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  “My mother had no idea that’s what I had on under my jeans and tank top. She thought I’d worn the virginal white one-piece she’d bought me in Jackson. When Nash saw that bikini, he was not happy.”

  “I was.”

  “Really? Then why did you treat me like a bratty little tagalong all day?”

  He took a fortifying sip of his beer and set it back on the scarred wooden table. “Because you were Nash Bledsoe’s little sister, and if he’d guessed what I was thinking, he would have cleaned my clock.”

  She gazed at him in obvious fascination. “You wanted me back then?”

  “With the heat of a thousand suns.”

  “Damn it, Hutch! If I’d known that, it would have changed my entire image of myself. My high school career would have been completely different. It would have—”

  “Landed us both in a heap of trouble. You were fifteen. You weren’t ready for the kind of action I had in mind.” He should probably stop talking about this. The more he did, the more this little booth warmed up, and he didn’t have a plan.

  “Meanwhile you were a worldly seventeen.” She took another drink of her beer. “I’ll bet you were still a virgin.”

  “No, I wasn’t.” He hadn’t meant to say that, but there was no taking it back, now.

  “Is that so?” Her eyebrows lifted. “Do I know her?”

  “A gentleman doesn’t discuss such things.”

  “Oh, come on, Hutch. I’ll tell you who my first was if you’ll tell me yours. On second thought, let me guess. Candice Melbourne.”

  He did his best to stare her down without giving anything away, but apparently he failed.

  “It was her. I can tell by the way your eye is twitching. She had the biggest rack in the junior class. Of course you’d go for her.”

  “I refuse to confirm or deny.”

  Trina began to laugh. “Okay, then, I’m not telling you who was my first.”

  He suddenly had a burning desire to know. Then again, knowing might be a bad thing. If the guy was still in town, Hutch would rather not know. What if he was someone Hutch actually liked? That would end any potential friendship, because he couldn’t imagine being friends with anyone who had—

  “Simon Flear.”

  Hutch groaned. “Not him.”

  “Why not? He had a poet’s soul. He used to write odes to my beauty.”

  “You do realize that everyone called him Simon Qu—”

  “That’s because you Neanderthals didn’t appreciate someone who was a million times more sensitive to a woman’s needs than you were.”

  Hutch shook his head in disbelief. “The guy had no cojones.”

  “Oh, yes, he did. In fact, he had very impressive—”

  “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear about it.” He gulped more beer. “When did this take place?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to hear about it.”

  “I just need some historic perspective.”

  “He took me to my senior prom. He came home from college specifically so he could do that. I was touched.”

  Hutch grimaced. “In the head. You know, I would have gladly taken you to your senior prom.” And now he wished he had, if only to save her from Simon.

  “But you didn’t ask, did you?”

  “No, because Nash would have demanded to know my intentions, and if I’d told him the truth, he would have knocked me clear into next week. He never suspected that Simon was a threat to your innocence.”

  “I can testify that Simon is absolutely heterosexual.”

  “Yay.” He polished off his beer.

  As if the waitress had been watching his every move, she appeared by his elbow. “Another round?”

  “Fine with me. Trina?”

  “Sounds good,” Trina said. “But I need to call my mother and tell her I won’t be home for dinner.” She pulled out her phone, but then she paused and glanced questioningly at Hutch. “I’m assuming we’ll move on to dinner?”

  “Absolutely. I have to make up for lost time and Simon Flear.”

  Trina laughed, which made her brown eyes go all sparkly. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, but when I look at you, it seems like yesterday.” Nothing had changed, either. He still wanted her with the heat of a thousand suns.

  Her gaze met his. “I know what you mean. The roads not taken and all that.”

  “And now you’re building a life hundreds of miles away.” He had to ask the next question and make sure he wasn’t misreading the light in her eyes. “Anyone special back there?”

  “No.” Her sweet mouth curved. “But there’s someone special right here.”

  His heart slammed against his ribs. She was picking up his cues. “You’d better call your mother. Tell her…”

  “Not to wait up?”

  Whew. He hadn’t had an adrenaline rush like this since he’d run the rapids on the Snake River. “Right. Tell her that.”

  * * *

  TRINA HOPED SHE looked calmer than she felt. Her finger shook and she almost hit the wrong button on her phone. Unless she didn’t know men at all, Hutch was planning a seduction. And she was more than willing to be seduced after years of imagining Hutch making love to her.

  Her mother’s phone went to voice mail, so she left a vague message about meeting up with an old friend and needing time to catch up. Well, that was partly true.

  She disconnected and tucked the phone back in her pocket. “Maybe you should call your dad and let him know you’re set for dinner.”

  “Can’t. He refuses to carry a phone. That’s why I decided to try a walkie-talkie, because it’s not as complicated, but he didn’t take that with him today, either. That’s what I was cussing about when you walked in. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with him.”

