Joshua and the Cowgirl (8 page)

With one last shred of sanity, Joshua found protection and slipped it on, telling her with that instinctive, caring gesture that there would be no repeat of her past, no lingering regret for her to manage in the years to come. Whether she understood all that was beyond him. He knew only that he needed her in some elemental way that was both wonderfully simple and terrifyingly complex. Those were things he would have to sort out later, after he’d made love to her, after he’d gentled her like a skittish filly and made her his own.

Damn, he thought as he lowered himself to the bed beside her. It was going to be Garrett, after all. There didn’t seem to be a damn thing he could do to stop the loving, the unexpectedly sweet emotion that crowded his heart. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

With slow, deliberate kisses he stirred her again, his own body responding instantly, this time demanding fulfillment. Eyes locked on hers, he entered her with one slow, tormenting stroke. As her silken heat closed around him, a deep sigh of astonishing contentment shuddered through him. Then he was moving, each thrust binding them together, sealing their fate in a way that should have terrified him, but instead filled him with a sense of completeness he had never known.

Watching her, he saw the excitement build in her eyes, felt the tension in her body as it strained toward that moment of pure ecstasy that lurked again and again just beyond them. Then with one final, deep stroke, he felt her control shatter, heard her exultant cry. His own body splintered into a million sparks of dazzling light. He cried out her name and then, as they floated slowly back to reality, he murmured it again.

“Garrett, my love,” he whispered with a sigh. “Oh, baby, I love you.”

He felt her go absolutely still beneath him.

“What is it?” he asked at once. “What’s wrong?”

Propping himself on an elbow, he studied her face, still glowing with the thrill of their lovemaking. There was no missing the troubled expression, the tiny flicker of panic that sprang to life in her eyes. Guessing at the cause, he said gently, “I do love you, you know.”

“You can’t,” she said matter-of-factly, avoiding his gaze.

“Oh, but I can.”

“You and I would be a disaster together.”

“You call the last hour or so a disaster?”

She flushed. “It was a release, that’s all. It could have happened between any two people who’d been through what we’d been through tonight.”

“That hardly qualifies as a disaster, then, does it?” he said, barely tempering his anger.

“No, but I’d say the description fits all the other hours since you and I have known each other.” She said it flatly, as if emotions could always be fit into tidy little compartments, separated as black or white. Didn’t she know about the grays? Didn’t she understand anything at all about the power of love?

“Okay, I’ll admit we have a few little differences we’ll need to work out,” he conceded.

“That’s like describing the Rockies as a couple of puny little hills.”

“The pioneers made it across the Rockies. We can get past our differences.”

Uncertainty seemed to replace rock-solid conviction. The wistful expression in her eyes made his heart ache.

“I’ll prove it to you, Garrett. Give me time and I will prove it to you.”

“There are not enough years in a lifetime for you to prove that to me,” she said, her tone utterly bleak.

This defeated attitude threw him. Where was the woman who was certain she could conquer the world and do it alone if she had to? Or was that the problem? he thought with sudden insight. Was she convinced that she had to go it alone? He tangled his fingers in her hair and pressed kisses to her cheeks, her bare shoulders, stopping just short of the temptation of her breasts.

“Who made it impossible for you to believe in love? Was it Casey’s father?”

Her eyes closed, but not before he’d seen the pain. “He didn’t help,” she admitted finally.

“Then who?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like remembering.”

“Sometimes that’s the only way to banish the memories once and for all.”

“My God, now the man thinks he’s Dr. Joyce Brothers,” she said with forced levity, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Where did you get your degree in psychology, Dr. Ames? Did it come with your business degree? Or was it in a cereal box?”

“Your sarcasm only proves I’m right.”

Glaring at him, she jumped out of the bed and grabbed for her shirt. Holding it protectively in front of her with one hand, she reached for a blanket with the other.

“Where are you going?”

“To the sofa to sleep. It’s what I should have done hours ago.”

Joshua snagged a corner of the blanket and reeled her back, tumbling her down on top of him. She sat up fighting mad. “I am not sleeping in this bed with you.”

