by Cait London
In the morning, he awoke to an empty bed and the unsettled sense that he wasn’t all that appealing to Savanna. She’d made it plain that she’d had other lovers since they were teenagers, and the thought burned in him. For a man who enjoyed women, he didn’t like the feeling that Savanna could take or leave him. He really didn’t like that waiting for a perfect husband remark, or the exclusion from the perfect-male class. He didn’t like feeling like a “cull” from the marriageable-males shelf.
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Chapter Twelve
Jemma slept with childlike innocence. Hogan lay still, enjoying her awakening in his arms, absorbing the fit of her curved body against his, yin and yang.
He’d been a solitary man, protecting his private life. He was surprised that he enjoyed sharing the first quiet moments of the day, cuddling Jemma, watching the dawn slowly touch her face.
He ran his hand over the jut of her hip, a woman’s narrow waist contrasting the curve of her hips—a woman’s hips made for passion and for bringing life into the world. Natural and almost fawnlike in sleep, Jemma’s body seemed poised to spring into action.
Hogan realized he was smiling softly, floating in gentle pleasure and harmony that he’d never experienced. He hadn’t suspected that this on-the-go, pushy woman could be so delectable when she slept. Her hair slid on his shoulder, tips prickling his skin just enough to be exciting.
He eased closer to the soft nudge of her breast against his side—her nipple hardening slightly with the friction. He shifted his thigh to enjoy the slender one tangled with his, to feel the nestled heat of her womanhood burn his skin. He inhaled her scent, blended with their lovemaking, and opened his palm upon her bottom.
An unfamiliar emotion sawed through him—that of a man who wanted to keep and hold a woman as his own. To bind her to him, so that she wouldn’t fly away. He realized that his fingertips were digging slightly into the softness.
That softness tensed, as Jemma lifted, bumped his chin and braced her elbow against his chest; she pushed her wildly tangled hair away from her eyes. Hogan raised his lips to the strand sliding across them; he let his body awaken to the tantalizing, erotic movement of her body and hair moving over his skin.
He smiled, hearing the echo of her laughter as he’d tossed her upon his bed, where she should be every night. Playfully wrestling, testing each other led to frantic hurried lovemaking that slowed and lingered and explored.
“I’m dead,” Jemma announced desperately, sleep clinging to her voice. “I have conference calls scheduled for nine this morning, and it’s already eight.... And I’ll probably have to protect you from Carley. She’s pretty angry with you, and so are the rest.”
Jemma rolled over him on her way to the bathroom and Hogan grunted, her knee coming too close to his already hardening body.
“Why should they be angry? Because you’re here with me?” He wasn’t keeping away from Jemma. His need for her was greater than his pride. He grabbed her ankle and tugged her back to him.
Sprawled beneath Hogan’s body, she glared up at him. “You’re holding my wrists, Hogan, and you look like a thundercloud. Goodness, you can be so intense. I’ve got a big deal going down this morning.”
After a night of lovemaking, Hogan had come in second to making money. He wanted more... and he wanted to serve Jemma breakfast in bed. He’d had a plan, a romantic one, and typically, she’d sliced through it with her money-sword. His attempt to explore Jemma and himself, and enjoy the day with her, was dying before it began. “They’ll call back.”
Her eyes had that steely glint that meant Jemma was determined to have her way. “I never miss a call that will get me a profit like this one, Hogan. Let go.”
“Never?” Hogan studied her, this woman that could evoke tenderness and romantic fantasies within him, a woman who fascinated and delighted him, and decided he could settle for passion. The sensual challenge was too much to resist.
He eased Jemma to straddle him, fitting her heat to his arousal and watched her eyes darken. He took her mouth, kissing her with all the emotion in him, hiding nothing, and while Jemma met him hungrily, he eased into her.
In their time on the mountain and last night, Jemma was a traditional lover, learning quickly to meet his rhythm, but this new position— her dominance shocked her. He wondered how she would react and couldn’t help smiling at her stunned expression. “Hogan—I’m not certain—oh! Oh! Hogan!”
