ONCE SHE WAS SURE she wouldn’t run into Conner—she’d heard the back door shut smartly in the distance— Tricia took her last clean sleepshirt out of her suitcase, left over from the trip to Seattle, along with her toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, and ventured into the bathroom.
The shower was huge, and there were plenty of thick, thirsty towels. Tricia leaned inside the stall and turned the spigots, planning to adjust the spray, but pleasantly warm water flew out of a dozen different showerheads, placed at all levels and angles. With a little shriek of surprise, she jumped back, laughing, and started peeling off her now-soggy clothes.
What followed wasn’t a mere shower, it was an experience, like being massaged by a hundred industrious Lilliputians. Although she most definitely had not come to the ranch to seduce—or be seduced by—Conner Creed, the warmth and the soap lather and the dance of the water against her naked skin was sensual.
Okay, Tricia admitted to herself minutes later, as she stood on the lush-plush bathmat, drying off, if she was perfectly honest, maybe coming here was a little bit about having sex with Conner. She didn’t seem to be in any big hurry to put on her nightshirt, after all.
As the steam fog cleared from the big mirror above the long vanity, with its artfully painted ceramic sinks and ornate copper-tile backsplash, Tricia assessed her wild-haired image. She had a pretty good body, compact and firm where firmness was an advantage. She turned in one direction, studying her profile, and then the other.
Finally, since goose bumps were starting to crop up all over, she put on the nightshirt, brushed her teeth thoroughly and crossed the hallway to Conner’s room.
There was a nice blaze crackling in the fireplace grate now, and Valentino, still lounging on the rug, had rolled onto his back in an ecstasy of warmth, all four paws in the air.
Tricia smiled at the sight, but only after she’d scanned the room and made sure that Conner hadn’t stuck around after building the fire.
He hadn’t.
This was, as it happened, both a major relief and a disappointment.
Too tired to consider the implications—there would be plenty of time for that in the morning, when she was over her exhaustion and this crazy sense of ending one chapter of her life to begin another—Tricia crossed the room and climbed into the bed, stretching out on sheets that smelled woodsy and fresh-air clean. Like Conner.
She bunched up a pillow, snuggled down.
The bedframe was probably old, but the mattress was definitely modern, made of some space-age material that supported her softly, like the palm of a huge and gentle hand. She yawned, closed her eyes and promptly conked out, tumbling into a dreamless sleep, deep and sweet.
Hours later, upon awakening to a stream of sunlight and a cheerful yip from Valentino, Tricia stretched deliciously before turning onto her side and seeing Conner on the other side of the room.
Fully dressed, his honey-gold hair damp and recently combed, he was just turning away from the fire. He’d added wood, and the flames leaped and popped behind him, framing him in a reddish glow.
“Hey,” he said. His grin flashed. “All rested?”
“Yes,” Tricia said, as the inevitable sense of chagrin settled over her. She jerked the covers up over her head, so he couldn’t see her face. “Don’t look at me,” she added.
Conner laughed. “That’s asking a lot, don’t you think?”
“I could just die,” she said, the words muffled.
“No need to go that far,” he replied. The echo of laughter lingered in his voice. “I’m in your bed!” she pointed out, through layers of cloth.
“Yes,” Conner answered easily. “I know that.” A pause, a circumspect clearing of his throat. “Believe me, I know. And I’ll admit this isn’t exactly how I pictured things turning out—sure, I imagined you in my bed, lots of times—but I sort of expected to be right in there with you.”
No way she was coming out from under the covers now—or maybe ever. “You pictured me in your bed?”
“I’m human,” he said. Apparently, Conner considered that an answer.
“Please leave the room,” Tricia said. “Before—”
“Before what?” Conner’s voice was throaty.
She felt a distinct tug at the covers. And a need to breathe freely.
Tricia lowered the blankets just far enough to peer over the edge and suck some air in through her nose.
Conner’s face was an inch from her own.
“I have a theory,” he drawled. His gaze rested on her lips, made them tingle with the anticipation of illicit things.
