About the Author

Besides writing, ANN MAJOR enjoys her husband, kids, grandchildren, cats, hobbies, and travels. A Texan, Ann holds a B.A. from UT, and an M.A. from Texas A & M. A former teacher on both the secondary and college levels, Ann is an experienced speaker. She’s written over sixty books for Mills & Boon and frequently makes bestseller lists.

His for the Taking

Ann Major

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-472-00626-4

HIS FOR THE TAKING

© 2013 Ann Major

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Epilogue

About the Publisher

To Ted

One

The last thing John Coleman had planned to do when he woke up to the stench of petroleum and the roar of his oil rig was to go chasing after Maddie Gray.

Jamming the phone against his ear, Cole—as everybody from Yella, Texas, called him—leaned back in his leather office chair and rubbed his throbbing temple. “What do you mean Maddie’s come back to Yella and she’s nursin’ Miss Jennie?”

Miss Jennie had been their beloved high school English teacher.

Cole knew his soft drawl sounded mild, even disinterested, as he spoke to Adam, his older half brother, yet Cole was anything but calm.

During his marriage to Lizzie, which had ended when she’d died almost a year ago, he’d dreaded the thought of his childhood sweetheart coming back to town. Because he’d feared how he might react. But he was a widower now, and he’d been thinking about Maddie of late, thinking he might just drive to Austin and look her up. So far he’d always managed to talk himself out of it.

What kind of sap carries on a secret teenage affair with the town’s bad girl and then can’t move on after she treats him like dirt?

Hell, six long years had come and gone. And still his mind burned with memories of Maddie’s fine-boned face, her heart-shaped lips, her violet eyes and ebony hair, and ample breasts. Why couldn’t he forget how radiant her face had been every time she’d lain beneath him? Because she’d been more than beautiful. She’d been smart and gifted, especially with contrary horses.

But she had bad genes. Maddie’s mother had stolen husbands, fathers—indeed any man who would have her. And in the end, her own daughter had turned the tables on her by stealing her boyfriend and running off with him, leaving Cole behind.

“Miss Jennie fell over a garden hose and cracked her pelvic bone,” Adam said, interrupting Cole’s thoughts. “Maddie’s here to take care of her until Miss Jennie’s niece from up in Canada can get down here. Nobody in town can stop talking about Maddie. About how well educated and classy she is now. About how’s she’s got herself a college degree and all. Cole, she’s so damn beautiful she takes your breath away.”

“You’ve seen her?”

His half brother hadn’t moved to Yella until after their dad’s death, which had occurred shortly after Maddie had run off, so Adam hadn’t known Maddie when she and Cole had been together.

“I dropped by first thing this mornin’! All the guys have been stopping by Miss Jennie’s place to check on her, so I figured I’d better check on her myself.”

“Right.”

“Just to make sure she’s gettin’ proper care and all. Oh, is Maddie ever beautiful. All curves and creamy skin. She has the softest voice and the sweetest smile—one that lights everything up.”

“Enough!” Cole growled.

The brothers’ telephone call had centered on ranch business until this last bit of local gossip. When Cole was away from Yella, Adam usually ended their calls about the family business by filling him in on the latest scuttlebutt.

“Well, don’t you be going back there just to see Maddie, you hear.” It was strange how much more annoyed than usual Cole suddenly was with his older brother. “You’re to steer clear of Maddie Gray. I don’t care how polished she is now, she’s no good. Never was. And never will be.”

“Something’s sure got you riled this morning.” There was an edge in Adam’s voice now, too.

“Pressure here on the rig. You know how I was telling you this damn drought has shale frac water in short supply? Well, I’m facing the possibility of having to drill a deepwater well. All the drillers are overbooked except for one bandit who says he’ll put me first, but only if I make it worth his time by paying him triple. And now you’re distracting me with idle gossip about a no-good woman like Maddie.”

“She’s the interim CEO of some nonprofit in Austin called My Sister’s House. She’s worrying herself to death over some fundraiser she’s in charge of in a couple of weeks. Sounds like she’s trying to do some good, at least, doesn’t it?”

“Camouflage! It’s an ancient trick.”

“Well, I liked her. Oh, and she’s got a little boy she left back in Austin at camp. He’s six years old. Noah. Miss Jennie’s got loads of pictures of him. He’s cuter than a bug. Black hair…green eyes. He reminds me of someone.” There was an odd note in his brother’s voice. “All in all, Maddie didn’t seem the least bit bad. She’s nothin’ like her mother.”

The last thing Cole wanted to hear was praise for Maddie, or her son. Especially not from his half brother, who often resented him because of their father’s mistakes, so he told Adam he was a fool to fall for anything Maddie Gray said and ended the call.

So, Maddie was back, dazzling the town, even his brother. And she had a kid. Who was the father? Vernon? The timing would be about right. Cole had always been careful to protect her, so he knew the boy wasn’t his.

Cole pushed his mug of strong black coffee aside so roughly, the steaming liquid sloshed onto several important drilling leases. With thoughts of Maddie stirring his blood, he didn’t need more caffeine.

Edgily he shoved the papers aside and stared out the window. He slid his jean-clad legs onto the top of his desk and stacked one scuffed, black, ostrich-skinned cowboy boot on top of the other. It was early yet, but already a brilliant sun blasted the desolate Texas landscape. Thanks to his air conditioner, the interior of his trailer was icy. That was the only thing he liked about living at the drill site for weeks on end while he worked a field. But even the chilled air couldn’t keep out the hot memories of Maddie.

Too well he recalled the first time he’d actually spoken to Maddie, who’d been younger and poorer than him, and hadn’t run in his social circle.

