Читать книгу Their Baby Miracle - Lilian Darcy - Страница 9

“T ell me what you regret about last November,” Lucas said to Reba. “What should I have done differently? What would you have done differently? Tell me what you resent in how I handled everything from the very beginning, September included.”

His eyes flicked to Reba’s pregnant stomach and he frowned. They hadn’t gotten to the nitty gritty, yet. They were both still caught up in memories about their first meeting that were still achingly vivid, even after almost six months.

Reba searched for the right answer to his question, while the nagging, belt-tightening ache in her back and stomach notched a little higher on the pain scale, slower to let go, this time. She didn’t like it. It made her uneasy. She reached for the inadequate chair at the manager’s desk and eased herself into it, making it squeak, just as the door opened, hard on the sound of a token knock.

“Gordie’s here, looking for you,” one of the waitresses said.

Churned up and uneasy, she couldn’t school the impatience out of her voice. “Oh, now?”

“What shall I tell him?”

“Tell him I’m— Tell him—”

“Tell him to wake up to the fact that he’s not wanted, and hasn’t been for eight months or more,” Lucas answered for her, then revised at once, “No, just tell him she’s not here. Let him work out the rest for himself.” The waitress nodded, the door closed, and he added to Reba, “McConnell’s still around. Is he back in the picture, then?”

“No, he’s not.”

Reba felt quite positive on this subject.

Gordie himself vacillated like waterweed in a river current, however. His attitude back in September had pushed her right into Lucas’s arms, she sometimes felt. He’d hung around the steakhouse, the way he still hung around. He’d given with one hand and taken away with the other, and he was still doing it.

After showing Lucas around the ranch that first day, she’d worked a shift at the steakhouse the same night, venting her complicated feelings about the sale and the man by throwing her steaks roughly around the grill. It hadn’t helped. She was still feeling tense and angry and confused when Gordie had sloped into the kitchen to hang out with her, and maybe that was the real point where it had all started with Lucas…

“Hi, Reb.” Gordie had dragged a stool in from the bar and positioned himself on it in front of the big freezer. He already had a light beer in his hand.

“Hi, yourself,” Reba had answered. Her smile was an effort. “No food in your fridge, tonight?”

She tried to make it into a tease, but found it irritating that he still came in here like this, so often. And she was tired, after too much tension with Lucas Halliday today, while she’d showed him over the ranch, so she had to fight to hide the irritation.

She and Gordie had broken up two months ago, for heaven’s sake! Maybe she should be pleased that they could still be friends, as far as he was concerned. True, she did feel a certain degree of relief. She wouldn’t want to think that she’d hurt him so badly he couldn’t stand her company. In a small ranching town like Biggins, when she cooked four shifts a week at the only decent restaurant, that would be awkward for a whole lot of people.

But it made her uncomfortable that his routine had been so little changed by her calling off their engagement. He should have started serial dating around three counties, or something. He should have brought strange blondes in here to dangle in front of her, every week. He should at least have had his hair cut different, and bought a couple of new shirts.

Like I’ve done any of that? she scolded herself, as she watched him take a gulp of his beer.

“I’ve been thinking, Reb,” he said, ruffling his choppy dark hair at the back with his spare hand. It stuck up after he’d finished with it, definitely getting too long.

He was the only person who called her Reb. She didn’t mind it from him. She didn’t challenge the statement that he’d been thinking, either. He had a good brain, especially for figures. She didn’t possess one herself. He had statistics on his computer, relating to the McConnell ranch, that even her father wouldn’t have thought to tabulate. He spent a lot of time on the Internet, which apparently made money for him, she wasn’t even sure how. And he could ride as if his thighs were part of the horse.

“Yeah?” she answered, slinging three steaks on the grill.

“You’ve got a buyer sniffing around, right?”

“He seems interested. But he’s a businessman. Pretty hardheaded.” Enough to bulldoze my family home. “He’s not going to make a spur-of-the-moment decision. He wants to see more tomorrow, so I’m taking him down to Steamboat, and up to the cabin.”

