Joss knew that she shouldn’t be kissing Jace.
She was almost thirty, for crying out loud. Old enough to know that nothing messed up a perfectly great friendship as fast as sex could. And what did sex start with?
Kisses.
Kisses like this one. Slow, delicious kisses. Kisses that began so gently, with Jace’s wonderful soft mouth just barely brushing hers, with the warmth of his big, lean body so close, but not quite making contact with hers.
Yet.
Kisses that led to touching—oh, yes.
Touching just like Jace was doing right now, his big hands cradling her face, holding her mouth up to him. Wonderful hands he had, strong and slightly callused, and warm.
So warm...
He let them wander.
She knew that he would. She welcomed the slow twin caresses along the sides of her neck as his fingers skimmed downward. Oh, she could easily get used to this, to kissing Jace.
For five whole years, she’d never kissed anyone but Kenny. Really, what had she been thinking?
She’d been missing out, big time.
Jace clasped her shoulders. His lips moved on hers, coaxing. She knew what he wanted.
She wanted it, too. She parted her lips for him and let him inside.
He groaned, a soft, low, pleasured sort of sound. She felt it, too. The beginnings of arousal. Already, her body was kind of melty and heavy in the most lovely, delicious sort of way.
She swayed against him and he gathered her in.
Oh. Yes. Perfect. Her breasts were now pressed against his hard chest. They ached, a little, already. A good, rich, exciting ache. An ache that promised to deepen in the best sense of the word.
His arms were nice and tight around her and she felt cherished and safe and very, very good. And his tongue was doing beautiful things inside her mouth, stroking, exploring. Learning all her secrets—well, a few of them at least.
He lifted his mouth from hers. She made a frantic little sound, not wanting it to end. Not yet.
Oh, please. Not yet....
And then, what do you know? It didn’t end. He simply slanted his amazing lips the other way and kissed her some more.
Yes. This, she thought in a lovely, foggy, heated wordless way. This was it. The kiss. The one she’d known she couldn’t afford to miss....
Jace’s kiss...
He wrapped her even closer, so tight against him.
Tight enough that she could feel his growing hardness, pressing into her. Her response was immediate. She sighed against his warm lips and pressed herself even closer, lifting her hips to him, eager.
For more.
For sex.
With Jace.
Sex...
Oh, she did want to...
But then what?
The annoying question echoed in her brain, stealing her pleasure in this special moment, reminding her that her life was all upside-down and an affair on the rebound was not a good idea. Her world was way too complicated already. She didn’t need to make it more so.
He must have felt her withdrawal. He raised his head and he smiled down at her, so tenderly, his dark eyes low and lazy. “You messed up and started thinking, didn’t you?”
“Guilty.” She put her hands against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat, strong and steady.
He peered at her more intently. “You okay?”
She nodded. “You are a totally amazing kisser.”
And he smiled. “Likewise.”
“I would kiss you some more, but...”
“...it’s not what we’re about,” he finished for her. His strong arms fell away and she carefully kept herself from swaying back against him. He offered his arm. She took it. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll take you back up to the resort.”
“Not coming in?” she asked, when he pulled up under the porte cochere.
Jace was thinking he would like to go in. He would like it a lot, but it seemed too dangerous after that kiss. She’d felt just right in his arms. And the sweet taste of her lips...
That had been something. The way she’d cuddled up close against him had really gotten him going. They might be best friends and not going there. But he had to be realistic. She did it for him. In a big way.
And he needed a little distance. Tonight, he could too easily be tempted to try and put a real move on her. And he got that she wasn’t up for anything hot and heavy with him—or with anyone. Not after what she’d been through.
“Not tonight,” he whispered. “Breakfast? We can go down to the bakery and maybe—”
“Yes.” She smiled an eager smile. And he was glad. They’d shared an amazing, mind-blowing kiss, but it wasn’t going to mess things up between them.
