THE MOST TERRIFYING NIGHT of his life, she should have said.
Ruby at the wheel of his truck careened down small rutted country roads as if she were hugging the track at the Indianapolis Speedway. Hairpin mountain curves barely slowed her down. They flew—if you could call the jolting, bouncing roller-coaster of a ride something so graceful as flying. Gravel sprayed angrily against the vehicle’s underbelly, creating a firecracker racket that set Cody’s teeth on edge. He gripped the armrests with white knuckles as the dark scenery skimmed past his window. He didn’t dare glance at the dashboard to see how fast they were going.
“I think we’re losing them!” she said excitedly.
Cody gritted his teeth. “We lost them twenty miles ago.”
“Can’t be too careful.”
“Is careful even in your vocabulary?”
She laughed. “Okay, I’ll give it a rest.”
Speed Racer’s foot hit the brake, churning up more gravel but slowing the truck to a wonderfully poky crawl. Cody felt like kissing the speedometer. The relief he experienced must have been akin to that of the Apollo astronauts when their reentry capsule bobbed safely in the ocean. “Just pull over and I’ll drive.”
She glanced at him, brows knit. “Say, you look kind of jittery. Think you had too many Jordan almonds at the movies?”
“I don’t think it’s the almonds making me jittery.”
She began to pull over. “I’d better douse the lights, in case my brothers are somewhere below.”
Cody leaned forward, a warning on the tip of his tongue, but it was already too late. In the inky darkness, the truck lurched and dived. Ruby let out a yelp and, in the heat of the moment, Cody reached out to grab either her or the wheel or both. For a second he was fairly certain they were dropping right off the mountain.
But in the next moment the truck hit earth, woppy-jawed, so that Ruby was practically in his lap and both of them were a lot more friendly with the dashboard than heretofore.
Ruby gasped. “Where did that ditch come from?”
Cody laughed. “I don’t know, but if it weren’t for that ditch we might have taken the express elevator down the mountain.”
“Oh, Cody!” She moaned. “I’m so sorry. I hope your truck’s okay.”
“I’m just glad we’re okay.” He frowned, lifting her chin and inspecting her face in the scant light. “You are okay, aren’t you?”
She certainly smelled okay, a delicious combination of perfume and barbecue.
She looked worried. “I won’t be if I’ve done any damage to the truck.”
“How bad could it be? We were only going three miles an hour.”
Carefully, they undid their seat belts, pushed themselves upright and slid out the passenger side door. There was only a sliver of a moon in the sky, so it was hard to tell the condition of the truck, or if there was any damage.
Ruby snapped her fingers. “I know, the first-aid kit!”
Thankfully, it was still nestled in the truck bed. She opened the big box and started rummaging through its contents, tossing aside blankets and canned goods. Finally, she came across the flashlight and handed it to Cody.
The truck didn’t appear to have a scratch, but other than that the news wasn’t good. The vehicle had landed crookedly and wedged itself into a wet culvert. One wheel wasn’t even touching ground.
Ruby put her hands on her hips. “All we have to do is give it a few pushes and we’ll be up and running again.”
Cody smiled, remembering Ruby’s expertise with automobiles. “I guess I capsized my truck with the right person.”
“Without me you never would have had this wreck,” she reminded him.
“True, but you’re a lot more pragmatic about cars than your love life,” he observed.
That brought a laugh. “One’s fixable, the other isn’t.”
Maybe she was right. At least, this latest attempt at fixing her love life wasn’t working out so well.
They immediately set to work, but a half hour of grunting and shoving and spinning their wheels indicated that they were in a stickier wicket than they had guessed.
“Where are we?” Ruby asked, rubbing her brow with the back of her hand as she eyeballed the countryside. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness enough to make out a greasy smudge on her nose.
Cody laughed. “I thought you knew!”
She blinked. “We’re somewhere near the ridge, aren’t we?”
“I hope so.” Heartbreak Ridge was a bluff some five mountainous miles above the town of Heartbreak Ridge. His brother lived on Heartbreak Ridge in an old cabin. “I might be able to find Cal’s house.”
