Cowboy at Midnight (6 page)

When the explosion came, it was mutual. She screamed and clung, and he damn sure embarrassed himself by doing the same.

Afterward, when she continued to clutch him, crying softly against his chest, he felt big and manly—protective. When their bodies cooled and he'd kissed away her tears, he couldn't bear the thought of letting her go. For a long time while she slept, he held her, staring at the ceiling.

Something cataclysmic had just happened in his life. Never before had he felt so utterly completed by a woman. Not even by Madison.

Not even close.

A great tenderness for the woman in his arms welled inside him. He knew without a trace of doubt that Sally was
the one.
Which was hellishly scary because he didn't even know her.

Damn it. He had sworn he would never trust his heart to a woman unworthy of it again. And here he was, in the grip of something way stronger than he should be with a virtual stranger. That was the trouble with life and with people. You thought you were in control. Wrong. You could be in deep water with the first awkward step in a relationship, and suddenly your life wasn't yours anymore.

In the morning he would start trying to win her trust. He had to find out why she'd cried and why that was a big deal. Even though he knew better than to try to rescue another person, what choice did he have?

He was in too deep. He couldn't fail with her as he had with Madison. He simply couldn't. Too much was at stake.

Snuggling closer into her sweet-smelling warmth, he knew he wanted to hold Sally like this every night for the rest of his life. He nuzzled the nape of her neck with his lips, and the mere softness of her skin stirred him. If he lost her, she'd take a real piece of him with her.

She was the one woman for him.

Yet somehow he knew—hell, he was the smart triplet, wasn't he?—that she spelled trouble.

 

When Amy awoke, naked, her long limbs tangled in Steve's, the icy bedroom was dark except for the gray edges of light around the tall, rectangular windows. Her breathing was slow and measured, relaxed. Her body was filled with indescribable warmth. For a long moment she lay there in a state of utter contentment. As her hands moved across the sheets, she realized she'd never known such a profound sense of tranquillity. Then her hand brushed a warm, muscular arm, and she realized where she was and whose arms wrapped her. For a long moment she let herself sink into the tranquil bliss of just being with him, and in those brief seconds before her brain took over, she felt like a flower blossoming in a paradise that was eternal spring.

Then logic kicked in. It was morning. She had a job, and she'd probably overslept. There were probably a dozen messages on her cell phone and more on her office voice mail. She had calls to make, caterers to meet, hoteliers to woo, budgets to fine tune, and her major client to suck up to.

Her next breath was quick and shallow.

“Steve. Oh, my God.”

Her temple pounded painfully. She had an awful headache. The soft tissues between her legs ached, too. He was big and he'd been an enthusiastic lover. She was sore down there, which meant she'd think of him all day.

Even now she wanted to forget about her cell phone messages. She wanted to stroke his hair, to kiss his throat and his mouth, to kiss him awake and then make love to him for hours.

Frowning, she forced herself to focus on her early meeting with her favorite caterer. Last thing yesterday her number-one client had told her he never wanted to use the caterer again. Amy still didn't know how she was going to explain. Also, sometime today she had to call her mother. But first she had to get out of here without waking Steve up. He made her feel things and want things. That terrified her.

Still, for another endless moment she lingered in his warm embrace and felt sad that she had to leave him. He was sweet. He'd been incredible in bed, too. So incredible she wished her life were different…she wished she were different.

She wished she deserved him. She wished she was the kind of person who didn't disappoint those she loved most.

Careful not to awaken him, she shifted a little.

Oh my, she
was
sore. Gingerly, inch by painful inch, she scooted her tender body away from his.

She grabbed her boots on the way to the living room where she found her panties, skirt and blouse. Quickly
she dressed. She'd only managed to pull one boot on, when she heard something crash in the bedroom.

Another lamp? Was he coming after her like a big bear on the rampage the way he had last night?

“Sally!” His voice was a roar.

With a smothered little cry, Amy grabbed her other boot and purse and ran. On her way out the door, the boot caught on the doorknob and went flying back into his living room.

