ThE BUCKHORN LEGACY

Emma was well used to that teasing response—he’d been saying it to her since she was seventeen years old, when they’d first met. She’d been backward, afraid, alone. And he’d treated her like a well-loved kid sister.

Laughing, she turned toward the other car, and caught the censure on Casey’s face. He didn’t say a word, but then he didn’t have to. She knew exactly what he thought. And none of it was nice.

Worse, none of it was accurate.

CHAPTER THREE

EMMA STOOD IN front of her car, watching Damon and Kristin drive away. With their departure, the previously calm evening air suddenly felt charged. She was aware of things she hadn’t noticed before, like the warm, subtle scent of Casey’s cologne, the nearly tactile touch of his watchfulness. The pulsing rhythm of her own heartbeat resounded everywhere, in her chest, her ears, low in her belly.

B.B. shifted beside her, restless and uncertain with this turn of events and her renewed tension.

Though he didn’t make a sound, she knew Casey was now closer behind her. As if he’d touched her, she shivered in reaction, and continued to stare after the car.

“So how’ve you been, Em?” His voice was low and intimate, a rough whisper of sound somewhere above her right ear.

The twin taillights of the other car faded away, swallowed up by distance and fog, the inky blackness of the night. Left with nothing to stare at, Emma drew a deep breath, took two steps away and turned to him with a bland smile. “Good. And yourself?”

“Good.” He visually caressed her face, slowly, thoroughly, as if he’d never seen her before. As if maybe he’d…missed her.

Emma moved to the side of the car, taking herself out of the harsh beams of the headlights. The dog followed and she leaned down to give him a reassuring pat. When she straightened, Casey was even closer than before and he made no attempt to move away. She felt vaguely hunted.

“You look so different, Em.”

She wasn’t about to back away a second time. Faking a calm that eluded her, she shrugged. “Eight years different.”

“It’s not your age,” he murmured, once again looking her over in that scrutinizing way of his. “Your hair is different.”

Emma started to reply, but the words hung in her throat as Casey reached out and caught a shoulder-length tress, rubbing it between fingers and thumb.

Both breathless and a little indignant, she tossed her head so that her hair fell behind her shoulders. That didn’t deter Casey. He simply drew it forward again, making her frown. He was bolder than she remembered.... No, that wasn’t true. He’d always been bold—with the girls he’d wanted.

He just hadn’t ever wanted her.

“I don’t bleach it anymore.” Despite being annoyed, awareness trembled in her belly, sang through her veins. “This is my real color.”

His long fingers tunneled in close to her scalp, warm and gentle, then lifted outward, letting the silky strands drift back into place. “I can’t see it that well here in the shadows.”

Her breath came too fast. “Light brown.”

“I never really understood why you lightened it.” He stroked her hair again, totally absorbed in what he did, unmindful or uncaring of her discomfort. “Or why you wore so much makeup.”

She refused to apologize for or explain about her past. That was one of the things Damon had taught her—to forget about what she couldn’t change and only look forward. “I thought it looked good at the time, but then, I was only seventeen and not overly astute.”

Casey stood silent for only a minute. “Why don’t we sit in the car? The air is pretty damp tonight.”

Being that she was already far too aware of him, she didn’t consider that a good idea. But the dog had heard him and, not wanting to be left out, quickly went through the open driver’s door and performed an agile leap into the backseat.

Emma gave a mental shrug and scooted inside, leaving Casey to go to the passenger side. The consummate gentleman, he closed her door first before walking around the hood of the car. When he slid into his seat, she had only a moment to appreciate the sharp angles and planes of his face fully lit by the interior light. He closed his door too, and the light clicked off with a sort of symbolic finality that made her senses come alive.

Casey twisted sideways in his seat and spoke in a low vibrating murmur. “Better turn off the headlights, Em, or you’ll have a dead battery to go with the busted water pump.”

Though Emma knew he was right, she hated to be in utter darkness with him. Her awareness of him as a man defied reason.

He hadn’t touched her, but God, she felt as if he had. All over.

“There’s a flashlight in the glove box.”

Casey opened the small door, moved a few papers aside and pulled out the black-handled utility light. He didn’t hand it to her, didn’t turn it on, but instead held it in his lap. She turned off the headlights and inky blackness settled in around them. Emma wondered if he could hear the wild pounding of her heart.

Her reactions irritated her as much as they distressed her. No other man had ever affected her this way. She’d had plenty of relationships since she’d grown up, and she’d assumed her tepid reactions had been mostly due to maturing, to wising up, to learning what was best for her. She’d accepted that sex was pleasurable but not vital. It eased an ache, provided comfort, added to the closeness, and nothing more.

Yet, sitting in a dark car next to Casey Hudson, she felt the biting greed of lust in a way that hadn’t touched her since…since the last time she’d been this near him.

“So what have you been doing with yourself?” he asked, and Emma started in surprise.

“What?”

“It’s been a long time.” His voice held the same easy cadence she remembered from long ago, but there was an edge to it now. An edge to him. “You disappeared without a trace, so I’m just wondering what you’ve been up to.”

Emma didn’t want to get into this now. He wouldn’t understand and she wasn’t up to explaining. In truth, it wasn’t any of his business what she did or had done while she’d been away from Buckhorn. But telling him so would have been too ballsy, even for her, and would have made her sound defensive.

Keeping her answer vague, she shrugged. “Working, like most people I guess.”

She braced herself for the questions that would follow, and wondered at the hesitation she felt in explaining her job to him. Damn it, she loved her job and was proud of herself for doing it so well.

But Casey took her off guard by skipping her occupation and going straight to a more difficult topic.

“You and Damon involved?”

Anger flashed through Emma, pushing some of the sexual awareness aside. Regardless of their pasts, she didn’t deserve an inquisition.

“Are you and Kristin?” Her voice sounded sharper than she’d intended, but Casey just laughed.

“No.” His white teeth gleamed in the darkness. “As I said, she’s a co-worker, a friend. No more than that.”

Emma shook her head. Men could be so dense. “So you say. My guess is that she wants to be considerably more.”

Casey touched her cheek, a casual gesture that felt hotly intimate and made her breath catch. “Yeah, well, I can be stubborn when I want to be.”

She almost replied I remember, but caught herself in time. His honesty provoked her own. “Damon and I are friends.”

“Uh-huh.”

She didn’t care if he believed her or not. She didn’t. She turned away to stare out the window, letting Casey know without words that he could think what he wanted.

“If you were homely,” Casey teased, “then I could maybe believe it. But Em?” He waited just long enough to make her antsy. “You’re far from homely.”

She tried to ignore him. The field to her left sounded with a thousand insects: the buzz of mosquitoes, the singing of crickets. Like stars in the sky, fireflies twinkled on and off.