His gaze pinned her. “Why not? Sleeping with me seems pretty innocuous compared with what we were doing in this bed a few minutes ago.”

“A gentleman would not remind a lady of indiscretions she’d rather forget.”

“I told you long ago that I’m no gentleman.”

“I can see that.”

Her irritation amused him. Taming her would be a delightful challenge. Capturing her heart would require all of his ingenuity and charm. Understanding her might be the most complicated—and rewarding—test of all.

With one final glare in his direction she lay down on the bed, turned her back to him and pulled the blankets up to her chin. Defiantly, Joshua lifted the blankets, fit himself to the curve of her, lowered the covers and draped an arm over her waist. He waited, then, for the inevitable explosion. Instead she merely sighed, a tiny whisper of sound that could have been resignation or exhaustion. And then she was asleep.

“Round one,” he murmured victoriously, then wondered what the hell he was going to do if he actually won the fight.

Chapter Six

G
arrett couldn’t figure out why she couldn’t move. Irritably she kicked at the blankets and felt them give, but only slightly. She tried again to roll over and realized she was pinned between the wall and some equally immovable object. A warm, breathing object. An object that seemed to draw her like a magnet.

Joshua!

Oh, Lord, she thought with a muffled moan. She really had done it this time. She had violated the single rule that had guided her life for the last thirteen years. With her hormones whizzing like an adolescent’s, she had tumbled into bed with a virtual stranger. Why? Why after all this time? Why this man? It must have been the fear, the dangerous night they had survived. Surely it had been no more than a desperate need to reaffirm life. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d told him as dawn had stolen into the cabin?

Unfortunately she seemed to be the one who didn’t quite buy that. Garrett knew deep inside that she had responded to some inner yearning for the promised comfort of his arms. That need she’d felt last night for the first time in years was ultimately far more dangerous than the passion. It warned her that her defenses were weak. She was not immune to Joshua’s rare combination of strength and gentleness. She needed to get out of this bed, into her clothes and back to the ranch where she’d have the protection of Casey, Mrs. Mac and a dozen cowboys to keep her from making yet another dreadful, weak mistake.

She would do just that, too…in a minute. First, she wanted to take one last, lingering, intimate look at the man whose touch had filled her with life. His dark blond hair was mussed in a way that would probably have appalled his barber. The line of his jaw was shadowed with stubble, giving him a rakish, sexy look. Even in repose, his muscles were taut and well defined. The mat of hair across his chest arrowed down, narrowing to a faint line as it disappeared below the sheet that was tangled provocatively low on his hips.

Lord he was gorgeous, she thought with a sigh. She tried to drag her gaze away but couldn’t. She was fascinated by the textures of his skin, by the play of light across his body. Maybe it wasn’t just Joshua. Maybe she would have been equally fascinated by any masculine form. It had, after all, been a very long time since Casey’s father had taken her to bed. Her eyes followed the line of Joshua’s out-flung arm, ending finally at his hand, a hand that she knew from experience could caress with daring, bold strokes or tease with utmost subtlety. Just the thought of those expert touches filled her again with dangerous yearnings.

Irresistibly drawn to him, she reached out a hand, but when her fingers were no more than a hairbreadth from his chest, she jerked away. No. Maybe, if she’d been capable of viewing this as no more than a casual fling, she could indulge in one caress, but her defenses warned her against that much at least. Joshua had changed the rules by declaring his love. Such declarations weren’t worth the breath wasted on them, but the temptation to believe, to trust, was always there. Garrett had learned the danger of that the hard way and it was a lesson she was never likely to forget.

Convinced that she dared stay no longer, she tried to slither through the nest of blankets toward the foot of the bed. Keeping one watchful eye on Joshua, she moved inch by inch to safety. As she crept, he turned restlessly, reaching for the space where she had been. She heard a softly muttered curse, just before she felt his fully alert gaze on her back.

“Going someplace?” he inquired, stretching lazily.

Evading his eyes, she said, “I thought I’d add some wood to the fire.”

