Desert Blood (The Wolves of Twin Moon Ranch Book 2) (11 page)

He jumped back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand then scrubbing it on his jeans. “Don’t you think we ought to get to know each other a little?”

“Sure, I’d like to get to know you better, Cody,” she purred, shooting a hand toward his crotch. He caught it a hair away from his zipper. “In fact, I feel like I already know you.”

I doubt it.
Though he kept the words inside, his face must have given him away, because Sabrina’s face went from puppy-dog perky to pit-bull malice in one cold-blooded blink.

That’s when he realized it. This was not just about him. Offending the daughter of the Westend alpha meant jeopardizing his entire pack. She’d go crying to Daddy, who’d come screaming for revenge. Cody’s father had toiled over a lifetime to forge alliances, making bitter sacrifices of his own. One wrong word and he’d set off a new feud. And judging by the little he knew of Sabrina, the only right words were
I do
.

Classical music floated up from the schoolhouse below: that yearning song, the one with the violin, striving to break free. Never had the notes sounded as bleak as they did today.

Damn his father! Couldn’t he at least have asked?

Vaguely, Cody felt Sabrina—persistent little leech— thread her arm through his again and snuggle into his shoulder. It took everything he had not to recoil. She pointed down the hill with an exaggerated sigh, right to the spot where the old smokehouse used to stand. “Your dad said he’d build us a big house, right over there.”

His stomach did a 360. That spot? That was Heather’s—his and Heather’s! It was the exact spot he’d secretly tagged for their future house. His imagination had already filled it with green-eyed, champagne-haired kids and a big, goofy dog. And Heather, always Heather. Only Heather.

Jesus, how the hell was he going to get out of this? One by one, his vital organs started shutting down. There was no out. His gut told him as much, even as it heaved. His eyes darted over the view of the ranch. What had always seemed an endless landscape now squeezed in like the walls of a cell. That hill right over there, that’s where the rogues had come in a few years ago. To the east was the spot where Ty and Zack had fought off outsiders looking to steal a mate. And over there was the highway, a symbol of the human world, whittling away at the edges of their territory.

He took it all in, shoulders slumping. His duty was here.

He tried telling himself he’d be no good for Heather anyway. She didn’t know his true nature and never would. They just weren’t meant to be. Even if the thought killed him, he knew his outer shell would keep ticking for another few centuries, no matter how hollow he got inside.

Blood mired in his veins as his heart stuttered and slowed. When Sabrina nailed him with another kiss, he willed his mind blank, even though the taste of her snuck in. Wrong, this was all wrong. Inside, his soul was kicking and screaming, but outside, he was frozen, lost. By the time they made it back down the hill, Sabrina was practically skipping in triumph while Cody dragged his feet.

“Cody, I need you now!” Ty barked, shooing Sabrina toward the council house with a look of distaste. “Kyle called. There’s a new break in the case.” He grabbed Cody’s shoulder and pulled him aside then dropped his voice to a gritty whisper. “I swear I didn’t know Dad was up to this.”

The words trickled to his ears from the far end of a tunnel. “Doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “It’s for the best.” He hauled himself into this truck, feeling gravity triple. The gears moaned as he ground them into reverse, backed out, and headed for the highway. Duty called. No matter how his wolf protested, one thing would never change. He was his father’s son, and duty came first. Always.

A glance in the rearview mirror showed Ty, jaw set hard. There, Cody told himself, he’d done it again. Seemed no matter how hard he tried, he always managed to let someone down.

Including himself.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Heather had practically breezed through the school day. A glorious week with Cody—okay, a glorious week of nights…and mornings—with Cody, and she was glowing. She’d found a new kind of calm with him, despite all the uncertainty in her life. An inner calm that came from the sensation of two hearts beating just inches apart. A glass half-full kind of feeling she’d never had before.

