by Diana Palmer
“Lucky I didn’t lay you down on the desk, isn’t it?” he said, chuckling.
There was a tap on the half-closed door and Mrs. Culbertson came in with a tray. She was so intent on getting it to the desk intact that she didn’t even look at Dorie.
“Here it is. Sorry I took so long, but I couldn’t find the cream pitcher.”
“Who drinks cream?” Corrigan asked curiously.
“It was the only excuse I could think of,” she told him seriously.
He looked uneasy. “Thanks.”
She grinned at him and then looked at Dorie. Her eyes were twinkling as she went back out. And this time she closed the door.
Dorie’s face was still flushed. Her gray eyes were wide and turbulent. Her mouth was swollen and when she folded her arms over her chest, she flinched.
His eyes went to her blouse and back up again. “When I felt you going over the edge, it excited me, and I got a little rough. Did I hurt you?”
The question was matter-of-fact, and strangely tender.
She shook her head, averting her eyes. It was embarrassing to remember what had happened.
He caught her hand and led her to the chairs in front of the desk. “Sit down and I’ll pour you a cup of coffee.”
She looked up at him a little uneasily. “Is something wrong with me, do you think?” she asked with honest concern. “I mean, it’s unnatural…isn’t it?”
His fingers touched her soft cheek. He shook his head. “People can’t be pigeonholed. You might not be that responsive to any other man. Maybe it’s waiting so long. Maybe it’s that you’re perfectly attuned to me. I might be able to accomplish the same thing by kissing your thighs, or your belly.”
She flushed. “You wouldn’t!”
“Why not?”
The thought of it made her vibrate all over. She knew that men kissed women in intimate places, but she hadn’t quite connected it until then.
“The inside of your thighs is very vulnerable to being caressed,” he said simply. “Not to mention your back, your hips, your feet,” he added with a gentle smile. “Lovemaking is an art. There are no set rules.”
She watched him turn and pour coffee into a ceramic cup. He handed it to her and watched the way her fingers deliberately touched his as he drew them away.
He wanted her so much that he could barely stand up straight, but it was early days yet. He had to go slowly this time and not push her too hard. She had a fear not only of him, but of real intimacy. He couldn’t afford to let things go too far.
“What sort of things are we going to talk about later?” she asked after she’d finished half her coffee.
“Cabbages and kings,” he mused. He sat across from her, his long legs crossed, his eyes possessive and caressing on her face.
“I don’t like cabbage and I don’t know any kings.”
“Then suppose we lie down together on the sofa?”
Her eyes flashed up to see the amusement in his and back down to her cup. “Don’t tease. I’m not sophisticated enough for it.”
“I’m not teasing.”
She sighed and took another sip of coffee. “There’s no future in it. You know that.”
He didn’t know it. She was living in the past, convinced that he had nothing more than an affair in mind for them. He smiled secretively to himself as he thought about the future. Fate had given him a second chance; he wasn’t going to waste it.
“About these books,” he said in a businesslike tone. “I’ve made an effort with them, but although I can do math, my penmanship isn’t what it should be. If you can’t read any of the numbers, circle them and I’ll tell you what they are. I have to meet a prospective buyer down at the barn in a few minutes, but I’ll be somewhere close by all day.”
“All right.”
He finished his coffee and put the cup back on the tray, checking his watch. “I’d better go.” He looked down at her with covetous eyes and leaned against the arms of her chair to study her. “Let’s go dancing tomorrow night.”
Her heart jumped. She was remembering how it was when they were close together and her face flushed.
His eyebrow lifted and he grinned. “Don’t look so apprehensive. The time to worry is when nothing happens when I hold you.”
“It always did,” she replied.
He nodded. “Every time,” he agreed. “I only had to touch you.” He smiled softly. “And vice versa,” he added with a wicked glance.
“I was green,” she reminded him.
“You still are,” he reminded her.
“Not so much,” she ventured shyly.
“We both learned something today,” he said quietly. “Dorie, if you can be satisfied by so small a caress, try to imagine how it would feel if we went all the way.”
Her eyelids flickered. Her breath came like rustling leaves.
He bent and drew his mouth with exquisite tenderness over her parted lips. “Or is that the real problem?” he asked at her mouth. “Are you afraid of the actual penetration?”
Her heart stopped dead and then ran away. “Corrigan!” She ground out his name.
He drew back a breath so that he could see her eyes. He wasn’t smiling. It was no joke.
“You’d better tell me,” he said quietly.
She drew her lower lip in with her teeth, looking worried.
“I won’t tell anyone.”
“I know that.” She took a long breath. “When my cousin Mary was married, she came to visit us after the honeymoon was over. She’d been so happy and excited.” She grimaced. “She said that it hurt awfully bad, that she bled and bled, and he made fun of her because she cried. She said that he didn’t even kiss her. He just…pushed into her…!”
He cursed under his breath. “Didn’t you talk to anyone else about sex?”
“It wasn’t something I could discuss with my father, and Mary was the only friend I had,” she told him. “She said that all the things they write about are just fiction, and that the reality is just like her mother once said—a woman deals with it for the pleasure of children.”
