Cowboy at Midnight (14 page)

“You don't look too good yourself, boy. Something eatin' you, too?” Ryan asked.

Steve jammed his fists in his pockets. “I'll be a whole lot happier when this place is finished.”

Ryan stared at him a little too intently. “Right.” An awkward silence followed.

“The house is looking great. Really great,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, but the closer James gets to finishing, the more he slacks off. You might have noticed he and his men aren't here yet. They didn't show up yesterday or call, or even answer their cell phones until late last night.”

“Hey, the A.C. sure feels great.”

“Good thing, too. This way.” Steve pointed toward the dining room. “When Nita called yesterday to schedule this planning session I actually got my dining room table out of storage and set it up in the dining room.”

He'd done that on the off chance that Amy might show up today. Not that he expected her to. Nita, who seemed formidable over the phone, had been handling all Amy's phone calls and meetings ever since the morning Steve had left Amy in that parking lot. Every time he asked Nita about Amy, she clammed up. It was all too obvious Amy had told her assistant not to discuss her with him.

Steve poured Ryan a cup of coffee.

“The gossips in Red Rock are tarring and feathering me,” Ryan said. “Now even Lily—”

Clouds of dust outside the window signaled a new arrival.

“Maybe that's her,” Steve muttered. “This will blow over. You'll see.”

“It'll be a while before I forget those who turned on me.”

Steve swallowed guiltily as somebody knocked on the front door. He heard his name. Then his screen door banged, and he heard quick, light footsteps in the hall. The next thing he knew, the scent of violets wafted into the dining room.

“Steve? Oh, hi, Ryan.”

Despite her fashionable, gold-rimmed sunglasses, Steve felt the exact moment when her gaze locked on his face. His feet became rooted as his heart began to thud in violent excitement.

“The doorbell didn't work, so I'm afraid I just barged right in.”

“That's okay,” Steve said tightly.

She was so golden and lovely, such a vision in white in his doorway, she dazzled him. Ryan said something, but Steve didn't quite catch it.

He hated how Amy held him in thrall. How every muscle in his body tensed. His gaze fixed on her pale face and trembling mouth. He wished he could see her eyes, but her sunglasses hid them.

She looked thinner, as if she'd lost weight. Her cheekbones were more prominent. Was she okay? He brushed aside his concern.

Gone were her stuffy professional clothes and old-lady bun. Soft gold waves he longed to plunge his hands into gleamed about her shoulders. A snug white T-shirt clung to her small breasts and tiny waist. Low-slung white jeans hugged her butt and thighs like a second skin. The jeans hung so far down on her hips, they didn't quite meet her T-shirt, so he got an eyeful of too much honey-gold abdomen.

In spite of being thinner, she was sexier than hell today. Had she dressed like that to break his heart all over again?

“Hey, there,” Ryan said casually.

Steve held his breath, and his pulse knocked against his ribs.

“Hello, Steve,” she said ever so casually, as if their ten-day separation had meant nothing to her.

Steve wanted to grab her, to crush her against his chest. He wanted to push her against the wall and kiss her so much he didn't trust himself to speak.

“Would you like some coffee?” Ryan said, lifting an empty cup.

Amy smiled uncertainly at Steve. “Sure.”

Suddenly Steve felt too conflicted to just stand here, pretending he felt nothing when she was dressed like a sex kitten and he was aching to hold her. No way could he sit through this planning session with her dressed like that. He felt close to exploding from tension, when he blurted, “I forgot something in the barn. I'll be right back.” Not that he had any intention of coming back anytime soon.

Before she or Ryan could speak, he was slamming out of the screen door onto his front porch. Indeed, he was moving so fast, he hurtled into a heavyset woman who was marching up his stairs with an armful of folders. The older woman lost her footing on the stairs, and her file folders spilled down the steps onto his sidewalk.

As he grabbed her elbow to steady her, a stray breeze flipped the folders open, and papers began to blow across his lawn and down his driveway.

