Against the Wind (18 page)

“The place is really shaping up,” he said, glancing around as he took a sip of wine. “You've got a knack for decorating, Sarah.”

She smiled, seemed pleased. She pointed toward the old steamer trunk she had placed beneath the window. “I found it up in the attic. It's wonderful, isn't it? I didn't think you'd mind.”

“I like to see things put to use.”

She sipped her wine. “I bought that oak bookshelf down at Potter's Antiques. I gave most of my books to
the library before I left L.A., but I love to read so it won't take long to fill up.”

Jackson watched her, noticed that she looked a little less pale than she had when she'd first pulled open the door. They finished the meal and ate spumoni ice cream for dessert. By the time they had cleared the table, Sarah seemed completely relaxed.

“I'm glad you stayed,” she said as they stood at the kitchen counter.

“So am I.” He leaned toward her. He only meant to kiss her cheek, but she looked so good standing there with her dark hair loose and tomato sauce on her blouse, he couldn't resist. It was only supposed to be a thank-you-for-supper kiss, but weeks had passed and the minute his mouth touched hers, sparks seemed to leap between them.

“Jackson…” Sarah leaned into him and her arms went around his neck. Jackson pulled her hard against him, deepened the kiss, slid his tongue inside her mouth.

She tasted so damned good, a little like the ice cream they had been eating. He wanted to eat her up that same way. He shoved his hands into her dark hair, pulled her mouth up to his for another burning kiss.

Sarah kissed him back, pressing her full breasts into his chest, making his erection stiffen and throb against the fly of his jeans.

“God, Sarah, do you have any idea how much I want this?” He pressed himself against her, let her feel how hard he was, heard her moan. Jackson kissed her long and deep, felt her fingers move down to cup his sex, caress him through the heavy denim fabric.

“Jesus, lady…” He backed her up until her shoulders hit the door leading into the bedroom, unbuttoned the
front of her blouse and filled his hands with her breasts. They were full and heavy, her skin soft as silk, but her nipples were stone-hard, and so was he.

He had meant to suggest a walk down by the river. He could barely walk now and he was getting harder by the minute. He cupped her face and kissed her again, long, wet and slow. Sarah squirmed against him, reached back and turned the knob on the bedroom door.

They stumbled into the room. Jackson caught her up in his arms and carried her over to the bed. He stripped away her blouse and bra, dragged off her sneakers, jeans and skimpy thong panties, then stood there for a moment admiring her. Her sweet woman's body called to him, the soft curves and lovely breasts, the thatch of dark curls that marked her sex. Her light perfume mingled with the scent of her arousal, and his mouth watered. He wanted to taste her, pleasure her the way he had the first time they made love.

He shed his boots and the rest of his clothes and joined her on the bed, came up over her and kissed her long and deep, kissed her until he had her squirming beneath him. He suckled those luscious breasts, grazed the tips with his teeth, took the fullness into his mouth.

She was ready and so was he, and yet he waited, moved between her legs and lifted her knees up onto his shoulders.

Sarah squirmed. “Jackson, please…I—I want to feel you inside me.”

“Soon, darlin'.” And then he set to work, using his hands and his mouth, tasting her, stroking her, making her come two times before he sheathed himself and entered her.

Her eyes slowly opened and catlike, she smiled. He
could read the renewed desire in the way her head fell back as he began to move, her hips arching upward, taking him deeper, making him groan. She was one helluva a woman—but then he'd figured that out sometime back.

Her body quivered. Her sex pulsed around him, sending a fierce shot of pleasure roaring through him. He tried to hold on, give her as much as he could, but when she cried his name and her body convulsed around him, it drove him over the edge.

His muscles strained and tightened, jerked with the deep, intense pleasure of a mind-blowing climax.
Sweet God Almighty.

Sarah clung to his neck and he rested his head against her shoulder as the heat spiraled down and the world slowly spun back to normal. Jackson kissed her one last time and settled himself beside her on the bed.

You're mine,
he thought.
Even if you still don't know it.

S
arah slept deeply. The house was quiet, just the night sounds outside the window, the crickets and the coyotes. Jackson lay beside her. Some part of her knew he was there, felt the joy of it, the rightness. And yet, even in sleep, she knew it could not last.

As she slept, her mind shifted, slipped back in time. She saw Ed Mercer standing in front of her desk at the office.

Why don't you make it easy on all of us and admit you were the one who shot him. We both know you did it.

She tossed and turned on the mattress, her legs tangling in the sheets. Perspiration soaked the dark hair at her temples. Her thoughts shifted.

Suddenly, she was back in the house on Sunset, standing in the doorway leading into Andrew's study. She'd been upstairs packing the last of her things to take to
the condo in Santa Monica when he had arrived. He had called out to her, demanded she come downstairs.

 

“Sarah! Get down here! I want to talk to you!”

She could hear the anger in his voice, the fury.

He wasn't drunk. He didn't have to be.

As she stood in the open study doorway, she saw him rise from behind his desk.

“What…what is it you want, Andrew?”

“Do you think I'm a fool, Sarah?”

He was a no-good, rotten bastard, a true sonofabitch, but he was no fool. “Why would I think that?”

