Two hay bales under one end of the blanket made a perfect backrest, and Abby sat in front of them, Indian fashion, looking out the hay doors.
Cal joined her, sitting the same way beside her.
“Coffee?” he offered.
“Not right now, I don't think,” she said. She still felt lazy and weighted from sleep, which helped make her more at ease, more comfortable with him. It was nice and she didn't want it disturbed by caffeine.
Instead she surveyed his property beyond the barn.
The main house was the biggest in the county. The center portion was a two-story, redbrick Georgian structure, and on either side were single-story wings that stretched out like welcoming arms.
Behind the house was another barnâsmaller than the one they were in, a two-level bunkhouse, a large foreman's house that dated from when there had been a foreman and several smaller cabins that had been built when the place had been turned into a dude ranch.
With the exception of some weather-worn gutters, the main houseâbecause it was brickâdidn't show many signs of disrepair on the outside. But since all the outlying buildings were wood, they did. Paint chipped and peeled or was water-stained in a pattern that looked like muddy icicles dripping from beneath the eaves. Window and door screens were torn, glass had broken, shut ters were hanging, shingles were in need of replacing, paddock fences had splintered and weeds had overtaken the grounds all around.
Still, though, there was no denying it was a big spread. Especially for a man alone. A man who'd bought the place, Abby recalled, hoping his many brothers and sister might join him. But until that happened, it just felt lonely.
Or maybe he did and she was only sensing it intuitively.
“What're you thinkin'?” he asked, breaking the silence that surrounded them.
“That you have your work cut out for you.” She lied, rather than telling him what she'd just been wondering.
“I like a project,” he said, once again making it sound as if he were referring to more than what it would take to get the place back in order.
“Is that what I am, a project?” she asked, this time guessing at what else he might mean.
He smiled slightly. “I was thinkin' more of you as a plaything.”
“So you're toying with me.”
“No, just enjoyin' you,” he said slowly, as if contemplating what exactly he was doing with her. Then, in the same way, he added, “Enjoyin' you and thinkin' about you more often than not. Wonderin' about you. Wantin' you...”
“Me?” she asked as if she couldn't believe what he'd just said. Well, actually, she
couldn't
believe it.
He chuckled at her, reaching over to take a strand of her hair and letting it curl around his long, thick finger. “Are you fishin' for compliments or are you a quart low on self-esteem for some reason?”
“It's just that I wouldn't think I'm your type.”
“Why is that?” His voice was quiet, but it had a touch of huskiness to it as he stared at her, his eyes caressing her face. And Abby wondered how it was possible for the man to take her from cool porcelain to red-hot flames with just that glance.
“You said you've known a lot of wild women. And from the things I've heard...well, I'd just think wild women were more suited to you,” she said as she feebly attempted to fend off her own feelings.
“I've known my fair share of wild women, all right,” he conceded.
“More
than your fair share, is the rumor.”
“Is that right? Maybe you ought to fill me in on what's bein' said about me.”
“I've been told that you're a ladies' man. A womanizer. A playboy. That you get around...”
“I'm thirty-seven years old and I haven't led a monk's life, if that's what you're gettin' at.”
“The insinuation isn't that you date a lot of women. It's that you juggle them. That you're never serious about themâ”
He shook his head. “Cissy Carlisle's been doin' a lot of this talkin', I can tell.”
“Is she wrong?”
“I don't juggle women. I don't use them. I've never in my life kept company with more than one at a time or cheated in any way. I try to be honorable and honest, and to do everything I can to make sure nobody gets hurtâwhich is why I didn't ask Cissy Carlisle out again after she made it clear she was husband huntin'. I was not interested in her that way and didn't want to take up time she could be usin' findin' someone who was.”
Abby didn't doubt that scenario. Cissy Carlisle was notorious for her hot pursuit of a husband and the fact that no man dated her more than once or twice without her starting to wonder out loud what their kids might look like when they had them.
