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  He felt like a randy teenager—long on urgent need and short on control. He’d never engaged in unsafe sex. At the back of his mind, alarm bells clanged even as he ran a hand inside her jeans to touch her moist, hot center. Then he thought, “What can it hurt?” Women who hung out in bars usually took the Pill. Barring an unwanted pregnancy, wherein lay the risk? She was too damned sweet to be carrying an STD, and he knew damned well that he wasn’t.

  She whimpered and jerked when he touched her clitoris. Honeyed wetness spilled over his fingertips. He thrust a finger inside her, and she cried out in pleasure. He pulled her jeans and panties down to her ankles, unfastened his pants, and positioned himself between her thighs. Holding himself with one hand and stabbing to find his target, he clamped her to his chest with one arm angled up her back so he could kiss the sensitive place just below her ear.

  “Hank?”

  “What, darlin’?” His body was knotted with arousal. He pressed his hardness against her, found the wet, welcoming center of her, and promptly lost it, semen pumping in uncontrolled spurts before he even gained entry. “Oh, damn. I’m sorry,” he whispered raggedly when she made a soft sound of distress. “It’s okay. It’s all right. Just give me a second.”

  Hank grabbed for breath. No problem. Even sloppy drunk, he was always good for two rounds. He could still make it worth her time. He centered himself over her again. With one hard thrust of his hips, he plunged into her.

  And she screamed.

  Hank felt the fragile barrier of tissue tear. He froze, his breath coming in harsh, rasping pants. He cursed raggedly, the echo of his own words bouncing against his eardrums like a Ping-Pong ball. Lights went off inside his head like camera flashes. He blinked, trying to see her face in the dim light that filtered faintly through the window from the nightclub sign.

  A virgin? That was his last thought. Between one breath and the next, he passed out.

  Chapter Two

  A damned bird chirped near Hank’s ear. The sound made his head hurt. He lay there, trying to think how a bird had gotten in his bedroom and why his comfortable bed felt as lumpy as a sack of spuds. He cautiously opened his eyes. Sunlight stabbed his pupils like ice picks. He groaned and attempted to angle an arm over his face, but his shoulders were wedged into a tight space, and he couldn’t move. What the hell?

  Squinting against the brightness, he struggled to focus. At first, he had no clue where he was. Then, with mounting bewilderment, he determined that he was lying on the back floorboard of his truck, his torso sandwiched between the seats. He stared stupidly at the rear passenger window above him. The bird that had serenaded him awake was perched on the edge of the lowered glass. Chirp-tweet, chirp-tweet. The sounds exploded inside his head.

  It felt as if blender blades were pureeing his gray matter. He rolled onto his side and rose up on one elbow. The inside of the truck slid into a sickening spin. He stared stupidly at the small gray bird, which had cocked its head to study him with beady little eyes.

  “Shoo!”

  Not smart. Oh, God. His head. Bracing an arm on the seat, he waited for the pain to pass and then pulled himself to a sitting position. Why had he slept in his truck? He dimly recalled driving to town last night, but the events of the evening grew foggy after that. He had obviously gotten drunk. When he drank too much, he usually locked his vehicle, called a cab, and slept it off at a motel.

  Craning his neck to look out the window, he identified the deserted parking lot of Chaps. Slowly, in blurry disorder, the events of the previous night came back to him. He’d begun the evening by tossing quarters with his buddies and had been three sheets to the wind by ten o’clock. Shortly after that, he’d hooked up with a woman. Some blonde. Marly? No, Charlie, that was it. Big blue eyes, a face like an angel, and a tidy, curvaceous figure, showcased to best advantage in skintight Wranglers and a pink blouse. They’d danced, talked, and had a few beers. Then, in hopes of lightening the mood and loosening her up, he’d ordered them each a slammer.

  What the hell had he been thinking? Slammers were Chaps’s version of assisted suicide. All that beer and a stiff drink, to boot? Little wonder his head hurt. Both he and Charlie had been loop-legged when they left the bar.

