“Hello, Cooper,” Shiloh said from the sofa.
“Evening, ladies.” He tipped his hat at her and at Bonnie, who was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace with the dogs.
“Oh, they are beautiful,” Abby squealed from the kitchen. “I’m putting them in a quart jar in the middle of the table. Y’all can look at them, but if you steal one I will know.”
“Roses?” Shiloh raised an eyebrow.
“Daisies,” Abby answered. “Look.”
She held up the jar with twelve daisies, some greenery, and a sprig of something the florist had said was baby’s breath. The blue ribbon that had been around the box was now tied in a perfect bow around the top of the jar.
“One for each day you’ve been in the canyon,” he said.
“How sweet,” Bonnie said.
“I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to be selfish and put them in my bedroom,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute more. Thank you so much, Cooper. Daisies are my favorite flower.”
Shiloh looked up from her book. “Better have her home by midnight. She turns into a mean soldier when the clock strikes twelve.”
“I’ll remember that,” he said as he tucked her hand in his.
“So will I.” Abby pointed at Shiloh.
“Looks like y’all are getting along better and better,” Cooper said on the way outside.
“We’re not doing too bad for three women who had to start from scratch.”
“That’s the way all relationships start,” he said.
“Yes, but most siblings get to start from babies and grow,” she said.
When they were in the truck and driving toward the road, he said, “You are right, but it’s still from scratch and the first thing you have to do is build a foundation. Without that, nothing will withstand the storms of time. Silverton, Claude, or Amarillo?”
“Do you have ice cream in the freezer at your house?” she asked.
Yep, I told you she could be the right woman for you. She reminds me of your grandma. That woman wasn’t a bit bashful, either, the voice in his head said.
With his heart racing like he’d just run five miles, Cooper agreed with his grandfather.
Chapter Seventeen
The cleaning lady comes on Thursdays, so the place isn’t as nice as it would be tomorrow,” Cooper said as he flipped a switch and lit up the foyer.
“A cleaning lady, but not a cook?”
“Grandpa hated cleaning, but he didn’t mind cooking. He always said that Granny was worth more to him on a tractor than she was scrubbing bathrooms. That was one area where he and Ezra disagreed. Granny and Grandpa shared the kitchen, so when she died Grandpa took comfort in making supper every night.”
“Do I get the grand tour?” Abby let her eyes shift to the doors in the foyer when she really wanted to know what was up that long stairway.
“Sure. Let me take your coat first.” He slid it off her shoulders slowly, taking time to kiss her on the neck along the way. The quick quiver in her heart and the delicious little shiver down her back created a quick intake of breath that she sincerely hoped he did not hear.
He hung it on an old-fashioned hall tree on a peg to the right of a long mirror. She hadn’t seen one of those since when she and Haley were little girls. Haley’s grandma had had one in her foyer before she sized down and moved into a retirement home.
He put his coat beside hers and draped an arm around her shoulders. “Through this door is the master bedroom. It sits empty these days, because I’ve always had a room upstairs and this belonged to Grandpa and Granny. Someday if I have a house full of kids, I might remodel it for a nanny.”
“Why would you need a nanny?”
“Maybe my wife will mean more to me on a tractor than chasing down a dozen kids all day.” He grinned.
“A dozen, huh?”
“Well, there are seven bedrooms upstairs. I figure if half share rooms with the other half, an even dozen would be nice,” he answered.
“And if your wife would rather not hire a nanny, but take care of her children?”
“Then the wife and I could move into the master bedroom and give the kids the upstairs and we could have two more.”
A smile tickled the corners of Abby’s mouth. “You’re thirty-one, right?” He nodded. “I reckon you’d best find a woman about eighteen if you want someone to produce a dozen or more kids before her biological clock flat-out shuts down.”
He chuckled. “Way I see it is if I say a dozen kids or more, then when I tell her that what I really want is three or four, it’ll be such a relief she won’t argue with me.”
He threw open the door into the room. It smelled like potpourri. She scanned the whole room before she saw the bowl of dried leaves and flowers filling a basket on the dresser. A white chenille spread covered the four-poster bed. Two overstuffed rockers shared a small round table with a lamp. An ashtray and a Bible were placed on the table.
“Your grandpa smoked?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Granny smoked cigars, but never outside the house. She was partial to the story of David in the books of Samuel, so she’d sit with a cigar while Grandpa read the Bible to her before they went to bed. These days she would have been diagnosed with dyslexia, but in her time they thought she was too dumb to learn to read.”
“That is the sweetest thing I’ve heard in a long time,” she whispered.
He kissed her softly on the forehead. “They had what it took to withstand a hell of a lot of disappointments and joys. I want what they had.”
“But they only had one child?”
“Just my dad. They wanted more, but Granny said God gave her a perfect son and she guessed he just didn’t intend to try to outdo himself with another one.”
Abby could feel the memories in the room and she envied Cooper having them. She wished the housekeeper hadn’t put the potpourri on the dresser and she could catch a faint whisper of cigar smoke still lingering in the chairs. She’d missed that since her mother had been gone—that little touch of smoke the ocean breezes couldn’t quite remove from her shirt when she stepped outside in the alley for a cigarette.