He’d driven home from the University of Texas on a Friday and had gone looking for his girlfriend, Lizzie Collier, over at her daddy’s ranch. It had been spring and the pastures had been filled with bluebonnets.

When Cole had stepped inside the barn and hollered for Lizzie, one of the horses, Wild Thing, had gone off like dynamite, neighing and kicking his stall door. Cole thought Wild Thing was too dangerous to fool with but Lizzie had the softest heart in the world. When she’d found out Old Man Green was starving Wild Thing and beating him, she’d talked her dad into buying the horse. Her father had hired more than a dozen horse whisperers to save the animal, and when they’d failed, Lizzie’s father had wanted to put him down. Lizzie wouldn’t hear of it.

Cole hadn’t thought too much about the ruckus the horse was making until he heard a crooning voice inside the stall. Thinking Lizzie might be trapped, Cole had rushed toward the stall door.

“Lizzie?”

“Shh!” chided a young, defiant voice from inside the stall.

Since Cole couldn’t see too clearly in the shadows, he took the slim figure wearing jeans and a baseball cap turned backward for the young male groom who worked for Lizzie’s dad.

Fixating on Cole, the gelding’s ears swept so far back against his narrow gray skull they all but vanished. Then the big animal lowered his head as his pale forelock shot over terrible eyes that rolled backward. Half rearing, the animal charged, his hooves splintering a board.

“Get out of that stall, boy!” Cole commanded.

Wild Thing’s eyes rolled crazily. Again the gelding reared to his full height and heaved himself with murderous intent against the stable door.

The boy jumped back and flattened against the wall. “Are you trying to kill me?” In the confusion the kid’s baseball cap hit the sawdust, and a lustrous mane of black hair tumbled down the imp’s shoulders. And across breasts.

“Maddie Gray?”

What male with an ounce of testosterone wouldn’t have recognized her sinfully gorgeous, exotic features—Maddie’s creamy pale skin, her voluptuous mouth, her violet-blue eyes? Hell, she looked exactly like her no-good mother, Jesse Ray Gray, the town’s most notorious slut.

Cole’s gaze seared her ample breasts, which heaved against her faded blue cotton work shirt. She’d filled out since he’d seen her last. If her tight clothes were any clue, she’d probably be up to her mother’s tricks—if she wasn’t already.

“You’re Maddie Gray,” he repeated accusingly, disliking her more than a little because she stirred him.

“So what if I am?” Her beautiful mouth tightened rebelliously.

Wild Thing’s eyes rolled, and he neighed shrilly.

“Please lower your voice and start backing away,” she ordered.

At least she wasn’t a total simpleton. She saw the folly of being penned in such a small enclosure with a monster like Wild Thing.

“I said back away!” she repeated. “Can’t you see you’re scaring him?”

She began to speak to the startled horse in a sweet, soothing murmur Cole would have envied if he wasn’t so furious at her for her foolhardiness and willingness to blame him for her own stupidity.

“It’s okay, big baby. Nobody’s going to hurt you,” she said huskily in a purr that would have oozed sex had she been talking to a man.

A gray ear perked up. Not that the large animal didn’t keep his other ear flat and a suspicious eye on Cole.

“You’ve gotta go,” the girl urged when Wild Thing danced impatiently.

“Not until you get out of that stall,” Cole said.

“I will, you big idiot—just as soon as you shut up and leave.” For the horse’s sake, she kept her insult soft and sweet.

Cole’s stubbornness made him stand his ground a few seconds longer, but her pleading eyes finally convinced him. After Cole left, it took another minute or two before the horse settled and the girl was able to slip out. Strangely, no sooner was she safely outside the stall than Cole’s temper flared again. He knew he should forget about her recklessness and go to the Collier house and wait for Lizzie, but Maddie had his blood up. So when he heard her light, retreating footsteps as she lit out the back to avoid him, he rushed after her. When she caught sight of him, she let out a cry of alarm.

Grabbing her arms, he shoved her against a wall. “You have no right to be on this property! Or to be in that monster’s stall!” Cole yelled. “You scared the hell out of me!”

When Wild Thing screamed and sent his hooves crashing against wood again, Maddie stilled.

“I was just doing my job, okay?”

“Your job?”

“I’ll have you know Liam Rodgers hired me.”

Liam, Lizzie’s daddy’s foreman, was no man’s fool. “Why you? Why would he hire you, of all people, when he could hire the best?”

She frowned. “Maybe because I know what I’m doing. While you’ve been off at college driving your fancy cars and chasing girls, I’ve been mucking stalls to get free riding lessons. Maybe I’ve learned stuff. When he saw Wild Thing stand calmly and let me saddle him in the round pen, Liam about fainted. When I rode the horse just as easy as you please, Liam hired me.”

“Well, you can’t possibly know enough to work with that monster.”

“I did what twelve men couldn’t do!”

“You got lucky! Now you listen to me. A normal horse weighs half a ton and has a brain the size of a tomato. Such an animal is wired to defend himself against predators, which includes humans, even half-pint girls like you.”

“I know all that!”

“That horse is a maniac. You shouldn’t be anywhere near him—not in the round pen, not in his stall, not ever!”

Her chest swelled, and her eyes narrowed rebelliously.

Her dark look only fueled his fury. “Don’t you get it? Next time he’ll kill you!”

“Not if you stay out of this barn and let me do my job!”

“Right! So, it’s my fault? I have half a mind to report this to Mr. Collier.”

“No! If I don’t save him, Mr. Collier will kill him.”

“Good.”

“No! Please…He’s better. I know he’s still easy to startle, but he’ll get even better. It’s just going to take time and patience. He’s been through a lot.”

