Yet even with all the work demanding his attention, he couldn’t get Alexa off his mind. Their lovemaking had been just that—love. So sweet and hot and deep that even just thinking about it made his heart turn over, his body long to have her back in his arms.
He’d told her that he’d never expected to want her so much. But if he’d been truly open with her, he would have also told her that he’d never expected to love her so much. And that scared the hell out of Jonas. The words had actually been on the tip of his tongue, but something had prevented him from pushing them past his lips.
Was it because he was afraid of hurting her or losing her?
Hell, Jonas, you’re afraid of both. Face the fact. You’re a Texas Ranger, and you’re brave enough to stare down a bullet if need be. But you’re afraid of a blue-eyed woman who melts your heart. Afraid that in the end you won’t be man enough to keep her happy.
“Where are you going this late in the evening?”
Jonas recognized Laramie’s voice, which came from behind him. Not bothering to glance over his shoulder, he continued to tighten the girth on the saddle.
“Gonna do a little camping tonight.” A few minutes ago, he’d slung saddlebags filled with food over the back of his saddle. Now he tied a bedroll and slicker over the bulging bags.
“Camping?” Laramie quizzically repeated the word. “What in the world for? You just got a yen to sleep on the ground and get a backache?”
Even though he felt as glum as a rainy winter day, Jonas forced himself to chuckle. “I suppose. I’ve decided to take a night, maybe more, and go have a look at the canyon for myself. And while I’m at it, the night air will do me good.”
Leaning his arm on the rump of Jonas’s horse, the other man stared skeptically at him. “Why don’t you just pull a lawn chair outside the barn and sit there for a while? That ought to give you plenty of night air.”
“That wouldn’t give me a look at the canyon.”
With the bedroll safely fastened, Jonas stepped back from his task and looked at the other man. Laramie shook his head.
“You’re obsessed about that cut fence, Jonas. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Nothing else is gonna happen in the canyon. Trust me. Whoever caused the mischief isn’t going to take the trouble to go all the way back into the mountains to do it again.”
Jonas wished he could explain the whole situation to the foreman, but he couldn’t. Not until the case was solved or Leo called him back home.
“Maybe not. Just humor me, Laramie. And if you need me for anything, you’ll know where to find me.”
The other man glanced pointedly toward the house. “Do the folks in the house know you’re going to be gone tonight?”
Early this morning, before Jonas had left Alexa at the breakfast table, Frankie had called to say she’d be spending another night away from the ranch. Jonas knew that with her mother gone, Alexa would be expecting him to return to the house right about now. She’d probably planned for him to spend another night in her arms, in her bed. The notion filled him with hungry desire. Yet it also filled him with resolve.
No matter what had happened between the two of them last night, first and foremost, he was here to do a job. And while he was at it, he was going to make Alexa see that trying to make a life with him was the worst thing she could possibly do.
“I left word with Reena. She’ll let them know.”
He could see questions roiling around in Laramie’s head, but thankfully, the other man didn’t ask them. Because right now, Jonas was certainly short on answers.
Later that evening in the house, Alexa passed Sassy on her way to the kitchen.
“Does Reena have dinner ready?” Alexa asked the maid.
The young redhead paused and then stopped her dust mopping. “Yes. She’s already left for the day. And she told me to tell you that Jonas wouldn’t be back tonight. He had to go do something.”
Alexa’s heart sank. “Do something? What are you talking about?”
Sassy shrugged. “She didn’t explain. Just said he was going to do some horseback riding.”
Alexa’s brow furrowed into a puzzled frown. Why hadn’t he told her he wouldn’t be home tonight? He’d known Frankie was going to be away again. All day she’d been planning the evening, dreaming about them spending another night together. She’d believed he’d been doing the same. But evidently, she’d been wrong.
“Don’t look so sad, Alexa. You know how cowboys are—sometimes they just have to get on a horse and ride off to who knows where. If they couldn’t, it would kill ‘em.”
A man ought to be able to do what he wants to do the most.
Jonas’s words suddenly came to Alexa’s mind, and she wondered if his being away this evening had something to do with the rustling case. She had to believe it did. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have just gone off without a good reason. And if she was ever going to make him believe that she could deal with his job, she had to trust him, show him that he was dealing with a different woman now and not his ex-wife.
Three days later, Alexa decided that holding on to that resolve was much easier said than done. Jonas had still yet to reappear at the house, and she was thinking about heading down to the stables to question Laramie when he suddenly walked in the back door, with an armload of dirty clothes.
“Jonas!” she exclaimed.
“Hello, ladies.”
From her spot at the cabinet counter, Reena nodded a quiet greeting at him. Alexa stood staring at him in stunned fascination.
His face and neck were covered with stubbly beard, while his clothes were all wrinkled and grimy. His hair lay in tumbled disarray across his forehead, while lines of fatigue etched his mouth and eyes. Wherever he’d been, he’d certainly not been living the high life.
“Jonas!” Alexa said again. “Where have you—are you okay?”
“Of course, I’m okay,” he replied. Walking over to the mudroom, he opened the door and tossed his dirty clothes into a hamper. When he stepped back into the kitchen, Reena said, “There’s fresh coffee, Jonas. Would you like a cup?”