“And over here”—he steered her to the other side of the foyer—“is the kitchen where the ice cream is kept.”
It was one of those huge square country kitchens with cabinets on two sides, an enormous window that looked out into the backyard and a round dinner table that would easily seat ten people. She shut her eyes for a moment and imagined Cooper as a little boy, running in and out the back door, slamming the screen every time. She could feel the pain his grandmother had felt when she lost her only child and the bittersweet joy of raising her only grandchild because of that loss.
“And through that archway is the living room.” He led her in that direction and flipped on another light. It was twice as big as the kitchen, with a fireplace on one end. Comfortable, buttery-soft leather furniture was arranged like a woman had had a hand in it, and beckoned to her to sit down.
“I love it,” she whispered.
“Have a seat and I’ll dip ice cream. You want rocky road or butter pecan?”
“Both.” How sweet of him to remember her favorite was rocky road.
A big yellow dog peeked out from the shadows of a corner and wagged its tail. It was gray around the nose and it limped when it got up and came forward. Sitting down right in front of her, it lifted one paw and almost smiled.
She knelt before it and shook the paw. “I’m Abby Malloy. And you are?”
“That’s Delores. I told you about her, remember?” Cooper said. “Named for a great-aunt that my granny hated. She didn’t want Grandpa to bring that puppy into the house when he found it on the side of the road with a busted leg. He named it Delores just to needle Granny and it worked. She declared that she hated the dog but when no one was lookin’, she’d talk
to it like it was a baby. It was the last year she was alive, so that makes Delores seventeen this spring.”
“Well, Delores, I’m glad to meet you.” Abby scratched her ears and the dog flopped down flat on the floor.
Abby sat down and Delores scooted closer until her head was in Abby’s lap. “Why did your granny hate her great-aunt?”
Cooper sat down beside her and said, “Because the great-aunt was a pistol. She didn’t have children and she thought all kids should be seen and not heard. Granny was not a quiet person. If she had an opinion, the whole damn world knew what it was.”
“That’s not such a bad thing,” Abby said.
“Abby, why did you want to come here rather than going for a long ride and then visiting an ice cream parlor?” he asked.
“I dreamed about this house last night. I wanted to see if it was like my dream,” she said.
“And is it?”
She shook her head. “No, Cooper, it’s better. I’d like to see all of it, if you don’t mind.” It was better because he was there in the flesh and the sensations she felt were so much deeper and more real than what she’d seen and felt in the dream.
“So ice cream now or after you see the upstairs?” he asked.
“Give me the tour and then we can come back down here for ice cream. I wish this house could talk. I bet it could tell me lots of tales,” she said.
“Give me a minute to put this back in the freezer until we’re ready for it. Abby, I’m glad the house can’t talk. And I’m almighty glad it couldn’t when Granny and Grandpa was still alive. I would have never been allowed out of my room.” Cooper returned and extended a hand.
“Ah, a bad boy, were you?”
“Bad enough that I’m glad Granny didn’t know everything,” he answered.
She let him lead her up the stairs. Common sense told her that she had no business even looking into his bedroom. Her heart told her to push him backward on the bed and land on top of him while she had the chance.
“At the end of the landing you will see three doors. The one to the left is the linen closet. The other two are bathrooms—a ladies’ and a gentlemen’s. Granny liked her own bathroom. I’ll show it to you first,” Cooper said.
“Oh, my! This is one big bathroom,” she said when he threw the door open. A big tub like the one at the Malloy Ranch didn’t even put a dent in the room. It had one of those long chaise lounges beside a vanity with two separate sinks. A separate shower and potty was hidden by a half wall covered with pink rose wallpaper.
“Grandpa never said as much, but I had a feeling that the chaise lounge was for him so he could talk to her while she took a bath, or”—he wiggled his eyebrows—“maybe for something else when they were younger.”
“You can think of your grandparents like that? I can’t even imagine my mama kissing Ezra.” She could feel her nose curling up at the thought.
“I wouldn’t know about Ezra and your mom. But my grandparents were so much in love—way past Granny’s dying day. He survived on her memories.” Cooper tipped her chin up for a scorching kiss that made her knees turn to jelly.
Instinctively, her arms snaked up around his neck, one hand tangling itself into his thick blond hair. She tilted her head so she could see his face and their gazes locked in the moonlit room. He took her hand in his and led to another door across the landing.
“This is my bedroom,” he said. “Don’t leave. I’ll be right back.”
The room was empty without him. No, the universe was empty without him. The canyon had magical powers. It had drawn her mother to Ezra and now it was doing its damnedest to draw her to Cooper.
He carried a tray bearing a huge bowl of ice cream. Her heart fluttered and she wished she could trade the ice cream for a romp in that big four-poster bed. It would be a hell of a lot more satisfying, because ice cream wouldn’t do a damn thing to cool what was hot inside her.
“One bowl? One spoon?” One of her eyebrows rose slightly.
