“Would you mind if we went out on the porch?” He needed some fresh air and wide-open spaces for this conversation. And no way did he want to return to the scene of last night’s crime.
“Sure.” He noticed her starting to glance at her watch and decide not to. Knowing she was willing to risk being late for Ms. Grim, he found that encouraging.
The foreman’s cabin didn’t have a swing like the main house, but it did have two rockers side by side. He waited until she sat down in one, then chose the other.
“It’s been a rough few days.”
“For everyone,” she pointed out.
“True. But it kicked in some memories that I’d stuffed down. Ones I’ve been trying to ignore.”
“I imagine war brings a lot of bad memories.”
“True. But except for nightmares, which everyone has, for some reason, I was mostly able to deal with that stuff. Which doesn’t have anything to do with strength of character, or personality. Maybe it’s just the way our different brains are wired. I mean, look at doctors who cut into people’s bodies. Or Tom, who’d have to put down animals. They can do their jobs and not have it haunt them or they wouldn’t make it through med school in the first place. Or they’d quit when it got too tough.
“Or cops, like Coop. You know he had to deal with stuff when he was working those mean streets in Portland, and hell, he was leading the search team that found Ellen’s body. But somehow he managed to deal with all that, while most people wouldn’t be able to handle it without stress having them crack.”
“I get your point. So, are you saying you’re not haunted by battle flashbacks?”
“Well, sure. But, like I said, they’re not that big a deal. I can shake them off, and some days it’s even like those things didn’t happen to me. That they’re more like some movie I’ve seen.”
“Yet something bothered you last night.” She reached out and took his hand, linking their fingers together.
“It’s the funeral stuff.” He drew in a deep breath. Blew it out. “You knew that my last mission turned into a blood bath.”
She nodded. “The one where you got injured. And were given those medals for.”
God, he got sick of hearing about those damn medals. “Yeah. That one.”
He told her some of it, leaving out the worst details because there was no way he wanted anyone, least of all her, to have those images in her head.
“I’m so sorry.” She was holding his hand so tight she’d probably cut off his circulation, but Sawyer didn’t really care.
“It was bad. But, like I was trying to explain, I sort of got past it. For the most part. Maybe the same fog of war fogs memories or emotional connections for me. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “But then, after I got out, I visited all the families of all the guys who didn’t make it home.”
“How many?”
“Six.”
“Why?”
“They were my team,” he said simply. “I owed it to them to let the families know that their last thoughts were with them. And that as bad as it had admittedly been, there’d been a moment of peace.”
She tilted her head. Studied him. “Was that true?”
“With some.”
“But not all.”
“No.” He could still hear the screams and sobs. And not only when he was sleeping. “Not all.”
“That was your way of honoring them, wasn’t it?”
“I guess.” Another shrug. “To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t thought through the reasons. All I knew was that since they hadn’t come home, at least alive, I couldn’t come home until I met their families and visited their graves.”
“Oh, wow.” He saw her taking all that in and realized that she was probably one of the few civilians who could, in some small way, understand what he’d ended up going through. “That’s a lot of raw emotion you were taking on.”
“The Marines have a notification officer who informs the family of a death,” he said. “And unlike the other branches of the military, stays with them through the burials, and longer, if needed. Those guys take on a lot and tend to burn out. But as good as they are, and as much as they care, they didn’t know the Marines personally.”
“Not like you did.”
“No. Not like I did.”
A long silence stretched out. Then, finally, she said, “Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it?” Surprised to get off that easily, Sawyer stood up and looked down at her.
“Any time you want to talk about it more, or about the men you lost, I’m always here. But I get why the past few days had to trigger some really painful emotions, and I’m certainly not one to preach about trying to ease pain by turning a flamethrower of alcohol onto a lake of gasoline. It’s not effective, has the totally opposite result that you’re hoping for, and it leaves you messed up. However, in a way, I suppose it can be cathartic. So.”
She stood, as well, went up on her toes, linked her fingers around his neck, and kissed him. “I’m going to go have myself a good cry about all this, then get myself together for Ms. Grimsley.”
