A Texas Rescue Christmas

by Caro Carson

  She felt Trey’s gaze on her, and set aside her plate.

  “Not hungry?” he asked.

  She looked up at him, prepared to shrug and smile and pretend. The care and concern in his summer blue eyes took her breath away. That was what she wanted most. That was what she’d failed to capture in her coupons.

  The sex was important, though. It gave him a reason to keep her around, which kept her safe and provided for. She needed to lighten up this somber dinner. Keep it fun. Keep it sexy.

  On the blanket by the tree, she drew her knees to her chest and clasped her arms around them, putting a little energy into her pose, tilting her head in a flirtatious way.

  Trey was near her, sitting on the floor as well, but using the sofa as a backrest. He looked so wonderful, freshly showered, his black hair still damp. He was nearly done with an enormous portion of spaghetti. If she was going to play house with a man who worked outdoors all day, she was going to have to remember to cook for three. Maybe four.

  She waited until he looked up from his plate, then she smiled as if she were perfectly delighted with life. “You were gone a long time. Did you miss me?”

  “I keep you in my mind every minute.”

  “Oh.” There was an intensity to his words that she wasn’t prepared to hear. She’d been planning on steering the conversation in a different direction. “I guess there must be a lot of horses here, with all those different barns and paddocks. Is your ranch very big?”

  “About seventy-five thousand acres.”

  “Seventy-five thousand?” The number boggled her mind and derailed her train of thought. “I never left the ranch when I ran away, did I?”

  “You stayed right where I could find you.”

  Again, that intensity. Rebecca couldn’t ignore it, so she relaxed enough to rest her chin on her knees. “You’re the James in James Hill, I take it. Why didn’t they call it Waterson Hill, or something like that?”

  “The ranch is old. The only way to have one this size is to inherit it. Land costs too much to start a new cattle operation. Over time, the ranch got passed down through women every few generations. The last names would change. I’m the third James Waterson, but there were two James McClaines before that, and the original land grant was to James Schuler, my many-greats grandfather.”

  “You’re the sixth James to own the James Hill Ranch. That’s some old money.” And then, to her mortification, she burst into tears. “My mother would be so proud of me.”

  He set his plate aside and moved closer to her. She shuddered when he sat a little behind her and wrapped his arms around her, because it made her feel like they were back in a sleeping bag. Fresh tears welled, but she tried not to cry too loudly. She wanted to hear every word as he called her sweetheart and darlin’.

  Eventually, she mopped herself up with her dinner napkin. “It’s just depressing that I turned out to be like her, after all.”

  “I don’t see the resemblance.”

  “She has Hector. I have you. I keep telling myself you and I are different.”

  “We are.”

  “I had no idea who you were when I first slept with you. No idea at all. I want you to remember that.”

  “I’ll remember.” He started to do that wonderful, one-sided grin. “Although I’m not sure that’s the most flattering sentiment. That doesn’t make either one of us look very good.”

  “Don’t make me laugh when I’m so miserable.”

  “My apologies.”

  She laid her head back on his familiar shoulder and turned her face into his neck. “I wanted to be with you when I thought you were a landscaper in Oklahoma. Remember that, too, okay? This was never a trap or a trick. I wasn’t ever trying to cut a deal with a wealthy man.”

  “I really am a landscaper in Oklahoma. I’ve had a lot of time to think—”

  A horrible thought occurred to her. She pushed away from him so she could turn around. “You’re not just a landscaper, are you? You’re probably some kind of landscaping tycoon.”

  His smile faltered. “I’ve got a few crews. Eight trucks. That’s more than some, less than others.”

  “James Waterson the third, do you really? This is awful. My mother has to save face. You know she’s looking you up on the internet right now, and she’s probably cackling with glee that she’ll have a good answer when she’s asked about little Becky.”

  She sniffed again, not very sexy, and flexed her feet in her socks. She was too comfortable with him, when she should be a femme fatale to whom he was helplessly drawn like a moth to a flame.

  “If I married you, she’d turn that into her personal triumph, like she’d auctioned off my virginity for seventy-five thousand acres.”

  The last of his smile died.

  She tried to tease him like a fun girlfriend should. “What else have you done? Nothing will surprise me. Have you saved children from burning buildings? Invented a new gizmo? Won a major sporting event?”

  He ran his fingers through her hair. “Your mother might read that I was the highest-ranked college quarterback in the nation at one point.”

  He said it like he was confessing that he’d once been a murderer. He was in such a strange mood.

  “You’re not kidding, are you?” Now it was her teasing smile that faltered as she remembered the day’s drama. “The way you took that bodyguard out...that was like some kind of tackle, wasn’t it? Then you threw that punch... I’m so sorry you had to fight for me.”

  “I’m not. It was my pleasure.”

  She picked up his right hand and kissed his knuckles. “Does it hurt? I didn’t get a chance to ask you if you needed ice or anything before you left.”

