City Girl

Judy Griffith Gill

Chapter One

Ryan McCall woke up from a nap, stared out the car window, and shouted, “Look, Mom! Snow!”

Liss Tremayne glanced at her excited four-year-­old in the rearview mirror. “Hush. I know. Don’t wake Jason.” Snow, she thought, inaccurately described the raging blizzard she’d been driving through for the past forty-five minutes. In the last fifteen, all the road markings had been obliterated, and her four-wheel-drive Blazer kept threatening to forge a trail of its own, straight into the ditch. She’d gone from extremely nervous to downright terrified but was determined not to let Ryan see. She ground her molars together and fought the wheel, slowing as a huge gust of wind slammed into the side of the Blazer, carrying a load of snow that obscured her vision for several seconds.

Lord, what had she gotten herself into? Liss wondered, putting another soothing tape into the cassette player as soon as she could take one hand off the wheel for a second. Was she, as her in-laws insisted, out of her mind for leaving the safe, familiar city where she’d always lived and, on the last day of November, taking her children off into the wilderness? More precisely, to a cattle ranch, where they weren’t wanted and where they would have to share a house with a man she didn’t know and an old lady with a grudge against the world. Maybe she was out of her mind, but even if she and her sons weren’t wanted, her late uncle Ambrose Whittier’s will had offered a chance for her to make a better home for her children than she’d managed to in Vancouver.

There were going to be problems, though, and far worse ones than snow. Kirk Allbright had seemed so nice when he’d picked her up at her house that morning at the beginning of the month. His slow smile had done crazy things to her in­sides, and when he’d shoved his silver-gray Stet­son to the back of his head, letting a thick swath of straight dark-blond hair fall over his forehead, she’d had to force back a whistle. Half an hour later, the two of them had tacitly allied themselves against Mrs. Healey, Uncle Ambrose’s forbidding, elderly former housekeeper. She had done nothing but carp and complain from the moment they arrived at her house until the lawyer finally shut her up by saying that she, along with Liss and Kirk, had each inherited one-third share in Whittier Ranch. But, he’d added, they all had to agree to live there, together, for one year, if they wanted to inherit, or each would receive one hundred dollars and the property would be turned over to the government as a Provincial Park. After that, if two of them agreed, they could sell the ranch and split the proceeds.

That was when Liss had learned that Kirk All­bright was Uncle Ambrose’s illegitimate son, and that he’d expected to inherit alone. His smiling gray eyes had gone cold and hard, and his mouth had formed a straight, taut line as he glared at her, silently accusing her of having somehow arranged all of this.

Liss clenched her teeth and wrapped her hands tightly around the wheel. She fought another skid before she remembered to relax her grip and steer in the skid’s direction. Carefully, cautiously, she brought the car back under control. What a road! she thought. What a night! If only she hadn’t stopped all those times along the beautiful Co­quihalla Highway to take literally hundreds of photo­graphs. But the sky had been blue and cloudless then. The mountains and the endless vistas, roar­ing streams and cascading waterfalls, had cried out to be captured. She’d been unable to resist the vision of merchandising and advertising execu­tives gasping in awe at her expertise, her knowl­edge of form and composition, depth of field, her sheer artistry. She had stopped in the town of Merritt at a high-speed Internet place to upload the new material from her camera’s disk to Graham James, her agent. Who knew what kind of internet service she might find at the ranch? If any.

Now, though, she thought she might pay dearly for the delay, instead of having the photos pay her the dazzling sums she’d fantasized. Sums she was counting on to help pay for the brand new, top-of-the-line digital camera Graham had insisted she needed if she was to really make a name for herself. Personally, she preferred her old film cameras, but now they had been relegated to her black & white shots—the ones that really showed off her artistic abilities. In her not so very humble opinion, of course.

“Can we make a snowman when we get there?” Ryan asked in a lower voice.

Liss peered through the swirling white and again fought the car’s tendency to slide out of control. “It’ll be too late and too cold then, honey,” she said, and shivered. Suddenly she was more glad than ever that the lawyer, Lester Brown, had helped her choose this four-wheel-drive vehicle and had ad­vanced her the funds from her first quarter’s dividend to buy warm winter clothing for herself and the kids. And the new camera, too, though he didn’t know that.

“We could build it under the street lamp like we did last year,” Ryan said hopefully.

