Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown

“Is your mother still living?”

“I don’t know. She ran off with my daddy’s accuser days after he was convicted. They were never seen or heard of again.” He glanced over at her and asked dryly, “Do you reckon that story about the lame horse might’ve been made up?”

Laurel was dismayed. “She just left you?”

“Appears so.”

“Who took care of you?”

“I was placed with a family. Decent people. They took in orphans, kids like me. We were expected to do chores on their place, but they saw that we got schooling.

“When I was eleven, thereabouts, I heard that a Mr. Henry Hobson, who had a large spread, was looking for hands to drive his sizable herd to the nearest railhead, which at that time was Fort Worth. Mr. Hobson’s age requirement for trail hands was thirteen, but I passed for that. He signed me on.”

He smiled with one corner of his mouth. “Years later, he told me he knew I’d fudged on my age, but he saw how bad I wanted the job. Anyhow, after the drive, he made it permanent. I lived and worked on his ranch for the next fifteen years, till I was drafted into the army.”

“Why haven’t you gone back?”

“Nothing to go back to.” He told her the circumstances, his gaze pensive and sad when he talked about his mentor’s death and the change of fortune it had wrought for him.

“Mr. Hobson was the finest man I’ve ever met. I called his son up in Dallas and left word how to reach me. Haven’t heard from him, though, and I don’t expect to. Don’t see that it makes much difference. Not now.”

“Now?”

He broke his distant stare and turned to her. “Things have changed, Laurel.”

“What things? Since when?”

“Since tonight.”

He left the rocker and made a circuit of the bedroom. Pausing at one of the windows, he drew the curtain aside and looked out, before resuming his restless prowling. Ordinarily she would have resented his prying and this invasion of her personal space and would have told him so. However, being unsure of his reason for coming here, and made timid by his broodiness, she held her tongue.

He said, “Before they took Tup away, I had a chance to talk to him. He told me what he remembered about the two people working those stills. One trait he recalled was they were both light-footed.” Now standing in front of her dresser, he looked down at the barrette he’d set there. “Where’s Corrine?”

Believing it would benefit her to stick as close to the truth as possible, she said, “She’s staying at the shack.”

He turned and fixed his gaze on her.

“She was afraid if she didn’t pull her weight, I’d kick her out, although I had assured her I wouldn’t. But she was doing too much and not giving her broken arm time to heal properly. I took her out there to stay for a while.”

“We drove past the old place tonight. Twice. The shack was pitch black dark both times.”

“I guess she had turned in.”

He came toward where she sat on the end of her bed. “If I went back out there right now, would she be there?”

“Why are you asking me all these questions?”

He captured her head between his hands, tilted it back, and brought his face close to hers. “Because I’m afraid we’re gonna wind up on opposite sides of a bitter and bloody fight.”

“What fight?”

“You know damn good and well what fight, Laurel. Why did I find your hair clip at the site of a still?”

She tried to look down, but he held her head, disallowing her to look away and making it impossible for her to lie to him anymore. With a catch in her voice, she implored him, “Please don’t ask.”

He stamped a hard kiss on her lips. “Please don’t answer.”

He placed his knee on the bed and took her down with him as he stretched out across it. He dug his fingers into her hair as his thumbs brushed across her cheeks. Looking into her eyes, he said, “You knew this was coming, didn’t you?”

Understanding what he meant by “this,” she whispered roughly, “Since that day we met on the street.”

“I knew sooner than that. Also knew it was a bad idea. You’re the damnedest, most complicated woman I’ve ever met. But I can’t stop wanting you.”

He kissed her again. This time it started out tender, but almost at once turned tempestuous. When she responded with the same degree of ardor, he placed one arm around her shoulders while the other encircled her waist. She folded her arm around his neck and clung.

Moaning unintelligible words of arousal, he wedged his knee between hers and pushed it up to separate her thighs, then splayed his hand over her bottom and secured her against him. She felt his want, hard and imperative, assertively male. Every feminine inclination in her being yearned to have that potency inside her.

When he began undoing the buttons down the front of her nightgown, she said faintly, “The lamp—”

“Stays on.” He opened her neckline, slid his hand inside and lifted her breast clear of her nightgown. “Jesus.” His warm breath drifted over her, as did his fingertips, feather-light. He lowered his head and rubbed his lips against her nipple, then swept it with his tongue.

She whispered his name and tunneled her fingers into his hair. He hadn’t gotten it cut since she had met him. It was longer, thicker than then, and she loved the feel of it sliding between her fingers.