by Caro Carson
“The wind has stopped, but the clouds have cleared up,” he said. “We’re in for a cold one.”
“It looks nicer than this afternoon.”
He made a negative movement of his head and hand. She felt every bit of it, sitting so close to him. “Cloud cover keeps some of the earth’s heat in. Today’s clouds dumped their sleet and left, so now there’s nothing to stop the temperatures from falling.” He took the canteen from her and unzipped the bag, efficiently setting it outside again.
“Falling? It’s going to get colder than it already is?” She could feel the fear crawling up her throat.
He looked at her with concern. After a long second, he kissed her forehead. “Listen to me. Outside, the temperature may fall, but you are not going to get colder. You and I are going to stay right here, safe and sound and warm.”
He laid her back gently, following her down and settling her body against his again. Safe and sound and warm. As a seduction, no man could have had her more completely in his thrall. There was something about him that made her feel restless inside, reckless. They were alive, the only two people in the world, and she couldn’t get enough of his deep voice and his soothing hands.
She set her hand on the back of his neck and tilted her face to his. She wanted to be kissed and held and warm. She let her eyes drift shut, anticipating the feel of his mouth.
“It’s not us I’m worried about,” he said. “It’s the cattle.”
“Oh.” She blinked, feeling a little sheepish. Cows had never crossed her mind, but apparently, even if virginal little Becky Cargill was naked, a man’s thoughts didn’t stay on her. Hopefully, he hadn’t noticed that she’d been about to kiss him. “What—um, what do cows do when it’s this cold?”
“The foreman knew this weather was coming. He probably got a good portion into the calving sheds. The rest would’ve been driven into one of the pastures that has a deep gully. The cattle huddle in there to get out of the wind and basically do what we’re doing.”
“Nice to know I don’t have the common sense of a cow. I drove into a wide-open space. I was so stupid. It would have served me right if—”
His finger pressed her lips, cutting her off. “Don’t say that. Ever. Do you hear me?”
She was so surprised at his ferocity, she couldn’t even nod. She just stared at him, his face a shadow in the night.
“You got yourself out of the wind as much as possible. You built yourself a shelter. You stayed alive. Give yourself some credit, Rebecca. You’ve got common sense and you must have a giant heap of willpower, because you were still alive when I found you. Thank you for staying alive until I could get there.”
He moved his finger away from her lips only to cup her head in his hand. He angled her so he could kiss her, not so softly this time.
“Thank you,” he said against her mouth, “for staying alive. This works both ways. You didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to find you dead. I feel this insane relief that you are with me. You did a phenomenal job of staying alive. Thank you.”
He was kissing her again almost before he was done speaking, and this time, she felt the sweep of his tongue. They were tasting, kissing, and she wanted to absorb all the intensity of him, all that heat, into her body. For the first time, she realized he wanted to feel her heat, too, finally greedy as she was.
I feel this insane relief that you are here with me. That was it, exactly. To hear him say what she was feeling was like another miracle.
He ended the kiss first, still cupping the back of her head in his hand, now panting slightly over her lips. “Rebecca, I—”
She waited, but words seemed to fail him, and he rolled a little bit away, onto his back. He exhaled, a sound that she feared sounded like he was disgusted with himself. Perhaps he thought she was too fragile for kissing? Perhaps he didn’t know that she shared his feelings.
Perhaps she ought to be brave enough to stop waiting for her life to begin. If she wanted to kiss this man, perhaps she ought to tell him.
“You’re welcome,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“You said ‘thank you,’ so I’m saying ‘you’re welcome.’ I want you to know that if kissing is your particular way of saying thanks, then I hope you have a whole lot of it to get out of your system. You are one great kisser.”
The night was utterly, completely silent in the remote cabin. She heard her own heart beating, too loud because she’d been too bold.
He started to chuckle. Then he gave her a tight, friendly squeeze, and let her go. He planted a kiss on top of her head, like they were pals.
Swell.
“I’ve got to step out for a minute.” He started unzipping the bag.
He was leaving her. Alarm made her turn abruptly and push up onto her elbow as he slipped out. “You can’t go. You’ll freeze to death.”
He’d pulled a Navajo-style blanket out of the gear and thrown it around his shoulders like a cape before she could catch more than a glimpse of his nude, male backside in a stripe of moonlight.
He stomped on one boot. “I’m not going to relieve myself in front of you, darlin’. I’ll be back in a minute. Stay warm.”
He stomped on the second boot, and left.
Rebecca flopped back down, and shivered. So much for her first attempt to grab life by the horns. She’d told a man he was welcome to kiss her, and he’d left to go find a tree.
I will not cry.
That never would have happened to her mother. Rebecca had never wanted to be like her mother, until tonight. In this one thing, she now wished she were. She wished she had the power to make Trey Waterson crazy about her.
Rebecca, he’d called her, and she hadn’t corrected him. Rebecca sounded like a woman who was confident. A woman whom men would want to kiss. She was still sweet Becky Cargill, and she felt like she always would be.
