Twice in a Lifetime Read online

  Dear Lord, Jake…

  He could have given lessons in tender. And sweet. And maddening. He set the pace from the first, feeding her kisses while he set up a rudimentary camp, tantalizing her with brief tastes, refusing to be rushed.

  “Not this time,” he murmured against her mouth. “No grabbing for you at the bottom of a gully. No dust swirling around us or bawling calves as an audience. This time, there’s only you and me, sweetheart.”

  She caught his face between her hands, feeling the whiskery abrasion of his cheeks, searching his eyes. No doubts lingered in their depths. No shadows masked a deep, hidden hurt. He was right, Rachel thought with a wild thump of her heart. There was only the two of them.

  Absurdly, the realization filled her with shyness. After hungering for this man so intensely and waging a silent battle with his memories, she was suddenly unsure of what to do with the victory he handed her in every kiss.

  As it turned out, she didn’t have to do a thing. Zipping the two sleeping bags together, Jake arranged them into a soft, cushiony bed and laid her back. The flap of the bag covered him. His heat covered her.

  He was so incredibly gentle, so incredibly skilled. His mouth molded hers with slow, drugging kisses. His hands roamed her throat, her shoulders, her breasts. He needed no help removing their outer layers of clothing, alternating her boots with his, sliding her jeans down her hips, her sweater over her head.

  Cold air danced on her face and shoulder. Jake’s hard, hot body burned on every other square inch of her skin. He held her mouth with his while his callused palm planed her waist and the flare of her hips, then traveled back up to her breast. Somehow, he managed to contort his body enough to take the aching nipple in his mouth. Rachel jumped at the scrape of his teeth against her engorged flesh.

  “Jake…”

  “Easy, sweetheart. We’ll go easy.”

  Rachel soon discovered that his definition of easy differed considerably from her. When he gently kneed her legs apart, his hair-roughened thigh created a tormenting friction. That left her uneasy enough. Then his fingers slipped under her panties and found the tight nub of flesh at her center. After the first few strokes, Rachel’s uncharacteristic passivity went up in a burst of heat.

  One of her arms locked around his neck. Her legs tangled with his, trapping his wrist between her thighs, jamming his rigid shaft against her hip. It took a frantic wiggle or two, but Rachel managed to wedge a hand between their straining bodies, press her palm against the bulge and create a little friction of her own.

  Jake’s back and shoulder muscles went taut. She knew a moment of delicious triumph, then his gentleness disappeared and his mouth ravaged hers. She was gasping when he stripped off her panties, couldn’t drag in so much as a single breath when he slid first one finger, then another into her hot, slick core. With a skill that left her moaning, he primed her, thrusting in, out, in again.

  She was wet and hot and aching when he withdrew his hand and eased away. He rolled onto his side, his back to her, his shoulders hunched. Rachel swallowed another groan, this one of sheer dismay. Oh, no! Not again! Surely he wasn’t having second thoughts!

  Her breath ragged, she propped herself up on one elbow. A dozen different protests tumbled through her head. Then he reached for his jeans and extracted a condom from his wallet and she let out a fluttery sigh of relief. In her mounting passion, she’d forgotten about Jake’s inbred sense of responsibility and need to protect.

  His shoulder muscles rippled as he sheathed himself, and the most idiotic warmth flowered in Rachel’s chest. She was a grown woman, for heaven’s sake. An adult both capable of and used to taking care of herself. A professional prepared to stand by her analyses and take the heat, if necessary. Yet the idea of letting Jake protect her stirred some deep, primitive sense of feminine satisfaction.

  She nibbled on her lower lip, more than a little embarrassed by the feeling. It certainly wasn’t one she’d admit to among her circle of professional contacts. Maybe she was just out of her element and recognized it, she rationalized. Overwhelmed by all these rugged mountains, tall, swaying pines and swooping hawks. She was experiencing nature at its most majestic, most elemental. Maybe she’d just gotten caught up in the place and the circumstances.

