Texas Redeemed (30 page)

“They weren’t living on the ranch then. It wasn’t
rehabilitated yet.” Because she hadn’t had the money to invest in Battle Creek
until her daughters had become ill. But she couldn’t open that Pandora’s Box.
“They moved to Night Sky when Battle Creek was starting to turn around, but it
took a while before there was any real profit.”

Peyton put his arm around her shoulders. “Nothing bad’s going to happen tonight.” He glanced around. “Dance
with me?”

“Are you serious?” If there was one thing about him that
hadn’t changed, it was the fact that he didn’t dance. The song now
reverberating throughout the bar, “Down on the Farm,” demanded dancing. When
Peyton didn’t immediately retract the offer, she took his hand and hurried to
the dance floor before he could change his mind.

For a few solid minutes he tried to keep up and mimic the
moves of the others crowding the center of the room. She laughed more than
danced, and hurried off to join a group in an uncoordinated line dance. She
chatted over the commotion with a few women she recognized around town as they
tried to move in unison. She staggered once or twice and finally gave up the
effort, navigating her way back to Peyton. She found him in the sea of Stetsons
and baseball caps bobbing in time with the music.

A nudge from someone rushing past had her stumbling
against him, and he caught her without missing a beat. Tim McGraw’s voice
overhead faded and was replaced by The Goo-Goo Dolls.

And then they were swaying, fitted together with her
hands loosely locked behind his neck, and one of his arms hooked around her
waist … her soft curves and his hard planes creating a delicious friction.

The heat was building, but not because of the crush of
bodies on the floor. Valerie’s arms slipped from his neck. “I don’t feel like
dancing anymore.”

Peyton didn’t ask for an explanation, just led her to
their booth where he paid the bill and she insisted on covering the waitress’s
tip, and then they were on Old Towne again.

At the ranch, he followed her to the porch, but he didn’t
seem to want to leave right away. Nor did she want him to.

She stepped inside the foyer and turned to face him. “Do
you have a good memory of the Bronco now? Great food and … well, we won’t bring
up the line dancing debacle.”

He grinned, and his blue-gray eyes glimmered under the
porch lights. “I remember you in my arms, so it’s a damn good memory.”

Nothing bad’s going to happen tonight.
It would if she once
again put away what she needed to say to him—what she needed to show him.

Valerie let her purse fall to the floor and stood with
her arms at her sides. “Peyton.”

A heartbeat later, he scooped her off her feet and hauled
her against him as he took two long, determined strides into the foyer. With a
firm kick he shut the door.

“Lock it,” he whispered against her throat before he let
her down.

“In a second.” Valerie kissed
him, taking his bottom lip between her teeth in a teasing bite that had him
groaning into her mouth. “Now I’ll lock the door.”

She felt his eyes on her, caressing the length of her
spine, her ass, her calves, as she went to the door and engaged the lock. It
was purely erotic and a tiny bit embarrassing to have him watching her so
closely, but it didn’t slow her stride as she walked right past him to the foot
of the curved staircase.

Peyton’s hands were on her before they reached her
bedroom. In the upstairs hallway, he stopped her with a searing, deep, wet kiss.
“What about your boundaries, Val?”

“No boundaries. Not with you. Not anymore.”

They hit her closed bedroom door with a hard
Thump!
A few feet away the cat came
skulking out of a closet and, finding nothing of particular interest in the
hallway, trotted down the stairs, probably in search of his water dish.

Peyton smoothed her tousled hair away from her face, his
gaze pinioning hers as his free hand cruised down her torso and around to her
back. Then it dove into her jeans and lace panties, the rough pads of his
fingers scraping the supple flesh of her buttocks.

He took his time exploring, pressing her to him even as
he drove his hips forward. They moved roughly against the door, the
bump, bump, bump
a rhythm in Valerie’s
ears.

Fisting his hair, she brought her mouth to his, tasting
the desire on his tongue.
This,
she
thought as their moans blended.
This is
what I want for a lifetime.

