Heartbreak Ranch (16 page)

Her voice was a whisper trapped in her throat. “Oh, Jed.”

“I still remember the thrill of finally getting one to light. When it burned down to my fingers, I dropped it.” The words were dragged from him with a horrible lack of passion. The passion and guilt were all locked on the inside.

“That's how the apartment caught fire.”

He gave a slow nod. “I remember being afraid of what my mother would do when she found out. We hid in the
bedroom closet at first. When the smoke got too bad we opened the door and went for the window. The fire spread before help arrived.”

She closed her eyes, but the picture he was painting was branded on her mind. The screams of the frightened children, the smell of smoke and the agony Jed must have suffered, caught in the flames. He had the scars to remind him of his nightmare. But it was the scars on the inside that worried her most. The massive load of guilt he'd carried with him most of his life would have leveled a weaker man.

“It wasn't your fault. Surely you know that?”

He gave her a terrible parody of a smile. “Wasn't it?”

Driven to move, she went to touch him. She laid her hand on his arm and slid it up and back in a gentle glide.

“You were a child. Lay the blame where it belongs—with your mother. She was to blame, not you.”

His tone was final. “I lit the matches.”

Her grip tightened on his arm and she gave it a slight shake. “You were four! It was a horrible, horrible situation, but you weren't responsible.” Her voice softened, became imploring. “Forgive yourself, Jed. It wasn't your fault.”

“It's all tangled up inside,” he murmured wearily. “Everything I do, everything I want, comes from some pathetic piece of my childhood. You said you understand me. How could you? I've never told this to anybody before.” His mouth twisted. “There's lots you don't know.” In a gesture of frustrated weariness, he scrubbed both hands over his face. “Maybe it's time you were told.”

She didn't doubt that there was more. But the fortress around his emotions had been breached and she didn't know if he could withstand another assault. Not so soon. “Shh.” She went up on tiptoe to kiss his throat. “It's
enough. It's enough for now.” Her arms went around him, his suffering eliciting an instinctive offer of solace.

He cupped her elbows with his hands and bent his head. His lips were hard and more than a little desperate. She tasted his desperation and tempered it with compassion. Jed wouldn't accept sympathy, would be offended by pity. What she wanted to give him was so much more than that. Tracing his lips with the tip of her tongue, she poured her heart into the kiss.

She could feel the tense muscles under her hands, and her fingers went immediately to soothe. His primal male flavor surged through her body, and she leaned into him in a wholly female reaction.

He stiffened under her hands. “Julianne.” His voice was a velvet caress.

“I know,” she whispered. He'd come to apologize for hurting her, but the pain he'd just relived for her was the worst kind of torment she could imagine. Perhaps he even believed that he didn't need to reach out to another person right now, but he was wrong. Her fingertips trailed down his shirtfront. She didn't want to think of him alone tonight with only his torturous memories for company. He should be with someone who cared about him. As she did. She pressed her lips to the hollow in his throat.

His body remained unyielding, but his face was set with the expression of a man waging a mighty war with himself. She was going to do her best to make sure it was a battle he would lose.

Her gaze locked with his, she undid each button on his shirt with smooth, graceful movements. His eyes hooded, he watched her, still motionless. When she had his chest bared, she went up on tiptoe, brushing her silk-clad body against his skin. A shudder worked through him and his
arms went around her with a fierceness that should have shocked but only thrilled.

He buried his face in her hair for a moment, then stepped back and swept her up in his arms. She linked an arm around his neck, so when he laid her down on the bed, she was able to pull him down to meet her mouth. He pulled away after a moment, stood and shrugged out of his shirt.

Her heart jammed in her throat. The emotion he usually sought to contain was unleashed. He undid the button and zipper on his jeans, then, as if he couldn't go without touching her any longer, joined her on the bed and covered her mouth with his. Passion flared, clean and bright, sending sharp darts of need throughout her system.

They clung, pressed, rolled on the bed. The light from the single lamp on her dresser slanted across the bed so they moved from brightness, to shadow, to light again. His hands swept over the silky camisole, then slipped beneath it, streaking over skin. He rolled to his back, pulling her on top of him without releasing her mouth. Edgy blades of lust pricked at her, and her hands were as ruthless as his as she wedged them between their bodies and went on a sensual discovery.

