Last Year's Bride (Montana Born Brides)

by Anne McAllister

“Thank you,” she said solemnly. “I like to think so. But it’s not all of who I am.”

  “Well, the ranch is all of who I am,” Cole said sharply.

  She shook her head. “It’s not, you know. There’s so much more to you than this.”

  “Maybe,” he allowed grudgingly. “But this is all I have time to do. If there were five other Cole McCulloughs, I could do other things. There’s not. There’s just one. And this is where I’m going to stay. This is my life.” His jaw locked, and Cole met her gaze again. This time he didn’t look away. This was his life. She needed to understand that.

  “I get that,” Nell said. “And I love you for insisting that it is your life, for taking the responsibility for the ranch, for your family—for being the man you are.” She leaned closer, put her other hand on his thigh, brushed her lips across his.

  Cole felt his throat tighten. He wanted to deepen the kiss, wanted to reach for her and pull her into his arms. Instead he pressed his lips together, shook his head.

  “Do you love me?” Nell asked him.

  His gaze flicked away, then came back to meet hers. “You know I do. You said so.”

  “Yes, But I need to hear you say so. I need to hear you say you want to make this marriage work as much as I do.” She ran her tongue over her lips, never letting her eyes stray from his. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” she went on. “You know that. I’ve got work to do there to put this episode together. We’ve got more to do later this month and in early May. Then we want to come back here. The ranch is a wonderful setting. Everyone loves it. We want a new round of challenges. The last round. Then we’ll have our winner. I’ll wrap up the last of the work on it back in L.A.—and then I want to quit and come home.”

  Cole swallowed. He tried to find words and couldn’t. He didn’t know what to say. He rubbed his shoulders against the headboard.

  “Do you trust me to do that?”

  “To quit?” It sounded insane to him, however much he wanted it to be true.

  “To quit,” Nell affirmed. “My decision—as an adult—making my own choices. Doing what I think it best for me. And for you,” she added. Her lips touched his again.

  Cole sucked in a breath. “So what will you ... would you do if you did that?”

  “I don’t know. I’d find something. I might teach. I do have a credential in elementary ed,” she said. “I could think about that. See what’s available. I don’t know. It’s enough to know that I’ll be here with you.”

  For how long? Cole wanted to ask. But she was kissing him again. The hand that had covered his was exploring the edge of the quilt now, dipping under it.

  “Nell!” his voice was strangled.

  She sat back, removed her hand and looked at him innocently. “What?”

  He glared, shifted under the quilt.

  She grinned. “Ah.” She shrugged. “Well, I did say I love you.” She cocked her head, looked at him. Waited.

  Cole knew what she wanted to hear—what he wanted to say. “I love you, too.” He bit out the words, meaning them at the same time they scared him. Saying them in Reno had been easy. In Reno reality had been a long way away.

  Saying them here on the ranch, facing the future, that was harder.

  “Do you believe me?” Nell asked him. She was still sitting back. There was a good eighteen inches between her lips and his now. Her knee still pressed into his thigh on the bed, but she wasn’t coaxing. She was asking. “Do you trust me to go away tomorrow, do my job, tell Grant I’m married, then come back in May, finish the last episode, go back and tie everything up, then quit and come back to you?”

  Nothing like spelling it out. No wiggle room at all. So Nell. So very very Nell. Cole’s mouth twisted in a wry smile.

  “Tell your boss you’re married?”

  “I am,” she said firmly. “We both are. You and me. Forever.”

  She clutched his hand, came very close to clutching something else. Cole shut his eyes, trying to stop his world from spinning, trying to understand what she’d said, trying to trust that she would make the right decision. Trying to believe.

  He wanted to. Dear God, he wanted to!

  She believed it. That was a starting place. A better place than this would be if he said no, if he denied his trust ... if she turned and walked away now.

  And what if she did later? In June? Next Christmas? Two years from now? After they had kids?

  His stomach clenched. He forced himself to open his eyes. Nell was still watching him, waiting, hope in her eyes.

