by Jodi Thomas
“I’ve never seen a single trophy around the house,” Cord commented. “You would have thought they’d let her put them up somewhere.”
“That stepmother she had one summer tossed them all out, I bet. She even tried to get the old man to sell off Nevada’s horses. Only her daddy had promised Nevada’s mother before she died that he wouldn’t mess with them, and the old man kept his word. Maybe he figured as long as Nevada had the horses she wouldn’t spend much time at home. I swear that summer the step-witch was here, Nevada slept more in the barn than she did in the house.”
“Thanks for telling me.” Cord realized Galem must trust him to so openly talk about Nevada. “And thanks for yelling. That steer almost bloodied one of these shirts Nevada bought me. I was daydreaming on the job.”
“No thanks needed,” Galem answered. “I’m guessing you got a problem on your mind.”
“Right,” he managed to say as he looked up and saw the problem headed straight toward him in her grandfather’s old Jeep.
Swearing, Cord swung over the fence thinking he should have stripped all the gears except first so she couldn’t go over twenty. He headed toward the spot he hoped would be where she stopped before hitting the corral.
Her own little cloud of dust swirled around her as she hit the brakes and slid to within three feet of him.
Cord waited. He knew it wouldn’t be long.
She climbed out of the Jeep talking. It took his mind a few beats to catch up with her.
“Hold on now, Nevada. Take a long breath and start over.”
“What is the matter with you? Didn’t you hear what I said?” She folded her arms over her chest and stared at him as if he were brain dead. “I swear if I have to tell you everything twice, we’ll never finish a conversation.”
Cord moved closer and lowered his voice so none of the men could hear. “I just need time to get over the sight of you before I can think. You’re beautiful even when you’re upset.”
He fought the urge to kiss her. “I thought you weren’t on the ranch. I heard something about you going shopping.” He grinned. “You do look great in that sundress.” He closed his mouth and his eyes. He was starting to sound as scattered as she always did. Maybe being brain dead and chattering on about nothing was catching.
“The men are staring at us,” she whispered. Thunder rattled the air and the first raindrops plopped in the dirt, but she didn’t move.
“They’re staring at you and that cotton dress.” He’d thought she looked and felt great in silk, but now he couldn’t imagine anything finer than cotton brushing her legs.
“We need to talk. Something happened in town that I should tell you about.” She took his arm and pulled him toward the Jeep. “Go for a drive with me.”
“I can’t,” he started, as huge drops splattered around him. The sky darkened as if someone had turned down the dimmer switch on the world. Big drops of rain hit the hood of the Jeep like tiny bombs spraying inch-wide circles across the hot metal. “We need to finish here.”
Horses danced nervously as lightning flashed and the men scrambled for the rain slickers tied to their saddles. This wasn’t just a light afternoon shower coming; something strong was blowing in.
Cord turned back to his men. “Close it down, boys, and call it a day.” Even if the rain stopped soon, it would be too muddy to get much work done. He saw Zeb running for one of the horse trailers as the cowhands loaded up their mounts. Riding home in this storm might get horse and rider killed.
He put his arm over Nevada’s shoulder. “All right, let’s go talk, but I drive.” In the drafty old Jeep they’d both be soaked in minutes if they didn’t find cover fast.
As he circled the corral, he made sure all cowhands were loaded into trucks, horses were ready to move, and gates were closed. Cord didn’t want to come back in the morning to find fifty head of cattle wandering the west side of the ranch. He’d had enough accidents happen lately. So many, in fact, he was starting to think someone had it in for him, making trouble run double time. In the back of his mind the name of Bryce Galloway kept echoing even though he didn’t have an ounce of proof. He wouldn’t put it past the ex-husband to try to make things hard for Cord just for the fun of it.
Since Cord was closer to his farm than the ranch house, he headed down the dirt road toward his home place. He’d sold his old tractor and his horse trailer, hoping to make enough money to pay off the last of his loan. The buyer was supposed to pick both up yesterday. He’d left them parked in the yard between the house and the barn and had planned to drive over to his place today anyway just to make sure they were gone.
As they drove he could feel them racing the edge of the storm, and he guessed if he slowed it would catch them. Rolling down the window, he let damp air fly past him as lightning danced along the horizon. In this country it paid to watch the weather.
Nevada chatted about her trip to Amarillo and all she’d bought as he drove. He knew she wasn’t talking about what she needed to. She was nervous about something more than the lightning. Like him, she grew up with the sudden storms and knew to take cover.
When they turned onto his land, he slowed. The storm hadn’t caught up to them yet, and the last thing he wanted to do was accidentally flip the old Jeep in a pothole. He knew his place needed repairs, but somehow the Boxed B always drew his attention.
“You need to get the crew out working on this road.” She voiced his thoughts. “I don’t want you neglecting your farm. I always thought this was a nice place, like one of those pictures of what folks in cities think farmhouses should look like.”
He’d never thought of it that way. It had always been just a house. Even though he grew up there, it still seemed more his folks’ place than his.
“That’s not what you came out to talk to me about.” Cord was ready to hear whatever she had to say. “What brought you back from town so early?”
