The Cowboy's Honor

by Amy Sandas

  “Clinton, leave the woman alone,” his father said in exasperation as he headed toward his horse.

  Such flattery was nothing particularly new to Courtney, but the younger Mr. MacDonnell had a certain earnest affect to his delivery that was often absent from the gentlemen back in Boston.

  “Thank you,” she replied with a smile before the young man turned and vaulted onto his horse’s back. Just as they turned their mounts to head back down the drive, another rider could be heard approaching. This one came from the direction of the range, riding hard across the earth.

  Tension thickened amongst the visitors as they watched Dean ride in.

  “What are you doing here?” Dean’s harsh words drew her attention to him as he pulled his horse up beside the porch. He was tense and angry as he directed his rude question at the MacDonnells.

  “Hello, Dean,” the older MacDonnell said in an even tone. “We stopped by to introduce ourselves to your wife. We were just about to be on our way.”

  Dean did not reply. He just sat stiffly atop his horse, the reins pinched in tight hands as his horse danced around in agitation.

  Horatio MacDonnell met his gaze for a few long moments. The tension between them was thick and uncomfortable. The old man stared long enough at Dean that Courtney thought he might say something more, but then his son leaned forward and muttered, “Let’s go, Pa.”

  Dean’s expression remained hard and closed off as he watched the three men turn and head off down the road until all that was left was another dust cloud like the one that had heralded their arrival.

  “What’d they say to you?”

  Dean’s sharp question had Courtney looking to him in surprise. Though his features hadn’t softened one bit, there was something in his voice—buried beneath the tension and the anger. It sounded suspiciously like…fear.

  “Just as Mr. MacDonnell said,” she replied. “They introduced themselves and welcomed me to the area.”

  “Why the hell would they do that?” he muttered under his breath.

  Dean’s irritated and incredulous response—added to his inexplicably rude greeting of his former fiancée’s family and heaped on top of her own insecurities about the man—rubbed harshly on her raw nerves.

  “Why indeed?” she retorted. “Heaven forbid someone might have some neighborly manners and a desire to wish me well.”

  He snorted at that. “I want you to steer clear of anyone from the MacDonnells’ place.”

  “Like you have?”

  He settled his light-blue eyes on her. “I’ve good reason. They might seem nice and welcoming, but they’ve never forgiven me for what happened to Anne.”

  Courtney shook her head. “No, Dean. It’s you who won’t forgive yourself.”

  His expression hardened. “I’ll say it one last time. Stay away from the MacDonnells.”

  Courtney’s throat burned with the desire to argue with him about who she could or couldn’t make friends with, his assumed right to dictate anything about her personal activities, and how he decided to show up just to order her around without explanation.

  But the cold, hard look in his eyes held her back.

  That, and the growing sense that even though they had spent a breath-stealing night in each other’s arms, nothing had really changed between them.

  She gave a shallow nod. “Of course, Mr. Lawton. I wouldn’t dream of interfering.”

  Then she turned and reentered the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Courtney had been looking forward to her first opportunity to cook a full meal on her own. Pilar was still not feeling well, so Jimena had asked Courtney if she could manage supper without her. Excited and terrified about being in charge of an entire evening meal, Courtney worked hard preparing the roasted chicken, fresh vegetables from Jimena’s garden, seasoned potatoes, and a creamy vanilla dessert Jimena had taught her to make the week before.

  It was to be just the two of them for supper that night, and she had imagined Dean’s appreciation and surprise when she brought everything out all steaming and savory-smelling and declared that she had done it all by herself.

  Instead, he barely seemed to notice the food as he ate. He rarely looked at her across the table and didn’t speak beyond perfunctory responses.

  By the end of the meal, her tension and disappointment got the better of her.

  “Are you honestly going to be angry with me for accepting your neighbors’ good wishes?”

  Dean looked up from his plate, a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. His expression was slightly confused. “What? I’m not angry.”

  Courtney folded her arms across her chest and leaned back in her chair. “Then why the silence?”

  He lifted his brows and glanced back down at his plate. “The food is good. I’m eating.”

  She frowned. “So you are not angry about earlier?”

  “No. You couldn’t have known how things are between me and the MacDonnells.”

  She decided to step into the opening he had created. “Why did their visit upset you so much?”

  He set his fork aside and pushed back from the table to sit straight and stiff in his chair. It was clear he did not want to answer, but when he looked across the table at her with the heavy scowl, she stared back expectantly. Patiently determined.

  Finally, he sighed. “The MacDonnells and I haven’t exactly been neighborly these last few years.”

  “Since Anne’s death?”

  His jaw clenched and his eyes darkened, but he nodded.

  Courtney chose her next words carefully. She wanted to understand but had no intention of hurting Dean more than he had been already. “They said you blame yourself for what happened.”

  He looked down at his plate before he replied. “I do.”

  “Why?” she asked softly.

  He took a ragged breath, and Courtney tensed for his refusal to talk about such a personal topic. Her heart ached for the obvious distress the discussion caused, but she felt compelled to understand. From everything she’d heard, Dean had taken his fiancée’s death very hard. She wanted to know how much of that was still with him.

