by Laurie Paige
He eased into the stall and examined the mare. The animal glanced at him with big, suffering eyes as she went into another contraction. It wasn’t a long one.
“Let’s walk her,” he suggested. “Maybe that will speed things along.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too.” She gave him a serious, concerned glance before clucking to the mare, who lay in the straw. “Come on, girl, let’s take a walk. That will make you feel better. Yeah, that’s it. Come on now.” She led the horse out of the stall. “What’s her name?”
“Delilah. Because she was the prettiest of all the fillies on the ranch, according to the previous owner.”
She grimaced, then laughed. “I would have called her Mopsy because of the hair that keeps falling in her eyes.”
They took turns walking the mare for the rest of the afternoon. By dark, Cade was getting worried.
Leanne sat on a bale of straw and wiped her face with a handkerchief dampened at the utility sink in the tack room. She looked up at Cade, a question in her eyes.
He waited out another contraction, then led the mare into the stall. She sank into the clean straw as if too tired to stand any longer. He soaped his hands and arms and rinsed, then gently examined the horse. “Bring me that piece of rope over there,” he said.
She removed the rope from a nail and handed it to him. He held it in his mouth and, giving a great heave, brought the foal’s forelegs into the open. He quickly tied the rope on. Leanne moved over to help while he rinsed his hands.
Together they pulled each time the mare went into a contraction. Each time a bit more of the foal came into view. It was a slow, taxing process.
“She’s tired,” Cade said at one point, wiping sweat on his sleeve. “She’s not helping much now.”
“The foal has got to come out.”
“I agree.” He hooked a pulley on the stall door and threaded the rope through it. “A big pull this time.”
She nodded and got into position, wrapping the rope once around her palms for a good grip.
At the next contraction, Cade moved behind her. He reached around her and grasped the rope, his big, strong hands alternating with hers. They leaned against the rope and pulled with all their might.
She felt his chest against her back, the short puffs of breath against her hair when he panted with exertion.
“Steady,” he said. “Keep the pressure on.”
Slowly the foal slipped into view—a nose, the eyes and ears, finally the shoulders. The mare grunted and pushed to her feet. Her sides heaved as if she’d been running.
“Rest now,” Cade said in a soothing tone. “You’re doing good, girl. Once more and we’ll have it.”
The mare huffed, and the next contraction began. The tiny back hooves appeared, then the haunches. It was over in a rush. Leanne fell against Cade as the pressure of tugging suddenly released.
He closed his arms around her. “Watch,” he said quietly.
The mare sniffed at the baby, then gave a tentative lick at its rump. The foal’s head, wobbling as if it were a toy on a spring, bobbed around. The mother licked vigorously at its little face, making the head bobble more.
Leanne felt Cade’s soft laugh. She laid her arms over his, her hands touching his, and rested her head against his chest. “A filly,” she whispered as the foal tried to stand.
“Good.”
She smiled. A ranch was one place where females were appreciated and usually desired over males. Feeling connected with life and procreation, she enjoyed the tactile sense of their bodies—their warmth, the perspiration that soaked their shirts where they touched, the camaraderie of sharing one of the elemental experiences of life.
His lips caressed the side of her neck. She tilted her head and closed her eyes as tingles arced down into the inner core of her body. She lifted one hand and stroked his cheek, the damp strands of hair at his temple.
When his hands moved upward, she instinctively thrust forward. His hands closed over her breasts. He licked the salty dampness at her throat while massaging her breasts in a sensual pattern.
Excitement swept through her. She became hot, tense, damp. Her body was ready for his.
“Cade,” she whispered in painful need.
He turned her in his arms and claimed her mouth. Willingly, eagerly, she went to him. His hands slipped down her back and cupped her hips, pulling her against him. She twisted slightly, brushing back and forth, arousing him and herself with the subtle pleasure.
“Let’s get out of here,” he murmured.
They looked at the mare and filly once more, then left the stall.
