How could a man not react to that? Especially when she was trying to get it right this time—they both were, by being open with each other, honest. Part of him wanted to tell her that he’d started imagining himself in Three Ridges a few months from now, a few years. But he’d gotten caught in that trap before, and gnawed through both of their souls to get free. So instead he said, “Give me until eight tonight before you come over, okay? I’ve got a surprise for you.”
T
hat night at two past eight, Krista pulled into her spot beside Old Blue in the bunkhouse parking lot, killed the engine, and sat for a moment as Klepto appeared in the nearest window, head cocked as if to say,
What’s with the car?
She had driven over, figuring she would celebrate Jupiter’s success at the parade and Wyatt’s promise of a surprise with a flirty skirt and a pair of high-heeled boots that really weren’t designed for hiking.
Anticipation and desire skimmed through her as she got out of the car and headed up the steps, hearing Klepto bark to announce her arrival. She raised a hand to knock, not wanting to spoil the promised surprise if he wasn’t yet ready, but before her fist made contact the door swung inward. And there he was, with his dark hair shower-damp, his plain white T-shirt and worn jeans molded to his body, and his feet bare, revealing the crooked toe that had been broken twice by the same horse.
Smiling, she stepped across the threshold. “The
guests are tucked in for the night and Mom is on call, so here I am.”
“So you are. And you look amazing.” He spun her around so the skirt flared away from her ankles, her heels tapped on the polished wood, and Klepto danced like his legs had turned to springs. Then Wyatt drew her in for a kiss and murmured against her lips, “It seems almost a shame to get you naked.”
Heat thrummed through her. “Right now?”
“Well, that’s up to you.” He nudged the door shut and flipped off the overhead lights illuminating the main room. “Come see what you think.”
“What I think about— Oh.” Her mouth fell open at the sight of a dozen fat white candles lighting the tiles surrounding of the hot tub, which had been high and dry yesterday, but now was full and steaming, with bubbles and swirls making the surface dance while ghostly mist turned the air soft and humid. “Oh, wow.” She tightened her grip on Wyatt’s hand as she took in the gleam of mosaic tile, the perfect lines of sealed grout, and the polished wood door that protected the controls and electrical circuits. “You finished it! When . . . how . . .”
He grinned. “Last night. I know you’ll need to get someone to sign off on it for guest use, but I figured we could take it for a test drive.”
As her eyes adjusted to the shock, she saw that the surface was dotted with familiar pink flowers that made her think of the waterfall, with more of their petals scattered on the surround, leading to a bottle of her
favorite red wine, open to breathe beside a pair of glasses. Emotion lumping in her throat, she managed, “You set all of this up for me?”
“I didn’t do it for Klepto.” Wyatt came around behind her, dropped his head, and nuzzled her neck. “You smell better than he does when you’re wet.”
A laugh bubbled up alongside a dizzy rush that made her feel like she had stood up too fast. “Thank you.”
“Well, he’s a dog. They’re supposed to smell like dirty sheep when they’re wet.”
She turned in his arms and found his lips with hers. “I meant thank you for the flowers and the wine. Which you knew perfectly well.”
He kissed her long and deep, sliding his hands down her body, and gathering a double handful of her skirt. “Yeah, but I like making you smile.”
“Is that what the Reddi-wip is for?” She said, tipping her head to where a familiar canister sat next to the drugstore bag she suspected contained a new box of condoms to replace the one they had burned through last night.
“Technically, the whipped cream is for the brownies and strawberries I’ve got in the fridge. I was going to put them on a plate with the wine, but . . . You know.”
“Klepto.”
At the sound of his name, the dog thumped his butt on the floor and cocked his head.
“Yeah, right,” Wyatt said. “We’re so on to you.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Krista whispered. “I’ll share.”
“Later,” Wyatt said, pulling her into him for a kiss. “After.”
“After what?” she said, as if his hands weren’t busy on the buttons of her shirt.
“After I get you out of these clothes and into the water.” He eased back to give her a boyish smile that made her heart shudder in her chest. “What do you say, Krissy? Will you come hot-tubbing with me?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” She shimmied out of her skirt and tossed it on a nearby chair. That left her standing in her open shirt and the skimpy panty and bra set she had bought in town on her last supply run, imagining his face as Kitty bagged her purchase. Now, in the flickering candlelight, his expression was everything she had imagined, and then some. Eyes gone black with desire, he trailed a finger along one of her collarbones, down between her breasts, and across to toy with one sensitized nipple through the lace-edged fabric of her bra.
