Courting Trouble (19 page)

“I’d ask for the restraining order in any other case,” Cade said.

“This isn’t just any other case.” The passion of her words surprised even her and Tulsa took one step back, away from Cade.

She wanted Cade to feel the need to protect her. To protect… this thing between them that couldn’t seem to find the light to grow. She wanted Cade to hold back for Savannah, to throw the soft pitches, weight the game in their favor. Her desire for Cade to work against his client in favor of Savannah wasn’t fair and wasn’t legal and she realized her wants weren’t just, or logical, or even legal. But still, Cade’s allegiance to her and to her family was what Tulsa wanted. She wanted Cade, for once, to be completely on her side. But he was like stone. Cold and hard and unyielding. Self-righteous and proud—there was no humility in his stance.

Tulsa stepped away from him with the realization that she wanted more from Cade—more than even she was willing to give.

She took three quick steps backward—still facing Cade. She turned and lengthened the distance. Her high heels clipped along the marble floor as she walked quickly away from him. With each step, she drew closer to Savannah, and Bradford, and the side that protected her family.

“That’s right, Tulsa,” Cade called after her. “Don’t like how the argument’s going? Run. That’s what you’re good at, right? What you do best? Running.”

Her feet stopped and with them the click-clack of stiletto on marble. Heat burst through her belly—pure unadulterated fury. No logic. No thought. Tulsa shut her eyes. She took a deep breath.
1… 2… 3… 4…
She bit down on her tongue. So many words.

Don’t turn around, don’t turn around, don’t turn around.

She flipped her hair over her shoulder and turned. Tulsa retraced her steps to the opposite end of the hall. She stopped before Cade. His chin tilted toward her and prickles rose on her arms with his nearness.

“And what about
you
, Cade Montgomery?” Tulsa said softly so that only he could hear her words. “The stupidest thing I ever did was to actually believe there was something more to you than what everybody in this town says about all the Montgomery men.”

A tiny muscle in Cade’s jaw flinched.

She leaned forward the tiniest bit. “After all these years, you still don’t know what people say about the Montgomery men?”

Cade lifted his eyebrow, a direct challenge to her. Her lips nearly brushed his earlobe and despite her anger, his scent, his nearness, his utter maleness, it sent a shiver through her.

“People say that the Montgomerys are only out for themselves.”

Cade didn’t move; he stayed just that close. So close she could feel his breath on her cheek. She felt him tense and was fully aware of all his tightly wound maleness beside her.

“That right?” he said, his voice low and throaty. “Well, you know what the McGraths are known for, don’t you? Aside from their tempers?”

Tulsa pulled her head back. She fought to contain her emotions. She dared him to utter even one of the names children had tossed at her and her sister while they grew up in Powder Springs. If those words slipped over Cade’s tongue then she could hate him for the rest of her life. She’d never again second-guess herself where Cade Montgomery was concerned. The “what-ifs” and “what-could-have-beens” would finally be vanquished this very day by those same hurtful words she’d fended off as a child.

“Go on then, Cade,” Tulsa whispered. “You tell me what
they
all say about the McGraths.”

Cade leveled his gaze on Tulsa, his blue eyes piercing deep. “What they always said was that the McGrath women never did choose men very well.”

Chapter Nineteen

Tulsa hadn’t seen Cade in nearly a week and while anger pitted her belly over the restraining order he’d asked for in Judge McKittrick’s courtroom, her want for him hadn’t subsided. She entered the white horse barn with green trim and smelled the sweet scent of hay and the earthy smell of manure. Ash walked beside her in the cool darkness. Sunlight shone in through the open door at the far end of the barn. Horses snorted and shuffled in their stalls. Their long necks arched in a bow and their noses plunged deep within their feed buckets as they were content to finish their breakfast of oats.

Once Ash identified her father in the darkness of the barn, she bolted toward him. Tulsa walked at an even pace toward father and daughter. While part of her feared the relationship forming between Ash and Bobby, another part of Tulsa—a more magnanimous part—wanted Ash to have a relationship with her dad. If only Tulsa could somehow be certain that Bobby wouldn’t hurt Ash or Savannah—but there were no guarantees in life or in love.