  “Rebecca, I mean it when I say it was a pleasure. Maybe it’s a guy thing, or a cowboy thing—hell, it’s probably a caveman thing—but there’s nothing more satisfying than knocking down some bastard who deserves it. When you first told me his name in that sleeping bag in the cabin, I knew his time was coming.”

  “Did you know who he was today, before he bragged about his name?”

  His hand grasped hers. “I may be slow, but even I can put two and two together. Most of the time.”

  The card game. How could she have forgotten about that miserable card game?

  She kissed his hand one more time, anxious to steer away from anything he didn’t like. Her mother would never have brought up a subject that offended her protector, and Rebecca was grateful for Trey’s protection. “Do you think Hector will come back?”

  “No. That was his only play. He’ll move on now. You’re safe on this ranch, either way.”

  She wanted to crawl inside his skin, just to be totally safe. She huddled against his chest instead. “I think that bodyguard was here to ensure that I got in that car. If it had started raining sooner and you had gone off to the pastures...” Fear of what might have been made her shiver the same as the cold did.

  Trey ran his hands down her arms, warming her.

  She forced herself to say her fear out loud. “If you’d left to work the horses just a little bit sooner, I would’ve been dragged away. No policeman would’ve arrested a mother who was flying her daughter home on a private jet. Money lets men do a lot of things they shouldn’t.”

  “Did you notice the ranch hands that were out front when I put Ferrique in the car? There were at least two. One on horseback, one walking over from the cattle sheds. Did you notice them?”

  “Kind of, now that you mention it. Did you press some kind of alarm?”

  “There is a fire bell, but there was no need to use it. That limousine was out of place on the ranch. I couldn’t see it from the barn, but the hands at the cattle shed could. They were coming to check it out. It’s what you do on a ranch.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “It’s always been
that way. It probably goes back for centuries. You’ve got to know who is on your land, bad or good. Visitors get noticed. Those cowboys wouldn’t have stood by if they saw a man forcing a woman into a car. You’re safe on this ranch, sweetheart, even if I’m miles away. You can sleep well tonight.”

  * * *

  The rain turned to ice. The sound of the drops pelting the window changed subtly to something sharper. Something less forgiving.

  Trey lay on his back in the four-poster bed and cradled Rebecca to his chest. The sleet had blotted out all the starlight, but he could make out the contours of her shoulder and see her hand on the white pillow because of the faint glow from the tree lights she’d left on in the family room. They illuminated the open door of the suite in holiday colors, but Trey appreciated their light for a different reason. Every moment that his eyes were open, he liked to be able to see Rebecca. Commit her to memory. Never forget who he held, not for a millisecond.

  He stopped stroking her hair and just held his hands still on her head for long minutes, keeping his own breathing carefully even. Her eyelashes blinked against his skin. She could not sleep.

  “Does the sound of the storm bother you?” No matter how softly he spoke, his words seemed too brash in the darkness. “You could try wearing earplugs.”

  “Then I wouldn’t be able to hear your heartbeat.”

  The sweetness was piercing. She should have been able to hear the impact of her words, so acutely did he feel it in the heart she was listening to.

  “An acre of olive trees.”

  The escaped words hung in the air. Silently, he sent more after them, curse after curse.

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  One more time, he gritted his teeth and apologized. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “I know. Usually what you say is connected to the conversation, though. ‘Rescue swimmer’ took a little explanation, maybe, but it made sense. I don’t understand olive trees.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t ask her, not while she was torn up inside. She’d been essentially disowned by her mother today, who had shouted nasty last-minute things in the driveway as the bodyguard had tried to get his boss’s mistress to sit in the car. Her contempt for Rebecca’s choices had been poisonous. Nothing Trey could say would make it better.

  I actually do want to marry you. That’ll be seventy-five thousand acres—or a third of that, anyway. That’s twenty-five thousand acres, a wedding ring, and I’ll throw in a new car, because you need one. Pretty good deal for your virginity, wouldn’t your mother say?

  “Long stories are good.” Rebecca slid off his chest to lay on her stomach next to him, propped up on her arms. “I can’t sleep, anyway.”

  “It’s a hard thing, to cut off ties with your family, even if you’re better off without them.”

  “I wish I’d never met her.”

  It was an odd thing to say about a parent. He never thought in terms of meeting his parents.

  “That makes me sound like an awful person,” Rebecca whispered when he was silent. “It’s not like she ever hit me or anything.”

  He rolled on his side to face her. “Do you remember meeting her? She said something today like ‘that’s why I took you in’? Is she not your birth mother?”

  He could tell his question caused her pain. Her eyes were luminous in the almost-dark.

  “Trey, my love, we already talked about that.”

  His heart was pierced again, not with sweetness, but with dread.

  “In the kitchen, while I was waiting for the water to boil to make spaghetti, you asked me that same question.”

  He searched his mind. Nothing.

  “We joked about how a watched pot never boils, so we could talk as long as we wanted while we stared at it. You asked me about that taking-me-in comment. She’s not my birth mother.”

  Nothing. As far as he knew, this had never happened in his life.

  “I told you my real name. I’m Rebecca Burgess, remember?”

