Rainsinger (8 page)

It was not a rough kiss, but rather the hesitant exploration of two people unused to such things. He moved his mouth over hers, gauging the fit of her plump lips to the harder contours of his own, tasting lightly. In an instant, he felt her giving in return, tasting him in cautious sips. He inclined his head and sighed when her lips parted ever so slightly and her tongue hesitantly reached out to meet his, the new, wet heat a dizzying sensation that sent spirals of heightened desire through his thighs.

It was not a deep kiss, but it was long. So long. They moved and moved again, tongues lightly fencing, teasing, tasting. Daniel had forgotten kissing like this, forgotten how narcotically delicious it was. He felt adrift on the simple pleasure, for once not thinking or planning or worrying, only kissing. He liked the soft, surprised sounds that came from her throat, the way her hand fluttered over his chest, then lit and stayed, open palm over his heart.

It was Winona who ended it, suddenly pulling away without finesse or grace, leaving Daniel a little dazed as she slipped from his grasp.

“I—um—” She frowned, lifted a hand toward the other room. “I have to take a shower.”

She bolted. Daniel didn’t move until he heard the shower come on.

Bemused, he sat down in the chair she had vacated, his body still tingling from the long, sensual kiss. He lifted a hand to the place on his chest where her hand had rested and absently rubbed it, tasting his mouth for the lingering flavor of her. As he listened to the shower he thought of her in there, bare and—

The drugging cloud of arousal suddenly shattered. Daniel swore as the implications of his actions flooded the brain that had gone conveniently dead.

He was the ultimate fool. How could he have let that happen? How could he have instigated it? He cursed and flipped off the buttons on the computer, stomped into the kitchen and turned off the light. For a moment, he stood in the middle of the living room, staring at the place where they’d stood, kissing for such a long time. He looked at the picture of Luke and Jessie, deliberately making himself remember.

He cursed again. Would he never learn? All these months at the ranch, he’d worked on acceptance of the fact that he’d likely spend his life as a bachelor.

Now he felt that acceptance crumbling. And not only crumbling under his attraction to Winona, but to her fatherless little sister, who plucked the cursed father string in his heart all too strongly. The situation so echoed the one he’d unwittingly put himself in with Jessie that he ought to have his head examined.

He couldn’t bear that kind of loss again. Henceforth, he had to erect his walls and keep them firmly in place, no matter how much he wanted to kiss Winona Snow again. Kiss her and touch her and...

Ah, hell. And damn. And hell and damn. With a growl, Daniel went to his room and closed the door decisively. This was one night he would not work late. He would stay in his room until he could pull himself together. Firmly and completely.

He was happy with the life he’d built here, among the peach trees that were his legacy, and in the house he’d worked so hard to restore. And if he needed companionship, there were always bulletin boards for chat, and Luke and Jessie a short drive away.

It was more than enough. A lot more than many people had. He’d make it work.

W
inona sat on a sturdy upper branch of the mother tree at the center of the orchard, studying the horizon. Not a wisp of cloud, only the vast, unbroken blue sky. It had not rained at all since their arrival almost three weeks earlier.

Below the tree, Joleen collected tiny wildflowers from the hardy desert plants and sang a sad folk song about a woman who’d chosen to leave her husband and child for a new love, and was drowned with him at sea. Cotton from the cottonwood trees surrounding the house floated on unseen eddies of wind and collected in a snow like drift on her hat, but Joleen showed no signs of her mother’s allergy.

It was oddly peaceful to sit in the old tree, surveying the landscape the way she had as a child, Winona thought lazily. Of course, the retreat to the orchard was also an avoidance technique. Since their kiss four days before, Winona had kept out of Daniel’s way as much as possible.

By the ease with which she managed it, she assumed he was avoiding her, as well. They didn’t play basketball the night following their first match, and Winona suspected he was pretty sore from the way he limped around the house. She considered ribbing him about it, but humor seemed an intimate thing.

She didn’t want to be intimate with him.

