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.This won’t be the last time, he vowed silently.He had no right to make promises—had no way of knowing where he would be tomorrow or if he’d even be alive.If tonight was all they could share, he would do his best to make it a memorable one.Turning aside, he opened the drawer in the bedside table with one hand.A moment later, when he moved over her, she was ready, lips parted, eyes glowing softly.He could see the faint flutter of her heart echoed in the shadows of her breasts.Carefully, he positioned himself and slowly entered her.This time there was a sense of inevitability in the act, almost a sense of sadness.One thrust, and then like spark to tinder, they burst into flames.She wrapped her long, cool legs around his waist and whimpered, her fingers clutching his sweat-damp sides as together they raced toward the explosion of sheer, unimaginable pleasure.Long after the race ended, she lay in his arms, breathing softly through parted lips.“I need to…” she began drowsily, and he laid a finger over her mouth, still swollen from his kisses.“Shh, you need to stay here until I decide whether or not I’ll need that crutch again to get out of bed.”She smiled.At least he thought she did.Moving his head to look was too great an effort at the moment.“Stay here.There’s no need for you to get up, but I really should go out to check on things in the barn again.”“You stay here.I’ll go check on the girls,” Spence said without opening his eyes.Neither of them made a move to get up.Spence wasn’t at all sure he could walk.Aftershocks still reverberated through his body from what had to have been the most profound sexual experience of his entire life.He didn’t know if the aura of danger had added the extra element, or if it was sensing that this might be the last time.“Knowing Pete,” Ellen said, “he’s probably sneaked downstairs and is camping out in the barn.”“Let’s hope Miss Sara waits awhile before going into her act.I don’t think I want him bursting in here right now with a progress report.”“I’d better get up,” Ellen said sleepily.“I’ll go.If Pete’s in the barn, do you want him to come inside?”“Wouldn’t do any good.He’d just hang out his bedroom window trying to see what was going on.”“Mmm…” He nuzzled the place behind her ear where she was incredibly sensitive.He had discovered more than one place on her body where a single kiss could have her gasping for breath.But as it turned out, they both got up.Just as Spence was reaching for the bedside table drawer again, the phone rang in the kitchen.He froze.Ellen sat up, grabbed her bathrobe and went to answer it.Who the devil would be calling at this time of night? Spence wondered as he pulled on a pair of jeans.The vet? Hardly.The old guy had struck him as adequate, but about ten years past retirement age.Besides, why would old Doc Leonard be calling at this hour?“Hello?” Ellen said hesitantly.He could hear her clearly through the door she’d left open.After a brief pause she said, “Who’s calling? Who is this?”Zipping his fly, Spence hurried into the kitchen to see her standing there, the phone dangling from its cord.The look on her face was more puzzled than frightened.Catching sight of him, she said, “That was odd.It was for you…I think.” From the other side of the room, Spence could hear the dial tone.She made no move to hang up the receiver.“Ellen?”“He said— It was this man.When I said ‘Hello?’ he said, ‘Tell your sweetheart we’ll be paying him a visit.”’The room was not particularly cold, but Spence felt as if he’d just been doused with a bucket of ice water.“And when you asked who was calling?”“He just said, ‘You tell him that, you hear?”’TwelveEllen finished putting on her bathrobe and made coffee, then raced upstairs to check on Pete, who was sound asleep in his own bed.Evidently the fencing plus the preliminary driving lesson had worn him out.They agreed that the horses would have to wait.Whatever was going on was serious, possibly even dangerous.Even now Ellen shuddered, remembering the sound of that gravely voice on the phone.Wordlessly, she placed a cup of black coffee on the table at Spence’s elbow.Funny, she thought, how quickly she’d gotten used to thinking of him as Spence and not Storm.Although he’d apparently been in the middle of a storm that had nothing to do with the weather when she’d found him.Finders keepers.The childish phrase popped into her mind, and she shoved it away.She was just beginning to realize that no matter how intimately she knew this man, he wasn’t hers to keep.Up until two weeks ago he’d had a full life that hadn’t included her at all.He was talking now to someone named Flynt.“I have a feeling time’s running out, so let’s make this fast and get off the line.Here’s what I need.” Speaking rapidly, he proceeded to read off the items he’d scribbled on the back of her grocery list.The man sprawled out on one of her kitchen chairs, barefoot, bare-chested, the top of his jeans undone, was a stranger, Ellen told herself.A stranger who snapped out questions and demands as if he were used to being in command.“Someplace that can’t be connected—something well off the beaten track.”Was he describing her farm? Connected to what? To whom? It was most definitely off the beaten track.By the time he finished she was too furious to listen to the rest of the conversation, which was cryptic, at best.The moment he hung up, she nailed him to the wall with a furious glare.“What do you mean, you’re going to need a place to stash a woman and an eight-year old boy?” she snapped.“Shhh, don’t wake Pete.Calm down and I’ll explain.”“Nobody stashes me and my son anywhere.Besides, my horses are right in the middle of having their babies.I can’t walk out now.”If his nerves weren’t on razor edge, Spence might have been amused by the small bundle of fury glaring at him as if he were a mouse she’d just discovered in her lingerie drawer.“Back off, Ellen.Things are coming together faster than I’d expected.Unfortunately, you and Pete are involved.” He broke off, paced a tight circle, massaging the back of his neck with one hand, his mind racing down half a dozen avenues at once.“All right, the first thing we have to do is get you and Pete somewhere where you’ll be out of the line of fire if worse comes to worst.”“What do you mean, the line of fire? Shooting? You mean—”“I’m trying to tell you what I mean,” he explained with patience dredged up from some deep reservoir.“The men who came looking for me were part of the mob.The Texas Mafia.” She gasped.He waited to let it sink in.“Honey, I told you they played hardball.The case I was working on when I got sidetracked involved the murder of a federal judge—a man who’s responsible for my being who I am and what I am today, instead of just one more bad apple.The guy who’s on trial for Judge Bridges’s murder is named Alex Black [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]