After a year apart, and a month’s wait to marry her, having all of her nakedness pressed against him was the purest pleasure.
He gathered the ends of her hair with his free hand, studying the dark lines of it against the fainter lines of his palm. He would wake like this every morning for the rest of his life. He would sleep as serenely as he had last night every night for the rest of his life. Contentment rippled within him.
Releasing her hair, he simply enjoyed the rhythm of their entwined breaths, the slip of her skin against his, the slow beat of his heart in his ears. He could almost be lulled back to sleep like this…
She raised her head slowly, those dark eyes solemn without the protection of their spectacles.
“Good morning,” he said gravely.
Was that the correct way to greet a wife? He wasn’t certain.
“Good morning,” she said just as gravely.
“Did you sleep well?”
A smile curved her mouth, her lips still rosy from their exertions of last night. “As well as you did.”
He smiled in return. “Then very well indeed.”
Yes, this was the way to greet a wife, with gentle teasing and a reminder of the night before.
“What shall we do today, wife of mine?”
“Hmm.” She trailed a hand down his torso, scattering his thoughts. “Breakfast, of course, and after, we should continue our search for a house.”
“Certainly.” A little strained, but her hand was in a very sensitive spot indeed.
“But first”—she rolled to her back, tugging him along to raise him over her—“you have some duties to attend to.”
A command. Now this was the way to greet a husband in the morning.
“Of course.” He began to kiss his way down the slender length of her, lapping up the taste of her skin. “What kind of house shall we have?”
She lifted to meet his lips. “Close to the streetcar, so you can travel to work easily. How lucky for you they needed an experienced marshal so badly they were willing to overlook your resignation in Los Angeles.”
“Being a celebrated hero has its uses. Besides, how was I to know I would miss being a marshal until I wasn’t one?”
“Better to serve an imperfect justice than none at all?”
“Exactly.”
He’d come to that realization after some weeks of pondering what he might do next. After all, he was the marshal.
But he was also Sebastian.
“Mmm,” she replied. “The house should be large enough that we’ll need at least two maids.”
He smiled into her stomach. “As many maids as you like, all to wait on you, wife of mine.”
He’d give her all of that and more—she would never want as his wife. And books… He’d give her books the way other men gave their wives flowers.
She squirmed as his breath dusted her skin, and tapped his head. “No tickling. It will need to have a large library.”
“Of course.” He moved lower, spreading her knees apart as he did. “We will take all the papers, even those in languages we don’t speak.” He nipped at the softness of her inner thigh, running his tongue to the hot, wet center of her.
She made a noise beyond language, the kind of noise Eve must have made when Adam first did this, before the words for it existed.
“And roses,” she gasped. “As many roses as we can plant.”
“As many as you like,” he whispered as she writhed beneath him. “Anything and everything for you, my heart, my love. My Isabel.”
Thank You!
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* * *
For a sneak peek at The Sheriff Takes a Bride, turn the page!
The Sheriff Takes a Bride
When a surly sheriff butts heads with an unstoppable woman, sparks fly.
* * *
When an outlaw’s bullet ends his career—and almost takes his life—Sheriff Joaquin Obregon locks himself away from the rest of the world. But when a stubborn woman comes into his life, refusing to take no for an answer, he finds himself wanting to say yes…to her.
* * *
Mary Margaret McCallahan is proud of her skills as a nurse, but she’s never had a patient as difficult as this gruff, handsome sheriff. She’s going to bring him back into the world no matter how much he grumbles—or how attractive she finds him.
* * *
The battle lines are drawn, and only love can win.
* * *
Available Now!
San Jacinto Mountains, California
Autumn, 1899
* * *
The bedpan hitting the floor was the first indication that Mary Margaret McCallahan’s teatime was about to be interrupted.
She knew it was a bedpan by the deep metallic clatter as it bounced across the hardwood floors. You didn’t spend two years working in a sanatorium—and five as a nurse—without learning to recognize that sound. The depth of it suggested the bedpan was empty. Thank the Lord for small mercies.
Mae set down her tea and looked at Sally across the table in the nurses’ parlor. Sally’s gaze never lifted from her book as Mae took another bite. Roast beef. Very nice. “I think that came from Mr. Obregon’s room,” she said between bites.
Sally kept her eyes on the page. “It’s your turn to deal with him.”
Mae sighed. It was her turn to deal with him, but of all the thankless tasks a nurse had at the Pine Ridge Sanatorium, dealing with Joaquin Obregon was, in her opinion, the most thankless. A man as handsome as all that shouldn’t be so infuriating.
Well, he’d just have to wait until she was done. The first thing she’d learned in childhood was to fill her belly when she could. Mae could never ignore a lesson taught so often and so well.
