by Ann Jacobs
“Let’s go tell your dad what we’ve found out,” Karen said, a triumphant look on her beautiful face.
Bye bent and kissed her. “Later, sweetheart. There’s a spot not far from here that’s one of my favorite places on the ranch. I want to show it to you now.”
* * * * *
The Bar C had to be one of the most beautiful places on earth, Karen thought as Bye drove the Jeep over a field of bluebonnets and onto a rutted track carved out of a dense growth of native trees and shrubs.
“Look over there.” He pointed toward a fast-moving stream of clear water where a couple of whiteface deer grazed on the bank. “See the opening in the rock on the other side?”
She saw it, an irregular break in a towering hill of pale, pinkish limestone. Out of the break came a cloud of what looked like steam. “Is that steam coming out of a cave?”
“Yeah. There’s a hot spring inside. It’s a great place for soaking sore muscles. Want to go in?”
“I’m game. I didn’t bring a swimsuit, though.”
He laughed, a deep, hearty sound from deep in his chest. “Neither did I.”
Sex was nothing new to Karen. To Bye, either. They’d both embraced a lifestyle in which men and women alike found no shame in taking sexual pleasure. She shouldn’t feel as though they were embarking on anything original or even innovative, but maybe they were. What she felt for Bye had little to do with the raw passion that characterized sex games she’d played with others, and everything to do with her new, tender emotions that he’d set free.
Love. Respect. Trust she’d never granted another man—even her dad—for reasons she was beginning to understand, but which she gave to Bye without restriction. “Last one in is it,” she said, getting out of the Jeep and running across a narrow natural bridge toward the steamy cave entrance.
When he caught her halfway across the bridge, he threatened to dunk her in the stream, but she knew from his tone that he was teasing. She wasn’t used to being teased, except in a sexual way. Laughter had never been a big part of her growing-up years at the Rocking O. Apparently it had been to Bye, at least in this magical place nature had tucked in a corner of Caden’s Kingdom.
Yeah. That was how she’d think about Bye’s home. Like him, the Bar C was larger than life. When she stepped inside the cave opening, her breath caught in her throat. Crystalline stalactites growing out of the high, uneven ceiling sparkled in the light from Bye’s flashlight. Steam rose off a large, irregularly shaped pool carved by time from a cave floor of shimmering rose-veined limestone. “It’s so beautiful.”
It was almost as though they’d stepped into another world, surreal in its tranquility. A constant drip-drip of condensate off the ceiling punctuated the silence, and warm dampness surrounded them. The cave smelled of salt and minerals leached from the limestone—not unpleasant at all, just different. She imagined the first Caden patriarch might have discovered this magical place and passed the knowledge of it down through generations, protecting it from the greedy eyes of strangers.
When Bye came to her, she fancied she could see love shining in his eyes. As gently as if she were a child, he took off her clothing one piece at the time, folding it neatly before setting it on an outcropping of rock. “This place isn’t half as beautiful as you.” He hugged her fiercely, as though he were afraid she’d disappear. Then he stepped back, leaving her embraced only by warm, damp steam and her own expectations.
His hot gaze never leaving her, he stripped down, his motions economical. Soon his clothes rested beside hers. He took her hand and led her into the hot spring. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever brought here, sweetheart.”
She felt special…wanted…wanting… With one smooth move, he picked her up and held her above the swirling waters. His skin felt cool compared with the hot spring that surrounded them, but when he kissed her his lips were warm, welcoming.
Wanting more, she shifted her legs in the water and drew them back until they floated free while she clung to his shoulders, her anchor against the current. Water bubbled and swirled around them, facilitating a sensual dance that drew her closer then away, until she managed to wrap her legs around his muscular thighs. His hot cock scalded her pussy, but he made no move to enter her.
Instead he kissed her again, his lips softer than velvet, his afternoon beard stubble deliciously scratchy. He did wonderful things to her back with his hands, his movement accentuated by the undulating water. “I’m gonna set you on the edge now. I can’t wait any longer to taste you.”
