How to Handle a Cowboy (26 page)

The aspen grove really was the most perfect spot Sierra had ever seen—especially for a lovers' tryst. The little wind chimes danced in the wind all around her and Ridge, creating a curtain of sound that seemed to shut out the rest of the world. As he kissed her, one of the straps of her bra slid off her shoulder. Part of the cup peeled away with it, revealing one pink nipple that was obviously aching for his touch.

She didn't make any effort to cover up, so Ridge took full advantage of the situation, peeling the strap away from her other shoulder. Ducking his head, he licked and sucked at each swollen nipple in turn while his fingers squeezed and stroked. Sierra's breath came fast and hard, and when he moved his hand down to trace the edge of her panties, she gasped and squirmed, hiking her hips up to let him know she wanted more. More? She wanted everything.

“No rush,” he murmured. “No hurry. Let's take our time.”

That was easy for him to say. He was the one with his clothes on.

She reached up to rectify that situation, but he pulled her hand away.

“This is about you,” he said. “I can wait.”

“I'm glad somebody can,” she said with a gasp as the back of his hand brushed the tip of one breast.

He kept playing, kept touching until it was almost a torment, and then, finally, he slipped his hand inside her panties and found the hot, wet welcome waiting for him.

Maybe now he'd get the message.

But no, he was still sweeping his fingers over her skin, sliding up and around her curves, skimming over her ribs and belly, alternating between sweet torture for her breasts and then her sex, and each one ached for him as the other reveled in his touch.

If he'd ever had any doubt as to how much she wanted him, those days were over now. She found herself twisting her body to reach his hands, moaning as he caressed her breasts, and then she was clutching the blanket in her fists while he stroked between her legs, and oh yes, this was a man who knew what he was doing. She supposed some women might wonder where he'd learned it, but she didn't care. Their life together began when they met that day in the closet, and anything that happened before that was just preparing them for this moment.

His fingers slid inside her and found some magical place that seemed to render her boneless in an instant. And then he was kneeling between her legs, and then she was bucking and moaning, almost weeping with the wonder of it. The stroking of his fingers, the touch of his lips, and the talents of her tongue were going to drive her over the edge.

Just then, she found it—the edge, and she slipped over it, and there in the middle of the woods, to the music of a hundred tiny chimes, she rose and rose and then crashed in an orgasm so wild she thought she'd rise up into the trees and hover there, happy and sated forever, floating on the gossamer wings of something that sure felt a lot like love.

***

Sierra in the throes of lovemaking was the most beautiful thing Ridge had ever seen. He'd always dreamed of bringing a woman here, into this magical space, and now he lay beside the one he'd chosen, the one woman in all the world he knew he could love, and looked up at the sky. The aspens seemed to lean inward, almost as if they were protecting them, and the golden leaves shimmered like old-fashioned pirate coins dangling from the supple branches.

Her breathing slowed and she squeezed his hand, letting him know she was back in the real world.

“It's like they're protecting us,” she said, looking up at the trees. “The trees, the way they lean in. They make it feel safe.”

“It is safe.” He pulled her close, and she propped her head up on one elbow. One hand nested in her hair; the other one busied itself unbuttoning his shirt, and this time he didn't mind.

He didn't mind one bit.

Once the two of them were naked, he sat up and grabbed his jeans, flipping through his wallet to find a condom. As he put it on, he watched Sierra stretch and stare up at the sky. When she turned back to him, her smile was almost wicked.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Do I look ready?”

She laughed. “Maybe the question I should ask is ‘are you willing?' Because you've been ready for a while.”

“It feels like I've been ready ever since we met.”

“Well, I would have been a little taken aback if you'd tried this in the closet.”

“I know,” he said. “But I was never so grateful for an electrical outage in my life.”

She laughed, and he kissed her, and then their bodies were writhing together under the sun. He fitted himself to her, and though it was nearly impossible, he held back, stroking slow and easy, giving her the full length of him in a push and then easing out, only to push again.

She was with him all the way, wild for him in a way he'd never experienced before. He did all right with women—he had enough experience to know that—but Sierra wanted him in a new way. It was as if she needed him, as if she were starving and he was the one thing that could sate her hunger.

She stroked his back and rocked him with her hips then whispered in his ear, “I want to be on top.”

She rolled with him as he moved, and somehow, without the usual awkwardness, they'd managed to flip her to the top without pausing in their lovemaking.

She flexed her muscles to ride him, and he remembered feeling those muscular calves the first time they met, playing chicken in the closet.

She kissed him, and when she sat back up, he rose with her without breaking the kiss. Face to face, they fell back into her rhythm of rising and falling, rising and falling. Then the kiss broke, and they were looking each other straight in the eye while the sensations intensified. He was slowly losing his mind, or at least his ability to think, and he suspected she was too. But they never lost eye contact.

It was like nothing he'd ever experienced. Usually he'd closed his eyes or turned his head or somehow evaded sharing
this
—his thoughts, his emotions, the overwhelming passion he felt for this woman and she for him.

