by Anna Schmidt
“Still, Maria, it’s not proof of anything.”
“Well, it’s all I’ve got.” She pocketed the stones and walked on, gathering flowers as she did. Finally she turned to him. “Chet, I’ll ask you the same thing you once asked me. Do you trust me? I mean do you trust what…has passed between us these last few days?”
“Trust is a funny word for it, Maria.”
“Not really. You were betrayed by Loralei, and I would hate to think you might believe me capable of similar tactics.”
“What’s this about?”
“Over the next days—maybe even weeks—I need to make Roger Turnbull believe that I have had a change of heart where he is concerned—at least until I can find the bolo and make sure I’m right that the pieces fit. Playing up to him obviously means I will have to pretend to ignore you—maybe even appear to be angry with you.”
“Don’t do this, Maria. You don’t know what Turnbull might be capable of.”
“Oh, I think I know him well enough.”
Chet reached for her, and she did not resist. “Let me handle this for you,” he said.
“No. This is something I need to do for my father and my family. Roger holds the key—he may not have had a hand in killing my father himself, but he knows who did.”
“Maria, please.”
She cradled his face in her hands. “Please don’t fight me on this,” she said softly, and then she kissed him. “Please, Chet, say you understand why I need to see this through.”
Her courage and determination proved to be his undoing. He had never known a woman like Maria. And when he deepened the kiss and she wrapped her arms tightly around him, he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the edge of the field, where the flowers met the shade of a large cottonwood tree. He glanced at Cracker. “Stay,” he ordered.
He settled himself on the grass and pulled her into his arms. What he wanted more than anything he’d ever considered was to make love to her. But they were from two different worlds, and he was not the right guy for a woman like Maria.
“Maria,” he began.
“Shhh,” she whispered. “No more talk, Chet. Just love me.”
And, after all, how could he say no?
He removed her hat and eased her down onto the grassy ground, winding a lock of her hair around one finger. He reached over her and picked up one of the flowers she had dropped.
“Kiss me, Chet.”
“Where?” he asked, teasing her with the blossom, running it over her cheeks, her eyelids, her lips. “Here? Or here?” He trailed the flower down her throat, to the opening of her shirt. “Here?”
Her eyes widened and he knew she’d never considered being kissed anywhere but on her cheek or lips. She smiled. “Everywhere.” She pulled him closer, and he was only too happy to oblige.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said as he began kissing her eyelids, then her ears, where he took time to explore with his tongue, feeling more than a little excitement of his own as she squirmed beneath him.
“That tickles,” she said.
He moved on to her neck, turning her to find the spot at the nape that he’d thought about a good deal. “How’s that?” he whispered.
“Wonderful,” she said, her breath starting to quicken.
He pushed open the neckline of her oversized shirt and it fell off, exposing one shoulder and allowing him to taste her collarbone.
He sat back on his haunches and started to unbutton his shirt. “I want you to be very sure about this, Maria.”
Her answer was to brush his hands aside while she finished opening his shirt. Then she ran her palms over the planes of his chest. When she raised herself up to feather kisses where her hands had been, he felt a jolt of desire rocket through him.
“Easy there,” he managed. If she kept this up, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from having all of her, and even though she had asked him to love her, he wasn’t sure a woman like Maria fully understood what that meant to a man like him. More to the point, this wasn’t some dance-hall girl he’d met after a cattle drive. This was Maria. His Maria.
“Maria.” He cupped the back of her head, his breath coming in short bursts as if he had run miles. His desire for her threatened to make him lose all control. He saw in her eyes that she would not refuse him—that her need for him was just as great. “I… You…” He wanted her more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.
“Please,” she whispered as she reached for him and buried her fingers in his hair, guiding him closer until his mouth was covering one breast.
With each kiss he felt the heat within her growing. His own passion threatened to make him forget anything he might have been thinking about the future and focus only on now. This moment. This woman beneath him.
“Touch me, Chet,” she pleaded.
“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured, and he cupped her breast, massaging it with his thumb until she squirmed beneath him. The way she looked at him, her eyes pleading for more, made him put aside his worries about whether or not they might have a future and feather kisses over her breast, shoulder, and neck until he reached her mouth.
“And stop calling me ‘ma’am,’” she said after a searing kiss.
“What would you like me to call you?” he asked as he levered himself above her. His breath caught at the sheer beauty of her lying among the flowers, her eyes roaming over his face and body.
“Yours,” she said huskily as she held out her arms to him.
The desire that radiated between them on the sound of that single word made the heat of the day seem more like a cool breeze. He reached between their melded bodies and tried to open the belt she wore. After a few futile attempts, she pushed him aside, sat up, undid the belt and the button front of her trousers and pushed them down, exposing a length of creamy skin that made Chet’s blood rush to his brain.
“Well, help me,” she said as she tried to push the pant legs over her boots.