Ruby’s face brightened, then she frowned. “Correction. We might be able to find Cal’s house.”
Her nervous tone surprised him. “Are you afraid of the dark?”
“Not the dark. But the dark and mountain lions is a combination I don’t relish.”
“Mountain lions are rarer than icebergs around here.”
“It doesn’t matter to me if there’s only one in the whole state,” she said. “I don’t want to be his midnight snack.”
He laughed and reached into the truck bed for the box.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking the first-aid kit.” However much of it he could carry. He heaved a bottle of water out of the box to lighten the load.
She frowned. “Are you expecting to spend the night in these woods?”
“No, but this way if we run across one of those mountain lions you’re so afraid of, maybe instead of eating us he’ll settle for a can of beenie weenies.”
RUBY WAS FREEZING COLD and her feet hurt like all heck, but she was hesitant to stop their progress—if you could call trudging around a mountaintop in a circle for hours on end progress. At least it seemed like hours to her. Since she wasn’t wearing a watch, she was reduced to judging the passage of time by nature. For instance, she estimated that her teeth clocked in at ten chatters per second, and her big toe was ticking away the hours at about twenty throbs per minute.
“Cody, what time is it?”
He glanced at his watch. “About one. Why don’t we take a rest?”
“You wouldn’t have to talk me into it.” She dropped in her tracks and lay on the ground as if there were a feather bed beneath her instead of grass, leaves and twigs.
Cody put down the box and plopped next to her with a sigh. He rooted through the first-aid kit and came up with two blankets, a big plastic jug of water and a flare.
“Are you going to set that thing off?” she asked, pointing to the flare.
He nodded.
“So you really think we’re lost.”
He laughed. “What did you think we were doing, taking a midnight constitutional?”
She shook her head ruefully. “No, I figured we’d wandered off the range, so to speak.”
The flare shot into the air almost like a Roman candle. For a moment the world was brighter, and as Cody settled next to her, she could see his face clearly. He was a dazzler in the simulated starlight, his chiseled jaw and straight nose perfectly proportioned to his blue eyes and extremely kissable lips.
Realizing the disturbing direction her thoughts were taking, she forced herself to look at the sky. “Do you think anybody saw the flare?”
“Maybe,” he said, hardly brimming with optimism. Then he handed her a jug of water. While she sat up enough to slug down some liquid, he tucked the blanket around her shoulders tenderly.
“I’m sorry, Ruby.”
His touch aroused her most intense feminine interests—and astonished her. All during their silly date, she remembered, she’d kept wondering, foolishly, if he intended to kiss her. After hours in the wilderness, when she was so tired she felt she’d burned all the fuel in her tank, those reckless musings sprang to life again. “You’re sorry?” She laughed. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I got us into this predicament!”
He shook his head. “I thought I could find my brother’s house, but I not only didn’t find it, I also managed to lose the road.”
“It’s my fault. I was the one who drove us so far out into the hinterlands.”
He took a long draw on the water, and Ruby couldn’t force herself to look away from him, his head tipped, a droplet of cool liquid spilling down his chin, his Adams’s apple bobbing. She shivered and glanced away. “I’m the one who’s behaved like a fool.” And if she kept lusting after Cody, by the end of the evening she might earn her cap and bells.
“No, you haven’t.”
“I don’t mean just about getting the pickup stuck,” she admitted, although that should have been embarrassing enough. “My foolishness goes way back. All the while you were at the restaurant gawking at Leila—”
“I was not gawking.”
She harrumphed. “All the while you were casually looking at Leila with adoration in your eyes, I was burning with envy.”
She’d obviously stunned him speechless.
“I don’t know what it is—my competitive nature, I guess. Maybe I just didn’t want anyone to have what I had, even if I only had you out of a sort of practical arrangement.” She shrugged and grudgingly added, “So I sort of bad-mouthed Leila. But I suppose she’s all right.”
When she dared to cast a glance at him, Cody smiled at her. “Then I hope she and your brother will be very happy.”
She couldn’t believe her ears. “You mean it?”
He shrugged. “Going out with Leila was probably not a practical idea.”