  “Anne had ridden over to talk to me that day,” he said in a harsh undertone. “She’d sent a note the night before saying she had something important to talk about. But that morning, something urgent came up involving the ranch… I honestly don’t remember what it was anymore, only that it required I head into town right away. I decided the ranch’s needs were more important than whatever Anne needed to discuss. I didn’t even think twice about it. I just left, knowing she’d be coming over. When she realized I wasn’t here, she took off toward town, thinking to head me off, I suppose. Along the way, something spooked her horse and she was thrown. Her neck was broken in the fall.”

  “That’s terrible,” Courtney whispered.

  “If I’d been here—where I was supposed to be, where I’d been just about every other day of my life—she wouldn’t have headed down that road that day, her horse wouldn’t have been spooked, she wouldn’t have been thrown against that boulder, and she’d be here today.”

  As his wife.

  He did not say the last words, but he didn’t have to. Courtney heard them anyway, echoing like a boom of thunder through her mind.

  She shoved aside her personal feelings and reordered her thoughts. “It was an accident, Dean. You can’t blame yourself for something that couldn’t possibly have been predicted or prevented. And from what the MacDonnells said, they do not blame you either.”

  “Well, there’s saying something, then there’s feeling it.” He lifted his gaze, and Courtney nearly flinched at the pain reflected there. “Do as I say on this, if nothing else. Steer clear of the MacDonnells.”

  She decided not to press the issue. Not now anyway.

  She gave a nod, and after a moment, he picked up
his fork again and went back to the business of eating, as though now that the matter was settled, he only wished to move past it. But she couldn’t keep from watching him, thinking about all that he’d revealed and everything he had kept to himself.

  After a little while, she came to realize just how much he appeared to like her cooking. He was quite voracious, in fact. “You truly are enjoying your meal, aren’t you?” she asked with a bit of hopeful incredulity.

  He gestured with his fork toward his plate. “It’s really good.”

  She was more pleased than she’d expected to be by the acknowledgment of her success, as small and simple as it was.

  “Why?” he asked as he paused to wipe his mouth with his napkin. “Did you make all this yourself?”

  Courtney nodded, trying not to give away just how much his appreciation mattered to her. He wouldn’t understand how the simple act of creating a successful meal felt like such a long stride forward from the woman she’d been. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of how she’d lived before coming to Montana. It was just that she was pleased beyond measure to discover that she might possess a few hidden talents after all.

  “I’m impressed,” he said in that smooth way of his that always seemed to have a ridiculous effect on her body temperature.

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  Seeing her smile, Dean narrowed his eyes and dropped his gaze to her mouth. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he muttered, his tone shifting into one that was disgruntled and rough.

  Her smile slipped, and a frown tugged at her brows. “Do what?”

  “When I see your lips curving all sweet and pretty like that, I start thinking things I shouldn’t.”

  Courtney went still as her belly twisted and her breath became shallow. “What things?” she whispered.

  He didn’t reply.

  The answer was clear in his eyes. He was thinking of what they had done together in his bed two nights ago.

  And then she was too.

  Her lips parted to draw a long, unsteady breath.

  With a loud clearing of his throat, he stood. “We’d better get this cleaned up.”

  Courtney watched as he gathered his dishes and headed into the kitchen without looking back at her. She took a moment longer to gather herself before she rose and did the same. After a few trips back and forth, they had the table cleared. Without speaking, they started washing the dishes and getting things put away.

  As they moved around the kitchen, they occasionally had brief moments of contact: a slight brush of shoulders, a fleeting touch of the hand, a bit of eye contact as Courtney passed clean dishes to him for stacking in the cupboard.

  No words were spoken, but anticipation rose within her all the same. Her breath grew short, her skin tingled, and her body felt overly warm.

  After washing and drying the last serving bowl, she handed it to him to put away. He took it wordlessly and returned it to its spot on the top shelf.

  When he turned back to her and saw that there were no more dishes, he stilled and his eyes found hers.

  The kitchen suddenly seemed too expansive. He stood only a step or two away, but to Courtney it felt like an insurmountable distance.

  She released her breath on a heavy sigh, and his eyes narrowed at the sound as he bowed his head. “I need to go—” he began, glancing toward the kitchen door.

  “No, you don’t,” Courtney interrupted gently. “Whatever work you have will keep until tomorrow.” At some point during the last two days, she’d decided being patient and coy was going to get her nowhere with this man. “I want you to stay with me tonight.”

  “Courtney…” There was a thread of warning in his voice.

  She ignored it. “Dean.” She said his name on a quiet breath as she looked square into his resistant face. “Do you regret the night we spent together?” she asked quietly.

  He opened his eyes and met her questioning gaze with a direct stare. “No.”

  “Yet you’ve been avoiding me, haven’t you?”

  “I had to,” he replied, his eyes darkening dangerously. His voice was rough—a low, gravelly sound—and his handsome face showed everything he tried to hold back. It was in the heavy pull of his brow, the firm line of his mouth, and the taut muscles of his jaw.

