The Widow and the Wildcatter: A Loveswept Classic Romance (9 page)

The light in the tack room was on
.

“Larry?”

The echo of her own voice in the vastness was her only response
.

Feeling a vague premonition, she walked past the now empty milking stalls toward the tack room
.

The banshee wail of the wind, the squeak of the hinges, the crash of the barn door behind her caused the hair on the back of her neck to stand on end
.

Long afterward, she would remember the dim light spilling from his private little domain, the metallic taste of fear in her mouth as she approached it. “If this is your idea of a joke, Larry Fletcher—”

The foreclosure notice lay on his tool bench
.

She picked it up with shaking hands, wishing she’d been at home when the mail came. But when one of the other waitresses had called in sick, she’d jumped at the chance to work a double shift
.

The barn door screaked open; the wind cried mournfully, nature’s keening; the rafters shivered in reply
.

A terrible cold embraced her as she pocketed the notice and reached for the oil can. What she saw when she turned to leave the tack room froze her in her tracks
.

The boots, cracked and worn
.

The body, collapsed in the corner
.

The …

• • •

There, he heard it again.

A muffled scream.

Chance extinguished his half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand and swung his naked legs over the edge of the bed. Stepping into his discarded jeans, he fastened them on the run.

He’d been laying there wide awake, mulling over the horror story that Dr. Rayburn had told him, when he’d heard the first scream.

Silence had followed.

And then another scream.

The hall was dark as lampblack.

He opened the door to Joni’s room.

Moonlight spilled through the lace-curtained windows and across a wicker confection of a bed that seemed totally out of keeping with the rest of the sparsely furnished house.

She had her back to him, her face buried in her pillow. The sheets, as lavishly trimmed as a Victorian petticoat, were tangled about her legs. Her narrow shoulders shook in the grip of nocturnal terror.

Chance didn’t even hesitate. Didn’t stop to think that what he was about to do could upset the tenuous balance that already existed between them. He simply broad-jumped across the room, onto the bed, and gathered her into his arms, rocking her and holding her tight against him.

“Larry?”

Chance winced when she grabbed frantic handfuls of his chest hair. But in all honesty, he welcomed the physical pain. It helped him forget the emotional sting of being called by that S.O.B.’s name.

“Oh, God, I dreamed you—”

“Hush, darlin’.” Chance combed soothing fingers through her sweat-damp hair, rubbed his chin on the top of her head, ran his hands down her delicate back. “I’m here.”

The wind luffed the curtains, Quaker lace tied back with matching wisps of material.

She relaxed her grip on his chest hair and curled up against him like a kitten looking for a warm lap. “I’m cold.”

Chance propped his bare back against the curli-cued headboard and held her in a close embrace. Desire knifed through him when she draped her leg over his, crooked it so that her knee practically nudged the fly on his jeans. “The hinges on the barn door need oiling,” she mumbled.

His mouth curved in a smile. She was starting to sound like her old self again. “I’ll do it first thing in the morning.”

“That’s what you said yester—” Sleep, peaceful sleep, claimed her in midsentence.

Chance did his damnedest to relax, but his body felt nervier than a bad tooth. Her soft hair feathered his lips and her steady breathing tickled his nipples. A small, firm breast rode the swell of his rib cage, while a slender hand branded his stomach just above the beltline of his jeans.

Think about something else, he admonished himself when her knee slid up a smidgen and her hand slipped lower. Anything else!

A silver-dollar moon beamed through the picture frame of a window, highlighting the summerhouse
nostalgia that reigned supreme in her private retreat.

Serrated tendrils of Boston fern grew lush and long atop a tiered stand. The screen guarding the far corner was a veritable fantasy of hearts and spit curls. A snooze-inducing chaise sat at the foot of the plumply pillowed bed.

First the old-fashioned dress, and now the white wicker room … Who’d have ever dreamed this practical little package in his arms had a hidden romantic streak?

He ground his head against the headboard when her aristocratic nose grazed his highly sensitive nipple. At this rate, he’d never get to sleep!