The valet opened her door. She got out and then turned back and leaned in to ask, “Nine tomorrow morning? Pick me up right here, under the porte cochere?”
“You got it.”
The valet shut the door. Jace watched her turn for the entrance, admiring the easy sway of her hips, entranced by the way all that lush, shiny hair tumbled down her slim back.
During the drive to Jackson and Laila’s place, his mind kept circling back to the kiss. To the way she filled his arms, to the feel of her breasts against his chest, to the way she pressed her body to him, lower down, to her soft mouth opening under his...
He thought about kissing her again.
He thought about doing a lot more than just kissing.
The house was dark when he let himself in. He went straight up to the guest room and took a shower. A very cold shower, for a long, long time.
When he got out, his teeth were chattering and his lips were blue. But the shower had done the trick. He was freezing and sex was the last thing on his mind.
And he’d learned his lesson. He was not kissing Joss again. He was not even thinking about kissing Joss again.
Uh-uh. No way....
In the morning before he left to pick up Joss, he joined Jackson and Laila in the kitchen.
“So,” he asked his twin, “how long’s the Hitching Post been closed?”
“Since March,” Jackson said.
“You never a said a word.” Jace tried not to sound accusing, but it did kind of bug him that no one had told him. “Nobody said anything. Joss and I stopped in there last night and everything was dark.”
Jackson sipped his morning coffee and answered with a shrug. “It was a shock when it happened. But you were more or less refusing to communicate at that point.”
That was true, Jace had to admit. In March, he’d still been pretty down after the whole mess with Tricia. Half the time, when Jackson or any of his siblings called, he would find some excuse to get off the phone fast, and then not bother calling them back. He hadn’t felt like talking to anyone—and he certainly hadn’t felt like answering any questions as to what the hell was the matter with him.
“Sorry about that,” he said and meant it.
“Hey.” Jackson gave him a grin. “You finally seem to be coming out of it. That’s what matters.”
At the stove, Laila asked, “You want some bacon and eggs, Jace?”
“Thanks, but no. I’m picking Joss up and we’re going to the Mountain Bluebell.” He asked his brother, “So what’s the story? I always thought the Hitching Post was a moneymaker. Why would they suddenly close down?”
“Lance O’Doherty died,” Laila said somberly.
Jace blinked. “No.” O’Doherty and his wife Kathleen had owned the Hitching Post since it first opened in the 1950s. Kathleen had passed away some years back.
“Yeah,” Jackson confirmed. “Lance finally went to meet his maker. The old guy was in his eighties. And he was still going strong right up to the end. Story goes that he went to bed on March first and never woke up on the second. There was no one to take over for him.”
“I thought there was a daughter...”
Jackson nodded. “Noreen. She’s in her fifties. Plays the harp for some symphony in San Diego. Never married, no kids. Has zero interest in coming back to Thunder Canyon to run her dad’s bar and grill. So she shut it down and put it up for sale, cheap. At first, we were all sure that someone would snap it right up. I think I heard that there were a few offers made, but I guess those deals never went through.”
Jason shook his head. “The Hitching Post out of business. That’s just wrong.”
“Someone will buy it eventually,” said Laila. “It’s been only a few months since it went up for sale. It’s a great location, with plenty of parking. I heard a rumor a cousin of the Cateses from Sheridan was thinking about buying the property and turning it into a farm machinery dealership.”
“Farm machinery?” Jace swore in disgust.
Jackson chuckled. “People need tractors, Jace.”
“And this town needs the Hitching Post.”
Jackson sent him a sly look. “Why don’t you buy it?”
He thought about last night, him and Joss in the shadows next to the locked-up front door with the For Sale sign on it. He’d teased her that he would buy it and she could teach him how to run it.
But it was only a daydream. A fantasy, like Joss had said.
Laila fished bacon out of the frying pan and onto a paper towel–covered platter. “Yeah, that would be great if you moved to town. Your brother misses you, you know? We all miss you. Family matters. It matters a lot.”