Warm, hard stone on her backside contrasted with the vibrant heat of his shoulders beneath her thighs. She threaded her fingers through his soft hair, urging him on as he sucked her clit then tongued her cunt for what seemed like hours, using his fingers to intensify her need. God but she wanted his cock. “Please,” she whispered when the pressure became too much, the wanting too intense. “I need you inside me.”
He lifted his head and met her gaze. His eyes, normally so pale, were almost black with desire. “There’s nothing I want more, but I don’t have anything here to protect you.”
“We could…” She couldn’t finish saying it, not with the fresh memory of another Oakley woman, another Caden man—and the pain their carelessness had caused both families for generations after they both were dead and gone.
His balls ached. His dick felt as though it might explode. Maybe I could pull out. I want to marry her anyway.
That had to be his gonads arguing with his conscience. He dared not heed their advice. “We can’t risk it.” Not when they could finally believe the hundred-thirty-year-old feud was about to end. Not when he realized the hatred between their families had to be resolved before they could have a lifetime together. “Relax and come for me. Don’t think, just feel.”
Lowering his head again, he tongued her rigid little clit and worried the sensitive nub between his lips. Her sexy, musky scent and the taste of her slick, hot juices were driving him crazy, but he loved her too much to risk repeating their ancestors’ tragic history. When she strained toward his mouth, he slid three fingers up her cunt. She gripped him with her vaginal muscles. “Come for me, sweetheart,” he murmured against her pussy. Then he sucked her clit some more.
“Oh God. I’m coming.” He felt her tangle her fingers in his hair. She clutched his head as though she’d never let him go.
He sucked her harder and worked his fingers inside her while her body shook with the intensity of her climax. When she came down, he pulled her back into the waters of the spring and held her close.
Just held her, in this beautiful, magical place he’d known she would love. He felt her heartbeat against his chest and savored the taste of her on his lips. It struck him that he’d never foregone his own pleasure before to keep a woman safe and satisfied. “I’m okay, sweetheart,” he said when she offered to get him off. “This time was for you.”
She found his lips and kissed him. “I want you to know you’re the only man who’s ever been able to make me come that way.”
Chapter Eleven
Back at the Bar C, Bye and Karen sat around one corner of the dining table, putting together the feud’s history they’d reconstructed so Karen could fax it to Slade’s psychologist. While Bye sorted out the notes they’d made, Karen entered information onto her laptop computer. Bye liked that division of labor, because his hands were too big for him to try typing on the tiny laptop screen.
“There you are, Bye. Hi, Karen.”
When Bye looked up at Deidre, he thought she looked awfully pale, but at least she was up now, nearly twenty-four hours after Doc Baines had put her out to calm her hysteria. “Hey, Funny Face. Come join us.”
She took a chair next to Karen and looked over at Bye. “How come you get to be in love and I don’t? I can’t believe Daddy thinks a whole lot more of anybody named Oakley—no offense, Karen—than he did of Travis.”
Bye shot Deidre a sharp glance. “You may think you were in love, but the only thing that cowhand lov
ed about you was money. When he found out you wouldn’t be getting any as long as you were with him, he took off faster than that long-legged bird in the Roadrunner cartoons we used to watch on TV every Saturday.” It hurt Bye to shoot his sister down, but she had to accept the truth. Four had been right when he’d said Mom had sheltered her too much from all the ugliness in her world.
Deidre sniffed. “You probably won’t get anything, either, if you ignore the silly feud and marry Karen. Dad could always decide to give the Bar C to our brother.” She spat out the last word as though it were an obscenity.
“I doubt that, but maybe I don’t care. Maybe I’ll go for love, and to hell with the money.” Bye lifted Karen’s hand off the keyboard and brought it to his lips. “And maybe if we’re lucky the silly feud, as you call it, will soon be over.”
“Good luck, but I wouldn’t count on it. I still bet Slade Oakley will shoot you full of buckshot if you try to marry Karen, and I’d hate to lose my only real brother.” With that, Deidre slid her chair back and got up. “I’m out of here. I need a change of scenery, so I think I’ll go spend a week or so with Aunt Cathy down in Houston.”
