If Ridge stabbed himself in the foot with a pitchfork, it couldn't hurt any worse than coming face-to-face with Holly Turner. Since she'd left Arizona ten years earlier, not a day went by he didn't think about her. Sometimes the memories were painful, always bittersweet, and on occasion, they were steamy enough to curl his toes. Ridge steered into the sprawling barnyard of Bar Creek Ranch and cut the motor. With any luck he could avoid seeing her altogether. But when did he ever get lucky?
By the time Ridge unfolded his long legs to swing out of the driver's seat, Sam, Bar Creek's ranch manager, came out of the barn. If not running, Sam was at least moving as fast as any eighty-year-old could go. His thick gray brows were drawn tight with worry.
"Guess this means you haven't heard from her," Ridge groused. Damn. Why did Holly have to come back to Arizona? Why did he have to care so damned much after all this time?
Sam nervously rubbed his hand over his almost bald head. "She should've been back hours ago. You know as well as me what that could mean. It spells trouble. Maybe big trouble."
"My friends Tam and Mike were at the ranch when you called and will be here shortly to lend a hand in the search. I'll see if I can pick up her tracks. Tell them I decided not to wait."
"Take this," Sam said, handing Ridge a walkie-talkie. "If you don't find her by dark, I think I'd better call for help from the sheriff's office."
"We'll find her before dark, Sam. She probably got thrown from her horse and is out there walking home in her fancy city shoes."
"Ridge, I may be three times your age, but I'll be damned if I let you disrespect little Holly. She's the closest thing I'll ever have to a daughter. Now, I appreciate your help, but put a lid on it or I'll do it for you."
Ridge felt a twinge of grudge-holding guilt. "Holly and I have history and bad blood between us. You knew that when you called me for help."
"I called you because you know this ranch better than anyone living 'cept me. I can't get up on a horse with this bad back of mine and I didn't have anyone else I trust like you."
Ridge walked back to his horse trailer to get Big Red. "I appreciate that you trust me to help Holly, but I can't help how I feel."
Ridge wasn't surprised about Holly getting into trouble. He was, however, blown away by rumors Holly intended to keep Bar Creek instead of parceling it out. She must have made a boatload of money as a New York model to be able to hang onto the place. Taxes on thirty-five acres of prime desert land on the edge of Cave Creek had to be high. Many of the home sites in the area were selling for well over a hundred-thousand-an-acre.
Ridge saddled his horse. "Did you see which way she headed?"
Sam gave a nod. "Down the wash and out toward the old house."
Ridge's heart crashed in his chest. Surely she hadn't gone there. Not to the place they'd first made love. Damn! "I think I know where to find her. She's probably just daydreaming and forgot the time."
Holly ran her hand along the blanket, fighting the need to sleep. The familiarity of being home, back in the place she'd first made love to Ridge, was comforting, and at the same time, overwhelming. Memories were around every corner. She yawned and curled into a ball. Memories--dreams of her cowboy, so crystalline clear, it was like it happened yesterday...
"Are you sure about this, cowboy?" Holly asked as she watched Ridge fold and adjust the flannel blanket between him and his horse.
Ridge smile was golden, making her glow inside. "You're the one who wanted to try it," he teased. "Climb on up here and I'll take you for a ride you'll never forget."
Holly looked admiringly at the big cock sticking high in the air near her nose. She'd never get used to how weak in the knees it made her feel to look at it--him. Since the first time they made love a year earlier in the abandoned homestead built by her great-grandfather, Holly had been consumed with thoughts of when and where she could get her hands on him next. She couldn't get enough of handsome Ridge White.
"Hold still, Red," she told his horse, running a hand along his thick neck while her fingers threaded through his coarse mane. She climbed onto the rock and swung her bare leg over the horse's withers with her backside toward the animal's head. Sitting high, she faced the man she loved with all her heart. He leaned down to kiss the side of her neck. She sank her fingers into his soft golden hair and pulled him to meet her mouth.
Ridge was pure gold. His hair, his skin, his kisses, everything about him was twenty-four karat. And every inch of him belonged to her, Holly Turner. All six-feet of golden, sinewy muscles were her private property. Especially so, the magic rod now poking anxiously against her belly.
Ridge put his arms under hers and lifted. Pinned against him, she felt him about to enter her core and moaned. Each time with him got better, more magical. If she guessed right, this time would be the best yet.
