by Diana Palmer
“Her mother died and left her a small fortune in stocks,” he told the older man, watching with compassion the effect it had on him. “She says she’ll be leaving as soon as we can hire a replacement. No need for her to work with a million dollars worth of stock, is there?”
Cag went to the sink and poured himself a glass of water that he didn’t want, just to keep from groaning aloud. Tess had money. She was quitting. He’d thought he had time to work out his own feelings, and suddenly it was all up. She was leaving and he’d never see her again. She’d find somebody younger and get married and have babies. Tess would love having children of her own….
He put the glass down with a thud. “I’ve got things to do. How about those new bulls?”
“They came in, and I got Billy to sell me that Salers bull,” he added smugly. “I’ve put him in a pasture all to himself with his own salt lick and a nice clean stall to keep him out of bad weather when it comes.”
Cag didn’t rise to the occasion which he would have only days before. He looked thoughtful and worried. Very worried.
“It won’t be the same without Tess, will it?” Leo prompted gently.
Cag’s face closed up completely. “I’ll change and get back to the paperwork.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me how the conference went?”
“Later,” Cag said absently. He walked out of the room without a backward glance.
He acted oddly for the rest of the day. And he wasn’t at the supper table.
“Said he had to go into town, God knows what for,” Rey murmured as he buttered a flaky biscuit. “They pull in the sidewalks at six. He knows that.”
“Maybe he’s got something on his mind,” Leo mused, watching Tess fuss over the chicken dish she was putting into a serving bowl.
Rey sighed. “Something big. He wasn’t going toward Jacobsville,” he added. “He was headed toward Shea’s.”
That brought Leo’s head up. “He was?”
Tess finished putting food on the table, so preoccupied by Cag’s reappearance that she couldn’t put two thoughts together in any sort of order. It was much harder to leave than she’d even anticipated.
She missed the comment about Shea’s Bar entirely, and she barely touched her own food. She cleaned up the kitchen, blind to the brothers’ troubled glances, and went to bed early. She felt like it was the end of the world.
So did Cag, who sat quietly at a corner table at Shea’s Bar, drinking one whiskey highball after another until he was pleasantly numb and barely coherent.
No fool, he left the truck locked at the bar and took a cab back to the ranch. If the driver wondered at the identity of his overly-quiet passenger, he didn’t ask. He took the bills that were fumbled out of the cowhide wallet and drove away.
Cag managed to get through the living room without falling over anything, amazing considering the amount of whiskey he’d imbibed. He made it to his own room and even into the shower, an undertaking of mammoth proportions.
With his hair still damp and only a short robe covering his nudity, it occurred to him that he should ask Tess why the rush to get away from the ranch. That it was three in the morning didn’t seem to matter. If she was asleep, why, she could just wake up and answer him.
He knocked at her door, but there was no answer. He opened it and walked in, bumping into a chair and the side table before he ever reached the bed.
He sat down on the side of it and noticed how hot the room was. She hadn’t turned on the air conditioner, and then he remembered that his brothers had told him they’d shut the unit off temporarily while it was being worked on. No wonder it was so hot.
He reached out and pushed gently at Tess’s shoulder under the cover. She moaned and kicked the cover away and he caught his breath. She was lying there just in her briefs, without any other covering, her beautiful little breasts bare and firm in the muted light of the security lamp outside her window.
He couldn’t help himself. He reached out and traced those pretty breasts with the tips of his fingers, smiling when she arched and they went hard-tipped at once.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world to slide out of his robe and into bed beside her.
He turned her against his nude body, feeling her quiver softly and then ease closer to him. She felt like heaven in his arms. The feel of her soft, warm skin so intimately kindled a raging arousal in him.
He moved her onto her back and slid over her, his mouth gently smoothing across her lips until they parted and responded despite the sharp tang of whiskey on his breath.
Half-asleep, and sure that she was dreaming, her arms went under his and around him, her legs moved to admit him into an intimacy that made his head spin. He moved against her blindly, hungrily, urgently, his mouth insistent on her mouth as he felt surges of pleasure breaking like waves inside him.
“Ca…Callaghan? Callaghan?” she whimpered.
“Yes, Tess…!” He caught her mouth again and his hand went to her thigh, pulling her even closer, straining against the thin nylon barrier that was all that separated them.
She didn’t fight his seduction. If this was what he wanted, it was what she wanted, too. She relaxed and gave in to the sweet, fierce sensations that came from the intimate contact with his powerful body.
But even as his fingers sought her hips in a fierce urgency, the liquor finally caught up with him. He gave a soft, explosive sigh and a curse and suddenly went limp on her, the full weight of his body pressing her hard into the sheets.
She lay dazed, wondering exactly what had happened. Cag had no clothes on. She was wearing briefs, but nothing more. Not being totally stupid, she realized that sex involved a little more contact than this, but it was blatant intimacy, all the same. She shifted experimentally, but nothing happened. He’d been very aroused, but now he was relaxed all over.
She eased away a little and pushed. He went over onto his back in a liquid sprawl and with a long sigh.