  The thought absorbed her until Jake rolled back, and she knew what she was feeling didn’t have diddly to do with mountains or pine trees. Gulping, she took in his wide, muscled shoulders. The sweat glistening on his chest. The rigid shaft thrusting up from its nest of dark, wiry hair.

  But it was his smile that turned her insides to a quivering mélange of mush. Half tender, half pure, hungry male, it was all Jake.

  “Still awake?”

  All hungry female, she nodded. “Wide awake.”

  “Good.” His smile feathered into a wicked grin as he drew her under him. “Let’s see if we can keep you that way for those hours I promised you.”

  Her stomach quivered as he positioned himself between her thighs. The first thrust was agonizingly slow, the withdrawal even slower. The second went a little harder, a little deeper. Rachel lost count after the third or fourth stroke. By then, her tongue had found his, her back was arched, and her fingers were digging into his taut, tight rear in an effort to hurry things along.

  He wouldn’t be hurried, dammit!

  “Jake!”

  “Not yet.” Every sinew and tendon in his body corded, he drew back. “Not yet, Rachel. I want to…”

  He snapped his jaw shut, his entire body resisting the pull of her eager muscles. Some hazy corner of her mind sensed that he was holding back to make sure he didn’t take his own release at the expense of hers. Unfortunately—or fortunately!—Rachel had passed the point of holding back. Hooking her legs around his thighs, she slammed her hips into his.

  A groan rumbled up from his chest. He surged into her, full and heavy and bone-hard. Her lips parted on a gurgle that might have been triumph or relief or pleasure. Whatever it was, it got lost in another gasp as her womb clenched around him. When the first tight swirls began, she squeezed her eyes shut and threw back her head. Within moments, the white-hot sensations were piling one on top of the other.

  She rode the crest, her back arched, her body shuddering. Pleasure splintered through her. The spiraling waves lifted her, carried her, crashed down on her.

  Only after she lay boneless and breathless did Jake take his own release. Fisting his hands in her hair, he thrust into her once, twice, again. Suddenly, his body went rigid. Burying his face in her hair, he followed her over the edge.

  Still shuddering, Rachel burrowed her nose in the warm, damp flesh of his neck. Slowly, the world righted itself. The fleeting notion entered her head that finding the missing forty million dollars might constitute a definite and distinct anticlimax.

  With their basic, most urgent need satisfied, they attended to more mundane matters such as food and fire.

  More used to participating than spectating, Rachel felt guilty about lying limp and languid in the warmth of their zipped-together sleeping bag while Jake dragged on his clothes and took care of the housekeeping chores. Not, however, guilty enough to extend more than a token offer of assistance.

  “You stay warm,” he replied, smiling as he took in her tousled hair and obvious disinclination to move. “I think I can handle this.”

  There was no thinking about it. The man certainly knew his way around the great outdoors. Snuggling down in her warm cocoon, Rachel could only admire his smooth efficiency as he started a small, snapping fire, then dug around in his ATV’s carrier for a fishing line. Her interest took a slight dip when he baited the line with something white and squiggly he dug from under a rotting log.

  Yech! Profoundly relieved that he’d volunteered to handle matters without involving her, she dragged the flap of the sleeping bag up to her nose. Warm and comfortable, she watched while he selected a large, flat rock in midstream. Rachel had no idea whether fish would rise to the bait this late in the day, but had to a
dmit she enjoyed the sight of Jake hunkered down and waiting with seemingly endless patience.

  She must have dozed off, because the next thing she knew Jake was kneeling beside the stream, cleaning his catch. His movements economical and sure, he gutted the speckled trout and spitted it on a forked branch. Moments later, he propped the trout over the crackling, popping campfire. Water from the stream was already boiling in the dented tin coffeepot Marsh had contributed, to which Jake added a handful of unground beans.

  Her now rumbling stomach gave a joyful leap when he lined up a couple of cans and opened them with the tool on his pocketknife. With silent thanks to Marsh for donating the extra food supplies, she dragged on her sweater and tucked the sleeping bag around her waist.

