The Bridal Path: Ashley (2 page)

“Do you have a key?” she asked. The old lock was very distinctive. If this man had been in touch with her father, he would have a recognizable key.

“Actually, I thought I’d pick the lock to stay in practice,” he snapped.

There was something in his tone that suggested he might very well be experienced enough to do that. Ashley shivered at the thought. It was increasingly possible that she was alone in the wilderness at the mercy of a clever common criminal. Her sense of impending danger escalated another notch.

Unfortunately, it was too late to shut up and run for the hills. She was going to have to brazen it out.

“Just show me the damn key,” she ordered. “Toss it in.”

With a heavy sigh, he did exactly that. It scooted across the braided rug and landed at her feet. Good aim, she thought grudgingly. Apparently plastering herself against the wall hadn’t thrown him off at all. He knew exactly where she was.

She picked the key up as gingerly as if it was a dead scorpion. With its intricately designed head and obvious weight, there was no mistaking the fact it would fit the cabin’s lock. She had one just like it in her purse.

“Where did you get it?” she asked suspiciously.

“From the owner,” he responded, his exasperation clearly mounting. “Look, we’re talking in circles.”

“Humor me. Tell me where he is.”

“He was in Tucson when I saw him,” he said with no hesitation at all. “He’s probably in Phoenix now. Or maybe Carefree. How the heck should I know? He’s not sitting still for more than a few days at a time. He’s a restless man.”

Ashley was beginning to get the idea that she’d made a very bad mistake in judgment. Her father was indeed in Arizona, wandering from town to town in search of the perfect retirement village, or so he claimed.
Restless
was an understatement. Trent Wilde had an itch to kick up his heels. No one in the family had dared ask him to define exactly what he meant by that.

Whatever it meant, the family had bets he would be back in Wyoming by fall so he could meddle in their lives at will. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he had all three of his daughters married off. So far only Sara had accommodated him, which left Dani and Ashley at the mercy of his devious schemes. For all she knew, this man was part of one of those schemes.

“Okay,” she said finally. “Slide your gun in first, then come in very slowly.”

A very impressive and very lethal-looking gun scooted to her feet, to precisely the same spot where the key had landed. She was still staring at it in horror when she realized that its owner had entered right along with it, though he’d maintained his distance.

Her gaze cut through the shadows and locked on his well-worn black leather cowboy boots, then traveled slowly up very long, muscular legs clad in black denim. A black T-shirt was tucked into the narrow waistband and fit snugly across a broad chest. A black leather jacket was draped over solid shoulders.

All that unrelenting black–to say nothing of that spine-tinglingly masculine body–triggered an alarm. Once upon a time, there had been a man…well, a boy, really, who’d dressed in that same defiant, daring way. When she finally reached his face, which had a fresh cut just above the left eye, her mouth gaped in recognition and astonishment. Her already jittery nerves set off an adrenaline rush unlike anything she’d felt in years.

“Dillon?” She mouthed the name in little more than a stunned whisper.

His hard mouth quirked into something vaguely resembling a smile. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said in a voice as rough and dangerous as bad whiskey and twice as intoxicating. “It’s been a long time.”

A long time? An eternity was more like it. Ashley could remember every single detail of the last time she had set eyes on Dillon Ford. He’d been running from the law, hightailing it out of town on his beat-up Harley. Or so everyone in town had surmised at the time. They had never cut Dillon much slack, and he’d never been very big on explanations, even when they might have cleared his name.

Judging from the harsh, unrelenting expression on his face right now, he might still be in more trouble than any other ten men combined.

For some reason, though, Ashley was less concerned about that than she was about the fact that even now, after all these years, Dillon Ford still had the ability to make her pulse and her wits scramble.

Despite the unfortunate timing of his arrival, despite this inauspicious beginning, she was ridiculously glad to see him. And that scared her worse than finding a rattler in her bed might have.

