by Diana Palmer
She couldn’t get any closer. She remembered trying to. Jason was still trembling in the aftermath, his heart shaking him, his breath gasping. She was trembling, too. She thought she’d cried out his name, but she was dazed in the aftermath of unbearable fulfillment.
Kate breathed, trying to calm down. And just when she almost did, he lifted and pushed, and began to move. She started to speak, but his mouth covered hers with exquisite tenderness, and when he slid against her she realized that he was still part of her. Then the rhythm changed and he moved again.
The morning light streaming into the room woke her. Kate opened her eyes and looked for Jason, but he was nowhere in sight. As she sat up, she felt a lingering soreness and smiled.
Her eyes went lovingly to the dent in the pillow beside hers, and she leaned over and pressed her lips tenderly to it.
“What a waste,” Jason murmured from the bathroom as he stood in the doorway, laughing at her.
She flushed. He was wearing his dress slacks and boots, and she could see that his naked chest bore the marks of her fingers and her mouth from the long night. “Good morning,” she said shyly.
“It was a good night, too,” he mused as he sat down on the bed and stripped the covers off, lifting her across his lap. Her bare breasts were now lying soft and warm on his hairy chest. “Now tell me good morning,” he breathed, and kissed her.
She reached up to hold him, kissing him back, warm all over with the sweetness of belonging to him. There was nothing to compare it with. Always before, there had been some conflict, something to spoil it when they came together. If nothing else, there was his own inability to open up with her. But that seemed to be miraculously gone.
Her eyes opened lazily as he lifted his head, and she searched his face, finding no traces of conscience or guilt or moodiness.
“I thought it would only be another dream,” she whispered. “I was afraid to open my eyes.”
“So was I, if you want the truth,” he whispered back. His dark eyes searched her, and then went over her like hands, caressing, possessing. “My God, if last night had been a dream, I’d have jumped off the roof.”
“I thought we’d never be close again,” she said softly, dazed by the feeling in his deep, tender voice. “Not this close, anyway.”
He lifted his eyes back to hers. “You’re the only person who ever was,” he said gently. “I don’t want anyone that close, except you.”
She smiled up at him, her hand touching his hard shoulder, his chest, his neck. “Now that I’m here, do I get to stay?” she asked, only half joking.
“Suppose we start acting like married people,” he suggested. He spread her fingers flat on his hard chest. “Suppose we sleep together from now on.”
“And make babies?” she asked slowly, looking up, because that was the one thing she did remember from that long, sweet loving; what he’d said at the last.
“Did you hear me?” he whispered as his eyes searched hers. “I wasn’t sure I’d said it aloud.”
“You did.” Her face flamed, like the body so close against his. “And I want to.”
He hadn’t been sure of that at all. She did lip service to wanting a child, but he hadn’t been sure that it wasn’t either grief at the loss of the other one, or just desire. He was afraid a baby so soon would tie her down again and she wouldn’t like it. But if she loved him, it didn’t seem to matter. To him, at least.
“Kate…your career…this traveling…” He hesitated. “Hell, I’ll go with you,” he said. “I’ll take care of you.”
“I’m not risking that again, if I get pregnant,” she said quietly. “Not if it means spending nine months in bed. There isn’t going to be any traveling.”
“No. I won’t try to chain you here,” he said firmly. “You have a talent. I want you to use it.”
Her eyes searched his. “You don’t mind my career anymore, do you? You really don’t.”
“I told you once that it disturbed me, I just couldn’t tell you why. Not then. You see, Kate, I wanted to come first,” he said shortly, admitting it at last. “I wanted to know I was loved. All right. Now I do. I won’t feel jealous of your work anymore.”
She wondered if a woman could faint sitting up. She cocked her head. “You wanted to know that I loved you?”
“Is that so surprising? I made you pregnant on purpose, or haven’t you even realized it?” he asked matter-of-factly. “I could have taken precautions. I didn’t even try. And you never questioned it. My God, does a man who doesn’t really want ties deliberately risk getting a woman pregnant when he’s as old-fashioned about that sort of thing as I am?”
