Blame It On Texas (18 page)

“Gran—”

Dustin turned that cool gaze her way again. “So why don’t you?” He really was handsome, better looking than nine years ago.

“I—” she began, then stopped when she realized she didn’t have an answer. Her home was here, in Texas, but her job—her career—was in New York. But was she really happy working seventy-hour weeks and dealing with the insanity of an hour-long television show that ran five days a week?

“See?” Gert chuckled. “My granddaughter is speechless. That doesn’t happen very often.”

“I’m a television writer. I don’t know anything about running a ranch,” Kate said, leaving the table on the pretense of getting the coffeepot. She would refill cups that didn’t need refilling and try to change the subject back to painting barns. “We’ll get more paint tonight when we’re in town.”

“I’ve got plenty,” Dustin said. “Enough to get you started, anyway.”

“You know more than you think you know,” her grandmother insisted, not content with discussing paint. “You hire the right people and you start
learning from those who know more than you do, people you trust.” Gran smiled and handed Danny another cookie. “Besides, ranching’s in your blood. You come from five generations of Texans, Katie. How many people can say that?”

“What’s ‘in your blood’ mean?” the boy asked.

“It means you’re born liking things your daddy likes,” Gert replied. “And you’ve got a good daddy. Maybe you’ll grow up to be a rancher, too.”

Kate glanced toward Dustin, who was looking at her as if he wanted to get into a car and drive away someplace private and without deputy sheriffs with flashlights and attitudes. Well, there was a lot of land here on the Lazy K. If he wanted to be alone with her, all he had to do was open a car door and ask.

“I’ve got some cows to check on,” the man said, serious as he could be though his dark eyes held a gleam that could only be described as X-rated. “Do you want to take a ride with me?”

Bingo.

“Go on,” her grandmother said. “Danny and I will play a game of cards, won’t we, boy?”

“Sure.” He didn’t even check with his father first, Kate noticed. The little kid really liked having Gert for a grandmother.

“Okay,” Kate said, wondering if she should
sound so eager. It probably wasn’t ladylike. “Let me get a hat.”

“There’s an extra in the truck.” He stood and took his empty coffee cup to the sink. “We won’t be gone more than an hour or two.”

“I need to be back by five-thirty.”

“There’s no hurry,” Gert said. “I’ll call your mother and tell her we’ll meet later, say about seven. Go on.” She made a gesture as if shooing them out of the kitchen. “Go make my granddaughter into a rancher,” she told Dustin. “I could use some more help around here.”

“You got me,” Danny piped up. “I help.”

“Yes, you sure do, honey, and—” her voice was drowned out by the squeak of the back door opening. Dustin put his hand on Kate’s back and gently pushed her outside into the hot afternoon sun.

“I’d say we’re going to be gone quite a while,” the man declared.

“Look, Dustin, I—”

“Let’s make your grandmother happy,” he said. “And I wouldn’t mind some cheering up myself.”

“Is this about last night?”

“Forget about that,” the man said, and Kate turned around to look up at him. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Forget about last night? Forget the way the cowboy’s
hands felt on her skin and what heated relief it was to sink against him and start making love?

Not likely.

H
E TOLD HIMSELF
he wanted to talk about the ranch, wanted to know where he stood should Gert move to town or—God forbid—die and leave the ranch to Jake and Kate. Jake would keep him on as foreman; he couldn’t see the Johnsons moving off their own place and setting up housekeeping at the Lazy K. In a perfect world Kate would stay in New York and he would stay on as foreman, with free rein to improve the place, turn a profit and continue to run a few head of cattle himself.

In a perfect world, Kate would be naked and willing in his bed tonight, too.

She looked about twelve years old sitting beside him wearing a faded green baseball cap sporting the logo of Beauville Feed & Grain. He headed the truck north, with no particular destination in mind, except there was a pretty stand of cottonwoods by the creek up there. He decided there was only one way to deal with Kate McIntosh, and that was by making love to her. It was safe enough, he told himself. He was older and wiser. The boy who had promised “no strings” and gotten tangled up in love was now a grown man. A serious man with responsibilities and all sorts of experience. A man
more than capable of protecting his heart against visiting city women.

