Lone Star Midnight Read online

  Shane’s cold beer bottle landed against her back. She got the instant jolt of that drop in temperature and an even bigger jolt when his chest landed against her breasts. All in all, her breasts were rather pleased about that contact. So were her own hands when they trailed up his back.

  He was all man and muscle. Lots and lots of muscles that now strained against his wet shirt. She’d never especially considered muscles and wet shirts a turn-on, but it was apparently working for her now. Plenty of him to hang on to while he took her mouth and body for a wild, hot ride.

  Shane deepened the kiss. Of course he did. She certainly wasn’t giving him any signals whatsoever that this madness should stop. In fact, Megan contributed to those don’t-stop-now signals by sliding her fingers into his thick brown hair and pressing even closer to him.

  At least she couldn’t make this any worse, because she couldn’t possibly get any closer to him. Unless they stripped off their clothes and had sex, that was.

  Which suddenly seemed like a stellar idea.

  It wasn’t.

  This kiss, touching and the body bumping—yes, that was going on, too—shouldn’t be happening, much less sex or even ideas of having it. After three years of resisting each other, they couldn’t be giving in to, well, whatever the heck had gotten into them. Insanity, maybe. It was possible they’d just snapped from the pressure of all that matchmaking.

  Shane apparently had a bunch more willpower than she did because he finally put an end to the kiss and moved away from her. Megan immediately felt the loss, and not just of his body heat. Her hands ached to slide right back over him again. Her mouth wasn’t so happy with the halt to the kissing, either. And the rest of her begged to yank him back against her.

  With his breath gusting, Shane stared at her as if he expected her to give him some explanation about what had just happened. Megan managed an “uh,” but she suspected he was looking for actual words, ones that made sense. She didn’t have any, and even if she did, she likely wouldn’t have managed to speak them because all the oxygen had drained from her lungs.

  “It’s, uh, the stress of the day,” he finally said.

  She nodded, jumping right on that. Stress. That would certainly do it. And maybe she would start to believe it if she repeated it a couple of times to herself. At least it was an explanation better than her “uh.”

  “Yoo-hoo!” someone called out. “Megan?”

  Oh, man. It was her mom.

  In horror, Megan looked up and spotted her mother already on the back porch. She had an unopened umbrella clutched in her hands and was clearly scanning the grounds for her. If her mom spotted them, it would only fuel the matchmaking effort, which needed no such boost.

  “Do I look as if I’ve just been kissed?” Megan quickly asked Shane. She heard the panic in her voice, felt it, too, in all those places that just seconds earlier had been tingling with heat. No heat now, though.

  “Yes,” Shane admitted after growling out some profanity. “What about me? Do I?”

  Oh, yeah, and that’s when Megan noticed his erection pressing against the zipper of his jeans. “Let’s just say it’s not a good idea for my mom to see us in here like this and leave it at that.”

  But seeing was exactly what was about to happen because her mother stepped off the porch, and with the now opened umbrella perched over her head, she started toward the stables. Thankfully, it was dark enough inside that she wouldn’t be able to see them unless she came closer.

  Her mom was coming closer.

  “We need to go out back,” Shane said, taking the words right out of Megan’s mouth. He took hold of her arm and started moving—fast.

  Megan was all for the moving. Running, even. But she wanted to carry this plan one step further. “I’ll go to the right and you go to the left. That way if she sees us, we won’t be together, and no one will ever know we were in this barn.”

  No one but her, that was.

  And Megan was absolutely certain that she wouldn’t be forgetting that kiss—or Shane—any time soon.

  What the heck had they just done?

  * * *

  MEGAN SIPPED HER coffee and tried to pretend that everything was normal. And it was, on the surface anyway. That was something at least. The last thing she wanted was to telegraph to her family anything that’d happened in the stables between Shane and her. No way did they need to know about that kiss.

  Her sisters—Janie and Ella—her parents and her brother-in-law Liam were all having breakfast as usual. Since Liam and Janie lived in the house they’d built just next door, it was their routine for them to come over for breakfast and many times even family dinners.

  Emphasis on family.

  Their mom and dad were big on that. Keeping the flock together, as her father liked to say. So far, that’s what had happened, and the next phase of that would continue because Ella and Jacob had already said they wanted to build a house on the other side of Liam and Janie.

  Megan was well aware that she was the failing cog in keeping the flock together. She was well aware that everyone at the table would be thrilled about her kissing Shane since it suggested there was hope that the triple in-law thing might happen.

  And that’s why she would keep that kiss to herself.

  The touching, too. She was going to have to work hard to figure out a way to keep it out of her own head.

  Megan made an attempt to eat some scrambled eggs while the chatter went on around the table. This morning there was talk of Ella’s upcoming wedding along with the daily chores.

  Liam would soon be heading to the feed store to deal with a supply problem there. Ella and Janie were going to work with the horses. Her dad had paperwork. Her mom, grocery shopping and errands. Megan would be checking some of the back fences—along with thinking of things that she shouldn’t be thinking about.

  Well, one thing anyway.

  Shane.

