by Linda Conrad
"Cal?" Bella looked up and tilted her head. "What are you doing up?"
"I heard something," he huffed. "Thought you might be in trouble and need help."
"We're fine." She glanced down at Kaydie then drew her gaze back up to meet his. "Your daughter was hungry earlier than usual. I don't like making a baby wait to eat. They don't understand the concept of timetables."
"Oh. Well…" he mumbled. They didn't seem to need him at the moment. He grabbed the corner of the wall, prepared to turn around and head back to bed.
"Wait," she called out to him. "Uh. Since you're up, maybe you could sit for a while and keep me company until Kaydie finishes her breakfast."
Yeah. He could probably do that. After all, he was wide-awake now.
He limped toward the chair next to the sofa. "If you really need someone to keep you company, I guess I can manage to help you out." Cal thought he heard Bella make a small disgruntled noise in her throat at that remark, but it was probably just Kaydie burping.
Once he'd settled his body into the overstuffed chair, he decided to get Bella talking about herself. He figured that was one good way to put her at ease. And he needed her to like him… It was suddenly important that they become friends. He wasn't going to make the same mistake with her that he'd made with his wife.
"So…" he began. "Are you happy with life in general, Bella?"
She glanced up at him. "I suppose. I haven't thought about it."
"I don't care for mine at the moment," he interjected.
"Is it your profession … the driving … you miss?" Bella guessed.
Cal shrugged, but wasn't sure she caught the movement in the dark shadows that engulfed them. "Mostly," he admitted. "Driving didn't ever feel like a job, though. It was always more of a game."
"A dangerous game, I think."
"The danger never seemed to bother me … before."
"And now?" she probed.
Cal answered with the first thing that popped into his head. "Now I think too much." Dang. He wondered how they'd ended up on this subject.
He heard her shift the baby in her arms, but the moonlight had disappeared and the room had fallen into darkness once again.
"Thinking too much might not be a good thing on the race track, yes?" Her voice was clear, soft and concerned. "I mean, that might make you hesitate. And maybe it could get you killed."
Thinking too much might just be the death of him, for sure. But it wouldn't be while driving.
"It's late, sugar." He was about to take the coward's way out and knew he was starting to make stupid remarks. "I mean it's early. And my knee hurts. I think I'll go back to bed for a while. We can finish this discussion at another time."
Bella tried to hide her irritation with Cal as he twisted in his saddle, and she stemmed the urge to go to his aide. "Cal, please stop grumbling," she muttered with as much cheerfulness in her voice as she could manage—considering the circumstances.
It had taken all her strength just to prepare, arrange and start out on this outing she'd planned. Having to soothe Cal's injured feelings at this point qualified as a little more than she could handle.
"Tell me again why you're so damn sure a ride and a picnic will be good for me." He'd turned around in his saddle to speak to her and she saw he was still steady on his mount. But obviously he was having some pain.
She'd expected that. However, it hurt her to see the lines of it cross his brow. Over the past week she'd come to like this irritating man. A physical therapist should not be too sympathetic when it came to making a patient squarely face his pain, though.
To make injured muscles relearn their proper uses, a patient must work through that pain. Think past it. Push it aside and go on, even when that was the last thing he wanted to do.
Cal had been trying so hard to do whatever she'd asked—until today.
"Just keep your horse moving, please." She aimed the comment toward his back as his mare moved in front of hers.
When he was feeling good, the man could charm the flame right out of a fire. But when he was in pain, he was absolutely the most annoying…
Kaydie shifted in her carrier on Bella's back and Bella had to remember her riding posture. She'd been competent on horseback since she was a little girl at boarding school. It had been one of the things that "mannered" girls had had to learn. But she'd found that she loved riding. Most especially, she'd decided she liked it here—on the open Texas plain.
"There's the river and the trees you've been looking for," Cal shouted over his shoulder. "Can I get off this damn mare now?"
"Please wait until I dismount and can assist you," she grumbled as she pulled her own mare and the pack horse up under the pecan trees. "Remember how we organized it when you got on the mare's back at the cabin? And remember how I said I would aid your dismount when we arrived at the river?"
Cal grumbled under his breath but stayed in the saddle while she and Kaydie slid off the back of her mare. Bella knew it must be difficult for a man who'd been riding all his life to suddenly have to be assisted on and off his horse.
She was impressed by how well he was doing, even though his pride was taking a beating. After just a week, Cal had regained much of the strength in his upper body. That was good news and bad. Like most patients, he tended to want to use that strength to do all the work for his painful lower limbs.
Bella insisted on this ride in order to force him to use his legs where he could not depend on his muscular arms to help him along. But those arms of his had been a great help when it came time to mount the mare. He'd practically dragged himself onto the mare's back with pure strength of will. That, and a little help from Bella and the mounting box that Abby brought over from the main ranch.
"All right," Bella said after she tied down all three horses. "I'll get the box to help you."
"No way," Cal sputtered. "Just come over here so I can lean on you when my bad leg hits the ground."