  Trina had some ideas, but she wasn’t sure Hutch was ready to hear them because they involved her mother. “Something has to happen. You’re wasting your talents clerking in a feed store.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I sure do miss the excitement of making those videos. You may not have time to go online, but—”

  “Are you kidding? I probably own every video you’ve made. In fact, I was wondering when I’d get a notice of new ones coming out. Now I understand why there’s a holdup.”

  “My PR guy isn’t too happy about it, either. I’ve explained that I can’t leave until I’m sure my dad can make it without me.”

  “You really can’t.” She wondered if Hutch would be able to accept a solution that involved having another woman step into his mother’s shoes. But mentioning that now would be premature. She glanced up and smiled at the waitress who’d arrived with two more drafts. “We’ll need menus.”

  “Coming right up.” The girl’s attention swung immediately to Hutch. “Although you usually order a hamburger medium well with all the fixings. I can get that started for you.”

  “That’ll be fine, but Trina will want to look at the menu.”

  “Not really.” Trina fought not to laugh. Hutch had no idea that the waitress was about to fall at his feet. “Make it two hamburgers.”

  After the waitress left, Trina lowered her voice. “She has a huge crush on you.”

  He looked startled. “Me? I’m almost old enough to be—”

  “Her older brother. Age doesn’t matter to her, though. If anything, it makes you more glamorous. She has it bad.” She gave him a rueful smile. “Reminds me of myself at her age.”

  “I don’t see that at all. You were never boy crazy.”

  “That’s how much you know. I was crazy as a bedbug. Over you.”

  He looked genuinely surprised. “You were? But you never said anything.”

  “That’s right, I didn’t.”

 
; He picked up his beer mug. “Probably better that way. Any encouragement from you, and I would have said to hell with Nash’s disapproval.”

  “Which is exactly why I didn’t let on. I knew it would cause problems between you two.”

  He gazed at her over the rim of his mug. “I can’t believe you felt like that back then. I honestly had no idea.”

  “I did my best to hide it. Besides, as we’ve just established, you don’t pick up on those things very well.”

  “Apparently not.” He sipped his beer. “But if I had, it would have changed everything.”

  “And our timing would have been all wrong.”

  Setting down his beer, he reached for her hand, cradling it in both of his and stroking her palm with his thumb. “So tell me, Trina, how’s our timing now?”

  Her hand tingled in the warmth of his grip. His hands were large and roughened from handling fifty-pound sacks of grain and slinging bales of hay. She quivered at the thought of feeling those hands on her naked body.

  Seeing the hot flare of lust in his green eyes, she grew moist and achy. This encounter was long overdue, and they owed it to themselves to enjoy the moment. “You know, Hutch, I think our timing’s just about perfect.”

  3

  HUTCH LOST ALL interest in food at that point. But they’d ordered the hamburgers and if they left without eating them, people would talk. They might, anyway, because not many secrets survived in this little town.

  Frankly he didn’t give a damn if people knew, but Trina might. From the corner of his eye he saw the waitress arriving with two plates of food. Giving Trina’s hand a squeeze, he released it and sat back in the booth.

  The waitress’s movements were brisk and her manner wasn’t nearly as friendly as it had been. Now that he understood the situation, he could imagine why. She’d seen him holding Trina’s hand and didn’t much like that.

  After she stomped away, Trina ducked her head to hide a grin.

  “Yeah, I know. She’s jealous.” Hutch waited for Trina to use the ketchup and mustard before doctoring his own burger. “I swear to you, I’ve never given that girl any reason to think I’m interested.”

  “She doesn’t need that to create her rich fantasy life. Trust me, I know all about it.” She took a bite of her hamburger.

  “I’m still getting used to this concept. You actually had a fantasy life involving me?”

  Still chewing, she nodded.

  “I don’t know if I can handle that kind of pressure.”

  She swallowed and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “You think you have pressure? I’m about to have an encounter with a man who became a legend in his own time, a man who started out with the likes of Candice Melbourne. I’ve never had a body like that, not even when I was seventeen.”

  If she only knew how often he’d fantasized about her body in that yellow bikini. “Figures like Candice’s are overrated. At seventeen, that’s what I thought I wanted. But Trina, you’ve always had the best ass in Wyoming. I thought so back then and I still do.”

  “Now you’re making me blush.”

  “Good. You look great with color in your cheeks. Now eat up. I don’t want to spend the whole night sitting in this booth.”

  “Which brings up another issue.”

  “You’re saying this could get a little tricky?” He took another generous bite of his burger.

  “Neither of us has our own place. I’m sleeping on the pull-out sofa at Mom’s.”

  He finished chewing and swallowed. “At least I have a room with a door on it. Or maybe we should take a drive to Jackson.” He quickly rejected that idea. “Nope. Drive’s too long. Getting through this meal is bad enough without adding another hour on the road.”

  “We could act like teenagers and park somewhere.”

  “Dealing with this problem makes me feel like a teenager, but I’ll be damned if we’re going to do it in a car or the back of a pickup. Keep eating. I’ll think of something.” The more he wrestled with the problem, the more he knew that his bedroom was their best bet.