Jackson and Jace shared a look. Jace had missed his twin, too. He only realized how much now he was coming out of the funk that had gripped him for months.
And Thunder Canyon would be a great place to live. Yeah, it got mighty cold in the winters, but he could deal with that. There were still lots of wild, wide open spaces in Montana. He wouldn’t mind exploring them. Plus, he’d have the benefit of being near a lot of the people who mattered most to him. And he was planning to move.
But he wasn’t ready to decide where yet. And as for the Hitching Post...
“I know zip about running a restaurant,” he said.
Jackson got up to refill his coffee mug. “No law says you can’t learn.”
Joss was moving a little stiffly when he picked her up at nine. But she said she was fine.
She laughed. “Hey, you should have seen me when I first got up. It wasn’t pretty. But I’m feeling better now that I’ve been moving around.”
And it did seem to him that her stiffness faded as the day went by. After breakfast at Lizzie’s bakery, they walked over to the Historical Society Museum on Pine Street. Aunt Melba was there, behind the little desk in the small lobby area of the old building.
“So lovely to see two young, smiling faces,” she said. She charged them three dollars each and then gave them a guided tour.
The rooms were small and dark and packed with treasures from the past. There was a whole display dedicated to Lily Divine, the madam who’d owned the Shady Lady Dance Hall in the 1890s. They learned that some sources claimed Lily hadn’t really been a madam at all, but a hardworking laundress who took in women in trouble and helped them to get back on their feet. There was even some dispute as to whether the famous portrait of Lily, nearly nude but for several strategically place scarves, was actually of Lily at all.
Jace couldn’t help wondering if that portrait still hung over the bar inside the Hitching Post. He hated to think of someone turning the place into a tractor dealership.
What would happen to the portrait of the Shady Lady then? Would they dismantle the long, gleaming cherrywood bar that had been built over a century ago?
He decided not to think about it.
Times changed and a man had to learn to roll with the punches. He set his mind to enjoying the time he had left with Joss.
It was going by too fast.
That afternoon, they went riding again. He borrowed Major from Jackson and she rode Cupcake. He took her to a small, crystal-clear lake he knew about on the other side of Thunder Mountain from the resort. It was too cold to swim, but they spread a saddle blanket in the sun and stretched out for a while. She said she was feeling better about her life now, about everything. And she thanked him. She told him she didn’t hate all men anymore. And she said that was mostly due to him.
He listened to her talk and drank in her laughter and thought about kissing her.
But he didn’t. They were friends. Period. And he intended to remember that.
That night, the family get-together was at Dax and Shandie’s. Jace took Joss. They had a great time.
The next day was the Fourth. In Thunder Canyon, that meant a parade in the morning, a rodeo in the afternoon and a community dance in the town hall at night. He and Joss spent every moment together.
He thought about kissing her a lot that day, especially at the dance. When he held her in his arms, it was all too easy to start remembering how good her lips felt pressed to his.
But he held himself in check somehow. Even though sometimes, in her eyes, he thought he saw an invitation. He had a feeling she wouldn’t be entirely averse to another kiss. And when he danced with her, he tried not to read too much into the way her curvy body swayed against him.
That night, he took another long, cold shower before he went to bed. It didn’t do a lot of good. His dreams were all about Joss, naked and willing in his arms.
Thursday they played golf up at the resort’s golf course. Joss was a really bad golfer.
“I’m worse with a golf club than I am on a horse,” she said.
He had to agree. Actually, she had some aptitude for riding. But she was a walking hazard with a golf club. Every time she swung it, turf went flying. The ball, however, rarely budged.
After dinner that night at Corey and Erin’s, they returned to the resort and hung out in her suite. He told her he kept thinking about the Hitching Post, that he was actually kind of tempted by the idea of maybe buying the place, of moving to Thunder Canyon and learning how to run a restaurant and bar.
