Tallchief: The Hunter (9 page)

The hunger was there, veiled by black lashes and riding that firm mouth. Instead of the fear she’d expected, the need to—Jillian turned away from him, shaking with the thought that she was too susceptible to Adam, her defenses down in the morning and her sexual urges—if she had them—on the rise. The hunger in her body was nonsense, of course. She had accepted long ago that she was a frigid woman, terrified of men. She crossed her arms, digging her fingers into her flesh; she wanted to fling herself upon him and kiss and take and see—

With a rough sound, Adam spun her around. His stormy hot look equaled the emotions inside her as Jillian shivered and ached and scowled up at him.

“Afraid?” he asked too softly, the deep sound seeming to wrap around her, tugging at her sensually.

She lifted her chin, glaring at him. “Not a bit.”

His fingers caught her hair, firmly but gently, holding
her as he leaned close to study her. “Just do it. Then we’ll both know.”

Her hands were on his chest now, the heavy beat racing beneath her touch. She tried for calm and failed. Then passion sprang from her keeping and she reached upward even as his arms circled her waist, tugging her to him.

His mouth fused to hers, and this time the gentleness wasn’t there, only the hunger and the heat seeking hers.

Jillian’s senses filled with him, tossed away her fear and gave as he sought, feeding her own needs. His breath warmed her face, the soap and clean air scents blending with that of Adam.
Adam.

The woman in her knew his body shook from desire, and welcomed the thought that she had called it forth. She understood that hardening of his body, but not the melting of her own, that soft, dewy ache, low and intimate. His hand found her bottom, caressed it, pressing her closer. She realized that her hips had flowed against him, a natural, sexual rhythm. His breathing had changed, rough now, uneven, and her fear came slipping back until it devoured her.

She pushed away and Adam looked down to where her pajama top had come unbuttoned, the space between her breasts pale in the shadows. His fingertip strolled down that space before she gathered the edges together with shaking hands. “So we know now, don’t we?” he asked huskily.

And she knew that he would want more, and so would she. The calling was too primitive, her first taste. Her heart still beat hard and fast within her chest, her breasts had peaked, nudging the flannel material in her response to him.

Then as though nothing had happened between them, Adam moved to her computer, which had been left on all night. He scanned the design she planned for Nancy, and picked up the as yet unmarketed toy, studying it. “Nice.”

How could he dismiss her, just like that? Just after he’d held her tight against him and uttered those lovely, deep, hungry sounds—
Jillian shook her head. Only Adam had the ability to tear her temper from its cool hiding place.
She sat and tried to regain her calm, and found sturdy anger instead. “In contrast to you, the man commissioning that work is understanding and sweet.”

Adam held very still, a big man taking too much space in a small, feminine setting. “Have you met him?”

“No. But he’s a very gentle man. He sends me e-mail. He’s very thoughtful and creative. I adore him. That mixed bouquet of flowers is from him, a very nice welcoming present to his ‘Sam family.’ I’m hoping to meet him. I think we could be very good friends. He’s generous, too. Once he found that J.T. was in preschool, he sent Sam the Truck toys to his class. I think he’s lonely, and I like him. He’s very, very sensitive and has a good sense of humor, too,” she repeated, realizing that she sounded defensive.

“I see. I’d better get to work then,” Adam said, tossing Nancy back to the desk. “That color is a bit off, isn’t it? The toy has a deeper shade of rose and the eyes need more feeling. Put a speck or two just there and there, and the eyelashes on the model are more distinct. That piece of information is too low for impact,” he offered, pointing to the screen.

“You think so?” she asked, waylaid by Adam’s input to her design. She came to stand beside him, studying her work. She leaned close, concentrating on the design. “I suppose I could try. It’s easily undone. I’ve only just started on this, you know. I’ve had to read his storybooks to get the feel he wanted, family and warmth, of caring and trying to do the best you can. Sam is about values and love and friendship.”

