“I told you—
“Doesn’t matter. I intend to marry you,” he said. “Should have done it before I went back to Texas. Damned sure should have done it since Wood died.”
“You intend—Intend!”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Rachel, it’s for the best.” He reached for her. She jerked free.
“No, I told you last time—”
“Things have changed. You need my help, and I owe you.”
“You more than paid any debt. And I won’t marry you to save the Circle T or my horses. I won’t marry a man who doesn’t love me.”
“But that’s what you did before, wasn’t it, Rachel?”
“This is different.”
“What’s different about it?”
“You.” She raised her head and locked her eyes on his. A force of will made her words come steady. “You’re what’s different.”
“Yeah, I’m different. I have no fine past, and I don’t know what future I can offer you and our son. But I’ll do my damnedest, Rachel. For you and the boy.”
“It’s not enough, Nick. Not this time.”
She didn’t cry, not even as she turned her back on him and walked away.
* * * *
A weariness soul-deep slowed Rachel’s movements as she removed her corset and laid it neatly atop the folded split skirt and bodice. After Nick’s departure, the hours until she could retire had seemed endless. Now the night hours stretching ahead of her seemed the same.
A rush of raised voices and agitated footsteps from downstairs froze her with one foot raised and her stocking hooked on her toe. Her balance went as the muffled uproar relocated to the stairs. Hopping, she pulled off the second stocking.
Still holding it, she snatched at her nightdress, intending to pull it on to provide more modesty than the thin fabric of her chemise combination as she headed to the door to investigate.
The door flew open and banged against the log wall behind it.
Shock stifled her startled gasp.
Nick.
He stopped inside the doorway, several strides short of her.
“You get out! Go away!” Shouting, Esther came around the door frame, puffing from exertion between each word, and followed immediately by Myrna and Olive, then more slowly, by Fred, all asking questions that no one answered.
Rachel clutched her nightdress to her chest.
“Nick, what on earth do you think you’re do—”
“I’ve got more to say to you, Rachel.”
“I will get Bob Chapman, Joe-Max, all the others. They will bring a gun. Many guns. You get out. Now!” It was the most agitated Rachel had ever heard Esther.
“Now, wait a minute,” blurted Fred. “I don’t think shooting Nick’s the thing to do here—”
Nick never took his eyes off her. “You’ll have to have me shot to get me out before I have my say, Rachel, and you better be sure they don’t just wing me.”
“Olive, you go. Find your father,” Esther ordered from behind Nick. “Tell him to bring his gun.”
For an instant longer, Rachel stared at Nick. His jaw was stubbled with beard, his face lined with fatigue. She hadn’t seen that outside earlier this evening. But his eyes were the same. Black eyes polished to a point of steel.
“No.” Finding her voice, she repeated it, still locked in Nick’s gaze. “No, don’t get Bob. It’s all right.”
She looked beyond him then, to the worried faces at the doorway. “It’s all right, Esther. You all go on downstairs.”
Esther met her eyes, a long thoughtful survey.
“It’s all right,” Rachel repeated. “Thank you, Esther.”
“I will wait in the kitchen.” Esther shooed the others in front of her, drawing the door closed with one final look.
Nick hadn’t moved since he’d burst into her room.
“What do you want?” Dignity didn’t come easy with her nightdress clutched to her chest, but she fought for it.
“You married Terhune to save your father and Wood to save our son, didn’t you?”
She said nothing. Not knowing what to expect from him, she was still unprepared for this.
“Didn’t you? You near as said it already, so why not now?”
“Okay, yes.”
“But you won’t marry me to save your land or your horses?”
Misery welled in her. She shouldn’t have to turn away from what she most wanted again. She shouldn’t have to turn away from him.
“No.”
“Okay, then, will you marry me to save me?”
Her head jerked up. A glint shimmered in the black of his gaze. “What?”
“I need saving, Rachel. Maybe it can’t be done. If it can, you’re the one to do it.” He hitched one shoulder in frustration. “I don’t know the words, not like you. I’m saying—asking—will you marry me?”
“Will I marry you?” she repeated.
“Yeah. That’s what I’m asking.”
“Why?”
“I told you—to save me. If I’m ever going to learn about love, like you told me, I guess I need you to teach me.”
“Why?”
He narrowed his eyes, though not enough to hide the flicker of anger. She was pushing him and they both knew it. His eyes shifted to the window beyond her. When they came to her once more they’d changed.
“Because I’d like to know I could love you proper, Rachel. The way you deserve.”
The forgotten nightdress fell as she took the final three steps into his arms, because he’d come so far on so hard a road.
Lifting her face, she took his kiss, hard and hot and deep, and returned it.
That fast, they were slick-skinned and desperate.
Crushed against his chest, she tried to burrow closer, to sink into his skin right through the layers of cloth that separated them.
