Long, Tall Texans_Hank Read online

  Poppy’s expression fascinated him. She looked at everything, explored the CD deck, the television, the well-stocked bar, the telephone…

  “Six people could ride in here,” she remarked, smoothing her hand over the burgundy leather seat.

  “Six people usually do,” he replied, stretching out lazily to study her. “Like it?”

  She grinned. “I love it. I only wish I had a friend that I could brag about it to.”

  “Surely you have one or two.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t make long-lasting friends that easily. Only casual ones. My best friend married years ago, and we lost touch.”

  He crossed one long leg over the other. “Did you see the song on the charts?” “Yes! It was great! Thank you for the dedication.”

  He waved her thanks away. “Thanks for the help. Everyone loved it, especially Amanda.”

  “How is she?”

  “Blooming,” he said with a smile. “She and Quinn and Eliott are all moonstruck over that baby. They take him everywhere, even to recording sessions with the group.” His eyes were sad and faintly wistful. “I’ve always envied them that closeness. Now I envy them the baby.”

  “The album was dedicated to him, too,” she recalled.

  “He’s a good-looking kid,” he said. “Even cries with rhythm. We’re all going to buy him a set of drums when he’s two.”

  “Do they still hang people in Wyoming?” she asked meaningfully.

  He got the joke at once and chuckled. “Quinn might just do that to me.” He locked his hands behind his head, pulling his suit coat pleasantly taut over the powerful muscles of his chest and arms while he looked at her. “I’ve been tying up loose ends, settling business affairs, getting recording contracts and publicity tours finalized. I’m free for the next two months.”

  “You’re not in town on business, then?” she asked conversationally.

  His blue eyes narrowed. “You know why I’m in town, Poppy.”

  Her heart jumped but her face gave nothing away. “Actually I don’t. I wrote you two letters, neither of which was ever answered. There wasn’t a telephone call or any communication for months. You don’t ignore people for almost half a year and then just drop by as if you saw them yesterday.”

  “You’re mad.” He sighed. “Yes, I was afraid you would be. I kept trying to put down what I felt on paper, and failing miserably. I couldn’t boil it down to a telephone call, either. Just when I thought I’d fly out here, something kept coming up. It’s been a long five months, honey. The longest five months of my life. But I’m here now, and you’re going to have hell getting rid of me.”

  “Don’t you have contractual obligations to fulfill?” she asked.

  He shook his head, slowly. “That’s why it took me so long to come after you. I didn’t want any interruptions.”

  She shifted back against the leather seat. “I won’t have an affair with you, so if that’s why you came, I’ll save you the time.”

  He began to smile. “Have you forgotten what a low boiling point you have with me?”

  “Yes,” she said uncomfortably. “And that should bother you. One more groupie might be more than you could take.”

  “Not if she was you,” he said pointedly. “I’d love having you throw yourself at me and hang on for dear life.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s something we’ll talk about for the next few days.” He stretched again and yawned. “I haven’t slept. You’re a hard woman to track down. Eventually I phoned every single veterinarian’s office in the city. Do you know how many there are?”

  “I have a fairly good idea,” she replied, shocked. “Couldn’t you have had your secretary or someone do that for you?”

  “Why, no,” he said, surprised at the question. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me to trust something so important to another person.”

  She flushed. “You’d forgotten all about me, surely? I’ve seen some of the photos on your other albums. You attract beautiful women.”

  “Beauty isn’t everything,” he replied. “And sometimes it isn’t anything at all. You’re beautiful to me, Poppy, because you have the kindest heart of any woman I’ve ever known. I’ve never had anyone want to take care of me when I was sick until you came along. And under those circumstances, too, when I’d practically kidnapped you. You’d have been perfectly justified in walking out and leaving me there to cough myself to death.”

  “I couldn’t have done that,” she protested.

  “Not even if you’d hated me. Yes, I know. But I don’t think you hated me, Poppy,” he mused, watching her like a hawk. “In fact, I think you felt something quite different on that last day we spent together.”

  “Compassion,” she said abruptly.

  “Compassion.” He smiled. “Is that all I get?”

  “What do you want?”

  He leaned forward with his hands clasped loosely over his long legs. “I want you to love me, Poppy,” he drawled deeply. “I want you to become so obsessed with me that you grow pale if I’m out of your sight for an hour. I want you to hate women who look at me or touch me. I want you to ache for me in your bed at night, and go hungry for the feel of me in your arms.”

  She already felt that way. She wasn’t telling him so, however. She cleared her throat. “Well!”

  “And before you start raging at me about indecent proposals before dinner,” he added slowly, “I want a hell of a lot more than one night with you.”

  Her eyebrows levered up. “An affair is still…”

  “I want a baby, Poppy,” he said in a deep, soft whisper. “I want a son of my own, so that I don’t have to stand over Amanda and Quinn and covet theirs.”

  Her body reacted to the statement in an unexpected way, so that she had to fold her arms over her breasts to keep him from noticing.

