The Cowboy Finds a Family

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The Cowboy Finds a Family Page 16

by Anne McAllister


  “Home, you said.”

  “I meant—”

  “This is home.” She got out, ignoring his protests, and went around to open the passenger door. Then she stood there, waiting for him.

  “Jenny,” he protested.

  But she just reached in and took hold of his arm. “You’re home, Mace. Come on.”

  *

  Jenny had seen Mace sick. She had seen him stomped by a bronc. She had seen him gored. But she had never seen him look like this.

  He had the bleak, drawn look of a man who had reached the end of his tether. She saw raw anguish in his eyes in the split seconds she managed to catch his gaze. He’d lost weight. He looked gaunt, unshaven, pale. He looked like hell.

  She’d thought that the moment she’d driven up and spotted him sitting there on the curb. He was hunched over, his hands dangling between his knees, his head bent, while Rooster hovered over him like some badly cast nursemaid, flapping and clucking and almost pathetically relieved when she showed up and he could turn the responsibility over to her.

  Not that Mace had wanted it turned over to her. That was abundantly clear.

  Well, she hadn’t been having very many kind thoughts about him lately either. And she’d thought of a thousand pithy things to say to him as she drove the thirty-plus miles down to Bozeman.

  She hadn’t needed to say anything.

  Rooster and the judo expert Mace had picked to tangle with—God forgive her, how she would have liked to have seen him flip Mace on his butt!—and Mace’s own body had done all the chastising he deserved.

  Now, as she stood in their bedroom and stared at her husband, sound asleep on his stomach on their bed, one bare arm flung up, one jean-clad leg bent, she couldn’t feel anger anymore. She could only ache for him.

  His face was turned toward her, and in the light from the bathroom across the hall she could see rough stubble of black whiskers on his face, as if he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. Beneath the whiskers, his skin looked sallow, his cheeks sunken. There were dark circles under his eyes. And even in sleep, his brows were drawn down as if he were in pain.

  She knew how that felt. They were both in pain, had been for weeks.

  She moved closer to watch the steady rise and fall of his back. She saw a fading bruise on it and wondered how he had got it. If he’d been home, she would have known. She would have touched it and soothed it, and at night when she put her arms around him, she would have kissed it to make it better.

  Tonight he had sent her out of the room while he got undressed.

  “I can manage,” he’d said gruffly, turning his back on her to stumble down the hall.

  Not willing to let him go, Jenny had followed and had moved toward the dresser to bring him clean underwear, so he could change out of his dusty shirt and dirty jeans.

  “I said, I’ll do it.” And there was a fierceness in his tone she hadn’t heard earlier.

  So she had nodded and left him alone.

  She heard the shower start to run by the time she got downstairs. Deliberately she went into the kitchen and turned on the hot water to wash the pots and pans, knowing full well he’d get a shot of cold in the shower when she did it. Serve him right, she thought as she washed the dishes she had left from her dinner with Tom. It seemed like a thousand years ago.

  Tom and the dinner and the wine and the movie. Tom kissing her. Jenny wondered if Tom had really expected to take her to bed. It didn’t matter what he’d expected, she thought wryly.

  Neither of them had expected this.

  By the time the dishes were done, there was no sound at all from upstairs. Mace could well have died for all she knew. She shut out the lights in the living room and climbed the stairs, half expecting him to come bolting down as she was going up. But the hallway was empty. One small lamp on the dresser in their bedroom showed her that far from bolting, Mace, wearing only a pair of boxers, was sound asleep on the bed.

  Jenny stood in the doorway staring at him. He looked exhausted, worn out. There was none of the relaxation of sleep in his features. They were taut, as if even in sleep, he was in pain. His brows were drawn down, and his mouth seemed almost permanently carved into a frown. She wanted to run her fingers over his brows and smooth them. She wanted to touch her lips to his, to ease his pain. She wanted—

  Abruptly, in his sleep, Mace turned his head away.