But Abby was also not losing sight of the fact that Cal was not denying that he was a ladies' man, either.
“So, all the women you don't juggle or use or cheat onâare they wild women?” she said, getting back to their original subject.
“Mostly they have been. I guess I have to own up to that. But I seem to have hit a time in my life when that's gotten old.”
“So you thought you'd try out something newâlike me?” she said wryly.
He looked into her eyes. His expression was very serious. “I didn't set out lookin' for a wholesome woman, no. Meetin' up with you just happened. Likin' you just happened. But what I'm findin' in you is that there's one thing wild women have in common that you don't.”
“What's that?”
“They're shallow,” he confided, leaning near as if someone might overhear him. “No substance. No meat on their bones, so to speak. Over the years I guess I've just been left hungry for somethin' more. Now I'm findin' myself starvin'. And you're lookin' like a feast.”
He held her eyes with his for a long moment before he slipped the hand that was fiddling with her hair behind her head, bracing her for the kiss that came after the slow descent of his handsome face.
It was a gentle, chaste kiss initially. But it didn't stay that way for more than a few moments before his lips parted and his tongue came to urge her lips open, too.
Not that she required much persuasion, especially when she'd been craving this since he'd left her dazed after the sunset kiss.
His other arm went around her, pulling her closer, and for the first time Abby grew brave enough to wrap her arms around him, too. To press her flattened palms to his backâhis broad, muscular backâsoaking in the feel of the hard hills and valleys that spoke of a healthy, virile, masculine body.
She gave herself over to that kiss, which was even better than the last, as his tongue traced the very tips of her teeth, teasing, taunting, entering only in small darts that enticed her tongue to frolic along with his.
And frolic she did.
Matching him dart for dart, circle for circle, parry for thrust until playing turned more serious, more languid, more sensual, and their kisses became even deeper, their mouths open even wider, their appetite for one another so great neither could seem to get enough.
His hands had been in her hair, or bracketing her face, but now they traveled lower, those firm, strong fingers massaging their way to her shoulders, around to her back where he kneaded away any remnant of tension.
He pulled her shirt free of her jeans and slipped his hands underneath, and Abby couldn't help the groan that escaped her throat when she felt his kid-leather palms against her bare skin.
Wonderful hands! The man had exquisitely wonderful hands that seemed to know just the right time to apply pressure, just the right time to run featherlight strokes along her skin, to set off tingling sensations all through her and leave her wanting more.
His powerful hands found her shoulder blades, working them like clay he could mold to suit whatever form he chose. Warm hands smoothed their way down into the hollow at the base of her spine, low enough to almost reach her derriere but not quite, teasing her with fingertips that barely reached an inch inside her waistband when she yearned for a much deeper dip.
As his mouth continued exploring hers, those magnificent hands slid to the sides of her waist, then trailed a snail's pace upward, to her ribs, and only slightly higher.
Abby's whole body was alive with yearning, with anticipation, with longing for him to rid her of the blouse that seemed to keep her a prim prisoner, of the bra that blocked his path. She wanted to feel his hands on her breasts. Feel them surrounding those oh-so-sensitive mounds that strained for his touch. Feel her already hardened nipples kerneling within his palms...
But he didn't do any of that.
Instead his hands stayed where they were, barely brushing the sides of her breasts, tormenting her with his reserve.
And then she felt something else against her bare back where her shirt was pulled up to accommodate Cal's ministrations beneath it. Something warm. Soft. Furry...
It took her a minute to realize it had nothing to do with what they were involved in, nothing that was coming from Cal at all as it brushed up against her once, twice, three times.
An animal. It was an animal.
Abby gasped and that gasp caused Cal to end the kiss, to pull his hands from under her shirt as if he thought she was letting him know he'd gone too far.
“There's something furry rubbing against me,” she said in a hurry, both to let him know what was going on and hopefully to convey that nothing he was doing needed to stop.
He leaned around her, took a quick look, then sat back up, bringing with him a tiny gray kitten with one white ear.