Comfortably ensconced in the cradling arms of the tree, Winona finally admitted to herself that her defensive attitude was a smoke screen of pure lies. She would not have minded a good number of intimacies with Daniel Lynch. In fact, she’d thought of little else for days.

And nights. The nights were worse than the days. Her dreaming mind insisted upon regaling her with wondrous examples of what those delicious intimacies might be. Almost all of them involved him letting down that mane of shiny, long hair.

She made a face. Pleasurable as those imaginings might be, there were a good many reasons to avoid any further involvement with Daniel Lynch. They both wanted the ranch—fiercely. Winona didn’t want to think he might use sex appeal to get what he wanted, but he wouldn’t be the first man to seduce a woman to attain his ends.

She narrowed her eyes. She didn’t
think
he was the kind of person who’d resort to such methods, but what did she really know of him? It was always best to proceed with caution.

On the branch near her cheek, there were tiny, hard balls at the base of the flowers. Embryonic peaches. Fingering one, she sighed.

It surprised her that Daniel seemed attracted to her at all. A man like that must have his choice of women. Why would he want Winona? It might just be proximity—she was, after all, the only woman around.

But he also might be so desperate to keep his hold on the land that he would do whatever was necessary to get it.

Winona wished she had more experience with men. Then she might be able to sort genuine attraction from a ploy. Unfortunately, Winona was practically a virgin.

Daniel
seemed
attracted to her. There had been a look in his eye the other night that she didn’t know how to fake—but millions of women before her had been taken in by clever actors.

No.

The voice of protest came from her gut. There was one thing going against her seduction scenario—his loneliness. He had such wild, lost loneliness in him that it made her ache. It showed in little ways—the sudden distance that crept into his eyes sometimes, the longing way he looked after the pair of them when they left the house, the restless way he joined them in the kitchen in the evenings, as if he could not help it.

Hearing her thoughts, she frowned again. She didn’t like feeling insecure, and it wasn’t really part of her nature. Early in life, she’d discovered a talent within herself to be comfortable anywhere, in any culture or situation. It was a matter of letting the situation, rather than any preconceived notions, guide her actions, and it had served her well in a wide array of places she’d traveled.

The only time the ability broke down was in the company of men. No, that wasn’t exactly true. In the company of men who showed no interest in her sexually, she could be friendly and cheerful and work right next to them. It was only when a man showed signs of attraction that Winona became tongue-tied and gawky.

She’d been very protected as a young girl. Her minister father was strict, and she had grown up expecting she would not have sex until she was married. And except for one time, with a Peace Corps doctor she had imagined she was going to marry, she had not. The experience had been more than a little disappointing. Winona had chosen not to repeat it.

The trouble was, she was edging toward thirty, with no husband in sight, and sometimes there were certain signals from her body that she found more and more difficult to ignore. Like any healthy woman, she wanted to have sex. It was as bald and simple as that.

She was stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place, she thought with a wicked grin. Men were not terribly attracted to her as a rule. She was too tall, too big, too strong. Men wanted dainty, slim, fragile women. Winona somehow threatened their maleness.

Coupled with that sad fact was another. Her mother used to say Winona’s standards were too high.

Winona shifted on the branch, lazily swinging a foot in the open air, and knew her mother had been right. She didn’t like a whole lot of men enough to let them that close. She wouldn’t tolerate bullies, or men who had to run with the boys every night. She liked intelligence. Humor.

And, she had to admit it—sex appeal. No mild-mannered man need apply.

In her whole life, no man had ever come as close to meeting her standards as Daniel Lynch. He was intelligent—maybe even a genius. He wasn’t arrogant or bullying. There was room in his heart for young girls with big problems.

And he had sex appeal. Good grief. If he was any sexier, women would faint in the streets.

He was a man who ought to be in the movies. Winona could just see it—a bare-chested Daniel on the big screen, allowing hints of that poignant loneliness to show in his liquid eyes, letting that devastating grin break the fierceness of his face.

He’d be a box-office smash.