“Because I’ve been thinking.”

“You said that.” She smiled, to soften the statement, and wished once again that he wasn’t here. Or that he was somehow different. Tougher? With more emotional perception in his heart?

“If we got married after all, your Dad might decide not to sell,” he said. “I’d be willing.”

At this, she had to fight to stop her jaw dropping open. “We broke it off, Gordie,” she reminded him, then added more bluntly, “I broke it off.”

“Yeah, I know, but nothing much has changed since then, has it? For either of us? Except that your Dad is selling the ranch.”

“There’s that, yes,” she answered heavily.

“So I wondered… I kind of was relieved when you broke it off, but now I’m thinking we were both too hasty. We had a good thing going, and I should have talked you out of it, instead of feeling—”

“Gordon McConnell…!”

“Not to insult you, or anything.”

“Because you were kind of relieved?” She plated two ribeyes, and threw a glance over the grill to see if anything else needed flipping.

“I just— You make me nervous, Reb.”

“What do you mean by that?” Her anger rose inside her.

“You scare me. The way you’re so— But that’s okay. If you could just—”

“Let’s get this straight, here! Are you asking me to change, so that you could stand to marry me, so that we could keep Seven Mile in the family?”

He blinked his light blue eyes. “Just tone down a bit. Don’t feel stuff so much. Don’t get so emotional and passionate about everything. Is all. Makes me nervous. See, you’re doing it now!”

Damn right she was!

Damn right she was emotional!

And apparently it showed. The clenched teeth and the half growl, half shriek that escaped from between the clenched teeth gave a clue.

“I don’t think we should get married, Gordie,” she said. With difficulty, she kept the lid on the passion that he regretfully, tactfully, didn’t want as part of the Rebecca Grant package.

He flinched a little, then argued, “But you want to keep the ranch.”

He’d always been persistent.

“No, I don’t,” she yelled, over the hiss of cooking steak. “I spent all day today, showing that buyer over the place, and he’s ideal. Rich. Smart. Experienced.”

Interesting. Complex. Hot.

“If he’s serious, I couldn’t be happier,” she went on. “Mom and Dad deserve to have the best lifestyle they can, down in Florida. I’m glad I scare you, Gordie, because you’re beginning to scare me!”

“So now you know how it feels. Just tone down. I care about you. You know that. We’re good together.”

They were terrible together!

They’d been terrible together for more years than she cared to count, and they’d always had more habit than passion in the mix. She hadn’t questioned this because he rode so well and he ranched so well. He had the organizational skills, number skills and money skills that she lacked. On paper, he was perfect for her, and his ranch was right across the fence.

And she’d been holding her breath about Mom’s health for so long, she hadn’t wanted to rock any boats. Wanting to stay safe, she’d hidden her head in the sand, but safety had proved an illusion.

She couldn’t even remember the immediate trigger that had prompted her to tell him it was over. Thinking back, she decided there wasn’t one.

They hadn’t had a fight. She hadn’t met someone else. She’d just reached some invisible line in the sand and cracked.

Exploded.

And the fallout and shrapnel was still in the air. She’d realized that this wasn’t her life. Watching Gordie Mc-Connell sit on a bar stool drinking beer while she cooked, telling her to “tone down” just wasn’t her life.

He’d said the toning down thing to her before, she remembered, but she’d never understood what he meant, never paid it the right attention. And it might be someone else’s life, but it wasn’t hers.

So what’s mine?

She didn’t know.

Meanwhile, Gordie hung out in the kitchen for another half hour, while in her mind Reba watched the pieces of her exploded self still hanging in the air. She had no idea where they would eventually fall, and she didn’t trust this odd new intuition that Lucas Halliday could somehow help her find out.

She felt a sudden need to explore the intuition, all the same.

As arranged, Lucas arrived at Seven Mile early the next morning in his rental car.

