In the month she’d been here, the place had begun to feel like home. Her apartment had always felt like a holding area, a temporary place to keep her things until she began her real life.
However, she knew the dangers of thinking of this house as a home. Eventually, probably in the next month or two, she’d be back in her apartment, and these days and weeks with Chance would only be a memory to make her happy—and make her sad.
As she cleaned up the lunch dishes, rain pelted the windows and the kitchen grew grayer and more gloomy. She put on a pot roast, then got a book from her room and curled up on the sofa.
The rain pitter-pattering against the windowpanes made her feel snug and safe and warm. She’d only been reading for about an hour when Chance came through the front door.
“Whew!” he exclaimed, shaking off the rain that clung to him. “It’s a regular toad-strangler out there.”
Lana sat up and placed her book on the coffee table. “But it sounds nice against the roof and the windows.”
Chance shed his wet windbreaker and hung it on the hall tree, then paced the area in front of the sofa. “The weather forecasters all say it’s supposed to move out in a couple of hours. There’s nothing I can do for the time being except wait it out.”
“It’s a nice afternoon to curl up with a good book,” she said. “Rainy days are wonderful reading days.”
“I don’t want to read,” he replied. His hair was wet against his scalp and emphasized the strength of his handsome features. His T-shirt was also damp, pulling across the broadness of his shoulders, and Lana’s fingers tingled as she remembered how those shoulders felt when bared to her touch.
“Maybe you could find a good show on television,” Lana said, her mouth suddenly dry as she saw the familiar look in his eyes.
“I’m not much of a TV buff,” he said, then sat on the sofa next to her. “You know what I think?” He reached out to twirl a strand of her hair between two fingers.
“What?” she asked. His sinfully long dark eyelashes were spiky with dampness and his eyes beckoned her to fall into their green mist.
“I think it’s a nice day to curl up with a good husband.”
She felt his touch as if it were an electrical impulse shooting from the ends of her hair to her head, then down to the pit of her stomach.
“I can always read later,” she murmured, her voice holding the breathless quality it always had when he touched her, when he gazed at her with want in his eyes.
“Good, because I don’t want to wait until later to do this.” He leaned forward and captured her mouth with his.
“How about one last cup of coffee before I head home?” Samuel Wallons, one of Red River’s eldest citizens gestured to the cup before him.
“You got it,” Emily replied with a friendly smile. She liked Samuel, who came in most afternoons and passed the time by telling tales of years gone by.
She poured him a fresh cup of coffee, then looked at her wristwatch. Ten more minutes and she could go home. Although it was just a little after three in the afternoon, she was ready to call it a day.
Too little sleep, too many dreams the night before and an unusually busy lunch rush had left her exhausted. Her feet were killing her, her back ached, and all she wanted now was to go back to her quiet little cottage and take a long, refreshing nap.
“Emma?” The name rode above the din of the café and it took a moment for Emily to remember that was the name she’d been using.
Emma Logan. A fake name for a woman in hiding.
She looked around to see who was calling her. “Telephone.” One of the busboys gestured to the kitchen where the phone was located.
Telephone? She frowned. Who would be calling her here? She hurried to the kitchen and grabbed the receiver.
“Hello?” she said and pressed the phone closer against her ear in an effort to hear over the kitchen din.
“Hello?” she repeated.
Silence.
Not the silence of a dead phone, but rather the screaming silence of somebody listening, but not speaking. “Is somebody there?” she asked, although she knew somebody was…she could sense their presence, hear them breathing. “Please…who is this?” She hesitated a moment. “Toby? Is that you?”
There was an audible click, and Emily knew she was alone on the line. Had Toby finally convinced Wyatt to tell him where she was? Where she was working?
“Oh, Toby,” she breathed softly, knowing she was going to have to go back to Keyhole, she was going to have to go back to let Toby know he needed to let her go.
Seven
Chance wondered when the time would come when he’d finally have had enough of her, when her hot kisses and silky skin no longer sent shooting flames of desire through him.
He didn’t wonder if the time would come, only when. For there was one thing Chance was certain of: nothing good ever lasted. But, at the moment, none of these thoughts were important. His head was filled with Lana.
She returned his kiss with the same kind of fevered response that swept through him. Her mouth was sweet as honey, and he drank deeply of her, as if she alone offered him the nectar of life.
He allowed the kiss to linger for long minutes, then swept her up into his arms and carried her from the living room and into their bedroom.
With one hand he yanked down the bedspread, then placed her on the bed, as always thrilling at the sight of her long dark hair, and her chestnut skin against the white of the sheets.
Her dark eyes glittered and her lips were slightly parted, as if anticipating his next kiss. Blood rushed to his head, thick and hot, making any thought impossible.
It took him less than ten seconds to get out of his clothes and join her on the bed, where he once again claimed her mouth with his as his fingers moved to the buttons that ran down the front of her dress.
With each inch of her flesh that was revealed by the unfastening of the buttons, Chance’s desire for her inched higher and higher. As she raised her hips to help him remove the dress and her lacy panties, he thought he might shatter with the wanting of her.
