“Before your engagement, a real gentleman would only kiss your hand.”
“Are you talking about a Boston gentleman or a Texas gentleman?”
She had him there. His Cousin Joseph would undoubtedly refrain from kissing his future wife until after their official engagement, but he knew that wasn’t true for his brothers. They weren’t the kind of men to scatter their kisses recklessly, but neither were they likely to be reserved once they became interested in a woman. Even Isabelle had confessed to kissing Jake quite a few times before she agreed to marry him. She joked that she had to try him out to make sure he wasn’t the terrible beast she thought him at first. Unfortunately, that excuse wouldn’t work for Bret.
“Even in Boston, lots of couples kiss without having to be engaged. Only men in families like yours and mine are that formal,” he said.
“Dad kissed Mama before they were engaged. It scandalized her family, but he did it anyway. Mama said she liked it. I remember them kissing a lot before she got sick.”
Jake and Isabelle kissed, too. It used to embarrass him, maybe even upset him a little. There was the natural impulse of boys to avoid anything like a public display of affection, but that wasn’t the reason for his discomfort. At first he told himself it wasn’t proper for adults to behave this way in front of their kids. Later he realized he was jealous that no one loved him enough to kiss him. It took him years to realize that every time he saw Jake and Isabelle kiss, it increased his determination to go back to Boston.
“Jake and Isabelle kiss a lot,” Bret said. “It made us boys uncomfortable, but my sister Drew thought it was wonderful.”
“Do you think kissing is wonderful?”
“Yes. It’s the perfect way for married people to show they love each other.”
“I don’t mean for other people. I mean for you.”
He liked it fine, but it had never been something he couldn’t resist. He had a feeling that wouldn’t be true with Emily. “I’ve never been in love.”
“I’m not talking about that. Ida told me men like holding hands, dancing, going for long walks, and kissing a girl even when they don’t want to marry her. Do you?”
“Yes.” He hadn’t done those things all that often, because he rarely had the time or money, but he had enjoyed them.
“Then you could like kissing me.”
He didn’t know why Emily was asking these questions. He’d expected her to stay so angry she’d hardly speak to him. What had he missed that could account for the change? “Why would you want me to kiss you?”
“I already told you.”
“Then ask somebody you know.”
“I can’t ask Lonnie or any of the cowhands.”
“But why me?”
“Because you don’t like me. Even if you did, you’ll be going back to Boston, and I’ll never see you again.”
“I do like you.” Bret knew he shouldn’t have said that, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“I didn’t know that.” She sounded surprised, even a little embarrassed. “Why? I’m stubborn. I get angry and say things I shouldn’t. I didn’t treat you very well when I first met you. Why would you like somebody like me?”
Bret felt himself relax. “I’m also stubborn. I get angry and have to almost strangle myself to keep from saying things I shouldn’t. I wasn’t nice to you when we first met. And I’m trying to talk you into doing something you don’t want to do.”
“I’m trying to talk you into doing something you don’t want to do, too.”
“I never said I didn’t want to kiss you.” Damn! That was the last thing he should have said. Why was he losing his control?
“Then will you kiss me?”
He didn’t know what had gotten into Emily, but he had two choices. He could either refuse to talk about this any longer and go to bed, or he could kiss her, get it out of her system, and they could both go to sleep.
The logical and safe answer was to go to bed and refuse even to talk about it any longer. Her father wouldn’t like it if he knew. His uncle and cousin would run him out of Boston, and Lonnie would shoot him. He would be leaving before long, so a sensible person wouldn’t do anything to cause trouble.
But he was tired of being sensible, of following the rules and getting nowhere. He wanted to kiss her. He’d been thinking about it almost from the time he first saw her. Forget that she was lovely. Or that she had the kind of body that would fit perfectly into a man’s arms. He admired her courage if not her stubbornness, her ability if not her tendency to assume the worst about him. He also liked her loyalty, even though it was sometimes misplaced, her youthful innocence, and her sense of responsibility.
