Reclaiming the Cowboy
Autore
Kathleen O'Brien
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Chapter One
IT WAS A MEAN March midnight, the road a sludgy river of asphalt oozing in slow loops under an icy moon. Mitch Garwood’s mood was sour and his face frost-burned as he rumbled up to the back door of his cottage, one of the six they’d recently finished on the eastern edge of Bell River Ranch.
Tilting off his helmet with one hand, he twisted the key with the other, silencing the growling motorcycle before any of the adjoining guests woke up and complained. Although why they should sleep soundly when he knew darn well he wouldn’t...
Still astride the bike, he stared at the dark windows of the cottage, envisioning the cold, half-empty spaces within. A bed. A sofa. A bookcase. A refrigerator full of bottled water and blackening guacamole dip. Six hours of tossing and turning...alone...till dawn, when he could finally get up and distract himself with work.
This was a life?
It was his choice, of course. He’d never been forced to be alone, not since he hit puberty and discovered that rusty-brown hair and a few freckles over a goofy grin actually appealed to some females.
He definitely hadn’t needed to be alone tonight. At least fifty bored women from a cosmetics convention in Crawford had jammed into the Happy Horseshoe Saloon. Two-thirds of them were nice, half of them were hot and at least two of them were both.
But not one was interesting enough to take home.
He shoved his helmet into the storage bubble on the back of the bike, a little too roughly. He heard the fiberglass crack against the rim. He’d better watch out—he’d already fractured two helmets this way. He’d probably coil himself up so tight he’d break his own bones if he didn’t find a woman soon.
Problem was, the only woman he wanted was the one he couldn’t have.
Bonnie. His chest did a painful cramping thing, as if the two syllables were electric prods applied to his heart. Bonnie, he thought again, like the masochist he was, just to feel the reaction once more.
Bonnie O’Mara. If that was even her name.
For one amazing year, the beautiful mystery woman had seemed like his own personal miracle. Turned out she was a mirage instead. Nearly nine months on the road together, running from something only she could see, and then, one morning, Mitch woke up and she was gone.
That was six months ago. So yeah—he needed someone new.
He inhaled deeply, the Colorado frost stinging his lungs. Too bad he didn’t drink. His friends assured him that getting lightly buzzed could put a sparkle into even the dullest diamond.
But he’d tried that once, a few months ago, on his twenty-seventh birthday. He’d found a bottle of Johnnie Walker and a smart, lively redhead visiting from Crested Butte, and he’d mixed them together to see what happened.
He told himself it was allowed, darn it. He wasn’t ready to be a monk just because True Love had spit in his face. At the very least, he owed it to himself to make sure his machinery still worked, right?
But—get this—he’d been bored to death. Apologizing as politely as he could, he’d left the confused woman after about five minutes and five kisses, already feeling the hangover churning in his stomach. He’d spent the rest of the night chucking big ugly rocks to see if he could bust a hole in frozen Silverbottom Pond. He’d only succeeded in scaring the deer.
So no more nights like that. The machinery could shrivel up and fall off before he’d repeat that pathetic fiasco.
Mitch rocked the bike up onto its kickstand, then took the steps to the cottage two at a time. If he had to go in, he might as well get it over with.
But the minute he opened the door, he froze. Something felt...different.
The house wasn’t empty and still. Someone was here.
He left the lights off as he moved through the kitchen, using only the weak beams of the fingernail moon and the LED displays on the appliances to guide him. As he entered the living room, he picked up a poker from the fireplace, holding it over his shoulder like a baseball bat.
Then he heard a woman’s voice, softly, from the darkness.
“Mitch?”
His grip went numb. The poker clattered from his hand. “Bonnie?”
A shadow near the sofa stirred. It formed into a human shape and then became a blur as she ran blindly toward him.
It was. It was Bonnie. He knew her silhouette. He knew her scent. He knew the way she ran and the way her boots lightly tapped across the hardwood floor.
He was only ten feet away. She crashed into him hard, wrapping her arms around him and burying her head in his chest. He had to take a step backward to balance against the collision.
For a split second, he was reminded of the desperate embraces he sometimes got from his nephew, Alec, when the boy was in pain. When the poor kid had run over a squirrel with his bike or found a dying baby bird, fallen from the nest.
But then, as Bonnie lifted her pale, moonlit face to his and smothered his cheeks, his chin...and finally his lips...with kisses, all thoughts of Alec evaporated.
All thoughts of anything evaporated.
His brain shut down entirely, his body taking over.