“Now you've done it!” the woman snapped, placing beefy hands on her ample hips as she stared holes through him. She had straight gray hair, a long nose and brown eyes that missed nothing.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Sorry.” Then he chased after the papers down the drive.

“I'd run after them myself, but I have a bad knee,” the woman called from his shaded porch, sounding cheery now that she had him on task. “I don't think we've met. I'm Nita.”

“Steve Fortune,” he yelled.

He was hot and breathless and totally out of sorts by the time he'd snatched up each paper and handed them all to Nita, who pursed her thin lips as she dusted off the gritty, dog-eared jumble. “I'll have to refile them all before the meeting.”

“I'm really sorry,” he said.

“What were you running so fast for?”

Suddenly Amy appeared behind his screen door. “Can we talk?” she whispered.

Steve stiffened. Nita hitched up her chin, her long nose sniffing for mischief.

“Not now, darlin'. Nita's here. She could use some help with the filing.”

Nita glowered at him. “I think I can handle this on my own. You tend to your messes, and I'll tend to mine.”

“Please, can't we just talk?” Amy pleaded.

“I think that's a reasonable enough request,” Nita said when he didn't answer.

Who asked you? Steve scowled at Amy's impertinent assistant. Clearly she was the bullheaded sort who didn't
mind stirring the pots of other people's business with that long nose of hers.

“She hasn't been able to eat this whole week—because of you,” Nita said.

“Where do you want to talk?” he muttered to Amy, realizing he was beaten.

When Amy's know-it-all champion shot him an encouraging smile, he was tempted to throttle her. “Surely you have an office, young man?”

“In the first outbuilding by the barn,” he admitted, striking out across his green lawn and driveway so fast, Amy had to sprint like a deer to catch him.

“How's Noche?” she asked breathlessly when she finally managed to reach him.

“Something tells me that's not what you really want to talk about,” he muttered, furious because he cared so much.

“It's called a conversation opener.”

“I don't give a damn what it's called. Get to the point.” He stomped up the stairs to the porch of his office.

Now that they were in the shade, she pushed her sunglasses up so they were like a headband, holding her shimmering hair back from her face. Despite being thinner, she was as beautiful as an angel, he thought, with the sun gleaming on her golden head. But when her desperate blue eyes clung to his for an unbearable moment, he felt her pain as always. Only, today he hated himself for feeling it.

“You dating anybody yet?” he asked, his voice cold and deliberate so she wouldn't guess how much he cared.

“What if I am?”

He grabbed her right there on the porch in front of Nita and the whole damned world and kissed her hard. At the first touch of his mouth, her lips quivered. At his first taste of her, he sobered.

“Sorry,” he said, instantly letting her go, even pushing her away because she affected him so profoundly and he was so afraid he'd lose control again. He wanted her that badly.

“I'm not sorry,” she whispered. “Because I love you,” she admitted in a torn, low tone. “I…I don't want to, but I do, and I came here today to tell you that. I haven't been able to sleep or eat or think about anything except you.”

Steve laughed harshly. “Tell me about it. If you care so damned much, why didn't you call?”

“Because I thought a clean break would be easier.”

Nita was staring across the driveway at them, her dark eyes zeroed in on them.

Let her watch, he thought. He didn't give a damn who saw them now. All he could think about was Amy.

“A clean break? What the hell are you talking about? You just said you loved me.”

“But that's why I can't date you.”

“You never make any sense, darlin'. You drive me crazy.”

“If I love you, something terrible will happen. I know it will.”

“Like what? What can be worse than what you're doing to me now?”

Her eyes darkened to a luminous shade of midnight blue. “You'll die. Or be hurt…or maybe paralyzed.”

He clenched his fist, looked up at the sky and prayed
for patience from whatever god might be tuned in at this exact second.

“Those are realities for everybody who lives in this world. Sooner or later something bad happens to everybody.” He paused. “Amy, darlin', that's no reason to stop living. That's the reason to make the most of every moment.”