He put his hands on her hips. “What are you going to do afterwards?”
“I have to pick up the kids. We decided they’d be spending the night here and going with us to the church for the funeral.”
“Good plan. I do have one question.” He played with her braid, brushing the silky loose hairs below the elastic band holding it together against her throat.
“What’s that?”
“Do you think you could pencil in a quickie before leaving to pick up the kids?”
“Just like a man,” she said on an exaggerated sigh. “How soon your people give up the effort of a slow seduction after getting the woman to give it up.”
“I’m up for a slow seduction any time you want. But don’t judge until you’ve experienced my quickie.”
“Nothing wrong with your ego, is there, Sawyer Murphy?”
He bent and kissed her again, slow and long and deep, thinking he could easily spend the rest of his life doing nothing but making love to this tropical-smelling, sweet-tasting cowgirl.
“It’s you,” he said, releasing her when what he wanted to do was drag her, caveman style, off to his bed “You’re my inspiration.” He ran a hand over her shoulder, down her arm, linked their fingers together, and lifted her hand to his lips. “My everything.”
“Well.” She took a deep breath. “You’ve convinced me. I’ll be back, hopefully before noon. Be ready.”
31
S
AWYER HAD BEEN
right about Ms. Grimsley being every bit as grim as her name. Austin became more and more nervous as she was subjected to an hour-and-a-half-long interrogation that had her expecting the woman to go out to that gray sedan and pull some bright lights and rubber hoses out of the trunk.
Still, she did her best to answer calmly and truthfully. Even when it came to Sawyer.
“We’ve been best friends most of our lives,” she said when asked about their relationship. “His mother stepped in after my mother left.”
“To return to Sweden.”
“Yes.” Sawyer had also been right about the note-taking.
She glanced up at Austin over the rim of her cheaters. “That must have been difficult.”
“It wasn’t easy. But I suspect growing up with a chronically unhappy mother would have been more difficult,” she said mildly. “And I had a great deal of support. As I said, Sawyer’s mom was wonderful, as was Winema, our housekeeper. And there were teachers and so many others who made certain I never felt abandoned.” That might have been fudging the truth a bit, but she couldn’t see that part of her life was any of Ms. Grim’s business.
“Yes, Mr. Murphy mentioned all that,” she said. “How close were you and he when you were married?”
“Excuse me?”
“To be more to the point, did your friendship with Sawyer Murphy have anything to do with your divorce?”
Austin felt the color flooding into her cheeks. She wasn’t embarrassed but angry. Folding her hands together so tightly she could feel the nails biting into her skin, she lifted her chin and looked the officious, annoying woman straight in the eye. “No,” she said. “He did not. I wasn’t in contact with him during my marriage.”
“I find that strange.” More damn writing. “Given that you’d been so close all your lives until then.”
“Why would you find it strange? Given that Sawyer was deployed and I spent so much time traveling with the ranch’s stock business. Our lives were on different paths. I also fail to see where our relationship during that time has anything to do with whether I’d be a good custodial parent to Jack and Sophie Campbell,” she said with a great deal more poise than she was feeling.
For the first time, Austin was actually grateful that Lexi had sneakily entered her in the Modoc County Miss Teen Rodeo competition the summer after eighth grade. Although she’d intended to back out, when Lexi pointed out that no way would Sawyer not want to date a rodeo queen, Austin had gone ahead with the pageant.
Being the youngest girl in the competition that had contestants to the age of eighteen, she hadn’t even placed in the top ten, which was a huge relief, because no way would she have wanted to travel all over the state representing Oregon rodeo. However, the interview competition and the mock TV interview had proven good training for today’s interrogation.
“Yet you’re back together now,” the woman pressed on.
“Sawyer is leasing property and living on the ranch. In the foreman’s cabin,” she pointed out.
“Yes. I was there last evening.”
“So I heard.”
“Do you have an intimate relationship?”
“Again, I don’t see what that has to do with the issue at hand.”
“These are young, impressionable children we’re talking about, Ms. Merrill.”
