The Color of Forever: Book Two: Forever Cowboys Series (5 page)

But, she told herself sternly, nap time could wait at least until after she made a stab at the first chapter of her book.

Marielle had internet service of a sorts via satellite here at the cabin, but the bandwidth usage was capped and Sam didn’t want to use it all up on her writing, preferring to save most of the allotted amount to watch a little television in the evenings. Besides, she had buckled down and done all the research she needed for the book before leaving New York, so the word processor in her Microsoft program would suffice for her writing needs.

She would get started as soon as she finished her tea. In the meantime, her thoughts drifted to Ben Connors and the time she had spent with him today.

Lord, he was good looking! He was handsome in a movie star or male model sort of way although his features were rugged and masculine. All in all, Ben’s looks were distinctive and added up to a total package that was extremely appealing. She knew guys back in the city who would kill for Ben’s muscles and physique.

His almost white blonde hair was cut fairly short, very thick and straight. The contrast between his light hair and dark eyebrows, not to mention those ridiculously long, thick dark eyelashes, was striking. She had already noted the slight hump in his nose that indicated evidence of a break at some point in his life. But instead of detracting from his looks, it enhanced them. His lips were full and had a sensuous shape.

Sam indulged in a brief daydream of those lips claiming hers in a passionate kiss, telling herself it wouldn’t be long before she experienced Ben’s kisses for real.

Moving on with her mental assessment of his face and body, she couldn’t overlook the potent attraction of those charming dimples that came into play when he smiled. His chin was firm and he had a strong jaw, always a plus in a man. Last but not least were those amazing eyes!

Samantha sighed. Oh, those eyes. She had tried to study them surreptitiously this morning during their trip to see the eagle’s nest in an attempt to definitely identify their color. She had decided at one point that they were gray. But then they seemed to change and be a cool shade of pale blue. Then she looked again and thought she saw flecks of gold in them. Or green, maybe.

She was perplexed, never having encountered a pair of eyes that seemed to change color like Ben’s. He had the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen in another human being and even if she couldn’t pin down their exact color, they were some kind of wonderful!

Surprisingly, Samantha had enjoyed seeing the eagle’s nest more than she had expected to. That wasn’t her kind of thing and her primary reason for agreeing to go had been to spend time with the sexy game warden/cowboy. Still, she could see how people who were into the whole nature and wildlife scene would find it fascinating.

A small frown clouded her features as she recalled what Ben had told her about poachers. Honestly, how awful of people to kill those magnificent birds and steal their eggs! Poaching probably wasn’t much of a problem in the city. Did New York City even have a game warden? If she had to hazard a guess, she would say no. She shook her head, reflecting that this sojourn in Wyoming was an eye opener in many ways as well as a learning experience.

No longer than she had been here, Samantha was already forced to think about things she had never thought about before. Like protecting eagles, for example. She smiled, imagining introducing that topic into the conversation at a cocktail party or club.

People would think she had lost her mind. The general conversation was usually about light, inconsequential things such as the latest gossip making the rounds about town or which art gallery was showing works of a new and interesting painter and more along those lines. Sometimes the talk turned to music, Broadway plays, movies or restaurants.

But for the most part Samantha’s friends and acquaintances didn’t delve too deeply, if at all, into the things that Ben dealt with every day in his job. She couldn’t see him fitting into her circle. He was awesome out here in the mountains, no doubt about it. But he would be a fish out of water in her world.

Still, she told herself, brightening, whether or not he would fit into her world was irrelevant since he wouldn’t need to try and adapt to life in the fast lane. She was in
his
world for the time being and her game plan was to make the most of the time she spent there.

It would make a great book title, she told herself, chuckling.
The Seduction of Ben Connors.
Yeah, that had a nice ring to it. Samantha had never thought of herself as a seductress before since she was ordinarily the one being seduced. But the concept appealed

to her and she thought she would make a darned good seductress. Who knows? She might practice her seductive wiles and hone her skills on Ben in case she ever ran into some other man she wanted to use them on.

Samantha prided herself on being a thoroughly modern woman. The time honored concept of men being the pursuers was old hat, in her book. Modern females should feel free to go after a man they liked and desired, just the same as men did and had been doing for centuries. Why wait by the phone for a man to call you or play the demure maiden and wait for him to make the first move toward the bedroom?

If a 21st century woman wanted to get to know a guy better, she could call him. If she was ready to get physical, she should consider herself at liberty to make her feelings known to the object of her desire.

Speaking of desire, in all of her 31 years Samantha didn’t know when she had run across a member of the opposite sex who had the effect on her that Ben Connors did.

Despite his Mr. Nice Guy demeanor and gentlemanly manners, he had a potent, raw sexual appeal that shifted her raging hormones into overdrive. Everything about him turned her on. Even his voice was sexy! Deep but not gruff, Ben’s voice was mellow and well modulated. He had played his guitar and sung a few songs at Marielle’s and Trey’s wedding, and Samantha recalled now what a beautiful singing voice he had.

Face it, Sam, she told herself, the man is nearly perfect.

But she had believed that about men before and been bitterly disappointed every time when she learned that far from being perfect, they either had some serious flaws or simply weren’t into her. She didn’t expect a man to be perfect. Not really. She knew that no human being was 100% perfect, including herself.

Still, one of the guys she had dated for a while that seemed like a great catch had turned out to have a weird fascination for women’s lingerie. He had bought Samantha several pieces of frou-frou lingerie and sexy panties, which didn’t strike her as particularly bizarre. It was when he showed up with matching frilly babydoll nighties for the two of them that things felt weird. To her, anyway. He had been offended and defensive at her refusal to play dress up with him, saying that his predilection for women’s underwear wasn’t unnatural or strange.

