The Rancher And The Redhead

by Leigh, Allison

  “Better. A lot better, actually.” Then she hunched her shoulders. “My back itches.” She flushed again, miserably self-conscious.

  He pushed away from the jamb and in his smooth-limbed way, approached. She nearly jumped out of her skin when he laid his palm on her forehead, then her cheek. “Fever’s better. Turn around and let me see.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Come on, Red. I’ve been swabbing down your body for two days. Let me see your back.” When she just looked at him like he was a madman, he leaned over her and tugged up her T-shirt, ignoring her sputtering. “Yup.”

  “What yup?” Jaimie yanked her T-shirt back into place.

  “Chicken pox.”

  She gaped at him. “What?”

  “You’ve got a few spots on your back. It’s what the doctor suspected.”

  She rose and went right into the bathroom, slamming the door shut. A few minutes later, she opened it again. “Chicken pox. I don’t believe this.”

  “Why not? The doc said there’s a near epidemic in town.”

  “But you’ve been with me all this time. I’ve probably exposed everyone!”

  “Don’t sweat it, Red. We’ve all had chicken pox. And before you panic about exposing Maggie, Dan checked with her. She’s had them, too. ‘Course we had ’em when we were kids. But you do like to do things in your own individual style, don’t you?”

  He sat on the arm of the couch beside her, and Jaimie felt her head spin. This time. though, it had nothing to do with being sick.

  “How’s the stomach?”

  The reminder of how he’d been witness to her glorious moments with the porcelain goddess made her blush even harder. “Fine.”

  “Good. Then it’s time you ate something.” He left her staring after him. She could hear him rummaging about in the kitchen. “Toast should do for a start. Then I’ll put some of that pink stuff on the spots on your back.”

  Sure enough, within minutes, he’d returned with a plate of lightly browned toast. “I never said I couldn’t cook,” he said at her astonished look. “Not that toast takes much cooling.”

  He left her for a few minutes and she heard the beep of the microwave. He returned with a mug of hot tea. “Well, don’t just sit there,” he said, his voice gruff. “You’re letting it all get cold.”

  He was taking care of her. Still. It was so sweet it made her eyes burn. She’d never had a man take care of her. Her father had usually been gone; only when she’d gotten older had she realized that he’d been out with other women. And Tony...well Tony had turned green if Jaimie had a hangnail, much less something more serious.

  She looked down at the toast in her hand. Tony would never have patiently pulled out splinters from her hand, or held back her hair while she lost her stomach. Her eyes noticed the bottle of calamine lotion sitting on the round dining table. Nor would he be prepared with something like that.

  Matthew was such a good man.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.” She touched the toast again. It couldn’t have been more precious to her than if he’d handed her a dozen roses.

  “Sure?”

  She nodded, smiling tremulously, and ate the toast.

  Eventually Matthew pulled on his thermal shirt and buttoned up his jeans, much to Jaimie’s secret relief. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy looking at his broad shoulders or the rock-hard sculpture of his abdomen. She did. But she couldn’t think straight, much less breathe normally, when he displayed all that glorious muscle and bone. He was all briskly business when he asked her to present her back to him and he daubed the soothing lotion over her spots.

  “How many are there?”

  “About five. Mebbe you won’t get covered with them.”

  She sincerely hoped not. The three on her stomach itched like mad. He capped the bottle and handed it to her before he stomped his feet into his boots and shrugged into his heavy sheepskin coat.

  “I’ll come back and check on you after I tend to some chores.”

  Suspecting that he’d already put them off too long, she nodded. As soon as he left, after a stern warning to keep herself quiet, she slid from the couch and skedaddled into the shower. He could warn her all he wanted. She wasn’t going to let him come back and check on her when she felt like a dirty dishrag.

  Her shaky legs had something to say about her plan, however, and forgoing the quickness of the shower, she ended up taking a bath. Just as well, she decided, as she sank to her chin in the steamy, fragrant water. This was a lot more relaxing and felt like heaven on her itchy spots. She noticed a pink mark appearing on her leg. So far, none had cropped up on her face.

