Bedded then Wed

Shifting around on the bales of straw, he supported her back with one arm while leaning in for a taste. He kissed the side of her breast, then opened his mouth to sample the silken skin.

She raked her hands through his hair, grazing the scalp and anchoring her fingers near his nape. His tongue drew circles around her tightened areola, the movements growing smaller and smaller until he engulfed the entire tip.

She straddled his thighs like a champion rider, tilting her hips, straining for a more intimate touch. And he wanted to give it to her, was desperate for it himself. Sweating, shaking, more aroused than he could ever remember being before in his life.

Releasing her breast, dragging in great gulps of air, he returned his mouth to her lips. At the same time, he tried to get his trembling fingers to work on the snap and zipper of her jeans.

With the denim loose around her waist, he slipped his hands inside, palms flat against her skin as he slid them down, beneath the elastic edge of her panties. He skimmed her hips, then moved around to cup her buttocks.

When she moaned and ground herself into the hard bulge behind the zipper of his own jeans, he knew he couldn’t wait much longer to be inside her. Not without embarrassing himself and depriving them both of something he was beginning to suspect would be earth-shattering.

Laying her back along the bed of straw bales, he sat up only long enough to yank off her shoes and drag her pants down her legs. Then he was with her again, tearing off his shirt, unbuckling his belt and opening his fly before covering her with his body.

He lifted her legs around his waist, gently probing her warm, moist folds. Brushing thin strands of strawberry-blond hair away from her face, he met her eyes and offered her an encouraging smile. She returned his grin and lifted her hands to his shoulders, applying just enough pressure to tug him down for a kiss. While his tongue plumbed the depths of her mouth, he cocked his hips and entered her in one long, strong stroke.

The instant friction and intense sensation made them both gasp. Mitch held himself perfectly still, feeling her tight inner muscles flexing around him, all but blowing off the top of his head. He knew if he moved, if she shifted even a millimeter, things between them would be over much too soon.

So he gritted his teeth, concentrating on his breathing until the blaze in his gut sputtered to a low forest fire and he thought he could open his eyes, gaze down at Emma’s angelic features without exploding. She was staring up at him with liquid blue eyes, the same stunned expression on her face that he suspected mirrored his own.

Taking a deep breath, he let the air shudder out of his lungs, and then brushed his lips across her mouth.

Her breasts brushed his chest, her arms and legs locked around him like tentacles. With a minor shift, just a small forward movement, he was inside her, buried to the hilt.

He groaned, the sound rumbling up from his diaphragm even as she flexed around him and he began to move. Short, slow strokes growing slightly longer and faster as the tension built. Blood pumped through his veins, hot and flowing like molten lava to pool between his legs.

Emma threw her head back and he kissed her throat, nibbled her ear, trailed his lips down to her breasts. His belly clenched at the noises she was making. Low, erotic mewling sounds that drove him senseless and made him thrust harder, faster, striving for completion.

Sweat dripped past his temples and down the middle of his back. Her fingers tangled in his hair, caressing and keeping him close as her hips rose and fell to meet him.

“Emma,” he growled out.

She met his gaze and smiled even as her mouth opened on a rush of ecstasy. “Mitch,” she breathed in return.

And that was all it took to send him over the edge. White-hot pleasure pounded through his pores, filling every cell of his being to near bursting.

With a deep groan, he drove into her one last time, relieved to feel her pulse and shake, following him over the cliff into mindless pleasure.

Emma couldn’t keep her lips from curling up in a grin as she ran her hands over Mitch’s silky-soft hair and sweat-slickened back, his strong, muscular bicep and broad chest.

His face rested in the hollow of her neck, his body still covering hers after the most intense session of lovemaking she’d ever experienced.

She still couldn’t believe it had happened. Her body hummed with recently released passion, the lingering effects causing her muscles to twitch and a delightful warmth to spread all over.

And she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that with anyone but Mitch Ramsey, the sex might have been good, but it wouldn’t have been phenomenal.

