him have his way. Once he would have gotten away with it, too, but she was stronger now, tougher and smarter. She could see right through him.
“That’s what you said,” he insisted.
“Only because you make me so crazy I don’t know what I’m saying half the time,” she said, pausing to glower at him. “Besides, thanks to my career, I can provide Amy Lynn with all the financial security she’ll ever need and then some. We don’t need you.”
That claim was meant to rile him, and it did. His eyes glittered dangerously. She tried to make a clean getaway, but he snagged her hand as she whirled around. Before she knew it, he’d hauled her into his lap.
“Let me up,” she demanded, shoving ineffectively at his chest.
“Not till you admit I’m right,” he said, a teasing sparkle replacing the fury that had put fire in his eyes only seconds earlier. “Not till you admit you need me.”
“When hell freezes over,” she retorted.
“Admit it,” he commanded.
“Never.”
“Say it or I will...” His gaze clashed with hers, held. The silence built. Tension shimmered in the air.
“Or you will what?” she asked, her voice suddenly shaky.
“This,” he whispered just before his mouth claimed hers.
His fingers tangled in her hair as he coaxed her lips apart. His tongue dipped, tasted, savored. Then hers did the same. The kiss stirred her blood, stirred memories. He tasted of coffee and just a hint of maple syrup. Laurie rocked back in his lap and grinned.
“Your mama made you waffles this morning, didn’t she?”
“What if she did?”
“The woman spoils you rotten. No wonder you’re so impossible.”
“I’m not impossible, darlin’.” He shifted her ever so slightly so she could feel the hard shaft of his arousal. “When I’m with you, I am always very, very possible.”
She sighed and buried her face against his shoulder, relaxing into the wondrous sensation of having his arms tight around her again. Last night, walking into her mother’s house again after being away for so long, had been incredible, but this? This was what it felt like to come home.
“Oh, Harlan Patrick,” she murmured. “If only everything were as easy as you make it sound.”
“It’s as easy or as complicated as we make it.”
“Then why do we insist on making it so complicated?”
“Damned if I know,” he said ruefully. “Maybe that’s just how it has to be, so we’ll appreciate what we have when we finally work it out.”
She pulled back and gazed into his eyes. “I hope you’re right. I really do.”
He smoothed her hair back from her face and smiled, a sad, wistful little smile. “I hope so, too, Laurie. I truly do.”
Nine
A knot of dread formed in Laurie’s stomach as they got closer and closer to White Pines. Once this ranch had been like a second home to her. She and Harlan Patrick had explored every acre of it on daylong horseback rides and picnics. She’d been welcome at family gatherings, included on special occasions, all because everyone had assumed that one day she and Harlan Patrick would marry.
She wondered what they thought of her now. Oh, she knew what Harlan Patrick had told her, that everyone, including his grandfather, cared only that she’d given him a daughter. That might be what they told him, but she had little doubt that resentment would be simmering below the surface. How could it not be? He was an Adams, and she had betrayed him.
Hands clenched, she stared out at the rugged, familiar terrain and tried to see the beauty in it that Harlan Patrick saw, tried to feel the same connection to the land. All she felt was uneasiness and the same restless urge to wander that had driven her away from Texas years ago.
As much as she loved the people here—as much as she loved one particular person here—it hadn’t been enough. She had desperately wanted a singing career. She had needed to be somebody, on her own, not just because she married into the wealthiest family in town. Marrying a man like Harlan Patrick would have been blind luck, not an accomplishment she could claim.
“You okay?” Harlan Patrick asked, giving her a sideways glance as he turned into the long driveway leading up to the sprawling house that had been built as a replica of the home his Southern ancestors had lost in the Civil War, then recreated after moving west.
“Sure.”
As if he could read her mind, he said quietly, “Nobody here hates you, Laurie.”