Hell, her glass was more than half-full. It was overflowing, at least when it came to the physical. Cody had devoted a good quarter of an hour to her breasts on Wednesday night alone, until she’d woven her fingers in his dewy hair and guided him down to lap at her sex. She’d never trusted a man to do that before, but with Cody—well, there had been a lot of firsts. Ecstasy like she’d never known before this week hit her at the first flick of his tongue. When he popped his head up to check on her a minute later, his lips glistened with the taste of her, and she could swear the word that popped into her mind came from him.
Mate.

Afterward, she nearly blurted it out.
I love you, Cody.
It seemed ridiculous, because how could anyone fall in love that fast? Clearly, she was just infatuated, right?

Something deep inside her laughed out loud at that one. They had fit enough emotion into the past two weeks to fill two years. No one had ever made her feel so complete. Just the quiet companionship of him sitting nearby when she went through the kids’ assignments in the evenings was the stuff of her dreams. But she didn’t dare say it, lest she break the magic spell. Instead, she tapped it into his skin, a kind of lover’s Morse code. Three slow taps: index finger, middle finger, ring finger.
I. Love. You.

One night at a time, he’d chased her nightmares away and coaxed out the part of her she had thought long gone. By the third night, she’d stopped triple-checking her locks and peeking out the curtains. Stopped waking in the night, drenched with fear. She remembered what life was like before. Life could be good. Life could be beautiful.

The heady feeling he gave her carried over into her days. She felt taller, freer, as if she’d doubled her yoga time or swallowed a magic pill. She’d even started humming, for goodness’ sake! Like she was doing now, while the music played and the kids settled down for reading time.

Giggles brought her attention to the back of the room. Timmy had found something outside the window even more interesting than the adventures of Captain Underpants. Heather fixed him with a firm look and went back to her papers, secretly replaying Cody’s kisses, again and again.

Timmy snickered. “Cody’s got a new girlfriend.”

Her head snapped up, mortified that the kids had picked up on her and Cody. Had she somehow let on?

But no, that wasn’t it because eleven little heads were all swiveled to the window, looking up to the rise, where Cody stood locked in tight mouth-to-mouth with a curvy brunette half his size.

“Cody’s got a new girlfriend—again,” Timmy added, making everyone laugh.

Everyone but Heather, whose heart was free-falling through her chest. She could picture it, flip-flopping, desperately clawing for a hold.

“Cody’s got a girlfriend,” a singsong voice rang.

“Cody’s got a girlfriend,” the rest chimed in.

Cody’s got a girlfriend,
Heather thought, sick to her soul.

# # #

Somehow, she made it through the day then beeped at every damn car on the highway all the way home. She parked abruptly, slammed her front door, and then collapsed in sobs on the couch. She’d read somewhere that the human body was 60% water, and now she knew, because most of it was flooding her face as she made inhuman noises, curled up in the tight ball.
Cody’s got a girlfriend…

She’d retreated into a heap in bed by the time a knock sounded on the door. A knock she’d jumped in anticipation of every night, like one of Pavlov’s pathetic dogs. How naïve could she have been?

A second knock came, and all her sorrow, all her self-pity, formed a sharp arrow and took aim. She stomped to the door, flung it open. There he was, the scum!

Only he didn’t look like scum. He looked like Cody, sweet and sincere, but anguished, too. Maybe… Maybe she should hear him out. Maybe—

“Heather—” he started, but stopped when his phone sounded from his pocket. The new girlfriend? Heather’s face went hot. The man was a master of deception. She would not fall for him again!

“Wait—” Cody tried, but she beat him to the punch, gripping the door hard and slamming it in his face. Not a second chance kind of slam; a goodbye slam. She stood still, listening to the house shake.

A moment later, a timid knock. She opened the door to find a confused-looking Cody. Hurt, even. Well, she was the one who was hurt. Mortally wounded was more like it.

“Heather, I need to—”

She didn’t want to hear what he needed. She slammed the door again, and this time, she was shaking as much as the wood.

A third knock, and her blood boiled over. Enough of him! She threw the door open.

“Baby, I—”

Baby? She was no baby. And he was no man. He was a coward, a liar.

“Get lost!” she screamed, right in his face. “For good!” She followed up with a slam that almost took the door off its hinges.