When all was said and done, he did want to kiss her.
“Okay, but you’ve got to agree to stop before we go too far.”
“All I want is to know how to interpret different kisses. It’s like a lesson in school.”
Not in any school he’d ever attended! Heaving a fatalistic sigh, he got to his feet. “It’ll be easier if we stand.”
He reached out to help Emily, but she scrambled to her feet without waiting for him. He hoped it was nervousness, but he had a sinking feeling it was eagerness. Her attitude was flattering but a little frightening. And it made him want to kiss her all the more.
“The first one I’ll show you is the formal kiss,” Bret said. He took Emily’s hand and kissed it.
“Why would a man do that?” Much to his shock and amusement, she wiped the back of her hand on her skirt. “It feels weird. Do men really do that?”
“Not everybody, but it’s considered very elegant.”
“Well, I don’t like it. What’s the next one?”
“The friendly kiss,” Bret said. He hoped his voice didn’t shake and betray his nervousness. “It’s perfectly acceptable with relatives—cousins, uncles, grandfathers—but it’s also acceptable with good friends. Depending upon circumstances, it can be acceptable during a courtship.”
He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. As kisses went, it was almost nothing, a mere brushing of his lips against her cheek, but shock waves rocked him and he felt like he might lose his balance.
“Have you kissed a lot of women like that?” Emily asked.
“I haven’t kissed a lot of women,” Bret said, wondering if he was being truthful because he wanted to be or because his brain couldn’t control his tongue.
“Why not? Don’t you like women?”
“I like women very much, but gentlemen don’t go around kissing lots of women.”
“It sounds rather boring to me.”
It had been, but he’d been so focused on his work he hadn’t had time to realize how bored and lonely he was. He’d certainly never met anyone like Emily.
“What’s next?” Emily asked.
“Some variations on the friendly kiss.” Bret leaned forward and planted a kiss on her forehead, then one on her nose.
“Ugh!” Emily rubbed her nose vigorously. “Do people really do that?”
Despite the tension building inside him, Bret laughed. “The kiss on the nose is usually for children or close cousins, but the kiss on the forehead is quite popular, especially with older relatives.”
“My cousins or older relatives don’t count,” Emily said, dismissing the Abercrombie family in a single gesture. Bret wondered if he shouldn’t do the same with the Abbotts. “I want to know what a man who likes a woman does.”
“The rest of the kisses are more personal,” Bret said. “They’re placed on the mouth.”
“I know. I saw my mother and father kiss. I even saw Ida and Charlie on occasion. Ida said Charlie’s not a good kisser. Are you a good kisser?”
Bret didn’t know when he’d been in such a potentially dangerous situation where he was exercising so little control. “I’m only doing this to show you the different kinds of kisses, not demonstrate my ability.”
“Well, it would be helpful to know if you’re good. How will I be able to judge other m
en if I don’t know how you measure up against them?”
Bret knew that if he had any sense, he’d put Emily on her horse and take her back to the ranch despite the dark. “Women don’t go around judging men on how they kiss.”
“Why not? We judge them on everything else. How tall, strong, attractive, nice, well-mannered, rich—”
“I get the point. Look, here’s how a man will kiss a woman he likes but isn’t yet ready to marry her.”
Bret grasped Emily by the arms and kissed her lightly on the mouth. He pulled back, but she just stood there, lips puckered. A moment later she opened her eyes.
“Is that all?” she asked.
“Y-yes.” Bret was stunned. No woman had ever responded like that before.
“That kiss wouldn’t tell me whether he liked me better than his horse.” She sounded thoroughly disgusted. “If that’s the only kind of kissing men do, no wonder women don’t like it much.”
“Those are just the polite kisses. When a man kisses a woman and means it, it’s something she’ll never forget.” Bret would never have done what he did next if his pride hadn’t been wounded . . . and his manhood threatened. He put his arms around Emily, pulled her into an embrace, and kissed her on the mouth with passion.
