Out of Exile (6 page)

For just a moment he'd wanted to laugh with them, be able to forget the past and reach out to each of them, but he couldn't…and he wasn't sure why.

The sound of horse hooves pounding the ground drew him up from his prone position and he looked out the loft door to see Lilly approaching on horseback.

She rode the way she did everything else—wholeheartedly. It was one of the qualities about her that
had always drawn him. She seemed to embrace all of life, without fear and without reservation.

He wasn't sure if he was glad to see her or irritated that she had managed to hunt him down. His nerves were pulled taut enough as it was and he wasn't sure if her presence would make things worse or better.

He watched as she dismounted and tied her horse next to his, then heard her open the door below. “Matthew?” Her voice carried easily in the otherwise stillness of the barn.

He thought of keeping silent, unsure if he wanted her company or not. “I'm up here,” he called out after a moment of hesitation.

A moment later her head popped up in the loft near where he was sprawled. “You missed supper,” she said. Her hair was tousled, and the exertion of the ride had whipped a pleasing color into her cheeks.

“What did I miss?”

She climbed up into the loft the rest of the way and sank down beside him on the blanket. “Tuna surprise. The surprise is that it tastes like tuna at all.”

He knew she was trying to make him smile, but he simply couldn't work up the energy for even that simple gesture. He stared out the loft door, aware of her gaze on him.

“Matthew? Are you all right?”

He opened his mouth to tell her that of course he was all right, that he'd simply come here to be alone
and avoid talking to anyone. “I don't know,” he surprised himself by replying.

Again he focused his gaze out to the distance. “I've just been sitting up here trying to figure out what's going on.”

“Did you come up with any answers?”

He shook his head. “Nothing that makes any kind of sense.”

She stretched out on her side next to him, her elbow propping her up. “Did they steal a lot from here?”

“Enough.” Once again he lay on his back and stared at the roof beams, intensely aware of her so close to him. Where before the only scent in the air had been the odor of hay and a lingering hint of horseflesh, now the air was redolent with the scent of her.

Her nearness had bothered him all morning as they had painted together. Clad in a coral-colored tank top that exposed the faintest hint of the top of her breasts, and in another pair of those shorts that made her legs appear impossibly long, she had been a source of temptation. And the temptation certainly hadn't diminished.

With the scent of her and the hay around him, if he closed his eyes he could almost imagine them back in time. They had spent a lot of hours in this hayloft trying to solve world problems. Even in the midst of one of their serious conversations, Matthew had never lost sight of her attractiveness.

“Do you have any idea who might be responsible?” Her soft voice intruded on his thoughts.

He turned to his side and propped himself on his elbow, so they were face-to-face and only mere inches apart. “I don't have a clue,” he replied.

She frowned, her eyes slightly deeper in hue than usual. “What about somebody from the development company that wants to buy this place?”

“Why would they want to make this kind of trouble for us?” he asked, fighting the impulse to reach out and touch a strand of her dark, shiny hair. He knew it would be wonderfully silky.

“I don't know. Maybe they want to make problems, then renegotiate a lower price.”

“Maybe,” he said, although he didn't believe it. “Or, maybe Jacob Tilley is paying back the Delaneys for his father being in prison.”

Her eyes widened. “You really think so?”

He rolled onto his back again, finding it much easier to concentrate on the conversation if he wasn't looking at her. “Who knows. Sometimes I just get the feeling that this place is cursed.”

“You mentioned that last night.” She placed a hand on his forearm. “Cursed by whom? By what?”

Her hand was warm…too warm, and he wanted to shake it off him. How could he tell her that he felt as if this land, this ranch was cursed by the spirit of a miserable man? How could he tell her that the specter of his father seemed to be in every room, in every corner, and there would never be any happiness found here because of his ghostly presence.

“Forget it,” he said. He sat up and faced the loft door, his back to her. He drew a deep breath, won
dering why at this moment all his emotions seemed so close, too close, to the surface?

“Matthew, talk to me. Tell me what you're thinking…what you're feeling.” She was silent for a moment, then continued. “You seem so alone.”

“I like being alone.”

