by Caro Carson
“This is only your third time. You want...angry sex?”
She’d stripped him and was above him once more. She tossed her hair back. “Is there a law against it?”
Her sarcasm surprised him, but then Trey started to laugh, aware that he’d been conquered in every way by this virgin, this vixen, his Rebecca. She silenced him with her eager mouth, and their bodies took over, making demands and taking what they wanted from each other.
Afterward, in the quiet and the dark, with only starlight coming in through the picture window to light their bed, she sprawled on top of him and he smoothed her hair. He felt her eyelashes blink against his chest. She still wasn’t sleeping.
“Close your eyes, sweetheart. I promise you, we’ll still be here in the morning.”
She sighed, and trailed her fingers down his arm. “Well, I’ll be here, but you’ll be back in your bed. We can’t let your aunt June catch us. What would she think of me?”
She was still anxious to be thought of as a good little girl. It bothered Trey.
“I’m thirty-one years old. You’re twenty-four. We’ve decided to be with each other. This is my house, and there’s no way in hell I’m scurrying back to a guest room when I want to be with you. Aunt June will survive.” He tried to lighten the mood. “She’s had three kids and just as many husbands. I don’t think she’ll be shocked.”
But Rebecca had gone very still. “Do you really own this house?”
There was something so grave in the way she asked, Trey knew it was not an idle question. “Yes, a third of it. A third of the ranch.”
“Oh,” she breathed, with a little catch in the sound. She raised her head and looked at him, doe eyes in the soft light. “Then could I stay awhile?”
He shouldn’t have forgotten what she needed. She had nowhere to call home. She had no idea how long this temporary visit would last. He’d failed to give his lover security.
“Not because we had sex,” she whispered, and he knew she was thinking of her mother. “I don’t want that to have anything to do with it. I just need a place to stay.”
He’d always had a home. Not his apartment in Oklahoma, but this ranch. He hadn’t been back in ten years, it was true, but it had always been here, waiting, ready to welcome him if he needed it. That was a security that Rebecca had never known, not in her childhood, not as an adult. It was one he’d not appreciated before, but it was one he wouldn’t take so lightly again.
“Rebecca Cargill, you have a place on the James Hill Ranch for as long as you want it. Whether you have sex with me or spit in my eye, you’ve got a roof over your head.”
“I’m not really a Cargill,” she whispered.
“I’m talking to you, Rebecca, not to a Cargill.”
“I like the cow analogies better than spit in your eye.” She wrinkled her nose and laughed a little bit, which he was glad to see. He wanted her to be happy.
Her laugh died away quickly. “I’d like to stay through Christmas, and a little beyond. Just until I can figure out what to do next. I’ll get a job. I won’t impose on you forever.”
She didn’t intend to stay with him forever.
He’d worried about leading her on, knowing they’d be parting ways sooner rather than later. She’d said she loved him in the cabin, but he hadn’t said it back, and she hadn’t repeated it since. It ought to be a relief to hear her say that this time together was only an interlude for her, too.
Instead, it cut him to the quick.
“Close your eyes now, sweetheart. I’ll be here in the morning.”
But for how many mornings?
He’d never been the kind of man to wish for a miracle, but now he knew the miracle he’d choose: a forever of mornings.
Forever, with Rebecca Cargill.
* * *
Aunt June and her family left the next day to go to their own home for Christmas. June’s other daughters would be there, bringing their own young families.
Trey left Rebecca cozied up on the couch in her tropical clothing, but with her feet wrapped in one of his mother’s afghans. She had three days of newspapers to devour, something he thought might be more than a hobby to her. When she started sentences with “I read an article once,” Trey knew that meant she’d read dozens of articles, every single day, as a teenager and adult. It had been her way to learn about the world her mother wouldn’t let her join.
He left to check on the horses, an impulse that seemed to come naturally with being back at the ranch. It had been ten years, closer to eleven, so his favorites were gone, the horses sold to be pampered pets in their old age after a life of cowboy work. He chose a few of the current ranch horses that could carry a man his size and rode them briefly, get-acquainted rides in case he needed a horse while he was here.
The foreman, Gus, stopped by the paddock and gave him a terse update on the flooding. The river hadn’t risen too far. The flood hadn’t lasted too long.
“Luke will be glad to hear it,” Trey said.
“You planning on riding out there to bring those ATVs back? ’Cause that horse in particular don’t like the noise. She won’t be real cooperative if you want her to follow you back while you’re riding a machine.”
“It’d be faster and easier to drive my truck out there. Most of it was easy terrain. I’ll take two men and a can of gas, and they can drive the ATVs back.” Trey remembered that although he was James Waterson at the James Hill Ranch, he was also new around here in a way. He owed Luke’s foreman certain courtesies. “If you’ve got two men to spare, that is.”
“Like I said, water went back down quick. Tomorrow’s looking pretty light.”
“All right, we’ll do it then.” Trey turned his horse from the fence, and took her around the pasture one more time.
It all felt so familiar. He felt so normal.
