A Fortune Wedding

by Kristin Hardy

  She was instantly sorry. “Frannie, Frannie, Frannie, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she muttered under her breath, shaking her head.

  “You think so?” a voice asked. “Here I was just about to applaud you.”

  Frannie turned to see Gloria Fortune, the wife of her cousin Jack. And the sister of Roberto. “Oh, Gloria, they’re driving me crazy.”

  “You? Five more minutes of this and I’m going to be the one in jail for homicide.”

  “Oh, take down the one in the lime-green,” Frannie begged. “I want to watch.”

  Gloria rolled her eyes, her honey-brown hair rippling. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But what am I doing complaining to you?”

  “Who better?”

  “You know he didn’t do it, Frannie, right?”

  “Of course I know it. What drives me crazy is that no one else in town seems to. They never even arrested him and everyone’s got him convicted. It’s not fair,” she said in frustration. “He deserves better.”

  She glanced up and caught Gloria looking at her searchingly.

  “You seem to have thought about this,” Gloria commented. “I didn’t realize you were such a fan of Roberto.”

  “He and I—I just don’t think it’s right,” she said lamely.

  And for no reason she could figure, Gloria suddenly gave a broad smile. “Me, either,” she said, reaching out to tuck Frannie’s arm through hers. “Tell me more about yourself, Frannie. I think it’s time we get to know each other better.”

  “The young stock looks good.”

  Roberto and his uncle Ruben walked along the paddock behind the barn at the Double Crown. Roberto had come out to the ranch because he’d been too restless to sit still. There was anger at McCaskill and Wheeler, frustration that after two weeks of asking questions, he knew no more than when he’d started. But most of all, there was Frannie.

  “Five colts and seven fillies,” Ruben Mendoza said in satisfaction. “They’re coming along. We’re going to start gentling them.” He glanced at Roberto. “You could come out and help with the halter training and getting them used to grooming. I’m too old to lean over and pick up their feet.”

  “Tío Ruben, when are you going to retire?” Roberto stopped to lean on the white railing. A brown mare and her filly walked over, ears pricked.

  “I tried retiring,” Ruben said, pulling out his pocket knife to quarter one of the apples he habitually carried in his pockets. “Your Tía Rosita threatened to brain me with a frying pan.”

  Roberto watched his uncle feed the mare some apple and reached out for one of the pieces. “That didn’t have anything to do with you sneaking her fresh churros, did it? You know how she gets about those.”

  “I have made foolish mistakes in my time, but none so foolish as that. She said I was underfoot. The truth is, I was happy to retire from being retired. And now she has her days at the house, I have my days out here, and all is pleasant.” He clapped a hand on Roberto’s shoulder. “I will tell you a secret, Robertito. A man can only be as happy as the woman in his life.”

  Didn’t he know it. He hadn’t talked to Frannie since the afternoon he’d held her in his arms. And he hadn’t stopped thinking about her once. He’d had everything in that moment, all he wanted, heated and gasping against him, and he’d pulled back. He’d been crazy, Roberto thought. Except that deep down he’d known he hadn’t had everything. He’d had her body, not her mind.

  There were parts of him that didn’t seem to get it, though. Morning after morning, he awoke from tumultuous dreams of her, tense from arousal with no outlet, desire settled in his belly like a load of rocks.

  He hadn’t stopped wanting her once.

  “The question is, how do you make them happy?” he asked aloud. The filly poked her muzzle through the slats in the fence, and Roberto held out the apple on the flat of his palm for her to lip up and crunch.

  Ruben eyed him. “A young caballero like you, I think you would know.”

  Roberto snorted. “The more I know about women, the more I realize I don’t know anything at all.”

  “Ahh, I understand. The question is not how do you make women happy, the question is how do you make a woman happy. A special woman, no?” Ruben turned toward the bar with a half smile on his face. “For that, we must go to my office.”