“Well, right now you aren't alone.” She crawled over to sit next to him, and for several long minutes they simply sat and stared out into the distance. The sun was riding low in the sky, sending out a splash of farewell colors in pinks and oranges.

“It's beautiful from up here.” She finally broke the silence.

“Yes, it is,” he replied grudgingly. He couldn't dispute the beauty of the land…their land…his father's land.

“Don't you want to have a son or daughter to pass all this onto?” she asked, then didn't wait for his reply. “That's the only thing I regret about never marrying, the fact that I'll never have children.”

“You could have a child without marriage. Women do it all the time.”

She shook her head, her hair swaying around her shoulders with the movement. “That's never been an option for me. I guess I'm more conservative than I thought.”

He frowned thoughtfully and cast his gaze once again out the loft door. “I should have left this place a long time ago, made my own way somewhere else.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Because I had to stay. I had to protect them.”
The words fell from his mouth unbidden and were met with a long moment of silence.

“Protect them? You mean your sister and brothers?” Again she placed a hand on his arm. “Protect them from what?”

He hesitated before replying, wondering if he would later regret this conversation, yet suddenly unable to stop himself from having it. “From my father, who was the meanest bastard on the planet.”

He turned and looked at her and fought the anger that always surged inside him at thoughts of Adam Delaney. “I had to stick around and make sure things ran smoothly, do the right thing to keep him happy and hope to God when he did have one of his explosions he didn't manage to kill me or one of them.”

Her eyes widened, and her hand gently squeezed his forearm. “Your father was abusive?”

“My father was a sick son-of-a-bitch who took pleasure in beating and tormenting his children.” Matthew heard the venom in his voice and drew another deep breath to steady himself. “He was physically and mentally abusive every day of our lives.”

“Oh, Matthew.”

He turned to look at her, and his breath was nearly stolen away by the sweet empathy of her expression, the gentleness and compassion in her eyes. He shrugged and emitted a small laugh of embarrassment. “It doesn't matter anymore. It's all in the past, anyway.”

She placed a hand on the side of his face, her
fingers stroking softly down his cheek. “I'm so sorry, Matthew. I had no idea.”

He shrugged, a bitter smile on his face. “How could you know? The old man was always on his best behavior while you were here.”

He pulled her hand from his face, but instead of releasing it, held it in his own and stared down at it. She had pretty hands, slender and long-fingered, and her nails were painted a pretty pearlized pink. Her hand was warm, and he was surprised to feel some of his anger dissipate as he held it.

“Those weeks that you were here visiting were the very best weeks of my life,” he said softly. “I knew that during the time you were here my father wouldn't beat me or any of the other kids. For that week I could pretend that we were a normal family and we had a normal father.”

Her fingers curled around his and he felt the stir of a tension that had nothing to do with thoughts of his father. He released her hand and stood and moved to the loft door, needing to distance himself from her nearness, from her touch. If he didn't get some distance, he wasn't sure what he might do.

“But there was always a consequence to that week of no beatings,” he continued. He rubbed the center of his forehead with two fingers as he thought of those days so long ago. “The day that you and Clara left I'd get the beating of my life.”

“For what?” she asked as she stood up and moved behind him.

He turned back and looked at her with a wry, humorless smile. “For whatever. I got hit for being
nice to you and for not being nice enough. I got slapped for the way I'd looked at you over the dinner table, for
not
looking at you while we were eating dinner.”

He shrugged and once again focused his attention back to the distance. “I think he knew I liked you, and he wanted to taint that, ruin it. He knew I had fun with you, enjoyed your company, and so he always made sure I paid.”

She took his hand and pulled him around to face her. Her eyes shone with a shimmering light that made his chest ache. “He's not here to make you pay anymore,” she said softly, then she leaned forward and placed her lips on his.

With his emotions so close to the surface, he had no defenses against the onslaught of heat and the taste of desire that was ripe in her mouth.

It was what he'd feared…and what he'd wanted.

A groan of pleasure escaped him as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tightly against him, returning her kiss with a savage hunger that felt as if it had burned in him for her for years.

