Читать книгу A Texas Rescue Christmas - Caro Carson - Страница 11

Chapter Five

When Becky had closed her eyes, she hadn’t expected to ever open them again, yet here she was, awake. She was alive, but she was still cold. Shivering, and sick of it.

The first millisecond of opening her eyes was spent on realizing she was alive. The second millisecond was much more interesting. She was looking right at the jaw of a man, a real man with a five-o’clock shadow and a firm mouth. But as she stared at that mouth, the man kissed her.

Her eyes fluttered shut once more. His lips were soft, but the greatest miracle of all was that they were warm. Oh, so warm—and she craved heat right now.

She loved that mouth, so she kissed it tenderly, then opened to taste his upper lip, his lower. If his lips were warm, than his tongue was warmer, and she lost herself in a good, hot French kiss.

He pulled away, and she opened her eyes once more to focus on his mouth as he spoke.

“Okay, then. I’d say you’re awake.”

She looked into eyes as blue as the summer sky.

But she was still cold, and it felt as though she would never stop shivering again. His warm hand stroked down her back, stilling her momentarily as it passed, and then she shivered again.

Her breasts brushed against the warm skin of his chest. His warm skin was just that. Just skin. Nothing else. Awareness came swiftly. Her breasts were bare. Startled, she made a sudden movement, her legs sliding against his, smooth against rough. She was bare everywhere.

“Oh, dear. We’re—we’re—”

“Kind of awkward, isn’t it? But we won’t freeze to death.”

She looked away from his blue eyes to focus on her surroundings. They were hiding in some kind of cocoon, but she could see through the opening. Somehow, he’d magically surrounded them with a log cabin while she’d been sleeping.

“Where are we?”

Gosh, that was such a cowardly question for her to ask. She should have addressed the fact that they were utterly naked, but she went with the log cabin. She was like Mother, after all, ignoring the difficult and unpleasant issues, even if they were more important. When her mother had heard that her latest paramour was already married, she’d pointed to a purse and asked about its designer. Becky was nude and so was this man, but she was asking about location.

“We’re in the old Tate cabin. It was built more than a century ago. Lucky for us, they built them to last back then.”

She could see outside through some of the spaces between the logs. She could feel outside, gusts of damp cold. She burrowed into the sleeping bag, which meant she tucked herself more tightly against his naked body.

“The wind can come right through this cabin,” she said against the warmth of his throat.

“Some of it does. We’d be worse off if we didn’t have these walls. That storm is getting bad outside.”

Well, that was blunt. “How are we going to get back to the ranch?”

“You mean the house? We’re not. We’re going to stay right here, and stay warm.”

“And naked?” There, she’d addressed the elephant in the room. She wasn’t a total coward.

“It’s the best way for us to stay warm.”

Becky cared about being warm more than anything else. “I’m so tired of shivering. It hurts.”

“I imagine it would. Hadn’t thought about it before. Having your muscles clench like that would wear you out. Don’t worry, you’ll stop shivering. You’re no longer unconscious, so that’s an improvement. I’m glad you’re awake.”

His large hands roamed all over her body, as she realized they’d been doing this entire time.

“Are you really glad I’m awake?” she muttered. “Because it seems while I was asleep, you got me naked.”

“Strictly survival, Miss Cargill. When I undress a woman for fun, I like her to be awake and fully participating.”

Undressing for fun. She knew people got naked to have sex, of course, but she’d never considered that the actual taking off of clothes was one of the fun parts. He made it sound worth trying.

“And kissing me? That was strictly survival, too?”

“Your lips were blue.”

The way his gaze dropped to her lips when he said it made her stop shivering for a second. He was a darned good-looking man, in that outdoorsy, cowboy kind of way. And he’d found her. He was her miracle.

“What’s your name?” she asked, watching him as he watched her lips.

“Trey Waterson.”

“Tell me, Trey, are my lips still blue?” It was the single most provocative thing she’d ever said in her life, and she’d said it to a naked man. She bit her lip, wishing the words back.

He drew his palm up her spine and over her shoulder, to rest on her neck. With his thumb, he caressed her jaw as he frowned at her mouth, taking her question seriously.

“They’re more pink, but still too pale.”

He bent his head, and kissed her again, softly, slowly, and without the openmouthed hunger she’d had. It was a lovely kiss, all the same, and she felt rewarded for having been daring.

Then he rested his head next to hers, so they simply looked at one another in the last of the winter twilight. They could have been friends sharing the same pillow, settling in for a long slumber-party chat. The corners of his mouth curved upward in a bit of a smile. “You’re going to make it, you know.”

She was still shivering, but at his words, she realized the waves of shivers were coming and going, their intensity diminishing with each return. Her jaw wasn’t clenched to prevent her teeth from chattering. Her arm was wrapped around his warm body instead of clinging to the bark of a tree.

“Thank you.” How terribly inadequate that sounded. “I mean, thank you for my life. Not ‘thank you’ like you just passed the mashed potatoes. There ought to be a better word to say. Thank you so much, because I really didn’t want to die.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“It was practically suicidal, the way I left. I can see that now, but I wasn’t trying to kill myself, honest.”

