Montana Sky (31 page)

“Oh.” Hurriedly, Lily set her glass down, clasped her hands to her hot cheeks. “I've never said things like that to anyone. I didn't mean to embarrass you.”

“You didn't.” Willa's own stomach was fluttering as she reached over to pat Lily's arm. “I think it's wonderful for you, and for Adam.”

“I couldn't say things like that to anyone before.” Lily's voice broke, and the tears swam. “I couldn't to anyone except the two of you.”

“Now, Lily, don't—”

“No.” Lily cut off Tess's concern with a shake of her head. “Everything's changed for me. It started changing when I first met both of you. I started changing. Even with all the horrible things that have happened, I'm so happy. I found Adam, and both of you. I love all of you so much. I love you so much. I'm sorry,” she said, and sprang up to rush to the bathroom.

Moved, flummoxed, Willa sat where she was and listened to the sound of water rushing into the bathroom sink. “Should one of us go in there?”

“No.” Feeling misty-eyed herself, Tess filled Willa's glass again, then dropped onto the couch beside her. “We'll give her a minute.” Thoughtfully she selected a perfect Granny Smith apple from the complimentary basket on the table. “She's right, you know. As bad as things are, there's a lot of good stuff trying to balance the scales.”

“I guess.” Willa looked down into her glass, then lifted her gaze to Tess's. “I guess I'm glad I got to know you. I don't have to like you,” she added before things got sloppy. “But I'm glad we got to know each other.”

Tess smiled, tapped her glass to Willa's. “I'll drink to that.”

“W
HAT
'
S THE POINT
?”
WILLA ASKED AS SHE FROWNED
down at her toenails, currently being painted Poppy Pink by a technician. “Nobody sees them but me, and I don't pay much attention to my toenails.”

“Which was quite obvious,” Tess returned, pleased with her Ravage Red polish. “Before Marla worked her magic on you, your toenails looked like they'd been groomed with a lawn mower.”

“So?”

Willa hated the fact that she was actually enjoying most of the process—which had included her new favorite, foot massage. She turned to the opposite side of the padded pedicure bench where Lily was beaming down at her half-painted toes.

“You really think Adam's going to go for—what is it”—Willa cocked her head to read the label on the bottle of polish—“Calypso Coral?”

“It makes me feel pretty.” Smiling, Lily admired her nails, already shaped and slicked with matching lacquer. “Grown-up and pretty.” She looked over at Tess. “I guess that's the point, isn't it?”

“There.” As if after a long classroom lecture a student had finally grasped the formula, Tess clapped, careful to guard her nails against smears. “At last some simple common sense. A smart woman doesn't dress up and decorate herself for a man. She does it for herself first. Then for other women, who are the only species that really notices the details. Then, coming up in the rear, for men, who, if a woman's lucky, see the big picture.”

Amused at all of them, Tess wiggled her brows, lowered her voice an octave. “Ugh. Looks good. Smells good. Me wanna mate.”

She was rewarded for this insight by a snorting chuckle from Willa. “You don't think much of men, do you, Hollywood?”

“
Au contraire,
dimwit, I think a great deal about men and find them, on the whole, an interesting diversion from the day-to-day routine of life. Take Nate.”

“You appear to have already done that.”

“Yes.” Tess's smile turned smug and feline. “Nathan Torrence, an enigma at first. The slow-talking Montana rancher with the law degree from Yale who likes Keats, Drum tobacco, and the Marx brothers. A combination like that, well, it presents both a challenge and an opportunity.”

She lifted her completed foot and preened. “I like challenges, and I never miss an opportunity. But I'm getting my toenails painted because it makes me feel good. If he gets a charge out of it, that's just a bonus.”

“It makes me feel exotic,” Lily put in, “like—what was the name of that woman in the sarong? The one in the old black-and-white movies?”

“Dorothy Lamour,” Tess told her. “Now take Adam, a different type of man altogether.”

“He is?” Since they'd moved to her favorite topic, Lily perked up. “How?”

“Don't encourage her, Lily. She's playing at expert here.”

“I don't have to play at it, when it comes to men, champ. Adam,” Tess continued, wagging a finger. “Serious, solid, and yet vaguely mysterious. Probably the most gorgeous
man I've ever seen in my short, if illustrious, career of male tracking, with this—the only word I can think of is ‘goodness'—sort of beaming out of those yum-yum eyes.”

