Calder Pride

by Janet Dailey

  Cradling a child in his arms was a new sensation. It moved him in some deep, bonding way Logan didn’t understand. Slow to relinquish the moment, he laid Quint on the twin bed and took his time pulling the covers around him. A little self-conscious, he brushed a kiss on Quint’s forehead and straightened away from the bed.

  There were too many emotions, too many desires running too close to the surface when Logan came out of Quint’s room and collided with Cat. Automatically he reached out to steady her even as her hands moved to clutch at him.

  “Quint? Is he—”

  “He’s sleeping. I just tucked him back into bed.” A dozen different impressions registered at once—the drowsy, only half-awake look of her eyes, the bareness of her shoulders and neck, and the full contact with her satin-draped body. It all worked into him and through him.

  “I thought I heard—Did he have a bad dream?”

  “No.” Logan smiled. “He discovered I don’t snore. He wanted to wake you up, but I told him I didn’t think that was a good idea.” Looking at her, all he could think was that this stunning woman was the mother of his child, easily the most amazing gift he had ever received. “Thank you, Cat, for giving me such a beautiful son.”

  But it wasn’t his murmured words that held Cat motionless. It was the incredible love shining in his eyes. It filled her vision, dazzling her even as his mouth moved over hers in a warm and fiercely tender kiss. She had no time to collect her scattered defenses—no time to even remember that she should.

  The pressure eased until his lips were barely brushing hers, evoking an ache that was gnawing and sweet. “I probably should have told you that before.” The tips of his fingers caressed her cheek. Her lashes fluttered down, then lifted again when he raised his head to gaze at her through heavily lidded eyes. “I’d like you to give me more children. Maybe a little girl next time. One with gorgeous green eyes like yours.”

  She couldn’t seem to get her breath as his eyes darkened with undisguised hunger. Something inside leaped at the thought of a child, a little girl. It sent her pulse racing.

  “Once I thought it would be enough to have you in my bed.” His thumb stroked her lower lip, setting all its sensitive nerve ends to tingling. “But it isn’t enough, Cat. Not nearly enough. I wish to God I knew how to get him out of your mind.”

  Perhaps it was the lingering effects of a sound sleep or the distraction of Logan’s closeness that addled her thinking. But there was only one other “him” on her mind, and that was Quint. It made no sense that Logan would be talking about him.

  “Who?” Cat whispered in confusion.

  Before she could remember, an exultant sound came from his throat. His mouth came crushing down. The fire was instant. At that moment, with her head spinning and her body humming, it no longer mattered to Cat that it was Logan who ignited this blaze. No one else ever had, not as completely as this.

  When she melted against him, Logan swept her up and took the three strides that carried them into the bedroom that had once been his, then hers, and now was one he was determined to make theirs. His fingers curled into the slick material of her nightgown and pulled the gown up around her arms as he let her feet settle onto the floor.

  “Let’s get rid of this,” he said in a voice raw with the need to feel skin against skin.

  Giving her no time to object, he dragged it over her head and slung it away. He heard her quivering gasp and saw her startled eyes, then his gaze traveled downward.

  “My God, you’re beautiful, Cat,” he declared in a fervent whisper.

  Uncertainty flickered in her eyes when he started to reach for her. Logan saw it and knew he could erase it. But he also knew he couldn’t stand any regrets or recriminations later. When she made a move toward him, he seized her shoulders and kept her away.

  “Damn it, Cat, tell me you’re awake,” he ordered roughly. “Tell me you aren’t sleepwalking through some dream of him.”

  But Cat knew what he was really demanding—make sure it’s me you want, not a stand-in for Repp. She wanted Logan. It frightened her how much she wanted him. She knew the deeper the love, the deeper the grief would be.

  She wasn’t emotionally safe with Logan. Subconsciously Cat had known that all along. She had already lost too many people she had loved. Something told her losing Logan could be a more devastating loss than all the rest.

