Between Midnight and Morning Page 7

  It felt natural now, swaying in the dark against him. He made it so easy for her move her feet as he gently nudged her forward, then back, then in a slow, rhythmic circle. Made it so easy to lose herself in the moment. And easier still to wonder about other moments. The ones she’d missed. The ones he wanted.

  The ones she just couldn’t bring herself to invite or encourage.

  “That’s it,” he murmured against her temple, “You’ve got it. Feel that?”

  Everything. She felt everything.

  Including regret that he so easily made her want what she’d never imagined wanting again.

  “There you go. Simple as pie, right?”

  She couldn’t answer. Didn’t want to hear her own voice in the dark with this man who wanted her to let go of things she’d clung to with the fierceness of a warrior.

  Memories. Promises. The man who had made her a woman. A wife.

  “It’s…it’s getting late,” she said, pulling out of his arms. And feeling very cold suddenly even though the summer night held the lingering warmth of the July day.

  For a long moment, he said nothing. He just stood there. She could feel his gaze on the top of her head. Feel his disappointment in the long breath fanning her cheek.

  “Well,” he said finally, his voice sounding gritty. “I’d better go home so you can go to bed.”

  She gave him a tight, clipped smile and wrapped her arms around her waist. “Don’t forget your cookies.”

  One corner of that beautiful mouth tipped up. “Not likely.

  “See ya ’round, Doc,” he said, sauntering down her porch steps toward his truck.

  “Thanks for dinner.” She walked up to her porch post and hung on.

  Without breaking stride or turning around, he touched his fingers to his hat brim and kept right on going.

  So did her heartbeat.

  Reminding her, again, how very alive she truly was.

  How very alive he made her feel.

  Six

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Ali insisted the following Monday when Peg dropped by the clinic with her lunch.

  Peg lifted a forkful of salad, pointed it at Ali. “There’s nothing complicated about good old-fashioned lust.”

  She hadn’t intended to tell Peg about this shift in her feelings about John Tyler but, in the end, Peg hadn’t even had to wheedle it out of her. What was the point? When she’d left the welcome party early, begging off with a headache, and then when John had shown up at the clinic last Monday all sexy grins and talk about cookies, it hadn’t taken Peg long to put two and two together and know there was something in the wind.

  “Wait a minute. He kissed you, didn’t he?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ali had confessed without so much as a token denial and then knuckled under and spilled all the details—including how John had showed up at her house a week later with burgers and fries and taught her how to dance in the dark.

  She hadn’t realized how badly she wanted to talk about it. Now she couldn’t stop talking about it.

  “The thing is,” Ali confided thoughtfully, “I’m so utterly shocked that I feel this attraction to him. Not just to him—to any man.”

  “John’s not just any man.”

  “Tell me about it. According to you he’s fast and loose and way too freethinking about sex and…and…well, I shouldn’t like him, but I do. And I don’t want to. I just don’t want to.”

  Peg pulled a face but Ali kept right on rambling.

  “In the first place he is too young, that’s just a fact. Besides, he’s not my type. He’s never been my type. Never will be. But most of all, I don’t want to get involved. With anyone.”

  “But?” Peg asked, knowing there was a qualifier.

  Ali let out a pained breath. “But…he makes me want things and I—I just don’t know how to handle it.”

  “It?”

  “It. Everything.” She was quiet for a while as she contemplated the ham sandwich she’d made for her lunch. It had sounded good this morning. Now, somehow, she’d lost her appetite.

  She stood, shoved her hands in her hip pockets and walked to the window overlooking Main Street. Pickup trucks lined the south side of the street where an equipment auction was taking place at the implement dealers.

  “I know this sounds clichéd,” she began slowly, “but when David died, it really felt like part of me died, too, you know? I loved that man. He was steady and solid and he was my best friend. We grew up together—literally. Our houses were next door to each other. Our parents were best friends. Until four years ago, I didn’t have a memory that didn’t include him. And I have never once, in all the years since I lost him, considered getting involved with another man.”

  “Because it seems like a betrayal,” Peg offered gently.

  Ali turned, looked at her friend, not really surprised by her insight. “Yeah. It feels like a betrayal.”

  “Would David want you to be alone?”

  Ali shook her head. “This isn’t about what David would have wanted. It’s about what I want.”

  “And what is it you want, sweetie?”

  Ali stared at the ceiling. “I want to do a good job here, build my practice, build a life—on my own.”

  “And yet…John reminds you that you have needs that you hadn’t factored into the equation.”

  She closed her eyes. Felt a burst of sexual awareness shiver through her. Boy, did he remind her. “Do you suppose it’s just an age thing?” she asked when the thought suddenly came to her. “You know, I’ve read where women reach their sexual peak in their late thirties, early forties. Do you suppose this is all about hormones kicking in?”

  “Well,” Peg said sympathetically, “I suppose if you’re looking for an excuse, that’s as good a one as any.”

  “I’m not looking for an excuse,” Ali insisted, feeling defensive. “I’m looking for an explanation.”

  “I think,” Peg said gently, “that what you’re really looking for is absolution.”

  Ali wanted to argue but not enough to stop listening to what else Peg had to say.