Cade pressed her against the wall of the old stable, lifting her off her feet. She wrapped her legs around his lean hips and rocked against him.
He groaned softly, then nibbled her neck in gentle forays of passion.
“Make love to me,” she demanded. “Now.”
He shook his head and buried his face in her hair, which had come loose from its band as they’d worked with the mare.
“Don’t you have—”
“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “But we’re not— You’re not to tempt me beyond control.”
She leaned her head against the planking and stared up at him, unable to hide her disappointment. She felt she would scream if he didn’t make love to her.
“I can’t stand it.” She planted kisses all over his face, as much as she could reach. “I want you. I don’t want to stop, not this time.”
He laughed, a rough growl of need and frustration. “Do you think I do?”
“Then why…?”
“One of us has to think.”
She unclasped her legs and slid down his long, lean, utterly masculine body. She laid her cheek on his chest. “Your heart is beating so fast,” she murmured.
“So is yours. A fine fix we’ve found ourselves in, isn’t it?”
The sardonic edge was back in his voice. She kissed his chest above the opening of his shirt and tasted the salt on his skin. “What do you mean?”
“I came here to meet a family I never knew I had. You came to escape yours that you know all too well.” He was silent a moment. “Don’t let them talk you into anything you’re not sure of.”
“It’s hard. I know they want only the best for me. I don’t want to hurt them. Or Bill.”
“But you don’t love him,” Cade cut in, “not the way a woman should love the man she’s going to marry.”
She didn’t answer.
His hands tightened around her waist. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. I care for him. He’s been a friend all my life. He says we’re in love.”
“But you don’t share this.” He moved against her, bringing a gasp of pleasure to her lips. “How could you consider marrying a man you don’t want this way?”
She shook her head. “I guess I answered that when I left before the ceremony. I feel so terrible about letting everyone down.” She sighed, then gazed up at him. “Kiss me some more, Cade. In your arms, I forget how awful I am.”
Cade took in the weary smile, the sadness in her eyes. He held her close. For a long minute he battled an impulse to ride off into the hills with her and to hell with everyone and everything.
A strange sensation gripped his chest. He had the oddest need to protect her, not just from her family, but from her own mixed-up loyalty to them and her ex-fiancé. It wasn’t something he’d experienced in his previous thirty-five years, and it confused him.
He had a feeling this woman could make him act the fool with very little effort. He remembered how it was standing in front of family and friends and telling them there would be no wedding. He wouldn’t be that big a fool again for any female, no matter that she came to him like a gift from the storm, looking lost and frightened and weary beyond endurance. Her family was her problem, not his.
“It’s late,” he said in a growl. “We’d better go in.”
Her eyes were softly pleading. He didn’t think she was even aware of the need.
He resisted for all of five seconds, then he bent and kissed her again, this time very slowly and very gently. The hunger trembled through her as she leaned against him.
The need was mutual. His body demanded he take her to his room and keep her there for hours and hours. Until they had drunk their fill of each other. He suppressed the images with an effort.
“Out,” he ordered with a rueful smile when he lifted his mouth from hers.
He opened the stable door and walked up the road, his arm around her shoulders. He stopped at the point where she needed to cross the road to the bunkhouse.
“Good night,” she said.
He liked the slight tremor in her voice, the candid way her eyes searched his face in the faint light, the fact that she didn’t act coy or falsely shy about their passion. He touched her lips with a finger, lingered to caress their softness, absorb their heat.
“Go on in,” he said, and stayed in the shadows to watch until she was safely inside.
When she reached the door of the bunkhouse, she emitted a startled “Oh!”
Cade saw another shape, that of a man, materialize out of the dark. The man grabbed Leanne’s wrist.
“What’s your hurry, sweetheart?”
Gil. Cade frowned and moved silently across the road, sticking to the shadows. If Leanne could handle it, he wouldn’t interfere. If not, then Gil had a lesson coming he wouldn’t soon forget.
