Perhaps it was the fact that she absorbed everything he taught her like a sponge. Or that she didn’t mind getting her hands dirty. Or ruining an expensive silk shirt. Or eating supper at the kitchen table when he was idiot enough to suggest that that was how they did things at Hawk’s Way.
He wondered what would have happened if he had taken her up on her offer three years ago. What if he had made love to her—really made love to her—both giving and accepting the love she offered in return?
Garth felt his stomach clench and recognized the feeling as cold, stark fear. He had seen how his mother’s unfaithfulness eventually destroyed his father. The old man had gotten drunk every night to forget the pain. One day he hadn’t quite sobered up before he went to work and had come off a bucking horse and broken his neck. Garth had been left with the responsibility of holding both Hawk’s Way and the family together.
Garth had made a vow that he would never let himself care for any woman enough that she could destroy him the way his father had been destroyed. In the years since his mother’s infidelity he hadn’t allowed himself to even think of a woman in terms of love.
Until he had met Candy Baylor.
Garth hadn’t realized the emptiness, the loneliness he had felt over the past three years until she came back into his life. It was getting harder every day to convince himself that all he felt for her was desire.
Which made him all the more convinced that what he ought to do was get her bedded and out of his life before his feelings for her made him as vulnerable to a broken heart as his father had been.
Garth considered leaving Candy where she was. One look at the awkward angle of her neck convinced him that if he did, she wouldn’t be much use to him in the morning. He slid one arm under her shoulders and scooped up her legs with the other. As he stood, she rolled down his arms and settled against his chest. Her face burrowed against him, and she said something unintelligible in her sleep.
In vain, Garth fought the feelings of possessiveness and protectiveness that rose within him. He hugged her a little closer and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Come on, sweetheart. It’s time for bed.”
“Good night,” she mumbled.
He carried her up the stairs and down the hall. The hardest thing he had ever done in his life was to stop at her bedroom door rather than traveling two steps farther to his own. He reached out with two fingers and dragged the spread off the bed before he laid her on it. She immediately curled into a ball on her side and murmured a sigh of satisfaction.
He would have loved to undress her, but he didn’t trust his willpower that far. He pulled the spread back up over her shoulder, set the alarm clock beside the bed for 5:00 a.m. and left the room, closing the door behind him.
The next morning, the look on Candy’s face was sheepish when she arrived in the kitchen for breakfast.
“Did you put me to bed?” she asked Garth.
Garth grunted his assent.
“Thank you. I guess I fell asleep. I’m sorry to be a bother.”
“Next time go to bed when you’re tired,” he said.
Candy winced at the irritation in his voice.
“Did you learn anything?” he asked.
Candy gave him an excited recitation on equine digestion that ended with, “I had no idea all of that went on inside a horse.”
Garth couldn’t help smiling at her enthusiasm. She talked the whole distance to the barn and asked surprisingly astute questions as he and one of the hands, a young man named Tom Handy, fed the horses in the stable.
“Who feeds the horses in the north pasture?” she asked.
“Tom will take care of that. We’ve got other business to do today.”
“Oh?”
“How would you like to take a turn on Stop and Go?”
Candy stared at him. “You’re going to let me ride him?”
“I’d rather you started with a horse who knows what he’s doing while I teach you the basics. Then I’ll give you a horse of your own to bring along from scratch,” Garth explained.
Candy hadn’t expected to be allowed to work one of Garth’s horses so soon. Although when she thought about it, how else was Garth going to teach her to train cutting horses except to put her on an animal and give her instructions about what she was doing right and wrong?
Two hours later, Candy was having second thoughts about riding, cutting horses and Garth Whitelaw, in that order.
Garth touched her constantly. All under the guise of teaching her, of course. The position of her hands, the angle of her heels, the shape of her shoulders, nothing escaped his notice. When he wasn’t touching her, he was barking orders.
“When the cow goes, you go. When the cow stops, you stop. Back the horse up to reinforce the stop!”
Candy had grabbed the saddle horn and hung on, using her knees to let the horse know what she wanted from him.
“Stay down in the saddle. Push your pelvis forward. Not like that! Hold up there.”
Garth marched out to her and put a hand on her rear end and a hand on her belly. “Tuck in your rear end. Sit deep in the saddle and stay with the horse’s movement. Understand?”
Candy was so flustered by the feel of Garth’s hands on her where no other man had ever dared put them, that she couldn’t find her voice to object.
“Understand?” he demanded.
Candy nodded. “You can take your hands off me now.”
Garth seemed to realize suddenly where his hands were. To Candy’s chagrin he drew them away slowly, making his touch a caress. She closed her eyes and bit her lip to keep from moaning.
When she opened her eyes again, Garth was on the other side of the fence. Apparently he had recognized the danger, as well.
“Concentrate on getting the horse to travel with the cow. Keep his head aimed at the cow’s shoulder.”
Candy nudged Stop and Go with her knees.
“Don’t pressure the cow!” Garth warned.
Candy backed the horse off slightly.