  She figured two days should be plenty of time to rid her body of the tingling she got when she remembered him. But her body seemed to have a different notion about that. It remembered in perfect detail. The way Shane’s mouth had claimed hers. The way she’d wanted to claim the rest of him. But there could be no claiming.

  Could there? Or better yet, should there be?

  Resisting him seemed to fall into the “cutting off your nose to spite your face” category, but it could also be a case of forbidden fruit being so hard to resist. Shane had been off-limits for so long now that it just made him more tempting.

  Yes, that was it. It had to be.

  So, no, she couldn’t claim him because that would mean listening to a lifetime of her parents and his saying I told you so. She could deal with that, probably, but if she jumped into Shane’s arms and it did turn out to be just lust, then there’d be a breakup. That wouldn’t play well with all the get-togethers and such between their two families, though she wasn’t sure if that would be worse than the matchmaking.

  Decisions, decisions.

  Of course, Shane probably wasn’t having any doubts right now. He was likely in the mind-set of running for cover. If so, that was good. If he stayed out of sight, then he and his mouth wouldn’t be around to tempt her.

  “So, how was it?” Megan heard Ella ask.

  It took Megan a few seconds to realize her sister was talking to her. And that her mom, dad and Liam were no longer in the kitchen. Mercy, she had really zoned out there for a while and had clearly missed whatever conversation had come before Ella’s question.

  “How was what?” Megan said.

  Her sisters giggled and nudged each other. Definitely not a good sign. “Told you she was daydreaming about him.”

  Lord love a duck, Megan hoped they were talking about a horse.

  “We’re not blind,” Janie assured her. “We saw how you looked when you came back into the engagement party after your �
�walk.’” She put air quotes around the last word. “We saw Shane, too.”

  The alarm settled like a fireball in Megan’s stomach, and since this could possibly be about that kiss, she glanced around to make sure her folks weren’t hearing anything they said. Or didn’t say. Her mom was especially good at interpreting “deer caught in the headlights” expressions and uncomfortable hesitations.

  “They’re not here,” Ella said as if figuring out what that glancing around meant. “It’s just the three of us, and you can tell us what happened between Shane and you.”

  “Nothing happened.” Megan couldn’t blurt out that lie fast enough, but speed and her firm tone didn’t help because her sisters smiled and nudged each other again.

  “All right, play it that way,” Janie said in a tone that only a sister and someone with ESP could have managed.

  “There’s nothing to play,” Megan assured them, and so that she wouldn’t have to look them in their prying sisterly eyes, she got up to clear her dishes. “Shane and I aren’t getting together.”

  “Then who or what gave you that starry-eyed look?” Ella asked.

  Sweet merciful heaven, now she was starry-eyed? Maybe she needed to start wearing sunglasses whenever she had any encounters with Shane. “Checkers gave me that look,” Megan snapped.

  “A horse, right.” There was Janie again, this time with skepticism added to her tone. “I honestly don’t know why you fight this attraction. It’s not as if you’re seeing anyone else.”

  Megan considered her words wisely. Best not to even address the attraction-fighting because then she would have to deny the attraction—which her sisters clearly wouldn’t believe because of the starry eyes. So, she dealt with the last comment.

  “I’m in between boyfriends,” Megan explained. “I’ll meet someone soon.”

  “You’ve been in between boyfriends for six months now,” Ella pointed out. “It’s been about that long for Shane, too.”

  With Megan at the dishwasher and with her back to them, she heard her sisters whisper something that she didn’t catch. She groaned. Now they were plotting and matchmaking, too. It was bad enough when it came from their folks, but sibling interference could be even worse since they could get their significant others—Shane’s brothers—to gang up on her.

  “If not Shane,” Ella went on, “then how about if you go out with one of the Laramie brothers? They’re all hot.”

  They were indeed hot, and three of them lived in Coldwater. But there was something in Ella’s tone that had Megan suspicious of the suggestion and even more annoyed than she already was.

  “I dated Nico Laramie,” Megan pointed out. “Briefly dated him,” she amended, turning back around to face them.

  Janie laughed. “Honey, everyone’s briefly dated Nico.” Dated went in air quotes. “But he’s not a long-term kind of guy. He’s someone more suited for a long night.” She bobbled her eyebrows. “How about his brothers Kace and Judd?”

  Again, hot times two. Kace was the sheriff, and Judd was his deputy. Hard to think of a logical reason not to send some signals their way, but Megan thought of an illogical reason. “I don’t want to date a cop because I’m holding open my options in case I want to do something illegal.”

  Before her sisters could call her on that lame excuse or come up with another hot guy to match her with, Megan headed for the back door. “I’m going to ride fence this morning,” she added.

  Janie grinned. “Maybe it’s because I’ve got sex on the brain, but that always sounds like a euphemism for fooling around.”

  In this case, it was a euphemism for peace and quiet. All this talk of hot guys and sex was making her want to puke.

  Or possibly have sex.

  And she hated that the image of Shane popped into her head along with that thought. Worse, she kept thinking about him when she saddled up and rode across the pasture. Megan was still thinking about him when she reached the long stretch of backwoods rail fence, and her imagination had either gotten extremely vivid or else Shane was actually there.