“There was another note on my car when I stopped at the mall. We weren’t there long and I saw no sign of him, but Bryce left it. I know he did.”
“Same words.”
She nodded. “Ora Mae said we’d better get back to the ranch. I was glad I wasn’t alone. I swear I could feel him watching us. It spooked us both.”
“You won’t be alone again. Until this guy stops missing you, me or one of the men will drive you anywhere you want to go.” He glanced her way and saw her open her mouth to argue, then stop.
“Agreed?” he pushed, knowing it sounded more like an order than a request, but he couldn’t just talk about her safety, he had to do what he could.
“You’re right. If I know Bryce, we won’t have long to wait. He had the attention span of a mosquito sucking tequila. He’ll either show up soon or move on. I should warn you, he’s a master at causing distraction and walking away like the victim. Once when he blacked my eye, Galem taught him a lesson. On the way to the hospital to get a few stitches, Bryce swore he’d see Galem in jail. When I begged him not to, he ran off the road. I was barely conscious when he shoved me behind the wheel and called 911. My injuries, as well as his, were written up as a car accident. The sheriff thought I was driving blind drunk, and he said he’d gone along hoping to stop me.” Nevada shook her head. “He put on such a show of begging the sheriff not to book me, even promising to hide the keys on the nights I drank.”
“Were you over the limit?”
“Probably, but I hadn’t been the one driving. Luckily, we were still on the ranch when the wreck happened. Private property saved me from a DWI.”
“You could have told the truth.”
“I wouldn’t have been believed. It would have been my word against his, and Bryce has this way of telling lies that suckers everyone in. After that night he was the long-suffering husband and I was the wild spoiled brat who had totaled yet another car.”
Cord remembered reading about the wreck. Even the local paper had run it more as a “see what the Britain girl has done now” story than a news report. They’d even repo
rted the injuries suffered by the passenger, her husband.
“That where you got the little scar just over your left eyebrow?”
Surprise pulled her out of her depression. “You noticed that.”
“I notice everything about you, Babe.”
He’d managed to make her smile. “Apparently you do, except that I hate being called Babe.”
When he pulled up to his place and cut the engine, he thought his farm looked abandoned. With the farm equipment and the trailer gone, the house and barn looked even more run down. Tumbleweeds were caught along the fence line and one of the chairs had blown off the porch. Far to the right he could see the first crop breaking the soil by a few inches. Thanks to the Boxed B’s huge tractors, they’d plowed and planted in days instead of weeks. Cord had even bought mobile irrigation units, almost guaranteeing a good crop. When their marriage ended, he’d haul the irrigation system over to her place.
Glancing down at her finger, he saw the thin band of gold. She was still wearing it, so today wouldn’t be the last day. After a month, he’d thought they were working well together, but now he wasn’t so sure. After all, he had made love to her just before dawn without them even talking it over first.
She hadn’t exactly invited him to make love to her, but she hadn’t objected. He’d thought she enjoyed it as much as he had. She’d come home in the middle of the day and pulled him away from work, saying she needed to talk. A note left on a car didn’t seem that urgent. Something else was bothering her.
Maybe he’d stepped over that invisible trip wire he’d been looking for since they walked out of the courthouse . . . maybe he’d tripped the switch that was about to blow up everything.
“So, I finally heard what Ora Mae had been trying to tell me. That woman would drive to heaven in a wheelbarrow to get her point across.”
“What did she tell you?” He’d dropped out of the conversation at some point. He had enough frightening things in his past. The housekeeper wouldn’t have to make something up. Whatever it was, he knew he’d found the real problem that had made her drive across half the ranch to find him.
Nevada huffed as if she’d been asked to say everything again. “She told me that you’re not comfortable in the house. She says you go around opening drapes and turning on lights. She says every door you walk through, you leave open, and you’re forever roaming through the kitchen looking for something to eat.”
Cord relaxed. She was complaining about his habits. He could fix that. “I like light and fresh air. I like being able to eat whenever I’m hungry, but if it bothers you I can change.” He could learn to live in the cavelike rooms with their thick drapes and closed windows. He could eat on a timetable; he had in prison.
“It doesn’t bother me.” Now, after he gave in, she sounded angry. “If you want light and air, we can work on that. I told Ora Mae to leave a basket of fruit and snacks out on the counter and clean the wine cooler out and stock it with individual milks you can take with you or whatever kind of drinks you like. Since our marriage I seem to have given up the habit of wine with dinner anyway.”
Now he was confused. She was giving in. He climbed out of the Jeep and ran the few feet to the overhang at the side of his parents’ home. “What are we talking about, Nevada?”
She followed him to the corner of the porch and sat down, propping her boots up on the steps. “We’re talking about making you happy, you idiot, so stop making a big deal of it and tell Ora Mae what you want her to do. She’ll stock up on whatever you like. We’ll turn off the air conditioner and keep the windows open as long as the wind is under forty. W—”
He knelt to her level on the thick grass that had always grown on the shady side of the porch. “One more time. What are we talking about, Nevada? This isn’t about me turning on lights or what I want to drink. You didn’t drive out to talk about Ora Mae’s worries, did you? What are we really talking about here? Say what you want to say, Babe,” he asked again, and then waited.
