Читать книгу Wyoming Strong - Diana Palmer - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

SARA WAS DRIVING past Wolf Patterson’s ranch on a Sunday afternoon, on her way home from picking up a loaf of bread at the Sav-A-Lot Grocery Store, when she noticed a big black form in the middle of the road.

She slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid hitting what was on the road, a huge Rottweiler. It had blood all over it.

She parked her car in the middle of the road. There was no traffic, darn the luck, so she couldn’t wave down anyone to help her. She approached the big dog. It was whining. There was blood on its side, and one leg was turned at an odd angle.

“Oh, dear.” She ran to the car, pulled an afghan out of the backseat and put it in the front seat. Then she went back to the dog. It was enormous, but maybe she could lift it. If she could get it into her car, she could find a vet. She hoped it wouldn’t bite her, but she couldn’t stand by and do nothing. She reached down, talking gently to it, smoothing over its head. “Poor, poor thing,” she whispered, and slid her arms under it.

She was wearing a yellow sweater and black slacks. Blood saturated her sweater as she struggled to pick up the huge animal. She heard a vehicle approaching and eased the dog to the ground. She ran toward the truck, waving her arms frantically.

“What the hell...!” Wolf Patterson exclaimed when he slammed out of the truck. She was covered in blood. He felt a jolt of fear. Had she been injured? “Sara!”

That was when he spotted Hellscream, lying on the road.

“What happened?” he bit off. “She’s my dog.”

“I don’t know,” she groaned. “I almost hit her before I saw her lying on the road. Somebody must have run over her and just left! Damn the coldhearted idiot who did this! I tried to lift her and put her into my car to take her to the vet, but she’s so heavy!”

“I’ll get her to the vet,” he said. He looked at Sara with narrow, shocked eyes. “Your sweater is soaked with blood.”

“It will wash,” she said. “Oh, hurry, she’s in so much pain!”

He turned and put the big dog on the seat beside him and sped away.

* * *

SARA HAD A SHOWER and washed her clothes. She hoped the dog would be all right. Gabriel had gone to see Eb Scott. She wished he was home, so that she could get him to call Wolf and ask about the dog. She was too intimidated by the big man to do it herself.

She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee when she heard a car drive up.

She went to the door, peering out through the security port, and saw Wolf Patterson striding up to the porch.

He was wearing ranch clothes, denim jeans and a chambray shirt with a battered black Stetson and tan boots that had seen better days. Tan batwing chaps flapped when he walked.

She opened the door before he could knock.

“How is she?” she asked.

He nodded. “She’ll be fine. It’s Sunday and the staff was off, so I had to help Dr. Rydel hold her while he cleaned the wounds and stitched her up. He set the break in her leg. She’s pretty sick, but he says she’ll mend.” He hesitated. “Thank you for stopping.”

“I could never leave an animal hurt on the road.”

“Someone did. And I’ll find out who,” he added coldly.

Looking into those piercing pale eyes, she was glad she wasn’t the person who left his dog bleeding on the highway.

“Would you...like coffee?” she asked.

“Yes. Is Gabe here?”

“He went over to Eb Scott’s, but he should be back soon. Did you need to see him?”

“Yes. I’ll wait, if I may.”

“Of course.”

She poured black coffee into a mug while he straddled a chair at the kitchen table. He watched her move around the room, gathering up cream and sugar to put on the table.

“Do you cook?” he asked suddenly.

She laughed softly. “Yes.”

He was looking at the rack of cookbooks on the counter. “French cuisine?”

“I like French pastries,” she said. “We never lived close enough to a city to buy them, so I learned to make them. My father loved éclairs,” she recalled with a sad smile.

“Did your mother cook?”

Her face closed up. “Do you take cream or sugar in your coffee?” she asked instead.

His eyes narrowed on her suddenly pale face. He shook his head. “Your mother blamed you for what happened.”

She sat down and wrapped her hands around her mug. “Yes.”

“She saw you as a rival, I gather.”

He made it sound as if Sara had been grown when it happened. But it was too painful to discuss. “I don’t know how she saw me. She hated me. I never saw her again, after the trial. She died some time back.”

He lifted the mug to his lips and raised an eyebrow. “You could float a horseshoe in this,” he pointed out.

She managed a smile. “I like strong coffee.”

“So do I.” He sipped it again. “My mother turned me out when I was about four. She hated my father. I had the misfortune to look like him.”

She didn’t betray that Gabriel had already told her about this part of Wolf’s past. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wouldn’t know what a sweet mother was. Gabriel and I never had much love from ours.”

He turned the cup in his hands. “Neither did I.”

“Is she still alive?’

His eyes were terrible to look into. “I don’t know. I don’t give a damn.”

She sighed. “I would feel the same, if mine was still alive.”

He sipped coffee. “That was one damned expensive sweater you had on,” he said after a minute. “You didn’t even hesitate to lift Hellie.”

“Is that her name? Hellie?” she asked with a smile.

He nodded. He didn’t add that it was short for Hellscream. She wouldn’t understand the reference, anyway. Hellscream was a male orc in his video game, and he thought the name was amusing for a female dog. He hated Hellscream as leader of the Horde forces.

“I bought her when I moved here. She’s three years old. My best girl,” he added with a smile, one of the few genuine smiles she’d ever seen on his hard face.

She was studying the backs of his hands. There were fine scars on them.