Reba had told him she’d show him the shortcut from the ranch down to Steamboat Springs. On the way back, they would make a couple of detours. He wanted to look at trout streams and hunt down the elusive herd of wild horses that roamed the Medicine Bow Range. The round trip would probably take a good six hours, apparently, plus a stop for lunch, so she’d suggested they start at seven.

She seemed different, this morning, he thought.

The same electric current ran through her veins that he’d seen in her all of yesterday, but today it was… Bolder? More open? Less angry, but even more determined. She was proving something to somebody, with those sparking eyes and that jutting jaw. Lucas didn’t know what it was, or who she was proving it to, and maybe she didn’t, either, but it was a pretty impressive sight.

Today, he drove while she navigated. He thought they might clash over the new roles, but they didn’t. She told him where to turn in plenty of time, which let him relax and focus on the drive.

And on her.

The Indian summer temperature was forecast to flare even higher today. She wore shorts in anticipation, although at this hour a dawn chill still lay on the land. The honey-beige of the shorts matched the tan on her legs and drew his attention to how long and smooth they were, stretching down to a newer, shinier version of yesterday’s boots.

A baggy, dark navy sweatshirt hid the rest of her. Its round neckline half covered a thin gold chain she hadn’t been wearing yesterday, and showed the occasional glimpse of something white—a tank-top shoulder strap, or possibly her bra.

She had her hair looped and knotted at the back, with some sexy little tendrils already escaping. She even wore makeup. It made her eyes more startling than ever in their unusual color. Her lips were darker and redder, and he noticed them every time she spoke, every time he dared take his eyes from the road to look sideways.

Yesterday, she’d dressed down for him. Today, she’d apparently dressed up, in her own way, for wild horses and Steamboat Springs.

Heck, how long was it since he’d met a woman who considered polished riding boots a big step up on the fashion ladder?

For most of the drive, he forgot to think about what Dad or Raine would want if they were here. Raine hated hair-raising roads with no guardrails and steep drops. She hated getting dust on the car. Actually the car rental company might not be too thrilled about that, either.

Hair-raising roads with no guard rails and steep drops didn’t seem to trouble Reba Grant. The temperature climbed and she took off her sweatshirt. Yes, the white fabric did belong to a tank-top—a little stretchy cotton thing with a triangular panel of lace in front. It fit snugly over her curves and her ribs, and he could faintly see the pretty shape of a white bra beneath it.

Using the discarded sweatshirt for a pillow behind her head, she slid her seat back and stretched her long legs out in front. She pointed out wildlife and vistas and potholes in the road with a combination of familiarity and fresh interest that sparked his own curiosity.

“You sat up like a startled cat just now, but you must have seen elk around here before.”

“Sometimes you forget to look, when you’ve seen something before. You take it for granted. I told myself I wasn’t going to do that today.”

“Because you’re selling? Because you won’t be here any more? I thought you were staying in Biggins.”

“I want to. Wanted to,” Reba corrected herself.

Yesterday, she would have resented Lucas probing her on personal issues like this. Today, she wanted to talk, and still had last night’s odd sense that he could be the right person to listen.

Something about his eyes.

The perception.

The blunt honesty.

He’d talked about bulldozing her home. Bluntness could be refreshing, sometimes. It could be necessary. Even if she got angry with him, anger could give clarity, the way it had last night, with Gordie. She couldn’t simply wait for the explosion in her life to settle. She had to go out and look for the pieces.

“I didn’t really consider the alternatives,” she went on. “I don’t want to move to Florida. I’m not sure what there would be for me there. I love this country.” She took a breath of the mint-clean morning air flooding through the half-open window. “But I don’t want to end up twenty years from now, still a short-order cook at the same restaurant, with corns on my feet and dreams that faded before I even knew I had them—”

“Can’t picture you like that, for sure.”

“—because I never had the courage or took the time to really think about the future. This is a—a huge turning point. I don’t want to just let it happen to me.”

His glance arrowed across in her direction. As usual he seemed to take her whole soul in at a glance. And her whole body. “You don’t want your father to sell the ranch. That’s clear. Jim Broadbent said your mother’s health made the decision. She has lupus, right?”

