Western Man (16 page)

“Good night, Andy,” she returned and tossed a glaring look at Ridge.

Stubbornly, she waited outside a few minutes and watched Andy walk back to his car while Ridge impatiently cooled his heels at the door. Then, and only then, did she enter the house, her chin held at a coolly defiant angle.

The door was barely shut when Ridge pounced on her with an angry demand, “Do you know what time it is?”

“It must be after midnight,” Sharon replied nonchalantly and swept into the living room. “How come you’re still up? I thought you would have been in bed ages ago.”

“I always stay up this late,” he taunted her with the he the way she had taunted him with her question. “I’ve been waiting up for you! What the hell do you think I’m doing up at this hour?!”

“That’s what I thought.” She turned on him, no longer trying to contain her anger.

“Just where the hell have you been?” Ridge demanded.

“That’s none of your business!”

“It is my business!” he snapped. “You’re staying in my house, so that makes me responsible for what happens to you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she declared scornfully. “Where I go and what I do are none of your affair.”

“In case you don’t know it, your brother doesn’t think much of your oil man—and neither do I.” He towered in front of her, bristling with anger.

“I don’t care what you or Scott thinks of him. All that matters is what I think about Andy.” She pointed at herself for emphasis. “I date whom I please—and stay out as late as I please. No one, not even my parents, tells me what to do—and you’re certainly not going to.”

“I suppose you think your oil man is going to give you a ring and a marriage license and those kids you said you wanted last night,” Ridge jeered.

“He could,” Sharon countered, angrily baiting him.

“Well, you can just forget him because you’re not going out with him anymore,” he informed her coldly, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

“Why? Because you say so?” she mocked him sarcastically, then hurled, “You don’t own me, Ridge Halliday!”

“Do you wanna bet?” The taunting words were ground through his teeth as he roughly pulled her into his arms. She fought him wildly, pushing and struggling against the steel band that pinned her to his chest. By twisting her head, she managed to elude the mouth moving hotly over her face, but it was only temporary. “You’re going to lose,” Ridge said against her throat, his breath coming roughly. “And you know it.”

Her own breath was coming in taut little sighing gasps as her pulse careened wildly out of control. It wasn’t his strength she was fighting. It was the sensation of his lean, muscular length, the smell of his skin, and the husky sound of his voice that she fought to resist.

“I hate you,” she said through her teeth, because he knew what he did to her when he touched her and he was taking advantage of it.

His mouth reached the corner of her lips. Of their own accord, they turned to seek his bruising kiss. Her fingers slowly uncurled from the balled fists she’d made of them and spread across his shoulders to dig fiercely into his shirt and the hard
flesh under it. For long, hot moments, their lips mated in an angry union until it spawned passion.

She strained against him, arching her spine to shape herself more closely to the hard angles and planes of his body. Blood rushed through her veins, fevering her skin already heated from the restless, pressing movements of his hands, alternately caressing and molding her body to his needs.

When Ridge pulled his mouth from hers and came up for air, dragging in heavy, labored breaths, Sharon pressed her hot face against his chest. She could hear his heart pounding, loud and fast, competing with her own drumming pulse. His hand moved over the silkiness of her tawny hair to the side of her face and lifted it away from his chest. She tipped her head back to gaze up at him, seeing the smouldering satisfaction in his half-closed eyes. Ridge stroked his hand over her neck and throat, caressing its curving length. There was a faint tremor in his touch, betraying how disturbed he was.

“I’ll never understand—” his husky voice was lower than a murmur and deep with desire “—how one person could have such incredibly soft lips and soft curves and still be so hardheaded and hard-nosed. Tell me now,” he insisted, “where were you and that oil guy all this time?”

“We went to a show in Glenwood Springs, then ate afterwards,” she whispered, her body aching for the thrust of his hips.

“He didn’t make love to you?” His fingers
tightened ever so slightly on her neck, briefly applying pressure.

“No.” Sharon turned her head in a negative movement. “Andy’s a . . . friend.”

