The Secret Ingredient

by Raine Cantrell

  Since that afternoon three days ago, he had kept an eagle’s eye on her, watching for the signs he had missed somehow. They weren’t there.

  She still wore her hair in its neatly coiled braid. Dark brown hair, shot with a glint of red fire in the sunlight, rich and thick as a mink’s pelt. Those eyes of Hallie’s, green as high mountain spring grass, slanted like a cat’s, never once gave away the sensuality of her thoughts.

  He had never seen her dressed in anything but long-sleeved bodices, starched collars, and white aprons over long, dark skirts with layers of petticoats thick as a man’s thigh hiding every inch of skin.

  Now that he had a good idea of what the clothing concealed, he was in torment. Hell. Trapped.

  Desire tugged at him like a relentless south wind.

  Whispering. Luring. Enticing him to discover all her secrets.

  Hallie—lush as a tree-ripened peach waiting to be plucked.

  Salvation. Redemption. The Lord would offer more blessings than a man knew what to do with is a man put Miss Hallie out of her misery and into his bed.

  Cade groaned again. He’d been doing that a lot lately. It was a deep, painful sound. His teeth ground together. His hands clenched at his sides.

  He was harder than a whetstone, hotter than a steam engine’s boiler, and crazier than a locoed bedbug.

  That’s what thinking about Hallie and her damn journal did to him.

  He would burn alive if he touched her.

  An intolerable, impossible situation.

  The ranch—if anyone in his right mind wanted to call it that—could be built into a thriving concern. Hard work and money was all it would take.

  Miss Hallie would be grateful if a man kept the wolves from the door.

  A man would have his work cut out for him trying to get near her. He’d be crazy to try.

  Cade would be crazy to try.

  But what else could he do when a woman wrote down her dreams about him? Dreams so vivid that the words steamed up off the page to set his mind on fire and consigned his body to hellish longings.

  That pouty little mouth of Hallie’s and that corset-cinched body might know half the words she had written, for there was an undeniable air of innocence about Hallie.

  Unfortunately, Cade knew.

  Damn, did he know.

  An honorable man would clear out. He was honorable, wasn’t he?

  Some saddle tramp might take his place.

  Cade prowled his room. One hand raked his hair, the other remained clenched at his side.

  Could he in good conscience ride away and leave Hallie to the mercy of the next man she took in? While Hallie fed him her sweet confections, some lowlife tinhorn would be thinking of feeding the hunger that sweet, lush body aroused.

  Some other man might hurt Hallie.

  He had not seen anyone but Doc in the past five weeks. She had no one to look out for her. After what she had done for him, he couldn’t ride off and leave her as vulnerable prey for whoever came along.

  And you wouldn’t hurt her?

  Cade hushed the voice of conscience. He remembered the feel of Hallie’s hands on his body when he’d been at her mercy and helpless as a babe in swaddling. The memory of her husky, soothing voice washed over him. Heat pooled until the seams of his pants were strained.

  Then the sound of her voice was real, calling him to supper.

  Cade glanced at the closed door. She’s gotten along just fine without you. The fur coverlet, remember?

  The money to keep this place and feed those animals had to come from somewhere. He mentally slammed the door to the most obvious answer. If she had a lover, where the hell was he? If she had a lover why was she dreaming about him?

  But the knowledge that Hallie was going to pump him full of sweet confections, pat him on the head, and send him on his way settled like a cold lump of grits in his belly.

  She had never once hinted that he would be invited into her bed. That pricked his pride.

  Hallie called to him again.

  A wicked grin slashed his lips. Hallie was a bundle of intriguing feminine contradictions he’d just have to untangle before he rode away.

  And maybe, just maybe, he’d make the shy Miss Halimeda Pruitt a very happy woman in the doing.

  Chapter 2

  It was time for Cade McAllister to leave. The decision had hovered at the back of Hallie’s mind for the past two days. She had never turned anyone out of her home before Doc’s allotted time to heal, but Cade was going to be the first exception.