“Is it really you?” He dug his hands into her silken hair and pulled her as close as he could, close enough to smell her, taste her, own her. Close enough to make the six months of loneliness go away.
“Bonnie,” he whispered against her mouth, and maybe she said his name again, or maybe she merely moaned. Her lips were wet where he’d moved over them and so warm. He dragged his kisses, hard and possessive, down the column of her throat and up again. His hands stroked her back, down to her hips, tracing the sweet curve he knew so well.
After so many dreams, so many ghost Bonnies that had come to tease him in the night, only to disappear just short of heaven, he had to convince himself she was real.
She was. He had no idea how this gift had come to him, but he was beyond questioning it now. He lifted her legs so that she nestled against the fire between his, and they both groaned, remembering.
He stumbled backward, not caring whether he was loud or clumsy. Not caring whether he broke everything in the cottage or whether he looked a fool. He kissed her as he walked. He bent his head to find her breasts, though he nearly killed them both as he keeled backward toward the wall.
He made his way, somehow, to the bedroom. He fell with her onto the bed. She was fumbling with his belt and with her own, and he was tearing buttons, hers and his, and shedding clothes and boots as fast as he could.
And there she was, open to him. The same—oh, heaven help him—exactly the same as his dreams. Her breasts were like snow in the moonlight, and he claimed them because they were his. They had always been his, whether she was in his bed or lost in some invisible nowhere.
He went lower, then lower still, as she wriggled under him, wrestling free of scraps of denim and lace. And then he couldn’t take it anymore. He rose swiftly up on the heels of his hands, ready.
She fumbled with him, and he realized she was covering him with a condom. He groaned. Even that light touch was torture. And did they need this? She was on the pill...or had been...
Somehow she got it on, though her fingers trembled. When she finished, she lay back with a soft gasp and lifted her legs again, clasping them around his hips.
He had to have her. He didn’t care why she felt they needed protection. Maybe she had been...or maybe she thought he had been...
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t slow himself down. He’d hungered for her so long. He’d been so unbearably alone.
He murmured her name once more. Then, though he knew it might be too soon, he drove into her, at once animal and poet. Master and slave.
Every inch of his body pulsed and burned. His rhythm was hard, fast, relentless, and he heard the tiny hitch in her breathing that meant she was ready. Her head tilted back, exposing her creamy throat. Her legs tightened. Her heels dug into him, asking for more.
He knew her. He knew what she wanted. A few deeper, more powerful thrusts, the wet nip of his lips against her hardening breasts—
Oh, yes, he knew her. She cried out, her back arching, her legs going limp. Seconds, minutes...no longer than that...and, with an agonized groan, he exploded, too. Liquid gold fire poured through his veins, dizzying him, weakening him, dislocating him from time and place.
It lasted forever, for both of them. Of course it did. The river of their passion had flooded behind the dam of separation. Six months of longing, pent up, roiling in powerful currents. Six months of heat and tension and pain.
Finally, he was empty, but amazingly she still shimmered around him, like a crystal bell that no longer rang but filled the air with an exquisite humming. She hadn’t opened her eyes, and her breath was still shallow.
His Bonnie. He knew her. Tenderly, he touched two fingers between her legs, closing over the wet heat and coaxing the last invisible tremors free.
She shuddered helplessly, every sensation written on her beautiful face. He held on, poised above her, until finally, finally, her fierce internal pulses stilled. And then, unable to hold himself up an instant longer, he collapsed onto the bed beside her.
They lay together, with braided legs and tangled arms, palm against belly, cheek against breast, until the air grew cool around their sweaty bodies. She moved only once, stretching up to lift the glass he kept by his bed and taking a deep drink from it, as if she was parched.
Then, with a hum of satisfaction, as though the tepid liquid had been sweeter than simple water, she dropped back to his side and laid her head against his chest.
As he breathed in the daffodil, yellow-sky perfume of her hair, something inside him began to relax for the first time in six months. It wasn’t just sex. Amazing as that had been, this was deeper than sex.
This was as deep as his soul. He smiled at himself, aware the poet lingered, even now that the animal was sated.
His soul had come back to him.
They dozed. Slept, even. Much later, he woke to a dark, frigid room. He closed his hand over her hip, just to be sure she was there. His fingers must have been icy, because she shivered. She must be freezing. They hadn’t even pulled a blanket over them.
He cursed himself for a selfish fool.
“I’m sorry. I’ll start a fire.” He raised himself on one elbow, extending his other arm, hoping he could reach the bedside light.
“Don’t.” She stopped his arm with gentle fingers. “No fire. No lights.” She rolled over, until her slim body was half on top of his. “We can make our own fire.”
