Danielle stood her ground with hands defiantly poised on her hips.
“I’d like to see you try!” she challenged without thought of the consequences of such a dare.
“Glad to oblige, Red.”
One hand captured the back of her head and pulled her close. Before Danielle had time to protest, he pressed a searing kiss upon her.
His lips were firm and demanding. His tongue slipped inside her mouth to make a thorough exploration and an electrical promise. Her knees turned to rubber as Danielle sagged against the solid wall of his chest. Her heart was pounding so loudly she wondered if its wild staccato beat could be heard for miles around.
God must have palmed the earth with one hand and sent it spinning out of control on a sudden whim. Danielle steadied herself by wrapping her arms around the sturdy column of Cody’s neck and answering him demand for demand. How long had it been since she had been kissed like this?
Never, she realized weakly. Never with such passion, such urgency, such reckless need. Vaguely aware of the corresponding shock registering in a pair of sky-blue eyes that mirrored her own bewildered reaction, Danielle’s eyelids grew heavy as she surrendered to the white-hot flames that consumed them.
Cody hadn’t been sure what he’d find in her. The woman’s red hair screamed “fire” but the cool aqua waters of her eyes shouted “ice.” The heat radiating from her was a shock to his system, rekindling feelings in him that he’d thought long ago extinguished. Desire born of a long stretch of self-inflicted denial burst into flame. Having forgotten what it was to hunger for such things, he found himself a starving man at a banquet, longing for more than just a chaste morsel, aching for an end to his gnawing loneliness.
Winding his fingers in the silky thickness of her hair, Cody leisurely explored the inside of her mouth. Her taste was sweet and tempting. Tempting enough in fact to make him entertain thoughts about taming this wild, fascinating creature in his bed and at least temporarily easing the grief that held him prisoner.
The mere thought pumped icy guilt into blood that was running too hot and fast.
It occurred to Danielle that should her daughter stumble upon this scene, it would be impossible to explain how she had come to be wrapped in some strange man’s arms. No justification of how she had come to be ravaged could possibly placate Lynn’s shrill and certain indignation.
Placing her palms firmly against Cody’s chest, she pushed him away. Hard.
Then she reminded herself to breathe. Surely it was only the altitude that made it so difficult to coax the thin oxygen into her lungs.
“Your ego is bigger than your ten-gallon hat,” she wheezed, wiping her sweaty palms on her skirt.
She wasn’t quite sure whether it was anger or mirth tugging at the corners of Cody Walker’s mouth as he stepped back and checked the position of the sun against the sky.
“That may be,” he replied, swinging gracefully up into the saddle. “But it’s just about time to go, so unless you’re willing to volunteer that red head of yours to act as a night beacon, I’d suggest you round your troop up and get them ready.”
With that he wheeled his horse around, leaving Danielle alternately cursing and admiring the receding view of his snug-fitting jeans.
Chapter Two
Despite Danielle’s repeated self-assurances that she didn’t give a hoot about what Cody Walker thought of her appearance, she nevertheless tightened the bonnet strings beneath her chin. The allusion to Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer had cinched it. Never had she ever met a more infuriating, insulting, or presumptuous man in all of her life.
Nor one as sure of his overt sexual appeal. At the mere thought of the mind-numbing kiss that he had laid on her out of the blue, something tight and hot clenched deep within her. Tingling from head to toe, Danielle had enough sense left to resent the continuing quivers that she was unable to dismiss through sheer willpower alone. Just who did Cody Walker think he was, grabbing her up like some desperate old maid grateful for any measure of a virile man’s attention?
A blush climbed the nape of her neck. Imagining how Cody must relish her complete lack of self-control, Danielle assumed his own presumptuousness was born out of years of taking such liberties whenever he felt like it. Someone needed to explain to this Western Don Juan that going around kissing unsuspecting women might just land him in a messy little sexual harassment case. Lucky for him it wouldn’t be her. Right now all she wanted from the man was distance—and plenty of it.
Determined to believe that her reaction to his kiss had more to do with the onslaught of heat exhaustion than with any mutual attraction between them, Danielle was grateful to be past those kinds of girlish feelings. The other den mothers, she’d noticed, seemed to have no such compunctions about acting their age. Clearly her less-than-fond sentiments toward the despicable Mr. Walker were not shared by her fellow sponsors who fluttered around their long-legged wagon master like hummingbirds around nectar. She seriously doubted whether any of them would be lodging any complaints in a court of law if he chose to return their attention.
It really was something to watch how gracefully Cody Walker managed to step around their every snare without giving the slightest offense. Apparently it was impossible for these ladies to be angry with a man who so cavalierly swept off his hat and wickedly smiled into their eyes, ensuring that each felt he was secretly flirting with her. The only one, it seemed, from age thirteen up, immune to their wagon master’s charms was Danielle herself.
Assuming that she was the only one who had been slung over his shoulder like prehistoric chattel, she couldn’t hold the other women’s weakness against them. Just the memory of his arms around her sent a curling heat unfurling in her body in pleasurable waves that threatened her grasp on reality. And the cold, hard reality was that Danielle had been married to just such a charmer, a man willing to share more than his winning smile with his female associates.
Danielle grimaced. She had been a perfect ninny, naively accepting at face value those all-too-frequent stories about having to work late. Had she not decided to drop by the office one night with some Chinese takeout, she would have never discovered her husband and an eager young trainee in a compromising position atop his desk. And Scott would more than likely still be playing her for a sucker. A lance pierced her heart at the memory of the awful night that had stripped away the last vestiges of her pride.
Never again, Danielle told herself fiercely. No, thank you.
Consciously hardening her heart against the rawboned cowboy leading their wagon train with the sinuous potency of a mountain lion, she reminded herself that there was no room in her life for any man at the moment, and most assuredly not for one who made her so achingly aware of the sexual dearth in her life.
Stumbling along in the deep ruts of the Oregon Trail in a pair of high-laced boots, Danielle had plenty of time to consider the decision that had brought her here. What at the time had made perfect sense seemed infinitely stupid when studied beneath the glare of the midday sun. Unlike other mothers who had high-powered jobs and pressing social engagements, Danielle had nothing to tie her down but a dreary list of entry-level Help Wanted ads. So when Lynn had come home from a Prairie Scout meeting one afternoon, echoing Hildy Fustis’s request to sponsor the troop on this Oregon Trail Trek, she’d succumbed to her daughter’s not-so-subtle arm twisting. It actually sounded like a pleasant alternative to spending the entire summer cooped up in a small, un-air-conditioned apartment with a budding teenager whose mood swings were as unpredictable as they were disconcerting.
Lately Lynn had donned the surly, snide attitude considered chic among her peers, even going so far as to verbalize how “crummy” their circumstances were in comparison to her friends’. Scott hadn’t been around enough for Lynn to miss him much, but she did openly miss her daddy’s money and was especially concerned how