Peyton’s hand slid from inside her jeans and she ached
for that contact. But the moment he twisted the doorknob and they shuffled into
the room, she was in his arms again.

As she released the buttons on his shirt, she pressed
openmouthed kisses to the expanse of exposed skin from his collarbone to his
navel. He discarded the shirt as she freed him of his belt and unzipped his
jeans.

Down to his briefs, Peyton followed her to the wide set
of windows along the far wall. Just before she pulled the sheer white panels
shut, she glanced at the silhouette of mountains in the dark distance. It was a
beautiful view, but not more so than the reflection of Peyton’s naked body in
the glass.

He’d shed his briefs while crossing the room and now
stood behind her at the windows, his hands on the strip of skin exposed below
the hem of her sweater. “These clothes have gotta
go.”

She guided his hands underneath the sweater to her
breasts. “Just touch me. Anywhere. Everywhere.”

It was all the urging he needed. From behind, he snatched
the sweater over her head. Then she gripped handfuls of the sheer window
coverings at the shock of pleasure that rode her blood when he thrust against
her bottom. It wasn’t enough though, with her jeans and underwear still barring
him from where she wanted him most.

Peyton caught her around the waist, dumped her onto the
bed and she promptly sprang up on all fours and crawled to the center. In close
pursuit, he joined her in less time than it took for her to draw in a breath.
Ridding her of the lacy scrap of bra, he groaned onto her breasts, swirling his
tongue over the sensitive flesh, making her wetter with every explicit whisper.

He flipped her onto her back, impatient to remove the
jeans that became snagged on her boot heels and had to be tugged off. The
panties were no more than sexy netting that didn’t even quite cover her butt
cheeks, and she was all but naked under him.

“Get up,” he said, already helping her to her feet.
Standing unsteadily on the pillow top mattress, she trusted his hands on her
hips to keep her balanced. But without a warning his tongue lashed between her
legs and she cried out.

Still, he held her in place, tasting her moist heat
through the lace. When he all of a sudden stopped, she gasped at the
interruption. “Promise me something, Val.”

Oh, hell, yes. She’d tell him anything he wanted to hear
to get his mouth back on her.

“Promise you’ll get yourself another pair of these—” his
fingers curled into the panties “—real soon.” The fragile lace ripped in his
grasp, and she almost came on the spot.

Valerie let his mouth, and his skilled fingers, bring her
body to total surrender. Her skin was damp with sweat, hot to the touch, and
she felt so, so heavy with lust as she flopped onto the bed with her arms up
and legs parted.

Wicked thirst flashed in his eyes as he dragged his gaze
from hers to the apex of her thighs. He drank from her again, then kissed his
way to her mouth as his weight pressed her into the mattress. “Wait. A condom.”

“No.”

“Val, come on. You don’t mean—”

Valerie drew his head to hers, kissed his mouth and
tasted herself on his lips. “I do mean it. I said no boundaries.”

Peyton took his time learning her body: scraping her
nipples with his teeth as his hands kneaded her ass. Finally—
finally—
he sank between the nook of her thighs.

She reared up to kiss a bead of sweat from his jaw, then slid her arms around him, clutching his shoulder blades
as the stiff length of him speared her. Gasping in shock at the tight fit, the
delicious invasion, she inadvertently arched against him, bringing him deeper.

Peyton groaned, and in a minute they were rocking
together, his every thrust intensifying the passion that had been dormant for
entirely too long.

Valerie looked between them, watched his abdominal muscles
contract as his hips hammered against hers, and then she found his eyes almost
completely dark with desire.

And when their bodies were slick with sweat, their
breathing ragged and their pleasure at a new peak, he grasped her bottom,
hauled her upward and let his pleasure fill her. Despite the warm sensation she
shivered, reaching up to smooth back his hair.

He’s beautiful. And
he’s mine.

He coaxed her orgasm, and she came apart in violent
shudders, repeating his name on broken sighs, hugging him in the most intimate
way.

