by Laurie Paige
His teeth flashed white in the near dark. “Fun,” he repeated with sardonic amusement. “I must have missed that part of the adventure.”
“Nah. You were right in the thick of it.” With a laugh and a shiver as another sweep of rain surged over them, she ran for the bunkhouse and that hot shower.
Minutes later, standing under the warm spray, she thought of him in his room, doing the same. Her breath stuck in her throat as she imagined sharing a shower with him.
She closed her eyes in despair. What was wrong with her? To…to lust after a man she’d known for a week…This wasn’t like her. She’d never been man crazy like some of her friends. Yet she wanted Cade with a bone-deep need that unnerved and baffled her.
Why?
What drove her restless spirit to yearn for this man—a man she barely knew?
She sighed. Or was it herself she no longer knew?
Leanne breathed deeply of the crisp morning air. Dawn came early in midsummer, and she’d gotten up at first light. She’d already peeled the day’s quota of potatoes and stored them, covered with water so they wouldn’t turn dark, in the fridge. Cookie had been grumpily amazed when he’d walked in and found her busily at work.
A movement from the main house caught her eye. Before she was even fully conscious of who it was, her body was already reacting—heart thumping, chest tight, skin tingling.
It was Cade.
She joined him before he reached the stable.
He paused and glared at her. She smiled brightly, although her spirits drooped a bit. She didn’t need a crystal ball to know he wasn’t pleased to see her.
“What are you so cheery about?” he asked.
“The morning,” she replied. “It’s my favorite time of the day. Everything is new, as if it was reborn during the night.”
“Huh.” He strode on.
She followed and without a word, saddled a sweet mare with pinto markings. Cade chose a piebald gelding whose temper seemed to match his. The gelding tried to bite him twice while he saddled up. Leanne hid a grin.
“We’ll be out all day,” he said outside the stable before they mounted up. “Did you bring food and water?”
She held up a canvas bag.
He grunted again.
She tied the lunch behind her saddle and mounted up when he did. They headed across the field toward the trees.
Jimmy brought fresh coffee and donuts out to them at nine o’clock, then helped them bring in the horses they’d found.
“Thanks, Jimmy. That was very thoughtful of you,” Leanne said warmly when he left to return to his job of moving cattle to another pasture. “And just in time. I was running on empty.”
After he rode off, Cade cast a sour glance her way. “Ease off on the kid. Any more praise from you and his face would have split from grinning.”
“Jimmy’s nice. And cheerful. A person would have to use a chisel to get a smile on that rock face of yours.”
That set him back for a second before he growled it was time to get back to work. He rode off.
Leanne had to admit she was glad when he signaled they should stop to rest the horses at noon. “Oh-h,” she groaned, plopping down on a rock and using a boulder as a backrest. “I’m not used to a full day in the saddle anymore.”
“Were you ever?”
She ate and watched his quick, sure movements as he retrieved his lunch, hung his hat on the saddlehorn and chose a place to sit, then ate a sandwich piled high with ham and cheese.
He glanced around at her, a question in his eyes.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?” she said, unable to recall the topic of conversation.
“I asked if you were ever used to a full day’s work in the saddle.”
“Like most ranch kids, I grew up on a horse. I always thought I’d live on a ranch. When my parents died and we lost our place, it was as if I’d been yanked out by my roots. Rand and Daisy were gone, but I was still at home. The world didn’t make sense anymore.”
“Poor little orphan,” he mocked, but there was gentleness in the tone, too.
“I knew I couldn’t afford another ranch on my own, but I thought, when I found the right person, we would do it together.”
“Instead your fiancé bought a house in the country club set?” Cade questioned.
She nodded. “He said it would be good for the insurance business, that we would make more money if we had a wealthy clientele.” She sighed and shook her head. “Maybe I was wrong to accuse him of lying to me and using my money for his own selfish plans. Maybe I am being foolish and headstrong as he said. Rand thought so.”
Guiltily she thought of her brother. And her sister. Rand would be angry with her while Daisy would be worried at her disappearance. They had watched over her for years. Leanne loved them more than she had ever loved Bill.
“A person has to follow his or her own dream,” Cade said in a deeper, quieter tone. “No one can force you to accept another’s as yours. It isn’t right of them to try to make you.”
“Then you think I was right to walk out?”
His expression changed to sardonic as he shrugged. “I didn’t say that. But a person ought to be sure before committing to a long-term arrangement.”
She nodded, feeling the tiniest bit vindicated in her decision to not go through with the marriage, although she didn’t harbor any illusions that Cade thought much of her in any way, form or fashion.
The day had warmed considerably since dawn. She’d already removed her denim jacket. Now she laid her hat aside and unbuttoned the blue work shirt, then rolled the sleeves back on her arms.
Perspiration stained the T-shirt she wore underneath to a deeper shade of blue from the neckline to a vee disappearing into the valley between her breasts where her bra soaked up the rest of the moisture. She wiped her forehead on her sleeve and blew a wisp of hair out of her eyes.