She was fire against him, and with the gentle patter of the rain on the roof as background music, Chance made love to her slowly.
He caressed her as if he had all the minutes of the day, all the hours of a year, until she was breathless and gasping and clutching him in sweet surrender.
Always before, when they were finished, they rolled apart, as if needing physical distance to maintain emotional distance. This time Chance didn’t want to let her go.
Instead of allowing her to move away from him, he pulled her against him and held her, her breath warming the side of his neck as one of his hands stroked the smooth skin of her lower back.
She fit neatly against him, one leg thrown over his, her soft breasts pressed against his ribs. Her long, silky hair was a spill across his chest and he thought he’d never felt anything quite so sensual before.
He was grateful that she didn’t talk. He didn’t want to speak, he merely wanted to bask in her warmth and listen to the rain softly beating on the windows.
She cuddled closer against him, her heart marking time with his and in the steady, reassuring beat, Chance felt a contentment he’d never known before.
It wasn’t just about the fact that they had incredibly good sex together. Chance had enjoyed good sex before with other women. But, with those other women, the moment the sex was finished, the act was complete.
He’d hold the woman he’d just made love to if he felt she needed it, but for him that afterglow, the lingering in an embrace, had never been necessary.
Now it felt necessary. As essential as breathing, as vital as eating or drinking. This emotion he felt, this strange serenity was something he’d never experienced before and something he’d never dreamed possible.
He didn’t try to analyze it, he merely closed his eyes and reveled in it. Her fingers stroked the hair on his chest, the rhythmic light touching drawing him deeper and deeper in
to relaxation.
The dream came almost immediately. He knew it was a dream because his father sat on the front porch, and Chance knew someplace in the back of his mind, outside of the dream, that his father was dead and buried in the cemetery that could just barely be seen from the porch.
“What are you doing, boy? Playing house?” Tom “Sarge” Reilly laughed, his brilliant green eyes glittering with the hard light that always made Chance’s stomach feel slightly sick. “Are you pretending you’re man enough to be a rancher, a husband?”
“I don’t want to be a rancher,” Chance replied evenly. “I don’t want anything to do with this place. Besides, I don’t have to listen to you. You are dead, Dad. Dead and buried.”
Sarge laughed again. “I might be dead on earth, but I’m still alive inside you. I’m in your blood, boy. In your thoughts and in your soul. And I’m not a bit surprised that you don’t want to be a rancher.”
Sarge leaned back in the chair and swiped a hand through his dark crew cut. “Ranching takes lots of work. Backbreaking work. You’re soft, boy, too soft. I always told your ma when she was alive that she was making a damn whimpering sissy out of you.”
“I’m no sissy,” Chance exclaimed.
“It takes a special kind of man to be a rancher. You’d never make it.”
“Hard work doesn’t scare me,” Chance protested.
Sarge laughed, the sarcastic, biting sound symbolic of Chance’s childhood. “Hard work doesn’t scare you because you run from it. Always have, always will. Anything worth having is worth working for, but you’ll never have anything because you’re lazy and useless and good for nothing.”
The words cut deeper than any slap in the face, any punch in the gut. “That’s not true.” Chance’s heart pained with the weight of those familiar words.
Sarge laughed again. “Sure it is. You even married a woman who doesn’t want you. She just wants your sperm. As soon as she’s done with you, she’ll throw you away. Because you aren’t a keeper, boy. You’re worthless.”
“I am not. I am not.” Chance jumped out of his chair and moved toward his father, whose laughter was so loud it hurt his ears. “I am not!” he yelled, trying to be heard over that damnable laughter.
“Chance…Chance…”
He came awake with a start, gratefully aware that Lana had shaken him out of his painful dreamscape and back to reality.
He drew in a deep breath and released it slowly, orienting himself to the here and now. He drew another breath in an attempt to shove aside the residual pain the dream had wrought. “I’m all right,” he said to Lana, who eyed him worriedly in the semidarkness of the room.
She reached up and gently shoved a strand of his hair from his forehead. “Are you sure? You were yelling. It must have been some nightmare.”
The tenderness of her touch winged right through him, warming him after the coldness of the dream. “Yeah…a nightmare.” The torment of the dream still raced through him and he wondered if he’d ever be able to exorcise his father from his head.
Her dark eyes shone with empathy as her hand moved from his forehead to his shoulder, lingering with a welcomed warmth. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Did he want to talk about it? He thought not. Somehow he felt that to talk about it out loud might give it more power. “No. It was just a dumb dream.”
He sat up and raked a hand through his hair, trying to forget the familiar hurtful words his father had used in the dream and wondering why those sentiments, spoken so often, had never lost their power over him.
The rain had apparently moved off and pale early evening light whispered through the curtains. “What time is it?” he asked.
Lana sat up next to him, seemingly unselfconscious despite the bareness of her breasts. She glanced at the clock on her nightstand. “Just after six. You must be starving.”
“I am hungry,” he agreed.
“Give me about fifteen minutes and I’ll have supper on the table.” She left the bed and padded naked across the room to where he’d thrown her dress and underclothes while in the throes of passion.