  Trust me. The words thrummed inside his head. Believe in me. Cole shut his eyes once more, ran his tongue over his lips, then took a deep breath. He opened his eyes again and looked at her. He gave her one quick short nod.

  The smile suffusing her face nearly lit the room. She launched herself into his arms and he caught her close, breathing in the soft sweet scent of her. Nell. God, yes. Nell!

  His arms wrapped around her, his fingers sliding under her sweater, seeking the warm smooth skin of her back. He fumbled with the hook at the back of her bra, wanting it undone, wanting it off, wanting the spill of her breasts in his hands, wanting to tease them, kiss them, lave them. He was making a hash of it in his haste.

  The advantage was all hers. He was naked under the quilt. She was fully clothed. He was fumbling. She had tugged the quilt down, was running her hands over him, making him squeeze his eyes shut at the feel of her fingers tracing the line of hair leading south of his navel. Touching him. Stroking him.

  “Nell!” He dragged his hands away from the hooks he was still trying to wrestle open to grab her hands away before he embarrassed himself.

  She pulled back, but only a little, to smile at him. “You want me to go away? Get in the truck and drive back to Marietta?” Her smile teased, challenged.

  “No, but Sam will be back. He’ll come bustin’ in and—”

  “Sam is otherwise occupied.”

  Cole frowned. “Otherwise... ? Well, at the party, yeah. But he won’t stay late. He’s an early riser.”

  “Sam left the party before I did.”

  For an instant Cole dropped her hands and looked wildly around, as if his father might be sitting in the shadows on the other side of the room, witness to this entire proceeding.

  Nell laughed. “He’s not here. I promise. He left with Jane.”

  Cole’s brows furrowed. “Jane?” He hesitated, considering the Janes he knew. He could only think of one. “Take the world by storm Jane? Chamber of Commerce Jane?” He had seen his old man chatting with Jane at the ranch house, and she seemed to be there a lot, but ...

  “The very same,” Nell gave a little bounce on the bed beside him. Her breasts jiggled. “They didn’t stay long at the Graff,” she confided. She was finger walking her way up the bedclothes again.

  Cole watched her fingers, trying to keep his mind on what she was saying. “Ah, well, Sam’s not much for fancy stuff. The Graff is a little rarefied for his taste. He’s more a Gray’s Saloon kind of guy.”

  “I don’t think they went to Gray’s.” Her fingers slipped beneath the quilt, slid over his belly, found how rock hard he was.

  “You don’t?” Cole’s voice was strangled. His hips arched. He hauled her into his arms. “I don’t want to talk about my old man,” he said against her lips right before his tongue touched hers.

  “I’m so glad,” Nell said, kissing him hard, taking the hunger in him and meeting it with a hunger of her own. “Love me, Cole,” she whispered against his lips.

  He did. He didn’t fumble the button on her jeans or the zip. He peeled the denim down her thighs, then hooked his fingers in the waistband of her panties and dragged them down as well. She wriggled to get them off, and he skimmed them down the rest of the way and tossed them onto the floor.

  “Want to keep your socks on?” he murmured, grinning.

  “How romantic are socks?” Nell was reaching down peeling them off even as she spoke.

  “They might keep you warm,”
Cole said, lifting her away just long enough to pull the quilt back and roll her inside next to him.

  She snuggled down, slid a leg over his. “I think you’ll keep me plenty warm enough.”

  “I aim to try, ma’am,” he said in his best cowboy drawl.

  Nell giggled. She pulled herself up to press another kiss to his lips. “I love you, Cole McCullough.”

  He settled her above him, her thighs straddling his hips. Then he pulled the quilt up over her shoulders and skimmed his hands down to cup her breasts, to fondle each of them, to nuzzle and taste them.

  “Cole!” She squirmed.

  He smiled even as her wriggling made him crazier than ever. “Nell,” he whispered, and put his hands to her hips to lift her and settle her down onto him. Slow, he thought. Take it slow. But there was nothing in him left to make himself slow down. He’d wanted this too long, had done everything he could since she’d been back to try to not think about making love to Nell. Now, with her in his arms, with her body moving rhythmically on his, he couldn’t even think of slow.

