“Why, Ms. Julia Margaret Hillard, that vicious bull might have broken my arm, cracked open my head, busted up my spleen, damaged my leg, and broken more than just a few of my wimpy ribs—not to mention everything else a mean bastard tried to get in—in less than five seconds, I might add. But the rest of me is still fully intact and quite functional.” He lowered his gaze for a split second, then winked. “And when I say functional, I mean…,” he started, pausing.
Julia cut him off at the pass. “We’ll just have to see about that. Won’t we, Eight Second Wonder-boy?”
Saber smiled a salacious smile that caught Julia by complete surprise. “Can I ask when?” he dared.
She tapped his chest. “When you take me out on that date you promised me three full months ago.”
Before Saber got the chance to react to Julia escaping, she moved quickly toward the house. He found her inside the kitchen. Her hands were submerged in hot sudsy water at the sink, trying to wash off the spatters of paint from her arms.
Having taken a seat at the table without asking he stretched his left leg out from under it and groaned. His skin looked ashen as Julia turned her head to him, smiling. The tiredness was in his eyes.
That storm cloud gaze locked onto her. “Seriously, Little Darlin’…This might be askin’ a lot, but is there somewhere I could lie down for a bit? Where I could catch my breath?”
Oh, God! She hadn’t given much thought to how he would be feeling; mentally kicked herself in both shins the moment she took in the pallor of his skin. Three short months to heal from all he had to wasn’t near long enough for a body not to still feel the pain.
Hurriedly moving to his side, Julia helped Saber to his feet and moved him directly to her bedroom. She hadn’t been lying when she told him there wasn’t room available for another. For the remainder of this week she had a house full of elderly ladies on their yearly excursion to catch the fall colors. Every available room inside the boarding house was occupied. That left only her double bed for Saber to use.
She led him there.
Once inside the bedroom, he took in the sight of the extreme clutter and teased her relentlessly. “I can see you still don’t clean your room, but expect it of your boarders.”
He dropped to the bed with a thud while she removed his boots and tossed them carelessly to the floor. With a bit of effort, he got both legs onto her mattress, his head placed on two of her scented pillows.
“Not many are ever allowed in here. So how big the mess is shouldn’t matter all that much,” she ascertained.
“Not many?” He’d cocked a blond brow upward, baiting her. “Or none, Ms. Hilliard?”
Chapter Eighteen
A man could easily die in this bed and be happy about it.
Saber turned this over within his thoughts, watching her struggle with his presence. He’d been out of her life for two months, nearer to three. Julia might have moved on within that time; taken a boyfriend while his back had been turned, and his ass stuck in a sling. She was a beautiful woman. She might be seeing someone. Whereas, he would be intruding upon territory already marked if this were the case.
Saber had high doubts he’d be able to survive an ass kicking from an angered, jealous man, while still healing from an ass-kicking bull.
Julia gave him an all-teeth showing grin. “None, Dr. Patterson.”
“Only me?”
This gained him a snort. “Yes. Only you.”
She pulled a quilt over his large frame, tucking in the sides. She was about to leave him in peace when he snaked his hand around her wrist, yanking her to the bed.
“What? Leaving me just laying here? Vulnerable? Helpless? Or so soon?” he said.
“The sooner I leave you to get some rest, the sooner you’ll get color back into your face. By the looks of things, you haven’t been doing much resting lately, have you?”
She’d not been told as of yet about his newest tattoo. He couldn’t let her go until he showed it to her.
“Can’t you stay with me Little Darlin’?” His grin slightly lob-sided, he was drawing from reserves.
“Why?”
“It helps with the pain.”
“You have women stay with you to help with the pain?”
He could see she was unable to stop these potentially damaging words from spewing forth.
“No,” he said.
“Then why do I have to? I have things to do today and I’d been doing them until you showed up, unannounced,” she promised. “I can’t sit here holding your hand while you nap.”
“What could be more important than holding my, um …hand?” he asked rakishly.
Julia ignored the innuendo. “Well, like baking, doing a load of dirty dishes, and washing a near ton of bedding. There are five other women inside this house for the week. I have to take care of them first and foremost, before I can even think of caring for anything else.”
“Are any of them as pretty as you?” he teased, adjusting the pillow; at the same time letting go of her wrist.
“Not a one. They are all over the age of sixty plus. More your Uncle LeRoy’s age. You wouldn’t be interested. And they probably don’t like Bull Men to begin with.”
“Sixty huh?” He mulled this over, testing her.
“If not a day over.”
Saber stopped her, yet again. “Can’t I at least have a kiss to tide me over until your return?”
“Why?”
He pinned her with a look meant to startle her. “So my dreams are actually livable.”
“Are you having nightmares, Saber? You should certainly tell a doctor about that.”
“Julia, I am a doctor. And he certainly knows he’s having nightmares.”
Sheepishly, she muttered, “Yes. I keep forgetting that you are one. You never seem to act like one.”
“What is a doctor supposed to act like, Ms. Hillard?” This, he had to hear.
“Well, for starters, he’s supposed to be old, and stuffy, and a really big Know-it-all. A real doctor doesn’t sit his gorgeous ass on a stark raving lunatic of a beast just for kicks and to make a few bucks.”