“Maybe because you didn't think I'd read your email, find out what you were planning to do.”

He was bluffing. She had been extremely careful, deleted everything, all her messages to Patty Gorski and the other women in the support group. And she had always chosen her words with special care, sent nothing in a message that would give her away.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

He just smiled. It was the kind of smile she hated. The kind that made her stomach knot with fear, the kind that made her want to throw up.

“I told you we were going to Rio. The three of us. Did you actually think you were going to take Holly and run away?” His smile grew feral and the knot in her stomach tightened. “I went directly to the server. I saw what you wrote to those women.”

She swallowed past the lump blocking her throat. “It was just conversation.” She had never been specific, only hinted to Patty. But Patty had understood.

“I think it was more.”

She straightened, determined not to let him know
how terrified she was. “Holly and I aren't going with you, Andrew. You can leave if you want, but we're staying here.”

His mouth thinned to a slash across his face. “You really believe you can defy me? You don't remember what happened the last time you tried?”

She remembered. He had beaten her so badly she'd ended up in the hospital. She'd had three broken ribs and thirty stitches in her arm. She hadn't reported him to the police, had, in fact, told the doctors he'd never touched her. She was afraid he'd take Holly and leave and she would never see her daughter again.

He stepped away from his chair, rounded the corner of his desk. Fury etched lines into his face. Anticipation glittered in his eyes. He liked this, liked to hurt her.

“Andrew, please don't do this.” She forced herself not to back away, to hold her ground and face him. It was now or never. “Stay away from me, Andrew. Don't!”

 

She was shouting his name and crying when a big hand wrapped tightly around her shoulder and shook her awake.

“Easy, Sarah,” a deep voice said, his hold turning gentle. “It's all right, darlin'. You're only dreaming. Everything's okay.”

She opened her eyes to see Jackson leaning over her, his face filled with concern. Sarah burst into tears.

Jackson eased her into his arms and held on tight. “I'm right here, honey. I've got you. No one's going to hurt you. You're safe with me.”

There was a gruffness in his voice that told her how upset he was, how worried. Sarah clung to him, fighting
the memories, trying to shove them back into the past, as it had taken her months to learn to do.

She hadn't had the nightmare since her arrival in Wyoming. Not until Detective Ed Mercer had shown up in her office.

He wanted to arrest her, put her in prison. He believed she was guilty of murder and he was determined to prove it. She was afraid to tell Jackson. She couldn't involve him in more of her troubles and even if she were selfish enough to do it, there was nothing Jackson could do.

Nothing anyone could do.

“Are you all right?” he asked, pressing his lips against the top of her head.

She nodded, dragged back her perspiration-damp hair. “I'm all right.”

“You were dreaming about Andrew.”

She swallowed. She remembered. She'd had the dream a dozen times. “It was the night he was killed. The last time I saw him.”

“You want to tell me about it?”

It was the last thing she wanted. “I'd rather not talk about it.”

Jackson didn't press her. “All right.” Lying back down on the bed, he eased her down beside him, nestled her in the circle of his arms. “Think you can go back to sleep?”

Tears burned her eyes. She wouldn't sleep anymore tonight. After the dream, she never did. Not unless… She turned to Jackson, ran her fingers along his hard jaw, felt the stubble of his night's growth of beard.

“Make love to me, Jackson.”

He studied her face, saw the need there. He came up
over her, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. She could feel him go hard, grow thick and pulsing against her. His kiss was enough to arouse her, the feel of his muscular body pressing her down in the mattress. He started gently, but she didn't want gentle. She wanted hard and fast, she wanted to climax and she wanted to forget.

Jackson seemed to understand. He pulled her beneath him and filled her, surged into her in a single deep thrust. Long, heavy strokes shook her. Deep, penetrating strokes made her come, then come again.

Jackson gentled his movements, kissed her softly and took her with such tenderness her eyes filled with tears.

“Jackson…” she whispered, wishing he had been the man she had married, the man who was Holly's father, the man she would share her life with.

It wasn't going to happen.

Andrew had seen to that.

 

For the next few days, Jackson spent his nights with Sarah at the cottage. He had pushed her to let him stay and Sarah was glad. She didn't dream while he was there. They made love and she slept and they made love again and it was heaven.

Then it was time to pick Holly up at Gran's, time for her brief respite to end.

“It doesn't have to be over,” Jackson said as they lay in bed that night. “I can come to you after Holly goes to sleep and leave before she wakes up.”

It was tempting. So incredibly tempting. But the risk was too great. Mercer was still on the prowl and sooner or later Jackson was bound to find out.

What would he think when the detective accused her of murder? What man would want a woman the police accused of killing her husband?

And there was the not-so-small matter of her heart. She was falling for Jackson Raines. She couldn't afford to let that happen. She trusted him more than any man she had ever known. Trusted him the way she had trusted her father. It wasn't enough.

Too much had happened. Too many years of abuse and misery. She couldn't take that kind of risk again.

Instead, tomorrow morning she would pick Holly up at Gran's and return to work. She had decided to let her daughter go back to the Busy Bee Day-Care Center so the little girl could play with her friends and make new ones. She prayed Ed Mercer would not return, that he would go back to L.A. and give up his search.

