“Well, to be honest, I’ve been wanting to tell you.”
“That’s the girl. Stop wanting and do it.”
Connie hesitated. Her paranoia flared. Certainly it occurred to her that her phone could be bugged, but she would have to take the chance. She really needed someone to talk to.
“You already know about Friday, when Quinn Loudon called and lied about wanting to buy the cabin. And what happened Saturday when I was followed back to Mystery and you and I found the cabin left wide open.”
“Right, pick it up from there.”
Methodically, beginning with the way she shook the tail on Sunday, she hit all the important points: finding Quinn at the cabin and taking him home with her; fooling Ray Lofton; then Ulrick’s visit. Finally she explained Quinn’s desperation to reach Billings and obtain some kind of evidence he claimed might clear him.
Hearing it all from her own mouth made Constance despair of her actions.
“Oh, Hazel,” she breathed into the phone, suddenly feeling the saline sting of pent-up tears. “Am I
worse
than a fool? Should I call the police right now?”
“Connie, what is wrong with you and what doctor told you so?”
“What—what do you mean?”
“All these years around my bad influence, and you’re still being so milk-kneed? Just tell me this, do you believe him or not? Believe that his life really might be in danger?”
“I—”
“Don’t start with ‘I.’ Start with yes or no.”
Constance laughed, sniffling a little at the same time. She raised her legs up onto the sofa and hugged her knees to quell her trembling. “Yes, I believe him.”
“I already knew that much. It’s in your tone every time you speak about this young fellow.”
“It is?”
“Mm…among other things.”
“Yeah, well. Not to throw it in your face, Hazel, but you said something similar about Doug.”
“Throw it in my face,” Hazel scoffed. “A McCallum doesn’t flinch from her own screwups. And I’ll tell you something else—we don’t quit riding all horses because some are biters.”
Hazel became practical again. “What is this evidence he has in Billings?”
“He won’t tell me. Says it’s not safe for me to know so much.”
“Well, if the rest of his tale is true, that shines right by me. Especially…let me just ask you. Is he notching his sight on you?”
Again Constance laughed. “You mean, is he interested?”
“Of course he’s ‘interested.’ He’s a man under ninety, and my God, look at you. That face and body of yours comprise a traffic hazard. What I mean is, does he act like he has more than just hot pants for you? And you for him?”
That question, in slightly less blunt terms, had been plaguing her ever since Ulrick’s visit earlier.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” she replied.
“How ’bout the fear? Can you handle that?”
“As long as I’m convinced he’s telling the truth, yes.”
“All right, then,” Hazel told her in a brisk, no-nonsense voice. “Roll the bones, baby.”
Constance wasn’t sure she’d heard her right. “What?”
“Shoot the dice! Take a chance, and get that strapping, good-looking son of a gun to Billings.”
“You mean it, don’t you?”
“Why, no one’s called me senile yet. Of course I mean it. Young lady, this valley is humming with excitement since last Friday. We haven’t had any real action around here since Ike Knoblaugh got drunk and rolled his cattle truck.”
“But…I mean, you’ve seen the helicopter and heard about the roadblocks. How would we—”
“Never mind all that for now. I’ll run my traps,” Hazel assured her—her phrase for gathering information from her secret sources. “We’ll cook up something. For now, keep Quinn hidden and don’t let that young hothead go off the rails. Also, keep a very close eye on this Ulrick fellow. Something’s got him all wound up to a fare-thee-well, and he’s scared enough to do almost anything.”
Chapter 10
D
ay gave way to night, and while Quinn slept on, Constance had plenty of time to worry—especially about how she was going to tell Quinn that Hazel, too, was now in on his secret.
She watched the last rosy flush of sunlight bleed from the sky. The temperature outside had begun to plunge rapidly, starting in late afternoon as a front blew down from Alberta. She finally stirred herself from her spot near the huge front window, going into the hallway to set the thermostat a little higher.
The furnace clicked on, and for a moment she stood over the floor vent in the hall, letting the heat caress her and quell her trembling.
