Almost a Bride (Wyoming Wildflowers Book 1)

  "Don't get your hopes up too high, Matty. It would have to go through committees and then be voted on, and you can never tell with stuff like that."

  "I know." She sounded a little impatient with his reminder as she turned her back to dry her hands on a towel hanging from the rack on the back of the half-closed door. "I don't have my hopes up. But I still say thank you. To all of you, but especially you."

  "Why me, especially?"

  As she turned, her gaze snagged on something beyond him and she gave a faint cluck of her tongue. Following her look, he realized her focus was on the partially opened medicine cabinet door.

  "Because you could have given it all away. I mean why I set this up. Taylor might have some suspicions, but you're the only one who knows for sure. You could have ruined it all with a few words. Thank you, Dave. I mean it, I'm really grateful."

  She stretched up on her toes to reach around him and push the medicine cabinet door closed.

  "No problem, Matty."

  He turned his head back from following her motion and there they were, nose to nose, eye to eye and, most importantly, mouth to mouth.

  Still on her toes, as if she wasn't thinking about it at all, she brushed her lips against his.

  He was fully, achingly aware that it was the first time she'd kissed him. Not accepted his kiss, not kissed him back. This time she'd initiated the kiss.

  The first time in six long, long years.

  And this was hardly even a kiss, just a brief brushing of lips against lips.. But it was between him and Matty, so it could never be that simple.

  The natural retreat of her action halted abruptly, with Matty's face six inches from his. He held absolutely still, not even sure he was breathing, but fully aware his heart was pulsing pure heat through him.

  Her gaze was on his mouth, as if she might have felt that same sizzle at the brief touch and was trying to figure out how it had happened. Her lashes rose, and he stared into the heart-breakingly familiar depths of her blue eyes.

  His muscles twitched with the urge to haul her to him. His jaw ached with biting back his desires.

  And then, she was moving.

  Toward him. Closer. But slowly. So damned, excruciatingly slowly.

  She reached up to slide her hands around the back of his neck, drawing his face toward hers. And when her mouth touched his this time, there was nothing fleeting or brushing about it.

  Matty kissed him the way she always used to kiss him–as if her soul and his depended on this kiss.

  When her lips parted and her tongue touched his lower lip, his restraint gave way with a growl. He opened his mouth to her at the same time he gathered her to his chest with one arm across her back and the other under her bottom. He opened his legs to bring her in as close as he could.

  It was like she'd been holding him off with a stiff-arm ever since she'd come back to Wyoming. Once or twice her locked elbow had weakened a bit and he'd gotten closer, but each time she'd stiffened that arm right away. He wasn't going to give her the chance this time.

  He wanted nothing between them. No questions. No doubts. No six years. No space.

  And a certain part of him was doing its best to close the little space between them by expanding in hard, hot surges.

  He shifted so he could slide his palm from the turn of her jaw, down her throat. It took a firm tug to open the top half of her shirt.

  Bless the snaps on western-style shirts.

  Instead of fumbling with buttons, his palm absorbed the cool, soft sweep from her collarbone down to the rise of her breast.

  And he blessed western-style shirts again when he felt her fingers tug open his shirt, and perform some miracle that turned her hands, so competent with rope and reins, into instruments capable of the softest, smoothest, most enticing touch known to man.

  Another time simply being touched by Matty would have been more than enough. Not now. Something primitive drove him to possess her.

  There was still space between them and that had to go.

  One stroke of his hand caught the fabric of her shirt and the strap of her bra, pulling them off her shoulder, baring her to him. He touched her rosy nipple with two gentle fingertips, circling it lightly, awed at the way it pebbled.

  A breathy sound came from Matty that hit him like lightning. He couldn't wait another second. He bent his head, and she arched her back, pushing against the apex of his legs at the same time she offered him what he most wanted.

  He flicked his tongue over the nub, felt the answering tightening as a surge in his own blood stream, then took her into his mouth, drawing on her.

  Matty moaned, and her hips rocked against his while her hands roamed over his shoulders and back to the rhythm he'd set.

