“What in the heck…” Cisco whispered, stunned, as he found himself looking down the barrel of a very small but very deadly gun.
“I told you what would happen if you came back,” Gillian said, in a voice thick with both confusion and sleep. “I told you I wouldn’t let you terrorize me again.” She gripped the barrel with hands that shook and stared at him with eyes that were wide with fright.
“Terrorize you how?” Cisco demanded. To his frustration, she didn’t answer, didn’t move. “What have I done, Gillian?” Cisco asked, even more firmly.
“You know very well what you’ve done….” she said, her voice rising angrily as she continued to aim the gun straight at his chest.
His jaw tensing, for he knew there was no way he could survive a bullet wound at such close range, Cisco stayed where he was and lifted his hands in surrender. “Put the gun down, Gillian, and we’ll talk,” he ordered.
But she didn’t seem to see him at all. “Never again,” she murmured thickly instead, as tears streamed down her face. “I told you…this was never going to happen again…and I meant it, Phillip,” she whispered hoarsely. “I meant it with every fiber of my being.”
Phillip! Who was Phillip? And why did she think he was Phillip? Was she dreaming? In the midst of some terrible nightmare? Not that this explained her sleeping with a gun under her pillow, for Pete’s sake! A gun she had to have carried with her on her person or in her purse. Both options were damned unsettling, to say the least. She was obviously in far more trouble than she’d let on. No wonder she didn’t want anyone asking questions or looking into her past.
“Gillian, listen to me,” he began patiently, imbuing his voice with as much tranquillity and kindness as possible, as his heart thudded all the harder. “It’s Cisco—”
Again she appeared not to hear him. “You have no right to be here,” Gillian said. Her lips tightened determinedly as she released the safety.
Talk about nightmares! “Put the gun down, Gillian.”
Still deep in her dream, she lifted the gun slightly, the whole of her trembling. “I’m warning you. Don’t come any closer! I’ll shoot!” The barrel of the gun jerked up as she put one hand up as if to ward off a blow. “I promise you I will!” she stated again. Then the gun came down once more, and locked into shooting position. Her left hand closed over her right in steadying fashion.
Cisco knew time had run out He wasn’t going to let her hurt herself or him. In one smooth motion, he ducked and dove for the sofa bed. His body covered hers and he knocked her body flat, her hands up above her head just as the gun went off with a resounding…click?
It wasn’t loaded, Cisco thought, as relief swept over him in a staggering wave. Or at least not all the way, Cisco decided as he struggled to get the gun away from her and Gillian began to scream. Given no other choice, he forced the gun from her hand and cut off her shriek with a hand clamped tight across her mouth. “You’re dreaming, Gillian,” Cisco said, giving her a little shake. “Do you hear me? You’re dreaming, Gillian. And there’s no reason to be afraid. You’re here with me. Cisco. In my apartment. No one is going to hurt you. Do you hear me, Gillian? No one is going to hurt you.”
Abruptly his staunchly uttered words penetrated. She stopped struggling. Tears still streaming down her face, she gazed up at him in a combination of horror and relief that let him know she was fully awake, if confused as hell as to what was now going on with the two of them.
Sorry he’d had to be so rough with her, Cisco eased his hand from her mouth. Saw her lower lip tremble all the more and tried not to notice that the pajama top she wore was twisted up around her waist, revealing long satin-smooth legs, a slender waist and gently curving hips, clad in transparent white lace panties.
“What happened?” she asked shakily, pulling the flannel pajama top down to midthigh.
Good question, Cisco thought as he rolled away from her and sat up. What the hell had happened? “I couldn’t sleep and came out, intending to get a cold beer out of the refrigerator. Before I got all the way to the kitchen, you sat up and pulled a gun on me. I assume you were dreaming.”
Gillian released a tremulous sigh and raked trembling hands through the tousled layers of her auburn hair. “I was,” she said shakily.
Cisco sat down on the sofa-bed mattress, still warm from her body heat. “Does this happen often? The nightmares,” he added when she continued to look vulnerable and confused.