But sometime before dawn, Chance finally slept. As his eyes drifted closed, it occurred to him that this was the first time in his life he’d gone to bed with a woman with no thought of making love to her before the night was over.

For a woman who was used to sleeping alone, the musky smell of a male first thing in the morning proved to be a real eye-opener. As did the hair-rough chest that pillowed her cheek.

Joni tried to remember the sequence of events that had led to her compromising position with Chance, but she drew a blank. Lying perfectly still otherwise, she glanced at the digital clock on her nightstand.

It was time to get up.

Past
time, she corrected herself with a start when she raised her knee a mite and realized she’d awakened with a fully aroused man.

Rolling her head back ever so carefully, she let her eyes wander up his tanned throat to the proud chin. His lips promised humor and hinted at passion—both its savage fury and its splendid fire. That nose had been on the receiving end of a fist at least once, and she hated to think what the other guy must’ve looked like when the fight was over.

She gasped softly when she lifted her eyes to his and found them steadily watching her.

“Good morning, sunshine.” His sleep-and-smoke husky voice reverberated in her ear.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

“You had a nightmare.”

It came back to her then in a chilling rush. The boots, the body, the— She swallowed convulsively and raised her head. “Thank you.”

He was intrigued to see that her skin was so tender, it retained the crinkly impression of his chest hair. “My pleasure.”

She straightened her leg and, ever so gingerly, lifted it off him. “You can let go of me now.”

His possessive hand warmed the valley of her waist. “I kinda like it like this.”

Vexed because she did, too, she pulled free of his hold and flounced over onto her back. “I need to get dressed.”

He settled in for the duration, looking more masculine than ever in her bridal-white bed. “I’m not stopping you.”

“Chance—”

“You called me Larry in your sleep.”

Joni detected a slight edge to his voice. “A natural mistake, under the circumstances.”

“Maybe so,” he agreed with exaggerated casualness. “But I think at least a part of you knew all along that it was me who was holding you.”

She rolled away from him, the galling truth she’d been groping toward in the dark of night suddenly tumbling into place in the clear light of his statement. To put it bluntly, she
had
known it was Chance and not Larry who’d come to her rescue.

Not the whole time—he was wrong about that. At first she’d been drowning in a deathly sea and seeking a lifeline. But gradually she’d begun to realize that the man who was holding her, comforting her, was the same man she’d sworn to avoid at all costs.

Instead of pushing him away, as she should have, she’d wrapped herself around him like a sweet potato vine. A slow heat stole over her as she recalled the chafe of denim against her bare legs and the insides of her thighs, the crimp of hair beneath her cheek. That much she vividly remembered.

And her dreams … Toward daybreak they’d taken such a sensual turn, it made her wonder if she’d only been dreaming.

“What was the nightmare about?” Chance thought it would be good for her to talk about it, to get it off her chest.

Joni snapped back to the here and now. She sat up, sickened and ashamed, and shook her head. “I don’t want to discuss it.”

He wondered who she was trying to protect—herself or that bastard who’d been her husband. Stretching an arm across the bed, he reached to bring her back to his side. “You can’t keep it bottled up inside you forever, you know.”

“Don’t touch me!” Guilt propelled her to her feet. She rounded on him, hands on hips and blue eyes flashing the same defiance that had kept her going when all else had failed. “You weaseled your way into my house. Into my bed, even! But you’re not—repeat, not—going to weasel your way into my—”

She cut her sentence off, realizing suddenly that he could see through her thin nightgown. Worse yet, he didn’t even have the decency to pretend otherwise!

Dropping her arms to her sides, Joni spun away from those jade green eyes and stalked to her chest of drawers. Turnabout was fair play.

Chance had watched countless women undress in his day. Hell, he’d even helped on occasion! But for sheer eroticism, none of the stripteases he’d witnessed could hold a candle to the sight of this nettled female getting dressed underneath her nightgown.

His pulse went freewheeling when she bent down to step into clean white hipsters, displaying a tulip flare of bottom. Then she drove him into a fine madness by pulling them up over those long-stemmed legs with a provocative lack of haste.