She encouraged him. He was just getting around to hinting that maybe she might consider taking a job managing a restaurant and bar in a great little town like Thunder Canyon when the phone rang.
It was her mother, at it again. He couldn’t hear the woman’s words, but he could see in Joss’s face what she must be saying: Come home to Sacramento and work things out with Kenny. When Joss hung up, her slim shoulders were drooping and all the warm amber light was gone from her eyes. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her, and promise her that everything would be okay.
But she asked him to leave, said she needed a little time alone. She really was down.
He went back to Jackson’s and took another cold shower.
That night he dreamed of Lily Divine—except she had Joss’s face. In the dream, he stood at the bar in the Hitching Post and looked up at the painting of the Shady Lady.
And suddenly, the painting came alive. The Shady Lady was Joss, so fine and curvy and mostly naked, lying on her side, braced up on an elbow with her beautiful backside to him, sending him a come-and-get-it look over one bare, dimpled shoulder. He stood there, gulping, hard as a rock.
But then she sat up from the pose she’d been stuck in for more than a century. The scarves that covered her breasts and hips wafted in a warm breeze that had come up out of nowhere—right there in the Hitching Post. She stepped out of the painting and down off the wall, her long hair lifted and coiling seductively around her in that impossible breeze. She reached out her slim, bare arms to him, her eyes gleaming with the promise of untold sensual delights.
And then he woke up.
He lay there in the guest room bed and glared at the darkened ceiling and wondered who he’d been kidding, to think it would be enough for him, to be just friends with a woman like Joss.
She called him at seven Friday morning. “Sorry I was such a downer.” Her voice was sweet and husky in his ear.
“Hey,” he said a little more gruffly than he meant to, “it’s not a problem. You know that.”
“I want to go riding one more time before I go....”
Her words hit him like a punch to the solar plexus. Before I go...
Their time was ending. Tomorrow was Saturday. And Sunday she was leaving.
A week. It was nothing. Gone in an instant. He’d known that, hadn’t he?
So why did it suddenly seem so wrong, so completely unfair, that she would be going, leaving him for good?
He schooled his voice to easiness. “So we’ll go riding. Today?”
“Yeah. I thought breakfast first at the Grubstake.” That was the coffee shop at the resort. “And then we’d head for the stables. I already asked to have Cupcake ready.”
He would need to get the go-ahead from Jackson to take Major again. That should be no problem. “Bring something you can swim in,” he said.
“But I thought the mountain lakes were too cold.”
“I know a little valley. A wide creek runs through it. It’s not so high up and should be warm enough for swimming.”
“Sounds wonderful,” she agreed.
“The Grubstake, then.” His voice was rough again, a little ragged with emotions he didn’t even understand. “Give me an hour.”
“I’ll be there. Waiting.”
And she was there, just as she’d promised, waiting in the coffee shop, dressed for riding in her red boots and jeans and a blue-and-white checked shirt. They ordered pancake specials, with scrambled eggs and bacon. She was animated and smiling, out from under the cloud of misery that had gotten her down the night before.
“Today and tomorrow,” she said, her dark eyes gleaming. “And that’s it.” Did she have to remind him? “I’m going to enjoy every minute of the time we have left.”
Don’t go. The words were there on the tip of his tongue. He shut his mouth over them and swallowed them down.
He tried to remember what a tangled mess the whole thing with Tricia had been, that he didn’t know his ass from up when it came to relationships. That the last thing Joss needed at this point was another man in her life.
A friend, she could handle.
But more?
It wasn’t going to happen. She needed time to get over that asshat Kenny, time to put her life back together, to get on her feet. She didn’t need to get involved with some ex-player ex-oilman from Texas who didn’t know zip about love and was seriously considering relocating to Montana and trying his hand at running a bar and grill.
They finished their pancakes and headed for the stables. By ten-thirty, they were on their way up the mountain. They rode a different series of trails that day, around the mountain, climbing for a time. But then, using a series of switchbacks, heading lower, down into the little valley he’d told her about.
