Montana Passions

She looked down at her folded hands. She was just about to tell him how much the project meant to Caleb. Caleb was getting older and Katie knew that sometimes he worried he was losing his edge—but no.

Katie kept her mouth shut. Yes, she was finding she liked Justin. A lot. However, the last thing Caleb would want was for her to go blabbing his secret doubts to a business associate.

She glanced up and found Justin studying her again, his dark head tipped to the side. “Question.”

“Ask.”

“Yesterday. Didn’t you mention that you went to college in Colorado?”

“That’s right. CU.”

“I’ll bet you had straight A’s in high school.”

She gave him a pert little nod. “You would win that bet.”

“High scores on the SAT?”

“Very.”

“Then why not Bryn Mawr, like your mother, and Adele Douglas? You’d have been a legacy, right—pretty much guaranteed to get in—even if your grades and test scores hadn’t been outstanding?”

“I liked CU. They have a fine curriculum. Plus, it was closer to home.”

“Home being here, in Thunder Canyon.”

“That’s right—and you? Where did you go to college?”

“I told you. No real formal education. I went to real estate school and then got my broker’s license a couple of years later.”

“You started in real estate because of your mother’s connections?”

He chuckled at that, though there wasn’t a lot of humor in the sound. “My mother had no connections. She’d been out of the real estate business for years when I started. It didn’t work out for her. Like a lot of things…”

She might have asked, What things? But he wore a closed-in, private kind of look at that moment and she didn’t want to pry. She coaxed, “So you started in real estate…”

He blinked and the brooding shadows left his eyes. “Yeah. By the time I was twenty-five, I’d branched into property development.”

“A self-made man.”

“Smile when you say that.”

She was smiling. But to make sure he noticed, she smiled even wider. And then her conscience reminded her that she had Buttercup to think of. She stood.

He put on a hurt look. “Just like that. You’re leaving. Was it something I said?”

“What you said was fascinating. Honestly. And I’ll be back soon.”

“The question is, where do you think you’re going?” He tipped his head toward the window and the still-falling snow outside. “I hate to break it to you, but I doubt you could get beyond the front porch.”

“I want to check on Buttercup.”

He rose. “I’ll come with you.”

She started to argue—that it was cold out there and she could take care of the job herself and he didn’t really need to go. But then again, it wasn’t as if he had a full schedule or anything.

He ushered her out to the back porch, where they put on their antique outerwear. Then they pushed open the door to the breezeway.

The snow had piled four feet or so on either side, sloping to the icy ground, leaving a path maybe a foot wide. “After you,” Justin said. “Watch your step. It looks pretty slick.”

In the shed, Buttercup snorted in greeting and came right to Katie. She stroked the old mare’s forehead and blew in her nostrils. “How’re you doing, sweetie? Kind of lonely out here?” The horse whickered in response. “And I’ll bet you wish I had some oats. Sorry. That hay’ll have to do you for a while.” She patted Buttercup’s smooth golden neck and pulled out one of the brushes she’d brought from inside. It was hardly a grooming brush, but nothing else was available.

She brushed the old mare’s knotted mane and spoke to her in low whispers for a while. Then she and Justin broke open another bale of hay.

“Watch out,” he warned when they were spreading it around a little. “It’s damned amazing how much manure one horse can produce in a sixteen-hour period.”

“It is at that.”

“Just don’t step backward without looking behind you first.”

She found a shovel in the corner and took it to him. “Get to work.”

“Shoveling horse manure?”

“That’s right.”

“But where am I going to put it?” The gleam in his eyes said he already had a pretty good idea.

“Just shovel it up, carry it out those open main doors there and toss it as far as you can into the snow.”

“That snow’s piling up pretty high out there. This could be dangerous.”

“So pay attention when you throw it. Wouldn’t want it to come flying right back at you.”

He pretended to grumble, but he started right in. She looked around and found another shovel. With both of them scooping and tossing, they had the mess cleared away in no time at all.

As they went to put the shovels up, Justin remarked that if the snow got much higher, swamping out the shed was going to be a real challenge.

“We’ll manage,” she told him. “Somehow…” She set her shovel against the wall and turned so fast, she almost ran into him.

