by Jillian Hart
The pointed glance didn’t faze Melanie. She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Yes, well, we all got the impression that you were more than grateful to Lucas. I’m grateful to Henry Stokes when he delivers the mail to our doorstep but I don’t give him a kiss in exchange for a letter.”
Gracious, had she been that obvious? Yes, Rosa supposed she had. Well, she would have to use it to her advantage then. She plucked up the scissors and went to work, but not before saying, “I had a second agenda. Having everyone think Lucas and I are an item is the perfect deterrent for holding unwanted suitors at bay. In fact,” she added, tossing out an impish smile, “maybe I will pay him to be my escort during the holidays. Not only is there a party tonight but also one on New Year’s, as well.”
Melanie expelled an unladylike snort. “You don’t fool me, Rosalie Greer. I know you too well. You like Lucas Burnett and I think he likes you back. In fact, when he snatched up that drunken hooligan for pestering you to dance with him, Lucas looked downright vicious and mad enough to strangle him.”
“He’s a former Ranger,” she countered logically. “It’s a learned reaction to put a stop to trouble, no matter who is involved.”
“Fine, don’t admit to me that there is something going on between you two.” Melanie went back to her ironing. “At least be honest with yourself.” Rosa was honest with herself. She knew she had fallen hard and fast for the hermit and outcast who didn’t think he fitted into society and didn’t seem to care if he did. But she refused to put pressure on Lucas. She would count herself lucky if he attended the church social on Christmas Eve, but she didn’t expect him to continue the policy after the holidays. Plus, she couldn’t make him love her back if all he felt for her was occasional sexual desire.
However, she vowed to see that he was accepted and honored as a hero who had helped bring law and order to the area. That would be her gift to him. Acceptance and respect.
Her thoughts trailed off when the bell over the door jingled. “Yoo-hoo, Rosa! Is my gown ready for tonight?”
Rosa scooped up the elegant gown she had put the finishing touches on this morning and strode off to answer the customer’s call. She tried to put Lucas out of mind but she wasn’t the least bit successful.
And confound it, if he didn’t show up to help her deliver gifts in the middle of the night she wasn’t sure she could finish her rounds without being sighted!
Lucas paced the confines of his cabin on Christmas Eve afternoon. Then he halted to stare at the note Rosa had sent with the same gangly teenager who had delivered the double invitations to her Town Square party, the same self-conscious teenager she suggested he hire to help with chores on his horse ranch. And so he had.
“Pushy female,” he mumbled and grumbled then paced some more. “Church party on Christmas Eve.” If he dared to show up at church, the white and Indian deities alike would likely send down a lightning bolt to drop him on the front steps.
He wasn’t even sure what he believed, having been raised in the Comanche stronghold and introduced to white man’s religion years later. Of course, his mixed breeding probably wasn’t the only reason the Powers That Be might fry him to a crisp. More likely, it was his reckless tryst with Rosa.
Lucas’s conscience had finally caught up with him and he regretted succumbing to his hungry need for a woman who was an integral part of civilized society. A woman who could buy and sell him if she had a mind to. They were so different! What had he been thinking?
He hadn’t been thinking, that was the problem. Hungry need had been prowling through him since the night he met Rosa during the storm. That insatiable craving hadn’t gone away, either. Not even after they ended up on her fancy bed, doing things to each other that, even days later, had the power to make his body throb and his sap rise.
He should have gone to the wrong side of the tracks the night of her party to ease his masculine needs. Not to her apartment. But he knew well and good that no other woman could satisfy the desire she alone had instilled in him.
Lucas blew out his breath and glowered at the elegant, handwritten invitation to the church social and her request to help her deliver packages in the dark of night. “Not going and that is that,” he decided.
Dog was lying in front of the fire, as usual. He lifted his head from his oversize paws and said, “Woof.” Whatever that meant.
A moment later Lucas knew exactly what Dog meant because footsteps resounded on the stoop. Gun drawn, Lucas opened the front door before his uninvited guest could raise his hand to knock.
“Cahill?” Lucas stared at the powerfully built rancher. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to offer to buy your ranch,” Quin declared.
“No. I want to buy the piece of property on your ranch known as Comanche Bluff,” Lucas countered. “It’s where my people camped when we followed the buffalo herds that you and your kind nearly exterminated.”
Lucas knew he was being rude and irascible but so what? He was nursing a conflict between good sense and unruly desire and it was seriously affecting his disposition.
“May I come in?” Quin asked, undaunted by Lucas’s greeting scowl.
“No. Don’t you have a home of your own?”
Quin snickered then barged in without invitation to look around. “You have permission to visit Comanche Bluff anytime you please,” he offered generously. “But if you won’t sell your ranch then how about a few of your horses?”
Lucas grabbed his coat to ward off the chill. “That I can do, Cahill. Not my best mares and foals, of course.”
“Didn’t expect that… Are you going to the church gathering tonight?” he asked as they stepped off the stoop.
“Don’t know,” Lucas murmured as he headed toward the barn and corrals.
“Me, either. Haven’t decided yet. But it’s better than staying home in a big, empty house, I suppose.”
