Lightning That Lingers (30 page)

Halley held her face up to catch the breeze and cool the hot blush that swept across her cheeks. His hands, on her ankles, were doing surprising things to her heartbeat as well as to other parts of her body. She took a quick breath and sought a contessalike answer.

“Yes, Baron,” she finally said, smiling at him down the length of her nose as the power of the masquerade rescued her. “But we’re also taught the fine art of control. And, dear Baron, I’ve mastered it beautifully.” There, she’d handled that well—well enough to make her wonder briefly if perhaps she had been royalty in another life.

The Baron sneaked his fingers beneath the hem of the slinky red dress and crawled them slowly over the smooth, firm skin of her legs. Her dress collected around the stiff white cuffs of his shirt and rode up along with his movements.

“Hey!” Halley shot up, her eyes wide as her body reacted violently to his explorations.

Nick grinned slowly. “Perfect control, hmm?”

“Baron,” she demanded feverishly, “remove your hands from beneath my dress immediately.”

Nick Harrington wasn’t at all used to listening to the pleas of ladies in situations like this because the women usually meant the opposite of what they said. But then, the freckled Contessa was not like anyone Nick had ever met before. He removed his hands and smiled softly. “Sorry, just wanted to know the extent of that control. You’re a pretty sensuous lady, you know.”

“You’re speaking in non sequiturs, Baron. A definite breach of logic.” She swung her bare feet down to the ground and wiggled her toes.

Nick threw his head back and laughed. “Tessa, I think I’m falling in love.”

“Well, good,” Halley said as primly and calmly as she could manage, her palms pushing away the wrinkles on her dress. “You’re following the script nicely, Nick.”

“Nick? Now how did he get in here? It’s not fair, you know, that you know my name and I know absolutely nothing about you.” He sidled closer to her.

She lifted her chin slightly. “Fair? There was nothing on
my
invitation, dear Baron, that said a thing about being fair. Now come.” She stood and looked down at him in the purple shadows. “Let’s head back. All this fantasy has made me terribly tired. I think it’s time I hit the hay.”

Nick watched her as she rose from the bench. A stray beam of moonlight splashed across her face and lit her remarkably honest green eyes. More women than he could count had said the same thing to him in the past four years—in slightly different words, of course, but she was probably the first one who meant she wanted to go to bed … alone … to sleep.

His smile went unnoticed by Halley, who was feeling around the pebbled walkway with her toes in an effort to find the spike-heeled shoes. Beneath that wonderful makeup job and sexy dress, Nick decided thoughtfully, was someone who had never come within fifty miles of a contessa in her life.

“Here, contessa, allow me.” He bent over and picked up her shoes, slipping each one onto an arched foot while she balanced herself with one hand on his back.

“Thank you. I feel like Cinderella.”

“In that case, you’d have to leave one shoe behind, and those pebbles would hurt like hell.”

Halley nodded. “Right.” She comfortably hooked one arm through his. “I’d also have to run off, and
there’s no way on earth I’d be able to manage that tonight.”

“Good.” He looked down and smiled softly. “I don’t want you running off.” He led her carefully back toward the well-lit terrace of the Harrington estate.

Later that night Halley stood barefoot before the French doors of her bedroom. Outside, all was still, except for the gentle breath of a breeze through the giant maple trees and several couples who strolled across the broad expanse of lawn. Tiny gaslights dotted the blackness like fireflies. Halley breathed deeply, then slipped through the doors and out onto the tiny, private patio, shielded from view by a thick, circular hedge of yew bushes and clumps of mulberry.

“A real fantasyland,” she murmured as the breeze ruffled her filmy nightgown.

She thought of her own apartment, a world away on the other side of Philadelphia. It was a cluttered, homey space in the old gatekeeper’s cottage on the Thorne Estate where she worked. Then she looked back through the open doors into the perfectly lit suite to which she’d been assigned for the weekend.
Everything
was perfect. The glistening white-silk and chrome furniture was accented by a slight smattering of pastel colors here and there on the upholstery and wall coverings.

She tried to imagine all her friends and acquaintances here, in this setting. It was hard to visualize. The Thorne Estate had been donated to the community by the Thorne family, and Halley loved her job there as director of the library, which was located in the main house. She loved the tiny cottage that was open to her friends at all hours of the day and night. She thought of them flopping on her couch and ordering pizza, laughing and crying and feeling completely at home. She thought of Archie, the hobo who lived behind the library in the old stable and sometimes came for tea in the gazebo, and the neighborhood
kids who pasted their rubbings from the old cemetery grave markers on her walls.

Halley burst out laughing. No, these were
definitely
two different worlds.

But she
could
picture Nick, the Baron, here. Sure, she could see him easily stretched out on that long, lovely couch in his handsome tuxedo. Even when the wind had ruffled his dark hair as they walked along the path earlier, it hadn’t looked mussed. Nothing about him was haphazard, not his long, lean physique, nor his way of conversing, nor his elegant mannerisms. The Baron von Bluster was definitely not haphazard. But what
was
he, exactly?

Halley looked up into the sliver of a moon that caught her eye and whispered, “A dashing, romantic dream. That’s what the Baron is.”

A piercing scream from out of the darkness shattered her thoughts into a million tiny pieces.

Immediately following was a shot and a bellow and a scuffling of footsteps, although later Halley wouldn’t be able to tell anyone in what exact order these events had occurred.

She stood frozen in place, the hair on her arms and back of her neck standing upright.

And then, in seconds, impulse took over, and without a backward glance she plowed through the carefully manicured yew bushes and ran down toward the lake and the sound, her gown flattening against her body in the breeze.

