Too Fast to Fall (Jackson Hole 1.10)

“God!” she groaned, tipping her head back to glare at the stars. Her breath hovered briefly, haloing the constellations in pale white before the wisps floated away. “Why did you even come here?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Because I thought you’d help. I thought… You loved me once. I was pretty cool after you walked out on me, Jenny. I signed the papers you wanted me to sign. I never gave you any shit about it. But I was still your husband, even if you want to pretend I never existed.”

Crap. His easy smile was gone now. He looked dead serious. And he was right. She did want to forget about it. She did go through life pretending he didn’t exist. “I’m sorry, Ellis.”

“I know you are.”

A sound snuck to her ear on the breeze, something long and lonesome. A wolf, way off in the Tetons somewhere. She shivered and told herself it was a coyote.

She didn’t owe Ellis anything. She didn’t. They’d both been too young to know what they were doing. So why couldn’t she leave this guilt behind? Why couldn’t she leave any of her guilt behind?

But she knew the answer to that. Even if she’d been young and stupid, she’d known better than to marry him. When he’d asked her, somewhere deep in her heart she’d known the warmth hadn’t been love. It had been relief. She’d been on her own for almost a year and she’d felt lost, and Ellis had loved her. And he’d owned a house. And she’d just wanted some security for once in her life.

Jenny cleared her throat. She told herself not to do it. She ordered herself to say no. But somehow her mouth opened with “Okay. But only for a little while.”

Ellis grinned. His smile was still a little boy’s grin, full of pride and joy and charm.

“Let’s get it over with. You can follow me home.”

“Whatever you say.”

She thought of driving straight out of town again. But this time, her past was right on her tail. Better to wait until she lost him before she disappeared.

CHAPTER FOUR

NATE’S MORNING QUICKLY went from bad to worse. Well, “bad” in the moral sense and “worse” in the sense that he was now in the mood to throw everyone in jail and sort out the details later.

He’d awoken to a vicious hard-on and indecent thoughts of Jenny Stone. He shouldn’t have embraced the situation quite so thoroughly. He’d felt guilty even as he’d taken his cock in a tight grip and groaned with relief. He shouldn’t have thought about her, but he hadn’t had much choice. She’d driven him crazy last night. Just that first sweet sigh against his mouth would’ve been enough, but she’d added a hundred other moments to set his heart racing. The sounds she’d made. The touches she’d granted. She’d been wild for him. Just a little. Just enough that he knew it would be good in a million different ways.

He’d covered about twenty of them as he’d stroked himself that morning. So it had worked out nicely. Which was more than he could say for his current situation.

He’d driven his old pickup to the cabin, not wanting to grant any official status to this visit. It made him nervous, driving down the rutted, icy dirt road without his radio, but he wanted to do this right. Today, he was here as a cousin, not a cop.

But when he reached a part of the road where a rise in the terrain had caused fresh snow to blow across the ruts, he knew he’d be back in an official capacity soon. There were tire tracks. Fresh tracks from this morning. Which was why he now found himself crouched under a lodgepole pine that let loose waves of snow every time the wind blew. And it was blowing a lot.

Nate shuddered as another fine dusting of powder found its way past the back of his jacket collar and snuck icy fingers beneath his shirt.

God, if that asshole Ellis hadn’t shown up last night, maybe Nate would still be in Jenny’s bed. He definitely wouldn’t be crouching in an icy ravine watching for signs of movement from the cabin. At the very least, he would’ve slept in and been soaking his sore muscles under a hot shower. Sore because he’d spent half the night working his ass off to make that woman come a dozen times.

He smirked at his own wild imaginings. Maybe he couldn’t have managed a dozen, but he’d have done his absolute best. There was nothing he loved more, nothing that got him off more, than watching a woman come apart like that. And Jenny’s little moans had promised a lovely reward for any endeavors. He wanted to know what she looked like, tasted like, felt like. He wanted to find out just how wet she got when he bit her neck like that. Fuck, he hadn’t expected that response. She’d jerked against him as if he’d touched a raw nerve. A nerve that went straight to her—

Wind slapped him in the face, and snow shifted down his neck, and Nate hissed and eased into a different position, cursing his stray thoughts and stray erection.

He couldn’t see enough from this position, anyway. He’d have to get closer to the cabin. See who was parked there, maybe even peek in one of the windows. He wasn’t interested in surprising anyone right now, but in this snow, he might not be able to make out faces once someone was in a moving vehicle. And he might not be able to get a license plate number unless he walked right up and dusted the snow off.

“Damn.” The tree provided easy cover, but he couldn’t stay. Glancing back to be sure the truck was hidden on the road that cut off toward an even more isolated cabin, Nate eased out from under the tree, cursing a blue streak when more snow showered down. He missed his uniform hat and its wide brim. He wouldn’t take it for granted again.

His boots crunched over the sheet of old, frozen snow that covered the rocky ground, and the sound seemed to echo off every surface, the only sound in this silent winter scene. But as he drew closer, he heard the hum of a propane heater and moved a little more quickly along the edge of the road.

He caught sight of a bumper. An ancient little Japanese car with a tan paint job and pitiful brown racing stripes down the side. The only thing that piece could race was a moped. He didn’t recognize the car, but it matched Luis’s description of what Victor had been driving lately, and Nate felt both disappointment and vindication at the sight.

There’d always been the possibility that Luis had been

wrong, after all. But that was almost certainly Victor’s car, and he was almost certainly doing something illegal.

Before he could ease farther forward, Nate heard voices from somewhere past the cabin and they were getting closer. Whatever Victor was doing, he wasn’t doing it alone, and Luis had made clear this morning that James was already on his way to Casper.

Nate eased into a hiding place beneath another pine. The tan car started and pulled onto the drive. The kid inside was skinny and dark-haired, with a thin goatee that framed a narrow mouth. The rest of his face was covered by black sunglasses, but Nate was pretty sure it was Victor.