“Watch it.” He laughed down low in his throat, the sound emerging on a cloud of mist.

She laughed, too.

And then, all at once, she wasn’t laughing and neither was he. They were just looking at each other—staring, really. And the cold air seemed to shimmer between them.

Oh, my goodness. Those lips of his…

Too full, for a man’s lips. Really. Too full and yet…

Exactly perfect.

If only she didn’t already know how delicious those lips felt pressed against her own. Maybe, if she didn’t know what a great kisser he was, she wouldn’t be standing here, sighing out a big breath of misty air and lifting her mouth to him.

He said her name, on a fog of breath. “Katie…”

She was so busy imagining what it was going to feel like when his lips met hers, that she didn’t register how close Buttercup was behind him—not until the mare let out a low whinny and head-butted Justin a good one.

“Hey!” He surged forward, right into Katie. She went over backward and down they went into the newly spread hay. He ended up on top of her.

Katie blinked up at him and he looked down at her and there was a lovely, strange, breath-held kind of moment. He was so…warm and solid, pressed all along the length of her—and heavy, too, but in a good way. He looked deep in her eyes and he said her name again and she held up her lips to welcome his kiss.

But Buttercup wasn’t finished. She bent her head and started nipping the back of Justin’s baggy old coat.

He rolled away from Katie to glare up at the mare. “Knock it off.”

Buttercup whinnied again and clopped off toward the double doors. A moment later, she was outside beneath the overhang, lipping up snow.

Justin canted up on an elbow and looked down at Katie. “That animal has it in for me.”

Katie was thinking that she really ought to sit up. Her hat had come off when Justin landed on top of her. She knew she had hay in her hair. But she felt kind of…lax. Lax and lazy and oh-so-comfortable, lying there in the hay on the frozen dirt floor.

“Hmm,” she said, and the sound was every bit as low and lazy as she was feeling. “Maybe Buttercup thinks you’re up to no good.”

He leaned in closer. She gazed up at his thick black lashes and his red nose and that wonderful, soft, oh-so-kissable mouth. “I’m perfectly harmless.”

“Perfect?” she heard herself answer, her tone as husky and intimate as his. “Maybe. Harmless? Oh, I don’t think so…”

There was a silence, a quiet so intense she could hear the soft sound of the snow falling outside and the faint rustling noises Buttercup made beyond the shed doors. Slowly, his mouth curved into a smile. And his eyes…

Oh, it was just like right before he kissed her, in front of everyone, back in the hall. His eyes kind of sucked on her. They drew her down.

“I don’t think that mare wants me to kiss you.”

And she probably shouldn’t kiss him. “Well, Justin. Okay, then. Let me up and we’ll—”

He cut her off by placing a gloved finger against her lips. “Not yet.” She probably should have protested, told him firmly to let her up.

But she didn’t. She watched, entranced, as he lifted his hand, took the tip of the glove’s finger between his white teeth and pulled it off. He dropped the glove beside her and then he touched her lips again—skin to skin this time. That brush of a caress made her mouth tingle, made her whole body yearn.

He let his hand drift over until it lay against the side of her face. “Soft,” he whispered. “So pretty and soft…” He lowered his mouth.

She expected a hot, soul-shattering kiss. But he only brushed his lips sweetly, one time, across hers—and then he lifted away again and she was looking in those haunting eyes once more. “What’s another kiss? Between a man and his wife.”

Now she felt truly torn. She longed to kiss him—yet she knew it was probably a bad idea. “We shouldn’t…get anything started, you know? We hardly know each other and—”

“But that’s just it. I want to know you better. What about you, Katie? Do you want to know me?”

She did! And that seemed…dangerous, somehow. That seemed foolish and scary and simply not right. “I—I don’t really want to start anything casual, you know?” She found her throat had gone desert-dry. She paused to swallow and then rushed to continue before he could do anything that would make her thoughts scatter and fly away. “I know it’s probably every guy’s fantasy to get stranded with a woman who, uh, knows what she wants and knows how to get it—not that I don’t know what I want. It’s just, well, I don’t want…that.”

He only smiled. “That, huh?”

“Yes.”

“That…what?”

