by Lynda Chance
“No.”
“It was one of those things I dreamed about, all the time. It was a daydream, really. I’d wonder what you were doing, where you were at, and if you were here, in this room, what you were doing. And I wanted to be in here with you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure you’ve figured out what I was doing in here, Hannah.”
She looked puzzled. “Not really. Homework, I guess.” She glanced around again. “There’s no television.”
“I was jacking off most of the time.”
He watched as her face split into lines of amusement and her voice peeled with infectious laughter.
“You think that’s funny?”
She nodded her head as mirth continued to light her face.
“You don’t know what you did to me, princess. I couldn’t trust myself around you. I had this damn boner for you that never went away. You might have had faith that I wasn’t going to pounce on you, but trust me, you don’t really want to know how close it came a few times.”
She continued to smile as she shook her head and rolled her eyes. Then she stood to her feet and slowly began to walk towards him. He remained still, leaning against the closed door with his arms crossed over his chest, and watched her approach. He recognized the look in her eyes. God, he loved that look in her eyes.
She stopped a bare inch in front of him and her hand landed on his chest. Her torso swayed toward his and as her pelvis landed against his, his arms moved and wrapped around her back. Her eyes were sultry as she looked up at him through her eyelashes, and he silently thanked God that she was his and all the damn waiting was over. Life would start now. And from the look in her eyes, what a life it would be.
As her eyes flashed, her hand moved like lightning and landed on the crotch of his pants. She tightened her hand, and he felt himself surge to life against her palm. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore, do you, Josh?”
His teeth tore into his cheek until he tasted blood, as he tried to keep his hands from grabbing her. “No, I don’t,” he grunted.
Her other hand slid down to join the first and she quickly unfastened both the button and the zip on his jeans and within seconds, she was holding his pulsating erection in her hot little hands.
He sucked in a breath as she ran a soft little thumb over the head of his penis and massaged the drop of pre-cum around and around. He sucked in a breath and his head hit the back of the wall as his eyes shut.
She sank to her knees and as her mouth closed hotly over him, he had one last thought before ecstasy took a firm hold. Yeah, marriage was good.
****
The next day, Josh asked around, but Zach McIntyre hadn’t been anywhere near Redwood Falls in several months. He thought about making the drive to Dallas and confronting his brother-in-law there, but he was too worried about Katie to wait that long for the confrontation.
There was also no damn way in hell that he wanted to upset Hannah with any of this, and if he left town, she would want to know where he’d been for so many hours. He wasn’t going to start off his marriage by lying to her. So he decided to make a phone call to Zach. It was the most expedient way, and with Josh’s connections, it wouldn’t take much to obtain Zachary’s personal cell phone number.
He was right, and within minutes, he had the number. Josh shut the door of his office and made the call. Zachary picked up on the second ring.
“McIntyre.”
“This is Josh Turner. I need to speak to you.”
There was a definite pause on the other end of the line. “All right. Hannah okay?”
“She’s fine. This doesn’t concern my wife.”
“How can I help you?”
“You need to listen up. I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt time and time again. And the last thing I want to do is to upset my wife. I just found out about the note you hold on our property. We’ve got the money to pay it off, which we’ll do this afternoon, but that’s beside the point. I want to know why you extended the loan. For that matter, I want to know what your motivation was for offering the loan in the first place.”
Josh had tried like hell to keep his voice even, without threat or rancor. If the man had been anyone other than his wife’s brother, he wouldn’t have been as pleasant. And now he tried like hell to calm his raging temper as he waited for Zachary’s answer.
He heard the other man take in a lungful of oxygen before he began speaking. “I’ve done a lot of things the wrong way in the past. It’s too late for apologies, but I suppose you deserve a truthful answer. I did the things I did because of Katie—”
“Goddamnit!” Josh exploded.
“You need to know—”
Josh lost it. “Where the fuck is she?”
“She’s with me.”
