She welcomed the warmth, but most of all, her body traitorously craved his masculine smell. The leather and musky citrus she’d grown to recognize as being uniquely his. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Mind telling me what you’re doing out here?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not entirely...”
She sighed. “To spell it out, I’m mad at you for making a fool out of me in front of damn near the whole town. You never should’ve asked me to kiss you. And I never should’ve agreed. No matter how compelling your excuse may have been, I should’ve been strong enough to deny you. Most of all, I’m mad at myself for ever being goaded into leaving the house in the first pla—”
Before she could finish her rant, he cupped her face between his big, rough hands, silencing her with another kiss. This one slower and sweeter, transforming the cruel February night into a balmy summer in her heart. Only Cooper had no business being anywhere near her heart, which was why she pushed him away. “Stop.”
“Sorry. Must’ve been the beer.”
Just when she thought she couldn’t have sunk lower, he’d had to go and blame kissing her not once, but twice, on being drunk?
Millie raised her hand to slap his damned handsome face, but he caught her wrist on the way up, leaned in to kiss her again then tossed her the truck keys. “Once you’ve sobered up, mind giving Stacie a lift back to the house? I’ll find my own ride.”
Chapter Thirteen
“He did what?” Peg whispered so as not to wake the boys, who’d made a fort in J.J.’s room. Half of it hung out in the hall, so they couldn’t shut J.J.’s door. Cheetah seemed fascinated by it, and sat under the ragged sheet canopy. “Start over from the beginning.”
She and Millie sat cross-legged on Millie’s bed, holding the bag of Oreos between them. Millie told her about the dance contest, and how Cooper wanted her to serve as a dating decoy for Stacie, but left out the part about him kissing her again behind the bar. “You can’t imagine how awkward it was when I had to tell Stacie he’d taken off—God only knows where. Plus, I had his coat. For all I know, he could be frozen in a ditch.”
Peg snorted. “He’s a Navy SEAL. Pretty sure he’d find a way to survive in Antarctica with tooth floss and a napkin.”
“Still...” Millie sniffed. “It was a horrible night. Lynette’s mad at me for leaving. Zane’s mad at me because I got Lynette upset—the whole thing was a start-to-finish disaster.”
“Okay, wait—go back to the part about the kiss.” She took another cookie from the bag. “Out of morbid curiosity, how was it?”
Millie’s eyes widened in panic. She couldn’t very well say it’d been as sweet as downing a hundred bags of Oreos, so she forced a deep breath, crossed her fingers and lied. “The kiss? Um, it was okay.”
“Just okay, huh? Show me your hands.”
The heat in Millie’s traitorous cheeks rose twenty degrees. “Why?”
“Because I have a feeling that behind your back, you’re crossing your fingers. It’s okay if you liked kissing him. I know you loved Jim, but sweetie, it’s been a long time since he passed. He wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life pining.”
“True, but he also would never want me to forge a new life with his brother of all people—not that such an option is even on the table.”
“I can see that....” Peg fussed with the cookie bag’s Ziploc. “But this morning, when he gave Lee and J.J. their gifts, I saw the way you looked at him—the way J.J. looked at him. You feel something. J.J. clearly thinks Cooper hung the moon.”
Millie interjected with, “LeeAnn can’t stand him.”
Peg laughed. “Lee can’t stand anyone. Goes with the age.”
“True.” Millie couldn’t help but laugh, too. But then her throat knotted. She had enjoyed Cooper’s kiss. Too much. She could have kissed him all night and deep into the next morning, but at what cost? She was already financially broken. When Cooper left for Virginia, was she emotionally stable enough to suffer a second broken heart, as well? Of course, she didn’t officially feel anything romantic toward him now, but as much as she’d already grown to crave his company, she had a sneaking suspicion that he’d be all too easy to love.
*
C
OOPER
JOGGED
THE
first ten miles to the house then cut across the pasture once he’d reached family land. Anyone outside of his SEAL team would probably think him nuts, but the run felt good. He was used to driving his body hard, and he’d run greater distances, in far colder temps while soaking wet. As he was dressed in a T-shirt, chunky sweater, jeans and deck shoes, this trek was a cakewalk. Hell, he didn’t even have his heavy-ass backpack to worry about.
Unfortunately, by the time he reached the barn—he wasn’t yet ready to go in the house and face his sister or Millie—he realized that while he may not have physical worries, he did have a fair amount of explaining to do.
Truth was, all night long he’d secretly hoped to kiss Millie. He didn’t give a shit that it’d been in front of practically everyone he’d ever known outside of the Navy. Maybe deep down he’d wanted it that way? Just to get everything out on the table in a one-stop, efficient manner. But had that been fair to her?