So many times, private wishes and forbidden fantasies lost their luster in the bright light of day. She’d dreamed of being with Mitch for so long that when he’d begun to kiss her, a part of her had been worried she’d be disappointed.

Or perhaps she’d been worried that she would disappoint him.

Instead, being with him had been everything she’d hoped for and more. So much more.

He’d been gentle and caring and…amazing. Not only in the way he touched her—although the memory of that alone was enough to curl her toes and cause a renewed warmth to pool deep in her belly.

No, he’d been kind and considerate all evening. Offering her a ride home, helping her tend to the livestock, climbing into the loft with her to check on the kittens.

It was a side of him she hadn’t seen in a very long time. Since Suzanne had ripped his heart out and stomped it into the ground, leaving him an empty husk of his former self.

Mitch thought he’d handled his ex-wife’s infidelity and the subsequent divorce well. He thought he’d been impervious to the pain that woman had caused him and had recovered quickly to return to his normal life.

But everyone around him knew it was a lie. He pretended to be okay while his insides remained shriveled and cold.

Emma often thought that if she ever ran into Suzanne again, she would slap the cheating bitch for what she’d done to Mitch.

But then, Emma had never liked the woman. From the moment Mitch had brought her home to Gabriel’s Crossing, having met her at a truck stop in Abilene, Emma had known that every dream she’d ever had of spending her life with Mitch was destroyed.

Suzanne was tall and blond and built like a 1920s pinup girl, while Emma had always had a more boyish figure. Small breasts, narrow hips, no feminine curves to speak of. She was a bit of a tomboy, and had always been proud of the fact, until Suzanne Yates had waltzed into town and reminded her of all the things she wasn’t, stealing Mitch in the process.

It had been a silly dream to start with, thinking that just because she and Mitch had grown up together he might fall in love with her. She’d grown up with Chase, too, but had never had an erotic or ever-after thought about him.

And until tonight, she’d truly thought she was over Mitch Ramsey. Or, if not over him, at least had come to terms with the fact that he was never going to completely heal from Suzanne’s betrayal. He was off the market and more out of her reach than ever before.

Now, though, she wasn’t sure what to think. Her heart wanted to believe this was the start of something permanent. That by driving her home tonight and making love to her in the barn loft, he was showing that he was recovered from his lousy marriage and willing to love again.

But her rational, more somber brain warned her to be careful. Reminded her that one night of passion did not a marriage proposal make.

She would keep that in mind, play it safe and follow his lead, whatever it may be.

“Mmm.” He moaned low in his throat like a man waking from a good night’s sleep and pushed himself up on one elbow.

Cool night air washed over her skin where his body no longer covered, and she fought not to shiver. Not because she was cold, but because she missed the intimate contact.

“You okay?” he asked, still leaning over her, staring down at her with those slate-gray eyes.

She nodded, biting the inside of her lip to keep from saying more.

He shifted again, rolling farther away on the bales of straw. She felt bereft without his touch, but curled her fingers into fists at her sides and took deep breaths until she got the urge to reach for him under control.

“We should think about getting dressed before your father gets home and catches us out here.” He shot her a wicked grin. “I’ve made it almost forty years without getting chased off by an angry, pitch fork-wielding father. There’s no sense in starting now.”

Moving around her, he climbed to his feet and began gathering their discarded clothes from the straw-strewn floor. She sat up and accepted her things when he handed them to her, taking her time putting bra and panties then her jeans and blouse back on.

She ran her hands through her hair, picking out pieces of straw and wishing for a brush to smooth the tangled mass. When she looked back at Mitch, he was dressed and just fastening his belt.

When he was finished, he slapped his hands against his thighs and fixed her with a lopsided smile. “Should we head down?”

She glanced around, surprised to find no visible signs of what had happened between them. After their explosive joining, she’d expected to see burn marks, singed straw, smoke still rising from the ashes. But, instead, there was just plain yellow straw, a little flat in places, but ordinary enough, and the litter of kittens curled up sleeping around their mother.