“W-what theory?” Tricia ventured, suspicious and wary and hot to trot, all at the same time.
“That you want to make love as much as I do.”
Her eyes widened. “What makes you think a thing like that?”
How did you know? Am I that obvious?
“I said it was a theory,” Conner murmured, and by then his mouth was almost touching hers.
When he actually kissed her, Tricia couldn’t help responding. The demands of her body instantly overrode conscious reasoning; the wanting raged through her like fire, swift and fierce, devouring every doubt, every hesitation, every fear in its path.
Her arms went around him, her fingers splayed across the hard expanse of his shoulders. The walls and floor and ceiling of that room seemed to recede, leaving in their places a void that throbbed rhythmically, like an invisible heart.
By the time that first consuming kiss was over, Conner was on top of Tricia, his hands pressed into the mattress on either side of her, being careful not to crush her under his weight.
“Hold it,” he murmured, gasping for breath, and for the life of her, Tricia couldn’t have said whether he was addressing her, or himself. “Hold on a second.”
She looked up at him, her very cells drinking in the hardness and heat, the blatant, uncompromising maleness of him.
A fragment of that milestone conversation with Diana flashed in her fevered brain, and a part of Tricia acknowledged that, yes, she was afraid to open herself, body, mind and soul, especially to this man. For all that, her need of him felt ancient, a cell memory, a part of her very DNA.
There was, she knew, no turning back. However advisable that might be.
“Conner,” she said, softly but clearly, “make love to me.”
His eyes were so serious, and so impossibly blue, as they searched hers, took in every nuance of her expression. It was almost as though he could see inside her mind, see past her desire, past her every defense, to the essence of her being, where all her deepest secrets were stored.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes,” she said, and it was the purest truth she knew in that moment.
Still, Conner hesitated, pushing back from her, standing up. She felt afraid then, afraid he would turn his back and walk away.
Instead, he hauled his shirt off over his head, without bothering to unbutton it first. He opened a drawer in the nightstand and took out a packet, set it within easy reach of the bed, his gaze fixed on her, blue and hot, missing nothing. After a few moments, he was out of his jeans and gently sliding Tricia’s nightshirt up and then off over her head.
He lowered himself to her, kissed her again. Wherever her skin made contact with his, it seemed to Tricia, they fused, one to the other.
She felt dazed and, conversely, powerful. She was more than herself, more than an individual woman with a name and a heartbeat and a collection of disparate emotions—she was womanhood itself, as ferociously feminine as a she-wolf taking a mate. She wanted him inside her.
Now.
But Conner moved at his own excruciatingly slow pace, every nibble or touch of his tongue designed to heighten her need and, at the same time, delay the gratification she craved with her whole being.
His lips traced the length of her neck, returned to her earlobe, shifted to her collarbone and then the rounded tops of her breasts.
When he finally took one of her nipples into the warmth of his mouth, Tricia cried out in throaty, wordless welcome, and arched her back out of pure instinct and incredible need.
Still, Conner savored her.
She alternately flailed and writhed under his mouth and his hands, gasped his name. Pleas spilled out of her, intertwined with desperate commands.
Conner Creed wasn’t taking orders—or dispensing mercies.
He ran the tip of his tongue around her navel, leaving a fiery little circle blazing on her skin, building the sweet, terrible pressure inside her, then easing off.
Tricia clawed at his shoulders, trying to pull him up from her belly, draw him onto her, into her.
But still Conner would not be swayed, would not be hurried. Conquer her he would, that was plain, but on his own terms and in his own time.
He moved farther down her frantic body, parted her legs and then raised her by the strength of his hands, took her softly into his mouth.
She gave a strangled, exultant sob, and her legs went around him, because her arms couldn’t reach. She repeated his name, over and over again, like some litany offered in delirium, now begging, now cajoling, now crying out in ecstasy.