Chapter Two

D
illon couldn’t help wondering if his blood was pumping so fast because he’d subconsciously guessed that the woman in the cabin was Ashley Wilde. The actual thought had struck him at the precise moment that lamp had shattered a window and grazed his head. It was the kind of outrageous act of which she’d always been capable.

That was what had drawn him to her back in high school. She’d been beautiful, so bright it was scary, and yet there had been an impetuous, daring side to her that had matched his own wild streak. In those days about the only thing the rebellious Dillon Ford hadn’t dared was to ask the daughter of Trent Wilde on a date. It was one of his very few regrets.

Moments ago when he had walked through the cabin’s front door and seen her, the past ten years had fallen away. A once familiar burst of pure lust had slammed through him, proving once and for all that surging adolescent hormones hadn’t been the sole cause of his reaction to her years before.

With his body on high alert, he’d had to work very hard to preserve even a facade of the hard-edged anger that had been all too real only seconds before, with that gash in his head bleeding profusely.

What he really wanted to do was stand silently before her and absorb everything about her, from the clean, crisp scent of her perfume to the porcelain sheen of her skin. He wanted to take his time and examine her from head to toe, from the artfully streaked blond hair and the unusual topaz eyes to those endlessly long, denim-encased legs that were the stuff of very steamy dreams. How had he survived all these years without so much as a glimpse of her?

Of course, that wasn’t counting the times he’d stood at a newsstand enthralled by her image on the cover of some glossy fashion magazine. Only the most rigid willpower had prevented him from gathering up all the copies and taking them home with him. Plastering his bedroom walls with her pictures would have seriously interfered with his active love life, a sacrifice he wasn’t willing to make for an elusive dream.

His body tightened just looking at her, though with that famed blond hair swept into a bedraggled ponytail and tangled wildly, her heart-shaped face devoid of makeup and her eyes red-rimmed from crying, she wasn’t exactly at her best.

Time, it seemed, hadn’t dimmed the forbidden attraction he’d felt for her back in the days when he’d been Riverton High’s resident juvenile delinquent and she’d been its perennial homecoming queen.

If anything, the lust clamoring through him was more urgent and demanding than ever. The prospect of being locked away with her for a week or two made his jaded heart skip several beats. He’d come to Trent Wilde’s cabin to get his bearings. Instead, it appeared he was going to be thrown more off-kilter than ever.

As for Ashley, she was clearly as sassy and arrogant as ever. She had the regal demeanor of a queen…or a woman used to being admired. According to the tabloids, which he’d greedily devoured while waiting in grocery checkout lines, tycoons and royalty had been equally infatuated with her. That alone was enough to make Dillon want to claim her. He wanted her all mussed up and submissive in his bed, the way he’d always believed she was meant to be. Just the thought had him swallowing hard.

Not that her fame didn’t have its dark side. Though he doubted she was aware of it, he knew all about the obsessed fan who’d threatened her for a few months the year before. She’d hired a Los Angeles security company for protection. His company. It had taken an act of supreme restraint to keep from claiming the assignment for himself. He’d known he could never be as objective as the case required.

But, oh, how he had longed to see her again. Finding her here was better than any fantasy he could have contrived.

Before he knew what he intended, before he could consider the consequences, he’d taken a step closer. Acting on pure impulse, he reached out and hauled her into his arms.

Surprise worked in his favor. His mouth slanted across hers just the way he’d always envisioned kissing her, softly, gently, but with so much restrained passion he ached with it.

She fit perfectly, snugly against him. Her mouth molded to his with surprising willingness. The spring night might be rainy and bone-deep cold, but the heat that erupted inside him could have burned the whole damn state to the ground.

Years of pent-up hunger went into that kiss. Years of practice on poor substitutes gave it a finesse that had both of them breathing hard in a heartbeat. He was left with a sense of wonder that an act so familiar could seem so fresh, so rare, so damned dangerous.

When he released her at last, there was a dazed expression on her face and pure fire in her eyes. She might have kissed him eagerly, but now her open hand connected with his cheek with a force that snapped his head back.

