Gunning for the Groom (20 page)

Heath shut the door just as he blurted out, “You had a pee stick in the bottom of your trash can.”

Anna gave him a blank look.

“The pregnancy test from nine and a half years ago,” he clarified. “Lucky found it and just told me about it. I'm wondering why I had to hear it from him.”

She laughed. Hardly the reaction he'd expected. “It wasn't my pee on that stick. It belonged to Kristy Welker. I bought it for her so her folks wouldn't find out, and she did the test here.”

Heath had vague memories of this Kristy. Anna and she had been friends, and Kristy had come over a couple of times that summer.

Anna's laughter quickly stopped. “What the heck was Lucky doing in my bathroom?”

She was using her sister voice now, and it wouldn't have surprised Heath if she'd gone running out of there to confront her brother about it. She might have done that if Heath hadn't done something so unmanly as having to catch on to the wall to steady himself.

“Whoa. Are you all right?” She slipped her arm around his waist, led him to the bed.

Heath didn't even try to say he didn't need to sit down. He did. “I thought... Well, I thought...”

“Trust me, if you had knocked me up, I would have told you about it.”

Of course she would have. But it might take a year or two for his heart rate to settle down.

She gave his arm another rub like the one she had in the barn. “Relax. You were my first, but I wasn't totally clueless.” She stopped, paused. “I wasn't your first though, and that's why you knew to bring a condom to the hayloft.”

Even though Heath was still coming down from the shock-relief whammy, he heard her loud and clear. She'd given him something that a girl could only give once. Her virginity. That upped the encounter a significant notch, and maybe she was looking for some kind of assurance that she'd given it to the right guy.

“You were the first one that mattered,” he said. “I risked being hit by a shovel to be with you. That should have told you something.”

No smile. No more arm rub, either. “And yet you left.”

He nodded, tried to ignore the sting of that reminder. “I was leaving for basic training, and you were barely eighteen.”

Anna waved that off. “I know where this is going. We were too young for it to have been real love.”

“No, we weren't too young.”

Okay, he hadn't meant to say that, and it was another opened box with contents that Anna was clearly waiting to be spilled.

“What I felt for you was real,” Heath said. And strong.

He hadn't cried as Anna had done, but leaving her had left a hole in his heart. Best not to mention that, especially since he would be leaving again soon.

“I knew I couldn't give you a good life,” he added. “Not when I was still trying to figure out my own life.”

She stayed quiet a couple of seconds. “Fair enough. And if you'd stayed, you would have resented me because you gave up your dream of being in the military. Your wanderlust and need for an adrenaline fix would have come into play. We would have fought, broken up, and all these years later we would have cursed the mere mention of each other's names.”

Heath frowned. He didn't like that version of what could have been, but she was probably right. Probably. Now he was cursing her name for a different reason. Because it reminded him of how much he wanted her.

“I still have the need for that adrenaline fix,” he admitted. “The need to be...something. Somewhere. It's easier if I stay on the move.”

“I get it.” She motioned around the room. “That's why it's hard for me to be at the ranch sometimes.”

He was pretty sure they were talking about her parents now, about the hole in her heart that their deaths had no doubt left. “Are the memories of your folks harder to deal with while you're here?”

“Every now and then. But sometimes it's hard no matter where I am. Sometimes, I wake up, and I can't remember what they looked like. That sends me into a panic. So I run to grab one of the photo albums just to remember their faces.”

“It's your way of keeping them in your life,” Heath said around the lump in his throat.

“Yes. The past has a way of staying with you like that.” Anna took a deep breath, then sighed. “And you can't run away from your past. I know, I've tried. It's like that little mole I have on my right butt cheek. It just goes with me everywhere.” She looked at him. “I know what you're thinking.”

Because he thought they could use some levity, Heath asked, “You have a little mole on your butt cheek?”

“All right, I didn't know what you were thinking after all. I thought you might be wondering if I was trying to outrun my past by transferring colleges.”

That hadn't even crossed his mind, mainly because he wondered why he hadn't noticed that mole on her butt cheek. He was also wanting to see that mole. Clearly, he had a one-track mind here.

He shook his head. “I didn't think the transfer was about running, more like ulcer prevention. No need for you to have to face a daily dose of Mr. Wrong and his new family.”

“Exactly.” She smiled in a triumphant
I didn't think you'd get that
kind of way.

Heath got it all right. He got a lot of things when it came to Anna. A lot of things because of her, too. Like that tug below his belly that nudged him to kiss her again. That was his red-flag warning to get moving, and he would have done just that if he hadn't spotted the silver heart locket on her nightstand.

When she saw that he'd spotted it, she tried to put it in the drawer, but Heath took hold of her hand to stop her.

Yes, it was the locket he'd given her all right.

