She couldn’t. Winding her arms around his neck, feeling the weight of his body, she fell to the soft bed of grass and sand. She didn’t stop him when she felt his hand find the zipper of her dress. The fabric parted to allow the cool breath of the wind to touch her back. His fingers skimmed her spine and she wriggled closer to him.
This night there was no holding back.
He pulled the dress over her shoulders and slipped her arms from the long sleeves. The warm summer breeze brushed across her bare skin and caught in the lace of her slip.
He looked down at her, and with one hand on each shoulder, he slid off the silky straps of her bra and slip. “I want you, Skye,” he said, his voice as husky as dry leaves turning in the wind. “I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you in the office.”
The straps fell down her arms, exposing more of her white skin to the moonlit night. She licked her lips and he groaned. The ache in his groin pounded, and hot, wet lust ran through his blood as he kissed her, and her lips seemed to melt against his. He pressed his tongue between her teeth, touching and flicking, wanting to taste every inch of her.
Skye couldn’t think, could only feel as she kissed him and felt the magic of his fingers. His breathing was shallow, like her own, his hands molding over that filmy lace and kneading her breasts. Heat flooded through her body, and desire, primal and hot, exploded within her. Her breasts engorged as he touched them and her nipples strained against her bra, becoming hard, insistent buttons that needed to be stroked.
He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her neck, leaving a slick trail of moisture to be dried by the wind. His hands, hard and demanding, delved deep within the cups of her bra, finding those hot little nubs and causing her to convulse deep inside.
“Max!” she cried, her voice caught on the breeze that crept through the canyon. “Oh, Max, please...”
He found the clasp of her bra and let her breasts spill into his hands. Stroking the nipples with hard thumbs, he buried his face between the soft mounds, kissing and breathing on her, stoking a fire so hot it was already consuming. She bucked upward, her spine arching off the ground, and he finally took one waiting nipple in his mouth.
She cried out, feeling as if he was drawing nectar from the very center of her, for with each pull of his lips, the void within her grew hotter and wetter and dark with lust. Her thoughts whirling, she found the buttons of his shirt, stripped him of the soft denim and felt his chest, rock hard with a dusting of springy hair.
He lifted his head to kiss her again, his mouth molding over hers and becoming one with her lips. She gazed up at him, his skin dewy with sweat, his hair tousled, the muscles of his shoulders straining.
“Make love to me,” she said in a voice she didn’t recognize as her own.
“You’re sure?”
“That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?” she asked, barely able to think, though the words tumbled heedlessly off her tongue. “To prove to your father that he couldn’t tell you what to do, that you could take whatever you damned well pleased. Including me.”
“I came up here because you’re all I’ve been able to think about every day, every night.” He swallowed and the lines of strain deepened around his mouth. “But if you don’t want this—”
“I do.”
“who?”
“For the same reasons as you. I haven’t been able to think about anything but you for the past two weeks,” she admitted before his lips crashed down on hers and he kissed her with hungry abandon.
He stripped off her dress, kicked the garment free and then guided her hand to his jeans. “Prove it,” he said gruffly.
“Prove what?”
“That you want me.”
“Wh-what do you want me to do?” she whispered, her throat as dry as a desert.
“Take off my jeans.”
She found his belt with trembling fingers and slipped it through the loops. Then slowly, gazing up at him and watching his every expression, she found the top button of his fly and yanked hard. The buttons, already straining from the bulge at his crotch, popped open like muted firecrackers on the Fourth of July.
“Oh, God,” he whispered as she eased his jeans over his hips. He could wait no longer. He impatiently kicked away the hated clothes and suddenly lay atop her, his erection visible, his eyes as dark as the night. “I won’t be able to stop,” he said as if some latent nobility had risen to the surface.
“I won’t ask you to.” She drew his head to hers and kissed him. She didn’t doubt that she was making a mistake, but she didn’t care. She was too old to be a virgin any longer and Max was the only man she’d ever cared about. She didn’t delude herself into thinking he loved her, or that she loved him, but she did care about him, did want to be with him and did want to make love with him.
She only hoped that when she told him her secret, he would understand.
He prodded her knees gently apart and then, with his lips still fastened to hers, thrust deep inside her, claiming her and making her a woman at last.
“You’re sleeping with Max McKee, aren’t you?” Dani drew deeply on her cigarette and the tip glowed bloodred in the night. She was sitting cross-legged on the old porch swing. Two weeks had passed since Skye and Max had first made love and in that time their affair had blossomed. They spent as much time together as they could.
“I don’t see that it’s any of your business,” Skye said.
“You just don’t understand about the McKees, do you? They’re bad news, Skye. Real bad news. And if you’ve deluded yourself into thinking Max isn’t a chip off the old block, you’re wrong.”
“Mom seems to think the McKees are the most upstanding people in the valley.”
“Yeah, well, Mom’s got a screw loose and we both know it. She idolizes old Jonah ’cause he came in and waved his magic golden wand when Dad died, but I don’t see that he’s done us all that many favors. He’s a bastard,” she said with such icy bitterness that Skye rubbed her bare arms.