The bedroom door slammed open and he yelled for somebody named Sally again.

Sally? Who was Sally, Amy wondered as she quickened her step.

Then she remembered that she'd told him her name was Sally.

That was good. At least he would never be able to find her or tempt her again.

S
teve woke up with a queasy feeling in his stomach and knew something was vitally wrong. No longer did he feel the silken coils of his lover's golden hair caressing his shoulder. No longer did he inhale the sweetness of violets with every breath. No longer did her soft, sweet arms wrap him.

He sprang into a sitting position and instantly regretted it.

She was gone.

Gray rectangles of light spun sickeningly, causing his empty stomach to roil. Last night he hadn't eaten, preferring beer to the pizza he'd ordered. Now his eyelids burned and his brain felt foggy. Still, when he heard his front door close, his heart leaped. He hurled himself out
of bed. Dragging a sheet, he stumbled into the living room, shouting her name.

His front door was open. As he ran through his living room, he tripped over something and fell forward into the dimly lit hall. He was picking up a black boot with little embroidered red roses when Mr. Beezee, the man who had the room across from his, opened his door and knelt to get his paper. Beezee's gray hair was neatly combed. Even his blue-and-white striped robe looked pressed and starched.

“Good morning,” Steve muttered grumpily, forgetting he was unshaven and holding an ill-fitting sheet wrapped around his waist.

His neighbor's jaw gaped open and he stared at Steve as if he was the devil incarnate. Seizing his newspaper, Beezee banged his door shut.

When Steve shut his own door, his pulse hammered more painfully than ever. Hell. The last thing he needed before his meeting with the governor was trouble with Beezee again or a call from the hotel management evicting him for indecent exposure.

The governor! Breakfast!

Steve glanced at his watch and then at the high-heeled black boot. The boot was hand stitched and fashioned of the finest leather. It had to be custom-made and expensive. Two thousand dollars easy.

Cinderella—or rather Sally Jones—shouldn't be that hard to track down. Not for a modern-day prince who prided himself on his smarts.

If you're so damned smart, you'd have picked a brunette.

A few phone calls to pricey boot makers, and he'd have Miss Jones's address and phone number.

But first—the governor.

If Steve hurried, he'd be ten minutes late. Not an option. Tom Meyers didn't like to wait. He was the busy and commanding sort who kept other people waiting.

On his way to the bathroom, Steve tossed the boot onto his couch.

Later.

 

When Amy stepped out of her shower, she still felt tender from all the lovemaking. As she was rustling through hangers of clothes in her closet to find something to wear, Amy's landlord's dog started barking.

Amy smiled. What was it this time—a bug or a leaf? Whatever it was, Cheryl's wussy teacup poodle, Sparky, sounded every bit as ferocious as a bulldog, which was what Cheryl had meant to buy when they'd gone to the breeder. But her spoiled daughter, Kate, had fallen for Sparky, who was a bit of a nuisance, to say the least.

Cheryl owned an immense limestone mansion in one of the plushest neighborhoods in central Austin. She was also, as luck would have it, one of Austin's richest and most eligible bachelorettes.

Amy's mother, who was a social climber par excellence, had run into Cheryl at an art gathering right after her divorce and had arranged for Amy to rent the apartment over Cheryl's garage, which had been built as maid's quarters.

Amy could just hear her bossy, persuasive mother using her courtroom tactics on Cheryl.

“You and your daughter all alone in that big house? You don't need a live-in. You need more security. Now, if my daughter, who's looking for a place, were to rent your little apartment…”

It hadn't hurt that Cheryl and Amy used the same gym and were in the same spin class. Nor that they actually liked each other.

It was so important to Amy's mother that Amy live in such a neighborhood on a fifteen-million-dollar property she could brag about to her law partners that, to shut her up, Amy had finally moved out of an apartment she had loved.

“How can you prefer your apartment to this?” her mother had demanded when she'd driven her by Cheryl's for the tenth time. “Nobody at your apartment complex is
anybody.
”

“I don't care. I don't hang out with them, anyway.”