With a long-suffering sigh, Bella did as he asked. "You do not have a bad leg," she told him for the thousandth time. "Your right knee and hip have been replaced with joints made out of space-age materials. That does not make your leg bad. It is good. And you will be able to walk on it again soon." If you'll do the things I ask of you—even though they will be difficult and embarrassing, she urged silently.
Once Cal was back on solid earth he straightened and pretended that nothing was wrong with him at all. He helped Bella pull Kaydie and the carrier from her back. Then he spread the blankets and tarps in the shade of the trees.
After they were settled and fed, Bella coaxed the baby into taking a nap. It was a warm autumn day and the sky above the leaves on the trees radiated a clear crystal blue. A few flying insects buzzed nearby, but they seemed more interested in the bright-orange wild-flowers growing in crazy profusion all the way from the riverbank to within arm's reach.
Cal leaned back against some packs at the base of a tall pecan tree. His eyes were half-closed and he finally looked at peace. Bella leaned back, propped on her elbows, and studied him at her leisure.
He was such a wondrous sight since the pain had disappeared from around his eyes and now that his mouth had taken on an easy tilt at the corners. She thought she could happily lie here and look at him all day.
This past week, as they'd been working with weights or when she'd been massaging his sore muscles, she'd tried hard not to look at him as a woman looks at a man. He'd been a patient, nothing more.
But now. Now she could see the bulges under his shirt that she'd help make. The lightweight, long-sleeved shirt strained to cover the muscles across his chest. He'd left the top couple of buttons open, and a few of his chest hairs curled daringly with the freedom they'd found there.
Little twinges fluttered in the vicinity of her belly. The spasms felt almost like hummingbird wings beating wildly against the inside of her body.
Long before Cal opened his eyelids and found her staring at him, the heat of Bella's eyes on his body burned into his
gut. "You doing all right, sugar?" he drawled.
"Hmm. Yes, I am full and fat and lazy." The words came easily from her mouth—slow and sensuous and sweet.
She lithely stretched like a cat. A sleek, black-haired panther, Cal thought. Instinctively his hand moved to caress her smooth golden skin. But she rolled just out of his reach.
He drew a long breath and got more than he'd bargained for. Sure, the smell of early fall was in the air. The weeds on the plain had dried like hay and the cedars were ready to sap. But the scent of Bella teased him unmercifully with tangy aromas of raspberry soap mixed together with the sugary smell of the chocolate cake they'd had for dessert.
Damn, but it had been a long week.
He'd known the physical therapy would be difficult—and painful. He remembered what it was like from the rehabilitation hospital. But what he hadn't known was how hard it would be to have Bella's hands constantly on his body and not be able to do anything about it. And he meant that word hard literally.
Cal had spent the past seven days in a constant state of arousal. He'd tried to concentrate on other things. Like the last ten years of Formula One racing statistics. Or mentally going through the entire manual of the stock-car association's rules and regulations. Nothing had worked.
If he couldn't manage to charm his way into becoming her lover soon, he wasn't sure his poor body would stand the strain of fighting both the pain of therapy—and the pain of wanting her.
Using his forearms, he leaned over and inched his body closer to where she lay. "You look good enough to eat, Señorita Fernandez," he murmured in his most charming tone of voice.
She opened her eyes wide, then immediately narrowed them when she saw how close he was. "If you wish to move around, I will help you stand. It would be somewhat difficult with the uneven ground here, but we could…"
Anger flashed, then quickly subsided. "I thought today was my day off. You said we wouldn't work if I'd come on this picnic."
It intrigued him no end that his charm still seemed to be lost on her. He knew there was heat between them. The kiss they'd shared had been an excellent example of that. And sometimes he would catch her staring at his body.
He'd done everything he could think of to make her trust him and like him. He knew she'd already taken to Kaydie. The signs of her love for the baby were written all over her. It wasn't that Bella wasn't capable of love, then. In fact, he suspected she was ripe with potential in that regard.
So what was wrong with him? Cal decided to push her a little and find out.
"Have you ever been married?" he asked, then realized that might be too out of the blue. "Or engaged maybe?"
"What a very strange thing to ask all of a sudden," she said dryly.
But she rolled over and leaned up on one elbow to talk to him. "Yes, I was engaged once. Luckily, we never married."
"Did you love him?" he inquired bluntly.
Bella hesitated a moment. The look in her eyes spoke of great sorrow. Cal had never seen that particular look there before and it bothered him.
"Yes. I thought I was madly in love with Enrique. He was an intern in the hospital where I studied nursing." Her eyes took on a dreamy look as she thought of her past. "What a dashing figure he made in his white coat, too. All the nursing students were fascinated by him."
"What happened between you?"
She raised an eyebrow. "What happened? If you mean did we have sex, that's none of your business."
"On, no…" he stumbled, chagrined at the foolish way he'd asked the question. "I don't mean the intimate details. I just meant why didn't you two ever marry?"
She relaxed her shoulders, and her lips softened into a wry smile. "Enrique was like a prince in a fairy tale. When he told me the stories of how he would be helping our countrymen by bringing health care to the migrants traveling toward the United States, I was … charmed. He was sexy and intelligent and I thought marriage to him would be like a dream come true."
