Into the Arms of a Cowboy (13 page)

“I’m fine,” she called. “Just a minute.”

She opened the door, scanned the cafe, then--when she had reassured herself that the deputies were gone--eased herself out of the bathroom. “I’m fine,” she repeated.

“Why don’t I buy that?” Jess’s brown eyes narrowed to study her face. “You don’t look fine. You look haunted. Something--someone--from the past?”

“Jess. . . .” She tried to brush past him.

He grabbed her wrist, and though his grip was gentle, she sensed the strength behind his restraining hand, and the coiled power of his muscular body. “All right, I won’t ask. But I think it’s time to go home, don’t you?”

She could only nod tiredly. At the cabin, at least, she felt safe, anonymous, as if she could afford to forget her past. “Yes,” she said. “Time to go.”

Cassie woke that night to find Jess gone.

She wasn’t sure how she knew he wasn’t there. It was dark in the cabin, except for a soft hint of
moonglow
leaking in through the kitchen window, and from her bed in the loft she couldn’t see the living area below. But Jess’s absence was palpable. The cabin felt empty, deserted, and sure enough when she snapped on the light and peered over the edge of the loft, she saw nothing but rumpled sheets where Jess usually slept. He’d pushed the chenille bedspread to the floor.

She crept down the ladder, padded across the floor, and slipped outside. It was a clear night with a new moon, cool but not cold, and even in her T-shirt and a pair of Jess’s boxer shorts she wasn’t tempted to pull on a robe. In fact, she loved the feel of the night air against her skin.

The stars were out, burning bright and crisp against the black sky, but there was no sign of Jess. Cassie pushed her feet into the espadrilles she’d left on the porch and headed toward the orchard. As she passed Harry’s doghouse, he stirred, lifted his muzzle, and opened one dark eye. Apparently he recognized her, because he lowered his head and went back to sleep, his paws twitching.

She’d walked halfway down the gently sloping hillside when she spotted Jess. He sat in the middle of the large clearing to the north of the apple trees, one knee drawn up to his chest, his right leg stretched out before him, his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the sky. The apple blossoms shone ghost-white among the leaves and gnarled branches. Only a few scattered lights illuminated the dark valley below. Jess sat without moving, his back to her, his crutches in a pile next to him. He wore a white T-shirt and a pair of plaid flannel pajama bottoms, the right cuff rolled up to bare his bandaged ankle.

Softly, Cassie said his name.

He turned, nodded at her without smiling, and went back to contemplating the sky. Cassie took the hint. She settled down near him and crossed her legs Indian-style. Together, without speaking, they watched the stars. They made her think fleetingly of her old apartment in San Francisco, and the ceilings she’d painted dark blue and studded with paste-on luminescent stars. This was better, though. This was the real thing.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Jess said, finally.

“Why?”

“Thinking. I just kept on thinking. . . .” He sighed and scooted closer, until the sleeve of his sweater brushed her bare arm. Cassie was silent, waiting for Jess to tell her what was worrying him. Instead, he gestured around at the grassy, open field, scattered with dandelions and purple iris. “See this place?”

“Sure.”

“This is where I wanted to build that house, the one in the blueprints. The master bedroom would’ve had a view of the valley, and a skylight so I--so my wife and I--could look at the stars at night. I put one in the nursery, too.”

“The nursery?”

He nodded, his dark eyes veiled and distant. “When she came to find me in Las Vegas, Danielle told she was six weeks pregnant. I married her the next day, in the Chapel
O’Love
.”

“Did you--did you want to? I mean. . . .”

He shrugged and traced a constellation with his fingertip, still refusing to meet Cassie’s eyes. “Not at first. But it was the right thing to do. The honorable thing. An
d then,” his voice softened, “T
hen I guess it started to sound okay. Settling down, you know, and, well, a baby. . . . Yeah, I liked that idea a lot.”

“But Danielle didn’t take to Bitter Creek.”