Too satisfied to consider letting him go, Valerie
protested when he started to get up. Now she cradled him with her legs splayed
and his head resting on her tummy. And judging by the tremble of his body he
was laughing. She frowned up at the ceiling. “Peyton?”

“So it’s true.” He shifted to raise one of her red-booted
feet into the air. “You do everything in boots.”

Valerie laughed, remembering the discussion that seemed
so long ago. Then his mouth found her navel, and she stopped laughing as she
sank into the wanton bliss of his kiss.

D
AYLIGHT
WASHED OVER
the bed, and Peyton awoke
with a start, momentarily jarred to be waking up in a room that wasn’t his.

Valerie’s room, he realized, rubbing his eyes and taking
in the mahogany furniture, the neutral walls, the bold artwork and the richly
floral-and-stripe patterned postage stamp quilt that had been flung across the
footboard. Valerie’s bed, he recalled, breathing in the coconut scent of her
hair that lingered on the French stripe sheets.

But she wasn’t lying curled against him, the way they’d
fallen asleep last night.

He shot into a sitting position, alarmed, then relaxed
when he found her stretched out across an old-fashioned traveler’s trunk
reading a ratty hardcover book with her legs bent and her feet swinging in the
air.

She wore glasses … and nothing else.

Aroused on the spot, Peyton dragged a hand through his
hair and across the overnight stubble on his jaw. “Catching up on some reading,
Val?”

“Wasting time. It feels
wonderful to do that.” She dog-eared the page. “Good morning.”

The light of dawn touched her hair and the slope of her
ass. When she stood and set the book aside, his stare settled on her front.

It was amazing that those full, rose-tipped breasts and
toned, taut thighs lurked beneath all the flannel and denim she wore. “C’mere.”

“Be patient,” she whispered, sitting beside him on the
bed. “Three things. First, can you make it for dinner
tonight … um, about seven? I’m thinking about making Caesar salad with lemon
pepper shrimp. There’s also a hot buttered rum recipe I’d like to try.” She
touched her lips to his. “I’m told it’s not meant to be drunk alone.”

“I can’t turn
down an offer like that.” Peyton lightly grazed her nipple with his knuckles.
“What’s the second thing?”

“It’s this.” Valerie’s whiskey-colored eyes seemed
hesitant and vulnerable. “I loved you a long time ago. I loved that boy who
left Night Sky. But I’m in love with the man who came back, who’s here now.”

He was rattled to his soul to hear the words. Last night
he’d known for certain, but to hear her say what he’d once thought impossible
shook the foundation of his world. “Valerie—” he bent his head to kiss her
thoroughly “—I love you. In every single damn way.”

“I know. Don’t think I didn’t know.” She removed her
reading glasses, set them on the nightstand and climbed onto the bed in front
of him. “Now lie back,” she instructed so softly he hardly heard the words. She
leaned over him, her silky curtain of dark hair sweeping across his chest. “On to the third thing.”

“Which is?” he said as her lips chased the arrow of hair
down the center of his abdomen.

Valerie paused to grin at him, and she, hovering over him
wearing nothing but a naughty but shy smile, was the sexiest thing he’d ever
seen. “The third thing is—” she slid lower “—I don’t do
everything
in boots.”

“M
OM,
CAN I
show you something?”

Valerie and Chase had just returned from exercising two
horses, the well-mended Daffodil and Hector—Brute’s replacement—on the trail
and were in the ranch office nursing beers from the mini fridge and reviewing
estimates to renovate the bunkhouse.

Her cousin had pled his case over a bid from Alamo Lumber
and Construction, saying that tearing down the mold-eaten outer rear wall would
be an investment that’d go a long way toward keeping a full-timer on board long
after he left Texas.

He hadn’t given any indication of when that would be, but
was always reminding her—and his sister and mother—that his presence in Night
Sky was temporary.

With mold festering on the structure, the bunkhouse
wasn’t suitable for anyone to live in. Now that it was early March and the days
were consistently warm with sunshine, she could get some of the major repairs
underway.

