I said back away! she repeated. Cant you see youre scaring him?
She began to speak to the startled horse in a sweet, soothing murmur Cole would have envied if he wasnt so furious at her for her foolhardiness and willingness to blame him for her own stupidity.
Its okay, big baby. Nobodys going to hurt you, she said huskily in a purr that would have oozed sex had she been talking to a man.
A gray ear perked up. Not that the large animal didnt keep his other ear flat and a suspicious eye on Cole.
Youve gotta go, the girl urged when Wild Thing danced impatiently.
Not until you get out of that stall, Cole said.
I will, you big idiotjust as soon as you shut up and leave. For the horses sake, she kept her insult soft and sweet.
Coles stubbornness made him stand his ground a few seconds longer, but her pleading eyes finally convinced him. After Cole left, it took another minute or two before the horse settled and the girl was able to slip out. Strangely, no sooner was she safely outside the stall than Coles temper flared again. He knew he should forget about her recklessness and go to the Collier house and wait for Lizzie, but Maddie had his blood up. So when he heard her light, retreating footsteps as she lit out the back to avoid him, he rushed after her. When she caught sight of him, she let out a cry of alarm.
Grabbing her arms, he shoved her against a wall. You have no right to be on this property! Or to be in that monsters stall! Cole yelled. You scared the hell out of me!
When Wild Thing screamed and sent his hooves crashing against wood again, Maddie stilled.
I was just doing my job, okay?
Your job?
Ill have you know Liam Rodgers hired me.
Liam, Lizzies daddys foreman, was no mans fool. Why you? Why would he hire you, of all people, when he could hire the best?
She frowned. Maybe because I know what Im doing. While youve been off at college driving your fancy cars and chasing girls, Ive been mucking stalls to get free riding lessons. Maybe Ive learned stuff. When he saw Wild Thing stand calmly and let me saddle him in the round pen, Liam about fainted. When I rode the horse just as easy as you please, Liam hired me.
Well, you cant possibly know enough to work with that monster.
I did what twelve men couldnt do!
You got lucky! Now you listen to me. A normal horse weighs half a ton and has a brain the size of a tomato. Such an animal is wired to defend himself against predators, which includes humans, even half-pint girls like you.
I know all that!
That horse is a maniac. You shouldnt be anywhere near himnot in the round pen, not in his stall, not ever!
Her chest swelled, and her eyes narrowed rebelliously.
Her dark look only fueled his fury. Dont you get it? Next time hell kill you!
Not if you stay out of this barn and let me do my job!
Right! So, its my fault? I have half a mind to report this to Mr. Collier.
No! If I dont save him, Mr. Collier will kill him.
Good.
No! PleaseHes better. I know hes still easy to startle, but hell get even better. Its just going to take time and patience. Hes been through a lot.
Hes a killer.
Not many living creatures get the easy, pampered start in life youve had. Thats why you cant possibly understand what its like for the rest of us!
Her lovely voice had softened with desperation and love for Wild Thing but it didnt hold a trace of self-pity. When her impassioned eyes misted, he noticed they were as beautiful as sparkling amethysts.
I know you dont care what I think, but Lizzie loves him. Spare him for her sake!
The girl was passionate, compassionateand despite her ragged jeans and faded shirt, gorgeous, as well.
Damn those eyes of hers. Again they reminded him of jewels, with lavender facets of light and dark that made his blood run hot and cold. Those damn eyes, coupled with having held her too close for too long in a shadowy barn that afforded him the privacy to follow through on his desire, had him hard as granite. Aware of her soft, slim body pressed tightly into his, he didnt even try to defend himself from the heat that her sexy curves generated.
It would be so easy to take her right here.
Her mouth was full and luscious and suddenly he wanted to kiss her, to dip his tongue inside and taste her. Would she open her mouth and let him?
The heat in her gaze was generated from some emotion. Maybe she felt what he did.
What? She had gone still. Her eyes never left his face. Let me go! Her voice was shallow.
You dont want me to do that, and you know it. In the grip of a need too fierce to deny, his voice was raspy.
His gaze moved hungrily lower. She had soft, lush breasts. Hell, he wanted way more than a kiss, and he wanted it very badly. She was Jesse Rays daughter, so she probably wanted it, too.