“Only when I’m overtired or upset.” She shivered again and drew her knees up to her chest. “I’m sorry.” She closed her eyes in abject misery and rested the side of her face against her upraised knees. She still seemed to be struggling to get a hold of herself. “I never should have held a gun on you.”
She was right about that, Cisco thought. He did not like surprises of any kind, never mind ones so potentially deadly. He also sensed there was a damn good reason for everything Gillian did, thought or said. His need to take care of her increased tenfold.
“Do you always sleep with a gun under your pillow?” low?” He began his information gathering casualty, wondering once again who or what she was running from, and if her experiences had been anywhere near as devastatingly lonely or physically brutal as his own.
Gillian lifted her head and looked him in the eye. Vulnerable or not, she was not about to be taken advantage of. “I have for a long while,” she said in a way that just dared him to make something of it
Cisco took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips. Ignoring the subtle tensing of her arm beneath his questing touch, he lightly traced the silky underside of her wrist with his fingertips. “Why?” he asked gently. Was she on the lam, or just in danger of some kind?
Her chin took on the stubborn tilt he was beginning to know all too well. Gillian withdrew her hand from his and aimed a killer look at him. “Look, I’m sorry for what I did just now, but why I do what I do is really none of your business.”
Cisco’s patience began to fade as she turned her glance to the moonlight streaming in through the open second-floor windows. “My wife’s problems are mine,” he told her firmly.
Gillian tossed her head. Her silky auburn curls fell over her shoulder every which way. “Maybe that’d be the case if we were married in more than name only,” Gillian began uncertainly as color swept into her high, delicately sculpted cheeks.
Aware she looked even more beautiful now than she had in her wedding dress, Cisco struggled to keep his desire for her in check. “It’s the case whether we ever sleep together or not,” Cisco said, realizing it was true. Wise or not, he cared what happened to her—now, and in the past—to make her behave this way. And this surprised him. Gillian did not seem like a good bet to stick around, and that fact alone ought to have had him running in the opposite direction. Yet he was drawn to her, more drawn to her than he had ever been to any woman. Furthermore, now that he knew she was in more trouble than even he had dreamed, he wanted to protect her. But to protect her he first had. to get her to trust him and confide in him. “Does it have anything to do with Phillip?” he asked softly.
“What do you know about Phillip?” she asked suspiciously, drawing the covers up around her waist.
Cisco leaned very close to her. “Just that you wanted to shoot him. Or tried to just now,” he explained in a quiet tone, wishing she would make it easier for him to comfort her.
“Yes, well, had the man in my nightmare been here, which he clearly wasn’t, except in my dream, he would’ve deserved it,” she said bitterly.
“Because he terrorized you or threatened you somehow?” Cisco probed, remembering what she had said in her sleep.
“I think I’ll have a cold beer, too,” Gillian said, changing the subject nervously. She threw off the covers, lowered her spectacular legs and padded toward the kitchen, her hips moving with subtle, albeit unconscious, sexiness beneath the hem of the pajama top. “Want to join me?”
Trying not to notice her soft enticing curves, Cisco followed her to the refrigerator. “Sure.”
She removed two bottles from the refrigerator and closed the door. Their hands brushed and their eyes met as she handed the beer to him. He twisted off the cap by hand while she used the bottle opener on the counter. Wordlessly, she plunked the metal cap into the trash, returned to the sofa bed and settled languidly in the corner.
Cisco watched Gillian draw the covers up around her waist once again and knew she considered the conversation about her nightmare over. As far as he was concerned, they were just getting started.
Obviously, Gillian perceived herself to be in some kind of danger. If he was going to help her, and he was determined to help her, he had to find out more about why this Phillip would want to hurt her. He had to know what he was up against if he was going to give her her future back and at the same time protect everyone else on the ranch from getting caught up in the violence of Gillian’s past, too. “Gillian…”
She lifted her gaze to his. Gave an officious smile. “I know you are trying to be gallant in the Old West way and come to the aid of a lady, as any good gentleman would do,” she said stubbornly. “But I really think, in this case, the less you know the better.”