Turning back to meet his gaze, she nodded, then climbed down the ladder ahead of him.

Just as they reached the door of the barn, they heard tires crunching on the dirt and gravel drive, and saw headlights headed their way.

“That’ll be Pop,” she told him.

“Looks like we made it just in time.” He stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, his thumbs hooked over his belt and waistband.

If he was nervous about coming face-to-face with her father only minutes after having her naked and writhing beneath him, he didn’t show it.

Her father pulled his pickup into the yard and cut the engine. A second later, the door opened and he climbed out.

He didn’t look completely steady on his feet, and she rushed forward to take his arm, hoping he’d kept his word about only finishing off that one last beer.

His head snapped up when he felt her hand on his elbow, and he smiled through his shaggy gray beard and mustache.

“Well, there you are. I thought you would have been in the house, asleep by now. What are you doing out here?”

“Mitch and I were just…um…”

“Checking the livestock,” Mitch offered, stepping out of the shadows of the barn and into the glow of the house’s front porch light.

“Good, good,” her father said. “Thanks for helping out my girl, Ramsey.”

Emma’s cheeks heated, but she hoped neither her father nor Mitch would notice in the dark.

“My pleasure, sir,” Mitch answered, rocking back on the heels of his well-worn boots, hands still in his pockets. “Anything else I can do for you tonight before I get going?”

“No, no, you go on.” Her father started toward the house, slipping out of Emma’s hold and looking more steady on his feet now that he’d had the chance to stand for a few minutes. “Have a good night. We’ll see you soon.”

“Yes, sir. Good night, sir.”

“Emma, I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“All right. ’Night, Pop. I love you.”

“Love you, too, sweetheart.”

The screen door slammed closed behind him and she waited several long seconds before speaking. Once she was sure he was out of earshot, she turned to face Mitch.

“Went a little overboard with the ‘yes, sir,’ ‘no, sir,’ ‘have a good night, sirs,’ didn’t you?”

She thought she saw him wince and bit back a chuckle of amusement.

“Maybe,” he answered shortly, his face a mask of inexpression. “But it sure beats the alternative.”

“What’s that?”

“Letting him know I spent the last half hour rolling around in the loft with his daughter.”

It was Emma’s turn to wince, and she cast a quick glance over her shoulder, afraid her father might have been close enough to overhear Mitch’s declaration.

She was a grown woman, so what she did with her body and with whom was no one’s business but her own. But talking about sex in front of her father—or worse, having him know she’d just finished having hot, extremely satisfying sex in his barn—was still something that made her keenly uncomfortable.

“Point taken.”

Gravel crunched beneath her feet as she crossed to him, then followed as he stalked to his truck.

“Thanks for your help with the horses and cattle,” she said.

He nodded, opening the door and climbing inside.

Watching him get ready to leave made her stomach clench. But what had she expected? That he would ask to stay the night or suggest they sneak back into the barn for seconds? That he would declare his undying love and fall to one knee, asking her to marry him?

She might harbor fantasies of happily-ever-after with him, but she wasn’t delusional. She was realistic enough to accept that sex was just sex, even if it had been with the one man she’d always secretly had a crush on.

“So I guess I’ll see you around,” she offered. The perfect opening for him to ask her out on a date, tell her he’d call, anything to imply that what had passed between them would be more than a one-night stand.

“Yeah,” he replied, and nothing more.

A beat passed before he started the engine, then turned his head to meet her gaze. “’Night.”

Forcing a smile to her lips, she swallowed back the bubble of disappointment swelling in her belly. “Right. Good night.”

He put the truck in gear, turned around and rolled slowly down the drive. She stood watching until his taillights disappeared, rubbing her arms to stave off a chill that centered in her chest and had nothing to do with the still night air surrounding her.

Three

Emma glanced at her shopping list. She had everything she needed except bread flour.

Turning down the baking aisle, she scanned the shelves for the brand and type she wanted, groaning when she spotted it on the uppermost shelf. The store had apparently rearranged items since the last time she’d purchased bread flour. And at five foot three, that left it just a couple of inches out of her range.