“This is what I get for tryin' to convince them they're bam cats,” he said in a voice raspy with passion as two other fur balls charged into his lap.
“Kittens? You have kittens?” Abby asked, laughing at how funny it seemed for this big, man's man to have pets like that.
“They came with the place. And they think I'm their mama.”
“Boy, are they confused,” she said, enjoying the sight of Cal with the three tiny cats nuzzling against him as if that was exactly what they thought.
“They also have lousy timing,” he muttered.
The sun was just rising on the horizon framed by the edges of the open hayloft door, but Abby was more than willing to set aside the kittens and ignore nature's display to get back to what they'd been doing.
Only for some reason Cal seemed to be drawing into himself and seizing the interruption to let things cool.
He nodded in the direction of the horizon and said, “We're missin' the sunrise.” Then he transferred the cats to her lap, clasped her hips to turn her to face the hay door, and maneuvered himself so he was sitting directly behind her, bracing her back with his chest and resting his hands harmlessly on her thighs.
Abby could hear the strain that his determination to end what they'd been sharing put in his voice. And she knew he wasn't stopping for lack of desire because she could feel the proof of that in the iron-hard ridge that pushed against her rear to let her know she hadn't been the only one of them who had been lost in what had just happened.
But he didn't do anything about it.
Instead he was a perfect gentleman as they watched the sunrise, drank coffee, ate beer nutsâeven as he drove her home.
Maybe he was
too
much of a gentleman, she thought when he'd left her on her front porch to watch him drive off after nothing but a quick peck of a goodbye kiss.
Because he'd raised a whole slew of yearnings in her.
And a secret part of her couldn't help wishing he'd kept her in that hayloft all day long, satisfying them.
5
“H
EY, LADY, IT'S ABOUT TIME,” Cal said into the telephone the next afternoon when the call he'd placed was finally answered by a person instead of a machine. “Don't you ever return calls?”
“Don't give me any trouble. I've been calling and calling you, and you're never around. Why don't you get an answering machine yourself so a person could leave
you
a message?” the woman on the other end shot back.
“I have one. I just haven't gotten around to settin' it up.”
“Then don't complain.”
He softened his tone. “How are you, Katie-my-Kate?”
His sister giggled just slightly, the way she had when she was a little girl and he'd used her name in that same endearment. “I'm fine. How are you?”
“Never better.”
“Never better, huh? So Cody was right. By now we know what that
never better
of yours meansâthere's a new woman on the scene.”
“Have you guys been talkin' behind my back?”
“Of course. We all talk behind each other's back. How else would we keep up with things?”
“What'd he tell you?”
“That he thought you were trying to smooth your rough edges and get gentrified by buying up a bunch of property and getting yourself a small-town girl.”
Cal laughed but pretended to take offense. “Gettin' gentrifiedâI'm gonna beat the tar out of 'im when he gets here. And what're you all bettin' on?”
“How long it'll be before the country mouse is out and you're runnin' through the rest of the females in that county.”
“Abby is not a country mouse,” he said, this time not pretending the offense because he was bristling at the derogatory reference.
“Ooh, do I detect a bit of irritation?”
“She isn't a country mouse,” he repeated.
“Okay,” Kate said, drawing the word out. “What is she?”
“She's beautiful. She's sweet. She's funny. I think she's sort of shy but she's definitely not mousy. She works hard, owns her own business and is a responsible, upstanding member of the community. She's smart. And down-to-earth. She has a body that makes my blood boil. And big, wide, black eyes. Andâ”
“I get it. I get it. You like her a lot.”
If his sister had been there, she'd have seen him pulling back, surprised at where his own head of steam had taken him. But he didn't admit to Kate's conclusion. Instead he wondered how right she was.
“I don't recall you going for a woman with those attributes before,” Kate said then, barging into his musings.
“Guess there's a first time for everything,” he stated noncommittally. “There's no mistakin' that she's in a class by herself.”