“Oh, hi, Gil,” she said in casual surprise. “I didn’t see you. The mare foaled tonight. We have the most beautiful little filly you ever saw.”
Gil snorted. “I saw you in the stable. Didn’t look to me like you were paying much attention to the filly.”
She laughed. “I guess I got a little emotional after the birth. Poor Cade probably was shocked out of his mind when I nearly hugged him to death.”
“There was more than hugging going on,” Gil said in a suggestive manner.
“Well, we both got a little carried away with the moment. Luckily Cade is a gentleman.” She paused and looked straight at the cowboy. “Like all the men here at the ranch, I hope. I’d hate to scream and cause a big commotion. It could be embarrassing.”
Cade started forward when Gil didn’t let go of her right away. He would beat the man to a pulp.
Gil dropped her arm and laughed falsely. “Yeah, we’re all true-blue heroes.”
The door opened, spilling light onto the porch. Leanne politely held it until Gil disappeared inside. She turned and waved jauntily.
Cade relaxed. With a smile whose cause he couldn’t identify, he headed for the main house and a comfortable bed. He would have chosen a bed of straw that night if it had been with her, he realized.
Leanne greeted the dawn with more than her usual worshipful attendance. A quietness had entered her soul. An introspective mood engulfed her. When she thought of Cade, her heart gave a hitch. She wasn’t sure of herself or anything, but she seemed to have entered a waiting period.
She just didn’t know what she was waiting for.
Going to the stable, she checked on the new mother and baby. There was food in the manger and fresh straw on the floor. Cade had already been in. Her heart lurched as she thought of him.
Shaking her head, she returned to the bunkhouse and started peeling potatoes. Cookie came in a few minutes later and gave her a mock frown.
“You’re the only person I ever knew who got up just so’s she could say hello to the sun.”
“I like the morning.”
He snorted and poured a cup of coffee from the huge pot that she’d already made. It was the first of many that got the cowboys through the hard days of tending a ranch.
After the breakfast dishes were clean and put away, she headed for Cade’s office. Flicking on the computer, she realized they had the first birth to record in the new data program. She glanced at his bedroom door and wondered where he was. She hadn’t seen him outside all morning, only the evidence that he’d taken care of the mare and foal earlier.
Around ten, Gina stopped at the hall door. “How about a break? I could use some coffee and a snack to tide me over until lunch.”
Leanne nodded and saved the file she was working on. “We have a new filly who needs a name. She’s Appaloosa and should have beautiful markings when she matures.”
“What’s her mother’s and father’s names?”
They discussed it on the way to the dining room. There they found Garrett, Cade and Trent. Another man was with them.
“All the grandsons will be here for the auction,” Garrett was telling Cade. “Ah, the ladies,” he said, breaking off the discussion when Leanne and Gina entered. “Please join us. Have you met my grandson, Collin?” he asked Leanne. “This is Leanne Harding, who’s visiting and helping us out for a while.”
Leanne felt awkward and self-conscious around Cade’s family, as if she were there under false pretenses. Which she was, she reminded herself. No one but Cade knew that her family still didn’t know where she was. In less than a week they would return. And then what?
She didn’t know.
Trent served Gina in a sweet display of husbandly thoughtfulness. Leanne’s eyes met Cade’s.
“Good morning,” he said. “Have you been to the stable?”
She nodded. “They seem to be doing well.”
“I’ll turn them out to pasture in a bit.” He refilled his coffee cup, then held out a chair for her next to him.
Surprised and shockingly pleased at this courtesy, she sat and nibbled on a pastry that could have been a mud pie for all the notice she gave it. She couldn’t get past last night and the kisses she and Cade had shared.
“Was it a difficult birth?” Gina asked.
“Well, a slow one,” Cade admitted. “But there were no complications to speak of.”