  Every waking moment was filled with an intense awareness of his presence, every sleep-filled hour was consumed with dreams of him.

  She had never dreamed about any of the others.

  Hallie called Cade to supper once more, then retrieved the basket of steaming corn sticks from the stove’s warming oven. Setting the basket between the two place settings on the round oak kitchen table, Hallie sighed. She was twenty-five years old, long past nurturing girlish dreams of having a family of her own. At least she had believed that until Cade McAllister entered her life.

  The man had made her dream again, not just at night, but daydream when practical matters required her attention. And he made her feel restless. At first she refused to recognize the signs but the longer Cade stayed, the more apparent they had become. It was his eyes, of course, that started a liquid warmth running through her. That intense gaze that seemed to peel away all the protective layers to see the secrets she hid. He couldn’t know about the dreams she foolishly wrote down in her journal, but whatever had wrought the change in Cade, she couldn’t ignore it.

  For the tenth or was it the hundredth time since she had first set eyes on Cade, Hallie wished he had been less handsome. Not that she set such a store by a person’s looks, but Cade McAllister was handsome as sin, and Granny Rose had always warned that sin brought its own kind of trouble.

  Cade had the devil’s own good looks, thick black hair that begged a woman’s hand to tame it, eyes as hard and blue as a winter’s sky that glittered with male power. Slashing brows bridged a straight nose, lashes a woman would be dead not to envy did nothing to soften that tough, sharp-jawed face.

  But when Cade smiled, when those perfectly formed masculine lips revealed the dimples in the corners of his mouth, he blinded a woman with the sensual promise he implied.

  Thinking about that smile caused her toes to curl within her shoes. It sent a flush of heat across her cheeks. Eating a whole tin of Sparrow’s Empress double-chocolate, fondant nut centers wasn’t as good as watching Cade smile.

  Hallie closed her eyes. She had done more than look at Cade. She had had plenty of opportunities to touch him.

  A hitch in her breathing warned her. But it was too late. That lean, long-limbed body, naked and helpless as a babe, seared itself on her closed lids. Oh, my, yes, she had certainly touched him. Cade would be shocked out of his boots if he had an inkling that he played the starring role in her too vivid dreams.

  Hallie came to with a start. There, it had happened again. With a quick shake of her head, she snapped herself out of her heated musings. Her breathing was erratic, and a curious trembling beset her from the inside out. She stared down at the large tureen filled with the cooling chicken and dumplings. This would never do.

  The man had to go.

  She called him again, then fetched the pitcher of lemonade to the table. A dish of corn relish followed.

  Hallie attempted to shrug off her pensive mood. She knew she had a strong practical streak. Why did it disappear when she thought about Cade?

  “Forlorn, love-starved, old spinster,” she muttered, welcoming the anger the reminder brought. “You are a practical woman.” And thanks to Granny Rose’s trust, she was an independent one.

  Practical, independent women with plain looks did not appeal to men like Cade McAllister. Aside from his most wicked smile, she had to remember Doc’s warning. If she allowed herself to lose her
heart she would repeat her mother’s mistake.

  Temptation teased her with the thought of what it would be like to cast off the cloak of respectability that wrapped her so tightly at times that she couldn’t breathe.

  And do what? Seduce Cade McAllister? Throw yourself at him? Ask him to take pity and make a lonely woman’s dreams come true?

  There was no longer a choice. Cade had to go before she did something foolish.

  Briskly then, Hallie finished to set the table with the supper she had made. Chicken and dumplings was Cade’s favorite supper. Granny Rose had taught her that a man’s pleasure began with his victuals. Good food set a man’s mood toward indulgent to the woman who provided it Granny Rose would know. She’d been the toast of the Mississippi paddlewheelers fifty years ago. The thought was a strange one to have considering that she had made up her mind to ask Cade to leave.