Both her arms and her bra disappeared inside the gown then. He had to smile at the way her elbows gouged at their cotton confines as she
fumbled with the front clasp. But he gulped air, huffed it out when, on reaching for the rest of her clothes, sunlight silhouetted pert breasts encased in lace.

She made a big production of getting into her jeans and checking over her shoulder to be sure they didn’t cup her derriere too tightly. Whether she realized it or not, they revealed more feminine assets than they hid.

Chance, his stony jaw shadowed by a night’s growth of beard, met her eyes in the mirror. It did him good to see her blush, to know she’d trapped herself in the same sensuous web in which she’d ensnared him.

Quickly averting her gaze, she donned a sleeveless blouse and buttoned it with clumsy fingers. That done, she pulled the gown over her head and her hair from beneath her shirt collar.

“That was quite a show,” he said sarcastically.

Joni refused to look at him as she folded her nightgown and put it in the bottom drawer. She’d started out wanting revenge, but she’d ended up wanting him.

He slid off the bed and approached her from behind, and she knew she was in for it. “What do you do for an encore—climb into your widow’s weeds?”

Confession quivered on the tip of her tongue. She wanted to turn and tell him that she’d outsmarted herself with that stupid stunt, that she was hurting, too, but humiliation had her by the throat.

“There’s a word for women like you.…”

She burned crimson as he pressed his hard male shape against the soft curves of her bottom, the heat of him scorching her through the bite of zipper and the dual barriers of denim.

“Women who lead a man on and then leave him—”

“Get out of my room!” she flared when she found her voice.

He stood motionless for a moment, as though daring her to repeat her demand. Then the regrets he’d held at bay all night claimed her with renewed force as he spun and stamped toward the door.

When he slammed it shut behind her, she rubbed her throbbing temples and sighed wearily, “Get out of my dreams.”

Drilling started at sunup on Tuesday.

Chance gave the signal with a gloved hand. The motor rumbled to life, the roughnecks went to work, and all systems were go.

Standing on the rig floor, he almost laughed out loud to feel the great structure quivering under the powerful drive necessary to spin a quarter-mile of steel pipe on end.

God bless America, but he loved the oil business! It wasn’t the money that motivated him as much as it was the challenge, the gamble, and the flirtation with his old flame—danger.

Most people called him reckless. But those were the same people who’d never taken a piece of fallow ground and proven it productive. Nor had they risked everything they owned on the wheel of fortune and come out a winner. More’s the pity, they didn’t know what they were made of
because they’d yet to tread the razor’s edge and walk away whole.

So let ’em sit on their safe little sidelines and gossip their fool heads off. No skin off his nose. He knew what he was and he knew what he wanted.

He wanted black gold from the earth’s belly. Wanted to stand back and watch it gush sky-high, blocking out the sun. Then he wanted to lay his grandfather’s memory to rest for eternity.

Even more than that, he wanted to see Joni’s red, red hair spread across his pillow. Wanted to kiss her till his life’s breath flowed through her lungs and into her blood system. Bury himself so deep inside her, he could feel her heart beating. Make her body a part of his and his a part of hers.

It was the damnedest thing, the way she kept popping into his head when he least expected it.

He’d had his share of casual affairs. No strings attached on either side and no tears when it was time for him to move on. But he’d never met a woman who’d fought him tooth-and-nail and kept him coming back for more.

Until Joni.

Beat the hell out of him. He’d had money to burn, women to spare and cars running out the ying-yang. On the whole, he hadn’t done too badly. Lately, though, he’d been aware of some visceral lack, some vital element that was missing from his life.

Truth was, he wanted Joni so much it hurt. But
hurt
was the operative word here.

She’d suffered enough. More than enough, if Dr. Rayburn’s story and her nightmare were anything
to go by. He’d seen the once-burned-twice-shy expression on her face, felt her trembling in his arms. And he couldn’t—he wouldn’t—trifle with her tender emotions.