Once released, the emotions he sought to guard so closely were not easily restrained again. And before the night was over, she was determined to have every last one of them. With hot, voracious kisses and long, gliding strokes, she found what made him groan; what made his breath hiss and what caused shudders to rack his big body.

She sat astride him and tipped her head back, letting her hair brush her shoulders, running her hands down the sides of her camisole. With her gaze locked on his, she grasped the hem in her hands and pulled it over her head. The restless smoke of his eyes was enough to send fiery little
demons of passion pounding through her veins. Then his hands came up to stroke, to touch, to claim.

His hand went to her nape, and he pulled her down for his kiss, his fingers shoving into her hair as his mouth ate at hers. Colors exploded behind her eyelids, fragmenting into a prism of brilliant hues.

This was what she wanted from him, she thought dimly. Passion, primitive and unchecked. A need uncensored, unchained. One she returned without reservation. Her hands danced up his spine, lingering over each individual vertebra. Bodies rolled, tongues battled, damp flesh pressed to damp flesh. Sensation zinged from his fingertips to pulse points under her skin. She turned her head to graze his shoulder with her teeth, desperate for the taste of him. He indulged his own appetite by moving down her body and taking her nipple in his lips. Each rhythmic pull of his mouth elicited a corresponding contraction of pleasure low in her belly. Clawing need burst forth, a desperate wanting for now, now, without another moment of waiting. She was slowly being turned inside out as she writhed and moaned beneath him.

She was too close to toppling from that towering pinnacle of pleasure that he built with each stroke of his tongue, each glide of his fingers. And she was determined not to fall alone.

Her hands went to his hips and began tugging at the heavy denim. To aid her frantic fingers, he lifted up, and she reared beneath him, rolling him over and fighting the jeans down his long legs.

When she'd freed him, she slid up his body and wrapped her fingers around him. She stroked her tongue up his heavy masculinity and a ragged groan tore from his throat. And then his hands were on her shoulders and she was
flipped on her back. Her pants were swept away, and he made a place for himself between her legs.

Yes.
She almost wept at the promise of imminent satisfaction. The urge to have him inside her was brutal, the need to bind with this man primal. Then he drove into her, and she unraveled in one violent eruption.

There was no time for muscles to relax, for sensations to calm. With a feral snarl vibrating deep in his throat, he yanked her legs higher around his hips, and thrust harder, faster, deeper.

The aftermaths of the first climax slapped into the rising waves of the next. Breathing was impossible as she madly scrambled for the next peak. Her gaze unfocused, her nails scored the tense shoulders above her, and they went over the next shattering precipice together.

His touch was less urgent, but no less possessive as he stroked her body back to calm. His heartbeat hammered against her ear, the sound solid and comforting. When he rolled away from her, she made a noise of protest but couldn't summon the energy to open her eyes.

“Don't go,” she murmured.

“I have no intentions of going anywhere tonight.” His voice was low, with the edgy rasp of satisfied male.

“Good.” She smiled and snuggled more deeply into the pillow. “Otherwise I'd have to come after you and drag you back to bed, and that could prove tricky. I think I've gone blind.”

There was a smile in his voice when he suggested, “Maybe you should open your eyes.”

“Why, if you're not going anywhere?”

She could hear his footsteps padding across the room, the gentle click as the lamp on her dresser was turned off. Then the bed sank with the weight of his body, and she reached out and found his muscled thigh. He had the legs
of an experienced horseman, she thought dreamily, pausing to caress the sleek bundle of muscles there. She stroked gently, neither of them speaking for a long time. But there was something she had to broach with him, because Jed needed pushing and he needed prodding. He'd be the first to admit that prodding was her forte. She'd always believed in going with her strengths.

“What are you going to do about your brother?” The question hung in the darkness between them. And although she still touched him, she felt a part of him, a part deep inside, shift away.

“Leave it alone, Julianne.”

She wondered if he recognized the note of weary plea that threaded his words. It was enough to make her sorry she couldn't do as he requested. Her touch was not quite absent, her fingernails lightly scoring hair-roughened skin.

“I've never asked you for anything, Jed. And I'm not asking for myself, I'm asking for you. Just promise me you'll think about it.”

He didn't answer, and her heart split just a little. She'd always known the man was stubborn, and what she'd learned from him tonight told her that there was a seething cauldron of rusty guilt and pain oozing inside him. It was naive of her to hope, but she was helpless not to try.

