In Search of the Long-Lost Maverick Read online

  It was far from the declaration of undying love he wanted from her, but for now, he would take it. He leaned across the wide console and ran a finger down the velvet skin of her cheek. Sweet color bloomed in the wake of his touch. “It’s your night off. Share it with me. Come out to the ranch. Give my mom a thrill and have dinner at the main house. Then we’ll go back to my place, just the two of us.”

  She tried to back out. “I don’t know. I’m not exactly dressed for dinner with the parents.”

  “Weak excuse, Mel. It’s a working cattle ranch and it’s just dinner. Malone will cook and that means the food will be great. But it’s not like we dress up for dinner every night. You’re welcome just as you are.” When he pulled her closer, she let him, and he took heart from that. “I don’t want to let you go.” His lips just barely brushed hers. “Not yet. Indulge me.”

  “I feel the same,” she confessed in a whisper.

  He kissed her, a slow kiss that gradually deepened. When she sighed in surrender, he wished they were anywhere but here, in broad daylight in the parking lot of Snowy Mountain Senior Care.

  “Say you’ll have dinner out at the ranch,” he commanded gruffly against her parted lips, fully expecting more objections.

  But she surprised him—in a very good way. “Yes.”

  He pushed his luck. “Yes, what, exactly?”

  She gave a low, sweet laugh. “Yes, Gabe. I would love to come to dinner tonight at the Ambling A.”

  * * *

  Dinner at the main house went pretty much as Gabe expected.

  Malone outdid himself with his famous standing rib roast and Yukon Gold potatoes. Gabe and his dad argued over just about every subject that came up. Alexander made pronouncements concerning how nothing in the world went the way it ought to go anymore and everyone under fifty was spoiled and self-centered, unwilling to work hard to achieve their dreams.

  Gabe’s mom had a whole lot of questions for Mel, all of them geared toward pinning Mel down as a prospective daughter-in-law. Gabe had to cut in when she started talking about her favorite wedding venues.

  “Mom. Nobody at this table is planning a wedding,” Gabe reminded her, mentally adding yet.

  His mom waved him off with a flick of her hand. “It’s idle conversation, Gabriel. Relax. I was just wondering what Mel thought of an outdoor wedding. They can really be something glorious if done right—don’t you agree, Mel?”

  Mel took his mother’s shameless matchmaking in stride. “I do, yes. We’ve had several weddings in the town park up in Rust Creek Falls. Everybody in town is always invited. Sometimes things do get a little crazy after dark, though.”

  Gabe remembered the story Mel had told him the day she adopted Homer. “Yeah, some old moonshiner spiked the wedding punch once. Things got pretty wild.”

  His mother looked vaguely concerned. She suddenly had other ideas. “Maybe a barn wedding. Or one at the Association. They really put on the most gorgeous weddings there. So elegant. Just unforgettable. I’m hoping I can have the Association do Erica’s wedding, though she’s always vague and distant about it whenever I suggest that maybe it’s time for her and Peter to set a date—Peter’s her longtime steady boyfriend. He’s also the company attorney for his family’s business, Barron Enterprises, and Erica works for the company, too. I hope she’s not planning to be married there in Colorado. I mean, Montana is her home and she ought to be married here.”

  “It’ll all work out, Mom, don’t worry,” said Gabe, though he had no idea whether things with Erica would “work out” or not. He just didn’t want to get down in the weeds over his absent sister tonight.

  “Well, I do worry,” his mom insisted. “She should come home more often.”

  “Yes, she should,” his father agreed, rather sternly. Husband and wife shared a speaking glance. Whatever Gabe’s dad communicated to Angela in that look, she let the subject of Erica drop.

  Once they’d finished the meal, they all went out back to sit on the patio in comfy lounge chairs. They watched the sunset and enjoyed Malone’s irresistible lava cake, with brandy-laced coffee.

  It was almost nine, still not quite dark yet, when Gabe took Mel back to his place. Butch, who always tagged along when Gabe went back and forth to the main house, trailed after them.

