Ransom My Heart

by Gayle Wilson

  When he felt her climax, her body out of her control, he joined her, allowed himself to arch upward, his own body exploding with convulsive power. Then again. And again.

  It was not until those sensations eased, rippled into aftershock and then shimmered into slow heat that he was aware again of the pain in his shoulder. Aware of the price he would pay for even this semicontrolled movement. Aware but uncaring. It had been worth whatever price he would have to pay.

  “You okay?” she asked softly. He opened his eyes to find hers, wide and dark, looking down on him.

  He laughed, the sound of it low in his throat, and he watched the response of her mouth. Her smile a little too generous. Eyetooth just the tiniest bit crooked. “I’m not sure,” he said truthfully. “Maybe we ought to give it another shot. Practice makes perfect.”

  “Are you saying that wasn’t perfect?” she challenged. “Is that what you’re saying, Chase McCullar?” She put her hands on either side of his stomach, palms down, and leaned forward, almost threateningly, over his body.

  “I’m not saying anything of the kind,” Chase said. “I just always heard that the Kincaids demand the best.”

  “The best man for the job,” she said gently, not tauntingly.

  “If you’re gonna start quoting Sam, then I’m going to sleep.”

  “Bet me,” she whispered.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was pretty late the next morning when the phone rang. Chase came awake to find himself alone in the bed they had shared the night before. Still nude. There had been a sheet somewhere, he remembered, but it seemed to have disappeared. He lay and listened to the morning, relaxed as a cat in the sunlight that was streaming into the bedroom.

  Samantha must have been in the kitchen when the phone rang. He could smell coffee, and he could hear her footsteps over the wooden floor, hurrying to pick up before the phone could wake him.

  She reached it before the third ring. Like the time at Jenny’s, he didn’t really intend to eavesdrop, but there wasn’t anywhere to go to get out of hearing distance of the conversation. Besides, even if there had been somewhere to go, his aching body was too lethargic to drum up the energy to move. It was probably Sam, he thought, asking about last night.

  Her father hadn’t been thrilled about the role Samantha was supposed to play in what had gone on, but when Chase had called him to set it up, he had promised Sam that he’d see to it that nothing happened to Samantha. “I’ll keep her safe,” he had said. “On my honor, Mr. Kincaid.”

  The old man had made no reply for a moment, and then surprisingly he’d agreed. “You take care of my babies, McCullar,” he had said just before he’d broken the connection. At least, that was what it had sounded like.

  “No, of course, I’m pleased,” Samantha was saying now, her voice coming to him clearly from the front of the house. Chase raised his head carefully and propped his bent right arm behind it, testing. He was sore—that was natural after last night’s accident—but it would be bearable, he thought, until he could get back to Doc’s.

  “It’s just that it happened a little sooner than I’d expected,” Samantha continued.

  Chase thought about that, trying to fit it into what she might tell Sam. She sure as hell wouldn’t tell him that, he decided, grinning.

  “How long do we have?” she asked, and he waited with her through the reply. “Well, I guess that’s good. It may take me a little while to find somewhere. You did say he wants everything?” Another silence. “Okay. I’ll come in Monday. Thanks for calling. I really appreciate you calling, taking time on a Sunday morning to let me know.”

  Chase heard her hang up and return to the kitchen.

  “Samantha?” he called.

  “In the kitchen,” she said. “You ready for some coffee?”

  Which meant she would probably bring him some, and he should start the process of sitting up. He unbent his right arm and used it to lift his body, easing his shoulders back against the headboard.

  “Why don’t you let me take you in to one of those twenty-four-hour things in San Antonio, one of those doc-in-a-box deals?” Samantha asked from the doorway. She held a mug in one hand. “Or better than that, to the emergency room?” she suggested.

  “I’ll go by Doc’s when I leave here,” he said.

  “Doc doesn’t have the latest equipment—”

  “I promise you, sweetheart, what’s wrong with me doesn’t need the latest equipment to fix.”

  He held out his hand for the coffee and enjoyed watching her walk across the room to bring it to him. She was wearing jeans and a tank top. She had probably been out to the stables already while he’d just lain here, sleeping like a dead man.

  “And what would that be?” she asked, smiling at his tone. “Whatever’s wrong with you this morning?”

  “It feels a little like I’ve been rode hard and put away wet,” he said.

  Her hand hesitated, the mug just beyond his reach.

  “Don’t you pour that coffee on me,” he warned, seeing the temptation in her eyes. “I swear I can’t move fast enough to get out of the way.”

  “Is that what happened last night? You just couldn’t move fast enough to get out of the way?”

  “That’s not exactly how I’d describe what happened last night,” he said, and finally she put the mug into his outstretched hand and sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. She watched as he took the first swallow, rolling the heat and flavor of the coffee around in his mouth. “Was that Sam on the phone?” he asked.

  He took another swallow, still savoring it She didn’t say anything, and finally he glanced up to see if he was missing something. The laughter that had been in her eyes was gone.

  “It wasn’t Sam,” she said.

  “Something wrong?”

  “It was Blake Cunningham.”

  “You thinking about buying some more land?” he asked, smiling at her.