“Then is Cody rightâare you trying to smooth your rough edges and get gentrified?”
“Not that I was aware of. Thought I was just havin' a good time.”
Kate laughed. “That's more like the brother I know and love. Must've been your rhapsodizing about this woman that threw Cody off.”
“Rhapsodizing?” Cal repeated sarcastically.
“Rhapsodizing,” Kate insisted. “If I didn't know you better, I'd think you were getting sloppy over her.”
“Sloppy! Come on. I told you, I'm just havin' a good time,” Cal repeated, although something about this whole conversation rubbed him wrong.
“Are you having more than a ten-day good time with her?” Kate persisted. “Because Cody's betting that this is the person who could make a one-woman man out of youâ”
“And you said she isn't and took ten days in the pool for how long my fling with Abby will last,” Cal finished for her.
“Too short?”
Cal thought about that and couldn't come up with a genuine answer. He opted for joking instead. “Go out on a limbâtake three weeks,” he suggested even though he couldn't fathom putting an end to seeing Abby now or in three weeks. Or at all...
“Boy, you must have it bad for this one,” Kate marveled facetiously, as if she'd been reading his mind.
But the most he'd admit to was, “She's not like anybody else I've ever been involved with.”
“I wouldn't call what you've been in before âinvolvement.”'
“What would you call it?”
“Playin' around. Just playin' around.”
Cal discovered he didn't like having what he was doing with Abby categorized as just playing around.
Weird. Very weird.
And the only way he could see to escape the weirdness this whole talk was erupting in him was to change the subject. “So are you comin' to see the new digs or not?”
“I'll be there,” Kate assured. “But...uh...I'm coming alone.”
“You are?”
“Yeah.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Can't. Not right now.”
“Okay. Will you be stayin'?”
“No reason not to.”
“Are you tellin' me you aren't a one-man woman anymore?” he goaded slightly in return.
“Don't give me a hard time, okay? Times are hard enough all on their own at the moment.”
“Okay. Guess I'll see you when you get here, then?”
“It shouldn't take me more than a couple of days.”
“Need anything in the meantime?”
“No, thanks, big brother, I don't.”
“If you doâ”
“I know your number.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“You, too.”
They said goodbye and Cal hung up.
But he went on sitting on the kitchen countertop beside the phone, thinking about the exchange he'd just had with his sister. Thinking about Abby. About what was going on with them. About himself.
No, he hadn't ever been a one-woman man. The best that could be said about him was that he was a one-woman-at-a-time man. And yes, he'd always just played around with the women he'd encountered.
It hadn't mattered. The women had only been playing around with him, too.
But for some reason it struck him that there was something different happening now, with Abby. Something deeper. Something with more substance. Just the way
she
had more substance than those other women.
And as he thought about it, it occurred to him that part of what was happening now that was so different was that he had feelings for her. Strong feelings. Feelings that were more than just wanting her.
The truth was, for the first time in his life, two things were running through him at once. Noble feelings for herârespect, admiration, appreciation of the kind of woman she wasâwere keeping right up with plain old desire.
Except that it wasn't so plain.
It was all-consuming, red-hot and hard to handle.
Damn, did he want her!
It was an ache inside him. A tight, burning knot that was driving him to distraction.
She
was driving him to distraction. Without even trying.
He couldn't sleep for thinking about her, for craving the feel of her small weight on the mattress beside him. The feel of her in his arms. Under him.
As he worked around the house, around the ranch, she kept creeping into his mind's eye, lingering to tease him with that smile of hers, with those eyes that glistened with secret delight, with those lips he wanted to kiss. And kiss. And go on kissing until his own were too numb to even enjoy the warm softness of hers anymore.
She was there with him in the shower every morning as he soaped up his body and imagined her in the stall, too. Naked. Running her hands along every inch of his skin. Closing just one of them around him in a grip that would be surprisingly firm. Lifting her up high enough for her to wrap her legs around his hips so he could guide himself into her and all the while his mouth would be on a tight, kerneled nipple...first the right, then the left...