“Simple to say.”

“Simple to do, compared to burying us both alive. This house will be my tomb if you refuse to share it with me.”

“Share it?”

“I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool,” he growled.

“But I could've killed you the other night.”

“I'm asking you to marry me anyway,” he muttered fiercely, grabbing her arm because she looked so thin and tense and edgy, he figured she'd bolt before he said his piece.

She fought to wrench free of his hand. “Let me go. I came here to tell you I loved you, but that it's over.”

“Maybe for you, darlin'—the ice queen of control. But I'm not made of ice. You've put me in hell, and now I'm burning up. You're killing me.”

“I've got to go!”

His arms circled her like iron bands, crushing her against the wall of his hard chest. “Run away from this…if you can.”

With his hands and body he molded her against him, forcing her to feel the hot thrust of his body as he insinuated himself between her thighs and shoved her against the outer wall of his office.

“Nita's watching,” she whispered.

“And loving every second of it probably. I don't give a damn about Nita. I want you, darlin'—forever—with a passion I'm not sure even you can deny. I love you, and you're killing me.”

He was trembling now like a hard-run stallion as he held her pinned against the rough limestone wall of the outbuilding. She was shaking, too.

“I've been like the living dead ever since I last saw you, Amy. Is that what you want? To make me miserable?”

She gasped. “N-no.”

“Well, that's damn sure what you're doing.”

“You'll forget me…in time.”

“Not in this lifetime.” He snuggled her even tighter against his body, seized a handful of her golden hair and used it to tip her head back so his hard mouth could plunder hers. With a little moan of utter despair, she pushed at his chest with her open hands.

“Don't make this harder than it already is,” she pleaded.

“Darlin', quit fighting it so much. Just take one day at time…with me. Marry me, give us a chance, and one day soon, I swear, we'll get you over this and you'll be happy again. You'll look back and see it was only a bump in the road. We'll have children. Maybe a daughter with golden hair like yours. We can name her Lexie. And we'll have grandchildren. We'll grow old together.”

She began to sob and writhe in an effort to escape, but the harder she fought him, the more determined he was to break her mysterious resistance. It was as if some wall inside her stubborn mind was stopping her, destroying her, destroying him, too.

“Let me go,” she screamed.

“Not till I kiss you goodbye.”

“I hate goodbyes.”

“So do I. Especially this one, darlin'.”

His began the kiss in anger, and she fought him at first. But the instant their mouths touched and they tasted each other, their bodies melted together in fiery exultation.

He threaded his fingers through her hair before burying his lips in the violet-scented silk. How could he kiss her and be furious at the same time? He loved her so much.

His lips were gentle, and she began to weep and cling, her thin face streaked with tears, her slender body quivering, as if she regretted even more than he did the future she wouldn't let them share.

“It'll be okay,” he whispered, kissing her swollen mouth and then her salty tears, one by one.

“I must look horrible,” she murmured.

“You'll always be beautiful to me.” A smile touched his words with bitter sweetness as he kissed the tip of her nose, her lips and her eyelids.

“Don't make us live without this.” His voice was hushed, his expression distraught.

When she made no promises, he let his muscular arms fall to his sides, and she began to cry again.

“Lord, don't cry.” His frustrated sigh rippled through the silence. He turned away because he was so afraid her harsh sobs would make him snap.

He swallowed a hard lump in his throat. When he turned back to look at her one last time, he thought she'd never looked more beautiful. “Don't drive until you calm down, you hear,” he rasped.

“Okay.” Her word was punctuated with a strangled hiccup.

He lowered his dark head and raked an unsteady hand through his hair. How the hell could he just stand there and let her go?

When he heard her Toyota start, he looked up and watched her drive away.

She'd condemned him to hell for the rest of his life. He wanted to hate her, but he couldn't. He loved her too much.