“After Della asked about it, I found it in my old jewelry box,” she said. Then, she frowned. “All right, I wear it sometimes. Okay?”

She didn't sound especially happy about that, but it pleased Heath that she still had it. Pleased him even more than she occasionally wore it. What didn't please him was the reminder of the two words engraved on it.

“Be my.”
Anna ran her fingertips over it. “I wasn't sure what you were saying—be my heart, be my locket. Be my lay in the hay.” She chuckled, poked him with her elbow.

“It was a fill-in-the-blank kind of thing,” he joked, poking her back with his elbow.

“It sounds to me as if you didn't know what you wanted to say.” No elbow poke that time.

“I was eighteen. I didn't know.”

“And now?” she asked.

For two little words, it was a mighty big question. One that he didn't have to answer because there was a knock at the door, and the knocker didn't wait for an invitation to come in. The door opened.

Riley.

Well, at least Anna and he weren't in a butt-grabbing lip-lock as they'd been in the barn when Lucky had found them.

“I need to talk to you,” Riley said, looking at Heath. Then his gaze swung to his sister. “And no, this isn't about you. It's business.”

Damn it. That didn't sound good.

Anna must have thought so, too, because she gave Heath a sympathetic look as Riley and he headed out. They didn't go far, just into the foyer.

“I just found out that you're still trying to get out of your instructor assignment, that you put in a request to go on another deployment,” Riley threw out there.

Heath cursed. He wasn't exactly keeping it from Riley. Okay, he was, but he didn't want to justify what he was trying to do.

“You've already had two back-to-back deployments as an officer,” Riley reminded him. “Before that, you had back-to-back-to-backs as a pararescuer.”

“You're going on another one,” Heath reminded him just as fast.

“I've had breaks in between. In the past ten years, the only time you've been stateside is for leave and training.” He put his hand on Heath's shoulder. “You don't have anything to prove.”

“No disrespect,
sir
, but I have everything to prove. To myself anyway.”

Riley huffed. “You can prove it by being the best Air Force instructor you can be.”

“That sounds like a recruitment pitch.”

“It is.” Riley took his hand from Heath's shoulder, and his index finger landed against Heath's chest. “And here's some more advice—sometimes life gives you crap, and you just have to make crappy lemonade out of it.”

Heath frowned, thinking he might never again want another glass of lemonade. Or another lecture from Riley. Of course, there wouldn't be any more Riley lectures if Heath got stuck with that instructor job he didn't want. Then Riley would no longer be his boss.

Frowning, too, possibly over that bad lemonade analogy, Riley walked away. Heath would have, as well. He would have headed back to the pasture to do something, anything, to burn off some of this restless energy inside him.

Yeah, he needed an adrenaline fix
bad
.

He figured in that moment that his thought must have tempted fate, because his phone dinged with a text message. There was that old saying about when the gods wanted to punish you, they gave you what you wanted. Well, it wasn't from the gods.

It was from Anna.

And the text flashed like neon on his phone screen. A sort of warning from the gods out to punish him.

Meet me in the hayloft in one hour.

Chapter Four

A
NNA
FIGURED
SHE
wasn't just going to be able to sneak out of the house without anyone seeing her.

And she was right.

As she was cutting through the sunroom, Della spotted her. Anna smiled, tried to look as if she weren't up to something, but that was sort of hard to do considering she had a six-pack of beer in a plastic grocery bag. A six-pack Anna had just scrounged from the fridge.

Della glanced at the bag and its distinctive shape. Then gave Anna no more than a mere glance.

“What are you up to?” Della asked.

Anna shrugged. “I'm considering playing with some fire. Running with scissors. Taking candy from some guy I don't know.”

Falling hard for an old flame she shouldn't fall hard for was something Anna could add to that list of no-no's.

“So, you're going to the barn again with Heath,” Della said. It wasn't a question.

“No. Yes,” she admitted when Della gave her that liar-liar-pants-on-fire look. Anna huffed. “Don't give me a hard time about this. I'm tired of everyone babying me.”

“They do that because you're the baby.”

“Was
the baby,” Anna corrected. “I'm a grown woman now, but none of them can seem to accept it.”

“They love you,” Della pointed out.

“And I love them, but I want the key to my own chastity belt.”

Della smiled that sly little smile of hers which meant she could be up to something. But she only kissed Anna on the cheek. “Honey, you've had that key for a long time now. Might be time to see if it works the way you want it to work.”

Anna opened her mouth to respond, but she had nothing to say. Not a word. Instead, she returned the cheek kiss, tucked the beer under her arm so the bottles wouldn't jiggle and clang, and headed out the back.

No brothers in sight. No ranch hands, either.

But she also didn't see Heath.