Oh, this wasn’t going well. “Look. I just don’t want to start anything I know I’m not going to finish. Okay?”

“Katie?”

She glared at him. “What?”

“It’s only a kiss.”

“Oh, I just don’t—”

“Katie. Do you want to kiss me?”

“We’ve just about talked this to death, don’t you think?”

“But do you want to kiss me?”

“Oh, all right, damn it.” Katie rarely swore. But right then, damn it seemed the only thing to say.

“But do you?”

“Yes.” The word came out breathless-sounding. “I do.”

“Good.” He lowered his mouth to hers.

Katie sighed once and she sighed again.

Her hands slipped up to encircle his neck and she held on for dear life as he played with her mouth. With that clever tongue of his, he traced the seam where her lips met, teasingly at first and then with a more insistent pressure. She couldn’t resist him—didn’t want to resist him. Shyly, she let her lips relax and he swept that tongue of his inside.

It was a shocking, thrilling thing, the way Justin Caldwell could use that mouth of his. And it was a truly wonderful thing, the way his body felt, so warm and close, pressed against her side, the way he smelled of soap and shaving cream.

His cold nose touched hers and his hot breath burned her icy cheek. As he kissed her, he stroked her with his hands. That was wonderful, too. Each separate caress left a burning trail of longing in its wake. He wrapped his arms around her and rolled a little, so they were both on their sides, and his hand moved lower, to the small of her back. He rubbed there, a sweet, firm pressure, soothing muscles cramped from sleeping on that lumpy ancient mattress last night.

She moaned and pressed herself all the tighter against him. His hand swept lower. He cupped her bottom and tucked her up into him.

That was when she felt the hard ridge in his jeans.

Oh, my.

Time to stop.

Time to stop right now.

She braced her hands on his shoulders and tore her mouth away from his. “That’s enough.” She looked at his face and she feared…

What?

She realized she didn’t know. Her fear was formless, and yet she did feel it.

Remember the others, she reminded herself. They were after your money. They hurt you. He could so easily do the same…

But even as she thought of that, she didn’t believe it. Oh, he might hurt her, yes. But in her heart, she simply didn’t believe it would be for her money.

Which probably made her the biggest fool in Montana.

He loosened his hold on her. With a deep sigh, he pressed his forehead to hers. “You’re right,” he said. “Enough.”

She slid her hands down to his hard chest. Beneath her palms, she could feel his heat, and his heart racing. His breath came out in ragged puffs—just like hers.

She whispered, “We’d better go in.”

He touched her hair. She thought that she’d never felt anything quite so lovely in her whole life as that—the tender caress of his hand on her hair. He threaded his chilled bare fingers up under the tangled strands and cupped the back of her neck. She took his cue and tipped her head up to look at him.

“Yeah,” he said. His mouth was swollen from what he’d been doing to her, his eyes twin blue flames. “We’ll go in. Now.” He pressed one more quick, hard kiss on her lips—as if he realized he shouldn’t, but couldn’t resist. Her mouth burned at the contact.

Then he reached across her to grab his discarded glove. Rolling away from her, he rose. She scuttled to a sitting position.

“Here,” he said.

She stared at his outstretched hand. It seemed…too dangerous to take it.

Her gaze tracked upward, to his face. She knew by the heated look in his eyes that if she reached out, he would only pull her close and start kissing her again—and the thrumming of her blood through her body left her no doubt that she would end up kissing him right back.

No. Not going to happen. She’d known this man less than twenty-four hours. And she refused to end up rolling around naked with him on a bed of hay in a freezing old shed.

“I can manage, thanks.” She pulled off a glove and felt in her hair. It was just as she’d suspected: threaded through with bits of hay. “Oh, just look at me…”

Justin let his hand drop to his side. “I am.” His voice was husky and low. And in his eyes she saw desire—real desire. For her.

And not only desire, but also something dark and lonely, something that might have been regret.

Katie’s mouth went dust-dry. This was danger—a danger far beyond any threat a mere fortune hunter might pose. Peril to her tender heart, to her very soul.

No doubt about it. She wanted him—with a kind of bone-melting yearning, with a merciless desire the like of which she’d never known before.