“Systemic Lupus Erythematosis, yes.”

She hated the disease, hated its long, unpronounceable name. Some people called it SLE, which was snappy, at least. It had variable, wandering symptoms that were unique to each person. It had unpredictable phases of exacerbation and remission, and it could kill Mom eventually, if her kidneys failed or the disease reached other vital organs. Those worst case scenarios might not occur for years, or ever, but she’d never be cured.

“And your dad wouldn’t consider leaving the place for you to run?”

“No, they need the money. But I couldn’t run it. My brain’s not built that way.”

“You seem pretty bright to me, and totally at home around the ranch.”

“It’s not just about doing the right chores at the right time. It’s a business. You’d know that. I don’t have a business brain. I’d have to get a really competent manager, which would eat up too much cash flow, on top of the wages for the hands and everything else.”

“It could still be a profitable enterprise.”

“All my parents’ assets are tied up in Seven Mile Creek, and if they don’t sell, they’ll have to rent in Florida, and watch their pennies. Mom’s medical bills are getting higher every year. No, the ranch has to be sold.”

“But you’d prefer a local buyer, not me,” Lucas said, pushing Reba a little. He wanted all of this clear, and out in the open. He wanted to understand the sources of this woman’s anger, her unhappiness, and her fight.

Her voice dropped and slowed and took on a throaty quality he knew she couldn’t control, and maybe didn’t even hear. She ran her palm down her bare thigh and he heard the light friction of her work-roughened skin. Palms like cardboard, legs like silk, inner thighs like whipped cream melting over apple—

Hell, he had to stop thinking about her this way…didn’t he?

Did he?

Maybe she wanted him to.

Her eyes glared at him a lot, but the rest of her body said something different. Powerfully. His groin tightened and filled even more, and he stared ahead at the road, not daring to look sideways, in case he gave too much away. Or in case he caught fire.

She tilted her head, smiled a little, like a slow dawn breaking. “Actually, I’m getting used to you,” she said.

All the way through brunch at Steamboat, a look around the resort, and a failed attempt to find the wild horses, all through the winding drive back, Reba felt the exhilarating prick of danger in Lucas Halliday’s company.

Just yesterday, her emotional compass had been arrowed toward a hopeless need to protect the ranch, to protect the childhood she’d loved by staving off this big city buyer until a better one came along—a buyer like Gordie McConnell would have been, if he’d had the money, or the right claim on her heart.

She had wanted a buyer who would come into the steakhouse every night, regular as clockwork, tell her how the place was going and listen to everything she said about keeping it the same.

Today, everything was different.

Gordie was the only lover she’d ever had. He’d been in her life too long, and had stopped her from seeing her future clearly. That was her fault as much as his, and she had to do something about it. Lucas Halliday seemed like part of the answer. She knew he wouldn’t be looking for anything beyond a short-lived flirtation. Why not respond, just a little, just to see how it felt?

It needn’t go very far.

And yet if it did…

She’d never felt this way about a near-stranger before—this awareness that he wanted her and she wanted him, on a raw, physical level, immune to any other considerations. It made her dizzy, hungry, exultant, scared. The right kind of scared. Full of adrenaline and courage. She found that she liked it.

Back at the ranch after their long morning of touring in the car, he was ready to get on horseback right away, so she changed into jeans and her scuffed riding boots and took him out to the stable. She gave him her own mare, Ruby, while she took her father’s gelding, Moe. Lucas hadn’t big-noted his riding skills, but he found his way around the tack room without asking dumb questions, and mounted the sixteen-hand animal with ease. He’d be all right.

Reba loved this ride up to the cabin, and they couldn’t have picked a better day for it. The fields shimmered in the heat and the air was scratchy with dust. However, once the horses had splashed through a shallow section of the stream to reach the forested mountain slopes beyond, the shade beneath the ponderosas struck cool on her hot body.