Dillon grinned approvingly. He’d expected as much from the quick-tempered Ashley he recalled. She never had wanted to admit just how badly she wanted him. That kiss, however, had spoken volumes.

“Still feisty, I see,” he commented.

Fire blazed in her eyes. “And you are every bit as rude and obnoxious and low-class as you always were.”

His smile widened. “Still a bit of a snob, too.”

Color flamed in her cheeks. “I’m surprised you’re not in jail by now,” she countered with feeling.

“You and everyone else in town,” he said dryly. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m not disappointed,” she claimed. “Just surprised. Now would you mind telling me what the hell you’re doing with a key to my father’s cabin?”

He shook his head with exaggerated dismay. “I thought we covered that. You used to be much quicker. Straight A’s, as I recall.”

Hands on hips, she glared at him. “I mean it, Dillon. I want to know how you got that key. You’ve got five seconds or I call the sheriff.”

Though the answer was simple enough, she was having so much fun thinking he was here illegally, he couldn’t help taunting her.

He glanced deliberately around the cabin for some sign of that phone she was threatening to use. He knew perfectly well, as she did, that there wasn’t one. Trent had craved the isolation the cabin afforded him. He’d refused to have one installed, which was one reason his daughters almost never came here, he’d claimed. Not a one of them could stay off the phone for more than a minute at a time, he’d said with a father’s typical bemusement.

Apparently he’d been wrong about one daughter, Dillon thought. Which meant a distinct change in his own plans for the next week or two. He, too, had wanted to get away from the demands of the real world for a while. He’d wanted to be cut off completely from a life that had lately become too complicated and far too structured to suit him. He couldn’t seem to dredge up much disappointment at the change in plans.

“And how would you be planning to reach the sheriff?” he inquired.

“Ever heard of cell phones?”

“Of course,” he said readily. “Every self-respecting thief has one.”

“I’m sure you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

Dillon had been reformed for a long time now. He’d been a respected businessman for most of that time. It should have infuriated him to have everything he’d worked so hard to achieve stripped away with one disparaging remark from a woman who didn’t know him at all anymore.

Instead, though, he suddenly felt like the town’s bad boy all over again, and he loved it. The danger and excitement he’d been craving rushed through him. Respectability apparently hadn’t satisfied him as much as he thought it had.

Damn, but it was good to be home. It was even better being locked away in the wilderness with the woman who’d made his blood run hot since the very first day he’d laid eyes on her. This time, he vowed, he was going to discover what it was like to make her his own.

* * *

Then and now, Dillon Ford was the most exasperating, most troublesome man Ashley could ever recall having the misfortune of knowing. He was incapable of giving a straight answer and more inclined to lie than tell the truth.

In high school, his heated, knowing looks had set off forbidden yearnings deep inside her. Not once, though, had he ever acted on the dangerous promise that was there in his eyes every time his gaze caught hers. The gulf between them had been as wide and deep as any ocean on the planet.

She had dated the football captains and the class presidents, flirted outrageously with baseball heroes and the sons of the town’s wealthiest citizens. Hardly a tongue-tied boy in her high school class hadn’t stumbled over his own feet in her presence. All of them…except Dillon Ford. It had been exasperating. Naturally that made him the one she wanted, the one she found most intriguing.

Older than she was by three years–an eternity at that age–Dillon had never been shy. He had dated the girls whose reputations were in tatters by the time they turned fifteen. He’d flaunted his sexuality in a way that left girls breathless in his presence and parents terrified. Dani, who was in his class, had talked about him in whispers, which had promptly piqued Ashley’s curiosity.

Ashley had always known that if she and Dillon had so much as spoken in the school corridor, tongues would have wagged for a month. But, oh, how she had been tempted to do more than just speak to him! She’d flirted more than once with the idea of messing up her spit-and-polish, good-girl image once and for all. Dillon could have accomplished that with no more than a wink, but he’d never cooperated, quashing her rebellion before it could ever really flower. Apparently, he enjoyed taunting her, but not enough to waste time on a Goody Two-shoes, when far more experienced girls were at his beck and call.