“She better be with you of her own free will, motherfucker, because if she’s not, you’re gonna have every goddamn law-enforcement officer within a ten-mile radius swarm your ass in the next few minutes—”
Zach broke in. “She’s fine, man. We’re coming home this weekend—”
“Home to Redwood Falls?”
“Yeah.”
“I want to speak to her now. Put her on the damn phone.”
“Okay. She’s sitting right here. I’ll hand her the phone, okay? But, Turner, I need to tell you. You and I … we need to learn how to get along.”
“Why’s that?” Josh sneered. “Because my wife is your sister?”
There was another pause, and then Zach spoke again. “Well there’s that, yeah. But also because I’m in love with your cousin.”
Epilogue
Josh squatted on his haunches next to the vanity in the guest bathroom, where his wife probably wouldn’t think to look for them. His seven-year old son leaned against the counter, bracing himself, trying with all his might not to let out a sound.
Josh lifted the little boy’s shirt and saw a two-inch scrape that was fiery and red, but not deep enough to bleed.
Jeremy looked over his shoulder and tried to see. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“It’s pretty bad, dude.” It wasn’t, but Jeremy was at that age where any abrasion needed to be fussed over and blown out of proportion. “Listen little man, we need to keep this between us. If your mom finds out you’ve been crawling through the barbed-wire again, she’ll be mad at you.”
“At me? You showed me the short-cut to Mimi’s house.”
Josh smiled as he opened the tube of antiseptic ointment and spread it on his son’s back. “Yeah, that’s true, but I’m too big for her to mess with,” he lowered his voice to a teasing, conspiratorial whisper.
“Ouch!”
Josh lifted his finger from the abrasion and gently massaged his son’s shoulders. “That didn’t hurt.”
“Yeah, it did, Daddy!”
“Okay, well, I’m sorry.” Josh lowered the shirt and put a kiss on the top of Jeremy’s dark brown hair. “Seriously, you need to be quiet. Mom doesn’t like it when y’all get hurt.”
Jeremy turned around and began, “Rainey never gets hurt. She’s too little—”
Josh heard a small noise behind him at the same moment Jeremy’s words halted. His son’s eyes grew as round as saucers and he let out a deflated sigh. “Uh-oh. Busted.”
Josh’s face split into a grin and he hugged his son’s wiry little body and whispered in his ear, “I’ll take care of mom for you.”
Knowing he was well loved, Jeremy pulled his shirt over his head and turned so his mother could see the scrape on his back. “Check it out, mom. It’s really bad. Daddy said so.”
Josh stood to his feet and turned to face a visibly pregnant Hannah. Her eyes were narrowed and she was staring at Jeremy’s back with a look of concern. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Daddy put the stuff on it.”
“What stuff?” she asked, her tone confused.
“The clear stuff in the tube he uses when I get hurt.”
Hannah glanced at Josh. “This has happened before?”
“Well, maybe not a barbed-wire scrape—” Josh began.
“Barbed-wire? Josh!”
Josh saw the look in Hannah’s eyes. He was very familiar with it, so he glanced over at Jeremy. “Hey, dude, why don’t you go check on Rainey for us? You know she always needs help on the computer.”
“Yeah, I was better at it when I was four,” Jeremy announced.
“That’s not nice, son. And she’s pretty good and you know it.”
Jeremy looked between his mother and father and there was no doubt in Josh’s mind that his son knew that his mom still wasn’t happy. Jeremy took the excuse he was given and started to leave the room, but stopped at the door, a look of excitement brimming in his eyes. “Is it tomorrow that Aunt Katie and Uncle Zach are coming?”
“Yeah, they’ll be here tomorrow,” Josh answered distractedly, staring at his wife.
“And Aunt Ava and Uncle Ethan are coming too?”
“Sure are.”
“Are they bringing all those kids with them again?”
“They only have three, Jeremy.”
“Grandma’s going to bring me a Texas hot chocolate cocoa cake, right?”
