by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
"Oh yeah?" Cade lifted a skeptical eyebrow at her as he passed. "So tell me—where did you learn how to clean house?"
"Well...not house, exactly." Her smile was brief and distracted; there was so much to see. "In boarding school, we were required to clean our own rooms and make our beds, so I do know how to sweep and dust. Frankly, it is not that difficult."
Cade grunted. Through an open double doorway she saw him put the cooler on a table in what could only be the kitchen. "Well, I told you it was primitive."
"I do not think it is primitive at all." Leila had visited some of the poorest parts of Tamir with her mother and sisters. She knew what primitive was. She clasped her hands together to contain her excitement. "I think it is...perfect."
In fact, she had fallen in love with the house at her first glimpse of it. It was made of yellowish-brown stones, with a wooden veranda that ran straight across the front and a roof made of dark gray composition shingles, which Cade told her had replaced the original wooden ones. And the room she was standing in seemed so familiar to her she was sure she must have seen one just like it—perhaps more than one—in western movies. At one end there was a large fireplace made of the same stone as the outside of the house, with a sofa and several comfortable-looking chairs gathered in front of it. The floors were made of wood, covered with rugs made of cloth that had been tightly braided and then coiled. There was a set of antlers, perhaps from a deer, above the fireplace, and, oddly, the actual skin of a cow thrown over one of the chairs, like an afghan.
She let out her breath in a happy gust. She thought it was just what a house on a ranch in Texas should be.
She went into the kitchen where Cade was taking things out of the cooler and putting them into the refrigerator. He looked around at her, or rather, at the overnight bag that was hanging from her shoulder. "I'll show you where to put your things, and then we can have some breakfast."
Leila nodded. Once more she was too busy looking to reply. The kitchen had white-painted cupboards and blue linoleum on the floor, and a yellow plastic cover on the table that was covered with tiny blue and white flowers. Directly opposite the wide door from the living room, another door with a window in the top opened onto what appeared to be a screened-in porch. Just to one side of the door, a window above the sink looked out on dusty-looking trees, and beyond that, the barn and corrals she had seen from the airplane. Her heart quickened when she saw movement in the corrals. Horses.
"Bedrooms are in here." Cade was waiting for her in another doorway that opened off the kitchen to the right. He moved aside to let her pass, and she found herself in a small hallway with an open doorway— including the one in which she stood—in each of its four walls. Through one she could see a bathroom, with a deep iron tub with feet shaped like claws. The other two were bedrooms.
"Take your pick," he said, waving her toward them. "I think they're both about the same."
Leila peeked into both rooms, then walked through the doorway closest to her and placed her bag on the bed. She noticed that it was a much smaller bed than the one in Cade's room in Houston, but she did not linger and look as she had in the other parts of the house. There was nothing personal here, nothing to tell her which room Cade used when he visited the ranch. She felt a strangeness in being there with him so close behind her, and yet, so very far away. With so much unsaid between them there was awkwardness in the silence.
But, she thought, that is why I am here, because these things must be spoken of—they will be spoken of. But not now. This is not the right time.
Leaving her bag on the bed, she fixed a smile on her face and turned. "You said we could have breakfast? That is good, because I am hungry." She had eaten some toast with her one cup of coffee before leaving that morning, but it seemed a long time ago. "What must I do to help?" She felt strange little showers of shivers inside and rubbed her arms, though she wasn't cold.
"You want to help?" Cade looked at her, again with that so superior half smile that so clearly said he didn't see how she could. Leila was beginning to be very annoyed by that smile.
Back in the kitchen, he opened a drawer and took out a metal tool, which he placed on the countertop. Then he opened a cupboard and took out a large brown can. "If you want to help, why don't you open that while I get the coffeemaker going."
Leila picked up the tool, which was unlike anything she had seen before. It had two legs that opened when she pulled them, like a pair of scissors. Obviously, she was meant to use the tool to open the brown can, which contained coffee, she could see that. I will not ask him. I will not
My God, thought Cade, she doesn't even know how to use a can opener. He wondered if she'd ever seen one before.