ONE

Soaked to the bone, Niki Devlin began to lose her temper. She swiped at the rain on her cheeks and took a deep, resigned breath. If she ever got back to New York, she intended to wring her editor’s neck. Why had she agreed to spend ten days in the Wyoming wilderness?
Because Eli Neff casually suggested a series of columns on adventure vacations. And you foolishly approved of the idea!

That had been mistake number one. Niki could still see the smirk on his face as he mentioned a ranch outside Cutter’s Creek, Wyoming, that ran an autumn cattle drive for paying customers. Surprised, she’d blurted out, “I grew up in Cutter’s Creek.” Mistake number two.

Of course, Eli knew that. Eli knew everything. He knew she avoided Cutter’s Creek and went home only for the big holidays, like the bicentennial celebration.
So Eli, clever man, had gotten her to agree to the idea before telling her where she’d have to go. Niki wanted to tell
him
where to go, but fledgling newspaper columnists didn’t tell syndication editors where to go. Instead, they flew to Wyoming and climbed on a chuck wagon.

Niki slid across the wooden seat and leaned around the side of the white canvas top. She expected to see cattle or, better yet, the cowboy who’d taught her how to drive the team of mules, but she was still alone on the range. She looked down at the mud that sucked the wagon wheels deep into the ooze. All in all, this vacation did not look promising.

“Spit!” she said softly, setting the brake on the wagon. She wouldn’t wait for the cavalry to rescue her. Surely a twenty-six-year-old college graduate could get one little wagon unstuck. Right?

A slash of lightning ripped the sky, followed moments later by an explosion of thunder. Plump drops of rain tattooed the top of Zach Weston’s classic cowboy hat, splintering into smaller drops that rolled off the rim. Reining in his horse, he swore under his breath and shot another irritated glance at the sky. Slate gray clouds churned and tumbled into one another, looking to Zach as if they were in a cosmic race to drench all of Wyoming. His horse shifted restlessly beneath him, anxious to be on the move again.

Zach checked the herd behind him. Twelve hundred
beef cattle were being driven by four experienced hands and nine city slickers, some of whom had never been on a horse before yesterday. To their credit, the amateurs were doing their part to keep the cows moving. Nevertheless, Zach worried as the herd began to bunch tightly, trying to find safety in numbers. Nothing startled a cow faster than an electrical storm. Hoping the blinding flash of light would be the last of the day, he signaled to John Carey, one of the ranch hands.

John was levelheaded, a natural with animals, and, at twenty-two years old, a good ten years younger than Zach. As he slowed his horse he asked, “What’s up, boss?”

“The hair on the back of my neck,” Zach said, smiling, only half intending it as a joke.

“Ain’t that the truth.”

Zach pulled his hat off and slung the water from the brim. “Next time you talk to Mother Nature, remind her that late October’s supposed to be dry and sunny.”

“That reporter said the same thing this morning on account of the weather canceling her flight yesterday,” John commented. “She sure wasn’t happy about being assigned to drive the chuck wagon.”

Everyone on the ranch knew John Carey’s love of practical jokes. So Zach fixed the younger man with a questioning stare. “Before you left her at the lunch site, you did tell her that everybody takes a turn on the chuck wagon?”

“Sort of slipped my mind.”

“Slipped your mind?” Zach asked, pronouncing each word distinctly as he thumbed the reins. “Has anything else slipped your mind?”

John shifted in his saddle, cocked his hat back a notch, and grinned broadly. “Don’t think so, but I was kind of rushing her, since she was a day late and all. Of course, those poky old mules know the range better than I do.”

Suppressing a groan as he wheeled his horse around, Zach said, “Stay here. Mules don’t like thunder any better than cattle. I’ll go and see if there’s anything left of our New York columnist.”

“She’s pretty, too,” John called after Zach.

Pretty? The word rang in Zach’s head like an alarm—it always would. How many
pretty
women had his father dragged to the ranch over the years? Too many. And without exception they had all worried more about chipping their manicures than enjoying the scenery. A beautiful woman was a different matter. True beauty went clear through to the bone and didn’t peel away with the nail polish. Zach had a sinking feeling that the journalist was going to be pretty.

As he rode he kept his head down as much as possible to shelter his face from the stinging slap of the rain. After he crossed the highway that ran through the range, the downpour finally eased, and he lifted his face to a sprinkle of sweet water, full of wilderness perfume. The scent of rain on the foothills
was something he’d never forgotten, not even during the grayest of boarding-school winters.

Turning east, he spurred his horse to a canter and went in search of the chuck wagon. According to plan, it should be over the next rise, nestled next to a stand of cottonwood trees on the far side of the meadow, coffee simmering on the camp stove. Plan. Zach grinned.
Nothing
had gone according to plan today.

He topped the rise. The stand of cottonwoods was just as he pictured, but everything else was wrong. The wagon sat a full two hundred yards from the trees, its rear wheels up to their hubs in mud. A woman stood with her back to him, a neon pink rain slicker thrown on the ground beside her and her hands on her hips. Zach watched in amazement as the woman spoke to the wagon.

“Don’t you dare think you’ve won. I haven’t given up. I’m only resting. And plotting,” she warned ominously.

Tucking her hands in the back pockets of sopping-wet, mud-splattered jeans, she rocked back and forth for a few moments. Suddenly she straightened and marched toward the wagon. A thick braid of dark hair hung past the small of her back and swayed as she walked. As soon as she grabbed for the long plank normally used as an impromptu buffet table, Zach eased his horse forward.

“Need some help, Cookie?” he asked quietly.

“What?” Niki’s heart skipped a beat, and her question
was more a gasp than a word. As she whirled to face the man with the deep, slow voice, Niki’s right boot heel sank into the soft ground. Tilting backward, she windmilled her arms to restore her balance, lost the battle, and landed rump first in the mud.

“Well, spit!”

“Excuse me?”