  And the risk was there, much too vividly before her.

  Her fingertips traced the area of raised flesh on his chest. Cat had seen too many of the scars from her father’s injuries and numerous surgeries not to recognize that the redness of Logan’s indicated it was fairly recent.

  “You were shot, weren’t you?” she guessed.

  “Yes.” His answer was clipped and impatient. “Cat—”

  She shuddered uncontrollably at the closeness of the scar to his heart. Fear told her to use Repp’s name and push him away before she was hurt again. But pride made her lift her head and face the truth. “It terrifies me to want you this much, Logan. If—”

  But Logan had heard all he needed to hear—his name. Any other words were meaningless now. He had a much more elemental form of communication in mind, the kind that used his hands, his lips, and his body. He was stunned to find in her arms a need that matched his own.

  The raw urgency of it drove them both onto the bed, turning them wild as they hungrily sought all the pleasure to be found between a man and a woman. Time stood still, without a yesterday or tomorrow—only now, together.

  There was no patience, no gentleness. This was a hunger that had waited six years to be sated, and now could wait no longer, driving each of them relentlessly, ruthlessly, with its desperate, urgent demands. But there never seemed to be enough.

  As wave after wave of awesome pleasure swept through her, Cat suddenly understood that one moment would never be enough to satisfy her desire for this man. It would take a lifetime of moments—and more.

  Surrounded by Logan’s warm, earthy smell, the firm pressure of his arm holding her close to him, Cat lay with her head on his shoulder, a place that seemed to be reserved just for her. Both her breathing and her pulse were far from steady yet. She could tell that Logan’s weren’t, either. Somehow that made all the inner tremblings easier to accept.

  Tilting her head to look at him, she felt her breath take a funny little hitch at the possessive light in his eyes. She liked the way he looked at her. She liked everything about him, then immediately discarded the word. Like was much too tame a word to describe the things she was feeling.’

  “I don’t understand how I could possibly be in love with you when I know almost nothing about you.” She marveled that such a thing could happen, then realized. “That isn’t quite true, is it? I know very few details of your life, but I do know a great deal about the man you are.”

  If Logan had asked her to elaborate, Cat would have found it difficult to explain. Yet she only had to remember the times she had seen him with Quint—the patience he’d shown, the genuine interest and affection, the incidents of gentle but firm discipline and boyish playfulness—the calm way he had faced down her father and the bouquet of flowers she’d found in the bedroom, his clever questioning that had drawn the full story from her about Lath’s assault, his insistence that she wasn’t to blame and the subsequent lessons on ways to protect herself, giving her a sense of empowerment rather than making some extravagant manly vow to protect her. If she thought about it, Cat knew she could come up with more examples that would illustrate the knowledge she had gleaned about the kind of man he was—strong, intelligent, competent, sensitive, dependable, caring, patient, understanding, and determined.

  Cat also knew she had deliberately not asked any questions about his past. It had been a defense mechanism, a way to convince herself Logan was a stranger. It was time to correct that.

  “You told Quint you worked for the government?”

  Logan was slow to answer. He was too shaken by her easy declaration of love. Love was a wor
d too many women used to justify going to bed with a man. He was stunned by how much he wanted to believe her.

  “The Treasury Department, ATF.” Idly he rubbed his hand along the smooth curve of her waist, remembering how roughly he had taken her. But as tender as his feelings were inside, they were also that fierce and primative.

  “Is that where you got this?”

  He felt her fingertips brush against the scar. “Yes.” He caught her hand and raised it to his lips.

  “What happened?” She levered herself up, more of her body gliding onto him. The dim light from the hall filtered through the open door and mingled with the moonlight that came through the windows, touching her face and showing him the deep concern etched in her expressive green eyes.

  “I was on a joint raid after a paramilitary group who were trading in guns and drugs. Somebody tipped them off. They were waiting for us. My partner was killed in the first exchange.” It had never been an easy thing to talk about. Logan discovered it was harder now because he knew how close he had come to dying without ever seeing his son—without ever seeing Cat again.