It wasn’t as if Mr. Obregon needed any help, truly. Personally, she thought the only thing afflicting Mr. Obregon was his own sense of self-pity. Certainly a year ago, when he’d first come to the sanatorium, he’d been grievously wounded. But there was nothing wrong with him now that a little more activity and a little less sullenness wouldn’t cure.
But the nurses at the most exclusive sanatorium in Southern California weren’t paid to give their true opinion of their patients—they were expected to give the patients exactly what they wanted.
Mae set aside her cooling tea and rose, the keys at her belt jingling. Sally never once looked up—she must be at a good part.
With one last glance in the mirror to ensure her starched white cap was in its proper place, Mae went off to check on her least favorite patient.
She sailed down the halls at a fair clip, taking note of the general condition of the place. The walls hadn’t even the slightest smudge, the floors were bright with a fresh waxing, and there wasn’t a hint of dust. Exactly as the nursing textbooks recommended.
Keeping the sanatorium running in the most perfect manner possible wasn’t solely her duty—it was also her pride. The better she displayed her capability here, the sooner she’d be offered the chance to leave.
Mae stopped dead when a bit of cold passed across her skin. Was that a draft? Proper airflow was of the utmost importance—drafts were to be eliminated immediately. But no more chilled air slid along her. Nothing to worry over then.
As she approached Mr. Obregon’s room, a tall, rather severe-looking lady hurried out of it. It took Mae a moment to realize it was his fiancée leaving, dressed almost too fancily and wearing a hat that likely cost more than Mae made in a month.
A full year with no sign of this fiancée, and now she was back. How do you like that?
Mae never had liked the lady. First, the woman had made the poor man leave his bed when he was only just recovering in order to stop a lynching. Considering that the mob was about to string up the very man who’d shot Mr. Ob
regon, Mae thought that a rather severe request to make of him, his condition notwithstanding. And after Mr. Obregon had risked his life in her mad scheme, the woman had had the gall to move off to San Francisco.
The fiancée stumbled out and down the hall without even a glance toward Mae. Typical. Mae might have been a rather annoying piece of furniture for all the consideration the woman had ever given her. And now she was throwing bedpans and expecting Mae to clean them up. Well, fie on her.
Mae bustled into his room, putting on her mask of nursely efficiency. “Is everything all right?” Her voice was all sunny sincerity, not a hint of annoyance in it. She couldn’t afford to display her true feelings—she wasn’t wealthy enough to toss bedpans in a fit of temper.
Mr. Obregon sat on the bed, his face turned toward the wall and away from the afternoon sunlight coming through the window. The quality of light in California never ceased to amaze her, so different from that in New York. She couldn’t help but stare at times.
Her patient didn’t bother to acknowledge her, simply kept his head averted. His mood was as dark as his hair today, it seemed. Although his mood was dark most days.
She spied the bedpan in a corner on the floor. “I’ll just take this away,” she chirped, sweet as a little bird. “You’ve no need of a bedpan. You haven’t for quite some time.”
She’d squatted down to grasp the pan, her fingers curling around the cold enamel when she heard him speak from behind her.
“My fiancée is getting married.” Such a lovely, deep voice he had, and so ruined by the character of the man using it.
“Oh?” she answered as she straightened. “Has she taken up with the Mormons in San Bernardino? I always thought it was one man, many wives for their kind, but perhaps they’re branching out into one woman, many husbands.”
“My former fiancée,” he amended without turning from the wall.
She suddenly felt a right fool, holding a bedpan in her hands and talking to a man’s back about such intimate things and making jokes about Mormons.
“Who is she marrying?” she asked gently. She ought to leave, but he did look so vulnerable. She’d learned in nursing school that compassion must always be tempered by practicality. A nurse who lavished too much compassion on each patient soon found herself without any compassion left.
But she found she had more than enough for him at the moment.
“Do you remember when we stopped that mob a year back?”
Did she remember? It was only the most terrifying memory of her adult life. Growing up destitute in the slums of New York had been frightening enough, but she’d never had to face down an armed mob with a man recently snatched from near death.
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the lawman? That marshal?”
She couldn’t forget him either. “The one holding them off with a shotgun? The one who was shot?”
It had been a terrible night in every respect. Mr. Obregon and that fiancée of his—former fiancée—had driven off the mob with a clever ruse after the men had threatened to hang both the outlaw and the marshal. That outlaw had shot the marshal anyway once the mob was gone. Mae had only just gotten the marshal back to the sanatorium and into the doctor’s hands in time to prevent him from bleeding to death.
Her fingers trembled on the cold enamel of the basin at the memory, although her hands had been rock steady that night as she’d saved the marshal from bleeding to death.
“The very same.” Mr. Obregon turned a little toward her, revealing a freshly shaved cheek the color of varnished oak. “She’s marrying that man. Is already married to that man.”
“But how?” Mae couldn’t hold on to that exclamation.
She remembered the fiancée’s screams tearing through the dark of that night as the marshal had fallen. Mae had surmised the woman was simply prone to hysterics, but now she read something deeper.