Closing her eyes and leaning her head against the boulder, she murmured, “Doesn’t it feel good to sit here in the shade with nothing but the sound of the wind and a few sleepy calls from blue jays to keep us company?”
He didn’t answer.
She opened her eyes. His gaze was on her, moving slowly from point to point. Her mouth. Her throat. The damp vee of her T-shirt.
Without taking his eyes from her, he crumpled the bag of corn chips in his fist, then tossed it aside. She saw his chest rise and fall in a sharply drawn and released breath.
“Cade?”
She heard the uncertainty in her voice. And the yearning. So did he.
He looked into her eyes, his face grim. The intensity of his hunger seared through her, shocking her. Flames licked at her insides, destroying whatever sense of survival resided there.
His gaze still locked with hers, he crossed the few feet that separated them and settled beside her.
The moment lengthened, grew into an agony of longing, before he touched her. Raking his fingers into her hair, he pressed them against her scalp.
She didn’t hesitate, but moved forward, lifting her face. She clasped her arms around his neck.
In an instant their lips met and merged into a fiery kiss of passionate need. He slanted his mouth across hers, first one way, then the other. He explored her mouth, sucked on her tongue, stroked the inside of her lips.
Her heart went wild.
He crushed her closer, then lifted her and sat her across his lap, taking her place against the boulder.
“What is it with you?” he murmured at one point. “What is it about you that’s so damn hard to resist?”
“I don’t know.” She kissed him all over his jaw, his neck, down to his shirt. “What is it about you?”
“Wait.” He stripped the shirt off, revealing deeply tanned skin with a diamond of wiry hair. His hands went to her shirt and he waited.
When she sat up straight, he pushed the material past her shoulders, then slipped it down her arms and flung it on top of his.
“Take the other off,” he said, his voice h
usky.
Taking hold of the hem of the T-shirt, she raised it over her head and dropped it to the ground.
He groaned and pulled her to him, planting kisses over her burning flesh from her throat to her bra. She felt the hooks release, then the material being pushed aside.
“You’re exactly as I’ve remembered every night in my dreams. Perfect. Succulent.”
He pressed her gently back against his arm, then dipped his head and touched her breast. She held her breath.
With the gentlest of caresses, he brushed his lips over the very tip, then smiled at her response. His gaze was so hot on her, she wondered why she hadn’t simply burst into flames at the first glance.
With trembling fingers she touched his chest, running her hand over the hard muscles. With her other hand, she explored his back, then ran her fingers through his dark, silky hair.
“You make me feel weak,” she whispered, a protest as sense slipped farther and farther away.
“That isn’t half of what touching you does to me,” he told her, irony and laughter in the words.
“What? Tell me.”
“You know.”
She did. The evidence of his desire pressed against her hip, adding to the intense awareness between them. With a keening sound deep in her throat, she turned her face into his neck. Warmth spread from him to her, from her to him, wrapping them in a special lover’s cocoon of passion that excluded the rest of the world.
“It scares me, to want this much,” she explained as he stroked her back from neck to waist. “I’ve never felt this…this need. It’s like a fire in the blood.”
“It’s that,” he agreed, nuzzling her hair.
He laid a hand on her side, then smoothed it upward until his thumb brushed the side of her breast. After a bit, he moved again, this time sliding his hand between them. She shifted so he could reach her easily. He cupped her breast in his strong, exquisitely gentle hand.
She sighed against his throat and let the heat consume her. She didn’t care about anything but this man and this moment. Some part of her worried about that.
But only for a second.
“Give me your mouth again. You make me ache, and only you can stop it.”
Strange, but she knew exactly what he meant. When he laid her on their shirts, she went willingly. His chest pressed against hers as he stretched out beside her, his thigh nestled between hers. She gazed into his eyes and saw the fire in his.
There was more. Things she couldn’t read—emotion drawn from the past that he guarded himself against, questions that neither of them could answer. She didn’t understand, but she sensed he was vulnerable at this moment. And so was she. “None of this makes any sense,” she whispered.
“I know.”
He claimed her mouth again. The kiss went deep, and deeper still, making her heart jumpy, its beats erratic and somewhat frightening.
He kissed her breasts and tongued her nipples. She rubbed his until they contracted into hard beads like her own. The way he’d done to hers, she set out to explore his body. The pounding pulse point at his neck, the rich hardness of his chest. But when she slipped a hand beneath the waistband of his jeans, he stopped her.
“We’re not going that far. I don’t have protection with me. I didn’t think I’d need it on a roundup.”
She felt his chuckle as well as heard it. She managed a smile, although she felt heavy, languid, and yet incredibly tense, every nerve humming with energy.
“I know. I never thought to find this when I came here. Kiss me again, Cade.”
He shook his head. “I want you. But another minute or two and we’ll both forget the lessons of the past. The consequences might be more than we want to pay.”
“What consequences?” She shivered as he traced lazy circles over her body, making her breasts ache for more of his wonderful caresses.
“We could make a baby.”
His eyes went darker as he gazed moodily down at her. She exhaled shakily. The thought didn’t frighten her, though she knew it should.
He rested his head against hers. “If we made love, we’d complicate a situation that’s already too entangled.”