  When the water started to cool, she let some out and replenished the tub with more hot. She leisurely washed her hair, blinking away the sluggish sleep that beckoned.

  Surprised, Matthew heard the soft splash of water as soon as he entered the small cottage. There he’d raced through the chores, making do with the bare essentials, cramming into just a few hours what it ordinarily took ten, and what does he find when he comes back? That redhead, who didn’t have the sense of a goose, taking a bath.

  Striding across the room, he shoved his gloves in his pockets and pushed open the half-closed door. “Woman, I thought I told you—”

  Standing with one foot in the draining tub and one foot out, her startled eyes turned toward him. She yanked a towel off the rack and clutched it to her, bringing the other foot out of the tub. The towel was too late, though. He’d already seen every glorious, glistening inch of skin that the Man Upstairs had blessed upon her.

  He called himself the mangy dog he was when need swept through him with the vicious swiftness of a prairie fire. She was sick, for God’s sake! “You were supposed to stay put.”

  “You ordered me to. It doesn’t mean I had to listen.” She carefully arranged the towel to cover more leg. But it only reached so far. And as she tugged it down, she gave him a gut-wrenching view of the upper swell of her peach-tipped breasts. “Do you mind?”

  Yeah, he minded. He minded that he’d been out of his mind with worry for the past few days over her. And now he minded that the towel covered even one inch of her satiny skin. He minded that he’d sworn he wouldn’t succumb to her again. He minded that with every soft gurgle of bathwater down the drain, that very promise was dissipating. He closed the distance between them and touched a curl of damp hair that clung to her ivory shoulder. “Lemon,” he murmured. “You always smell like lemon.”

  Her throat worked. Her hand blindly swept behind her, and she pushed a bottle toward him. “Shampoo,” she said breathlessly.

  He tossed the plastic bottle into the sink and closed his hands over her shoulders, drawing her to him. “You’re making me nuts,” he complained gruffly.

  “I don’t mean to.”

  “I left the snowplow out in a snowstorm, just so I could carry firewood in for you.” His thumbs pressed her chin upward. “I think you delight in driving me up the wall.” He smoothed his thumb over her lips. Her eyes grew drowsy. “Either you’re still sleepy, sweetheart, or you’re wanting the same thing I do.”

  In answer, her tongue snuck out and swirled over his thumb.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” he muttered. “I sure do wish I knew what to do with you.” Before she could voice the sassy answer he saw forming in her eyes, he kissed her. Her slender body arched to his, perfectly and wantonly.

  Her fingers clutched his jacket as she kissed him back just as fiercely, just as hotly. When he lifted his reeling head, it was to the sight of their reflections in the bathroom mirror. She was barely covered by her damp white towel and he still wore his hat and coat. Her eyes followed his and he knew the sight struck her as painfully erotic as he found it.

  Their eyes met in the mirror, and Matthew’s fingers moved to the knot holding her towel in place. With the slightest nudge of his finger it loosened, and the towel tumbled to the floor.

  He wasn’t sure if
she turned first, or if he did. But suddenly she looked straight-on in the large mirror. Like magnets, the tight peaks of her breasts drew his palms and her head fell back against his shoulder, wet hair clinging to his coat. The pupils of her eyes widened, nearly engulfing the glowing emerald.”

  “You’re sick,” he rasped.

  “I’m a lot better except for the spots.” As if to prove it, she reached her arm up and snaked it around his neck, pulling his head toward hers.

  Tastes of mint and scents of lemon swirled. His heart thundered, and desire reared uncontrollably. He couldn’t get enough of her. Of the slender neck arching back toward him, the narrowness of her waist or the satiny smooth stretch of abdomen. God, was there anything softer on this Earth than her skin?

  Then his fingers grazed the juncture of her thighs, and he knew of only one thing that surpassed that softness.

  Her chest trembled with the breaths she dragged into her starving lungs, and he turned her to face him, catching her at the waist and lifting her to him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, burying her face in his neck as he carried her back to the living room.