Feeling justified in testing a girl of such easy virtue, he gripped her shoulders and pulled her closer. Before she could react, he lowered his mouth to hers so he could take his first taste of her. His lips were hard and demanding because he expected easy compliance. And for an instant she responded just as favorably as hed imagined, by gasping and sighing and clutching him closer. Her lips did part, and he felt her tongue, if only for an instant. Then almost immediately she stiffened. Recoiling, she balled her hands and began to pound at his chest, thrashing wildly.
When he didnt immediately let her go, her face flushed with anger. You wouldnt treat Lizzie like this! You wouldnt try to take her in a barn like she was something cheap and easy without ever even having a single conversation with her!
Well, youre not Lizzie Collier, are you? Youre Jesse Rays girl.
And that makes me too low to have feelings like you and your kind? Well, I do have feelings! And Im not like my mother, you hear! So, go find your precious, saintly Lizzie Collier, and leave me in peace! Shes your girlfriend. Not me! And I wouldnt ever want to be!
But the last was a lie. The quick tears of shame and desolation in her lovely eyes and the thick pain in her ravaged tone told him so. She wanted him, but on equal terms. She didnt want to be someone cheap in his eyes. Her pride, as well as her longing for him, tugged at his heart and made him feel ashamed even as it made his desire for her increase a thousandfold.
He hadnt misread her. She had wanted him, badly. But Jesse Rays daughter had as much self-respect as Lizzie Collier did any day.
For a long moment, she gazed at him as if pleading for something he was at a loss to give even as her look tore his heart. Then, with a desperate cry, she pushed free of him and ran out of the barn. As he watched her retreating across the pasture, he was stunned by her grace and vital beauty and by how much more he wanted her than hed ever wanted Lizzie. He was baffled by how low and ashamed he felt by that fact. She was just Jesse Rays girl. Why the hell should he feel such an overpowering need for her, such a need to apologize to her?
For weeks afterward, hed tried to put the scent and softness and taste of the spirited and unsuitable girl out of his mind, but shed been too lovely, too passionate, too brave, too forthrighttoo sexy. Hed dreamed of her, dreamed of making love to her.
He tried to forget her, but then his friends began to tell him stories about Maddiemarvelous stories hed hungered to hear. How Maddie raced with the other kids, mostly the boys, in the pastures outside town. How she always won on the back of that prancing demon, Wild Thing. They said that shed tamed him, that she was fearless, that she would ride bareback, that the pair could jump anything.
Why, one day after school when Coles friend Lyle had been smoking in his vintage Mustang with the top down, she and Wild Thing jumped over him and the car.
Crazy horse came so close to my head I dropped my cigarette in my crotch. Burned a hole in my best pair of jeans, Lyle had complained.
Such stories had impressed Lizzie, but theyd merely proved to Cole that Maddie was a headstrong fooland brave, stubborn and determined. Even if the older generation in Yella wouldnt change their minds about her because of her mother, some of the kids began to think she wasnt as bad as theyd been taught. Maddie was smart in school, too, and Miss Jennie, whose approval was hard to win, thought she was as good as anybody.
For all that, Cole knew his mother would never approve of Maddie as his girlfriend. After his mother had married into the legendary Coleman family, she felt her children had a position to uphold. Still, despite his better judgment, his fascination with Maddie began to consume him. Thus, it hadnt been long before Cole started coming home from the university every weekend to seek her out.
Hed go to the barn and watch her train Lizzies horses, especially Wild Thing. Maddie worked hard, giving more than she should to that monstrous beast, who now behaved like a docile pet to please her. Not that she said I told you so when Cole admitted hed been wrong about her horse-training abilities. She simply basked in his praise, and hed realized how much she enjoyed being admired rather than scorned. She was sweet when he apologized for kissing her, too.
Cole broke up with Lizzie and, with immense determination, began to court Maddiebut secretly.
He decided the gossips were wrong. Although she resembled her mother physically, she had a different character. Yes, mother and daughter shared the same jet-black hair, the same smooth, pale skin and the same lavender eyes that could turn blue when impassioned. Yes, their curvy bodies and sensual natures had been designed by God to drive men wild. But unlike her mother, Maddie was sweet and true.
Then shed jilted Cole for Vernon Turner and left town, proving his assessment wrong. She was just as feckless and promiscuous as her mother.