“Well, I’m not an artist, so my opinion isn’t worth much.” He glanced down to where her breast had brushed his arm, and his gaze met hers, the hunger in it taking away her breath. “Aye, I’d say so. I’d better get to work,” he said unevenly.

“So should I.” She wondered why she couldn’t move, why Adam’s gaze held her there as if the past and the future tangled between them, each unable to let go.

Then he smoothed her hair and his eyes followed the motion, his expression a mixture of tenderness and regret. He tugged a strand and asked, “Would you have had me do anything less, Jillian? I had my pride and obligations. We all have choices and now you have yours.”

Her bare feet locked to the floor and she couldn’t move, wondering at the flaming kiss they’d shared as it throbbed through her veins, still heating her. She wrapped her arms around her shivering body and rocked slightly. She tried to push away that kiss, the kiss of a man and a woman that had nothing to do with the past or revenge.

Yet it lingered and taunted and hungered as Adam looked down at her. The pulse in his throat beat heavily, those steel-gray eyes tracing her blush and brushing her lips. He tensed and leaned toward her, and then with a rough sound he opened the door. “I think the painting can wait.”

“So do I. Please leave.” She was afraid of herself now, because with Adam, she lacked that classy, cool control, her protection.

Why did her heart leap at the sight of him? Why had she kissed him? And without reserve, for it was no cool peck they’d shared, but a stormy tempest that smacked of passion and more—and she’d wanted him in her bed, staked out beneath her….

A

Adam lifted his face to the icy wind that sailed around the rugged cliffs and over the pines. He could still smell Jillian’s feminine scent and still taste her hunger on his lips from that morning two weeks ago. For just that moment, soft and warm in his arms, she’d given him an insight more dangerous than her anger. Her bottom had been curved and firm in the palm of his hand. She’d stood on tiptoe and leaned against him, the shape of her breasts too near not to hold—but he hadn’t, at least he’d had that much control.

Fever for her had hardened his body, and now he brooded on a cold mountain about the past and a riveting need that left him with an uncomfortable ache. Climbing the rough trail didn’t free him of the hunger and he’d known that painting the house with her in it was asking for
trouble.
He’d thought he could resist her, and after just that one hungry taste, he knew that being near Jillian would cause his body to hum and his heart to race. That soft, sweet, simmering look she sent him had almost…Little had kept him from carrying her to her bed.

After years of guarding his relationships, Adam had to admit that she’d torn away his protective layers; he’d wanted to make love to her, to seal or to end a need that had threaded through his life, destroying him for other women.

Adam shook his head and thought how foolish he was, unable to wipe the taste of her away, and in desperation, tramping up a muddy, overgrown mountain trail. He was forty years old, and just as desperate—maybe more so—for Jillian as he had been at eighteen.

“That does little for my confidence,” he said to himself as he slung the Tallchief plaid over his shoulder and settled down to brood upon a big black rock spotted with age and worn by rain. At various times in his life, he’d felt just as old and worn, especially during Sarah’s last illness.

He certainly didn’t feel as if he were old when Jillian was near. All body and heart parts accelerated immediately. He propped a boot upon a fallen log and thought of how narrow and delicate Jillian’s feet had felt in his hands.

It was better than thinking of how she felt in his arms, warm from bed and drowsy from sleep, and clad in oversize men’s pajamas that made her look even more feminine.

She thought little of him, but seemed to adore Sam.

It was a stupid thing to do, trying to hold on to her before life and their past erupted, separating them forever.

Just down there in Amen Flats, she was working on a new Sam ad campaign. Adam smiled briefly. Jillian was good and would be building a clientele. She suited the community better than he.

Adam lifted his face to the wind again, waiting for the call of new places to beckon him. Yet none came.

Nothing came to him in the wind and the cold but the
need to hold Jillian close and to feel her heart beat against his.

Adam rubbed his jaw and settled his fingers to stroke the wool around his shoulders. Jillian had said she experienced pleasure in spinning and weaving, the timeless craft women shared. Her home had the look of a loving woman making her nest, tending the serenity of it.

