Cowboy's Kiss (16 page)

Dropping her towel onto the first lounger she passed, she walked straight to the pool, descending the steps into the water, shivering just a little in its coolness before she became accustomed to it. She hoped it would have the same effect as a cold shower in calming thoughts and longings she didn't want to have.

She did laps in that pursuit, too. Back and forth across the length of the pool. Again and again. Trying not to think of Jackson. Of that extraordinary body of his. That to-die-for face. The kisses they'd shared...

But there was no distraction in swimming, she realized. The monotony of it left her mind wandering as wickedly as lying in bed trying to sleep would have. It didn't even do much in the way of tiring her out.

Where are hay bales to stack when you need them?

She'd probably finished thirty laps by then, and when she began fantasizing about knocking on Jackson's bedroom door, it occurred to her that this was doing more harm than good, and she headed for the pool steps again.

That was when she saw him.

He was standing in one of the open sliding glass doors, his chest bare, his jeans riding low on his hips, his thumbs tucked into his waistband. He leaned against the jamb, dusted only in moonglow, watching her.

She felt her nipples go instantly hard and hated to rise up out of the water and show him—as surely the tight, wet suit would. But she'd already begun to climb the stairs and she couldn't slink back now. Her only hope was to get to her towel in a hurry, before he could see.

“Trouble sleeping?” she asked as though she hadn't a care in the world.

He didn't answer her. He just pushed away from the door at the same time she stepped onto the pool's edge.

The lounger she'd dropped her towel onto was much closer to Jackson than to her. He reached it first, picked up the towel and held it open for her.

And he did notice her nipples, because she saw his eyes lower for a brief moment before lifting to her face again.

Why was he here? she wondered. Had he just come down to the kitchen for something to eat or drink and discovered her? Or had he heard her leave her room and followed her?

The possibility that he'd come down purposely to be with her tightened her nipples even more.

But to get to that towel she had to walk right up to him.

Resisting the urge to hunch her shoulders, cross her arms and huddle over her chest, she went to stand before him. But just as she was about to grab the towel, he took a step forward, flipped it over her head and caught her with it from behind.

The movement brought them closer together, facing each other, Jackson still holding the ends of the towel in his fists in a U around her.

“Did you enjoy your swim?” he asked then in a husky voice for her ears alone.

“It's a nice pool,” she answered, feeling silly and inane, and alive and excited at once. “If you can't sleep, maybe you ought to go for a dip.”

He smiled the way he had earlier in the truck, with one side of his mouth, as if the dip he wanted to take had nothing to do with swimming. “You're pretty good at it,” he commented, closing some of the gap between them by moving nearer at the same moment he pulled her forward, too.

“It's great exercise.” Small talk. But what else could she do to hide the race of her pulse, the quickening in her stomach, the urge to press her kerneled nipples to his well-defined naked pectorals?

“I'd have thought I'd been giving you plenty of exercise. Didn't know you needed more...”

There was suggestiveness in that, and Ally knew the exercise he was thinking of at that moment had nothing to do with ranch work or swimming.

Again he eased her toward him with the towel, and this time they ended up so close together that the tips of her breasts did nudge his chest. But just barely. Just enough to tease, to torment her with the surge of desire for so much more.

He gazed down into her eyes, searching, holding her with his, frowning as if something troubled him. Then he shook his head. “It's already going to be hard for me when you leave,” he whispered, as if he didn't mean for her to hear it. As if he were telling himself. Warning himself.

His chin reared back all of a sudden, his eyes closed, and Ally knew he was fighting the same battle she was. She told herself to solve the problem for them both, to snatch herself from the grip of the bath sheet and go inside.

But then he sighed, shook his head yet again and let his chin drop. “But I can't help this,” he said just before his mouth covered hers in a kiss that was hungry from the start.

Ally was barely aware of his letting the towel fall around her feet. But she was very aware of his wrapping his arms around her, holding her pressed to him the way she'd longed for, his skin hot against hers.

His lips parted, his tongue thrust in and he plundered her mouth forcefully. But not so forcefully that she didn't welcome it, that she didn't answer every parry, every circle, and chase it with her own.

Waiting barely beneath the surface was a passion that was combustible and that kiss lighted fire to it. Ally let her hands travel where only her eyes had gone before, up from the small of his back to the widening V of work-honed shoulders; into his hair, surprisingly silky and soft; down again to that thick, corded neck; into the hollow of his collarbone; and even—before she realized what she was doing—to his chest, easing herself slightly away so she could get there.