Feeling a little warmer now, she brewed herself a mug of chamomile tea and tried to work on her laptop computer in the living room.
But it was futile; she simply couldn’t concentrate.
It was impossible to keep her mind from straying to thoughts of the man sleeping in her house.
His touch, earlier, still tingled against her skin, as did the image of his lips parting to accept hers in a kiss that was interrupted by Ulrick.
The entire situation, she reminded herself in dazed disbelief, began last Friday—only three days ago. But they’d been through so much together that the intensity of their experience cut through the usual protocols and rituals—cut right to the essential problem of passion between a man and a woman.
Such thoughts still dominated her mind when she went to bed around eleven.
Strange, illogical dreams plagued her uneasy sleep.
They would always begin, pleasantly enough, with her and Quinn alone at the Hupenbecker cabin, cozy and warm. But each pleasant dream always turned bizarre, starting when Quinn would just suddenly be wearing Doug’s clothing. Somehow she’d end up in a homeless shelter, receiving huge credit-card bills for Quinn’s romps with his arm candy.
Quinn…Doug…
She woke up around 2:00 a.m., not sure, for a few confused moments, just who was sleeping across the hall from her. Or if anyone at all was there.
The house was silent and chilly, the only sound the winter wind rustling the treetops outside. She could see a patina of moonlit frost on her window.
Gooseflesh pebbled her bare arms when she got up and pulled a terry-cloth robe on over her chemise. She went into the hallway and nudged the thermostat another two degrees higher.
She was about to go back to bed when the slanted
open door of the spare room caught her eye, and she paused, listening.
She could hear his breathing, steady and peaceful. Good. He hadn’t slept this long since Thursday and needed the rest.
For no required reason, she pushed the door open a few more inches and peeked into the room.
It was always warmer in this room than in the rest of the house, and Quinn had shucked the covers off in his sleep. His naked body lay partially exposed, like a study in shadow and light. Winter moonlight gleamed on him, his precisely sculpted muscles relaxed yet still powerfully defined in his calves, thighs, back, and outstretched arms.
In those first moments she literally forgot to breathe. The lines and forms of his body, in the frosted lighting, made as perfect an artwork as any she’d ever seen.
She lingered there, unwilling to close the door on this vision of masculine perfection.
Somehow, after perhaps thirty seconds, she must have sensed that he knew she was there.
“Connie?” he mumbled.
She should have at least felt embarrassment about being caught at voyeurism. But she felt the odd conviction that this moment was inevitable and beyond her will or his.
“Yes?” she answered in a soft voice little more than a whisper.
He made no effort to conceal his nakedness. He rose up on one elbow to watch her in the ghostly moonlight.
“Well—are you coming in or not?”
She said nothing. The spare room was small, a
postage stamp, really. But the miles to cross it to his bed was too far a distance.
She met his eyes, her heart pounding like a tympanum.
“So is it lust or something deeper?” he growled.
“According to you I saved your life.”
The suffused moonlight emphasized his prominent cheekbones and the strong angularity of his face. “Why did you save my life?”
“Fate?” she whispered. “Eventuality? Something deeper.”
He stood. With two long strides, he crossed the vast expanse between them.
She could hardly look at him, at his nudity, his hunger.
He took her hand and pulled her toward him. The door closed behind her. Her robe untied as if by itself, and he pulled it off, letting it fall in a puddle around her feet. Only the sheer silk chemise covered her.
“No, please wait,” she murmured, unsure of herself and the fiery need that had sparked within her.
“Then stay right there in the moonlight.” He eased his nude form back onto the bed. “Just stay like that. Let me look at you. Just for a moment.”
She stood still. His stare seemed like a ravenous animal, greedy and obsessed. Despite the heat of his eyes, the room felt cold and inhospitable. She shivered and covered her barely-clad chest with her arms.
Quinn reached for her. His strong, sensitive hands slid slowly up her thighs and under the chemise. They paused to cup the supple swell of her hips.
She trembled, her legs weakening when he slid both hands across her stomach and took a breast in
each hand. He stiffened her nipples in slow, circular strokes that sapped even more strength from her legs.