“But...I want to see you,” he said. His voice sounded odd in the dark room. Why didn’t she want him to turn on the lights? The cold had stabbed his chest, and he suddenly felt very afraid.
Or very angry.
“I don’t think we should.” She spoke softly, and he felt the motion of her head as she glanced toward the window, as if to check to see if any of the neighbors were awake yet.
That was all it took. Suddenly, he knew.
“You’re not home to stay, are you?” Both the anger and the fear dripped from the question like icicles. “You’re going away again.”
She rolled even closer, until her torso was completely on top of him. Her hands tucked beneath his armpits, as she used her arms to lift her face several inches above his. Her eyes were cool, shining with blue moonlight. Her hair, which he now saw was still dyed that ridiculous shade of auburn-black, dangled like dark silk over her breasts and curled around her nipples.
In spite of his anger, he felt himself growing rigid all over again.
“Tell me,” he insisted.
Slowly, she nodded. “I am going away again. I have to leave at first light.” She paused. “I should go sooner, but...”
She shifted her weight, and, with the sweep of one pale, graceful leg, she straddled his hips. His erection hardened, readying itself without his permission.
“But there’s a little more time.” She leaned down and kissed his jaw. “There’s enough time, if you want it.”
She moved, tilting her pelvis so that she came so close... If she scooted two inches higher, it would be enough. In the old days, he would have cupped her velvet ass with his hot palms and made it happen.
“Enough for what?” He sounded so cold. He sounded like someone else, someone who didn’t love her. “For one more goodbye tumble?”
“Time to make love,” she whispered, and the sweet sensuality in that voice was meant for the real Mitch, the old Mitch—not for this scarred and angry man beneath her now.
“What about protection?” He stared up at her, his face immobile. “Did you bring extra condoms, just in case? I mean, obviously you can’t be sure where I’ve been these six months...who I might have slept with.”
“Mitch, don’t.” She put her fingers against his lips. “There’s so little time. Don’t spoil it by being angry.”
“But I am angry.”
He made a harsh motion under her, and she understood. Tilting to one side, she slid off him and sat on the edge of the bed. For the first time, she tugged at the hem of the sheet and pulled it up to cover her nakedness.
He stood, ignoring his own exposed body. Nothing there she hadn’t seen a thousand times. She’d seen it, possessed it, maddened it...and then rejected it.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he said. “If you’re still here when I get out, it had better mean you’re ready to tell me what’s going on. It had better mean you’re ready to stay.”
She looked at him, her expression numb and slack with pain. “I can’t stay. You know that.”
The disappointment— He shook his head roughly. Disappointment? What a laughable word that was for the lava spill of hot fury and pain cascading through him now! Like any volcanic eruption, it left only a blasted devastation behind.
“But if you’re gone,” he continued in that same stranger’s voice. “If you’re gone, Bonnie, don’t ever come back.”
She whitened, whiter than the moonlight, whiter than the sheet. She stood, the bedclothes trailing behind her, and moved toward him. “You don’t mean that, Mitch.”
“The hell I don’t.”
She was close enough now he could see her eyes were filled with tears. Well, so was every single goddamn vein in his body. Tears were for children. They didn’t solve anything. They didn’t change anything.
“You can’t play with my life this way. If you have to go, then go. But don’t ever show up here like this again, looking for a midnight romp—or whatever it is you were after.”
She flinched, and he had a sudden terrible thought. Had she run out of funds? Was she alone out there, on the run, without food or shelter, or—
“There’s money,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s in my dresser. Top drawer. You can take it all, if you—”
“Money?”
Without warning, she reared back and slapped him. Hard. The crack of her hand across his cheek rang through the room like a gunshot.
He stood there a second, feeling the stinging ripple across his skin, abnormal waves of heat against the frigid air.
Then, laughing blackly, he put his hand on the bathroom door.
“Goodbye, Bonnie,” he said.
* * *
“YOU OKAY, HON? Anything wrong with those eggs?”
The snub-nosed, friendly waitress hovered over Bonnie, metal coffeepot in hand, frowning down at her uneaten breakfast with a maternal worry, which was ironic, really. Even though the two were probably about the same age—mid-twenties—right now Bonnie felt about a hundred years older than anyone in the restaurant.
“No, no, they’re great.” Instinctively, Bonnie flipped over the paper place mat she’d been doodling on. Her Florentine morning-glory vines weren’t exactly great art, but they weren’t your everyday scribble, either. She knew it was paranoid, but she never wanted anyone to remember, later, that the nervous young woman had seemed talented, an art student, maybe?