The first orgasm was long, endless, with peaks and valleys, slow descents followed by rapid trajectory to an even higher pinnacle than the one before it. It wrung every last ounce of passion from Tricia, that continuous climax, causing her mind and soul to buckle and seize right along with her body. She was breathless when Conner finally let her rest, trembling, against the sheets.
Speech was impossible; she’d forgotten the language. She’d been transported, catapulted out of herself and then flung back in at the speed of light, and yet she felt every delicious thing Conner did to her. She was alive, and responding, on every level—physical, spiritual, mental and emotional.
He asked her again if she was sure; she barely made sense of the question. But she nodded.
Felt the shift of his powerful body as he put on the condom.
And then it happened, the hard, deep thrust as he claimed her.
Had her thoughts been coherent, Tricia might have wondered how Conner could possibly have aroused her to such a state of need, so soon after satisfying her so completely. As it was, she could only marvel, flexing wildly beneath Conner, hungry for release, fighting for fulfillment.
The pace, so slow before, was a rapid, powerful lunging now. The whole of life seemed to be concentrated in their coupling bodies. Tricia at once yearned for relief and wanted to burn in the fire of Conner’s lovemaking forever.
When they came, they came simultaneously, with low, hoarse shouts of nearly intolerable pleasure, slamming together hard, as though to become one and stay that way for all eternity.
Afterward, they clung together, hard against soft, warm pressed to warm, both of them breathless.
Tricia drifted, finally settled slowly inside herself, like the feather of some high-flying bird riding the softest of breezes back to earth.
Then Conner left the bed, returning long minutes later to stretch out beside her.
“Tears?” he asked gruffly, sliding the side of one thumb across her cheekbone.
Tricia hadn’t realized she was crying until then, and she had no explanation to offer, no way of sorting through the tangle of nameless emotions he’d stirred to life within her.
“Tricia?” Conner pressed, sounding worried. “Did I hurt you?”
She could only shake her head no. She slipped her arms around his neck, though, and held him close, unable to tell her own heartbeat from his.
He watched her, a gentle frown in his eyes. And he waited.
How could she tell him, in words, that he’d opened up new places inside her, broken down barriers she had no recollection of erecting in the first place? How could she explain that their lovemaking had altered her, possibly for all time, in ways that were beyond her power to define—ways that made her feel both triumphant and dangerously vulnerable?
“Hold me,” was all she could manage to say.
But it was enough.
Conner did hold her, and closely, his chin propped on top of her head, his shoulder smooth and strong under her cheek, his arms firm but gentle around her.
There was no telling how long they might have stayed like that if Valentino hadn’t suddenly stuck his cold nose between Tricia’s bare shoulder blades and given a plaintive whimper.
She started and cried out, and Conner chuckled.
“And now back to the real world,” he said, pulling away from her, sitting up, throwing back the covers to get up.
Tricia listened, keeping her eyes closed, as Conner got dressed, spoke a few gruff but reassuring words to the dog and finally left the room.
As soon as she heard the door close, Tricia bolted out of bed, grabbed her clothes and raced, wobbly-legged, into the bathroom. There, she locked the door and started water running for a shower.
And now back to the real world.
Was that ever true. She’d landed smack-dab in the center of reality, with a bone-jarring thunk, too, like a skydiver whose parachute had failed to open.
Of course, her body still hummed liked the strings of a recently tuned violin, and that only made everything worse. She’d given herself to Conner Creed in haste, and now, as the old saying went, she would repent at leisure.
What would happen now?
Tricia couldn’t say, of course, but she was sure of a few things, anyway. She’d crossed some invisible line, entered some uncharted territory, a place she’d never been before. She didn’t speak the language, and she didn’t know the rules. She was adrift.
And worse? There was no going back.
TRICIA DIDN’T JUST LEAVE.
She fled that venerable old ranch house, muttering some lame excuse about a forgotten appointment in town, remembering to take the dog with her but leaving her suitcase behind.