Cisco sat down beside her, on the edge of the sofa bed. He took a sip of his beer and watched her gaze drop to his bare chest and the way his nipples were contracting in the pleasantly cool night air. “I know where you’re coming from, Gillian. It’s never been easy for me to accept help, either.”
She sipped her beer and wiped the moisture from her lips with the back of her hand. “Really.”
Ignoring her droll tone, Cisco continued, “I haven’t always been an angel, either.”
Gillian turned her dazzling green eyes heavenward, as determined, it seemed, to keep their conversation on a. superficial note as he was to deepen it. “Although, like everyone else on the ranch, I’ve heard the rumors about your supposedly nefarious past, I still find them very hard to believe,” she said, running a hand through the length of her auburn hair, shifting it off her face.
“Believe it,” Cisco said gruffly. The truth was he was still pretty embarrassed and ashamed about some of the things he had done as a kid, but he had managed to put it all behind him, and so could Gillian.
Cisco caught her hand before it fell back into her lap. Ignoring her mutinous expression, he confided, determined to get her to depend on him a little bit whether she wanted to or not, “When Max and I first met, I didn’t want Max’s help any more than you want mine, Gillian, but Max gave it to me anyway. I tried everything I knew to make him give up on me and go away, the way everyone else had, but he wouldn’t do it. He said he saw something worthwhile in me that he wasn’t going to waste.”
Gillian stiffened and removed her hand from his. She took another drink. “Thanks ever so much for the charming parable, Cisco,” she said with lethal contentiousness that upped the tension between them another notch, “but I don’t need saving.”
Don’t you? Cisco thought as he shook his head at her remonstratively. “That gun you’ve been snuggling up to at night says otherwise.”
Flushing, Gillian drained the rest of her beer in one long thirsty gulp and set the empty bottle aside with a thud. “Look, I’m sorry I mistook you for the burglar of my dreams.” She defended herself hotly. “But the gun wasn’t loaded. It never is. I just keep it with me for protection, in case anything does happen.”
Cisco studied the flushed contours of her angel’s face. “And it has happened in the past, hasn’t it?” he queried as he put his empty bottle next to hers.
“I’ve had nightmares before,” Gillian replied, choosing—he thought—to deliberately misunderstand his question. “Everyone has.”
Cisco lifted a disbelieving brow as he shot a look at the gun on the table. “The kind of nightmare that prompts you to mistake an innocent bystander for someone named Phillip and try to shoot him?” he mocked dryly. “I don’t think so.”
Gillian’s green eyes grew stormy, even as Cisco savored the moonlit darkness and the intimacy of being together like this on such a quiet summer night. “I’m sorry I did that,” she said. “And for your information, that’s never happened to me before.” The flush in her cheeks deepened and she began to trace patterns on the blanket with soft, aimless strokes of her fingertips. “It’s just that I’m not used to having a man in my quarters with me when I sleep and you woke me in the middle of a bad dream. And when I saw your silhouette moving toward me, looking so dark and dangerous…I thought my dream was real.”
She looked upset about that, as she should be, Cisco thought. He tore his glance from the caressing motions of her hand. “Which brings us back to the original question,” Cisco said, forcing them to get back to the heart of the matter. “Who is Phillip and what did Phillip do to you?” Cisco asked more aggressively. If it was half as bad as Cisco thought, he wanted to pulverize the barbarian.
Gillian’s hand stilled. “You’re not going to give up on this, are you?”
Cisco surveyed the tense set of her slender shoulders. “Nope.”
Gillian released a resigned breath and after another long pause, appeared to come to some kind of decision. Swallowing hard, she looked up at him, the pain and devastation of what had happened reflected in her eyes. “A long time ago, right before I met Susannah, I was stalked and my apartment was broken into a couple of times, mostly when I wasn’t there—to terrorize me, I guess—but once I was there when the break-in occurred.”