Moreover, what was the point in declaring his intentions toward her when he wouldn’t even be sticking around?
He groaned.
Sassy released a soft snort.
“How’s it going, girl?” When he rubbed the horse’s nose, she leaned into his touch. “What I wouldn’t give if all women were as uncomplicated as you.”
The calf and chickens were down for the night, content beneath their respective heat lamps.
Now that the mess left by the fallen tree had been cleared, that meant he was good to go on assembling the new chicken coop. He hadn’t mentioned it to Millie, but he’d remembered her saying how she’d once seen a fancy chicken coop and thought it was cool, so that was exactly what he planned to give her.
She deserved so much.
Only a fraction of which he was equipped to deliver.
Had the night gone the way she’d deserved, that kiss wouldn’t have been an excuse for ditching Stacie, but so much more. As much as it pained him to admit, what she’d really deserved was a surprise kiss from a real man—maybe even that guy Buck, whom she’d danced with. She needed the sort of man who’d care for not only the ranch, but her and the kids, as well. He’d be a worthy son for Clint.
In short, Millie deserved a man who was everything Cooper wasn’t.
*
“W
HAT
’
RE
YOU
STILL
doing up?”
“What’s it look like?” Millie hadn’t meant to be sharp with Cooper. Or maybe she had.
He closed the back door behind him.
She shivered from the burst of cold air.
“Let me rephrase my question.” He drew out the chair across from her, spun it around then straddled it. He was tall enough to rest his forearms on the chair’s back. His cheeks were ruddy from the cold and his grown-out hair adorably mussed. Couldn’t he at least have the decency to look bad? “Why are you up at 1:00 a.m. painting LeeAnn’s volcano?”
“The science fair is next Friday. She needed me to put a coat on for her this afternoon so it’d be dry enough tomorrow for her to start adding trees, but with all the party planning, my day got away from me.”
“You outshone every woman in that bar.”
“Hush.” If her heart beat any faster, she’d pass out, doing a face-plant in the ugly brown paint.
“I mean it. I’m sorry I ran out on you, but I’m not sorry I kissed you.”
“Cooper Hansen, I’m about two seconds from pitching this paint in your face. Do you have any idea how humiliated I was to not only go back into that bar alone, but having to explain to Stacie that you’d left her, too?”
“She get home okay?” He at least had the decency to bow his head.
“Well, gee, I wouldn’t exactly know, seeing how about two seconds after I told her you’d left, she took off with some other guy and told me she’d find her own way back to her car.”
He had the gall to grin, and he looked damned sexy doing it. “Guess since her car’s not in the drive, my question was irrelevant.”
“You think?”
“Ouch.” He was back to grinning.
Millie wanted to slug him. Trouble was, she also wanted to kiss him. Instead, she fished one of the Oreos from her nearby Ziploc bag.
“I told you I didn’t want to go out with her.” He shrugged. “To my way of thinking, right from the start, that makes this whole mess your fault.”
That’s it
—she put down her half-eaten cookie to dredge her paint brush across the paper plate then flick it at him. Unfortunately, more of the washable poster board paint landed on the table than him, but he had gained a few awkward-size freckles on his chin. This dating disaster was
all
his fault for always looking so damned good—even with paint freckles.
“Nice, Mill.” He took a napkin from the holder she kept on the table. “Real mature.”
“Oh—like you leaving me to deal with your date was mature?”
“For the last time, she wasn’t my date. I only went along with this whole thing on the off chance I might get to spend more time with you.”
“Please, don’t do that.”
“What?” Her heart fluttered just to witness a flash of his slow grin.
“Act like you care, when you obviously don’t.”
He leisurely rose, sauntering toward her with cowboy swagger.
Dear Lord...
“My problem—” he knelt alongside her, manhandling her chair until turning her far enough to face him “—is that I care too much. From the second I stepped back into this house, you’ve been all I can think of. I keep seeing flashes of you when we were kids and then older, in high school—back before you and Jim were even an item. How had I never noticed you? How had I let him get to you first? But then what kind of lowlife does that make me? If Jim were alive, he’d owe me an ass-kicking.”
She licked her lips, willing her runaway pulse to slow. “That’s the thing—he’s not here. But we are. And that’s got me so confused.”
I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my whole life.
But was that just her body talking? Or something more? How was she supposed to know?
He rose just high enough to kiss her, resting his hands on her thighs, singeing her tender flesh through her robe. “You taste so damned good.”
