Hearing the reserve in her voice, Judson pressed for the rest of the story. “But?”
Forcing herself to separate her feelings for the man from his children, Carrie briefly considered withholding her personal opinion. Needing to be sensitive as well as honest, tact was called for when discussing any child, let alone the chairman of the school board’s feisty little moppet. Still Judson had every right to know her con- cerns about his daughter’s social development, and, whether he liked what she had to say or not, he
needed
to hear it.
“But some days she’s so angry that she verges on being unteachable. She has no trouble mastering the work, but there’s an impenetrable wall around her that makes it almost impossible to reach her.”
A perceptive glint illuminated those eyes of bluest blue. Having had some disturbing glimpses of his daughter as a soon-to-be rebellious teenager, Judson welcomed Carrie’s opinion. Little did she know just how much influence she already exerted in his daugh- ter’s life. Like his son, Brandy was fond of quoting her teacher on a daily basis, and since Carrie had taken over the class, Judson had noticed a definite softening around the edges of his rough-and-ready tomboy.
“Suppose she gets that from me,” he said, adding with a philosophical sigh, “She’ll come around sooner or later, I figure. I’m afraid I’m not much of a mother to her…”
The admission prompted the questions rattling inside Carrie’s head to tumble out without regard to conse- quences. “What about their mother? Do you share cus- tody?”
Like a shadow playing across the face of a mountain, raw emotion crossed Judson’s features.
“As far as my children are concerned, their mother is dead.”
“Surely you don’t mean that! What would make you say such—”
Though he had every intention of telling her to mind her own damned business, the harsh truth instead ex- ploded from Judson’s mouth. “Because I haven’t heard from her since she dropped them on my doorstep and turned her back on us all forever.”
He hadn’t meant to disclose anything so personal. It was a pair of eyes the exact color of newly budded aspen leaves that was at fault, he decided. Something gentle and reassuring glimmered in their depths, invit- ing complete trust. How he longed to share with another human being the heavy burden he had been carrying alone for so very long, but his stubborn pride and cul- tural upbringing didn’t allow for such weakness.
It would be too hard to keep the emotion from his voice to admit that the quarter of his native blood cours- ing through his children’s veins was what had prevented them from being accepted into the haughty McLeashe family. That fair European line deemed the offspring of their daughter’s ill-fated match to be nothing more than an appalling blunder to be remedied as quickly as possible.
Even as smitten as Cheryl Sue had been with him at the time, she had not been willing to risk complete disinheritance.
Choking back the bile that rose in his throat, Judson reminded himself of how grateful he was to her none- theless. It would have been far easier for a frightened eighteen-year-old to have gotten rid of her babies than fly in the face of her family’s wrath and carry the seed of his love to term. That in an act of desperation she handed the twins over to him was the greatest gift she could ever have given him.
When his own life had seemed most hopeless, they had provided him a miracle—a reason to go on. Those two bundles of needy, squirming infancy had kept him from falling into the same bottomless bottle of whiskey that had claimed his once-beautiful mother.
Last he’d heard, Cheryl Sue had married a well-to- do lawyer in Boston. Rumor was she hadn’t been able to give him any children. Maybe it was, as some said, God’s justice, but Judson doubted it. Personally he didn’t perceive God as being that spiteful and small.
Somewhere in the back of his mind a nagging worry pricked at his consciousness. Just the thought of Cheryl Sue someday trying to lay claim to Brandy and Cowboy closed the hand of fear around his heart.
I’ll bring down the entire McLeashe clan first!
Carrie wondered if it were possible to freeze in the blue ice of Judson’s eyes. She could not fathom how any mother could just up and walk away from her chil- dren. It was, in her estimation, an unnatural act of ul- timate betrayal. No wonder Judson’s saddlebag was so filled with cockleburs. It also explained why Cowboy was so starved for motherly attention and why Brandy
insulated herself against the rest of the world, women in particular. Glad that she had worked so persistently and patiently with the recalcitrant child, Carrie’s heart filled with empathy. If anyone was in need of a friend she could trust, clearly it was Brandy Horn.
Carrie regretted that her curiosity had resurrected such painful memories. Yet now that it was out in the open, for Brandy’s sake Carrie knew she had to pursue her gut instinct.
“I’m concerned about your daughter. She’s critical of others to the point of being rude. She’s hostile when called on in class, and she picks on the boys at recess.”