She picked up her fork and smiled as brightly as she could. The woman’s name tag read “I’m EDNA! How can I help you today?” and apparently Edna took her mission seriously.
If only she could help, Bonnie thought, spearing a forkful of eggs, then trying to swallow them around the rock in her throat. If only anyone could.
Apparently unconvinced by the bogus smile, Edna let her gaze flick expertly over Bonnie’s face. Bonnie’s cheeks grew warm. She’d spent so long trying to avoid attention that even this kindhearted scrutiny made her heart pound.
“You coming in from the back shift or heading out to the day watch?” Edna raised the coffeepot, as well as her eyebrows. “Maybe I should top you off, unless you’re headed straight to bed. You look about done in.”
That was probably an understatement. Bonnie had stopped here not because it looked appetizing, but because she simply couldn’t make it another mile.
The old-fashioned diner squatted on the side of U.S. 24, just outside Colorado Springs. Judging by the crowd at 7:00 a.m., Bonnie figured one of the big defense employers must be located nearby. Or maybe one of the technology companies. She probably should be flattered that Edna considered her capable of holding down a real job like that.
She felt more like a piece of muddy flotsam tossed up by a river flood. She’d been driving almost all night, ever since she left Silverdell—and Mitch. The days before Mitch blurred, but for a week, at least, she’d known nothing but driving, driving, driving...and death.
Her mother’s serene face rose in her mind’s eye—Bonnie was so glad, so profoundly relieved, that, as her poor, troubled mother faced death, the woman had finally found peace. And Bonnie was so glad that she’d returned to Sacramento, that she’d sneaked into the nursing home that last night. She wasn’t sure how she’d known the end was near...but she’d felt the urgency, as clearly as if she’d heard her mother’s voice calling her.
She’d stayed only long enough to say goodbye. As she’d left, she’d taken—stolen—the silly quilted-calico mobile that hung in her mother’s window. “Heather,” the flowered cloth letters said. Her mother’s hands had made it, though probably one of the aides had helped, since her mother had no longer been able to spell her own name.
The lumpy letters were in Bonnie’s purse right now. She’d reached in and touched them, every hour or so, as she drove. Going back to California had been risky, but she was glad she’d done it. She couldn’t have endured learning of her mother’s death online...even though she’d been checking every day for two years.
Was she glad, too, that she’d driven to Silverdell afterward to see Mitch? Or had that been a terrible mistake? Had it been the final straw?
A month from now, she would have been able to come to him openly. She would have been able to tell him everything. She should have been strong enough to wait.
But she’d been so bereft, so desolate. Even though her mother had been as good as lost to her for years, there was something about the finality of death that hurt Bonnie in a way she couldn’t have imagined. Now she was truly alone.
She’d needed his arms around her.
She touched her fingers to her inner brows, shoving down both images—her mother’s empty face and Mitch’s cold, hard eyes. She was too tired right now to think about any of that. When she found a hotel, when she got some sleep...then she’d allow herself to grieve.
“Actually, I’ve just arrived in town,” she told Edna. “I was hoping to find a decent hotel, not too far off the highway. Reasonable, if possible.”
Edna, bless her motherly heart, looked relieved that Bonnie wasn’t trying to go to work in this condition. Or maybe simply thankful this bedraggled customer was only passing through and wouldn’t be a regular.
“Marley’s is just what you need,” Edna said brightly. “About a mile down the highway, toward town. Respectable, if you know what I mean. No frills but clean as a whistle.”
Bonnie nodded gratefully. “Sounds perfect,” she said. Smiling again, she forked another small lump of eggs and made sure her posture was upright enough to help Edna feel free to tend other customers. “Thanks so much!”
Slowly, the waitress moved away. Bonnie fought the urge to let her shoulders slump back down. It wasn’t enough to fool Edna into thinking Bonnie had adequate starch and courage to face this day. She needed to fool herself, too.
She turned her place mat over again. Inside the border of morning-glory doodles, she slashed quick crisscrossing lines, creating a grid of empty squares. Then she numbered the squares—one through thirty-one.
She leaned back, looking at the makeshift calendar. Thirty-one days. That wasn’t so long, was it? And one of them was over already. She took her pen and drew a large X inside the first square. She traced over the mark, then traced it again and again, until the X was the darkest spot on the whole paper.
One down—thirty to go. She closed her eyes, then dragged them open, for fear she’d fall asleep and do a face-plant in the eggs. She blinked, squared her shoulders again and stared out the window, trying to get her bearings.