But the rest of him wanted her. After all, here was Kate—long legs, gold-streaked hair, hazel eyes that with one look could make him hard. Could make him long for privacy and a long dark night to have her all to himself.

A hot bright afternoon would be the next best thing.

“Where are we going?”

He glanced toward her. “Do you care?” He dared her to protest, dared her to object.

“I suppose not.” She stifled a yawn.

“Short night.”

“Yes.” She chuckled. “I think we’d better stay out of drive-ins from now on.”

“Do you think that would solve this?”

“I don’t think anything will, until I go back to New York.”

“Out of sight, out of mind,” he muttered, annoyed with the reminder of her other life. They rode in silence, as Dustin wondered if he’d made another mistake. He should have left her to paint the barn, should have spent his day far from any living creatures except for cattle.

But he wanted her. He hadn’t slept much last night, knowing she was within walking distance.

He’d vowed to get her out of his system and then get on with his life, whatever it was he ended
up doing. Fatherhood was going okay, even if he didn’t have much experience at it. The boy seemed content enough with three meals a day and his own bed to sleep in.

Dustin parked the truck in the meager amount of shade a couple of scraggly trees provided. The brook was a mud puddle, and a couple of heifers eyed them from the other side of the sloping bank.

“Now what?” She turned to face him and he thought he saw her smile as if to tease. He didn’t feel like smiling back.

“You’re angry,” she said. “Why?”

He could have told her then, he supposed. Explained he was angry that she’d believed some stupid rumors. Because she’d tossed him aside and all this time he’d thought it was because a wild Jones boy wasn’t good enough for the honor student in the fancy home. She hadn’t cared enough to ask him for the truth, hadn’t loved him enough to suspect that there could have been an explanation, hadn’t given him a chance to explain that he couldn’t think of making love to someone else when Kate was in his life and in the back seat of his car.

“Sweetheart,” he drawled. “Why would I be angry?” He was, though. It was old and went deep and he didn’t like himself for holding on to it. He could tell her the truth any time he chose, but he didn’t want to. Not yet. Let her think what she
wanted—she had for all these years, so what difference did it make now?

Dustin took a deep breath and looked out the window. The heifers looked back at him as if they too waited for the next move. He turned to face her. “You kiss like a woman who hasn’t been with anyone for a long time.”

“And you’re an expert on women, of course,” came the reply. She looked at him as if she was trying to solve a puzzle. He didn’t think she’d have much luck.

“Of course.”

“You act like a man who hasn’t been with a woman in a long time,” she answered.

“And you would recognize the signs?” He didn’t want to think of the other men she’d slept with. She was his—or she would be soon, if his instincts were right—and that was all that mattered.

“Let’s stop this,” Kate said. “I don’t want to fight with you anymore.”

“No,” he agreed, taking his hands from the steering wheel. His fingers were stiff. He turned off the ignition and looked at her again. She took off the cap and ran her fingers through her hair as casually as if they were in the middle of a crowd.

“We can leave anytime,” she said. “And we can stay away from each other for the rest of my vacation. It wouldn’t be so hard to do.”

“It would be impossible,” Dustin said. “Gert is doing her best to throw us together.”

“I can talk to her, get her to stop,” Kate said.

“We came here to finish what we started last night,” he reminded her, though the coward in him wanted her to fly back to New York this afternoon.

“Yes,” she said, those hazel eyes studying him. “Do you think making love will help?”

“Couldn’t hurt,” he answered, as if discussing sex with her was effortless. His insides were rearranging into knots.

“Oh, yes, it could,” came her soft reply. Dustin wondered if she was finally being honest with him.

He reached for her, took her left hand and brought it to his mouth. He kissed her warm palm briefly. “I won’t hurt you, Katie,” he promised.

She was silent a moment.

“No strings?” Her question echoed his cocky declaration of years before. Her fingers swept his jaw and tempted him to kiss her.

“No strings,” he agreed, though he knew as he spoke that he lied. He held her hand against his face for the length of a heartbeat and then, with his free hand, urged her closer. Her arms went to his shoulders, his hands cupped her face. The first kiss was light and sweet, a cautious brush of lips that tested his patience and teased his willpower.

