Forever in My Heart

by Jo Goodman

  The insistent caress of his hand brought her to the edge. Tension was coiled in every part of her. "Connor," she whispered, beginning to arch. "Please."

  He touched her again, driving into her. She gasped, then shuddered, reaching down to hold his hand against her. She felt him withdraw slightly, then fill her again. His rhythm quickened and his stroking became shallower. She tightened around him as she climaxed, the moist center of her holding him a heartbeat longer before he moved again. His free arm slipped under her. She was secured to him, joined by his arms, by the tangle of their legs, and in the moment by their desire.

  Connor buried his face against her neck as his climax brought him up against her hard. It seemed to go on forever, the release and ripple of tension, the suspension of time as pure sensation flooded through him.

  His hold on her relaxed slightly, but he didn't let her go. "If you loved me any better," he whispered, "it would kill me." Then on a wishful, youthful note, he added, "But if I could pick the way I want to die..."

  Her elbow came back and caught him gently in the ribs. His exaggerated groan mingled with her husky laughter. She snuggled against him, liking the weight and strength of him at her back.

  His breath parted strands of her auburn hair. "There's nothing wrong you," he said softly. "Not a thing."

  "I'm not—"

  "Not a thing," he repeated. "Except maybe that you argue with me."

  She smiled at that.

  He eased out of her and brought the quilt over their bodies as he took up the spooning position again. His arm curved around her. "We'll talk about it later."

  "All right," she said. She closed her eyes, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand.

  They fell asleep together.

  * * *

  Denver

  Ethan Stone was shrugging out of his coat as he walked in the door of his home. Snowflakes dusted the foyer rug briefly, and then melted. He hung up his hat and coat, listening for a sound that would indicate the whereabouts of his wife. He heard the oven door close in the kitchen and started in that direction. Two steps forward and he was tripping over a package that had been placed as an obstacle in his path.

  "Michael," he yelled, catching himself on the banister spindles before he pitched to the floor. "Are you trying to kill me with this thing?"

  She appeared at the end of the hallway. She had a potholder in each hand and her mouth was set seriously. "I just put Madison to bed," she said. "Please don't shout." She disappeared again.

  The package was large enough to have held a pair of boots and just about as heavy. Ethan nudged it to one side and continued on his way to the kitchen. "Something smells good," he said, sidling up to his wife as she worked at the stove. He tried to lift the lid on one of the pots but Michael tapped his fingers with a wooden spoon. A dab of brown gravy fell on his knuckles. He sucked it off and pondered for a moment. "Tastes good, too."

  Michael's mouth pursed to one side as she gave him a skeptical look.

  He leaned over and stole a kiss. Michael's lips parted briefly in surprise. The kiss lingered a moment longer than it might have otherwise. "That tastes better," he said, grinning.

  "You're incorrigible."

  "And I'm late."

  "That, too." Michael pointed to the plates and silverware on the table. "If you'll set, I'll serve."

  Ethan laid out the plates and utensils. "Jeb Morgan was drunk again tonight. His wife asked me to lock him up."

  Michael looked her husband over, making certain he was still all of a piece. "No bruises this time. Jeb must be getting docile."

  Ethan grinned. "Maybe I'm getting more agile."

  Serving up the meat and potatoes, Michael's glance was gently disbelieving. "You just tripped over a package the size of a small stump for the third time this week," she reminded him.

  He sat down and helped himself to the basket of bread. "If you wouldn't keep putting it in my way..."

  Michael set the gravy boat and a bowl of succotash on the table. She sat down and bowed her head. Ethan joined her in prayer. When the brief grace was over, she lifted her head and without missing a beat said, "One would think that a federally appointed marshal, especially one who's college educated, would have sense enough to know that when the same package appears in his way on three different occasions, his wife is trying to tell him to do something with it."

  Ethan served himself some of the vegetables and passed the bowl to Michael. "What am I supposed to do with it?"

  At first Michael looked at him as if she couldn't believe her ears. Then she merely shook her head, sighing. "I told you what to do with it before I started putting it in your way."

