Allison Leigh - Montana Passions

Which pleased her greatly. “Er…that would be a no?”

“Yeah. A no. A definite no—and let me guess your next question. Do I have a steady woman in my life?”

She was grinning again. “Yep. That would be it.”

“That’s a no, too.”

“Well.” She put her arms down on the blankets again. “Okay, then. Were you ever married?”

“Never. Too busy making something from nothing. Serious relationships just didn’t fit into the equation.”

“You’re career-driven?”

“I guess one of these days I’ll have to slow down and get a life. But I like what I do.”

“What about…a high school sweetheart?”

A brief silence, then, “High school. Now, that was a long time ago.”

She realized she didn’t know his age. “You’re how old?”

“Thirty-two. And as I think I told you, when I was growing up, we moved around a lot—no chance to fit in. I dated now and then. It never went anywhere.”

“You make yourself sound like a lonely guy.”

He grunted. “No need for a pity party. There have been women, just not anything too deep or especially meaningful.”

There have been women…

Well, of course there had. He had those compelling good looks. That kind of dangerous, mysterious air about him. A lot of women really went for the dangerous type. And yet, he could be so charming, so open, about himself and his life. And then there was the way he could kiss…

Katie slipped her hand up, to touch her lips, remembering.

Oh, yes. A guy who could kiss like that would have had some practice.

But there was no special woman. No secret wife.

In spite of that aura of danger he could give off, Justin Caldwell was an honest guy—and Katie really did like that in a man.

The next day was Monday. They woke to find the snow still coming down, though not as thickly as the day before. On the ground, it reached halfway to the porch roof. After they’d dressed and had their fresh coffee and two-day-old sandwiches, they both went out to the front porch, though the door could barely clear the spill of snow that sloped onto the boards of the porch floor.

“Shoveling our way out of here will be a hell of a challenge,” Justin said.

She nodded. “If it would only stop coming down. Give us a chance to take a crack at it, give the snowplow a break. It’s piling up faster than anyone could hope to clear it.”

Back inside, the phone was still out. And the boom box picked up the usual crackling static.

They made their way along the narrow covered path to the shed, where they spent a couple of hours cleaning up after Buttercup and keeping her company. Twice, the horse got feisty with Justin. She tried again to head-butt him into the hay. And once, in a deft move, she actually got the collar of his jacket between her teeth. She yanked it off him.

When he swore at her, she instantly dropped it. White tail swishing grandly, she turned for the doors that led out to a wall of snow.

“See?” he demanded. “That horse hates me.”

“Could be affection,” Katie suggested.

“Yeah, right.” He picked up the old coat and brushed it off.

“Hey, at least it didn’t land in a pile of manure.”

He made a low sound, something halfway between a chuckle and a grunt, and slipped his arms into the sleeves. “Are we done here?”

She agreed that they were.

Back in the museum, Katie decided to get busy on the day’s main project: clean hair.

Over her baggy tan pants, she put on a wrinkled white T-shirt with a boarded-up mine shaft and Stay Out, Stay Alive! emblazoned across the front. The rummage sale bags didn’t come through with a bath towel. But hey. She had plenty of personal-size bottles of shampoo—in herbal scent and “no tears.” And there was a stack of dish towels in the kitchen cupboard. She’d make do with a few of them.

Then came the big internal debate—to use the bathroom sink: more private. Or the one in the kitchen: bigger.

Bigger won. Justin had seen her in her ugly sweater and saggy pants wearing zero makeup; he’d seen her in the distinctly unflattering flannel pajamas. He could certainly stand to get a look at her bending over a sink with her hair soaking wet.

Glamour just wasn’t something a girl could maintain in a situation like this.

Justin sat at the table playing solitaire with a deck he’d found in the desk out front and tried not to sneak glances at Katie while she washed her hair.

The faint perfume from the shampoo filled the air, a moist, flowery scent. And the curve of her body as she bent over the sink, the shining coils of her wet hair, the creamy smoothness of her neck, bared with her hair tumbling into the sink, even the rushing sound of the water, the way it spilled over the vulnerable shape of her skull, turning her hair to a silken stream and dribbling over her satiny cheek and into her eyes…

He couldn’t stop looking.

He had a problem. And he knew it.

There was something about her. Something soft and giving. Something tender and gentle and smart and funny…and sexy, too. All at the same time.

Something purely feminine.

Something that really got to him.

Every hour he spent with her, he wanted her more. It was starting to get damn tough—keeping it friendly. Not pushing too fast.

Too fast? He restrained a snort of heavy irony liberally laced with his own sexual frustration.

Too fast implied there would be satisfaction.

There wouldn’t be. And he damn well had to keep that in mind.

Even if she said yes to him, there was no way he was taking her to bed while they were locked in here.

He couldn’t afford that. Not without protection. And though the bags in the storage room seemed to have no end of useful items in them, what they didn’t have were condoms.

He knew because he’d actually checked to see if they did.

And since he’d checked, he’d found himself thinking constantly of all the ways a man and a woman could enjoy each other sexually short of actual consummation.

He grabbed up a card to move it—and then couldn’t resist stealing another look.

She’d rinsed away most of the flowery-scented shampoo, but there was a tiny froth of it left on her earlobe. She rinsed all around it, but somehow the water never quite reached it.

He gritted his teeth to keep from telling her to get that bit of lather on her ear. He ordered his body to stay in that chair. Every nerve seemed to sizzle.

Damned if he wasn’t getting hard.

Ridiculous, he thought. This has to stop…

He looked down at the card in his hand—the jack of spades—and couldn’t even remember what he’d meant to do with it.

This was bad. Real bad.

Some kind of dark justice?

Hell. Probably.

He meant to use her as another way to get to Caleb. Too bad he hadn’t realized how powerfully—and swiftly— she would end up getting to him.

At last, she tipped her head enough that the water flowed over that spot on her ear. The little dab of lather rinsed away and down the drain.

Late that afternoon, Justin went out to the front of the museum to stoke the fire in the stove. Katie busied herself in the kitchen, putting away the few dishes that stood drying on the drain mat, wiping the table and the counters. The tasks were simple ones, easily accomplished.

After she rinsed the sponge and set it in the little tray by the sink, she found herself drawn to the window. She wandered over and stood there watching the snow falling through the graying light, wondering how long it would be until they could dig out, until the old mare in the shed got a little room to stretch her legs and a nice, big bucket of oats.