Secrets and Lies: He's a Bad Boy\He's Just a Cowboy (44 page)

The evening air was heavy, weighted with the coming night. Insects droned and lavender clouds shifted across the darkening sky. Twilight. A summer evening and she was alone with Turner. Just as she had been six long years before. But now they had a son—a son with an illness that could be fatal. Oh, God, why?

“I thought maybe you’d chicken out,” he said, the old chair creaking as he stood.

“Not me.” She forced a smile she didn’t feel and realized just how isolated they were. No bunkhouse full of ranch hands, no attic rooms with kitchen help, no guests dancing or laughing or playing cards in the dining hall, no Zeke, no Mazie. Just Turner and the windswept hills that were Badlands Ranch.

Her heart drummed loudly and she only hoped that he couldn’t hear its erratic beat over the sigh of the wind.

“You didn’t have to show up,” he said, finishing his beer and setting the empty bottle on the rail of the porch. As he walked down the stairs, she noticed his limp, barely visible, but evidence of the pain his body had endured for a life he loved. “I would have gone through with the tests, anyway.”

“I figured I owed you this much,” she said, trying not to observe his freshly shaven jaw, or his slate-colored eyes, or the loose-jointed way he sauntered across the hard earth. Or his limp. The reminder of the life he led. In jeans and a faded shirt, with a backdrop of a run-down ranch house and acres of grassland, he was, without exception, the sexiest man she’d ever seen. That was the problem. What they’d shared had been sex—in its young, passionate, raw form. Naively she’d thought she’d loved him, that he’d loved her, but all that had been between them was a hunger as driven as the winds that blow hot through the California valleys in August. Even now, as she tried to seem relaxed, she felt that tension between them, the tug of something wild and wanton in her heart, the hot breath of desire tickling the back of her neck.

“Tell me about Adam,” he said. “Where is he now?”

“He’s with the babysitter, Mrs. Rassmussen. She lives two houses down from mine.”

“How sick is he?”

Her heart twisted. “He’s in remission. It could last indefinitely, but then again…” She shook her head and bit on her lower lip. “Adam’s pediatrician’s name is Richard Thurmon—he’s the best in San Francisco. I’ve told him about you and all you have to do is call him. He can tell you anything you want to know.”

“I will.”

They stood in awkward silence and Turner stared at her, sizing her up, as if he still didn’t believe her. “I tried to call Zeke today.”

“To check my story.”

His lips twitched. “He’s in Montana. Won’t be back for a couple of weeks.”

“What about Mazie?”

“She doesn’t remember much about that summer, but she does think you called, that you wanted to talk to me.”

“She doesn’t remember me practically begging her for your address—for a phone number where I could reach you?” Heather said in disbelief. Though she hadn’t confided in Mazie, she’d been near tears, her voice choked with emotion. But Mazie had probably taken more than her share of teary phone calls from women Turner had left behind.

“She didn’t say.”

“Well, it’s the truth, damn it!” Heather cried, then threw her hands up in despair. Turner still acted as if she were a criminal, and she was no better about trusting him. One minute she was fantasizing about him, the next she wanted to wring his neck. “Why don’t we go for a ride,” she suggested.

“A what?”

“A trail ride. Like we used to.”

“Why?” The look he sent her silently called her a lunatic.

“Because I can’t just stand here and have you start accusing me of God only knows what! It used to work, you know. Whenever we were angry with each other, we’d ride—get rid of our aggressions. You do have horses around here, don’t you? What about Sampson?” She didn’t wait for a response, just stormed off toward the barn where she’d seen the ugly reddish horse earlier in the day.

He caught up with her in three long strides. “You’re crazy, lady,” he accused, as she flung open the barn door and stepped into the dark interior. She reached for a switch, found none and fumbled in the dark. “We have a son, a kid I didn’t know about, a boy who needs a transplant, for God’s sake, and you want to ride?”

“I just don’t want to argue anymore!” She swung around and faced him. High in the rafters of the barn a bat’s wings fluttered. “I’m scared, Turner. Scared out of my mind. And I don’t want you or anyone else to start in on me about what I did or didn’t do wrong. I only want to deal with the here and now!”

“You want me to forget about six years?” he asked, his voice low and angry.