Judson’s guffaw at her last remark failed to derail Carrie’s train of thought.
“I suspect that beneath that tough cowgirl mask is a frightened little girl who could use some professional help.”
Judson stiffened. His own dealings with modern psy- chiatry had left him openly wary. Time and time again hadn’t the people from Family Services said they were only doing what was best for him? And time and again hadn’t they proven themselves liars?
He had been the same age as the twins when his mother died of liver failure, leaving him completely on his own. Recalling the well-intentioned efforts of the “professionals” who placed a scared little boy into one foster home after another, Judson felt his stomach tighten. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that many foster parents were just in it for the supplemental in- come generated by their charity.
When he spoke again, his stiff tone matched his pos- ture. “Brandy doesn’t need any damned psychiatrist ex- amining her head. She’s just going through a phase, and that’s all there is to it.”
“I don’t think so,” Carrie responded evenly.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate your deep concern,” Judson drawled with affected politeness, “but Brandy’s my daughter, and I’ll deal with her as I see fit. I don’t want any snoopy shrink poking at her with a bunch of nosy questions—or you, either, for that matter.”
As silence filled the space between them, Carrie’s eyes shimmered with unspilled tears. “Of course, you’re entitled to your privacy.”
The professional tone she assumed didn’t quite man- age to hide the hurt in her voice. Had Judson slapped her, he couldn’t have hurt her more deeply. Not only didn’t he value her professional judgment, he flat out didn’t want her butting into his life. Despite the fact that Brandy’s pain was so obvious, Carrie knew that she had to respect Judson’s wishes. As he had so point- edly reminded her, he was the girl’s father.
But that didn’t mean she had to agree with him. Or give up hope. After all, persistence was one of her strong suits.
Seeing the open resistance reflected in Judson’s coun- tenance, Carrie decided to pursue the matter at a later time. She closed her grade book, signaling that the con- ference was at an end.
Judson wasn’t about to be so easily dismissed.
“Not so fast.”
A masculine finger beneath her chin tipped her face up, and Carrie found herself lost in the spinning uni- verse of Judson’s blue eyes. The ice in those eyes had been replaced with a twinkle of devilment.
“There’s still the matter of a missing key to discuss.”
Praying that sanity would return if she could only manage to ignore that maddening swirl of heat low in her stomach, Carrie fumbled for a response.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Let me guess,” Judson murmured in a voice tinged with reproach. “You don’t remember teasing me into a full body search for a nonexistent key, right?”
The slow, soft tone of his voice was velvet against her skin. Carrie shivered as a flicker of recollection sputtered to life. Suddenly she remembered only too well how she had practically thrown herself at him! Scott had once taunted her with hateful words like “frigid” and “prude.” Judson had every reason to em- ploy their antonyms. If he hadn’t thought her suitable to teach his children before, what must he think now? Two bright coins of color stained her cheeks pink.
It was obvious from the stricken look on Carrie’s pretty face that she thought he had taken advantage of her. And that hurt. More than it should have. Somehow Judson had let himself believe that Carrie was different than the rest, who were so eager to believe the worst about the savage red man. Angrily, he told himself that she deserved to be kept dangling from his teeth like a mouse hanging by its tail, but somehow he wasn’t up to playing any more games. He’d deliberately misled her once before, and all that had gotten him was one implacable, guilty conscience.
“Let me put your mind at ease,” he said, and the flat tone of his voice hinted of a fatigue born of time and experience. “Nothing happened that night.”
“Nothing?” Carrie repeated dumbly. What she re- membered of Judson tucking her into bed hadn’t seemed like nothing to her.
Hurt that he’d had so little trouble in brushing aside her sexual overtures, Carrie tried hard to sound grateful. “Thank you for being such a gentleman,” she said stiffly.
Her gratitude filled Judson with chagrin. He knew he didn’t deserve it. What would she think if she knew how difficult leaving her that night had really been? Familiar with lust, Jud feared that what he was feeling was more than that and it rendered him virtually help- less. Foreboding seeped into his bones like the cold Wy- oming winter. Having been burned once before, Judson had promised himself never again to let any woman exercise that kind of power over him.
Just being near Carrie was too damned dangerous for his own good. And for hers. He was in desperate need of something to sweep away the deceptive fog invading his senses. There was only one issue left for him to address before his conscience would allow him to take off and leave sweet temptation behind for good.
