Biting her lip, she shouldered open the door of the stables, cringing as it creaked and the dog let out a sharp warning bark. Her heart was hammering as she slipped through the crack and felt along the wall to the door of the tack room. She couldn’t risk a light, but she knew where her bridle was hung, just this side of the window. Her fingertips grazed the leather reins. Deftly, she removed the bridle from its hook, then, feeling along the wall, edged her way into the stables again and walked swiftly down a cement aisle to the far stall, where her mare waited.
“Easy, girl,” Shelby whispered as she unlatched the gate and stepped inside. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and she saw the white splotches on Delilah’s rump. The smells of horses, manure and dust filled her nostrils as she eased the straps of the bridle over the mare’s long nose and ears.
Delilah, high-strung by nature, snorted and tossed back her head. Even in the darkness, her white-rimmed eyes were visible. “Shhh ... It’s me.” Shelby patted the mare’s sleek neck as she tightened the chin strap. “Come on.” Carefully, she led her horse along the unlit corridor to a back door. With each step, steel horseshoes rang against the concrete, but still there was no sound of dog or men. As she passed by the windows, she caught a glimpse of the bunkhouse, where the lights were glowing through door and windows.
So far, so good.
Praying the old hinges wouldn’t let out any noise, Shelby shoved the back door open and tugged on Delilah’s reins.
The mare’s nostrils flared as Shelby led her into the dark field, where the air was thick with the promise of rain. Snorting and sidestepping, Delilah minced, as if she, too, felt the electricity of the night. “Take it easy. That’s a girl,” Shelby whispered, using the fence post to help her climb onto the mare’s broad back.
Clamping her knees tight, Shelby clucked softly. “Let’s go.”
Delilah took off. She broke into an easy lope that accelerated with each stride, eating up the dry earth and range grass, until they were racing through the night.
Shelby’s heart soared.
The dog and Ross McCallum were far behind her.
Ahead lay Nevada.
Adrenalin rushed through her veins at the thought of seeing him again. Wind tore through her hair. Thunder rumbled over the hills. The night bristled with anticipation. More clouds choked the moon and covered most of the stars.
Shelby leaned forward. “Come on, come on,” she urged, not wanting to waste a second. Soon she’d be with Nevada again, soon she’d touch him, hold him ... oh, God, her throat went dry at the thought of what the hours ahead promised.
If he showed up.
But of course he would. Why wouldn’t he?
Though he’d hinted that they shouldn’t see each other again, she couldn’t believe that he’d stand her up.
She hoped beyond hope that Nevada was waiting for her. He was her first—her only—love. She’d dated a few boys during high school, but had never gotten serious, never gone much further than making out once in a while. But with Nevada it had been different from the start. When he’d returned to Bad Luck, the gossip mill had gone crazy, grinding the grist daily about the half-breed hellion who not only had the nerve to show up again, but to somehow land a job as a deputy. He’d already been linked with several women in town, including Vianca Estevan, a local girl with a reputation as tarnished and corroded as Caleb Swaggert’s old Dodge station wagon.
But that was long over, Shelby told herself. Now she, and she alone, was the woman in his life.
She gave the mare her head. Delilah responded, powerful muscles stretching and bunching, running faster and faster, her hooves pounding over hay stubble and weeds.
Through the fields, past the skeletal remains of an old cabin and along the base of a ridge, the horse raced freely, Shelby tucked like a burr to the mare’s shoulders. Sinuous muscles moved beneath her bare legs, coarse mane twined in her fingers. Thunder rolled over far-off hills.
Delilah crested a final rise. Then, as Shelby’s fingers tightened over the reins, the nervous mare began to slow, until, tossing her head, she was walking along a trail that wound downward to a creek on the very north edge of the ranch. Sweat shone on the mare’s red coat. Bats flew by in a whoosh of wings. The scents of dust and wildflowers mingled in the air.
Oaks lined the creek and their dark shapes loomed large and foreboding. Shelby squinted, searching the darkness for any sign of Nevada, crossing her fingers, silently praying that he would be there. “Please,” she whispered over Delilah’s breathing and the plop of her hooves. Then she saw it—the glowing red tip of a cigarette—a beacon flaring through the shadowy trees.
“You made it.” Nevada’s voice had a way of touching her heart.
“Of course I did.” She swung a leg over Delilah’s back and hopped to the ground. “I said I would.”
He took a final drag on his cigarette, dropped it and squashed it under the heel of his boot. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“So you’ve said.” Wrapping the reins of Delilah’s bridle over a sapling, Shelby sauntered up to him. Even in the darkness she recognized his sharp features and aloof stance. Wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt, he was so much more approachable than when he was decked out in his uniform. “I think you’re wrong.”
“You do, do you?”
“Mmm. What could be wrong about this?” she asked as she stood toe to toe with him and boldly wrapped her arms around his neck.
“It could lead to trouble.”
“Maybe I want trouble,” she said brazenly, shocked by her own words.
“You don’t. Believe me.” But his arms locked around her waist, the strength of his muscles comforting.
“You don’t know what I want.”
“Sure of that?”
“Um-hm.”
The creek gurgled and Delilah’s bridle clinked softly. Insects hummed and the wind picked up, pushing more clouds over the moon. “You want what all women want, Princess,” he said, bending down so that his breath whispered through her hair, his words seemed to caress her ear. Shelby tingled inside. “You want a man to provide for you, take care of you and give you lots and lots of babies.”
“Not me,” she said, shaking her head.
“Why’re you different?”