  “Actually,” she said softly, “I’m selling some.”

  It took a minute to penetrate, his brain overly relaxed by all the problems that had finally seemed on their way to resolution last night

  “I didn’t know you owned any land but this place.”

  “I don’t”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, trying to figure it out. “Why?” he asked. “You said you wanted Amanda to have the ranch, and I thought after last night—”

  “Last night…” she interrupted, and then she hesitated before she completed it. “Last night didn’t change anything about this.”

  His heart had stopped about halfway through that. “This?” he repeated carefully.

  “I owe Sam a million and a half dollars. I don’t have any other way to repay it. Even if we eventually get back what Drake took…” She shrugged. “Blake has found a buyer who wants it all. Everything that’s here—lock, stock and barrel. I used to wonder when I was a little girl what that meant.”

  “You’re selling the horses?”

  She nodded, the cost of it in her eyes.

  “Even Lightfoot Harry and your mares?”

  “He wants it all.”

  “Damn, Samantha,”he said. For the first time he looked away from her, thinking about the dreams that had crowded into his head this morning, waking up in this house, listening to her footsteps moving through the small rooms. The same stupid adolescent dreams he’d had before.

  “He doesn’t care if you pay it back,” he said, and then wondered why he had bothered. They both understood that Sam didn’t want the money. She was the one who cared. She was the one to whom the debt mattered.

  She shook her head, not even trying to explain. This was part of the relationship she and her father shared. Chase might not understand why Samantha felt the way she did about accepting help from Sam, but he understood the ramifications of it.

  “I’m sorry, Chase. I always wanted Mandy to have this. Something of yours. But…it’s more important that we have Mandy back. That’s the only reason I took Sam’s mone
y in the first place, and I’ll never begrudge anything it costs to pay him back. Mandy’s worth any sacrifice.”

  He nodded. She had said nothing about them. Nothing about making plans together. One-night stand? he thought. Was that what last night was? Another one-night stand?

  “I hope you won’t begrudge it, either,” she continued. “I know that you haven’t really had time to get to know Mandy, but I think—”

  “Don’t say it,” he warned her, his voice cold. “Don’t even suggest that I might value this chunk of desert more than I value her.”

  “I know you don’t But I also know that this is your heritage. I know what that means.”

  “Mandy’s my heritage, not rocks and sand. But you don’t have to sell the horses. I’ll take care of whatever’s left after the land is sold.”

  “Sam said you made good money,” she said.

  That meant she was at least thinking about letting him handle part of the debt. But it also sounded like she was thinking he had salted away a good portion of what he’d made in the last few years.

  “And I spent it about as fast as I made it,” he confessed, not begrudging that, either. “But there’s always more where that came from. Sam’ll wait for his money.”

  “More trips into Mexico you mean,” she said softly. “Negotiating. Carrying other people’s money. Putting yourself at risk, a risk that increases each time.”

  “It’s what I do, Samantha.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  He smiled at her. “We talked about this. Even if Buck Elkins needed a deputy, which I haven’t heard he does, I can’t go back to that. Or to the DEA.”

  “You could work for Sam.”

  He knew what she was thinking. She had said the old man needed some help, someone to see to things on the ranch that he no longer could handle himself.

  “I don’t think so.” He hated to burst that particular bubble, but he couldn’t see himself turning into Sam Kincaid’s right-hand man.

  She didn’t argue the point “The other’s just so dangerous. You even admitted it. Too many people know you, know what you do.”

  “I can’t live off Sam Kincaid’s charity any more than you can,” he said.

  She nodded and then the silence was back. The uncomfortable kind. He knew he needed to ask, even if the answer wasn’t what he’d been dreaming about. He still needed to know.

  “So where does that leave us?”

  She looked up at him, her eyes quickly dilating. Shock, this time. She hadn’t been expecting the question, he realized. And maybe that meant…

  “Where do you want it to leave us?” she asked, her voice very low.

  Fish or cut bait, his daddy used to say. Now was the time. No more years wasted on regret because he hadn’t had sense enough to make it plain to her how he felt. He’d already done five years of that, a long enough sentence.

  “Together,” he said. “You, me, Mandy. Married. A family. A real family. And there’s one job I’ll be willing to do for Sam,” he added. “Free of charge.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, her lips beginning to curve.

  “Make him that grandson he’s always talking about.”

  THE WEDDING WOULD BE at Mount Ebenezer Baptist Church, the tiny wooden church the McCullars had always attended, where Chase and Mac had gone to Sunday school all those years ago. She and Chase didn’t talk much about that decision. It just seemed right somehow.

  She had told Sam that Sunday evening when she’d gone to the ranch to pick up Mandy and to tell him all that Chase had learned about Jason Drake’s treachery. Her father hadn’t said much, beyond the expected protest that she ought to be married at home, but he had offered her her mother’s wedding dress. She had taken the veil and had even thought about wearing the beautiful silk-and-lace designer gown, but theirs wasn’t going to be the kind of wedding Sam and her mother had had, with the cream of Texas society there to offer their blessings and good wishes.