  Roberto gave him a dubious look. “Why, do you have a handbook there?”

  “Better, caballero. A bottle of tequila.”

  “Now that might just—” Roberto began and stopped short. Frannie rode around the corner from the barnyard on a chestnut mare. She pulled up when she saw him.

  He stared at her. The breeze tossed her hair a bit. There was about her a flavor of wildness he couldn’t identify. Something kinetic surged between them then, something he had no words for, but that sent the adrenaline rocketing through his veins. The seconds stretched out.

  And then she wheeled the mare around and rode out of the barnyard like the hounds of hell were behind her.

  Roberto stood, watching without moving, barely registering the fact that his uncle was speaking as the hoofbeats faded. He stirred, and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Tío Ruben, what?”

  Ruben gave him a shrewd glance. “I asked if you wanted to borrow a horse.”

  Chapter Ten

  Frannie crouched over Daisy’s withers. She’d had enough. She’d had enough of the sudden silences, the false condolences and outrage of strangers who assumed Roberto had killed Lloyd. She’d given up trying to explain, sick of the way they looked at her, perplexed, as though understanding the facts wasn’t nearly as important as having a target to blame. It had taken every last bit of her patience to stay to the end of the wedding.

  And now, she wanted to wipe it all away.

  She needed speed, she needed the wind in her hair, the vibration of hooves on the ground.

  She needed Roberto.

  “Come on, girl,” she urged Daisy as the mare galloped along. Frannie knew where they were going. Even two decades hadn’t wiped the memory away. Out through the rolling countryside toward the afternoon sun that hung low in the sky. Daisy picked her way down an embankment to cross the little stream that wound through the Double Crown, then Frannie urged her on, faster, to the place that lay waiting. They followed the trail straight up the side of the hill to the red oaks, the trail she hadn’t used in years. Nineteen of them. And then they were at the top, out of breath.

  Blue sky, a soft breeze and the almost-liquid rippling of the grass over the hillsides. This was what she’d needed—this sense that she’d escaped from all that dogged her, that she’d left it all behind back at the ranch house. Here, she was just Frannie, with no fears, no responsibilities, no threats—just open space and silence.

  And then she heard the sound of hooves.

  She’d been certain he would come, from the moment she’d seen him in the barnyard. She hadn’t come to the ranch expecting him to be there, and yet the sight of his truck had come as no surprise. In some strange way, it was as though she’d known in her bones she would see him. And she’d known in her bones that he’d follow.

  Roberto rode up over the edge of the escarpment. There were no words spoken, no smile, as he reined his horse in. Intensity shimmered around him. He slid out of the saddle, and Frannie began walking toward him. He took a step, then two, and then they were running toward each other across the gap.

  The next instant, they were in each other’s arms, pressed together so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe, and yet she didn’t want him to stop because it meant giving up this reality, this contact, this connection, the utter rightness of the two of them together in this place at this moment.

  His mouth on hers was like a benediction and the words for what she felt were “now,” and “finally,” and “yes.” She feasted on him like a woman starving. Her hands cradled his face. And then she was sliding her arms around him, tugging his shirt out of his jeans so that she could run her hands up underneath and feel his
skin, finally, his skin against her palms.

  It was unimaginable that she’d waited, impossible now to understand how or why she’d held back, when all she wanted was to devour him. The world reduced to touch and taste and sound: the feel of his hands roaming over her body, the dark male flavor of him, the rapid-fire clatter of snaps as she ripped his shirt open. Pleasure layered upon pleasure, touch upon touch.

  With a sound of impatience, Roberto shrugged off his shirt. He caught the bottom of her tank top in his hands, stripping it off over her head with a suddenness that took her breath. For an instant, she stood before him, bare breasted. Then they came together, and the heat and the feel of his naked chest against the sensitive skin of her breasts made her moan aloud. How could they have spent so many years apart when the thought of separating for even a moment to pull off their boots seemed unendurable? They divided, they rejoined. And open mouth to open mouth, they lowered down to the grass as one.