Conner watched through the window over the kitchen sink, a slight smile crooking his mouth up at one corner, as the Pathfinder sped off down the driveway toward the road. Once the rig was out of sight, he poured himself some coffee and fired up the right-front burner on the stove to cook some scrambled eggs. He made toast and sat down to enjoy his solitary breakfast, feeling strangely peaceful, though he supposed Tricia’s quick exit wasn’t an especially good sign.
After he’d eaten, Conner headed to the barn to feed the horses and then turn them out into the corral for some exercise. Brody’s rodeo stock was way out there, on the range, and against his better judgment, Conner worried. There was plenty of water, since the river flowed clear across the ranch, but the grass was getting skimpy, now that it was November.
And Brody wasn’t back from wherever it was he’d gone. Fuming a little, Conner strode to the equipment shed, rolled up the high, wide door, and drove the flatbed truck out, leaving it to idle beside the barn while he climbed into the hay mow and began chucking bales down. When he had a load, he got behind the wheel again and made his way through a series of gates and out onto the range. He attracted a crowd of hungry cattle right away, though the horses kept their distance at first.
Methodically, silently cursing his twin brother the whole time, Conner drove from one part of the ranch to another, cutting the twine around the bales with his pocket knife, flinging the feed onto the ground so the livestock could get at it. After he’d dropped the last pile, he drove back toward the house. All the while, he was conscious of the heavy gray clouds overhead, promising snow. Maybe a lot of it.
What he tried not to think about was making love to Tricia McCall. Yes, he acknowledged silently, he’d enjoyed the experience. But it had left him shaken, too, and more than a little confused.
He’d been with his share of women in his time; the mechanics were the same. What wasn’t the same was the way he’d felt, before, during and after. He supposed it could be compared to dying a good death at the close of a long and happy life, or being knocked off a horse on the road to Damascus by a Light so irrefutably real as to be utterly transformative.
He was thinking all those crazy, un-Connerlike thoughts as he pulled up next to the barn, shifted gears and shut down the truck’s big engine. There was no point in putting the rig away in the equipment shed; knowing Brody, he, Conner, would be out there feeding cows, bulls and bucking broncos again, all by his lonesome, come morning.
A light rain, mixed with snow, began to fall as he stepped out onto the running board and leaped to the ground. A sound, or maybe a flicker of movement, drew his attention to the back door of the house, and there was Bill—Valentino—sitting on the step, looking as though his last friend had just caught a freight train for points south.
He walked quickly toward the dog, noting as he approached that the animal’s hide was damp and streaked with mud. Judging by the way Valentino sat, instead of getting up to greet Conner, he was footsore, too.
“Hey, buddy,” Conner said, crouching in front of Valentino and looking straight into those expressive, dog-brown eyes. “What brings you all the way out here?”
Valentino gave a low whine, but he didn’t move.
A chill trickled down Conner’s spine, like a drop of ice water. He glanced around, but there was no sign of Tricia or her Pathfinder.
So he reached out gently and ruffled Valentino’s floppy ears.
Valentino whined again and raised his right foreleg slightly, prompting Conner to examine the dog’s paw. It looked swollen, maybe a little bruised, but there was no blood.
Conner frowned. “Okay,” he said, partly to himself and partly to the dog. “Let’s get you inside. Give you some water and let you rest up a little.”
Valentino permitted Conner to hoist him into his arms, carry him into the kitchen. He set him gently on the bed he’d improvised when the critter first came to stay with him, then headed for the phone.
A glance at the wall clock above the stove surprised him with the realization that it was barely 10:00 a.m. Conner could have sworn he’d lived a lifetime since Tricia had left the house on a dead run.
It occurred to him that he didn’t know her number, either the landline or the cell. So he dialed Kim and Davis’s place and, as he’d hoped, Carolyn answered.
Conner identified himself and asked for Tricia’s number.
Maybe it was something in his voice. Maybe it was just woman’s intuition. In any case, Carolyn was instantly worried, and there was some intrigue there, too. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Probably not,” Conner said, after indulging in a long sigh that wouldn’t be kept inside him. “I’d just like to make sure, that’s all.”