Cade walked from an empty stall on Tulsa’s right. She felt his presence before she saw him. Her skin prickled and an electricity shimmered through the air. Her heart kicked upward and a thin spark of heat flew over her skin.

Cade was backlit by the open doorway at the far end of the barn and she saw only his profile—but he was still amazing. He wore Levi’s and a fitted shirt. With his boots and a hat, he looked every inch the outdoor, western-raised man he was and not the New York attorney he’d become. This Cade harkened back to her teenage memories of him and her body responded with a pulsing and a warmth within the V between her thighs. Her skin heated with his nearness even though anger still clenched.

“Tulsa.” His voice ran over her like silk.

She nodded to him and kept walking. She exited the barn. Once in the sunlight, she saw that Bobby and Ash had already mounted their horses and were slowly headed up the lazy trail. A groom stood holding the reins of two saddled horses—a sorrel mare and a chestnut gelding. Tulsa took the mare’s reins and the saddle horn and mounted. She guessed that the groom thought that she and Cade would be riding together. Well they wouldn’t—because right now with thoughts of Cade in court from the week before, Tulsa’s anger won over her desire. She clicked three times and dug her boot heels gently into the mare’s sides—let Cade try to keep up.

*

He did keep up—in fact, he caught up but he didn’t speak; he didn’t even look at her. What an arrogant ass. She looked ahead where Ash and Bobby had halted their horses. Still astride his mount, Bobby had turned his horse downhill and pointed into the distance toward Delmont Peak. Tulsa couldn’t hear their conversation, but she saw the bright smile on Ash’s face—her sincere interest in everything her father said. Tulsa noted Bobby’s quick grin and the way he watched Ash and took in her every word.

She hated to admit that after witnessing all these supervised visits, she felt as though Bobby Hopkins had the potential to be a good father.

“He is going to be a good dad to her,” Cade said as if reading Tulsa’s mind.

Tulsa pulled her body straighter in the saddle. She jutted her chin and slid her eyes toward Cade. Admitting such a thing to herself was one thing, but she wasn’t about to say it to him.

“Maybe,” Tulsa said with an insouciant flip of her hair.

Cade raised an eyebrow and examined her as if to say
you really want me to believe that you don’t see it?

Tulsa clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth and moved away from Cade. She circled around the trail and turned downhill. Ash and Bobby were now ahead and Cade was behind. Headed back to the barn, her horse started to pick up pace. Not an unusual phenomenon, as most horses remembered the rest, relaxation, and oats that waited in the barn once they got the fool human off their backs.

Tulsa gave a gentle tug on the reins, pulling the bit back, asking the mare to slow. They were headed downhill and Tulsa didn’t like the belly-flipping sensation of falling over the front of her horse. The mare didn’t yield, instead she tossed her head and flipped her bit from her mouth.

Tulsa’s stomach jolted. Her thighs clenched tight into her saddle and she pulled backward instinctively on the reins. Her logical brain knew she had lost control of the mare. A horse flipping her bit out of her mouth was akin to a race car losing its brakes. She now had absolutely no control over her horse—a fact not lost on the four-legged creature. The mare jolted forward, quickly going from a trot to a gallop.

Tulsa’s stomach barreled into her chest. She clutched the saddle horn, willing herself to breathe. The gallop turned into a canter—herky-jerky, the horse bounded downhill around rocks, skidding over dirt, hell-bent on getting back to the barn. Tulsa couldn’t steer or slow down the horse. She clamped her thighs and leaned close to the back of the horse, one hand grasping the saddle, the other clutching the horse’s flying mane.

Cade, downhill from her, looked up and saw the beast bolting toward him. He slid off his horse and got in front of Tulsa and the mare—not an unheard-of way to slow down an out-of-control horse, but not a damned safe one, either. At first Tulsa felt the mare slow beneath her. Tulsa took a quick breath, thinking that Cade would grab the reins and all would be well, but as they got close the mare took a sideways jump to the right and Tulsa felt her whole body dump to the left.

The ground came up fast. Her hips and shoulders hit hard. Her teeth rattled in her mouth. She lay on the ground and assessed each body part in turn. She waited for pain to sear from bone or joint.

Nothing came.

She opened her eyes. Cade stood above her. His cowboy hat shielded the full impact of the sun.

“You all right?” he asked.