  His torment was that getting what he most wanted made him crave that touch more at the same time it awoke a craving for another, deeper touch.

  He'd found the opening where the back of her shirt had pulled from the waistband of her jeans. He fumbled at the hooks on her bra, needing more, needing everything.

  The last hook gave and he began a trail of kisses toward her other breast.

  "Oh!"

  The sound could have come from Matty, but he didn't think so. It didn't resonate through his nerves like the sounds she'd been making had done.

  He wanted to ignore it. He wanted to forget control, forget responsibility.

  The hell of it was that he might have if it hadn't been Matty he held in his arms. But if it hadn't been Matty, he wouldn't have been driven to a pitch where he was tempted to forget those things.

  Because it was Matty, he had no choice but to take care of this.

  With more reluctance than he could ever remember, Dave lifted his head and looked over Matty's bare shoulder. Taylor Larsen stood in the doorway, one hand still splayed on the door, her mouth rounded from that "Oh!" and color surging up her neck. She was as frozen as a deer in headlights.

  "I'm sorry! I didn't mean... I didn't know anyone was here."

  Matty started to pull back, but he wrapped both arms across her back and drew her hard against his chest. He thought he heard an indignant sound from her, but he had enough to worry about with trying to slow down the way his body was reacting to her.

  "Hey, Taylor," he managed.

  She was backing up. "There was a line for the other bathroom, and the door was open–both doors. I never meant–I'm so sorry."

  "Honest mistake. No harm done." Other than he might die of frustration in the next twenty seconds.

  "I'll just, uh, go." She fled.

  He loosened his hold on Matty, and she eased slightly away from him, but not completely. She left her head down and her forehead dropped against his shoulder, so he felt her slight puffs of breath as rhythmic tingles against his bare, heated skin.

  "Oh, Lord."

  When Matty repeated that twice more, he thought he'd better try saying something.

  "I'm glad it was Taylor," he offered,

  Her head came up, her eyes questioning. "Are you? Why?"

  "If it had been one of the guys I would have had to shoot them, and that would get messy. Not to mention, I sure as hell would get sued."

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  "Because they're all lawyers, Matty," he explained with a teasing patience that cost him.

  "I know that, it was that crazy talk about shooting–"

  He sighed deeply. "I did my best, but with the mirrors, if you'd backed up another inch... You're not exactly decent, Matty."

  She pulled back from him and looked past his shoulder, her eyes apparently catching a good look at her state of disarray in the mirror. "Oh, Lord." A tide of color an even darker shade than the one that had suffused Taylor's face started rising as she fumbled ineffectively with snaps and hooks and eyes.

  His fingers itched to pitch in, but he had a feeling they were more bent on undoing than doing. And at this point, restraint was definitely the wiser course. As it was, movement of any sort threatened to leave him wit
h cause to be red-faced himself.

  With her head bent over her task, Matty muttered something.

  "What?"

  "That was...uh..."

  Hell and damnation. Blast it to hell and back. His string of mental curses went on, running out of vocabulary long before it eased the feeling behind the words. She was going to say it was a mistake. Or it was gratitude. Or it was the past. Or some other damned stupid phrase–some lie–and it was none of those things. It was the fire that had always existed between the two of them from the first days they'd had the hormones to fuel that kind of fire.

  He crossed his arms over his chest, waiting.

  She glanced up at his motion, then down as she snapped the last snap.

  "That was...well, I don't know what that was."

  She followed that stunning statement with a nervous little chuckle that almost made him reach out and draw her into his arms. But before he could, she drew a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and met his eyes.

  "I'm sorry, Dave. I apologize."

  "It's okay, Matty."

  "No, really, I'm the one who set the rules, and then to–"

  "I said it before–it's okay."

  "Right, before." Color surged up her face. Damn. He hadn't meant to remind her of their kisses after she got the grant approval. "This is the second time I've had to apologize for my behavior, and I promise there won't be a third time–"

  "Shut up, Matty. I said it's okay."