  Matthew deposited her gently on the couch, and Jaimie was grateful that she didn’t have to stand. He barely got off his hat and coat, though, before she was teaching for him, pulling him down to her.

  He gave a strained chuckle. “Jaimie, sweetheart—”

  “Shhh.” She yanked at his shirt and a button went flying. Too desperate to wait, she just shoved his layered shirts up his chest, and he yanked them over his head, coming down to her again, as if he needed the feel of her against his chest as badly as she.

  “Hurry,” she pleaded.

  He ripped his belt free, his fingers brushing against hers as she struggled with his fly. Then he was free, and sinking into her with a savage growl.

  Jaimie cried his name, clinging to his strong, solid shoulders as that very first thrust propelled her straight to a shattering, shuddering peak.

  He groaned harshly, unrelenting as he drove her again and again. Finally he rolled to the side, taking them to the floor and pulling her over him. His big hands eclipsed her hips, guiding her trembling movements.

  Staring into his narrowed eyes as her senses coiled tighter and tighter, she wondered for an insane moment how eyes so icy blue could burn with such heat. Then he stiffened beneath her. That overworked spring within her snapped just as her name, rough on his lips, rasped over her and she hurtled with him toward heaven.

  The fire in the fireplace had burned down to a deep glow. Newly swabbed with calamine and propped against the nest of pillows that Matthew had arranged in front of the couch, Jaimie sipped at the fresh tea he’d brought her. He leaned forward with the iron poker and jabbed flesh sparks to life, then added another log before sitting back and picking up his coffee mug.

  “Tell me about your mother,” Jaimie asked quietly.

  He looked at her, then into his coffee. She wasn’t sure he’d even answer. But surely, surely, he wouldn’t push her away right now. Not when their bodies were still warm from each other.

  His shoulders moved, and Jaimie bit back her disappointment. She buried her nose in her teacup.

  “She was beautiful,” he finally murmured. “She had long blond hair. Shades lighter than mine is now. It nearly reached her waist.”

  Jaimie knew what Sarah Clay had looked like. She’d dusted the photograph of her that sat in Squire’s room often enough. And anyone who’d ever been in the big house couldn’t fail to see the beautiful portrait of Squire’s wife that hung in the rarely used living room.

  He smiled faintly. “She was bitty, too. Even at nine, I was nearly as tall as she was. Sawyer was taller and he wasn’t even a teenager. When she stood next to Squire she was dwarfed by him.”

  “He must have loved her very much,” Jaimie ventured. She was acutely aware of every nuance of his breathing.

  “They were just teenagers when they married.” Matthew shifted. “She was barely older than you are now when she died.”

  Jaimie knew what he would say before he finished.

  “Too young.” He shifted again, more restlessly. “You don’t want to hear all that.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said steadily. More importantly, Matthew needed to talk about all that. “What’s the earliest thing you can remember about your parents?”

  His coffee mug paused on the way to his lips. He shot her a bemused look and she kissed his bare shoulder. “The earliest thing I remember about my parents,” Jaimie said, “was driving. I don’t remember where we were going, but it was really late when we arrived. And I had this ratty old blanket that I carried with me everywhere. I can’t even remember what Joe was doing, but I remember that blanket. It was faded pink. Anyway, my dad carried me from the car inside to the house. He seemed really tall and the ground a long way away. But he held me real snug, and my mom followed along, keeping that blanket from dragging on the ground.” She smiled faintly, surprised despite herself at the warmth that spread through her.

  She hadn’t thought about that in years. Her memories of her father were generally dominated by the later years. When he’d been so critical during those rare times he’d been around. Then, he’d been gone. Leaving her mother crying in their bedroom at night, thinking that Jaimie was asleep and couldn’t hear. Her parents had never separated. Never divorced. And in the end had moved to Florida, still together. Jaimie had never been able to figure out if it was because her mother didn’t have the strength to leave her father, or if their love had survived despite their problems.

  “What happened to the blanket?”