"It's...a can opener," he said gruffly, moving closer to her.
She glanced up at him—a patient look, as if he had said something stupid. "Yes, I know. It is just that I have never seen one...like it...before." There was a smudge of color in each cheek, and he wondered if it was pride, or embarrassment.
"It's, uh...pretty much just your classic can opener." He edged closer still. "They're kind of a basic necessity around here, since about the only things we can leave in the house are canned goods. Power's unreliable, so we can't leave anything in the freezer. And then there are the mice..."
"Mice?" She was gazing at him, not with the maidenly horror he'd expected, but with a bright and childlike delight. "Oh, do we have mice? I would very much like to see one." She tilted her head and dimpled thoughtfully. "I do not think I have ever seen a real mouse before."
Why am I not surprised? Cade thought. Aloud he muttered, "They're a damned nuisance."
"Perhaps you should keep a cat."
"Who'd take care of it when there's nobody here?"
"Perhaps.. .your neighbor, what was it? Mrs. MacGruder? Since they must come to tend the horses anyway?" Her eyes were wide and ingenuous. He wondered how he'd come to be close enough to her to see himself reflected in their depths.
"What, once a day? Nah—animals need attention. You can't just leave them on their own all the time."
"Oh yes," she said softly, "that is true." And she looked at him just long enough before she said it that he felt a mean little stab of guilt.
"Here, why don't you let me do that?" he said roughly, reaching for the can opener.
She held it out of his reach. "No. I would like you to show me how to do it." And she added as a breathless afterthought, "Please."
Cade was awash with feelings he didn't know what to do with. Part of it was anger, or something close, and part was the kind of thing he imagined he might be feeling if he were trapped on a rocky shoal with the tide rising fast. And part of it, if he was honest with himself, was just plain old sexual excitement. It was her body heat, her woman's scent, partly familiar, partly exotic. He should never have let himself get so close to her. He was having trouble keeping his breathing quiet so she wouldn't hear how fast it was. He hoped she couldn't hear his heart hammering.
"Okay, here's what you do—here, let me show you." He reached again for the can opener.
And again she pulled it away, out of his reach. "No—I want to do it. Just please show me how."
What could he do? Gingerly as a rattlesnake wrangler, he reached across her and covered her hands with his. "First you have to open these up..." God, he could hardly breathe. "Then, you chomp down on the edge of the can—like this, see? That little hiss means you broke the seal. Then, you turn this..."
He felt like he was going to pass out, honest to God—-just like the way he felt when he hadn't eaten in way too long. Only he didn't think he'd ever known hunger quite like this, couldn't remember ever wanting a woman the way he wanted this one. No, not wanting, needing. Like, if he couldn't have her right now, this minute, he might keel over right there on the floor.
It occurred to him that her hands weren't moving.
"I think we are finished," she whispered, and she was looking at him, not the can.
Oh, yeah, Cade thought,
we're finished, all right. All his high-minded resolve? Dead.. .cooked. This was going to happen, and there wasn't a thing he could do to stop it.
It had come down to a matter of seconds.. .heartbeats. He could feel her heat and her scent seeping through his shirt and into his skin. His nerve-endings were learning the shape of her breast. She looked up at him and he stared down at her parted lips, and his throat was parched, thirsty almost to the point of madness for the taste of her.
The taste of her. He remembered it now. Oh yeah, it all came rushing back to him. And he knew in that moment that he'd never stopped thirsting for the taste of her.
He made a sound...whispered something, maybe her name. His head dropped lower, closing that taunting distance between himself and the thing he craved....
A loud banging noise made him jerk upright with adrenaline squirting through his system like ice cold fire. The door—dammit. Someone was knocking on the back porch door.
A moment later, before the shock of that had begun to subside, there came a lighter tapping at the kitchen door. It opened, and a short, bandy-legged man with a completely bald head and cheeks as red as Santa Claus stuck his head in. His neighbor, of course. Deb MacGruder.
