Reuniting With the Rancher (8 page)

Then he asked the question, the one that gave her no quarter. “So what are you really afraid of here, Holly? Except for not being able to bury yourself in work, nothing changed by you coming out here.”

“Yes, it did,” she said, unable to silence the words, no matter how hard it was to speak them. “I don’t want to go back.”

* * *

Holy hell,
Cliff thought. That was momentous. It left him speechless. He knew as well as anyone how much being a social worker meant to this woman. The scars of her determination still resided in his heart. Come to that, the scars of her determination probably resided in her heart and soul.

He couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. All he could do was hold her close and let her go wherever she wanted or needed to go with this. He wasn’t comfortable with feeling helpless, but he felt utterly helpless right now.

He vastly preferred to deal with matters, get them taken care of, pleasant or not, and move on. Not that he’d been great about the moving-on part with Holly. He remembered moping for a long time.

But now he certainly understood why she had needed someone to talk to. Just thinking that she shouldn’t go back would have rocked her to her very core. The attack was bad enough, and the single detail of the guy’s breath was enough to tell him what they’d been after. He had to admit he was surprised that she’d been able to return to her work in that same neighborhood. He couldn’t imagine.

As he sat there holding her, he thought about the protected life he’d led. Not exactly sheltered. He’d dealt with other exigencies, like bad years, range fires, the deaths of animals, plenty of hard times. Holding things together with twine and a prayer, he sometimes thought.

But nothing like what she had been facing. He felt so damn inadequate right now. He didn’t know how to comfort her; he didn’t have any helpful words, nothing to offer. Nothing except that he could hold her, and that seemed a small enough thing to do.

Before long, however, it ceased to be a small thing. Memories of that long-ago summer began to burgeon in his brain even as his body responded to her closeness. There was an inevitability to it, as if she were the key to a lock that hadn’t been opened in a long time. A key to feelings and sensations he had put away, only to discover that they hadn’t even become dusty with time.

He was older now, though. He had learned some self-control, and some other basic truths, such as that anticipation had pleasures of its own.

The ache began to build in him, the need and the yearning, but he checked them. Now was certainly not the time. The time might never come again, but it certainly wasn’t going to happen when she was in the middle of a crisis. Once he had been young enough to think that making love was an anodyne to everything. He was no longer that young.

Older and wiser, he might wish and want, but he could still maintain enough sense to know it wasn’t right.

Although maintaining that sense was getting harder by the minute. His groin grew heavy and throbbed. His heart beat a little faster. His hands itched to reacquaint themselves with her every charm—charms he remembered as if they had been permanently etched on his brain and skin.

To him she had always been irresistible. When she had walked into the lawyer’s office, he had realized in an instant that that hadn’t changed, despite all the pain she had caused him. That’s why he’d been so annoyed.

He’d long since learned a measure of forgiveness for her. She had left because she had other things to do, things that didn’t involve being buried on a ranch. She’d never made any secret of that, she’d never misled him. He’d misled himself, and finally he had become man enough to admit it.

He had thought he was in love with her. Maybe he had been. But he wasn’t in love now. He didn’t know her well enough, and probably never would. She might talk about not wanting to go back, but she would. It was her life.

And he was too smart now to put himself in that bind again.

But he sure wouldn’t have minded making love with her again. Once, twice, a hundred times—the passion remained after all else was gone.

Kind of amazing, actually.

Right then he didn’t dare move a muscle for fear he would make the wrong move. It would be so easy to kiss her, to fondle her, to pull her clothes away and bury himself in her welcoming depths. To reenact the folly of so long ago. A summer love, a time when he’d been high as a kite on her, and randy every single waking moment. They had frolicked endlessly and joyously.

And unrealistically. It had been a few months stolen from reality. He knew that now. Sooner or later, one way or another, reality would have intruded on their cocoon of laughter and passion.

It was intruding right now. The licking tongues of flame that devoured him and urged him to take her right this second couldn’t have been more inappropriate.

