by Diana Palmer
Unwilling to wait for a flight out, Cag had a company Learjet pick him up at the Jacobsville airport and fly him straight to St. Louis.
It was the dinner hour by the time Cag checked into a hotel and changed into a nice suit. He had dinner at the restaurant where Tess worked and ordered biscuits.
The waiter gave him an odd look, but Cag refused to be swayed by offers of delicate pastries. The waiter gave in, shrugged and took the order.
“With apple butter,” Cag added politely. He had experience enough of good restaurants to know that money could buy breakfast at odd hours if a wealthy customer wanted it and was willing to pay for the extra trouble.
The waiter relayed the order to Tess, who went pale and had to hold on to the counter for support.
“Describe the customer to me,” she asked curtly.
The waiter, surprised, obliged her and saw the pale face go quite red with temper.
“He found me, did he? And now he thinks I’ll cook him biscuits at this hour of the night!”
The assistant manager, hearing Tess’s raised voice, came quickly over to hush her.
“The customer at table six wants biscuits and apple butter,” the waiter said with resignation. “Miss Brady is unsettled.”
“Table six?” The assistant manager frowned. “Yes, I saw him. He’s dressed very expensively. If the man wants biscuits, bake him biscuits,” he told Tess. “If he’s influential, he could bring in more business.”
Tess took off her chef’s hat and put it on the counter. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work here, but I have to leave now. I make biscuits for breakfast. I don’t make them for supper.”
She turned and walked out the back door, to the astonishment of the staff.
The waiter was forced to relay the information to Cag, whose eyes twinkled.
“Well, in that case, I’ll have to go and find her,” he said, rising. “Nobody makes biscuits like Tess.”
He left the man there, gaping, and went back to his hired car. With luck, he could beat Tess to her apartment.
And he did, with only seconds to spare as she got off the downtown bus and walked up the steps to her second-floor apartment.
Cag was standing there, leaning against the door. He looked worn and very tired, but his eyes weren’t hostile at all. They were…strange.
He studied her closely, not missing the new lines in her face and the thinner contours of her body.
“You aren’t cut out for restaurant work,” he said quietly.
“Well, I’m not doing it anymore, thanks to you. I just quit!” she said belligerently, but her heart was racing madly at the sight of him. She’d missed him so badly that her eyes ached to look at him. But he’d hurt her. The wound was still fresh, and the sight of him rubbed salt in it. “Why are you here?” she continued curtly. “You said you’d had enough of me, didn’t you?” she added, referring to what he’d said that hurt most.
He actually winced. “I said a lot of stupid things,” he replied slowly. “I won’t expect you to overlook them, and I’ll apologize for every one, if you’ll give me a chance to.”
She seemed to droop. “Oh, what’s the point, Callaghan?” she asked wearily. “I left. You’ve got what you wanted all along, a house without me in it. Why don’t you go home?”
He sighed. He’d known it wouldn’t be easy. He leaned his forearm against the wall and momentarily rested his head there while he tried to think of a single reason that would get Tess back on the ranch.
“Mrs. Lewis can’t make biscuits,” he said. He glanced at her. “We’re all starving to death on what passes for her cooking. The roses are dying,” he added, playing every card he had.
“It’s been so dry,” she murmured. Blue eyes met his. “Haven’t you watered them?”
He made a rough sound. “I don’t know anything about roses.”
“But they’ll die,” she said, sounding plaintive. “Two of them are old roses. Antiques. They’re precious, and not because of the cost.”
“Welll,” he drawled, “if you want to save them, you better come home.”
“Not with you there!” she said haughtily.
He smiled with pure self-condemnation. “I was afraid you’d feel that way.”
“I don’t want to come back.”
“Too rich to bother with work that’s beneath your new station?” he asked sarcastically, because he was losing and he couldn’t bear to.
She grimaced. “Well, there isn’t going to be any money, actually,” she said. “The stocks are worthless. My mother made a bad investment and lost a million dollars.” She laughed but it sounded hollow. “I’ll always have to work for my living. But, then, I always expected to. I never really thought she’d leave anything to me. She hated me.”
“Maybe she hated herself for having deserted you, did you think of that?” he asked gently. “She couldn’t love you without having to face what she’d done, and live with it. Some people would rather be alone, than admit fault.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But what difference does it make now? She’s dead. I’ll never know what she felt.”
“Would you like to know what I feel?” he asked in a different tone.
She searched his eyes coolly. “I already know. I’m much too young for you. Besides, I’m a weakness that you can’t tolerate. And I lie,” she added shortly. “You said so.”
He stuck his hands deep into his pockets and stared at her with regret. “Leo told me the wedding was all his idea.”
“Of course you’d believe your brother. You just wouldn’t believe me.”
His chest rose and fell. “Yes, that’s how it was,” he admitted, not bothering to lie about it. “I made you run away. Then I couldn’t find you.” His black eyes glittered. “You’ll never know how that felt.”
“Sure I know,” she returned grimly. “It felt just the same as when you walked out the door and didn’t come back all night!”