“No. She wanted to go on the road with me, watch me ride the bulls. I tried to tell her it wouldn’t work. I was about to become a father. I couldn’t take those kinds of risks any more.”

“And what did she say?”

“She left. She packed up and left. I tried to stop her. ‘What about our baby?’ I asked her.” His voice was calm, neutral, his eyes on the sky, but his jaw clenched and she saw that he was pulling at the grass under his fingers--yanking up whole handfuls, roots and all, the muscles in his arms and shoulders tense under the tight-fitting T-shirt. “And do you know what she did then?”

“What?”

“She laughed at me. ‘I never thought you’d fool so easy,’ she said. ‘You’re so damn naive, Jess.’ There never was a baby. She was going to wait another week or two and tell me she’d lost it. But I guess she didn’t even care enough to keep on lying.”

Jess’s pain and disappointment lay heavy in the air between them. Lightly, Cassie touched the back of his hand. “That must have been horrible. I can’t understand how she could do something like that.”

He met her eyes for the first time. His expression was tortured, his mouth twisted bitterly. “Don’t you?”

“I haven’t told you any lies.”

“No. You haven’t told me much at all.” He chuckled, but it was a harsh, humorless sound. “Am I being naive again, Cassie? Are you playing games with me?”

“No,” she said. “No, Jess.”

“I’m not the smartest man on earth. I know that. I didn’t even finish college. I hit the rodeo circuit instead. Maybe Danielle was right. Maybe I am a fool. A fool to trust you. A fool to--” He broke off and turned his face away, raking his fingers through his hair.

Cassie swallowed a quick denial, knowing her words would mean nothing in the face of Jess’s fears. She stared at Jess’s slumped shoulders, the curve of his broad back, the thick black hair curling against the nape of his neck. Was there anything more vulnerable, more boyish and endearing, than the nape of a man’s neck? Surely not. Her heart was breaking for him.

She comforted him the only way she knew how. She rose onto her knees and leaned toward him, laid her hand against the tanned skin on the back of his neck, and pulled his face close to hers. “This isn’t a game to me,” she whispered.

And then she kissed him.

She kissed him quickly, fiercely, pressing her lips hard to his for no more than a half-second before she pulled away. It wasn’t a seductive kiss, like the brain-melting, nuclear-blast sort of kiss they had shared in the kitchen. This time he had no time to respond, to part her lips or claim her mouth as he’d done the night before. He only stared at her, waiting.

She was intensely grateful for the darkness that hid the furious flush stinging her cheeks. She had something to say, and she meant to say it. Better to get it out, despite her embarrassment, than to live the rest of her life wishing she had.

“This isn’t a game,” she repeated. “Jess, I want you to know that I’ve never met a man I cared for so much.” She hesitated, blushing again. “Maybe this isn’t a very ladylike thing to say, but I--I’ve never--” Her voice faltered, and she cleared her throat. “To hell with ladylike. I’ve never wanted any man as much as I want you.”

For the first time, a slow, sexy smile curved Jess’s firm mouth. Even in the dark, his eyes twinkled like the stars above them. “Is that right?”

She lifted her chin. “That’s right.”

He caught her face in his hands and touched his thumb to her lower lip. She caught her breath as the hard, callused surface pressed into her sensitive flesh. He drew his thumb back and forth, as if testing the softness of her lips, and the sensation provoked a thousand tiny explosions in Cassie’s blood.

“Hell, I want you, too,” Jess growled. “I guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.”

In spite of her initial audacity, Cassie suddenly wondered if she’d gone too far. She swallowed hard. “But I don’t want you to--you know--do anything you don’t want to do, so if you’d rather be alone. . . .”

Jess laughed, his face just inches from her own. His breath warmed her lips. “I don’t want to be alone. Do you?”

“N-no. I think I--”

His mouth descended on hers, and whatever she had meant to say was lost forever. His kiss was warm, thorough, searching--a question, at first, and then, when she responded eagerly, more aggressive.
How could his mouth feel hard and soft at the same time?
she wondered dizzily
. Shouldn’t it be one or the other?