  Her mouth was soon watering at the aromas that drifted her way. Still comfortably ensconced in the sleeping bag, she dined al fresco on the crusty trout and beans Jake served her, washed down with a mug of hot coffee. A dessert of canned peaches followed.

  “I could get used to service like this,” she said, licking sticky sweet syrup from her fingers. “I’m trying to remember the last time I had dinner in bed. It was, umm, never.”

  “Really?” He hooked his boots at the ankles and stretched out on his half of the rumpled sleeping bag. “You’ve been missing out on one of the finer pleasures in life, woman. Ellen and I used to…”

  He broke off, his face clouding. “Oh, hell. I’m sorry, Rachel.”

  “It’s all right.”

  It was all right. Mostly. But she could see he needed convincing.

  “Ellen was part of your life. Part of you, Jake. Everything you two shared made you into the man you are today. And I… I like the man you are.”

  It was too soon to talk of love. Neither one of them was ready, despite their acrobatics a while ago and the musky scent that still clung to their skin.

  “I remember meeting Ellen, but never got to know her very well. Will you tell me about her?”

  “No.”

  The quiet refusal hit Rachel like a slap in the face. She jerked her chin up, stung. Jake caught the movement, swore, and apologized again.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Maybe you’d better tell me how you did mean it,” she said carefully.

  “This is our time. Our night, Rachel. The reference to Ellen just slipped out. I wasn’t thinking about her.”

  His hand came up and tucked a tangled strand of hair behind Rachel’s ear.

  “I was thinking about you, sweetheart, and about how much I’d like to deliver a whole lot more meals to your bed.”

  She wanted to believe him. With a need so fierce it stunned her, Rachel wanted desperately to believe him.

  He must have read the need in her eyes. Sliding his hand around her nape, he drew her closer and rested his forehead against hers.

  “I’ve never made love beside a mountain stream like this, with the wind crying through the trees and the taste of peaches and a wild, sweet woman in my mouth.”

  Rachel understood instantly what he was doing. He was stamping this night, this place, as theirs and theirs alone. A shudder of delight rippled down her spine.

  “Cold?”

  “A little.”

  “This room service comes with more than just roasted trout and peaches.” With a smooth, sure tug, he drew her into his lap. “Want me to get you warm and toasty again before you zonk out for the night?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me, cowboy.”

  She managed to hold on for another couple of hours before she fulfilled Jake’s prediction and crashed for the night. They were, she decided just before she gave herself up to total oblivion, quality hours.

  From his concealed position some two hundred yards away, Russ Taggart steadied his blue-steel automatic on a tumbled boulder and sighted through the infrared targeting system. The grip was cold and smooth in his hand. His thumb itched to flick the lever and paint a tiny red target on one of the dim shapes humped inside the sleeping bag.

  They were too far away for him to make out their features, but he’d seen enough to guess that Henderson’s expression would have gone slack with satisfaction and Rachel’s heavy with sleep. God, they’d been wrestling inside that damned bag for over an hour, since before Russ spotted their campfire and moved in as close as he dared.

  Anger knotted his insides. At Henderson, for going off on his own hunt like this. At Rachel, for going with him. He’d half expected it of Henderson. He’d spent too many years in the Bureau to believe any man would pass up the chance at forty million dollars.

  What he hadn’t expected was Rachel Quinn’s defection to the enemy. Russ had trusted her. He’d used her for his own purposes, sure, but he’d respected and trusted her. At least until she’d started letting her hots for Henderson get in the way of her judgment. Did she think the rancher was going to cut her in on the money if they found it? More to the point, did she imagine Russ would let him?

  His finger caressed the trigger. He could take them out right there, right where they lay. They wouldn’t know what hit them. He’d have hell to pay justifying it, particularly to Henderson’s brothers. Russ could do it, though. If he could convince that hick deputy sheriff to sit on his hands and wait for the rest of his team to arrive while Russ did some looking around on his own, he could rationalize the death of these two fortune hunters.

  The lure of those lost millions had sucked them in. They’d set out on their own, caught him tracking them. Henderson had whipped out his high-powered rifle. Russ had tried to reason with him, tried to get him to see he couldn’t keep any of that money, had fired only to defend himself. Tragically, Rachel had gone down in the exchange.