Neither she nor Lucas spoke very much as they rode. Saddles creaked, insects buzzed, horse shoes clapped like scattered applause on earth and grass and rock. Knowing the route, Reba led the way. She only turned back once in a while, to warn Lucas about a tricky section or point out something of interest.

It must have been around three in the afternoon, or a little later, when they reached the cabin, but she hadn’t worn a watch, so she didn’t know for sure. Dismounting, she looped Moe’s reins around an old-fashioned hitching post, and Lucas did the same. She swung her day pack clear of her shoulders and brought out some carrots and apples as treats for the horses. They began to crunch on the offerings loudly.

Pretending to be absorbed in feeding them, and chewing on one of the two apples she’d saved, she watched Lucas covertly. He shaded his amber eyes with his hand and looked back the way they’d come. He had a folded crease in one leg of his bone-colored pants, after their ride, echoing the softer, darker crease he’d have in his skin, at just about the same point, where his thigh met his backside.

His back had to be hot under his black T-shirt, and he should be wearing a hat. The tan on that curve of neck would turn red, soon. Reba had sunblock in her day pack. She could offer him some. He would stretch his jaw and smooth the white liquid around that long, brown column, before handing the fragrant plastic bottle back to her. She could watch every movement.

She didn’t make the offer.

What had captured his interest, down below, anyhow? You couldn’t see the house or the outbuildings from here, but you could see the Bailey field and the Upper Creek field and a section of the road leading into Biggins. Felt as if they had to be a good two miles or more from the nearest human being.

Her heart shifted and sank. Maybe that was his exact thought. He’d probably consider it way too isolated, up here. His interest in the ranch, on his father’s behalf, would turn out to be a frivolous city slicker impulse, and wouldn’t survive this afternoon of reality.

“This place have electricity?” he asked, confirming her fear as he turned and came toward her again.

“Generator.”

“And tanked roof runoff for water.” He’d obviously seen the galvanized piping, and the tank that stood behind the cabin.

“It’s not meant for year-round living.” She heard defensiveness raising the pitch of her voice. “If you want your stepmother to have her white Christmas here, you’ll need to haul some firewood. See, here’s where the vehicle track comes out. We didn’t take that, because it’s longer, but you can get a pickup along it, or snowmobiles in winter. Easy.”

He only nodded, walked over and stood at the head of the track, looking down it as far as the first bend. Turning again, he said, “Shall we take a look inside?”

“Sure.”

Lucas let Reba go ahead of him, watching the tight way she held her body, the tight way she walked. He wanted to tell her it was okay, he wasn’t going to get put off a major purchase because of one outdated hunting shack.

And even if he did decide against the place, on his father’s behalf, Jim Broadbent was right. A buyer would show up soon. She could relax. Meanwhile, whatever happened with the sale, he had no intention of riding rough-shod over her feelings.

He almost reached out to her with the same touch of support and understanding that she’d rejected yesterday when they’d spotted the dead beast, but she was too far in front, and the chance was lost.

For the moment.

But after the way she’d flirted with him in the car, his whole body was primed by the physical stretch of the recent ride and ached for its next opportunity.

The cabin wasn’t locked, of course. The porch floorboards resonated beneath her feet, and by the time he’d stepped onto it behind her, she’d rattled the old door handle and swung the door open. He’d expected a dusty, musty interior, with dirt-misted window panes, uneven floors and shabby furnishings, but it wasn’t like that at all.

“I came up here two days ago, cleaned it and aired it out,” she explained. She’d even put fresh flowers in a couple of vases. There was the smell of lavender in the air. The furniture was old, true, but of good quality, and there were new throw pillows and slipcovers on the couch and two armchairs. The kitchen, also, must have been modernized only about ten years ago.

The old fireplace had been replaced with a modern, glass-fronted wood-burning stove. It was fan-forced, and would give out fantastic heat. You could slide the Persian-style rug closer, arrange the throw pillows in a heap on top, and sit here in front of it.

Toasting marshmallows.

Baking potatoes wrapped in foil.

Making love.

