"God Almighty, Ellie." The words hissed through his lips. "You're gonna be the death of me." And then, he drew her up hard along the length of his body, bringing her mouth into line with his. They kissed again, slowly, deeply, desperately.
And both of them knew that kissing was no longer enough.
"Not here," Rance whispered. "Not here. Let's do this right."
Ellie wanted just to do it! The heat of her need seemed in danger of consuming her. And even though Rance's body was hard with need for her, he seemed in no hurry to assuage it.
He took a towel and slowly, quite deliberately he dried her off. The soft terry seemed to bring all her nerve endings alive wherever he touched. And he touched everywhere. He made her shiver with longing for him. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders when he knelt to dry her. His hair brushed against her naked thighs as he parted her legs to dry them. And she heard herself whimper when he touched his tongue to the inner side of her knee.
"Rance!" She tugged at him, tried to bring him to his feet, to wrap her arms around him. But he wasn't ready yet. He was still touching her, drying her—teasing her. "Rance!"
"Hmm?" He looked up at her then, his blue gaze dark and lambent with desire, but also twinkling with just a hint of mischief. "Did you want something, El?"
She almost laughed. She did stifle a groan. Then, when he got to his feet and started to lead her out of the bathroom, she shook her head. Two could play that game.
"My turn," she said.
He looked confused.
"You dried me. Now I get to dry you."
He didn't argue. But he did begin to look a little desperate as she took another towel and began to softly stroke his skin. She dried his shoulders and his arms. She dried his neck and his chest. "Raise your arms," she told him.
He did. But he also ran his tongue over his lips. "Hurry up," he said.
Ellie smiled and shook her head. No, she wasn't going to hurry. At first she'd been eager, almost frantic. But now she realized that would be foolish. She didn't have forever with Rance. She had one night. And she was going to make it last.
She bent and picked his foot up. She dried between his toes. She ran a finger up his hair-roughened calf. She felt him tense.
"Ellie," he said, strangled.
She looked up at him, smiling with her eyes. "You wanted something, Rance?" she teased, echoing his earlier line.
"You know damn well what I want."
She nodded. "So do I." She breathed the words against his legs. She ran the towel up between them, following the words. She touched him, stroked him.
"Ellie!" He pulled back sharply. His breath came in quick, desperate gasps. "I didn't mean hurry like that! You do that and it's gonna be all over before we get started."
"But I have to dry you, to warm you. You were freezing."
"Was. Now I'm dry. And so damn hot, it won't take a match to light my fire." He grasped her arms and pulled her to her feet. "Enough," he whispered against her lips just before he kissed her again.
And Ellie whispered back, "Not nearly."
But she let him lead her out of the bathroom, and then, wrapped in the comforter from Ellie's bed, they went to the living room and lay before the fire.
It was no hotter than they were. It burned no more brightly than the desire Ellie saw in Rance's eyes and knew was reflected in her own as they touched and stroked and nibbled. She tried to take her time, to savor and anticipate, to make it last.
But her body burned for him, and his was on fire for hers.
The time to go slow had passed.
His fingers found her slick and warm and ready. Hers found him hard and urgent with desire.
"Now?" she breathed and opened for him.
"Now," he agreed, sliding between her legs and easing himself into her body—as he'd already eased his way into her heart and into her soul.
Where he belonged.
She didn't know where the thought came from. She didn't question its appropriateness there. She no longer hoped, as she had when she was younger, to have Rance forever. She only knew that tonight she'd made the right choice—to show him the love she felt and would undoubtedly feel her whole life long.
Tears sprang to her eyes as she drew him in and hugged him tightly to her. She ignored them, let them fall. They didn't matter. The future didn't matter. The past didn't matter. Only loving him this very moment mattered.
Her whole body clenched around him, shivering through a climax he shared.
"Ah, Ellie," he murmured against her ear when at last they lay quietly together, their passion spent, their hearts slowing down, the real world coming back between them. "Ellie." He said her name again, then pressed a kiss into her neck, then another and another along her jawline. He rolled onto his back and pulled her on top of him, snuggling her close in the cocoon of the comforter.
"Perfect," he breathed. "You're perfect. This is perfect. The whole world is perfect tonight."
For an instant, Ellie knew, he was right. They had shared perfection.
Was she supposed to ruin it now? How on earth was she supposed to tell him that Josh was his son?
Loving Ellie should have satisfied him.
Spending the night in her arms, holding her in his, making their bodies one, should have sated his appetite. It should have freed him to move on, to put the past behind him and face the future with calm confidence and renewed purpose.
It did not.
It made him want Ellie more than ever. It made him want not only to make love with her again and again. It made him want a life with her—and her kids.
He wanted love, a wife, a home, a family. Everything he'd thought he would never want. He had run off to hang on to his freedom, to remain forever unencumbered, a single man—on his own.
Now he had that. He had all the freedom in the world to walk away from Ellie. In fact he had to leave.
And all he wanted to do was come back.