It was…a physical aching. A hunger in the blood.

Oh, she would have to watch herself with him. She would have to exercise a little caution, or she’d be in way over her head.

Somewhere far back in her mind, a taunting voice whispered, Katie. Come on. You’re already over your head. Over your head and falling fast…

Chapter Four

He shouldn’t have kissed her.

It had been a major error in judgment and Justin damn well knew that it had.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. Not so soon, anyway—and certainly not in a prickly bed of hay on the frozen dirt floor of the shed out back, with that irritating old mare looking on.

Getting hot and heavy so fast had spooked her. She had her guard up and now he couldn’t get past it.

They spent the rest of the endless day playing checkers, watching the snow fall, stoking the fire in the stove out front and reading books and magazines they found stacked in the storage room. Whenever they spoke, she made sure it was in polite generalities.

The snow kept falling. The radio played only static. And the phone stayed dead.

Justin could have kicked himself with his rummage sale Converse All-Star. The big loss of ground with her was his own damn fault. He’d sucked her in beautifully, had her right in the palm of his hand once he’d told her the story of that lonely week in the cabin when he was thirteen. He’d hit the perfect common nerve: a lonely childhood; parents who weren’t all they should have been.

It was going so well.

Until the kiss.

And even that could have been okay—could have been tender and sweet and worked beautifully to lure her closer.

But he’d gotten his arms around her and her mouth under his and that sweet body pressed close against him…

He’d lost it. Lost every last shred of control.

The bald truth was that he’d seriously underestimated the power of his own lust for the shy browneyed librarian with too much money and an adopted family he despised.

It was funny, really—though he wasn’t laughing. A royal backfire of his basic intention: he was supposed to seduce her.

Not the other way around.

At six that evening, they sat at the kitchen table, reading—or at least, Katie was reading. He knew it because he kept sneaking glances at her and losing his place in the thriller that should have been holding him spellbound—or so it said in the cover notes. As “taut” and “edge-of-your seat” as the book was supposed to be, he kept having to go back and read the same paragraph over and over again.

Katie, though…

She seemed to have no trouble at all with her concentration. She’d laid the heavy volume she’d chosen open on the table, rested her forearms on the tabletop and bent her brown head to the page. She’d barely budged from that position for over an hour. He knew. He’d timed her. Occasionally, she’d catch her soft bottom lip between her teeth, worry it lightly and let it go. Sometimes she smiled—just the faintest hint of a smile. As if what she read amused her.

Justin scowled every time she smiled like that. He wanted her to look up and smile at him, damn it. But she didn’t.

And he ought to be glad she didn’t look up. If she caught him scowling at her, he’d only lose more ground than he already had.

And what the hell was his problem here, anyway? He was getting way too invested in this thing with her. She had nothing to do with the main plan and if she never let him get near her again it wouldn’t matter in the least.

So why should he care if she smiled at him or not?

He decided he’d be better off not thinking too deeply on that one.

Luckily for him, he’d just looked down at his book again when she glanced up and announced, “You know, when we went through the cupboards in here yesterday, I noticed some cans way in the back.”

There was something in her tone—something easier, a little more friendly.

His pulse ratcheted up a notch and he quelled a satisfied smile. Better, he thought. Now, don’t blow it…

He shut the battered paperback without marking the page. Next time he picked it up, he’d have to start over, anyway. “Yeah,” he said, sounding a hell of a lot more offhand than he felt. He gestured toward the cabinets on the far wall. “In the bottom, on the left.” He started to rise.

“No. I’ll look.”

He sank back to his seat and she got up and went over there, leaving him debating whether to follow her. He decided against it. She was loosening up a little. Better let her get looser before he got too close.

She went to her knees, pulled open the cupboard and stuck her head in there. He looked at her backside. Great view. Even with the ugly baggy sweater and too-loose frayed corduroy pants.

“Yes,” she said, her voice muffled by the cabinet. “Here they are.” She pulled her head out and craned around to grin at him. “Lots of soup, but I see some canned fruit, too.”

He got up, after all, and went to stand over her—just to be helpful. She passed him the dusty cans and he set them on the counter above the cabinet.