  It was the nearest spot with a good innerspring, and he had a box of condoms up there. With luck his dad would be watching TV with the volume blasting, and if they came in through the back, his dad would never notice Trina quietly going upstairs while Hutch distracted him. There were advantages to having parents whose ears weren’t as sharp as they once were.

  Pushing back his plate, he reached for the wallet in his back pocket. He knew the prices by heart and didn’t need a bill to figure what he owed. “If you’re ready to leave, I have a plan.” And thinking about it had added considerably to his lust level.

  As she stood, she gave him a teasing glance. “Sure you don’t want to stay for dessert?”

  “The dessert I have in mind isn’t on the menu.” He took her hand, not caring if anyone noticed, and hurried her out the door.

  * * *

  “WHERE ARE WE going, exactly?” Trina was out of breath, both from the fast pace Hutch had set and the prospect of what would happen once they reached their destination. Because he was leading her through alleys and down unpaved side streets, she’d lost all sense of direction.

  “To my dad’s house using shortcuts.”

  “Won’t he still be up?”

  “Sure, but we can get around that if we go in through the kitchen. By now, Dad’s eating dinner in front of the TV in the living room. I’ll go make polite conversation while you walk quietly upstairs. My bedroom’s the first door on the right.”

  “Now I really feel like a teenager trying to put one over on the parents.”

  He glanced down at her. “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Actually, no. It’s the best of both worlds—teenage excitement without the teenage angst.” She’d never approached the Hutchinson house from the back, only stared dreamily at it from the street side, longing for her idol to appear.

  But once the house came in view, she recognized the neat white two-story that looked as if the siding and dark green shutters had recently been repainted. “Are you keeping up the house, or your dad?”

  “I am. And that’s fine. I could easily come home for a week in the summer and spruce up the place. The store is the big problem, and I don’t have the heart to talk him into selling. I don’t know what he’d do with himself without that store.”

  Trina suspected Ronald would get along just fine with the feed store if he had a businesswoman like her mother helping out, but once again, she didn’t say so. She needed to have another talk with her mom before she made any such statements to Hutch.

  When they reached the steps going up to the small porch outside the kitchen door, Hutch stopped. “Wait here while I scope things out. I suppose he could still be microwaving his dinner.”

  “Does he eat microwave dinners every night?”

  “Pretty much. My cooking skills are limited and he never learned. I’ll be right back.”

  As Hutch went through the kitchen door, Trina thought about her mother’s love of cooking, a passion that had no satisfactory outlet because she lived alone. Cooking meals for a man who existed on microwave dinners would hold a powerful appeal for her. No wonder romance was in the air.

  Hutch opened the kitchen door and beckoned to her. “I don’t know where he is, but he’s not in the house. Guess we lucked out.”

  Trina smiled but kept her suspicions to herself. “Guess so.”

  “I see that look. You think he’s with your mother, don’t you?”

  “I do.” She walked up the steps. “When I left her a message that I wouldn’t be home for dinner, she probably fixed him a meal, or else they went out to the diner. I think it’s sweet.”

  “I think it’s convenient.” He pulled her through the door and into his arms. “Come here, you.”

  Her p
ulse leaped as her body made contact with his solid warmth. Ah, he felt good. “Shouldn’t we get upstairs while the getting’s good?”

  “If you’re right about where my dad’s hanging out, and you probably are, then I have time to kiss you first.” He pulled her in tight, allowing her to feel his erection. “And I’ve waited years for the chance.”

  “Years?” Heart pounding, she wound both arms around his neck and breathed in the remembered aroma of his shaving lotion. Now it was mixed with the scent of arousal, both his and hers. Her voice quivered slightly. “Come to think of it, I’ve waited years, too.”

  Combing her hair back and cupping her cheek in one hand, he tilted her mouth up to meet his. “Then I’d better make this good.” He leaned down, but then he drew back to gaze at her. “You’re not closing your eyes.”

  “After all the anticipation, I don’t want to miss anything.”

  His mouth tilted at the corners. “There’s more to a kiss than what you see.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Trina, don’t mess me up here. Close your eyes.” He kissed her forehead, and as his warm breath tickled her lashes, she lowered them.

  “Thank you. Don’t want you staring up my nostrils.”

  She started to giggle.

  “Oh, hell, don’t do that. This is supposed to be serious stuff.” He pressed his mouth gently against each eyelid.

  She swallowed a bubble of laughter. “Okay.”

  “Don’t get me wrong.” He kissed his way down to her cheek. “I love your laugh. It’s one of the sweetest sounds in the world to me.”

  Wow.

  “I just don’t want you to laugh right now.” He kissed her other cheek and moved to her jaw.

  Any thoughts of doing that drifted away the longer he held her close. She stood very still and absorbed the amazing sensation of his lips feathering her skin. Hutch’s lips. The moment had a dreamlike quality, especially because he moved with such careful reverence, as if he, too, cherished every second and didn’t want to miss a single square inch of her face before he finally touched her mouth.

  If this turned out to be a dream, she was going to be pissed.