Nick was more direct. Grabbing fistfuls of cotton, he dragged the chemise off her, scooped her quickly off her feet and laid her on the bed, then attacked his own clothes. She watched a moment, then sat up to draw his shirts from the waist of his pants while he yanked off his boots. He shucked both shirts in one quick move and pants and drawers in a second.
Then he was beside her, stroking her, exploring her with such fevered touches her skin seemed to burn. He moved between her legs, opening her even as she opened for him, his eyes never leaving hers as he drove deep and heavy into her. She raised her hips to draw him deeper.
They moved. Against each other, for each other, to each other.
It was possession. Without words, he staked his unalterable claim, repeating what he’d told her this spring. You belong to me.
As eloquently, as passionately, she repeated her claim. We belong together.
“Yes.” His hips rammed against her, his body shuddered. “Rachel.”
As he pulsed inside her, she topped a long, rolling crest. But it wasn’t the last. Nick collapsed across her, his weight and his continued possession drawing deep, shivering waves from her.
“I love you. Nick Dusaq.” His shoulder twitched against her breast. “You better get used to hearing that, because I intend to say it a lot.”
He raised his head, kissing her slow and deep, until she thought she’d cry with the emotion of it. He gave her such love, yet she knew he might never truly believe that he did. For now, it would have to be enough that he believed in her love. That was the start.
He kissed her forehead and temple, then met her eyes, his expression darkening.
“There’s one thing, Rachel. If I ever raise a hand to you, if I get to be like—
I won’t stay by. I’ll ride and I won’t look back, and you won’t be able to hold me.”
Foolish man. She would also have to show him he was so much better than he thought himself to be. The first step was to share some of the burden he carried.
“If you ever raise a hand to me or the children that way, I’ll send you off at the muzzle of my rifle.”
&nbs
p; He tipped his head and considered her face. “I believe you would. Damn, if I don’t believe you would.”
He rolled, so quickly she could do nothing but tighten her hold on him, inside and outside.
“What are you doing, Nick?” The demand came breathless at the sensations he’d stirred by bringing her atop him.
“It’s what you’re going to do, Rachel.”
“I don’t . . .”
“You will.” He raised his hips, then dropped them, satisfaction glinting his eyes at the low sound she made. “It’s just like riding.”
His hands skimmed over her abdomen, teased her breasts, then dropped lower as he rose to pleasure her breast with his mouth.
“Not quite,” she gasped.
“Ride, Rachel.”
She did. And the satisfaction was mutual, as she discovered her power. In the end she shared the power so it burst across their senses and souls, until they collapsed, together, into sweet weakness.
His slow caress along her back was the first move either of them made for a long time.
“Does this mean you’ll marry me?” The words stirred her hair, sending a shiver of pleasure through her.
Without lifting it, she turned her head so her cheek rested on his chest.
“I suppose I better, with you putting such a fear into Esther.”
He chuckled, the rumbling under her cheek a sensation she could get accustomed to. “More like the fear Esther’ll put in me, if I don’t marry you. Wouldn’t be surprised if she’s out there with a shotgun, waiting to make sure I do right. Not to mention Joe-Max and Bob Chapman. Comes to that, Davis and Alba’d likely take aim, too. In fact, you’d better go out first and tell them not to shoot, or you’ll be a widow again before you’re really a wife.”
She shuddered. “Don’t say that.”
He lifted her face between his hard, worn palms. “It’s all right, Rachel.” He touched his lips to hers. “I intend to keep you from being a widow woman again for a good many years.”
“I’m holding you to that promise. Nick Dusaq.”
Epilogue
Four years later
Rachel had just pulled the thick layers of covers up to her chin when her bedroom door opened and her husband walked in wearing only his underwear.
“Nick! What in heaven’s name—”
“Got frozen clear through with icicles just going to the barn and the bunkhouse, so I left my clothes in the kitchen so Esther can’t grumble about me tracking her clean floors.”
Rachel used the top of the covers to hide her smile.
“Johnny and Phillipa settled in?” he asked as he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his socks before turning down the lamp. A gust pelted snow against the rattling window.
“Sleeping like angels. Is it bad outside?”
“Bad enough.” He propped himself on one elbow, looking down at her, with the faint light from the window shimmering across his strong face.
“This storm makes me all the happier we visited Alba and Davis and little Mary Rachel last week. Could be we’ll be snowed in a while.”
“Wouldn’t be the least surprised,” he said with a satisfied grunt, sliding his hand under the covers. But his expression turned quizzical as he encountered the fabric of her nightdress.
“Why do you bother with this thing? It comes off soon enough.”
“But in the meantime, I’d get chilled. Just like you start with your underthings on. Besides how would I explain to Esther that my washing never includes any nightdr—What? Why are you looking at me that way?”
“I . . . I love you, Rachel.”
Love for him flowed through her as heat in her blood, tears in her eyes and a whirlpool in her throat. He’d said the words to her before. Not often, but a few times. First, at the same time his body expressed the emotion. Once, when he watched Phillipa nursing at her breast. Each time seemed to come a little easier for him. Each time meant even more to her.