  Jenny felt the rejection even knowing it was unintentional. It was the way things were between them now. And touching him would hurt even more.

  She turned away, got her nightgown off the hook on the bathroom door and slipped it on. She brushed her teeth and washed her face, scrubbing it good because she could still catch a hint of the perfume she’d put on for Tom all those hours ago.

  It felt like another lifetime.

  Then she shut off the light and went into the spare bedroom. It was minimally furnished with a twin bed and dresser, but the room was bright, cheerful. Once upon a time they had fixed it up for kids.

  “So Becky will feel at home when she comes over. So Tuck can stay if he wants,” she’d rationalized when they were doing the room, not wanting to pressure Mace.

  But he had cut to the chase. “For our kids,” he had corrected firmly.

  She remembered that afternoon as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. They’d just finished painting the room a neutral cream color and had started arguing about curtains.

  “Blue,” Mace had said. “For our half dozen boys.”

  “Pink,” Jenny had countered. “For our half dozen girls.”

  “A half a dozen hussies like you?” he’d teased, putting his arms around her and starting to tickle her. He’d nuzzled her under the ear and nibbled her neck. She’d pulled out his shirt tails and tickled his ribs. One thing had led to another right there in the spare room.

  “Maybe,” Mace had said in the aftermath of their lovemaking, “we can tell our son he was conceived in this bed.”

  “Our daughter,” Jenny had corrected him with a laugh.

  Tonight it felt as if those children were ghosts, taunting her by their very absence. She ached for them, for the life she’d dreamed of, for the man she still loved in spite of everything.

  She didn’t even get as far as the bed. She couldn’t sleep here. She wouldn’t sleep at all if she tried. She started toward the couch in the living room. She never got that far. A noise from the bedroom stopped her.

  Mace was muttering in his sleep. Hurt, angry sounds. Painful sounds.

  Sounds that, even though Jenny knew she ought to, she could not ignore.

  She came to stand in the doorway to their bedroom and saw that Mace had wrestled with one of the pillows. He had pressed his face into it and held it clutched against his chest with one hand.

  The other hand was flung out, and she moved closer to see if he was awake. He still muttered, but his eyes were closed.

  His fingers dangling over the side of the bed were barely an inch from her knee. His knuckles were scraped, his nails short and ragged. Mace had cowboy’s hands—rough and callused, hardened by years of manual labor and bad weather. She knew sometimes their roughness embarrassed him.

  “I shouldn’t be touching you,” he’d say. “You’re so soft. I could hurt you, scratch you.”

  And every time she’d taken his fingers and kissed them, one by one. “You could never hurt me,” she’d told him.

  And he never had. Not with his hands.

  She reached down and touched them now. Instinctively his fingers curved around hers, and so surprised was she that she turned her head once again to see if he was awake.

  Of course, he wasn’t.

  If he had been, she thought grimly, the last thing he would have done was touch her. On the contrary, he’d have yanked his fingers away at once.

  But in sleep he held on.

  His muttering stopped. His breathing evened. When she started to pull away, he frowned.

  “Ah, Mace.” It was a plea, but if she’d been forced to,
Jenny didn’t know if she could have said what she was pleading for—that he let go, that he hang on?

  She ran her thumb lightly over his abraded knuckles. A result of his encounter with the judo expert?

  She knelt beside him and touched her lips to them. He turned his head toward her, and a slow, soft sigh escaped his lips.

  Jenny lifted her head and turned to study the man she’d married. He was her husband. He was a stranger. A man she thought she knew as well as she knew herself, and even after all these years, maybe, didn’t really know at all. That was what her mind told her.

  But her heart? Ah, her heart was a different story.

  She brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. He stirred, half-smiled.

  Jenny swallowed. She couldn’t face that smile.

  And yet she couldn’t look away, either. So much of her life had been spent in this man’s arms, in this man’s bed, she wondered at a few hours ago having contemplated sleeping with another man.