“I could sure use one, but I’ve got to get a shower first,” he told her. “I don’t want to stink up your kitchen.”
He started out of the room, and Alexa followed promptly on his heels.
“Jonas! You haven’t answered me. Where have you been? You’ve been gone for three days. Reena said you were going out riding and—”
“I did go riding.” As they walked down a short hallway, he glanced around him, then lowered his voice so that only she would hear. “I’ve been out at the canyon near Pickens’s land. I camped there, staking out the area. Waiting for something to happen.”
Alexa wanted to scream. “And did it?”
“No. Nothing.”
“I’m sorry about that. But can you imagine what I’ve been thinking, feeling? You left without a word to me.”
“I told Reena to tell you I’d be gone.”
By now they’d reached the stairs, and Alexa had to practically leap up each step to keep up with him. How different, she thought, than the gentle way he’d helped her up the staircase while she’d been pregnant with J.D. Apparently, those considerate days were over, she thought crossly.
“That’s hardly the same, Jonas! You’ve been gone for three days without a word!”
He looked at her, his face unflinching. “That’s right, Alexa. Get used to it.”
He started to move on up the stairs and away from her, but Alexa’s blood was already boiling, and she grabbed him by the arm to prevent his escape.
“Not so fast, Jonas. You’re coming with me!”
For a moment she thought he was going to plant his boots on the stairs and remain there like a stubborn mule, but thankfully, he relented, and she quickly led him inside her bedroom and snapped the door shut.
“Where’s J.D.?” he asked as he spotted the empty crib.
“As if you care,” she flung at him. Then, with a regretful shake of her he
ad, she said, “Forget that I said that. I didn’t mean it. And J.D. is with his grandmother. She took him over to the Hondo Valley to see Chloe Sanders—a dear, longtime friend of hers.”
“I see.”
“No! You don’t see! But I do!” She stood before him, her blue eyes shooting sparks at him. “I’m not stupid, Jonas. I might have made some naive choices in the past when it came to men, but that doesn’t mean I’m a total idiot now. You’re doing all this on purpose. You went out to the canyon to deliberately put distance between us.”
Tilting his face toward the ceiling, he sighed. “Alexa, I came here to the Chaparral to find a group of rustlers. I’ve not done that yet, and my captain is expecting results. One way or the other, if something doesn’t happen soon, he’s going to axe this thing and call me back to Texas!”
“You were just in Texas,” she reasoned. “If he’d had that on his mind, he wouldn’t have sent you back to New Mexico.”
He leveled an impatient look at her. “All right, damn it! Maybe he does have plans to give me a few more weeks on the case, but that’s beside the point. I need—”
Stepping closer, she placed her palms upon his chest. “You need to convince yourself that you don’t care about me or J.D. You need to convince yourself that you don’t want us in your life.”
As he stared down at her, his lips clamped together with frustration. “I need to catch a band of rustlers the best way that I know how. I also needed to show you just exactly what it would be like to be married to a Ranger. These past few days, they weren’t pleasant, were they?”
The fire went out of her eyes as she realized he’d totally misinterpreted her ire. “Jonas,” she said softly as her head shook back and forth, “I wasn’t upset because you were gone for three days. I had already come to the conclusion that you were doing something about the case. I can wait on you for three days, three months, three years if I have to. But I was hurt because you deliberately avoided telling me your plans.”
His nostrils flared, and she could see from the emotions flickering in his eyes that he wasn’t nearly as indifferent as he wanted her to think. In fact, she got the feeling that he wanted to pull her into his arms. He was just too stubborn to let himself.
“That’s just it, Alexa. Sometimes things like that happen with my job. I have to leave at a moment’s notice.”
Her hands moved back and forth against his chest. “Like I said, Jonas, I’m not stupid. But I do want to know one thing. Were you lying to me the other night, after we made love, when you told me how much you wanted me?”
He made a garbled noise in his throat, and then, suddenly, his hands were on her shoulders, dragging her close against him.
“You know the answer to that,” he muttered.
Alexa opened her mouth to reply, but his mouth quickly put a stop to anything she might have said.
Once again, the time that had separated them had fueled their need for each other. His lips opened roughly over hers, and along with the precious taste of him, she was aware of his beard scratching her cheek and chin, his fingers dipping into the flesh of her shoulders.
While his lips rocked back and forth over hers, his hands left her shoulders, slid down her back and onto her buttocks.
When he yanked the juncture of her hips up against his bulging arousal, she whimpered with need and slipped her arms around his neck.
Her reaction must have jolted him, reminded him that they were on the verge of making love and that he wasn’t about to let it happen again.
Ripping his mouth from hers, he pulled himself away from her. As he sucked in several harsh breaths, his gaze wavered, then dropped to a spot on the floor.
“All right, Alexa. You can see how much I want you. I can’t deny that. But we—this can’t go on. It isn’t going to go on! One way or the other, I’m going to be leaving soon. And you’ll not be going with me.”
Alexa told herself that he really didn’t mean what he was saying. That he really didn’t want to reject her. Even so, he was rejecting her just the same, and the pain that was quickly settling in her heart was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. It robbed her lungs of air. It twisted her stomach into knots.