When he finally broke the kiss, she stepped back from him and stretched out on the bed of hay. “Make love to me, Matthew.” Her voice was an urgent whisper of need. “Make love to me now like you wanted to then. There's nobody to punish us, and I promise there won't be any consequences.”

As if to break the inertia that held him in place, she reached down and grabbed the bottom of her tank top and pulled it off over her head, exposing
to him the nude-colored bra that did little to hide her breasts.

In an instant he knew he was going to make love to her, he knew it would be a mistake, knew that even though his father wasn't around to punish him, eventually he would punish himself.

But at that moment all the reasons why they shouldn't do this were distant cries that echoed faintly, overridden by the white-hot streak of desire that seared through him.

With a fevered groan, he sank down on the hay and took her back into his arms.

A
s Matthew drew her against him on the soft bed of hay, Lilly felt as if this moment in time had been destined long ago. It was as if all those hours they had spent talking together, laughing together, so long ago had been a kind of foreplay that now would come to fruition.

His confession about his father had stunned her. She'd had no idea what the Delaney children had suffered at the hands of their father. Matthew's pain, when he'd told her about the past, had filled the loft and seeped into her heart to the point where all she wanted to do was somehow erase that pain.

But all thoughts of his father and abuse disappeared from her head as Matthew claimed her lips in a kiss of intense hunger and sweet mastery. It was impossible, as his hands ran up the length of her
back and his lips plied hers with flames, to think of anything but making love to him.

Her heart beat a quicksilver rhythm as their kiss deepened. She placed her hands on either side of his face, loving the feel of the faint scrub of whiskers there, the strength of his jawline just beneath the emerging beard.

He broke the kiss only long enough to sit up and pull his T-shirt over his head, then captured her mouth again as her hands raked across the broad width of his bare back and her legs twined with his.

Endless moments were spent in kissing, their tongues touching, seeking, then retreating and beginning anew. There was a wildness in his kiss that intoxicated her and with the press of their bodies so close, she could feel his hardness against her. It filled her with a need so yawning and rich, a need such as she'd never known before.

“Lilliana,” he finally uttered against her hair, into her ear as his fingers worked the clasp of her bra.

“Matthew,” she replied, loving the sound of her name on his lips, the feel of his name on hers. She moaned as her bra fell away and his hands cupped her breasts.

His thumbs raked across her nipples, and they responded, rising to pebble hardness and aching with sweet sensation. She pulled his head down, wanting to feel his tongue on them.

He complied, using the tip of his tongue to tease and torment, sending her higher up the spiral of desire. As his mouth pleasured her breasts, his fingers
danced across her stomach at the waistband of her shorts.

His hands were hot, fevered, and it was a fever she relished, a fever that burned inside her, as well. As his hands worked the button snap of her shorts, her fingers did the same to his jeans.

Impatience made her fingers clumsy. She wanted to feel his nakedness against hers. She wanted no barriers between them. As if he felt the same way, he gently shoved her hands aside and stood.

With his gray eyes burning into hers, he unsnapped his jeans and slid them off. For a moment she had a glimpse of him clad only in a pair of navy briefs, and his beauty stunned her. Then the briefs were gone and he knelt down and grabbed the waist of her shorts.

In slow, deliberate movements, he pulled her shorts off and threw them aside, leaving her only in a pair of wispy silk panties.

She shivered, instinctively knowing she was about to be loved more thoroughly, more passionately than she'd ever been loved in her life. She saw it in the flames of his eyes, felt the crackle of electric heat that sizzled in the air.

“You are so beautiful.” The words eased out of him as if from beneath an enormous pressure.

She wanted to tell him that he was beautiful, too, that his broad shoulders stirred her, his muscled abdomen awed her, and his arousal stole her breath away. But she got no opportunity to say anything, for once again he was against her and his mouth took utter possession of hers.

As he kissed her, his hands worked her panties down and she aided his efforts, arching her hips up to meet his intimate touch.

She felt as if she'd been ready for that touch for years, and it shattered her. As he stroked her she cried out and rode a crest of pleasure so intense it melted her from the inside out.

For a long moment she remained motionless, gasping from the sheer power of her release, then she reached a hand down and encircled him.