She didn’t know why that news made her feel so jubilant, and she was fairly certain it shouldn’t have. She wiped the joyful grin off her face and burrowed deeper into her blanket. Whether Cody was footloose and fancy-free wouldn’t matter one whit to her once she’d shaken Heartbreak Ridge off her feet.
“Are you cold?”
She shook her head, but as she took in a breath, her teeth chattered.
He laughed. “I guess that was a definite maybe.” Scooting over until their bodies were touching, he draped his blanket over both of them, shawl-style.
More than the added covering, the heat from his body warmed her. In fact, the minute they touched, the temperature under that shared blanket of theirs probably shot up about thirty degrees. Her teeth stopped chattering. Her aching feet were history. And although she was fairly certain Cody was just saying all that about not really caring for Leila to make her feel better, her thoughts roamed to kissing him. At this moment, she’d take the warmth of his lips over a potbellied stove—and that was saying a lot!
“Maybe I should make a fire.”
Or, in a twist on the old Boy Scout routine, if they rubbed themselves together, they might work up some combustion. “Do you think we’re going to be here that long?”
Two implications struck her. First, Cody must think they were very, very lost. More interestingly, he obviously didn’t find the idea of staying in her company too terrible if he was ready to spend the night with her.
“Well, we’ve got the equipment.”
No kidding. Her equipment was certainly revving up for a wild overnight experience. Her throat felt bone dry, and she cleared it with effort. “But what about my brothers? They’ll be frantic.”
He grinned. “Isn’t that the point?”
She sucked in her breath as it occurred to her what her brothers would think, which was precisely what she had immediately thought when Cody proposed tucking themselves in for the evening. She’d immediately started fantasizing about herself and Cody frolicking under the woolly blankets.
Oh, dear.
“We’re supposed to make them want to loosen the reins, not strangle you with them, which they just might do if we tromp home in the morning talking about getting the truck stuck in a ditch.”
He laughed, and the rumbling from his chest sent a shiver through her. She’d never noticed before, but Cody had a very sexy laugh: it was just like his voice, deep and resonant.
“You won’t be laughing tomorrow,” she warned.
“But just think, Ruby. If they assumed that the worst had happened, and that you…” He shifted uncomfortably beneath their blanket. “Well, you know…”
“Lost my virginity?”
He squinted at her. “If you ever did lose your virginity, what the heck would we talk about?”
She gave him a playful dig in the ribs. “Don’t get sidetracked. You were talking about my brothers.”
“Right. Maybe you should let them think the worst. Maybe your trouble is you haven’t really gone far enough in scandalizing them.”
The logic of his words registered. “So you think if my brothers knew I wasn’t so squeaky clean and innocent, they might just toss up their hands and leave me alone?”
“Precisely.”
“So instead of being a general screwup all these years, I really should have been a tramp.”
“Well, in a manner of speaking…”
“And you’d be willing to risk your reputation to soil mine?” she asked admiringly.
He chuckled, setting off that rumbling again. “I guess there’s still a pretty good double standard going. Your downfall could only enhance my reputation.”
She tilted her head, studying him. Was he really willing to run the gauntlet of jeers he’d receive in places like the Feed Bag just to help her? She couldn’t think why, unless… “Word would surely get back to Leila.”
He nodded. “Among others.”
But Cody Tucker didn’t need gossip to make him look virile. He was sexy without needing any fanfare. In fact, next to his quiet, assured masculinity, all those mooseheads hanging around the Chugalug with their big belt buckles, goat-roper swaggers and endless capacity for whooping loud and guzzling beer looked silly. Real men didn’t need to advertise.
Her blood pressure shot up again. “If Leila needs a scandal to notice you, she’s as blind as a Mexican fruit bat!”
He grinned, and the gleam of those white teeth of his was like a laser beam to her heart. “You never noticed.”
“Yes, I did.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. She’d noticed Cody was good-looking weeks ago; she just hadn’t found him irresistible until right this minute. “I couldn’t very well throw myself at you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was trying to get you to arrest me!”
His hand worked its way to her elbow, then up to her shoulder. Like a sensual telegraph, the slow caress sent waves of desire right to the most sensitive, feminine part of her.