“He’s a killer.”

“Not many living creatures get the easy, pampered start in life you’ve had. That’s why you can’t possibly understand what it’s like for the rest of us!”

Her lovely voice had softened with desperation and love for Wild Thing but it didn’t hold a trace of self-pity. When her impassioned eyes misted, he noticed they were as beautiful as sparkling amethysts.

“I know you don’t care what I think, but Lizzie loves him. Spare him for her sake!”

The girl was passionate, compassionate…and despite her ragged jeans and faded shirt, gorgeous, as well.

Damn those eyes of hers. Again they reminded him of jewels, with lavender facets of light and dark that made his blood run hot and cold. Those damn eyes, coupled with having held her too close for too long in a shadowy barn that afforded him the privacy to follow through on his desire, had him hard as granite. Aware of her soft, slim body pressed tightly into his, he didn’t even try to defend himself from the heat that her sexy curves generated.

It would be so easy to take her right here.

Her mouth was full and luscious and suddenly he wanted to kiss her, to dip his tongue inside and taste her. Would she open her mouth and let him?

The heat in her gaze was generated from some emotion. Maybe she felt what he did.

“What?” She had gone still. Her eyes never left his face. “Let me go!” Her voice was shallow.

“You don’t want me to do that, and you know it.” In the grip of a need too fierce to deny, his voice was raspy.

His gaze moved hungrily lower. She had soft, lush breasts. Hell, he wanted way more than a kiss, and he wanted it very badly. She was Jesse Ray’s daughter, so she probably wanted it, too.

Feeling justified in testing a girl of such easy virtue, he gripped her shoulders and pulled her closer. Before she could react, he lowered his mouth to hers so he could take his first taste of her. His lips were hard and demanding because he expected easy compliance. And for an instant she responded just as favorably as he’d imagined, by gasping and sighing and clutching him closer. Her lips did part, and he felt her tongue, if only for an instant. Then almost immediately she stiffened. Recoiling, she balled her hands and began to pound at his chest, thrashing wildly.

When he didn’t immediately let her go, her face flushed with anger. “You wouldn’t treat Lizzie like this! You wouldn’t try to take her in a barn like she was something cheap and easy without ever even having a single conversation with her!”

“Well, you’re not Lizzie Collier, are you? You’re Jesse Ray’s girl.”

“And that makes me too low to have feelings like you and your kind? Well, I do have feelings! And I’m not like my mother, you hear! So, go find your precious, saintly Lizzie Collier, and leave me in peace! She’s your girlfriend. Not me! And I wouldn’t ever want to be!”

But the last was a lie. The quick tears of shame and desolation in her lovely eyes and the thick pain in her ravaged tone told him so. She wanted him, but on equal terms. She didn’t want to be someone cheap in his eyes. Her pride, as well as her longing for him, tugged at his heart and made him feel ashamed even as it made his desire for her increase a thousandfold.

He hadn’t misread her. She had wanted him, badly. But Jesse Ray’s daughter had as much self-respect as Lizzie Collier did any day.

For a long moment, she gazed at him as if pleading for something he was at a loss to give even as her look tore his heart. Then, with a desperate cry, she pushed free of him and ran out of the barn. As he watched her retreating across the pasture, he was stunned by her grace and vital beauty and by how much more he wanted her than he’d ever wanted Lizzie. He was baffled by how low and ashamed he felt by that fact. She was just Jesse Ray’s girl. Why the hell should he feel such an overpowering need for her, such a need to apologize to her?

For weeks afterward, he’d tried to put the scent and softness and taste of the spirited and unsuitable girl out of his mind, but she’d been too lovely, too passionate, too brave, too forthright—too sexy. He’d dreamed of her, dreamed of making love to her.

He tried to forget her, but then his friends began to tell him stories about Maddie—marvelous stories he’d hungered to hear. How Maddie raced with the other kids, mostly the boys, in the pastures outside town. How she always won on the back of that prancing demon, Wild Thing. They said that she’d tamed him, that she was fearless, that she would ride bareback, that the pair could jump anything.

Why, one day after school when Cole’s friend Lyle had been smoking in his vintage Mustang with the top down, she and Wild Thing jumped over him and the car.

“Crazy horse came so close to my head I dropped my cigarette in my crotch. Burned a hole in my best pair of jeans,” Lyle had complained.

Such stories had impressed Lizzie, but they’d merely proved to Cole that Maddie was a headstrong fool—and brave, stubborn and determined. Even if the older generation in Yella wouldn’t change their minds about her because of her mother, some of the kids began to think she wasn’t as bad as they’d been taught. Maddie was smart in school, too, and Miss Jennie, whose approval was hard to win, thought she was as good as anybody.

For all that, Cole knew his mother would never approve of Maddie as his girlfriend. After his mother had married into the legendary Coleman family, she felt her children had a position to uphold. Still, despite his better judgment, his fascination with Maddie began to consume him. Thus, it hadn’t been long before Cole started coming home from the university every weekend to seek her out.

He’d go to the barn and watch her train Lizzie’s horses, especially Wild Thing. Maddie worked hard, giving more than she should to that monstrous beast, who now behaved like a docile pet to please her. Not that she said “I told you so” when Cole admitted he’d been wrong about her horse-training abilities. She simply basked in his praise, and he’d realized how much she enjoyed being admired rather than scorned. She was sweet when he apologized for kissing her, too.

Cole broke up with Lizzie and, with immense determination, began to court Maddie—but secretly.

He decided the gossips were wrong. Although she resembled her mother physically, she had a different character. Yes, mother and daughter shared the same jet-black hair, the same smooth, pale skin and the same lavender eyes that could turn blue when impassioned. Yes, their curvy bodies and sensual natures had been designed by God to drive men wild. But unlike her mother, Maddie was sweet and true.