  “I think,” Peg continued when she saw she had Ali’s attention, “that you are an attractive, healthy, sexual woman and somewhere along the line you decided you didn’t have the right to be any of those things. And you were good with that—at least you made yourself be good with it until J.T. gave you a reason to question that decision.”

  “I don’t live in a vacuum, Peg. There have been other men who’ve made it known they were interested. I didn’t have this problem with them.”

  “Maybe you just weren’t ready. Or maybe they weren’t J.T.”

  The phone rang about that time and ended their discussion. Ali had to rush out to the Savage spread to treat a colicky colt. The ride out to Lee and Ellie Savage’s place gave her a chance to think about what Peg had said.

  “Like you haven’t been thinking about it day and night,” she muttered as she bounced along the gravel road toward Shiloh Ranch.

  For the rest of the day, she was too busy to think about John or his kiss or his smiles or his dancing or anything else, for that matter. After she got the Savage’s colt back on his feet and out of trouble, she headed across country to the Grangers’ to do some herd testing for the state lab. In fact, she had a whole list of stops to make yet that afternoon.

  By the time she finally made it home, it was well after sunset.

  By the time she finally made it to bed, she was too exhausted to think.

  But it didn’t stop her from dreaming. And when she dreamed, she dreamed not of David as she had so many, many nights since she’d lost him. She dreamed of John Tyler instead. She dreamed of that kiss. Of how kissing him had made her feel alive. And as needy as she’d felt needed.

  The next morning, as she lay awake and alone in her bed, still achy from the vivid aftermath of the dream, she couldn’t help but question if maybe Peg was right.

  Maybe she was looking for absolution. Maybe she was even looki
ng for permission. To be a woman again. To feel the kind of intense physical pleasure a hot, steamy affair with a younger man could bring.

  And that’s all it could ever be between them. David had been her one and only love. She didn’t harbor any delusions that she’d find what she’d had with him with another man.

  An affair.

  “Whoa.”

  She sat up in bed, braced her fists on the mattress beside her hips. The idea was so far beyond the realm of anything she’d consider appropriate there weren’t words to explain it. And yet…John Tyler certainly had jump-started her hormones and had her thinking in that direction.

  It was ridiculous. It would be too complicated, and just thinking about it brought on such strong feelings of guilt, she wasn’t certain she could enjoy it even if she did have the courage to see it through.

  And when had her thoughts started swaying more in the direction of seeing it through than nipping it in the bud?

  Since John had backed her up against a wall and kissed her, that’s when.

  Since pretty much all she could think about was what it would feel like to have him kiss her again.

  Since he’d taken her cookies and left her on her front porch Saturday night without so much as a peck on the cheek and she’d had to latch on to the porch post with both hands so she wouldn’t chase him down the sidewalk and demand that, for God’s sake, he kiss her again.

  Urggh.

  If she didn’t kiss him again, she had the ominous feeling that she was going to jump out of her skin.

  “It’s going well, huh?”

  Ali frowned at Peg, then cast an overt glance toward John where he and Cutter and Lee Savage were standing together over a barbecue grilling steaks and doing what men did best, laughing and giving each other a hard time.

  “Define well.”

  Peg laughed and handed her a stack of plates loaded with silverware. “You’re doing fine. Set the table. It’ll give you something to do with your hands other than wring them.”

  Ali was on a date. A date, for heaven’s sake. Well, not a date date, at least not technically, but it didn’t change the fact that she was here and John was here and she’d agreed to come to this get-together at Peg and Cutter’s knowing full well the motive for it.

  “It’ll be perfect,” Peg had insisted when she’d called and cooked this up. “It’ll be you and John, Cutter and me and we’ll ask Lee and Ellie Savage over, too. Friday night. We’ll have a cookout. Just a bunch of friends getting together. It’ll give you a chance to get to know him better.”

  “I don’t want to get to know him,” Ali had said grimly. “I just want to jump his bones.”

  Peg’s laugh was big and surprised. “Well, I’ll say this for you, girl. When you decide to turn over a new leaf, you do it in a big way.”

  “That was a joke.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  Sadly, Peg had been right—even though Ali was hard pressed to admit it in her more sane moments. Agreeing to this event hadn’t been one of them, she thought now, as she distributed tableware around the picnic table and tried to keep from looking at John. Second thoughts had moved in and paid rent the moment she’d made the decision to harken to the call of her hormones, so to speak.

  And now, here she was. Harkening.

  It was exhausting.

  She hadn’t paid this much attention to her hair and makeup in ages. And she hadn’t felt this nervous in decades. Probably since junior high—which was laughable appropriate since more and more often lately she felt like she was functioning with the mentality of a teenager.

  She glanced at the men again—and stopped breathing when she realized John was watching her. His expression was sober, his gaze assessing and intent. And when his brown eyes, as warm as melted chocolate, locked on hers and one corner of his incredible mouth tilted up in a private, intimate smile, her heart went haywire.

  She was not a strong swimmer and as she looked away from his July-hot gaze, busying herself with rearranging plates on the picnic table, she had a vivid mental image of herself drifting toward deep water and sinking fast.