They were through. She’d never thrill in the simple sound of approaching footsteps again, nor wake up feeling so fulfilled. She’d never feel that sense of completion in being with someone else.

Because there was no one else for her. Just him.

She leaned against the door, half hopeful for a fourth knock. She knew she wouldn’t have the strength to stand him up again; she loved him too much. But she was tired of letting other people rule her life. People who made her fear, people who made her love. The latter were nearly as bad as the former. So she would be strong. The old Heather would take charge of her life again and find some way to soldier on.

“Heather…”

His whisper carried through the door, accompanied by a light tap, then another, and a third.
I. Love. You.
Everything inside her heaved as she pushed her hands to her ears. Heather knew she was imagining it, wishing too hard for something that would never be.

Outside the door, his phone rang again. The girlfriend. God, how could she have been so gullible? There was a moment of silence followed by an echo in the floor—the faint tread of his step. Never mind that it sounded dull and dejected; she couldn’t allow herself to care.

She buried her head in her arms, trying to muffle the sound of Cody leaving her life.

For good.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Heather tried to settle down to grading papers to get her mind off Cody’s betrayal but couldn’t focus on anything but the pain. She should have known better. He was too smooth, too perfect. And far, far too experienced. A cowboy, a player. What did she expect?

Having already cried a reservoir of tears, she decided to try anger. Yes, that would do it. Anger was much more conducive to accomplishing anything. She forced herself to turn to work, powering up her laptop, only to watch it shut down. The battery was drained—a little like her—and she’d left the power cord at school. She slammed a hand down, making the table shudder. No way could she wait until Monday, not with six grade levels of literacy benchmarks to juggle.

Fine, damn it!
She would just drive out to the ranch and pick it up.

On the way out the door, she cast a wary eye at the crescent moon, low in the sky. Never mind that she’d been discouraged from driving the ranch road at night. This was school business, right? She’d breeze in, grab the power cord, and breeze out. No one would even notice she was there.

She drove with the windows down, letting the cool night air scour her skin. There was so much space out there, so much earth and sky. So much regret, stretching to infinity.

A truck with its high beams on tailed her all the way. Couldn’t they just pass? Heather cursed it then cursed herself and then Cody. She cursed his sunny good looks, his tender touch. Cursed the little boy hidden in the man. He probably didn’t even want to be free, not when woman after woman willingly opened her legs and heart to him. He was probably off with that brunette right now, the new goddess on his altar. Heather was over in the discards pile, among so many weeping statuettes.

Eventually, the steady rumble of highway gave way to the rattle and grind of dirt road: the song of the ranch. Heather drove on until the car gave a sudden lurch. The wheel pulled left and the rhythm changed to roll, roll, thump.

A flat. God, could it get any worse? She banged a hand on the wheel. Dammit, if she could drive with a broken heart, the car could survive a flat. Let it suffer a little, too.

The car groaned along for a miserable mile before she let it roll to a stop. Any farther and she’d destroy the rim, if she hadn’t already.

“Just great.” She killed the engine and sat, fuming. She was in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with a flat, while crickets chirped cheerily outside her window. She heard something slither into the night and watched a tumbleweed somersault past, mocking her immobility.

Fine. She’d changed tires before; she could change a tire again. Calling for help was a lost cause. There was no reception on this stretch of road; everyone on the ranch complained about it. Anyway, who would she call? Cody? She snorted.
Cody, could you peel yourself away from your new girlfriend for five minutes and help me with a flat? Pretty please?
The only merit of that idea was the possibility of slamming a few more doors on him.

She stepped into the cool night air, leaving the headlights on. Shrugging off a shiver, she pulled her field hockey stick from the backseat. Never know when you might come across a rattlesnake, she figured. Plus, she could hit the tire with it, and possibly Cody, if he happened along. She hugged herself, eyeing her surroundings. Beyond the narrow strip of headlights was an abyss of darkness. Who knew what might be out there? Squeezing her stick tighter, Heather approached the tire and kicked at it. Nothing doing.

She was just popping the hatch for the spare when the whine of an engine registered in her ears. A truck had just crested the rise, coming from the highway.