  The vows she and Chase would exchange were somehow too private for Sam’s kind of show, the Kincaid kind. This wedding wasn’t really a beginning, wasn’t even a celebration. It was simply a culmination, maybe a maturing for them both. The church was big enough to hold their real friends, and in some way having the ceremony there would include Mac, too. She thought that might be important.

  She had wondered how to tell Mandy, but in the end it had been far easier than she’d imagined. She had told her the truth—almost all of it. That Chase was really her daddy and that he’d had to go away for a long time, but now he was back and they were all going to live together.

  “But where will we live?” Mandy had asked, a small worried crease forming between her deep blue McCullar eyes.

  Samantha had mentioned nothing to her daughter about the sale of the small ranch, knowing that the loss of the horses would shadow even the joy of acquiring a daddy, so she hesitated, unsure what reassurance she should give.

  “Will we have to go live at Aunt Jenny’s?” Mandy prodded at that hesitation.

  Samantha realized then that the question had nothing to do with the impending sale, only with her own explanation of where Chase lived.

  “Maybe a new place,” she suggested. “Don’t you think that would be best? A brand-new place for the three of us. How do you think that would be, Cupcake?” she asked, holding her breath.

  The blue eyes were still troubled at the thought of having to leave the only home she’d known, but Samantha knew her daughter was more adventuresome than she had been at that age. That quality came from Chase.

  “Okay, but we’ll have us a swing,” she said decisively, “so Mr. McCullar can push me every day.”

  Samantha made no mention of the horses. Mandy wouldn’t be able to conceive that Samantha would leave them behind. She was finding it a little difficult to conceive of it herself, but despite Chase’s offer, she knew it was the right thing to do—to sell the horses with the ranch. They were too valuable an asset not to. For some reason she couldn’t stand to burden Chase with her debt any more than she could take Sam’s money and not repay him.

  During the next two weeks Mandy had helped her pack their belongings and had welcomed her father into the circle that had before included only the two of them. She delighted in his attention, and Chase was infinitely patient with four-year-old unanswerable questions and “supposes.” Samantha often sat on the railing of the narrow porch, she and the calico cat together, watching while Chase pushed the swing, listening with serious attention to Amanda’s chatter.

  “Don’t you get tired of it sometimes?” she had asked him one night, cuddled into the curve of his arm, as they lay together in the big bed while Mandy slept in the room down the hallway.

  Chase always timed his arrival long after their daughter’s bedtime, and he left in the predawn stillness of the desert night. She didn’t know why that was so important to him, but she accepted that it was.

  They both knew there would be gossip about their marriage, a lot of speculation. Chase had said he couldn’t do anything about the fact that people would talk, but they weren’t going to give them any further ammunition and they weren’t going to take a chance on that talk hurting Amanda. But he couldn’t seem to stay away and she didn’t want him to, so for the weeks before the wedding neither of them ever got a full night’s sleep, and neither of them cared.

  “I mean, I love her better than my own life, but there are days…” Samantha said, moving her head slightly back and forth against his shoulder. “I have to confess there are days when I think I can’t answer another one of those whatifs.”

  “I have a lot of catching up to do. I owe her a lot of answers I missed being here to make during the last four years,” Chase said. Then he put his lips against her temple, and she closed her eyes in anticipation of his touch. “I’ve missed so much—with both of you—that it’s going to take me a lifetime to catch up,” he whispered. “Even if I start now.”

  His hand moved downward to find the hem of
the nightgown she wore. She wondered why she even bothered to put one on, as the fabric was pushed upward until his hand found what it sought, found and possessed with the sure, unquestioning confidence of ownership. Coming home.

  IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING, Samantha thought, she had been expecting Sam to show up. And she wasn’t entirely sure if it was the fact she was marrying Chase McCullar that was responsible for his absence. She really believed his feelings about Chase had changed. Maybe he hadn’t come because of the betrayal of Jason Drake, because of the fear of what he would see in the eyes of those who knew about his misjudgment. Whatever the reason, as she stood in the back of the small church, she couldn’t find that distinctive shock of white hair among the wedding guests, and the day was a little less perfect because of it.

  She watched Mandy walk down the aisle, dropping rose petals one by one with serious concentration. It wasn’t until the little girl looked up and spotted Chase standing before the altar that she relaxed. Eyes on her father, she began scattering the flowers with reckless abandon, evidently in a hurry to reach him. When she did, she took his hand, her tiny fingers reaching with confidence for his, despite the careful instructions Jenny had given her about where she should stand. Mandy had already decided where that should be.

  Samantha’s lips curved, watching them together. Finally together. She was aware suddenly that the music that signaled her entrance had begun. Chase’s eyes lifted from their contemplation of the pink-clad flower girl to find hers, and in their blue depths was the promise he had already made. “Together. Me, you, Mandy. Married. A family.”

  She would never remember her journey down that aisle or even the vows they repeated. Those words weren’t necessary. They both knew that. It seemed that the ceremony lasted only a heartbeat, and then Chase was kissing her, his warm lips pressed over hers, his strong arm around her waist.

  Cherishing and supporting. To love, honor and obey. In sickness and in health. For richer or poorer. As long as we both shall live. At least some of those words had lodged in her consciousness, she realized. The important ones.