  He noticed anyway, and his eyes gleamed with feeling. “You want it, too, don’t you?” he said coaxingly. “A home, a husband, a family of your own. Maybe a few pets to look after, too.”

  “My job…”

  “Whatever,” he said easily. “If you want to keep on practicing, that’s all right with me. It will give you and the kids something to do when I’m out of town.”

  Her heart was racing wildly in her chest. He looked sane. Perhaps he had a fever again.

  “I’m not crazy,” he explained. “I’m just lonely. So are you. So if we get married and make a family together, neither of us will ever have to be lonely again.”

  “There are plenty of women who would be willing…”

  “I want you,” he said simply. “You can’t imagine how empty my cabin has been since you left.” He laughed, but without mirth. “All my life I’ve been self-sufficient, independent. Women have chased me for years, before and after my marriage. But here you come, spend less than a week in residence, and you’re living with me still, here and here.” He touched his head and his heart. “I can’t get rid of you. And believe me, I tried. I tried for five months.”

  She glared at him. “Maybe I had more success at it than you did,” she taunted.

  “Maybe you didn’t.”

  He reached across the space that separated them and lifted her body right into his arms.

  “Now, you see here…!”

  His mouth hit hers while she was getting the last word out. He wasn’t brutal or rough, but the action was amazingly effective. She went under without a protest. Her arms went around his neck and she lifted to the slow, soft caress of his hands even as her mouth opened to accept the deep, hard thrust of his tongue inside it.

  Her legs trembled where they lay over his. He drew her closer and deepened the kiss even more, held it until he felt her begin to shudder. His hand smoothed up over her thighs, her flat stomach, her breasts. She moaned.

  “You got over me, right?” he whispered against her mouth. “It’s really noticeable, how completely you’ve gotten over me. Open your mouth again…”

  She barely heard him above the wild th
rob of her heart. She clung to him while one kiss led to another, each more arousing than the one before. He turned her so that her hips pressed deeply into his own, so that his arousal was suddenly blatantly threatening. But she wasn’t afraid.

  “You’re so small,” he groaned as he let his mouth slide onto her throat. “Too small!”

  She kissed his cheek, his temple, his closed eyelids with quick, warm lips. “I’ll fit you,” she promised. “I’ll fit you like a glove.”

  “Poppy,” he groaned again in anguish.

  “Do stop worrying,” she whispered as she found his mouth. “I love you.”

  “No more than I love you,” he whispered back, holding her closer. “Are you going to marry me, complications and all?”

  “I don’t seem to have any choice. How else can I protect you from scores of sex-crazed beautiful women?”

  He chuckled and kissed her again, murmuring his agreement against her soft, welcoming mouth.

  *

  And they were married, six months to the day after Hank had abducted Poppy to his mountain cabin. The whole group of Desperado was there as witnesses in the small Wyoming church where Amanda had married Quinn Sutton several years before. They spoke their vows and exchanged rings. The look Hank gave his new bride would have melted snow, but fortunately it was summer.

  “Where are you going for your honeymoon?” Amanda asked them when they’d changed and were ready to get into the limousine.

  “That’s our secret.” Hank chuckled. He kissed Amanda’s cheek, and the baby’s, and shook hands with Quinn Sutton and Elliot.

  “Well, write when you get time,” Quinn asked. “Let us know you’re okay.”

  “I’ll do that. Take care of each other. We’ll be in touch.”

  The Suttons all stood close together, waving until Poppy and Hank were out of sight.

  “They’re a very special couple, aren’t they?” Poppy asked, sliding as close to Hank as she could get.

  “A very special family,” he agreed. “We’re going to be one, too. I’ll prove that to you tonight,” he said, his voice deepening, lowering. There had been nothing more than kisses all during the time they waited for their wedding day. Now the time had come for all the secrets to be unveiled for Poppy and she was as excited as she was apprehensive. She loved him. That had to be enough, she reminded herself. She slid her small hand into his big one and snuggled close.

  *

  But she was less comfortable after they ate a leisurely supper and cleared away the dishes. Her disquiet showed on her face, too.

  He tossed aside the dishcloth and pulled her gently in front of him. “Weddings are traumatic at best,” he said quietly. “We can wait until you’re rested and feel more like a new experience.”

  She nibbled at the skin on her lower lip. “I’m not usually so cowardly,” she began.

  He took her face in his big hands and tilted it up to his tender eyes. “I don’t have anything that you haven’t already seen,” he reminded her.

  “But I do,” she said miserably. She plucked at his shirt. “And I’m grass green and inhibited…!”

  “And five minutes from now, you won’t know your own name,” he whispered as his mouth searched for her lips and opened on them.

  Actually it took less time than that for him to reduce her to insensibility. Her desire for him matched his for her, and by the time he carried her into the bedroom, she was fighting her way to his bare chest through the confining shirts that separated them.

  “Slowly,” he whispered as he put her down and slid onto the bed beside her. “Slowly, darling, we have all the time in the world. Nice and easy, now. Let’s not rush.”