“This one’s not doing that anymore,” he promised, stalling the rest of his words.
Up until this moment he hadn’t been certain. Now he was.
“You mean…”
“I mean for good, Little Darlin’.”
**
Julia let go her held breath. She’d not even known she was holding it until the rush of air left her body so swiftly it made her lightheaded.
“You truly mean…”
“Ms. Julia Margaret Hillard, Eight Second Wonder has officially retired from the rodeo circuit. Under doctor’s strict orders, there will be no more bull riding. No more stupid moves atop a wild, uncontrollable mammal. No more rodeo or rodeo groupies to contend with. No more late night endeavors that can’t be reasonably explained to the woman’s husband…”
She didn’t dare react to that.
“But you’re a Bull Man. You said so yourself. What ever will you do if you can’t ride bulls?” Again, she was unable to keep her thoughts in check.
“I was hoping I could get myself hitched, have a few kids, grow old, and practice medicine again.” He held her gaze steady, as well, his breath.
“With, um, whom?” she pried cautiously.
“Well, my ride kind of dropped me off at your doorstep, Little Darlin’. So if not with you, then I guess I’m plum out of luck at this point.”
“That was pretty presumptuous of you, Dr. Patterson, being dropped off on my doorstep again, with no way to leave. What if I say no to you?”
Saber started to chuckle. He very easily pulled her to his side, pinned her to the bed, and trapped her into a submissive state. Her red hair was falling into her eyes and Saber took but a moment to brush it away with a glide of his fingertip. His gentle touch sent heat waves of desire to rush through her in near record time.
“I haven’t asked you anything yet, Little Darlin’. But if you say
no to me, it’ll probably be the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”
He then started to kiss her with everything he had, every ounce of strength left inside him that did not pertain to his injuries, turning her into jelly within his hands.
Bull Men certainly did not waste time when they knew what they wanted.
“So? What’s it going to be?” he asked, while she caught her breath.
“Yes.”
“Yes?” His silver-blue eyes turned to liquid mercury in mere seconds.
“Yes,” she answered. “I guess I could find the time to marry you.”
“You guess?” He turned so quickly, she didn’t have the time to react, placing his large body over hers to look directly into the depths of her soul. “Or you will?”
“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” she said playfully. “I do seem to be head over heels in love with a Bull Man.”
“Oh? And just when did this happen? Last thing I knew, you were running from one in particular, with your heels on fire.” He brushed a light kiss to the tip of her nose.
“When?” Julia gave it thought. “Probably the second you took off your damn T-shirt when standing in my great-grandmother’s living room and showed me your snake tattoo.”
He pulled from her body and deftly lifted his T-shirt over his head, tossing it to the floor. For a guy who was so dead tired, and said he felt the worst for wear, Saber made quick work of discarding the article. “You mean this one?”
Julia ran her fingertips over the scarred flesh, his body memorized by her gaze. His rippling muscles, his sensitivity, his true masculinity, they all drew her in.
“Yeah, this one, Bull Man,” she promised, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve always been a sucker for a guy with a tattoo. Especially a tattoo right here.”
Julia reining her body in could barely hold back the desire to make love to this man.
“That’s good, because I’ve got a certain something for a girl with long red hair and iridescent eyes who can’t seem to stop smiling at me.”
He lowered his face, sealing the deal. Somehow, she felt Preacher’s Bend was never going to be the same with Saber Patterson in its midst. Then again, hadn’t this town thought the same thing about Gill Hillard and Jake Giotti the days they arrived, kicking and screaming from their mother’s womb?
Julia didn’t give a damn about Preacher’s Bend staying the same. All was good. All was right with the world. The man of her dreams was undressing her, as gently and as considerately as any man could undress a woman; with every fiber of his being and every intention to make love to her caught in his gaze. She never felt so free or so alive in all her life.
When both were completely naked, and Saber hovered over her, he asked, “Is your father in town by chance?”
“Yes. Why?” Last she knew Gill was down at Rachel’s, eating a late lunch. He’d stopped by a full hour ago only to see if she’d needed help with cleaning out the garage.
“Did you lock the doors?”
“No.” She hadn’t locked any one of them. Her other boarders would not be able to get into the house.
“Damnation, Woman! You want me killed?”
“No. I want the two of you to actually like each other,” she ruled sweetly. “Gill’s not so bad once you get to know him. He bites hard, at first, but only when he has to. My father means well, really.”
“Do I have to get to know the man, enough for him to take a bite out of me? He already rearranged a few of my facial bones.” A quick grimace done in memory. “I don’t know if the rest of my body can take another assault from the man’s fists. It’s been through enough.”
“If you intend on doing what it is that you intend on doing within the next few seconds, then yes, you have to.” She made a sensual move to guide him to where she meant.
Saber groaned playfully under the pressure of her insistence. Three seconds more and she wouldn’t have been able to hold back from digging in her own bag of tricks to get to this man.