He sighed and shifted cautiously, resigning himself to unsated need. Some things mattered more. He’d managed to grow up at least that much.

She stirred against him and for a second he froze as a rush of renewed hunger flooded him. He wished he knew what it was about her. Not even Lisa had ever managed to make him feel the kind of desire this woman kindled in him. Which was not to say he hadn’t enjoyed Lisa, but Holly was in a whole different league.

He nearly voiced a protest when she eased out of his arms and sat back. Then she blew him away.

“I shouldn’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Let you hold me. All it does is make me crazy with wanting you again.”

“Damn,” he murmured. He clenched his fists and fought an urge to pounce on her right then.

“I guess I shouldn’t have said that.” She tried to jump up but he caught her wrist and stopped her.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m kind of feeling the same way.”
Kind of?
He had fireworks going off in his head because of her admission.

“But we can’t go back,” she said.

“I know.”

“I mean, how do I know what I’m feeling right now isn’t just a memory?”

Memory? What he was feeling right now was no memory. Not by any stretch.

“Regardless,” she said, giving him the sense that she was trying to be reasonable, “last time we let passion rule us, we got hurt. We’d be fools to open that door again.”

She was probably right, but he was perilously close to not caring. He shut his eyes briefly, battering the caveman in him back to a darker corner, then looked at her again. He hadn’t missed the fact that she had said, “
we
got hurt.”

“Holly? Were you hurt, too, when you left?” This whole thing was beginning to take on some strange dimensions, and he had to figure it out.

“Of course I was.”

“I wish I’d known that.” He might have felt a little better to know her decision hadn’t been easy, that it had cost her, too. It was a selfish feeling, and he despised it, but it was true anyway. He had felt cast aside, as if he didn’t matter to her at all.

“I told you it hurt,” she answered, her eyes widening. “I told you it wasn’t an easy decision.”

He remembered those words, all right, but he also remembered something else. “I didn’t believe you. You made it look so easy to just get up and walk away from me that afternoon. Not a tear, not even one look back.”

“You thought that was
easy?
Why do you think I had to say all those horrible things? I was taking a hatchet to the ties.”

He couldn’t tell if she was angry or surprised. Her face didn’t give him a clue. After a moment, she just shook her head and murmured, “Wow.”

There was no reply to that, so he just leaned forward, resting his elbows on his splayed knees so that she was behind him. Looking at her right now was difficult, between the desire that refused to completely quiet and the feeling that things were somehow going off the rails here. At the very least he had to adjust his memories a bit. At the worst... At the worst she was about to make a life-altering decision under circumstances that weren’t the best.

“I’m sorry,” Holly said. “I’m a mess and I’m making things messier.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Stop apologizing. What mess?”

“I’m mixed-up,” she said. “Everything’s suddenly all mixed-up. My aunt, my job, what happened to me last year, you... It’s all roiling together and I can’t sort it out. It’s not fair to dump all of this on you.”

“I don’t feel dumped on.” He really didn’t. Confused, yes. A little worried, definitely. Mostly for her. Come what may, he had this ranch and all that entailed. If she started doing things like quitting her job, she might wind up with nothing that mattered to her.

He wished he knew how best to help her out, but he suspected that in the end she was going to have to make her own decisions about everything. Well, she would. She’d been making her own decisions for a long time. There was only one thing he could think of to say.

“Just don’t decide anything right now,” he said. “Not with so much turmoil. If nothing else, there’s plenty of time.”

“Not really,” she said quietly. “I fly back in less than two weeks.”

“Why should that be a deadline? You’d have to go back to give notice regardless, so nothing about your job needs deciding this instant. If you’re really thinking about a camp for kids, that’s going to take a lot of time and planning. As for me...I shouldn’t even be part of this. I’m here, planted like a tree, I’m not going anywhere and you have more important things to deal with, like your grief over Martha.”

“God, I miss her. I could almost hate that house, because it’s so empty without her. Then I remember the good times.”