Tulsa sat up slowly, her tailbone crying out in pain. “I think so.” Her entire body would ache tomorrow.

Cade reached out his hand and helped her to stand. She rose and dusted the dirt from her jeans. She looked downhill to see the dust clouds being kicked up by the mare as she raced down the mountain toward the barn.

It would be a long walk. Tulsa took two steps and her right ankle twinged. Not broken—barely sprained—but she would be limping all the way downhill to the barn.

“I’ve got room for two,” Cade said.

Tulsa shook her head no and took two more steps forward, only to be rewarded with another pain—this one sharper—through her ankle.

“Think you better take the ride that’s offered,” Cade said.

He wrapped his hands around her waist and heat seared through her shirt where his hands clasped her. He lifted her effortlessly into the saddle. Once he mounted, he wrapped his arms around her waist and a hot, thick feeling slid from her hands to her belly. His thighs cupped her and as much as she fought the urge, she still leaned against him into his hard, male chest. Muscles rippled beneath his black T-shirt and she thought she heard the lightest gasp of breath come from Cade as his arms pressed against her breasts.

“Easy there, Tulsa,” Cade said. “We may be angry at each other but neither of us is dead.”

She hardened her jaw and tried to think of some quick quip to come back with but nothing tripped off her tongue. He was right—he was one hundred percent accurate with his assessment. While they were completely at odds with Ash’s case and even the old case of her mother and his father, none of those facts quelled the unnerving desire that simmered within her for Cade.

He steered his horse off the path and in between two stands of pine trees where no one heading up the trail or down could see them. He brought them to a stop and dismounted.

Once on the ground he pulled her off the back of the horse and slowly lowered her, letting every raw nerve ending and heat-filled piece of skin slide its way down her body. She stared into his blue eyes and still saw the twitch of muscle in his arms. Heat shot through her as just before her feet touched ground, the dampened V between her legs slipped over the hard maleness that throbbed underneath his jeans.

“This isn’t the barn,” she breathed out, her voice thick and heavy.

“No it’s not,” he said, not releasing his hands from her body.

“I’m mad at you,” Tulsa said, still unwilling to give in to her feelings for Cade or to let him know the electricity that swirled through her body with his nearness. As if she could hide these feelings, as if the same electricity didn’t snake up his legs and around his thighs and into his belly. His hardness was testament enough that he felt the desire too.

“That makes two of us,” Cade said.

“What you said—what you did—in Judge McKittrick’s courtroom, I can’t forgive you.”

“I didn’t ask you to.” Cade pulled her forward and captured her lips.

The longing, the want, the desire, uncoiled within her belly and shot through her legs and up through her chest. Her heart beat faster knowing how confused and convoluted and unbearable this desire was. He parted her lips with his tongue and she pressed her hips into his hard cock. She wanted to climb on top of him and rock forward. Cade pulled up her shirt and hot sparks trailed across her skin where his fingertips touched. She yanked his shirt up upward, wanting—no
needing
—to touch his skin. This moment—this stolen moment—might not come again for them.

His tongue slipped between her lips, prying, seeking, and her lips opened to him. His hands now cupped her breasts and his fingertips slipped around the nipple, caressing, pulling, teasing. She slipped her hand into his jeans and caressed the hard top of his cock.

“We have to go,” Tulsa said. Her voice was low, still thick with lust. “Ash will wonder what happened.”

Cade nodded his agreement but gripped her once more—pulled her forward, possession in his touch. He kissed her lips. When he pulled away from her, his hard expression closed over the want on his face.

He lifted her back onto the saddle and then joined her. She was wet with desire and her heart heavy with hurt. There was nowhere for them to ever go, no possible repair that would ever allow them to be a couple again. But the want that lay thick between them would never die.

*

That night, Tulsa looked up from the depths of her nearly empty coffee cup. She peered out the window of the Wooden Nickel at the empty streets of Powder Springs. With the nighttime cold a sharp brittleness hovered in the air. Huddled inside, in a booth with her coffee, she couldn’t feel the cold, but Tulsa remembered the feeling of that sharp chill. A shiver shot up her spine and a shudder fanned out across her shoulders. The trees had dropped their leaves and their branches stood cold and stark against the night sky. Bare black limbs reached upward into the night and waited to be clothed in the finery of powdery snow.