Carolyn hunted up the number, then recited it to him.
Conner thanked her and hung up, but before he could punch in the appropriate digits, the phone jangled in his hand. The unexpectedness of it made him flinch.
“Hello?” he rasped.
“It’s Tricia,” came the answer, at once shy and anxious. “Conner, have you seen Valentino? I took him for a walk, and everything was fine, but when we got home and I unhooked his leash from his collar, he took off like a shot. I’ve looked everywhere, but—”
“He’s here,” Conner said, closing his eyes. Bracing himself against the wall by extending one hand, palm out. “Tricia, are you all right?”
She hesitated before answering. “I’m—I’m fine. What’s Valentino doing all the way out there?”
Conner chuckled, though inside, he was quaking with relief. Nearly sick with it. He opened his eyes, straightened his spine. “I guess you’ll have to ask him that. I went out to feed the range stock and, when I got back, Bill—er, Valentino—was waiting for me.”
“Is he okay?” Tricia sounded anxious.
“I think his feet might be a little tender,” Conner allowed, glancing at the dog. “Must have been quite a hike, from Natty’s place to here.”
She was quiet for so long that Conner started to think the connection had been broken. “Maybe Valentino would rather be your dog than mine,” she said, at long last.
The words bruised Conner’s heart in some deep and private places. “I could bring him back,” he offered, after a long time.
“Conner—”
He sighed. Shoved a hand through his hair. “Look, if you regret what we did this morning, Tricia, I can deal with that. What I won’t do, under any circumstances, is pretend that nothing happened.”
She was silent for a while, but this time Conner knew she was still on the line, because he could hear her soft breathing. “I’m—I was vulnerable last night, and I didn’t mean—I don’t want to—”
“It’s all right, Tricia. If you don’t want things to go any further than they already have, I’m okay with that. But, as I said before, I won’t accept business as usual, either. We did go to bed together. It was better than good. Beyond that, you can put any spin on this that works for you.”
Again, she didn’t answer right away. “Lonesome Bend is a small town,” she said, finally. “If you—well, if you kiss and tell, Conner—”
He huffed out a snortlike chuckle, a sound completely devoid of amusement. “If you think I’d brag about our getting together, Tricia, you don’t know me very well.”
“Exactly,” she said, after a long time. “I don’t know you very well, Conner. And you just said you weren’t going to pretend—”
“With you,” Conner clarified, annoyed. Even a little hurt. “I’m not going to pretend with you. But neither do I have any intention of announcing to the whole town that we slept together.”
A low whistle of exclamation made Conner whirl in the direction of the kitchen door.
There stood Brody, wearing a grin as wide as the Mississippi River. His timing, as always, was rotten.
Conner swore under his breath, roundly and with considerable creativity.
Tricia, being a woman, instantly took offense. “I beg your pardon?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Conner told her, so calmly that he amazed himself. He glowered at Brody, who ignored him, crossed to Valentino, and crouched to stroke the dog with a sympathetic hand. “Listen, Tricia—I’ll bring your dog home in a little while. We’ll talk then.”
“What if I don’t want to talk to you?”
“Well, I guess that’s your prerogative. I could always keep Bill. Obviously, he likes it here.”
“Who’s Bill?” Tricia wanted to know.
“Bill,” Conner replied patiently, “is what I called Valentino before you decided to take him back.”
“Oh,” Tricia said.
“Yeah,” Conner said. “Oh.”
On the other side of the room, still on his haunches beside the dog, Brody chuckled and shook his head. “God almighty,” he told Valentino, in a voice just loud enough to carry, “no wonder my little brother can’t score with a woman. He has all the subtlety of a Brahma bull at a church social.”
“What if you bring Valentino back and he runs away again?” Tricia asked, her voice soft and sad, echoing faintly with losses he knew nothing about. “He could be hit by a car, out there on the road, or attacked by coyotes—”
Trying to ignore Brody, who was still inspecting the dog for injuries, Conner thrust out a sigh. “Here’s the problem, Tricia,” he said quietly. “The road goes both ways. He could just as easily take a notion to take off for your place.”