  Hallie turned from the table and found herself staring out the window over the dry sink. Strong, dying rays of the sun warmed her hands where they gripped the wooden edge. She didn’t see the lush grass sprinkled with the spill of wildflowers. She was deep in thought of the three years that had passed, and how much that during that time she had missed her outspoken grandmother who held to her belief against everyone’s opinion that a woman had the right to decide how she lived her life.

  While Granny had been alive, Hallie agreed with her. It was becoming more difficult as the years slipped away and the consequences of Granny’s and her mother’s beliefs forced her to live alone.

  Cade felt the springy give of the wooden floor as he entered the kitchen. Dusk already layered the room in shadows. He sniffed appreciatively at the delicious aroma of the herb scented chicken stew set on the table, but noted with a frown that Hallie didn’t seem to hear him. She hadn’t lit the coal oil fixture above the table or answered him when he softly called her name.

  Unbidden words from her journal came into his mind: It was the surprise of those unexpected kisses that I treasure the most. He delights in catching me unaware. From the first he had discovered that most sensitive flesh at the back of my neck. Whether the brush of his warm masculine lips or the lightest touch of his teasing fingertips touched upon that place, tremors dance up and down my spine.

  Before Cade knew what he was doing he had moved up behind her. The fresh scent of lemon rose from her hair as he leaned close. A streak of sunlight cut across his vision. Sunlight that touched her hair with fire and picked out a series of golden needlepoints from the tips of her eyelashes which formed a fan of shadows across one cheek. She looked lost and defenseless. He felt her body heat through the layers of cloth between them.

  He touched his lips to the back of her hair. “Hallie?” Cade moved his fingers to the bare skin of her neck, his thumb brushing her earlobe. He sensed she was aware of him now, every bit aware as he was of her.

  Hallie stilled as a warmth seeped through cloth, going beyond skin, beyond muscle, to the core of her. The brush of his breath across her neck brought forth a tremor. The touch of his lips made her knees go weak. Her breath was heavy and fast. Goosebumps raced up and down her spine.

  “Hallie?” Cade’s voice was thick with a rush of emotions too tangled to name. It was the first time he had touched her and the sweet scent of her, the pale smooth skin drew his lips again and again.

  She lost herself in the daydream, giving in to the impulse to tilt her head to one side, allowing freedom to the warm whisper of his mouth. The caress was as light as butterfly wings against her skin. Dreamily she sighed, unconsciously leaning back against his body.

  Cade shifted his weight and the floorboard creaked.

  Hallie lifted her head with a jerk and slammed his nose.

  “Ouch! Dammit, Hallie, that hurt!”

  Snapped from her daydream, she turned on him like a spitting kitten. “What were you trying to do to me?”

  Cade rubbed his nose. “Damn, but you’ve got a hard head.”

  Hallie looked up at his eyes. They glittered down at her, full of nonsense blue. A very dangerous blue. “Why? Why did you …” Helplessly, she waved her hand in the air.

  “To wake you up, Hallie.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping.”

  “Like hell you’re not.” He said it so low he was almost certain she didn’t hear him.

  But she had. Hallie flushed. She kept her eyes on a level with the shadowed length of his throat. She could see the beat of blood just below the smooth, clean-shaven flesh.

  “You had no right—”

  “Don’t expect me to apologize. You were temptation itself standing there, Hallie,” he added for good measure.

  “No.” She blinked several times, then shook her head. He was wrong. There was nothing tempting about her. Her gaze slid past his shoulder to the crock of wildflowers sitting in the center of the linen runner on the sideboard. She should say something, make it plain that he did indeed need to apologize for taking advantage of her, for crossing the line that only confirmed her decision to ask him to leave.

  Hallie couldn’t get a word out.

  “Hallie?” Cade couldn’t keep a note of alarm from his voice. She appeared to have withdrawn without moving.

  He stepped in front of her, tempted to touch the flush on her cheek. She seemed fragile to him, something he had never noticed before about her. His hand was on her shoulder before he thought about it.

  “I didn’t hurt you, Hallie. There’s no need to have a maidenly fit of the vapors or something.”