  Rebecca was not a Cargill. He’d drilled that into his head after a few mistakes. She’d never gone by Maynard or Lexington.

  “Rebecca Burgess.” He said it out loud, the name of the woman he loved, but he knew he’d forget it and have to be reminded.

  There was one name she’d never use: Rebecca Waterson. Trey would never ask her to marry a man so unworthy of her.

  He couldn’t remember boiling a goddamned pot of spaghetti. Disgusted, angry, he rolled out of bed and yanked on the jeans he’d thrown over a chair.

  “Where are you going?” The concern in Rebecca’s voice was precariously close to pity.

  “Nowhere. My life is going absolutely goddamned nowhere.”

  He slammed the bedroom door behind himself.

  Out of habit, he forced out the usual words. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  There was no one around to hear.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rebecca was scared out of her mind. She’d been scared of being forced to sleep with Hector Ferrique and scared that Patricia Cargill would kick her out. She was scared of ice storms and hospitals, and she was still scared she’d somehow freeze to death in this warm house. But nothing, nothing, scared her like the thought of losing Trey.

  Her hands shook as she tied the sash of the white bathrobe. She fumbled with the doorknob, but she held up the long hem of her robe and did not trip as she ran after Trey. He was not by the Christmas tree, brooding into the cold hearth, and not in the kitchen, where they’d had a long talk he didn’t remember. She opened the door to the room he’d been in the first night, the room full of trophies that gleamed in the dark.

  He wasn’t in the house at all.

  “Trey!”

  At a full run, her fists full of white robe, she plunged out the mudroom door and off the back deck into the icy sleet, heading for the barn. She would cut through that to reach the ATV shed. Maybe he’d needed to leave, just leave, to escape a bad situation that he couldn’t change.

  I’ll go with you. I don’t care.

  She kept her head down against the sleet, but she was forced to run a little slower. The bare soles of her feet struck hard ground. Every piece of rock felt like a razor blade.

  She heard the pounding of his running footsteps a second before he grabbed her around the waist and swung her into his arms, running the rest of the way to the barn. “Rebecca, damn it, what are you doing?”

  It was dark but dry in the barn, cool enough that she could see the white puffs of their breaths as they stopped inside the door. Trey put her down and slid the door shut, then scowled as he looked her up and down. He cursed at her bare feet and scooped her up again to perch her on a stack of hay bales.

  The hay pricked her thighs right through her thin robe. Trey grabbed a horse blanket and bent to dry her feet. His movements were brisk and the blanket was coarse as he chastised her. “Don’t you ever do a thing like that again. You scared the hell out of me, running across the ranch like some kind of white ghost.”

  “You scared me first.” She was wet and chilled, but inside she felt hot and angry and so incredibly relieved to have him in hand’s reach, looking strong and healthy and furious.

  Done with her feet, he stood and pitched the blanket into a corner. “I was standing on the front porch. Staying dry, like a normal person, when I heard my name. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  “I had to find you.” She grabbed him by the only clothing he wore, grasping belt loops on his jeans and tugging him closer to stand between her knees. She twined her feet around the backs of his thighs as if that would keep him from running away.

  She circled both arms around his neck to pull him close, but he resisted her for a second that lasted forever. When he g
ave in, his arms came around her and he held her too tightly against his chest. Crushed against him, she felt like she could breathe again.

  “You thought I decided to walk to the barn in the sleet?” he muttered into her hair.

  “I thought you went to get an ATV. Everyone goes crazy now and then. You’re allowed to run away, but you have to take me with you. New rule. I have to take you with me, too.”

  “Rebecca.”

  “Do you want that? Please tell me you want that.”

  He was silent, although his hold on her didn’t loosen.

  It would have been so easy to slip into sex. With her robe open in front and his jeans easily unzipped, he could have been inside her with a single push. The physical reassurance would be a relief after the scare they’d given each other.

  Instead, they stayed as they were, so close, not talking, not close enough. There was something terribly, terribly wrong. Whatever it was, he was not going to tell her.

  It was harder than breaking out of her mother’s prison, even harder than staying awake by an oak tree in the cold, but Rebecca had to know.

  “Trey, what’s wrong with you?”

  Oh, he held her hard. His arms were incredibly strong, and emotion made his hold too tight. She did not try to get free.

  “Why did you get a CT scan in the emergency room and I didn’t?” At his continued silence, she asked the most frightening question of all. “Do you have a brain tumor?”

  If you do, how am I going to live without you?

  Hard on the heels of that selfish thought, she whispered, “You’re not alone.”

  “It’s not a brain tumor. It’s not a stroke. I’m just...damaged.”

  He stopped crushing her with his arms, only to start touching her with his hands. He smoothed his palm over her cheek, his touch not entirely gentle, and buried his hand in her hair. He seemed to want to touch her everywhere at once, a desperate and emotional man. He grabbed a fistful of her bathrobe’s lapel in one hand, holding it shut over her heart, but his other hand slipped inside to cup her breast.