Such Rough Splendor

by Cinda Richards

  “Ask me why,” she prompted, kissing him just on the line where tanned cheek met facial hair. She loved his beard, loved the feel of it against her face and body. “Go on. Ask me.”

  “Why?” he said warily, and she knew he meant Why ask and not Why the job.

  “Because,” she said, settling for whatever why she could get. “You, cowboy, are worth a whole lot more than ten dollars.” She tried to see his face, loving that moment when the worry left him and he grinned.

  “Is that so?” he asked, chuckling, obviously pleased.

  “Oh, Lord, yes,” she assured him. “But since I don’t have any money to speak of, we’re going to have to work out some terms.”

  He laughed and rolled over on top of her suddenly, putting her dangerously close to the edge of the narrow bed.

  “We’ve got to get a bigger bed too,” she said, smiling up at him, reaching to cup his face in her hands.

  “No, ma’am,” he assured her, biting her neck. “I’ll go for a smaller bed but not a bigger one. I want you here”—he bit her playfully again—“as close to me as you can get!” He was tickling her, nipping her, punctuating his attack with a wild cowboy yell that made her jump and shriek.

  He found it infinitely funny. “Tennessee women are so nervous,” he said, still laughing. “I just did that so you’d know how happy I am,” he explained, still chuckling.

  “You just did that to scare the hell out of me!” she accused him.

  “Amelia!” he said, sounding shocked by the accusation. “I did not!”

  “Yes, you did!”

  “I did not!”

  “You did!”

  “Okay, I did. So what are you going to do about it?”

  The challenge was too much for her to ignore, and she initiated an attack of her own brand of tickle-and-bite until they were both out of breath and nearly off the bed from laughing. Then the playfulness gave way to serious kissing, hungry, urgent, open-mouthed kissing that gave lie to the fact that they had just made love. And they weren’t able to go slowly this time either. He entered her swiftly, his deep, sensuous movements making her whimper until she collapsed against him in that wondrous burst of satisfaction and release.

  “You’re too much for me,” he whispered after a time, lying on top of her, their bodies still joined. “It’s never—been like this with anyone else.” He waited a moment for her comment, pinching her when she didn’t make one. “This is where you tell me how good I am,” he whispered into her ear, and she laughed.

  “I… think maybe you are good,” she offered.

  “Maybe? All I get is a maybe?”

  She caressed his face, letting her fingers run into his crisp dark hair. His rough hand stroked her ribs; then he moved to lie beside her, taking her into his arms so that she was lying with her head on his shoulder.

  “Maybe,” he said again with a forlorn sigh.

  She turned to look at him, smiling in the dark. “That was a generalization—because I don’t know much about this.”

  “You know enough, lady,” he assured her. “You aren’t going to be serious with me, are you?”

  “Serious? All right. I’ll be serious. You’re my only one—except for Daniel.”

  “Your only one what?”

  “My only lover. That’s why I don’t know the rules.”

  He didn’t say anything, letting his fingers gently caress her forehead. She tightened her arms around him, loving the hard feel of his warm body. He reached down to bring her leg over him, and she kissed his neck and jaw.

  “Go on,” he said. “What rules?”

  She sighed in the darkness. “Oh, how to be like Kerry. How to do this and not—”

  She stopped again. She wanted to tell her—her com-pañera how she felt, but her lover might not be ready to hear it.

  “Now, listen,” he said, giving her a hard squeeze. “You don’t get to tell a man he’s a maybe and just leave it there.”

  She kissed him again. Hard. “You’re not a maybe, Mac. You’re my—”

  “Amelia,” he said in exasperation. “These half-sentences are making me crazy here. Now, let’s back up to ‘How to do this and not—’”

  But she continued with the other half-sentence first. “You’re my—fantasy too. You’re gentle and tender, and you still make love like a man just let out of prison—”

  He laughed and kissed her forehead. “And?”

  Amelia waited a moment before she answered, her old fears keeping her teetering on the edge of commitment. She pushed the fears aside. “I know I’m not supposed to, but I love you with all my heart, Mac.”