  Hank went still. A shivery sensation crawled up his spine. His memories of her were like scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the pictures coming to him in fragments. But he remembered one thing with harsh clarity. He’d brought her out to the truck and had sex with her on the back seat.

  He dropped his gaze to the gray cushions, and in a swirling flash, he could almost see her, lying there beneath him. There was a smear of dried blood on the light-colored leather. His already queasy stomach dropped with a sickening lurch. Oh, God. A virgin, she’d been a virgin.

  The same feelings of shock and incredulity that he’d experienced last night coursed through him again. How many women were still virgins in their late twenties? And of that minuscule number, what percentage of them frequented places like Chaps? There had to be a mistake. Maybe she’d been having her period—and the fragile barrier he’d felt had been something other than a hymen.

  Deep down, he knew better. He distinctly recalled how she’d cried out in pain. After that, he couldn’t remember anything. Had he passed out? He’d been shit-faced more times than he cared to count, but he’d never lost consciousness. Only what other explanation was there?

  Shit. A virgin. He hadn’t tried to be gentle—hadn’t realized there was a need. He twisted to sit on the seat and saw more dried blood on the fly of his boxers. With shaking hands, he zipped his jeans. Then he propped his elbows on his knees and cupped his face in his hands. What, in God’s name, had he done? He couldn’t remember the lady’s last name and had no idea how to find her.

  After staring blearily at the closed nightclub for several minutes, Hank concluded that sitting there and feeling rotten would serve no useful purpose. What did he expect, her last name to suddenly appear in large block letters on the side of the building?

  Miserable, with a splitting headache, he crawled over the front seat to drive home. The sight that greeted him as he slid under the steering wheel made him mutter a curse. Foil packets littered the floorboard. He always wore protection. It was a hard-and-fast rule. What had he been thinking? That was the whole problem, he concluded. He’d been stupid drunk and not thinking, period.

  When Hank parked his truck near the house a half hour later, his older brother Jake waved to him from the stable, a huge, rectangular metal building of forest green. Hank was in no mood for another lecture about his social life. He’d broken all the rules last night, just as Jake had warned him he eventually would. Hank wasn’t about to give him an opportunity to gloat and say, “I told you so.”

  Hank kicked at a condom package under the brake pedal. One slip in thirty-one years wasn’t such a bad average, he assured himself. Then a mocking voice at the back of his mind whispered, Right, bucko. One slip is all it takes.

  He swung from the truck, waved to Jake, and loped toward the front steps of the two-story log house. Jake probably needed help with one of the horses and would be pissed that Hank had ignored him, but this was Hank’s morning off. He needed some pills for his headache, followed by some peace and quiet. No lectures, no arguments, no judgmental scowls. Those could wait until he’d slept off this hangover.

  Kid stuff littered the glossy hardwood floor of the entry hall. Hank toed a Mattel driving toy out of the way, accidentally touching the button that activated the voice mechanism. “Beep! Beep! Coming through!” blared behind him as he strode to the kitchen. Jake’s wife, Molly, stood at the stove with Hank’s nephew Garrett perched on her hip. Sunlight from the flank of windows behind her glanced off her copper hair, which lay in a cap of silky curls around her head. She had a pencil thrust behind one ear, cluing Hank in to the fact that she’d been working in the downstairs’ office, juggling her duties as a wife and mother with her demanding career as high-end stockbroker and investment consultant. Jake had hi
red a full-time housekeeper, but Molly insisted on caring for their child herself.

  She turned and flashed a bright smile. “Well, well, look what the cat dragged in.”

  Hank winced at the sound of her voice. He walked in what he hoped was a reasonably straight line to the cupboard, popped the childproof cap from a bottle, and shook three ibuprofen onto his palm.

  “You look like death warmed over,” Molly observed softly.

  Hank filled a glass with tap water. “G’morning to you, too.”

  “Your eyes are so bloodshot, I think you need a transfusion.”

  “Don’t start.”