She moaned with shameless abandon as he slid the silk garment off and folded her into the bed beside him and placed her in the nest of the warm spot he’d just vacated. Their bare legs intertwined, and he pulled her closer, his aroused sex hard and heavy as he pressed against her still-cool skin.
“Quinn,” she whispered, tangling her trembling fingers in his hair and turning his face to hers.
He kissed her, silencing her, his tongue exploring. Over and over she whispered his name as he kissed and tasted her body, lighting fires everywhere he touched.
His own need intensified with hers. His mouth on the tip of her breast became more and more needy. His tongue sizzled across each of her full nipples, giving her small spikes of pleasure she could feel even through her back.
Finally she felt one of his hands slide between her thighs, then move higher. Several fingers gently probed, opening her soft folds like petals to sunlight, sending currents of pleasure pulsing through her.
“I want you,” he whispered.
He rolled on top of her and pushed his length inside her, whispering incoherent words of electric pleasure. Groaning her name, he slid both hands underneath her, thrusting her up so he could enter even deeper, filling her.
The furnace, humming quietly to life, nudged the curtain into rippling motion. The moonlight danced on them just as it danced across waves in the painting hanging above them.
Again, then again, she heard herself cry out, felt
her long-hungry body lifting, peaking, each climax stronger than the one before it. With Quinn she’d found a rhythm more joyous than she’d ever experienced before, and the act was more than lust and sex. It was pent-up need, the sheer desperation of their plight; it was a way to get lost, to forget.
Again and again in him she was absorbed in pure, mindless pleasure so intense the world fell away and lay crumpled at her feet.
Her efficient inner clock woke Constance at seven o’clock sharp, as it did almost every weekday.
Even before her eyelids opened, however, she recognized the signs of a near-sleepless night: aching eyes, sluggishness, bodily weariness and exhaustion.
But the arms and legs entwined with hers were pleasantly new and unfamiliar in a safe, dreamlike way. Still floating in the misty haze between sleeping and waking, she snuggled against the human warmth beside her.
Human warmth….
Human warmth?
Her eyes snapped open, and she came fully awake.
Of all the things she might have worried about, she realized before anything else: I’ve slept with Quinn. The outlaw. The desperado.
Chasing this thought, she carefully extricated herself from Quinn’s embrace. Almost in shock, she wondered what had gotten into her last night, and how she was going to handle the new situation she had created. It was already complicated enough before she gave in to her lust.
No, not lust. It was more than lust—on her part, anyway.
Even knowing so little about him, she had felt something inside her soul connecting with his. What she had felt, when he was inside her, was far more meaningful and fulfilling than mere sated desire.
But, she rebuked herself, that doesn’t mean
he
feels the same.
At this reminder, harsh reality came crashing in on her. Roger Ulrick’s troubling remarks yesterday, and unpleasant thoughts of Doug, were blunt reminders that she was the world’s worst judge of men and their character.
Quinn sighed, muttering something in his sleep, but he didn’t quite wake up when she eased out of bed, naked and shivering in the gray morning light.
Ice coated the windows. She picked up her chemise and slipped her robe on, then crossed the hallway to her bedroom.
She folded open the louvered doors of the big closet and selected a white pullover sweater, indigo pants, and a pair of shearling-lined suede boots. She grabbed underclothing from a bureau drawer, then placed everything ready on her bed.
A steaming-hot shower, in the smaller bathroom off the master bedroom, was followed by a fast, brutally cold rinse in an attempt to jolt herself awake.
Among the day’s many problems still awaiting resolution, she wasn’t sure what to do about work—whether to go or not.
Best to get ready just in case, she decided. She could hear Quinn stirring around as she dressed and quickly applied makeup at her triple-mirror vanity. A nervous stirring in her stomach reminded her, yet again, that she still had to tell him about Hazel.
Guilt stabbed at her. Never mind that he was the
fugitive. He had trusted her, after all, and she had broken faith with him. Anyway, that’s how he would see it.
Thus ruminating, she nearly dropped her hairbrush when he knocked on her door.