IT WAS A MEAN March midnight, the road a sludgy river of asphalt oozing in slow loops under an icy moon. Mitch Garwood’s mood was sour and his face frost-burned as he rumbled up to the back door of his cottage, one of the six they’d recently finished on the eastern edge of Bell River Ranch.
Tilting off his helmet with one hand, he twisted the key with the other, silencing the growling motorcycle before any of the adjoining guests woke up and complained. Although why they should sleep soundly when he knew darn well he wouldn’t...
Still astride the bike, he stared at the dark windows of the cottage, envisioning the cold, half-empty spaces within. A bed. A sofa. A bookcase. A refrigerator full of bottled water and blackening guacamole dip. Six hours of tossing and turning...alone...till dawn, when he could finally get up and distract himself with work.
This was a life?
It was his choice, of course. He’d never been forced to be alone, not since he hit puberty and discovered that rusty-brown hair and a few freckles over a goofy grin actually appealed to some females.
He definitely hadn’t needed to be alone tonight. At least fifty bored women from a cosmetics convention in Crawford had jammed into the Happy Horseshoe Saloon. Two-thirds of them were nice, half of them were hot and at least two of them were both.
But not one was interesting enough to take home.
He shoved his helmet into the storage bubble on the back of the bike, a little too roughly. He heard the fiberglass crack against the rim. He’d better watch out—he’d already fractured two helmets this way. He’d probably coil himself up so tight he’d break his own bones if he didn’t find a woman soon.
Problem was, the only woman he wanted was the one he couldn’t have.
Bonnie. His chest did a painful cramping thing, as if the two syllables were electric prods applied to his heart. Bonnie, he thought again, like the masochist he was, just to feel the reaction once more.
Bonnie O’Mara. If that was even her name.
For one amazing year, the beautiful mystery woman had seemed like his own personal miracle. Turned out she was a mirage instead. Nearly nine months on the road together, running from something only she could see, and then, one morning, Mitch woke up and she was gone.
That was six months ago. So yeah—he needed someone new.
He inhaled deeply, the Colorado frost stinging his lungs. Too bad he didn’t drink. His friends assured him that getting lightly buzzed could put a sparkle into even the dullest diamond.
But he’d tried that once, a few months ago, on his twenty-seventh birthday. He’d found a bottle of Johnnie Walker and a smart, lively redhead visiting from Crested Butte, and he’d mixed them together to see what happened.
He told himself it was allowed, darn it. He wasn’t ready to be a monk just because True Love had spit in his face. At the very least, he owed it to himself to make sure his machinery still worked, right?
But—get this—he’d been bored to death. Apologizing as politely as he could, he’d left the confused woman after about five minutes and five kisses, already feeling the hangover churning in his stomach. He’d spent the rest of the night chucking big ugly rocks to see if he could bust a hole in frozen Silverbottom Pond. He’d only succeeded in scaring the deer.
So no more nights like that. The machinery could shrivel up and fall off before he’d repeat that pathetic fiasco.
Mitch rocked the bike up onto its kickstand, then took the steps to the cottage two at a time. If he had to go in, he might as well get it over with.
But the minute he opened the door, he froze. Something felt...different.
The house wasn’t empty and still. Someone was here.
He left the lights off as he moved through the kitchen, using only the weak beams of the fingernail moon and the LED displays on the appliances to guide him. As he entered the living room, he picked up a poker from the fireplace, holding it over his shoulder like a baseball bat.
Then he heard a woman’s voice, softly, from the darkness.
“Mitch?”
His grip went numb. The poker clattered from his hand. “Bonnie?”
A shadow near the sofa stirred. It formed into a human shape and then became a blur as she ran blindly toward him.
It was. It was Bonnie. He knew her silhouette. He knew her scent. He knew the way she ran and the way her boots lightly tapped across the hardwood floor.
He was only ten feet away. She crashed into him hard, wrapping her arms around him and burying her head in his chest. He had to take a step backward to balance against the collision.
For a split second, he was reminded of the desperate embraces he sometimes got from his nephew, Alec, when the boy was in pain. When the poor kid had run over a squirrel with his bike or found a dying baby bird, fallen from the nest.
But then, as Bonnie lifted her pale, moonlit face to his and smothered his cheeks, his chin...and finally his lips...with kisses, all thoughts of Alec evaporated.
All thoughts of anything evaporated.
His brain shut down entirely, his body taking over.
“Is it really you?” He dug his hands into her silken hair and pulled her as close as he could, close enough to smell her, taste her, own her. Close enough to make the six months of loneliness go away.
“Bonnie,” he whispered against her mouth, and maybe she said his name again, or maybe she merely moaned. Her lips were wet where he’d moved over them and so warm. He dragged his kisses, hard and possessive, down the column of her throat and up again. His hands stroked her back, down to her hips, tracing the sweet curve he knew so well.
After so many dreams, so many ghost Bonnies that had come to tease him in the night, only to disappear just short of heaven, he had to convince himself she was real.
She was. He had no idea how this gift had come to him, but he was beyond questioning it now. He lifted her legs so that she nestled against the fire between his, and they both groaned, remembering.
He stumbled backward, not caring whether he was loud or clumsy. Not caring whether he broke everything in the cottage or whether he looked a fool. He kissed her as he walked. He bent his head to find her breasts, though he nearly killed them both as he keeled backward toward the wall.
He made his way, somehow, to the bedroom. He fell with her onto the bed. She was fumbling with his belt and with her own, and he was tearing buttons, hers and his, and shedding clothes and boots as fast as he could.
And there she was, open to him. The same—oh, heaven help him—exactly the same as his dreams.
