Stevie Lee (11 page)

“Cripes,” he muttered under his breath. If love felt wonderful and awful at the same time, if love was sleepless nights and waking fantasies, then this was it. No wonder he’d felt turned inside out and upside down every time he looked at her. No wonder he could do little else but look at her constantly. And when she wasn’t with him, all he did was think about her.

“
Por Dios
.” He needed to think, to find an angle on this new and amazing situation. Grabbing a couple of beers, he headed for the front porch. He always thought better with nothing but the sky above him. His good friend Mother Nature had given him most of his answers to life’s deeper questions. He hoped she wouldn’t let him down tonight.

Stevie tossed and turned in her bed in a vain attempt to find comfort. She refluffed her pillows with a vengeance, but all they did was fluff right back at her, refusing to become the sanctuary she needed for her aching head. Finally, beaten by her own inner turmoil, she flopped back on the sheets and stared at the ceiling.

Subdued light from the cloud-covered moon tracked the curved pine boards and became lost in the high arch, but no more lost than she was in her loneliness. Halsey Morgan was alive. The sight and scent and feel of him resonated in her every pulse. They suffused her veins and filled her mind with his presence. Yet her arms remained empty.

Weakly, she pulled a pillow across her chest and hugged it tight. What would she do now? Tiptoe around him until he left? For leave he would, she’d never doubted or underestimated his yen for wandering. The faraway places of the world pulled him like a magnet. They pulled her, too, but for whatever reasons, she had feet of clay compared to his nomadic ways. He got up and left when the next port called; she got up and went to work every day. Day after day after day.

She sighed and rolled over onto her stomach, propping her chin up with a pillow. The headboard of her bed proved as boring as the ceiling. She would fire him, she thought, then immediately discarded the idea. He was much too valuable to her bottom line for her to throw him away. Hiring him had been her only smart move since she’d met him. And could she really keep her sanity, knowing he was in town and not where she could see him every day?

“No,” she whispered forlornly, rolling to her back and taking the pillow with her.

Somewhere off in the night a coyote yapped its freedom at the moon. The clear, wild call broke the stillness of the sky, echoing through her room and catching at her dreams. She tilted her head up off the pillow and held herself quiet, waiting for the answering call. When it came, it was much closer and much more familiar. Before the cry died out, she was on her feet. Tiva had enough wildness in her to run after her feral brothers, but she didn’t have the sense to find her way home. Stevie had lost enough of her life in the last few weeks; she wasn’t about to lose her dog too.

Clutching her flannel nightgown up off the floor, Stevie took the stairs two at a time and raced across the living room. Halfway to the door, a third voice joined the others and stopped her dead in her tracks. The last song rose in a long howl, deeper and rougher and infinitely more emotional than those that had gone before. The sound curled around her heart and sent a tremor down her spine. She stood in the darkness, listening as the three animals called to each other in a repeating chorus of “Oy, oy, oyuuuuu.” One coyote, one dog—and one man.

On quiet feet, Stevie moved toward the window. She touched the cold pane of glass with her fingertips, listening to the sonorous refrains fill the air, her eyes finding him without err. Sitting on the edge of his porch, knees splayed, his head thrown back, Hal howled up at the stars. One of his arms rested across the husky’s back. He held a bottle of beer in his other hand, wetting his throat after each encore. Tiva went next, picking up the song as Hal finished, adding her soprano to his tenor. Then they both waited, heads cocked, and soon the coyote’s voice cut through the night, echoing off the mountains and hills.

The wildest call brought a wide grin to his face. He reached up to scratch the husky behind the ear, and then lowered his nose to hers. By Tiva’s reaction, Stevie knew he was talking to her, conferring with her in his gravelly voice, and she felt the oddest pang of jealousy. As if coming to a mutual agreement with his canine buddy, Hal laughed and tilted his head back once more. Moonlight rippled through his hair and shone along the column of his throat. Next to his golden, masculine beauty, Tiva’s coat glistened with a silvery darkness.

The two of them made quite a team, howling up at the sky and playing backup to the coyote, quite a team indeed. They were having fun just being together and being a part of the universe. Their naturalness, their easy camaraderie, brought her own solitude into a sharp and painful focus. Stevie took her hand off the window and brushed at her cheek. She wouldn’t cry for him. She’d work with him. She’d laugh with him. She’d watch him leave at summer’s end—and she’d love him until she forgot how. But she wouldn’t let him hurt her—she wouldn’t cry for him.