  He saw her open her mouth, then close it. She swallowed twice.

  "Okay. Then I guess I better get back out there." She gave a vague wave.

  "Guess you better."

  At the door, she turned back, not quite meeting his eyes. "If you're sure it's okay–I mean, if you understand that what happened doesn't mean I'm going back on what we agreed to."

  "I understand that, Matty."

  He must have sounded grim, because her gaze met his and she frowned slightly. "Are you sure you're okay with this? Because you sound a little–"

  "I sound like a man who needs a few minutes before he can move around real comfortable, that's all."

  Her gaze instantly dropped to his groin, and damned if Matty Brennan Currick didn't blush at the sight.

  "Oh, I didn't know you felt... I mean, I had to know, because I couldn't help but feel... I mean, not my feelings, because we're not talking about my feelings–Oh, hell!"

   With that she turned and hurried out of the bathroom, then slammed the bedroom door behind her.

  And Dave knew that after her final, hot look and those very interesting fragments of the thoughts apparently tumbling through Matty's mind that it would be a few additional minutes before he could comfortably–or decently–join their guests.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Dave paused at the doorway to the family room. Matty was distributing the items she'd gathered earlier.

  Her eyes came to him then skittered away.

  He strode into the room.

  "Thorne" was all he said by way of warning before tossing the bottle of pain reliever he'd spotted on the bathroom counter. He aimed it in the general direction of Kyle Thorne's head. Kyle had been a top college baseball prospect–a catcher–and his instincts brought his hands up in plenty of time to catch the bottle, as Dave had expected. The abrupt movement also made him wince against what was no doubt a throbbing head, also as Dave had expected.

  "Hey, what's the idea?" Kyle complained in an unappealing whine.

  "I understand from my wife that you need some morning-after cure, Kyle. Or more accurately, some afternoon-after cure."

  A couple of the guys had gone outside to smoke and Taylor was nowhere in sight, but he sensed heightened awareness from most of the rest of the room. Except Randy Duff, who was rearranging the extra pillow Matty had brought him.

  Matty's lips parted as if to protest, but after her gaze met his for another of those fraction-of-a-second exchanges, her mouth closed into a firm line. After all, what could she protest? That he'd called her his wife?

  She grabbed a handful of empty glasses and headed toward the kitchen.

  Randy let out a gusty sigh as he pressed his aching back against the pillow. "She's great, Currick. Makes everybody comfortable. Works the room like a pro. Boy, she'd make a terrific political wife."

  "Hands off, Randy."

  Even Randy recognized the tone of that order. He raised his hands in a sign of surrender, but he also chuckled. "Ease up on your trigger finger, Dave. I've already got a terrific wife, and absolutely no political ambitions. I was thinking of you."

  A new tension seeped into the room, and Dave knew it came from Bob Brathenwaite. Randy had just inadvertently stirred Bob's unreasoning fears–or maybe not so inadvertently. The usually easy-going Randy truly disliked Brathenwaite.

  "No thanks," Dave said curtly, hoping to end the discussion now that he'd made his point to these men.

  "No thanks to the politics? Or–" Kyle looked in the direction Matty had taken. "–the wife? Because if your act-in-haste wedding means you're repenting at leisure and the lady's going to be free..."

  Dave moved directly in front of Kyle. He never let his voice lose its calm, but he didn't bother to mask his expression. "The lady is not free. She's not going to be free as long as I'm alive. And if I die and you put one hand on her, I'll come back from the dead and rip your heart out."

  Into the silence that followed, Phil blew his nose like a bugle.

  Randy, settled comfortably against his cushion, declared, "Guess that about covers it."

  * * * *

  Matty got around the corner out of sight, then turned back to the family room to listen. She pressed the glasses against her midriff to keep them from clinking against each other.

  Her hands were still shaking from what had happened between her and Dave in the bathroom–what she had initiated. Despite all her promises to herself and him that she wouldn't.

  She wanted him.