  He hugged her to him. “And I love you. You know I do—everybody between here and Trinidad, Colorado, knows I do—so you have to know it. I’d do anything I could for you, Amelia; you know that, don’t you? Don’t you?” he repeated, trying to see her face in the darkness.

  “Yes,” she whispered. She did know it. Anything he could…

  “I’m… playing for keeps here, Amelia, and I think that’s what scares you so much. You know I am. It’s not so much you think I’m just out for a good time, is it? You know I mean it. You know I’m going to make you choose—”

  “Mac,” she interrupted, suddenly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken.

  “No—Amelia, I want you to know how I feel. I want to marry you. I know what I’m asking, honey. I’ve done everything I could since you’ve been here so you’d know what you’d be getting into. You’re right about me. I’m a big, dumb cowpuncher, and I love it. But I love you too. I want you to stay with me. And I don’t want you to think that we wouldn’t know how to treat you. Pop and I lived a long time with a woman who wasn’t a rancher. My mother had her own work—just like you do—but she was happy here.” He reached to caress her face, his thumb finding the space between her eyes. “Oh, God,” he said, “the frown’s back. What are you going to do—tell me to run along?”

  “No,” she whispered, kissing his face and then his eyes and mouth. “I… just have to think, all right?”

  “Before you do that, there’s one other thing you need to know. Adam—he’s part of the package.”

  “I know that,” she answered, giving him a hug.

  “If I can find him,” he said sadly, and Amelia held him close for a moment, not knowing quite what to say.

  “Marlene’s family is here,” she said finally. “They’ll know where she is. Forbes Townsend—you said he was a good man.”

  Mac sighed. “He says he’ll let me know if he hears from her, but I—” He didn’t go on, sighing again instead. He lifted his head to look at her. “Then… you aren’t telling me no?”

  “No,” she whispered, kissing him gently on the lips. She wasn’t telling him no, and she wasn’t telling him that she’d have to leave him before she could decide either. There was no way in the world she could know what to do while she was anywhere near him.

  “What time is it?” Mac asked, and Amelia gave him a small crooked smile.

  “Do I look like a person with a watch?” she asked, pressing her bare body against his.

  Mac grinned. “Get up—up—hurry.” He had them both sitting while he searched frantically for clothes. But he seemed to keep forgetting that it was he who was in such a rush. Amelia would have been content to lie there with him forever, but each time he handed her something to put on, he let himself become distracted by the lure of her partially clad body—and he blamed her for it.

  “Amelia, if you don’t leave me alone,” he said, kissing the cleavage between her breasts yet another time. “We’re in a hurry here—or do you want to explain this to Pop and Rita?”

  “I don’t mind,” she said, smiling at him, and the lamp on the bedside table came on suddenly.

  “Neither do I,” he said, smiling, then frowning from the sudden light. “Bobby might though.” He pulled on his jeans, Amelia watching, admiring his beautiful male form.

  She frowned. “What do you mean, Bobby will mind?
”

  “Might,” he said, snapping the snap and zipping the zipper. “I said he might mind. He thinks a man who listens to Willie Nelson and Hank, Junior, and drinks beer can’t make a woman who listens to the Pachelbel canon while she sips white wine and reads Stephen Vincent Benét’s poetry happy. Now, what does that face mean?”

  “This face means, how does Bobby know about any of this?”

  Mac sighed. “Honey, I told you. Everybody—everybody—knows I love you. Bobby’s known the longest—why do you think I kept turning up every four or five years? I mean, I like your brother and all that, but you’re the one I wanted to marry, see?” He walked by her, looking for his shirt, dropping a kiss on the top of her head on the way.

  “You wanted to marry me?”

  Mac stopped what he was doing. “Amelia, don’t you listen to me? Didn’t you just hear me say I did?”

  “That’s now. I’m asking about before.”

  He sighed again and gave her a small smile. “Yes, my darlin’ Amelia. I wanted you—but I wanted you for keeps. I always wanted you for keeps. Now what’s the matter?”