The moment Bret’s lips touched Emily’s, any control he might have had went out the window. Mother Nature took over and rode him hard with whip and spur.
He was barely conscious of what he was doing, only of the effect that holding Emily in his arms had on him. The feel of her thighs pressed hard against his loins sent sexual energy thundering into that part of his body. Instinctively his arms tightened around her until her breasts pressed hard against his chest. The heat that flowed from her body was hot enough to scorch him.
But it was the feel of her lips on his that nearly undid him. He’d thought about kissing Emily. He’d even dreamed about it once, but he’d never expected it to happen. Not only had it happened now, but it was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. He wasn’t merely kissing her. He felt joined with her; energy flowed between them with the violence of a spring flood. He’d been drawn into the kiss with such force, he felt helpless to do anything except follow where he was led. When her lips parted—probably in shock rather than in invitation—he didn’t hesitate to invade her mouth with his tongue. He realized he’d never really kissed anyone before, never really tasted a woman, never really understood at a visceral level what it meant to hold one in his arms. The reality nearly drained him of all strength.
It wasn’t until they had pulled far enough apart to look into each other’s eyes that he realized the kiss had ended.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. A thousand thoughts blazed through his mind, leaving no trace but the feeling that everything had changed. Emily looked stunned, as if she didn’t know quite what to believe about what had just happened.
“That’s the kind of kiss a man gives a woman he cares about.” Bret’s voice was so weak, he wasn’t sure Emily could hear him. He realized he still had his arms around her, was holding her against his body. He slowly released her and stepped back. “You should never let a man kiss you like that unless he wants to marry you.” He took a deep breath. “Even better, don’t let him kiss you like that until after the wedding.”
“Why did you kiss me like that?” Emily asked.
“You wanted me to show you what kisses were like. You said—”
“Was that all you were doing, teaching me a lesson?”
He wasn’t sure what he was doing. He’d wanted to kiss her, but he hadn’t expected anything like that. Either he had a thousand answers or none at all. “That’s what you asked me to do.”
“Can you kiss a woman like that anytime you want?”
He would have given practically everything he possessed to know what was going through her mind. Did she like the kiss? Was she horrified to have let him treat her like that? Did she believe he was a shallow man who would kiss any woman who let him, making promises he had no intention of keeping?
“I’ve never kissed anyone like that before.”
He wondered if it was wise to tell her the truth. Hell, he wasn’t sure it was smart for him to know it. He should have been putting the whole thing out of his mind, treating it like a bad experiment. He should have been remembering how he’d put the success of his errand as well as his future at Abbott & Abercrombie in jeopardy. He should have been thinking about how to convince Emily this whole thing was entirely meaningless to him. Knowing it wasn’t cut the ground out from under him.
“Why did you kiss me like that?” she repeated.
“No man likes to be told his kisses are forgettable, not to say regrettable.” It was a safe answer and had the virtue of being part of the truth.
“It didn’t feel like a challenge. It felt like you liked it.”
Hell and damnation! Emily never might have been kissed, but she’d seen right through him. Nothing now would serve but the truth.
“I did like it, but it’s something we can never do again.”
“Why not?”
Surely she knew the answer to that. Why did she insist on making him put it into words? “You’re a wealthy young woman who’s a member of a very important family. You deserve a husband who’s your equal. You won’t have that if you go around kissing men like me.”
“You’re part of an important family.”
“I’m not rich, I’m not powerful, and my family would be delighted if I never came back from Texas. Now it’s time for us to go to sleep. We have a lot of riding to do tomorrow. I’ll take the horses down to the creek for a last drink of water.”
He turned and left before she had the chance to ask him anything else. All he needed was half an excuse and he’d take her back in his arms and make sure she could never like another man’s kisses, another man’s arms. He kept walking because he knew if he did that, it could end up hurting Emily. That was something he never wanted to do.