Liss smiled. They’d done so because the weather­man had predicted rain by morning, washing away the snow kids on the coast considered exciting, and adults either saw as Christmas-card beautiful, or just plain a nuisance that caused far too many fender-benders. Since she didn’t have any fenders to get bent, and did appreciate the sight of snow-laden trees and houses, she was among the former adult group.  Snow was usually short-lived down there at sea-level, if it came at all. This, however, was a whole new ball-game.  “There’ll be lots of time to build snowmen at the ranch,” she said. “This snow won’t melt overnight, I promise you.”

Street lamp? she thought. Hah! She hadn’t seen a street lamp for fifty miles, or a town, or a lighted house, or another car. She wondered if she’d see green grass before June, and swallowed hard. Since news of her move had gotten out, everyone she knew had some horror story to tell her about the nine- and ten-foot snowfalls in the Robson Valley, close up against the sheer western slopes of the Rockies; about temperatures of forty below zero; about what happened to people who got caught outside under such conditions.

But going to Whittier Ranch or not going there might become a moot point if she couldn’t keep the damned car on the road, she told herself, and concentrated harder on her driving. She had cho­sen to ignore those horror stories and shrug off all the “good” advice she’d been offered. She and her children had a right to their place on the ranch, and she wouldn’t be stopped, not by the weather, not by Mrs. Healey’s bad manners, not even by Kirk Allbright’s attitude. There was nothing any­body could do to keep them out.

* * * *

The dog was huge. It stood between Liss and the front door of the house, its hackles up, its snarling lips curled open to reveal sharp teeth. Snow swirled around it, doing nothing to cool its rage at the intrusion of her car into the smooth, unplowed driveway that led to the front of the house.

She tried to open the car door, but the dog barked hysterically and lunged toward her the instant the dome light came on. She slammed the door and, inanely, locked it. The dog was on a chain, but that chain was plenty long enough for those fangs to reach her, just as its claws were able to come so close to the car door she feared for its finish. All the maniacal animal had to do was stretch another two inches and he be scraping paint. His snarling, slavering bark was ferocious.

Scrambling across to the other side of the car, Liss eased open the passenger door and stepped out into snow that reached her knees. Wading through it, she headed for the house, after admonishing Ryan to stay put till she figured out what was what.

Sure. Right. The damn dog’s chain was also long enough for it to reach her before she was even half-way to the front porch. She floundered backwards, praying she wouldn’t fall, and shut herself thankfully into the warmth of the car. “Whew!”

“What are we going to do?” Ryan asked.

“Sit here and blow the horn until Mr. Allbright comes out to call off his hound.” She gave the horn another blast.

“Maybe he’s not home,” Jason said. When the car stopped, he had undone his and his brothers seatbelts and the two little boys had climbed out of their booster seats and leaned forward, hooking their elbows over the back of her seat. Their combined breath was warm on her neck as they, too, watched the enraged dog lunging against its chain, sweeping a wide arc from her car right up to the front door of the house it was guarding.

After ten minutes of blowing the horn with no results, she knew she had to do something else. This was Friday evening. Allbright might not be home for hours. He might not come home at all, she realized. He likely had a hot date on this cold night. What if he was away for the weekend? For two cents, she’d turn around and head home—except conditions were so bad she knew she wouldn’t make it, and she didn’t think freezing to death in a ditch beside an empty, endless highway would be any better than freezing to death here. Besides, this was home for her and the kids now.

She sighed. Fat lot of good it did to sit there telling herself she had a right to get into that house, when between her and the front door was a dog about as vicious as the highway behind her. But wait, she thought. “Front door” suggested “back door.” Liss smiled grimly. Right. She was not going to sit here and watch her children freeze! She shifted into drive and crept slowly around the house, peering at the place for any sign of occu­pancy. There was none, until she saw the dim yellow glow of a porch light. Relief washed through her.

The door under that light was mercifully un­locked, and it led into an entryway that obviously served as a pantry and laundry room. It was nearly as large as her entire former house had been, and yet was only half the size of the kitchen beyond it. It took fifteen minutes to get everything out of the Blazer and into the house, and by the time she was finished, Liss was wet, exhausted, and half frozen. She staggered into the kitchen and dropped the last suitcase on the floor, then carefully dusted snow off her largest camera case and set it beside the others on the end of the table. Those cameras were important, and becoming more im­portant as each moment passed, she decided, looking around in dull disgust at the dirt and clutter. Something sticky and brown had oozed down the side of the stove and pooled onto the floor. Jason knelt in it as he and Ryan bent over a box beside the stove.