Gillian shrugged and didn’t meet his eyes. As each moment passed, she seemed to withdraw into herself a little more. “I called the police, of course, but they let the guy go.”
This, Cisco did not understand. “Why?” he asked, his own frustration evident.
Sighing heavily, Gillian raked her hands through her hair again and looked all the more distressed. “Because I knew him and had had a relationship with him and there wasn’t enough evidence to arrest him.”
“But if he’d broken in, surely there was proof.”
“He had a background in intelligence work before I met him. There was no lock, no alarm system he couldn’t get around. He was also a number of years older than I was at the time, and as far as the police were concerned, because I was so completely hysterical about everything, he had a lot more credibility. Anyway—” Gillian sighed shakily “—rather than continue to deal with it, or try to prove to the police that he was the one who was lying and not me, I walked out on my lease and used every cent I had to get as far away as I could from him.”
“Which is how you ended up in a homeless shelter in California,” Cisco guessed.
“Right.” Giving him no chance to ask questions about her time in the shelter, she rushed on. “Once there, I put my life back together pretty quickly again, but ever since, as you can probably understand, I’ve been a little leery. So, to help feel safe again, I took lessons at a shooting range and bought a gun.”
Gillian bit her lower lip and shook her head, continuing, “I tried sleeping with it loaded and nearby, but I was always afraid it was going to go off accidentally. So I stopped carrying it loaded and contented myself with knowing I had a few bullets to put in the gun, and that even unloaded, it would work effectively to scare off an intruder, although that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Does it?”
Cisco recalled how he’d felt when confronted with her weapon. “Don’t bet on that. You scared the heck out of me.”
“But you got the gun away from me anyway. Which means anyone else could’ve, too,” Gillian pointed out, troubled.
Cisco studied her, then finally guessed unhappily, “Which means you’re still frightened of being accosted.”
Gillian shrugged and replied, “In and of itself, that is not surprising. Once you realize your vulnerabilities, the apprehension doesn’t really go away. Although it is better for me now. Or has been, since I learned how to shoot and started carrying a gun.”
“On your person, or in your purse?” Cisco inquired matter-of-factly. Although he was pleased Gillian had confided in him as much as she had, his gut instinct told him Gillian was still concealing a lot.
“In my purse, most of the time. Occasionally, on my person—if I have to be out alone late at night.”
“This was in Los Angeles,” Cisco ascertained, wondering what else she was holding back.
“Yes,” she bit out.
Cisco could almost understand that. In recent years, cities like Los Angeles had become hotbeds of crime and violence. But they weren’t in the big city. “Here, in Montana, have you felt the need to do the same?” he asked gently.
“No. At least not so far. I’ve felt very safe on the Silver Spur Ranch, very protected,” Gillian admitted in a soft voice. “It’s one of the reasons I was willing to go through this forty-eight-hour charade so I could run the food business and stay here permanently.”
Cisco paused, pleased to see her instincts were on target in this regard. “You’re right to think the men and women here would lay down their lives to protect each other. We’re like family. It’s one of the reasons I like it here, too. But as for you carrying a gun, Gillian, you shouldn’t have to resort to that to feel safe, no matter where you live. No one should.”
Gillian shifted restlessly. She drew her knees up to her chest, beneath the covers, and rested her chin on her knees. If she were really his wife, in something more than name only, maybe she would believe that. “Easier said than done, believe me,” she muttered.
“Maybe it is,” Cisco told her gently, his heart going out to her.
Gillian lifted her head, for one brief moment looking as though she wanted to take shelter in his arms, every bit as much as he wanted to offer it. “And how is that?” she challenged, just as softly.
Cisco knew it was not going to be easy for Gillian to learn to trust any man again, but more than anything he wanted to make the uneasiness in her eyes go away. And that process was going to involve risk on both their parts.
“I think I could make you feel safe.” If you’d let me.
She looked taken aback by his proposal. “Really. How?” she asked, skeptical.