He urged her mouth open, sweeping her tongue with his. An erotic jolt slammed through her, colliding flaming desire into an icy wall of guilt. Despite her speech, she still knew what they were doing was wrong, but that fact didn’t even remotely slow them down.
When he took her hands, urging her from her chair, she let him, and when he dipped his kisses deep into her robe’s open vee, she didn’t offer the slightest protest. All that mattered was the velvety warmth centered between her legs and spreading like wicked syrup throughout every inch of her fevered body.
The house was quiet save for the clock ticking over the stove. Everyone had been sleeping for hours, which was why when Cooper untied her robe, instead of fighting him, she only held her breath, praying for release of the forbidden tension that’d been building ever since he’d come home.
He was kneeling again, worshipping her abdomen with kisses, skimming his hands along her hips, dragging down her panties until the room’s chill touched her hot core.
Back to her lips, he kissed the breath from her, dizzying her from his urgency that surprisingly matched her own.
His slipping his finger inside her seemed the most natural thing in the world, as did his nipping her rock-hard nipple through her bra. He set a rhythm that left her alternately gasping and moaning, twining her arms round his neck for support, kissing him, kissing him until he made her come, moaning her pleasure into his mouth.
“More...” she begged. She was no longer a mom or widow, but a woman. A woman desperate to once again feel alive in every sense of the word.
“Sure?”
Cheek pressed to the warm wall of his chest, she nodded.
And then he was shoving aside the paint and volcano to ease her back, leaving her for only the instant it took him to unfasten his jeans. He’d just touched his tip inside her, when he stopped.
“Wh-what’s wrong?” she managed to say. He needed to keep going before she lost her nerve.
“I don’t have protection.”
“I don’t care.” And in the moment, she truly didn’t.
It’d been so long, that the first few thrusts were painful. Tears sprung to her eyes, but then he slowed and kissed pain away, and then pleasure was once again building and spreading into a lavish labyrinth of stunning heat and joy and spiraling, ever-climbing, raw sensation. This man had somehow become her moon and stars and everything in between.
With his every thrust, she gripped his biceps harder, raising her hips, urging him deeper, deeper until she came again in a glorious Technicolor dream.
He rested on top of her, showering her with adoring kisses that only made her want him again. Was this normal? It’d been so long since she’d been with a man, she couldn’t even remember. All she knew was that she wasn’t sorry. Not one bit.
Though she probably would be in the morning...
*
S
UNDAY
MORNING
, C
OOPER
volunteered to help his dad eat breakfast. Considering what’d gone down in the kitchen the previous night, he wasn’t sure he could ever again look at the table with a straight face.
“How are you?” Cooper asked, mixing butter and sugar into the oatmeal.
“T-tired.”
“Me, too.” He fed Clint his first bite. “I went on a date with your therapist. What’s her name? Sandy? Sissy?”
“St-Stacie...”
“Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, it was a rough night. She’s a sweet girl, but not really my type. I guess when it comes down to it, if I ever settle down, I’d want a woman more like Millie. Someone who’s not afraid to get her hands dirty, and isn’t into all the fancy hair and makeup. I like an earthy girl, you know?”
His dad grunted then swallowed his latest bite.
“Truth is, I couldn’t sleep a wink. Just thinking about things. Makes me crazy when that happens.” He helped his dad with a few more spoonfuls then a few sips of coffee. “How come you couldn’t sleep?”
Clint gestured for Cooper to hand over his whiteboard. He then wrote:
Too damned noisy!
Cooper’s stomach tightened. Did that mean what he thought it did? That his father hadn’t been
out
when...
His cheeks felt hot enough to fry an egg. No, no, no.
“Too noisy, huh? What? Did you have an owl outside your window? Coyotes?”
Clint erased the board with his elbow, then wrote:
All that rutting!
Cooper gulped. Okay, no biggie. No need to panic. He’d been trained in crisis management and thinking on his feet in the often-fluid situation of battle. “Geez, Dad, I’m sorry. I’ll bet you overheard the movie I was watching. Parts were pretty racy—if you know what I mean.”
His father didn’t look all that convinced.
*
“W
HY
DOES
MY
volcano look splotchy?”
Late Sunday morning, Millie took a sheet of oatmeal cookies from the oven, pretending she hadn’t heard her daughter’s embarrassing question.
“Mom? Did you hear me?”
Mortification didn’t begin describing how awful Millie felt about not only the odd paint pattern on LeeAnn’s science-fair project, but also for her own downright scandalous behavior. What had she been thinking? “I heard you, okay? I don’t know how it happened. Maybe Cheetah’s been on the table?”