“Look, Mom!” Ryan’s brown eyes gleamed under his straight bangs. “Kitties. A big mama cat and little bitty babies.”

She smiled and slumped against the fridge. They were there, safe, and together, and that was all that mattered. As Ryan picked up a kitten to show her, mama cat reared up with a hiss and swiped at his face, her claws bared. Startled, he dropped the kitten into its soft nest and leaped back while Liss jumped forward to haul Jason out of the cat’s reach. Ryan’s eyes flooded as he wailed, “The kitty scratched me!” Not to be outdone, Jason cried, too.

Crouching, Liss gathered both boys close, sooth­ing them and then cheering them with the prom­ise of food. After wiping the scratches, which had just barely opened Ryan’s skin in two spots, and applying antiseptic cream, she managed an adequate meal for them of scrambled eggs and toast, glad she had brought the basics from home with her. The other house, she reminded herself, which was no longer their home. By now, the landlord had surely rented it to some other desperate person who could put up with its leaky pipes, antiquated heating system, drafts, and single-glazed windows.

While they ate, she explored, munching a slice of toast and find­ing the rest of the house in the same state of chaos as the kitchen. There were plenty of bedrooms on the second floor. One was obviously Kirk’s, and another, at the end of the far wing, was also occupied—by a soundly sleeping, loudly snoring, completely oblivious Mrs. Healey, who apparently didn’t object to living in squalor. This was a housekeeper? Liss suspected Mrs. Healey had been something else to Uncle Ambrose, who apparently didn’t consider a clean house any more important than he or Kirk Allbright did. With a shudder at the sight of the littered room, Liss closed the door and returned to the one she’d chosen for the boys, to make up their beds with linens and warm quilts she found in a well-stocked closet.

When the children had finished eating, she carried Jason and led a worn-out Ryan by the hand to their new room, telling them she’d be sleeping right next door. They were asleep almost before she finished pulling up their covers, and she headed back downstairs for the rest of their things.

Leaning on the kitchen table, she looked at the opened suitcases spread over the floor, their con­tents jumbled from the boys’ search for pajamas. Exhaustion washed over her as she thought about carrying those bags upstairs. No. She couldn’t do it. She was too tired. She’d scramble some of those eggs for herself and then go to bed. The mess could wait till tomorrow. Who’d notice her clutter amid that which already existed?

With her eggs cooking, she lifted one of her suitcases to the table and sought a nightgown and robe. She had just found the former when the back door opened on a gust of cold wind and two snowy figures stumbled inside and staggered kitchen­ward.

Liss didn’t even think. She simply recognized the first of those figures as a deadly enemy and reacted, sweeping up the entire suitcase and fling­ing it at the intruders with a scream of pure terror.

“Back! Back!” she cried frantically. “Sit! Lie down! Outside! Go home!” She snatched up a chair and held it threateningly before her as she edged around the table, putting more and more obstacles between herself and the slightly abashed looking dog with a lacy pink bra hanging out of his mouth and a pair of panties over his high, curving tail.

Kirk walked toward Liss slowly, trying to look unthreatening, took the chair from her and set it on the floor. “Hello, Liss,” he said, and groaned silently. At close quarters, her scent affected him exactly as it had the first day he’d met her. He told himself it shouldn’t, that he couldn’t let it. In spite of him­self, he drew in a deep breath of it and extended his hand.

His words seemed to whip her into action. She slapped his hand aside and glared at him. “‘Hello’?” she shouted. “‘Hello’? Is that all you can say after leaving a vicious animal chained between the driveway and the door when you’re expecting someone to arrive? What kind of monster are you, not to be here when that person and her two innocent little children show up in the middle of a blizzard, and can’t get inside the house because there’s nobody around to call off the animal? And now you come waltzing in here after a nice, cozy evening out with one of your women while I’ve been out there on your stupid treacherous country roads, driving through the dark and the snow without another car in sight for miles and miles, and not even a motel or a town or anything, and then coming in and finding this pigsty waiting for me and you have the gall to say ‘hello’?” She gasped for breath and flung an arm in a wide sweep around the kitchen.

Kirk winced. It was a pigsty. He had to admit it. But it had been one hell of a week, and he hadn’t had time to do much more than work and catch an hour or two of sleep before going back out to work some more, which was what he had to do if he was going to keep this ranch, especially now it had to support not only him and his dog, but two women and two kids.