Seven

If this was love, Hal didn’t know what all the shouting was about. Hell, he’d had a better time dragging himself and a bitchy camel across the Sahara. Not even Delilah had given him as much trouble as Stevie Lee Brown. All his life he’d grappled with Mother Nature’s dangers and extremes, the searing heat of the deserts, the endless emptiness of the ocean, the uninhabitable ramparts of the highest mountains, and none of them compared with the whirlwind of emotions Stevie had sucked him into. He didn’t know which end was up anymore.

“... and make sure you clean out the beer cooler tonight after closing, or before, if you find the time.”

An unlikely possibility, he thought wryly, looking down at the black cowboy hat pulled low on her forehead and the wealth of hair spilling over her shoulders. He’d never seen her hair unbound before, and it was prettier and silkier than he’d imagined, strands of gold and brown woven together all the way to her waist, skimming the tight curve of her jeans, begging him to gather it up in his hands.

Don’t do it, Hal
, he warned himself. Another rejection was the last thing he needed, especially in front of the dozen or so regular barflies who were watching Stevie order him around.

She crossed beer cooler off her legal pad without making a dent in the long list of projects she had lined up for him. “Tomorrow see if you can fix the legs on those other two chairs in the office. We’re going to need all the seating we can get for the Buffalo Barbecue. I’ll get Doug to work on the broken table.”

With effort, Hal kept his hands and a smart remark to himself. He’d seen Doug’s handiwork. Anything her brother fixed Hal usually had to fix again. For an engineering major, the kid was remarkably klutzy when it came to putting things back together.

She crossed off chairs and scribbled his initials next to the item. “On Thursday night we’ll all put in an extra hour and make sure the liquor is in order. We’re not going to have time to hunt around for stuff once the weekend starts. The Fourth of July will make Memorial Day look like a cakewalk.”

Three weeks before, Hal would have cringed at the thought of horrendous crowds descending on the Trail again. But not even Stevie could keep up with him now. Or was that the other way around? Since the night she’d told him of her love, she’d put new meaning into the word “avoid” and driven him crazy in the bargain. Too late he’d realized he’d made a big mistake when he’d conned her into giving him a job. By working for her, he’d clipped his own wings. If she wanted to keep her distance, all she had to do was chalk his name up on the schedule and head the other way. She was getting damn good at both. The locals, he knew, were having a heyday watching him come up scoreless time after time in this battle of wills with Stevie Lee. Fortunately for them, they had enough sense to keep their ribald chuckles and comments to themselves. Hal had fielded them for a while, but he wasn’t in the mood anymore.

“Okay, I think that’s it for now.” She ran her pencil down the list, checking one more time. “Any questions?”

Questions? He had a million of them. He started with the one at the top of his own list, hating his curiosity and still not able to keep his mouth shut. “Where are you going?”

“To The Emporium, to have a drink with Jake,” she answered, for the fifth night in a row. “The number is posted by the phone.”

“I know where the damn number is.” Hours of steaming around the Trail working himself into a knot had given him plenty of time to memorize the four numbers necessary to dial a local connection. He was getting damn tired of this game—her running off with the crowds, leaving him alone to clean up and imagine all sorts of goings-on down at The Emporium.

“Good. If you run into trouble, just give a call. I can be back in under five minutes.”

“I’m already in trouble,” he said under his breath.

At that she glanced up, but typically not at him. “The guy at the end of the bar looks ready for another beer”—turning her head, she checked out the rest of the room—”and everybody else looks fine. I think you can handle it,” she said coolly, galling him to the core.

“Dammit, Stevie,” he hissed through clenched teeth, quickly coming to the point where he didn’t care how many people saw him shot down. “You know what I mean.”

Oh, she knew what he meant all right. Dark circles under her eyes attested to the same restless yearnings that were putting the ragged edge to his voice. In the last month she’d dropped ten pounds she could ill afford to lose, causing her mother to cluck alarmingly every time they met.

“No, I don’t,” she lied, gathering her legal pad to her chest and turning to leave.