“Why didn’t you explain that to start with?” Ridge demanded gruffly. “Why did you put me through all this hell, wondering where you were and what you were doing with him? It kept getting later and later and I . . .” The rest was lost in a smothered groan as he punished her lips for the torment he’d been through, kissing them roughly and thoroughly, then drawing away. His hand tugged the elastic neckline of her dress off one shoulder to allow him to nibble on the sensitive bone, sending shivers of delight over her skin that raised her flesh.

“Were you jealous?” Sharon was dazed by the idea.

“Of him?” The look of amused scorn on his face when Ridge glanced at her, laughed away that fragile wisp of hope.

Crestfallen, Sharon lowered her gaze to the darkly tanned column of his throat. It had been a foolish thing to think, but just for a little while, she’d wondered. Then his warm lips were on her cheek, running over it in stimulating circles, and she closed her eyes to enjoy the heady bliss his touch created.

“Sharon,” he murmured, tormenting her lips with the closeness of his mouth. “Let’s stop fooling around and make love.” His hands moved restlessly
over her body, teasing her hips and breasts with his fleeting touch. “It’s what we both want.”

Although his statement wasn’t a question, Sharon answered it like one. “Yes.”

While her whole being seemed to clamor under the sweeping urgency of his kiss, some tiny fragment of her mind forced a recall of the words that had been said between them. It started an icy stream of thoughts that eventually chilled her ardor. As much as she loved Ridge and wanted him, she couldn’t tolerate being a one-night stand in his life—and nothing he’d said had indicated he was offering her more than that.

She pushed with her hands to break free of him, inadvertently doing it against his cracked and broken ribs. His strangled cry of pain as he doubled over made Sharon realize what she’d done, but she felt little remorse. Considering how much he’d hurt her emotionally, he deserved to feel some pain of his own even if it was physical.

“What the hell are you trying to do?” he gasped and looked up at her with a frowning scowl. “They were just starting to heal and you damned near broke them all over again.”

“You hypocrite!” She hurled the accusation at him.

“What are you talking about?” He straightened slowly and carefully, holding his rib cage and continuing to frown.

“You, pretending to be so righteous and upset because I was out so late with Andy Rivers!” Her scornful gaze raked him with disgust. “Trying to
claim that you felt responsible for my reputation because I’m staying in your house. It was all lies! And I nearly believed your forked tongue. You come on ‘holier than thou,’ like Big Brother, and not ten minutes later, you’re trying to proposition me into your bed!”

“It isn’t like that, Sharon,” he denied roughly.

“Oh, no?” she scoffed. “I told you last night and I’ll tell you again. I’m not interested in what you have to offer, Ridge! I’m greedy. I want more than you can give me.”

As she started to leave the room, Ridge tried to take a quick step to stop her and flinched at some inner shaft of pain. “Sharon.” His hard voice called after her. “The last time you accused me of encouraging you. If I stepped out of line tonight, it was after I got encouragement from you.”

“Then that makes us even, doesn’t it?” She stopped long enough to throw the words at him.

For an instant, Sharon was held there by the sight of him, a lone figure in the middle of the room. His feet were planted slightly apart and his long arms were hanging loosely at his sides. His head was up and level. Nothing could be read in his features, ruggedly drawn in impassive lines. But it was the unstated things Sharon saw—the absolute self-reliance and the proud strength.

“Yes, we’re even,” Ridge acknowledged in a voice that rang flat and hard.

Turning, Sharon entered the hallway and walked past his room to her own. With unnatural calmness, she undressed and hung her dress up properly.
It was as if she was trying to be as controlled and unaffected by events as Ridge appeared to be.

But when the lights were off and she was alone in the dark, it didn’t seem so important anymore. Lying in bed, she slowly began to shake with sobs. As they grew stronger, she turned into her pillow and tried to muffle the sound in the feathery mass. It muted her crying and sopped up the tears running from her eyes.

A radio was turned on in the next room—Ridge’s bedroom. The strains of a melancholy country song took up the silence. With it playing, Sharon didn’t have to worry about Ridge hearing her, so she stopped holding back the violent ache that wrung her heart.

She finally cried herself into an emotionally exhausted sleep with the radio still playing its music in the background.