Her lips parted. “Oh, my goodness,” she managed. “I never thought about that.”
“Thank God. A man likes to have a few secrets.” He kissed her softly and pursed his lips as he looked down her body with lingering desire. Then he sighed. “I guess you’re going to be out of commission for a couple of days, after last night.” He looked up and grinned, looking unspeakably happy and at least five years younger. “But we can always feel each other up under the covers, can’t we?” he asked.
She laughed. And then she cried. She held him convulsively. “I love you,” she breathed.
“Yes. I noticed that a few hours ago.” He sighed, drawing her closer. “How about some breakfast? Then I can go to town and try to talk the bank out of foreclosing.”
She stiffened. “But the production sale—didn’t you say it made enough to pay off the interest note?”
“Sure,” he agreed. “But I still have to pay off the other mortgage, honey, the one on the house and land. I paid off the interest note on the last cattle shipment, that’s all.” He searched her troubled eyes gently. “Kate, I don’t care. Nothing comes before you, not even the Spur. If I lose it, and I still have you, then I haven’t lost a thing.”
He might not love her, but he certainly felt something for her, if he could make a statement like that. The Spur had always been his life.
She smiled tenderly, touched beyond reason. “It’s pretty momentous, to be told that you’re more important than somebody’s enormous big ranch.”
“I meant it, too.” He brushed his mouth over hers. “Let’s go down and have something to eat. Then I’ve got to get to town. And you’ve got to get to work.” He grinned. “If I lose my shirt, you may have to support us.”
“Oh, I would, gladly,” she began.
He put his finger over her lips. “No. I was kidding. I’d sell the place before I’d let you pay for it,” he said, and the look in his eyes was level and genuine. “I mean it. My pride wouldn’t stand that.”
“I just offered,” she faltered.
“Yes. Thanks. Now get dressed, you brazen hussy,” he said, tossing her lightly into the middle of the bed, his dark eyes appreciating every line and curve. “God, what a body! Get out of there before I go crazy looking at you.”
She laughed delightedly. It was like a totally new marriage, bright with love and promise. He picked up his shirt and suit coat and tie.
“I’d better find something less rumpled to wear,” he remarked. “See you downstairs, Mrs. Donavan,” he added, and there was real tenderness in his voice now.
She showered and put on her working clothes—jeans and an embroidered top. Her freshly shampooed and dried hair fell like black satin around her shoulders. She felt young. Honeymoonish, in fact. Not only that, she felt determined. Jason might not want help, but he was going to get some. Now the Spur had become not only her future, but the future of her prospective children. She wasn’t going to see it go down the tube because of Jason’s pride. She had more than enough to bail the place out, in her own account. She was going to save the Spur and swear the bank to secrecy. Then, when things were a little more stable than they were right now, she could tell Jason the truth and wait for the explosion.
She pursed her lips. The bank president was a good friend of the family. If Kate approached him in the right way, she just might get him to disc
over unexpected dividends from some of Jason’s stock to report to Jason. That might disguise the true nature of the deposit, which Kate had to make sure Jason didn’t find out about. It just might work, she decided.
Jason was downstairs when she finally got there, always one jump ahead of her when it came to dressing. He seemed to appear in his clothing, as if he never had to put it on at all.
He was in a charcoal gray suit this morning, and he looked debonair and unusually flashy with a red pouf in his chest pocket that matched his bloodred, patterned tie.
“Well, aren’t we spiffy looking,” Kate mused, grinning at him as she sat down next to him at the long table.
“We sure are,” Sheila remarked, grinning herself as she put a platter of biscuits next to the eggs, hash browns, sausage and bacon platters already on the table. “My, my, there’s that Kate all flushed and looking like a bride, and Jason’s bed not even slept in all night long. A body could get suspicious.”
Kate went beet red and so did Jason, of all people. He glared at Sheila with eyes that promised murder.