The land belonged to Grant Clifton, the resort’s manager, and his wife, Steph. Last year, when Ethan had invested Traub money in the resort, Grant had been kind enough to issue a general invitation to any Traubs who wanted to swim in the creek there.
“It’s beautiful,” Joss said, when they spread a blanket under a cottonwood at the edge of the creek.
He had a hard time paying a lot of attention to the trees and the clear creek and the rolling, sunlit land. Joss had taken off her jeans, boots and shirt by then. She wore a little black-and-white bikini that looked like polka dots at first glance, but was really tiny white hearts on a black background. She filled it out real nice. He kept thinking about his dream, where she was the Shady Lady and she came down out of the picture and held out her arms to him.
“Jace?” she asked softly. “You okay?”
“Ahem. Fine. Great. Why?”
She laughed then. “Well, your mouth is hanging open.”
He shut it. “Is not.”
She laughed again and turned and ran to the creek. He watched her pretty, round bottom bouncing away from him and tried not to think about how much he wanted a lot more than he was ever going to have with her. If she had any bruises from her fall the other day, he couldn’t see them.
Hugging herself and giggling, she went into the water. “It’s cold!” She bent at the knees and got right down into it all the way up to her neck.
“I can hear your teeth chattering,” he teased from the bank, admiring the way that thick, long hair of hers fanned out on the water all around her.
“My teeth are chattering because the water is freezing!”
“Don’t be a sissy,” he taunted.
“You said it would be warm down here in this valley,” she accused. “Brrrr.”
“It is warm—compared to the lakes higher up.”
She rose to her feet, the water sheeting off her body, her hair falling to cling like a lover to her shoulders and the high, proud curves of her breasts. The sight stole the breath clean out of his body and made all the spit dry up in his mouth.
“Well?” she demanded. “Are you coming in?”
He remembered to breathe and he swallowed, hard. “Yes, ma’am.” He dropped to the blanket and pulled off his boots and socks. His shirt followed. Then he stood up again to unbuckle his belt. A moment later, he stepped out of his jeans.
Joss gave him a two-finger whistle. “I never saw a cowboy in board shorts before—neon orange, no less.” He made a show of flexing his biceps and she laughed some more.
And then he took off toward her at a run. She shrieked as he cannonballed into the water. And when he got his feet under him and stood up, she started madly splashing him.
He dived and grabbed for her legs, yanking them out from under her. Flailing and laughing, she went down, but only for a moment. Then she kicked free of his grip and swam for the far bank.
When he caught up with her, she was trying to climb out on the other side.
He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back in.
She let out a shriek and went under again.
A moment later, she shot upright. She was quick, he had to give her that. She gave him a shove when he wasn’t expecting it. He went down on his back, sending water flying. He heard her laughing as the creek closed over his head.
In a few seconds, he was upright again. They started madly splashing each other, both of them fanning the water for all they were worth, really going to town.
Finally, her hair plastered to her face, water dripping from her nose, she put up both hands. “All right. I surrender. You win. You’re the champion.”
That made him laugh. “The champion of splashing?”
“Yeah.” She swiped a hand over the crown of her head, gathering her hair in one thick swatch, guiding it forward over her shoulder so she could wring the water from the dripping strands. “You don’t want to be the champion of splashing?”
He speared his fingers back through his hair. “Depends on the prize.”
She made a scoffing sound. “Please. You don’t get a prize for splashing the hardest.”
He stepped up closer. He couldn’t resist. They stood in the shallows by then, not far from the bank and their waiting blanket, with the hobbled horses grazing nearby.
She stared up at him, drops of water caught like diamonds in her long, dark eyelashes, her eyes so bright they blinded him. Damn. She was beautiful. “Jace?”
He couldn’t stop staring at her wide, soft mouth. “I want to kiss you.”
“Oh, Jace...”
“You’d better tell me not to. You’d better tell me now.”