Because now it wasn't enough to merely have her breasts pressed to him. She craved the feel of his hands there, exploring her nipples the way she was exploring his.

His mouth left hers then, kissing a scorching trail across her cheek to her ear, along the side of her neck to her shoulder, where he slipped the straps of her bathing suit down and with them, the front, too.

It dropped only as far as the crests. But one of those glorious, big hands did the rest, answering the need inside her to feel it covering the whole sensitive mound and working a magic more incredible than she'd imagined, taking her breath away on a sigh of exquisite agony.

His mouth came back to hers, even more hungrily, more urgently, as he filled his other hand with her other breast, driving her mad with a desire more intense than she'd ever felt before. She wanted this man. Wanted him to make love to her. And at that moment nothing—
nothing
—else mattered.

“Jackson,” she breathed, meaning to tell him so.

But suddenly he tore himself away as if something had stabbed him. “I can't do this,” he groaned as if stopping were killing him. “I can't put my heart on the road out of this place again.”

He jammed his hands through his hair so hard it must have hurt. Ally saw his jaw clench, saw every muscle in his face tense up, saw him swallow so fiercely his Adam's apple punched the sky.

She slipped her suit back in place and somehow, though he'd seemed lost in his own battle again, he noticed that, yanking his head lower and looking at her as if she were stealing something from him.

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come down here,” he said, stepping around her and striding on long, determined steps toward the barn.

Through the glow of moonlight, she watched him hop over the paddock fence and then leap onto the rear of the nearest horse, landing perfectly on the slope of the animal's back.

And then, with a clicking sound that carried to her through the silence of the night, he set the horse to a gallop, clearing the far side of the fence as if it were no more than a low-lying hurdle and disappearing into the distance.

Ally stood there watching, enduring the ache of disappointed desires even as she told herself it was for the best.

Because deep down she knew something she didn't want to know.

That her own heart was just as much at risk as his was.

I
f the water in the pool had started to boil, Ally wouldn't have been surprised. That's how hot the next day felt to her. In reality, by eleven in the morning the temperature was just shy of one hundred degrees.

Hans and Marta had gone into Cheyenne to visit Beth's small family in the hospital, the ranch hands were all out on the range, and only Ally, Meggie and Jackson were close to home. But even the heat didn't keep Jackson from working or from again expecting Ally to keep up with him.

He set Meggie to polishing his saddle, making sure she kept to the shade, but he insisted he and Ally unload a truck bed full of feed by hand, scooping the dried corn and oats into four-gallon buckets and then carrying them to the bin in the barn.

The heavy buckets nearly pulled Ally's arms from their sockets and even the few minutes in the shade of the barn each trip did nothing to cool her off. She pined for the air-conditioned house and wondered how Jackson could keep at this himself.

But the new day had brought with it yet another change in him. Gone, still, was the gruff, goading tyrant, yet the pleasant pamperer had disappeared, too.

To Meggie he was just as warm and friendly as always, but working with Ally he was even more quiet than usual. Oh, he was civil enough, and polite. But very serious. Very sober. And there was an air of stronger determination about him, as if, sometime during the night, he'd decided he needed to use even more punishing tactics to drive her away.

Or maybe Ally was just projecting that. After all, what had been on her mind since their encounter at the poolside was that maybe she should throw in the towel herself and go back to Denver before she got in any deeper emotionally.

Because no matter how reluctant either of them was—and there was no doubt they were both reluctant—something was happening between them. Something powerful. Something beyond their control. Something that smacked too much of caring for each other.

They stopped for lunch when the truck was finally empty, and Jackson informed Meggie that he was going to teach her how to halter-break the filly afterward.

Meggie was delighted and hurried through her sandwich so she could go out to the barn to tell the horse.

When her daughter was gone, Jackson turned to Ally. “What you need to do this afternoon is climb up and oil the windmill.”

He had no way of knowing what he was asking of her. But just the mention of such a thing sent a wave of fear through her. And for the first time since she'd come here and been taking his orders to do every smelly, heavy, dirty, difficult chore, she refused. “I won't be able to do that.”

Her answer cocked his head to one side and raised his eyebrows. “Sure you will. You just climb up the back side of it and—”

“I'll do something else.”

“It's oiling the windmill that needs to be done.”

“You'll have to do it yourself.”

“It's an easy job.”

“No.”

He stared at her, boring into her with eyes that could be surprisingly hard in spite of their soft color. And suddenly, as they were locked in a stare-down, she watched the goading tyrant return.

