Wild Man Creek (Virgin River #14)(47)

His breath caught and he moaned. “Baby, you blow my mind.”

“And other things,” she said with a laugh.

But he wasn’t laughing; he was inside her before she even saw him coming, rocking her, devouring her, pushing her to her absolute limit, falling with her into the sweet aftermath of sheer, blinding pleasure. All she could say, when she caught her breath, was, “Oh… Colin!”

Eight

Jillian hadn’t even thought about how she was going to handle the clothes and shoes and other paraphernalia that landed on the sunporch roof, but apparently Colin had. When he took her home after their first night together, he examined the sunporch from the inside and found a couple of skylights. He came back later with an A-frame ladder, screwdriver and can-do attitude; he removed a skylight, got up on the ladder and poked his head through the hole, reached onto the roof with a long-handled broom and retrieved their stranded items.

“Thank you for doing that,” she said. “I might not have thought of it.”

“No problem. I really like those boots and I know you’re attached to the furry slippers.” He lifted her chin for a kiss goodbye. “Will you come to my cabin tonight?”

“You can’t keep me away.”

Jillian began driving herself to Colin’s cabin in the woods when the sun set and the day was done. She was so grateful that he asked her every morning if she’d come back again that night because she wasn’t sure how she’d admit to him that sleeping with him was so perfect that she wanted to be in his arms every night. He never put her through that; he always told her how much he wanted her beside him.

“You talk in your sleep,” he informed her.

“No way!”

“You murmur about peat moss, mulch, smudge pots, shears…. It’s not about me or sex or what you want me to do to you next, but about your garden.”

“Are you feeling offended? Slighted?”

“No,” he said with a smile. “Because when you’re conscious, you yell to me what you want, what you need, how you feel, what you’re going to do to me. Sweetheart, I am anything but slighted. Over and over and over again.”

Four days after their first night a bed was delivered to Jillian’s house and set up in her downstairs bedroom. Since first telling her he was going to make sure she had a bed, Colin hadn’t mentioned it again. She left Denny in charge that afternoon and headed for Fortuna to buy linens and groceries. Would he come to help christen the bed, knowing it had been delivered?

He did.

Every morning they decided where they would spend the night. Sometimes the big old Victorian; sometimes the little cabin in the woods by the creek. She loved that creek at night, with a bit of moonlight filtering through the tall trees, and at dawn, with wildlife creeping close to the cabin for a drink.

“I’ve never had so much sex in my life,” she confessed to him. “I’m surprised I can walk.”

“Funny, I’m walking better than ever,” he said.

What was very interesting to her was that she’d never felt so secure in a relationship in her life and yet she should probably feel the most vulnerable. They had entered into this liaison because they were driven physically, knowing that this was a brief space of time during which they were both planning their next lives—lives that did not include each other. He was going off to find wild animals and perhaps an edgy flying job in another country; she wasn’t likely to spend much more time in a six-bedroom Victorian when all she really needed was a little living space and a lot of gardening space. It was temporary, yet it felt so safe, so permanent.

She played her cards pretty close to her chest for a couple of weeks and concentrated on developing her gardening operation. She had irrigation installed in her portable greenhouses, bought the kind of grow lights Dan Brady recommended and then paid him to help Denny set them up. Denny picked up the generators Dan suggested as the alternative to running wiring all the way from the Victorian, and together they got them operational.

By day she gardened and Colin painted. By night they had dinner together and then lay in each other’s arms, sometimes making wild love, sometimes enjoying the comfort of togetherness.

In April sprouts popped out of the ground and appeared in her seed cups—strong sprouts. She smiled on them; she kissed them. She believed the fullness in her heart brought them out in a rush of glory and she knew, knew they would be hearty plants. When her fingers touched the soil, they were fingers that held in their memory the most powerful and beautiful physical love imaginable and she believed the seeds could tell and responded. And then, finally, on a call to her sister she said, “I’m having a love affair.”

“Are you now?” Kelly asked with a laugh. “I thought you’d sworn off men. You sure didn’t last long. Who’s the lucky guy?”

Jillian explained about Colin, about how she met him, how she responded to him as though he was made for her. She told Kelly that he planned to leave at the end of summer and that she wasn’t sure where she’d settle down—it would all depend on the harvest. It was probable she’d dismantle her greenhouses after the fall harvest and begin looking for a plot of land just right for her gardens. “If I can make my organic crops work, this might be my next job.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Kelly said. “Are you in love?”