“His eyes,” Lily said with a sigh that made Willa roll her own.

“But—” Tess made her point with a shake of her finger. “It doesn't make him boring, as goodness sometimes can, because there's this simmering, controlled passion in there too. And as far as you're concerned, Lily, you could shave your head and paint your face Calypso Coral, and he'd still adore you.”

“He loves me,” Lily said with a foolish grin.

“Yes, he does. He thinks you're the most beautiful woman in the world, and if you woke up some morning and some wicked witch had put a spell on you and turned you into a hag, he'd still think you were the most beautiful woman in the world. He sees past the physical, appreciates it but sees past it to everything you are inside. That's why I think you're the luckiest woman in the world.”

“Maybe that wasn't such a bad take,” Willa commented, “for a Hollywood writer.”

“Oh, I'm not done. We have to complete our triad.” Delighted with herself, Tess leaned back. “Ben McKinnon.”

“Don't start,” Willa commanded.

“Obviously you're hot for him. We'll just sit here a minute and dry,” she told the technicians, then reached for her glass of sparkling mineral water. “A woman would have to be dead two weeks not to have a pulse spike around Ben McKinnon.”

“How much has your pulse been spiking?”

Pleased with the reaction, Tess moved a lazy shoulder. “I'm otherwise involved. If I wasn't . . . In any case, I haven't been dead for two weeks.”

“Could be arranged.”

“No, don't get up and stalk around yet, you'll smear.” Tess put a restraining hand on Willa's arm. “Back to Ben—his sexuality is right out there, striding along a foot in front of him. Raw, hot, unapologetic sex in a tough male package. You watch him ride a horse and you just know he'd ride a
woman with the same power. He's also intelligent, loyal, honest, and looks fabulous in Levi's. As a student of such matters, I'd have to say Ben McKinnon has the best buns in denim east or west of the Pecos. Not a bad distraction,” she finished, taking a slow sip of water, “from the day-to-day routine.”

“I don't know why you're looking at his butt when you've already got a guy,” Willa muttered.

“Because it's a fine butt, and I have excellent eyesight.” Tess skimmed her tongue over her teeth. “Of course, a woman would have to be brave enough, strong enough, and smart enough to match him in power and style.”

There, Tess thought, as Willa sulked beside her, challenge issued, Ben. That's the best help I can give you.

 

I
T WASN
'
T UNTIL WILLA WAS BACK AT MERCY AND
unpacking that she realized that through the last twenty-four hours of her stay at the spa, she hadn't thought of the ranch, of her troubles, her responsibilities at all. And now that she did realize it, there was a quick wash of guilt that it should have been so easy to leave it all behind, to immerse herself in the pampering and pleasure.

Like walking into an alternate reality, she supposed, and grimaced as she tumbled pretty gold boxes onto her bed. Which might explain why she'd barely put up a struggle when Tess and Lily had urged her to buy creams, lotions, scents, shampoo.

Christ Almighty, hundreds of dollars' worth of female foolishness that she was unlikely to remember to use.

So she'd give the lot of them to Bess, she decided, to go with the fancy perfumed soaps and bubble bath she'd bought her.

In any case, it was good to be getting back into jeans, she thought, tugging them on. It was better to have Adam tell her there'd been no whisper of trouble over the weekend. The men were starting to relax again, though the round-the-clock guard remained in effect. Calf-pulling season was winding down, and the calendar insisted that spring was on the way.

You wouldn't know it, she mused, trailing her shirt from her fingers as she walked to the window. The air swooping down from Canada was as bitter as an old woman with gout. There was no snow in the sky, and for that she was grateful. Still, Willa knew the vagaries of March—and April, for that matter. The reality of spring remained as distant as the moon.

And she longed for it.

That surprised her as well. Normally she was content in any season. Winter was work, certainly, but it also offered, even demanded, periods of rest. For the land, for the people on it.

Spring might be a time of rebirth and rejoicing, but it was also a time of mud, of drought or impossible driving rain, of aching muscles, fields to be planted, cattle to be separated and led to range.

But she longed for it, longed to see even one single bud bloom—the flower of the bitterroot, triumphing out of the mud; a laurel, springing up miraculously in the thickening forest; wild columbine teasing a mountain ridge.