“You were just running away. People don’t think real hard when they do that.”

She shivered, and pressed her entire body closer to him for shelter. For protection. She hid her face between his warm neck and the sleeping bag.

His hand swept down her back, firmly over her backside, too, to the back of her thigh. He lifted her thigh just a tiny bit, adjusted the position of her leg. “Can you feel your feet? Your toes?”

She flexed her ankle and tried to wiggle her toes. They didn’t exactly respond with individual wiggles, but she felt them pressing into his calf muscle. “They’re still there. I’ll never take my feet for granted again. You should have seen me out there, clomping around like I had cement boots. It’s so hard to walk when you can’t feel your feet.”

“I wouldn’t have let you stay out there long enough to clomp anywhere.”

She almost smiled at that, remembering how he’d scooped her off her feet before she’d seen him coming. Her shivers subsided, and she moved to be able to see his face once more. Night had come, but their eyes had been adjusting all along, and moonlight poured through the cracks along with the cold air.

“Thank you,” she repeated.

His soothing hand had just traveled over her shoulder. He stopped and squeezed her upper arm. “You don’t have to keep saying that.”

“I need to. I’m so grateful, you can’t imagine.”

With a sigh, he turned a bit so he was laying more on his back. “All right, then. Get it out of your system.”

He looked like he was waiting patiently for something. “Thank you?” she said tentatively.

He nodded, solemn. “You’re welcome, Rebecca.”

She stared at him in the moonlight.

After a minute, he raised an eyebrow. “Is that it? Are we done?”

She gasped, a tiny sound of indignation. “Are you joking about this?”

He started to laugh.

She gave his shoulder a little shove. “If it weren’t for you, I would have died.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.” As if that was the end of it, he started maneuvering around in the bag. “I’m going to unzip this for a second—”

“No! I’m not warm enough.”

“Just far enough to get my hand out. You need to drink this water before it freezes solid. Your body is working hard to warm up. It needs water.” He grabbed for a canteen that was in a pile of other stuff, jostling them both. She felt her breasts bounce a little against his arm. She was embarrassed, but he didn’t seem to notice as he brought the canteen back inside and zipped the bag.

“I think we’ll have to sit up so you can drink,” he said. “Ready? One, two, three.”

Of course, they had to move at the same time. One person couldn’t sit up in the sleeping bag if the other was laying down. She tried, but curling up into a sitting position was more than her body was ready to do yet.

“It’s okay. Let’s try that again.” Trey put his arm underneath her and lifted her with him as he sat up.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I knew there were more thank-yous in there. Drink up.”

She felt those blue eyes on her as she chugged, suddenly realizing how terribly thirsty she was. When she finished, he wasn’t looking at her any longer. Instead, he was frowning at the night sky beyond the cracks in the log wall.

“The wind has stopped, but the clouds have cleared up,” he said. “We’re in for a cold one.”

“It looks nicer than this afternoon.”

He made a negative movement of his head and hand. She felt every bit of it, sitting so close to him. “Cloud cover keeps some of the earth’s heat in. Today’s clouds dumped their sleet and left, so now there’s nothing to stop the temperatures from falling.” He took the canteen from her and unzipped the bag, efficiently setting it outside again.

“Falling? It’s going to get colder than it already is?” She could feel the fear crawling up her throat.

He looked at her with concern. After a long second, he kissed her forehead. “Listen to me. Outside, the temperature may fall, but you are not going to get colder. You and I are going to stay right here, safe and sound and warm.”

He laid her back gently, following her down and settling her body against his again. Safe and sound and warm. As a seduction, no man could have had her more completely in his thrall. There was something about him that made her feel restless inside, reckless. They were alive, the only two people in the world, and she couldn’t get enough of his deep voice and his soothing hands.

She set her hand on the back of his neck and tilted her face to his. She wanted to be kissed and held and warm. She let her eyes drift shut, anticipating the feel of his mouth.

“It’s not us I’m worried about,” he said. “It’s the cattle.”

“Oh.” She blinked, feeling a little sheepish. Cows had never crossed her mind, but apparently, even if virginal little Becky Cargill was naked, a man’s thoughts didn’t stay on her. Hopefully, he hadn’t noticed that she’d been about to kiss him. “What—um, what do cows do when it’s this cold?”

“The foreman knew this weather was coming. He probably got a good portion into the calving sheds. The rest would’ve been driven into one of the pastures that has a deep gully. The cattle huddle in there to get out of the wind and basically do what we’re doing.”

“Nice to know I don’t have the common sense of a cow. I drove into a wide-open space. I was so stupid. It would have served me right if—”

His finger pressed her lips, cutting her off. “Don’t say that. Ever. Do you hear me?”

She was so surprised at his ferocity, she couldn’t even nod. She just stared at him, his face a shadow in the night.

“You got yourself out of the wind as much as possible. You built yourself a shelter. You stayed alive. Give yourself some credit, Rebecca. You’ve got common sense and you must have a giant heap of willpower, because you were still alive when I found you. Thank you for staying alive until I could get there.”

He moved his finger away from her lips only to cup her head in his hand. He angled her so he could kiss her, not so softly this time.