’t good.
After the silence stretched out for way too long, she finally asked, “Well. Are you done?”
“I…” Hell. What more was there to say? “Yeah. I’m done.”
“Great.” She grabbed her boots from the edge of the blanket and yanked them on. Then she settled her hat on her head, gathered her legs under her and stood.
“Put your boots on,” she said in a voice so controlled it made him want to grab her and shake her and beg her to yell at him, to go ahead and get it out, tell him exactly what she thought of him. After all, it couldn’t be worse than what he thought of himself.
But he didn’t grab her. He knew if he did, he’d only try to kiss her again.
God. He was low. Lower than low.
He sat, put his hat on and then his boots.
She asked in a tone that was heartbreakingly civil, “Now, would you please get off the blanket so I can roll it up?”
He glanced at his Rolex. There was time—to ride to the ranch, say what needed saying—and get back to his office by four-thirty to meet Eva. He grabbed his beer and gulped the rest of it down, then shook out the can and crushed it.
She took it from him and put it in her saddlebags. He rolled the blanket. She took that from him, too, and tied it behind her saddle.
They mounted up.
“See you tomorrow,” she said, her clean-scrubbed, beautiful face absolutely expressionless.
“Uh. Tomorrow?”
She looked at him as if she wondered where he’d put his brains. “It’s the Fourth, remember? The parade?”
That’s right. Every year, the town put on an Independence Day parade. They’d both agreed to ride the resort’s float. Terrific. Another opportunity for her to treat him like the pond scum he was. “Of course, I remember.”
Something flashed in her eyes. He couldn’t read the emotion. Anger? Hurt? Some bleak combination of both? He didn’t know.
He felt like a stranger, an interloper, someone evil and cruel. And still, even now, when she looked at him as if she didn’t know him, didn’t want to know him, he only wanted to drag her right off that mare of hers and into his hungry arms. He wanted to touch her all over, to take off her shirt and her jeans and her boots, to strip her naked and finish what they’d started a little while ago.
She tightened her knees on Trixiebelle and off she went. Grant shook himself and urged Titan to follow.
Steph reined in and leveled a far too patient look at him. “In case you’ve forgotten, the resort’s that way.”
“I’m going with you.”
She blew out a hard breath. “Haven’t you done enough?”
“I have to tell them.”
“No, you don’t. I’ll do it.”
“No. That wouldn’t be right.”