He'd always used sex to stave off feeling rather than to share it. Oh, he'd shared sensation and pleasure, even desire. But never love.

With Sierra, it was different. There were no barriers between them as her gaze grew hotter and hotter, and finally she arched back and came, crying out to the sky. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen—but he only saw a second of it because then he too was suddenly in a world of swirling sensation that made him shout with joy so loudly that the birds stopped singing.

They lay side by side in the sudden silence, their fingers linked together, their hips touching. Filtered by the aspen leaves, the sun cast a golden glow over Sierra's pale skin, making the shadows of leaves and branches dance and chase each other over her curves. He wished he had the time to follow every one of those shadows with his fingertips, stroking her body the way the shadows did.

Maybe he did have time.

Maybe he had a lifetime.

***

Sierra could have laid in that grove forever, staring up at the sky with Ridge, watching the trees sway above them. But she wanted to know him better—not just his body, but his mind too.

“What was it like, growing up as a foster child?”

“You don't want to know about that,” he said.

“No, I do. I'm not trying to pry. I want to understand the boys better.”

He turned to face her, and she saw the tough cowboy give way to the tender man she'd seen the other night. He had a shield he kept in place ninety percent of the time, a tight lid on the part of him that still held the hurt he'd suffered as a boy. She knew he needed that shield, but he'd dropped it that night at the Red Dawg when he'd given her his injured hand. And he was doing it again now.

“It's hard,” he said. “When you don't have parents, you look at the other kids, and it's like they're all golden, every one of them. Even the meanest, nastiest bully is everything to someone. Someone cares if his clothes are clean and his hair's combed. If he skins his knee, somebody helps him up and fixes it for him. But we just had to get up and keep going on our own.”

“I try to do those things for my guys,” she said softly. “I know it's not the same, but I try.”

“And that's good,” he said. “That's more than a lot of foster kids get. But even when you do your best, you're not their mom.”

“I love them,” she said.

“But they're not
yours.
And you're not
theirs.
”

She flinched, but she knew she shouldn't. Where was that professional distance she was supposed to keep?

“I'm not trying to hurt you,” he said. “But you said you wanted to understand.”

She nodded, and he seemed to lapse back into a haze of memory. “When you're a kid, you don't understand that it's not your fault. You wonder why you don't shine the same as other kids, why you're not first in anybody's heart. Why your parents chose drugs over you, or worse yet, just walked away and left you like trash for other people to pick up. You don't know it's the luck of the draw, and you think you must be flawed somehow.”

She nodded.

“There were two kinds of us,” he continued. “There were the ones who tried like hell to matter to somebody—like Josh—and there were the ones who pretended they didn't care, like Isaiah.”

“Which kind is Jeffrey?”

“The person Jeffrey was supposed to matter to didn't just stop caring. That person hurt him and would hurt him again if he could.”

“You're right.” She'd flinched every time she'd read Jeffrey's file, unable to imagine the kind of people who would hurt a child that way. But Ridge hadn't had to read a file to know the answer.

Had he suffered the same kind of childhood as Jeffrey? Was that the bond that seemed to draw them together?

“Jeffrey doesn't talk because he doesn't trust himself,” he said. “He's afraid that if he starts, he won't be able to stop.”

She stared resolutely down at her lap, afraid that if she met his eyes, he'd stop talking. And she needed to know these things. To love her boys better, the way they needed to be loved. And maybe to love Ridge too. This man needed to be first in somebody's heart. With her mother so distant, she had nobody but Riley to care for, and she knew it was time to let Riley go.

But a man like this, so damaged and difficult? All of her heart wouldn't be nearly enough. Her whole life was about helping people, but could she help Ridge?

She could. She could love him enough to stay with him. She could help him create a life so complete, so
right
, that his dark past would recede behind their shining future.

And for herself? She could have the family she'd always longed for: a patchwork family, with kids from every culture and background plus a few of her own. She wouldn't just be a replacement for their mothers, a temporary fix; she'd be the real thing. And they'd be golden.

Maybe someday…

She remembered Jeffrey's words in the car on the way back from the clinic.

I'm sick of someday.

Well, she was sick of someday too. She was sick of trying to change the world when she couldn't even deal with the changes happening around her. Sick of giving all she could to others and never taking anything for herself.

She was sick of working so hard to help others attain the good things in life—love, a home, a family—and denying those things to herself every single day, even though she wanted them with all the depth of her being.

Ridge reached over and touched Sierra's chin, lifting her face so she could look in his eyes. And when she did, she saw the pain he'd suffered while he waited for his own someday—the hurt, the healing, and the courage it had taken to survive. His eyes held a solid determination under the tenderness, and she sensed a tensing of his whole being as he looked into her eyes.

“Sierra.” He said her name as if he were tasting it, as if he were saying it for the first time. “What do you want out of life?”

Funny he should ask. “I don't know,” she said. “I thought I did, but now I'm not so sure.”

“What's changed?”

She thought a moment. What had changed? Just one thing that mattered.

“I met you,” she said.

