Kate Bridges - Welcome To Wyoming

“You have given this a lot of thought.”

She frowned. “Haven’t you?”

He seemed to be getting exasperated. He tugged at the collar of his shirt as if it were too tight. “Yes, it’s all I’ve been thinking about. For days.”

“Only days?”

“Weeks. Three months.” He groaned. “What do you want me to say?”

She opened her mouth in disbelief. “How can you be so...so detached?”

Still looming at the doorway, he held up his palm in a sign of forgiveness. He seemed sincere as his voice softened. “I’m sorry. Let me rephrase this. Since the moment you stepped off that train, I haven’t been able to take my eyes off your beauty. Since the moment you kicked that trunk halfway down the platform, I thought there’s no other woman in the world for me.”

“You truly mean that?”

“And every word I said in my letters.”

At his bright expression, she felt buoyed. Then somewhat embarrassed. “You saw me kick the trunk?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh.” So much for appearing ladylike.

She stepped into the large room, her skirts and petticoats swirling about her ankles. It was a fine room. Large and airy, decorated in clean white linens with fresh-cut flowers on the nightstand and a lantern lit on the wall above the bed.

Her trunk had been placed at the foot by the closet door, and the bed had been turned down. The pillows had been fluffed and patted and looked inviting after her long, tiresome journey. Comfortable feathers awaited her.

She tossed her satchel onto the bed, lifted her arms to unfasten the pin holding down her bonnet, removed it from her head and turned to face Jarrod.

Staring at her from several paces away, he pressed a bulging shoulder against the door opening, one massive cowboy boot crossed over the other. He studied her as she patted down the unruly hairs that followed her bonnet, and mistakenly knocked out a pin from her hair.

One side of her curls fell to her shoulder, so she quickly unfastened the pin on the other side till it tumbled down, too. The weight of her hair fell onto her collar and spine.

He was watching it all, as if he’d never seen a woman fix her hair before.

The lapels of his suit jacket opened. She got a glimpse of the shoulder holster crossing his chest and swallowed hard at how intimidating he looked. The men in Chicago rarely displayed their weapons. She wasn’t naive enough to think the men in the East didn’t carry any, but this vision of Jarrod made her realize how rough and crude and lacking in the law the West was. She’d observed it on the train ride here. Every man had the right and duty to defend himself, and most carried guns.

She placed her bonnet and hairpins on a stand.

His posture stiffened, as if watching her made him uncomfortable in some way, as if being here in her room made him uncertain how to proceed. But, Lord, he hadn’t even crossed the threshold of the door. How tense would it make him if he moved closer?

“I trust you’ll be comfortable tonight, Natasha. I’ll swing by in the early morning.”

Startled that he was leaving, she asked, “Where will you be tonight?”

“Right next door.”

Her eyes widened. “Next door? In this hotel?”

“I thought it would be more convenient if we could spend more time together. No sense going back to the cabins with McKern and Fowler. I’m here to spend time with you.”

Her pulse hammered in her throat. So he did care.

Her lashes lifted as she walked closer, experimenting with this new relationship, this new man. What did he want to know about her?

And what did she wish to know about him?

The answer was quite simple, really.

She wanted to know what he truly thought of her as a potential bride, beyond their cordial first greeting and the predictable words of How was your trip? and How do you do? There was one quick way to find out, and he seemed to be too shy, or too much of a gentleman, to make the first move.

Her lady friends of a certain kind back at the boardinghouse had often told her that some men, especially upstanding gentlemen, often needed a nudge to know when a woman wanted to be touched. And where she wanted to be touched.

Natasha stepped close, craned her neck to stare up at him and tangled her slender fingers into his. An invisible current shot through her at the contact. She tugged in a breath of air. He froze.

Kiss me on the lips, she thought. Show me what you truly feel and kiss me properly.

* * *

Her touch was unexpected.

Simon’s initial response was to pull back. He wasn’t here for this; he was here to get into her mind and motivations, and not be affected by her damn presence.

She pressed her soft lips together as she stood assessing him, their fingers entwined. The warm light from the lantern danced across the bridge of her nose and lit the soft details of her cheek. Her dark chestnut hair, slightly ruffled from the hairpins she’d removed, swirled about her creamy throat.

Why did she have to be so luscious?

She slid her hand into the nook of his firm waist, her light touch caressing his skin, sending a jolt riveting through his gut. She stood so close he could breathe in the scent of her fresh skin and the lemony rinse she’d used on her hair. His pulse drummed hard beneath her touch, and when their eyes met, hers were clear and sharp and inquisitive. No woman, no innocent woman, had ever offered herself to him in such a tender manner.

She was poison, he reminded himself.

And yet he needed this, needed her. He needed tenderness and warmth and gentle understanding. Lord knew he’d had none of this on the road for the past ten years, only hard work, distance and no attachment to any upstanding woman he might have met in his line of duty. There had been saloon girls and hard-core drinkers who could guzzle a bottle of whiskey as fast as any man, but no one with any lick of sensitivity or class.

He swallowed hard at what he could not have.

A night with her would be filled with a hell of a lot more consequences than with a pretty barmaid. This woman would demand things from him he wasn’t willing or capable of giving. Just as his father hadn’t been able to give to the woman he’d married, and to the son they’d had.

Maybe that made Simon selfish. So what.

He was protecting her by not giving in, by not succumbing to her charms. He was also protecting the soreness in his heart that would surely rise if he ever became involved with a decent woman.

Huh, he thought, realizing for the first time in his life that he’d never been with a decent woman.

He’d slept with painted ladies, barmaids and drinkers. No one like Natasha O’Sullivan.

His jaw muscles tightened.

He should have broken free of her grasp then, for when she slid her other hand along the other side of his waist, his sexuality awakened, and the lonely boy who’d grown into a lonely man could not resist her.

With a firm grip, he anchored his hands at the sides of her face and lowered his lips to hers. It began as a graze, a soft, teasing pleasure, warm and delicious. His mouth slid across hers, tasting and pleasuring in the feel of her femininity, marveling at how lightly she could kiss, and yet how firmly his body responded. It was instant arousal. He had an immediate need to take it further.

Expertly, he moved her, stepping into the room just enough so that he could kick the door closed with his big cowboy boot and press her against the slab. Her hands slid up over his ribs, making him burn with a palpable need. He cupped the back of her neck, twirling the silky strands of her hair beneath his fingertips, gasping at the sound of her soft moan and then boldly shifting his palm to cup her breast.

He could feel the rib cage of her corset, the shallow waist, the whalebone strips that tilted her breasts upward. The cup of her breast was large and firm beneath his hand, a wondrous mound of beauty. The bud of her firm nipple arched beneath the fabric into his palm.