  He looked at her blankly.

  Michael pointed upward. "To the attic," she said. "I want you take it to the attic."

  "I'll do it right after dinner." He took a bite of roast beef. "What's in it?"

  "You really ought to act a little abashed when you ask that question," she said. "You're making it quite clear that you didn't hear anything I was saying to you last Monday night."

  "What was I doing?" he asked.

  "Reading the paper."

  "Perhaps I was reading one of your articles," he said hopefully, trying to extricate himself from the doghouse.

  "I didn't have an article in the News that day." She patted the back of his hand. "But that was a good try."

  "Thank you." He speared a small, buttered chunk of potato. "So the package contains..."

  "A black leather bag," she said. "Mother is sending it to Maggie, but she wasn't sure of the best way to get it to the Double H."

  "We can send it on to Queen's Point."

  "I thought of that, but then I got to thinking that the weather was too uncertain this time of year. You did notice, I suppose, that it's snowing this evening."

  "Jeb Morgan slammed me with a few snowballs when I tried to take him in," he told her dryly. "I noticed."

  "Then you realize that Maggie's probably snowed in at the ranch. That package is likely to sit in some storage closet at the station until spring. I'll feel better if it's here."

  "What's in the bag?"

  Michael shrugged. "Mama didn't say and I didn't peek. It looks a little like a doctor's medical bag."

  Ethan's dark brows furrowed. "Medical bag? I thought Maggie had put doctoring behind her."

  For a moment Michael stared out the kitchen window as if she could see past the curtain of night and falling snow, as if she could see her sister, and more importantly, as if she could see into her sister's mind. "Maggie was always the guarded one," she said softly, looking back at her husband. Her emerald eyes only hinted at the depth of her concern. "But I keep thinking that she hasn't given up the idea completely."

  * * *

  Maggie slipped out of bed and put on her nightgown and robe. It was still relatively early in the evening and her growling stomach reminded her she hadn't had any dinner. She stepped on Connor's thick socks lying on the floor and put them on. They felt comfortable and warm. Slipping quietly out of the bedroom, Maggie padded to the kitchen.

  The house was silent. Sometime while she and Connor were napping, Dancer had retired to his own room. The wind had stopped whistling overhead but snow was still falling. A quick look out the back door revealed that the steps were once again obliterated and a small drift seemed to be crawling inexorably toward the door itself.

  Maggie was familiar enough with the kitchen that she didn't bother lighting a lamp. She thought wistfully of home, of how surprised Mrs. Cavanaugh would be that she had learned her way around a kitchen. Home, she thought. This is my home.

  She was not aware she had spoken aloud until Connor said from the doorway, "That sounds a little bit like a revelation."

  Maggie gave a small start. She paused in picking up a loaf of bread and glanced over her shoulder. "I suppose it is. A happy one, though." She placed the bread on the table. "Would you like something to eat?" she asked, searching for a knife.

  Connor pulled out a chai
r and sat down. "Nothing for me."

  She sliced through the bread. When she skirted the table to get the butter, Connor captured her and brought her down on his lap. "I'm too heavy for you," she said, trying to scoot off his thighs.

  Laughing, he held her still. "My saddle weighs more than you."

  "But you sit on that."

  "I also toss it around. Anyway, I'd sit on your lap if you had one." Both of his large hands flattened over her belly. His fingers spread out. Maggie's stomach rumbled. "I was hoping the baby would move," he said. "Not you."

  "The baby," she said tartly, "is weak with hunger. Just like her mother."

  Connor set Maggie on her feet again and let her get the butter. "Then feed that boy."

  She managed to elude him on her return to the table, taking the chair across from him. "Our baby is a girl," she said.

  "How do you know that?" he asked suspiciously.

  "I don't know it," she said. "Not with I'll-bet-my-last-two-bits certainty. I just have a feeling."

  "Then feed our daughter," he said. "I'll bank on your feeling."