The air hung heavy with the scent of flowers and passion, but no matter how deeply she filled her lungs, she couldn’t catch her breath. Then he knelt in front of her and pressed his lips to her stomach, and she dug her fingers into the heavy muscles of his shoulders through the heated material of his T-shirt. And she decided that breathing was overrated. Who needed oxygen when there was so much to
feel
?
His smooth-shaven jaw contrasted with the thick
fullness of his hair and the slide of skin on skin when he worked his way up her body and kissed her lips, drawing her shirt off and letting it fall.
“Boots,” he rasped against her lips, “unless you want them getting wet.”
She toed them off and kicked them aside, and the second they thudded to the floor he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the raised platform. She didn’t have a chance to admire the finished surround, the wine, or the candles, because without pausing for an instant, he stepped straight into the hot tub and started down the shallow staircase.
“Wyatt!” She pushed at his arms. “You’re still wearing your—”
He sank down, carrying her with him. She gasped as the water closed around her, then murmured in pleasure as she found it warm rather than hot, so it energized her rather than sapping her strength. “Jeans,” she finished on a breathy moan as he settled her against him face-to-face, spreading her legs around him so she was riding the hard, jutting ridge behind his fly.
“I know.” He kissed her throat, her ear, the upslope of one breast. “They’re the only reason I’m not already inside you.”
“So what are you waiting for?”
“Wine,” he muttered, hands splaying to cup her buttocks beneath the water. “Brownies. Slow seduction.”
“Later,” she said, going to work on his fly. Reaching up, she snagged the bag, found the condoms, and soaked the box getting it open. When she had one of
the packets free, she reached beneath the water to press it into his palm. “Right now—I don’t want to wait.”
His eyes fired and his lips curved, a cocky boy’s smile in a face that was all man. “Good. Because neither do I.”
*
Wyatt had known they were good together, but before tonight, he hadn’t known how far “good” could go. Hadn’t had a clue.
In the warm languor following their first hard, fast encounter in the hot tub, they sipped wine and fed each other strawberries dabbed with whipped cream, and talked about a long-ago picnic when they had ridden up into the hills and picked wild berries. By unspoken consent, they left the brownies for later and turned to each other instead, twining together in the hot tub, only to emerge an hour later, waterlogged and laughing, to towel each other off between kisses and caresses. Then, as had become his newest favorite habit, he swept her up, cradled her against his chest, and carried her up the stairs to the bedroom.
As he started up the short hallway, she danced her nails across his chest and kissed his throat until he groaned and rasped, “You keep doing that and I may drop you. I won’t mean it, and I’ll feel really bad afterward, but I’ll do it.”
“No, you won’t,” she purred, tugging on his earlobe with her teeth. “I trust you not to let me fall.”
“Don’t,” he said, tossing her on the bed, “speak too soon!”
She squealed as she landed and bounced, damp, naked and pink-skinned, and so glorious that part of him wanted to stand there and stare, and wonder how he’d gotten so damn lucky. He dropped down to the bed beside her, instead, and covered her with his body, intensely aware of how perfectly she wrapped around him, welcomed him home, and then took him someplace else entirely.
In the aftermath, lying with her tucked against his side, with her hand on his chest and his cheek resting on the top of her head as usual, he dozed, not really ready to sleep when sleeping would mean the end of an incredible night. Mind drifting, he listened to the now-familiar sounds of the bunkhouse. The hot tub was off and cooling, but the passive vent system whirred, powered by the heat still coming off the water. The refrigerator kicked on now and then, as did the solar-charged battery that fed to an exterior generator. And under all of that, counterpointing the sounds of their breathing and the occasional
click-click-click
of Klepto’s nails on the floor downstairs, was the rare
creak-pop
of the logs settling for the night.
Of all the sounds, it was strange to think that those
creak-pops
were the only ones that the long-ago inhabitants of the bunkhouse would have heard.
He imagined the place as it would have been back then, a single-story, single-room dormitory with a card table at one end, bunks at the other, and saddles stacked by each bed. Because a cowboy could borrow a horse, but he couldn’t call himself a cowboy without a saddle.
