Joshua and the Cowgirl (7 page)

Her shoulders sagging with fatigue, Garrett nodded. “Probably buried in that drift. There should be some in the fireplace, though. Let’s get a fire started and warm up some before we bring in more.” Her gaze turned hopefully toward the stone hearth.

Joshua shook his head. “I’ll get it now. Once I settle down, I’m not going to be the least bit interested in braving that weather again before morning.”

“You won’t have long to wait. It’s nearly morning now.”

“It can’t be. It was barely midnight when the car went into that ditch.”

She glanced at her watch. “And it’s 4:00 a.m. now. By all rights we should have frozen to death in that time.” She shuddered. “If you hadn’t kept us going…”

He shook his head and clasped her hands. His eyes met hers. “I’d say we’re even.” The tension that had sprung to life every single time they’d touched crackled through the air again, until at last he said softly, “Why don’t you start a fire and see if there’s coffee or some brandy? I’ll get more wood.”

Bracing himself against the wind, he went back outside. As Garrett had suspected, there was a supply of logs just outside, covered with snow. He carried three loads inside and would have gone back for a fourth if Garrett hadn’t suggested with a wry expression that they had enough for the next twenty-four hours.

“I want a big fire.”

“You’ll warm up quickly enough,” she promised as she knelt before the hearth and touched a match to the kindling. The first spark held the promise of a blazing warmth that drew him to her side. He held his still-gloved hands toward the flames and felt the tingling pain that came as his circulation was restored.

“You can lose the gloves,” she teased. “Now they’re just keeping the heat out.” She reached over and removed them for him. Again, her gaze caught his and held. Her fingers, every bit as stiff and icy as his own, skimmed over the back of his hands. He captured them and held on.

“Your hands are frozen,” she said.

“So are yours.” He touched his lips to her fingers. “Does that help?”

Slowly she nodded.

He placed her hands inside his jacket, against his chest. “And that?”

A faint tremor swept through her, but again she nodded.

“What about the rest of you? How do you feel?”

“I can’t even feel my feet.”

“Let’s take a look,” he said, releasing her hands. “Sit right here in front of the fire.” She huddled on the braided rug, her shoulders hunched over her knees as he reached for her boots and tugged them off. “Wiggle your toes.”

She stared at her feet, an expression of consternation on her face. Nothing happened. “I think they’re too stiff to wiggle,” she said finally.

Joshua picked up one icy foot and began to rub, trying hard to ignore the effect that touching her was having on him. For a man who was half frozen, he was having decidedly overheated thoughts. Since those thoughts were about as out of place tonight as he was in this cabin, he concentrated instead on Garrett’s poor, icy feet.

Think of it as a medical emergency, he told his straying libido. The truth of that had absolutely no impact. Instead he found himself fascinated by the incongruity of a woman who ran a cattle ranch and prided herself on tough, fiery independence wearing a frosty-pink toenail polish. Sexiness hidden by rawhide, vulnerability protected by cactus prickliness. It seemed to sum up her whole intriguing personality.

As if she sensed the direction of his thoughts, Garrett drew away from him. “They’re better now,” she said. “Why don’t you check to see if there are some dry clothes we can put on, while I make that coffee?”

The last thing Joshua wanted to do right that second was put on clothes. With an intensity that rocked him, he realized he was much more interested in getting the rest of Garrett’s clothes off. He wanted her with a blaze of raw desire that could have heated the whole damned cabin. The force of his yearning was compounded by the certainty that he shouldn’t take her, not tonight, maybe not ever. There were too many complications, too many unanswered questions. He’d discovered the depths of his own feelings tonight, but he had no idea what he should do about them. As for Garrett, he couldn’t even begin to guess what she was thinking, what she was feeling.

Oh, she wanted him. He had few doubts about that. But she would have regrets in the morning and even deeper ones after he’d gone. Some instinct warned him that she’d been left once too often in the past. Joshua wouldn’t be the one to do it to her again and until he’d given it a lot more thought, he couldn’t promise her that wouldn’t happen.