“What did he ever do to you?”
Dani’s eyes slid away and she jabbed her cigarette out in a jar lid she was using as an ashtray. “What hasn’t he done to everyone in this damned town?”
“I’m not going out with Jonah.”
“Max is just like him.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that he gave up a great life in San Francisco. He could have been his own man there, but instead he came running back here—to Daddy.”
“You make it sound like a crime.”
“Not criminal—just mercenary.”
“Why do you hate them so much?”
Dani’s lips tightened, then she sighed. “Personal grudge.” She reached over to the windowsill and grabbed her pack of cigarettes. “You were off at college when it happened.”
Skye saw the pain in her sister’s eyes. “The baby,” she said, her own throat working. The subject of Dani’s child was never discussed; this was an unwritten law that Skye had never broken, a law that Dani had insisted upon when she’d turned up pregnant at seventeen. Dani had never named the father of her child, and with a chill as bitter cold as a November storm, Skye wondered if her younger sister had been involved with Max. Could he have been the father of her child? Oh, God. Her world turned inside out.
“Yeah. The baby.” Dani nodded miserably and Skye leaned against the doorway for support.
“Wh-what happened?” she hardly dared ask. Her mind was spinning with questions and denials.
“I wanted to keep it—you know I did.”
“That’s all I know about it,” Skye said, her heart knocking with dread.
“But Mom was worried, thought she’d end up raising it.” Dani struck a match, lit her cigarette and sighed a cloud of smoke. She dropped the match in the makeshift ashtray. “Maybe she would have. I don’t know.”
“The baby’s father—?”
Dani looked up sharply. “It wasn’t Max, if that’s what worries you.”
br /> Relief ran like a river through Skye’s worried soul. “Then why all the hatred?”
“Because Jonah got involved. Mom was real upset and you weren’t around. She didn’t want to worry you, what with you being the first Donahue woman to ever set foot in a college. Anyway, she turned to McKee and he found a way for me to get rid of the baby.”
“An abortion?” Skye asked, her fingers curling into the windowsill.
“No! That was his idea, but I refused and...he had a sister with a daughter who couldn’t have any kids and so...well, he made all the arrangements.” Tears filled her eyes and the cigarette shook in her hand. “I have a son, Skye. Somewhere...God, I don’t have any idea where...there’s a boy who’ll be three on his next birthday, a boy I call Monty.”
“You’ve never seen him?”
“Not since the delivery room and that was just a glimpse.” Still holding her cigarette, Dani wrapped her arms around her middle as if to protect herself. “I’ll probably never meet him, but I swear to God, Skye, I think about him every day of my life.” She swallowed hard and blinked against the tears starring her lashes. “I never thought I wanted a kid, not like you do, but giving up my baby was the biggest mistake of my life.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“For him,” Dani said simply. “I didn’t want him to grow up without a daddy, not knowing who he was, having people talk and gossip about him behind his back. Hell, I was still in high school, hadn’t quite graduated yet. I didn’t even have a job. What could I do for a kid?”
Skye dropped down on the swing. She wrapped her arms around her sister and felt tears build behind her eyes. “I’m sorry, Dani,” she said. “You should have told me.”
“Why?”
“Maybe I could have helped.”
“It was my problem, not yours.”
“But—”
“I figured the way things were, you wouldn’t want to think about my having a baby and not being able to keep it.” Dani took a long drag on her cigarette, shrugged off Skye’s arms and squashed the butt in the lid. “I’m goin’ inside now, but just think hard before you get involved with a McKee. They’re bad news—every last one of ’em.”
She climbed to her feet and slipped into the house before Skye could say anything else. Tucking her feet beneath her on the swing, smelling the lingering traces of smoke, Skye closed her eyes. Dani was wrong about Max. He wasn’t like his father or the rest of his family. And she wouldn’t get pregnant. No worry there. A sad little tug on her heart brought back the tears, but she wasn’t one to feel sorry for herself. So she couldn’t have children, so what? It wasn’t the end of the world. Lots of people got by childless. Someday, she could adopt. She didn’t even have to be married. Yet...to have a child with Max...oh, God, she shouldn’t even think like this.
She was going to be a doctor.
She was going to be an independent woman.
And, whether she liked it or not, she knew deep in her soul, that she was falling in love with Max McKee.
Chapter Seven
Skye looked over the documents she’d typed—the deed and title for the old copper mine formerly owned by Ned Jansen, once a wealthy man who had fallen on bad times. Jonah McKee had been quick to buy the old mine and had convinced Jansen that the deal was sweet, that Jonah’s team of geologists had found little copper ore in the mountains surrounding the mine, and only traces of anything else of value—oil, zinc, silver and gold. The team of experts had concluded that the hills around the old mine were put to better use as rangeland or as a quarry for gravel.
Jansen, a rotund man of forty-five going through his second divorce, had looked upon the McKee offer to buy the useless mine as a godsend. Not only would he be able to pay his alimony, child support, the IRS and his creditors, but he’d be able to pay the back property taxes to keep his ranch...at least for a little while. Skye had watched Ned sign the papers, stuff a check into the inner pocket of his jacket, pump Jonah’s hand and thank him profusely.
