Chapter 1

It was a chily Febuary night on the Cherokee Rose ranch in Central Oklahoma. Cherokee Rose Chisholm took a well-earned rest in herrecliner before the big screen TV in the living room.
She could take the time to relax because she'd been in sadle most of the day, and at the desk working on the ranch records and books half the evening.
Thank goodness, she thought, for Maria, who'd stepped into the position of housekeeper when Ealine retired last month, and for Emily, who loved to oversee the house and meals and added a muchneeded feminnine touch to the house. Between those two women, they took a load of responsibility off Rose's shoulders. And their daughters- six year old Libby and 8 year old Janie, Rose's new Granddaughters, plus Rosa, Maia's new baby, who was named for the ranch on which she was born.
With her two youngest sons married now, that left only Justin, and Rose was getting concerned about him. She'd thought he had found someone special a couple of months ago, but lately he'd been moping around a lot, and moping was simply not in Justin's nature.
If he didn't snap out of it soon, she would just have to stick her nose in. She couldn't bear to she one of her boys unhappy.


"Hi this is Blaire. I can't come to the phone right now. If you want me to call you back, leaave a message."
Justin resisted the urge to pound his head against the wall. he hung up without a message. If he left any more messages he'd end up getting arrested as a stalker.
Two months. Two damn months he'd been trying to get close to Blaire again. Two damn months of wexcuses, of lost messages, of unreturned phone calls.
He had called her the day after they had spent the night together to make sre she was all right, since she'd thought she might be comming down with something. She'd said she was fine, nothing a good night's sleep hadn't been able to take care of. She'd sounded fine, as far as that went. Unti he asked to see her again...

******

Somewhere, sometime in his life, Justin chisholm figured he must have done something incredibly right, and this night was his reward. He couldn't fathom any other reason why he should be sp lucky as to finally end up with Blaire Harding in his bed. He knew she was in his bed because they had just made sweet, hot love together, and he wa just now drifting down from a peak higher than he'd ever known. He didn't need to open his eyes to see the shape of her sleek and curved in all the right places, lean where she should be, round where it counted. Behind his closed lids he could still see her dark blond hair, her golden brown eyes. The cute way the tip of her nose turned slightly upward. He couldn't think of a time since she moved back to town when he didn't want her. She'd made him wait, she'd put him off, she'd kept him at arm's length all the time.
But gradually she had let him get closer. A conversatin or two. A developing friendship. Eventually, a ride to get her car fixed. A lunch with a bunch of their mutual friends. A dance or two at the local watering hole. Then another dance, and another, until finally she had agreed to go out to dinner with him. Then dinner and a movie.
No woman before her had ever made him work so hard to please her. But he wanted to please her, in every way he could.
Tonight she finally agreed to let them please each other.
With a low moan , he inhaled the fragrance of wildflowers in her hair. "You smell so good." Curled up warmly against his chest, Blair Harding smiled and sighed. "Glad you approve."
"Oh, I do." He nuzzled his face against her hair. Then, when she expected something deeply romantic, or maybe a sweet word or two, or even a comfortable silence, he snorted in her ear. Blair burst out laughing and rolled away from him with a shriek."Where'd he go? Where'd he go?"
"Where'd he go?" He sat up in bed and looked quickly ha-ha" around the room. "Justin Chisholm," she cried. "He was here just a minute ago, then all of a suddenthere wasa pig snorting in my ear."
"Oh, ha-ha." He pulled her backagainst his chest. "I don't know how to coo like a turtledove, or whatever."
"So you snorted?"
He reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. "Maybe that was an allergic reaction."
"To what, me?"
"To wildflowers."
Blaire squinted and tried to duck away from the glare. "Egad, That's bright. What wildflowers?"
"The ones I smell in your hair."
"You said it smelled good."
"It does."
"But it makes you snort?"
'Maybe."
She laughed and rapped her arms around his neck."I think you werejust trying to be funny. And it worked, I guess, because it made me laugh."
They lay nesled together, still feeling the afterglow of two rounds of intense lovemaking. After several minutes Justin shifted and groaned. "Uh, Blaire," he said," believe me, this is the absolute last thing on earth i want to say to you right now..."
Blaires stomach tightened of accepting any of his numerous invitations, she finally given in and spent the most incredible night of her life with a man she'd had a secret crush on forever, and he was going to tell her he didn't want to see her again. She just knew it." But you're going to say it anyway," she said tensely.
"Only because f an overdeveloped sense of honesty, which I wish my grandmother had never drummed into me." She couldn't look him in the face. Not if he was going to tell her he didn't want to see her again.
"Honesty is never a bad thing. Why don't you just spit it out and get it over with?"
"Okay." He lowered his forehead to rest against hers, "You said you wanted to be home by two. It's one-thirty."
A wave of relief swept through her and left her limp in his arms. "Oh," she managed.
Justin sensed that something wasn't quite right. He frowned. "What did you think I was going to say?" She turned her face away and shook her head. "Nothing."
"Blaire? Whats wrong?"
"Wrong?" She managed a smile and rolled over to sit on the side of the bed with her back to him.
"What could be wrong?" Holding a corner of the sheet over he breast, which was a rediculous attempt at belated modesty considering what they'd been doing to and with each other for the past couple of hours, she smiled at him over her shoulder. "It feels silly to say I had a great time. but I did."
He sat up brhind her and kissed her bare shoulder.
A shiver of remembered passion raced through her. "It doesn't sound silly to me," he said.
Blaire noted the time on the clock is 1:35 a.m. She had no pressing reason for getting home by two, except she wouldnt have the luxury of sleeping late in the morning. Her father always opened the feed store at seven every morning, Monday through Saterday, and tomorow was Saterday. Her job was to man the office, so she had to be there during business hours.
Without thought she glance down at her wrist watch- the only thing she was wearing.
How odd, she thought with irritation. Her watch had stopped at 11:30p.m. It had lasted through their firts round of lovemaking, but not the second.
The implications suddenly struck her. She bolted upright. It couldnt be. This had to be a coincidence.
"Whats wrong?" Justin asked, his lips moving over the back of her neck. "You're all of the sudden stiff as a board." He ran his hands up and down her arms.
"I told you I'd get you home on time."
"Its not that. Its nothing." Her mind scrambled for something to say that would make sense and justify her sudden stiffness, which she could not deny.
"Just a cramp in my foot."
"Ouch, I hate it when that happens. Here." He slid from behind her and knelt -naked- at her feet.
"Which foot?" He sure was pretty to look at, in all his naked glory.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 05.10.2012

Alle Rechte vorbehalten