  “Weren’t you wearing a vest?”

  His mouth crooked with cynical humor. “Vests are only bulletproof if the other guy is using legal ammunition. That’s why four men went down that day before we got them.”

  Mixed in with the look of horror, Logan saw the flaring of outrage in her eyes. He wasn’t all that surprised when he thought about it. Cat was essentially a fighter. In that way, they were very much alike. It pleased him to know that. But there was much about Cat that pleased him. He wanted her to know that, but action came easier to him than words.

  With a fluid, sideways turn of his body, he rolled her onto her back and dipped his head to take a tasting sip of her lips. She made a contented sound and snuggled against him, a hand coming up to caress the side of his face.

  “The shooting, is that why you decided to quit?” Her thumb moved across his lips in a slow stroke.

  “Not really.” His hand skimmed over her waist to the rounded swell of a breast. “But I spent a lot of time just lying around thinking while I was recovering—enough time to take a good long look at myself. I didn’t like what I saw.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was fast becoming too hardened, too cold, too cynical, trusting no one and believing in nothing. If you had seen me—even as little as a year ago—you would never have walked up to me in a bar. You would have taken one look at me and turned away.”

  Cat smiled. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Believe it.” The sudden edge to his voice warned her that Logan was far from a tamed man.

  “Why did you come to Blue Moon?”

  “I knew I had to get as far away from the cities as I could. I had some money saved, enough to buy a small ranch if the price was right. I also knew I’d have to be very lucky to make it without an outside income. Which is when I decided to get a job as a deputy sheriff. After living in the South for so long, I wanted to get back to the Plains. I looked around the Dakotas first, but there were too many…unpleasant memories. I heard about the opening here, and I’d been here before—”

  “When?”

  “A few years ago.” He was deliberately vague. “Before you and I met.”

  “Really. What brought you here?”

  “I was trying to get a lead on a man suspected of selling illegal firearms.” Logan wasn’t about to mention Lath by name and have his memory intrude on this. “I asked my questions and left the next day. But I remembered the bigness of the sky and the scarcity of people. Unlike the rest of Montana, the land prices around here were reasonable. The celebrity and big-money types prefer more spectacular scenery, I guess. After I got the job, I started dickering to buy the Circle Six. The rest you know.”

  “Yes.” She smoothed a hand over his chest in an exploring fashion. “What about your family?”

  “Other than the odd cousin or two, I don’t have any.” Seeking to distract her, he nuzzled at the corner of her mouth. “I don’t remember you talking this much before. I guess Quint gets it from you.”

  She laughed against his lips, then gave them a quick kiss. “That’s because I spent most of my time avoiding you. Now I want to know everything about you.”

  “But you don’t have to learn it all now.” He nibbled his way from her mouth to her throat. “We have plenty of time.”

  “We don’t know that. Nobody knows that,” she said with a telling throb in her voice. Convinced she was thinking of Repp and angered that she had, Logan lifted his head and saw the fiercely needy light that burned in her eyes—for him. Everything smoothed out as she cupped a hand to his face. “I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to you, Logan. I love you too much now.”

  There was that word again. Again, he dodged it. “Nothing’s going to happen to me—unless you talk me to death.”

  “You know what I meant.” She feigned exasperation, then turned serious again. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You aren’t going to lose me. You and I are going to grow old together and spend our evenings out there rocking on our front porch.” Logan paused, turning thoughtful and tender. “I guess that’s what love is—wanting to grow old with someone and watch her hair turn silver and the wrinkles line her face, loving every one of them because each is a memory of the days, months, and years you’ve shared with her.” A long slow smile curved his lips. “I have a feeling when I’m ninety, I’ll still be chasing you around those rocking chairs.”

  “And I promise I’ll slow down so you can catch me.”