  Hank swallowed the pills and set the glass on the counter with a little more force than he intended. The sharp report made the baby jump. Garrett twisted in his mama’s arms to fix big, suddenly wary blue eyes on his uncle. The next instant, his little chin started to tremble. A shriek soon followed. Hank’s head felt as if it might blow off.

  “Now just look!” Molly cuddled her son close and shot Hank an accusing glare. “You’ve frightened him.”

  The sound of the child’s screams made Hank want to run for cover, but he already had enough counts against him. “Hey, buddy.” He rubbed a hand over Garrett’s narrow back. “It’s just me.” He leaned around to tweak the child’s nose, which resulted in a cessation of the noise and earned him a drooling grin that flashed four front teeth. “Come here, partner.”

  Mollified, Hank’s sister-in-law relinquished the toddler. She smiled at the way her son hugged his uncle’s neck.

  Hank met her gaze over the top of Garrett’s head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be a grump. It’s just that I have a splitting headache. You know?”

  “That’s what happens when you drink the well dry.”

  That wasn’t all that could happen. A picture of Charlie flashed through Hank’s mind.

  Molly grabbed the glass and put it in the dishwasher. “I worry about you, Hank. It doesn’t seem to me that you’re making very wise choices.”

  “What’s so wrong with a guy having a little fun?”

  “Unless you want an honest answer to that question, don’t ask.”

  Hank decided there was wisdom in that suggestion. He held the baby a moment longer, then handed him back to Molly.

  “I think I’ll take a walk.”

  “You sure you wouldn’t like some breakfast? I was about to make eggs and toast. It’s no trouble to fix extra.”

  Just the thought of food made Hank’s stomach roll. “No, thanks.” He brushed past mother and child to reach the back door. “Maybe later.”

  As he started outside, Molly called softly, “I love you, Hank. If that makes me an interfering pain in the neck, I apologize.”

  Hank stopped on the threshold to look back at her. Molly was one of the kindest people he’d ever met, a fact that was evidenced right then in her big brown eyes. “I love you, too, even if you are a pain in the neck.”

  She shrugged and smiled. “For a guy who’s supposedly having so much fun, you don’t laugh very often anymore.”

  “Observation noted. I’ll work on it.”

  After letting himself out the back door, Hank stood for a moment on the porch. Despite the splashes of lemon-yellow sunlight that dotted the yard, the surrounding forest cast deep shadows that touched the May morning with coolness. The gusts of chill, pine-scented air soothed the pain in his temples.

  He considered sitting on the steps but discarded the idea. The hired hands usually entered the house by the back door, and during the day, the foot traffic was heavy. Hank needed time to himself.

  He headed toward the creek that meandered the length of the property. The ankle-high field grass licked his boots with morning dew, turning the scuffed leather uppers dark brown. An occasional grasshopper skittered from its hiding place to whir around his legs. A pungent odor rose from the soggy earth. Hank took a deep breath, the smells and sounds easing the tension from his shoulders.

  He’d always gravitated to the creek when he was troubled. Upstream from the main house, there was a grassy place along the north bank. He couldn’t recall the first time he’d sought privacy there. He only knew that the sound of the rushing water had always helped center him, even as a kid.

  When he reached the water’s edge, he sank down on the damp, grassy bank to wallow in his misery, which was one part physical and three parts emotional, the emotional parts so tangled inside him, he couldn’t separate the guilt from the regret. Charlie. Right at that moment, Hank would have given his right arm to turn back the clock and undo the events of the previous night. He remembered that innocent glow he’d glimpsed in Charlie’s eyes and wanted to kick himself. He’d always had a knack for sizing people up. Why, the one time when it had been vitally important, had he ignored that little voice in his head?

  Every warning his mother had ever issued came back to haunt him now. Sooner or later, Hank, you’ll do something you regret. You can’t dance with the devil and never get burned. Hank had always tuned his mother out, chalking off her lectures to the generation gap and too much Bible reading. Now he wished he’d paid more attention. Just a few months ago, he’d read an article about teen sex, and it had said that a large percentage of twelve-year-olds were sexually active. How in bloody hell had he managed to stumble upon a virgin in her late twenties?