“That’s it.” She shut the cabinet doors and stood to read the labels. “Vegetable beef, chicken noodle, cream of asparagus, pears, applesauce…” She gave him a pert look. “Justin. Not a single can of cream of mushroom soup. And no peaches.”

Absurdly pleased that she’d remembered the details of his childhood ordeal, he allowed himself to chuckle. “That’s a relief. I admit I was getting worried.”

“No need to.” She brushed his arm—the lightest breath of a touch. Beneath the green sleeve of his sweater, his skin burned as if she’d set a match to it.

Their eyes met. Zap. His heart raced faster and the air seemed to shimmer around them. Damned amazing, her effect on him.

Katie smiled wider, a nervous kind of smile. Yes. She was trying. She wasn’t cutting him out anymore. “So…soup with your sandwiches?”

He nodded. “Vegetable beef—unless that’s your favorite?”

She admitted, “I have this thing for cream of asparagus.”

“Well, then. Looks like we both get what we want.”

Katie went to get ready for bed at ten. Justin said he wanted to read a little longer and then he’d be in.

She knew it was only a pretense. In the hours they’d sat reading, he’d hardly made it through the first few chapters in that book of his. No. He was being thoughtful, giving her a chance to get ready and go to bed in private.

In the ladies’ room, she rinsed out her underwear and hung it over the stall door. She washed up and dressed for bed in a wrinkled old pair of red flannel pajamas—thanks, again, to the bags of clothing in the storage room.

She looked at herself in the mirror over the sink and scrunched up her nose at what she saw. Tomorrow, if they were still stuck here, she would have to wash her hair. Maybe she could find some bath towels in the rummage sale stuff—or if not, well, she’d work it out somehow. And really, Justin didn’t need to be sitting in the kitchen pretending to read, respecting her need to keep her distance from him after the kiss that had gone too far out in the shed.

“Stupid,” she muttered to her own reflection. “I’m being stupid about this and I need to stop.” There was nothing alluring or lust-inspiring about the sight of her in flannel pajamas. They buttoned up to here and bagged around her ankles. If Justin saw her getting into bed in them he would not be the least tempted to make mad, passionate love to her.

Truly. In pajamas like these, she was safe from the potential to have sex of any kind.

She peered closer at herself, craned her head forward so her nose met the glass. The question was, why did that depress her?

Oh, come on. She knew why.

Because there had not been nearly enough sex—of any kind—in her life.

“I, Katherine Adele Fenton,” she whispered, her breath fogging the glass, “am a cliché. I’m right out of The Music Man. I’m Marian the librarian—hiding in the stacks, waiting for some cocky con man to show up and let down my hair for me.”

Really, it had to stop. She owed it to librarians everywhere, who, she knew, were a much more outgoing, ready-for-anything bunch than most people gave them credit for.

She pulled back from the mirror and then used her flannel sleeve to wipe the steamed-up place her breath had left. She stood straight and proud. “I wanted him to kiss me and I’m glad he kissed me,” she announced to the sink and the toilet stall and her soggy underwear hanging from the stall door. “I’m not afraid of my own feelings. I’m an adult and I run my own life and I do it very well, thank you.” She liked Justin and he clearly liked her and she wasn’t running away from that. Not anymore.

Yes, there was always danger—when you really liked someone, when you put your heart on the line. Things that mattered inevitably involved a certain amount of risk.

Her shoulders back and her head high, Katie marched to the ladies’ room door and pulled it wide.

Justin looked up from his book when she entered the kitchen. The bewildered expression on his handsome face made her want to grab him and hug him and tell him it would be all right. She didn’t, of course. There were a few things that needed saying before they got around to any hugging.

“Katie? Everything okay?”

She marched over, yanked out the chair opposite him and dropped into it. “It was very sweet of you, to sit in here with that book you’re not really interested in and wait until I had time to put on these ugly old pajamas and get into bed. But it’s not as if we had to share a bathroom or anything.” She raised her arms and looked down at her baggy bedroom attire. “And as you can see, this outfit reveals absolutely nothing of my, er, feminine charms. We’re both perfectly safe from any, um, dangerous temptation, don’t you think?” She lifted her head and met his eyes.