  He was there.

  Megan got confirmation of that when he cursed. Not exactly a friendly welcome, but then at the same time he was belting out profanity, she was groaning a “welcome” that was just as unfriendly.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know you’d be back here,” she grumbled.

  And that was the truth. Their families shared acres of fence line, so it wasn’t unusual to run into each other. Just, well, unexpected.

  “I was getting a full plate of matchmaking for breakfast and needed a break,” he said. He didn’t leave, though. Shane stayed put with a hammer in his hand and his horse, Midnight, grazing behind him.

  “Same here.” Megan got off her horse and went closer to see what he was repairing. Actually, she just went closer and didn’t give a rat about the repair. They needed to talk, and now was as good a time as any since there were no prying eyes or ears around.

  “My sisters suspect something went on between us,” she confessed and waited for him to curse, groan and give some other irritated/shocked response.

  But he just nodded. “So do my brothers. You would have thought I was wearing some kind of sign with flashing letters announcing I kissed Megan Reynolds.” Now he muttered some profanity and kicked the bottom rung on the fence.

  She couldn’t say why his frustration made her smile, but it did. Maybe it was a misery-loving-company kind of thing.

  “I tried to put my sisters off our scent,” she went on, “but I think that’s only going to challenge them to fix me up with someone else. I suspect there’ll be a blind date or two in my near future.”

  He nodded. “My brothers took my less-than-perky mood as a sign that I need to get laid. There’ll be a fix-up for me, too.”

  A fix-up that his brothers thought would lead to sex. Megan certainly didn’t smile about that. She zipped right out of the misery-loving-company zone and felt the Texas-size tug of...jealousy.

  Yep, that’s exactly what it was. Green-eyed envy. Something that she hoped Shane wouldn’t see and that she would stop feeling.

  Thankfully, Shane didn’t see. That was because he was staring down at the ground. She probably should have been doing the same—or better yet, getting to work—but she stayed there, frozen, her gaze waiting for his to return to hers.

  And it came.

  He lifted his head, looking directly into her eyes. The heat crashed right into her, so fast, so hot that her breath went thin. It was also possible the soles of her boots melted.

  “Ah, hell,” he grumbled.

  That was her sentiment exactly. Forty-eight hours should have cooled things down between them. It should have been just the right amount of time for them to know with absolute certainty that the kiss in the stables had been a mistake.

  Apparently not, though.

  She and Shane launched themselves at each other, their lower bodies smacking against the fence. But their upper bodies did just fine making direct contact.

  His mouth had no trouble whatsoever locating hers, and the kiss went from a brief lip-to-lip touch to scalding in under a second. It was long, deep and thorough. So thorough that there was no way she’d be able to pretend this was just temporary insanity. This insanity felt as if it might last for a while.

  He fisted his hand in her hair, angling her head so he could take those wildfire kisses to her neck. Her own fingers dug into his arms and urged him on by making some whimpers of pleasure.

  Megan wasn’t sure how she managed it, but she got her feet on the rung of the fence, and Shane took things from there. He put all those honed muscles to good use and lifted her over and into his arms.

  Finally!

  That was what her lust-crazy mind was shouting now. Finally! Finally! Finally! Her body landed against all the interesting parts of his. His chest to her breasts. The front of his zipper in the g
eneral vicinity of hers, and she wanted, badly, what was behind that zipper.

  The kissing ravaged on, and even though they’d never made out before, Shane must have found CliffsNotes on all her hot spots because he instantly located them. The little spot beneath her ear. The front of her throat. Her breasts. Yeah, he made his way down there, too, and even though the kiss was through her clothes, Megan still felt it on every inch of her body.

  Their horses snorted, probably one of the few sounds that could have caused Shane and her to fly apart as if they’d been scalded. That’s because the snorts were a warning that someone was approaching. With her blurred vision, it took Megan a moment to spot Shane’s brother Jacob in the distance.

  He was riding toward them.

  Shane cursed again, and he helped her back over on her side of the fence. “I think he’s too far away to have seen us.”

  But that sounded more like wishful thinking than anything based in fact.

  “I have this rule about private things staying private. We take this to the grave, right?” Shane asked her.

  The lust was still on fire inside her, but Megan nodded and stole a quick kiss from him. “You want to take something else to the grave? Something much more than a kiss? Then come to my house, tonight.”

  With that invitation widening his eyes, Megan went to her horse and rode away.

  CHAPTER THREE

  COME TO MY HOUSE, TONIGHT.

  That should have been a giant red flag for Shane, but here he was heading over to Megan’s. Or rather sneaking there. He hadn’t driven his truck because it would have been easy to spot if any of their family members came by, since she didn’t have a garage.

  He’d nixed the idea of riding Midnight there, too. Someone might have noticed the stallion gone, and that would have led to questions. Instead, Shane had taken one of the geldings from the pasture, and he hoped the ride to the back of the Reynolds’ ranch would be enough to cool him down. If so, he’d turn around and wouldn’t do something else that would require being taken to the grave.