“What are we going to do?” Tricia asked.
“Keep an eye on him,” Conner answered, wanting to offer her solutions but having none to offer. “That’s all we can do, right now.”
Brody, getting to his feet and ambling over to the refrigerator, where he no doubt hoped to find that his favorite foods had materialized by magic, had evidently gotten the gist of the conversation by listening in on Conner’s end of it. And he jumped right in there with his two cents’ worth, unasked, like always.
“That poor dog,” he said mildly, “will run himself ragged going back and forth between the ranch and town. If he’s with you, Conner, he misses Tricia. And vice versa. He’s only going to be happy when both of you are under the same roof.”
Brody’s remark made a certain amount of sense, to Conner’s irritation.
“Stay out of this,” Conner said, adding, at Tricia’s indrawn breath, “Brody.”
Brody shrugged. He’d shaved recently, and his hair was still fairly short. Furthermore, he was either wearing Conner’s clothes again, or he’d gone to a Western store and outfitted himself with similar ones. What the hell was going on with him, anyhow?
“So,” Tricia interjected, “are you bringing Valentino back or not?”
“Might as well,” Conner said lightly. If Brody hadn’t been right there, he’d have reminded her that she’d left her suitcase behind, though he was pretty sure she must have realized that by now. “I’ve been feeding my brother’s livestock,” he added, putting a point on his words and raising his voice a notch, “so I have to shower and change first. See you in about an hour?”
“Yes,” Tricia said, rallying audibly from some distraction all her own. Her tone and her words were formal. They might have been business associates, or mere acquaintances, the way she talked, instead of two people who’d been wound up in a sweaty tangle together just a few hours before. “Yes, that would be fine.”
Frowning, Conner said goodbye and hung up.
Brody was still rummaging through the fridge. “Don’t you ever buy food?” he complained.
“Don’t you?” Conner countered.
Brody closed the refrigerator door briskly. His jaw tightened as he studied Conner, but then mischief twinkled in his eyes.
“You slept with Tricia McCall,” Brody said. “Little brother, I’m proud of you.”
Conner gave a ragged laugh, but he wasn’t amused. “Brody?”
“What?”
The dog lifted his head off the blanket-bed and looked at them curiously.
“Stay the hell out of my private business.”
Brody leaned back against the counter, in that old, familiar way, folding his arms, tilting his head to one side and planting the toe of his right boot on the other side of his left one. “Thanks for feeding my stock,” he said idly. “But it wasn’t necessary. I made arrangements with Clint and Juan before I left, and I figured on being back in time to haul out a load of hay this morning. Which I was.”
Conner was still annoyed, but the subject they were on was better than kicking around what had gone on between him and Tricia—by a long shot.
“Well, I didn’t have any way of knowing that, now did I?” he asked.
Brody sighed, looking put upon and sadly amused, both at once. “Those critters belong to me,” he said. “And I’ll take care of them. If I need your help, Conner, I’ll ask for it.”
Conner cleared his throat. Looked away. Momentarily, and with a stab of pain so sudden and so fierce that it nearly stole his breath, he wondered what things would be like by now, between him and Brody, if Joleen had never come between them.
“I want to get along, Conner,” Brody said, surprising him. “But you’re not exactly making it easy.”
“Imagine that,” Conner snapped, but the truth was, the grudge was starting to weigh him down. He was getting tired of carrying it.
Brody huffed out another sigh. “I’m heading for town to pick up some grub at the grocery store,” he said. “If you want, I could drop the dog off at Tricia’s and save you the trip.”
Conner felt a whisper of distrust, fleeting and foolish.
He wanted to see Tricia again, and any excuse would do, but he knew she needed space, and time to think.
“Okay,” he said, secretly pleased to see that Brody had expected him to refuse the offer out of hand.
Conner crossed to the dog, crouched beside him. “You be good, now,” he told the animal. “No more running away.”