Josh smiled at his son. “You know she will.” Aunt Diana and Uncle David were grandma and grandpa to the kids. It was easier and it was the way that Aunt Di had wanted it from the beginning. Hannah’s parents were called mimi and pops so there was never any confusion.
With the promise of his favorite chocolate cake tomorrow, Jeremy turned and headed for the game room where the computer station and his little sister could be found.
When Josh and Hannah were alone, Hannah closed the door and leaned against it, her hands going to her belly in a slight caress that Josh figured she wasn’t even aware of. She raised a single eyebrow. “Care to explain?”
“Explain what?” he asked, prowling over until he stood in front of her. One hand slid gently to her belly, and he wrapped the other around her waist, running it down and letting it land on her backside.
Her lips curved into a smile that he knew she was trying to suppress. “Don’t try to distract me. Why was your son crawling through the barbed-wire when he’s only seven years old?”
Josh’s lips lifted into a smile. “My son?”
“Yes. Your son.” Her eyes lit with an inner pleasure that he could plainly see.
“He was your son last week when he made a perfect score on his math test,” he accused.
She shrugged her shoulders, clearly trying not to laugh. “So he was.”
Josh turned to the subject at hand. “Baby, you know we can’t keep the kids from prowling all over the place. He’s getting to that age where he wants to investigate every little thing.”
Her face lost a little color. “He’s going to get hurt.”
Josh tried to soothe her, his hand running up and down her spine. “That’s why I’m teaching him the right way to do things.”
“That’s why we had a gate installed between the properties. So he can run back and forth without any mishaps.”
“There’s too much fence-line. He’s got to know how to crawl through it. Besides, he’s pretty damned good at it and his tetanus shots are always up to date.”
“He’s going to get hurt,” she said again, but the fire was gone from her voice.
“It didn’t even break the skin. He’s fine.” Josh wrapped her all the way in his arms and hugged her to him.
Hannah sighed. “Okay, I know. It’s different for boys. But Rainey and this baby won’t be—”
He jerked back from her and lifted her chin in his fingers. “What do you mean, this baby? Is it a girl? Are you saying that you know this one’s a girl?”
Her beautiful eyes misted and he saw joy reflected within. “Yes,” she whispered.
A jolt of happiness hit him, and he brought her to him again, careful not to hurt her or the new baby. “I thought we weren’t going to find out beforehand this time.”
“I thought we weren’t either but the doctor called her a ‘she’ at my last ultrasound.”
“Well, we knew we’d end up with one or the other,” he said on a smile as he rocked her against him.
Her hand snaked up and wrapped around his neck as he looked down at her. Her eyes were brimming with tears and the love she had for him and the kids was there for him to see. “I love you, Josh.”
His hand landed on her cheek as satisfaction and primal possession ran through his system. “I know you do, baby. I love you, too. So much, you’ll never know.”
She gave him a tender smile and slid her hand down and placed it over his heart. “I’m so glad you rescued me with that kiss at the football game all those years ago. I still sometimes can’t believe you did it, but I’m so happy you did.”
He leaned down and placed a soft kiss on her lips. “It was my pleasure, princess. Totally my pleasure.”
The End
####
Coming Soon:
The Story of Zach and Katie
Redwood Falls: Book Two
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****
And now on sale for $0.99 for a limited time only!!
The Louisiana Liaisons Trilogy Box Set by: Lynda Chance
Other Books by Lynda Chance:
The Mistress Mistake
Marco’s Redemption
Under the Cowboy’s Control
His Indecent Proposal
Historical Westerns:
The Sheriff and the Innocent Housekeeper
The Rancher’s Virgin Acquisition
Temptation in Texas:
The Thrill of the Chase
Mike and Megan
Logan and Lauren
Ranchers of Chatum County Series:
Staking His Claim
Sarah’s Surrender
And coming soon from Anne Marie Novark:
The Cowgirl’s Secret
The newest installment from The Diamondback Ranch Series