They swayed, holding on to each other. "No," she murmured with her eyes closed. "This is just extra."
"I missed you a lot."
"I missed you so much. Let's never be apart again."
"Okay."
The only reason he hadn't come with her and Levi to Grant's Pass was because of Bellefleur. Which reminded her. "Nestor says you've got a surprise, too."
He broke away, grinning. "Guess what it is."
"Belle?"
He nodded, grabbing her hand. "God, Cady, wait'll you see. He's gorgeous." A colt, then. Her own excitement mounted as Jesse led her down the dim passageway to the loose box stall at the end. "Oh... Oh, Jess, look."
"Did I tell you?"
Belle's newborn colt was all black, except for a white blaze in the center of his Roman nose. He stopped nursing to swivel his head, surveying them with a brown, liquid eye. "Oh, he can stand and everything," she breathed, enchanted.
"Well, sure. He could run if we let him out. His legs are almost full grown."
"Hey, sweet Belle." The proud mother shifted around and ambled over to them. "You did so well," Cady praised her, stroking the soft muzzle, letting Belle push her nose against her chest. "What a beautiful baby. Was it hard? Did you have a bad time, sweetheart?"
"No, she was great, she didn't even need me and Nestor. Marion popped out in about forty minutes."
"Marion." She snorted, tickled. "You aren't really going to call that beautiful horse Marion, are you?"
"Marion, son of Pegasus out of Bellefleur. Oh, he's a crackerjack colt, Cady. Look at his eyes—see how bold he is? And look at his chest, look at the shape of his head."
"English and Arabian." That was a good mix of bloodlines, she knew—but that was about all she knew. Thoroughbred horse breeding was about a thousand times more complicated than she'd ever imagined.
"What a sire he'll make. Between him and Peg, they'll breed beauties, Cady, nothing but beauties."
"Won't Belle have something to do with it?"
"Well, sure, but we'll buy other brood mares for our stallions—good, blooded females so Belle doesn't get worn out."
"Oh." Lucky Bellefleur, she thought, scratching between her ears. In a year she'd gone from cruelty and mistreatment to a life of luxury and comfort, with a handsome husband and the prospect of lots more children.
The foal—Marion—had curled up in a corner and gone to sleep. Cady hated to go, but Jesse said they'd come back after dinner and look at him some more. On the way out she congratulated Pegasus, who lifted his proud head and flared his arrogant nostrils, taking her praise as his due.
Nestor was unhitching Nell from the wagon. "Where's my surprise," Jesse wanted to know. "In here?" he scanned the wagon bed, but all he could see were wrapped tree saplings and seedling flats and bags of some special fertilizer she claimed she could only get in Grant's Pass.
"Nope." She put her arm around his waist, smiling blandly. They began to walk toward the house. He wanted to kiss her and kiss her and take her clothes off and lie down on the ground with her. "I was going to wait till tonight," she told him, "but I don't think I can stand it."
"I know I can't." And he wasn't talking about the surprise. "What is it? Something good?"
"I think I can safely say you're going to love it."
He stopped short. His heart stopped, too. "You're pregnant."
She gasped. "No! No. Oh, no, I'm not. Oh, Jess." Disappointment clouded her eyes. "Are you sorry? I'm—"
"No! I'm not sorry, I'm just..." Jesse laughed, not really sure what he was. Okay—a little disappointed. But a little relieved, too. And interested in himself. You're going to love it, she'd said, and his first guess was a baby. Well, well, well.
"We haven't been trying or anything," Cady fretted. "I haven't even been thinking about it. I guess I didn't know how you felt."
He touched her cheek. "Well, I'm for it, but I'm not in any big hurry. That is, if you're not."
"No..." But there was a gleam in her eye that hadn't been there before. It fascinated him. He started to kiss her, but just then Michele called down to them from the front porch.
"Dinner in twenty minutes?"
"Yeah," "Great," they yelled back.
"Welcome home," she called to Cady, before disappearing into the house.
Cady slipped her arm through his. "So. Did she take good care of you while I was gone?"
"Too good. If I ate everything she puts on my plate, I'd weigh more than Peg in a week."
"I know, but it's so good. But you're right—I'll have a talk with her about portions."
"She's used to cooking for a crowd at Jacques's."
"I still can't believe we've got her."
"I can't believe we've got a housekeeper at all. I mean, any housekeeper."
"I know. I know."
They marveled about it all the time—their good fortune. Having each other was the best, but now they also had things. It was a first for both of them. And together they were learning that material prosperity, unlike so many other things you coveted once and then acquired, really was all it was cracked up to be.
"Well, look at this."
"Oh, Jess, how sweet. Did you tell her to do it?"
"Yeah. No," he admitted, laughing, when Cady slanted him a dubious look. Michele had put a fresh, cool glass of lemonade on the arm of Cady's rocking chair and a mint julep on the arm of Jesse's. They sat down carefully, took up their glasses, and toasted each other.
"To you."
"To us."
"Welcome home, honey."
"I'm never going away again. Not without you."
They leaned over and kissed. Then they drank, and they both said, "Ahh," afterward, meaning the drink and the kiss. "This is it," Jesse gloated. "Definitely. This is the life."
"I've got something for you." She pulled an envelope from her skirt pocket and handed it over.
He was hoping it was the surprise, but it wasn't. " 'M.N.,' " he read, chuckling. Marion thought he was so funny. He couldn't write "Gault" on any of his letters to Paradise, so he'd taken to calling himself "Marion Nogunsatall" when he corresponded with his cousin.
"Ha. Hm."