He rolled away from her, and this time she didn't protest, thinking she'd pushed too hard, too fast. After several moments she became aware of something feather light fluttering to land on her sensitized skin. She smiled slowly, stretched, keeping her eyes tightly closed. Because Jed was here. He may have closed up again, but he wasn't running. At least not from her.

The scent of rose petals stung the air, and she drew in a sharp breath as his lips followed the path of the flowers he'd shredded. He kissed each inch of skin covered by the
fragrant pieces, then she laced her fingers in his hair, drew him up to meet her lips.

“Promise me,” she whispered against his mouth.

His lips hesitated against hers for an instant before kissing her deeply. And as the silken web of passion began to tighten around them once again, she was very much aware that he hadn't promised her anything at all.

“W
hat in heaven's name are you doin' in there, girl?”

Julianne started in surprise, banging her head on the inside of the refrigerator. Wincing, she withdrew from the appliance and faced Annie. The woman was carefully moving her walker toward a chair, where she sat down, breathing heavily.

“We're going to have to put a bell on that thing,” Julianne observed. “It's getting downright dangerous the way you sneak up on a person.”

Annie was flushed with exertion. “Never thought I'd see the day when just getting around was enough to wear me out. Why, it can't be more than twenty yards from my room to the kitchen, and look at me. Puffing and panting like a hound dog on a hot day.”

“Maybe that should tell you something.”

The housekeeper waved away the concern in Julianne's voice. “All it tells me is that I've laid in that blasted bed too long. Now.” She fixed the younger woman with a
steely look. “What was it you thought you were doing, climbing into that fridge?”

Julianne pointed with her wet rag to the countertop lined with the refrigerator's contents. “Cleaning it, of course.”

“Don't suppose it ever occurred to you that those shelves and drawers are removable.”

She blinked once, then turned, opened the door and peered inside. “Well, I'll be darned,” she said, wonder tingeing the words. “That's handy, isn't it?”

When she looked back at Annie, the woman's eyes were twinkling. “Learn something new every day, don't you?”

“Sometimes too late,” Julianne muttered. With quick movements she started replacing the food items in the freshly cleaned appliance. She caught the other woman's broad grin, and it elicited an answering smile. Whatever her feelings about taking over for Annie during her convalescence, she couldn't deny that the experience had been an education. When she'd been a girl, the housekeeper had never required Julianne to do more around the house than keep her room neat. And there had always been servants at the homes she'd shared with Andrew. She'd been kept too busy during her marriage, at any rate, trying to pull her ex-husband out of a bottle or the nearest casino.

But despite the aching muscles and the sheer drudgery of some of the tasks she'd taken over, Julianne didn't regret a moment she'd spent replacing Annie. Regardless of the tedium of some of the days, regardless of the missed hours for riding and the sometimes bone-deep exhaustion, there was an undeniable sense of accomplishment at being able to keep the household running smoothly. A quiet satisfaction that came from looking at a sparkling room and knowing she was responsible.

“Why don't you sit down for a few minutes?” Annie suggested. “Lord, the way you fly around the house these
days is enough to make a body tired just looking at you. Take a break.”

“And when did you ever take a break?” Julianne asked. But after a quick sideways glance at the clock, she slipped into a chair. There was still the laundry to finish, the upstairs to dust and a cake to bake and frost for dinner. But she'd always left time in her day to check on Annie, to fetch and carry for her and to stop in for a few minutes of chatter every hour or so.

“Don't worry. The way I've been feeling the last couple of days, I'll be on my feet again before you know it.”

“You'll be on your feet when the doctor says it's okay, and not a moment sooner,” Julianne corrected her. “Jed and I aren't going to let you push yourself harder than you should.”

Annie's eyebrows raised. “Jed and you, is it? Think because you've got the big man himself on your side that you'll scare me into staying down for a few weeks more?” She snorted, reminding Julianne vividly that this was the woman who'd raised her and kept both her and Jed in line for more years than she'd like to count. With effort, she suppressed a smile. Annie would be supremely unimpressed with anything either of them suggested.

Placatingly, she said, “Now, Annie. We just want you to follow doctor's orders, is all. Dr. Brierly said you're going to have to take it easy for a couple of months, at least.”