He gaped at this invader in his kitchen, slid his gaze over suitcases and boxes, then slowly peeled off his thick leather gloves and unbuttoned his sheepskin jacket. She’d seemed so . . . even-tempered the first time he’d met her. Bend­ing, he lifted the panties from their perch on his dog’s bushy tail and dangled them from one finger. Liss Tremayne, her face as white as the underwear he held, still held a chair in front of her as if she would fling it as she had the suitcase. She’d backed around the table as she’d shouted conflicting orders at his perfectly harmless and undoubtedly con­fused dog.

She was dressed in jeans and a thick red sweater. Her nearly black hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, and her almond-shaped eyes were huge with terror, pinned on the dog. When she came up against the counter, she stopped of necessity and stared at Kirk as if only then becoming aware of his presence.

“Call him off,” she begged, her voice shaking. “Please send him away. Oh, lord, he’s eating my bra!”

Kirk took the bra from Marsh’s slack jaws and dangled it from the same finger as the panties. “Sit, Marsh.” Obediently, the dog, a cross between a husky and a shepherd, lowered himself onto his haunches, tongue lolling, ears pricked up, head cocked. “Stay,” Kirk added, and bent to pick up the spilled suitcase, stuffing items of feminine apparel back in it willy-nilly. He set it on the table, put his  snow-damp Stetson on top of the fridge, and slid out of his shearling coat.

“Send that horrible beast outside!” she demanded.

“The hell I will. This is Marsh’s home, too, you know.”

“Yes, sure, and as far as you’re concerned, he takes precedence over me and my children and you want us to leave,” she went on, her voice growing more shrill. “Is that what you expected to accomplish by leaving this mess? Or did you figure you could live like a slob for weeks and weeks simply because I was coming to clean it all up? I didn’t come to be a servant to you, Kirk Allbright! I didn’t come to have my children threatened by a man-eating beast! Even your damned cat clawed at Ryan and . . . and . . . I must have been out of my mind to think this would be a safe place to raise my children, but don’t think your snow or your mean animals or your squalor is going to drive me away! Move!” she added, pushing him hard as her voice cracked and tears spurted from her dark eyes. “Get out of my way! I’m going to bed!”

Her tears undid his tight control. Dammit, he was tired, and hungry, and cold, and he didn’t need a woman screaming at him the minute he got home from a long and exhausting day. He’d been racing the weather for the past three days, and every one of them had been hell. And now this! The nerve of her, berating him about going out with women, as if it were any of her affair what he did. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of when he’d learned he was to have her and the old bat dumped on him! Mrs. Healey’s behavior since her arrival the previous week had been enough to deal with, and now here came this one, pulling that one female trick geared to turn a man inside out. Well, he’d had enough of women this past week. Hell, the past year!

He blocked her way. “Now, you just wait one damn minute here, lady. How the hell was I sup­posed to know you were coming today when you didn’t tell me? I’m not a mind reader!”

She dashed the tears from her eyes. “I wrote to tell you I was coming today.”

“Yeah? When?”

Liss had to think about it. The past weeks had been a whirl of activity, of getting packed, of saying good-bye to friends, of one last, horrendous battle with Johnny’s folks. She felt tears well up again and held them back with a conscious effort of will. “On—on Monday, I think.” Or had it been Tuesday before the letter got mailed?

Kirk stared at her. Her chin trembled! It honest­-to-God trembled. How many hours had she spent practicing that little trick in front of a mirror?

“Oh, for the love of Mike!” he roared. “Where the hell do you think you are, city girl? Letters don’t arrive in an hour or two out here as if they were sent by a courier on a bike! A letter mailed in the city on Monday won’t show up here before Friday at the earliest, and Tuesday was the last day I had time to drive into town to pick up mail. What do you think I’m running here, a nine-to-­five operation? I’ve been beating myself into the ground trying to get feed out to my cows before this storm hit. And why the hell were you driving in these conditions anyway? You should have holed up in a motel at the first warning!”

Hands on her hips, she yelled right back at him, “What warning?”

“On the radio, of course. Doesn’t that fancy Blazer you and Lester Brown picked out have a radio in it?”