Below, in the orchard, Joleen started to sing a church song that had been their father’s favorite—“Rock of Ages.” Winona smiled softly, wondering if Joleen realized what tune she sang. Here in the safety of the isolated grove, the girl had taken off the eternally present baseball cap. Her badly chopped hair sprang in unfortunate spikes all over her head.

That was another problem. How could Winona even begin to entertain notions of intimacies with Daniel with Joleen right here, observing everything and obviously smitten? It would be a rather uncomfortable situation, to say the least.

“When are you going to let me take you to town to get that mop properly cut?” Winona called, leaning against the trunk of the tree.

Joleen glanced up. “Never, never, never, my sweet,” she sang, rearranging the flowers in her hands. “It has to grow out by itself.”

“You have no idea how hot the sun gets here. Another month, and you’ll hate having to wear a hat all the time.”

“So, I’ll wear a bandanna, instead.”

“What about the glasses?” Winona plucked a leaf and held it to the light, looking at the beautiful structure of veins within. “You can let me order a better-looking pair now, can’t you?”

Joleen shook her head.

Winona climbed out of the tree and squatted next to her sister. “How do you like being here?” she asked.

“Why?” Joleen looked up, alarmed. “Do we have to leave?”

“No, not at all. I was just wondering.”

“I love it here,” Joleen said after a minute. She rubbed the fine, pale hair on her head. “It makes me feel okay sometimes.”

Winona inclined her head, aching for her sister. “Will you at least take off the glasses in the orchard? No one can see you here.”

Joleen shook her head wordlessly and lifted the almost colorless eyes to the horizon, as if in communication with something only she could see.

Their parents, probably. Winona sat down and plucked one of the daisies for herself, examining the way the petals grew from the middle. “They wouldn’t want you to punish yourself like this, sweetheart.”

Without a word, Joleen picked up her cap and put it on, then walked away, carrying the flowers with her.

“Don’t forget lunch!” Winona called after her.

Joleen waved.

With a sigh, Winona fell backward and looked up at the sky through the tracery of branches and leaves above. The deep, bright blue was an astonishing color, almost indescribable, the color of the sky on picture postcards. It was, she knew, because the air was dry. Too dry.

It was bad for the orchard, but good for Joleen, who had a fear of storms since the accident, which had taken place on a rainy highway. Aloud, Winona appealed to those beings who ruled the bright sky. “Can’t you find some way to let me help her?”

“Maybe.”

Winona made a startled noise and looked to her right, where Daniel stood, smiling over answering her appeal to the heavens. If only he knew just how well he answered her prayers, Winona thought with the now-familiar tingle rushing over her skin at the sight of him.

He wore a plain, blue T-shirt and jeans, his ever-present tennis shoes on his feet. Nothing uncommon in his dress, that was sure.

It was the way he made it all look so uncommon that thrilled her. The simple cotton shirt clung to square, broad shoulders and followed the lean lines of his torso to narrow hips. His dark skin gleamed in the bright day, as smooth as polished stones. But it was his face that made her heart catch, those bold cheekbones and blade of a nose, the mouth so sinfully rich, turned down ever so slightly at the corners. Realizing that she was staring at his lips, suspended in a wave of heated memory, she yanked her gaze away.

She took a breath.
Way out of her league.

As if her devouring gaze went unnoticed, he lifted his chin toward the retreating figure of Joleen.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“I made the mistake of offering to buy her some new glasses,” she said. Feeling oddly vulnerable lying on the grass, Winona sat up, brushing loose grass from her hair. “She thinks she has to pay for the death of our parents. I don’t know how to help her get past it.”

He squatted and drew a long sheath of grass to chew on. “I don’t understand the glasses or the hat.”

Winona sighed. “That’s what they were fighting about when they had the accident—Joleen is nearsighted and needs glasses, but she was furious that they wouldn’t get her contacts.” With a rueful smile, she added, “Believe it or not, she’s an extraordinarily pretty girl under all that.”

“I believe it.” He stared at the small figure at the edge of the orchard. “And the hat?”

“Her hair is a mess. Right after the funeral, she locked herself in the bathroom and chopped it off, like a grieving ritual. She saw it in a movie, I think.”