At some point in the last month, she had become comfortable with him and her own nudity. They no longer dressed in separate rooms and Chance recognized they had reached a deeper level of intimacy and trust.
He watched her, enjoying the sight of her nakedness. He liked the upward thrust of her small breasts, the tapered waist and shapely buttocks. Her legs were long and muscled just enough to add attractive shapeliness.
After she dressed and left the bedroom, Chance lay back once again, this time his head filling with a picture of a pregnant, naked Lana.
Her breasts would get larger and her nipples would darken. The slender waistline would disappear as the months of her pregnancy advanced. He knew with certainty she would be beautiful carrying a baby. His baby. And he wouldn’t be around to see it.
Again the words his father had laughed in the dream came back to haunt him. Worthless. Not a keeper. Even if she had made any indication that she wanted this marriage to last, that she wanted him to be a part of her life, she was better off without him.
He didn’t want to risk finding out that his father was right, that he was worthless, that he couldn’t make a woman happy forever, that he would never have the skills to parent.
And in any case, Lana hadn’t made any indication of wanting him to stick around. She’d had a childhood crush on him, but that didn’t translate into the mature kind of love that bound two people for life.
Out of sorts, and irritated with his thoughts, Chance left the bedroom for a shower. The nightmare had unsettled him, as had his own thoughts.
Minutes later, he walked into the kitchen to see Lana finishing up the last touches to the table. “Perfect timing,” she said, a smile lighting her features.
“As usual, everything looks great,” he said as he took his seat. “You always make all the food look so attractive.” It was true. A sprig of parsley decorated the top of the mashed potatoes, and pineapple spears rested on a bed of lettuce, adding a touch of color to the table.
Lana sat across from him. “My mother always says pretty food tastes better.”
“I’m not sure about that,” he replied. The truth was, it was the little extra efforts she made, not only with each meal, but around the house as well, that somehow filled up a hole in Chance.
After they’d eaten, he helped her with the dinner dishes, then they took a cup of coffee and sat on the two chairs on the front porch.
“Hmm, I love the smell of the air after a rain,” she said.
Chance drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with the odor of damp earth, late-blooming flowers and the faint scent of Lana’s perfume. “Yeah, it does smell nice, doesn’t it?” He sipped his coffee, and gazed at her.
She looked lovely with her dark hair slightly tousled from their nap and her gaze off in the distance, as if she were contemplating the years to come. She looked as if she belonged sitting on this porch.
She turned and looked at him, as if she’d felt his gaze lingering on her. For the first time since she’d approached him with her crazy idea of the two of them getting married, he wondered what her plans were for after he left.
“Do you intend to work after you get pregnant?” he asked.
“Eventually, but probably not for the first year or so after the birth.”
“Financially, how are you going to do it? I mean, I know you aren’t independently wealthy, Lana.”
She laughed. “Not even close. I live fairly frugally, and I have enough money set aside to allow me to take some time off and not worry about working.” Her eyes gleamed with a softness. “It’s important to me to spend at least the first year being a full-time mommy.”
He thought of how she’d tried to comfort him after his nightmare, the loving expression that had lit her face when she’d stroked the wood of the canopied crib in the store. “You’re going to make a wonderful mother,” he said.
Her eyes
lit and her cheeks pinkened. As always he found her easy blush charming. “Thank you,” she said simply. “I certainly hope so. If I can be half the mother to my child that my mother was to me, I’ll be satisfied.” She took a sip of her coffee, then eyed him curiously. “Tell me about your mother. You’ve never really talked about her before.”
Chance’s first impulse was to refuse. What few memories he had of his mother he’d never shared with anyone. Not even years ago, when he and Lana had been confidantes, had Chance discussed his mother.
But now his mind opened to those memories. Sweet, warm memories. He leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I remember she loved to sing. I’d wake up in the morning to the sound of her singing and the scent of bacon frying. And for just that moment, I’d feel safe and secure.”
“Did she have a nice voice?”
A bubble of laughter escaped him. “Not really. She was slightly tone-deaf, but that didn’t stop her. She didn’t care who heard her. When she felt like singing, she sang.” His laughter faded and he grew serious.
“What I remember most about her is that she was my champion, my defender against my father.”
“What do you mean?” Lana leaned forward slightly, her attention solely focused on him.
That was one of the things he’d liked about her even when she was a young girl. She had the ability to focus in on a person and make them feel as if what they were saying was important to her.
“I remember one time in particular. I was about seven, and my father decided it was time he take me hunting. I didn’t want to go, I didn’t have the stomach for shooting anything. Dad threw a fit, screaming and yelling at me, and my mother told him to leave me alone. And to my surprise, Dad did leave me alone.”
The memory of his mother’s arms around him after his father had stomped off, angrily branding him a “sissy,” now sent a rivulet of warmth and love through him.
Lana leaned over and took his hand in hers. Her delicate fingers entwined with his and her eyes were soft and dewy, filled with compassion. “I’m sorry, Chance. I’m sorry she had to leave you. I know you must have missed her terribly.”
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