“Now you’re too late!” Garth remonstrated. “Travel with the cow. Travel with the cow!”
Candy was more exhausted than Stop and Go when the training session was over, but she believed both she and the horse were doing better. She waited for a word of praise from Garth. It didn’t come.
“Unsaddle him and wash him down,” Garth ordered. “When you get done come back, and you can watch me with the two-year-old I’m working.”
“Yes, sir, your highness,” Candy muttered as she rode past Garth out of the corral.
She hadn’t thought she had spoken loud enough to be heard. An instant later Garth had yanked her out of the saddle, and she was standing on the ground in front of him.
“There’s no royalty around here, sweetheart. Just hard-working cowboys. If you’ve got a problem with that, we can finish the business between ourselves, and you can skedaddle on home.”
Garth emphasized his point by pulling Candy into his arms and kissing her hard. Candy kept her teeth clenched, but he used his hands on her cheeks to force her mouth open so he could thrust his tongue inside. He wasn’t gentle, and she had the feeling he wanted her to fight him.
Candy was smarter than that. She kissed him back. She slipped her tongue into his mouth and tasted him the way he had tasted her. It was a toss-up which of them was more surprised by what she had done. Desire speared through her, powerful and demanding.
She forced herself to think, rather than feel. This was a war of nerves as much as a seduction. She was determined not to succumb to the desire that demanded satisfaction. If anybody cried uncle, it wasn’t going to be her.
Every place Garth touched her, she touched him back.
Shoulders. Arms. Chest. Buttocks.
Both of them were gasping when he broke the kiss at last.
“Damn you, girl! You’ve left that horse standing there with the sweat drying on him. Take care of him!”
Candy was furious at Garth’s accusation. He was as much responsible for t
he horse being left unattended as she was. But she wasn’t about to lose her temper and give Garth a reason either to send her packing or seduce her further. “Next time stay out of my way!” she snapped as she crossed past him.
Garth stared after Candy as she picked up the reins and led the cutting horse back around behind the barn. He was shaken by how close he had come to having her right here in the open. Never had he become aroused so quickly or so completely from a woman’s touch. When he was with her he felt like he was riding the edge of a steep cliff. It wasn’t going to take much more to shove him off.
Similar thoughts were running through Candy’s mind. She had never understood the power of her passions. It wasn’t the least bit comforting to know that all Garth had to do was touch her and she responded. From the way things had gone today, every lesson was going to be a trial.
Over the next several weeks Candy realized that she had been mistaken about her feelings for Garth. To her horror, she discovered that the infatuation she had felt for him at seventeen wasn’t gone at all. It had always been there, buried somewhere beneath the embarrassment and humiliation she had suffered that evening in his arms.
Every time Garth touched her—and he touched her as often as he could find an excuse—she was forced to deal not only with her body’s instant reaction to his physical presence, but the growing knowledge that her heart and mind were equally involved with the man.
Candy knew the day was coming when Garth would push her too far, and she would have to make a choice. Candy couldn’t decide whether it would hurt more to make love to him when she knew he didn’t love her, or to leave and know that she could never come back.
During breakfast on the Fourth of July, Charlie One Horse announced that he was spending the holiday in Amarillo where he could see the parade and the fireworks.
“You two wanta come along?” Charlie asked.
“We’ve got work to do,” Garth answered him.
Candy laughed. “It’s a holiday. Surely we can—” The fierce look in Garth’s dark eyes cut her off.
Garth turned to Charlie and said, “We’ll be staying here.”
Charlie shrugged. “Suit yourselves.”
When Candy heard Charlie’s rattletrap truck heading down the magnolia-lined lane, a frisson of alarm ran down her spine. It dawned on her suddenly that the old man had provided a much-needed buffer between her and Garth. Now that buffer was gone.
The difference was immediately noticeable. There was a subtle tension between them that made the horses skittish. Stop and Go performed badly, and Candy had to bite her tongue to keep from apologizing for what wasn’t her fault.
“That’s enough.”
Garth’s order, coming as it did long before sunset, told Candy she wasn’t the only one who had noticed the difference. He followed her inside and watched her with hooded eyes while she unsaddled the horse and put away the tack. Then, for the first time since she had come to Hawk’s Way, Garth joined her when she took Stop and Go out back to rinse him off.
Naturally, with Garth watching her, Candy was all thumbs.
“I’ll do that,” he volunteered.
Candy gratefully handed him the hose and was surprised when he turned it on her.
She stared at him aghast. Water dripped from her eyelashes, nose and chin. Her blouse was plastered to her body. “What did you do that for?” she spluttered.
Garth grinned. “I figured you needed to cool off, too.”
It only took Candy two seconds to reach Garth and another two seconds to wrestle the hose in his direction. The two of them drenched each other, laughing over who was getting the wettest.
“We’d better go get dried off,” Garth said at last.
Candy followed the direction of his gaze. She looked down and realized he could see her bra through her shirt. From the avid look in Garth’s eyes, she knew he was seeing more than a hint of lace. If she could see his nipples through his soaked shirt, she suspected her bra wasn’t doing a much better job of keeping her concealed. A flush rose from her throat to stain her cheeks.