“You tell me.” She tilted her head back, looked upward into his night-shadowed eyes.
His teeth flashed white in an irreverent smile. “Okay. First, you’re rich as hell.”
“No, I mean—”
“And then you’re Judge Red Cole’s daughter.”
“But—”
“On top of that you’re spoiled and sassy and smart as a whip.”
She didn’t know whether to be complimented or insulted. “Wait a minute—”
“You ace all your tests in school, flirt outrageously with boys you never intend to date, drive that damned yellow convertible of yours too fast and study too hard. Sometimes you act like a spoiled brat and other times you seem a lot older and wiser than you should be.” Strong fingers twined in her hair, tilting her head back, forcing her to look at his night-darkened face. “You told me there was somethin’ important you wanted to talk about, that I had to meet you, and that was a damned lie—you and I both know it.”
“It is important that we be together. Don’t you think?”
“I’m just trying to be smart about this.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Nope. The truth is, I don’t know what to do with you, Shelby Cole,” he admitted, and for the first time since knowing him, she heard a note of desperation in his voice.
“Liar,” she teased.
“I’m serious.”
Oh, if only you were! Love me, Nevada, oh, please just love me!
She started to blurt out the words, but didn’t. ‘I’m serious, too,” she said.
“And it scares the living hell out of me.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t get involved with you, Shelby.”
“You are involved.”
Somewhere overhead a night bird flapped his wings, and the wind rustled through the leaves of the live oaks. Nevada kissed her forehead and she felt him tremble. “You and I—”
“Don’t say it.” She moved a finger to his lips. “Don’t say we’re from different worlds or anything so—so clichéd as that,” she whispered. “I know it. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does.” His mouth moved against her finger, his tongue flicking against her skin, making her shiver. She traced his lips and heard him groan from somewhere deep inside. With the tip of her finger she prodded slowly and he opened his mouth, his tongue surrounding her finger, his mouth gently sucking.
Shelby quivered, her blood running hot and wild. Inside she turned to liquid fire. She wanted to kiss him, touch him, experience the wonder of making love to him.
He pulled his head away. “Don’t,” he warned.
“Why not?”
“We don’t have to go through this again.” Releasing her, he swore under his breath and stepped back.
“Nevada—”
Angrily, he jabbed two sets of stiff fingers through his hair. “You don’t know what you’re getting into here,” he said tightly. She saw the tension in his broad shoulders as he walked to the shore of the creek and reaching upward, braced himself against a low branch of one of the oaks.
“Of course I do.”
“How?”
“I—I know what happens between a man and woman.”
“Do you?” His voice held a sneer of disbelief.
“Yes! I was practically raised on this ranch. I—I watched the bulls with the cows and the stallions that were brought in for the mares. I—I wasn’t supposed to,” she admitted as she walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, “but I did.”
He flinched. “Well, it’s a little different with people.”
She laid her head between his shoulder blades, holding him close, hearing him breathe. Dear God, was that his heart beating so wildly, or hers? He smelled of smoke and musk, and his muscles flexed hard at the feel of her. “Different how?”
“Don’t play dumb, Shelby. It’s not your style.”
“Nevada—don’t you want me?”
He let out a low groan; then, taking the hand that was flat over his abdomen, he pulled it downward to his fly. She started to jerk away, but he was forceful and flattened her palm over the bulge in his crotch. “What do you think?” he asked and let go.
She didn’t. “That ... this ... is natural.”
“Don’t mess with me, Princess,” he said. “What this is, is dangerous.”
“Nevada, I think I love you.” The words were out before she could take them back.
“Oh, shit, no. You don’t know a thing about love.” He turned and faced her again, and this time she saw more than anger in the lines of his face. There was a different emotion in his eyes, a raw pain she didn’t understand.
“I know what I feel.”
“You’re a kid.”
“Eighteen next year.”
“As I said, a kid.” Leaning his forehead against hers, he sighed. “You’d better leave.”
“No.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him softly on the lips, felt his resistance and kissed him again, more slowly this time. His mouth opened, his tongue slipped past her teeth and he wrapped his arms around her. The world seemed to fade away as he kissed her long and hard. Her bones started to melt, her blood heated and she moaned softly when he lowered his head and kissed the comer of her mouth and the slope of her neck. His lips brushed a spot near her collarbone and deep inside she quaked, wanting more—oh God, so much more.
Holding her tight, he rubbed against her. The hard fly of his jeans pressed into her mound, and through her shorts she could feel him—hot and hard and wanting.
Slowly he backed her up until her rump was stopped by the trunk of one of the trees and he held her there, kissing her, his hands fisting in her hair, his mouth moving magically over every bare inch of her skin.
“This is what you want, Shelby?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He kissed her harder, his tongue plunging into her mouth, his breathing raspy. Her chest was crushed, her legs pinned with his and she shivered with passion as he pulled her blouse from her cutoffs and moved a hand against her abdomen, reaching upward, fingers delving inside her bra to find her breast, graze her nipple.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Oh, God, yes.
Her thighs flexed involuntarily and she moaned. Unbuttoning her blouse, he slid the strap of her bra down her arm, then lifted her breast and slowly, nearly torturously, teased her nipple with his tongue and teeth.
Deep inside she began to ache. Throb. Want with a hot need she’d never felt before. It felt so right to hold him, to kiss him, to do things she’d never before dared. A part of her knew that she was about to step through a door that would close forever behind her. And yet she couldn’t resist.
Arching, she pressed her hips ever tighter to his, feeling his hardness, wanting that smooth skin against hers.