  He could only think of Nell, of Nell moving on him, around him. Rising. Falling.

  Faster and faster.

  Again and again.

  He saw her bite her lip, close her eyes. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as she came down on him and instinctively Cole’s body rose to meet her. Then he felt her body tighten around him and there was no slow, no fast—only Nell.

  He felt her shatter even as he did, and he clutched her against his chest, kissed her cheeks, her jaw, her nose, her eyelids, her lips. His heart hammered so hard he could feel the pulse of it—or was that hers?—against the wall of his chest.

  Nell drew a long, shuddering breath and burrowed against him. She kissed his collarbone as her breath whistled back out between her lips. “I love you,” she whispered. “I love you.”

  Cole smoothed a hand over her hair, shifted to adjust her body against his, then wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on the top of her head. “I love you, too,” he whispered back.

  Please God, love would be enough.

  Nell had intended to tiptoe out while he was still sleeping. She got as far as putting her socks on, when Cole shoved himself up on one elbow. “What’re you doing?” His voice was hoarse with sleep. It was still dark, barely past four.

  Nell finished pulling on her second sock before she stood up. Then she said, “Time to go.” She tried not to think about how much she would prefer to just forget going back to Los Angeles, resign right now and crawl back into bed with her husband. But if Cole could be responsible, so could she. And there was no way she could stay now, even though she wanted to. She rolled her shoulders in an effort to relieve the tension as she said, “I have to get back to the hotel. We head back to Bozeman this morning to return the equipment and the trucks. Our flight is late morning. We didn’t leave ourselves much time. We should have stayed last night in Bozeman,” she admitted.

  She thought Cole would stay there. He didn’t. He sat up and put his feet on the floor, then raised his gaze to meet hers. In the darkness she couldn’t see his expression, only that he was looking at her. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  She was glad she hadn’t, too. Glad she’d dared to beard him in his den, track him down to the cabin when logic told her he was avoiding her for a reason, and she had to respect the reason.

  The trouble was, she couldn’t respect it if she didn’t understand it. And she loved him too much to simply walk away because Cole said that was the right thing to do. For her. For her! As if he knew!

  Now, though, she felt warm and loved, she also felt relieved because she’d been afraid that a night’s sleep, however short, might bring him a change of mind. But he said nothing, just got up and began to put on his clothes.

  “You don’t have to get up yet,” Nell told him. “You should get all the sleep you can. I know how exhausted you are.”

  He pulled an undershirt over his head, then slanted her a quick grin, his teeth white in the moonlight still pouring through the window. “Did I feel exhausted?”

  She knew that look. She knew what he meant. And no, he hadn’t felt exhausted at all making love to her. He’d felt as hungry and desperate as she had. But he’d slept like the dead afterwards. So had she. It was a good thing she had set her watch alarm—and had heard it. Cole had slept right through it. But he hadn’t slept through her leaving.

  “No,” she said. “You didn’t feel exhausted at all.”

  “If you came back to bed now, I could show you how exhausted I’m still not feeling,” he suggested still grinning. But even as he did so, he followed her down the stairs, buttoning his shirt, knowing there was no choice today.

  “I wish I could,” Nell said, flipping on the kitchen light. As soon as she did, she heard a soft scratching at the store room door. Curious, she turned toward the sound.

  Cole opened the door. “It’s just Sal,” he said as a Border Collie whipped through it, grinning up at them both. “She wants a little respite from her puppies.”

  “Sal has puppies? Why didn’t you say so? Where are they?” She poked her head in the store room and saw a good-sized black and white misshapen lump of fur in a pen next to the wall. The spill of light wasn’t strong enough for her to distinguish one puppy from another, and they were all sound asleep.

  “Do Sal a favor and don’t wake ‘em,” Cole said.