“I love you, Nick.”
A rumble of thunder from outside seemed to echo the beat of her heart. Thunder had mixed with the sleet and snow all evening.
She smiled at her husband, then nestled close to him so she could reach the buttons that separated her fingers from his flesh. “Esther says thunder in winter means a real bad storm. Kind that can keep a man inside for days.”
“It’s only fitting there’s thunder.” He grinned at her slow and hot, sliding his hand lower. “Because there’s always lightning when we’re snowed in together.”
* * * * *
A Note From PATRICIA McLINN
Hello!
I hope you’ve enjoyed Rachel and Nick’s story, and will consider sharing your experience with fellow readers by posting a review online.
To be notified of my new releases, sign up for my book alert at www.PatriciaMcLinn.com. That’s also where you can find a printable booklist, excerpts, and lots more.
Here are a few of my books to check out:
Courting A Cowboy: A young lady seeking a peculiar kind of husband. A ranch full of cowhands who have long adored her from a distance. A foreman who’s got his hands full … and his heart on the line …
Sophie Vandercook leaves her post as an instructor at an Academy for Young Ladies in St. Louis, and heads to the OS Ranch in Wyoming Territory with a plan. It seems the perfect place, since her older half-brother is employed there. There's just one thing in her way – the ranch's foreman, Nate Abbott.
Nate has a ranch to run, a vital roundup to get through, and a bunkhouse full of cowhands smitten from afar with a young lady they all consider Our Sophie. So there’s no time – or reason – to consider exactly what her letters might be stirring in him. Then Sophie arrives in Wyoming.
Secrets tumble, problems multiply, and the OS outfit is turned on its head wondering if Sophie will wed a cowboy?
The Games: Contemporary fiction “Fast-paced, vivid and true-to-life...A gold-medal winner…Your ticket behind the cameras and inside the hearts of the Winter Olympics."
In sixteen days of the Winter Olympics, careers can be made, medals can be won and hearts can be lost . . .
Tessa Rutledge, once an Olympic champion figure skater, returns to the Games as a coach, encountering her first love and only heartbreak and testing her ability to forgive. Alpine skier Kyle Armstrong has made a terrible mistake that could cost her a shot at Olympic gold as well as any hope of reconciling with the man she loves. Biathlete Rikki Lodge thinks she's just happy to be at the Games, until she meets a hockey player who demands that she do what she's never done before: put it all on the line.
Let The Games begin!
SIGN OFF: Murder mystery with humor, romance “Crackles with wit… Twists and turns …Dry humor…Fast-paced and intriguing...Will keep you guessing right until the end.”
They exiled her to a town with more cattle than people and where the best investigative journalism is done by an observant grocery store clerk. But now there’s a killer on the loose…
Top network news journalist Elizabeth “E. M.” Danniher committed two major mistakes–she didn’t stay young, and she made an enemy of a powerful network executive–her ex-husband. So now she’s working out her big-city broadcast contract in rugged Sherman, Wyoming. She used to break national news. Now she’s the “Helping Out!” consumer affairs reporter for tiny KWMT-TV. Her hard-hitting stories? Helping a senior citizen get a refund for a defective toaster and uncovering a travel scam.
But E.M. won’t fade to black without a fight. Tough, funny and determined, she wrestles with her evolving self-image, the challenges of keeping her professional edge, her sudden isolation and the fear of never being in the spotlight again. Can she make Wyoming–the land of cattle, cowboys, tumbleweeds and less than six people per square mile–home, or is her first stop on the road to obscurity?
She doesn’t have much time to dwell on her fall from grace. Soon she’s in a battle of wills with an ex-football player turned journalist, who sees her as a handy rung on his
ladder to fame. And then there’s the matter of a missing deputy sheriff–was he murdered? E.M. finds herself investigating the case at the insistence of a little girl who’s set on proving that her enigmatic father had nothing to do with the crime.
Happy reading!
Patricia
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Did you love Widow Woman? Then you should read Courting a Cowboy by Patricia McLinn!
A young lady seeking a peculiar kind of husband. A ranch full of cowhands who have long adored her from a distance. A foreman who’s got his hands full … and his heart on the line …
Sophie Vandercook leaves her post as an instructor at an Academy for Young Ladies in St. Louis, and heads to the OS Ranch in Wyoming Territory with a plan. It seems the perfect place, since her older half-brother is employed there. There's just one thing in her way – the ranch's foreman, Nate Abbott.
Nate has a ranch to run, a vital roundup to get through, and a bunkhouse full of cowhands smitten from afar with a young lady they all consider Our Sophie. So there’s no time – or reason – to consider exactly what her letters might be stirring in him. Then Sophie arrives in Wyoming.
Secrets tumble, problems multiply, and the OS outfit is turned on its head wondering if Sophie will wed a cowboy?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Another western historical romance from Patricia McLinn:
Widow Woman Page 29