The day of the branding dawned clear and cold. The day before had brought balmy spring breezes that had softened and melted most of the snow. Now things were ready to go. Three of Ellie's neighbors showed up to help out. They took Rance's direction without question, because both Ellie and Sandra deferred to him.
It wasn't near the work that the branding on the Phillips spread had been. But it was more satisfying to Rance because he'd been fully and completely the one in charge. And because, when they were all finished, and the bawling babies were mothering up again, and the neighbors were all around sharing the after-branding meal, he could see Ellie moving around talking to her neighbors, laughing with them, smiling all the while.
It was over. The branding was done. The ranch was still on its feet.
"Jim Riker," Ellie told him after everyone was gone, "one of the guys who helped out today, also works at the bank. He said he'd hold Cleve off or point him in another direction. He thinks I'm doing well." She smiled at him again. There was a light of satisfaction and peace in her gaze and just the barest twinkle of mischief. "He doesn't know I owe it all to you."
"My pleasure," Rance assured her. It had been, too.
And then she drew herself up and faced him almost formally. "I want to thank you, Rance, for all you've done. I don't know what we would have done without you."
Her tone surprised him as much as her words. He'd been standing there, waiting for her to touch him, to kiss him, to slide her arms around his waist and hug him.
He'd been waiting for her to ask him to stay.
He felt like he'd been handed his hat.
It was what he'd said he wanted, wasn't it? he asked himself. It was what they'd agreed to when he'd come. She'd give him a "bolt-hole," and he'd stick around through the branding and help her out.
She'd fulfilled her part of the bargain. He'd fulfilled his.
One look told him that she wasn't going to change the rules now—even if they had made love.
He looked at her closely. For an instant—only an instant—she looked back. It was l
ong enough. She'd held herself with total restraint since yesterday morning when the kids had come home. She'd never betrayed, by the slightest hint, that they'd spent the night in each other's arms.
But they had—and they cared about each other, too.
He might even dare to think they loved each other. He could read her a little better than he'd been able to read her all those years ago when they'd first loved. He was older now, smarter, less self-absorbed.
She hadn't said anything. She never would. He understood that now. But he had seen the way she watched him without wanting to. He had seen the way her hand almost brushed his, then pulled back, when he passed. He had seen the small unspoken things that told him he mattered to her.
He wanted to matter.
Now he took her by the arms and drew her close—not caring if Sandra was standing in the window watching, not noticing if Josh was gritting his teeth in the attic window or the twins and Carrie were looking on open-mouthed.
"I'm going now," he told her before his lips touched hers. "I have to."
"Of course." She was trying to sound matter-of-fact. She sounded desperate.
"Of course," Rance said mockingly. "But you can bet your bottom dollar, sweetheart, I'll be back."
Chapter 7
« ^ »
He wouldn't be, though.
Ellie was sure of it. His words were just Rance's way of being polite, the same way a man who had no intention of making a second date would still say to the woman, "I'll call you."
He wouldn't come. He wouldn't call. The interlude was over for both of them. The real world beckoned. In Rance's case, she knew, it even demanded. She'd heard his side of the phone calls he'd made to his secretary this past week.
She'd heard him say, "Never mind where I am. It doesn't matter."
It didn't matter.
Or it wouldn't once he was back home.
And that was fine with her. She'd never expected anything else. It only made her glad—in spite of Sandra's disapproving gaze—that she hadn't told him about Josh.
When there was no future, there was no point at all in raking up the past.
"Where the hell have you been?"
It was a litany Rance heard wherever he went—when he got back to the ranch, when he went down to the barn, when he walked into his office, when he turned up in the courtroom. His father, his foreman, his secretary, his partner, his clients and, not surprisingly he guessed, seven or eight weary young women who looked like they'd been waiting for weeks, all wanted to know.
"Getting my head together," he said to them all. "Regrouping. Sorting out my life."
"Good," they said, one and all, then waited expectantly as if, now that he'd done it, things would—he would—get back to normal.
He tried.
God knew he had plenty of work to do—both on the ranch and in the office. It was all work he was interested in. But not as interested as he was in thinking about Ellie.
Mostly he thought about Ellie.
He thought about making love with her. He thought about stripping wallpaper with her. He thought about all the time he'd spent with her—and her family—and he tried to put that together with the rest of his life.
It was a stretch.
He'd been so firm for so long about not wanting any strings—so determined to resist any thought of settling down, of getting married, of having a family—that thinking about it now caused him a major mental adjustment.
Oh, he'd thought about it once or twice before—like when Judge Hamilton had offered Poppy up—but never terribly seriously. And he'd never regretted a lot that it hadn't happened. He hadn't regretted not marrying Ellie eleven years ago.
At least for the past eleven years he hadn't.
Now he began to realize what he might have missed.
He was thinking about marrying Ellie.
He was also thinking about calling her. He'd wanted to call her since he'd left. But he hadn't. He wasn't sure what to say.
Now he was pacing in his office late Wednesday night not thinking about the witnesses he had to cross-examine tomorrow—which was what he ought to have been thinking about—when the phone rang.
Jodi was long gone, leaving the answering machine to catch all the calls. Rance wouldn't answer any of them, but he always listened on the off chance that one of them might be Ellie calling him.
