Blackwolf's Redemption

Never mind all that. He’d come awake with a take-no-prisoners hard-on. End of story. It was a strictly physiological reaction to sleeping with a woman after weeks, months of celibacy.

More to the point, it was a reaction to what had gone on last night.

If he hadn’t awakened that way, there’d be something wrong with him.

Definitely, it was time to do something about it.

There were a dozen women listed in his address book who’d be eager to spend a couple of hours in bed with the owner of Blackwolf Ranch. And once he put this place and its memories behind him, moved to the coast where he’d already started to make a life that suited him a lot better than this one, there’d be women lining up for the right to spend a night with him.

Any one of them would do fine, he thought coldly.

He had no romantic illusions. Not anymore. Sex was sex, not just as he’d thought last night but as he’d learned with Linda. It was purely physical. And it was a damned good thing he hadn’t gone all the way with Sienna last night. Women were nothing but complications. This one had been in his life, what, twenty-four hours? Look how she’d already complicated it.

Complexity was the last thing he wanted. Things were finally right where he wanted them and that was the way he intended to keep them. Simple. Straightforward. No emotional ups and downs, no promises that inevitably turned out to be lies.

Absolutely, that was how he wanted it. He wasn’t about to confuse things by getting involved with a woman who’d turned up out of nowhere, whose reasons for intruding into his life were clouded, to say the least.

Sienna’s life was hers to worry over, not his.

Jesse’s jaw tightened. Time to get up, get moving and, most of all, get this stranger out of his life.

She was still sleeping. Good, he thought as he got to his feet. By the time she was up, he’d have showered, made coffee, put some food in his belly. He’d have come up with a plan for how to deal with her.

Contacting the sheriff, never a real option, was definitely out.

No matter how badly he wanted her gone, a man who’d come within seconds of burying himself inside a woman would have to be out of his mind to turn her over to the law. He might be cold-hearted, as Linda had said, but he wasn’t a complete SOB.

His bedroom was still cool—it would take a while for the chill of the night to wear off—but when he wrenched the shower lever all the way to hot, the water poured out just the way he liked it.

Quickly, he stripped off his clothes, dumped them in the hamper.

He’d give Sienna breakfast. Drive her into Bozeman. If the guy she insisted was her professor and not her boyfriend was there, waiting there for her, fine. If he wasn’t, well, that would be fine, too. Once he got her to town, she’d be on her own. She could take a bus, a plane, rent a car, go back to wherever she’d come from.

If she needed money, he’d give her some.

Then he’d walk away.

Jesse stepped into the shower stall, turned his face up to the spray.

He’d have to put in a couple of days cleaning up the damage the storm had undoubtedly left behind. Downed trees. Broken fences. Whatever. Then he’d go through the sale documents one last time, sign them, and all this—the ranch, the canyon, the memories he no longer wanted—would be done with.

His new life was waiting.

“San Francisco,” he said as he dumped shampoo on his hair, “here I come.”

Yeah, he’d tried that new life once before and it hadn’t worked out, but things had changed. He had changed. California, not Montana, was where he belonged.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the vanity. The face, the eyes were the same. Cool. Maybe even a little empty. Maybe he hadn’t changed, after all….

Jesse snorted. The hell with trying to figure it out. Worrying a thing half to death never got a man anywhere. That was what starting over was all about, wasn’t it?

“Damned right,” he said, and he flattened his hands against the glass of the shower wall, bent his head and let the spray beat down on his aching muscles.

Sienna heard the distant hiss of running water and decided it was safe to open her eyes.

She’d been awake forever. Since right after Jesse had awakened, anyway. One second she’d been dreaming that she was lying in the arms of a gorgeous stranger. The next, she’d realized the dream was true, she was lying in the arms of a gorgeous stranger. But before she could do anything about it, at least put some distance between them, she’d felt Jesse’s long, powerful body shift against hers, felt the impact of his gaze on her.

And the sexy pressure of his erection.

That was when she’d decided to pretend she was still asleep.