She was breathing hard just to get enough oxygen. Why was that? She feared it had nothing to do with the altitude.
“And all those Friday nights we spent at the jail?” he asked, his voice deep and husky.
Her mind whirled in confusion. She couldn’t remember where she’d wanted the conversation to lead. All she could think of was kissing that sexy mouth of his. “All those Friday nights you didn’t exactly brim with interest in me, either, you know.”
He fiddled with a curly lock of hair next to her ear. When his thumb brushed her lobe, she shivered. “I didn’t want to insult you again. Remember what happened when I tried to touch you?”
“Mmm…” She was having a very different reaction to his touch now. “It wasn’t exactly flattering that you never wanted to get your nose out of your bee book to look at me, though. And then when we played cards…”
He nuzzled her temple. “What did I do then?”
Good Lord, that felt good! She clamped her jaw to keep from panting. “You played cards.” She gritted the words out. “And nothing else!”
His arms moved to her shoulders, and he pulled her close so they were touching all over beneath their wool cocoon. “What should I have done?”
Did she have to spell it out for him? She’d never seduced a man in her life, but she’d never been this desperate. Unable to find words, she twined her arms around his neck and showed him by planting the most shameless, hungry kiss she’d ever given any man smack on his lips.
But the moment their mouths touched, she realized that he’d yearned for the kiss as much as she had. His warmth completely enveloped her, and he swept his arms around her to hold her more tightly. His mouth was yielding and demanding at the same time, and she tilted her head for better access. The instant his tongue probed hers, she was lost in a frenzy of pure desire.
It was astounding. Bewildering. She wasn’t Pollyanna; she’d kissed men before, if only kissed and nothing else. A dozen men, in fact. But she’d never become so completely absorbed that she lost the ability to think, to reason.
Only with Cody.
He rubbed her back, causing a delicious heat to well inside her. She instinctively moved against him as wave after wave of desire lapped inside her. Their tongues entwined as the storm surged within. She never could have guessed that she would be affected so feverishly by a touching of lips…or that her kiss would have such an effect on someone else.
Cody’s breathing was heavy against her skin, and his firm embrace told her that he didn’t want to stop with a kiss, either. She didn’t know how she knew that. She just did, instinctively. The realization shocked her to her core.
She pushed away, panting.
His blue eyes looked into hers, searing her with desire. “It’s good we didn’t do that in the jailhouse.”
She pressed her hands against his chest, half pushing him away, half reveling in the strength of his muscles beneath her hands. “I’m not so sure,” she replied shakily. “I feel like I need to be locked up for my own safety.”
He chuckled, and the sound of his laughter rumbled down to the marrow of her bones. Wasn’t that what started this madness? His grin, his laugh…his suggestion that they shock her brothers out of their socks. Instead, she’d managed to shock herself. She was lusting after Cody Tucker. It seemed wrong, somehow—like vamping Jiminy Cricket.
“I don’t know about this, Cody. Maybe we’re taking shock treatment a little too far.”
His hands ran up and down her arms in a way that made her think of the good use they could put that inflatable rubber raft to. It would certainly make a better mattress than the cold ground they were sitting on.
He studied her face, then tilted his lips in a smile. “It would only be pretend.”
She’d almost forgotten.
“That’s right.” Before the kiss, they’d been talking about letting her brothers think they’d spent a night in the woods doing the wild thing. It was only her imagination—and that kiss!—that was making the impossible seem so very, very attractive to her.
But it was still impossible. Shy Cody, lawman, with his crush on Leila and his steady job that he would never give up, could never really be interested in Ruby Treadwell, troublemaker and potential Heartbreak Ridge escapee. Even if Cody did harbor unrealistic dreams of sheep ranching, his dreams only took him fifteen miles out of the city limits, while once she broke free, she wanted to go and go and go.
“It’s just the moonlight, isn’t it?” she said. “That’s what’s confusing me.”
He nodded, and for a moment, she saw the same conflicting emotions in his eyes that she felt. “Must be.”
“This playacting we’ve been doing…” She laughed unevenly. “I didn’t know it was so easy to get carried away.”