Then she’d jilted Cole for Vernon Turner and left town, proving his assessment wrong. She was just as feckless and promiscuous as her mother.

If she was trash, why couldn’t he forget her? Why did he care if she was back in Yella?

She doesn’t matter anymore. Hell, she never should have mattered.

So why did every nerve in his body feel taut? Why was his heart racing at the possibility of seeing her again?

Women like Maddie Gray, women who roared into a man’s life and then left him like so much roadkill when they’d finished with him, were a dangerous breed. A smart man learned his lesson the first go-round and steered the hell clear of them.

So why was he standing up and slinging his jacket over his shoulders?

Cole had about a million things to take care of on the rig, like dealing with that crooked driller. He didn’t have time for an unscheduled trip to Yella. Nevertheless, he scooped his cell phone and the keys to his Ford Raptor off his littered desk. Then he grabbed his sweat-stained beaver Stetson and rushed out of his trailer. Scanning the well site, which reeked of acrid fumes, he hollered for Juan.

After the air-conditioned trailer, the thick summer heat felt suffocating. Briefly he informed Juan that there was a problem at Coleman’s Landing, his family’s legendary ranch on the southern tip of the Texas Hill Country. Cole said he had to get down there fast, but that he’d be back soon. He told Juan to get the water well drilled and to damn the expense.

Then Cole was in his truck. Tires spinning, gravel and dust clouds flying, he set off for Yella.

After three miles of graded dirt road, his tires hit the main highway. He drove down that straight stretch of asphalt through parched, open country of scrub oak, mesquite and huisache like a madman, hating himself for being so all fired up to see her. She’d ruined his life…or at least several years of it, and she’d hurt sweet Lizzie, too.

Lizzie had loved him with every bone in her body, but because of Maddie haunting him, hard as he’d tried, he hadn’t ever been able to love Lizzie as he should have. Or at least he’d never craved her, if that sort of cravin’ counted for love—not the way he’d craved Maddie, with every fiber of his being.

Even Lizzie’s dying words had been about Maddie, and he’d hated Maddie for distracting him at a time when he should have been concentrating solely on Lizzie.

But he had to see Maddie again. Hopefully all he needed was closure to get her out of his system. Something about the way she’d left him six years ago—without even so much as a goodbye—bothered him.

He had to know how she could have been so unfailingly thoughtful and kind during their long-ago summer romance, how she could have loved him so sweetly that final afternoon in August—and then run off with trash the likes of Vernon Turner that same night.

Who was she: The bad girl her own mother and the town claimed she was? Or the sweet, pure girl he’d fallen in love with?

He hoped to hell he wasn’t fool enough to chase after a dream again.

Two

If Maddie felt nervous and out of sorts just being back in Yella, she felt even worse to be chasing Miss Jennie’s dog onto Cole’s wooded land. What if Adam was wrong? What if Cole came back to town before he was supposed to?

She dreaded seeing him more than anyone else in Yella, which was ridiculous. How could his rejection and contempt still hurt so much after six years, when she’d told herself repeatedly that the past—that who she used to be—no longer mattered?

Maddie hadn’t been back to Yella since the night she’d run away because there were too many memories here, both good and bad. For years, she’d made the future her focus and only rarely looked back. Besides, coming here meant she’d had to leave Noah, who was enrolled in a summer day camp on Town Lake, with a dear friend. She missed him, but she wouldn’t have people here judging him because of her—or noticing how much he resembled Cole and putting two and two together.

She’d only come back now because she owed Miss Jennie for everything good in her life.

Maddie wiped her damp brow with the back of her hand. Had Yella always been this suffocatingly hot in the summer? Of course it had. She just hadn’t noticed when she’d been a skinny, fearless kid wearing a thin T-shirt and shorts, running wild in the woods.

Today, with the sun beating down out of a bright sky, the heat felt thick and ferocious, and it wasn’t even noon yet. Strands of her long black hair had come loose from her ponytail and stuck to her cheeks and neck. Her T-shirt and cutoff jeans felt as if they were glued to her perspiring body.

Still, despite the oppressive heat and humidity and a faint sense of uneasiness, she loved the scents and sounds of the woods. The smell of grass and dust, the chorus of insects that hummed along with the birds, made her remember some of the brighter moments of her youth. Long ago she’d ridden in these woods. Here, on horseback, a slim, despised girl had acquired the magical power that riding a powerful horse could bring. Riding had taught her to be brave and strong.

Most of all she remembered riding here with Cole.

Don’t think about him.

Better to fret about her company’s fundraiser than Cole. Even though she dreaded the annual event and the stress of dealing with wealthy donors, especially the women who knew how to dress and where to shop and where to lunch, she preferred worrying about all of that to thinking about Cole.

He’d rejected her, had made her feel more unworthy than anybody else here ever had. Why couldn’t she simply forget him? Even after Greg had come into her life last spring—solid, reliable Greg, who didn’t know her secrets, who approved of her and wanted to marry her because of who and what she was now—she remained confused about her obsession with Cole, who’d never seen her as his equal.

He’d rejected her soundly—so why couldn’t she let him go? Why was she so afraid of seeing him?

When she’d fled Yella six years ago, she’d been too traumatized to ever imagine coming back. In Austin, she’d tried to better herself, tried to live down the mother who hadn’t wanted her, the sorry trailer in Yella where she’d been raised, the terrible night that had driven her away. Most of all, she’d fought hard to be a better mother to Noah than her mother had been to her.