“You won’t be sorry you’re doing this,” Ned had prophesied, sweat beading near his temples. A ring of gray hair failed to hide the bald spot at his crown. “Great rangeland, a little timber and hell, who knows what can happen with the price of gravel?”
Jonah clasped the shorter man’s hand warmly. “Who knows?” he said with a smile that appeared friendly and satisfied as if all parties to the deal truly were happy.
Jansen scurried out of the offices apparently glad to get away before Jonah changed his mind. The door closed and Skye realized that she and Max’s father were alone. Everyone else had gone home for the day and the phones had been turned off a half an hour earlier. She felt a little edgy, but told herself she was overreacting. She’d been in the office with Jonah McKee often enough in the past, but not since his older son had defied him by openly dating her. At first they’d been discreet, but now everyone in the office knew that she and Max were seeing each other.
Jonah reached for his jacket on the brass coat tree near the door to his office, then hesitated, his hand dropping slowly. As if he was noticing Skye for the first time in weeks, he actually offered her a smile. “How’s that mother of yours? She gettin’ any better?”
“Every day, but it’s slow and she’s frustrated.” Skye felt a few drops of sweat collect at the base of her neck. She shouldn’t be nervous; he was just her boss, just Max’s father, just the man her mother worshiped.
“I was hopin’ she’d be back to work by now.” He rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully, avoiding her eyes.
“The doctor said two or three more weeks, depending upon how she recovers.”
He frowned for a second, then waved impatiently as if whatever he’d been thinking wasn’t important. “Doesn’t matter, really. Just as long as she gets well. She’s a helluva woman, you know.”
“Yes.”
“Worked hard to raise you girls right.”
“I know.”
“A shame about your daddy.”
He paused, but Skye didn’t respond, didn’t understand where the conversation was leading. She was aware of the humming of her word processor and the tick of an old clock in the outer hall. The piped-in music was soft, a song she didn’t recognize.
“I know that you’ve been seeing Max,” he said slowly, every word measured. His blue gaze didn’t move from her face even while he picked up a crystal paperweight in the shape of a ladybug and tested its weight.
“That’s true.”
He seemed to think things over, then said, “And you’re probably sleeping with him.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Oh, I think it is.” He tossed the paperweight into the air and caught it deftly. “He’s not just my son, you know. He’s the one who’s gonna run this company one day. All of it—including the ranch. It’s a lot of work, a lot of property to oversee, a lot of people to keep employed. Max will need a wife who can stand by him, support him without expect-ing too much for herself, a wife willing to let him be the boss—” his dark eyebrows rose over the tops of his glasses “—and most importantly, he’ll need a wife who can give him sons. Strong sons.”
Skye drew in a quick breath. How did he know? How could he get the information—privileged information between a doctor and patient? She swallowed hard but kept her gaze level, refusing to back down. “What is it you’re trying to tell me, Mr. McKee?”
His eyes were suddenly opaque, without depth. “I’m just warning you that you’re not the woman for my son.”
Skye’s insides began to shred. “Don’t you think he should be the judge of that?”
“Not when he’s in the throes of lust.” He dropped the paperweight back onto the desk. “I just thought you should know how I feel. I won’t change my mind.”
“Neither will I,” Skye assured him. Her fingers had curled into tight fists and she thought about the night ahead, how Max had asked her to meet him at the ranch. Would Jonah be there? Her stomach roiled slightly as he reached for h
is jacket again.
He didn’t bother smiling when he said, “Don’t forget to lock up.”
By the time she got home, Skye’s shock had given way to a raging fury. Who did Jonah McKee think he was—checking into her background, finding out her deepest secrets and then...and then trying to blackmail her with them?
She half ran across the dry lawn, sending grasshoppers flying out of her path, then slammed through the screen door of her mother’s cottage and threw her purse on the table. Her face was hot, her fists clenched tightly, and it was all she could do to keep from screaming before she splashed cold water from the kitchen faucet on her face.
“Skye?” Irene’s voice called to her from the living room. “Is that you? Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right,” Skye said, wiping the water from her face with her hands as she strode into the living room.
Irene, in her favorite housedress, was stretched out on the couch, a glass of water on the table next to her, an old afghan tossed over her legs.
“Mr. McKee wants to know when you’ll be back at work,” Skye announced.
“I told him I’d return just as soon as Doc Fletcher gives me the okay. Oh, dear—”
“Don’t worry, I said you’d take over when you could, and good ol’ Jonah seems to be handling it.”
“Are you so backed up with paperwork? Is it that busy?”
Skye shook her head. “Everything’s fine as far as work goes. It’s busy, but nothing I can’t handle. The problem is,” she said, unable to keep from blurting out the truth, “that your boss doesn’t think I’m good enough to date his son.”
“What? Oh, no, Skye, I can’t believe—”
“Believe it, Mom. He’s already talked to Max, then had the nerve to tell me to stop seeing Max—that I was the wrong woman for him.”
“Oh, no!” Irene’s bony hand flew to her mouth. “But why—”