“If you’d crawl back up here, I’d keep you warm.”

The seductive offer alone fulfilled that promise, she thought as flames instantly heated her blood. “Thanks, but I think I’ll stick to my original plan.”

“Any special reason why you chose that particular route to leave?”

“I was hoping not to wake you.”

“How thoughtful,” he said skeptically, just when she was congratulating herself on her inventiveness.

Since it was too late to sneak away undetected, Garrett jumped out of bed, grabbed the clothes that had been hung in front of the fire to dry and raced for the comparative safety of the bathroom.

“Garrett,” Joshua said softly just as her feet hit the icy tile.

She hesitated, her hand on the doorknob.

“I’m ninety-nine percent certain that I didn’t store the wood in there.”

She scowled at him and slammed the door behind her. The man was so damned smug and he had the uncanny knack of reading her thoughts, which meant it was more essential than ever that she get them off of him and back on practical matters such as getting back to the ranch, where she could put acres and acres and maybe a thousand head of cattle between them.

She stood under a steaming shower, hoping to wash away the memory of Joshua’s caresses, but the slickness of the soap and water on her sensitized flesh had exactly the opposite effect. It was as if his hands were sliding over her again, reminding her, in the very core of her being, of what it meant to be a woman. She’d spent so long in what was predominantly a man’s world that the rediscovery came as something of a shock. It was an awakening that could only lead to disaster, especially if she counted in any way on Joshua to keep that feeling alive on a permanent basis.

For one wistful moment she tried to imagine him staying, tried to envision a lifetime of powerful sensations such as those he’d stirred in her last night. No matter how hard she tried, though, the picture wouldn’t stay in focus. He wouldn’t mean to hurt her by leaving, but he would leave. There was no question in her mind about that. Getting back to what he thought of as civilization had been on his mind from the instant he’d put those fancy, impractical shoes of his into ankle-deep snow.

That meant there could be no repeat of what happened during the night—no more smooth-as-silk kisses, no more innocent touches destined to lead to something more intimate. Celibacy was something with which she’d been familiar for a long time now. There was no reason to believe she couldn’t embrace that life-style again after such a brief lapse in judgment.

As Garrett brushed and braided her hair, she studied her face in the foggy bathroom mirror. Her eyes seemed wider and brighter than usual, her mouth softer and more vulnerable, her skin a healthy pink. Like a woman in love! No, more like a woman who’d lost the last of her sanity. She yanked her hair tighter, as if to tame the emotions that had caused the changes in her appearance. She stiffened her spine resolutely and curved her lips downward. Better, she decided. Unfortunately there was nothing she could do about the glow of her complexion or the defiant sparkle in her eyes.

Reminding herself that her entire future hinged on her ability to impress Joshua with her intention to pretend that nothing untoward had happened between them, she opened the bathroom door and stepped back into the cabin’s main room.

While she’d been gone, Joshua had added wood to the fire. Now he was in the kitchen, humming cheerfully as he poured pancake batter onto a griddle. He glanced at her over his shoulder and smiled.

“Breakfast’s almost ready. Want some coffee?”

“Sure,” she said, pleased with the brisk response. Unfortunately she couldn’t control her hesitant steps as well. An intuitive man would sense at once that she was running scared. As she’d already noted a dozen times in recent days, Joshua was uncannily intuitive where she was concerned.

He was also too damned attractive, she noted regretfully. With stubble darkening his cheeks, his feet bare and his flannel shirt hanging open to the waist, he promised untold masculine delights. She was caught off guard by the suggestion of intimacy that still lingered, by the captivating web of domesticity that surrounded them. She had never, in all of her adult life, shared such a morning ritual with a man, not unless breakfasts from the back of a chuckwagon during roundup counted. Not once during all of those roundups had she felt the slightest temptation to kiss the back of the cook’s neck, as she did now. Drawn across the room, she was within inches of doing just that. Then she stopped, horrified by how easily her good intentions vanished in Joshua’s tempting presence.

“The snow’s stopped,” he informed her, turning a stack of perfect, golden pancakes onto a plate and handing it to her.