His eyes met Leanne’s again. She felt herself blushing and bent her head over her coffee cup as if enthralled with the aroma rising on the steam. Every part of her was awash in memories of last night.
The touch of his hands as they’d roamed freely over her. The way his mouth could be gentle or demanding. The hard masculine feel of his body and the way touching him made her feel very feminine.
She lost track of the conversation and was abruptly brought back to reality by a commotion in the front hall.
“I want to see Kincaid right now. Not Wayne. I want the old man,” an angry male voice said, speaking quickly and loudly.
Garrett rose. Cade, Gina, and the men stood as one and headed for the entrance. Leanne trailed after them.
Jordan Baxter stood in the foyer. He smiled in triumph when he spotted Garrett and waved a piece of paper at the Kincaid patriarch. “I found it,” he declared. “The letter my uncle wrote, promising me the ranch. He gave me the right of first refusal if he had to sell. It’s rightfully mine.”
Collin started to speak, but Garrett touched his grandson’s arm. He held out a hand for the letter.
Jordan handed it over. “It’s a copy, so don’t think you can destroy it. The original is with my attorney.”
Garrett read the letter, then shook his head, his expression sympathetic. Gina asked to see it.
“Look at the date on this,” she said to the older man. “The statute of limitations ran out long ago. It would have had to be invoked when Jeremiah Kincaid bought the Baxter ranch. It’s too late now.”
“You lie,” Jordan accused.
Trent took a step forward. Gina stopped him by the simple expedient of leaning against him.
Baxter continued. “My attorney says otherwise. Since you won’t see reason and withdraw, we’ll leave it to the courts to decide.”
“It doesn’t have to come to that,” Garrett said. “Gina is right.”
“You’ll see,” Jordan promised. He stormed out as suddenly as he’d arrived.
Garrett shook his head sadly and gestured to the letter Gina still held. “Better add it to the file of things to be looked into. Would you fax a copy to the ranch lawyer? He’ll need to see it.”<
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She promised she would.
Cade walked out onto the front porch of the ranch house. He watched Jordan Baxter drive down the gravel road at a furious, reckless pace. Like Garrett, he felt sorry for the man. He knew how it hurt to give up a dream. Baxter hadn’t given up yet, but it was only a matter of time. Cade agreed with Garrett and Gina. The man really didn’t have a case.
Before Baxter drove out of sight, Cade spotted another vehicle on the ranch road. Two of them.
He watched as Rand Harding and his family arrived home. The second car, too, stopped at the foreman’s house. A man climbed out and joined the others as they went inside.
He’d better warn Leanne that her family was back. She was going to have to face the music a bit earlier than she’d planned.
The surge of sympathy surprised him. He couldn’t figure out how she’d gotten under his skin so fast. Neither could he fathom why he kept experiencing this need to step between her and her family and the ex-fiancé as if she needed his protection.
He checked the dining room but found only his grandfather and Collin. He went on down the hall to his office, where he found Leanne at the computer.
“Prepare yourself,” he advised, keeping his tone neutral. “Rand has arrived.”
“He’s early,” she protested. Worry leaped into her eyes, making them as dark as a mossy bank in the forest.
He shrugged. “Guess he got enough vacation.” He paused. “There was a stranger with him.”
She looked stricken. “A man?”
“Yeah. About your brother’s age. Light brown hair. Rangy frame.”
“Bill.”
When she glanced at him, her face flamed, surprising and intriguing him. Her mouth looked soft. Vulnerable.
He wanted to kiss it until she trembled against him the way she’d done last night. “You were going to have to face him sooner or later anyway,” he reminded her.
She gave a tiny fatalistic smile. “I’d hoped for later.” She stood and smoothed down her shirt, hesitated, then buttoned the green work shirt over the T-shirt.
He liked the shirt open so he could see the rise of her breasts under the cotton T-shirt. He liked to touch her and feel the kick of her heart against his palm. He liked to cup the succulent fullness and feel the tip bead in his hand.