  “Kiss my buttons, Cade McAllister. I am not about to have a fit or faint or give way because you forgot yourself. Supper’s cooling,” she said, then slipped out from under his hand. Her skin still felt the heat of his touch.

  “I’d like to do that too.”

  The teasing note made her face him. “Do what?”

  “Kiss your buttons, Hallie, just like you asked.”

  Under the curve of his wicked smile that turned her knees to unset jelly, Hallie could only sputter.

  “Yep,” he added, hooking his thumbs on the corners of his pants pockets so that her gaze dragged down to the indecent fit of his pants. “I’d number them among the other things I’d like to kiss.”

  “Try Divine, McAllister. Her tongue is as broad and slippery as yours.” She walked past him to the table.

  “Wouldn’t do, you know,” he murmured close to her ear as he pulled out her chair. “I’d need one that was smaller and softer to duel with mine.”

  Cade took his place across the table from her. She dished up their plates and refused to look at him.

  “Chicken and dumplings,” he remarked. “Third time this week.”

  “It’s your favorite. You said so enough times.”

  “You’re a kind woman, Hallie, to indulge me so. If I told you some of my other favorite things, would you be as indulgent?”

  “Did you eat your chocolate?”

  “My chocolate? What has—”

  “Did you?”

  “Yeah, I ate it. And all the while I still wanted a belt of whiskey.”

  In her lap Hallie twisted her fingers in her apron.

  Maybe she should have given him two. Guilty she glanced up at him, then just as quickly looked away. Her gaze lingered on his hands as he buttered a corn stick. Long, strong-looking hands. A cowboy’s hands, calluses on the fingers, across the tops of his palms. A working man’s hands. But another image imposed itself. A lover’s hands, sure and gentle enough to stroke a woman … Hallie! What are you thinking of? That way leads to restless tossing all night long. And he’s leaving, remember?

  But another little voice countered, only if you ask him to.

  It was impossible to ignore his masculine presence. Even when she wasn’t near him, wasn’t looking at him, she was intensely aware of Cade, as though every nerve in her body centered on him. With her skin still carrying the heat of his light kisses on her neck, the sensations were ten times more powerful.

 
Feeling him watch her, she had to look up. His gaze was fixed on her mouth. Hallie tried to swallow and found that she couldn’t. Her breath was lost somewhere inside herself. She forced herself to take a shaky sip of lemonade, then stared down at her untouched plate.

  Hallie sensed something different about Cade tonight. She couldn’t name it what it was, and it went beyond the liberties he’d taken, beyond the sexual teasing. From herself she wouldn’t hide the truth. That was exactly what it had been. But why?

  When the answer came to her, Hallie sat up straight, her eyes round as saucers, her lips parted, her hands clamped around her knife and fork as if they were weapons to do battle. Cade McAllister was a healing, healthy male, definitely hot as a horn! She wasn’t positive what the last entailed. It was one of those phrases Granny Rose had been fond of quoting after a long association with Victoria Wood-hull, a believer in free love and the first woman to run for president. The woman had left the country almost ten years ago to live quietly in England and Hallie had been one of many left with the legacy of her scandalous and radical principles.

  She was the only woman here. Cade had not meant anything personal by his charming kisses. The man simply needed a fast trip to Miss Ada Lane’s. Hallie wasn’t supposed to know about Miss Ada or her girls or what went on in the big house, but Miss Ada had been one of her grandmother’s intimate friends. Another burden to bear. How could she keep Cade’s respect and make the suggestion that he should visit there?

  How could she when she didn’t want him to? Hallie, take yourself in hand. You do not want him to stay.

  While she sat toying with her food, working out her dilemma, Cade refilled his plate with seconds. Normally Hallie would have been pleased. Tonight she wasn’t. How could he sit there and eat as if he hadn’t caught her off guard, daydreaming? How could he tuck into food when he’d left her insides feeling as if he had dragged them across the ribs of the washboard? And he dared to smile at her. She should have slapped that wicked smile right off his face. She should be furious that he had taken such a liberty with her.