“You’re not expecting anyone else, are ya?”
Noting that the only vehicle parked outside the schoolhouse was his snowmobile, Carrie shook her head.
“Then this is the perfect opportunity to let me intro- duce you to your winter transportation.”
Caught completely off guard, Carrie stammered, “W-what? Tonight? Are you crazy?”
Her thoughts fled to the massive snowmobile to which he referred. She hadn’t so much as peeked un- derneath the heavy tarp that covered it and, in all hon- esty, had little desire to ever familiarize herself with it.
“Some people think so,” he readily admitted, taking a single key from the rack behind her. He dangled it enticingly in front of her.
“But there’s nothing like a moonlit ride on a snow- mobile to clear the mind. Besides, you do need to know how to ride it, and I promised our superintendent that
I’d personally see to it that you know how to operate our emergency winter equipment.”
Judson attacked Carrie’s hesitancy with a boyish grin.
“That is, unless, of course, you’re chicken….”
Those childish words sounded like an indictment against all fainthearted womanhood. How could such a juvenile challenge stir her blood? Carrie wondered, even as her mouth was forming the words “You’re on!”
A
n early model snowmobile lay sleeping beneath an aged tarpaulin. As Judson removed the snowy cover, Carrie surveyed the machine critically. It was bigger and far more formidable-looking than she remembered. Glad that the dark of night covered her face, she sucked in her breath, vowing not to let Jud see just how nervous she was.
“I’ll start it for you,” he said, throwing a leg over deftly.
Carrie leapt back at its firing up as if she had been shot. “It’s loud,” she yelled over the deafening roar. Black smoke rolled from the exhaust pipe. “And smelly,” she added.
“Ready?”
Carrie hesitated. All around her heavy snow was fall- ing. Tilting her face up, she caught a perfect crystal upon her tongue. When she looked again at Judson, it was to view him through a snowflake caught on the end of her eyelashes. Bedecked in prisms of light, he looked
heaven-sent. Surrealistically surrounded by a pocket of warmth and contentment, Carrie wished there were some way to halt time.
The bitter cold was sure to follow the fantasy of this crystal fairyland.
Carrie had changed from her professional clothes into a one-piece snowsuit that should have been the furthest thing from seductive. The slick material hugged and highlighted her womanly curves, and Jud’s attention was riveted to a zipper that ran the length of that in- credible body.
Get hold of yourself,
he told himself sternly. The last time he’d mistaken a bad case of runaway hormones for love had almost cost him his life.
Reluctantly Carrie took the ominous black helmet that Judson offered her and put it on. Climbing atop the snowmobile, she slipped her arms around Judson and braced herself against the onslaught of emotions that ran through her as their bodies made contact.
“This is the throttle,” he said, pointing. “And this is the brake.”
The snowmobile eased forward. Carrie tightened her mittened grip around Judson’s waist. She closed her eyes, and only when her stomach settled did she open them. There was something comforting in pressing up against Judson’s back as a fine, powdery snow sprayed up from the runners on either side of her. The ride was far smoother than she had anticipated, the snow oblit- erating any trace of the rocky road to Harmony.
As they turned sideways, the runners dug in. Snow shot up in a rainbow arc as Judson brought the machine to a sudden stop. Carrie was reluctant to release her
hold. It had been a long, long time since she had al- lowed herself to cling to anyone.
Climbing off the machine to stand beside it, Judson urged softly, “Now it’s your turn.”
Carrie stiffened. A coyote’s baleful howl echoed in the distance, sending a shiver along her spine. The snowmobile’s power seemed as tangible as the frosty air filling her lungs. Well aware that learning how to drive this machine was a necessity, she scooted forward on the seat to assume the driver’s position, and resigned herself with an audible sigh.
Judson hopped on behind, and Carrie felt her tem- perature rise. What was there about this man’s touch, even through layers of clothing and in the midst of fall- ing snow, that set her body afire?
“Where to?” she called over her shoulder.
“Wherever you want.”
She gave the snowmobile a little gas, and they jerked forward into the wilderness dark. Bit by bit, Carrie be- came braver. Slowly she increased the pressure of her thumb upon the throttle. Faster they sped through a tree- lined path. It was exhilarating to feel the pull of the runners through the fresh snow. It was as intoxicating as the man holding on to her.