“What were you saying about business?” he asked before the firestorm hit him. He guided her hips into the rhythm, pulled her knees up tight to his thighs, and spun out of control.
When she slumped upon him, her heart racing with his, Hogan couldn’t resist teasing her. “Time to go, Jemma. All that money is just waiting for you.”
“I can’t move. I’m still seeing red stars..... Hogan, a designer who can produce good garments is hard to find. No one does modesty panels like Cecilia.”
“What’s a modesty panel?” He sucked in his breath as Jemma’s body quivered, the remnants of her climax fading.
She went into herself, taking in the last pleasure, and relaxed. “You walk around naked. Modesty isn’t something you’d know about... A modesty panel is a strip of cloth beneath the buttons. When a woman’s blouse gaps, that extra cloth panel hides her bra....You rat. I’m not going to comment on your sizable, nonstop, more than adequate, athletic equipment. You’re too full of yourself already.”
He heard himself laugh, and wondered when a woman had ever spoken to him, moved him like Jemma could. He smoothed her trembling body, still filled with his, and flicked her earlobe with his tongue. He smiled as she groaned and shivered against him; a man had his pride after all. “Do I understand that you would rather be here with me, than punching cash register buttons and stuffing your bank account?”
“You’re teasing me. I don’t know if I like it.”
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked, challenged by her and filled with anticipation.
When Jemma looked at him, her expression was tender, her hand smoothing his jaw. And later he would think how that quiet, intent look—that contented and well pleasured look could be more dangerous than her sultry one....
All in all, it was a good way to start the day, Hogan thought later as he sat with his bare feet propped up on the wooden rail of his sprawling porch.
In the distance, the Crazy Mountains surged into the blue sky, wrapping peace around Hogan. He sipped orange juice, inhaled the fresh midmoming air, and examined the glow within him. Harmony in his emotions was a surprise and Hogan picked through the elements and they all led to Jemma— She’d changed him, eased him.
Taking care of a woman’s sexual needs was one thing. Hogan had always been very careful in that respect. But his lingering enjoyment of Jemma and the unfamiliar need to provide for her was new and tenuous. Hogan smoothed the rough earth-tone texture of the pottery mug he’d created while high on designing the Kodiak Design trademark.
Jemma. He enjoyed watching Jemma rush out the door, flustered and still warm from making love with him. The gentle sway and bob of her breasts said she’d forgotten that lacy bra that was crushed somewhere at the foot of his rumpled bed. He’d never felt the need to keep a woman in his bed all night, to make breakfast while she was taking a shower.
He’d never stood by the door for a woman as he had Jemma. As she’d rushed out, he handed her a mug of peppermint tea and bacon wrapped in whole-wheat toast. Not a fan of beef or pork, Jemma had looked at the food gratefully, grabbed it and stopped. She’d looked at him, and Hogan’s breath caught as a blush moved up her cheeks.
“I’ve got to go to Ben’s.... My file on this deal is there.” She’d stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Thanks for the breakfast. You’re not so bad,” she whispered, leaving him with the scent of her freshly bathed body and that soft, sweet kiss upon his scarred cheek.
Hogan sipped his coffee, then traced the scar with his fingertip as he viewed the Bar K. Ben was down in the pas
ture, replacing a salt block. The bright day settled over the lush fields and the grazing cattle, a peaceful day.
Peace. Hogan wondered at the peace he found with Jemma, at the peace that eluded him.
Hogan didn’t know what he would find with Jemma, but he did want the answers Ben could give him. Everyone else had gone into town, and there wouldn’t be interruptions, nor interference in his need for the truth. Dinah had said Ben was ready now—
A half hour later, Hogan swung down from Moon Shadow and walked to where Ben stood next to his battered pickup. He watched Hogan walk toward him, and then turned to continue studying his cattle, calves frisking in the field. Hogan joined him and shared the view. Father and son knew how to share silence, but not their lives.
“Coffee?” Hogan asked, noting a hawk’s soaring flight across the sky, its swift dive to take a field mouse.
The thing about waking up with a passionate woman who fascinated him, Hogan thought darkly, was that it left a man in an unsteady, emotional mood—too drained and body-pleasured to think straight. One wrong word between Ben and him would ignite old wounds.