  She was shivering with new sensations, new expectations, but he gentled her until she lay drowsily in his big arms and let him undress them. She didn’t have the will to protest or the sense to be embarrassed as he studied her pink nudity with covetous, possessive eyes. His hands were slow and thorough, like his warm mouth. He aroused her and excited her, and when she was whimpering softly with the overwhelming pleasure of his ardor, he moved into total possession.

  She stiffened a little and gasped, but his mouth savored hers, and pressed reassuring kisses over her closed eyelids as he coaxed her into accepting the raw intimacy of his body.

  “You are…very much a virgin,” he whispered against her trembling lips, and he smiled. “Is it all right? Am I hurting you?”

  “No,” she managed to say. Her nails dug into his shoulders as he moved again, very tenderly.

  “It stings, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only a little farther,” he said half to himself, and his mouth crushed down hard on hers, his tongue shooting deeply into her mouth. The action shocked her so much that she relaxed and allowed him complete and total access to the soft warmth of her body.

  She cried out, surprised, because it was the most profound experience of her entire life. Her eyes opened wide and she looked straight into his.

  “Yes,” he whispered huskily. “It’s a miracle, isn’t it? Man and woman, fitting together so closely, so completely, that they form one person.” He kissed her damp face gently as he began to move, each tender shift of his body bringing a sudden, sharp pleasure that lifted her to him in delight. “Feel the rhythm and move with me,” he coaxed, smiling as she began to match him. “Think of it as composing a symphony, making music…that’s it. Hard now, baby. Cut loose and move to the beat. Move hard. Real hard…!”

  She lost control of herself completely then and although she heard his urgent whispers, she seemed outside her body, watching it dance to his tune, contort and convulse with pleasure that seemed to feed on itself. Finally there was a hot burst of it that made her cry out against the unbearable sensations deep within her body. She buried her face against his throat and moaned endlessly as it went through her in waves. Somewhere in the heat of it, she heard him, felt him, as he joined her in that surreal existence with a hard shudder that arched his powerful body down roughly against hers.

  Minutes later, the dazzling heat and color began to fade away and she found tears falling down her cheeks.

  “It stopped,” she whispered miserably.

  He rolled onto his side and gathered her very close. “We’ll get it back again when we’ve rested.” He kissed her gently. “For a first time, it was fairly volcanic, wasn’t it?” he mused. He laughed delightedly. “And we fit, don’t we?”

  “Oh, yes.” She nuzzled closer, shivering with pleasure and love. “Hank…”

  His mouth slid over hers. “We’ve just said all there is to say, and we never spoke a word,” he whispered into her mouth. “I’m glad you waited for me, Poppy. I wish that I’d been able to wait for you, all my life.”

  She hugged him closer. “I’ll settle for the rest of our lives,” she said gently, “and everything that’s ahead of us.”

  His big arms folded her close. “Love, then. Years and years of it.”

  She smiled against his chest. “And children to share it with.”

  “Yes.” He tugged the cover over them, because it was chilly at night this high up in the mountains. “I’m glad I didn’t apologize for abducting you,” he murmured. “It was the only sensible thing I’ve done in the past few years.”

  “All the same, you can’t abduct anyone else, ever.”

  “Oh, I’m reformed,” he promised her with a grin. “The only thing I expect to abduct in the future is a piano now and again, so that I can compose an occasional song.”

  Her eyes fell to his mouth. “I particularly like the way you compose in bed. Would you like to try a new theme? Something on the order of a blues tune?”

  He rolled over, smoothing her body against his in the growing darkness. “I think I can manage that.” He chuckled. “How about you?”

  She whispered that she had no doubts at all; about that, or about the future with him. It was going to be wonderful. And she told him that, too.

  *

  HE’S
A TOUGH-TALKING COWBOY—EXCEPT WHEN IT COMES TO ONE GORGEOUS FBI AGENT

  Rancher Brody Bloodworth has spent years blaming himself for his brother’s disappearance. If he hadn’t snuck off to be with Julie Whitehead, everything would have been different—and he wouldn’t have pushed her away. Now Julie is back, as an FBI agent with a solid lead on his brother. Although the past makes Brody reluctant to fall for Julie again, he admires her for being unable to keep her hands off the case. Before long he finds himself unable to keep his hands off her. As he prepares for a showdown with the ruthless kidnappers, Brody knows what’s at stake if he wins. And just how much he’ll lose if he doesn’t….

  Ultimate Cowboy

  Rita Herron

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  CHAPTER ONE

  “This special news report just in—an amber alert has been issued for six-year-old Hank Forte. Hank was last seen at the county fair in Amarillo.”

  Brody Bloodworth’s heart clenched as a photo of the boy appeared on screen. The little boy had blond hair, was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He could be one of the kids on the BBL, the Bucking Bronc Lodge he had started for needy children.

  But he reminded him more of his own little brother, Will, and launched him back seven years ago to the day Will had gone missing.