LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

them over both of them.

      Willa smiled to herself. All those crazy teenage dreams she’d had about him. And here she was, damp and dirty, bruised and scratched up, lying practically on top of him, grateful beyond measure to share a pile of saddle blankets with him. The world seemed to have gone crazy in the space of a day. But right now, in Collin’s arms, she felt safe.

      Protected.

      She closed her eyes. “I didn’t realize until now how tired I am….”

      He touched her hair, gently. Lightly. “Rest, then.”

      She started to answer him, but then she found she didn’t have the energy to make a sound. Sleep closed over her. She surrendered to it with a grateful sigh.

      When she woke, the light was different.

      Sun. It was sun slanting in the window—and the window faced east. That meant it had to be morning, didn’t it?

      Also …

      She was lying on a man. Collin. He had both arms wrapped around her and his cheek against her dirty, snarled hair. Her head was on his shoulder, one arm tucked in against her side.

      Her other arm rested on Collin, which was perfectly acceptable, given the circumstances. But the hand that was attached to that arm? That hand was exactly where it shouldn’t be.

      And where it shouldn’t be was hard.

      Blinking, not quite putting it all together as reality yet, Willa lifted her head from his shoulder and blearily squinted at the morning light. Outside, faintly, she could hear birds singing.

      Without moving her hand away from his very definite, very thick and large hardness, she looked down at him. Because, seriously. Could this actually be happening?

      It was.

      And he was awake. He gazed up at her with the strangest, laziest, sexiest expression. “Mornin’.”

      She puffed out her cheeks as she blew out a slow breath. And then, with great care, she removed her hand from his private parts and whispered, “The sun’s out.”

      He nodded. “The rain’s stopped. It stopped hours ago.” He was playing along with her, pretending the contact between her hand and his fly had not occurred. Which was great. Perfect. Wonderful of him.

      She backed off him onto her knees, dragging the blankets with her, and shoved her hair out of her eyes. “You, uh, should have woken me.”

      “Uh-uh.” He reached out and clasped her shoulder, a companionable, reassuring sort of gesture that made tears clog her throat. She swallowed them down. And he said, “You needed your sleep and so did I. I woke up in the middle of the night and it was quiet. I knew the rain had finally stopped. I thought about getting up, but then I just closed my eyes and went back to sleep.”

      Buster was up, making whining noises, scratching at the door that led outside. “I should let him out….” He took his hand from her shoulder. She wished he hadn’t, that he would touch her again, hold on tight and never, ever let go. But he didn’t. And she pushed the blankets aside, swung her legs over the edge of the hay bales and stood up. Barefoot, she went and pulled the door open. Buster went out and she scolded, “Don’t run off, now.” And then she lingered in the open doorway, staring up at the sky. Blue as a newborn baby’s eyes. She glanced back over her shoulder at Collin.

      He was sitting up, bare feet on the floor. He had a case of bed head every bit as bad as hers, and he was kind of hunched over, his elbows on his knees. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “Put your boots on,” He raked his fingers back through all that thick, every-which-way hair. “We’ll see if the water’s gone down enough that we can get across the ravine to your folks’ house.”

      They put on their damp socks and boots and pulled open the door that led into the main part of the barn.

      “Needs a good mucking out in here,” Collin said. Did it ever. Most of the animals had wandered off, out into the morning sunshine, leaving a whole lot of fresh manure behind. “You supposed to be taking care of the place all by your lonesome while your folks and your brother are off at the rodeo?”

      She shook her head and named off the neighbors who’d agreed to look after things and feed the stock until the family returned. “But I’m guessing they probably all have their own problems about now.” At least it was summer and grazing was good. The animals wouldn’t starve if left to their own devices for a few days.

      Instead of slogging through the mess on the barn floor to one of the outer doors, they ducked back into the tack room and went out through the exterior door there. Buster was waiting for them, sitting right outside the door, acting as though he’d actually listened when she told him not to wander off.

      Willa scratched his head and called him a good dog and tried to tell herself that the jittery feeling in her stomach was because she hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before— not rising dread at the prospect of how bad the damage was behind the barn on the next rise over, and along the roads that crisscrossed the valley. And in town …

      “It’s a beautiful day,” she said, tipping her head up again to the clear sky. “You’d almost think yesterday never even happened.”

      “Hey.”

      She lowered her gaze to him. Even with his hair sticking up on one side and a smudge of dirt at his temple, he still looked like every well-behaved girl’s naughty, forbidden fantasy. “Hmm?”

      His dark eyes searched hers. “You okay?”

      And she nodded and forced her mouth to form a smile.

      On the other side of the barn, the two pigs from the night before were rooting around near the water trough. A rooster stood on a section of busted-down fence and crowed as Willa stared across the ravine at her parents’ house.

      The house was untouched by the flood, though the water had gotten halfway up the front walk that was lined with her mother’s prized roses. Her dad’s minitractor lay on its side at the base of that walk. And a couple of steers had somehow gotten through the fence and were snacking on the vegetable garden in the side yard.

      Below, in the ravine, the water had receded, leaving debris strewn down the sides of the hill and up the one on which the house sat. There were tree trunks and lawn chairs down there, boulders and a bicycle, a shade umbrella and any number of other items that looked bizarre, scary and all wrong, soggy and busted up, trailing across the pasture. Willa turned her eyes away, toward the road.

      And saw her red Subaru. It had drifted past the ditch and lay on its side in the pasture there. It was covered in mud.

      “Guess I’ll be needing a new car.” She tried to sound philosophical about it, but knew that she didn’t exactly succeed.

      “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go check out the house. Watch where you put your feet in that ravine.”

      Buster and the two pigs followed them down there. They picked their way with care through all the soggy junk and knotted tree roots. It was going to be quite a job, cleaning up. And she knew that all the other ranches in the valley had to be in a similar state, if not worse. Her family still had a barn and the house, at least. And as far as she could see, there were no animals or—God forbid—people lying broken amid the wreckage down there.

      When they reached the house, they skirted the downed tractor and went up the front steps. She’d lost her keys. They were probably still stuck in the ignition of her poor Subaru. But her mom had left a house key where she always did, in the mouth of the ceramic frog by the porch swing.

      They went inside. The power and phone were both out, but still, it all looked just as it had the last time she’d been there, the white refrigerator covered with those silly smiling-flower magnets her mother liked, some of them holding reminders to pick up this or that at the store. There were also pictures of her and her brother and a few recipes her mom was meaning to try. In the living room, the remote sat on the magazine table by her dad’s recliner and

Скачать книгу