Very quietly, and only for one minute, Becky turned her face into the material of the sleeping bag, and gave herself permission to cry.
Chapter Six
You are one great kisser.
She’d said that, looking at him with those doe eyes in that heart-shaped face, porcelain perfection brought to life. Rebecca had told him he was a great kisser, and Trey had very nearly blurted out every thought that passed through his stupid brain. You’re beautiful. We’re alive. Let’s have sex.
Thank God, he’d controlled it. He was grateful for every trial he’d failed in the past ten years, because those situations had taught him the hard way to relearn how to think before he spoke. He knew he was often too blunt despite his best efforts, but at least tonight, when faced with the greatest challenge of all, he hadn’t made an idiot of himself in front of Rebecca Cargill.
You are one great kisser.
I want to do a hell of a lot more than kiss you.
That would have scared her. She would have been on guard and anxious no matter how hard he tried to explain that he didn’t mean those outbursts. It didn’t mean they weren’t true—it meant that he did know better than to say such things. He just seemed to know it after the words had come out.
When he’d first been kicked out of Oklahoma Tech, sex had been the one, sweet oblivion where he didn’t have to think. He didn’t need to monitor himself. That lingerie looks sexy as hell. Come here, so I can take it off you. The unfiltered truths that came out in bed seemed to make women happier, and for that, he was grateful.
But the girlfriends had been fewer and farther between over the years. It was difficult to date a woman when you couldn’t reliably find her house, and he was tired of the strain. Relationships that did last a little while had to end before anyone got too serious about moving in, settling down, having children. Trey had cared about each girlfriend, enough that he wouldn’t have saddled any one of them with a husband that couldn’t count
the change at the grocery store.
A relationship with Rebecca Cargill was out of the question. She was something special. It would be impossible to keep things purely physical with a woman whose emotions were so vulnerable, but whose personality was turning more playful with each passing moment.
She’d impressed him just by surviving. She’d impressed him again with how well she’d taken it in stride when she’d woken up, stark naked, with a man she didn’t know. He’d tried to set a casual tone about the situation, and he was doing his best to keep his private parts private, shifting out of the way so she wouldn’t be pressed against parts of a stranger’s body that she wouldn’t want to know so intimately.
She was recovering quickly, and the more she revived, the harder it got. There were times she seemed almost innocently unaware of the position of their bodies. Didn’t she realize that she was sometimes cuddling into a position that would have allowed him to enter her easily, if they’d been making love?
No, at least twice now it hadn’t seemed to occur to her, so he’d been the one who’d moved, who’d shifted, who’d tried to keep things polite, naked as they were in a sleeping bag.
Keep things polite. That’s all he had to do. He had to lie down with a beautiful woman who thought he was a good kisser, and not touch her nude body while they kept each other warm by touching.
Hell. He didn’t think a man with a good brain could make sense out of that one.
He had no choice. It was a waste of time to freeze out here, when there was no way to avoid another round of innocent, sensual torture with Rebecca. It was time for this landscaper to cowboy up.
He lifted the crossbar and went back to her dangerous warmth.
* * *
Rebecca’s one-minute crying jag did not go unpunished. They never did. She should have known better than to think that without Mother around, it was safe to cry.
Her tears had ended with a shiver, right between the shoulder blades. Too late, she realized she should have been zipping up the bag when she’d been indulging in her tears. Trey hadn’t left her uncovered, of course, but even the slit left by the open zipper let in too much cold for her system to handle. She zipped the bag with fingers that shook. She huddled, her arms crossed over her chest as they had been all afternoon.
The first time her teeth clacked together with one of those convulsive reactions to being cold, she panicked.
“Trey!” she cried into the darkness.
The door had opened the same moment as her teeth had chattered, but she’d called his name, cold and fear making her desperate, although he was coming back to her already.
He dropped to his knee beside her, Navajo blanket spreading over them both. “What happened? Talk to me.” He started running his hands over the sleeping bag. “You’re shivering again.”
“Come back, p-please.”
He was already hauling off his boots. He fumbled for the zipper a moment, then climbed in beside her.
His skin was not as warm as it had been before, not after his time outside. Rebecca squeezed herself to him, anyway, hanging on for dear life.
His hands began their familiar journey, over her shoulder, down her spine, over her backside and to her thigh. The motion was steady, unrushed, when she was frantic to get warm. He used his voice like he used his hands, speaking calmly and evenly.
“I’m sorry, baby. You’re going to be okay. It won’t take long this time. Those shivers are going away.”
The mantra repeated as his hand smoothed its way back up her body. “I’m sorry, baby. You’re going to be okay, it won’t take long.”
“What took you so long?” she said against his shoulder.
“I was only gone a few minutes.”
“It was an eternity.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were that vulnerable. You’re dehydrated, and you need food, so I guess your body is just not going to be able to handle much cold for a while, not until we get you watered and fed.”