  She blinked. “Oh. You know, I can’t remember.” She shrugged, smiling slightly. “Now you. What’s the earliest thing you remember?”

  He gave her an indulgent look. Bending his leg, he propped his wrist on his knees, coffee mug dangling by a finger. His lids lowered in thought. “Jefferson’s just a few years behind me...don’t remember a time when he wasn’t around. But Daniel...I guess I remember when she got pregnant with Daniel. Squire danced her around right there in the middle of the kitchen.” The light in his eyes sobered. “I remember her being pregnant, more often than not.”

  “With five children...that would account for forty-five months of being pregnant,” Jaimie pointed out gently. “That’s nearly four years. And you were only nine—”

  “When she died,” he finished abruptly.

  “How did it happen?” She was fairly convinced that he wouldn’t say. But again Matthew surprised her.

  “She fell and broke her back outside the barn on Christmas Eve,” he said neutrally.

  She sucked in her breath.

  “She hemorrhaged. It was blizzarding and Squire barely got her to the hospital before she died. Whether she was in labor with Tristan and fell because of that, or went into labor because of the fall, we’ll never know.” He lifted his coffee and drank, his eyes unreadable. “If Squire knew, he certainly never said.”

  “Maybe it’s too painful for him to talk about, too.”

  Matthew’s head tilted in acknowledgment. “He tore that old barn down about two weeks after she died. Didn’t have any help. I’m not sure whether he used tools or his bare hands,” he murmured, obviously remembering. Then he blinked and lifted his mug once more. But he just looked into the cup. “Anyway,” he said after a moment. “Tristan was born. She was gone. And the rest, as they say, is history.” He swallowed down the rest of his coffee and stood up.

  Jaimie wondered why on earth Matthew’s mother had been outside in blizzard conditions, but decided it wouldn’t be wise to pose too many questions. Matthew had shared more with her than she’d ever dreamed possible. He reached for her teacup, and she handed it to him, folding her arms across her bent knees, and watched him as he padded, unabashedly nude, into the kitchen.

  “Want a sandwich?” he called after a moment. It would be dawn soon.

  “No. Go ahead, though.” She stretched out her legs, pointing her toes at the fire and
resting her head back on the couch. Her eyes fell on his battered cowboy hat, and she lazily drew it over, propping it on her head. It fell right down to her nose.

  Smiling faintly, she closed her eyes and listened to Matthew in the kitchen. Before long, she heard his footfalls, then felt his presence beside her. From beneath the hat, she could see as high as his calves.

  “Now there’s a cowboy’s dream,” he murmured. “Long legs and silky skin with its nine chicken pox wearing nothing but a cowboy hat. And her lucky bracelet, of course.”

  It didn’t matter that they’d made love less than two hours ago. That need for him hovered under her skin, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. “I have a thing for your hat. I admit it.” She tipped back the hat and looked up at him. She couldn’t help the silly smile spreading across her face. “Well. You’re certainly not made of clay,” she observed softly.

  He choked down a half laugh. “Damn straight.”

  She propped herself up on her elbows, her eyes dancing over him. He was a beautiful male. His shoulders were wide and roped with muscle. Not developed from pressing weights in some weight room, but from the hard physical labor that made up his life. His abdomen rippled down to narrow hips and strong, long legs. His arousal nestled heavily between. “I’ll say.”

  His eyes narrowed as he lowered next to her, his movements sleek and pantherlike. “Kind of sassy, aren’t you?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  He removed the hat, then drew the brim over her shoulder. Down the valley between her breasts. Grazed over her feminine curls, making her feel faint. His dimple flashed wickedly. “What was that about my hat?”

  Jaimie couldn’t believe she was already yearning for his lovemaking. Her muscles felt tender and fulfilled. Oh, who was she kidding? She believed it all right. She stretched luxuriously, drawing in a deep breath filled with heady anticipation.

  His lips curved appreciatively, “You are something.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  His eyebrow peaked. “What do you think?”

  “Definitely good.”

  He perched his hat on her head. “What are we going to do now?”