  Had she actually considered it?

  No, she had to admit. Not really. Not willingly.

  If she considered it even theoretically, it was only because it seemed to be something she ought to think about since she had been going out with Tom. But Tom was gone. Long gone.

  Tom was never going to be the man in her bed. The only one who belonged there was this man—her stubborn, hardheaded, determined, proud, idiotic husband.

  And, Jenny thought ruefully, she was apparently just as big an idiot as he was because—despite the letter from his lawyer on her dresser, despite his anger and his pride and his refusal to let her share his pain, despite the fact that he would probably divorce her whether she agreed or not—she slipped into the bed beside him.

  There was no other man for her.

  Only him.

  *

  For the first time in ages Mace felt warm.

  His body, which seemed to him to have been clenched against the cold forever, sensed the heat gradually. It seemed close, but not close enough.

  He edged back toward it. Yes. Ah, yes.

  He could feel it now, right next to him, against him. Holding him, drawing him in, warming him—at last.

  Slowly—for the first time in ages—he began to relax. The tension in his body, so intense he’d forgotten what it was like to be without it, gradually started to ease.

  God, yes.

  He moved, stretched, rubbed his bare skin against hers.

  She was the source of his warmth. She was the fire he had been missing. She was the blanket, the protection he needed from the cold.

  He’d been cold. So cold.

  And now he was warm again. Alive again.

  He felt himself uncurling, opening to the heat of her skin and the tentative softness of her touch.

  He murmured encouragement. Please, yes. That’s it.

  She understood. Her touch wasn’t so tentative now. It became surer, firmer, yet still gentle. Her hands sliding warmly on his back made him arch against her. The subtle shift as they stroked and slipped and moved around to caress his chest made him breathe deeper so he could intensify the feeling of her fingers hard against his ribs.

  Yes. Oh, yes.

  Her breath was hot against his spine. Her mouth was wet as she kissed him. They were small fiery kisses that kindled corresponding fires in him. Down his spine she went, one vertebra after another, and then back up. She nuzzled the nape of his neck, nibbled him with her teeth, licked at him with her tongue.

  He groaned. Desperate. Burning suddenly.

  Not with heat, but with longing. A longing to become one with her, to absorb her heat and make it his own.

  Without her he was cold. Without her he was lost.

  With her—only with her—he was whole.

  He turned and touched her then, tangled his body with hers in the bed. Rolled beneath her and drew her on top of him. There he let his hands play over her soft skin, skimming over her arms, framing her narrow shoulders, tracing the curve of her back as he drew her down against his chest and wrapped himself in her warmth.

  Her lips were on his face then—touching his forehead, his eyelids, his nose, his cheeks. His mouth.

  He’d never realized how thirsty he’d become. Never understood how parched his life had felt. Until their lips met. Until her tongue touched his—mated with his.

  The way his body needed hers.

  He was hot now. Hot and hard.

  No longer relaxed. Taut again. Tense. But with a different kind of tension.

  At her touch, his body had surrendered the hard shell of defensiveness. She had eased his isolation and soothed his loneliness. She had warmed his soul and heated his body.

  And this new heat was forging another sort of hardness—but one that would not defend him but expose him.

  He felt the fear and, for a moment, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew a split second’s hesitation, an instant’s withdrawal.

  But it was gone in a blink, swamped by the need to be a part of her, to share the warmth and the oneness that only the two of them could make.

  He eased himself inside, feeling the welcome wetness that both soothed and excited him. He wanted to slide out, to feel it envelop him again. He wanted to stay there forever, wrapped in the heat of her body, trembling in this most intimate embrace.

  He had been so lonely and so cold and so empty. And now he was none of those things. He loved; he was loved.

  His body spoke words he’d forgotten how to say. Her body told him over and over again words he never thought he’d hear again.

  And when he shattered in her arms, when he felt her shatter in his, he knew peace and wholeness at last.