S
teve paced back and forth on his porch with his cell phone clutched tightly in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other. It was Saturday night. His no-good contractor and his men had quit hours ago. Steve had given the hands the night off, so it was just him and the cows and Noche.

Usually he didn't mind being alone. But he was in such a hellish mood, he couldn't stand his own company. He kept thinking about Amy's thin, pale face and her brilliant, shimmering eyes. Damn it, he was a fool. He'd known better than to even look at a blonde with lost, sad eyes like hers, much less bed her.
Much less fall in love with her.

He was crazier than a mad dog. He had half a mind to call her and half a mind to collapse in his rocker and drink until he was so plastered he couldn't get up.

Steve debated with himself long and hard before he finally punched in her phone number. When it rang endlessly, his legs turned to jelly as he imagined her standing in her apartment, smiling as she read his name lit up in icy blue on the display of her cell phone.

Then he thought of her with another man and bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. Ever since she'd left him, he'd thought of nothing except her.

And did
she
care?

Sometimes he cared so damn much he almost hated her.

To hell with her!

He snapped the phone shut and grabbed the bottle. When he tipped his head back, intending to slug as much vodka as he could in a single draught, he screamed like a madman instead. Then he ran to the railing and flung the bottle far out onto the driveway, where it broke into a million glittering shards.

To hell with her!

To hell with the ranch!

He'd drive into town. He'd find her. He'd force her. He'd—

What he did, wuss that he was, was to collapse in a heap in his rocking chair and bury his head in his hands.

She'd broken him. Just like Madison had.

Only, this was way worse.

Because this was real love.

 

Amy stared at Steve's name and number lit up by the brilliant blue display of her phone. Then she clutched the phone and held it against her pounding heart.

Did he have any idea what she was going through?
Any idea at all? She couldn't sleep. She couldn't eat. She couldn't work. She'd gone to her therapist, but she couldn't talk to her, either.

Two things were better in her life, though. The first was her relationship with her mother. Her mother called every day, but now Amy confided in her a little more each time. It was as if she'd always felt a deep need for some real mothering and now she couldn't get enough of it. Her mother would listen and make quiet suggestions, which Amy didn't resent.

Call him. Just call him. Why can't you just try, dear? Like he suggested—one day at a time?

Because I'm too scared, Mother.

The second improvement was that the Vales had forgiven her. Her mother had called her just yesterday and told her Robert Vale had phoned her out of the blue. He'd said that he'd read the articles in the newspapers and he'd realized he'd been wrong to blame Amy for Lexie's death, wrong to sue her mother, that he'd gone a little crazy after Lexie died and was only just now feeling sane again. He'd wanted to know if there was anything he could do for Amy.

“Isn't that something?” her mother had said. “He's forgiven us, forgiven you, for the accident.”

Amy hadn't known what to say.

“Don't you think it's time you forgave yourself? Why don't you call Steve, dear?”

Maybe Mother was right, and she was wrong.

Hardly knowing what she did, Amy picked up her cell phone and called Steve.

“Amy?”

Amy registered the profound pain in his deep baritone in that fatal half second before she chickened out and snapped her phone shut.

For a long time after that she just sat frozen on her kitchen chair at her little table, where she'd fed him scrambled eggs weeks ago, and held the phone against her left breast.

The smothering, dark silence of her lonely apartment wrapped her, but for the first time in years, it felt free of ghosts.

“Lexie?” she whispered, just to make sure.

Lexie didn't answer as she had in the past. And no matter how hard Amy tried to conjure a disturbing vision of her friend to punish herself, she couldn't. Nor could she envision Lexie's beautiful white face underwater.

Instead she saw Lexie riding Smoky. This time Steve was beside her, leading both Noche and Smoky through the sun-dappled trees toward Amy, who was sitting on the bench beside his pond.

Lexie dismounted, and Steve took her hand. A strange radiance lit Lexie's face as she walked toward Amy. When she reached her, she folded her in her arms, and they stood together like that for a long moment in an eerie circle of light.

