Much later, when it was quiet and dark and she was in bed reading, she noticed a noise. At first it sounded like the beat of a heart: pa-dum, pa-dum, pa-dum. Nice and even and slow.
She sat up, listening. It was a horse, running along the fence line. Coyotes?
Putting on a robe, she got up and hurried to her bedroom window. The dark ranch lay stretched out before her. Even with the moonlight, it took her a while to locate the running horse. Renegade.
He was only a shadow from here, moving along the rail in an easy lope. She sensed him more than saw him; all she could really make out was a hat, colored by the moon to look like bone, set on hair too dark to be seen.
She knew she shouldn’t go, just as she knew she would. Tightening her terrycloth belt, she went down the stairs and crossed the yard, careful to stay in the shadows.
Dallas was riding Renegade bareback.
Only riding seemed too ordinary a word. Vivi Ann couldn’t believe how effortless he made it look, how he cued and turned and guided the gelding with movements so slight she couldn’t see how he did it.
“Hey, boy,” Dallas said quietly. “You remember all this, don’t you? A champion doesn’t forget.”
Vivi Ann stood hidden in the shadows for almost an hour, unable to look away, until finally she heard Dallas say, “Whoa, Renegade.”
The horse came to an abrupt stop and Dallas slid off in a single fluid motion. Exchanging the bridle for a halter, he petted the horse for a while, and then walked away, up the hill.
At his cabin, a light came on. Like the Dungeness Spit lighthouse that both showed mariners the way home and warned of dangerous shoals.
And then she was moving, following him. With each step, she told herself that this was a mistake, coming up here, that she was seeing something in him that wasn’t there, but none of that mattered now. It felt inevitable, this moment, this succumbing, as if the choice had been made long ago.
Without bothering to knock, she opened his cabin door and saw him standing by the sofa, drinking a beer. “Just once,” she said, hearing the cracked pleading in her voice, the fear and the excitement. Everything about this night felt impossible, as if she’d found this place that lay parallel to the real world, that had all its tastes and smells and desires, but none of its rules. In this new world she could be brazen and sexy and bold. Just for this one night. “We’ll do it once and get it out of our systems. No one will ever know.”
“I’ll be your dark secret, huh?”
Vivi Ann nodded, moved toward him.
He swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed, where he pushed the pile of her grandmother’s quilt aside and laid her down. Wrenching his Levi’s open, he shoved the jeans down his bare legs and kicked them aside, then pulled off his shirt.
Scars covered his chest; one ended in a coil of puckered flesh at his rib. Moonlight softened the marks, made them look silvery and almost pretty, but she’d seen enough abused horses to know what she was seeing. “My God, Dallas . . . what—”
He kissed her until she couldn’t breathe anymore, couldn’t claim to own even the smallest portion of her body. He took it all from her, forced her to want him with a desperation that was so raw it hurt. When he pulled off her clothes and rolled her beneath him, she opened herself up shamelessly, crying out his name and clinging to him. Nothing mattered except his body and hers and how alive he made her feel.
Vivi Ann woke in the middle of the night, wanting him again. She rolled over to kiss his shoulder and discovered that she was alone in bed.
She pushed the pile of covers away and reached for the robe that lay in a heap on the floor.
She found Dallas on the porch, sitting on the top step, drinking a beer.
She sat down beside him. “Did I wake you up? Kick you in the head or something?”
“I don’t sleep.”
“Everyone sleeps.”
“Do they?”
It was a reminder not only that she didn’t know him, but that she was a small-town girl in a big world. She stared out over this ranch that suddenly looked unfamiliar. She knew she should get up, say thanks for the great sex, and go back to her life. But even as she imagined forming those hard, sharp words, she remembered the softness of his tongue on her body, the way he’d made her cry out in pleasure.
“I should go,” she said finally.
He just sat there, staring out over the fields. “Take off your robe, Vivi.”
She shivered at the way he said it. In some distant part of her (grown smaller in the space of this one night; the old Vivi Ann) she wanted to deny him. She had to get back to the house. Come dawn, she’d be missed. “We said just once,” she whispered, hearing how hollow she sounded, how unconvincing.
“You said it. I didn’t.”