"Hey, how you folks doin'? Heard you come flyin' in."
It was impossible to stay irritated at ol' Deb, who had to be one of the nicest people ever put on this earth, and Cade didn't even try. Hoping he didn't look or sound as jangled as he felt, he invited the man in, introduced him to Leila and relieved him of the plastic grocery bags he'd brought with him.
"Edna sent you over some fresh eggs and a jug a' milk—figured you could use some." Cade noticed then that ol' Deb was sort of fidgeting and looking sideways at Leila and blushing like a tongue-tied teenager, and when he glanced over at her, he understood why. She had her dimples turned on, full wattage, and was looking about as lovely and charming as it was possible for a woman to look. Deb rubbed a hand over his sunburned scalp and coughed. "I, uh.. .put up some of the mares in the corral, just in case the two of you were wantin' to do some ridin' while you're here." He sounded as if he thought the possibility remote, under the circumstances.
But Cade heard a gasp from somewhere behind him, and Leila's voice, breathless and excited. "Oh, yes, thank you!"
And he realized that he ought to be feeling grateful. He'd been given a reprieve. All was not lost, after all.
Sure, he thought, what he had to do was keep his wife out riding all day until they were both so worn out and saddle sore they wouldn't be thinking about doing anything tonight except sleeping.
And tomorrow, well.. .that was another day. He'd cross that bridge when he came to it.
* * *
"Hey, what do you think you're doing? Come back here!"
Leila's answer to that was a peal of laughter. Crouching low over her mount's neck, she urged the mare to full gallop. Sure-footed like all of her breed, the roan mare's hooves seemed to fly over the hard ground. Dark shapes of the trees Cade had called junipers flashed by on either side of her, and their spicy scent rose into the muggy air.
At the top of the gentle rise Leila had a brief and exhilarating glimpse of forever, and then her heart lurched into her throat as the mare plunged over the top of the hill and skidded down.. .down into a sandy valley. With a squeal of sheer exuberance she urged the mare on across the sand and up the slope on the other side. And there she finally halted, with the wind whipping her hair and the view before her stretching all the way to the base of billowing black clouds. Laughing and out of breath, she waited for Cade to catch up.
"What the hell were you doing?" she heard him bellow as his horse's chestnut head with a white blaze appeared atop the rise. A moment later she saw Cade's face, and it was dark and stormy as the thunderclouds that filled the sky above their heads. "What're you trying to do, get yourself killed?"
Somehow, though, Leila knew the light in his eyes was not anger, and she tossed back her hair and smiled as she called back, "Killed? No, no—I am living!"
"Huh!" Muttering soothing things to his mount and patting her sweat-soaked neck, he brought her beside Leila's. "Living?"
"Oh, yes—do you not know? I am living a dream. My dream." She threw her arms wide and lifted her face to the sky. "I have dreamed of this—riding like the wind...land that goes on forever."
"Yeah, well, the land may go on forever, but my piece of it doesn't. You see that down there?" He jerked his head toward the limitless horizon, and he was throwing his leg over the saddle in a dismount that Leila was sure only a man with long legs and the body of a cowboy could accomplish gracefully. "That's where my property ends. If you'd decided to keep on going to the next hill over there, you and the mare would've run right smack into a barbed wire fence."
Leila was quite sure nothing of the sort would have happened, and that either she would have seen the fence in time to stop, or the mare would have. And then, most likely, they would have jumped over it.
But a wife must not argue with her husband. "Please, do not be angry with me, Cade. If you only knew—"
"I'm not angry with you," he muttered as he ducked under the chestnut mare's neck and came into the space between the two horses. "Here—your stirrups are too short. Put your leg up."
"Oh, but I like them this way. I am learning to ride Western style—Rueben has been teaching me—but I am not very good at it. He said I should get used to it a little at a time."