  For just a moment, Hank started to feel angry. Looking at it rationally, this whole mess was actually her fault, not his. She had been looking for trouble, hanging out in a rowdy honky-tonk, and she’d damned well found it. How was he supposed to know she’d never been with a guy? She’d been dressed to kill in those skintight jeans, just asking for someone to hit on her.

  Hank’s anger flagged the instant it began gathering steam. There was no law that said virgins had to wear signs, broadcasting their sexual inexperience. And there was damned sure no law against their going to a bar. It wasn’t Charlie’s fault that she was pretty, and as much as he might like to shift the blame, he couldn’t hold her accountable for his own behavior. When he’d ordered her the slammer, his sole intent had been to get her drunk. She’d been staggering by the time they left Chaps, and he’d taken full advantage of it.

  An awful thought suddenly occurred to him. Why would a virgin be taking the Pill? He groaned and fell back on the grass. What if he’d knocked her up? She could be out there somewhere, pregnant with his kid. He had to find out who she was in case a problem developed.

  And if a problem developed, what did he intend to do about it?

  The answer was there in Hank’s head before he completed the thought. Coulter men didn’t shirk their responsibilities, and a child was one of the biggest responsibilities of all. From age fourteen, Hank had had that drilled into his head by his father. Get a girl pregnant, and there’ll be no walking away. You’ll shoulder the responsibility and make it right, or I’ll know the reason why.

  No ifs, ands, or buts, Hank had to find Charlie. The question was, how?

  At precisely ten o’clock that evening, Hank reentered Chaps. He’d timed his arrival for ten because it was normally the busiest time of night. The latecomers had usually trickled in by then, and the hardcore partiers still hadn’t left. Somewhere around eleven, people would start pairing off, and not long after, couples would start ducking out. Hank wanted to speak with as many regulars as he could on the off chance that one of them might know Charlie.

  Standing inside the doors, he scanned the crowd, hoping he’d see her. A blue-gray haze of smoke hovered in layers above the tables. The smell of beer, whiskey, and sweat drifted to his nostrils, the uneven cacophony of raised voices in constant competition with the blare of music. Occasionally, a decibel above the din, filthy language spewed from the rumble like backwash from a gutter grate.

  Being at Chaps again brought Hank’s memories of Charlie into clearer focus. Glancing at the table where she’d been sitting last night, he recalled her saying she didn’t know how to dance. At the time, he’d believed she meant country-western dancing, bu
t now he wondered if she’d ever danced at all. The same went for a score of other things. At one point, he’d worried that she wasn’t accustomed to drinking hard liquor. He’d also noticed a shy hesitancy in her response when he kissed her. The memory made him cringe. Where the hell had she been all her life, in a convent?

  Hank sorely regretted now that he’d had so much to drink. If he’d been sober, he would have realized something was off plumb and never would have touched her.

  If wishes were horses, poor men would ride. He’d gotten sloppy drunk, and he had touched her. That was the bottom line.

  Hank made the rounds, stopping at first one table, then another. At each, he launched into the same spiel, reminding people of the blonde he’d been with last night and asking if anyone knew her. Unfortunately, no one he spoke with, including Gary, the bartender, had ever seen Charlie before. Hoping she might return to the honky-tonk, Hank left his name and phone number so Gary could contact him.

  As Hank left the bar, he paused just inside the door to look back at the room. For months now, this place had been like a second home to him. Now he wondered why he’d come there so much. It was strange how quickly a man’s tastes could change.

  As he stepped outside and moved past the light of the overhead sign into the darkness, he stopped to stare at the sky. Like diamonds on black velvet, thousands of stars twinkled down at him. As a boy, he’d liked to sit on the porch with his grandfather McBride to stargaze. The old man had often challenged Hank to choose the brightest star, look away, and then try to find it again. That endeavor had always ended in failure.

  Hank feared that finding Charlie again might prove to be just as difficult. Crystal Falls and the outlying areas had a population of 150,000. Without a last name to go on, he had no idea how to even start searching for her. To complicate matters even more, Charlie might be a nickname.