Since it was—Anna checked the time on her phone—three minutes to rendezvous, she'd hoped she would see him waiting for her. He better not have blown her off. Except Heath wouldn't do that. Well, he might have done it with a text, call or chat, but he wouldn't do an unannounced blowing-off.

And he hadn't.

The moment she stepped in the barn, she saw him. Not in the hayloft, but standing by the steps that led up to the loft.

“You came,” she said.

“Of course I came. I'm a guy and I'm not stupid. All right, maybe I am stupid, but the guy part's still true, and I've got the junk to prove it.”

She smiled, chuckled. All nerves, and she hated the nerves because they didn't go well with this blistering attraction. “Yes, I got a glimpse of your junk. You're definitely a guy.”

He smiled, too. “Beer?” he asked, tipping his head to the bag.

“I thought you might be thirsty. It was either this, milk or a questionable green smoothie.”

“You made the right choice. I've already had my quota of milk and questionable green smoothies for a while.”

He reached out, took her by the fingertips. That was it. The only part of her he touched. It was like being hit by a really big dose of pure, undiluted lust.

“You may have made the right choice with the beer,” he added a heartbeat later. “But asking me to meet you here might fall into the stupid category.”

“Might?” she repeated. Well, it was better than an out-and-out “this ain't gonna happen.”

“Is this going to happen?” Anna came out and asked.

With only that teeny grip on her fingertips, he inched her closer. So close that when she breathed, she drew in his scent. Mixed with the hay and the crisp November air, it gave her another dose of lust.

“It shouldn't happen,” Heath said. “I've tried to talk myself out of it.”

“And?” She was still breathing, through her mouth now. Still taking in that scent. Still feeling him play with her fingers. “I hope you're really lousy at talking yourself out of things.”

He closed his eyes a moment. Groaned. And, as if he were fighting—and losing—a fierce battle, he brought her another inch closer. She figured if the lust doses kept coming that she was going to launch herself into his arms.

“I'm leaving soon,” he reminded her. “And I'm trying to do the right thing here.”

She wanted to point out that unless he was leaving within the hour, then this could indeed happen, but that would just make her sound needy. Which she was. So very, very needy.

He let go of her fingertips, and she figured this was it. Heath would send her on her way. But he took the beer from her, and as if he had all the time in the world, he set the bag next to a hay bale.

“So, what now?” she asked.

Heath didn't answer her. Not with words. He reached out, and just when she thought she was going to get more fingertip foreplay, he took hold of her, snapped her to him and kissed the living daylights out of her.

Anna forgot all about the stupid argument that he was leaving soon. She forgot how to breathe. But other feelings took over, too. Probably because Heath didn't just kiss.

He touched.

He slipped his hand between them and ran his fingers over her right breast. Nice, but he double-whammied it with a neck kiss, and Anna felt herself moving. At first she thought it was just her body melting, but nope, she and Heath were walking.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

“Complicating the hell out of things.”

“Good. I like complications.” At the moment she would have agreed to a lobotomy.

Heath kept kissing her, kept moving. Not up the steps of the hayloft but rather toward the tack room. Maybe because it had a door. Maybe because it didn't require the coordination of step climbing with an erection. Maybe because it was just closer.

It was the erection thing, she decided, and since she could feel it against her stomach, Anna added some touching of her own. She worked her hand over his zipper and would have gotten that zipper down if Heath hadn't stopped her.

She heard herself make a whiny sound of protest, but then he put her against the back of the door that he'd just shut, and he lifted her. Until his hard junk was against her soft junk. Everything lined up just right to create a mind-blowing sensation.

“Let's play a game,” he said. And yeah, he drawled.

Anna nodded. She would have agreed to a second lobotomy.

“On a scale of one to ten, rate the kisses, and then I'll know which parts to concentrate on.”

She wasn't sure she could count to ten, much less rate kisses, but Heath jumped right into the game. He kissed her mouth.

“A ten,” she said after he left her gasping for air and reaching for his zipper again.

He put his hand over hers to stop her, but Anna just used the pressure of his hand to add pressure to his erection.

“We'll play that particular game later,” he promised.

Heath moved on to the next kiss. He placed one in the little area just below her ear, and he must have remembered that was a hot spot for her because it didn't seem like a lucky guess.

“Fifty,” she blurted out. If Heath hadn't held her in place with his body, she would have dropped like a rock. There were no muscles in her legs, and her feet had perhaps disappeared.

“I'll definitely put that on my playlist,” he said and added a flick of his tongue in that very hot spot that needed no such licking to further arouse it.

She went after his zipper for a third time, and the only reason she failed, again, was because he pushed up her sweater, pushed down her bra and did that tongue-flicking thing over her nipples.

“A seventy,” she managed to say.

“Scale of one to ten,” he corrected.

“Ten plus sixty.”

He chuckled, which made for some very interesting sensations since he still had his mouth on her nipple.