Hard to imagine, on an eighty-five-degree day, that such heat could be needed, but Lucas knew that temperatures could drop to thirty below, up here. Raine’s white Christmas was a pretty safe bet.

The rooms were way too cramped for Raine’s taste, though. He and Reba stood within touching distance because they had little choice. The windows were too small and the ceilings were too low. His stepmother would claim claustrophobia and boredom within a day.

Bulldoze the log cabin, too?

Absolutely not! Raine could build a new one, open plan, with twenty-foot ceilings, acres of glass and satellite TV, in some ostentatious location. Lucas would lay claim to this place for himself—his cut of the purchase, his finder’s fee. It was an irrational, emotional impulse, and he wasn’t sure why he felt it so strongly. He knew it didn’t make sense. He knew it wasn’t even his decision to make.

What was happening, here?

Too much.

More than flirtation.

Already, he understood more than he wanted to about why Reba’s roots ran so deep into this soil.

“Do you want to see upstairs?” she asked him.

“Please.” Sounded as if he were begging, and maybe he was.

She went ahead, denim rear end rocking as usual, and he followed closely, unable to tear himself free of her aura, so that when she suddenly turned and spoke, he was right behind. “I should have showed you the—”

The point she broke off was the point where his hand landed on her hip. Her body softened in an instant, and swayed toward him. Her eyes widened and went dark. Since he was one step below, her mouth was level with his, and only an inch away. He could feel her breath cooling his lip. She didn’t attempt to increase the distance.

Good.

They’d gotten to this, at last.

He hadn’t been sure that they would, and her huge eyes told him it might already be more than she’d expected.

He anchored her other hip in place, to keep the rest of her where she was, and watched her lips press together, then part again. She had another, more determined and even more doomed attempt at saying what she’d wanted to say before. “While we were downstairs, I should have showed you the—” Then she stopped again.

“Just show me the bedroom.” His voice rasped, and the last word lost itself on her mouth.

Her lips were as warm and sweet as ripe fruit. They responded just the way he’d known they would. He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to look, he only wanted to taste and feel. She stayed in place, thighs pressed to his groin, which meant she had to know just what her body had already done to him.

Oh, yes, she knew! She was overwhelmed by it, but she knew.

Did she know that she’d begun to shimmy against him, too? Her hips slid and rocked, slid and rocked. The movement went just an inch or two either way, and was oh-so-slow, but it made him throb and want to lunge. Her breasts, in their thin covering of lace and stretch cotton, jutted softly against his chest and he imagined her nipples, pebbled as hard as he was, from the slow friction between them.

How would they look, her nipples? Puckered with need? Definitely! Big and dark, or dainty and pink? He didn’t care either way, he just wanted to know, see, touch and kiss.

“Show me the bed,” he said.

Without waiting for her answer, he deepened the kiss, tangling his tongue in her mouth. He tasted the fresh, sweet apple she’d withheld from the horses several minutes ago. He abandoned her hips and slid his hands higher, trailed his fingertips across her breasts and thought, “Yes! I knew it. Like cherry stones.”

She sank back with her spine arched. Suddenly she was seated on the wooden tread of the stairs, reaching up for him, eyes half-closed and hair threatening to tumble from its high knot. He went after her, chasing the taste of her mouth, chasing her body heat. He ended up bracing his fingers on the stair edge, his weight looming over her.

She pulled him lower. His face fell between her breasts and she gasped and threw her head to one side. He felt the heat-perfumed mass of her hair drift onto his hand. The soft mounds of her breasts against his cheeks and nose and lips felt like warm satin.

Her thighs parted and squeezed his ribs, half supporting him while he rolled a little. He slid her top up, clumsy with desire. Cupping her with one hand, he thumbed her hardened nipple, then replaced his thumb with his mouth, through a lace and net bra.

She dragged herself back, higher up the stairs, and held his face between her hands. Her eyes were still enormous, filled with a wild light and a soft flame of doubt. Throbbing, damming himself back, he realized she was still debating this. He pressed his lips together, struggling with a code of honor that said it had to be her own decision, made freely.