  But if she'd given up her pride by asking him for help to save the Flying W, she wouldn't give up her honor by breaking her pledge that this would be a platonic marriage. It was wrong. Dishonest.

  He didn't seem to feel that way pointed out a voice in her head.

  You weren't exactly an impartial observer, another voice shot back.

  "Matty?"

  She jumped at the soft voice that came from behind her instead of inside her, and spun around to face Taylor, who must have been in the kitchen.

  "Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. I thought you saw me. I just wanted to say how sorry I am about walking in on you two that way. I feel like such an idiot."

  "No, Taylor, I'm the one who apologizes. We shouldn't have been–"

  "Actually, it was sweet seeing a married couple like that, especially when at first..."

  Taylor didn't need to finish the thought. Matty knew the lawyer was thinking that she and Dave hadn't seemed very lover-like at first.

  At first? What was she thinking? They shouldn't seem lover-like at all. Except of course for appearances' sake. Although what Taylor had just walked in on most definitely had looked lover-like. Felt lover-like, too.

  "Dave and I have–had–a lot of issues from the past that needed working out even after we, uh, decided to get married."

  "Well, I'm glad to see you've worked them out so well," Taylor said with a warm smile. "I'll admit I was a little concerned with the marriage coming right on the heels of the grant commission's refusal to give you an exception. But if that was the only reason for the marriage you wouldn't be having all of us work on getting the regulations changed legally, would you? Besides, I can see what there is between you." She gave a rueful laugh. "Even not counting what I walked in on earlier."

  Matty's stomach felt unsettled. Probably because Taylor had been nothing but a good friend and hard-working attorney, and she didn't deserve to be lied to.

  "Anyway," Taylor added, "it gives hope to those of us who've found that when they talk about wide open spaces out here in Wy
oming, they're talking about the lack of eligible men. I haven't had a real date since I moved here two years ago, not to mention other, um, activities."

  "I know exactly what you mean." As soon as she'd finished her wholehearted agreement, Matty caught sight of Taylor's face and hurriedly added, "I mean when I came back for visits. Before getting together with Dave."

  But the surprise didn't fade from Taylor's expression. "I thought you and Cal Ruskoff–Oh! I'm sorry. That's so rude of me. It's none of my business."

  "Well, if it's rude, so's the rest of humanity, because I suspect that's what most people thought. Truth be told, I would probably think the same thing if I were outside looking in. But no, Cal and I weren't ever, uh, an item."

  "That's..." Apparently at a loss for words Taylor gave a slight shrug.

  "That's a damned shame, is the phrase you're searching for, I think."

  Taylor chuckled. "A damned waste was actually what I was thinking."

  "That, too. Cal's a fine-looking man."

  Taylor held up her soda glass in a toast. "To fine-looking men."

  "Fine looking men," she agreed. She put down the dirty glasses and picked up a bottle of soda. "Especially the ones who are as good at heart as they look."

  "And the women who have them," Taylor finished, clinking her glass to the bottle.

  Taylor Larsen had a lot more humor in her than Matty had given her credit for. She might be the woman to bring Cal out of that shell he wrapped around himself. When things settled down between her and Dave maybe she'd try her hand at a bit of matchmaking.

  No, what was she thinking? When things settled down between her and Dave, they'd go their separate ways, and if Taylor was half as smart as Matty thought she was, the woman would zero in on Dave. Cal was a terrific man, and there was no denying he had a nice body, but he also had that shell and besides, he wasn't... Well, he wasn't Dave.

  Matty solemnly clinked the neck of her bottle against Taylor's glass. "Amen."

  Dave came around the corner to the kitchen at that moment.

  "Speak of the devil," Matty murmured.

  He'd closed his shirt and tucked it neatly into his jeans long before he'd come out to the family room, yet it seemed she could still feel the sensation of his chest–smooth skin, muscles, prickly hair–against her palms. And that was the least of it, because it also seemed she could feel his hands and mouth on her flesh.

   "What's this I hear about amen and the devil? You two having a revival meeting in here?" he demanded.