  Maggie put a dollop of sweet butter on her bread and spread it out. "You won't mind if it's a girl?"

  "No. Did you think I would?"

  She hesitated. "I don't know," she said softly. "I don't really know what you think about things like that... about girls growing up to be women and wanting to do things men usually do. Some men think girls are mostly useless." Even though she couldn't see his eyes in the darkness, she could feel him watching her closely.

  "Useless except for taking to bed and bearing children," he said. "Is that what you meant?"

  "Something like that."

  "You're right," he said after a moment's thought. "You really don't know what I'd think." She had every right to question him, every right to be contemptuous. "I haven't done anything to make you realize I'm not one of those men."

  Maggie said nothing.

  "My mother ran this ranch. She worked beside my grandfather and my uncles and for a while she worked beside my father. When they were all gone she did it alone. She worked harder than any two hands she ever hired. She could rope and brand and shoot and she wasn't much bigger than you are. This ranch was in her blood and keeping it going was her dream. I suppose I never gave much thought to what women could or couldn't do, not at least until I spent some time in the east." He paused. The deep rasp of emotion was in his voice when he spoke again. "So no," he said, "I don't mind at all if we have a daughter, and if she wants to run this ranch someday, I'll have kept it going for her. And if she decides she wants to be a doctor, like her mother, then we'll figure out a way to make that happen, too."

  Maggie's eyes glistened with tears. She left her chair, came around the table, and simply let Connor sweep her up in his embrace. She rested her head against his shoulder. "I'm not a doctor," she said.

  "Yet."

  And the way he said it, Maggie almost believed it could still happen. She kissed him on the jaw, then the mouth. The kiss deepened, lingered.

  He pulled away reluctantly. "I thought you were hungry."

  "I am. But I don't want the bread anymore."

  Connor came to his feet, bringing Maggie with him. He carried her into the bedroom, and they made love this time with their hands and mouths, touching and tasting with fingers and tongues. It was the contrast of textures that they enjoyed in their loving, the gentle abrasiveness of his hands in the silky lengths of her hair, the rough pad of his thumb sweeping across her tender skin. There was a soft spot at the nape of her neck, that when he lifted her hair and kissed her there, she shivered. She felt his skin leap just beneath her fingertips in anticipation of her touch.

  His flesh was warm; her hands were cool. She thought he tasted both salty and sweet. He thought of the wild scent of musk when he pressed his mouth between her breasts.

  It was an exploration, a discovery. This time there was time. She found him curiously exotic: the planes and angles of him so different from her, the width of his bones, the inherent strength, the dark hair that arrowed down from his flat belly, the dimples at the base of his spine that seemed incongruent with his maleness. Riding had given him thighs like steel, but he was ticklish at the back of his knees. He liked her fingers combing through his hair, liked her teeth tugging on his earlobe, liked her mouth at the curve of his shoulder, sipping his skin. He liked her mouth elsewhere as well.

  It was satisfying, this exchange, this sharing. Pleasure was mutual but they took it in turns. She brought him to a climax first, then his attention was all for her.

  She wasn't ticklish anywhere, but there was a sound that she made at the back of her throat when he kissed the soft inner skin of her elbow. She liked the hot suck of his mouth on her breast, the touch of his hand on her inner thigh, the whisper of his breath near her ear. Engulfed in his, her hands were small. His tongue teased her fingertips as he kissed them one by one. His mouth pressed in the palm of her hand. His mouth pressed her elsewhere as well.

  They lay together then, facing each other this time, their knees drawn upward and touching. Beneath the quilt their hands were clasped, fingers intertwined.

  "The first time we met," Connor said, "you sat up in a whore's bed and looked as if you were expecting me. Do you remember that?"

  "No," she whispered.

  He squeezed her hand gently. "I've thought about it now and then. It stays there, in my mind, a niggling thought that won't go away. You were shy, but trusting, and knowing later what you went through that night with the sailor and Harlan Porter, it's struck me as odd that you would offer me—another stranger—trust so easily."