Jess pressed her back on the grass and she let herself fall, cradled as she was by his well-muscled arms. The stars whirled over her head and then she closed her eyes and they were gone. The solid length of Jess’s body covered hers. She squirmed until the hard shaft of his arousal pressed itself into her lower belly, and heard his explosive groan. Cassie’s body responded, too. She felt sharp, pleasurable ache of and then a sudden slickness between her legs.

Jess’s fingers were tangled in her hair, which had somehow come undone from the knot on the back of her head. He smelled like leather, grass, rain, and also faintly of his now-familiar musky aftershave. His skin was so warm where it touched her cool skin, his mouth hot on her throat, his hands under her T-shirt, on her belly and then her breasts. . . . oh, Jess’s hands, not gentle now in the urgency of their coming together, but not like Andrew’s, either--Andrew, who had also lain on top of her--Andrew, who was dead--

“Cassie?”

Jess’s voice. He’d felt her stiffen. He drew himself onto his elbows, and she cried out in dismay as the chill night air touched her skin again, cried out at the loss of contact with Jess’s body.

“Cassie, what happened just now?”
She reached for him, and tried to pull him down to cover her again. “Nothing, it was nothing, just something I remembered. Please. . . .”

He still sheltered her body with his own, but the sense of urgency had vanished. He touched the right side of her face, drawing his fingers lightly over the bruise that was almost invisible, a faint yellow mark she’d hardly noticed when she glanced in the bathroom mirror that morning.

“Someone hit you. You remembered that.”

She couldn’t deny it. “But you’d never do anything to harm me, Jess. I know that. I’m not even sure why I thought of And-- of him just now.”

He smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “Our bodies tend to remember things,
darlin
’, even when our minds try to forget them. Especially--” He broke off, wincing. “Especially if he hurt you. . .sexually.”

It was a question, though a tentative one. Something about the dark night and the warmth of Jess’s body above hers broke through Cassie’s resolve. If she was very careful, she could tell Jess a little about that night. If she left out the end of the story.

“Well, he didn’t--I mean, nothing really happened,” she said.

Jess touched her cheek again as he arched one dark eyebrow. His thighs were tight against her own, the muscles of his neck standing out like knotted cords. “Nothing? I wouldn’t call that bruise nothing.”

“Well, he tried to--he pushed me down, and he--” She couldn’t even say it. She squeezed her eyes shut against the image of Andrew looming above her in his living room, Andrew advancing, fists clenched. “But I was lucky.”

She felt Jess relax, almost imperceptibly, and when he spoke she heard the stark relief in his voice. “He didn’t rape you?”

“He would have. But I fought him off.” She spoke firmly, without regret, surprising herself. Then again, she didn’t actually feel guilty for def
ending herself against Andrew.
She’d done what she had to do.

“Thank God for that,” Jess said. His eyes burned like two hard, cold coals. “I hope you hurt the bastard, too.”

Oh, I did. In fact, I killed him.
She almost said the words aloud, then bit her lip to stop herself.

She’d never heard Jess sound so ruthless, almost bloodthirsty. He must have seen the surprise in her expression. “I’m an officer of the law, Cassie. I can’t condone vigilantism. But if there’s anyone who deserves to suffer, it’s a man who attacks a woman.” He clenched his teeth, his expression savage. “If I ever got a hold of this guy. . . .”

“You won’t,” Cassie said, with absolute assurance.

“Oh?” Jess studied her face. “How can you know that?”

She’d said too much. She gulped, her mind whirling. “Because he--he’s not walking around free anymore,” she blurted.

“He’s in prison? Good.”

She’d let him think that. Cassie turned her face away and feigned emotional overload. It wasn’t much of a stretch. “Do--
do
you mind if we change the subject?”

“Oh,
darlin
’, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring it all back for you.” Jess rolled off of her, then gathered her in his arms and kissed her gently.

Cassie sighed happily as his lips caressed hers. “Jess?”