Liss blinked rapidly, stung by the acidity of his tone. “Are you objecting to the car we chose? Lester said you specifically stipulated a four-wheel-drive vehicle, so that’s what we got. And it’s not all that fancy! It’s used, after all. Besides, it’s not mine any more than it’s yours. It belongs to the ranch, so what’s your problem?”

“My ‘problem,’ as you so sweetly put it, is that you risked your and your children’s lives by failing to exercise common sense. The weather advisory has frequent updates. What I want to know is why weren’t you listening?”

She stared up into his furious gray eyes. And to think she’d once thought he was attractive! To think that during the half-hour drive to the law­yer’s office, before any of them knew they were going to have to live together, he’d made her stomach quiver with nothing more than a smile. Now, as during the reading of the will, he was glaring at her as if everything were her fault. Instead of making her stomach quiver, he was making it churn.

“I was playing my CDs,” she said through clenched teeth. “I hadn’t heard any of them for ages because I had to sell my CD player months ago, and I was enjoying them. Why would I want to listen to some yackety-yacking deejay when I don’t have to?”

He rolled his eyes and shook his head in disgust. “Because that deejay might have told you to get the hell off the road if you didn’t have a damned good reason to be there. So, I’m telling you, city girl, from her on you listen to the radio at least once every hour while winter lasts. Failing that, open your eyes and pay attention to the warnings all around you. The minute it started snowing, you should have started looking for a motel. “

“Look for a motel because of a few snowflakes? Would you?”

“Damn right I would, if I was driving into un­known territory and unused to the conditions.”

“How could I know how bad it was going to get? And it was pretty at first. Then—then all of a sudden the road disappeared.” She paused to draw in a deep breath, trying to steady her voice. “And so did all the towns and lights, and all I could do was keep coming until I saw the ranch sign and when I got here there was nothing but that horri­ble animal out there w-with his teeth bared to keep me away and . . .” She felt a choking sensation in her throat and turned her head away. “And I thought you’d be here.” It was hardly more than a whisper.

Kirk nearly groaned aloud. Having her hide her tears was worse than letting him see them. Worse, and sneakier, and far more manipulative. He steeled himself. “I have a ranch to run. I couldn’t sit around waiting for you to show up so I could say welcome, especially when you’re not.”

She looked at him then, and there were no tears, no quivering chin, just a deep, abiding weariness and an ineffable sadness in her face. “I know I’m not,” she said. “But I couldn’t let that matter, you see. I had to come anyway. For the kids.”

Before he could stop her, she slipped around him and snatched up the suitcase she’d thrown at the dog. Hugging it across her chest with both arms, she left the room without looking back.

Oh, hell, what had made him say she wasn’t welcome? he wondered as he looked through the doorway toward the stairs, listening to her ascend. It was a filthy thing to say to a woman whose only fault was that, because she resembled a long-dead relation she probably didn’t even remember, she’d been left part of his ranch. She’d likely had as long and exhausting a day as he’d had, and was as tired as he was, maybe even as hungry.

Hungry? It was then that he smelled scorching food and looked at the stove. A congealed mess that had once been scrambled eggs now smoked in a pan, turning brown around the edges.

With a growl of disgust, Kirk lifted the pan and shoved it, eggs and all, into the overloaded sink, then sat down at the table and pulled off his boots, leaving them lying where they fell. He was too damned tired to do anything else. Except, not only was he tired, he was also hungry, breakfast having been a long, long time ago and lunch non-existent. Hell, Liss Tremayne was probably tired, too, and hungry. It was clear she hadn’t taken so much as a bite of those eggs she’d left burning on the stove.

He dumped out the crusty mess, scrubbed the pan, then whipped up half a dozen more eggs. He put some ham on to fry, the slowly poured the eggs into a larger pan, letting them cook slowly with a lid on. After a few minutes, he lifted the edge of the congealing eggs, let the liquid top run into the bottom of the pan, then added shredded cheese. He flipped the thick slices of ham and turned the oven onto warm. When the eggs were ready, he folded the omelet over the cheese, divided it more or less equally onto two plates, added the ham set it in the oven. He dropped four slices of bread into the toaster and forced his  weary body up the stairs.

Liss lay on her bed, tears slowly leaking from her     eyes. She was feeling sorry, not for herself, of course, but for poor Uncle Ambrose, a cold, hard man who’d been embittered by his young bride’s death. At least that’s what Liss’s father had told her, and she figured he should know. His sister had been Ambrose’s wife. How sad, Liss thought that her aunt had died in childbirth, along with the infant, leaving Ambrose with this huge, empty house.