“My point exactly! Cheryl was married to that computer zillionaire. She's exactly the kind of connection you need to get your life on track.”

“But—”

“You've been moping ever since college. Be nice to her and maybe she'll introduce you to someone, dear.”

“‘Someone' being a man?”

Her mother had dropped by the apartment with a hanging ivy right after Amy had finally rented it and moved in. Amy had been painting the apartment walls the color of golden honey.

“You should have gone with white,” her mother had said.

“I like this color.”

Her mother, who was black-haired, tall and reed thin, had pursed her lips. Not that she'd overruled Amy's opinion. Instead she'd moved about the apartment, her intense, burning black eyes, taking in everything. Finally she'd paused by a window and after a lengthy study of Cheryl's mansion and the pool, she'd given Amy
the
look.

“You'll meet our kind of people here.”

“Cheryl's way older than me, Mother.”

Her mother's brows had arched wickedly. “She doesn't look it.”

“Ouch.”

Like a lot of really rich women, Cheryl did whatever it took to stay young looking. Her present lover was even younger than Amy.

“She certainly married well, didn't she?” her mother said in her sweetie-sweet tone as she continued to look out at the pool, studying the imported Italian lawn furniture, the fountains, the red canopies and the lush landscaping.

“He divorced her.”

“Which means she has his money and doesn't have to put up with him.”

“That's marrying well?”

“You missed a spot, dear.”

Amy raised her paintbrush and swiped the place her mother was pointing at.

“The next best thing to marrying well is divorcing well,” her mother said. “She's got money, a cute lover, a fabulous house and she looks great. Take notes, dear.”

Amy loved Cheryl now and her blue-haired daughter, Kate, but not because she saw them as connections.
They were just a mother and daughter with way too much money, who were struggling with all sorts of issues. For one thing, Kate's rich father wanted nothing to do with either one of them. To get his attention Kate constantly rebelled. She chose friends “normal” kids considered weird, wore rags and dyed her hair every color of the rainbow. Right now it was a startling neon blue. Not that her daddy had even noticed.

Amy knew all about rebellion, about fathers never noticing. Except, her rebellion had been caused by her mother's tyranny, not her father's benign neglect. She'd wanted her parents' approval more than anything, so her rebellion had been a secret thing, like a deadly drug that had destroyed her and her parents. Not just them. Lexie, too.

She'd been a happy kid before adolescence. Her mother hadn't known what to do with small kids, so she'd been raised by her father and kindly nannies. It was only when Amy had turned thirteen that her super-compulsive mother had suddenly taken a much more active role, picking her friends with the attention of a dictator choosing his generals, because the choices Amy made even at that early age could affect her future.

When Amy had argued, her mother had dominated and crushed Amy's independent spirit by grounding her and making her a virtual prisoner. Slowly a deep anger to be something other than the successful, well-dressed, popular robot her mother approved of had begun to burn inside Amy. When she'd gone to her father at sixteen and pleaded for the freedom to date a certain cowboy,
he'd said her mother was in charge. Her mother had even wanted her to stop riding.

Amy had felt if she didn't do something, her mother would destroy everything she was. So she'd started playing the dutiful daughter, coming home at the right hours, appearing to run with her mother's choices of friends, making good grades, but all the while she'd been sneaking out. And so had Lexie.

Amy went to her mirror and pulled her long blond hair back into a ponytail. This morning there was no trace of that rebellious young girl. Her face was lightly made up. She looked very professional in cream-colored slacks and a matching long-sleeved silk blouse that she'd buttoned all the way to her throat. She wore no jewelry, and her beige pumps were low and sensible.

Not that beige was her color, but then, that was why she wore it. Unlike her mother, who always, even when she was in the courtroom, dressed with dramatic flair, Amy didn't want to look flashy or stand out in any way.

Never again!

Except for last night.

Unbidden came a vision of herself in Rasa's low-cut black spandex. She shivered at the jolt of heat she felt even as she remembered Steve mouthing the little
L
on her left breast outside the Hyatt. He'd thought she was a bad girl for sure.