  It would be messy. Russ would have to reposition the bodies to explain the angle of fire. He’d probably be put on administrative leave while an independent investigator determined whether the circumstances warranted the use of deadly force. But he’d worked enough crime scenes to make the deaths appear justifiable.

  He didn’t take either Henderson or Rachel out, though. As much as he despised her for going over to the enemy, he needed her. Needed Henderson, too. At least until they got wherever they were going. They had a specific destination in mind. They wouldn’t have parted company with Henderson’s brother and taken off on their own unless…

  Unless Jake Henderson couldn’t wait to get the bitch to himself and jump her bones.

  For a moment, doubt sliced into Taggart’s gut. He lowered the automatic, his hand fisted around the cross-hatching on the grip.

  No. That wasn’t it. Henderson could have taken her to a nice, warm hotel room in Flagstaff if he didn’t want to do her at the ranch, with all his relatives listening to the bedsprings rattle. There was more to this detour into the mountains than mere lust.

  There had to be.

  Sliding his back down the rock behind him, he settled in to wait for the dawn.

  Chapter 12

  The tantalizing aroma of coffee dragged Rachel from sleep. Prying open one lid, she eyed the mug weaving a lazy figure eight under her nose.

  “Whatimeizit?”

  A hint of laughter threaded through the low, rumbling reply. “Approximately twenty-five and a half hours later than the last time you asked me that question.”

  That was too much for her still-fuzzy mind. Poking her head out of the sleeping bag’s swaddling folds, she squinted through heavy lids.

  “Huh?”

  Jake knelt in front of her. Whiskers darkened his cheeks and chin, which no doubt accounted for the slight burning sensation on Rachel’s own cheek when she attempted a weak smile.

  “You want to run that by me again? I’m, uh, not at my best in the morning.”

  “It’s just past seven,” he said, graciously ignoring her statement of the obvious. “Here’s your coffee. Hope you don’t mind warmed-over beans for breakfast?”

  Actually, Rachel couldn’t think of anything less appetizing at the moment. The closest she usually came to breakfast was
a bagel slathered with cream cheese around nine or ten o’clock, and then only when she didn’t have a lunch scheduled.

  “Coffee’s all I need,” she murmured, burying her nose in the mug he handed her.

  “You sure?”

  “Mmm.”

  “I’ll pack up and refuel the vehicles, then.”

  He moved away with his easy stride, leaving Rachel to unfuzz her mind. The coffee helped. Thick and hickory-flavored, it left a bitter taste as it went down, but provided enough of a jolt to stir her sluggish brain cells. Enough to notice how good Jake looked in the morning, anyway.

  Despite the sandpapery whiskers…or maybe because of them…he seemed to fit right in with his surroundings. His faded blue flannel shirt owed nothing to high-priced designers. His vest with its warm, curly-haired lining might have come from one of the mountain sheep that bounded through the Rockies. Under the brim of his hat, his eyes were the same color as the sky collecting light from the sun still hidden behind the eastern peaks. He must have cleaned up in the stream while she slept, because the hair that showed under his hat carried a damp gleam.

  Rachel, on the other hand, knew she must look as frowsy and frumpled as she felt. She rarely bothered with much makeup, but after two days in the mountains she would have forked over a good portion of her next month’s paycheck for a few essential cosmetics.

  She would have paid even more for toiletries. All she carried with her besides the wet wipes and sunblock Lauren had stuck in the ATV carrier was the bar of soap Shad had appropriated from his cousin’s cabin yesterday morning. She’d used the wet wipes to scrub both her face and her teeth. They had done the job, but didn’t provide quite the same level of confidence as a toothbrush and dental floss.

  Grimacing, Rachel set the coffee mug aside. She’d better find a private bend of the stream and get to work. With a little grunt, she wriggled into her clothes. Her hours on the ATV yesterday had generated an assortment of aching muscles. The hours she’d spent with Jake last night seemed to have generated a few more.