"I love you," Ridge whispered and lowered her slowly onto his thick, throbbing cock. "I love making love to you. Promise me we'll still be doing this fifty years from now."
"I plan to live to be a hundred. That means we'll be doing it a lot longer than fifty years. This feels incredible. All the way, Ridge. I can take you. All of you." She didn't need foreplay. Just telling Ridge what she wanted him to do made her wet with need. The wonderment on his face as he calculated the physical possibility made her sex clench with anticipation.
Ridge lowered her completely and draped her legs around him. She was so full of him she willed herself to stretch. Hot tears ran down the sides of her cheeks. The feel of him was exquisite--so perfect it was almost painful. He filled her so fully she wanted to scream her intense pleasure. She wrapped her legs around him more tightly while Ridge raised the reins behind her naked backside, signaling the horse to move.
At first they walked, the easy gait sending him deeper inside her. She knew they were headed to the sand bottom wash, which would slow Red's gait, making his hooves dig deeper and harder than on ordinary ground.
Again she felt Ridge signal Red, this time with his legs. The horse immediately stretched into a lope. The effect was devastating. The strong motion carried her up and down on Ridge's long, hard cock. They'd only gone thirty seconds before she started to come.
"Not yet," she moaned into his shoulder. "I want more. I want longer. I...never felt anything so wonderful!"
Ridge pulled Red to a sliding stop, the action pushing Ridge deeper than he'd ever been inside her.
"Oh, baby," he moaned while his hot cum filled her.
Holly's orgasm began again as she felt him throbbing inside her. "I love you," she whispered. "Forever."
"Wake up, Sleeping Beauty," Ridge growled. Why the hell had she whispered, "Forever"? She'd said that same word to him every time they'd made love as teenagers, which was often. And, she did look beautiful, despite being much too thin for her five-foot-ten frame. Her mahogany curls fanned out from her delicate face in a riot of color and disarray over the green flannel blanket he recognized immediately.
Dark circles in the pale porcelain skin under her eyes were clearly visible. When words didn't rouse her, he bent down and gently nudged her shoulder. The smile on her slumbering face was pure rapture. Whatever she was dreaming about had taken her to a happy place.
He envied that.
This same woman had turned all his dreams into hellish nightmares.
Somehow, she managed to grab onto his hand, rubbing it against her silken cheek like a damned cat. The act cut through him like a knife. His cock, already stiffening at the sight of her, began to throb mercilessly. After almost ten years, he still wanted her. Hell!
When she whispered, "Forever," a second time, he jerked his hand away. No way! She wasn't dreaming about him.
Ridge stood and stomped over to the old stone fireplace with his back to her, trying to find something--anything--to distract him. Vandals had done a lot of damage to the old homestead over the years. The No Trespassing signs posted all over Bar Creek land didn't seem to deter them much.
Why the hell had she come home? How did she have the ability to both anger and sexually frustrate him after all these years?
"What are you doing here?" he heard over his shoulder. Her silken voice poured over him like bottled sex, low and husky. His cock painfully pulsed even more in response to the sound of her.
Ridge hadn't even been certain she'd know him after all these years. He'd changed a lot since they were nineteen. He'd grown four more inches and added forty pounds of muscle to his lean frame.
He turned to face her blinking blue eyes. Just a whisper of blue, almost silver really, they were arresting as ever against the darkness of her long, thick lashes. "Sam was worried about you. I'll ride on back and tell him you were taking a nap while he thought something bad had happened to you. Some things never change."
She winced like he'd slapped her before she raised a dark brow and pulled herself into a sitting position, hugging her long legs in front of her. "Did you bring back my horse?"
Now it was his turn to be confused. "What happened to your horse?"
"I tripped over a rock and sprained my ankle. When I tried a one-legged mount, she got away from me. I hoped maybe she'd head back to the barn."
Damn! Ridge should have known she'd get the upper hand five seconds after they met again. That's stupid, he told himself. She didn't do this on purpose. She didn't make me run my foolish mouth.
Ridge pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt and put it to his lips. "Are you there, Sam?
"You find her?"
"Yep, I got her. We still have a horse out there running free in the desert."
"The horse showed up here a few minutes ago. Are you sure she's all right?"
Ridge met her pale silver-blue eyes and she gave a single nod before turning away to stare at the old stone fireplace.
