Read Reuniting With the Rancher for Free Online Page A

quiet instead of gunshots.
    She tried to dismiss the idea as utterly impractical. The amount of work in just getting it rolling, all the obstacles and roadblocks she’d run into. And while she was working on that, how could she keep up with her job?
    Nor did she want to be so close to Cliff. He’d been pleasant enough today, she gave him credit for that, but her tension around him was almost as bad as her tension on a dark city street. It was an incautious, overwhelming desire for him, every bit as strong as it had been all those years ago when she’d given in to it and caused some serious pain.
    And while she had never let Cliff know, leaving him behind hadn’t been easy for her, either. No, she hadn’t wanted the commitment he was offering. Hadn’t been ready for it. Had been set on her goal to help kids to the point that she couldn’t imagine any other life.
    So she had gotten what she really wanted, and now life had brought her full circle to deal with all the unanswered questions.
    How could she best help those kids? And why did she still want Cliff?
    Why don’t you just bring some of them out here?
    Why had he asked that question? What had he been thinking? His face had revealed nothing, but he’d been quick to leave after that, as quick as he could.
    Could she stand being this close to him for any length of time, which bringing kids out here would require? But as soon as she asked herself, she felt selfish. If there was some way to help kids with her legacy, then she needed to do it, Cliff or no Cliff.
    But maybe bringing those kids out here for even a few weeks or months might not be kind at all. To give them a taste of a different life and then plop them back into their old messes? It would help only if she could make them see possibilities to work for when they got home. Dreams they could believe in.
    Propping her chin in her hand, unaware that the afternoon was fading into twilight, she twisted the idea around in her head, half wishing Cliff had never mentioned it, half wishing she could find a useful way to do it.
    The chill of the night penetrated finally, and she went inside to make herself a small supper. Once again the empty silence of the house hit her hard, making her eyes sting and her chest tighten.
    Live here alone forever? No way. Somehow there had to be another way. A better way. A useful way.
    * * *
    Damn memory, Cliff thought. He’d given up all hope of sleeping. Again. Since he’d heard that he was going to have to see Holly again, he’d been an insomniac, and now the insomnia had grown to devour most of the night hours.
    As for memory...there were all kinds of it, he was discovering. He wasn’t remembering the way Holly had looked all those years ago. No. Mental pictures had nothing to do with it.
    Instead his mind was plaguing him with the sounds she made during passionate sex. His hands, indeed his entire body, were resurrecting the way her skin had felt against him, the way she felt beneath him. His palms itched with the certain knowledge of how it felt to caress her, how her breasts felt in his hands, the hard way her nipples pebbled, the dewiness of her womanhood.
    And scents. They filled his nostrils almost as if she were right there, sated and content.
    He even remembered exactly, exactly, how it had felt to plunge into her warm depths.
    Much as he tried to banish the thoughts, they planted themselves and stayed like unfinished business. He couldn’t see Martha’s house from his place, but it didn’t matter. There weren’t enough hundreds of square miles in this county to make him comfortable when she was in it.
    His body ached with a need to take her again, to touch her again, to fill her again. Not even his wife had ever awakened such a craving in him.
    Damn Holly, damn Martha and, God, he hoped that she didn’t take that stupid thought of his seriously. Bring those kids here? He couldn’t imagine the scope of the undertaking, but even less could he imagine life with Holly