“And this one?” he asked. He went lower, kissed her stomach.

“Ten,” she admitted, and she was about to pull him back to her to breast and neck.

Then he went down a few more inches.

Heath clearly had some experience in zipper lowering.
Fast
zipper lowering. He slid down, unzipping her and dragging her jeans just low enough so that he could plant the next kiss on her panties.

Anna threw back her head, hitting it against the door and perhaps giving herself a concussion. She didn't care if she did. That's because the only thing that mattered now was the pleasure. Such a puny word for the incredible things Heath was doing with his mouth.

“Your rating?” he asked, and mercy, he added some breath with that question.

“Six million,” she managed to say.

He laughed.

“One more kiss,” he said. “Then it'll be your turn.”

Oh, she wanted a turn all right. Wanted it badly. Until he shimmied down her panties, put her knee on his shoulder and kissed her again. A special kiss.

Tongue flicks included.

After a couple of those flicks, Anna went into forget mode again. The thought of taking her turn went right out of her head. Everything vanished. Except for the feeling that she was about to shatter. And fall. And shatter some more.

Heath made sure he gave her the
more
she needed for shattering. One last well-placed kiss. An equally well-placed tongue flick. And all she could do was fist her hand in his hair and let him shatter her.

She had to take a moment to gather her breath. Another moment to keep gathering it. But even with the ripples of the climax tingling through her, she wanted to get started on her turn. And she was going to torture the hell out of Heath and his junk.

“Damn,” Heath growled.

It took her a moment to realize that he was reacting to something he heard.

A knock at the tack room door.

“Heath?” Riley called out.

Hell
.

“Uh, Heath, I need to talk to you,” Riley added. “It's important.”

Unless the world was about to end and Heath could stop it, then it wasn't that important, but Anna conceded that was the lust talking.

“How important?” Heath asked.

“Very.”

Heath and she both cursed.

“Anna's in here with me,” Heath volunteered.

It took Riley several snail-crawling seconds to respond to that. “Yes, I figured that out. Didn't think you'd go into the tack room alone and close the door. But this isn't about Anna. It's about your assignment.”

Heath groaned, stood back up, helping her fix her jeans and panties. “You can wait in here if you want,” he offered.

“Not a chance,” Anna argued. “Riley knows what we've been doing. Or rather what we started doing, and the assignment thing could be a ruse to draw us out so he can ambush you with a shovel.”

He brushed a kiss on her mouth. “You've got a very active imagination.” Though she knew there might be a grain of truth in her theory.

Heath went out ahead of her, and Riley was indeed right there. He was sitting on a hay bale, drinking one of the beers. She braced herself for him to say something snarky like had she been trying to get Heath drunk or why did she have this thing for barn sex?

He didn't.

Riley did give her a look that only a big brother could have managed, but it had some, well, sympathy mixed in with the brotherly snark. A strange combination.

“I just came from the base,” Riley said to Heath. “They want to see you about your deployment request.”

“Deployment request?” Anna repeated. “I thought Heath was going to Florida.”

Riley remained quiet, clearly waiting for Heath to explain.

“I asked to be diverted from the instructor job to another deployment,” Heath said.

Riley's arrival had been a killjoy in the sexual-pleasure department, but hearing about Heath's request was a different kind of killjoy. Although obviously not for Heath since this was something he wanted.

Very much.

After all, he'd told her that the instructor job made him feel washed up, and maybe now he wouldn't have to feel that way because he could go back to one of those classified sandy locations. Where people shot at him and where he could be hurt or killed.

Mercy.

That felt as if she'd been slammed with a truckload of bricks. And there was no reason for it, because this was Heath's job. No logical reason anyway. But Anna wasn't feeling very logical at the moment.

“They want to see you out at the base right away,” Riley added.

Heath nodded, looked at her as if he needed to say something, but Anna let him off the hook. She smiled, brushed a kiss on his cheek.

“Go,” she insisted, trying to keep that smile in place. “We can talk when you get back.”

Heath hesitated, gave another nod and then walked toward the house. Anna managed to keep her smile in place until he was out of sight. Riley opened a bottle of beer and handed it to her.

“Will he get to come back here to the ranch if the deployment is approved?” Anna asked, though she was afraid to hear the answer. “Or will they send him out right away?”

“Hard to say.”

Or maybe not. The next thing Anna saw was Heath leaving the house, carrying his gear. He put it in his rental car and drove off. Obviously, he was prepared to go.

Anna took a long swig of that beer and wished it was something a whole lot stronger.

“Best to forget him,” Riley said as they watched Heath drive away. “Heath isn't the settling-down type.”

If only that weren't true
.

“It's just a fling,” Riley added. “That's what it was nine and a half years ago, and that's what it is now.”

If only that
were
true
.