Or in a compact cabin filled with the lingering scents and memories of a violet-eyed female that I can’t rout from my mind. Lucas sighed inwardly. Why hadn’t Rosa become snowbound somewhere else? Then he wouldn’t be fighting this exasperating battle that was keeping him up nights and coloring all his thoughts.
“Burnett?” Quin prompted, jolting Lucas back to the present.
“What?”
Although Quin flashed him a knowing grin, he didn’t comment, just directed Lucas’s attention to one of the yearlings in the corral. Lucas did his damnedest to keep his mind on the negotiations and off Rosalie. He even succeeded—for about thirty minutes.
Rosa checked her reflection in the cheval glass then pinned up an unruly corkscrew curl that dangled by her temple. She had made it a point to dress in the most delicate gown she owned so no one in Cahill Crossing would even think that a dainty female might be responsible for the surprise gifts that showed up on doorsteps long after midnight on Christmas Eve.
Unless a townsperson spotted her because a certain someone—named Lucas mule-headed Burnett—didn’t help her distribute the toys so she had to do it herself in record time!
Rosa glanced up at the mantel clock. The church social and short evening service would begin in twenty minutes. It would take her that long to walk across town to the church situated near the school. Although the snow had melted days earlier, she required a heavy coat to fend off the cold breeze. After being snowbound in the blizzard Rosa had vowed to bundle up and never experience that kind of bone-deep chill ever again.
After she donned her coat, she pulled open the door then jumped back in surprise. Lucas stood before her, his hand upraised to knock. He had accepted her invitation? Another Christmas miracle.
“You’re here,” she said unnecessarily, and smiled like a witless idiot.
To her delight, he walked in and lifted her clean off the floor. Then he kissed her. Her arms involuntarily encircled his neck and she locked her legs around his lean hips. All too soon, Lucas set her to her wobbly legs and backed up a respectable distance. Rosa was having none of that. She grabbe
d him by the collar of his coat, jerked him to her and kissed him until she was forced to come up for air.
Then she gathered her composure and plucked up the gloves sitting on the end table. She glanced up to see Lucas staring at her with those penetrating midnight-colored eyes that had the power to bedevil and arouse.
“Is something wrong, Lucas?” she asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as a woman could get.
“Yes, but I learned while fighting intruders with the Comanche and battling outlaws with the Rangers that some problems you just can’t fix.”
She had no idea what that meant and she didn’t have the chance to ask because Lucas glided his arm around her waist to escort her out the door.
“Quin Cahill came by this afternoon,” he commented as they descended the steps.
“Good, I was hoping you two would become friends. Now that Quin, Bowie, Leanna and Chance have had a parting of ways after their parents’ tragic accident, he spends entirely too much time rattling around in that big ole house on 4C Ranch.”
“He bought six of my horses,” Lucas reported as they stepped outside to greet the cold December wind. “I made a killing. He’s a lousy horse trader. No self-respecting Comanche would pay that much for a mount when he can train another one easily enough.”
Rosa chuckled at the playful twitch of Lucas’s lips. “He wanted to buy Drizzle, didn’t he?”
“Yep, but I told him Drizzle, Dog and I are family.”
“Never underestimate Quin,” Rosa warned. “He’s liable to return in a few months and offer to sell back one of your horses that he has trained to herd cattle, with or without a rider on its back. The man knows cattle and horses so don’t let him fool you.”
“My horses can open their stall gates and let themselves out,” Lucas boasted teasingly. “Cahill has nothing on me.”
Rosa silently seconded that but she didn’t comment because Lucas grasped her hand as they hiked across Town Square. The want of him derailed her thoughts.
“Cahill isn’t Comanche, Lord of the Plains. I am,” he said, and grinned. “I like him, even if we have an ongoing debate about who knows more about livestock.”
Rosa sighed contentedly as she strolled across town, hand-in-hand, with the swarthy ex-Ranger. She was already having a grand time and she had encouraged two lonely men to enter into a friendship that might benefit both of them. The evening so far, she decided, was about as perfect as it could get.
Melanie smiled delightedly, and her husband, Cyril, grinned when Lucas and Rosa entered the playground area between the church and school. Lucas experienced a moment of awkwardness when all eyes focused on him, just like the night of Rosa’s party. This was their second public appearance. He received several annoyed glances from male partygoers that indicated his rivals weren’t happy that he was Rosa’s escort.
A sense of pride overcame Lucas as Melanie and Cyril walked toward them. Even if Rosa had invited him out of gratitude—and most likely a sense of obligation after their night of passion—they were an item. But gratitude and guilty obligation were the very last two things in the world that he wanted from Rosalie Greer. He wanted the impossible, he realized.
“How much did she pay you to accompany her so you could discourage her would-be suitors?” Melanie asked teasingly.
The question stung his pride like a hive of hornets. Is that what this was all about? He was running interference for her would-be beaus? Of course, he realized. That’s what the public displays of affection were about.
“If you spread that nonsense around town, Melanie Eileen Ford, you are fired,” Rosa insisted. “Don’t tease Lucas. I’m just elated that he is joining in the festivities.”
“Just having a bit of fun,” Melanie said quickly. “Ask me, the two of you make a striking couple, don’t they, Cyril?”