He gasped and froze, not moving a muscle. She thought she could hear his heartbeat pounding in the otherwise silent loft. But she wasn't sure if it was his or her own.

She looked into his eyes as she stroked the length of him, saw the haze of desire that darkened his beautiful eyes, felt the stiffening of his body at the sensual assault.

“That's dangerous,” he said, his voice filled with simmering tension.

“Yes,” she replied and stroked him again, this time with her fingers tightened slightly around him. She sensed that his control was fragile, and she wanted that control to break. She wanted him beyond control, wild with want.

She wanted all those seething emotions she'd felt in him since she'd arrived here to break free and consume him…consume her.

And as she stroked him a third time, that control snapped. With a muffled curse, he removed her hand from him and moved between her legs and entered her.

He didn't ease in, but buried himself inside her, and they both froze, overwhelmed by the sensations of their joining.

Lilly was enflamed, lost to any other conscious thought as he filled her up. His mouth again sought hers, and as he kissed her, tears sprang to her eyes…tears of pleasure so intense she thought she might die.

He moved against her, slowly at first, easing in and out in an age-old rhythm that set Lilly's nerve endings on fire. As he increased the pace, she matched him thrust for thrust as she once again began to climb toward the pinnacle of desire.

Faster and faster, in frenzied need, they clung to one another as outside the twilight deepened and cast dancing shadows through the loft.

Sensation whirled in her, taking her up…up…up to peaks never before realized, and then she was there, falling over the edge as he stiffened and cried out her name in sweet release.

Minutes passed and they remained unmoving, their bodies still locked together. Their breathing slowed…calmed, and Lilly's heartbeat resumed a more normal pace.

Still, she didn't move from his embrace. She wanted to remain locked in his arms forever. She wanted to lie in his arms through the night and watch the sunrise from his embrace.

“We should have done this years ago,” she said, finally breaking the silence.

He rolled to the side of her and wrapped a strand of her hair around his finger. “No, we shouldn't
have. We were too young to handle it then. It would have complicated things.”

His features were obscured by the deep shadows that had begun to claim the loft. “Maybe you're right,” she agreed. “Although at the time I thought I was mature enough to handle anything.”

He smiled. “And that's a sure sign that you were too immature.” He unwrapped her hair from his finger and instead trailed his hand down the side of her face.

She gazed at him. “Why didn't you ever tell me about your father?” she asked softly. Instantly she knew the question was a mistake.

Stress rolled toward her from him, and he sat up abruptly and swiped a hand through his hair. “Because I knew there was nothing you could do.”

“I could have told Aunt Clara,” she replied, and also rose to a sitting position.

In one graceful movement, he stood and grabbed his jeans. “It's getting dark. You need to get back to the house.”

She reached out and picked up her bra, sorry she'd broken the mood, sorry she'd brought up the topic of his father once again. “What about you? Aren't you coming back to the house?”

“I'll go back later.” He pulled on his jeans.

“I'll wait for you.”

“No,” he replied sharply. He grabbed her shorts and tossed them to her. “This was all a mistake, Lilly. It would have been a big mistake years ago, and it was a bigger mistake now.”

The shaft of pain that swept through her at his
words surprised her. She didn't want him deriding what they had just shared, not with the scent of him still clinging to her skin, not with the taste of him still in her mouth.

“If it was a mistake, it was an overwhelmingly pleasant one,” she said dryly. She quickly stepped into her panties, feeling naked and vulnerable where before she'd felt naked and beautiful.

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, it was, but just because it felt good doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake. I don't want or need a woman in my life. I don't want or need anyone in my life.”

Lilly wanted to argue with him, to tell him that she'd never seen anyone who needed as much as he did, but she knew now was not the time or the place. He'd completely closed off from her. The shutters in his eyes were firmly in place, obscuring any emotion that might shine there.

“I'll wait downstairs while you finish getting dressed,” he said and headed down the ladder to the barn below.

Lilly finished getting dressed and hurried down to where he waited next to their horses. His features were stony and grim, no hint of the softer man who had just made love to her.