“I’m well aware of that, Ms. Grimsley.” Austin couldn’t help putting a bit more stress on that first syllable. “And if you’re worried that Mr. Murphy and I plan to be having wild orgies in front of Jack and Sophie, you can rest assured that will not be happening.”
“But you can’t dismiss the possibility of sexual intimacy.”
Seriously? Did she ask this of married applicants? Surely she didn’t expect people to take an oath of celibacy to win guardianship?
“No. I can also not dismiss the possibility of lightning striking the barn. Or a boulder falling on the roof of my truck while I’m driving into town.” Austin stood up. “If we’re done here, I really need to pick up the children.”
The social services caseworker stood, as well. “I have one last question. Have you seen Mr. Murphy exhibit any evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder? And do you think the children would be safe in his company?”
“No to your first question,” Austin said. Which was true. “And absolutely, positively yes to the second.”
Grimsley nodded. Closed her clipboard. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Austin said, changing to a more conciliatory tone. It wouldn’t help to have the woman leave in a huff. “I realize that the county only has the children’s welfare in mind, and I know Tom and Heather would appreciate your thoroughness. As do I.”
She walked the woman all the way out to the car, waved goodbye, then breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Feeling as if she’d been rode hard and put away wet, Austin turned and headed toward the foreman’s cabin.
*
S
AWYER OPENED THE
door even before she knocked, suggesting he’d been watching for her. And didn’t that cause a little kick of anticipation?
“What took you so long?” Without giving her a chance to answer, he scooped her into his arms and his mouth claimed hers, and he was kissing her as if they’d been apart for days, months, years.
And wow, his kisses! World-class didn’t even begin to describe them, she thought, her head spinning dizzily as he carried her down the hall to the bed where she’d been so thoroughly ravished two nights ago. If kissing were an Olympic event, he’d win the gold medal. Hands down. Along with the silver and bronze.
He only broke the bone-melting contact long enough to put her on the bed and cover her body with his gloriously muscled one, then resumed kissing her, slow and deep, as if they had all the time in the world.
“So much for the quickie,” she managed to say as he caught her bottom lip between his teeth and lightly tugged, setting off little explosions inside her.
“Oh, we’ll get to that.” His lips skimmed up her face, warming her cheek before lingering at her temple. His breath warmed her skin when he lightly blew at a strand of hair that had escaped her braid, then nipped at her ear, drawing a moan when his tongue took a long lick down her neck. When his open mouth paused at the hollow in her throat, Austin knew he could feel her wildly beating heart.
A heart that had only ever truly beat for him.
“This is just a warm-up.” She could feel his smile against her lips as his mouth returned to hers. And—oh, yes!—he began moving his body against hers.
“I like warm-ups.”
Which was a misnomer, because the friction between their bodies was creating such heat they could well be in danger. She could see the headline in the
River’s Bend Register
now:
War Hero and Former Miss Teen Rodeo Queen Die from Spontaneous Combustion
.
Nothing Left but Ashes
.
“Good.” Rolling over to lie beside her, he began unbuttoning her blouse with an intense fascination that made it seem as if it were the first time he’d ever been exposed to a woman’s bare flesh. “You’re wearing a bra.” His fingers slipped beneath the cup, trailing sparks over her breast.
“I came straight from the meeting with Grim,” she managed breathlessly. The last time she’d had less air in her lungs was when she’d fallen off Blue.
“You were in a hurry.”
She could only nod as he bent his head and licked the crest of her breasts. “For this?”
Another nod as his fingers poised on the front clasp of the bra.
“I like this.” His knuckles brushed over the cups. “I wonder how many men in River’s Bend know that you wear girly pink-and-white polka dots beneath those practical cowgirl working shirts?”
Austin decided he didn’t need to know that the bra, which she’d never worn before, was yet another outlet mall purchase Heather had talked her into. “I don’t exactly go around town flashing all the males I see.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” One flick of his wrist and his palms were on her breasts, which she could have sworn were growing to a full B cup beneath his touch. “We can keep it our secret.” When he took a nipple between his lips and tugged, as if pulled by an invisible cord, her back arched off the mattress in a silent plea for more.