His smile disappeared. “Me, neither.”
She swallowed, feeling vaguely disappointed with his responses. But what did she expect, for him to come out and confess undying love for her, to tell her that he’d dreamed of kissing her and no one else for lo these many weeks and that he wouldn’t have to pretend to convince her brothers that he had the hots for her?
Yeah, right.
A noise caught her ear, and she straightened. “Did you hear something?”
“It was probably just an animal.”
As if that was supposed to make her feel better! Ruby stiffened and grabbed his arm in a viselike grip. “Where’s that Swiss Army knife?”
“I don’t know how handy it would be at repelling cougars, Ruby.”
Just then the source of the noise appeared, and it became clear that mountain lions weren’t half the threat an angry brother could be. And a pair of angry brothers was even more intimidating!
Both she and Cody jumped to their feet, still wrapped together in their blanket, snug as a sausage.
“What the Sam Hill is going on here?”
Seeing Buck and Farley glowering at Cody made her wince in apprehension. Suddenly all her easy talk about making her brothers think they’d slept together flew right out the window. She’d as soon present two burly, hungry cats with a small flightless bird.
“Absolutely nothing,” she declared.
Cody whirled on her, his eyes round with surprise. “Darling, what are you saying?”
Ruby blinked at him in shock. Darling? Was he nuts?
Buck and Farley took a step closer. “How long have you two been sitting out here?”
“We weren’t sitting,” Ruby said. “We just stopped to rest. You obviously saw our flare.”
Cody pulled her stiff, defensive body firmly against him. “Don’t lie, cupcake,” he pronounced grandly.
Cupcake? Was he trying to cook his own goose? Attempting to slap his arm away, she explained, “We were wandering around lost for what seemed like hours. I’ve got the bruises on my feet to prove it.”
Her brothers’ gazes swept toward her feet but snagged at her hip, where the skirt of her dress had hitched embarrassingly high. She self-consciously grabbed the hem and tugged it down.
While she was thus occupied, shy Cody Tucker pulled her to his chest and proclaimed, “We have nothing to be ashamed of, Ruby, not if we love each other!”
Finding herself plastered melodramatically against Cody’s chest would have made her laugh except that there was nothing laughable about Farley’s rigid pro-wrestlerlike stance or the way Buck kept fisting and unfisting his hand. “Cool it, Cody,” she whispered.
“How can I cool it when my desire is still so hot?”
Where was he coming up with this stuff?
She imagined a similar confusion was all that was keeping her brothers from launching themselves at her would-be paramour. But from years of watching them, she could tell when her siblings were reaching their boiling point, and in kitchen terms, the lids were dancing on the pots.
She made a last attempt to sooth them. “Cody’s just clowning you guys. Nothing happened here, absolutely nothing.”
“Oh, yeah?” Farley took a step forward so he was standing toe-to-toe with Cody.
“Then how did your lipstick get smudged?” Buck asked.
Cody, parroting the answer she’d once given Bill, smiled when he answered. “The usual way.”
She gasped, lifting her hands to her lips, and in that moment she knew she looked guilty as sin. When she could still feel the imprint of Cody’s lips on hers, there was no keeping a telltale blush from rising to her cheeks.
“Don’t let them convince you something beautiful was something ugly,” Cody counseled her in his Don Juan voice.
The wary look in his blue eyes as he bent to kiss her made her think he had to sense a little of what was coming. Maybe he intended the gesture to be a farewell kiss. Before his lips could reach hers, however, he was snatched from her arms and knocked out cold.
“HOW’S THE EYE?” Ruby asked.
Cody smiled in greeting, though doing so made him wince. The swelling had gone down days ago, but the bruises remained. It was the first time in his life he’d ever had a shiner. “Okay.”
Ruby frowned as she stepped through the sheriff’s office door and shut it behind her. “It looks purple.”
“That’s good. Yesterday it was blue.”
She shook her head. “You know, I’m beginning to wonder whether beneath that mild-mannered exterior of yours there lurks a stark raving lunatic.”
He laughed. “I promised to help you.”
“I didn’t mean for you to risk your life!”
He sighed. “I thought women always wanted proof that chivalry isn’t dead.”