Not that juggling single motherhood while working full-time and going to college had been easy. Especially not when the nagging fear that she really was what everybody here had believed—no good—had remained.

Then, five days ago, just when she’d been on the verge of setting a date for her wedding to the man who valued her, Miss Jennie had called from the hospital and said she’d fallen. Miss Jennie was the one person in Yella who’d always believed in Maddie, the one person who’d been there when Maddie had been terrified and desperate. So, when Miss Jennie had mentioned she’d just love it if Maddie could come for a few days because her niece, Sassy, lived in Canada and needed some time to wrap up her affairs before she could fly to Texas, Maddie had agreed to come.

Not that Miss Jennie’s neighbors hadn’t all offered to fill in, but Miss Jennie had made it clear that she would prefer spending a little time with Maddie…if only that were possible. “Time seems more precious as you get older,” she’d said, her voice sounding frail.

Still, since Miss Jennie had helped her relocate and had lent Maddie money to go to college, there was no way she could say no, even if it meant facing Cole and the prejudiced town.

Up ahead Maddie heard the jingle of dog tags. Just as she was about to call him, Cinnamon barked exuberantly from the sun-dappled brush. Her heart sank as she realized that he’d set off for the swimming hole on the Guadalupe River where she and Cole used to secretly meet. Where they’d made love countless times. Of all the places she would have preferred to avoid, the icy green pool beneath tall cypress trees on his land topped her list.

For here she could be too easily reminded of Cole, of their brief affair. Back then she’d been young and in love and filled with anticipation for their every meeting. She’d been so sure that he’d loved her and would love her forever, and that his love, once known publicly, would change other people’s opinions and she’d gain the respectability she’d craved. Even when he’d insisted on keeping their relationship a secret from everyone important to him, especially his mother, she’d believed in him.

It had taken a crisis of the worst magnitude to make her see him for what he really was—a typical boy in lust out for a few cheap thrills with the town’s bad girl, a boy who’d never respected her and couldn’t be counted on to save her. No, she’d had to save herself.

Maddie had had six years to deal with the trauma of the past. She was all grown up now. She knew that life wasn’t a fairy tale, that she needed to get over the hurt that Cole and his mother had inflicted on her.

The last thing she wanted or needed now was to see him again and reopen all those old wounds. If she were lucky, Cole would keep to his oil fields while she was here with Miss Jennie.

Maybe then she would escape Yella unscathed.

Three

Two hours after he’d left the drill site, Cole pulled up to Miss Jennie’s white house on the edge of town where her property backed up to a corner of his own estate. Miss Jennie’s house, with its sagging wraparound porch, was a sorry sight in the middle of an overgrown, brown lawn. Not that Cole’s mind was on the lousy condition of her house and yard as he slammed the door of his big, white truck and strode up her walk.

He was a little surprised when Miss Jennie’s fool of a dog didn’t race up to him, yapping. Whenever Cole rode on this part of his ranch he usually ran into the mongrel. On hot summer evenings Cinnamon loved nothing better than lying on a shady rock along the bank where the river was spring-fed and icy cold.

That particular swimming hole had often been Cole and Maddie’s secret meeting place.

All he could think of was Maddie.

He knocked impatiently, but when the screen door finally opened, it wasn’t a reluctant Maddie prettily greeting him, but sharp-eyed Bessie Mueller from next door.

Cold air gushed out of the house around her as she set fists on her solid hips. Her wrinkled face was brown from working outdoors. She had a way of standing that made her look bolted to the earth.

“Your mother told everybody you weren’t coming home till tomorrow, so, what has got you planting your dusty boots on Miss Jennie’s doorstep today?”

It went without sayin’ that everybody in Yella knew everybody else’s business.

“Ranch affairs,” he drawled, hating the way the lie made heat crawl up his neck. “Is Miss Jennie doing okay?”

“She’s just fine, but she’s restin’ for a spell. She’s had so much company this mornin’—all male. She’s plumb tuckered out.”

“And Maddie Gray?”

Bessie grinned slyly. “Oh, so, it’s her you’ve come to see…like every other man in town?” The knowing glint in her black eyes irritated the hell out of him. “Well, she’s out looking for Cinnamon, if you have to know. That’s why I’m here. I told Maddie it wasn’t no use chasin’ that mongrel. When that fool dog isn’t barking loud enough to wake the dead, he’s after my poor chickens or diggin’ up my pansies. He always comes back—when he takes a mind to.”

Like all mammals, human or otherwise, living in Yella, Cinnamon had acquired a reputation.

Cole tipped his hat. “You tell Miss Jennie I’ll be back a little later, then.”

If Maddie was chasing Cinnamon, he knew where to find her.

When Cole tugged lightly on the reins, Raider snorted and jerked his head, stopping just short of the small creek that fed the river where ancient trees grew in such dense profusion they were almost impenetrable.

“The brush is too thick from here on,” Cole said, “so this is where I’ll leave you.”

On a hunch that Cinnamon would lure Maddie to the pool by the dam, he’d saddled his large, spirited bay gelding and set off.

Dismounting, Cole looped Raider’s reins over a fallen log near the rushing water and left the horse grazing in the shade.

Pushing back a tumble of wild grapevines that cascaded from the highest branches of a live oak, Cole made a mental note to get his foreman to send a hand out to clip the vines before they smothered the tree. Then, as he stalked through the high brown grasses toward the emerald pool, memories of Maddie played in his mind.

He and Maddie had ridden these trails together. When they’d dismounted they’d often played hide-and-seek. How he’d loved catching her and pulling her slim body beneath his. She would smile up at him, her flushed face thrilled and trusting in the pink glow of a late-afternoon sun.