It angered her just a little, how quickly he'd been able to shut her out. As he held her horse's bridle, she mounted. “I'm sorry, Matthew, that your father was a mean, hateful bastard,” she said. “But that doesn't mean you have to become one. The past is over and done, and you only have control over what you do with your future.”

She yelped in surprise as he gave her horse a sharp slap on the rump. The horse shot forward and she grabbed wildly for the reins and slowed the horse's pace.

She'd gone only a short distance when she turned in the saddle and looked back at the barn.

Matthew stood in the shadows of night, staring after her, and never had she seen a man who looked so achingly alone.

 

“Thanks for meeting with me, Judd,” Matthew said to the dark-haired man seated across the table from him in the Inferno café.

Judd Stevens nodded, his green eyes sharp and assessing. “You said on the phone you're having some problems out at the ranch. So what's going on?”

Judd Stevens was an ex-FBI agent who had worked on occasion for Matthew's sister as a private investigator. Matthew knew little about the man other than Johnna liked and trusted him, and that Judd had moved to Inferno several years ago after quitting the FBI.

Quickly Matthew told him about the destruction in the cabins and the lumber and supplies that had been stolen four days previous. “The latest incident took place yesterday,” he said. “One of the workers thought an opened bag of feed looked and smelled funny. It was funny all right, somebody had laced it with enough rat poison to kill any horse that might have eaten some of it.”

Judd's eyes narrowed and he took a sip of his
coffee. “Nasty stuff,” he finally said. “So what do you want from me?”

“I'm not sure,” Matthew admitted. “I don't even know if the person responsible for all this is working at the ranch or not.”

“Have you had a beef with anyone? Know any reason why somebody would want to cause you grief?” Judd asked.

Matthew frowned. “Walter Tilley went to prison for transporting aliens and killing a social worker from the ranch. He was caught by us right before he was going to kill my brother, Mark, and his wife. Jacob Tilley, Walter's son, just recently came to work for me.”

“And you think he might be getting revenge for his father?”

Matthew sighed and leaned back in the seat. “I don't know. He seems genuinely appalled by his father's crimes. He doesn't seem to hold a grudge against us, but he's the only one I can think of who might have a reason to cause us problems.”

Frustration surged up inside him, a frustration that had been building for days. “I figured I'd talk to you and see if you had any suggestions. We're going to have guests arriving in two weeks, and I don't want anything going on that might put any of them at risk.”

Judd took another sip of his coffee. “The first thing I would recommend you do is talk to a few of the men you trust, see if they've seen anyone acting suspicious, pay them extra to work extra hours to keep an eye on things.”

Matthew nodded. “I've already done that. I've got a couple of men who have been with me for years.”

“Other than that, I'm not sure there's a whole lot you can do. You might want to check the backgrounds of all the people who work for you,” Judd suggested. “I'm not sure you'll find any answers, but you might get something that sends up a red flag.”

“Can you do that? Check backgrounds?”

Judd nodded. “Sure, if you get me the information. Get me copies of their job applications, and I'll see what I can come up with. You might want to bring me the applications of anyone who has left your employ over the past couple of months also.”

“You know you're probably going to find false information on a lot of those applications,” Matthew said. “Ranch hands are often transients, working for a few months, then moving on. They aren't always completely honest when it comes to job applications.”

Judd smiled. “Then we'll see who is lying and why.”

Matthew nodded and looked at his watch. “I've got to get out of here. I dropped my aunt at a doctor's appointment and she should be about finished by now.” Matthew finished up his coffee and stood. “I'll get those applications to you in the next day or two.”

A moment later Matthew stepped out of the café and headed down the sidewalk toward the doctor's
office. With each step he took, he steeled himself for seeing Lilly once again.

He'd seen little of her over the course of the past four days, had consciously kept physical distance between them. He left the house just after dawn and returned after dusk to find a plate of whatever she had cooked for dinner awaiting him.

He had no idea how she had spent her days. He had spent his trying to forget. He wanted to forget the taste of her mouth, so hot and sweet against his. He wanted to forget the silky heat of her skin, her breathy little moans and the exquisite pleasure of making love to her.