“I work from my home,” she had written Sam. “It’s comfortable and small and warm in the worst storms we have here in Wyoming. I don’t have children, but if I did, I would certainly read them your stories. I’ve just seen a whole family of men and women down on the floor, playing with your toys. It was heartwarming.”

“Let me make this clear,” Adam had written as Sam. He had written the same to other contractors and employees, but with Jillian the message was more personal. “If you are in need of anything to make you more comfortable, please don’t hesitate to ask. We are a family here at Sam the Truck. If you would like an office in which to do your work, that can be provided. If you would like to relocate closer to our factory, that’s possible. We want you to be happy. I want you to feel that you can write me at any time and discuss anything at all.”

“Thank you so much,” she had returned. “But I love this little country community and there is a family here that I adore. There is also a big reason why I cannot leave, but I am capable of handling the problem.”

“Think of us as your family,” he had written amid other information about Sam the Truck company benefits. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Jillian had replied with a few questions and written, “No. I’ve just met someone who I knew a long time ago. He’s upset me, but I can deal with him.”

Sam would not have written the reply to that—but Adam’s curiosity had driven him on, even as he damned himself. “A romantic interest? I’ve only had one experi
ence, but I know how it can tear at the heart. If you need someone to talk with, I’m here.”

“Thank you so much. But this man only reminds me of other times, nothing more. He’ll be on his way soon. He’s a drifter and brooding, and always out of work. I don’t know that he does work, really, just odd jobs. I pity his poor relatives who are basically supporting him. I’ll like being a part of the Sam family. I have lost my own and am so lonely at times. Families are what everyone should have. I’ve seen wonderful love and care here in Amen Flats, more than in my own family. I love being with them, but after this problem is settled and my work completed, I will be moving. This will not interfere with our relationship.”

Her “problem” meant one Adam Tallchief…a drifter…always out of work…his poor relatives who are basically supporting him.
Adam hiked his jacket collar up against the wind’s cold nip and lowered his face slightly into the warm Tallchief plaid that Elspeth had woven for him. He kept little with him, traveling light, but the plaid seemed a part of him now.

Jillian might never discover that he was Sam. In her messages, she was not only professional, but still soft and sweet. And she loved the Tallchief family.

What did he know about families? He’d only had Sarah—Sarah, who he couldn’t protect at eighteen and who still touched his life, even in the wind hurling around the trees and the rocks of Tallchief Mountain. He held her close inside him, keeping his grief from others.

Maybe Jillian was right—that J.T. would miss Adam when he left. Liam had changed his life to give his son a heritage. Yet he posed a nagging question to Adam—why Sarah hadn’t known their parents’ destination, or the reason for it—other than a short vacation.

Sarah had always portrayed his parents as loving. Why then would a mother and father leave a three-year-old boy recovering from a cold, without a contact number?

Adam wondered if more information rested in Aunt Sarah’s safe-deposit box in Iota. Whatever remained of their parents, he and Liam should know.

The kinship that should have been between them as children was there as men—some siblings did not have that, and Adam wanted the best for his brother and family. Rocking a four-year-old boy while he dozed and playing trucks with J.T. on the floor had been incredible—the warmth of Liam and Michelle’s home a treasure Adam would always keep.

He’d traveled his entire adult life, living out of duffel bags. There was history here, a family blending together, loving each other. He wasn’t a part of that, and yet blood told him that he was. What could he give them, other than a few toys, baby-sitting and help with fix-up jobs?

Adam leaned back on the rock. The birds filling the bright blue sky used mountain drafts to soar without moving their wings. For whatever reason, Sarah had wanted Jillian to give him those feathers. Whatever was brewing between Jillian and himself wasn’t calm; he’d gotten a taste of how the unexpected need for her could erupt and devour him.

Jillian hadn’t had a family, not like the Tallchiefs. Maybe she deserved a taste of warmth and love.