He raised an eyebrow. “Something you want to say?” he mused.

“You said that you got scars on your hands from rappelling from helicopters in the FBI,” she said.

“Yes?”

“How do you get scars on the backs of your hands when you’re rappelling? You wear gloves, don’t you?”

His eyes had an odd expression. “You’re perceptive.”

She studied his face. “That means you aren’t telling me a thing, Mr. Patterson.”

He searched her eyes and then averted his. She was so formal with him. Well, she was young and he wasn’t. Thirty-seven to her twentysomething. It made him feel cold inside, those years that stood between them. Even if he was tempted, and he was, she was far too young for a man with his jaded past. Not to mention he was friends with her brother. He couldn’t afford to get involved with her. She was mysterious in her way, and she’d tempted her stepfather away from her mother. She might pretend to be innocent, but was she? Ysera had tried that trick on him. He didn’t trust women. Lying seductresses, the lot of them.

“You never stay down here on the ranch when Gabe’s out of town, do you?” he asked, for something to break the uncomfortable silence.

“No,” she said. “I’m...nervous if I’m alone at night.”

“You have an apartment in San Antonio, don’t you? You’re alone there.”

“I have neighbors that I know,” she replied. “Out here, there’s just me.” She swallowed. “Gabriel has enemies. One of them targeted me, in the past. I was very lucky that he was home at the time.”

He scowled. He hadn’t considered that Gabe’s line of work would put her in danger. But of course it would. He had enemies of his own. One had tried to kill him, although he wondered now if Ysera hadn’t sent the man after him. She’d sworn bloody vengeance when he turned her over to the authorities.

His eyes went to the silky blue blouse she was wearing. It had fine pearl buttons all the way down the front. Under it, he could see the outline of her breasts, firm and tip-tilted. They made him ache.

“Could you...not do that, please?” she asked, folding her arms across her blouse.

He leaned back in his chair and just looked at her. There was a world of sensual wisdom in his pale eyes. “You seem like two people sometimes,” he remarked. “One brash and hot-tempered, the other nervous and vulnerable.”

“We all have different sides to our personalities, I think. More coffee?” she asked, for something to say.

He nodded. His eyes were calculating, but she didn’t notice until it was too late. As she reached for his cup, he reached for her, and pulled her gently down onto his lap.

“Nothing heavy,” he promised, his voice deep and soft, like velvet. His big hand spread across her cheek, holding her face so that he could see her black velvet eyes. They were huge in her beautiful face, sad and apprehensive. “Your brother will be home any minute,” he reminded her.

Yes. But she worried about what could happen in the meantime. She put her hand on his broad chest, and it encountered the thick hair where the shirt was open at his throat. She caught her breath and tried to jerk her hand back.

He spread it into the opening, watching her face as he pressed her long, cold fingers into the thick hair. She shivered a little at the feel of him, so intimate. There was warm, hard muscle under the hair. His heart was beating heavily, like hers. She really should protest and get up.

But just as she thought about it, his thumb brushed over her full lower lip and teased it away from the upper one. He felt her shiver.

It was obvious that she hadn’t had a lover who knew what to do with her. He shouldn’t be touching her, of course. He was only going to make things worse.

While he was considering that, his head was bending. He brushed his open mouth over hers, tenderly parting her lips. It was like that day in the pasture when he’d pulled her off the horse, terrified that she was going to kill herself. He hadn’t been able to get her shy response out of his mind. It haunted him.

He reminded himself that innocence could be faked. Ysera had taught him that.

His fingers stroked up and down her long throat, making her breath jerk, while his mouth gently explored her soft lips.

He was damaged. So was she, in some sort of way. Perhaps the man she’d taken away from her mother had been rough with her. He scowled, remembering that she’d sent a man to prison for being intimate with her. It disturbed him.

He lifted his head and looked into her wide, fascinated eyes. His own narrowed as the heat began to build in him. It had been a long time. Too long. He wanted her. He hated himself for it.

His big hand slid down over her breast and cupped it, teasing the nipple with a forefinger until it went hard, and her body stiffened.

That was when he lost it. His mouth crushed down over hers in a fever of hunger. She tasted like honey. Her body was warm and soft in his arms. He turned her, so that her breasts were crushed against his shirt. He groaned, on fire to have her.

She wanted to protest. But the feel of his mouth on hers was drugging her. She clung to him, whimpering softly as she felt her body begin to swell. She’d never felt anything like this, never wanted so much to have a man’s mouth on hers, demanding and insistent. She wasn’t even afraid. That was a first.

He stood up, with her in his arms, and his eyes were flashing like blue lightning. He couldn’t think past relief. He could put her down on the sofa in the next room, smooth his aching body on top of hers. He could jerk those tight jeans off and go into her, hard and fast, make her scream with pleasure.

Except that it was broad daylight, and he could see Ysera’s face, mocking, laughing. He was a weakling, she taunted while he died in her arms, a weakling who couldn’t control his desire, who looked ridiculous when his face went rigid, when his body corded over hers as he drove for satisfaction...

He shuddered.

Sara saw nightmares in his pale eyes. She’d been uneasy when he picked her up, afraid of what he might intend. They were alone, and she wasn’t really sure when Gabriel might come home. She’d never tried to be intimate with anyone. There were reasons why she might not be able to at all, and one was very physical, a reason she was too shy to speak of, especially to a man like Wolf Patterson.