  Maggie wished she could remember. "I don't know why I did," she said. What she did remember was the way she had turned to him in that bed, the way she had touched him with no invitation on his part, only a deeply buried need on hers. "You had every right to think I was a whore."

  "And you had every right to think I was a doctor," he said.

  The knot in her middle unwound a little. The notion that she might have mistaken Connor Holiday for a physician tickled her fancy. She grinned, laughing huskily at the back of her throat. "Your bedside manner is not precisely ethical," she said. Her laughter faded. "You're serious, aren't you?"

  "You were sick and had been badly used by Porter. Mrs. Hall said she was going to send for a physician. I walked in carrying a leather satchel—"

  "Filled with money."

  "That could have been confused for a medical bag," he said. "I don't know what was in your mind, Maggie, but I know there's nothing wrong with you. There never was. Your curiosity was as natural as your desire. But the next time I saw you, I set out to make you feel coarse and ashamed because it was easier than admitting I felt either of those things myself. It was easier to hide behind the fury about losing my fortune than to admit I might have hurt you that night, easier to call you a whore than to believe I could have taken you against your will. Your virgin's blood was on the sheets, on me, and I still found it more convenient to think you'd played a cheap whore's trick on me than accept the evidence in front of my eyes."

  Connor pulled her hand closer to his chest. His voice was soft, earnest. "I was wrong about you," he said. "I was always wrong. I know why you didn't tell me the truth about the baby. You have a mother's instinct for protecting her young and you had no good reason to suppose that I'd make anything but the worst kind of husband and father."

  "Connor," Maggie said gently. "You don't have—"

  "No," he said. "I want to tell you these things. This summer, when you were at Dancer's, I came to realize that if I had treated you differently you might not have aborted our baby. When Dancer came here looking for help and told me you were pregnant I accused him of being the father."

  Maggie gaped at him. "You didn't."

  "I did," he said, sighing. "Then I saw you again and my best intentions fled. There was a bandit at your feet, you were pointing a gun at me, your eyes were consigning me to the lowest circle of hell, a
nd you were still wearing your wedding band. I couldn't think straight."

  "I wasn't thinking very clearly myself," she admitted.

  Connor stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. "I wasn't sorry when Dancer broke his leg. It gave me the excuse I'd been wanting. I couldn't get you back to the Double H fast enough." He stretched his legs and insinuated one of them under Maggie's calves. "I'd also found the unsigned divorce papers. They gave me reason to hope." He chuckled. "False hope, as it turned out."

  "It turned out just fine," she said. "Although it's not precisely comforting to discover Dancer Tubbs is as meddlesome as my father." She thought a moment. "Rushton had a hand in this as well, you know."

  "I know," he said. "That's why I'm here and he's there. Everybody's happier that way."

  * * *

  New York

  Beryl cinched her satin wrapper more securely about her waist. She stepped in from the balcony outside her room and shut the French doors quickly. A dervish of dried leaves followed her inside. She kicked at them.

  "I don't see why we can't go to the Double H," she said. Her lower lip was thrust forward in a way that she knew was still attractive. She'd practiced the expression in front of the mirror. "Or at least to Denver."

  "Homesick?" Rushton asked. He didn't look up from the newspaper he was reading in bed so Beryl's expression was lost on him.

  "Yes," she said. "Homesick. Exactly that. I miss the mountains and the sky. I haven't seen my mother in nearly two years."

  "You couldn't wait to get away from there. As I recall, your mother was included in the things you despised about Denver."

  Beryl sat on the edge of the bed. Her pale blue eyes flashed. She yanked the Chronicle away from Rushton and threw it on the floor. "At least have the courtesy to look at me when we're talking," she snapped.

  Rushton looked up politely, his dark eyes unfathomable. His voice was cool and patient. "Anger doesn't really suit you, Beryl. Your cheeks flush quite unattractively."

  "Damn you, Rush." Beryl pushed at a lock of dark hair that had fallen over her shoulder. "I don't want to talk about the way I look."