High Country Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  He eased them both to the ground without another word, and they kissed for a long time, there in the cool, damp grass, never bothering to fetch a blanket from the wagon.

  Usually, their lovemaking was a lengthy process, but that day they were too eager for each other to wait long, or even to fully undress. Rafe opened the bodice of Emmeline’s dress, baring her breasts, reveling in them, and she unbuttoned his shirt, splaying her fingers over his chest, savoring his warmth and his strength.

  He raised her skirts and petticoat, bunching them in one hand, and she felt the soft ground through her pantaloons. They were soon gone, too, down around one ankle, and Rafe was unfastening his trousers. He teased her for several long, excruciating minutes, and she finally pleaded with him. He was inside her in one deep, powerful stroke, and her need, pent up for so many days, unwound like a watch spring freed from its casing. She was crying out, and hurling herself against him in the first throes of release, from the very beginning.

  Now that he was inside her, though, Rafe took his time, guiding her through one climax, and then another. She was all but exhausted when he finally lost control himself, and delved deep. He threw back his head and shouted in triumphant surrender, and his body buckled on hers once, twice, a third time. She felt his warmth inside her, and hoped—prayed—they’d conceived a child.

  They lay entangled for a while, and Emmeline wondered dreamily if they would ever be really separate again, after such a joining. It seemed to her that, this time, their very souls had fused into one, just as their bodies had. She wound a finger ’round and ’round a lock of his hair, just below his collar.

  He raised himself, trembling, to look down into her face. “That,” he said slowly, still out of breath, “was worth waiting for. I’ve got to admit, though, there were times in the last week when I thought I’d go out of my mind, wanting you.”

  She merely smiled, feeling as voluptuous as Cleopatra on her barge, and stretched, making a little crooning sound of sensual contentment, way down in her throat. Rafe moaned and instantly began to grow hard inside her.

  Her eyes widened.“Rafe,” she said,“I can’t…Not yet.”

  He nibbled at her lower lip. He was harder still, now, and bigger.

  It was her turn to moan.

  He began to move on her, inside her, slowly. Very slowly.

  “Oh,” she groaned, drawing out the word, lke someone falling over a cliff.

  He slipped his hands under her bare bottom, raised her a little, plunged to the core of her, and found fire there.

  Her hands were wild under his shirt; she grasped his back, pulling, trying to draw him into her very soul. Within moments, she was climaxing again, with a violent abandon so wild and so primitive that she barely recognized herself. All the while she was shouting his name to the skies, all the time she was meeting him thrust for thrust and coming apart in his arms, she wondered what force had taken her over.

  Rafe’s release was as fierce as her own, and when at last it ended, he fell beside her, fighting for every breath, his eyes tightly closed. It was as if he had depleted all his senses in loving Emmeline, and must wait for their recovery.

  He didn’t stir until much later, when a chilly breeze began to blow. Only then did he carefully, but awkwardly, button her bodice, covering the breasts he loved so well, and lower her skirts. He held up her pantaloons, like a flag, and smiled when a blush rose in her cheeks.

  “You won’t be needing these quite yet,” he said, and sent them sailing up into the back of the wagon. He ran a hand through his hair, dark as ebony, and mussed by Emmeline’s eager fingers.“What do you say we have that picnic now? Build up our strength a little, before the next round?”

  She blushed harder still. “You are incorrigible, Rafe McKettrick.”

  “And insatiable,” he added.

  She laughed. “Such fancy words. You must have been a very good student.”

  “Better at some things than others,” he admitted, kissing the backs of her fingers. Then he stood, deftly pulling her right along with him. He turned his back to her, to fasten his trousers and then button his shirt. He was still in a state of appealing dishabille when he faced her again, took her in his arms, and kissed her soundly.

  If we never had any more than this, Emmeline thought, it would be so much more than I ever dreamed of.

  “Let’s get a fire going,” he said when the kiss ended, and for a moment, Emmeline didn’t realize that he was talking about gathering sticks and lighting matches. “It’s getting cold out here.”