He leaned forward on his hands, shaking his head. “I wish you’d told me this eight years ago.”
“You’d have laughed,” she replied. “You didn’t believe I was innocent anyway.”
He looked up into her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said heavily. “Life teaches hard lessons.”
She thought about her own experience with modeling. “Yes, it does.”
He got to his feet and looked down at her with a worried scowl. “Don’t you watch hot movies?”
“Those women aren’t virgins,” she returned.
“No. I don’t guess they are.” His eyes narrowed as he searched her face. “And I don’t know what to tell you. I’d never touched an innocent woman until you came along. Maybe it does hurt. But I promise you, it would only be one time. I know enough to make it good for you. And I would.”
“It isn’t going to be that way,” she reminded him tersely, denying herself the dreams of marriage and children that she’d always connected with him. “We’re going to be friends.”
He didn’t speak. His gaze didn’t falter. “I’ll check back with you later about the books,” he said quietly.
“Okay.”
He started to turn, thought better of it and leaned down again with his weight balanced on the chair arms. “Do you remember what happened when I started to suckle you?”
She went scarlet. “Please…”
“It will be like that,” he said evenly. “Just like that. You won’t think about pain. You may not even notice any. You go in headfirst when I touch you. And I wasn’t even taking my time with you today. Think about that. It might help.”
He pushed away from her again and went to the desk to pick up his hat. He placed it on his head and smiled at her without mockery.
“Don’t let my brothers walk over you,” he said. “If one of them gives you any trouble, lay into him with the first hard object you can get your hands on.”
&
nbsp; “They seem very nice,” she said.
“They like you,” he replied. “But they have plans.”
“Plans?”
“Not to hurt you,” he assured her. “You should never have told them you could cook.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Mrs. Culbertson wants to quit. They can’t make biscuits. It’s what they live for, a plateful of home-made buttered biscuits with half a dozen jars of jam and jelly.”
“How does that concern me?”
“Don’t you know?” He perched himself against the desk. “They’ve decided that we should marry you.”
“We?”
“We’re a family. Mostly we share things. Not women, but we do share cooks.” He cocked his head and grinned at her shocked face. “If I marry you, they don’t have to worry about where their next fresh biscuit is coming from.”
“You don’t want to marry me.”
“Well, they’ll probably find some way around that,” he said pointedly.
“They can’t force you to marry me.”
“I wouldn’t make any bets on that,” he said. “You don’t know them yet.”
“You’re their brother. They’d want you to be happy.”
“They think you’ll make me happy.”
She lowered her eyes. “You should talk to them.”
“And say what? That I don’t want you? I don’t think they’d believe me.”
“I meant, you should tell them that you don’t want to get married.”
“They’ve already had a meeting and decided that I do. They’ve picked out a minister and a dress that they think you’ll look lovely in. They’ve done a rough draft of a wedding invitation…”
“You’re out of your mind!”
“No, I’m not.” He went to the middle desk drawer, fumbled through it, pulled it farther out and reached for something pushed to the very back of the desk. He produced it, scanned it, nodded and handed it to her. “Read that.”
It was a wedding invitation. Her middle name was misspelled. “It’s Ellen, not Ellis.”
He reached behind him for a pen, took the invitation back, made the change and handed it back to her.
“Why did you do that?” she asked curiously.
“Oh, they like everything neat and correct.”
“Don’t correct it! Tear it up!”
“They’ll just do another one. The papers will print what’s on there, too. You don’t want your middle name misspelled several thousand times, do you?”
She was all but gasping for breath. “I don’t understand.”
“I know. Don’t worry about it right now. There’s plenty of time. They haven’t decided on a definite date yet, anyway.”
She stood up, wild-eyed. “You can’t let your brothers decide when and who you’re going to marry!”
“Well, you go stop them, then,” he said easily. “But don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”
He pulled his hat over his eyes and walked out the door, whistling softly to himself.
CHAPTER FIVE
First she did the accounts. Her mind was still reeling from Corrigan’s ardor, and she had to be collected when she spoke to his brothers. She deciphered his scribbled numbers, balanced the books, checked her figures and put down a total.
They certainly weren’t broke, and there was enough money in the account to feed Patton’s Third Army. She left them a note saying so, amused at the pathetic picture they’d painted of their finances. Probably, the reason for that was part of their master plan.
She went outside to look for them after she’d done the books. They were all four in the barn, standing close together. They stopped talking the minute she came into view, and she knew for certain that they’d been talking about her.
“I’m not marrying him,” she told them clearly, and pointed at Corrigan.
“Okay,” Leo said easily.
“The thought never crossed my mind,” Rey remarked.
Cag just shrugged.
Corrigan grinned.
“I’m through with the books,” she said uneasily. “I want to go home now.”
“You haven’t eaten lunch,” Rey said.
“It’s only eleven o’clock,” she said pointedly.
“We have an early lunch, because we work until dark,” Cag volunteered.