Adam inhaled sharply; she certainly could have used the protection years ago. And Sarah, too, a woman raising a son alone, troubled by poor health and turmoil.
Sarah….

He noted the cutting journey of a hawk across the sky. Liam deserved to know about Sarah, her strength and unwavering love. Perhaps now was time to open his aunt’s safe-deposit box. Her things should be divided with Liam. Whatever rested in that box was also his to know and share.

“So that’s why.” Liam tossed Sarah’s letter onto the dining room table with the rest of her things, and those precious to Jamie and Tina Tallchief. “In this letter, she admits to calling Pauline Tallchief—the mother of Duncan
and the rest—to waylay her, to keep her from coming to claim you. There was no record of it in the letters that Elspeth has from our parents and from her mother, because Sarah didn’t want written records.”

Liam’s fury shook the room. “Sarah’s mother had a heart attack and passed away just after our parents left. By the time news of our parents’ wreck arrived,
she knew
she wasn’t letting you go.
She deliberately lied.
She said that your cold had turned worse, and you had just died of pneumonia. At the time, Pauline had no idea that you were alive. That’s why she didn’t try to contact you. She didn’t double check that woman’s lie.”

Liam’s bitterness echoed in the room after he stopped talking, his eyes bright with anger. “And you think she loved you. What kind of a woman would do a thing like that? Say a boy was dead in order to keep him for herself?”

“The kind of woman who had just lost her mother, her sister and a man she loved. A kind of woman who had no one else left in her life.”

“It wasn’t right. She shouldn’t have done it.”

Adam didn’t answer; he knew how painful the letter would be to Liam because he’d experienced that same outrage and shock. But he didn’t regret showing his brother the startling, condemning letter; Liam had a right to know the truth and to give it to his son.

The drive to Iota from Amen Flats took a solid day and a half, across a crooked mountain road. Years ago, his parents had planned “a two-day hop,” moving slower with an infant. Down a craggy mountain bank that ended in a rushing stream, they’d died; Liam had been salvaged from the car wreck by a childless couple and passed off as their own. The distance was only a few hundred miles, but it bridged thirty-six years. The round trip had taken Adam four days—he’d spent a day weighing whether to tell Liam about Sarah. Truth wasn’t always easy, but Liam deserved nothing less.

Adam glanced at J.T. He was asleep on the carpet, amid
his Sam the Truck toys, and oblivious to the fact that the adults in Liam’s home were facing a stormy past more fierce than the April night’s raging outside.

In the safe-deposit box had rested the court order assigning Sarah as four-year-old Adam’s legal guardian. That decision had taken an entire year of wrangling.

Now, over the old brooches and papers and coins rested the letter from Sarah to Adam. Words of love mixed with harsh truths.

Adam picked up the letter that had waited for over twenty-five years, when Sarah first began to fail badly. He reread her admission.

Michelle came to rest her hand on Liam’s shoulder and his immediately sought hers. “We’ve lost a lifetime together,” Liam said, his expression grim. “I’ve come to hate letters from the past. You never know what they’ll open up.”

“Shush, Liam,” Michelle admonished softly. “It was a letter from your foster mother that brought you here. She loved you enough to hide the truth in a letter, in her Bible, and it waited for you…. Sarah loved you, Adam. If she’d have known Liam, she would have loved him, too. Try not to think too harshly of Sarah,” Michelle murmured softly.

“At first, holding that letter for the first time, I did. And part of me is still angry. But she loved me, and I was her son, a part of her sister she couldn’t bear parting with. It’s a good thing to be wanted as a child. Some aren’t. It will take some time to settle my feelings, but I can’t hate her. She never faltered, never failed me, not once. I’ve come to know that there are few people like her in the world.”

Liam’s hard expression said there was little forgiveness in his heart. He’d lived a harsh life with the man who had stolen him from their parents’ wrecked car. He met Adam’s eyes, the same shade of brooding gray as his own. “Look at us. Grown men who have missed a lifetime together. Why didn’t you open the box sooner, Adam?”