If she was trash, why couldnt he forget her? Why did he care if she was back in Yella?
She doesnt matter anymore. Hell, she never should have mattered.
So why did every nerve in his body feel taut? Why was his heart racing at the possibility of seeing her again?
Women like Maddie Gray, women who roared into a mans life and then left him like so much roadkill when theyd finished with him, were a dangerous breed. A smart man learned his lesson the first go-round and steered the hell clear of them.
So why was he standing up and slinging his jacket over his shoulders?
Cole had about a million things to take care of on the rig, like dealing with that crooked driller. He didnt have time for an unscheduled trip to Yella. Nevertheless, he scooped his cell phone and the keys to his Ford Raptor off his littered desk. Then he grabbed his sweat-stained beaver Stetson and rushed out of his trailer. Scanning the well site, which reeked of acrid fumes, he hollered for Juan.
After the air-conditioned trailer, the thick summer heat felt suffocating. Briefly he informed Juan that there was a problem at Colemans Landing, his familys legendary ranch on the southern tip of the Texas Hill Country. Cole said he had to get down there fast, but that hed be back soon. He told Juan to get the water well drilled and to damn the expense.
Then Cole was in his truck. Tires spinning, gravel and dust clouds flying, he set off for Yella.
After three miles of graded dirt road, his tires hit the main highway. He drove down that straight stretch of asphalt through parched, open country of scrub oak, mesquite and huisache like a madman, hating himself for being so all fired up to see her. Shed ruined his lifeor at least several years of it, and shed hurt sweet Lizzie, too.
Lizzie had loved him with every bone in her body, but because of Maddie haunting him, hard as hed tried, he hadnt ever been able to love Lizzie as he should have. Or at least hed never craved her, if that sort of cravin counted for lovenot the way hed craved Maddie, with every fiber of his being.
Even Lizzies dying words had been about Maddie, and hed hated Maddie for distracting him at a time when he should have been concentrating solely on Lizzie.
But he had to see Maddie again. Hopefully all he needed was closure to get her out of his system. Something about the way shed left him six years agowithout even so much as a goodbyebothered him.
He had to know how she could have been so unfailingly thoughtful and kind during their long-ago summer romance, how she could have loved him so sweetly that final afternoon in Augustand then run off with trash the likes of Vernon Turner that same night.
Who was she: The bad girl her own mother and the town claimed she was? Or the sweet, pure girl hed fallen in love with?
He hoped to hell he wasnt fool enough to chase after a dream again.
Two
If Maddie felt nervous and out of sorts just being back in Yella, she felt even worse to be chasing Miss Jennies dog onto Coles wooded land. What if Adam was wrong? What if Cole came back to town before he was supposed to?
She dreaded seeing him more than anyone else in Yella, which was ridiculous. How could his rejection and contempt still hurt so much after six years, when shed told herself repeatedly that the pastthat who she used to beno longer mattered?
Maddie hadnt been back to Yella since the night shed run away because there were too many memories here, both good and bad. For years, shed made the future her focus and only rarely looked back. Besides, coming here meant shed had to leave Noah, who was enrolled in a summer day camp on Town Lake, with a dear friend. She missed him, but she wouldnt have people here judging him because of heror noticing how much he resembled Cole and putting two and two together.
Shed only come back now because she owed Miss Jennie for everything good in her life.
Maddie wiped her damp brow with the back of her hand. Had Yella always been this suffocatingly hot in the summer? Of course it had. She just hadnt noticed when shed been a skinny, fearless kid wearing a thin T-shirt and shorts, running wild in the woods.
Today, with the sun beating down out of a bright sky, the heat felt thick and ferocious, and it wasnt even noon yet. Strands of her long black hair had come loose from her ponytail and stuck to her cheeks and neck. Her T-shirt and cutoff jeans felt as if they were glued to her perspiring body.
Still, despite the oppressive heat and humidity and a faint sense of uneasiness, she loved the scents and sounds of the woods. The smell of grass and dust, the chorus of insects that hummed along with the birds, made her remember some of the brighter moments of her youth. Long ago shed ridden in these woods. Here, on horseback, a slim, despised girl had acquired the magical power that riding a powerful horse could bring. Riding had taught her to be brave and strong.