Amazed at herself, she shook her head and stepped back from the window. Since when had she started dreaming of flowers?

It was Tess's doing, she imagined. All that talk about romance and sex and men. Just a natural segue into spring, flowers—and mating season.

Chuckling, she studied the scatter of gold boxes over the simple quilt on her bed. And what were those, she admitted, but expensive mating lures?

At the sound of footsteps she called out and began to gather the boxes up. “Bess? Got a minute? I've some other things in here you might want. I don't know why I—”

She broke off as Ben, not Bess, stepped into the room.

“What the hell are you doing here? Don't you knock?”

“Did. Bess let me in.” His brows went up, and the eyes under them lit with appreciation. “Well, hell, Willa, look at you.”

She was grateful she'd pulled on jeans at least and also very aware she was shirtless but for the thin, clinging silk
of her thermal undershirt. Her nipples hardened traitorously even as she snatched up the flannel shirt she'd tossed aside.

“I'm not back an hour,” she complained as she punched her arms through shirtsleeves, “and you're in my face. I don't have time to chat or go over reports. I've already lost a whole weekend.”

“Doesn't appear you lost a thing.” He was understandably disappointed when she buttoned up the plaid shirt but intrigued by the busy, businesslike way her fingers executed the task. Eventually he'd like to see them go in reverse.

“You look fine.” He came closer. “Rested. Pretty.” And lifted a hand to the spiraling curls raining over her shoulders. “Sexy. I had a couple of bad moments when Nate told me about the place you were going. Figured you might come back with your face all tarted up and your hair chopped off like one of those New York models trying to look like a teenage boy. Why do you suppose they want to do that?”

“I couldn't say.”

“How'd they get all that hair of yours into those corkscrews?”

“You hand those people enough money, they'll do anything.” She tossed back the curls, faintly embarrassed by them. “What do you want, Ben, to stand here and talk about salon treatments?”

“Hmm?” It was the damnedest thing, he mused, toying with her hair again. All those wild curls, and it was still as soft as duck down. “I like it. Gives me ideas.”

She was getting that picture clearly enough, and slipped strategically out of reach. “It's just hair curls.”

“I like it curled.” His grin spread as he maneuvered her toward the wall. “I like it straight too, the way it just swings down your back, or when you twist it back in a pigtail.”

She knew the dimensions of her room well enough to judge she'd be rapping into the wall in another two steps. So she held her ground. “Look, what do you think you're doing?”

“Is your memory that poor?” He took hold of her, pleased that she'd stopped retreating. “I didn't figure a few days away would have you forgetting where we left off.
Hold still, Willa,” he said patiently when she lifted her arms to push him off. “I'm just going to kiss you.”

“What if I don't want you to?”

“Then say, ‘Get your hands off me, Ben McKinnon.' ”

“Get—”

That was as far as she got before he cut off her opportunity. And his lips were hungry, not nearly as patient as his voice had been. The arms that held her tightened possessively, stole her breath, had her parting her lips to gasp for air . . . .

And her mouth was invaded by his quick and clever tongue.

It was like being swallowed, she thought hazily. Like being eaten alive with a greed that incited greed. Hearts pounding. That was his, she realized, as well as hers. Racing wild. Dangerously fast. And she wondered if they continued to ride this course, at this speed, how soon one or both of them would fly headlong over the saddle and into the air.

“Missed you.”

He said it so quietly as his lips trailed down to sample her throat that she thought she'd imagined it.

Missed her? Could he?

Those lips cruised up again, along the side of her throat, behind her ear, doing things to her skin that made her giddy and weak inside.

“You smell good,” he murmured.

He'd said she looked good, she remembered, as her knees trembled. Smelled good. Did that mean he had the big picture? And what came next was . . . She thought of Tess's lightly cynical remark and swallowed hard.

“Wait. Stop.” She couldn't have pushed a mound of feathers away, much less an aroused man, but at her breathy voice and the flutter of her hands he changed the tone.

“Okay.” He still held her, but easy now, his hand stroking up her back to soothe. She was shaking, he realized, and cursed himself for it. Innocent, innocent, he repeated like a mantra, until his breathing began to level.

He'd only meant to indulge in a couple of teasing tastes, not a flurry of half-mad gulps. But days, weeks—hell,
years—of frustration and wanting, he admitted, were boiling up and threatening to blow.