“That changed me too.” He pulled her close, so her head fit just under his shoulder and her cheek rested against his chest. Together, they watched the little gold and silver ornaments glitter as they swayed in a gentle breeze. “Before I met you, I never expected much more out of life than survival.”

She nodded. She'd known that somehow—that he was just moving from one day to the next, with no real goal in sight.

“I knew I was lucky to have my brothers, to have had Bill and Irene. But I never thought I'd have a family of my own.”

“Why not?”

“I didn't think I knew how.” He thought a moment, his thumb gently stroking her shoulder. “No, that's not it. I thought I was my father's son. My mother told me once that men in my family were born without a heart, and I believed her.”

“And now?”

He chuckled, pulling her closer. “You and your little band of outlaws showed me different. I never knew there were so many ways to love somebody.”

“I know,” she said. “I can tell you love them.”

“And you,” he said. “I love you.”

She tilted her head up, and those gray eyes looked into hers. They were soft now, all their crystalline hardness gone.

He was right. He had changed since they met. And so had she.

She rested against his chest again, tucking her head under his chin, so he couldn't see the tears gathering in her eyes. “I didn't mean for that to happen. I'm only here for a few more weeks. I'm so sorry, Ridge.”

“Sorry for what?”

“The last thing you need is for someone else to leave you.”

“Then don't.”

She sighed. “I have to. But I thought maybe we could see each other now and then. I could come up on the weekends once in a while. And maybe you could come down to Denver.”

He somehow managed to put his arms around her and pull her away at the same time. Now he was looking into her eyes, and she knew he could read the storm of emotions there as clearly as he could read the Wyoming sky before a rain.

“That's not what I want,” he said. “And I don't think it's what you want, either.”

“What do you want?” She regretted the question as soon as it left her lips. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what Ridge wanted. She wasn't sure she was ready.

“I want you to marry me.”

She opened her mouth then closed it, then opened it again. She must have looked like a horse mouthing an uncomfortable bit.

“I know it's sudden. I know it's soon. But I love you, Sierra. I love you so hard it hurts, and I need you beside me every day.” He squeezed her hands, and those honest gray eyes were fixed on hers. “We can make it work. Say yes.”

She couldn't speak. She wanted to, if only to tell him to wait, but she couldn't get a word out.

“I know you want to make a difference in the world,” he said. “But can you really do that from some high-rise in Denver?”

“That's where all the decisions are made.”

“Really? That's where they decide that Isaiah should be put in charge of something to channel his bossiness into something constructive? That Frankie needs to hang on to that old hat, even if it is a menace to public health, because it was his grandfather's? That horses hold the key to Jeff's heart? You don't change the world with laws and rules and policies; you change it with love. I know that, because you changed me.”

“But I've tried to make a difference here,” she said. “I wanted to make this a hometown for the boys, remember? And the neighbors just look at me sideways and turn the other way. I don't know how to do it.”

“I do,” he said. “I know these people. Brady said Isaiah was really interested in that old tractor engine over there. So how about we let him work with Ben Sanders a couple afternoons a week?”

“Ben Sanders?”

“He's the mechanic in those garages in town. Fixes cars sometimes but mostly heavy equipment for the oil fields. And Josh seems to be interested in medicine.”

“I thought maybe he could be a vet someday.”

“Vet, heck. He could be a doctor. But we could start with the animals. I could have him shadow Doc Harrison once in a while on his rounds. Carter seems like sports might be his thing, but he also likes military stuff. He could talk to Phoebe Niles's son when he comes home from his deployment. And then when Mike goes back to the military, maybe Phoebe would enjoy having him around once in a while. He reminds me a lot of Mike when he was that age.”

“Why didn't you tell me all this sooner?”

“I've only just gotten to know the kids and figure out what would work. Besides, I was too busy talking you into spending time with me.”

She bent her head and began plucking fuzz from the old blanket as if it was the most important thing in the world.

“You might not be able to save the world from here, Sierra. But I think you could save this little town. And who knows what could come after that? You could write about it. Make it a book. That way, you could have that influence you want.”

“I've always wanted to do that someday.”

“Do it now. You don't have to compromise, hon. You can save the world
and
be happy. You just have to say yes.”

She stared into the distance, her mind spinning as she watched popcorn clouds drift across an indigo sky. An airplane sliced through the blue, leaving a white contrail like a tear in the blue of the sky. She watched it fly, a silver speck in the great blue bowl of the sky.

Ridge was right. She was just one person. There was no guarantee that she could change the world. But she knew she could change this man, this town, these kids.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes?” He looked so startled she wondered if she'd done the right thing. Maybe he hadn't expected her to say yes. Maybe he'd been playing with her, or maybe he thought he had to propose to get her—well, not to get her into bed, because he already had that, so…

He leaned into her, and she suddenly found herself on her back on the blanket, and then he was kissing her with a new tenderness but somehow, at the same time, with a new power—a possessiveness that should have irritated her but only made her feel like she'd finally found where she belonged—and who she belonged with.