  Roberto unsnapped her jeans and tugged them down her thighs. She lay back on the grass and their discarded shirts, hair tousled, eyes slumberous, wearing only a scrap of black lace around her hips. He trailed fingers down over the long line of her body. “Frannie,” he whispered in something close to awe.

  And she was long and lovely and luminous, the unformed lines of girlhood turned to the sweeping curves of woman. And she was more beautiful, more desirable as an adult than she’d ever been as a girl. There was magic to her and mystery and a sort of hypnotic secret that came only from woman.

  How many times had he dreamed of this, how many nights had he woken alone in the darkness, body soaked with sweat, lips still heated from the memory of hers, knowing, knowing above all else that they belonged together, that she was the only one?

  And knowing that it was impossible.

  To have her now in his arms, warm and willing, silky and fragrant against him, was more than he could ever have dreamed. It took him beyond simple desire into a kind of delirious joy. And when he stripped off the rest of his clothes and lay down next to her again, it was as though some tone had been sounded in his deepest soul, as pure as the ringing of a crystal goblet, a sound for which the words were “yes” and “this is it,” the certainty that he’d found the one true thing.

  Frannie gasped at the feel of his hands sliding over her body. How many times over the years had she wondered? How many times had she told herself that she just wasn’t made for sex, that Lloyd was right—she was frigid? It was her, always something wrong with her that she couldn’t respond to the impatient gropings of his hands, the awkward explorations that never worked because he never bothered to understand how it felt, and what she liked and what aroused her.

  All that was gone because he didn’t matter, none of it mattered. It wasn’t about thinking when Roberto touched her. It was only about sensation, reaction, the same way a flame burned without knowing how or why.

  He slid his hand up over her breasts and she arched against him, moaning incoherently as sensation ricocheted through her. And all she wanted was more because it wasn’t enough, could never be enough. There weren’t enough hours in her life for her to feel the roughness of his palm slip over her breasts, to feel those clever, clever fingers turn her nipples to hard peaks. And yet this was just the beginning; she knew there was more.

  She remembered.

  He traced his tongue down her throat to her breasts. The teasing trail dragged a moan from her. When he fastened his mouth over her nipple, coherent thought simply deserted her. She jolted, crying out, pressing against him, wanting, needing to move, to explore, yet utterly overwhelmed by the overlapping sensations of mouth and lips and tongue, by his hand tormenting her other breast. It was too much, but not enough. She burned for more.

  As though he’d heard her thoughts, Roberto shifted to press kisses over the quivering flat of her belly. And Frannie was aware of precisely this: the soft grass beneath her, the warm trail of his tongue, the tension forming between her thighs, a slow curl of heat she barely recognized because it had been so long since she’d felt it.

  With a sound of impatience, he hooked his fingers in the sides of her briefs, dragging them down and leaving her open to the heat of his breath. A shiver ran through her. Anticipation had her moving restlessly against him, clutching at the grass, his shoulders, anything.

  Then he laid his mouth on her and she cried out. There was heat, the softness of his lips, the maddening swirl of his tongue as he caressed her and took her somewhere she hadn’t been in so many years it should have been alien, and yet it was instantly familiar, this tension, this pressure, this bursting need. He took her to a world she’d soared in once, back before she’d known fear or defeat, a flight of ecstasy fueled by touch, her hips bucking against him until she was flung into free fall, shuddering and quaking, spiraling down from a great height into laughter and pure joy.

  “Oh my, where have you been?” She kissed him wherever she could reach, half-giddy as he moved up over her.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”

  But the tension had only been banked back, not vanquished. With his hands and his mouth he set her to trembling. When he moved up and over her, she wanted, she needed in a way she’d never dreamed possible. The setting sun behind him lit his hair with a penumbra of fire, shadowing his eyes, making him look like some primitive warrior.