  She reached for him, holding him tightly. “I didn’t know, Mac.”

  “I know, honey.” He leaned back to look at her. “Not in here,” he said, kissing her forehead. “But in here, maybe.” He pressed his big callused hand over her heart. “You seen my hat?”

  “No,” she said, laughing and stepping back from him to let him look for it as she finished the last of her dressing.

  Mac found his hat on the kitchen table. “Now, I haven’t had a chance to talk to Beth,” he said as he put it on. “I think she’s the reason Bobby wanted to come up here this weekend. He either wants to see her or he wants to hide.” He pulled her into his arms again.

  “I take it you’re going somewhere?” Amelia said, wanting only to keep him with her. But he was interested in kissing, not in answering questions.

  “I’ll call you,” he said finally. “Or you could get Pop or Bobby to bring you up to Vermejo Park. But I’ll call twice a day in case you hear something from Scooter. I love you—a lot.”

  “I love you—a lot,” she responded. “Do I get to know where you’re going?”

  “With Ernie,” he said as if she should know that. “To the Working Cowboys Rodeo.” And he waited, looking into her eyes. Amelia could feel his question. I’d do anything I could for you. She had believed him when he said it, and now he was giving her the opportunity to hold him to it. She stood staring back at him, and she didn’t ask him not to go.

  He gave her a slow smile. “Tell Pop to bring you to the rodeo—and I’ll let you squeeze the stuffing out of me like you did the last time.” He whacked her soundly on the backside. “Hey,” he said, hugging her to him. “I’m… your only one, right?”

  “My only one,” she assured him.

  “Great,” he said, kissing her one last time, and he went out the door, whistling all the way to the truck.

  CHAPTER TEN

  POP AND RITA came back with Bobby shortly before midnight, and Amelia could feel Rita waiting for a chance to “get at her.”

  “What’s the matter?” Rita asked the very minute Pop and Bobby went outside on the porch to drink a beer and talk ranching in the quiet New Mexico night.

  “Nothing much,” Amelia said evasively. Mac wants to marry me.

  Lord, she thought. It had all seemed so possible while Mac was here, but now that he wasn’t, it seemed—ridiculous. How could they marry? They were able to make exquisite love together certainly, but they rarely got through ten sentences without a brawl.

  “You and Daniel have a fight?”

  Amelia shrugged. “I… threw your deck of cards at him.”

  Rita frowned. “Mac didn’t get into it, did he? He promised his daddy he wouldn’t unless it came to you getting hurt—”

  “No, he didn’t get into it.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “I think I’m ready for the tequila, Rita. Now.”

  “Honey, tequila ain’t going to help whatever it is you got. Tequila is for aggravations—it ain’t for the end of the world. Now are you going to make me play Twenty Questions or are you going to tell me?”

  Amelia glanced toward the back screen door. Pop and Bobby were still talking, and the tears welled in her eyes—when she thought she’d cried all she could tonight.

  “Rita,” Amelia said, trying not to wail, “you know I love Mac…”

  “Sure I know it. Kinda hard not to. Ain’t no woman going to work that hard to hold off a man she don’t care about. So what is it—beside that, I mean?”

  “Oh, Lord, Rita. I love him—and he loves me—and he said he’d do anything he could for me—but I can’t ask him, can I? I can’t ask him to do it. I love him, dammit!” She looked into Rita’s blue eyes, her face all screwed up with trying not to cry.

  Rita smiled and patted her shoulder. “You know what, Amelia? I almost understood what you said.”

  Amelia gave a gulping laugh and rested her head on Rita’s shoulder. “Rita—I don’t want to drink—tequila. I want to go to the damned Working Cowboys Rodeo.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

  “I hate rodeos!”

  Rita laughed and hugged her hard. “So are you marrying our Mac or not?”

  “I can’t marry him, Rita!”

  “Why not?”

  “I just told you!”

  “Well, if you did, Amelia, I sure missed it. You can’t not marry a man just because you’re afraid he’ll get hurt.”

