by Quinn Wilder
They had stopped in a grove of cottonwoods. It had taken them quite a while to get here and the dew was gone from the ground. He helped her down, then pulled a huge wicker basket out of the back of the buggy. He spread a blanket in the tall grass.
"Is this still your land?" she asked, once she was seated,
"Mmm. You want some champagne?"
She laughed. "For breakfast? That sounds frightfully decadent. And delicious."
"It's mixed with orange juice," he said. She watched as he poured hers into a long-stemmed plastic wineglass, but then he poured himself hot coffee from a Thermos.
"Oh-oh," she mused. "Are you planning on getting me drunk and seducing me?"
He laughed, a pleasant rumble that came deep from his belly. "I may be planning one, but not the other," he teased. He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Care to guess which one?"
"You're making me nervous," she said, and he was. "Don't you drink?"
He hesitated for a long time, and then drew in a deep breath. "No. Not any more."
There was a note of unbelievable pain in his voice, and she waited for him to go on. In a while, he did.
"My wife, Janey, and my little girl, Jasmine, were killed in a fire four and a half years ago. Jasmine was only five."
She remembered that night she and Dace had shared a starry sky, and she remembered guessing he carried some terrible tragedy within him. But she had compared it to her own tragedy, and her own was so puny in comparison to this.
"Dace, I'm so sorry." The words seemed so small.
"There's sorrow," he confided quietly, "and lots of it, though the years seem to take the edge off
the sorrow. But there was some guilt involved, too, and that cut is still the deepest.
"When I took over the family ranch it just seemed as if there was so much pressure all the time. I was a boy, dealing with a man's pressures. Janey was a neighbor girl, and she was always there, doing her best to make me feel like a grown-up. We got married, because we had to, when we were both nineteen. I'm ashamed to say I even felt quite manly about that.
"But I never loved her. Janey wasn't strong— you couldn't look at her sideways without her crying. I was always trying to pretend I was happy so she'd quit trying so hard, but pretending is hard work, and it killed us in its own way. I started leaving her on her own a lot. I felt as if I were always walking on eggshells around her. A man needs to get decently angry every now and then, he needs to be able to be grouchy as a bear in his own house if he wants to. But I felt Janey was too fragile to handle the real me, and I felt lonely and annoyed and impatient around her. I threw myself into the ranch work. Those are hard memories to live with. That I didn't give my wife or my daughter the time they deserved."
"Not very many teen marriages are made in heaven, Dace."
"I know."
"You needed a strong, strong woman."
She felt his eyes move to her face and fasten there. "I know," he said again, his voice a whisper softer than the breeze that caressed her cheek.
"After my wife and daughter died, I hit the bottle pretty hard. Sloan rescued me somewhere before I
succeeded in killing myself, but not before I'd lost a whole herd of pure-blooded Charolais cattle/'
"Sloan rescued you?"
"He and my dad were good friends. They both grew up right around here; cowboyed together for a long time. He kind of kept an eye on me after my dad died, and gave me advice I never took. When I started getting into Charolais he didn't approve—said my family was paying the price for my ambition. And it was true, but I didn't want to hear that. And after the fire it made me resent him that he knew I'd been so busy and wrapped up with my blooded stock cattle that I barely knew my wife or my little girl. He came around but I wouldn't have anything to do with him. Usually wouldn't even invite him in.
"Meanwhile I was selling off my cattle to support my excesses, and in some perverse way trying to come out even. If I got rid of the cattle that made everybody but me so unhappy...
"Anyway, one day Sloan showed up, took one look at me, and knocked me cold. He packs quite a punch for an old guy," Dace said ruefully. "I woke up in his house, being spoon-fed soup and told he needed a hand for branding, if I thought I could stay sober that long.
"He threw me a lifeline, and somehow, probably with a lot of grace, I managed to grab it. I've been at the ranch ever since. And I know the truth: I'd be dead by now, if Sloan hadn't shown up that day. I owe him my life—and he knows it. And, to answer your original question, no, I don't drink any more. Scares the hell out of me where that almost got me."
"You're lucky you didn't lose the land," she commented.
He looked over it, and she could see his love for it in his eyes. "Some day, I'd like to rebuild a herd and ranch it again. It's been in the family for generations. I grew up on this land. My daddy ranched it all his life."
"You grew up on this land? We grew up within a few miles of each other?"
"We wouldn't have hung out in the same circles, Cadence Copperthorne," he said wryly.
"I did go to private school—and, of course, you're years older than me," she teased.
"Cadence, sometimes you just don't use your head. Here you sit, in the middle of nowhere, entirely at my mercy for a ride home, and you start throwing insults around."
"Not smart," she agreed with a laugh. "What do I have to do to wriggle back into your good graces?"
"Tell me about you."
She looked into his eyes—he really wanted to know. She glanced away into the distance. "There's embarrassingly little to tell. My whole life has been spent trying to make my dream of a gold medal a reality. I never even had a boyfriend, because they always got in the way of my training, of the time I wanted to spend with my horses.