“We only need one spoon if I feed you.” Cooper sat down in a brown leather recliner beside the double doors leading out to the sun porch. He pulled her down on his lap and when she reached for the spoon he shook his head and said, “It ain’t happenin’, darlin’. I get to feed you.”
She opened her mouth when the first spoonful came toward her. “We’ve got until midnight, so I intend to eat slowly.”
“Yes, Cinderella.”
She swallowed quickly and laughed. “That’s the first time anyone ever called me Cinderella.”
“Maybe no one saw the princess beneath the combat boots. Which reminds me, you are gorgeous tonight all dolled up like a cowgirl.”
“I didn’t buy many clothes in the military. Just a couple of things for nonmilitary weddings I attended. It seemed like a waste of money and I’ve only been out of the service a few weeks. If it was a military party, my dress uniform worked just fine. It’s hard to explain,” she explained.
“You don’t have to explain, Abby.”
“But I do, and it’s hard to put into words. I wanted Ezra, even in death, to see that I’d done all a boy could do,” she said. “But thank you for the compliment about the way I’m dressed tonight. I suppose when my camouflage is worn out, you’ll be seeing more of me in jeans and maybe even flannel shirts.”
“I like that idea of seeing more of you in anything you want to wear. But”—he grinned and his brown eyes twinkled—“I think I like you in nothing at all best.”
Another bite went into her mouth and she had to swallow fast to keep from choking after that comment. She covered his hand with hers and before he could protest, she dipped deeply into the ice cream and slowly brought it to his lips. If he wanted to play that game, she was more than willing to join right in.
“Darlin’, I like you naked best of all, too.”
He bent slightly and kissed her. His tongue traced her lip line and sent shivers down her backbone.
“Cold?” he asked.
“Hot. Very, very hot,” she murmured.
“Would it be another mistake?” he whispered softly, his breath caressing her ear.
“I hope not.” Right, wrong, or somewhere in between, she wanted to feel Cooper’s naked body next to hers.
His hands were rough against her face when he cupped her cheeks in his hands and kissed her eyelids shut, then moved to her lips. The first kiss was soft and tender. The second lingered but was still sweet. By the fourth they’d grown more passionate. One hand cupped her chin tenderly, his thumb making lazy circles on a sensitive part of her neck.
She shifted slightly so she could raise his shirt up over his head. The kissing stopped but only long enough to get the shirt out of the way. Then she splayed out her hands on his chest. The soft hair tickled her palms.
Getting down to nothing was a slow process that required so much making out that she was panting by the time he made it to a kneeling position in front of the chair to take off her boots and jeans.
She had one moment of panic when she realized her socks were mismatched but he rolled them off like they were pure silk stockings and tossed them over to the side. She quickly forgot about them when he kissed his way from her toes to her lips.
“God, Cooper, I can’t wait much longer,” she gasped.
“I want this to be perfect.” He picked her up and carried her to the bed, where he gently laid her on the bedspread and put a knee on either side of her body. She wrapped her legs around him and arched upward.
She was so ready that when he filled her she began to match his rhythm, stroke for stroke. His lips lowered to hers again and she tangled her hands into his hair, holding his head steady.
This was not raw, passionate sex. Cooper was making love to her, and there was a major difference. It was deeper, more satisfying, crazy but almost peaceful, even though she could scarcely breathe for the emotions and desi
re shooting through her body.
“Abby, my God,” he said just as he took her over the edge and into the most intense climax she’d ever known.
“Yes,” she whispered as her legs relaxed and unwound from around his body.
He rolled to the side, keeping her in his arms, and for the first time Abby Malloy experienced that thing she’d read about in romance books called an afterglow. So it was real and not just a figment of an author’s imagination—and it was beautiful and warm and made things right.
They slept.
Until midnight they slept in each other’s arms. Happy, contented, and life was good. And then they awoke at the same time, laughed about her missing curfew as they got dressed, and Cooper took her home.
She was so glad that her sisters were asleep so she could keep that warm, sweet afterglow a little longer.
Chapter Eighteen
Abby sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, her mother’s two-page letter in front of her. She’d made up her mind to stay in the canyon somewhere between the drive between the Lucky Seven and the Malloy Ranch at way past midnight. And that morning when she awoke, she thought about it but hadn’t had time to read it. The day had passed and it had stayed on her mind until evening, when she’d taken it from the accordion file of her important papers and removed it from the envelope. The first time she read it had been the day after her mother’s funeral, when the lawyer had given her the key to the safe-deposit box and told her that she was now the owner of a prime piece of property on the strip.
“I was eighteen, Mama, and in the army.” Tears flowed down Abby’s cheeks. “I was too young to be alone in the world.”
She wiped the tears from her cheeks and reread the portion of the letter she’d never understood until that moment:
My dearest daughter,
I’m writing this because it dawned on me when we said good-bye that if something happened to me . . . well, I don’t want things to end without you knowing what I want you to do. Your kiss is still warm on my cheek and you are off to your military training. I’m so proud of you and what you are doing, Abby.
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