  “I need to be inside you,” he ground out in what was half plea, half demand, and when he moved himself through that slick cleft between her thighs, searching for the spot, she held her breath in anticipation, shivering, feeling the ache, the need, the emptiness waiting to be filled.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  Then he shifted and drove himself into her, and in one hot, slick rush they were coupled.

  Her cry echoed his groan. For an instant they were poised, staring into each other’s eyes, their gazes locked together as intimately as their bodies. Roberto leaned in and pressed a kiss on her. “Querida,” he breathed against her lips.

  And slowly, slowly he began to move.

  There was no rush, no furious pounding. Instead, his strokes were measured, almost leisurely, taking him nearly all the way out of her, then back in slow and deep. But there was a sense of power banked back in each thrust, a sense of breathless expectation. His eyes burned black with arousal. His body trembled with the effort of control.

  And it drove her mad with need.

  Each slide of his flesh against hers made her shudder. Each slide took her higher. She clutched at his back, feeling the muscles clench and flow under her fingers as he moved faster. And gradually, gradually, he reached a rhythm, that rhythm, that ancient, timeless rhythm that was love and hope and renewal all in one.

  And it was impossible—the tension, the exquisite rush of pleasure that swept through her with every stroke—impossible for her to bear it one more instant, impossible for it to end. She gasped for air, twisted against him, wrapped her legs around his waist. She cried out for more. And then the tension compressed all that need, and arousal and desire down into a single point, a single point that held for a shuddering instant before it suddenly exploded, bursting through her entire body, sending her jolting and crying out, clenching around him in mindless ecstasy.

  And she heard his helpless groan as it put him over the edge, as he drove into her one final time and spilled himself, pulling her hard against him.

  Above them, one by one, the stars came out in the darkening sky.

  He wasn’t naive enough to think that perfect happiness existed, but if it did, it would have to feel something like this, Roberto thought as he lay beside Frannie, waiting for his heart rate to level.

  She stirred. “If we stay out here too much longer, we’re not going to be able to find our way back.”

  “Relax, there’s a full moon tonight. Besides, the horses know how to find the barn.”

  She shifted to look at him. “How did you find this place again? It’s been almost twenty years.”

  “I don’t
know. I didn’t think about it.” He hadn’t, just mounted Barnabus, the gelding Ruben had given him, and gone on instinct. Or maybe it wasn’t instinct. Maybe some part of him had a special sense for her and where she was. Maybe they were connected. It was a ridiculous thought, he knew it was ridiculous, but maybe a man was allowed to be ridiculous at a time like this.

  Roberto laughed aloud.

  Frannie turned her head toward him. “What’s the joke?”

  He shook his head a little. “Nothing. Life is good.” He leaned over and pressed a kiss to her nose, and figured he’d kiss her cheek while he was there. And since her mouth was nearby, he might as well do that, and…

  Long moments slipped away as hand smoothed over flesh, needs long denied built afresh. They touched, they demanded. Again they rose, again they fell. And this time when they finished, they stayed linked together and let themselves slip further into slumber.

  The full moon overhead shone down, silvering the path before them as they rode up to the barn. Triggered by their motion, the flood lamps flicked on in the stable yard.

  “Finally, light,” Frannie said.

  “I thought moonlight was supposed to be romantic.”

  “There’s romantic and there’s not being able to see where you’re going.” She stopped beyond the mounting block and slid down from the saddle, feeling the sweet ache between her thighs. “Lucky thing we found the road. Otherwise, we’d have been stuck out there all night.”

  Roberto gave her a lazy smile. “I can think of worse things than being left with nothing to do but make love with you until sunrise.”

  A shiver ran through her stomach. Still…“What would your uncle think if we’d come traipsing in tomorrow morning?”

  “I doubt Tío Ruben would have been all that surprised. Hell, he was the one who gave me Barnabus to ride.”