  “It’s not just that. It’s everything. He’s who he is, and I’m who I am—and New Mexico isn’t Tennessee. I love Tennessee!”

  “Well, honey, Tennessee ain’t going to keep you warm at night—I don’t care how much you love it. Now, wipe your eyes before Pop and Bobby see you. I know this is just a natural part of trying to make up your mind, but they won’t. Amelia, you should’ve seen me when the senior McDade popped the question. I cried buckets because I didn’t think I was good enough to take Louise McDade’s place. Heck, I was a waitress. She was an artist—you’ve seen her paintings.”

  “It’s not the same,” Amelia insisted.

  “The hell it’s not—and if you don’t tell Pop I said hell, I won’t tell him you said damn—twice.”

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  “I’m going to miss you!” Amelia said.

  “No, you ain’t going to miss me, because you’re staying right here with us. Wipe your eyes—here come Pop and Bobby.”

  Rita kissed all three of them good night and went off to bed, leaving Amelia at the kitchen table with the men. Bobby was unusually subdued, Amelia thought, and it surprised her that he knew so much about ranching and that he was so interested. He must have had Pop recall every beef-raising event that had happened since the barbecue.

  “What did Daniel want?” Bobby asked her in the middle of the conversation. Amelia toyed briefly with the idea of putting him off, then decided against it. She wasn’t going to let herself fall into that old role of being her brother’s protector.

  “He wanted to buy the house.”

  “What house—the home place?”

  Amelia nodded. “For Kerry. So he doesn’t have to marry her.”

  Bobby laughed. “What did you tell him?”

  “I can’t tell you what I told him,” Amelia said, exercising some censorship after all. “Pop’s here, and he’ll wash my mouth out with soap.”

  Pop grinned and winked at her. “Might let you get by with it just this once, gal.”

  “You’re not selling it to him, are you?” Bobby asked.

  “Of course not,” Amelia said, surprised. Part of the stipulation of their mother’s will had been that Amelia would have the house and Bobby, the land. And neither would sell without first offering it to the other. “I’m not selling, period.”

  “Not even to me?”

  Amelia frowned. “To you?”

  “We
ll, you and Mac have got something big going.” Bobby glanced at Pop, who had become very uncomfortable all of a sudden, scratching the white hair over his left ear and taking a long swig from his can of beer.

  This has got to stop, Amelia thought. She looked from one of them to the other. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be out here permanently without ever knowing if that was what she wanted, what she decided or not. All of them—well-meaning as they might be—were about to gang up on her. And I’m not going to let them do it. It wasn’t fair to Mac or to her.

  “Don’t you have something going with Mac?” Bobby persisted, pressing her to answer.

  “Not to the point of selling off the real estate, I don’t,” she said quietly. “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “Bobby, if you ain’t about as delicate as a elephant in an egg factory,” she heard Pop say as she quietly shut her bedroom door.

  Amelia woke early, but she had slept well, surprisingly well considering the emotional upheaval of the day before. She took a long shower and thought about Mac as she dressed in a full pink cotton skirt and a white Henley T-shirt. Everyone in the house seemed to still be asleep—or elsewhere—and she took the time to finally sort out her frazzled emotions, walking outside onto the patio, then along the unpaved lane that led to the secondary road to Chimayo. She’d ridden along this same road with Mac her first day here, hanging on to him gingerly because she was so afraid she would end up in exactly the same predicament she was in now. The sun was up and the sky a brilliant turquoise-blue with a splattering of purple-and-gray clouds. Amelia took a long breath. The air was so clean and fresh here. Late July. At home the air would be heavy and humid, a nearly living thing you had to push your way through from one air-conditioned haven to another. Was she homesick? Yes. And no. She strolled along the road, her footsteps muffled in the fine dust along the shoulder.

  I love him, and I can’t stay here.

  I love him, and I don’t want to go.

  And—I love him.

  The proverbial bottom line.

  Pop and Mac had a working ranch. If she married Mac, there would be no “his” chores and “her” chores. They’d have to work together—and what if he didn’t want her to teach?