“Is Mike flying you down there?”
“No.” She shifted from one foot to the other then continued. “I’m going to drive. It’ll give me time to think about what I want to do.”
A silent alarm went off in Bye’s head. “Does Four know?”
“Of course.” Deidre wouldn’t look him in the eye when she spoke, which raised Bye’s suspicion more. “Look, I’m leaving now.”
With that, Deidre practically ran out of the room. Karen shook her head. “You probably ought to go check on your sister. She was acting strange, and after yesterday…”
Strange was an understatement. Nobody in her right mind would take off and drive more than five hundred miles, mostly at night, on a whim. Then he remembered Deidre’s Miata wasn’t back here yet. What the fuck did she think she was going to drive? Bye dug his phone out of his pocket and speed-dialed Four’s cell. “It doesn’t make sense for her to take off this way. Dad?”
Before he finished explaining what Deidre intended, Four interrupted. “I’m out in the east pasture. I want you to make sure your sister doesn’t go anywhere. I don’t know anything about Deidre going to Houston, and I certainly didn’t give her permission to drive there. I’d like to know how she managed to ditch the maid Maria assigned to stick to her like glue.”
“I’ll try.”
“I’m on the way back to the house now,” Four said, and he cut off the connection.
When Bye and Karen hurried outside, all he saw was Karen’s car parked next to the garage. No sign of Deidre. Bye sprinted inside the huge garage. “All our cars are here. Where the hell is she?”
“Isn’t that the young man who brought the message to me at the Neon Lasso?” Karen gestured toward the young ranch hand as he raced up the drive toward them.
By the time he reached the garage, Manuel was panting from exertion. “She…señorita Deidre…she took the pickup I was using to bring bags of feed for the horses. I was in the barn, currying señor Vampire.”
“Which way did she go?”
“That way, señor Bye.” Manuel pointed east. “She just got in the truck and drove.”
“I can’t see the truck. I bet she turned off on the first farm road, and that goes straight to the highway.” If she’d turned there, she’d be off the Bar C before anybody could stop her. They’d play hell, forcing her back home again. “Deidre’s long gone, I’m afraid.”
Karen looked down the road and saw another pickup heading toward them at breakneck speed. “I think that may be your father.”
“Yeah, it is.” As soon as the pickup screeched to a halt, Four leaped out. “Where the hell is Deidre?”
“Gone. She stole one of the pickups right from under Manuel’s nose. I think she must have turned off onto the first farm road, because you’d have seen her if she’d kept going straight.” Four looked frantic, which was how Bye felt.
He turned to the frightened ranch hand. “Manuel, did you leave the keys in the truck?”
“No, señor. That truck does not have a key.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Bye asked, his expression grim.
Four put a hand on Bye’s shoulder. “It means your sister took a twenty-year-old piece of rusted metal that’s practically falling apart. Mike jury-rigged a sort of starter for it when the ignition died last month. As soon as the new pickups I ordered finally arrive, I’m sending that relic straight to the junkyard. Manuel, how did you happen to be using that truck?”
“All the other trucks were in use, patron. That one, she is better than the ones I drove back home.”
Bye supposed that was the truth, but he hated the idea of his seriously disturbed sister out driving God knew where in a piece of junk only an impoverished Mexican laborer would consider fit to drive. “It’s okay, Manuel. Take the patron’s pickup to the garage. He won’t need it again today.”
On the walk back to the house, Bye took Karen’s hand. He needed her, more than he’d have thought possible three short months ago. The warmth that she brought him made this whole tragic situation a little more bearable. “Thank you for being here for me,” he said as they followed Four into the house.
* * * * *
Near midnight, when it seemed they’d exhausted every reasonable means of finding Deidre, Bye laid a hand on Four’s shoulder. “I’m calling Jack.”