  Nell tiptoed in just far so that she could stare down at them, watch them stir slightly, then when one looked as if it were awakening, she eased back out of the room and pulled the door shut. “Why didn’t you tell me? They’re gorgeous.”

  “I’d have shown just you,” Cole said. “Didn’t want anyone else disturbing them.”

  She knew he was right. They were still very tiny. “How old are they?”

  “Just over two weeks. Opening their eyes.”

  “Yes, I can see why you didn’t want them disturbed. But I am glad I got to see them. Yet another reason to wish I could stay right here.”

  “You could,” Cole said, but they both knew she couldn’t. His expression was rueful.

  Nell slipped into her jacket and zipped it up. Then she closed the gap between them and put her arms around him. His own closed around her, hard and strong and warm, holding her tight, as if he would never let her go.

  He buried his face in the top of her hair, kissed her there, then tipped her face up to look down into her eyes. His were dark, unreadable. She gave him her heart in hers as she lifted up to touch her lips to his.

  “I’ll be back,” she promised.

  He swallowed, didn’t speak. His jaw was tight, she could tell.

  “I will be back,” she vowed once more—and stepped out into the April dawn.

  Chapter Seven

  There was no easy way to slide the words into the conversation. No means of making the announcement not an announcement at all, but just a casual statement of fact.

  So Cole just flat out said it the first time they all managed to sit down to a meal together—he and Sam and Gran and Sadie—at the dinner table.

  It had been a week since Nell and the crew had left. The pups had opened their eyes and were beginning to explore their pen. He’d delivered another half dozen calves, had driven to Choteau to check out and eventually buy some cattle for Tom McKay that Sam would be raising on the ranch, and had brought home a load of posts to repair the fence line near the ridge when the ground permitted. Sadie had a new job at some gift shop in town and was demanding more and more of his whittling and carving which he didn’t have time for because he was fixing up the cabin for when Nell came back.

  She called him every night. Some nights they actually got reception and could talk. Not that Cole ever knew what to say.

  Life was getting back to normal—except for the fact that Jane seemed to be an increasing presence in it. But that was actually good because Sam was less prickly. A less prickly Sam made it easier to say.

  So he did.

  “
Nell and I are married,” Cole told them all between forkfuls of Gran’s pot roast. Then, “Pass the potatoes,” he added to his sister who had just finished adding more to her plate.

  She promptly dropped the bowl and stared at him, her mouth forming an astonished O. “What? What did you say?”

  “What did you say?” Sam demanded. He had stopped cutting his meat. The knife hung in mid-air.

  Cole’s jaw tightened. Consciously he eased his teeth apart, then took a breath before he said again, as levelly as he could, “I said Nell and I are married.” He took another deliberate bite of the roast and chewed stolidly, letting them all stew in the revelation while he ate. It didn’t go down as easily as he had hoped.

  They were all still staring at him when it finally did, even his grandmother, who was scooping potatoes off the table and back into the crockery bowl which amazingly hadn’t broken. His dad and sister looked stunned. But Em looked dismayed. “You got married and didn’t even invite us to the wedding?” She sounded crushed.

  It was the first time Cole had experienced being the cause of her disappointment since he was twelve and had lied about not breaking the living room window when he’d been throwing rocks at Clint. He didn’t like the feeling.

  “It wasn’t here,” he explained. “We got married last spring ... when I went down to Reno.”

  Sadie let out a little squeak of astonishment. “You’ve been married a year?” Her eyes simply bugged.

  His grandmother stopped scooping potatoes and abruptly sat down.

  Sam just looked at him, then very deliberately set his knife and fork down onto his plate. “You got married in Reno and you didn’t bother to mention it because ...”

  Cole felt a prickle of mingled wariness and worry across the back of his neck. He glanced at his grandmother. She was darting glances at first one of them, then the other.

  “Because it was a spur of the moment thing,” he said. “And after—” he shrugged a little awkwardly “—when I thought about it, I didn’t see how it was going to work.”

  Sam’s mouth pressed together in a taut line.