“Okay, I’ll show you the bed,” she said at last, on another gasp of air.

Her fingers feathered up his neck and into his hair and she stretched to kiss him, her mouth hungry and full of promise. Lucas discovered he was shaking, and that he hadn’t breathed for the entire time she’d studied his face.

They scrambled the rest of the way up the stairs, breathless. There were just two bedrooms built into the roof line, both of them small, and he had to duck his head through the low doorway of the slightly larger one. Beside a double bed covered in fresh white sheets and a faded patchwork quilt, Reba crossed her arms, pulled her tank top over her head and unsnapped her bra.

Both garments fell to the floor in a pale heap and she turned to face him, straight-backed, arms at her sides, giving him the sight of her bare breasts and peaked nipples like a gift. Her eyes were huge and her breath came in shallow pants.

And he knew so totally that she just—didn’t—do—this, she just didn’t bring men to this cabin to make love, on a regular basis, or ever. Letting her make the decision on her own wasn’t enough.

Not with a woman like Reba.

He knew what he wanted. Even if the corporation didn’t buy the ranch, he wanted a piece of it to take away with him. He wanted a piece of Reba Grant, her passion and her intensity, to take away with him in the form of his memory of how she’d feel in his arms, writhing beneath his touch.

But knowing what he wanted wasn’t good enough.

Instead of wrapping himself around her as he wanted to, instead of lifting her against him and pulling at her jeans, he allowed himself just one soft brush of his knuckles across those jutting gifts. They were fuller and rounder than he’d expected them to be, with the crests even bigger and darker than his imagination had painted them.

Then he placed his hands on the knobs of her shoulders, looked into her eyes and said, “Wait.”

She seemed to understand exactly why he’d stopped. Instead of taking it as a way out, however, or even giving herself any further pause for thought, she lifted her chin, looked at him with narrowed, glittering eyes and said, “No.”

“Why, Reba?”

“Because I want this. And so do you. Don’t ask questions. Do me the courtesy of believing I know what I want.”

“I’m not offering anything beyond—”

“I’m not asking for anything beyond. This is now. That’s all. It’s more than I—way more than I expected, even an hour ago, but—” she made her hand into a fist over her stomach “—it feels right, here. It feels necessary.”

For another moment Lucas hesitated, and Reba felt the possibility of rejection slam into her.

Could he?

He couldn’t!

He wanted this every bit as much as she did. She knew that. He hadn’t denied it. The only way he’d reject her would be if some decent, chivalrous, protective instinct overcame him, and he decided that his making love to her right now was a favor she’d be better off without.

Despite the depth she’d glimpsed in him yesterday, Reba wasn’t convinced that a corporate prince like Lucas Halliday possessed any such chivalrous instincts. She certainly didn’t want him to possess them, right now. Gordie McConnell had them, and she was sick of them! Lucas was accurate in what he suspected about her narrow previous experience, and she didn’t want that to get in the way.

Yes, Lucas, you’re right, I’ve never done anything like this before.

Anything like this.

She and Gordie had made love, yes, but Gordie would never have done so in the middle of a working day, with no advance planning, in a location not previously designated as appropriate. And that burned her. So much about her life, and the crossroads she’d reached in it, burned her right now.

Dear Lord, she was nearly twenty-seven years old, she was about to have her home pulled out from under her like an old blanket off a horse’s back. She was going to make love to Lucas now—a rough analysis of her mental calendar told her it should be safe—and she’d think about the ramifications later. She was going to do this before something in her soul atrophied into dry wood and she lost the ability to even imagine a different life for herself, let alone go out and find it!

“There’s no doubt you know what you want.” Lucas’s voice caught on several of his words, and she felt his gaze on her peaked nipples like a caress. “Don’t you care what I want?”

“If you don’t want this…me…my body, then there’s been something very wrong with your signals, since yesterday.” She drew in a deep breath, felt her breasts lift, saw his tongue lap against his lower lip. His jeans strained at the front. He stepped closer to her, but not close enough.