“Chivalry?” She hooted. “You were trying to convince my brothers that we’d slept together!”
“But for your benefit,” he told her.
“Well, you did a fine job. They now want to know when we’re getting married.”
That was surprising news. “Really? The last thing Farley said to me was, and I quote, ‘Stay the hell away from her.”’
“That’s right. And you’d better stay the hell away, too, unless you plan to come calling with a wedding ring in tow.” She studied his face anxiously. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out, Cody, but thanks for all your help.”
He sent her a mock salute. “At your service, Ruby. I’d do more, if you thought any more would help.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
Her gaze was doubtful. “You’ve already gone above and beyond the call of duty. And I feel bad for drawing you into my problems, especially with such disastrous results.”
Cody grinned. He didn’t care what kind of pain it cost him. The truth of the matter was, he couldn’t mislead Ruby. “Strange as it seems, I enjoyed myself.”
She tilted her head skeptically.
“I did,” he said. “I’ve had more fun with you these past weeks than…well, than I’ve had since the FFA field trip to the Fort Worth livestock show my senior year.”
She laughed. “Wow, watch out how you sling those compliments around. A girl could start getting ideas.”
“What kind of ideas?”
She half sat on his desk, dangling one shapely leg over the side. “That all that Casanova stuff you were doing the other night wasn’t such a joke after all.”
“Maybe it wasn’t….”
Her brows shot up. “Nobody calls anybody cupcake anymore and means it, Cody!”
He laughed. “Okay, okay. I was improvising.”
When he looked into her twinkling dark eyes, he couldn’t help remembering their kiss. Ruby had been warm and willing in his arms, more tender than any woman he’d ever kissed. What he’d told her brothers about sleeping with her had only been a lie of fact; in his mind, he’d thoroughly imagined how it would feel not to end that kiss but to keep holding Ruby until dawn.
If they’d known, he probably would have received two black eyes.
Though he and Ruby hadn’t mentioned the kiss in the past week, he couldn’t believe she had forgotten it. Tension crackled between them, and she looked anxious. He wondered, suddenly, if there was an ulterior motive to her being here.
“I’m glad you dropped by, Ruby. Friday nights aren’t the same without you around.”
She grinned. “Good to know I’ve left some kind of mark.”
On his heart, he was afraid. “Beekeeping books aren’t holding my interest anymore.”
“Oh, dear. That sounds serious.”
“I guess I’ve become a gin rummy addict.”
Her dark eyes looked at him hopefully. “Would you like to play a game now?”
He didn’t hesitate to pull open the drawer. As he shuffled, a little of the tension between them drained away and the old feeling of companionability returned. He was always a little shocked by how much he enjoyed being around her. But maybe that was because he knew she wouldn’t be around forever, since her life’s mission was to escape Heartbreak Ridge.
In fact, maybe that explained the confusion going on inside him—a desire for the unattainable. Like wanting to be a full-time rancher, in his mind Ruby was something he couldn’t have. A pipe dream.
“What are you planning on doing now that our gambit for your freedom failed, Ruby?” he asked as he dealt.
She tilted her head as she snatched up her cards. “You really want to know?”
“That’s why I asked.”
“Well, now that you mention it, I’ve got a plan C.”
He looked at her puckish face with interest. “And you haven’t told me about it?”
“I wanted to, but I was afraid you wouldn’t like it.”
Uh-oh. His hands froze over the half-dealt hands. “What are you going to do, rob a bank?”
She rolled her eyes and laughed. “It’s nothing illegal.”
He exhaled in relief. “Then why wouldn’t I like it?”
Her face showed hesitation. “Because…it sort of involves you.”
“Well…”
“Come on,” he urged, “I told you I’d do more for you if I could.”
She cocked her head to gauge his sincerity. “But did you mean it?”
“Of course!”
She broke into a relieved smile. “Oh, good. ’Cause, frankly, plan C couldn’t work without you, Cody.”
He put the discard pile down with impatience. “For heaven’s sake, spit it out. What’s plan C?”
Her smile disappeared, and she leveled an uneasy gaze on him. “We get married.”