Downy flakes against the black night created a sur- realistic sense of timelessness. Carrie was seized by the magic of sheer, unrestrained power. Like nothing she had ever felt before, riding through the snow was like breaking the sound barrier or blasting into another di- mension. Speeding forward into an open field, she turned the machine up a whitewashed hillside and zoomed to the summit. The lights of a distant city glim- mered sixty miles away, making her feel simultaneously insignificant and omnipotent. Feeling Judson’s grip
tighten around her, she wondered if he, too, felt the same sense of awe.
Making a wide arch against the slope, Carrie began the steep descent downhill. Disregarding the brakes, she raced downward, savoring the sensation of floating inches above the freshly fallen snow. The laughter bub- bling in her throat froze upon her lips as a small ditch appeared immediately in front of them and they were suddenly airborne.
Thrown as if from the back of a bucking bronco, Judson landed in a snowdrift up to his waist. Carrie came down upon the back end of the runaway snow- mobile with a thump. She grabbed for the brake as the machine careered out of control, but it was too late. The snowmobile sideswiped an aspen, bending it back like a twig. Tipping on the left runner, the machine flipped onto its side and pinned Carrie beneath its entire weight.
She was not hurt, merely crushed deep in soft layers of snow. Once her heart stopped pounding so raggedly, she felt panic succumb to utter despair.
Lying on her back and staring up into the black sky and the falling snow, she felt the tears slip down her cheeks. In the short length of time that it took Judson to sprint to the overturned machine, her mind filled with self-recrimination. He had been right all along. Clearly she was not the right person for this job. If she couldn’t manage a snowmobile with assistance, how in the world would she manage a snowbound emergency in which a child’s life might be at stake? Why had she ever left the relative safety of the city? What had ever led her to think that she could run away from the pain of the past? Her heart overflowed with bitter tears.
Judson’s heart was beating so wildly that he feared his chest might just split wide open. A delicate woman
was trapped beneath five hundred pounds of machinery, and he was responsible for it. He covered the distance to the overturned snowmobile in five seconds flat. Adrenaline surging through his veins, he flipped the heavy snowmobile over as if it were a toy. Kneeling beside Carrie’s inert form, he removed the helmet from her head.
His voice was an off-key echo in the crystalline night. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine!” she sputtered, bracing herself for an an- gry scolding about the lethal combination of city slick- ers and speed. Her tears shimmered in the moonlight.
Judson longed to kiss them away. Instead he pulled her to his chest and held her tight, as if he would never let go.
“Thank God,” he murmured, brushing the hair from her face. It was at that moment he knew he had to have her—no matter how dangerous the consequences. She looked utterly devastated, and breathtakingly beautiful. Recognizing the agony in those unguarded eyes, Judson realized that she carried the same nameless emptiness inside as he. Was it possible that they could fill that void in one another?
Doubling up her fists, Carrie beat them against the flat plane of his broad chest. “I hate you!” she screamed into the vortex of the night.
And at that moment she truly did hate Judson Horn. She hated him for making her take a moonlit drive on this monstrous contraption, for seeing her so frightened and vulnerable, for his stupid practical jokes, for his hasty assessment that she wasn’t good enough to teach his children, for the way he made her feel guilty for the sins of her white ancestors, for his past loves, for blurring
that line she had so clearly drawn between her pro- fessional and personal life.
But most of all she hated him for making her want him as she had never wanted a man before.
Though her blows pelted him like bitter hail, Judson did not loosen his hold. Quietly the snow continued to fall around them, enveloping Carrie’s tears in soft cot- ton.
He held her without saying a word until, at long last, her rage spent, she fell limp in his arms.
“I hate you,” she whispered the last time before be- coming forever lost in a blizzard of emotions.
“No, you don’t,” Judson replied, cradling her head in his hands and slowly closing his mouth over hers.
It was a kiss as light as the falling snow. The sky and the stars and the snowflakes swirled madly around them. The hard strength of Judson’s body and the unexpected softness of his lips vanquished Carrie’s resistance as quickly as a snowflake melts against warm flesh. She clung to him as though he were the only point of sta- bility in a world spinning off its axis.
His kiss deepened as he probed the secret pleasures of her mouth. Carrie shuddered. But not from the cold.