“I don’t understand,” she said as she frowned down at the bedpan. “Wasn’t he at the trial a month back? And she in San Francisco?”
“He was.” As wearily spoken as the set of Mr. Obregon’s shoulders.
Mr. Obregon had been there as well, testifying as the outlaw was tried for the attempted murder of the marshal. The man had been given twenty years in prison for it.
“That marshal,” he continued, “went all the way to Mexico to capture that man. He brought him back to face justice. And the entire time I was here.” A soft exhale. “He snatched up the fugitive and now he’s snatched up Isabel.”
Mae felt a surprising surge of anger. After all he’d done for that woman—taking a bullet, stopping a mob—and she was now marrying the very man who’d protected that scum from the vigilantes? Mr. Obregon might have also wished to stop the mob, but that didn’t mean his fiancée had to marry that other man.
“Another lawman? She must like those.” She didn’t bother to keep the disdain out of her voice.
“I suppose.” The defeat in his voice made her angry all over again at that woman—and at him for taking this so hard. “Although I am a former lawman now.”
She wished with all her heart that Sally had put down her stupid book and come to handle this, because she was about to do something very reckless—she was about to reveal her true feelings on the matter. “Well, she’s a sly bit, make no mistake.” She gestured with the bedpan to illustrate just how sly. “No better than she has to be. That woman ought to have stood by you.”
He turned and her traitorous heart skipped a beat as it usually did. Thick black hair topped a face that could have come straight from a men’s fashion plate, with eyes the color of oversteeped tea, a commanding nose, and a well-sculpted mouth unobscured by a moustache. Too bad his personality wasn’t nearly as handsome as his face.
“You do know that I was the one to break off the engagement?” He sounded as if this were common knowledge, something she ought to have learned in primary school. As if she were stupid.
Her face flamed and she regretted her words even more. “No, and how was I supposed to know? I’m a nurse, not some small-town gossip.”
One of his fine eyebrows quirked up. “They don’t gossip in New York?”
She wasn’t discussing New York with this spoiled pretty boy. This was what happened when you tried to be nice to him—he went nasty on you. “Is there anything else you require, sir?” she chirped, acid burning her tongue.
He turned back to the wall. “No. You may leave.”
* * *
Available Now!
A Cowboy of Her Own
Introducing a new series: A Cowboy of Her Own! Follow the romantic adventures of a new, modern generation of Morenos and Merrills in present-day Cabrillo. (Want to know how everyone’s related? Check out the family tree on my website!)
* * *
First in the series is Her Billionaire Rancher Boss, available now:
* * *
She’s handed in her resignation—but this wealthy rancher is ready to offer her another position…
* * *
Benedict Merrill is handsome, wealthy, and the perfect cowboy. Unfortunately for Pilar Lopez, he’s also her boss, which means he’s completely off limits. She has no plans to seduce him, at least not outside of her wildest fantasies.
* * *
But when she hands in her resignation, Benedict reveals plans of his own—ones that involve Pilar in his bed. She can handle a short-term affair no sweat. But when she starts to fall for Benedict, will she be able to handle loving him for always?
* * *
Turn the page for a sneak peek!
Her Billionaire Rancher Boss
Pilar Lopez tucked the envelope behind her tablet computer, shifting the corners this way and that. And never completely concealing it.
Could he see it? That was all that mattered.
He being her boss, Benedict Merrill. Sitting behind his desk in a bright white button-down shirt, long legs stretched out before him in starched and pressed Wranglers. She couldn’t see from here, but
she imagined his battered black ropers were crossed at the ankle.
When a man ran one of the largest cattle-ranches-turned-hotel-and-resort in Southern California—not to mention the stock horse operation—he could wear Western business casual to work. Not that Benedict was casual. He was tough, efficient, almost cold.
Too bad his demeanor didn’t chill her attraction to him.
Only three more months. As soon as you give him that letter.
But not now. He was frowning—not at her, but at some expense report. Not a good time then.
She’d only been telling herself that for a week.
Today. She would definitely do it today. Just not at this particular moment.
“Tell Liliana,” he said in his deep voice, “that the feed bill for her horses was too damn high this month. I don’t know what she’s feeding them, but it sure ain’t alfalfa based on the price I saw. She needs to get a better price if she’s gonna buy that much.”
“I can do that.” She made a note on her tablet to talk to Benedict’s younger sister. Liliana ran the stock operations, although Benedict kept a close eye on everything. He treated his siblings with the same businesslike reserve he treated his employees. At least on company time. She guessed he was more approachable off the clock, considering that his siblings seemed to like him.
There was nothing in his office to hint at some hidden warmth though. Spartan was a good word for it—in the lacking things sense, not the naked warrior sense. He liked everything squared away and in its proper place. Very type A, Mr. Benedict Merrill.
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