"It's the only dream I ever had. This might sound like poor little rich girl, but kids need something to aspire to. My dad was too softhearted to understand that. Anything I asked for he just gave me. I think he was trying to make up for the fact that I didn't have a mom. She died when I was three. I hear she was a lot like me—especially in temperament. I needed something to work toward— I
was a wild, spirited kid. I needed to achieve something for myself—not have it given to me.
"When I was twelve " she smiled at her
brashness "—I won my first equestrian event. A few months earlier, my dad had taken me to see the Olympic equestrian events. I decided that was what I wanted, and I set out to get it.
"Somewhere along the way I got engaged to a man who didn't love me, and who ditched me after the accident. So, until you came along, I was the proud owner of some shattered dreams. Now, I hope maybe I can rescue some remnants of them."
"Did you love him? The man you were engaged to?" His voice was gravelly.
"I guess, in a way, I did. I certainly believed I did at the time."
"I saw you kiss him once. A kiss like that could meld the shattered glass of a few dreams back together."
She ducked her head and felt a fiery glow moving up her face.
His voice was rough. "Cadence, I need to know. I need to know how things stand between you and him."
She didn't want to give him that. She had used Lionel like a shield ever since she'd met Dace, and now he was asking her to throw it away. She wasn't sure she was ready.
"So. That's how it is," he said softly, misreading her hesitation.
She looked at him defiantly. "I only kissed Lionel that day to give a certain arrogant cowboy a 'hands off message. It didn't work worth a hill of beans."
"I'm asking you if you still have a soft spot for him," Dace persisted grimly. "I'm asking you if you still lie awake at night and think of him, of the way it felt when he held you and touched you, and kissed you."
She decided not to admit to Dace that the thought of Lionel's kisses had never kept her awake at night. She decided not to admit anything.
"I'm asking if you'd go back to him if you had the chance." There was a note of something close to pai
n in that deep voice, and she looked at him in surprise.
"What's it to you, Dace?"
"Don't ask to see my cards without showing me yours."
She sighed. "Lionel and I, we shared a dream once, and when the dream was gone we didn't have anything left. Nothing."
Dace nodded thoughtfully. Something in his face relaxed. "I don't think it's whether we attain our dreams that gives us our mark as people, Cadence. I think it's how we handle their breaking like glass in front of us that is the real tribute to our human spirit. He wasn't strong enough for you."
"I know," she whispered. "I need a strong man." Flustered by her admission, she stammered, "To win that gold medal for me, of course."
"Cadence, it's a long shot. At best, it's a long shot. You don't need a gold medal to make you something. You don't have to earn your right to breathe air. You are and that's enough. You have to make that enough. You have to start putting that before the dream."
"What do you mean?" she asked, startled by the sudden sternness of his expression.
"I bumped into Dr. Masterson at the show."
"Damn," she said.
"I assumed from the message he asked me to pass along to you that you hadn't been keeping your appointments with him. Or the physiotherapist."
"Thank you for that message. Isn't that a lovely bird over there? What do you suppose it's called?"
"A robin," Dace said dryly.
"Yes, I've always liked robins," she mused thoughtfully. "I've always "
"Cadence, be quiet. Don't try and change the subject. It won't work. You are guilty of neglecting yourself, and I want your promise that those appointments will be kept."
"It's no concern of yours, Dace Stanton," she said, just a trace of shrillness entering her voice. She suspected this little talking-to was the real object of this seemingly romantic outing, and it hurt dreadfully. As he had pointed out earlier, she was at his mercy, virtually his prisoner.
She felt furious. Outmaneuvered. She'd laid all her cards on the table, and he was still holding his close to his chest. Not only that, he was now going after something completely different.
"You're going to start going again next week, or else "
"Or else what?" she taunted him, her cheeks blazing.
"Or else, I'm going to quit riding for you."
"How dare you threaten me with that?"
"No, Cadence. How dare you put something like that ahead of your responsibility to yourself? I'll work for you, and I'll work hard for you, but only as long as I know you're working equally hard on yourself."
She stood up and brushed some crumbs off her skirt. "Take me home."
He folded his arms across his chest. "No."
"You have some nerve," she said quietly, looking down into his face. "Do you remember that day I got you into the riding shop and you called me sneaky and manipulative? That was the Flying Nun compared to this "
He shrugged. "Remember I pointed something out to you once? The same ingredients only mixed up differently? Besides, I don't understand your objection to looking after yourself; to regaining as much of your mobility as you can."
"So I can be her again? The one you spy on in your room at night?"
"You make it sound as if you're the star of a girlie magazine instead of a video most people would find incredibly boring."
"What is your interest in getting me back to the doctor?"
"For pity's sake, Cadence, you're in pain about ninety per cent of the time!"
"I still don't see "
He knocked her legs out from under her and she collapsed back onto the blanket. She sputtered indignantly and tried to rise, but he was on top of her, his eyes unbearably close, hissing smoky blue sparks.
"I care about you. Is that so bloody hard for you to believe?"
A shock trembled through her. Were these his cards? No, he didn't mean that the way she wanted him to mean it.