“I ought to bludgeon you with the coffeepot,” he said shortly.
“You’d attack your own cook?!” Sheila exclaimed, holding both hands to her breast. “You’d assault a helpless old woman who spent all morning stalking a wild hog, and hauled it up on chains and skinned it out and dressed it and ran it through a sausage grinder, just so you could have fresh sausage on your breakfast table?!”
Jason stared at her coldly. “You didn’t have time to skin out a hog.”
Sheila shrugged. “I had to take it out of the refrigerator and get the wrapping off, with my poor old hands eaten up with arthritis,” she amended. She grinned. “But it sounded better my way, didn’t it?”
He turned over his coffee cup with a smile doing its best to get past his teeth. “Oh, hell, sit down and eat your breakfast.”
“Can’t,” Sheila said, removing her apron. “I’m on my way to Laredo with Mrs. Carstairs from down the road. We’re going shopping for serapes.”
“I guess that means cold cuts for lunch,” Jason sighed.
“We don’t have any cold cuts,” Sheila replied. She smiled. “You might take Kate out to lunch.”
“Kate only gets a half hour, Cupid,” Kate murmured dryly.
“He could have a sandwich with you in the canteen, couldn’t he?” Sheila persisted.
“Of course he could,” Jason said resignedly. “I had planned to do that, without any prompting from you.”
Sheila chuckled. “Now isn’t that nice,” she sighed.
“So you can put up your bow and arrows,” he added curtly.
“I’ll just stick them in the cupboard, so’s I can shoot you some nice steak for your supper, my lord,” Sheila murmured, dropping him a convincing curtsy.
He picked up a fork and Kate had never seen the older woman move so fast, giggling all the way.
“You animal,” Kate accused.
“I wouldn’t stab her,” he replied. “God knows, I’m a patient man, I’ve put up with it all my life without killing her.”
“I had noticed that you’re a man of great patience,” she agreed with an impish smile.
He pursed his lips and searched her green eyes. “After last night, I should hope so,” he said, his voice dropping an octave.
She went red again, and he laughed, bending over to kiss her.
“What time do you have lunch?” he whispered.
She was having trouble thinking. “I…usually go at eleven-thirty, so the girls can go at twelve,” she whispered back.
“Do you? Open your mouth a little….”
She did, and it was like the night before, a stormy interlude that quickened her pulse and made her breathless with undisguised hunger for him.
He lifted his head after a minute, breathing roughly himself. His dark eyes were almost black. “You can’t imagine what it does to me, to kiss you like that,” he whispered gruffly. “It’s like making love completely when I do it with you.”
“Oh, don’t,” she moaned, “I’ll die of longing.”
He took a slow breath and nuzzled her nose with his. “So will I, honey. Isn’t it a sweet way to go?”
“So sweet….” She kissed him gently, loving the way his mouth responded so easily to hers. She smiled against it. “I love this,” she whispered. “I could never let go completely before, but now I can, and when I give in to you, I don’t feel ashamed afterward of what I’ve said and done and thought….”
He lifted his head, his eyes stunned. “Did you?” he asked. “Did you feel that way, after we made love?”
“Yes,” she confessed. She curled her fingers into his, and tugged at them idly. “It didn’t embarrass me at the time, but later, it all seemed so intimate and…and kind of…”
“…dirty?”
She looked up. “Yes,” she said.
His fingers contracted. “I told you how my father felt,” he reminded her. “Sex was an animal instinct, he said, and no real man needed it.” He brushed his lips against her fingers. “I guess, deep down, I had learned to feel that way about it, too. But after I made love to you, that started to change. It was something more than a mating urge. It was too tender most of the time, too profound. And last night, honey, all the walls went down. Every one. Last night was creation. I learned things about you and about myself that I never knew. That wasn’t lust. That was loving. That was the kind of loving,” he emphasized softly, “that plants seed and grows fruit. The kind of loving that brings a new life into the world, not a seamy kind of quick satisfaction that reduces a beautiful act to a sordid coupling.”