The bunkhouse would’ve held a dozen men, maybe more—they would ride together, eat together, even blow off steam in town together come payday. And when it came time to round up the herds and drive them down to the railhead several hundred miles away, they would have one another’s backs for the duration.
He pictured them scattered around the fire—some tending to the horses and cattle, others seeing to the camp, while the Cookie whipped up biscuits and gravy and brewed coffee the consistency of hydraulic fluid. Maybe they didn’t all like one another, but they needed one another. Their sum was far greater than its parts, but it was never static because they were the kind of men who didn’t stay in one place very long before their feet started itching, telling them it was time to move on.
And damned if he didn’t see it all of a sudden, a tantalizing glimpse of what could be: a fire of metal strips that spun in the breeze; a coffeepot that bubbled with recycled oil; a backdrop of hammered-flat car hoods etched with lines that suggested saddle horses on a picket line and a massive herd of cattle being held by the watering hole; and a dozen mechanical men in ten-gallon hats made of flywheels and air filters.
It was fresh, different, exciting. He hadn’t done anything like it before. Didn’t know if anyone had. And where a few minutes ago he’d thought he might not ever move again, now his blood hummed with a different sort of urgency—diffuse and not fully formed yet, but still more than he’d felt in too long.
I could build that. It could be good.
Giving in to the gloriously sudden urge, even knowing that tomorrow was going to suck if he didn’t get any sleep, he eased out from beneath Krista.
She snuggled up with his pillow, frowning in her sleep as he bent down and kissed her cheek. “Wyatt,” she whispered, reaching for him.
“I’ll just be down in the workshop,” he said, knowing she wouldn’t remember the conversation. “Klepto will keep an eye on you.”
At the sound of his name, the dog poked his head through the door.
Wyatt pointed to the floor near the bed. “Stay here,” he said. “Keep her company.” He didn’t know how many words Klepto actually understood, but the mutt did a couple of turns and lay down on the throw rug, facing the bed. The sight of her in his bed, with his dog on the floor nearby, put a curl of warmth in his chest and a sense that everything was where it was supposed to be. For right now, anyway. Careful not to look at it too close, he headed downstairs and out into the darkness, suddenly itching for his tools.
*
Krista awoke to a pink-tinged darkness and stared at the wood-beamed ceiling while the last of her dream—something about giant corn muffins with foam-rubber tentacles battling a flash flood, and she really didn’t want to run
that
through a dream analyzer—drained away and her pulse slowed.
“Well,” she said. “That was crazy.” Then, realizing
the space beside her was empty, the sheets cool, she called, “Wyatt?”
“Whuff?” A gray-whiskered face appeared over the side of the bed.
She tousled Klepto’s head. “Hey, buddy. Where’s the big guy?” Wide awake despite the early hour, she crawled out of the big, soft bed and pulled on the yoga pants and T-shirt that had migrated from her place to his. Sticking her feet into a pair of canary yellow flip-flops—more migrants—she said, “Come on. Let’s go see what’s up.”
Hoping it wouldn’t be tentacles and flash floods—or their real-world equivalents, whatever those might be—she headed down the stairs and swung open the front door. Klepto flung himself down the stairs with canine abandon, barking as if to say, “Hello, world, here I am!”
Clang-bang!
The noise brought Krista’s attention around, and she grinned. “Well, what do you know? Seems like the hot tub is already paying dividends. Who needs the Fountain of Youth when you’ve got the Hot Tub of Creativity? We’ll have to put that in the brochure.”
Ignoring the pang that came at the thought of renting the place out next season, she rolled open the sliding steel door and slipped into the shop, where she found the workbench covered with drawing paper and Wyatt standing over a collection of metal scraps that had been laid out in an indecipherable outline, like some mechanical fossil.
“Whuff!” Klepto barged past her, jogged into the shop, and dropped a flamingo-pink hairbrush at his master’s feet.
“What—” Wyatt looked at the dog, blinked at her, and then seemed to come out of whatever fugue he’d been in. “Hey!” Expression clearing, he crossed to her, tugged her into the shop. “Come in. Here.” Snagging a work shirt off the welder, he shook it out and draped it around her shoulders, then drew her in for a kiss. “You look cold.”