“Sure,” Cyril agreed then shuffled his wife on her way.
Rosa pivoted to face Lucas. Then she pressed a kiss to his cheek but now he knew it was all for show. Suspected he was just a prop used in her charade to discourage unwanted suitors.
“That will cost you an extra two bits,” he said, his voice gruff with the outrage he couldn’t squelch.
She scowled at him and he gnashed his teeth, thoroughly aggravated with her. He allowed her to tow him into the shadows, away from the lanterns and the milling crowd. He had a few things to say to her and he didn’t want an audience, either.
“Lucas Burnett, you are the furthest thing from my paid escort as you can get. You should know that without my having to tell you. I blurted out that comment in jest this afternoon because Melanie was trying to pry into our private affairs. I didn’t know what to say when she insisted that I was exceptionally fond of you and that you were fond of me.”
He bore down on her. “Are you?”
“Am I what?” she asked flippantly.
“You know, fond.” Lucas had never felt so awkward or uncertain in his life. Nothing in his hardscrabble existence had prepared him for putting his heart on the line. His neck? Yes. He could face outlaws with guns blazing but he was in unfamiliar territory here.
Rosa drew herself up, squared her shoulders and tilted her chin to stare him directly in the eye. He liked that about her. She didn’t sidestep issues with him, just gave it to him straight. He might not like her answer to his question but he appreciated her candor.
“Yes, I’m fond of you, Lucas,” she told him. “And no, I don’t mind that you escort me around town to assure other men that I am not interested in them and that I am not what they really need. Most men prefer younger, more impressionable women who haven’t yet formed their own opinions and haven’t spread their independent wings.”
“Here we go,” Lucas muttered under his breath. Rosa was handing him an excuse for making this their last evening together. She was going to let him think it was his idea to walk away from her.
“I enjoy running my shop and following my own dreams,” she went on to say. “Just because you and I—” Her voice fizzled out momentarily. But Rosa, being Rosa, gathered her composure and forged ahead.
He admired that about her, too, but he still wanted to strangle her!
“I am trying to tell you that you are under no obligation whatsoever for what transpired between us. If consequences should arise, they will be my problem and I don’t expect you to solve them. You can come and go as you please.” She inhaled a deep breath and hurried on. “I am telling you here and now that if you walk me to my apartment door after the party, the same thing that happened last time will happen this time.”
Lucas swallowed an amused grin, but she seemed so determined and serious that he tried not to laugh. “Well, in that case—”
“So, if you don’t want to give a repeat performance,” she cut in quickly, “then simply say good night at the door.”
“I want to come upstairs,” he assured her. “And you are under no obligation to let me think I’m more than your escort and your partner in passion if that is all you want from me.”
Rosa gaped at him, wide-eyed. “All I want from you?”
“I know I’m not your social equal, even if you have made it your mission to introduce me all around town and shout to high heaven that I’m your guardian angel, a hero and a gallant knight all rolled into one.”
“I don’t have a social equal!” she shouted at him.
“You’re right. You’re in a class all by yourself and I am well aware of that. More so than anyone else in town,” he added meaningfully.
She jerked her hands from his grasp and puffed up like a cobra. “That is not what I meant. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m in love with you, you blind fool and—”
Rosa slapped both hands over her mouth, wishing she could retract that blurted confession. Confound it! She had exposed herself as the hopeless romantic she never thought she would be after Jubal Hawthorne tore her dreams to shreds and made her wary of men’s motives.
Mortified tears sprang to her eyes. She had embarrassed herself in front of
the one man whose opinion of her mattered. To make the humiliating situation worse, he didn’t utter a word. Just stood there, staring down at her with those dark, penetrating eyes.
Unable to meet his gaze, she glanced sideways to note that her upraised voice, if not her specific words, had called attention to her and Lucas.
Rosa spun on her heel so quickly she nearly threw herself off balance. With as much dignity as she could gather around her, she marched across the playground.
Lucas, her dark angel and knight in shining armor, didn’t come after her, damn him. Which indicated that he didn’t return her heartfelt affection.
He was probably relieved that she dashed off so he wouldn’t have to figure out how to let her down gently.
Nothing like a domestic squabble in the churchyard on Christmas Eve to inflame gossip, she thought as she quickened her pace. The Cahills had nothing on her!
Tormented to no end, Rosa lifted her trailing skirts and broke into an undignified run to Town Square. Confound it! She had stumbled from one potential scandal with Jubal eight years earlier to another one with Lucas tonight. Now Lucas would never return to Cahill Crossing, for fear she would throw herself at him. Love was the last thing Lucas probably wanted from her. An occasional tryst during one of his infrequent visits to town was probably all the satisfaction he needed.
She’d have to pack up and leave, she thought in despair. All because she had made a supreme fool of herself by allowing her feelings for Lucas to bubble up like a geyser and spew out while a crowd milled about.
“Doesn’t matter what he—or anyone else—thinks of me,” she blubbered as she veered around to the back of her shop. She had a mission to undertake tonight when everyone was tucked into bed on Christmas Eve. She would make her deliveries alone, as she had last year, she promised herself determinedly.