He pulled the stakes tethering their mounts out of the ground and headed toward the shallow creek a hundred feet away. The horses followed, their shod feet sending muted metallic sounds into the night as their iron shoes encountered small stones. They waded into the stream, sank their muzzless into the water, and drank deeply.
It almost made him feel as if he were back at Jake’s ranch, sleeping out by himself, watering his horse before turning in. The work had been hard and physically tiring. But no matter how drained he felt at the end of the day, there was something about being outside under the open sky that leached away the tension and enabled him to relax, sleep well, and be refreshed in the morning. He remembered looking forward to getting back to the ranch and being part of the rough-and-tumble family Jake and Isabelle had cobbled together.
He pulled the horses away from the water. But as he walked back to camp, he didn’t feel that old sense of relaxation, the feeling of being at ease with the world. Emily was there. After that kiss, he knew she was the greatest danger he’d ever faced.
Chapter Twelve
Emily hurried to slip into her bedroll before Bret returned. She wanted him to believe she was asleep so she wouldn’t have to say anything to him. She was embarrassed, confused, and excited, not a condition conducive to clear thoughts or the ability to express them in a way that would explain what had happened in the last half hour.
She didn’t know what had gotten into her. She’d never done anything like that before. If he’d tried to kiss her without being asked, she’d have slapped him. Instead, when he’d been a perfect gentleman and tried to talk her out of this madness, she’d practically forced him to kiss her. She didn’t know what Ida or her father would say, but she was glad neither of them would ever know. It was bad enough that she knew, and worse that Bret did.
She finished spreading the bedroll on the ground. It wouldn’t be easy to sleep under the circumstances. If rocks didn’t jab her in the back, grass clumps created bumps under her bedroll. She finally managed to find a place between clumps and
settled in. She could hear the horses blowing through their nostrils, so she knew Bret was still down by the stream. She pulled the blanket over herself and turned away from where he’d dropped his bedroll.
Despite the enormity of her embarrassment, she had something more important to think about. She’d liked Bret’s kiss so much she’d clung to him, kissing him back. Even the thought was shocking. She’d never wanted to kiss any man, never considered allowing a man to kiss her. Prior to tonight, she’d been mildly curious about kissing, but she’d been too busy with her horses and taking care of her father to think about it much. Over the last two years, she’d gradually begun to picture herself running the ranch alone. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to get married. She just didn’t feel the need for a husband, and no one had come along to change her mind.
Now Bret was causing her to question all her assumptions.
If she’d been looking for a husband, she couldn’t have found anyone who came closer to her ideal. He was handsome, charming, and intelligent. He could ride, rope, and seemed to know as much about ranches as Lonnie. And she liked him. It was no longer mere attraction.
And he liked her—she was certain of that. She was a novice when it came to kissing, but she could tell theirs hadn’t been an ordinary kiss. The effect on him had been as much of a surprise to him as it had been to her. However, their attraction to each other was destined to end in frustration. He would be returning to Boston, and she was determined to remain in Texas.
Yet somewhere in the back of her mind lurked the wisp of an idea that he might regret having left Texas. She supposed she understood why he’d gone to Boston, but she didn’t understand why he stayed. From all he’d said, she believed he’d been happy living with his adopted family. He spoke of Jake with respect and of Isabelle with near reverence. His memories of his siblings and the work he did were all positive. He certainly didn’t show any reluctance to get hot, sweaty, and dirty. Nor did he back away from the danger of rustling.
That thought brought Emily face to face with a hard fact. If she didn’t do something about the rustling, she could lose her ranch. Then she’d have no choice but to go to Boston. She didn’t believe that Lonnie was involved in the rustling, but she couldn’t deny that somebody at the ranch was. That meant Bret was the only person she could trust to capture the rustlers and find a way to get her calves back.
A Texan's Honor Page 15