  He was so tense that Courtney had to fight the urge to soothe away his distress even as her own intensified. His rejection hurt. Deeply. And though she was willing to be bold, she couldn’t bring herself to beg.

  She wanted him to choose her. Willfully, intentionally.

  As she chose him.

  Turning away, she carefully folded the dish towel and set it beside the sink. She took her time with the task, hoping and dreading that he would just walk away and leave her to her personal yearning.

  She tensed when she sensed him moving behind her, but when she expected him to continue from the kitchen, he stopped. His boots disturbed the fall of her skirts, making them brush against the backs of her legs. Then his arm brushed hers as he braced his hand on the counter beside her.

  Courtney held her breath. Licks of fire ignited throughout her body. Though she was slowly melting inside, she remained still as stone, afraid he might back away again.

  His warm breath fanned her nape, sending delicious little chills down her spine. She rolled her lips in between her teeth to keep from making a needful sound at the subtle, delightful pleasure of it. Then his chest came slowly, torturously into contact with her back, and his other hand came to rest on the curve of her hip.

  Bowing his head beside hers, he murmured thickly, “I had to avoid you. I couldn’t be near you without wanting to take you to bed again.”

  A small sound slipped from Courtney’s throat. He responded by sliding his hand from her hip to splay against her low belly, drawing her back against him until her buttocks pressed intimately to his hardness. It was strange being able to feel him but not see him. Strange, and wonderfully wicked.

  “I wanted to give you time. Time to decide if you want this,” he explained, his words roughening with each syllable until his voice became a dark caress.

  Courtney’s fingers curled tightly into the dish towel, ruining the neat folds. She arched her spine, trying to press herself closer to him. “I want this,” she muttered thickly.

  He pressed his mouth to the side of her throat, touching her skin just briefly with his tongue. Her head fell back against his shoulder and her knees weakened, but she did not fear falling. He held her secure in his arms, his large body framing hers, supporting her as her muscles turned soft.

  “You sure?” he asked. His voice was little more than a growl now.

  Heat swirled around her frustration, transforming it into something far more intense and harder to control. “What do I have to say to get you to make love to me again?” she asked in a harsh whisper.

  “That’ll do it,” he said as he turned her around with a swift motion to face him. Wrapping both arms around her waist, he hauled her against him and took her mouth.

  She clung to him, pressing her body to his so she could feel all the barely controlled power in his frame. His lips moved intently over hers until she opened to the sweep of his tongue. When his mouth moved to the side of her throat, she held fast to his shoulders and dropped her head back.

  “I’ve been going crazy thinking of the other night,” he murmured against her flushed skin. “Thinking of all the things I didn’t get to do to you. All the places on your body I didn’t get to taste.”

  He had been thinking of her. Of this.

  Pulling back, he took her face between his hands. Her eyelids fluttered open to see his handsome face. His eyes were intently focused on her. “Will you come upstairs with me? Now?”

  “Yes.” Her acquiescence came out on a long sigh.

  Stepping back, he took her hand in his. With a gentle tug, he led her from the kit
chen, down the hall, and up the stairs. Courtney followed, concentrating on each step to make sure her wobbly legs did not give out along the way.

  He wasn’t a soft man or a gentle man. And his moods were occasionally dark and often confusing, but there was something…something tender and sweet buried behind his hard outer shell. In allowing herself to get close to Dean and letting her heart lead her head, she risked a great deal. But weren’t some experiences worth it, even when the outcome was completely uncertain?

  She’d left Boston to push her herself to new limits and explore an unknown future.

  For the time being, she was the bride of a man who wanted her. A man she wanted with every breath and beat of her heart. She could not truly be brave in this new life if she was not willing to take what she wanted despite what might come.

  In a couple weeks, she and Dean were expected to part ways. But right now—for better or for worse—they were husband and wife.

  When they entered his bedroom, he released her hand to close the door behind them before he lit the lamp on the bedside table.

  The last time they had been in this room together, it had been in near darkness with the faint reach of moonlight from outside the only illumination.

  Now, the room was cast in a golden glow as Dean turned to face her.

  He was so handsome in the soft light.

  Outside, under the stark sunlight, surrounded by rough lands and a homestead he loved, his strength of will and masculine appeal were fiercely apparent. The raw nature of his being was unapologetic in such a setting. He was larger than life, an immovable force.

  But here, standing in his bedroom in the soft glow of the glass lamp, he was just a man. A man of inner strength and quiet desires, with a shadow of longing in his eyes as he stared at her from across the room.

  “I should feel ashamed for wanting you so bad.” His voice was hoarse and low as he spoke.

  “Wanting me is shameful?” she asked.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he replied in exasperation. “I don’t have a way with words like some men.” He took a ragged breath. “You asked if I regret what happened between us and the truth is…I don’t regret a damn thing. I tried, but I can’t. I just keep reliving every moment over and over. I can still feel the pulses in your body as you came apart in my arms. I’ve wanted you again every second since.”