Candy decided that going into the house with Garth right now wasn’t such a good idea. “What about Stop and Go? We can’t leave him here like this.”
“Tom can take care of him.”
Candy froze. It was unheard of for Garth to leave an animal untended that either of them had ridden.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Garth held out his hand to Candy. There was no mistaking where he was taking her, or what he had in mind when he got there. This was it, Candy thought, the moment of truth. Should she go with him, or dig in her heels and stay where she was? It was a decision she had been dreading for weeks.
She knew there might be pain waiting for her at the end of the road. Garth had rejected her love once before. But there was no denying the strength of her feelings, then or now. When all was said and done, Candy followed her heart. She placed her hand in Garth’s. When a woman was in love, there really wasn’t any choice at all.
CHAPTER FIVE
Garth headed straight for the house. They were both drenched, so to avoid leaving two sets of wet tracks on the tile floor in the kitchen or on the hardwood throughout the rest of the house, he lifted Candy into his arms and headed upstairs. He didn’t even hesitate when he passed her bedroom door, just continued on to his own.
Garth set her down with her back to him and put his hands on her shoulders. Whether he did it to comfort her or to keep her from fleeing she wasn’t sure.
Candy had never been in Garth’s room, but she looked at it now, searching for anything that would tell her about the man she loved.
The first thing she noticed was how neat it was. That didn’t really surprise her. Garth was a man who liked to be in control. He would want things where he could find them.
She was glad to see the pictures of his family, his sister and brothers, in frames on the various wooden surfaces around the room. There was also a picture of an older man, whom she supposed was Garth’s father. She wondered why there was no picture of his mother.
Candy found hope in the fact that family was important to Garth. It was proof that he could care for people as much as he cared about horses. Whether he could love one woman and commit himself to her for a lifetime was another matter altogether.
His room was full of antiques, pieces of Whitelaw history that had been handed down from father to son. She had never doubted that Garth valued the traditions of his family. Which made her wonder whether he had ever considered how he could pass on those traditions to another generation of Whitelaws when he had so little respect for women and no use at all for a wife.
He slept in a huge four-poster bed covered with a patterned quilt. She stared at the bed, unable to take her eyes off it.
“Candy?”
His voice was low, intense, as demanding as it was challenging.
She suddenly had second thoughts about what she had come here to do. “I suppose there have been a lot of women in this bed.”
“Yes, there have.”
Candy’s heart dropped to her feet as she thought of all the women Garth must have brought here.
“My mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother—”
Her heart swelled with joy. So this bed was reserved for Whitelaw women. Surely the fact that he had brought her to this room, to this bed, meant he felt something special for her. And maybe, just maybe, she would be able to get him to admit those feelings.
Candy turned slowly to face Garth. In his dark eyes, whether he knew it or not, was a need so fierce it sent a shiver of anticipation running through her.
“Make love to me, Garth.”
He had been in such a hurry to get them here, she expected him to be impatient. Candy wouldn’t have been surprised if he had simply ripped off her clothes and taken her in a fury of desire. It was infinitely worse waiting the endless moments it took him to undo her shirt one button at a time.
The wet cotton clung to her skin as he pushed the shirt
off her shoulders. Candy shrugged and tugged at the sleeves to help him rid her of the garment.
With practiced hands he unsnapped the catch of her bra and pushed it out of his way—reminding her how experienced he was and how little she knew about what was to come. She caught his wrist when he reached for the zipper of her jeans.
“Your turn,” she said in a shaky voice. Candy reached up and began unbuttoning his shirt. Her fingers were trembling, so it took longer than it should have, but he didn’t interfere with her efforts. At long last the buttons were free, and she reached up to shove the shirt off his shoulders. Her hands skimmed across flesh that was smooth and warm. She felt his muscles bunch beneath her fingertips in response to her touch.
Intrigued by Garth’s reaction, she slid her hands across his chest, playing with the dark curls there. They formed a triangle that headed down into jeans that hung low on his hips. His belly contracted as she skimmed past it.
He grabbed her wrists with enough strength that she shot a surprised look at him. His dark eyes were hooded, his nostrils flared for the scent of her, his facial muscles taut.
“Did I do something wrong?” Candy asked.
“I want to take my time,” he said. “The way you were heading, things would have been over too damn fast.”
Candy shivered again, only this time from the chill caused by the air-conditioning on her damp skin.
“Come on.” Garth took her hand and led her toward a large, modern bathroom attached to his bedroom. Before Candy could object he had both her and himself completely stripped. She caught one quick—and somewhat awe-inspiring—glimpse of aroused male before he propelled her into the shower and followed after her.
The warm water felt wonderful. Candy closed her eyes and luxuriated in the feel of it on her back and shoulders. Her eyes blinked open when she felt Garth’s hands on her as well. Every feeling was new and exquisite, and yet it felt so right to be here with him that she welcomed each sensation.
Hawk's Way: Garth Page 5