“You make it sound profound,” she said gently.
“Isn’t it profound?” he asked, smiling. “When two people express what they feel for each other in that way, so that the very force of the feeling creates life? My God, Kate, is anything more profound than that?”
She laid her cheek against his hand. “I thought you had hang-ups,” she murmured. “It sounds as if you’ve gotten rid of them.”
“I’ve gotten things in perspective, that’s all.” He tangled her fingers back into his. “And I’m still learning. My father had problems. But they aren’t mine, unless I let them be.” He searched her eyes. “What we shared in that bed last night wasn’t dirty. And whatever we do together, however we do it, it isn’t anything to be ashamed of afterwards. We’re both vulnerable, Kate,” he added softly. “That used to bother me, but it doesn’t anymore. I don’t mind letting the barriers down with someone who loves me.”
She nuzzled her cheek against his. “That sounds nice.”
“No one else ever did, Kate,” he said, half under his breath, in a tone that was dark and soft. “I told you that in Jamaica, and I meant it. You’re the only person in the world who ever loved me.”
“Oh, that’s not so,” she said, getting up. She pulled his head against her breasts, cradling it there. “Jason, your father loved you. He had to. There was good in him, or how could your mother have cared about him? And your mother loved you….”
“Did she?” He pulled back, his eyes fierce. “Damn her, she put herself first. She left us here with that madman! She ran. I watched him try to go after her….” He stopped, fighting down the memory of that night. He’d been almost fifteen, he’d never forgotten what he saw, but he’d never let himself think about it. He clammed up.
Kate searched his eyes. ‘You still blame your father for his drinking and your mother for her desertion, after all this time. I don’t think you’ve ever tried seeing it from their point of view, have you?” she asked gently. “No, don’t blow up at me,” she whispered, and she put her hands very tenderly against his hard mouth, quietening him as if by magic. “Listen. People aren’t perfect. You’ve tried to be. You’ve been afraid to make mistakes, because that would mean you might end up like they did, you might be flawed. But we all make mistakes, Jason. We’re all human. Your father was weak, and in a way, so was your mother. But that’s just
human.”
“It’s weakness,” he ground out. “If you’re weak, you get hurt.”
She smiled, nuzzling her face against his. “I’d never hurt you,” she whispered, and her mouth softly rubbed over his lips. “I love you too much.”
His eyes met hers, tormented. “Kate…she loved him, at first.”
Kate kissed him tenderly, loving the way he was with her, loving the way he let her get close, let her touch him.
She nibbled his lower lip and smiled. “I love you,” she whispered. “And you can’t do anything horrible enough to make me leave you. Does that make you feel less threatened?”
He sighed heavily. “I don’t know.”
That was a setback, but only a temporary one. He cared for her. She could make him love her, it would just take time.
“Jason, wouldn’t it be as well to go and see your mother,” she suggested hesitantly. “While she’s still alive? And ask her all the questions you never asked your father?”
He didn’t move for a long time. His dark eyes thoughtful, he finally pulled away and got up, lighting a cigarette with steady fingers. “I don’t want to see her.”
“Why? Are you afraid of what you might find out?”
“I’m afraid I might break her neck,” he said curtly. And in that instant, he looked almost capable of it.
Chapter Twenty-two
“I guess it’s never occurred to you that she might have had a reason for what she did,” Kate murmured gently.
“She had a reason, all right,” he shot back. “Her own safety.”
“Have it your own way,” she sighed. “You’ve got it imbedded in concrete, and nobody’s going to change your mind. But she can’t be a young woman any more,” she added without emphasizing it. “Once she’s gone, there won’t be anyone alive who knows the truth. Not even you.”
He didn’t say anything. That was a good sign, she thought, silently pleased with herself. When he didn’t say anything, he was considering it.
“I’ve got to run,” she said as she swallowed the rest of her coffee. “I’ll be late.”