It never was. This one wasn't, either. But it did catch his attention.
"Hey, bud," a cheerful masculine voice said to the machine, "I know you're in there. I can see you pacin' around the room."
Rance snatched the phone off the hook. "Shane?" He took three strides to the window and jerked the blinds back.
A cowboy with a cellular phone to his ear grinned and waved at him from across the street.
"Get up here," Rance commanded, beckoning through the glass.
"You ain't gettin' me in any law office, bud. I've seen all I want to see of them for one lifetime. C'mon down."
Rance glanced at the paper in his hand, at the notes strewn all over his desk, then back out the window at Shane. It wasn't a contest. "Be right down."
They went to Sully's down the street. It was a good, honest bar that had never seen a fern and on Fridays had its share of fist fights.
"The real thing," Shane called it as they bellied up to the bar and took long pulls of draft beer. Then, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he cocked his head and got straight to the point. "What's this about you goin' AWOL?"
"Who told you that?"
"Your old man. He called lookin' for you."
Rance scowled. "Interferin' old coot. It's his own fault I left, you know. He's the one responsible for that tour bus."
Shane grinned. "There's fault and there's fault. Wish somebody had sent me a tour bus full of lovely ladies."
"No, you don't," Rance said firmly. "Or you wouldn't have Poppy."
Shane considered that. "I wasn't in any all-fired hurry to tie the knot."
"No, but if half the world's women were shoved down your throat, I reckon you'd have swallowed."
Shane's mouth tipped in a rueful grin. "Well, when you put it that way…" He cocked his head. "You gonna swallow?"
"Not them." Rance finished his glass and thumped it with such vehemence on the bar that the bartender hurried over. Rance, embarrassed, waved him off.
"Who?" Shane asked.
"What?"
"Not them, you said. So, who?"
Trust Shane, who generally wouldn't see a truck bearing down on him at high noon, to catch the unspoken qualification in Rance's words.
He shrugged, unwilling to answer when he hadn't sorted it all out yet.
"Marriage scare you?" Shane asked.
"Of course not. I just never thought I'd get married."
"Well, it's got a fair bit to recommend it." Shane gave the sigh of a satisfied man.
"Of course, if you're married to Poppy," Rance said.
"That's true. But I reckon she wasn't the last good woman. There's probably one or two left."
"There is," Rance said at once.
Shane grinned. "Thought so."
Rance felt an unaccustomed heat climb his face. He decided to shove his glass toward the bartender after all. When it had been refilled, he took a long swallow, then asked, almost conversationally, "It didn't scare you, gettin' married?"
"Hell, yes, it scared me. I wasn't lookin' to get married to anybody. And then, when I found out Poppy was Hard-A—" he grinned and corrected himself "—George's—daughter, I thought, no way! I'd probably still be runnin' if you hadn't come after me and told me to get my butt back home." He reached out and punched Rance tightly on the arm. "One more thing I owe you for, bud."
It was always easy to see what other people ought to do—especially a basically uncomplicated guy like Shane. Rance wished his own life was that simple. "I'm glad it's working out."
"Oh, hell, yes. Not that we don't have our set-to's. Poppy's damn stubborn. Bad as her old man sometimes. But,
hey—" Shane shook his head "—she loves me. And there ain't many women who'd even tolerate me. I figure I'm the luckiest bum in the world."
Rance figured he was, too. He'd known Shane Nichols for a lot of years, and he'd never seen Shane happier. Marrying Poppy and settling down to run the Hamilton spread definitely agreed with him. He and Poppy's old man actually seemed to hit it off these days. Of course, Shane didn't have Rance's pressures. Or his problems. Or his father.
He drew a deep breath, then raised his glass. "To you," he said, "and Poppy."
Shane clinked his glass against Rance's, then gave him a wink. "And to you and the future Mrs. Phillips, whenever you get the guts to marry her."
Ellie felt hollow every morning, like she had after Spike had died—as if there was a hole in her life, as if something major was missing.
But that was nonsense. Nothing was missing. The children were all present and accounted for. Sandra turned up every morning like clockwork. Things were humming right along, better than ever.
She didn't let herself think about Rance.
Much.
Just every waking moment.
You're a fool, she told herself firmly. It was nothing but foolishness to lie awake at night and remember the way it had felt to have his arms around her. It was insanity to think about his lips kissing hers. It was the height of idiocy to dry herself after a shower and actually stand there thinking how much better the towel had felt when Rance had been the one doing the rubbing.
If she'd known she was going to go this far overboard, she would have resisted, she told herself.
As if you could have, her more honest self countered.
She tried not to think about that. She had her memory. That was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? Of course it was. So be grateful and stop mooning around, she chided herself.
She tried.
It didn't help that Daniel and Caleb and Carrie talked about him constantly. They were like little lost souls now that they didn't have Rance to follow around and ask questions and pester all day.
It was ridiculous! He hadn't been here that long. She said so rather sharply when Daniel was pouting because Rance wasn't there to help him with his fractions one night.
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