"What's he say?" She leaned over, trying to see.
"He's gone and bought that tobacco plantation."
"Good."
"I guess."
"Don't you think he'll make a good farmer?"
"I have no idea. A year ago I'd have said no, definitely not. But then, I never thought I'd end up owning a stud farm, either."
"And I never thought I'd really have my own orchard."
He looked at her and smiled. Cady's happiness meant the world to him. "Think it's because we live right? Virtue rewarded?"
"Hah!"
Well, that answered that. "Here's to Marion," he offered, clinking glasses.
"To Marion. I hope he's as lucky as we are."
"And as happy."
"Oh, that would be impossible. Nobody could be as happy as I am."
"Except me."
Good thing they were alone; sometimes Nestor overheard the things they said to each other and laughed. Or made retching noises. It cramped their style.
The first star of the night winked on in the paling sky. High, high up, an osprey flashed them its white underside as it floated and dipped over the river, looking for its evening meal. Jesse sighed. Over everything, the land, this house, their lives, the whispery, muted roar of the Rogue was a sturdy constant he dearly loved and rarely noticed anymore. Only when he listened very carefully. But it was inside him, part of him. Deep and steady, like his love for Cady.
He set his glass down. "I want my surprise, and I want it now."
"Oh, all right." Cady put her glass down, too. "Think Michele's in the kitchen?"
"Probably. Why?"
She stood up. "I can't show it to you here. Come over this way." She pulled him out of his rocking chair and made him walk over to the side porch, a secluded spot, empty except for a swing hanging by a couple
of chains from the ceiling. She and Boo took catnaps in the swing, and sometimes in the evenings Jesse came out here and smoked a cigar.
"Over here." She went behind the swing and into the corner, the shadowy L between the house and the porch rail. He followed, mystified, and stood in front of her, and she peered over both of his shoulders to make sure they were alone.
"What?" His imagination was running wild.
Smiling a bit tensely, she started to unbutton her dress.
"Aha." He grinned, reaching out to help. He liked this surprise already.
"No, don't, Jess. You have to wait."
"Okay." Fine—he liked watching, too. She had on her traveling dress, as she called it, which was practical and gray, and wouldn't have looked sexy on anybody but her. She got the buttons undone to the waist and peeled herself out of the top, then started on her white chemise.
"Uh, dinner's in about five minutes," he felt obliged to point out.
"That's all right, this won't take long."
"Really? Now you're talking. Let's—"
"Wait."
"Okay, okay." He settled back against the rail again, resigning himself to Cady's timetable. Whatever she had in mind, experience had taught him it would be worth the wait.
She got her shift undone and shrugged it over her shoulders. She bit her bottom lip, looking up at him through her lashes with an interesting combination of worry and amusement.
"What?" The suspense was killing him.
She took one last, cautious look around. "Ready?"
"Cady—"
"Okay!" Carefully, gingerly, she slipped the shift over her shoulders and down her arms, uncovering her breasts.
His expectant grin faded. He stared in dismay. "Oh, honey. Sweetheart, what happened? Baby, did you hurt your..." He stopped talking and blinked down at her left breast, at the blotchy, too-pink, slightly swollen tattoo under her nipple. Gradually the shape of it came into focus, and he felt a slow smile spread across his face.
"It's still a little sore. I think it'll be nice, though," she said, shy. "Do you like it?"
All he could say was, "Cady."
"A woman did it. In Grant's Pass. All she had to do was add legs and a tail, and make the beak a nose. Oh, and ears. But the wings are the same."
"It's Peg," he said wonderingly.
"Yeah. I think it looks like him, don't you?"
He nodded. It was funny; he ought to laugh. But he found, to his surprise, that he was too moved to speak.
Cady said, "You always hated that seagull. You never said, but I know you did."
It was true. He leaned in and kissed her, whispering against her lips that he loved her, he loved her so much. And then, oh, so gently, he lifted her breasts and placed a soft, soft kiss on her brand-new tattoo. When he looked up, he saw tears in her eyes.
"Jesse. Oh, Jess. This is your brand on me. Because I'm yours."
He made a joke, because otherwise he'd have cried with her. "Peg will be so proud."
She swiped at her eyes, laughing. "Well, I wasn't planning on showing it to him."
"Dinner!"
Jesse called loudly, "We're coming," and a second later the screen door slammed.
"Help me." Cady began to pull at her clothes, her fingers clumsy and urgent. He tried to help, but four hands only made it worse. They started giggling. Their tender moment was over, but he had one more thing to say.
"God, Cady, I'm so in love with you. Do you think we're in paradise?"
She frowned down at all the buttons they'd done up wrong, and hurriedly redid them. "I don't know, Jess," she said distractedly, "but I can tell you one thing."
"What?" He stepped sideways, letting her edge around the swing ahead of him.
She reached back and took his hand. "It beats canning salmon."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I always wanted to be a writer. In fact, I wrote my first novel in third grade—Sugar and Me—the story of a boy and his horse. Three pages long, and it had the word "suddenly" in it. I was so impressed by this big, long, grown-up word, I vowed then and there that writing was the career for me.
It's taken a while, but now I write romance novels for a living. Occasionally, someone will ask why, and I'm always tempted to answer, "Why doesn't everybody?" Think about it. You get to work at home (no makeup, no pantyhose), you're never far from the refrigerator, and—this is the best part— somebody pays you to dream up love stories with happy endings. Now, really, is this a great job or what?
Patricia Gaffney is a Golden Heart Award winner and four-time Rita Award nominee. She lives in rural Pennsylvania with her husband and her dog.
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