  “I should go,” she said as he ushered her in the front door and Butch edged around them and kept on going toward the living area. When they’d walked over to the main house earlier, she’d left her purse and the diary on the credenza right there in the front hall.

  Before she could grab them up, Gabe captured her hand and pulled her close. He wrapped both arms around her. She felt so right pressed tightly against him. “Stay.”

  “Oh, Gabe...” Her body said yes—but he could hear the doubt in her tone, see caution in her eyes.

  He caught a lock of her hair and smoothed it over her shoulder. “Life’s too short. But still, you keep running away. Stay. Just for a little while.”

  * * *

  The thing was, Mel wanted to stay. So much. She wanted to spend the night in Gabe’s bed.

  She wanted it to be more than a rebound with him. She truly did. Every moment she spent with him, she liked him more. Trusted him more.

  And that made her afraid she was only setting herself up to be hurt again.

  “If you hurt me, Gabe...” She let the words trail off without finishing her thought, let her wary expression speak for her.

  He framed her face between his warm, rough palms. His eyes burned into hers, begging her to believe. “Not gonna hurt you, Mel.”

  “I don’t want to trust you, but then somehow I can’t help myself.” She pressed a hand to his hard chest. “I’m starting to believe you, Gabe. Starting to think that you are actually for real.”

  He put his hand over hers, pressing her palm more firmly to his chest. Beneath the layers of muscle and bone, she felt the strong, steady rhythm of his heartbeat. “This is special, you and me,” he said. “I’m not messing with you. Yeah, I’ve never gotten close to forever with anyone before. And I get that people think that’s a bad sign, that a guy needs to be practicing commitment from an early age or he’s not a good risk when it comes to love. Sometimes people are wrong. Sometimes a guy is just waiting for the right woman to come along.”

  Her breathing had gone a little ragged and her chest felt tight. “What are you saying to me, Gabe?”

  “You really want to know? You want me to say it out loud right now?”

  Why was her pulse racing? She gulped, hard. “I don’t think I’m ready.”

  And there it was, his slow, delicious smile, the one that made him almost impossible to resist. “You should get ready.”

  “I’m not sure I know how.”

  He lifted her captured hand from his chest and brought it to his lips. She felt his warm breath on her skin and prayed that, whatever this was with him, she wouldn’t blow it and neither would he. That they would ultimately be bigger than their fears and their doubts, that neither of them would end up letting the other one down.

  And she thought of the diary waiting a few feet away, of Wren Crawford, of the crazy idea the little girl had that the diary brought love to whoever possessed it. She saw herself, not long from now, passing it on.

  Passing love to the next person.

  After claiming it for herself.

  “It’s all right.” Gabe pressed those wonderful lips of his to the back of her hand and a thrill vibrated so sweetly down the length of her spine. “It’s gonna be all right.” He said it as a promise, a solemn vow.

  Her doubts reared up again. “How can you know that, Gabe? How can you be sure?”

  “I know one thing.” Oh, those eyes of his. So steady, sky-blue. And true. That was the thing about Gabe. She was honestly beginning to believe that he would know what Todd Spurlock hadn’t—how to be true.

&nbs
p; “What one thing do you know, Gabe? Tell me, please.”

  He gazed at her for a long time, his eyes holding hers, before he said softly, “No. Not tonight.”

  She groaned. “You’re a tease, Gabe Abernathy.”

  “Yeah, probably. But you did say you’re not ready.”

  He was right, of course. She might have begun to wonder if there really was something kind of magical about the diary, but she wasn’t ready to hear any brave declarations. Not right now. Not tonight.

  He bent close to nuzzle her neck. She let out a low moan as he scraped his teeth down the side of her throat, leaving a hungry trail of sparks in his wake.

  “Stay with me tonight.” He breathed the gruff words into the tender crook of her shoulder.

  She could feel him growing hard against her belly. And that hot shiver running down her spine? It was spreading out inside her, turning slow and lazy like warm honey, touching her everywhere, making her tremble in her boots.