After she’d left, he’d posted signs that read No Trespassing and No Swimming.

At the sound of a dog barking, Cole’s heart began to race. When he recognized Maddie’s low, velvety voice, he went stone-still.

“We shouldn’t be here. We’re trespassing. But you don’t care.”

Stealthily he inched forward until he caught glimpses of dewy skin and ebony hair through the trees.

Sitting on the dam, dangling her long legs in the water, she wore nothing but a blade of wet grass on her left nipple and a pair of black thong panties. Her exotic face with those arched, slanting brows was lovelier than ever. Not that his gazemained on her face. Her naked breasts and slender waist and her legs that went forever stole his breath.

He gulped in air while his heart thudded so violently he was sure she’d hear. He could turn and go, but why should he? He’d come here to find her, hadn’t he?

Slowly she dipped a rag—no, it was her T-shirt—into the water and squeezed it so tightly that rivulets of sparkling liquid showered her throat and breasts.

“Ah, nothing like icy water on a hot day,” she purred huskily as she put the T-shirt back into the pool and dripped more fluid diamonds over her body. “I was burning up.”

The dog was panting hard. Cole was burning up, too, but his condition wasn’t entirely due to the heat.

Erect, spellbound, he watched as the blade of grass got caught in the currents of water tracing down her smooth, gleaming belly before sliding down to her navel. When a slender fingertip plucked it off her skin, heat shot through Cole. His sex, hot and hard, swelled painfully against tight denim. When Cinnamon walked onto the dam and shook water all over Maddie, she screamed even as she giggled.

“You are all dog,” she said huskily, but she laughed, teasing the mongrel rather than chastising him.

Damn her to hell and back for being so gorgeous and unnervingly sexy. She seemed sweet, too, just as she always had—the very essence of everything feminine.

But looks could deceive.

Even though he knew what she was, memories of the first time she’d lain with him struck him full force.

She’d been flushed and naked as she’d whispered she loved him and always would. She had begged him to take her.

He’d kissed her throat and stroked her hair. “Are you sure about this?”

“No matter what happens, I want it to be you…who’s first, I mean.”

For a long time, his hands had skimmed over her body, touching her, caressing her. She’d been so innocent and so infinitely precious to him.

Determined not to hurt her, he’d been gentle and patient even though his youthful hormones had been raging. Hell, he’d even told her he loved her, too. Worse—he’d meant it.

Don’t think about it.

But how could he forget how tight she’d been, or how she’d held her breath so long after he’d entered her, she’d scared the hell out of him?

“Are you okay?” he’d whispered.

“Better than okay.” When she’d pressed her soft mouth to his throat she’d sent him over the edge. He’d apologized, but she’d begun to kiss him again, and he’d hardened inside her almost instantly.

“I’ve had a crush on you for years,” she’d said. “I just never thought you could care for someone like me.”

“Well, I do.”

“Sometimes I still have to pinch myself so I know I’m not dreaming.”

Now, determined to push the bittersweet memories aside and regain control, he counted slowly…backward from one hundred to zero. Long before he reached zero, more memories bombarded him, each one sweeter than the last. Then he couldn’t count, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but feel his testosterone-engorged body thicken.

More than anything, he wanted to touch her warm, velvet skin, to taste her sweet lips…just one more time. Maybe once he was sated, he would be rational enough to remember how shabbily she’d treated him.

As if she sensed him, she slid into the water, screaming because it was so cold, and then swam away from the dam, leaving a trail of graceful ripples flashing in her wake.

Instead of listening to the voice of reason that told him not to play with fire, he strode down to the bank and stood above her in the long shadows of the cypress trees, watching her swim, willing her to turn and face him.

When she did, her face whitened with shock. “Cole! What are you doing here?”

The alarm in her slanting blue-violet eyes cut him to the quick. But still his tone was hard when he said, “I heard you were chasing Cinnamon on my land, so I came looking for you.”

When her exotic face went even whiter, his own craven desire made his gut clench.

Without another word, she dived underneath the water and swam as far away from him as she could. When she finally came up, she crossed her hands over her breasts and scrambled behind the nearest rock. “I—I didn’t mean to bother you!” she began, blushing furiously as she gasped for breath. “If I’d known you were in town—I would never have come here! Your brother, Adam…He told me you wouldn’t be back anytime soon. I swear he did!”

“Didn’t you see the No Swimming signs? A kid nearly drowned here a couple of years ago, after a flood. Cinnamon is not worth risking your pretty neck by swimming here alone.”

“Okay. I won’t do it again. If you’ll just leave, I’ll dress and go.”

“The last thing I want is you dressed and gone.”

The stark look of terror reappeared in her eyes. “Don’t start!” she whispered. “Please—”

The shame and fear in her frantic gaze tore at his heart. He remembered how sensitive she’d been on the subject of her mother and how shy she’d always been about sexual matters, especially in the beginning. But she’d never been this skittish. Suddenly he wished he could take back the suggestive comment.

“Somebody told me a while back that you’re a mother now…that you have a little boy…”

Her violet-blue eyes widened with even more fear. Why?

“I just meant that as a mother, you shouldn’t take unnecessary risks—like swimming here alone.”

“My son is no concern of yours!” Her voice was high and thin. “You made that very clear—”

“When did we ever discuss your son?”

“What?” She seemed to catch herself. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I saw your signs. It’s just that I’m upset because you startled me. I shouldn’t have gotten in the water without a buddy. If you’ll just leave, I’ll get out, dress and go. Like I said.” She had begun to shiver, and her lips were blue.

“You can swim as long as you like…now that I’m here to watch over you.”

“I don’t want you here watching over me.” Her teeth were chattering.