Oh, yeah, he had it bad. No doubt about it.
Because here he was, sitting on his kitchen counter in the middle of the afternoon, hardening up so much it hurt.
But he could deal with wanting her so much it hurt. What he wasn't sure he could deal with was the rest of it.
Was he turning into a one-woman man? he asked himself. What if this infatuation with her was more than that? What if that other part of what was moving through himâthe noble feelings, the respect and admiration for the kind of woman she wasâwhat if that meant there was more to this than he realized?
Hell, it scared him to death, that's what.
Abby was a woman who would take some living up to. He'd never had to do that before. He'd always been able to play things fast and loose because fast and loose was what the women were themselves.
But Abby was different. And if he kept seeing her, he'd have to be different, too. He'd have to be ready for what was between them to be different. And he didn't know if he was. Didn't know exactly what that all meant or where it might lead. Or if he could do it...
What he did knowâsuddenly, like being struck by a bolt of lightningâwas that his feelings for Abby were growing with a will of their own. Feelings that were as new to him as if he were a young boy. Feelings that had him churned up. That had him stewing in his own juices. Worrying about when it would be right to take what was happening between them all the way. Worrying about what Abby might be thinking. About what she might be feeling in return. About what she might be expecting down the road if he did make love to her.
And if he could meet those expectations.
A one-woman man.
Could he be that?
He honestly wasn't sure.
And until he was, he'd just have to keep fighting the desire. Fighting urges he'd always indulged before.
Because she deserved at least that much from him.
The trouble was, noble intentions were great when he wasn't with her.
But when he was...
Well, hell, he was only human.
And damn if he didn't want her in a way that was beginning to need someone superhuman to resist.
Â
ABBY COULDN'T SLEEP that night. No matter how hard she tried, her mind was too agitated, her body too aroused, and she couldn't fall asleep to save her life.
She wasn't scheduled to work the next day until the eleven-o'clock shift, but she'd planned to go in much earlier than that. Every June the mayor sponsored a picnic for the teachers, staff and students to celebrate the completion of the school year. And he ordered a huge batch of Abby's specialty as the crowning gloryâbrownies with a layer of peanut-butter cheesecake.
But as she watched the hours tick by, it began to seem like a good idea to go into the bakery, make the brownies, then come home to catch a little belated sleep before going back for her regular workday.
So Abby got up, threw on a navy blue tank top, a pair of jeans and some tennis shoes, caught her hair in an elastic ruffle that left a burst of curls atop her head and drove over to the bakery. All the while hoping the quiet, calming act of making brownies would lull her. And chase away thoughts of Cal.
Because thoughts of Cal were what had been keeping her awake. Longings to see him. Longings to do more than see him.
Cal was a little like the brownies, she thought as she measured out the ingredients.
She'd tasted a similar confection on a trip into Denver. They'd been only fair but they'd lit a spark in her. She'd been convinced she could make a much better variation. And until she'd accomplished it, mastering the recipe had been on her mind almost constantly. Every failed experiment had only made her think all the more about what she'd done wrong, how she could alter something to improve it. She'd been obsessed. Until she'd finally perfected them so they were an exquisite blend of rich, fudgy brownies, creamy peanut butter, crackling top.
Cal had lit a spark in her, too. More of a spark than any other man she'd ever known, including the one she'd be married to right at that moment if he hadn't called it off. And like her obsession with this recipe, she just could not stop thinking about Cal. No matter how hard she tried. And she
did
try.
She knew this whole flirtation with him was something she shouldn't be doing. That she was likely headed for trouble...or heartache...if she kept it up. After all, from every account and from his own admission, Cal Ketchum didn't get serious over any one woman. He might be settling down in Clangton to live, but clearly he had no intention of settling down any other way or he might have at least given Cissy Carlisle a chance rather than Mghtailing it away from her the minute she'd let him know marriage was her eventual goal.