Pushing her cart to the side, she used the toe of her shoe to nudge cans of pie filling on the lowest shelf out of the way, then grabbed hold of a shelf at waist level and hoisted herself up. Her fingertips brushed the front of the bag, but she still couldn’t get a good enough grip to lift it down.

“Need some help?”

With a yelp, her hold on the shelf slipped and she fell backward. Strong hands and an even stronger chest caught and steadied her.

She turned, looking up into Mitch’s hard, gray eyes. Not that she’d needed to see him to know who’d spoken to her. She would know his voice anywhere.

“Hey,” she greeted him, feeling slightly out of breath, and not because of her graceless pirouette from the grocery store shelves.

It had been two weeks since the Fourth of July picnic, since that night in the barn. Two weeks without seeing or even hearing from him again.

She hadn’t been surprised. She would have been more surprised if he’d called or shown up on the doorstep, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t disappointed.

Disappointed that he could walk away without a backward glance after what they’d shared but also that their sleeping together might have ruined a perfectly good, lifelong friendship.

And now here he stood, staring at her from beneath the rim of his black Stetson. He didn’t seem particularly pleased to see her, but then Mitch hadn’t looked happy since Suzanne had left. A thin layer of stubble shadowed his square jaw, and lines bracketed his flat mouth.

“Hey, yourself. Is this what you were after?” He reached up with one hand and plucked a bag of bread flour from the top shelf with ease, holding it out to her.

She took it, cradling the five-pound weight to her chest while she swallowed and tried to think of something witty to say to break the tension and attempt to return them to the easy camaraderie they’d shared before sex had muddied the waters.

“You headed somewhere after this?” he asked without preliminaries.

“Just home to put groceries away,” she answered.

“Got time for a cup of coffee? Maybe a bite to eat?”

She glanced over her shoulder into the basket of her cart. Nothing cold. Nothing that would go bad if she didn’t go straight home.

Her stomach gave a little lurch at the possibilities of what he might want to talk about, but she nodded. “I guess that would be all right.”

“Good. Need anything else?”

She checked her list one last time, then shook her head. “No, I’m ready.”

They moved down the aisle together, Emma pushing the cart as Mitch followed a step behind. The heels of his boots clicked rhythmically on the hard, tiled floor, matching the nervous beat of her heart.

He stayed with her while she went through the checkout line, then helped to carry the bags to her car.

“Where are we going?” she asked, standing in the open driver’s side door.

“Rosie’s Café.” He tipped his hat down a fraction to shield his eyes from the midday sun. “I’ll meet you over there.”

Ten minutes later, they were seated across from one another in a red vinyl booth near the back of the café. Located in the center of town, Rosie’s was Gabriel’s Crossing’s most popular restaurant. A greasy spoon where folks came for home cooking and the latest gossip.

The lunch crowd had cleared out already, and dinner customers wouldn’t begin to trickle in for a few more hours. When the waitress came, they asked for pie and coffee, then sat in uncomfortable silence while the young woman went to fill their order.

Emma folded and refolded her napkin until the paper edges began to flake and fall away. Finally, she took a deep breath, laid her palms flat on the Formica tabletop, and faced Mitch head-on.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” she blurted out, deciding it was better to simply come to the point than sit here imagining worst case scenarios. Like tearing off a Band-Aid in one quick swipe rather than toying and tugging and prolonging the agony.

“Us.”

As much as she’d braced herself for his answer, she hadn’t expected that.

She waited until the waitress set slices of pie and steaming cups of black coffee in front of them before responding, using the much-needed time to calm her erratic pulse and get her scattered thoughts in order. He took a sip of black coffee while she stirred a sugar packet and dollop of cream into hers.

Once they were alone, she took a deep breath and kept her tone low so no one would overhear. “What about us?”

“I think there should be one.”

She knit her eyebrows. Mitch had never been the easiest man to talk to, but at the moment he was giving new meaning to the word confusing. “One what?”

