Montana Sky

swaggered into his office with sex on her mind. It didn’t even matter that he was falling headlong in love and she wasn’t even close to tripping. They fit. Whether she saw it or not, it had clicked for him.
    Hoping to be discreet, he snagged a bottle of champagne and two glasses. And made it as far as the base of the stairs.
    “Private party?” Ben asked, then chuckled at the flush that spread up Nate’s throat. “Give Tess a Happy New Year’s kiss from me.”
    “Get your own woman.”
    “I aim to.”
    But he took his time seeking her out and pinning her down again. His goal was to have her firmly planted in his arms at midnight. He gave her plenty of rope, and as the countdown began, firmly reeled her in.
    “Don’t you start on me again.”
    “Only a minute to go,” he said easily. “I always think of that last minute between years as untime.” When her brow furrowed, he knew he had her attention and slid his arms around her. “Not now, not then. Not anything. If we were alone, I could do what I want with you for those sixty seconds. But it wouldn’t be real. So I’m going to wait till it is. Put your arms around me. It doesn’t count yet. Not for seconds yet.”
    She couldn’t hear anything but his voice, none of the noise, the laughter, the excited countdown of timepenetrated. As if in a dream, she lifted her arms, wound them around his neck.
    “Tell me you want me,” he murmured. “It doesn’t count. Not yet.”
    “I do. But I don’t—”
    “No buts. It doesn’t matter.” He slid a hand up, over her bare back, under her hair. “Kiss me. It’s not real, not yet. You kiss me, Willa. Just once, you kiss me.”
    She angled in, kept her eyes open and her mind blank as she fit her lips to his. So warm, so welcoming, so unexpectedly gentle that she shuddered in reaction. And time ran out on her.
    Cheers echoed somewhere in the back of her head. People jostled her in their hurry to exchange New Year’s greetings. And as the seconds slid away from the end to the beginning, her heart ached with it.
    “It is real.” It was as much accusation as statement when she drew away. Her eyes glittered with the fresh awareness, and the fear of it. “It is.”
    “Yeah.” He stunned her by taking her hand, bringing it to his lips. “Starting now.” He slid an arm around her waist, kept her close to his side. “Look there, darling.” He shifted her just a little. “That’s a pretty sight.”
    Even through her own confusion, she had to admit it was. Adam, with his hands cupped on Lily’s face, and Lily’s fingers holding his wrists.
    See how their eyes meet and hold, she thought. How her lips tremble just a little, how gently he brushes them with his. And how they stay there, just so, fixed in that bare whisper of a kiss.
    “He’s in love with her,” Willa murmured. Emotions churned inside her. Too much to feel, she thought with a hand pressed to her stomach. Too much to think, too much to wonder. “What’s going on? I wish I could understand what’s going on. Nothing’s the same anymore. Nothing’s simple anymore.”
    “They can make each other happy. That’s simple.”
    “No.” She shook her head. “No, it won’t be. Can’t youfeel it? There’s something . . .” She shuddered again, because she could feel it. And it was cold, and vicious and close. “Ben, there’s something—”
    That was when the screaming started.

FOURTEEN
    T HERE WASN ’ T MUCH BLOOD . THE POLICE WOULD conclude that she had been killed elsewhere, then brought to the ranch. No one recognized her. Her face was largely unmarred. Just a bruise under the right eye.
    Her hair was gone.
    Her skin was faintly blue. That Willa had seen for herself when she rushed outside and found young Billy struggling to calm Mary Anne Walker after they’d stumbled over the body. She was naked, and her skin had crisscrossing slashes in it like hatch marks on a drawing.
    Very little blood, and what there was had dried on that pale blue skin.
    Mary Anne had been sick right there on the front steps. And Billy had soon followed suit, chucking up his share of the beer he’d guzzled in the rig while he was busy getting Mary Anne’s panties down to her ankles.
    Willa had gotten them both back inside and ordered everyone who was crowding out on the porch, gawking and talking at once, to come back inside. She told herself she would think about the woman later, the woman with the blueskin and no hair who was dead at the foot