He chuckled as he pulled off each boot and the sock underneath and kissed her instep, then teased her ankle with his tongue. As he pulled the pants the rest of the way off, she pulled her shirt over her head and cast it aside. Her hair had come free of the clip she wore to hold it back when she was riding. Strands of it lay over her bare shoulders. He knelt at her feet, taking in the sheer beauty of her—seeing the deep rose of her nipple through the thin fabric of her undergarment, the way her hair caught the sunlight, the way her eyes had darkened to deep pools of desire. “You are so beautiful, Maria.”
She smiled. “And you, sir, are overdressed.”
He made short work of undressing himself, saw her eyes widen in surprise when he exposed his manhood to her, and knew the moment that shock passed when she smiled and wriggled out of her undergarment.
He was full to bursting with wanting her and not at all sure he could maintain any sense of control. “This could hurt,” he warned.
“But not for long,” she said, then giggled. “At least when Mama gave Amanda and me the talk, that’s what she said.”
“Maria, be serious. If I hurt you, you have to let me know and I can…”
She frowned and put on what he had come to think of as her “don’t cross me” face. “If you think—”
He shut her up with a kiss and two of his fingers probing her until she raked his back with her nails. Levering himself above her—wanting to see her face this first and maybe only time for them—he eased himself into her.
She startled and then sighed, and it was as if she had willed herself to relax and open to receive him. Her softness surrounded him, and he knew there was no way he could hold out. He felt the build to the explosion he knew was coming, and just before he reached the heights, Maria gave a soft cry. His eyes flew open, and he was ready to withdraw when he saw that instead of the pain or even the regret he might have expected to see, all he saw was ecstasy.
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Maria had grown up on a ranch. She had seen animals mate. She had always thought she had a pretty good idea of what it might be like to lie with a man. Until now.
She felt as if she had become something other than the woman she thought she was. She had never known such intense need and want. Chet levered himself above her, watching her, his expression soft and—dare she think loving?
She pulled him closer, her hand flattening on his bare back as she felt him tease her with his fingers. She felt a heat and excitement building inside her. She was going to lose all control, and somehow she understood that this would be a relief—a release of all the feelings and longings she had been holding inside. Everything about this moment was absolutely right no matter what the future might bring for either of them.
When he entered her, she gasped and immediately he tried to pull back. But she grasped his hips and urged him to go on, for somehow she understood that the key to her release was him. Quickly she caught on to the movements of this dance of lovemaking—the rise and fall of the beat of it. She cried out as the pleasure peaked inside her. And then it was Chet who cried out and she who held him as shudders racked their bodies like the aftershocks of an earthquake.
After a moment of perfect stillness, he rolled to his back, bringing her with him so that her head rested in the curve of his shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asked, worry lines furrowing across his brow.
She pushed a lock of his hair away from his forehead, then smoothed out the lines with her fingers. “I’m not sure.”
He sat up and looked at her. “Not sure how? Did I hurt you?”
“Oh, no.” She smiled. “I’m fine—better than fine, in fact.”
“Then what?”
“Well, you see, I have nothing to compare what just happened here to, and I was thinking—purely for purposes of comparison—we might do it again?”
His laughter echoed across the land, so much so that Cracker came running from the creek, where she’d sneaked off to cool down.
Chet saw the dog coming and tried to shelter her. “Crack, no,” he yelled.
But it was too late. The dog had reached them and, reassured that everything was all right, took that moment to shake off and drench them both with water.
Now Maria was laughing as well, especially when she saw the dog roll over Chet’s clothes to dry herself.
“Talk about throwing a wet blanket on an otherwise great fire,” Chet muttered as he stood up and rescued his clothes.
“Cracker is right. We need to head back,” Maria said, although leaving this place—this man—was the very last thing she wanted.
The silence that stretched between them as they dressed bordered on uncomfortable. “Chet? I want you to know that I have no regrets. You do understand that?”
He turned to her, hesitant at first, but then he bent and broke off half a single daisy and offered it to her. “I have never met a woman like you, Maria Porterfield. Whatever the future holds for us, I will never forget you.”
“You make it sound like you’ve decided to leave.”
“I haven’t decided anything, but we both know there’s a lot standing between us and anything we might want together. All right?” he asked.
“All right, but I don’t have to like it,” she grumbled as she pushed away the flower he was now using to tickle her ear.
He wove the stem of the flower into hair and wrapped his arms around her. “We’ll find a way, Maria. I promise.”
Fifteen
At Joker’s funeral, Chet stood with the other hands across the open grave from the Porterfield family—and Turnbull, who had taken a position so close to Maria that their arms touched. It had rained all night, just as he’d heard the men mention it had the day they had buried Isaac Porterfield. The men wore their hats, letting the rain splash off the brims while the women stood under black umbrellas. Chet was glad to see that Loralei had apparently had the good sense not to attend the service.
Bunker led them in prayer after Trey read a passage from the Bible, and then Chet and five other men lowered the coffin into the grave and began filling the opening. Maria stepped to the edge just before they threw in the first shovelful of mud and dropped a small bouquet of wildflowers on top of the coffin.