“Hey, Lucy,” Chase said, getting up from his chair. “Still searching for a new nickname for you. How about
Little Chanel?”

“No way! Keep searching,” Lucy
said, smiling at him with undeniable hero-worship. In her eyes there was only
Chase the tough-as-hell soldier who’d fought the good fight in a place
destroyed by war. She didn’t see the Chase who was hurting and trying to outrun
something that was much too fast to escape.

On his way out Chase pointed his beer at the scrapbook
Lucy was crushing against her chest. “What’s that?”

“Just something I need to show my mom.”

Valerie closed the door behind Chase and returned to her
chair. “Let’s see it.”

Lucy relinquished the scrapbook and lingered near the
desk as Valerie studied the cover.

“This is what you and Dinah have been working on at the
hobby shop?”

“Yeah, but will you help me now, Mom?”

“‘My Life in Texas,’” Valerie read aloud, tracing the
embroidered image of a tree on the cover that had apples hanging from it with
slots for name tags to be inserted. Inside were copies of photographs from
Valerie’s albums, of Lucy and Anna as babies and toddlers, of Valerie and
Peyton as teenagers standing outside a movie theater in the city.

There were pictures of Peyton with his grandparents, and
one of him as a baby snuggled up to his father while his mother stood slightly
to the side wearing a beautiful suggestion of a frown.

“This scrapbook,” Valerie said, carefully closing it, “is for your father?”

Lucy took it, clutching it almost protectively. “Whenever
he goes on an assignment he can take it with him, or just look through it
before he leaves. Oh, he could add photos from all his travels—”

“What if he doesn’t leave, and chooses to stay in Night
Sky with us?” Peyton hadn’t outright agreed to let Doctors Without Borders go,
but surely that was a given. He had her love and trust and friendship now, all
he’d wanted from her … except for total honesty … and in their give-and-take
relationship, his reckless wanderlust was something he had to give up.

“But he can’t quit helping all those people in other
countries.” Lucy shrugged. “He can live here and still do that. It’s called
travel in the twenty-first century.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“No, it’s really simple. Grownups just make everything
complicated.”

Lucy hadn’t experienced Peyton vanishing into a sea of
billions of people and not making contact for years. She didn’t know that kind
of hurt and underestimated how his returning to the life of a wanderer would
affect the father–daughter relationship she had obviously learned to count on.

“About the scrapbook. I’ll need
the newspaper article.”

The article in the town newspaper printed the day after
Anna had passed away in the hospital. “You don’t want to include that.”

“Dad would
want it there.”

“You called him Dad.”

Lucy set down the scrapbook with trembling hands. “It
doesn’t feel weird to call him that now.”

Valerie enfolded her in a hug. “Peyton’s going to love
this. We’ll go through all of our photo albums and I’ll get the article about
Anna. We can use that photo program on the computer to make copies.”

“He has
to love
it. He’ll love it so much that the bad stuff I’ve done won’t matter.”

Valerie’s brow knit with surprised confusion. When her
daughter didn’t try to squirm out of the embrace, something like fear brushed
the surface of Valerie’s heart. “Lucy …?”

“Just another second. A mom’s
hug is the best kind.”

A
T
EXACTLY EIGHT
p.m. Valerie arrived at the
Turner mansion, as Peyton had requested when they’d crossed paths at Memorial
the previous day. He’d been in scrubs, assigned to the emergency room which was
located in an entirely separate wing of the hospital from the children’s
library where she’d spent the afternoon volunteering, so it hadn’t been a
chance encounter. He’d hung around for a while before he scribbled something in
crayon on a sheet of construction paper and enlisted a boy to deliver the note
to Valerie.

She’d read the invitation to dinner for two and nodded
with a private grin before he left the library to return to his side of the
hospital.

Now, in a little black dress and heels, Valerie climbed
down from the driver’s seat of her quad-cab pickup, grabbed the gift-wrapped
box from the front passenger seat and hurried to the portico to find Peyton in
a suit, waiting for her.

