LITMIR.BIZ

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One

      With only a towel about his waist and one slung around his neck, Cade McGivern gingerly sat down on the side of the bed in his darkened bedroom. Twenty minutes under a hot-as-he-could-stand-it shower, and it had only taken the edge off his aches, the merest bite out of the chill that seemed to go bone deep. He could still feel on his face the raw sting of snow driven by straight-line winds.

      Yup, from the looks of it, it was shaping up to be one hell of a new year.

      Hunching forward, he finished toweling his hair dry, stifling a groan at the twinge of pain through his right shoulder, the result of trying to coax a particularly ornery steer out of a drifting-over washout.

      Not that there was another soul in the house to hear him if he did let go with a holler or two. As it stood, he was completely alone, with nothing for company but the wind outside. It was howling a blue streak of its own.

      No doubt about it, that was one wicked storm out there. He was glad to be out of it after nearly twelve hours of working against time to ensure the safety of his herd. At a certain point, though, it all came under the category of damage control, meaning he’d learned as a matter of course not to hold out hope for a whole lot of success.

      Yet both such circumstances, he realized, might be about to change, with any amount of luck. Luck, that was, and Destiny.

      Cade didn’t know what he’d have done today without the chestnut gelding he’d been training up. Destiny had been a trooper, never faltering throughout the hours of gathering cattle and driving them to closer pastures.

      Then there was the letter that had come just yesterday. He reached out in the dark toward the bedside table to touch the still unopened envelope. What message it contained, he didn’t know. Forgiveness would be nice, although he’d done nothing wrong. Cade was ages past looking for justice, however. Simply having fate give him another chance would do.

      As for no longer being alone—well, that’d be nice, too.

      Yup, despite this blizzard and the prospect of losing cattle to it, Cade was aware of a certain…expectancy in the air that augured better times in the new year.

      In any case, he sure as hell was ready for a change.

      If he had the gumption, he’d see midnight in, just for the curiosity of finding out whether this hopeful impression would bear out. But he was just too dog-tired to stay up another minute, much less three hours.

      Casting the towel in his hand toward the doorway and giving the one around his waist a fling in the same general direction, he eased under the thick covers.

      That’s when he did smell something for real: the faintest waft of wood. Sandalwood, to be specific. He knew only because his brother had favored it, even if Loren had taken any amount of grief from Cade for being so city-slickered as to choose a “scent.”

      Lying on his back, Cade again put out a hand, finding the letter on the bed stand and bringing it to his nose. It smelled only faintly of ink and paper, nothing more.

      He shook his head at such foolishness, much unlike him. What was he waiting for, anyway? He may as well open it and get it over with.

      But he was waiting for something, he realized, even as he pushed himself up onto one elbow to turn on the lamp on the opposite bed stand. He was waiting for, wanting, expecting, something more—

      Cade’s heart stopped cold. He stared, blinked, then stared some more.

      For lying on her side in the bed, her back to him, was a woman, sound asleep.

      He was too stunned at first to move. Had he got so chilled out in the storm he was imagining things? Except he felt in perfect command of his senses.

      From his vantage leaning over her, he could see that she was fairly young, with skin as smooth and white and flawless as the snow-covered plain outside. Long lashes lay against her cheek like tiny feathers. A dark braid of hair curled over her shoulder. She’d evidently been pretty chilled herself, for she’d drawn the down comforter up to her chin, making her look like nothing so much as an ebony-haired Sleeping Beauty in the midst of the hundred-year sleep whose end would come only with the kiss of her princely hero.

      But he was no hero, princely or otherwise.

      Truth be told, though, the whole scene she presented, sleeping peacefully in his bed as if truly secure in the trust that a certain someone would soon ride in whose return would make everything right in her world, had a feeling of…of rightness about it—like the answer to a question he hadn’t even known he’d asked.

      She must have heard him, for the woman stirred, brow furrowing in momentary distress, making him wonder what dream he’d disturbed her from. He couldn’t tell whether it had been good or bad from the little sound she made in the back of her throat, half sigh, half moan. Half pleasure, half pain.

      It occurred to Cade that it was one of the most intimate things you could do, watching someone wake up. He was helpless to look away, though, even if it made him feel like a voyeur in his own bed.

      Her lashes fluttered, then opened. She glanced around drowsily before settling her gaze on his hand, propped on the mattress in front of her. Her eyes followed a path up from wrist to forearm to biceps to shoulder to neck before finally meeting his own gaze.

      And Cade found himself looking into a pair of the biggest, deepest, darkest blue eyes under the sun. He’d never seen anything like them, nor the expression in them, completely, utterly trusting.

      “You’re home,” she said simply. As if she had been waiting for him. Or someone else.

      Which seemed highly unlikely, given the way she closed her eyes again, as if to fully savor his chest pressed against her spine, her backside nestled against his—

      He realized only then that he was naked as the day he was born. And just as vulnerable. At the mercy of the elements, so to speak.

      At the mercy of this woman.

      It had been a long time since he’d been surprised into such a disadvantage. Seven years, in fact.

      If his face hadn’t already been red from windburn, it surely was now as Cade cast around for something to make him decent. Luckily—if you could call it luck, which he was beginning to think he was on the wrong end of—there was the pair of jeans he’d thrown over the footboard earlier before heading into the shower.

      With a mumbled “Pardon me,” he swiftly reached for the jeans and pulled them on under the covers before swinging out of the bed, back to her, to zip them up, barely preserving his modesty in the process, and only a fraction of his composure.

      For when he turned around, it was to those singularly captivating eyes staring at him as if he were the answer to a wish.

      But hadn’t he been the one doing the wishing?

      Without a doubt, the cold had done a number on his reason, Cade decided. He noticed the letter on the coverlet, where it must have slipped out of his hand. It had gotten crumpled, probably during his exertions getting his jeans on. He snatched it up and tossed it back onto the night table, making a mental note to be sure and read it as soon as he had a private moment. Best to get back to reality with no more delay.

      “If you don’t mind my bein’ nosy, just what’re you doin’ in my bed?” Cade asked, embarrassment making him short.

      She pushed herself halfway up on the headboard, the thick comforter mounding around her. “There wasn’t another one made up in the house,” she said, as if that explained everything.

      Once more, sarcasm got the better of him. “Not much reason for a man livin’ out in the middle of the Texas Panhandle to keep a guest room ready on the off chance some strange woman’ll want to make herself at home.”

      He immediately regretted his abruptness. Even with her face half in shadow, he marked the shock in her expression, as well as another emotion he couldn’t make out.

      “You are

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