“Thank you, Oscar,” she whispered, then stepped back, took Turnbull’s arm, and followed her mother and the rest of the family back to the house.
Chet knew the game she was playing with Turnbull, but that did not mean he had to like it. She was deliberately putting herself in danger. So what if Turnbull let something slip? What could she do about it?
As he joined the others to fill the grave, Chet went over what had happened from the time they’d returned to the ranch the day before. As they rode together and watched the sun sink lower in the Western sky, he had tried again to persuade her to let him handle things for her. But she had insisted that she had to do it her way. On the ride back, he had pulled her onto his horse, so that she was in front of him, her arms around him. Every time he tried talking sense to her, she kissed him, and after awhile, he had given up trying to talk her out of whatever scheme she had worked up. All he could do was watch and wait and pray that when she needed him, he would be there.
When they got within sight of the ranch, she had mounted her horse, then taken off. He’d watched as she rode up to the house, where Turnbull was waiting for her. The two of them had walked inside arm in arm, and Chet had not seen either of them until he and the other men had gone to the house for the wake.
At the wake, she’d been wearing a dress for once—a gray cotton with white trim around the cuffs and neck, her hair pulled back and wound into a tight bun. She had stood between her mother and Turnbull as the men filed by Joker’s casket to pay their respects. Afterward, there had been food set out in the courtyard, but then the rain had started up again, so Juanita had sent the men back to the bunkhouse and had Eduardo and Javier deliver the food. The last Chet had seen of Maria, she’d been resting her head on Turnbull’s shoulder and he had been speaking softly to her as they walked into the house together.
Any other man would have been filled with jealousy or would have suspected betrayal, even with Maria’s assurances. But he trusted her—and because he had come to respect her more than any woman he’d ever known, he decided to do as she asked. In the meantime, if he and Maria were to have any chance at all at a future, he had to get things settled with Loralei. So after he and the other men finished filling in the grave and marking it with a crude wooden cross, Chet headed for the anteroom.
He knocked and then entered without waiting for permission. Ezma was sitting on the floor, feeding the kid. Loralei was studying her reflection in a hand mirror. Without a word, Ezma gathered the child close, pulled her shawl to cover both of them, and left the room. Chet placed his hat on a peg near the door and sat in the only other chair available.
“You’re looking mighty gussied, Loralei. Expecting company?”
She put down the mirror and scowled at him. “I suppose, to get your attention, I need to run around wearing men’s trousers and such.”
He decided to ignore that. “You look nice. Turnbull should be impressed.”
“Roger is a gentleman, Chet. You could learn a thing or two from him.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
After a pause that went on just long enough to make Loralei start pacing the small room, she stopped in front of him. “Why are you here?”
He shrugged. “Seemed as good a time as any for me and you to write that letter to your pa.” He noticed how she kept glancing toward the door.
“This isn’t—”
“You see, Turnbull seems to be taking care of the Porterfield women—especially Miss Maria. I’d say it’ll be a while before he comes calling tonight.” He took out a piece of paper that he’d gotten from Trey and a pencil. “So let’s see�
��what would be the best way to say this?” He pushed the writing materials across the table to where she stood.
“You said you’d buy me a ticket—”
“You and your baby, and I will as soon as we get the stock to market and I get paid. But surely you don’t want to have to take time for writing this then. No, best go ahead and put it down now.”
She grabbed the paper and pencil and bent over the table, scrawling words with such abandon that Chet couldn’t help but wonder what she was writing. She signed her name with a flourish and slammed down the pencil. “There,” she huffed. “Now please leave.”
Chet picked up the paper.
Dearest Daddy,
Chet is not the baby’s father and that is all I will say until we see each other again. In the meantime, you must not blame him for any of this. I made a terrible mistake, but I am well and in a safe place, resting. Please don’t be angry with me. You and Mummy are everything to me, and I beg your forgiveness.
All my love,
Loralei
Chet folded the paper, noticing that other than in the first line, she had not mentioned the child. “Do you care at all for the boy?” he asked.
Loralei looked up at him, her eyes filled with confusion. Chet picked up a small wooden toy from the table and offered it to her. “Your son?”
“Well, of course. He is, after all, an innocent in this whole horrid business. But, Chet, I am in no position to raise a child, so I’ve been thinking that maybe…” She bit her lower lip, then started pacing the confines of the room again.
“Thinking maybe what?”
“Well, I’ve seen how Mrs. Porterfield takes to the boy. I mean, it’s practically the only time she shows any sign of life at all, and I was wondering… Do you think the Porterfields would…”
Chet was so horrified that he could not speak.
“Or maybe Ezma? She seems to truly like him. Of course, she’s being paid, but still…”
“Loralei, just stop talking.” Chet closed his eyes and tried to come to grips with the realization that getting Loralei out of his life just might be dooming an innocent child to a life Chet wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. “You don’t feel anything for the boy?” he asked, unable to let it go.