“I’m talking about the ranch,” he said.

“You think this is about—” Anger tightened her scalp. She dragged in a shaky breath and tried again. “You think I’m trying to sell you the ranch, right now, with this? That’s— That’s—”

“No! Hell, no, Reba!” Another step, urgent, that brought him toe to toe against her. He slid his hands up to her elbows. “I just wanted you to consider whether doing this—making love—” the word melted on his tongue like syrup “—would feel different if you knew my decision on the purchase.”

Again, she didn’t hesitate. “If you’ve made a decision, I don’t want to know. Because it wouldn’t make a difference. Okay?”

He nodded, touched her hair, her neck, let his hand trail lower, and bent his head to her mouth. “Yeah, you’re right, I guess,” he said, on a soft growl. “Wouldn’t make a difference to me, either.”

For the first time, she held him. She ran her palms up his strong back, and learned the pattern of his muscles, on either side of his spine. She helped him wrench the unwanted T-shirt up and over his head, put her tongue to her fingertip then, looking down, touched the moisture to his nipples. They hardened into little beads as it evaporated, and she felt a coil of pleasure and satisfaction deep inside.

She could do this to a man. She could do this to Lucas Halliday. And she wanted to do a whole lot more.

“Tell me what you like,” she said, branding him with kisses between every phrase. “Show me. Touch me in all the places you want. With your hands. With your mouth. Teach me, Lucas.”

“Hell, haven’t you ever—?”

“Yes. Yes, I have. But not like this. Nothing like this.” She reached for the front of his pants, fumbling a little as she snapped them open. She began to ease the zipper down, and he took a hissing breath. “Did I catch you?” she asked.

“No. Keep going. Yes, like that.”

She did, even more slowly, feeling the straining ridge of cloth and man pushing at her hand. When he was free, she slid trousers and underwear down in one movement. She dropped low in front of him and let her mouth explore the texture of his thigh on the way. She knew exactly where he wanted to be touched, but kept that pleasure from him, stringing it out.

He couldn’t stand it, pulled her back up and hauled her toward him so that they were pressed together from her breasts to her knees. His thigh eased between her legs, and she knew how hot she must feel to him, how full and ready.

“Take off your boots and your jeans,” he said. “Let me look at you.”

The old bed creaked as he sat and levered his own boots off. He kicked them beneath the bed, beyond the hem of the quilt, and she did the same. Then he watched while she shimmied her jeans down her hips, and she could tell he liked everything he saw.

“I didn’t…uh…come equipped for this,” he said, reaching for her. “If we need to set limits, can we set them now?”

“It’s okay. The timing is— No limits.” She brushed his mouth with hers, lifted his hands and brought them to her breasts.

“None?”

“Anything that feels good. Anything that’s a part of this.”

“Touching you, Reba, that’s everything.”

They kissed until her bones softened to liquid, and she no longer knew where her body ended and his began. His mouth was everywhere. She gripped him the way she’d have gripped a bolting horse, only who was bolting, who was out of control? Him, or her?

She leaned back on her hands and he knelt in front of her, on the braided woollen rug, trailing his lips down her jaw, her neck, to her breasts and beyond, to her sweet core. She bucked and twisted and sank into the bed, clenched her fists against the flood that swept her away, then felt him slide higher and seek entry. She was so swollen and ready that he slipped into her in a single movement, and a sound wrenched out of him, making his body vibrate against her chest.

“Reba, you’re so beautiful, so strong. The way you moved just now…”

He thrust and she rocked, clinging to him, digging her fingers into the muscles of his back. She loved his weight on top of her and the almond smell of his hair in every breath she took.

Their climax came freely, and ebbed in a series of aftershocks that jerked both their bodies like whips. Reba didn’t know what to say, whether to say anything at all, so she kissed him again, touching her mouth to his softly, as if each kiss was a word of tenderness or thanks.

“Hey…” he finally whispered.

“Hey,” she answered back.