"Yeah, she's fine," Ridge assured Sam. "I'll bring her home. Did Tam and Mike get there yet?"
Holly's face jerked back in his direction at the mention of her ex-lover, Tam.
So, she still has a thing for Tam?
"A couple of minutes ago," Sam's voice announced. "They're standing here arguing about which way to go."
"Tell them to go win the roping competition tonight. Without Brett and me there, they might even stand half a chance. Oh, yeah, tell Tam Holly says hello."
"Thanks a lot," she mumbled, turning away again in a huff.
Ridge clipped the radio back onto his pocket. "What'd you expect? Hearts and flowers?"
"I expected you to be happily married and not carrying a decade-old grudge. Silly me."
"I tried marriage."
"So I heard," she relied and then looked like she wished she hadn't.
"Been checking up on me, huh?"
"You're a neighbor. Of course, Sam would mention you'd gotten hitched."
"Gotten hitched? You must have wowed them in New York City with your quaint country charm."
"Go to hell, Ridge. Call Sam on that radio and tell him to come and get me himself."
"You know he can't ride. You want an eighty-year-old man to walk all this way?"
"And you know there are dirt roads leading all the way to this old house. You traveled them often enough to get a piece of ass off of me."
"Is this how it's going to be between us?" he snapped. Did she know he was divorced? It had only been final a month earlier. "Always at each other's throats?"
Holly glared at him. "You started it."
Ridge raised his brows to show he questioned the truthfulness of her charge. No, she'd started it when she cheated on him and left town, shattering his young heart in the process. "I'll make sure you get back to the ranch in one piece. Then we can stay the hell away from each other."
"Fine," she said.
"Fine," he repeated, but she didn't move. She was staring at the front of his jeans.
"Thinking of your wife?" she asked with sarcasm tingeing her voice.
"I don't have a wife. Bobbi Jo moved out a couple of years after we married. We didn't advertise it. She made it final a month ago."
A look of surprise crossed her face. No. She hadn't known about Bobbi Jo. And now she knew he had a serious hard-on for her. Always had. Always would.
"I'm sorry," she said when she met his gaze.
Sorry for what? Sorry for being the third person in his marriage bed? Sorry for being the only woman he ever really loved? Sorry for being a lying cheat?
"Divorce happens everyday. Marriage is hard," he said. "I'm surprised you haven't tried it yourself." For all he knew, she could have been married several times. She'd chosen a glamorous occupation as a model, but she wasn't famous. There were no supermarket tabloids reporting on beautiful Holly Turner's exploits. "How's your cousin?"
"Connie died right after Grandpa did. That's why I didn't come back to the funeral. She was too sick to leave alone."
"I'm sorry to hear that. I thought after all these years she'd beat the cancer. Wasn't she diagnosed when you left here almost ten years ago?"
Holly turned away again, but not before he saw tears streaking down her face. "Take me home. I can't do this right now."
"Can't do what, Holly? Can't be civil with a neighbor?"
"You were a lot more to me than just a neighbor and you know it. I can't fight with you. It's not right. I'm sorry for everything you think I did. I'm sorry I was so stupid when I was nineteen. If I could do it all over, I would."
"Everything I think you did? You slept with one of my best friends and then bragged about it. You broke every promise you ever made to me."
"Not every promise, Ridge. Just a couple really. I'm surprised Tam didn't tell you the truth long ago. I guess he must not have thought it would matter to you."
"Tell me the truth? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Not now. I think I might've taken a chill lying on this cold floor." She ran her hand over the old frayed blanket beneath her.
"Your horse bolted, but you managed to grab that particular blanket?"
"I brought it up here the day I got home and left it. We had some good times on this old flannel. Take me home?" she pleaded again.
Ridge wanted to yell at her. There were so many unanswered questions, but she didn't look good. In fact, she really could be sick. He walked back to give her a hand up. She stared at it for a moment.
Yeah, it'll hurt like hell to touch. You showed me how bad a minute ago. But I'd be a big pussy not to help because I'm afraid of your touch. Afraid of all the pent-up emotions aching to be freed. Damn!
Holly slowly reached toward his hand.
She's as scared as I am! When she stopped short of touching him, he knew he was right.
"Don't worry," he said softly. "I won't bite you. I can't guarantee what ol' Red will do. He's missed you."