  Emmeline found firewood, branches and twigs, mostly, fallen and dried, and Rafe made a circle of stones to contain the blaze. Once the campfire was going strong, he unhitched the mules and staked them nearby, where there was plenty of grass and a small spring.

  Emmeline, meanwhile, spread one of the blankets on the ground, well within the radius of warmth cast by the fire, and laid out the picnic. She was ravenously hungry, and so was Rafe; little wonder, the way they’d exerted themselves earlier. She reddened a little, just to recall her unbridled responses.

  Rafe, standing at the edge of the blanket now, bent to take the wine—elderberry, made by Concepcion herself—from the basket, along with two empty jelly jars. He uncorked the wine easily, then poured for Emmeline and himself.

  “A toast,” he said, holding up his glass.

  Emmeline knew her eyes were shining as she held hers up in response.

  “To us, Emmeline. To you, and me, and our children, and our children’s chilren. To this house, and this land.”

  She touched her glass to his, and they drank, and to Emmeline there was something sacred about the exchange.

  The wine was heady stuff, and she had more with her dinner, and more still afterward. When Rafe laid her down amid the remains of their feast and took her again, this time slowly, she was transported, rising and falling on the tides of a sweet, quiet passion that had no beginning, it seemed, and no end.

  They slept afterward, huddled together under the other two blankets they’d brought along, and woke to find twilight descending. The wind was raw, and the fire was nearly out.

  “We’d better head back,” Rafe said, without particular enthusiasm.

  Emmeline nodded, wishing again that the house were finished, and they could stay where they were, on their own ground, just the two of them, for just a while longer. She opened the valise she’d brought, found a pair of pantaloons inside, and put them on behind the wagon, out of Rafe’s view.

  It seemed a silly pretence of modesty, given that he’d removed the first pair with so little resistance from her, but there it was. She felt taut as the strings of a fiddle inside, tuned and resonant, all her senses humming. Indeed, she suspected that if Rafe so much as touched her in the most remotely intimate way, she would shatter like a clay pigeon at a skeet shoot.

  She didn’t look at him while they were gathering the blankets and the remains of their picnic, and when he’d hitched up the mules and hoisted her into the wagon box, she took great care to keep to her side of the seat.

  He chuckled, wrapping one of the blankets around her, pulling her close to his side. She hesitated, then settled against him with a sigh.

  It was dark by the time they crossed the creek, a few hundred yards downstream from the ranch house, with its glowing windows, and rambled up the other bank, mules and wagon wheels dripping water.

  Rafe stopped the rig behind the house, near the steps leading to the enclosed back porch, and helped Emmeline down from the wagon box first thing. She was stiff from the long, rugged ride down the mountain, but she felt a deep, secret contentment, too. That, she knew, was the legacy of Rafe’s lovemaking.

  He carried the picnic basket and blankets as far as the porch, then went back out to put away the team and wagon. Emmeline was hoping to find the kitchen empty, for she knew there was a silly, dreamy look about her, one she couldn’t quite hide. She might have been treading on air, several inches off the floor, so light was her step.
<
br />   And then she saw him.

  Emmeline stopped cold, staring at Holt.

  He smiled and hoisted his coffee mug in an impertinent salute.“Hello, Mrs. McKettrick,” he said.

  She couldn’t speak.

  Holt sighed and shook his head, affably bewildered. “Have you forgotten what we were to each other?” he asked. He chuckled when she didn’t answer, set his mug in the sink, and went out.

  Emmeline collapsed into the rocking chair near the stove, her knees having turned to water.

  Jeb reached into the of the wagon, just as Rafe was leading the mules into the barn to be brushed down and fed, and came up with Emmeline’s discarded pantaloons.“What’s this?” he teased.“A flag of surrender?”

  Rafe left the mules standing and went back to snatch the knickers out of his brother’s hand. Once he had them, he didn’t know what to do with them, and he made several false starts before stuffing them inside his shirt. His face felt hot as a stove lid with a January fire burning beneath it.

  “One more word,” he warned, waggling a finger at Jeb and frowning so hard, it hurt. “Just one more word, Little Brother, that’s all it’s going to take.”