“Right.” He set his hot, insolent gaze on her.

“Cole, I’m…I’m freezing. If…you won’t go, would you please turn your back so I…can get out and dress?”

“Okay, already.” Halfheartedly, he turned his back.

Not trusting him, she hesitated. A moment or two later, he heard water splash on limestone, followed by the whisper of damp feet on grass and the breaking of twigs as she scampered across the rocks to retrieve her clothes.

When a low curse escaped her lips, he turned out of concern and was rewarded with another glimpse of her tantalizing breasts and thighs. His breath hitched as she struggled to push her slim arms through the knotted sleeves of her wet, tangled T-shirt. Absorbed in pulling on her jeans, she didn’t look up and see that he couldn’t take his tortured eyes off her.

When she’d fastened her cutoffs, she looked up. “You cheated,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“I guess I shouldn’t wonder, since you’ll always think I’m the kind of girl who doesn’t deserve your respect.” With an indignant frown she leaned down and secured the now-docile Cinnamon with a leash.

“Damn,” he muttered, feeling guilty as well as angry.

That she could chastise him, for anything, when she’d jilted him for Turner, was gallingly unfair.

“Don’t worry. I won’t presume to trespass on your land again,” she said almost haughtily.

“You can swim here anytime,” he said coldly. “It’s just that I’d prefer that you bring a friend with you the next time.”

“Who? With the exception of Miss Jennie, people here don’t really like my mother or me much. If you’ll recall, I…I never had any real friends in this town.”

“I hear eight men stopped by to check on Miss Jennie this mornin’.”

“For your information, I wasn’t ever who you thought I was or who they probably think I am. It’s taken me a long time to believe in myself…after…after the way you and the town treated me.”

“Oh, really? I find that surprising. For someone so sensitive and romantic, you sure as hell slept with me and then ran off with Turner without so much as a goodbye.”

When her skin went as pale as the bleached limestone bank, he felt as if someone had kicked him in the gut. But even as she began to tremble, her eyes blazed.

“Believe what you want about me!” she whispered as she hugged her arms around herself. “I’m glad I don’t have to care anymore.” But her eyes belied her indifference.

When he’d left the rig today he’d sworn he wouldn’t rehash the past, but now he had to ask. “Tell me why you ran off with him. You owe me an explanation.”

“Once…I foolishly thought…maybe I did owe you. So, before I left, I called you to explain, remember?”

Fury that she would lie so carelessly swelled inside him. “The hell you did! You called me eighteen months later—when it was a little late, since I was already married to Lizzie!”

“No! I called you the night I left. But your mother answered the phone. She told me exactly what you told her to tell me, that she didn’t want my kind in your life. So, excuse me if I didn’t call you back. I had a lot on my plate. But my problems then are none of your business now.”

“My mother? You talked to my mother that night?”

She nodded.

“I don’t believe you! There’s no way she could have resisted throwing such a call from you in my face!”

“I don’t care what you believe. Do you deny that when I called you again, a year and a half later, you were even less receptive than she’d been that night? If you do, let me refresh your memory. You answered the phone and told me you never wanted to talk to me again! Then you slammed the phone down. At least your mother had the guts to talk to me!”

Her beautiful violet eyes shimmered with remembered pain, making a muscle in his gut pull. Her accusation about his mother didn’t play. His mother, who had rigid views of social order, would have skinned him alive if she’d found out he had anything to do with Jesse Ray’s daughter.

“The truth is—you waited a whole year and a half after you’d run off to call. Like I said, it was too late.”

“Well, then let’s leave it at that! You got married to a nice, respectable girl. Maybe I moved on, too. Okay?”

But it wasn’t okay. Why were feelings that he’d suppressed for years suddenly so important to him?

“I told myself to leave it at that! And I did, as long as Lizzie was alive—for her sake. But now that she’s gone and you’re here, damn it, I want to know why you left me for Vernon without any explanation. All I knew was what your mother told everybody—that you’d flaunted yourself around Vernon to spite her and had run off with him for the same reason.”

She whitened. Although she tried to hide her fear, he saw that her hands were shaking. What was she so scared of?

Then she drew herself up straighter, and her beautiful lips thinned with determination. It was as if she found some inner strength that enabled her to face him down.

“I—I wasn’t myself when I left. After talking to your mother, I believed you were relieved to be rid of me.”

Relieved? He’d been in so much agony he’d thought he was dying. When he couldn’t get in touch with her, he’d been wild to find her, to talk to her. Wanting to hurt her now, as she’d hurt him then, he said, “I should have been relieved. Any sane guy would’ve been. You were your mother’s daughter, in the end.”

“Well, there you go,” she whispered in a small voice. “Lucky you…to escape my clutches.”

Her casually tossed comment pushed him over the edge. “Well, damn it, what if I wasn’t smart enough to be relieved?” he growled, hating himself for not hiding that she’d held such power over him. Hell, she still held power over him as she stood there looking pretty and wounded and sexy as hell in the wet T-shirt that clung to her breasts. “When you ran off, I was worried sick about you.”

“You were?” She bit her lip and looked away in confusion, as if what he’d said made no sense.

“I thought about you all the time. I didn’t want to believe what your mother was saying without hearing your side,” he said. “Every night I’d come out here and wonder how you could just disappear like that. I missed you, damn it! I wanted to know you were okay, at least, even if you were with Turner.”

“Did you ever try to find me?”

“I wanted to. But, hell, my father got sick a week after you left. I was forced to take over the family businesses. On his deathbed he confessed to having another son…Adam. Mother couldn’t accept him. I had a lot on my plate, too.”