The next morning, Sharon drenched her puffy eyelids in cold water until her skin felt taut and frozen. She didn’t take any pains with her appearance, skinning her hair away from her face and twisting a rubber band around its toasted-gold length. Her jeans were an old pair with patches on the seat, and her blouse was plain white cotton with a buttoned-down collar and long sleeves that she had rolled back at the cuff. Its whiteness, so close to her face, only emphasized her colorless, frozen complexion.

Her suitcase lay open on the bed, her underclothes lining the bottom of it. Gathering her few
clothes on hangers in the closet, Sharon carried them to the bed and laid them beside the suitcase to begin folding them. As she slipped a blouse off its wire frame, she heard footsteps approach the door to her bedroom.

Since rising, she had ventured no further than the bathroom. No sound had come from the adjacent bedroom, so she had presumed that Ridge was still asleep—until she heard the footsteps. When she first awoke, the clock had shown the time as barely six in the morning. Evidently Ridge had been up before that.

The doorknob turned and the latch clicked in release. Her hands faltered slightly, then continued folding the blouse with steady precision. She didn’t look at the door when it swung open, although her raw nerves were tensely aware of Ridge standing in the opening.

“I thought I heard you moving around in here,” he said.

She laid the folded garment in the suitcase and reached for the next blouse, flicking a brief glance in his direction. But that swift look took in everything about him from the jeans and work shirt he wore to the impassive mask blanking out all expression from his male features except for the lazy sharpness of his blue eyes.

“If you want breakfast, you can fix it yourself,” she informed him, her voice flat and emotionless.

“You’re leaving,” Ridge stated.

“Brilliant deduction.” But her voice was too dry to put any sting in it.

“I thought you’d stay a couple more days.” He sounded calm as he moved into the room, coming toward the bed.

“I only came to look after you while you were laid up,” Sharon reminded him, her voice cool as she folded the blouse, laid it beside the first, and picked up the next one. “You’re on your feet. You don’t need me anymore, so there isn’t any reason for me to stay, is there?”

She made a project out of buttoning the blouse, waiting for his response to her faintly challenging question, even at this stage hoping against hope that he would express regret to see her go.

“No, I guess there isn’t,” Ridge agreed easily, and frissons of pain broke over her nerves.

“Then there’s nothing left to be said, is there?” she said tightly and pushed the half-folded blouse on top of the others in a short burst of raw impatience.

When she reached for the pair of jeans, she suddenly felt his hand under her chin, turning it so he could see her face. Except for that one brief glance when he’d entered, Sharon had kept her head averted, never looking directly at him. She quickly jerked her head away, but not before his alert gaze had swept the tautened skin around her eyes and the drained look of her complexion. She braced herself for some comment, but none came. Nor was there another attempt to inspect her face.

“As soon as I’m packed, I’ll call home and have someone come pick me up,” Sharon said into the silence.

“There’s no need to have someone make a special trip over here to get you. I’ll have one of the men drive you home,” Ridge stated, showing that his arrangements were final by turning and leaving the room.

Alone again, Sharon pressed the jeans against her quivering chin. There had been no arguments, no protests, no regrets from Ridge, only a calm acceptance of the news that she was leaving. She asked herself what she had expected, but there wasn’t any answer to that now.

When she finished packing, she discovered Ridge had left the house. She glanced out the kitchen window and saw him standing with Hobbs and another cowboy beside one of the ranch’s pickups. With a touch of grim wryness, Sharon realized he’d wasted no time carrying out her transportation arrangements.

She left the house by the back door, carrying her suitcase, and crossed the yard to join the men standing by the truck’s cab. She was painfully conscious of Ridge’s gaze watching her all the way, its shuttered look never altering under the hat pulled low on his forehead.

“Have you got everything?” Ridge took the suitcase from her and passed it to the cowboy to be stowed in the bed of the truck.

“Yes.” Everything that was hers to take.

His steady gaze was leveled at her, not allowing her to look away. “Thanks for coming.”

A flash of bitter and taunting mockery broke across her tautly held features. “It was the
neighborly thing to do.” There was a twist in the smiling curve of her mouth.