“Yes. Because it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except Adam’s health!” She found the latch to a stall and opened it, but the stall was empty.

“For God’s sake, Heather, I have questions. A million of them.”

“What you have is accusations!”

He grabbed her so quickly that her breath came out in a rush. Suddenly she was slammed against his chest, her back pressed into the rough boards of the barn walls. “I’ve spent the last six hours wondering how the hell this happened and why you didn’t tell me about Adam.”

“I explained that I—”

“I heard your story, Heather, but it doesn’t wash. You didn’t have to jump into marriage right off the bat. You could’ve waited.”

“For how long, Turner?” she asked, tears clogging her throat. “Until you got back to the Lazy K? Until you were through with the circuit? Until you couldn’t ride anymore because you’d suffered too many injuries? I had a baby to think about. I didn’t have any time to waste.”

His lips curled in disgust and his fingers dug into the soft flesh of her arms. “You weren’t thinking about the kid. You were worried about your reputation. You’d told me often enough about your sister and what she’d suffered in Gold Creek—and then you turn up pregnant, with no husband. You couldn’t face the thought of being a single mother. People would talk. Everyone in Gold Creek would know. You probably couldn’t face your parents!”

“Oh, Lord,” she whispered, shaking her head. How far apart they were and yet how close. She swallowed the hard lump in her throat and lifted her chin a fraction. “I thought I loved you, Turner. I had myself convinced that you were the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And you walked out. It’s that simple.”

“Not quite. You were pregnant. I’d say things got a lot more complicated.”

She felt the heat of his body, smelled the scent of soap on his skin and stared at the small cleft in his chin. Her breasts were flattened against his chest, her thighs imprisoned by his legs. She ignored the tingle that swept through her blood and told herself that he no longer attracted her. He was a broken-down cowboy, cynical and cold.

“Just what kind of a woman are you?” he asked, but his hard grip loosened a bit.

“I just want to start over,” she said. “For Adam’s sake.”

“Like nothing between us ever happened.” His hands moved down her arms to manacle her wrists, and a thrill shot through her—a thrill she refused to acknowledge.

“I…I can’t forget what happened, Turner, and I don’t expect you to. But if we could just start out without being enemies, it would be best for Adam.”

His hands, warm as the breath of summer, tightened a little, and pulled her even closer. She noticed the thin line of his lips, and her stomach seemed to be pressing hard against her lungs, her blood heating despite her determination to ignore his sensuality.

“So what’re you going to do, Turner?” she asked with surprising calm. “Are you planning to keep punishing me for the rest of my life—are you going to try and find ways to make me atone for my mistake?”

“Is that what I’m doing? Punishing you?”

His voice was so low, so sexy against her ear that she could hardly respond. But she forced the words past her lips. “I think you plan on making me pay for my mistake for the rest of my life.”

He stiffened, and she knew that she’d finally gotten through to him. But he didn’t move away, and his body molded over hers as closely as if they were making love. Hard contours pressed intimately to hers and she could hardly catch her breath. The smell of him, the heat of his body, his dark looks as he stared at her assailed her senses, and her mind wandered dangerously backward in time to when she and he had so innocently, so desperately made love. She licked her lips and wondered if he was thinking of kissing her again. Somewhere in the barn a horse snorted.

“My mistake wasn’t sleeping with you, Turner. My mistake was loving you and thinking I could make you love me.” Her voice was low and she forced her gaze to his. “I was wrong. All you wanted from me was what I gave you—a summer fling. A distraction from hard work at the ranch.”

His back teeth ground together and she saw the protests forming on his tongue. “I cared about you—”

“Don’t lie, Turner. It belittles us both and only makes things wor—”

His mouth slanted over hers and his arms tightened around her body. His hands pulled her tighter still and her breath was lost between her throat and her lungs. Raw passion surged between them, racing hot as wildfire through her blood, pounding in her brain, shutting down all her defenses. The taste and feel of him brought back memories she’d tried for years to forget. Her body responded of its own accord, knowing instinctively that this was the man, the only man, who could arouse a desire so torrid, she lost all reason and abandoned herself to him.