He had neither. The next kiss, heated and intense, meant business. He wondered how he’d survived
so long without kissing her, without moving his hands to the back of her head to hold her mouth against his. Kate moved closer, kneeling to meet him as she had so many other times before so that their lips would be level, so that she could slant her mouth and part her lips and take his tongue inside her mouth to tangle and mate with his.

He’d give all the cattle in Texas if he could keep kissing Kate McIntosh. It had been too long, a lifetime too long, since the last time he’d held her. Dustin managed to slide his hands to her back, skim her waist and dip under her T-shirt. Her skin was hot, reminding him of some pretty damn steamy nights in the drive-in. Reminding him of what it was like to be inside of her.

“Kate,” he managed, lifting his mouth a scant inch from hers. His hands swept high under her shirt and touched the satiny fabric of her bra. “I don’t want to do this on the front seat of the truck.”

“No?” Her hands dropped to his chest and fumbled with the buttons of his denim work shirt.

“Not enough room,” he managed to explain.

“I should have brought the Lincoln.” She kissed the dimple in his chin. “Bigger back seat.”

“Next time,” he promised. The gods owed him this. Owed him time with the only woman he had ever fallen in love with. He wasn’t in love with her now, of course—he was too smart for self-torture—but
his physical reaction to her was the same as it had always been: pure unadulterated lust, the best of all feelings.

“Then where?”

“On the grass.”

“Uh-uh,” the lady said. “Rattlesnakes.”

“The truck bed?”

She slipped the last button through its hole and skimmed her hands along his bare chest. “Too hard.”

“I have a sleeping bag behind the seat.” His hands moved higher, to cup her breasts, satin material covering what he wanted most to touch. It took only seconds to release the clasp so that those breasts spilled into his hands. Another practiced move and her shirt, along with her bra, ended up tossed over the gearshift.

“Works for me.” Her bare breasts brushed his chest, her skin so hot and soft he thought he would explode right then and there. His hands rounded her shoulders, held her against him. “Still mad at me?”

“Yeah.” His mouth found her neck, her collarbone, the little pulse there beating rapidly beneath his lips.

“I’m not too thrilled with you either,” she murmured. Her hand found the waistband of his jeans and tugged on the snap.

“Wait,” he managed to say, though the word
didn’t come easy. He took a deep breath as he rested his forehead against hers. “If we don’t slow down we will be doing it in the truck.” It would be a bungled, hasty affair and not at all the stuff that fantasies were made of.

“Yes.”

He lifted his hands and released her, but her eyes were closed and she didn’t move right away. Dustin turned and fumbled behind the seat for the sleeping bag. “Come,” he told her, and she opened her eyes and looked at him.

“We’re crazy,” was all she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed, opening the door. “I know.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

O
F COURSE THIS WAS
crazy, Kate decided, as Dustin disappeared from view. She was naked from the waist up in Dustin’s truck. She was about to climb into the back of the truck and make love on a sleeping bag. It was the middle of the afternoon. A June afternoon in Texas. If the excitement didn’t kill them, the heat surely would.

She was twenty-seven, not eighteen. But her age didn’t have anything to do with falling in love. And falling in love she was, all over again. Or maybe she had never stopped. She’d been home for a handful of days and here she was, half-naked and aroused, waiting for Dustin to make a bed. Waiting for Dustin to make love to her.

Some things never changed.

“Kate?” He opened the truck door. His chest, browned and muscled, filled part of the opening. Dustin held out his hand and smiled at her. “I’m ready if you are.” His gaze dropped to her bare breasts and then back to her face. “You’re more beautiful than I remembered,” he said.

Her heart flipped over when he looked at her like that. Her heart remembered a lot of things, she realized, as she took his hand. She grabbed her shirt and climbed out of the truck and took a breath of thick, heavy air. “Are you sure no one will come by?”

“I’m the only one who works this place, remember?”

“But it’s not as if it was dark—”

He sat her on the open tailgate and stood in front of her. “No one is going to bother us, Katie, but if you want to leave, just say so.”