bringing a four-wheeler down the road, but he’d been too intent on sneaking up on the intruder. Now he was stuck walking Shelley back to the house.
Holding her firmly against his side, he turned and retraced his steps, following his own trail through the snow.
It was still falling like a son of a bitch, and it was hard to see where he was going. But he pushed his surprise guest onward as fast as he could make her walk because he knew he had to get her out of the cold and wind as soon as possible.
As he held her upright, images from the past assaulted him—starting with a very nervous Shelley Young, just out of college, interviewing for the job of his accountant. She’d worn her brown hair longer then. He skipped a few months and saw himself and Shelley in his office, going over the computer files. The two of them at the breakfast table. Walking hand and hand along the creek. Down by the corral—feeding carrots to the horses.
He tried to keep one more vivid picture out of his mind—him and Shelley naked in bed, in each other’s arms, clinging desperately together because they both sensed that the relationship was never going to work out, and neither of them was willing to admit it.
He squeezed his eyes closed, struggling against that last image and against his own reaction. If he was smart, he would put her into a four-wheel SUV and drive her back to Boulder, where she was living now.
But he couldn’t do it. She must have come here for a reason, and he needed to find out what it was. Still, he knew he had his own reasons for bringing her inside.
If he could have her here for just a little while, maybe that would be enough to last him another five lonely years.
When they finally reached the house, he muttered a prayer of thanks as he helped her through the door. Once they were in the warmth of the house, he sat her down on the bench in the mudroom and pulled off her boots, coat and purse.
“Matt?”
“It’s okay. What are you doing here?” She shook her head, and he could tell she wasn’t exactly with it.
After tossing his own coat on the floor and pulling off his boots, he picked Shelley up in his arms and carried her through the kitchen, then down the hall to the room where he had slept when he was a kid.
He’d long ago moved into the master bedroom where he had more space to spread out, but he’d kept this room in case he needed it. Yeah, sure. For what?
Well, at least he didn’t have to put Shelley in his bed. That was something.
He propped her against his hip then pulled the covers aside and eased her onto the bed. When she was lying down, he reached for her feet. They were cold and wet, so he pulled her socks off and inspected her toes, which were red but not frostbitten. When he found that the hems of her jeans were wet, he opened the snap at her waist, pulled down her zipper and dragged the pants down her legs.
“You’re undressing me,” she murmured, her lips curving in a silly grin.
“We need to get you warm and dry,” he answered, peeling down her thermal underwear and discarding it along with her jeans, struggling to ignore his reaction to her slim legs, feminine thighs and the triangle of dark hair he could see through the thin fabric of her panties.
Luckily, her shirt was still dry, so he dragged the sheet and blanket over her, covering the tempting image of her lying in bed.
“You need to sleep.” “I need you.”
Her arms whipped out and circled his neck, pulling him down so that he flopped on top of her. “Shelley.”
“I need you, Matt,” she whispered, her voice quavery. “For what? Why did you come here?” She made a muffled sound.
When he lifted his head to gaze down at her, she still looked dazed and confused, and he knew he should climb off the bed and beat a retreat into the other room.
As he hesitated, she cupped the back of his head and brought his mouth to hers, and he couldn’t make himself pull away. When his lips touched down on hers, a jolt of sensation shot through him.
Somewhere in his mind, he knew none of this should be happening. He shouldn’t be in a bed with her—holding her—for so many reasons.
Yet at this moment in time, none of the reasons mattered. The only thing his brain had room for was that she was lying in his embrace.
He broke the kiss and lifted his head. Her lips were parted now, her breath shallow, her eyes full of hope—and, he thought, pain.
“What is it?”
“Just be with me.”
Unable to deny the invitation, he maneuvered to the side, gathering her close, and it was the most natural thing in the world to bring his mouth back to hers, nibbling, sliding, taking her lower lip into his mouth the way he’d always liked to do.
She tasted wonderful, as sweet as he remembered, but the best part was her response to him. The returned pressure of her lips against his and the way she moved restlessly on the bed fueled a hot, frantic burst of sensation inside him.
Not just him. He could feel needs zinging back and forth between them.
He was on top of the covers. She was underneath. He knew he should keep her warm, so he slipped off the bed—just long enough to pull the blanket and sheet aside and slide in next to her, so he could gather her close.
When she made a small sound of approval, he ran his hands up and down her back, then cupped her bottom, pulling her against the erection straining at the front of his jeans.
He had missed her so much. Needed her so much, and now here she was, right where he wanted her—warm and cozy with him in bed. He heard a sound well up in her throat. Or perhaps it was from his throat. He couldn’t even be sure.
Her hands began to move too, roving restlessly over his back, his shoulders, pulling him closer.
They clung together, rocking slightly in the bed, as the kiss turned more urgent—more hungry—driving every thought from his mind but one. Against all reason, she had come back to him, and he must make love to her before she slipped away from him again.
Was this reality or a fantasy? He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. The taste and feel of Shelley Young was the only reality in his universe.
His mouth moved over hers, feasting on her, his tongue sliding along the rigid line of her teeth, then beyond.
It was all so familiar. So precious. It was as though they had never been apart, as though the past five years had never happened.
As he kissed her, he eased far enough away to slide one hand between them so that he could cup her breast and stroke his fingers over the tip. He remembered how sweetly she responded to him, how she gave him as much as he took. And when he reached under her sweater to unhook her bra, she made a small sound of approval, then sighed in pleasure as he took her nipples between his thumbs and fingers, twisting and pulling, doing the things he remembered that she liked.
“Shelley.”
She answered with his name, and somehow that brought a dose of reality into the fantasy world he had created in the warmth of the