He leaned against the wall wearily. He’d avoided the subject, walked around it, worried it to death. Now here it was. He lifted his gaze to her face. “I wanted you too badly to come home,” he said. “I couldn’t have kept my hands off you. So I spent the night in the bunkhouse.”
“Gee, thanks for saving me,” she muttered.
He stood erect with one of those lightning moves that once had intimidated her. “I should have come home and ravished you!” he said shortly. “At least you’d still be there now. You’d have been too weak to walk when I got through with you!”
She caught her breath. “Well!”
He moved forward and took her by the shoulders. He shook her gently. “Listen, redhead, I love you!” he said through his teeth, and never had a man looked less loverlike. “I want you, I need you and you’re going home with me or I’ll…”
Her breath was suspended somewhere south of her collarbone. “Or you’ll what?” she asked.
He eased her back against the door and bent to her mouth. “Or you’ll get what you escaped when I left you that night.”
She lifted her mouth to his, relaxing under his weight as he pinned her there and kissed her so hungrily that she moaned. She clung to him. The past weeks had been so empty, so lonely. Cag was here, in her arms, saying that he loved her, and it wasn’t a dream!
After a few feverish seconds, he forced himself to lift away from her.
“Let’s go inside,” he said in a tortured voice.
She only nodded. She fumbled her key into the lock and apparently he closed and locked it behind them. He didn’t even turn on a light. He picked her up, purse and all, and carried her straight into the bedroom.
“Amazing how you found this room so easily when you’ve never been in here before,” she whispered shakily as he laid her on the bed and began to remove everything that was in the way of his hands.
“Nesting instinct,” he whispered, his hands urgent.
“Is that what it is?” She reached up, pushing at his jacket.
“First thi
ngs first,” he murmured, resisting her hands. When he had her out of her clothes, he started on his own.
Minutes later, he was beside her in the bed, but he did nothing about it, except to pull her completely against him and wrap her up under the covers.
“Oh, dear God,” he groaned reverently as he held her close. “Tess, I was so afraid that I’d lost you! I couldn’t have borne it.”
She melted into him, aware of the stark arousal of his body. But he wasn’t doing anything about it.
“I don’t like being alone,” she replied, nuzzling her face against his warm, bare chest.
“You won’t be, ever again.” His hands smoothed over her back. One eased between them to lie gently against her stomach. “How are you feeling?” he asked suddenly.
She knew what he was asking. “I don’t think I’m pregnant.” She answered the question he hadn’t put into words. “I’m tired a lot, but that could be work stress.”
“But you could be.”
She smiled against him. If this was a dream, she hoped she didn’t wake up too soon. “I guess so.” She sighed. “Why? Nesting instinct?”
He chuckled. “Yes. I’m thirty-eight. I’d love kids. So would you. You could grow them along with your precious roses.”
She stiffened. “My roses! Oh, Cag…!”
His intake of breath was audible. “That’s the first time you’ve ever shortened my name.”
“You didn’t belong to me before,” she said shyly.
His arms tightened. “And now I do?”
She hesitated. “I hope so.”
“I know so. And you belong to me.” He moved so that she was on her back. “I’ve been rough with you. Even the first time. Tonight, it’s going to be so slow and silky sweet that you won’t know your name by the time I’ve satisfied you.” He bent and touched his mouth with exquisite tenderness to her parted lips.
“How conceited,” she teased daringly.
He chuckled with a worldliness she couldn’t match. “And we’ll see about that….”
It was unexpectedly tender this time, a feast of exquisite touches and rhythms that progressed far too slowly for the heat he roused in her slim young body. She arched toward him and he retreated. He touched her and just as she trembled on the brink of ecstasy, he stopped touching her and calmed her. Then he started again.
On and on it went, so that time seemed to hang, suspended, around them. He taught her how to touch him, how to build the need and then deny it. She moaned with frustration, and he chuckled with pure joy.
When he heard her sob under the insistent pressure of his mouth, he gave in to the hunger. But even then, he resisted her clinging hands, her whispered pleadings.
“Make it last,” he whispered at her open mouth, lazily moving against her. “Make it last as long as you can. When it happens, you’ll understand why I won’t let you be impatient.”
She was shuddering already, throbbing. She met the downward motion of his hips with upward movements of her own, her body one long plea for satisfaction.
“It’s so…good,” she whispered, her words pulsing with the rhythm of his body, the same throb in her voice that was in her limbs. “So good…!”
“It gets better,” he breathed. He moved sinuously against her, a new movement that was so arousing that she cried out and clung to him with bruising fingers. “There?” he whispered. “Yes. There. And here….”
She was sobbing audibly. Her whole body ached. It was expanding, tense, fearsome, frightening. She was never going to live through it. She was blind, deaf, dumb, so much a part of him that she breathed only through him.
He felt her frantic motions, heard the shuddering desire in her voice as she begged him not to stop. He obliged her with smooth, quick, deep motions that were like stabs of pure pleasure. She closed her eyes and her teeth ground together as the tension suddenly built to unbearable heights and she arched up to him with her last ounce of strength.