“That old fool,” Annie sniffed, forgetting for the moment that the two of them were only months apart in age.

“Once I get off this blasted walker, I'll be back to my routine again. I really could do more right now. There's no reason at all I couldn't dust a few things for you. I'm moving along well enough with this thing.”

The look of horror on Julianne's face had the other
woman allowing, “Well, so maybe it will be a few more weeks, but I can't believe you'll be so unwilling to give up some of these tasks.”

“I promise to hand over dust rag and mop just as soon as the doctor releases you to work,” Julianne pledged, hand over her heart. “Satisfied?”

“Not that you aren't doin' a fine job around here, you understand. I've been right proud of the way you've stepped in and taken over for me.”

“Well, it did make me feel useful, and that's something I've needed for a long time.”

Reaching out to pat her hand, Annie said, “You're a good girl, Julianne. None finer, and that's the truth. There's not a useless bone in your body.”

“Maybe not.” Though the words warmed, they didn't quite dim the doubt. “But I've had a lot of time while I've worked around here recently to think about my future, and what I want from it.” Her eyes flashed to the other woman's. “No offense, but I think it involves more than washing, cooking and cleaning.”

“None taken. Everyone needs to choose their own paths, and any job, when done with pride, is a responsible one in my book.” Annie tilted her head and surveyed her.

“Did that time spent thinking result in any plans for that future you're talking about?”

“Well, I could ride out with Jed and the men every day, but—” she shrugged “—he doesn't really need me to help him run the ranch.” The words struck an answering pang in the depths of her heart. Jed didn't
need
her on any level, none but the obvious. The knowledge shouldn't have had the power to wound, but it did. Deeply. Careful not to let emotion color her voice, she continued lightly, “And let's face it, Jed and I working side by side daily would be the
quickest path to homicide. No, I've been thinking of going back to college.”

Annie looked approving. “That sounds like a good idea. Never did like the fact that you quit to get married before you got your degree.”

Julianne wondered if the other woman understood that quitting school had been just one in a long list of failures in her life. Some of them she had to chalk up to experience, but this was one she could rectify.
Wanted
to rectify, more every day. “I've only lacked a year from getting my degree, but I'm going to change majors, so it will probably take me even longer.”

“What major are you thinking about?”

“I thought…counseling. I'd like to get a job in an elementary school. Jed will jeer at what he calls my bleeding heart, but there's a lot of need out there, and I'd like to be part of the solution.” Her mind streaked to Jed's childhood. Who had been there to calm a little boy's devastation at the loss of his mother, his brother, his home? Her chest ached as she thought of all he'd endured when just a child. Surely someone had been assigned when he was taken from his mother, perhaps another when he'd been in foster care and then adopted. But the adults hadn't been able to ease the suffering from his injuries, hadn't freed him from his jail of guilt.

“Don't you worry none about what Jed will say. You've got a soft heart, but you're wise enough. You'll do fine. He isn't exactly an authority on the subject of letting others help him.”

Seizing the opening, Julianne told Annie of the call from John Sullivan, and Jed's reaction to it. The woman's face went slack with surprise.

“My, oh my,” she murmured, rocking a bit in her chair.

“I don't know what Jed will do. I wish I could think he'd
reach out just a little for the chance of family. But I have to believe that he won't.” Her gaze rose, and she caught sight of Julianne's face. “It won't do you no good to hope, I'm afraid. Something has burdened him for as long as I've known him. People have disappeared from his life too many times for him not to have built a mighty tight shield around his feelings. He's a grown man. Right or wrong, he's gonna make his own decisions.”

The woman hadn't said anything Julianne didn't know in her heart, but she couldn't prevent a fresh wave of disappointment. Last night Jed had given her a clue about the cause of his guardedness, and she was afraid that Annie was right. He wasn't going to contact John Sullivan, wasn't going to risk emotion on another, wasn't going to trust, even a little. She didn't want to examine the rush of pain that accompanied her certainty.

 

A door opened and closed somewhere in the house, and Julianne's gaze flew to the clock in panic. What was Jed doing in an hour before his normal time? And entering by the front door, at that? Wiping her hands on a dish towel, she went to the hallway to greet him, questions on her lips, and was confronted by the sight of her father.

Shock held her still for a moment, before welcome bubbled up inside her. “Dad!”