Surely he would, sooner or later.

Or he would convince the police he had enough evidence to charge her with Andrew's murder.

Sarah shivered.

 

Late in the afternoon of the next day, while Holly was outside playing with Rags and the boys, Sarah sat at the laptop computer in her bedroom. As soon as the machine geared up, she clicked on her email, watched it download, then deleted the junk mail that escaped her spam filter. There were a couple of actual messages, one of them from Patty.

Sarah smiled. Patty could be funny, and she was today, telling a story about her recent tooth surgery. According to Patty, the surgery had left a gaping hole that was meant to be filled by a porcelain tooth. While
she was waiting for the false tooth to be finished, she had a minor accident, slipped and fell in her basement and hit her head on a wooden sign she was making for the shelter. Her eye turned black and blue. That, along with the missing tooth, had the women at the shelter certain that some man had beat her. They were all up in arms over it.

Sarah grinned as she read the email. She always loved hearing from Patty. She kept her reply light, but Patty was hard to fool, and apparently she was sitting at her computer when she got Sarah's email.

The reply came back:

 

What's the matter, kiddo? You can tell your big sister.

 

Why not? She knew she could trust Patty Gorski. Sarah typed in, Okay—here it is. Detective Mercer came to Wind Canyon. He is sure I killed Andrew and he is trying to prove it. He says he won't give up until he does.

Patty wrote back, Tell him to bugger off. He doesn't have anything or he would have arrested you a long time ago.

Sarah felt the pull of a smile. Patty was different from any woman she had ever met. She was intelligent. She was street-smart and she was courageous. And she had been there for Sarah when no one else gave a damn what happened to her and Holly.

 

Thanks, Patty. Take care of those teeth! Love you, Sarah and Holly.

She blew out a shaky breath, feeling better after talking to her friend. Whatever happened, she knew she could count on Patty.

She thought of Jackson, how protective he was, the way he had held her after her nightmare. She trusted him. She cared for him.

And she was afraid.

 

The Fourth of July arrived. In a small town like Wind Canyon, Independence Day was a really big deal. Sarah covered the fireworks display and picnic, which she attended with Jackson, Holly and Livvy. Jimmy invited Nan to join him and his boys, and all of them sat together to watch the colorful fireworks show.

Sarah knew Nan and Jimmy were seeing each other. She just hoped her friend took the time to really get to know the man before jumping into a relationship.

It was late by the time the fireworks were over, all the hot dogs and sodas consumed, and the folding chairs and blankets packed up for the trip back home. Jackson dropped Livvy off at her house just down the road from the ranch, then drove his big white Ford along the lane and parked in front of the cottage. Sound asleep in the backseat, Holly awakened as he began unloading the leftover picnic items they had taken with them to the park.

All of them climbed out of the truck and Jackson reached into the backseat for a bag of leftovers.

“I was wondering…” he said as he handed her the bag and reached for another. “I thought maybe this weekend we might all ride up in the hills and spend the night. I think Holly would really enjoy it.”

Any residual sleepiness Holly was feeling instantly
faded. “Can we, Mom? Can we? Can I ride in front of you, Jackson, can I?”

He looked over at Sarah. “So what do you say?”

She should have been angry that he hadn't asked her first, considering there was no way now she could possibly say no, but instead she just thought how nice it was that he was willing to take all of them up into the beautiful mountains.

“I don't see why not,” she said, and he smiled so wide her heart squeezed hard inside her.

Holly squealed and flung herself into Jackson's arms. He lifted her up on his back, locking her legs around his waist, piggyback style. “We'll ride up Saturday morning, make camp and spend the night. Maybe do some fishing up at the lake.”

“Fishing! I get to go fishing!”

Sarah couldn't help laughing. “All right, you two, that's enough.” Jackson set the little girl back on her feet. “Holly, it's time to go in. It's way past your bedtime.”

As Sarah said the word
bed,
she made the mistake of looking at Jackson, saw his eyes go hot. Her breath caught. Just a hint of invitation and he would come in through the back door and join her in bed. Her body went liquid and warm. She wanted that so much.

Too much.

She turned to Holly, took her hand and led her up on the porch. “Good night, Jackson. Thanks for taking us tonight. It was really fun.”

He just nodded, pulled his hat brim down over his eyes. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

But tomorrow she would be working in town and it would be a long day. She had her story to write on the fireworks display and some shopping to do.

Ignoring a hollow feeling of regret, she opened the door and led her daughter into the house.

 

Jackson tossed a couple of small logs into the old iron stove in his study. Leaving the door open so he could watch the flames, he sat down on the comfortable leather sofa. All evening, his mind had been on Sarah. From the moment he had first seen her that night in the snowstorm, he'd had a feeling his life was going to change.

He sat there now, contemplating that change and his growing feelings for Sarah. And what, exactly, he should do about them. He was deep in thought when the phone rang. Jackson came up off the sofa, walked over to his desk and picked it up.

“Hey, bro…” Dev's voice came over the line. “You got a minute? I'm not interrupting anything, am I?”

“I wish…” grumbled Jackson. “What's up?”