“Yes. Now. Now, finally, now!” he said tightly.
There was no time. She went over some intangible edge and fell, throbbing with pleasure, burning with it, so oblivious to her surroundings that she had no idea where she was. She felt the urge deep in her body, growing, swelling, exploding. At some level she was aware of a harsh groan from the man above her, of the fierce convulsion of his body that mirrored what was happening to hers.
She lost consciousness for a few precious seconds of unbearable pleasure, and then sobbed fiercely as she lost it even as it began.
He held her, comforted her. His mouth touched her eyes, her cheeks, her open mouth. Her body was still locked closely into his, and when she was able to open her eyes, she saw his pupils dilated, glittering with the remnants of passion.
“Do you know that I love you, after that,” he whispered unsteadily, “or would you like to hear it a few dozen more times?”
She managed to shake her head. “I…felt it,” she whispered back, and blushed as she realized just how close they were. “I love you, too. But you knew that already.”
“Yes,” he replied tenderly, brushing back her damp, curly hair. “I knew it the first time you let me touch you.” He smiled softly at her surprise. “You were so very innocent, Tess. Not at all the sort of girl who’d permit liberties like that to just any man. It had to be love for you.”
“It wasn’t for you,” she said quietly. “Not at first.”
“Oh, yes, it was,” he denied. His fingers lingered near her ear. “I started fighting you the day you walked into the kitchen. I wanted you so badly that I ached every time I looked at you.” He smiled ruefully. “I was so afraid that you’d realize it.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” she asked.
His fingers contracted. “Because of the bad experience I had with a younger woman who threw me over because she thought I was too old for her.” His shoulders moved. “You were even younger than she was at the time.” His eyes were dark, concerned. “I was in over my head almost at once, and I thought I’d never be enough for you…”
“Are you nuts?” she gasped. “Enough for me? You’re too much for me, most of the time! I can’t match you. Especially like this. I don’t know anything!”
“You’re learning fast,” he mused, looking down their joined bodies in the light from the night-light. “And you love like a poem,” he whispered. “I love the way you feel in my arms like this. You make me feel like the best lover in the world.”
“You are,” she said shyly.
“Oh, no,” he argued. “It’s only because you don’t have anyone to compare me with.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” she said.
He touched her cheek gently. “I don’t guess it would,” he said then. “Because it’s like the first time, every time I’m with you. I can’t remember other women.”
She hit him. “You’d better not!”
He grinned. “Love me?”
She pressed close. “Desperately.”
“Try to get away again,” he invited. “You’re my wife. You’ll never get past the first fence.”
She traced a path on his shoulder and frowned. “I just thought of something. Where are your brothers?”
“Leo and Rey are in Denver.”
“What are they doing in Denver?” she asked.
He sighed. “Getting away from me. I’ve been sort of hard to get along with.”
“You don’t say! And that’s unusual?”
He pinched her lightly, making her squeal. “I’ll be a model of courtesy starting the minute we get home. I promise.”
Her arms curled around his neck. “When are we going home?”
He chuckled and moved closer, sensuous movements that began to have noticeable results. “Not right now….”
It was two days later when they got back to the Hart ranch. And they still hadn’t stopped smiling.
Tess had decided not to pursue her horticulture education just yet, because she couldn’t leave Cag when she’d only just really found him. That coul
d wait. So she had only one last tiny worry, about sleeping in the same room with an escaping Herman, although she loved Cag more than enough to tolerate his pet—in another bedroom.
But when she opened the door to Cag’s room, which she would now share, the big aquarium was gone. She turned to Cag with a worried expression.
He put his arms around her and drew her close, glad that his brothers and Mrs. Lewis hadn’t arrived just yet.
“Listen,” he said softly, “remember that nesting instinct I told you I had?”
She nodded.
“Well, even the nicest birds don’t keep a snake in the nest, where the babies are,” he said, and his whole face smiled tenderly as he said it.
She caught her breath. “But you love him!”
“I love you more,” he said simply. “I gave him to a friend of mine, who, coincidentally, has a female albino python. Speaking from experience, I can tell you that deep down any bachelor is far happier with a female of his own species than with any pet, no matter how cherished it is.”
She touched his cheek lovingly. “Thank you.”
He shrugged and smiled down at her. “I built the nest,” he reminded her. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Want me to fill it, huh?”
He grinned.
She hugged him close and smiled against his broad chest. “I’ll do my very best.” Her heart felt full unto bursting. “Cag, I’m so happy.”
“So am I, sweetheart.” He bent and kissed her gently. “And now, there’s just one more thing I need to make me the most contented man on earth.”
She looked up at him expectantly, with a wicked gleam in her blue eyes. “Is there? What is it?” she asked suggestively.
“A pan of biscuits!” he burst out. “A great, big pan of biscuits! With apple butter!”
“You fraud! You charlatan! Luring me back here because of your stomach instead of your…Cag!”
He was laughing like a devil as he picked her up and tossed her gently onto the bed.
“I never said I wouldn’t sing for my supper,” he murmured dryly, and his hands went to his shirt buttons as he stood over her.