No, that wasn’t all. He was also a six-three cowboy with hard muscles and a slightly imperfect smile that only made him more perfect. His hair was always a bit messed from his tendency to comb it with his fingers, and she’d noticed as she’d followed him around earlier that he had a very nice behind. But more than his physical perfection was the way he had of looking at and talking to a woman, of focusing all that male attention directly on her. Of casually calling every woman in town “honey,” yet making it sound personal.
“Did the ice help your eye?” she asked.
“No, got any other ideas?”
“I might have a frozen steak.”
“I don’t think so.”
Hope pressed a finger to her lips, then lightly touched his bruise. “How’s that?”
He shook his head and his gaze slid to her mouth. “I’m afraid that didn’t get the job done.”
She placed her hands on his chest, rose to the balls of her feet, and softly kissed the corner of his eye. “Is that better?”
The word “no” whispered across her cheek and Hope’s senses completely scattered, only to regroup and concentrate on where she touched him. Her cheek and hands tingled and the sensation spread like fire through the rest of her body. She froze, knowing she should push him away, yet unable to move from the warmth of his big, solid body. Standing and feeling him so close was like coming in from the cold. Like holding your frozen hands close to the fire.
“Dylan,” she uttered, and he responded by turning his head and covering her mouth with his. The kiss never got the chance to start slow and sweet. The instant their lips touched, it became an openmouthed tongue thruster. He placed his hands on the sides of her face and, with her back against the refrigerator, he held her to him. His slick tongue stroked hers while he created a light suction within her mouth. He tasted very good, like something elusive that she couldn’t quite catch. Like something she hadn’t had in a long time, but until that moment hadn’t even realized she desperately missed.
She ran her hands over his chest, felt his hard muscles bunch and flex beneath his shirt. She moaned deep in her throat, and her palm closed over the star pinned to his breast pocket. He kissed the way he did everything else. He gave every inch of her mouth his full attention. She breathed the air from his lungs and drew in the scent of him through her nose. It went straight to her head like pure oxygen. He made her light-headed and dizzy and gasping for more.
Hope slid her free hand down his chest to his flat belly. He sucked in his breath and her fingers curled in the cotton plaid of his shirt. She pulled it from the waistband of his jeans, but Dylan grabbed her wrists and pinned them to the refrigerator while he made love to her mouth. His tongue slid in and out, hot and slick. Her mouth clung to his. She wanted more. She wanted it all. All the hot touches and fiery hunger that had been missing from her life for so long. She wanted to feel him beneath her greedy hands and fought to free them. But when he finally let go, he ended the kiss and stepped backward, out of her reach.
His breath was ragged; his eyes ate her up. He wanted her. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. Her lids felt heavy, weighted as she stared at him, her body aching, responding to all that potent want and need staring right back at her. Yet he turned and walked away.
He moved to the doorway of the kitchen and he stopped. “Hope?”
She looked at the back of his wide shoulder and the brown-and-gold hair on the back of his head. She opened her mouth, but no sounds came out.
“Stay away from the Buckhorn,” he said, and then he was gone.
Chapter Six
SATAN PHOTOGRAPHED IN WILDERNESS TOWN
At nine o’clock the next morning, Hope finished the rough draft of her alien story. She thought the intro might be a bit vague, and she’d waited until the third ‘graph to make her transition, but she thought the article was shaping up nicely.
She’d created a wilderness town populated by shipwrecked aliens who disguised themselves to pass for normal, everyday, small-town weirdies. In reality they passed the time while waiting for their mother ship by tricking tourists and profiting off them in their betting pool.
She’d been working on the article since dawn, when she woke with the outline already written in her aching head. She’d downed several Tylenol with a coffee chaser and hadn’t bathed yet. Her hair was wound on top of her head and held in place with two Bic pens. She still wore her cow pajamas and a pair of slouch socks. She figured she smelled bad, but she knew better than to stop when she was on a roll. While she worked, she never answered the telephone, and only a raging house fire could have forced her to open the front door.
She’d e-mailed Walter the idea for her new article. He’d loved it, but wanted pictures to accompany the story. Believable pictures. Which meant Hope would have to drag out her Minolta and snap a few photos of the wilderness area. Later, she would scan them into her computer and superimpose the likenesses of aliens dressed up as local townspeople. It would take time, but it wasn’t impossible. And certainly not as hard as when she’d morphed Micky the Magical Leprechaun into a reasonable likeness of Prince Charles.
At around nine-thirty, Hope finally took a break. When the phone rang, she picked up the receiver. The call was from Hazel Avery, of the sheriff’s office, wanting to know when she planned to
come in and fill out a victim’s report. Hope looked down at herself and told the woman to give her an hour.
It wasn’t that she’d forgotten she needed to go to the sheriff’s office. It was more in the neighborhood of something she wished to forget. She wished she could forget the entire night, starting from the moment she’d stepped foot inside the Buckhorn to the moment Dylan Taber had walked out her door.
Hope hit save on her keyboard and made a backup copy of the alien story. Well, maybe not forget the entire evening, but she definitely should have left the bar after she’d heard about the Flatlander Pool and before Emmett Barnes had plopped his sorry behind in her booth. Her troubles had started as soon as she’d looked up from the napkins she’d been scribbling on and seen his I-know-you-want-me grin.
No, she amended to herself, they’d started the minute she’d began ordering twofers. If it hadn’t been for her excitement over the alien story, she would have paid more attention to how the alcohol was affecting her. If it hadn’t been for the beer buzz, she probably could have handled Emmett. She certainly would have kept her comment about small men and small penises to herself.
Hope peeled off her clothes and stepped into the shower. If it hadn’t been for the boozy glow, she definitely would have kept her hands and mouth off the sheriff.
She let the hot water run over her and didn’t know which encounter had been worse, the one with Emmett or Dylan. One had been scary. The other, humiliating. She’d been wrong about Dylan. He hadn’t wanted her the way she’d wanted him. He hadn’t wanted to crawl all over her. He’d wanted to walk away, and that was exactly what he’d done. With the taste of him still on her lips, she’d watched him walk out the door.
Stay out of the Buckhorn, he’d said. No words of regret. No “Gee, I hate to leave.” No lame excuse. Nothing.