“He wouldn’t help us find Deidre even if she was right there in his apartment. She isn’t—or at least that pickup isn’t there. Or anywhere else in Caden, for that matter.” Four sighed. “I cut off his mother and him the other day, with a few hundred thousand bucks to salve my conscience. I’m afraid to say I didn’t do it easy. Neither of them is about to do anything for me now.”
“Four, Jack gave us some papers that have helped us find out what kept the feud going.” Karen didn’t mention the reason Jack had given for looking up the records, for which Bye was grateful. “I believe he’d help us find Deidre if he could.”
Four rubbed at his temple. “You’re soft, lady, like Bye’s mama was. That’s good. Caden men need some softness in their lives.”
Karen blushed. “Why don’t we all go to bed? We’ve done all we can to locate Deidre tonight. She has credit cards she can use if that truck should die. For all we know she may be holed up in a nice motel along the interstate, watching the late movie on TV. Whether she is or not, there’s nothing more we can do to find her now.”
“Karen’s right, Dad. You’ve got an APB out on the truck. We must have called every emergency room in Texas and she’s not in any of them. The best firm of private investigators in the state has operatives working 24/7 to locate her. They already have some leads on where she’s used the credit cards you gave her.
“I’m calling Jack, just in case Deidre got in contact with him. Like it or not, she seems transfixed on punishing him for being her half brother, not her boyfriend.” Bye stood and stretched his sore muscles then moved over to stand behind Karen’s chair.
Four slumped as though the weight of this latest trouble was too much for him to carry. “All right. Go ahead.”
While his father watched, Bye called Jack. When Jack didn’t answer, he left a message. “He’s not answering now, but I’m sure he’ll keep an eye and ear out for Deidre.”
Four looked up at Bye, regret in his expression. “I’ve made a hell of a mess and I know it. I’ll go to my grave thankful Mae never knew about Marianne or Jack, but I owe my children an apology for thirty years of deception—especially Deidre. How the hell was I to know she’d fall for my illegitimate son, or that my mistress suddenly would decide to go public with a relationship that spent more than thirty years under wraps? It’s over now, for good. I’ll never forgive her for what she did to you and Deidre.” It worried Bye when his father steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them.
Bye had never seen Four like this before. U
ntil tonight he’d never thought of his father as old, or as anything less than omnipotent. Now Deidre’s second disappearance in as many days had him racked with guilt, grasping for even the smallest piece of hope that someday his little girl would be all right. “We’ll find her, Dad. Maybe, when we do, we ought to let her find her own way for a while. It didn’t do us much good to drag her back here after she took off with Travis Rodgers.”
“You may be right. Go on, call Jack if you believe he’ll help us find her. I’m going to bed hoping for a decent night’s rest. It will be hard without Mae.” Four sighed then managed a sad smile. “Whether you believe it or not, Bye, I loved her. I envy you two, being able to sleep in each other’s arms.”
* * * * *
“Well, can we?” When he stopped in front of the guest room door Bye bent, brushed Karen’s hair back and whispered against her ear. “Will you come share my bed?”
She wanted to. God how she wanted to be with him tonight. Not so much for sex. They were both too worried about his sister—and his father, who for the first time since she’d met him seemed all too human. Not like the patron as his ranch hands saw him as, or like the hard, uncaring patriarch Bye had first described to her. “I don’t know.”
“Four gave us his blessing, don’t you think?”
She couldn’t deny that. Bye’s father had made it crystal clear that he knew they were lovers and didn’t mind. “I think so.”
“Well?”
Tilting her head back, she looked up into his eyes. “Yes. Take me to your room.”
They walked by the staircase again and down the hall past a doorway Bye mentioned went to Deidre’s room. “Are there only the two rooms on this end of the hall?” She’d noticed at least six doors off the other corridor where the guest rooms were.
“We have four bedrooms down here but only two doors that open onto the hall. The children’s wing was built as two suites, one for sons and the other for daughters. It’s kind of a waste, really, since it doesn’t seem as though Caden men have ever produced big families. Go on in.” He opened the door and stepped back for her to go inside.