For the moment, however, both were enjoying the meadowlark’s trill and the sense of peace and harmony rarely experienced by either man.
Ben nodded, and Hogan handed him a thermos that hung from his saddlebag. Ben reached into the seat of his pickup and handed Hogan another thermos. “Trade you.”
“Carrot juice?”
“I’m going to turn orange,” Ben grumbled, opening the thermos to pour the juice onto the ground. “I’m hoping Jemma will run out of the store-bought carrots. She must have planted an acre of them in the garden. I’ve been thinking about hiring Winnie Manfred’s rabbits one night and clearing out the whole mess.” He poured coffee into the thermos cup with a long, satisfied sigh.
“Think of the carrots that died for Jemma,” Hogan found himself saying and wondered where the closest natural-foods market was. If he wanted Jemma in his home, he’d better learn how to feed her. He had the contented sense of settling into a relationship that he intended to enjoy—and work at, if need be. With Jemma, he enjoyed giving, and he enjoyed taking. Did he know how to care for her? How to say the right things? To be there when she needed him?
“You’ll take care of the girl. You’re worried about that now, because you think your heart is a cold lump, no more than an empty hole. But you’ll warm to the idea... maybe you already have.” Staring at the rugged Crazy Mountains, Ben spoke as if he were remembering his own emotions when first seeing Dinah. “Jemma said I should tell you about your mother. She said I’d been cruel not to. She’s a pushy thing, sweet and sassy one minute, and the next coming on like a bulldozer, ramming it down my throat that maybe you and I still have a chance.”
“I didn’t send her after you, Ben. You do what you want.” Hogan didn’t want Jemma battling for him, entering his dark corners. The wall had been between Ben and him for years; he didn’t expect it would come down easily.
“I want my grandkids swinging in the front yard and my wife— I want my wife wearing my wedding ring and this time, by God, I’ll make her a husband, if she’ll have me. Or what’s left of me.”
The statement came so harsh and deeply emotional that Hogan studied Ben. Ben’s face was hard, but his hand trembled as he rubbed his cheek. “Jemma got me one of those new battery- operated shavers, so I wouldn’t look so woolly during the day, if Dinah came to see me. She does that sometimes, brings me lunch. She’s a giving, sweet woman, always was.”
Ben inhaled and glanced at his son. “But you want to know about your real mother and here’s the short and sweet: You’re all mine. I was just seventeen when I met her in that camas field up in the mountains. She was a pretty little maiden, part-Kootenai, part-white, and real pretty.... Real pretty,” Ben repeated, as though going back through the years. “She felt things in her, like you do, earth and wind and trees moving in her. She liked to touch and take things into her that way, studying them, making them a part of her. She could draw, too.”
Hogan swallowed and remembered the field where Ben had taken him to play as a child. His mother was Kootenai.... A sense of wonder and belonging began to curl around him. “By Willow Creek?”
“That was her name—Willow. I couldn’t say the other Indian name. She was a half-blood, raised by her mother. Old Susan hated men, especially white men, and there I was, a blue-eyed, blond white man courting her daughter. Your grandfather Aaron would have had them run out of town, if he’d known. In those days, he had the power to do most anything. Then out of the blue, Willow sent me a note by carrier pigeon—she was really good with birds and animals, just like you, and could she ride a pony....”
Ben looked toward the foothills, his voice soft and uneven as he threaded through the past. “Well, by the time I met her in the rough cabin we’d made up in the mountains by that clearing at Willow Creek— to be together— she was already in childbirth, needing help, and something was wrong.”
Ben’s voice caught, and then he was silent for a time, taking another sip of coffee. “I didn’t even know you were coming— I guess she feared for me, too. Old Aaron had already taken a belt to me for—well, for a lot of things. Her mother had secretly given her herbs to miscarry, because she didn’t want another white child in the family, and because Willow wouldn’t harm you on her own. Willow used her last strength to protect you. She knew her mother would most likely give you away at birth. She got Joe Blue Sky to help her to that cabin.”