By the time he returned to the house, Rebecca had redecorated the fireplace. She’d taken down the wedding decoration and hung an evergreen garland with red bells and ornaments in its place. She asked him if it was okay to continue going through the decorations she’d found in the detached garage.
Trey thought it was a lot of trouble to decorate a house for just two people, but he knew it was her fantasy to have an old-fashioned Christmas, so he dragged as many boxes into the house as she wanted.
Rebecca had hung the wedding swag around the full-length oval mirror in the newlyweds’ bedroom. As they stood before it, Rebecca taught him how to pronounce cheval glass, emphasis on the “-val,” and Trey taught her how to enjoy it for their fourth round of sex, emphasis on the visual.
Their fourth time. Not that he was counting. Not that he was trying to commit every encounter to memory.
The fifth round was a challenge inspired by newspapers. During a dinner of leftover wedding hors d’oeuvres, Rebecca began the topic as she set her fork and knife precisely on the edge of her plate. “I read an article once that said the traditional missionary position is universally rated number one in polls about sexual habits.”
Trey kept chewing. He even managed to swallow, with a chaser of sweet tea.
“But I wouldn’t know about that,” she continued conversationally, “because I’m always the one on top.”
She put her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand, and sighed heavily, looking as wholesome as a daisy in her yellow-and-white beach dress. “Oh, you don’t have to get up on my account. You’ve still got three more miniquiche on your plate.”
“I read an article once,” he said, as he tugged her behind him on the way to the bedroom, “that said well-read women make the best lovers.”
“You can’t believe everything you read in the papers.”
He looked over his shoulder and winked at her. “Darlin’, you’ve already proven that one is true.”
For two more days, Trey enjoy
ed each round. He relaxed into a feeling of normalcy, and stopped trying to commit every moment to memory. He knew where he was. He knew everything about this ranch. It didn’t seem possible that he could forget the new memories he was making now.
Trey did a little more ranch work, Rebecca did a lot more decorating, and they kept the sex lighthearted. Tomorrow would come. She’d find her job, and he’d return to Oklahoma, and there was no sense thinking about miracles like forever.
He’d already gotten the miracle of Rebecca. She’d survived an ice storm. She’d gifted him with her body. Even when Rebecca curled up next to him and made him watch movies about Christmas miracles, Trey knew better than to expect the universe to give him more than that.
Trey kept the right perspective for rounds eight and nine and ten, but it was Christmas Eve that did him in.
On the safety of the Navajo blanket, with the limestone fireplace warming them both, Rebecca was having her traditional Christmas. By the massive tree that she’d assembled from the box in the garage, she served him popcorn and hot chocolate as she hung the last ornament.
Her sweetness wasn’t a matter of wardrobe, Trey already knew. Her confidence was real, too, and when mixed with her sweetness, the combination was like none other. Some of her ideas of daring adventures in bed were touching in their innocence. Tonight, she revealed a deck of cards and dared him to play blackjack for her idea of high stakes: every losing hand would require the loss of an article of clothing.
“Strip blackjack,” she announced, as if she were a Roman emperor who’d just declared the start of a court-wide orgy.
Trey was so hopelessly charmed, so completely under her spell, that he agreed to the game before he remembered why he no longer played cards.
Rebecca dealt hearts and spades and clubs on the zigzag diamonds of the Navajo blanket.
Trey tried to focus on the numbers. The suites were not part of the game. He focused on the numbers seven and two in the corners of the cards, but some of the numbers were Js and Qs. They had a value, he knew, when added to two. Trey felt the sick feeling between his shoulder blades begin, while he prayed this Christmas was not about to go to hell.
Chapter Thirteen
“Hit me.”
Rebecca pouted. “C’mon, Trey. It’s no fun if you try to lose. The idea is for you to get me naked. You have to try to win, so that I have to take off a piece of clothing, not so that you have to.”
It was as if the man had never played blackjack in his life. She’d even stopped a few hands ago to remind him of the rules. They needed to draw cards—take a hit—until their cards totaled as close to twenty-one without going over.
“You’ve got eighteen. Why would you want another card?”
She was watching his face closely, so she saw him blink as if he were surprised. Saw the way his mouth tightened. Saw him squint at the cards.
“Do you wear glasses?” she asked.
That question definitely surprised him. “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. Hit me.”
“Fine.” She dealt the next card off the top of the deck. A four. If he’d gotten a two or three, he would have beaten her. She smiled at him. “That was close.”
“Hit me again.”
She couldn’t keep smiling.
“You already lost, Trey.” She said it as kindly as she could, but her gentleness was lost on him as he glowered at the cards. Then he sat back and sent her a brilliant smile, too brilliant, and he pulled off his shirt.
“I know I lost. I needed to get rid of that shirt. It’s too warm by the fire.”
His bare chest was beautiful in the firelight. The lights were twinkling on the tree, and this Christmas Eve should have been her fantasy come true.
Instead, she felt cold.
“Trey, I think we should go to the hospital.”