Cade gave his head a shake. "Looks like you were doing okay to me." He tipped back the brim of his hat and squinted up at her. "Where did you learn to ride like that?"
She felt a warm little rush of pride, felt it spread right into her cheeks. "My brother has horses—I told you that, remember? At the polo match. Arabians, like yours. I used to ride a lot when I was younger, before—" She did not say, Before I became a woman, and no longer had the freedom of a child. "Before I got too busy with other things."
"Huh." He made a thoughtful sound and grudgingly added, "Well. Doesn't look like you've forgotten how." He looked at her for a long, silent moment, one hand on her saddlehorn, his arm resting on her horse's neck. He jerked his head and said, "Come on—get down for a bit. We'll give the horses a breather."
"A...breather?"
"A rest. Then I think we'd better be heading back. I don't like the looks of that sky."
Leila nodded and began to dismount. Then she stopped. She could not possibly manage the kind of graceful one-step dismount that Cade had used. Her stirrups were too short and her legs were, too. To dismount as she usually did, she would have to hold on to the saddle and lay her stomach across it while she freed her foot from the stirrup, then slide to the ground. But if she did that now, with Cade standing where he was, her backside would be only inches from his face. She was wearing jodhpurs, the only riding clothes she owned, and although they were not tight they did fit closely. If she was bending over, as she must, they could hardly help but outline her figure very clearly. The thought made her cheeks burn and her heartbeat quicken, but.. .not at all unpleasantly.
"Here—I'll give you a hand." He held out his arms to her, ready to help her dismount. His face had no expression at all. Even his eyes told her nothing; they were hidden in the shadow of his hat brim.
With pounding heart she considered her two choices. And then, with a sense of giving up a tiger in favor of a lion, she put her hands on his shoulders. She felt his hands, strong on her waist. Her throat closed and her breathing stopped.
Cade thought, what am I doing? He knew he should be more cautious around her, but something inside him was clearly enjoying this flirtation with disaster. He was like a child playing with matches, one old enough to understand the danger and arrogantly sure of his ability to avoid it.
Ah, but what a waist she had.. .slender and supple in his hands. Not so delicate and tiny he imagined his hands could span it, but firm and strong, with muscles that tightened under his palms as he lifted her down from the saddle.
He sensed a stiffening i
n her, too, that was more than the physical tensing of muscles, and to his profound regret, he thought he knew what it was. Not fear, exactly—he could see that she desperately wanted to feel at ease with him. It was as if she dared not allow herself to be. What she reminded him of—and his heart ached to realize it—was something he'd seen in Betsy's adopted strays, the guarded hopefulness of a once-friendly dog only lately grown used to unkindness.
Guarded. Yes. He understood, now, that where once she had been open to him, innocently eager and certain of her welcome as a well-loved child, now she was fortified against him. Against his rejection of her, at least. Pride had taken the place of innocence—she would not allow him to hurt her again.
The thought made him feel dismal and defeated, the more so because of the intensity with which he wanted her, right then, at that very moment. He remembered that night on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean, his awareness that she was "forbidden fruit," and his wondering if she might have been the more desirable to him because of that. And if that was true, then what did it say about his character? Was he, Cade Gallagher, who prided himself on his honesty, on his sense of honor and responsibility, afterall no more than a spoiled, contrary kid, wanting what he couldn't have?
A sound interrupted his dismal reflections—the soft rumbling of a cleared throat. Then it seemed that the thunder picked it up and carried it off into a darkening sky like a rolling echo, while Cade gazed down into the flushed face and luminous eyes of the woman he'd married, and felt that same rumbling in the back of his chest.. .the bottom of his belly.
A dust devil danced across the crest of the hill and swirled beneath the horses' feet. While the animals sidestepped nervously, it sprang like a teasing sprite into the sky, and Leila's laughter rose after it as, taking no chances, she held on to her hat with both hands. The hat reminded Cade of the one he'd retrieved for her from the polo field, and he could see from the way she suddenly went still and the way her eyes clung to his that she was remembering that day, too.