Suddenly Amy grew warm and began weeping hysterically, and she didn't know why. When she quieted, she felt a sense of profound release. The vision dissolved, and still she felt lighter, incredibly lighter, which made no sense. No sense at all.

She got up and stared down at the pool. She was so mixed up. All she knew was that she suddenly felt
trapped in her apartment and that she had to get out of here. She wanted to live and be alive. She wanted to be around people.

She called Betsy, but her friend didn't answer. She even called Rasa's cell, but she didn't pick up, either. Everybody but her had a life.

Running down the hall to her bedroom, Amy tugged on a pair of tight jeans and a white halter top. Her black boots with the red embroidered roses stood in a corner, a matched pair again, because Steve had sent Jeff over with her missing boot a few days ago.

After she pulled them on, she brushed her hair and grabbed her car keys. With her hair swinging down her slim back, she eyed herself in the mirror. She looked hot and wild and sassy, just like she had the night she'd met Steve.

It was Saturday night. What kind of woman stayed home on Saturday night?

She couldn't live with Steve or without him, but she couldn't stay in her apartment another second, remembering how they'd made love here, either.

She'd let him go, for his own good. He should thank her. He deserved someone better.

Refusing to dwell on that unhappy thought, she raced down to her Toyota. Not that she had any idea where she was going until she found herself in the parking lot behind the Shiny Pony Bar and Grill.

For a long moment she considered driving somewhere else. She couldn't go in his bar without remembering Steve. Not that she expected him to be here, or that she wanted him to be here.

Maybe she would be able to exorcise him from her heart by creating a new memory in the same place where she'd met him. Feeling more than a little confused, she marched up to the bar, telling herself, Steve or no Steve, a woman had a right to some long-overdue fun.

Jeff smiled his knowing smile when he saw her and said, “Hi, beautiful. Haven't seen you in a while. I like your boots.”

“I felt all cooped up.”

“You look better. Relaxed.”

“Thanks.”

Relaxed? What she felt was out of control. That was Steve's fault for making her fall in love with him.

“What'll you have, beautiful?”

“A Flirtita.”

“You got it.”

Jeff made the drink and winked at her when he set the icy glass in front of her. Then he tore off his apron and disappeared between the double swinging half doors that led into the back, and a new bartender she'd never seen before took over.

“Where's Jeff?” she asked the skinny redheaded guy with the ring in his lip.

“Taking a break.”

“For how long?”

“He had a phone call to make.”

“Girlfriend?”

“You're mighty curious.”

“What I am is thirsty. I'd like another Flirtita.”

Rock music throbbed, and she kicked her booted foot in time with the beat.

“You look like you want to dance, cowgirl,” a low, male voice whispered in her ear.

She spun on her stool and then frowned because he wasn't Steve. The young blond cowboy pushed his black Stetson back and beamed down at her.

“Sure I do,” she said uncertainly.

Even though she danced wildly, and other cowboys asked her as well, her heart wasn't in either the music or being held in strangers' arms.

She realized she'd come here because she wanted Steve. Only Steve. Every cowboy poster made her ache for him. Every horse poster made her think of Noche and how sweet Steve had been over that horse. She wanted Steve to hold her close and sway with her to the music the way he had that first magical night. She wanted to marry him and know that he would take care of her for as long as they lived. Why had she told him no?

A few songs later she started when she glimpsed a tall, dark, broad-shouldered figure in the doorway watching her with the proprietary interest of a large predatory cat about to pounce.

The broad shoulders blurred as Amy continued to stare at him in shocked disbelief. It couldn't possibly be Steve.

Still, her heart began to pound with a fierce excitement, and her legs felt as wobbly as jelly. She began to stumble in her dance partner's arms, unable to find the beat.

Steve. Oh, God, it is Steve. You came.