Fire and ice,
she thought to herself. Judson Horn was both. His kisses more passionate than she had ever imagined, she responded without thought to the future. Carrie writhed with pleasure in his arms. From behind dark clouds, a golden band of moonlight stretched upon the bed of snow. Squeezing her eyes shut, Carrie lost herself in a storm far beyond her control. Nothing made sense anymore.
She hated Judson Horn.
And she loved him.
No logical pattern of common sense could convince
her foolish heart otherwise. Carrie had fought against it so long that she dared not whisper the truth lest, as Estelle had assured her, it would send him scurrying in the opposite direction like a frightened jackrabbit.
With a groan, Judson pulled away. Her eyes wide and brighter than the moon shining overhead, her hair a shimmering halo about her face, Judson thought Carrie truly a snow angel. There was, however, nothing angelic about him, he thought ruefully. He knew that if he didn’t stop kissing her this very instant, he would suc- cumb to his own hard need and take her right now in this blanket of snow. It took all of his restraint to fight his own hot desire.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he growled, know- ing that what really frightened him was the thought that if this woman ever realized the power she wielded over him, he would be rendered as helpless as a baby. He had believed that his disastrous marriage had left his heart impervious to feminine attention. Now he wasn’t at all sure that was true.
Carrie’s hysterical outburst had shaken Judson to the core. In a very short time he had come to characterize her as tenacious and strong. There was an aura of gen- tleness about her that reminded him of a most delicate but deceivingly hardy wildflower. The thought that such a lovely blossom could so easily be crushed turned his blood to ice.
The concern reflected in Judson’s face assured Carrie that he did truly care for her—perhaps more than he was ready to admit. That realization caused hope to leap to life in her bosom like the sparks of a fire opal.
“We’d better go,” Judson said huskily, pulling her
to her feet. “It wouldn’t do for the teacher to be out with pneumonia, now would it?”
Even the very way that he brushed the snow from her body was infinitely sensual. Carrie felt herself sway, and though she was grateful for his steadying arm, what she really wanted was to dizzily succumb to more of his kisses, to let him take her this very instant and show her how splendid loving a man could be.
As Judson inspected the snowmobile, Carrie meekly inquired, “How bad is it?”
Bad,
he thought to himself.
Worse than anything I ever imagined.
But since she was not asking about the state of his heart, he replied, “Just a nasty scratch on the side. If anything more serious is wrong, it’ll show up on the way back.”
Despite the dangerous consequences of that possibil- ity, the thought of being stranded in the middle of no- where with Judson was far more appealing than Carrie dared admit aloud.
“I’m sorry…” she began.
“No need to be,” he replied, plucking both helmets from the snow and shaking them clean. “The only way to learn is by doing, and sometimes that means making mistakes. The important thing is to learn from those mistakes. It was good to see you gun it like that. You can’t be afraid of a machine, but you’ve got to learn that it doesn’t make you invincible, either.”
“I meant I’m sorry about hitting you,” she clarified.
Judson’s eyes were warm spots in the cold landscape.
“I don’t mind being used as your punching bag. Be- lieve me, it’s better to get it all out than to keep it inside and let it eat you alive.”
Surely he was speaking from experience. True to his words, Carrie did feel purged. The cold and the pain
and the blows and the kisses had somehow helped to cauterize that hurting part of her that ached whenever she remembered her ex-fiancé’s betrayal.
Having had quite enough of driving for one night, Carrie slid behind Judson as he pointed the snowmobile in the direction of home.
“I don’t really hate you,” she said as a guilty after- thought, but her words were lost in the roar of the en- gine.
The ride home was slow and controlled and though it was not long, by the time they pulled up in front of her trailer, Carrie was shivering.
“I brought you a present,” Judson said, walking her to the door.
“A p-p-present?” Carrie’s teeth chattered.
“Go get into something warm, and I’ll bring it around.”
She was perplexed. What could it be? she wondered, watching Judson make a path through the snow to his pickup. Quickly she slipped out of her wet clothes and into a pair of jeans and a sweater.
By the time she returned to the front door, Judson was parked directly outside. He rolled down the window and yelled, “Where do you want it?”
What she discovered when she looked into the bed of his truck evoked a smile so warm it threatened to melt the newly fallen snow. Much better than traditional gifts of roses or perfume, Jud’s present was a pickup load of kindling!