“What are you thinking, Ally? That delivering Beth's baby took care of your part around here forever? Or that just because we had a nice day yesterday, every day's going to be a party now? Or maybe that a few kisses bought you—”

“I don't think any of those things.” She cut him off, angry at where he'd been headed with that. “I'll do something else, but I won't oil the windmill.”

“That's what needs doing.”

Back where they'd begun. Stalemate.

Why did this have to come up today, of all days? she wondered. He seemed to be seizing any reason to push her even more than he had been before.

“If you want to live here, you do the work it takes to keep things going,” he said with a clear note of threat in his voice.

She considered confessing why she just couldn't be expected to do that, but somehow, admitting she was terrified of heights at a moment when he was looking for a weak link to yank on seemed like handing him the very tool he needed to do the yanking. Maybe reasoning with him would help.

“Jackson,” she began very calmly, “I know what you're doing. I know what's been happening between us has raised a lot of bad memories for you and shaken you up. It shakes me up, too. And I know—”

“The only thing you need to know,” he said so softly it sounded dangerous, “is that the windmill needs oiling. Right now.” He pushed back the stool he was sitting on at the butcher block and stood, taking his plate to the sink.

“I won't do it,” she said, giving up trying to reason with him and instead opting for belligerence.

“Yes, ma'am, you will,” he countered, more obstinate still. “If you stay here, you work. And you work at what I say you work at.”

“I will work. But I won't—”

“If that windmill isn't oiled by the time Kansas gets here to pick up Meggie I'll personally load her car with your belongings, and with you and Meggie, and it'll take a battle in court for you or your daughter to set foot on this place again.”

“You'd lose.”

“But I'd fight. And by the time you won any kind of order to get back on this ranch I would have told every person in this town that you came here, earned your keep for a few days and then, after I showed you a nice time in town, decided you didn't want to work like that anymore, that I could do it all while you sat around on your duff and reaped the benefits. Folks here don't take kindly to laziness or people who don't do their share. You wouldn't find this such a friendly place to be then.”

She met his stare, this native son of Elk Creek, and knew all it would take would be to tell that story into a few well-chosen ears and it would indeed turn his lifelong friends and neighbors against her and Meggie. And she didn't doubt that as nice and friendly as these small-town people could be, they could also be just as unpleasant, cold and aloof, if they chose to ostracize them.

Still, she might just have to risk it.

But at that moment Meggie came bounding back into the kitchen, as excited as if it were Christmas morning. “We're all ready,” she announced to Jackson. “Do you think, maybe, if I do a reee-ally good job trainin' li'l Sunshine—that's what I been callin' her, Sunshine—that maybe she could be mine? ‘Cuz she reee-ally likes me. I can tell. And I reee-ally like her.”

Jackson's eyes didn't budge from pinning Ally to the spot even as her daughter's happy voice chimed around them, an inescapable reminder of how important the little girl's improved state of mind was to her. A state of mind that wouldn't stay improved if being here meant a court battle and a whole town of people who let it be known they weren't wanted.

“What'll it be?” he demanded.

“I'll oil your damned windmill,” she said through clenched teeth in a voice so low it was a wonder even he heard it.

“The can's in the toolshed,” he informed, turning to escort Meggie back out to the barn, sparing Ally a glance that warned he'd be watching to make sure she kept her word.

There wasn't much of a lunch mess to clean, but as Ally rinsed plates and put them into the dishwasher she gave herself a pep talk.

“I can do this,” she muttered aloud. “It won't take long. I'll just climb up, squirt some oil and be on the ground again before I even know I've left it. No big deal. If I only look up at the sky it won't be a problem. People work from scaffoldings dangling from rooftops and walk along open frameworks for skyscrapers. People climb mountains for fun. If they can do that, I can do this.”

As she left the kitchen and went out to the shed, her gaze was trained on the windmill. It seemed much taller than it had ever before, but she tried not to think about that.

“I can do it,” she whispered to herself on the way out of the shed with an oilcan that looked like a small flask except that the spout was a long cone that narrowed to a precise tip.

She forced it into the back pocket of her jeans, freeing both her hands, which were so wet with nervous perspiration that no sooner had she wiped them against her thighs than they were damp again.

The windmill was near the barn, just off the corner of the paddock fence. As Ally stood at the foot of the giant thing, she considered going into the barn, where Jackson was, and calling his bluff.

Except that she knew he wasn't bluffing, because she had a hunch that what was happening between them on a personal level gave new impetus to his wanting her off his ranch.

“You can do this,” she repeated to herself. “Just get it over with.”