To take his mind off the needs his body had expressed in plain, masculine language, he looked around the single room and decided that calling it a shack was a serious misnomer. Though it was small, it was well equipped for emergencies or for those times when cowboys were chasing cattle far from the bunkhouse. A lone, narrow bed, made up with white sheets and layers of colorful wool blankets, was pushed against one wall. A sofa, which likely converted to a bed, had been placed in front of the fire and a small kitchen area included a refrigerator, well-stocked cupboards, a stove and a rough-hewn table with two chairs. A well-used deck of cards on the table was testimony to the late-night pursuits of the last occupants and curtains at the windows suggested a woman’s touch in this man’s domain. There was no sign of a telephone or radio. The cabin’s one other door led, he hoped, to a bathroom.

Before investigating that, he opened a trunk at the foot of the bed and found several flannel shirts, neatly folded, along with a pair of jeans. He held the pants next to his body and decided they were probably an inch or two short, but they’d do. He went into the bathroom, took a shower in surprisingly hot water, dressed and then took another of the shirts to Garrett.

“Go change. I’ll watch the coffee.”

While she was gone, he found cups, then hunted in the cupboards for a can of soup. It had been hours since dinner and they needed to get something more into them besides caffeine. He dumped the chicken noodle soup into a pot and turned on the heat. He’d just gotten bowls out when he sensed that Garrett was back in the room. He turned and saw her standing in front of the fire and suddenly his breath turned ragged.

Her hair was no longer braided and the golden waves fell halfway down her back like a splash of sunlight. The flannel shirt skimmed over curves to end just above her knees, leaving a provocative amount of slim, bare legs to tempt a man. Deliberately turning his back on her, he said in a choked voice, “Maybe you ought to wrap yourself in one of those blankets.”

“I’m fine. It’s plenty warm in here now.”

Warm. It was maybe five degrees cooler than hell itself. All of Joshua’s good intentions had been shot down with one glimpse of those heavenly, long legs. Those legs could wrap around a man and hold him prisoner until he drowned in a sea of wild sensations. Images, dangerous images, flashed through his mind, lingered, tempted and then were determinedly banished. Only to return again. And again.

A smart man would go outside and fling himself facedown in the snow. A wise man would sit down at this kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup and forget all about temptation, if he had to methodically count noodles to do it. Joshua told himself all about being smart and wise as he crossed the room and stood beside her. When she turned to face him, her cheeks flushed from the fire, her hair shimmering, his heart slammed against his ribs. God, she was gorgeous, desirable.

“Even after everything we’ve been through tonight, you look beautiful,” he said, his voice husky.

She lifted her head and hesitant, troubled eyes met his. She took a deep breath, then blurted, “Joshua, I’ve been thinking.”

“About?”

“We’re stuck here for the rest of the night, maybe even longer.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want you to think…I mean, just because we’re alone here…”

“I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to do,” he said, brushing a strand of still-damp hair from her face, his fingertips lingering against the flushed, soft-as-silk skin.

“No. Of course not,” she said hurriedly. “It’s just that I think things should be clear.”

She was being so serious, so intent. His lips twitched in amusement. “Absolutely.”

“So I’ll sleep on the sofa,” she announced firmly.

“You’ll sleep in the bed.”

“You can’t possibly sleep on that sofa. It’s too short.”

“It probably converts to a bed.”

“It doesn’t.”

“I’ll manage.” He grinned. “Unless, of course, you could be persuaded to share.”

Her expression clouded over. “Didn’t you hear a word I just said?”

“All of them, as a matter of fact. Soup?” He went back to the kitchen area and began ladling the soup into the bowls, telling himself it was a damned good thing one of them had some willpower. He sure as hell didn’t.

“We really need to talk about this,” she insisted.

“Why? It’s all settled. You sleep in the bed. I sleep on the sofa. It’s only one night, after all. I’ve slept on worse.” He couldn’t actually recall when. “Eat your soup.”

“I don’t want the damned soup. I want to discuss this.”

“Why? Is there some reason you’re obsessed with our sleeping arrangements? If you want, I could put a cord down the middle of the room and drape a blanket over it. They did that in a movie once. Of course, it was back in the thirties or forties.”

“If you’re implying that I’m being old-fashioned and prudish—”

“If the shoe fits.”

“I just think it’s better to spell things out from the beginning, so there are no misunderstandings.”

“The winner of the National Spelling Bee couldn’t have done it any better. Your soup’s getting cold.”