  Oh, God. What had she been thinking?

  As he shot the breeze with Cutter and Lee, John drained his bottle of beer and tried not to make a production out of watching every move Ali made. His mind wasn’t tracking one hundred percent of what the guys were saying. It was getting to be an old story but the doc pretty much occupied the bulk of his thoughts.

  He found it interesting that he couldn’t quite get a bead on why she, of all women, had him so hot and bothered. Yeah, she was a gorgeous woman. He knew a lot of gorgeous women, though, many of whom liked the idea of him taking them to dinner or to a movie. At last count not a one of them had attempted to relieve him of his hair. Or baked him cookies, he reminded himself with a grin.

  Ali fascinated him. Something unsettling had happened when he’d held her close against him that night on her front porch. Something electric and consuming. She’d felt like a little piece of heaven in his arms and the look in her eyes when she’d pulled away from him had rocked him. Heat. Desire. Need. Wavering denial. And panic. She wanted him. Just as badly as he wanted her but she was fighting it every step of the way.

  Apparently, she was still fighting it because every time her blue eyes landed on him and she realized he was watching her, she quickly looked away. That was okay. Just gave him more room to watch her.

  She’d dressed to accommodate the heat. Nothing overtly sexy—just a pale blue crop top that gave little peeks of bare skin where it almost met the waistband of her jeans shorts. A pair of leather sandals flip-flopped when she walked and made her legs look absolutely incredible.

  It didn’t seem to matter what she wore—on her anything looked sexy.

  “You look like a man with a powerful thirst, J.T. Need another beer?”

  Cutter’s sly grin made it clear he thought he knew exactly what John had a thirst for and that beer wasn’t going to quench it.

  John never had and never did kiss and tell. And since there was no way he was going to get into any kind of discussion with Cutter about the doc, he headed for the cooler. “A beer’d be great. How about you, Lee?”

  “Thanks.” Lee Savage reached for the bottle when John handed it to him. The rancher who had married one of John’s all-time favorite people, Ellie Shiloh, a few years back, eyed John beneath his hat brim. “So what’s up with you and Alison?”

  Okay. So they were both of a mind to give him grief. Or at least they were going to try. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied then tightened his lips when Cutter made a choking sound.

  After a few moments of amused consideration, Lee grunted. “In that case, you might want to put your tongue back in your mouth, because you’re doing a fine imitation of a man going down for the count.”

  Hell, was he that obvious? Apparently so, because these two were grinning like a couple of goons. “Since when does appreciating a pretty woman equate to going down for the count? I’m sorry to disappoint you, boys, but the doc and I are just friends.”

  Cutter flipped a steak and grinned at Lee. “That’s because she won’t give him the time of day.”

  “Ouch. Met your match with this one, have you, J.T.?”

  “Oh, he’s way outmatched,” Cutter said on a laugh. “It’s a little different playing to a classy woman instead of the party girls who go all limp-kneed over our favorite bachelor.”

  “Well, they can’t all be conquests,” Lee added with a total lack of sympathy.

  “You two are too funny for words.” Refusing to rise to the bait, John just grinned back. “It just busts your chops that you’re missing out on the joys of single life. That’s the problem with married men. Can’t stand to see an unattached man enjoying all the freedom that goes with being single. Me, I like my life just the way it is—no strings attached, no ring in my nose to be led around by like some among us who shall remain nameless.”

  “It’s your story, you can tell
it any way you want to,” Lee said, clearly unperturbed by John’s ribbing, “but if I was a betting man, I’d say you aren’t too happy about this just friends arrangement.”

  It would be easy to let them rile him—especially since they were right. He wasn’t happy about it. But he knew something they didn’t. He knew how the doc responded when he kissed her. He knew how she melted against him in the moonlight with a little help from Norah Jones. So, this just friends business was going to evolve into something a whole lot more pleasurable real soon. Hell, she was here tonight, wasn’t she? That said something.

  In the meantime, as far as going down for the count, his buddies couldn’t be more off target. Oh, he intended to woo and win the good doctor, all right. Just like he intended for them both to have a good time in the process. But he knew his limits. Even his best friends and family didn’t know about the side of him that had emerged since Afghanistan. No way was he subjecting a woman like Alison to that part of him. And no way was he letting himself open to the scrutiny.

  Yeah, the big, tough happy-go-lucky cowboy was afraid he’d be found out. Afraid they’d discover he was a fraud. The head docs could babble on all they wanted about emotional scars being as disabling as physical ones but he knew it was all bunk. He had both his arms, he had both his legs. He was alive. And he ought to be damn happy about it, instead of cowering in the dark when the flashbacks got the best of him and shoved him in the black pit…sometimes for days.

  “Something on your mind that you’d like to share with us, J.T.?”

  John threw Cutter a tight smile. “Yeah. I was thinking the company over at the swing set has got to be a step up from the likes of you two jokers.

  “Hey Shelby girl,” he said, walking away from his buddies toward the Reno children. “How’s it shakin’, sweetheart? Yeah, I see you, little dude,” he said on a laugh as two-year-old Dawson launched into a chorus of J.T., J.T. and toddled toward him at a baby bull trot.