Hogan couldn’t move, his heart pounding so hard in his chest that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. A chasm of pain opened and swallowed him. He looked at Ben, hated him, for keeping his mother away from him. “But you didn’t marry her. You couldn’t lower yourself, could you? A rich rancher’s son and a—”
Ben swallowed roughly. “I would have had a minister marry us, but Willow said a ceremony between us was what she wanted. That’s what we did, under a new moon. She knew old Aaron would cut at me— and he did later, when he found out, mad as blue blazes, but it didn’t matter. I tried to convince her that I’d leave, go anywhere to be with her. Hell, I was so green, I didn’t know the signs, and I was a cattleman, bred and true. I didn’t even know she was pregnant. There was no time to take her down the mountain to see a doctor— old Doc Coleman wouldn’t have treated her right anyway— you remember how he was, that bigot. She was too weak, a poor little pitiful girl, giving birth to my baby, my first son. I knew about calving and Joe knew about herbs, and between us, I think we eased her. Then you came out with a howl and a mop of black hair, and you were mine.... My son, hungry as a bear after a winter sleep. Willow faded out of life, but not before she made me promise—”
Hogan slammed his fist onto the pickup’s hood, the metallic sound echoing violently in the quiet country morning. “You were afraid to bring your bastard home—”
“I took you to Old Susan’s first. Not because I didn’t want you, but it seemed a woman might want a grandbaby from her daughter—and Willow was gone. I didn’t know anything about babies or women, and I wanted my son to know a woman’s softness. She slammed the door on us and left town. By the way, Old Susan died years ago— so I brought my son home to Kodiak land. I left no doubt in anyone’s mind that you were mine, a part of me. I didn’t know how to handle the woman part, how to tell you how sweet and caring she was…. Even as she died, she thought of you and of me. I didn’t know how to tell you in words. But you were mine.”
“You cold son of a bitch—” Hogan’s body was taut with the need to hit Ben, to make him pay for a lifetime of uncertainties and pain.
“I knew you’d take it hard. I should have told you right away, but you seemed so complete and strong. I was too young, too, but that’s no excuse for being a poor father. I’d been brought up to think that we had jobs to do.... Mine was to provide food and shelter for you, yours was to grow up. I buried her up there, where we’d been happy and where she wanted to lie. I promised to take care of her uncl
e, Joe Blue Sky, and I took you home. You were mine. My fine son.”
Anger slashed at Hogan, his hands shaking as he poured coffee and downed the hot fluid quickly, welcoming the burn. “That’s a simple story. You could have told me that long ago.”
“I was a boy when you were born. I had a crazy dying father, a twelve-thousand-acre ranch to run, horses to break, a baby son, and the whole works depended on me. Old Aaron had left his hard mark in me, but I take the blame. I didn’t know how to tell you that I— I loved you, to say the right words.”
“Did you love her? Or did you use her?” Hogan needed to take the knowledge inside him and weave it into sense. He’d lost a lifetime of knowing.
“Hell, yes, I loved her. My first sweetheart will always be with me. I see her every time I look at you.”
“You didn’t look at me that much.” Hogan’s statement was as brutal as he felt.
Ben stared off into the Crazy Mountains to that high moist meadow where he’d first met Willow digging camas roots in the old Indian way. “I didn’t know how to deal with the hole inside me, with losing the one piece of sunlight I’d had in my lifetime. And there you stood, a reminder of Willow, and how I should have done better by her.”
Hogan was startled by the deep emotion in his father’s rough voice. In his lifetime, Hogan could not remember Ben speaking as frankly about love. “Old Aaron must have liked that— an Indian grandson. Black hair and black eyes in a blue-eyed, blond family.”
Ben’s smile was wry. “Not much. You did stand out in the crowd. A nice straight, tall strong boy— solid, good judgment, and a heart that was kinder than old Aaron’s or mine. Animals sensed that about you, even when you were a pup, and they’d come to you. Made him mad as hell to see a foal tagging after you when it wouldn’t come to him for an apple. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He was already sick.... I think his hatred of everything and everyone ate him to death. He needed me to take care of him, and I’d have left if he’d made me choose between my son and the Bar K.”