Sam was pretty broad minded and basically felt that whatever two consenting adults wanted to do in the privacy of the bedroom was fine, provided nobody got hurt. She knew that there were men who liked wearing women’s clothing, including lingerie, and wasn’t judgmental about it. However, she had discovered with that particular boyfriend that when it came to her own intimate relationships, wearing matching undies was a little out of her comfort zone.

One guy had seemed like the sum total of everything every red blooded female was looking for in a male: handsome, great job, sense of humor, courteous, kind etc. etc.

She had dated him for almost a year and wasn’t surprised when he proposed to her as they had never had a serious disagreement and were very much in sync, especially sexually. She always had fun when she was with him and he appeared to be head over heels in love with her.

Then the other shoe dropped.

About a month before the wedding, Sam had taken off work early unexpectedly when a client canceled their meeting, and decided to put the extra time to good use by packing up some of her fiancee’s things that would be moved to her larger apartment when they married.

He was still at work, but she had a key so that wasn’t a problem. As soon as she unlocked the door and stepped inside his apartment, she heard strange noises coming from the bedroom. They sounded like loud smacks, like a belt or something similar hitting flesh, as though someone were being beaten. Oh no! Her first thought was that her poor fiancee was the victim of a break-in and was being tortured.

Her heart in her throat, badly frightened but determined to try and rescue him, she crept to the bedroom door and flung it open.

Someone was being whipped with a wide leather belt and that someone was her fiancee. But from the look of intense pleasure on his face before he saw her, he seemed to be enjoying it and definitely not an unwilling victim. The woman brandishing the belt and administering the whipping was clad in nothing but thigh high black boots as she stood over the bed where Samantha’s fiancee lay spreadeagled. His wrists and ankles were loosely tied with scarves to each post of the four poster bed.

At her gasp of shock and surprise, he looked flabbergasted. “I … I didn’t expect you this early,” he had stammered.

Obviously.

The woman was a prostitute who specialized in S&M, bondage and that sort of kinky sex. Sam’s fiancee had hastily explained that she meant nothing to him and it was solely a business arrangement. He said this was the only way he truly enjoyed sex and hoped that after they were married Samantha could accommodate his tastes, eliminating the expense of hookers.

Ummm … NO.

She knew that many people found bondage and sadomasochistic sex thrilling. But she wasn’t one of them. No, she hadn’t tried it but nor did she intend to. Everybody that wanted a little spanky-spanky with their hanky-panky was welcome to it. Personally, Sam didn’t want any pain with her pleasure.

In her opinion, someone had hit the nail on the head about the best seller
50 Shades of Gray
with the opinion that the only thing that made it erotic was the hero being a billionaire. If he had lived in a trailer park, it would have been a Criminal Minds episode.

So, that was the end of the engagement and she thanked her lucky stars that she found out about her husband-to-be’s passion for pain in time to call off the wedding. If not, their marriage would have
really
been a case of tying the knot—in more ways than one.

While Samantha didn’t begrudge her ex-intended the right to indulge his sexual preferences, they simply weren’t her cup of tea.

Then there was the boyfriend who, when their relationship progressed to a point where marriage might be the next logical step, informed her that he didn’t want to use any method of birth control. He wanted a large family, he said. A baby every year would be the ideal. For who? Sam had been stunned. Not ideal for her, certainly.

She had no desire to be the Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe. She wasn’t even convinced that she wanted to have any children at all, let alone a small army of them. After their mother died, Sam’s policeman father had gone into deep mourning and never come out of it. Never much of a drinker, he had sought solace for his grief in a whiskey bottle, spending most of his spare time at the local bar where other law enforcement officers hung out.

So absorbed in the death of his beloved wife, he hadn’t been able to see what he still had … two daughters that loved and needed him. Who needed him even more since the loss of their mother left such a big hole to be filled. He had ended up driving his car into an embankment while drunk and all who knew him, including the daughters he left behind, wondered if his death was an accident or suicide.

Looking back on it, Samantha knew that her sister Maeve had been the glue that held them together after Mom died and then after their dad was gone, too. Try as she might, Maeve wasn’t able to put the pieces of a happy life back together for their father, but she had been the bond that stabilized a very small but close knit family unit for Samantha. Maeve had been her rock and still was. Sam had the comfort of knowing that she could go to her big sister with any problem, large or small, and find someone ready and willing to listen to her.

Her sister didn’t always approve of Samantha’s lifestyle and often expressed her wish that marriage and a family figured more prominently in her younger sister’s plans. But she never lectured or tried to influence Sam in any way. Maeve knew that while Samantha might enjoy being footloose and fancy free, she wasn’t into anything as drastic as recreational drugs, excessive drinking or outright promiscuity.

Also, having been the recipient of her little sister’s tales of failed relationships and perfect men that turned out to be anything but … Maeve understood what had made Samantha the skeptic she had become regarding love and happily ever after.

Samantha supposed that a shrink might say she had relationship issues with men because her father had basically bailed on them and this had undermined her ability to trust the opposite sex or form a lasting commitment. And maybe there was more than a little truth to that theory. Still, for whatever reason, she had come to believe more and more that true love and a happy ending just wasn’t in the cards for her.

Believing that, she had decided to make the best of it and enjoy her unmarried status to the max. After all, if she was destined to be always a bridesmaid and never a bride, she ought to wring as much enjoyment from it as possible.