“Us. I think there should be an us.”

Picking up his fork, he dug into his slice of blueberry pie as though they were talking about the weather instead of…them.

Before she could reply, he swallowed and went on. “You know what happened between us, Emma. It shouldn’t have. It shouldn’t have happened the way it did, and for that I’m sorry.”

The flush of embarrassment she’d felt at his mention of the night they’d made love flared into sudden anger and more than a little hurt.

How dare he apologize to her for what she considered one of the most special nights of her life? If he was sorry, if he regretted what they’d done, then he should have kept it to himself instead of cornering her like this.

“That’s what you brought me here to tell me?” she demanded, her knuckles turning white as she clutched the edge of the table. “You’re sorry we slept together? I hate to break it to you, Mitch, but you’re not the first man I’ve had sex with. You didn’t seduce me, you didn’t take my virginity, you didn’t do anything that requires an apology. I’m a big girl. I can make my own decisions and sleep with whomever I want. I don’t need your permission or your approval.”

A beat passed while he held her gaze, then he nodded. “You’re right. You can make your own decisions.”

He took another bite of pie and washed it down with a gulp of coffee. “The thing is, I’m not the type to have a one-night stand with a neighbor and childhood friend. It feels…sleazy.”

Her eyes narrowed in warning. He wasn’t calling her sleazy or even what had passed between them, she knew that. But it was a close thing, and in her current mood she wasn’t sure she was willing to split hairs.

“My point is,” he continued, “I think maybe we should keep seeing each other. See where it leads.”

Of all the things he might have said, that shocked her the most. It also made her heartbeat—which had slowed to a crawl at the direction the conversation was taking—speed up and thump against her rib cage.

She swallowed hard, praying she wasn’t hearing things. “Excuse me?”

“I think we should…date. Go out a couple of times and see what happens.”

It was half-true, anyway. But the suggestion wasn’t driven by interest as much as nobility. And, he admitted, guilt.

In the two weeks since the Fourth of July picnic…since they’d made love in the loft of her father’s barn…he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her.

Partly because the sex had been incredible and every fiber of his being wanted to be with her again. And partly because she was his neighbor, a friend since childhood. They’d gone through school together. Climbed trees and ridden horses together. Survived the prom and graduation and the death of a parent—her mother, who had been a second mother to him as well—together.

She wasn’t some casual acquaintance to be used to slake his lust. Even if it had been four long, lonely years since he’d been with a woman.

So far, this was the best solution he could come up with. His personal code of honor wouldn’t allow him to just walk away and pretend that night had never happened. That might be all right for a stranger he’d met in a bar, but he couldn’t treat Emma that way.

Emma deserved better.

Using her for a one-night stand was unacceptable. But dating her for a while wasn’t.

Nothing would come of it, he knew. Nothing could ever come of it, and he didn’t want it to. But if they dated for a while and then split up, he could justify having slept with her.

And he wouldn’t sleep with her again, that was a promise.

Even if the memory of kissing her, touching her soft skin, heated his blood and tightened his trousers across his groin.

He’d known Emma all his life, but this was the first time he’d been distracted by her as a woman. The first time he’d noticed how sexy and attractive she was.

Physically, she was the opposite of Suzanne in every way. Where Suzanne had an hourglass figure, with full breasts and wide hips, Emma was proportionally well-balanced. Small, but still shapely.

Her hair was more strawberry-blond than peroxide-blond; her look more natural than painted on; her clothes stylish but comfortable, rather than skin-tight and meant to attract attention.

She certainly had succeeded at catching his attention, and not a day went by that he didn’t regret it.

“So?” He took a swig of coffee to wash down the last of his pie, taking note that Emma had yet to touch hers. “What do you say?”

What could she say? What should she say?

This had to be the most bizarre date invitation she’d ever received. And if it were coming from anyone other than Mitch, she’d have probably laughed the poor guy out of the restaurant.

But it was Mitch, which left her torn.