  Jeb was trying hard not to laugh, and he held up both hands, palms out, in a gesture of peace. His cheeks kept puffing out, though, and he was making a wheezing sound. Under any other circumstances, Rafe would have whacked him hard on the back, thinking he was choking.

  Instead, he turned his back on his brother, commending himself on his forbearance, and stalked over to take up the mules’ halter ropes again. Damn, but he’d be glad when he and his wife had their own place.

  Jeb followed him into the barn. Typically, he didn’t help put the mules away, he just leaned against the stall gate, watching Rafe work and grinning like a cat with feathers in its whiskers.

  Rafe finally snapped. “What?” he barked, tossing the brush he’d been using into an old bucket full of similar items, and forcing Jeb to step back by opening the stall gate.

  “I reckon we’ll be starting on that house of yours soon,” Jeb said.

  Rafe glared at him, suspicious. “You’re up to something,” he said.“What is it?”

  Jeb tried to look injured.“Me?” he asked, thumping his chest with both hands. “If anything, Brother, I’m stricken with admiration. Who’d have thought you had such a way with women?”

  “What way is that?” Rafe asked in a very low voice, glowering. He was taller than Jeb, so he made a point of looming a little.

  Jeb reached out, patted the lump on Rafe’s chest where the bloomers were stashed. Unbelievably, he’d forgotten all about them. “That must have been some picnic,” he said.

  Rafe lunged for him, but Jeb was quick as a rabbit, and he got out of the way. He gave a hoot of laughter and Rafe went over the edge, chasing the little bugger clear out of the barn and around the horse trough. When he got his hands on Jeb, he meant to drown him.

  The ruckus drew a crowd from the bunkhouse, including Kade and the new man, Cavanagh.

  “What’s that in your shirt, Rafe?” Denver Jack wanted to know.“You fetch home a pup or something?”

  Jeb found the inquiry uproariously funny and let out another guffaw. Rafe saw red. He knew Jeb was just ribbing him, and normally he wouldn’t have let him get under his hide, but he was mighty sensitive where Emmeline was concerned, and he didn’t want the whole bunkhouse speculating on how she’d come to be separated from her knickers.

  Jeb took to dancing around, dukes raised like a prize-fighter. He’d always been a show-off, and he loved an audience. “Come on, Rafe,” he urged good-naturedly. “You know you want to throw a punch. Let’s see your best.”

  Rafe made a roaring sound low in his throat, like a bull, and he knew his eyes were bulging a little. He made another lunge for Jeb, and this time he connected, landing a solid punch in his middle. Jeb flailed backward and Rafe, propelled by his own momentum, got sucked into the undertow. Both of them landed in the horse trough with a resounding splash.

  Jeb came up sputtering and laughing at the same time. Rafe scrambled to his feet, his temper considerably cooled, and found himself flying backward onto the hard ground when Jeb’s foot struck his middle.

  And so they fought, these brothers, like a pair of young bulls, soaking wet, cheered on by the bunkhouse crew, and laughing fit to be tied, until they finally gave up in exhaustion and headed for the house, each with an arm around the other’s shoulder.

  Chapter 10

  SMOKE ROILED DARK and greasy against the sky, and Emmeline hurried anxiously to meet Rafe as he rode in, the morning after their trip to the mountaintop. “Rafe,” she gasped,“what—?”

  His face hardened slightly—or had she imagined it? “Don’t worry,” he said.“It’s just the Pelton place.”

  Emmeline stared at him.“What do you mean,‘just’ the Pelton place? Are you telling me that fire was deliberately set?”

  Rafe swung down from his horse in front of the barn and gave the reins to a ranch hand. “I set it myself,” he said. “There are men watching it, keeping it under control, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

  “How could you?” she whispered, horrified.

  “I told you before,” Rafe said, plainly losing patience.

  “That’s McKettrick land. The last thing I want is another bunch of squatters moving into that cabin.”

  Emmeline clenched her hands at her sides, glanced back toward the ranch house, where preparations for the party were going on. The party celebrating their marriage. And Phoebe Anne was in there, too, resting up for the long trip home to Iowa; Phoebe Anne, who had buried her dreams just a few hundred yards from that cabin.“You had no right!” she said.