Something in his low tone got through to her because she whispered in a raspy, broken voice, “I’m sorry about your father. I didn’t know. I was upset when I left…and too ashamed to call you again after your mother had so soundly rejected me.”

“You sure as hell should have been ashamed.”

“It took me a while to get over…what happened.” Her eyes darkened with pain. “But when I finally called you again, you didn’t want to talk to me. No—you were cold and arrogant.”

Because he’d been afraid he’d break if he spoke to her, because he’d been trying to be faithful to Lizzie, damn it.

“I don’t see why you’re dredging all this up now, Cole.”

Maybe because nearly a year had passed since Lizzie’s death, and he finally felt free to pursue whatever the hell he wanted. Because Maddie was here, looking even lovelier and more vulnerable than before. His reaction wasn’t logical. He knew that. But somehow his involvement with Maddie wasn’t over. Seeing her again had thoroughly convinced him of that.

“So, what was in those letters you wrote me after I refused to talk to you?” he asked. He remembered too well signing for those two certified envelopes and then angrily tossing them in a drawer and telling himself he had to forget them.

Maddie gasped and lost even more color. “Didn’t you read my letters?”

“No. I signed for them, but I couldn’t read them, for the same reason I couldn’t talk to you on the phone—because of Lizzie. Maybe someone like you can’t understand this—but I would have felt like I was cheating on her if anything you said tempted me. Then she died, and I couldn’t read them out of loyalty to her. She’d been my wife. What had you ever done—except jilt me for Turner?”

Maddie drew in a sharp, anguished breath. Licking her lips, she swallowed hard. “Okay,” she finally said. “You just signed for them…. Well, whatever I said in those letters can’t matter now,” she said. “You owe me nothing. And I owe you nothing.”

“I’m beginning to see they’re a piece in a puzzle I need to explore in more depth.”

“No! The past, which includes you, doesn’t matter now!” But her voice shook. “I—I was nothing to you.”

“How can you say that and act like I mistreated you—when you ran off with Turner?”

“You should thank me. I set you free so you could marry your precious Lizzie and have everyone in Yella think the best of you. And that’s exactly what happened.”

He remembered resenting how anxious his mother had been to push Lizzie on him after Maddie ran off and his father died. Maybe marrying Lizzie because he’d been sad and lonely and overwhelmed, and because his mother and the whole town had thought they’d make a perfect couple, hadn’t been the smartest thing he’d ever done. Not that he could tell Maddie that he’d made bigger mistakes than sleeping with her.

“What did you write in those damn letters?” he demanded, really curious.

“Nothing that could possibly matter now,” she said, too casually. “I was young and foolish. Money was tight. My girlhood fantasy got the best of my better judgment. You know, poor girl wins rich boyfriend after all…lives happily ever after with him in his big, white, legendary ranch house…and then everybody in Yella looks up to her. Some foolishness like that.”

“I think it’s high time I finally read them. I’ll be the judge of what’s foolish.”

Her brows flew together. “You still have them?”

“I threw them in a desk drawer, in my office, up at my big, white house, as you put it. They should be there…that is, if Lizzie put them back.”

“Lizzie?”

“On her deathbed, Lizzie confessed she’d found them when she was tidying up in my office and had steamed them open and read them. She said she resealed them and put them back. She made me promise to read them after she was gone, said I owed you that. And then she said she was sorry, truly sorry, she hadn’t told me about reading them before…but that she’d been too jealous to do so, too afraid of losing me. Imagine what a heel I felt like for having made her jealous over someone like you. Out of respect for her, I haven’t looked for them since her death.”

Maddie’s gaze was fixed on Cinnamon. “Well, there’s no need to read them now,” she said softly. “I’ll go….”

“I’m not finished,” he said. “I told Lizzie those letters didn’t matter, that they never had mattered, because I’d married her, and she’d been the most wonderful wife a man could wish for.”

“You were lucky then,” Maddie said wistfully. “I hope to be as lucky…someday soon.”

He hadn’t felt lucky. He’d felt guilt-stricken and low for never having loved Lizzie as she’d deserved because of Maddie.

“She always loved you. From the time she first saw you,” Maddie said softly.

“Yes,” he muttered, familiar guilt washing over him. He’d broken Lizzie’s heart to pursue Maddie in secret. After that first kiss in the barn, he’d burned for the town’s bad girl so fiercely, he hadn’t been able to help himself.

And now Maddie was back, as beautiful as ever. He still wanted her.

“Maybe it’s good we saw each other today, so we can face the fact that the past is over,” she said. “I’m sorry I ran off without saying goodbye. I was young, immature…” Her voice was even and polite, the voice she would use to console or dismiss a stranger. “It’s nice knowing you had a wonderful marriage, and I’m truly sorry for your loss. It can’t be easy…even now. Cole, I wish you well. I truly want you to be happy.”

“Thank you,” he muttered ungraciously.

“Someday you’ll find another woman. Maybe she’ll remind you of Lizzie. You’ll have children, build a family together….”.

Her voice grew choked and then trailed off awkwardly.

He didn’t want to be reminded of Lizzie, who had been the bride everyone else had believed would be perfect for him. They’d made each other very unhappy. He’d remained lonely even in marriage.

“Goodbye, Cole.”

When Maddie turned to walk away, he watched her slim, denim-clad hips swing and noted the way her damp T-shirt clung to her back.

Just watching her move with liquid grace as she vanished into the woods had his blood surging like fire in his veins. His breathing felt shallow. He wanted to strip her, to hold her, to kiss her. He wanted her naked and writhing with her legs wrapped around his waist.

He wanted her—period. Longed for her.

He’d stay crazy if he let her walk out of his life a second time. At the very least she still owed him some answers.

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