She got no farther than the two steps to the hall before she felt his hand on her arm, propelling her forward into the office. Catcalls from the bar followed them.

“Go for it, Hal.”

“Hold him off, Stevie.”

“If she turns you down again, I’m still here, honey,” a smoky, feminine voice crooned, jarring Stevie out of her icy calm. She knew without looking who had spoken, the well-endowed, petite and pretty blonde who hadn’t missed a night at the Trail since Hal had started working.

Common sense told her not to care, but it was jealousy that put the acid on her tongue. “Better be careful,
honey
. You wouldn’t want to offend your biggest tipper.”

Much to her surprise, Hal laughed, still pushing her forward through the hallway. The deep, throaty sound rolled over her like hot honey, reminding her of all the things she was forcing herself to forget. “Now we’re getting somewhere, darlin’.”

“No, we’re not,” she said, stumbling to keep a step ahead of him. Showing any emotion was a mistake, and showing jealousy was the biggest mistake of all. “I’m going to The Emporium, and you’re staying—”

He swept her into the office, whirling her around in his arms and stealing her breath. “Right here with you, until we work this out,” he informed her with a dangerous glint in his eyes, pressing her back against the wall, trapping her with his body, and pushing her pulse into overdrive. “I’ll fight with you if you want to fight. I’ll make love with you if you want to make love. But I’m through with letting you pretend I’m not here. So what’s it going to be, Stevie Lee?” he demanded. “Fighting . . . or loving?”

The pressure of his thigh against hers, the sultry roughness of his voice, left no doubts about his preference, and left her scrambling for a shred of composure. One more kiss, and she’d never survive with her heart intact.

“Fighting,” she whispered, looking at the floor, her desk, off into space, anyplace except into those truth-seeking indigo eyes.

“Wrong answer, sweetheart. I’ll give you another shot at it.” In one smooth move he slipped her hat back off her head, letting it fall to the floor, and ran his hand down the side of her face, brushing her hair away with his fingers.

“Hal—” The warmth of his touch raced across her skin, the gentleness melted away another layer of her protective ice. Lowering her guard, she looked up—her second mistake.

Fathomless blue eyes caressed her face, the lines of strain at the corners softened with each moment his gaze lingered on her mouth. Light from the single lamp on the desk shone through the golden arcs of hair framing his face and sweeping around his collar. Slowly he lifted his gaze and captured a fleeting moment of desire she hadn’t been able to control. A heavy sigh swelled his chest.

“Stevie,” he drew her name out on a husky breath. “I don’t know why you’re running so fast and hard . . . but you’ll never run fast enough . . . or hard enough to get away from me.”

“Leave it alone, Hal,” she pleaded softly, even as his warmth and nearness drew her closer to the edge of desire.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Just walk away.” She shifted her gaze slightly, not wanting him to see her doubts. She had to get out of there before her armor completely fell apart, before she took what he offered, a night of love, maybe a summer. But not the forever she needed. “I have to go. Jake’s waiting,” she whispered, the lies coming harder.

His other hand slid up her arm and cupped her chin, forcing her to look at him. The dark wings of his eyebrows furrowed above his slate-blue eyes. A pulse of tension beat along the hard angle of his jaw. “If I believed you, even for a moment, I’d let you go.” He brushed his thumb across her lower lip, tantalizing the soft flesh, and his voice lowered to a rough timbre. “If I believed you, Stevie . . . if I believed you . . .” the words trailed off as he tilted his head lower and claimed her mouth with his own.

His body came up slowly and solidly against hers, overwhelming her senses with the intensity of his need, the power of his arms wrapping around her, the pure eroticism of his kiss. And once again she sank into the sweet valley where reason had no hold. He slipped his leg between hers and pulled her up his thigh until their hips met, drawing her into a higher level of instantaneous pleasure, a stronger level of need, his mouth never stopping the wet, deep searching of hers.

Stevie gasped at the explosion of sensation he incited with the gentle rocking of her body on his. Shock waves of desire coursed over her in a pulsing rhythm, one after the other, leaving her dazed and hungry for more. Her hands grasped at his shoulders, her mouth opened wider under his, and the rest of her melted into the surrounding strength of his hard body.