Chapter Nineteen
Saber Patterson, MD , who’d specialized in heart medicine and gave it all up to ride bulls, somehow ignored the fact that at any given moment this woman’s angry, uncontrollable, overprotective parent could come barging in here and punch out his lights. Or worse, haul out a shotgun on his sorry ass.
Then again, did he really care? Julia was more than worth the risk of getting embedded buckshot in the butt cheeks.
He settled his mouth against her lips, drew her closer, and slipped inside her warmth.
Two full hours later, flushed and satisfied, her body lying limp on top of his, Julia in deep slumber, Saber wondered if life could really be this good to a man. He pushed aside a tendril of her red hair, and smiled.
There’d been a time when everything had gone so horribly wrong. When Trevor, only six years old, died on his operating table and Saber had felt as though his entire world had ended right then and there. He’d wanted to die right along with his young son; severed himself from medicine, from his friends, from the rest of his family so the deep wounds could heal. But they healed over slower than expected.
Then to have his ex, Carol, take off into the dead of night as she had, leaving with her lover, and never once looking back at the damage she’d caused?
Saber had thought for many years he was simply a cursed man. He rode bulls to compensate for his inability to cope with the truth. He feared good wasn’t in any deck of cards ever dealt him, only bad and evil to hound his days.
As he moved his sight to a now slumbering Julia, so incredibly sexy that it pulled at every cell in his entire body, he wondered how he could have been so wrong. Life was good. A man need simply to take the bull by the horns every once in a while and hang on for that full eight seconds ride.
If getting Gill to like him was that raging bull, then he would do it. He would do anything for a redheaded, fire-breathing vixen of a woman with a permanent grin on her face.
Saber grinned. His dimples set at full depth. His heart filled with joy. His body might hurt, but his conscience was filled with indescribable warmth he didn’t want to lose.
Julia stirred on his chest. “What time is it?” she whispered, rubbing at her eyes as she drifted her sight up to his.
Saber’s hands surrounded her bared back as he answered. “Near six o’clock. Why?”
Startled by this answer, Julia pushed from his naked form and jumped right out of his arms, leaving him cold.
“Six o’clock?” she yelped.
He watched every move she made with a shameless grin that couldn’t be helped. “Yes. Why?” They’d been in and on her bed for a near eternity.
“Oh, shit! Oh, damn! Oh, God, Patterson!” She groaned loudly, searching for the remainder of her clothing.
Saber barely moved from his spot. “What’s wrong?” He propped his aching frame against the headboard. A headboard that had gotten a good workout, he would say, and proved without doubt he’d not been quite up to snuff—health-wise.
“My father is supposed to be here at six o’clock. He will be here any minute. Get up. Get dressed. And for God’s sake, would you please wipe that silly grin off your face?”
She tossed his pants directly at his head, followed by his crumpled T-shirt.
“I am not getting out of this bed and I am not getting dressed.” Saber tossed his clothes right back, missing her head by inches. “If you want me to like your father, then you had better calm yourself down and come back to me this very instant.”
“I will do no such thing!”
Julia shoved her arms through her paint-splattered T-shirt, then her legs into a pair of jeans. She couldn’t find the ones she’d been wearing. He’d strewn about her clothing in his haste to remove them from her person hours earlier.
She couldn’t locate her underwear, either; opted commando over being caught in the nude by an overprotective father.
“Come on, Patterson. This is not funny. Get dressed. If he sees you like this…”
&
nbsp; “Sees me, how?” he asked recklessly, flipping off the covers from his lower half to lie as God had intended him to be. Self-satisfied and dare he say it, terribly smug.
“Naked!” Julia smarted.
“How’s he ever goin’ to see me this way, unless you run right out there and let him know that I’m in here?” he asked, pointing toward her closed bedroom door. “He ain’t, so calm down, Sweetheart. Take a chill pill. I will leave this bed when I am good and ready to leave this bed. That might not be until tomorrow.” To prove this he plumped the pillow behind his head and settled in more comfortably.
Julia yanked the quilt from his body. “You don’t know my father as I do,” she reckoned. “He is totally overprotective, to a fault. If I am not where I should be, he will just come waltzing right in looking for me. He’ll think that I’m having an insulin attack … or something. And that he needs to do …well, something.”
Saber somehow did not want that something to be a man’s fist in his face. It just healed. “Fine, I’ll get dressed. But you are going to have to tell him the truth soon enough, Little Darlin’.”
Julia stopped at her bedroom door; her hand hovered over the knob. “And what is that, precisely?”
“That you love me, that you agreed to marry me, and that under no condition is he to punch out my lights again.” He rubbed his hand over his lower jaw. “It’ll just mess up my good looks, and no one wants that.”
“Fine, I’ll tell him all that, as soon as you start on getting dressed, and I leave this room. But if you do not hurry, I might not agree to any of it.”
She pulled open the knob to find a very determined Gill Hillard on the opposite side of it. He was holding a man’s cane in his right hand. In the interim, Saber had gotten out of the bed and was now standing on the other side of the room, completely in the buff.
Gill’s eyes moved first from one, then to the other, then hurriedly away.
“I don’t even want to know!” he blurted out, handing Julia the cane.
Seduction of Saber (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend #3) Page 15