She groaned softly when someone knocked on her door. “Go away,” she said, rubbing hastily at her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater.   

He didn’t. The door opened and he stepped in, still wearing the same damp jeans, but minus his boots and jacket. The three-day growth of beard remained. His eyes were dark and tired, and so oddly compassionate that she had to look away lest the kindness undo her completely and start the tears again.

When he reached out and touched her shoul­der, he felt her flinch then become so rigid, he thought her muscles might snap.

“Hey, come here,” he said quietly, urging her to turn around and face him.

She rolled off the bed and slipped away to the window, standing with her back to the room.

“Come on, Liss,” he said, his voice quiet and deep. “I’m sorry I said you weren’t welcome. Believe me, you’re a whole lot more welcome than our third partner in this venture. I was . . . I guess I was responding in kind to the way you greeted me, but I shouldn’t have. I know you were badly scared and had a lot of adrenaline to use up, and that’s what all the shouting and crying was about. I shouldn’t have said what I did and hurt your feelings.”

“Please, go away,” she repeated.  

Kirk knew he should do as she asked, but something about the stiff set of her slim shoulders, the guarded quality in her posture, held him there. Walking away from her right then would be like turning his back on a child in pain.

Stocking feet silent on the carpeted floor, he approached. He drew in a deep, unsteady breath. “Please, don’t cry anymore.”

“I’m not crying,” she said huskily.

         The wool of her soft red sweater caught on the rough skin of his hands, making him achingly aware of her fragile femininity and his own masculinity. It was not a difference he wanted to be reminded of. All he’d come for was to apologize for saying something he shouldn’t have said, something that wasn’t true. She wasn’t exactly unwel­come. It was just that he’d need time to get used to having someone like her around. Someone who cried. A woman. Soft. Delicate. Someone who smelled good.

He felt her struggle to move away from him, but he grasped her other shoulder and held her firmly, turning her into his embrace.

      “No?” He ran a finger up one side of her face, collecting tears to show her. Her skin was silky and warm. He hoped his frost-roughened finger hadn’t hurt her. Damn, but she was petite. And vulnerable, seeming to lack the strength to fight off bullies, among whom he counted himself at the moment. “What’s this?” he asked, showing her his wet finger.

      She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands and shook her head. “All right, so I’m crying. But not because I was scared or because you hurt my feelings. I always cry when I’m mad, and I lost my temper because of the blizzard coming up without warning, and the dirty house and the dangerous animals and that fat old lady sleeping down the hall with her hearing aids out and not hearing me honk and honk and . . . and . . . I was so sca-a-ared, Kirk! So damned scared that my b-babies . . . were going to die in the cold and . . .”

Instinctively his arms went tight around her, offering solace and protection and— He  shuddered at the delicate warmth of her, the soft press of her breasts against his chest, the scent of her dark hair, the silky feel of it under his chin. “Hush,” he murmured, “I know, I know. But you got here, Liss, you did it, and your children are warm and safe and the dog wouldn’t have hurt you. He’s noisy but gentle, and I didn’t tie him out there. It wasn’t me, I swear that. Everything will be okay. There, now, rest on me.”

Liss didn’t know why, but with a huge sigh, she leaned on him, burrowing closer and sliding her arms around his waist as he stroked her hair. The heavy, steady beat of his heart drowned the sound of screaming wind and hard snow pelting the window in an unending stream. Oh, heavens, it felt so good, being held like this, she thought dimly, her head swirling with weariness and sen­sual reaction.       

She was a sweet, warm armful, Kirk thought, feeling his exhaustion fade away as her heat penetrated his clothing. No, only half an armful. Lord, but she was little. His hand skimmed over her cheek, drying her tears, and he felt how small and delicate the bones were. He squeezed her shoul­der through her thick sweater, then slid one thumb inside the ribbing at its neckline and stroked her skin. His index finger on her throat encountered a pulse­ point, and he felt the fluttering throb of her blood. He filled his hand with her soft, scented hair and tugged gently so she raised her head. She looked up at him with her damp, exotic eyes, and he bent low, his lips brushing hers. Need slammed into him, and without thinking he parted her lips with his tongue. The steady yet slightly accelerated pulse in her throat went wild under his touch. She returned his kiss with incredible sweetness, giving and trusting and coming with him as he backed up to that inviting bed behind him, eased them both down onto it.