"As a matter of fact, yes. As a matter of fact "
His voice was an angry rasp. "You know, in all the time I've known you, I've only figured out one way to shut you up."
"I don't want to shut up," she informed him. "You can't make me "
His lips stole her breath away.
He was angry, and the anger came through his lips, and through the hard tension in his body where it pinned hers to the blanket. He was so hard, so strong, so crushing.
Helplessly she wrapped her arms around him to pull his hardness and his strength yet closer. The texture of the kiss changed at that. His lips trailed over hers. He conquered her mouth, plundered it gently. His hands moved to her hair, and he stripped the yellow ribbon from it, and ran his hands through the wild tangle of it.
"You are so beautiful," he murmured.
She felt a pleased jolt at that. He meant it. He meant it to the bottom of his socks.
She took his head between her hands, and met his mouth with her own. With gentle aggression she told him how much he meant to her. She did need him. And it didn't have a thing to do with some faraway gold medal.
The need was a burning thing inside her, something she had never felt before. Her world had been too consumed with horses, and high dreams. Her energies had been poured out into the pursuit of her ideals. She had never had anything left—had never even realized what she was missing.
The woman in her had had no opportunity to come out. There had been no passion or energy left over for that.
And yet now that it had this was the only part of her that mattered. That had ever mattered. Oh, if that accident had some higher purpose, perhaps it was this. That she discover what it was to be a woman. That it was a necessary part of herself to be a woman. That it was a part of herself that was not to be denied.
His hands were under her sweater. Bold. Tender. Exploring. He found the clasp to her bra and unhitched it with expert hands.
"I've been dreaming of doing that for weeks," he informed her, his voice a sensuous growl, "ever since this thing made an appearance."
"It's your own fault."
"I know," he told her huskily, in between nibbles on her ear and neck. "You can't begin to imagine how a man wishes he could take back words spoken with such a complete lack of foresight."
The wisp of lace and silk appeared from under her sweater and he tossed it carelessly away.
His hand sought the unveiled sculpture of her breast, and she gasped with unbearable passion and pleasure when his fingers spread over the mound, teased her nipple slowly and languorously as a summer breeze stirring the branches of a tree.
"How do you make love?" he whispered, nibbling at her ear.
She felt herself stiffen with embarrassment and tension. "What?"
"You said you couldn't do it normally. I've been wondering ever since..."
"I don't know," she croaked, mortified.
He laughed into her throat. "I was hoping you would say that."
"What? Dace, what?"
"I was hoping that you and I were going to unlock the secrets of pleasuring you together."
His eyes met hers, and she stared into them, astounded by what she saw there.
"I'm scared," she whispered.
"Me, too, Princess," he murmured into her ear. "Me, too."
CHAPTER NINE
Somehow they'd ended up underneath the blanket, tangled together. Now that other sensations were receding, the bed of lush, sweet grass tickled Cade's back, her skin more receptive to sensation than it had ever been. She looked up at the sky, and it seemed its beauty would overwhelm her, swallow her.
Dace was lying on his stomach. His arm, strong and brown, was thrown across her midriff. The weight was comforting. His nose was touching her jawbone, and his breath tickled the nape of her neck.
"Are you crying?" he asked, his voice deep and low and gentle as his loving had been.
"Yes."
"Did I hurt you, after all?" He sat up on one elbow and looked down into her face with concern.
"No, Dace, you didn't hurt me."
&n
bsp; "Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded softly.
"Tell you? Oh, that..." She smiled. "Would you have done something differently?"
He ran a hand through the shining curls of his hair. "I guess I would have."
"That's why I didn't tell you."
"Please stop crying."
"A woman cries for a lot of reasons. Right now I just feel happy. And whole and alive in a way I never felt before."
"I didn't plan this," he said gruffly.
"Didn't you?" She didn't know whether to feel dismayed or amused. She didn't seem to have much choice what to feel anyway—the heavy, relaxed languor had totally invaded her body, mind and soul.
"I lost my head."
"Hmm."
"Cadence, you're not the kind of woman a man takes lightly."
"Is the double meaning intended?" she teased from her safe, warm cloud of contentment.
"Cade, you know what I mean."
"No, I don't," she said honestly.
"You're not the kind of woman who takes a man lightly."
"Double meaning "
"Cadence! Things are never going to be the same between us."
"Is that bad?"
"Lord, I don't know."
"Does it feel bad right now?"
"You know it doesn't. You know it feels like a little piece of heaven right now."
"Can't it feel like this all the time?" she said, tracing her finger over the hard plane of his shoulder, down the corded muscles of his arm. The pure physical strength of him caused her awe—the way he had tempered all that power made her begin to tingle all over again.
"Yes," he said huskily, leaning toward her. "No!" He leapt back. "Cade, right now it's hard to think. About the other things."
"What other things?"
"Have you ever washed a dish, Cadence? Cooked a meal? Swept a floor?"
"I thought feminism had put an end to discussions like this," she mused, oddly unthreatened by his doubts.
"Feminism? /wash dishes, and cook, and sweep floors. I don't have maids and butlers and "