She wanted to run to him. To throw herself into his
arms. But he looked so dark and coldly forbidding standing there that she was suddenly afraid.

Had he started to hate her as she'd feared? Had Robert Vale forgiven her only for Steve to hate her?

Amy closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Steve loomed over her, mere inches away. His eyes were focused intently on her.

He was dressed all in black. His jeans had razor-sharp creases. His shirt was made of a slippery material that shone in the dark, and he wore a black cowboy hat tipped back at a jaunty angle.

Like characters in a bad play, they stood apart, staring at each other with fixed gazes, their minds groping to remember their lines. Then Steve held up his hand and signaled the band, who stopped playing instantly. After the blasting music, the hushed silence felt even more threatening to her.

“Hey, mister,” the young blond cowboy holding her complained so loudly everyone could hear. “We were dancing.”

“
Were
being the operative word, son. She's with me now.” Steve's voice cracked like thunder.

“Is that so?” her young partner whined, looking at Amy so plaintively she felt sorry for him.

“Maybe,” she said with soft regret.

“No maybe about it.” Steve grabbed her by the wrist and whipped her into his hard arms.

“Hey, watch it, mister!”

Suddenly the cowboy was surrounded by waiters in white aprons, who gently led him to a corner table and gave him a free beer.

“What the hell do you think you're doing here dancing with strange men?” Steve growled at Amy, ignoring the commotion over the cowboy.

“I don't know.” His nearness sent shocking waves of heat and cold through her. “Trying to have a little fun maybe.”

Steve's dark head jerked at the words, his gaze narrowing on her face. “Wrong answer, darlin'.”

A smile trembled on her lips as she stared at his face. “Looking for you maybe.”

“That's better,” he muttered, his voice steadier. “Way better.”

In the next instant he wrapped her in his arms, and his mouth closed in hungry possession over hers. The tart taste of him, the tangy smell of his musky cologne, his sheer male virility—everything about him swamped her feminine senses. In an instant Amy's needs were as insatiable as his.

“I want you,” she whispered, hugging his huge frame, crushing her soft body into his. “Oh, I want you so much. I can't live without you. I…I can't breathe. The last couple of weeks have been hell.”

“So, finally you admit it.” He laughed so loud, heads turned.

“Don't gloat. Just kiss me, you big lug.”

“Anytime. All the time. For the rest of our lives, darlin'.”

Her hands twined into his dark hair, and she arched her body into his even before he began kissing her again. She parted her lips, so his tongue could explore.

Oh, how wonderful it was to feel his warm mouth on
hers. And, oh, how quickly her sensual delight turned into impatience. She wanted to be naked and in his bed under him. She wanted it so badly. Still, she couldn't stop kissing him right here in this public place any more than he could stop kissing her.

“Why didn't you answer your damn phone tonight, Amy? Why'd you call and hang up on me?”

“Because you'll die,” she whispered. “If you love me, you'll die.”

“Someday,” he agreed. “We all will. But not because you love me.” Gently he traced his mouth across hers again. “You'll kill me faster by not loving me. You know that, don't you?”

She touched his lips with a seductive fingertip and then ran it down the length of his chest.

“Let's go somewhere, darlin'. Everybody's watching us. You're embarrassing me in front of my help again.”

“Your place or mine?” she whispered, as eager as he was.

When he lifted her into his arms, everybody, especially Jeff, clapped loudly. People at various tables held up their hands and made the hook-'em-horns signal with both their hands, the longhorns being the mascot of the University of Texas that was a mere half mile away.

“Jeff called me and told me you were here,” Steve said.

“I guessed. I'll owe him forever.” She blew Jeff a big kiss as she grabbed Steve's black Stetson.

Waving the cowboy hat wildly at Jeff, who began hooting like a coyote, she clamped it on her own head.

 

“How many times does that make?” Steve breathed as his tongue caressed her nipple.

Whimpering in response, Amy snuggled closer to him under the sheets and blankets. “Who counts?”