  She stretched her neck back, giving him better access. He scattered sweet kisses along the side of her throat. “Well, the more I think about it, the less I want to leave right now.” Her voice sounded slow and lazy, hungry and very willing to her own ears.

  “Stay as long as you want, Mel.” He scraped his teeth along the line of her jaw and nipped playfully at her chin. “Stay forever.”

  She started to tell him that she really wasn’t ready for forever. But before the words took form, his mouth claimed hers. She drank in the taste of him. Their tongues were dancing.

  Dancing, yes...

  He danced her backward, kissing her as they went—across the entry hall, through the big, open living room with its enormous fireplace, down a wide hallway and into the master suite.

  Standing by the huge bed, he undressed her, pressing kisses on the bare skin he revealed as he peeled her clothes away. “You are perfection, Mel. This shoulder...” He kissed the outer curve, where her shoulder met her arm, as he dropped her shirt to the rug. His lips traced a path to the base of her neck and then across her collarbones. “Perfection.”

  She closed her eyes on a heavy sigh, every inch of her open, willing, deliciously aroused, as he took her bra away and lavished kisses on her bare breasts. She threaded her clutching fingers into his hair, trying to hold him there.

  But he was on the move, trailing those lips of his down the center of her body.

  Blinking like a sleeper half-awakened from the deepest dream, she stared down at him as he dropped to his knees before her. He was looking up, his eyes waiting. Their gazes met and held.

  He took her hand and braced it on his broad shoulder. She held onto him for balance as he lifted her right foot and took her boot away. He peeled off her thin sock and then repeated the process with her left boot.

  A moment later, he was pulling down her jeans, taking her little pink thong with them as he went. When her jeans and underwear got down to her ankles, she stepped out of them and lightly kicked them aside. It seemed surprising in that moment that she was totally naked and he still had on all his clothes.

  Not that she cared who was naked, who wasn’t. He had her completely at his mercy. She was needy and yearning, ready to be his.

  And he made her more ready with those clever, stroking hands of his, with that mouth that knew magic spells to cast on her. That mouth was everywhere, taking control of all her most secret places. She welcomed him, opened to him willingly, and she cried out his name over and over as she came.

  The second time he took her over the edge of the world, as she was still quaking at the sheer beauty of the things he did to her willing flesh, he lifted her up and set her on the bed. Her body felt heavy and hungry, ablaze with desire. A quivering mess of pure sensation, she fell back, arms and legs limp. Staring up at him through dazed eyes, she watched as he swiftly and ruthlessly stripped away his own clothes.

  He was magnificent, looming above her, his body lean and cut, a racehorse of a man, beautifully masculine, his eyes holding hers, not letting go as he took a condom from the bedside drawer. She reached for him with a cry of need and pleasure. He came down to her, wrapping her up in his heat and his strength.

  They rolled together, holding on so tight, kissing so deeply, their bodies on fire. He was ruining her; she knew it. After this, after Gabe, there would never be another man who could possibly compare.

  No, she wasn’t ready for him. Not ready for the promise of the diary, either. Not ready for any of this, really. She’d had all the right plans once, known just where she was going and how she would get there.

  But her perfect plans had come to nothing.

  And now she was here, with Gabe. And in this moment, right now, her failure to judge the true character of the man who’d betrayed her didn’t matter. None of that mattered, really—all her careful machinations to make the right choices, to engineer a good life with a trustworthy man who’d turned out in the end to be anything but.

  Some things, a girl could never be ready for. Some things, a girl just had to give herself up to and hope that happy-ever-after was more than some romantic fool’s impossible dream, more than a promise of love in a tattered, bejeweled, leather-bound journal found hidden in a run-down ranch house three hundred miles away—a promise destined to be broken in the most tragic way.

  Gabe rose up above her, his eyes blue fire now. She watched him roll on the condom.

  She begged, “Please, Gabe. Please, now...”

  And then he was there, all around her, holding her, in her, with her in the truest way.

  True. He was true—in his heart. As a man. And she believed in him.