  He stroked her back now slick with sweat. He kissed her eyelids, wet with tears.

  Tears?

  “Don’t cry,” he whispered. But oddly, inexplicably, he felt like crying himself.

  He didn’t understand it. Couldn’t get his mind around it. Should have been able to. Couldn’t. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense—except the feel of the woman in his arms.

  He drew her tight against him.

  They slept.

  Chapter Eleven

  Becky would have been pleased that Mace was home—if she’d known.

  Of course she didn’t know because nobody ever bothered to tell her anything—except what she did wrong. She seemed to be doing a lot of that.

  She might have had a clue about how things had gone Saturday evening if her father had been more eager to help her do her schoolwork. But when she tracked him down, out by the corral where he was feeding the bucking broncs they used for Noah’s students and told him she needed to borrow a book from Jenny, he said, “No.”

  “But I need it!” Becky said. “You’re always telling me to be responsible, think ahead, do my best. An’ here I am, trying to, and all you say is no!”

  “Jenny has company.” Taggart went right on pitching hay.

  Becky knew that. That was why she wanted to go. She wanted to make sure things didn’t get out of hand, that Mace still had a chance. She liked Uncle Tom a lot—and if it were anybody else’s almost-ex-wife, Becky would’ve been cheering him on.

  But a girl had certain loyalties. Becky’s were to Mace.

  “It won’t take long,” she said. “Please.” She gave him her best pleading look.

  “You can call and ask Tom to bring it home to you.”

  “But I need to talk to her.”

  “Why?”

  “Er, well, ’cause. She knows how to card wool an’ spin it an’ weave it and stuff.” It didn’t sound very convincing even to her.

  Taggart leaned on his pitchfork. “Yeah, and . . .”

  Becky shrugged helplessly. “And that’s what the report is about.”

  “And you’re angling to get her to do it for you?” He gave her a disapproving look.

  Becky didn’t know if she’d rather he thought that, which wasn’t true, or if she’d rather he knew what she was really doing. She thought this might qual
ify as one of those situations where her grandpa said, “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

  She ducked her head and dug the toe of her boot into the dirt.

  “You have to do your own work,” Taggart said firmly.

  “I only wanted to talk about it. Felicity says it’s good to consult firsthand sources,” she quoted her stepmother. “That means somebody who’s done it.”

  Taggart grunted. “Where have I heard that before?” But he didn’t say no.

  “We don’t have to go now,” Becky pressed her advantage. “We could go later. After you’re finished. I’d help you finish feedin’.” Later would be better anyway, she thought. More chance they’d be interrupting something Mace would want interrupted.

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “You seem pretty desperate to get over there.” Taggart gave her a narrow, assessing look as if something else had just occurred to him. “You wouldn’t be meddling, would you?”

  Becky swallowed. Her eyes widened. “Meddling?”

  “Pokin’ your nose in where it doesn’t belong.” Taggart’s finger tapped the tip of that very nose. “Checking up on Tom and Jenny.”

  “Why would I do that?” Becky sounded horrified.

  “Because you’re you,” her father said with a fatalism born of long experience. “And you’ve been known to stick your oar into water you got no business paddlin’ in.”

  “Moi?” Becky said with all the innocence she could muster. It sounded better when Felicity or Miss Piggy said it.

  Taggart drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Oui, mademoiselle. Tu.” He fixed her with a warning look. “You let Jenny and Tom be. And you let Mace and Jenny work out their own problems.”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “I mean it,” he said sternly. “Messin’ in my life was bad enough—”

  “I didn’t mess in your life. I introduced you to my teacher—”

  “By not doin’ a lick of work.”

  “It was very hard work,” Becky contradicted. “I didn’t want to miss all those assignments. An’ you’re glad I did,” she added. “You wouldn’t have Felicity and Abby and Willy if I hadn’t.”

  “I’d have managed on my own.”

 

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