“That’s important.”

“Yeah.” She fell quiet.

He studied his hands as if they might have some answers when in truth all they wanted to do was reach for her. He folded them together and wondered how Holly managed to turn him into that young man who had spent an entire summer following her around like a buck in rut. He should be feeling stupid right now.

Instead he was feeling like a bull that had scented a cow in heat one pasture over, with a fence in the way. It should have been laughable.

“Cliff?”

“Yeah?”

“Remember how we’d ride out to that stream and sit on that flat rock?”

Boy, did he remember. He’d bring a blanket, she’d sit in his lap and there in the soft summer breeze, surrounded by running water, beneath the tree-dappled sunlight, he would open her like a treasure, touching, undressing, taking his time until he couldn’t stand it anymore, which usually hadn’t been very long. Desire had always seemed to overwhelm them almost between one breath and the next. Fast. Furious. He could still hear her cries and moans of pleasure echoing in his head.

“Yeah,” he managed to say, his voice rough.

“I wish I could sit on your lap like that again.”

“Why?” he asked, barely managing to get the word out.

“Because I felt so good there. I felt like I belonged there.”

Right now she didn’t feel as though she belonged anywhere, he thought. Not in her aunt’s house, not in her job, not anywhere.

But hold her in his lap like that again? He’d suffer the tortures of the damned.

Still, her plea tore at him, and much as he’d been trying to be friendly without getting himself in a position to be wounded again, there was no escaping the fact that he wanted to help her in some way. She was going through a rough time and she was all alone out here. She’d never been here long enough to make friends with anyone except him and Martha. A stranger in a strange land, grieving and alone unless he was willing to put himself out there and take a bit of a risk.

Hell, he was no chicken.

So he slid onto the floor, sat cross-legged and reached back for her hand. She came willingly enough until she sat in the cradle of his legs, her back against him, her head resting beneath his chin.

“Those were good times,” she whispered.

“The best.” He’d never deny that. He wrapped his arms gently around her. “Close your eyes and remember how good you felt on those days.”

She startled him by playfully slapping his arm. “If I start remembering how good that felt, we’re going to be doing more than sitting here.”

A surprised laugh escaped him, and he gave her a squeeze. “Okay, then think of something less inflammatory.”

“With you?” She giggled then sighed. “It was a wonderful summer, Cliff. I wish it could have gone on forever. But it wouldn’t have, even if I hadn’t left.”

“I know. Reality and all that. And while I was miserable for a while, I know that you would have been even more miserable if you hadn’t pursued your own goals. Giving up something that big...well, it probably would have poisoned us. You’d have resented giving up your dreams, and I’d have resented your resentment. Not a good mix.”

“Maybe so.” She wiggled deeper into his lap, just as she had done so often all those years ago. He figured it was unconscious on her part, and he hoped like hell she couldn’t feel how hard he was for her. She didn’t say anything and didn’t move, so he sat there suspended between heaven and hell with her warm rump against his groin.

In an instant he flashed back in time. They were on the rock, she lying on the blanket while he knelt at her feet. Her blouse was open, her bra riding up around her neck, revealing beautiful, full breasts with pink areolas and large puckered nipples. Nipples that had welcomed his mouth and drawn groans from her. Her narrow waist, her gently curved hips, the thatch of dark hair at the apex of her thighs...

He felt as if he were caught in a blacksmith’s fire. He remembered joking that she had to stop wearing boots because they were a pain. The giggle that escaped her then died as he at last yanked them away along with her pants. Then he had slid up over her, his own jeans still twisted around his knees, and pressed his face to her honeyed womanhood. How she had groaned and arched into him, gripping his head...

He didn’t want this moment, this memory, to end. Alarm bells sounded, because it was going to end, but he didn’t heed them. “How about we go riding tomorrow?”

“I’d really love that. But don’t you have to work?”

“The work is never done. But I can take a few hours for fun. Essential to sanity and all that.”