Curious, she sat up in bed and looked at him, surprised at how much she enjoyed the sight of him like that. He might have been a warm statue for all the movement in him, but he was a delight even to her innocent eyes. She smiled secretively as she studied him unashamedly, thinking that for tonight he belonged to her, even if he didn’t want to. After all, she hadn’t coaxed him in here. He’d come of his own free will. He had to feel something for her, if he’d had to go out and get himself drunk to express what he really wanted.
While she looked at him she weighed her options. She could leave him here and shoo him out first thing in the morning—unless, of course, he awoke in the same condition he’d just been in except sober. In which case, her innocence was really going to be gone. Or she could try to get him back to his room. That would be impossible. He was deadweight. She could call the brothers to help her—but that would create a scandal.
In the end, she curled up beside him, pulled the sheet over both of them and went to sleep in his arms. Let tomorrow take care of itself, she mused while she enjoyed the feel of all that latent strength so close against her nudity. She loved him. If this was all she could ever have, she was going to have this one night. Even if he never knew about it.
Cag felt little hammers at either side of his head. He couldn’t seem to open his eyes to discover what was the sound that had disturbed him. He remembered drinking a glass of bourbon whiskey. Several glasses. He remembered taking a shower and falling into bed. He remembered….
His eyes flew open and he sat straight up. But instead of looking at the bare back beside him, covered just decently by a sheet, he scanned his own nudity to the door, where Rey and Leo were standing frozen in place.
He jerked the sheet over his hips, held his throbbing head and said, predictably, “How did I get in here?”
“You bounder,” Leo murmured, so delighted by his brother’s predicament that he had to bite his tongue to keep from smiling. Finally he’d got Cag just where he wanted him!
“That goes double for me,” Rey sai
d, acting disgusted as he glanced toward Tess’s prone figure barely covered by the sheet. “And she works for us!”
“Not anymore,” Leo said with pure confidence as he folded his arms over his chest. “Guess who’s getting married?” He raised his voice, despite Cag’s outraged look. “Tess? Tess! Wake up!”
She forced her eyes open, glanced at Cag and froze. As she pulled up the sheet to her chin, she turned and saw the brothers standing poker-faced in the doorway.
Then she did what any sane woman might do under the circumstances. She screamed.
Chapter Ten
An awkward few minutes later, a cold sober and pole-axed Cag jerked into his robe and Tess retreated under the sheet until he left. He never looked at her, or spoke. She huddled into the sheet and wished she could disappear.
She felt terrible. Even though it wasn’t her fault, any of it. She hadn’t gone and climbed into bed with him, after all, and she certainly hadn’t invited him into bed with her! When she’d dozed off, she’d been almost convinced that the whole episode had been a dream. Now it was more like a nightmare.
Tess went into the kitchen to make the breakfast that the brothers had found missing at its usual time. That was why they’d come looking for her, and how they knew Cag was in bed with her. She groaned as she realized what she was going to have to endure around the table. She decided beforehand that she’d eat her breakfast after they finished and keep busy in another part of the house until they were gone.
The meal was on the table when three subdued men walked into the kitchen and sat down. Tess couldn’t look at any of them. She mumbled something about dusting the living room and escaped.
Not ten minutes later, Leo came looking for her.
She was cleaning a window that she’d done twice already. She couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Was everything okay? I’m sorry if the bacon was a little overdone….”
“Nobody’s blaming you for anything,” he said, interrupting her quietly. “And Cag’s going to do the right thing.”
She turned, red-faced. “But he didn’t do anything, Leo,” she said huskily. “He was drunk and he got into the wrong bed, that’s all. Nothing, absolutely nothing, went on!”
He held up a hand. “Cag doesn’t know that nothing went on,” he said, lowering his voice. “And you aren’t going to tell him. Listen to me,” he emphasized when she tried to interrupt, “you’re the only thing that’s going to save him from drying into dust and blowing away, Tess. He’s alone and he’s going to stay that way. He’ll never get married voluntarily. This is the only way it will ever happen, and you know it.”
She lifted her head proudly. “I won’t trick him into marriage,” she said curtly.
“I’m not asking you to. We’ll trick him into it. You just go along.”
“I won’t,” she said stubbornly. “He shouldn’t have to marry me for something he didn’t do!”
“Well, he remembers some of it. And he’s afraid of what he can’t remember, so he’s willing to get married.”
She was still staring at him with her eyes unblinking. “I love him!” she said miserably. “How can I ever expect him to forgive me if I let him marry me when he doesn’t want to!”
“He does want to. At least, he wants to right now. Rey’s gone for the license, you both go to the doctor in thirty minutes for a blood test and you get married Friday in the probate judge’s office.” He put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Tess, if you love him, you have to save him from himself. He cares about you. It’s so obvious to us that it’s blatant. But he won’t do anything about it. This is the only way he has a chance at happiness, and we’re not letting him throw it away on half-baked fears of failure. So I’m sorry, but you’re sort of the fall guy here. It’s a gamble. But I’d bet on it.”
“What about when he remembers, if he does, and we’re already married?” she asked plaintively.
“That’s a bridge you can cross when you have to.” He gave her a wicked grin. “Besides, you need an insurance policy against anything that might…happen.”