She swallowed the lump of fear in her throat, once again dried her palms on her pants, grabbed an eye-level rung of the built-in ladder with clenched fists and took the first step.

The pep talk started again, only this time it was silent, urging her to the second step, and then the third.

You can do this. You can do this. You can do this.

And she did, too. She made it all the way to the top.

The trouble was, once she got there, even taking her own advice not to look down didn't keep her from realizing just how high up she was.

High enough to look over the barn roof.

And that did her in.

Her heart was pounding so loudly she could literally feel it.

Her throat was dry as dust. Too dry to let words pass through it to even call for help.

Her head felt light.

And every muscle in her body was frozen stiff, from her hands in their white-knuckled death grip on the top wooden slat, all the way down to knees that were locked tight and toes that were curled inside her shoes as if that would give her a better hold.

The voice in her head that had urged her up there suddenly began to ask questions instead.

Was it really worth dying to be on this ranch? With a man who didn't want her here and would force her to risk her life just to oil this stupid contraption? Wouldn't Meggie enjoy other places? Other people? Pets that weren't bigger than she was? Surely there was something else, somewhere else, that would brighten her daughter's spirits. Someplace safe. Someplace where they could spend more time together. Someplace where Ally didn't have to work like a slave to “earn their keep.” Or climb windmills...

And she meant it, too, at that moment, when pure terror made the blood race through her veins. She agreed with Jackson—she and Meggie didn't belong here. And Ally definitely didn't want to be here.

She wanted to be on the ground! Safe on terra firma again. Relaxed. Cool. Calm. Enjoying what Shag had meant to ease her burden, not increase it....

“Mom!”

Ally heard Meggie's cry from below, but she could only assume her daughter had just come out of the barn and spotted her up there; she couldn't so much as lower her eyes to see. And the ring of horror in her daughter's voice only made Ally feel worse.

“Jackson! My mom's on the windmill,” Meggie shouted then. “She can't be up there! She's afraid of high places!
Bad
afraid!”

“Ally?”

That was Jackson's voice aimed up at her a moment later. She tried to open her mouth to answer him, but she couldn't do that, either. She couldn't do anything but hang on for dear life.

“Why the hell didn't you tell me that was the reason you didn't want to do the oiling?”

Did he expect her to answer him? Because she couldn't.

And when she didn't, he called up to her again. “Just come on back down.”

She'd have laughed hysterically at that if she was physically able.

“I think she's stuck. Or dead!” Meggie shrieked, clearly on the verge of panic herself.

“She isn't dead,” Jackson assured in a calming voice. “I think she's just too scared to move.”

“She can't stay there forever!”

“I'm going up to get her. I want you back in the barn with Sunshine. Brush her mane the way I showed you, and by the time you're finished I'll have your mom down. Now scoot. There's nothing to worry about. Everything'll be fine in just a few minutes.”

Ally knew his words were intended for her, too, because even though they were calm and reassuring, his voice was loud enough to carry to her. But it didn't help.

“I'm comin' up, Ally,” he called when, she assumed, Meggie had done as she'd been told and was no longer standing down there watching. “Just hang on.”

Ha! As if she could do anything else.

“So this is why you didn't want to oil the windmill,” he reiterated with some amusement in his voice, the idle chitchat of a rescuer distracting a ledge jumper as he climbed up after her. “Would have been a lot easier to tell me you're afraid of heights. I thought you were just bein' contrary and lookin' for a fight for some reason.”

He reached her then, and although it seemed like an eternity to her, it couldn't have been more than a few minutes before he was carefully placing his booted feet on the same rung hers were on and easing his big body around her from behind, his hands on either side of hers.

More panic freed her throat in a hurry. “Will this hold us both?” she demanded in a choked whisper.

“I wouldn't be here if it wouldn't,” he answered easily enough, his breath against her hair. “You aren't hurt or stuck on anything, are you?”

“No.” But her jaws seemed to be immobilized again and it came out through teeth that were clamped together.

“You really are going to be okay, Ally,” he said. “I've got you and nothing's going to happen to you. Now I want you to put an arm around my neck.”

“Can't.”

“You're gonna have to let go sooner or later, darlin', or we won't be able to budge.” He covered her left hand with his, rubbing it soothingly. “Now, come on, let this one relax a little and it'll give.”

Having the strength and power of his body around hers was beginning to allow her somewhat of a sense of security. She believed he could handle anything, even getting her safely back to the ground, and though it didn't quell her terror, it did give her enough oomph to slowly open her grip, one finger at a time.