  “I had every right!” he retorted.

  The extent of his insensitivity was breathtaking. “The least you could have done was wait until Phoebe Anne left for Iowa!”

  Rafe glowered down at her, eyes narrowed. “You’ve got a lot to learn about living out here. We don’t set a whole lot of store by waiting to do anything that needs doing. Furthermore, if I let every hard-luck farmer who took a fancy to this place slap up a cabin and hoe himself out a vegetable patch, there’d be no room left to graze cattle!”

  Emmeline stood on tiptoe, her face as close to Rafe’s as she could manage.“Rafe McKettrick,” she said,“that poor woman lost her husband and her baby, in the same day. Now you’ve burned her home to the ground.e you no trace of human kindness or understanding in you?”

  He pulled back, ever so slightly, as if she’d slapped him. “First of all,” he said evenly, “the place isn’t her home and it never was. And second, she doesn’t mean to live there anyhow!”

  “Seth and the baby are buried on that land! Did you just let the flames rush across their graves?”

  Rafe threw his hat to the ground.“Hellfire and damnation,” he bit out.“What kind of man do you think I am?”

  “I believe I have made that clear,” Emmeline replied. Then she turned and stormed back to the house.

  Angus, who had business with a neighboring rancher, was taken aback to find his eldest son standing in the barnyard with one foot planted in the middle of his own hat. He reckoned he shouldn’t have been surprised, though, since he’d just passed Emmeline on his way out of the house. She’d been in such a steaming rage that she hadn’t even said howdy.

  “What’s the trouble, Son?” he asked, slapping Rafe on the back. He felt charitable. Today, he meant to buy the Chandler place, just north of the Triple M, and double the size of his holdings. Now that one of his boys had taken hold and landed himself a wife, Angus had hope for the future.

  Rafe looked exasperated, and a little embarrassed, too, as he stooped to recover his ruined hat and slapped it distractedly against one thigh. “We’re burning the Pelton cabin,” Rafe said. “Emmeline isn’t taking it too well. I explained that it was on Triple M land in the first place, but—” He spread his hands, then let them fall to his sides. Enough said.

  Angus
sighed. “Women don’t usually put so much stock in deeds and titles and the like as we do,” he said, and shook his head. He’d always found the female of the species purely confounding, and never pretended otherwise.“They seem to reckon that if somebody comes along in a broken-down wagon, hangs up some curtains and builds a chicken coop, that’s claim enough.”

  Rafe thrust a hand through his hair. “There’s no reasoning with that woman,” he muttered, staring at the house intently as if he hoped to see through the walls.

  Angus laughed. “Don’t even try,” he said. “You’ll save yourself years of suffering.”

  Right then, the new cowhand rode in, mounted on a big sorrel gelding, one of the finest pieces of horseflesh Angus had ever seen, which was saying something, since he’d been around horses all his life. He’d heard about this Cavanagh fella, but this was the first time he’d actually laid eyes on the man, and something in his bearing gave Angus a jolt. Without thinking about it, he laid a hand to his heart, half expecting it to give out on him, right there in the barnyard.

  “You must be Cavanagh,” he heard himself say. He felt odd, as though he were sleepwalking, but with his eyes open.

  “Yes, sir,” came the reply, as the wrangler swung down from the saddle. His gear was good, like his horse—better than a man making thirty dollars a month and three squares a day ought to be able to afford. That saddle was Mexican, if Angus wasn’t mistaken—and he seldom was, when it came to good tack or anything else that had to do with ranching. Silver conchas gleamed in the richly tooled her on the canticle, and the bridle fittings and breast strap were just as fancy.

  Angus put out a gloved hand. “Angus McKettrick,” he said, frowning.

  There was something cocky about the man’s grin, and a little familiar, too. That was the most disturbing thing of all—the sense that he ought to know this fellow.“Yes, sir,” drawled the newcomer.“I figured that’s who you were.”

  Angus ruminated on that. “I knew some Cavanaghs once,” he said. “They were neighbors to my first wife’s people, down in Texas.”