For a while she didn’t look at him, and he just listened to the rain playing on the tin porch roof of the old house. He’d grown up in this quiet farmhouse where no one talked out their problems. He didn’t want it to be like that between him and Nevada. He’d rather face trouble head on than wonder what was bothering her.
When she finally did look up, her beautiful eyes were swimming in tears. “Why’d you make love to me like that, Cord?”
Of all the things he thought might be on her mind, bothering her, making her nervous and angry, their dawn loving had finally made it to the top of the list.
He cupped the side of her face and brushed a tear away with his thumb. “Like what? Did I do something wrong?” He wanted to scream that he could change, he could get it right next time, only in his life there were very few second chances and maybe she wasn’t willing to give him one.
Her hand covered his, pressing his palm against her cheek. “I didn’t expect it, not knowing the kind of man you are. I didn’t expect you to be so tender.” She gulped down a sob. “No one’s ever made love to me like that. Like I was special, like I was made of fine china.”
He stood and looked down at her, wondering how any man could touch her in any other way. The thought that someone had made his gut knot.
She straightened, lifting her chin. “We agreed to be honest, so here goes. I’ve had more lovers than I can count. I gave it away to half a dozen on my sixteenth birthday just to show my dad that I could party even if he forgot to say happy birthday to me. I’ve had one-night stands where I couldn’t remember the guy’s name in the morning. I had three husbands, one who thought that wild sex was an every-night rodeo and one who used it to dominate and control. If I didn’t want to, he’d torture me insisting on it and, if I agreed too easily, he’d say that I was a tramp and deserved to be treated like one.”
She held to her pride, and he saw all her invisible scars for the first time.
“I’ve had sex in the back of pickups and penthouse suites, coatrooms and bathroom bars, but I’ve never, ever had what you offered this morning.”
He circled his arms around her and pulled her gently against his chest. “What do you want?”
She pressed her forehead against his chest. “I want that kind of loving again, but I don’t want to have to ask or beg for it. I don’t want it to be part of the negotiation between us. I don’t want it to be a game between you and me. Not this. I need to know that this one thing is real between us.”
He turned her head up and kissed her before whispering, “I’ve never done it in a pickup or a penthouse, or a bathroom bar. In fact, except for a few awkward times before I left for prison, I’ve never made love at all, so I guess if you put us together we average out to about even.”
“But how?”
He laughed. “I dreamed of making love a lot, and always when I did, I dreamed that it was with you.”
She pulled away. “You’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “That’s why it came so easy last night. I’d practiced in my mind a thousand times.”
He kissed her again, this time with passion. When he finally broke the kiss, his hands still moved over her. “Making love to you was never part of any game. Whenever you want to again, just touch me. There will be no negotiating or bargaining.” He kissed her ear. “Or holding back. Any time. Any place.”
“Now,” she whispered, then laughed when he stumbled backward into the rain.
She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight, not caring that big cold raindrops splattered around her. Her first kiss was almost shy.
He moved his hands over her bottom and lifted her as she wrapped her legs around his waist. Moving toward the house, they were lost to everything around but each other. Without a word, he kicked in the door, climbed the narrow stairs, and walked into his old room. The storm made it seem like night, and the rain blocked out all the world.
Pulling the dust cover off the bed, he lowered with her still in his arms. “I want to take that
dress off you real slow. Any objections?”
He tugged the tie free at the back of her neck. “Then, I’m going to take my time learning every curve of you, Babe, all over again.”
She giggled as if it were her first time to be truly loved.
Within minutes their clothes were piled on the dusty floor, but neither noticed. They were too wrapped in each other. As the storm pounded the little farmhouse, passion flowed between them in long kisses and easy strokes. In the shadowy light he watched her face, loving knowing how much he made her feel . . . loving knowing what his touch did to her.
In his dreams he’d hadn’t heard the way she sighed softly when she was happy and how she cried out when lost in passion. Now, every sound she made washed over him in sweet melody. Loving her was as easy as breathing, and he never wanted to stop. Even when he was exhausted and she lay sleeping on his shoulder, he couldn’t keep from touching her.
As he drifted to sleep, he dreamed of loving her and woke to find her still in his arms.
When they finally got dressed and started home, the rain had stopped and the sun was setting. He turned the Jeep toward his old barn. “Want to go for a ride in my grandfather’s old plane?”
She looked worried.
“I’m a safe pilot.” He laughed. “I swear.”
She slipped her hand in his and nodded, making him feel like he could almost fly without the plane. She was trusting him, something it seemed like he’d had very little of in his life.
They flew over their land with the wind blowing in their faces. They watched the sunset and night move over the fields. The smell of spring brushed past them, making the night seem newborn.
When he set the plane down, she climbed out and into his arms.
“Can we do it again?”
“Babe, we can do everything again, and again, and again.”
Nevada laughed free and unguarded.