"So he's the reason you work for the church on the border." Suddenly a dark thought occurred to him and he had to blurt out the question. "He wasn't the man who was killed was he?"
She shook her head and wrinkled her nose. "His stories propelled me into doing the church's work. But to Enrique they were just good stories to tell the ladies. After his internship, he decided there was a lot of money to be made in private practice. He took a residency in dermatology and … he married a woman doctor who owned a big clinic in Houston."
She sat up and shrugged her shoulders. "I was so devastated I wished I could just curl up and die. I'd been so sure he truly loved me. It was … very foolish of me."
"Oh, Bella. I'm sorry." Cal's first reaction was anger at the bastard who would tell stories and pretend to be in love just to win a roll in the hay.
In the next moment the memory of doing some of those same sorts of things himself came back to haunt him. But he'd never left anyone devastated and wanting to be dead. He was sure he hadn't.
"Some men can't be trusted," he finally said. His voice sounded hoarse and reedy.
"I thought all men were that way. But now I wonder. Your brother and brother-in-law are trustworthy. Are they not?"
"Yes, I suppose that's true." He thought of his family, of the superior examples of manhood he'd so casually ignored. "And my father was the most admirable man who ever lived. You could trust him with your life. If he said he'd do something, the world coming to an end wouldn't stop him from getting it done."
Having said that, the image of his dad telling him he would back his efforts on the racetrack with all the power of Gentry Ranch came to his mind. The very next week his father was gone forever. He hadn't kept his promises.
"And you, Cal," Bella put in. "When you knew a woman was carrying your child, you insisted on marriage, even though there was no love. That was trustworthy. I'm sure your father would've been proud of you."
Cal wondered what the old man would've had to say about his plans to abandon his only daughter and run back to the carefree lifestyle of the racing circuit—even though Kaydie would be in much more capable and trustworthy hands with Cinco and Meredith than she would be with him. He rubbed the heel of his hand against his chest and tried to block the ache by turning his thoughts back to the beautiful woman beside him.
"Just doing one thing right doesn't make me a person to be trusted. I managed to kill my wife off, remember?"
Bella rolled on her back and gazed up through the leaves, wondering what she should say to that. The soft blue skies had given way to steel-gray clouds. Surprised, she discovered that in the quiet, she could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance.
The man beside her had many things going on inside him. He definitely felt guilty about his wife's death. More so than the circumstances seemed to call for.
But there was more than that there, too. Cal's whole demeanor had changed when he'd mentioned his father. It seemed odd that his loss had not healed over the years. But since she'd never known the love of a parent, she had no way of guessing how such a loss might affect a son.
She chastised herself for trying to psychoanalyze the man and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, Cal was staring at her in a way that was hard to ignore.
His eyes smoldered with desire. That much was easy to read. But as she gazed into the stormy, darkened depths she discovered more than hunger. For the moment his eyes carried sorrow and a pathetic little-lost-boy look that caused her heart to twitch.
He reached over and plucked up one of the brightly colored wildflowers. Rolling it absently between his fingers, Cal studied it for a second then bent to slide it behind her ear.
Touched, Bella sat up and placed a kiss on his cheek. She'd meant it as a thank-you. As a silent prayer for him to find his way. And as a helpless apology for his suffering.
For a second he remained perfectly still, but the heat radiating from him grabbed at her soul and set fire to her body.
He lightly touched her cheek, ran a knu
ckle along her jawline. The touch was too tender. Too gentle.
Right now Bella needed the flame of him, not the sweetness. She latched her hands on to his shoulders and firmly placed her lips against his.
Without a second's hesitation, Cal crushed his mouth down on hers and deepened the kiss.
* * *
Seven
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Nothing in her life had prepared Bella for this. This raw, ragged need twisting in her belly.
How could she have known there would be this much desire between two people? Enrique's kisses were warm and inviting, but they'd never combusted inside her the same way as the conflagration Cal had started.
Her head reeled with a flash of heat. Automatically she lifted her hands to Cal's neck, drove her fingers through his hair. He groaned and ran his kisses down over her jawline to the tender skin at the base of her neck.
Plastered against his chest, she still couldn't get close enough. Her hands went wild, tugging at his hair, digging into his skin, pulling him ever nearer.
He quickly moved back to her waiting lips. His mouth was clever, hot and richly male. His tongue tangled wildly with hers, demanding attention. Sucking at her lips and tongue, the sensation he kindled drove a blaze deep within her body. Down between her thighs the bonfire caused at first heat—then wetness.
Cal heard the tiny moans deep inside Bella as he closed his mouth over the tip of her breast right through the flannel shirt. He wanted more of those moans of pleasure. She was so wild. Such an energetic lover.
He felt her trembling as he moved over to cover the other breast with his mouth. The erotic jolts sent need shooting directly to his loins.
Pulling her body closer, he pinned her wrists and lifted them above her head to have better access. Bella groaned as her head fell backward and she arched her body against him.
More. He had to fill himself up with her, and her with him. Now. Right now.
But … right then, a roll of far-off thunder ripped through his brain, just as the first few drops of freezing water hit the back of his neck. The rain, splashing against the heat of his roaring desire, effectively smothered the fire.