“A host gift,” she said once inside the parlor off the
foyer. When he opened the box and stared at the jars labeled with fruit
names—strawberry and pear and apricot—she explained, “Marcella Boone makes the
most heavenly jam you’ll ever taste. These are from my stash.”

“Any other guest would’ve brought chocolate or wine or
flowers.”

“Oh, I’m not any other guest.”

He put the box aside and wound his arms around her waist,
drawing her close. “Thanks, Val. I’ve got a taste for something else now
though.”

“Maybe I can help you with that.” Her eyes drifted closed
and there was only the scent of his aftershave, the feel of his lips on hers,
the taste of want on his tongue.

When he finally let her go, she was dizzy with brewing
desire, no longer hungry for food.

Nevertheless, they ate in the formal dining room that
Valerie joked could comfortably seat the Senate, and chatted over beef stir-fry
with scallions and snow peas and white wine. Then he led her to the solarium
where she looked at the stars through his grandmother’s telescope.

“Can you see anything interesting?” he asked, standing at
her side.

“Not much. Too cloudy tonight.”
They began walking through the house that seemed even larger and more imposing
with both Nathaniel and Jasper away. “You
do
know where the best possible spot is around here to see the stars, right? Still iffy about climbing the Crest?”

“Not ‘iffy.’ Absolutely certain that I
won’t do it.”

“If you can handle disaster areas and deserts and jungles
… and riding horseback in an ice storm … you can
manage the Crest. I visit once every season to watch the stars. I’m going up
again at the end of the month or early April, then again in June on the summer
solstice—if the weather’s all right. In case you change your mind, the offer’s
open.”

They ended up at his bedroom door and he led her inside.
“I’ve got the place to myself and an
unbelievably
hot brunette in my room. This would’ve broken a few of my grandparents’ rules
back in the day.”

“You always were a rule-breaker.” Valerie moseyed to the
desk and opened the medical textbook on top of the stack. “Are these from
college?”

“They are. I haven’t gotten around to unloading them
yet.” He came over to take the books but she blocked him. “Not so fast, Doctor.
Let’s test your knowledge.”

Peyton’s eyes swept over her. “Make it interesting.”

Accepting the challenge, she sat on the desk and thumbed
through the textbook. “For every question you answer correctly, I remove one
item of clothing. Shoes count as one item.”

“Strip trivia,” he said, almost in awe. “Go.”

“What’s the correct way to prioritize patients in an
emergency room?”

“By urgency of injury or illness,” he said without
blinking, lowering to the bed. “That was too easy, Val.”

She toed off her high heels. “Next question, then.” She
flipped a few chapters. “What is used to treat organophosphate poisoning?”

“Atropine.”

“Correct.” She stood, unbuttoned her dress and wiggled
out of it, letting it slide down her arms to the floor. “Next question is …
what does nitroglycerine do to blood vessels?”

Peyton watched her intently, awash in total arousal as she
stood there, stripped to her undies. “Nitroglycerine,” he said slowly, “dilates
blood vessels.”

She unhooked her bra, let it
join her dress and shoes on the floor. “I should’ve worn layers,” she said.

“So glad you didn’t.”

“I have a really hard one for you now.” When a suggestive
smirk tugged at his lips, she giggled and shut the book. “Listen up. And this one’ll be timed.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“What—” she eyed him from his suit jacket to his leather
shoes, and was impatient to have him naked in her arms “—am I thinking now?”

Peyton rose, began to move closer. “That’s not a medical
question.”

“Clock’s tickin’,” she replied,
tapping an invisible wristwatch. “What am I thinking?”

“That my clothes should be on the
floor, too?”

Valerie’s mouth opened in amazement. “Incredible
guess.”

Peyton took the liberty of slipping her lace thong down
her legs, and nipped her neck. “Well, it’s what I was thinking, too.”

“We should play this game more often.”

He flung his suit jacket aside and gave her ass a playful
slap as he followed her to his bed. “Count on it.”