The easiest way in the world, Cisco thought as his entire being warmed to the task. “By watching over you,” he said.
“Watching over me or watching me?” Gillian asked as her heart took on a slow, thudding beat.
Cisco gave her a sexy grin that turned her whole world upside down. “I could see myself doing both.”
“And how exactly are you going to do that?” Gillian drawled, knowing deliciously dangerous complications like this were exactly what she had been trying to avoid all these years. She didn’t want to drag anyone else into the nightmare of fear and uncertainty that had become her life. She didn’t want to tear down the barricades she had erected around her heart. But that was, it appeared, exactly what Cisco Kidd was trying to do.
“It would depend on what time of day or night it was,” he said with a teasing wink.
Gillian glanced at her watch. “All right. I’ll play along,” she said dryly, her gut feeling telling her that Cisco would not rest until he’d had a chance to prove his point. “What would you do at three-thirty in the morning to make me feel safe, Cisco?” For that matter, what could anyone do to make her nightmares go away?
“This is after a bad dream.”
“Right,” Gillian said, aware her heart was pounding in her throat again and he was very, very close. Close enough for her to inhale the intoxicating scent of his skin and cologne.
“Well, first, I’d climb into bed beside you—if I wasn’t already there—and I’d take you in my arms,” he said softly. Ignoring her wide-eyed amazement, he lifted the covers, slid in beside her, so they were situated shoulder to shoulder in the warmth.
“Then I’d hold you close,” he continued, wrapping one strong arm around her protectively and cuddling her close. “Just like this.” He threaded his other hand through the hair at the nape of her neck and angling her head beneath his, pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Another on her temple. Her cheek. “And I’d hold you like this until you stopped trembling.”
Gillian’s face rested against the beard-roughened warmth of his. Had it ever felt so good to simply be held? she wondered wistfully as she snuggled against the rock-solid heat of his chest. Had she ever felt so safe, so protected, so absolutely and tenderly cared for? He was generating flames of heat, tremors of desire, just holding her this way, and he hadn’t even touched his lips to hers yet.
“Umm, I hate to break it to you, Cisco, but this is not making me feel safe,” Gillian commented as he lifted the soft veil of her hair and kissed his way down the exposed line of her throat to the U of her collarbone.
Cisco bent his head and, taking advantage of the languid ribbon of desire spreading through her, kissed her full on the mouth, until her toes curled and a hot flush swept through her entire body. She gulped in air, aware of the tantalizing feel of solid muscle and satin skin, and lower still, the heated stirrings of his desire. “Then what will?” he teased softly, holding her still as he kissed her again, even more thoroughly this time.
Unable to help herself, Gillian began to yield, then caught herself and moaned low in the back of her throat. “Cisco—” She splayed her hands across his bare chest, her fingers sliding through the thick mat of chest hair to the warm smooth muscle beneath. But it was too late; he was already undoing the buttons on her pajama top. Tendrils of white heat swept through her as his mouth moved sensually on the hollow between her breasts, then returned with devastating slowness to her mouth.
“Want me to stop?” he whispered as he deepened the kiss and slipped his hand inside to cup the soft curve of her breast.
Gillian moaned as his fingertips closed over her nipple, massaging it into a point. The pleasure was almost unbearable as everything around her went soft and fuzzy except the hot, hard pressure of his mouth. She knew all the reasons why they shouldn’t consummate this marriage, yet she had the urge to surrender completely to his tender touch and slow, sensuous kiss. “Yes. No. I don’t know….”
“Well, while you’re thinking about it…” He stroked his way down her spine, his caressing fingertips every bit as sure and sensual and somehow comforting as his kiss. “Think about this.” He spoke as his tongue moved across her lips. “And this.” His lips moved to her breast as his thigh moved between hers, easing her legs apart, as he moved to possess her the way only a husband could.
Heat curled high and low. She felt her back arching off the bed even as his hands found her, too. Heavy and warm, they splayed across her skin, slipped across her abdomen, moved lower still.