The sun had come up an hour ago—she’d been driving toward it, watching through the dusty car windshield as the golden ball had lifted itself sleepily over the horizon. The light had mesmerized her, then nearly blinded her, which was why she’d decided to pull over.
At first, she’d been too exhausted to notice much of anything. But now she saw that, right across the street, a huge nursery had blinked to life—electric lights illuminating the large metal-and-glass building. Behind the structure, sunlight sparked off sprawling rows of open-air plants and garden sculptures.
Crystal Eden, the nursery was called. She spotted several workers moving around, readying the place for opening. Lucky people! Her fingers closed over her palms, itching to hold a trowel or burrow into cold, reluctant earth.
They sold a lot of trees, she noticed. The effect was primarily green. But when she looked carefully, she spied the sprinkles of color.
Crocus, forsythia, daffodil...
Bulbs, already? Nervously, she glanced at the sky. March was a dangerous month. Spring was so close. You could smell the promise of warmth, floating behind the chill. The temptation to rush the planting was almost irresistible. But frost and snow remained a threat for at least another couple of months, and gardeners who forgot that often regretted it.
A little like her own situation, wasn’t it? Her winter of exile had lasted almost two years. Now she was down to thirty days, and she could feel her impatience rising. She could feel herself wanting to rush, to let down her guard, to take risks and dream of spring.
She wondered whether Crystal Eden was hiring. Sometimes, in spring, nurseries added staff as customers poured in, hungry for rebirth. She’d worked at other nurseries along the way. Once, she and Mitch had both landed jobs at the same tree farm.... Virginia, she thought, or maybe it had been in Kentucky. Summer...June or July. Every day, they’d come back to their hotel hot, sweaty and half-mad from working alongside each other, forbidden to touch.
She shook away the thought. She didn’t need a job, of course. When she first went on the run, she’d brought enough money to see her through five years, if she were careful. She’d had no way of knowing how long the ordeal would last.
But it had lasted only two. How was that possible? Just two short years, and already her mother was dead. Most of the money she’d started with was untouched.
Still, she wanted to work. What else would she do with her days, with her mind? How else would she feel a part of the living world? What else would keep her from going mad?
“Someone picking you up?” Edna was back, and her expression warned Bonnie she’d been letting her emotions show on her face. “You’re not driving, are you?”
“Just as far as the hotel.” Bonnie tried to sound reassuringly competent. “Then I think I’ll sleep all day.”
As Edna turned, Bonnie called out impulsively. “What’s the weather report, do you know? Are they calling for any snow this week?”
Edna shrugged. “Don’t think so. But you know March. At least if you’re from around here, you do.”
Her curious eyes invited Bonnie to share, but no amount of tired could ever make Bonnie be that foolish.
“Good,” Bonnie said. She wondered how crazy Edna would think her if she knew she was worrying about those vulnerable forsythia and crocus across the street. “I hate driving in the snow.”
Edna laughed and, giving up, moved on. Bonnie transferred her gaze back to the window. She’d hoped to get farther away before she hunkered down to serve her remaining days. Ohio, maybe. Or, even better, New England. Every mile was safety, another layer of protection.
But Colorado Springs was a decent-size town. Sacramento was already eighteen hours behind her, and even if Jacob was looking for her, he couldn’t be sure which direction she’d headed.
She stopped herself. If he was looking for her? There was no “if” about it. Her mother’s death had lit the fuse. The end would come, one way or another, in thirty days. Jacob knew that just as well as she did.
But maybe sprinting to the other edge of the map was the chess move he expected her to make and paradoxically would be the least secure.
Oh, God. She rubbed her face hard with both hands, unable to bear the twisted, looping logic. For two years, she’d second-guessed every decision this way.
She couldn’t think straight anymore. Her brain was dazed, as if the pain of the past few days were the equivalent of blunt force trauma.
She folded her place-mat calendar into a neat rectangle small enough to fit in her purse. Picking up her check, she slid her chair back and headed for the register. As she paid—cash, of course—she kept her eyes on the landscape boulders and evergreens in the Eden across the street.
Someone opened the door, and she heard a wind chime blow in the breeze, its notes wafting easily across the clean, crisp air. The sound reminded her piercingly of Bell River—though she couldn’t quite say why.
But suddenly she had her answer. She was tired of running. Every mile took her farther from Mitch. Whether he wanted her or not, he would always be the fixed foot of her life’s compass. Everywhere she went, forevermore, she would measure it in terms of how far it was from Mitch.
This was far enough. Any farther and she might not be able to breathe. If she could get a job, she’d stay.