It seemed to Leanne that this was the only simple thing in her life—this attraction that had no right to be, no cause to exist. Neither of them had asked for it.
Slowly the tension drained out of his body. After a while she realized he was asleep. An act of trust. She yawned and snuggled closer. With him, she felt safe, too.
It seemed only a minute later that she felt his touch on her shoulder. “Come on. It’s time to get back to work.”
She roused and stretched, then realized she was bare up top. Instinctively crossing one arm over her breasts, she reached for a covering. He beat her to it. He handed her the bra, then the T-shirt, and waited until she had them on before holding her work shirt as she slipped her arms into it.
“That’s odd. I slept better for an hour on the hard ground than in my bed this past week.” He cocked a dark eyebrow. “Must be the fresh air.”
She frowned at him, not sure what she should be feeling just now. “I don’t understand this, Cade.” She gestured toward the ground where they had lain. “We can’t…I can’t become involved with you. I was supposed to be in love with another man only a week ago.”
His expression became guarded. “A few hot kisses didn’t commit either of us to anything.”
“Of course not,” she agreed at once. “I know it doesn’t, but I want to be up-front with you. I don’t want an affair—”
“You think I do?” He pulled on his shirt and went to where the horses grazed on the lush mountain grass. He tightened the girth on the gelding, grabbed the reins and swung up. “Come on, Annie, we got work to do.”
“Annie?” she questioned as she did the same.
“As in ‘Little Orphan’,” he explained.
She grimaced at his back as they headed deeper into the back country to rout out the last of the missing horses. She felt orphaned as she struggled with her conscience about wanting Cade and hurting Bill and her family. She worried about her morals that she could so quickly go from one man—who hadn’t stirred much of anything in her but should have—to another—who stirred her to her depths and shouldn’t.
“Cade,” she said as they rode along the trail, “I’m worried about my steadfastness. What kind of person am I?”
“Everything I don’t need in my life.” He turned to face her. “Passionate. Impulsive. Headstrong.”
“Sorry I asked,” she said, stung by the criticism.
“You’re also good with the horses. You can help me with them, but only if you get the computer set up first.”
She brightened at the thought. Maybe she could live here at the ranch. She’d become indispensable to Cade and he would want her to stay. Maybe things would work out….
Six
“We buried the two horses we lost due to the lightning hit, but we’ve recovered the rest—every one of ’em,” Cade reported to Garrett the following day at lunch. “Thanks to your help.”
“And Leanne’s,” the older man observed. “She’s a good worker, isn’t she?”
Cade hesitated only a moment. “Seems to be.”
“Who’s this?” Collin Kincaid, the one legitimate son and heir to the Elk Springs ranch, asked.
“Harding’s sister.”
When he added nothing further, Trent spoke up. “She didn’t get married as planned, but came here to think things over for a while.”
Collin looked puzzled. “She’s working here?”
“Yes,” Cade snapped, aware of the amused glance between Trent and Gina. “She’s setting up the breeding program on the computer. She’s also helping the cook over at the bunkhouse. I figured she ought to earn her keep while waiting for her brother to return from vacation.”
“I see. I think,” Collin added drolly. He turned to his grandfather. “What’s the situation with the ranch?”
Garrett frowned. “Baxter
has filed an injunction. He’s claiming first rights at buying, as his uncle promised. He’s also saying he’s offered more and that the trustees are cheating Jenny McCallum out of her inheritance by selling for a lesser amount.”
“Your offer is market price. Baxter made a preemptive bid, but he can’t raise that kind of money,” Trent mentioned. “Gina checked his resources.”
“Only those of public record,” she quickly stated. “I didn’t go into his personal accounts.”
“I feel sorry for him,” Garrett said suddenly. “It’s tough to give up a dream. He thought the Baxter place would be his someday.” He turned to Cade. “I understand the Appaloosa mare you bought will be foaling any day.”
“She’s showing all the signs. I’ve brought her into the stable for the birthing. It’s her first, so I’d like to be on hand if she needs help.”
“Good. Wayne reports the calf count is up this year, so the ranch should break even or even be in the black this fall for the first time in years.”
Collin spoke up. “With the new cattle we’re bringing in from the other place, we’ll get a better beef herd within a couple of years.”
Cade answered questions on the auction. “I’ve got a bid on the whole string from a rancher down in Texas, but one of the other ranchers asked to look at the bunch before we accept. I’ve decided to go ahead with the auction since we’ve already sent out the information.” He stood. “I’m heading for the stable to check the mare.”
At the stable, he heard the mare whicker, then a soft murmur. Heat flashed through his body, alerting him to who was with the animal without seeing her.
He propped his arms on the stall door and watched as Leanne stroked the mare’s neck. He noted the stall was clean and fresh straw was strewn on the floor. Clean rags lay close at hand in case they were needed.
“How does she look?” he asked.
Leanne jerked around. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, a blush rising to her cheeks. “She’s dilated quite a bit, but the contractions aren’t all that strong. I checked the position of the foal. It’s fine.”
His skepticism must have showed.
“I was born on a ranch. I know a thing or two.”