For long glorious moments she gave herself up to the tension building inside her. For so long she had wanted to forget, and now she was. His kisses, his touch, the warm sensuality of their embrace combined to wipe out everything sordid and ugly that had gone before.
It had been so long since she had been touched, held…so long since she had let herself want, she thought as a new wave of heat and longing washed over her.
What was it Max had said? she wondered as she felt herself spinning into oblivion. Reach out with both hands and grab the happiness that is Waiting for you. That, she thought fiercely, her mind made up, was what she was going to do tonight. They might only be married for a couple days…their union might only amount to a fling, but right this moment they were husband and wife and she was going to enjoy it while it lasted.
Cisco hadn’t planned for this to happen. He hadn’t expected to do anything but protect Gillian and help her find a way out of whatever trouble she was in. But now that she was here, cosseted in his arms, now that she beginning to confide in him, he found he had a different agenda entirely. He wanted to take the kind of risks he’d never yet dared and make Gillian his own in every way that counted. He wanted to offer her the safety and security her previous life had lacked. Not just for tonight, but for the entire forty-eight hours and beyond….
The fact they were playing into Max’s matchmaking plan bothered him a little, Cisco thought as he continued to kiss and caress Gillian with a slow deliberateness that was as tantalizing to him as it was to her.
He did not like being manipulated into anything, even if it was allegedly something that was destined to be. But deeper than his concern over Max’s bold machinations was his hunger to know everything about her.
Gillian had cloaked herself in mystery, and that mystery extended to the way she responded to his kisses, with a sweet, demanding need that soon burst into flame. With the way she touched him, so sweetly and tenderly. And with the way she opened herself to his possession, letting him take charge, then surprising him again as she arched up wantonly to meet him, thrust for thrust.
She embraced him like a woman who had been too long without affection…without closeness of any kind. But that was ending, he decided as he deepened his strokes and urged her on to soaring heights. And it was ending now.
Because Gillian wasn’t alone any longer, and neither was he. They had each other, and they had this. And for the moment, he thought as his heart pounded and there was no more holding back, this was enough.
Gillian pulled him closer, holding him tight against the softness of her breasts, her response honest and uncompromising and unashamed.
He felt her tremble as she reached the frenzied acceleration to climax, felt her draw him into the whitehot pleasure of it all, and then he, too, was freefalling into oblivion, shuddering with release, and plummeting over the edge.
CISCO HELD HER until the trembling stopped and their breathing finally slowed, then moved back to look into her eyes. Rushing into a love affair was definitely not his style, but what the heck, he figured. The two of them were old enough, and adult enough, to be able to handle it.
“I just can’t believe it,” Gillian murmured in a stunned voice as she ducked her head shyly and stroked her hands across his chest.
“Can’t believe what?” Cisco asked, still holding her close.
She sighed serenely as she wreathed her arms about his neck and continued to snuggle in his arms. “I do feel safe when you hold me like this.”
Cisco felt a deep satisfaction, too, at simply being with her this way. A satisfaction Max would have gloried knowing about. Irritated, Cisco pushed the disturbing thought away. Max was his mentor, friend and father figure all rolled into one, but he was not doing any of this to please Max. Nor had he done it because Gillian needed saving. He had made love to her because it had felt right. It was as simple and honest and uncomplicated as that. “Maybe Max is right. Maybe we do belong together long-term,” he told her.
Without warning, the troubled light was back in her eyes.
“Cisco!” she exclaimed, distressed. “You can’t believe that,” Gillian whispered back, studying him even more intently.
It was almost as if, Cisco thought, she were searching for the trap in his words. Wanting…needing…to comfort her once again, Cisco framed her face with his hands and tilted her face up to his. “All I know for certain is that I want you,” he told her victoriously, deciding for now to stick with the fact they were sexually compatible. “It’s as simple and complicated as that.”
“Yes, it is,” Gillian agreed in a soft, serious voice, surprising him once again as she leaned up and warmly and seductively pressed her lips to his. “Because heaven help me, Cisco Kidd, I want you, too.”