“Let me see your feet.” He cupped her heel and slid off her sock, the warm wool one she’d borrowed from Patricia’s drawer out of necessity. The soles of her feet were peeling from the frostbite, but there was nothing too awful to see, nothing black or green or dangerous.
“It’s not my feet. It’s you.”
He kept his head down, her foot cradled in his hand.
“I read this article once, about the signs of stroke. It seems to me you’re having an awfully hard time counting and remembering the rules. You’re young for a stroke, but it’s not impossible. I read this article—”
His head snapped up. “I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
She was startled at his anger; her foot jerked in his hand.
He set her foot down gently and gathered up the cards.
“You know what?” she said brightly, coming to her feet. She moved over to the sofa, with its end table and the old-fashioned, corded phone that had a permanent place on it. “You shouldn’t be driving if we suspect an issue, and I’m not the world’s best driver, so I’m just going to call an ambulance. That’s the fastest way to get there.”
He stood, as well. “Don’t call 911.”
She was tempted to obey him. He looked so normal, so smoothly coordinated, as he dragged his shirt back over his head. If she hadn’t witnessed hand after hand of failed blackjack, she’d never believe there was anything wrong. But she had seen it, and it had scared her. She picked up the phone because she loved him, and she couldn’t watch him suffer from an attack that could be silent but real.
He took the phone out of her hand and placed it back in its old-fashioned cradle. “I’m not having a stroke. I just hate to play cards.”
It was a laughable statement, but he looked as serious as she felt, standing before the fireplace with his hands on his hips. He didn’t touch her. He couldn’t quite look at her as he said, “Hate is the wrong word. It’s can’t. I can’t play cards.”
The simple sentence cost him so much to say, he turned away from her to face the fire.
“You got the first few hands right, but then I think something happened. Did you feel anything? Sometimes people report they felt a pop or—”
“I can get things right sometimes, but then the harder I try, the harder it gets. It’s stupid, but it’s not a stroke.”
“How long has it been like that?”
He braced on hand on the mantel and leaned closer to the fire. The flames lit him in golds and oranges.
“Forever,” he said. “It feels like forever.”
It was hard for her to imagine Trey being unable to do anything. He was invincible in her eyes, a man impervious to ice storms and unimpressed by hospitals. She’d been spying on him through the windows, watching him ride horses, awed by the way he could make them change directions or gallop or stop, anything at all he wanted. Every night, he handled her as easily, making her climax with a word in her ear and the press of his body, making her sleep with the warmth of his chest as he stroked her hair.
But he could not make cards add up to twenty-one.
She clasped her hands in front of herself, trying to sort through the implications. “It must be more than card games. Do you run into other things that are hard to do?”
“Now and then.”
He didn’t fool her with his stoic profile and his calm answers. She knew him, and she knew the tension in his shoulders was not right. Her curiosity was burning, but she wasn’t going to ask him about things he did not want to talk about, not when he bore each question as if it were a turn of the screw.
“Okay, then.” She held up her palms, and shrugged. All done. No further questions.
“I didn’t mean to ruin your Christmas Eve.” He didn’t turn to her as he said it. He didn’t see the smile she wanted him to see.
She dropped her hands. “It’s supposed to be our Christmas Eve, not just mine.”
He was so remote as he stared into that fire, alone with thoughts tha
t caused him pain. Look at me, I’m here. I want to help. I love you.
But she couldn’t say any of that. She’d told him she loved him once, in the cabin. She wasn’t brave enough to whisper it again, not when he didn’t feel the same. But he loved her touch. She could offer him that.
She walked to his side and placed her palm softly on his back, between his shoulder blades. The muscles were taut. She kept her hand there, waiting for the tension to release.
“If my idea of fun isn’t your idea of fun, you could just say so next time,” she said.
“It’s not that easy.”
She kissed his shoulder. “Actually, it is. ‘Hey, sweetheart. I don’t like to play cards. Let’s do something else.’ That would work.”
Finally, finally, he pushed away from the mantel and turned toward her, and she slid her arms around his waist, fitting herself to him as she had from the first.
“This is still a great Christmas Eve,” she said. “We’ve got the tree and the fire and the hot chocolate.”
He gently ran his fingertips over her cheek, and returned her smile with a nearly authentic one of his own. “What other Christmas traditions are on your agenda? There’s enough food in this house for a feast, but we’re fresh out of plum pudding. We could go a-wassailing, but you’d have to tell me what that is, exactly.”
She laughed, because he was trying to make her laugh, and she loved him for it. “We should be nestled all snug in our beds with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads.”
“I like the bed part. I might take it as a challenge to drive those thoughts of sugarplums out of your head.”
“Challenge accepted.”
Their mood was only light on the surface, and as they bared themselves to one another, they stopped trying to be amusing. They kissed and touched and moved in silence. He was hurting inside, and she knew it.
Rebecca wrapped her whole self around him, telling him with her body what she could not say with her words. I’ve got you. Hold on to me. You’re not alone.