She felt hot. In spite of her best intentions, a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Then she lifted her chin up and told herself that the new, reformed Amy would not think about him—ever again.

On her way to the door, the reformed Amy grabbed her briefcase and purse and her cup of coffee, but just as she touched the doorknob, a timid hand tapped lightly on the other side of her door.

Had Steve followed her somehow? Her heart thumped eagerly until she raised her shade and saw that it was her father. She laughed because in his black spandex shorts, fluorescent-red riding shirt, mirrored sunglasses and skull-shaped black bicycle helmet, he looked like an alien from another planet.

She threw the door open. “Daddy!”

Mike Sinclair handed her a small silver-wrapped box with a white bow on it.

“This is a treat, Daddy. You never come by without Mother.”

He shrugged sheepishly. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

She pulled at the white bow on her present. “This is for me?” she whispered. “From you?”

“I hoped I'd catch you before you left for work. Usually you're gone when I come by.”

“You've come by before?”

His quick nod both thrilled and surprised her.

“I had no idea.”

“I've been worrying about you more and more.”

“You have?”

He nodded.

“I'm fine, Daddy.”

“You always say that. Because you're like me. Because you want to believe it. You think if you just keep on keeping on, things will work out.”

What did that mean, she wondered. Was he unhappy?

“Sometimes you have to do something…to change….” He stopped. “But who am I to give advice?”

Suddenly she wished he wasn't wearing those mirrored sunglasses so she could read his eyes. He shifted as if he suddenly felt uncomfortable. “I'm probably keeping you—”

“No.”

Her father was an exercise addict. He biked or jogged for miles every morning before he went into his office to pull teeth, build bridges and preach dental hygiene to the hordes in need of conversion to daily flossing. Exercise time was the only time he had for himself. Luckily Mother approved of exercise.

He turned. “I've got ten more miles to—”

“Don't you want to see me open your present?” Like a greedy child she tore the paper off, gasping when she discovered an exquisite miniature silver horse wrapped in tissue.

She fingered the fine workmanship of the gleaming figurine. “Why, it's beautiful, Daddy! How sweet of you to remember.”

He pulled his mirrored sunglasses off, studying her face too intently. Usually he was her absentminded father. Today his kindly blue eyes burned with fierce protective pride, just as they had the day he'd finally taught her to parallel park.

“You used to give me a horse on every birthday when I was younger.”

“Until your mother said the last thing you needed was more horses.”

“I…I could never have enough little horses. Not if they were gifts you picked out.”

“When you were a little girl, it was so easy to love you.” He hesitated. “I've missed you.”

“I know.” The gift and his saying those words made her long for that innocent time before she'd become a teenager, when she'd been so sure of her parents' love and pride in her, especially his. But life marches on. She was an adult now. And she'd disappointed them. There was no going back.

“It's just that I'm so busy,” she said.

“You're just like your mother in that way.”

His words stung.

“I…I'd rather be like you.”

“Your mother's a whirlwind, a real mover and a shaker.”

“You're as easygoing as she is uptight.”

“I used to be. She keeps me moving,” he continued. “That's for sure. She puts a weekly calendar on the fridge. If I don't look at it every morning, I can get into lots of trouble. But enough about your mother.”

Amy sighed in relief.

“I'd better let you get to work.”

“Thanks for coming by, Daddy.”

He backed down the steps. She glanced at the little horse one last time before rewrapping it in tissue and setting the box on her kitchen windowsill. By the time she'd closed her door and dashed down the stairs, he was a lone figure biking down the trail into the woods of Pease Park.

Sometime today she had to call Mother. As always, Amy dreaded her mother's critical questions and demands.

Amy stared out at the sparkling turquoise pool. What was Steve doing right this moment? If only she had the right to call him and find out.

What was his life like? Who was he really? Her chest tightened. What did he care about? What were his quirks? His passions? She swallowed against a sudden lump in her throat and was surprised how much it hurt that she would never know.