  At least in that moment, she believed. She believed she had everything—Gabe in her arms and hope in her heart.

  Her body rose to the crest again. She whispered his name that time, holding on tight as her climax rocked through her. And then she pulled him even closer. He was lost to his own pleasure, moving hard and deep within her. She held him, loving the desperate way he groaned her name as he came.

  * * *

  Mel hadn’t meant to fall asleep in Gabe’s giant bed with its frame and four posters made of massive, rough-hewn logs.

  But every time she started thinking she needed to get up and go, he would pull her close and cover her eager mouth with his—and the heat between them would rise again. Sometime after 2:00 a.m., the night must have caught up with her. She’d closed her eyes, just for a moment...

  And when she opened them, daylight was peeking through the blinds.

  She sat up and shoved the tangled mess of her hair out of her eyes. It fell right back down again. She blew at it, accomplishing nothing, and finally raked her fingers back through it, until it stayed off her face. “I need to get going.”

  Gabe didn’t answer. She glanced down at him to see if he was still asleep. That was when he reached out, wrapped a hand around her arm and pulled her down on top of him. “In a little bit.” He tried to kiss her.

  “Hey!” She shoved at his beautifully muscled bare chest. “I mean it. I have to go.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  She glared down at him, though it was hard to be crabby when he looked so rumpled and sexy, his hair spikier than ever, a sleep mark on his beard-scruffy cheek. “Homer chews on my things when I’m gone too long. I really hope he didn’t find a way to get into my closet.”

  “That cat needs a trainer.” He tried to pull her close again.

  She fake punched his rock-hard shoulder. “Stop right there, mister. Or you’re getting a big dose of morning breath.”

  “Give it to me, baby. Give it to me now.” He pursed his lips at her and scrunched his eyes shut.

  She laughed and squirmed away—and then couldn’t resist wriggling close once more. He banded an arm around her. For a moment, they just lay there, with her tucked nice and cozy against his side. She could have stayed like that forev
er, wrapped in the tangled sheets, the two of them, Gabe and Mel.

  It felt so right. It felt like this, with Gabe, was how it was really supposed to be, that maybe her whole life had blown up in her face because it was the wrong life all along. And the wrong life had brought her to the threshold of the right one.

  Sheesh.

  She really needed to put a lid on all these romantic fantasies she found herself indulging in lately.

  One day at a time, Mel. Yeah, Gabe was a great guy, but that was no reason to go fantasizing about forever.

  He dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head. “Coffee?”

  She put her silly, romantic musings away and grinned up at him from the cradle of his arm. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  He tipped up her chin and kissed the tip of her nose. “You got it. I’ll go make some.” He rolled from the bed, so gorgeous, so naked. She could have lain there staring at him for hours. But then he grabbed yesterday’s jeans and yanked them on.

  She sat up and blew her sleep-mangled hair back out of her eyes again. “Is it okay if I use the bathroom, freshen up a little?”

  “Go for it. I’ll look into rustling us up some eggs.”

  * * *

  Gabe had the coffeemaker going and was about to grab the eggs from the fridge when his dad spoke from behind him. “Still got company this mornin’, I see.”

  Wincing, Gabe shut the fridge door and turned to face his father, who held the diary in one hand and Mel’s purse in the other. “You know it’s rude to just bust in without knocking, Dad.”

  “And you oughta start locking the damn front door.”

  “I never felt I had to—until right this minute, anyway.”

  His dad shrugged. “Relax. Your mom and I just happened to notice that you never drove Mel home last night.”

  “What are you telling me? You two lurked out on the front porch, listening for the sound of my pickup driving away?”

  “What can I tell you, son? We’re not getting any younger and neither are you. I see the way you look at Mel. I think that girl’s special to you and I also think it’s about damn time. Can you blame your mother and me for being anxious? Your mom longs for grandkids. Your sister is a lost cause. Even if she married that guy in Denver and they had some kids at last, she would likely never bring our grandbabies home to us. It’s your job to give us some babies to spoil.”