  “Ah, but will you stop talking?” he mocked and covered her mouth with his to make sure she did just that.

  This time when he made love to her, it was with none of the urgency of before. It was long and slow and tender.

  He loved her. It still had the power to shake him to know exactly how much he loved her. She wrapped her legs around him when he slid between them. His mouth traveled over her while he moved deeply inside her with slow, steady strokes. Each time she shuddered, a new pleasure rippled through him, and he glimpsed the glory a man and woman could know together.

  Logan stirred, conscious first of a wall of heat pressed against him. Then he breathed in the familiar fragrance of the shampoo Cat used and remembered with a sudden rush of feeling. Opening his eyes, he shifted away from her, careful not to disturb her, then frowned in surprise at the sunlight pouring into the bedroom. He threw a quick glance at the clock on the nightstand. It was after six in the morning. His mental alarm clock had failed him for the first time. Hardly surprising, considering all the strenuous nighttime activity, he thought with a rather smugly satisfied smile.

  “Good morning.” The whispered greeting came from the doorway.

  Logan sat bolt upright, his startled gaze locking on Quint, standing just inside the room, still dressed in his pajamas. “Good morning,” Logan echoed the soft tone, unable to remember feeling more awkward and uncomfortable than he did at that moment. “Your mom’s still asleep.”

  Quint nodded, then smiled. “I guess you told her you don’t snore.”

  “I did.” Hastily Logan checked to make certain Cat was fully covered, then remembered his shorts were somewhere on the floor, probably not too far from Cat’s nightgown.

  “I’ll bet she was glad about that.”

  “I think she was. Why don’t you run and get dressed and you can help me with morning chores?”

  “Okay.” Quint turned to leave, then hesitated. “Mom might get worried if she can’t find me.”

  “Wha’?” Cat lifted her head and peered over her shoulder toward the door. “Quint. It can’t be morning already.” She rolled onto her back, levering herself up on her elbows. As the covers started to slip a little too low, Logan pressed her shoulder back onto the bed.

  “Careful,” he warned.

  Her eyes sprang open as her cheeks took on a rather beautiful color. Logan grinned when she clutched at the sheet.

>   “Quint’s going to get dressed and help me with chores. Is that all right with you?” he asked.

  “It’s fine, yes. You go right ahead, Quint,” she said in a rush.

  “Okay.” He glanced again at Logan. “You’re gonna get dressed now, aren’t ya?”

  “I’m right behind you.” He swung his legs off the side of the bed, careful to keep the sheet tucked around his middle. “Want to have a race to see who can get dressed the fastest?”

  “I bet I’ll beat you.” Quint grinned and ran for his bedroom.

  Logan didn’t waste time locating his shorts and pulling them on. Cat lay in bed watching him with an all-too-contented look, much too beautiful and tousled. Walking over to her, he leaned down and gave her a long, thorough kiss.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning,” she sighed.

  He kissed her lightly again, then lifted his head a couple inches, eyes twinkling. “Remind me to get a lock for that door while I’m in town today.”

  The corners of her mouth deepened. “And you wanted to have another child.”

  “Correction—more children.”

  Cat raised an eyebrow. “How many is more?”

  “However many you and the Good Lord bless us with.” He grinned. A drawer slammed in Quint’s bedroom. Logan glanced briefly over his shoulder. “It sounds like I’d better get a move on if I expect to make a decent showing in this race.”

  She wrapped her hands around his neck and dragged him down for another long kiss that started his pulse hammering in his neck. “The race,” she reminded him, impish laughter dancing in her eyes. “I wouldn’t want him to beat you too badly—at least, not until you get a lock for the door.”

  “Witch,” he murmured, then planted a quick, hard kiss on her lips before pushing off the bed and leaving her to fetch his clothes from the spare room.

  Understanding at last what bliss felt like, Cat snuggled back under the covers and savored this bottomless contentment she felt inside.