“There's my Julie-girl.” Harley Buchanan held out his arms. “Got a kiss for your old man?”

She hugged him, words tumbling from her lips. “I didn't know you were coming. Or, I guess Jed said you were planning a visit, but he didn't say when. How did you get here? Someone could have picked you up at the airport, if you'd let us know.”

“Oh, I just rented a car.” He stepped back, an easy
smile sitting on his face. “I have to be getting back tomorrow. No use putting anybody here out.”

Julianne's smile dimmed. “You're leaving tomorrow already? What's the rush? Take a few days and look at what Jed's done to the ranch. Visit the neighbors.”
Spend time with me.
The words remained unspoken. She'd never come high on Harley's list of priorities. She wondered when that fact would lose its bite.

He patted her shoulder. “I would, but my motto is Don't Walk Away From the Table in the Middle of a Winning Streak, and honey, the streak I'm on is blazing.” He winked at her, a tall, still-handsome man, long-limbed and broad through the shoulders. He didn't look any different from the last time she'd seen him, which had been—she mentally calculated the time—almost two years ago. She'd arranged to visit him when he was in Atlantic City. Other than a couple of dinners, they'd spent very little time together. She'd been unable to compete with the lure of the cards.

She tucked the hurt away with an ease borne of long practice. She'd never let him see it. Demands made Harley uncomfortable and changed nothing, except to leave her feeling ashamed and guilty when he left.

Pasting a smile on her face, she slipped her arm through his and led him to the kitchen. “Well, we'll have to make the most of the time you're here. Are you hungry? Dinner isn't ready yet, but I can make you a sandwich. You'll be surprised to learn that I'm well on my way to becoming a domestic goddess.”

“Annie can get me something. I didn't eat on the plane. Got into a game of blackjack with the guy beside me.” He winked, grinning widely. “He never knew what hit him.”

“I'm sure not.” Competently, she began to get fixings
for a sandwich out. “Annie had a fall a couple of weeks ago and I've been taking over for her until she gets better. She's sleeping right now, but I'm sure she'll be as tickled as the rest of us to see you.”

“Don't know about everyone,” he muttered, picking up the glass of milk she'd set before him and taking a long swallow. “Somehow I can't imagine Jed feeling tickled.” He surveyed the thick roast beef sandwich Julianne set before him with pleasure, and began eating. “He sounded downright menacing the last time he phoned.”

That snagged her attention. “Jed called you?”

The man nodded, making short work of the food on his plate. “He's getting to be a real nag, you know that?” Catching her eye, he hastened to add, “Not that I'd tell him so to his face, you understand. The man's got a slice of mean that doesn't bear crossing.” He finished the rest of the sandwich in two quick bites. “Only people I've ever noticed him having a soft spot for were Annie and you.”

“Me?” Julianne sank to a chair beside him, eyes wide.

“I've never noticed that Jed had any particular soft spots, and certainly not one with my name on it.”

Harley leaned back in his chair contentedly. “Well, you could fight like two tomcats on occasion, but he watched out for you. Still does.”

“Too much, sometimes,” she murmured. Then something else he'd said caught her attention. “Is Jed the one who gave you the idea to visit?”

The man's gaze shifted away. “Well, I've been promising him I would. Been meaning to for a while. I wanted to come check on you when your divorce went through, but I figured you needed some time to yourself.”

Her face went set and still. What she'd needed at that time, she recalled, was someone, anyone, who cared about her, to just be there. Not to rescue her, not to chastise her,
but just to
listen.
Her chin angled. She'd made it through without help, and maybe she was the stronger for it. But she wouldn't be thanking her father for that.

“And I was right.” He beamed a smile at her. “Look at you—beautiful as ever. You're the picture of your mother. I've told Jed over and over that he worries too much about you.” He nodded wisely. “You're stronger than he thinks. I've always known that. Don't know why he can't see it.”

She rose and took his plate and glass, rinsing them and setting them in the dishwasher. It was too easy to imagine how Jed had pushed and prodded Harley to act like a father and go to her aid when she'd been at her lowest point. Irritation warred with the swift warmth that spread at the thought. The warmth won. Maybe Harley was right. It did appear that Jed had a “soft spot” where she was concerned. Wistfully she wondered just how deep that spot went.