“Watered and fed like a good little cow.” She had to laugh at his cowboy talk.
“That’s right.” She could hear the smile in his voice as he kept stroking her, soothing her, caressing her.
Petting her. He’s probably petting me like I’m a horse. Even that thought made her smile. He was a cowboy, so she couldn’t expect anything less. She didn’t want anything less. This felt perfect.
“We’ll warm up for a while, then we’re going to eat and you’re going to drink more water, okay?”
“I wish the warming part went faster. I swear, I want to sink my teeth into your shoulder. You know, to keep them from chattering.”
“Yeah, well... God.” He cleared his throat. “We’ll talk to keep your teeth from chattering. Where do you live?”
“Boston, this season. Cape Cod. I’m a city slicker. Isn’t that what you cowboys call us?”
His hand stopped. Changed course. “I’m not a cowboy.”
She felt, instinctively, that was not true. “How do you know this ranch so well?”
“I was raised here, but I live in Oklahoma now. I’ve got a landscaping business, nothing large.”
Feeling warmer, she cuddled into him, sliding her knee up the outside of his thigh. His hand stopped her knee when it reached the top of his thigh. He smoothed his way down her calf and ankle, then held the arch of her foot in his warm hand for a moment. It felt nice, but it kept her from positioning her knee in a more comfortable way.
“What do you do for a living?” he asked, his voice low and deliciously husky.
“My mother likes me to accompany her to her engagements.”
He was quiet. She imagined a cowboy or a landscaper wouldn’t know what to say to that.
The tip of her nose was cold, so she nuzzled it into the dip above his collarbone. “I don’t have a real job. It would be nice, but my mother thinks it would make her look bad. She respects old money, the kind where someone’s ancestors earned it a few generations back. She likes people who don’t have to work.”
“But you think it would be nice to have a job? Most people would think that not working was nice, if they could get away with it.”
“It’s a lot of work, to keep an income flowing so that you don’t need to work.”
Her mother was always on alert, always aware of who was hot on the social scene. Clothes and hair and body were in a constant state of updating for Mother. For Becky, they never changed. The right events had to be attended, so that invitations would be extended to others. Events were where Mother met men, men with old money. It was a full-time job, and Becky was her best accessory.
“Do you mean investments?” Trey asked. “Interest?”
“Something like that.” Rebecca thought of Hector Ferrique, lending them one of his vacation homes. He wouldn’t have lived in it this winter, anyway, but nothing was free.
“So, how are you related to the groom?” she asked, changing the subject just like Mother had taught her. “You have the same last name.”
“Brother. You’re the bride’s sister?”
“Same last name, but no. Stepsister. Not even that. Our parents divorced fifteen years ago.” She kept it light. Matter-of-fact.
“It’s nice that you two are still close. That makes you a better sister than I am a brother.”
Take the compliment, Becky. When someone has a good impression of you, for God’s sake, don’t correct them.
Mother was right. Mother was always right. Except, when Becky had been about to die, alone by a tree, she’d thought her life with Mother was all wrong, wrong, wrong.
She took a long, slow breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth. She breathed in cold Texas air and warm male skin. She breathed out...so much that she’d been holding inside.
“I’m not a good sister at all.”
/> His hand squeezed her instep. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“I crashed the wedding. I hadn’t seen Patricia in years, not until Mother had the chance to take a little trip a few months ago and needed somewhere for me to go. She dropped me off at the Cargill place.”
“You needed a babysitter?”
“We were between houses. She was kind of between men. She’s kind of a professional wife.”
“That’s a lot of ‘kind of.’”
“She’s been married four times, to really wealthy men. Five, if you count my father.”
“You don’t count Daddy Cargill? How rich are the other men when an oil baron doesn’t make the top four?”
“I’m Patricia’s stepsister, remember?”
He was silent a moment. “Yeah, you told me that, Rebecca.”
“It’s Becky. Just Becky. I’m not even a Cargill. My father is some lazy son of a bitch bastard who didn’t know his right from his left.”
“Your mother’s words?”
“Correct. It is the only time swearing is acceptable.”
“Your mother’s rules?”
“Correct again. But she was married to him, so she’s been married five times.”
“Going on six?” He was holding her instep tightly.
“I don’t think so. She’s only forty-five years old, and she looks smashing, to be honest. But I think those men put her in the bedmate category now. They like to take her on vacations. She looks good, and she can be a great conversationalist over dinner, a good travel partner. But when it comes to marriage, those men expect someone who is child-bearing age. You’ve seen the gray-haired guys who marry a supermodel who has their baby. The guy can be sixty years old, with some pregnant wife his daughter’s age. I think it proves their virility, and all that.”
Trey didn’t speak for the longest time. Becky realized she had stopped shivering and felt warm again, but she missed the soothing stroke of his hand, although the way he held her instep was very...nice. Strangely intimate, to have her feet warmed by a man.