Glaring at him, she sat down at the kitchen table and began to eat. The silence throbbed with tension, a sexual awareness that all of his glib words and her rules hadn’t cooled one whit. Damn it! In her attempts to warn him off, she’d only succeeded in making him want her more. Whatever happened between now and morning, he could not sit by and watch her crawl into that lonely single bed. It would be such a terrible waste. It would also be sheer torture.

He picked up the deck of cards and shuffled. Suddenly he was propelled back thirty years, to the endless days when he’d been confined to bed with nothing more than a game of solitaire between him and awful, mind-numbing boredom. With a glint in his eyes, he dealt the cards.

“Five card stud,” he announced tersely.

“Joshua, I’m exhausted.”

He glanced significantly across the room. Her gaze followed his, saw the now-controversial bed and returned to the cards before her. Picking them up, she glanced over them, chose two decisively and dropped them on the table.

His eyebrows rose. “Just two?”

“Two,” she confirmed, her expression grim.

They played until the cabin began to fill with the first muted light of dawn. Garrett yawned, glanced at the score sheet she’d insisted on keeping and announced, “You owe me four thousand, seven hundred and twenty-six dollars.” She squinted at the paper. “And thirty-two cents.”

“You cheat.”

A smile teased at the corners of her mouth. “Joshua, you do not tell a cowboy he’s cheating at cards unless you have proof or a gun.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re a girl, isn’t it?”

She frowned at once. “A
cowgirl
,” she corrected. “And I may not have a shotgun with me, but I would hate to have to tell Mrs. Mac that you’re the kind of man who welshes on his debts. She has a shotgun.”

“By her bed. Yes, I know. She told me. You realize, of course, that I wouldn’t be a bit of use to her if she shot me.”

“Her aim’s pretty good. You’d still be able to add and subtract.”

“I’m not so sure that’s all she has in mind for me.”

“Meaning?”

“I think she has plans for the two of us.”

Pink stole into Garrett’s cheeks. “I can’t imagine what gave you that idea, but you’re absolutely wrong.”

“I don’t think so. She’ll probably be waiting for us with that shotgun, but not for the reason you think. She’ll probably insist on my marrying you now that I’ve besmirched your honor by spending an entire night alone with you in this cabin.”

“I’m sure you’ll be the first to correct her impression.”

He grinned. “I don’t know. My masculine pride’s at stake here, too.”

She tossed her cards on the table and stood up. “Go to hell,” she said with feeling.

He got slowly to his feet and leaned across the table until he was within mere inches of her delectable mouth. “But this is so much more fun,” he said, his gaze locked on her lips. His breath snagged. “Damn it, I want you, Garrett,” he said, his voice a mixture of regret and yearning.

“It’s not me you want,” she said, but she didn’t back away.

He was touched by the haunted look in her eyes. He told himself that she needed proof, longed for it, but would never in a thousand years admit it.

“It is you I want,” he said emphatically. Cupping her chin in his hand, he proved it by touching his lips to hers. “So soft,” he murmured. “So sweet.”

Her mouth trembled and her eyes suddenly lit with a flare of pure longing. In one swift move he shoved the table aside and drew her to him, claiming her mouth with a hunger that raged through him like wildfire. All the fears of the previous night fueled him with desperation. He could have lost her, lost himself without ever knowing the sweetness of her, without ever savoring the way she was melting in his arms.

By the time his fingers looped under the hem of the flannel shirt, she had abandoned herself to the feelings she’d kept banked through the night. Shyness and self-denial seemed to vanish on a wave of passion that took them both by surprise with its primitive force of raw need.

“Hurry,” she told him when his fingers found her heat at last. She arched her back, moving against his hand, pleading with him. “Joshua, please hurry. Please.”

With slow deliberation, he pulled back. “Not yet. Not yet.”

Not until he could strip away the shirt that hid her from his gaze. Not until he could take the rosy tip of each full breast into his mouth, thrilling at the responsiveness, the faint gasp of pure pleasure. Not until he could caress the taut flesh of her belly, the gentle curve of her hip, the silky flesh of her thighs. Not until his own body was hard and throbbing with need as her hesitant fingers became bolder and bolder. Not until he could banish the last, lingering doubt about the consequences of what was happening between them and give himself over to the wild sensations that made his blood pulse with pure fire.