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Those were the words in her mind, but she didn’t say them out loud.
Simply looking at him now in his dishevelment made her mouth water. She wanted badly to put her hands on him, pull him to her, feel him inside her and appease this craving that was as wonderful as it was terrible. If she thought that having sex would fix the problem, she would do it, and happily.
But along with the sexual yearning, she was also emotionally drawn to the man who’d had to live in the large shadow of his father.
Trapper didn’t whine about it. He didn’t tell a sob story to elicit pity. In fact, he rebuffed anything that smacked of compassion and sadness for him. Nor did he seem jealous of The Major. Trapper didn’t vie for his father’s celebrity. He did everything he could to avoid it.
So while he thumbed his nose at propriety and rebelled against authority, Kerra sensed that underneath the charm, and flippancy, and screw-you attitude, was a boy who’d been abandoned at age eleven. Young John Trapper had been unable to compete with the allure of fame, which his father had chosen over him.
She knew better than to open this up to discussion, of course. Wounded animals bit the tender hand extended to them. He would hate her for perceiving and exposing the anguish he suffered day after day.
He was in mourning, not over the loss of a dead parent, but a living one.
If she were foolish enough to let her heart get entangled with Trapper, he would break it. That’s what she didn’t want to risk.
They both reacted to the sudden knock on the door, but in different ways. Trapper lunged across the bed, grabbed his pistol, and made it to the window in the same wink of time that Kerra took a startled breath and slapped her hand over her jumping he
art.
“It’s Carson.” Trapper let the curtain fall back into place, slid the chain free, and unlocked the door.
The lawyer, whom Kerra had met the night before, came in carrying two sacks from a fast food chain in one hand. In the other he had a grip on a pair of plastic shopping bags. He took in the rumpled bed, Trapper’s open jeans, and her dishabille.
“Is my arrival untimely?” He turned to Trapper and scowled. “I hope. I owe you about five more interruptions.”
With no discernible self-consciousness, Trapper buttoned up his fly. “You bring us a car?”
“Isn’t that what you ordered?”
“What kind?”
“You have the audacity to be particular?”
“Well, I’d rather this one not be hot.”
“It isn’t.” Carson turned to Kerra. “I told him I was sorry about the SUV. Ungrateful bastard never accepts an apology.”
Her eyes met Trapper’s. “No, he doesn’t.”
Their gazes held until the tense silence became awkward. Carson chuckled. “I believe I did walk in on a scene. I love it.” He placed the carryout food sacks on the table beneath the window and tossed the shopping bags onto the bed. “There’s everything on the list you texted me. I took a stab at your size,” he said to Kerra. “Hard to tell in that baggy get-up you’re wearing.”
“I’m sure that whatever you got will be fine. Thank you.”
He motioned toward the table. “Y’all eat while it’s hot. I’ll sit here.” He sat down on the end of the bed. “I gotta make this quick. The missus followed so she could drive me back to Fort Worth. She’s waiting in the car.”
“She’s welcome to come in,” Trapper said as he divided the food.
“No way,” Carson said. “She doesn’t like you. Says you’re rude, and bad news, and you didn’t call her bridesmaid like you promised to.”
Kerra looked across the table at Trapper. He avoided looking back, biting into his breakfast sandwich instead.
Carson raised both hands in front of his chest, palms out, as though warding off something. “Really, truly, Trapper, don’t go out of your way to thank me for doing your shopping. Or for the breakfast. Or for driving out across the prairie last night during a snowstorm to rescue your ass. I mean, what are friends for?”
“Thank you. I’ll overlook that you arrived at the shack an hour and a half later than you said you would.”
“It was snow-ing.” Carson paused, then asked, “Do you think the preacher showed up there this morning?”
Trapper nodded. “Yep. With a posse.”