Shaking her head, she stared at him in stunned wonder. “You don’t deserve to be in my room. And you certainly don’t deserve to be in my heart. Please leave. And don’t come back until you’re man enough to face me with the truth!”
His head jerked at the same time that his chin thrust forward. “What do you mean, the truth?”
“That you love me.”
Something flickered in his eyes, and for a second, she thought he was going to reach for her again. But then his face turned to a cool blank, and he turned on his heel and hurried out of the room.
Two days later, Jonas was camped in a rock ravine high above the boxed canyon, a place where he could easily spot anyone who entered or left the area, but that provided him with plenty of cover.
The evening sun was just dipping behind the mountains, and he’d just downed a can of Vienna sausage and a warm beer, when he noticed a movement in the trees several hundred yards below.
Pulling a pair of binoculars from his saddlebag, he jammed them to his face, then cursed under his breath. The rider on the bay horse was Quint. Early this morning, he’d called Alexa’s brother and told him where he’d be, just in case the other man needed him, but he’d not expected Quint to ride out here. Jonas could only hope to hell the other man hadn’t been observed by anyone on his way.
Ten minutes passed before Quint drew close enough for Jonas to rise from his spot and signal to the man. After that, it took Quint five minutes’ time to climb up to Jonas’s rocky perch.
“I was beginning to think you’d moved on to another place,” Quint said when he finally reached Jonas’s hidden nook.
“I wouldn’t have let you ride away without signaling,” Jonas told him. He gestured to one of the flat rocks he’d been using as a chair. “Have a seat. I’d offer you coffee, but I haven’t been building fires. I can’t risk the scent or the sight of smoke plumes. But I’ve got a hot beer left.”
“No thanks. I’ve got a canteen of water on my saddle.” Quint settled himself on the rock, then peered down at the canyon below them. “I haven’t been out here in years,” he said. “I wasn’t sure I could still find it.”
Taking a seat on the ground, Jonas rested his back against the dirt wall of the ravine and stretched his legs out in front of him. “I didn’t know it was here until Pickens showed me. Up until then I’d ridden for days on Chaparral property and missed this. But fifty thousand acres is a lot of ground to cover. Especially alone.”
Quint nodded. “I never could figure out why the Rangers didn’t send another guy with you to deal with this problem.”
“I made my case for help, but it didn’t do any good. I’m supposed to do the work of five or ten men.”
Quint remained silent for a short spell, then said, “I’m going to be straight with you, Jonas. I wish I’d never agreed to this whole thing—to you coming here to the ranch.”
Troubled by this sudden change in Quint’s attitude, Jonas stared at him. “Why? Have I let you down? I’ve tried to keep everything running, and I know I’m not always available to the men, but they’re good hands and hardly need me.”
Quint quickly waved a dismissive hand at him. “It’s not that. The ranch is fine. You’ve done fine at managing it. And I realize that catching these damn rustlers is important. Who knows when they might start picking up Chaparral cattle along with the Corrientes. None of that is what concerns me right now. It’s Alexa. I’ve never seen my sister so messed up. When I arrived at the ranch house this afternoon, I found her up in her room, crying.”
Jonas felt as though the other man had suddenly stabbed him. He didn’t want Alexa to cry, to hurt.
“Is something wrong with J.D.?” he asked quickly.
“No. Sassy had him outside.” Quint grimaced. “When I questioned her about being ups
et, she told me that it was only the baby blues and that she would be all right in a few days.”
Jonas’s heart felt so heavy in his chest, he wasn’t sure that he could keep breathing. “You didn’t believe her?”
He looked Jonas in the eye. “No. And maybe it’s none of my business, but I’m her brother. I’m worried about her. So what happened, Jonas, when you told her about you being a Ranger?”
Jonas’s gaze focused on the rocky soil near his feet. “Nothing really. I expected her to be angry. She wasn’t.”
Quint picked up a handful of gravel and tossed it over the ledge of the canyon. “Hmm. I guess I was wrong about everything,” he said after a stretch of silence. “I thought my sister was in love with you.”
Jonas cleared his throat. “Hell, Quint, we both know that I’m not the man for her. She needs someone who is settled. Someone who works from eight to five and takes two weeks’ vacation every June.”
“You mean, someone boring? If you think she needs that, then you don’t know my sister.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how much she’s told you about herself. But I think you ought to know that she’s nothing like the fragile woman she appears to be. She’s tough. Before Mitch died, she was every inch the cowgirl. She could ride these mountains all day, searching for strays, and when they were found, she could push them out of the brush and rope them. She planned to be nothing but a ranch woman, and she’d worked side by side with our father. She wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. When she lost Mitch, she might have forgotten she was tough. But it’s still there, deep inside her, and if you’re trying to test her—”
“Damn it, Quint. I’m not trying to test her! I’m trying to—love her! The best way I know how.”
The other man let out a cynical grunt. “You have a funny way of showing it,” he said. Then his eyes narrowed shrewdly on Jonas’s weary face. “Or maybe you just don’t know how to show it at all.”
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