“Mrs. Culbertson just left,” Rey said. He sighed. “She put some beef and gravy in the oven to warm. But she didn’t make us any biscuits.”
“We don’t have anything to put gravy on,” Leo agreed.
“Can’t work all afternoon without a biscuit,” Cag said, nodding.
Corrigan grinned.
Dorie had thought that Corrigan was making up that story about the brothers’ mania for biscuits. Apparently it was the gospel truth.
“Just one pan full,” Leo coaxed. “It wouldn’t take five minutes.” He eyed her warily. “If you can really make them. Maybe you can’t. Maybe you were just saying you could, to impress us.”
“That’s right,” Rey added.
“I can make biscuits,” she said, needled. “You just point me to the kitchen and I’ll show you.”
Leo grinned. “Right this way!”
* * *
Half an hour later, the pan of biscuits were gone so fast that they might have disintegrated. Leo and Corrigan were actually fighting over the last one, pulled it apart in their rush, and ended up splitting it while the other two sat there gloating. They’d had more than their share because they had faster hands.
“Next time, you’ve got to make two pans,” Corrigan told her. “One doesn’t fill Leo’s hollow tooth.”
“I noticed,” she said, surprisingly touched by the way they’d eaten her biscuits with such enjoyment. “I’ll make you a pan of rolls to go with them next time.”
“Rolls?” Leo looked faint. “You can make home-made rolls?”
“I’ll see about the wedding rings right now,” Rey said, wiping his mouth and pushing away from the table.
“I’ve got the corrected invitation in my pocket,” Cag murmured as he got up, too.
Leo joined the other two at the door. “They said they can get the dress here from Paris in two weeks,” Leo said.
Dorie gaped at them. But before she could say a word, all three of them had rushed out the door and closed it, talking animatedly among themselves.
“But, I didn’t say…!” she exclaimed.
“There, there,” Corrigan said, deftly adding another spoonful of gravy to his own remaining half of a biscuit. “It’s all right. They forgot to call the minister and book him.”
Just at that moment, the door opened and Leo stuck his head in. “Are you Methodist, Baptist or Presbyterian?” he asked her.
“I’m…Presbyterian,” she faltered.
He scowled. “Nearest Presbyterian minister is in Victoria,” he murmured thoughtfully, “but don’t worry, I’ll get him here.” He closed the door.
“Just a minute!” she called.
The doors of the pickup closed three times. The engine roared. “Too late,” Corrigan said imperturbably.
“But didn’t you hear him?” she burst out. “For heaven’s sake, they’re going to get a minister!”
“Hard to get married in church without one,” he insisted. He gestured toward her plate with a fork to the remaining chunk of beef. “Don’t waste that. It’s one of our own steers. Corn fed, no hormones, no antibiotics, no insecticides. We run a clean, environmentally safe operation here.”
She was diverted. “Really?”
“We’re renegades,” he told her. “They groan when they see us coming at cattle conventions. Usually we go with Donavan. He’s just like us about cattle. He and the Ballenger brothers have gone several rounds over cattle prods and feed additives. He’s mellowed a bit since his nephew came to live with him and he got married. But he likes the way we do things.”
“I guess so.” She savored the last of the beef. “It’s really good.”
“Beats eat
ing pigs,” he remarked, and grinned.
She burst out laughing. “Your brother Cag had plenty to say on that subject.”
“He only eats beef or fish. He won’t touch anything that comes from a pig. He says it’s because he doesn’t like the taste.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “But I say it’s because of that movie he went to see. He used to love a nice ham.”
“What movie?”
“The one with the talking pig.”
“Cag went to see that?”
“He likes cartoons and sentimental movies.” He shrugged. “Odd, isn’t it? He’s the most staid of us. To look at him, you’d never know he had a sense of humor or that he was sentimental. He’s like the others in his lack of conventional good looks, though. Most women can’t get past that big nose and those eyes.”
“A cobra with a rabbit,” she said without thinking.
He chuckled. “Exactly.”
“Does he hate women as much as the rest of you?”
“Hard to tell. You haven’t seen him in a tuxedo at a social bash. Women, really beautiful women, followed him around all night dropping their room keys at his feet.”
“What did he do?”
“Kept walking.”
She put down her fork. “What do you do?”
He smiled mockingly. “They don’t drop room keys at my feet anymore. The limp puts them off.”
“Baloney,” she said. “You’re the handsomest of the four, and it isn’t just looks.”
He leaned back in his chair to look at her. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Does the limp bother you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, lifting her gaze. “Why should it?”
“I can’t dance very well anymore.”
She smiled. “I don’t ever go to dances.”
“Why not?”
She sipped coffee. “I don’t like men touching me.”
His eyes changed. “You like me touching you.”
“You aren’t a stranger,” she said simply.
“Maybe I am,” he murmured quietly. “What do you know about me?”
She stared at him. “Well, you’re thirty-six, you’re a rancher, you’ve never married, you come from San Antonio.”
“And?”
“I don’t know any more than that,” she said slowly.
“We were a couple for several weeks before you left town. Is that all you learned?”