This can’t be happening,
she thought wildly, and yet she was unable to stop the seductive assault of his tongue pressing hard against her teeth, gaining entrance to her mouth and exploring her with exquisite little flicks that caused her to tremble inside.

His hands caught in the silver-blond strands of her hair, forcing her head back farther so that he could kiss her throat and neck, as if he had every right to kiss her, to touch her, to make love to her.

Stop him! Stop him now! This can only lead to trouble!
one side of her mind cried desperately, but another part of her melted against him, thrilled by the sensations he aroused in her, toying with the idea that making love would be a good way to bury the pain of the past, to start a new relationship, to…to conceive a child.

She yanked herself away. “No!” she cried, and he jerked back, lifting his head. What was she thinking? Conceiving a child. Oh, God, no! She couldn’t deceive him. He already thought she’d used him. She wouldn’t do this… . She was shaking so badly, she had to touch the side of the barn for support.

“What the hell?” Turner took a step back and shoved his hands through his hair. He kicked at the stall in frustration. A frightened horse whinnied nervously. Outside a dog barked and in the barn bats took flight yet again.

“I’m sorry, Turner,” she said, then hated the weak sound of her apology.

“Hell, Heather, I wasn’t going to force you to—”

“Oh, I know that,” she said, flustered. Her hands trembled as she finger-combed her loosened hair back to her ponytail and felt like an awkward teenager. “I—I—just don’t know if this is such a good idea.”

His lips twisted into a cold smile. “I understand,” he said, and there was something in his words that forewarned her of dangers to come. “You still don’t want a cowboy.”

“That’s not true—”

“Oh, so you do want a cowboy?”

“Of course not.”

A trace of sadness touched his eyes. “There’s the problem, Heather. Always has been. You have trouble admitting exactly what it is you do want. You claimed you loved me—yeah, I remember. And you probably believed it yourself. But all along I knew that you thought I wasn’t good enough.”

“Oh, Turner, that’s not true—”

“Of course it is! I wasn’t blind, damn it!”

“I loved you!”

“You convinced yourself you loved me so that you wouldn’t feel so guilty about what we were doing. You confused love with lust—”

“I never—”

“Oh, yes, Heather,” he hissed. “You did. We both did. What we shared, hell, it was the best sex I’ve ever had—the kind of passion that cut right to the bone and turned me inside out. And you felt it, too.” He touched her neck, rubbed the tiny pulse at the base. “You still do. We both do.”

She couldn’t argue with his logic. Even now, when she burned with fury, his hand touched the hollow of her throat and she wanted to melt. Instead, breathing hard, she swiped his arm away and stepped back from him.

He held up both hands, as if in surrender. “I’ve never wanted a woman the way I wanted you, Heather. The way I still want you, but I knew, even then, that it wouldn’t work between us. All we had was sex—great sex, but that’s not enough.”

His words stung as surely as if a dart had pierced her heart, draining it slowly of lifeblood. She ached, because he was telling the truth, at least as far as he knew it. Tears welled behind her eyes and she stumbled forward, her hands brushing against the rail of the stall. She had to get out, get away; coming here had been a vast mistake.

His voice jarred her. “The problem was, I didn’t have this all figured out then, at least not clearly. I had a gut feeling that you weren’t the right kind of woman for me, but I had trouble convincing myself.” He leaned his back against the stall and closed his eyes, as if willing his passion to rest. “At least I didn’t know until it was too late.”

“And then?” she asked, her voice quavering.

“And then I decided I’d take a chance. Hell, why not? It wasn’t as if I had this terrific life or anything. I came back home and you were gone. Married already.”

“So I was just an alternative to a lonely existence.”

“I wasn’t sure what you were, Heather, but I couldn’t stop myself from coming back.” He threw a dark look to the ceiling as if condemning himself. “I draw the line with married women—always have. But with you, it was hard. I even thought about kidnapping you away from Leonetti, just to talk to you, but…” His jaw slid to the side at the irony of the situation. “I heard you were pregnant.”

“Oh, God, you thought—”

“I didn’t know what to think.”

“Turner.” She reached for him then, took his callused hand in her smaller fingers and squeezed. Torment wound through her soul. He’d thought she was pregnant with Dennis’s child. And why wouldn’t he? “I…I’m so sorry.”