“Nothing’s going to happen!” she growled, her fists clenched at her side.
“That’s what you think,” he murmured under his breath, smiling—but only after he’d closed the door between them. He rubbed his hands together with gleeful satisfaction and went to find his sibling.
It was like lightning striking. Everything happened too fast for Tess’s protests to make any difference. She wanted to tell Cag the truth, because she hadn’t been drunk and she remembered what had gone on. But somehow she couldn’t get him to herself for five minutes in the three days that followed. Before she knew what was happening, she and Cag were in the probate judge’s office with Corrigan and Dorie, Simon and Tira, Leo and Rey behind them, cheering them on.
Tess was wearing a white off-the-shoulder cotton dress with a sprig of lily of the valley in her hair in lieu of a veil, and carrying a small nosegay of flowers. They were pronounced man and wife and Cag leaned down to kiss her—on the cheek, perfunctorily, even reluctantly. He looked more like a man facing an incurable illness than a happy bridegroom, and Tess felt more guilty by the minute.
They all went to a restaurant to have lunch, which Tess didn’t taste. Afterward, Leo and Rey went on a hastily arranged business trip to California while Corrigan and Simon and their respective wives went to their own homes.
Cag put Tess into the Mercedes, which he drove for special occasions, and took her back to the ranch.
She wanted to tell him the truth, but the look on his face didn’t invite confidences, and she was certain that it would only make things worse and get his brothers into big trouble if she confessed now.
She knew that nothing had happened that night, but if she slept with Cag, he was going to know it, too. Besides, sleeping with him would eliminate any ideas of an annulment. She’d been thinking about that all day, that she could give him his freedom before any more damage was done. She had to talk to him before tonight, before their wedding night.
It was almost time to put on dinner and she’d just started changing out of her wedding dress when the door opened and Cag came in, closing the door deliberately behind him.
In nothing but a bra and half-slip, she turned, brush in hand, to stare at him as if he were an apparition. He was wearing his jeans and nothing else. His broad chest was bare and there was a look in his black eyes that she didn’t like.
“Cag, I have to tell you….”
Before she could get the rest of the sentence out, he had her up in his arms and he was kissing her. It wasn’t like other kisses they’d shared, which had an affectionate, teasing quality to them even in passion. These were rough, insistent, arousing kisses that were a prelude to out-and-out seduction.
Tess didn’t have the experience to save herself. A few feverish minutes later, she was twisting under him on the cover of the bed trying to help him get rid of the last little bit of fabric that concealed her from his eyes.
He was out of his jeans by then, and his mouth was all over her yielding body. He touched and tasted her in ways she’d never experienced, until she was writhing with hunger.
By the time he slid between her legs and began to possess her, she was so eager that the tiny flash of pain went almost unnoticed.
But not by Cag. He stopped at once when he felt the barrier give and lifted his head. His arms trembled slightly with the effort as he arched over her and put a rein on his desire long enough to search her wide, dazed eyes.
“I tried…to tell you,” she stammered shakily when she realized why he was hesitating.
“If I could stop, I swear to God…I would!” he said in a hoarse, harsh whisper. He shuddered and bent to her mouth. “But it’s too late! I’d rather die than stop!”
He kissed her hungrily as his body eased down and found a slow, sweet rhythm that brought gasps from the mouth he was invading. He felt her nails biting into his hips, pulling him, pleading, her whole body one long aching plea for satisfacti
on. She sobbed into his mouth as he gave her what she wanted in waves of sweet, hot ecstasy that built into a frightening crescendo just at the last.
She cried out and felt him shiver above her with the same exquisite delight she was feeling. Seconds later, he collapsed in her arms and she took the weight of him with joy, clinging as he fought to get his breath. His heartbeat shook both of them in the damp, lazy aftermath.
She felt his breath at her ear, jerky and hot. “Did I hurt you?” he asked.
“No. Oh, no,” she breathed, burrowing closer.
Her body moved just slightly and his own clenched. It had been years. He’d ached for Tess, for the fulfillment she’d just given him. It was too soon, and he wasn’t going to get over this subterfuge that had made him her husband, but just now his mind wasn’t the part of his body that was in control.
He moved experimentally and heard her breath catch even as sharp pleasure rippled up his spine. No, he thought as he pulled her under him again, it wasn’t too soon. It wasn’t too soon at all!
It was dark when he got out of bed and pulled his jeans back on. Tess was lying in a damp, limp, spent sprawl on the cover where he’d left her. She looked up at him with dazed blue eyes, her face rosy in the aftermath of passion, her body faintly marked where his hands and his mouth had explored her. She was his. She belonged to him. His head lifted with unconscious, arrogant pride of possession.
“How was it?” he asked.
She couldn’t believe he’d said anything so blatant to her after the lovemaking that had been nothing short of a revelation. She hadn’t dreamed that her body was capable of such sensations as she’d been feeling. And he asked her that question with the same interest he’d have shown about a weather report.
She stared at him, confused.
“Was it worth a sham wedding?” he continued, wounded by her silence that had made him feel obliged to go through with a wedding he didn’t want. She’d trapped him and he felt like a fool, no matter how sweet the bait had been.
