His Forever Texas Rose

by Stella Bagwell

  “Let me see.”

  To her surprise, he brought the tips of her fingers to his lips and allowed them to linger there just long enough to cause her to lose her breath entirely.

  “Wrong,” he said gently. “Your fingers are as soft as the wing of a dove.”

  “Oh.” She swallowed, then nervously cleared her throat. “How would you know—about the softness of a dove’s wing?”

  “I used to have a pair—for pets.” His thumb moved slowly over the back of her hand. “Now that I think about it, your skin is softer than a dove’s feather.”

  She was wilting inside, and if he didn’t quit touching her hand as though it were a priceless jewel, she was going to fall right into his arms.

  “What—er—happened to the—doves?”

  “I decided to give them their freedom, and they flew away together. For a while they would show up and eat the feed that I threw out for them. But eventually, they left and never came back.”

  “Oh, do you think something killed them?”

  A wan smile touched his lips. “No. I think they went south, made a nest and had a family. That’s the way with nature. The birds didn’t need me anymore.”

  Like a bolt out of the blue, tears suddenly blurred her eyes and forced her to look away from him.

  His fingers tightened around hers. “Nicci? Is something wrong? Are you crying?”

  He sounded concerned and a bit confused, which made Nicole feel like an idiot for the sentimental tears. He couldn’t know that ever since she’d been a very young girl, she’d dreamed of having her own family.

  “No! I’m fine.” She quickly blinked away the moisture and forced a smile on her face before she brought her gaze back to his. “What you said about the doves and nature. I was just thinking how nice it would be if things were that simple for people.”

  He rubbed his palm over the back of her hand in a comforting way, and the sweetness of his touch brought an even bigger lump of emotion to her throat.

  “To fly away? Or make a nest?” he asked.

  Her smile turned wry. “Both, I suppose.”

  “Life isn’t supposed to be that easy for people.”

  “Guess not.” She shook her head and called up the cheeriest voice she could muster. “But that’s enough philosophy. I’m ready to enjoy dessert.”

  He studied her for a moment longer, as though he wanted to make sure she wasn’t about to burst into another spate of tears. To her relief, she must’ve convinced him, because he released her hand and reached for a plastic container holding a few slices of cake.

  “Too bad we don’t have coffee to go with this,” he said.

  He carefully maneuvered a piece of the cake onto a paper plate and handed it to her. Nicole quickly took a bite, but she hardly noticed the taste of the chocolate confection. Her mind was too busy trying to figure out why every little thing Trey did or said was affecting her in ways she didn’t understand. She had to get a grip on her emotions. Otherwise, he was going to get the idea that she was either crazy, or prone to histrionics.

  She said, “If we were real prospectors, we would’ve been smart enough to bring a pot and make the coffee over an open campfire.”

  “Hey, that would’ve been good,” he said. “Along with some marshmallows and wieners to roast.”

  She laughed and was relieved the urge to throw her arms around him and rest her cheek against his chest wasn’t quite as strong as it had been a few moments ago.

  * * *

  Once they’d packed away the lunch leftovers, the two of them returned to the spot at the stream where Trey had found the pyrite. After sifting through several more shovelfuls of gravel, Nicole found another piece of pyrite, followed by an even larger chunk.

  With each discovery, her excitement appeared to grow. Trey was relieved to see her mood had lifted, but he still couldn’t dismiss the image of her eyes filled with tears.

  After she’d told him about turning down the marriage proposal, he couldn’t help but think she was living with regrets and those tears in her eyes were for a lost love.

  And what if they were, Trey? You’re not going to let yourself fall for her. You’re smarter than that.

  “We’re on the right track, Trey. I’m feeling those vibes you were talking about.”

  The sound of her voice interrupted his nagging thoughts, and Trey glanced over to see her head bent over her pan as she pushed a finger through a clump of tiny pebbles. Even with her damp, dirty clothes and her disheveled hair, she looked vibrant and beautiful. And nothing like the woman he’d met that first day in Chandler’s office.

  “Not getting tired yet?” he asked.

  “Gosh, no!” Her brows pulled together as she glanced at him. “Are you wanting to call it quits for the day?”

  He said, “No, I’m fine. I just don’t want you to get too tired. We’ve been at this a few hours now.”

  She shot him a bright smile. “Not a chance.”

  “Good girl,” he told her, then leaned forward and scooped up another panful of gravel.

  He was carefully allowing the water to slosh over the sides when something flashed in the sunlight. Quickly, he dug through the mud and pebbles until he found the bright yellow object. It was smooth with rounded edges, and it had only a single streak of black ore on one side of it.

  Excitement rushing through him, he stood up and rolled the pebble between his thumb and forefinger. “Nicci, I think I’ve found it.”

  “It?” She echoed the one word in the form of a question before she glanced at him. The moment she saw he was standing, her jaw dropped. “You mean—a piece of real gold?”

  “That’s what it looks like to me.”

  She dropped her pan and rushed over to him. Trey held the piece in the middle of his palm for her to see. She drew closer and touched the nugget with the tip of her forefinger.

  “Ooh, that’s a yellow-gold color, all right! And it feels rather soft.” Then she questioned in a half-whispered voice, “Do you think it’s actually gold?”

  He grinned. “I’d bet the money in my wallet that it is.”

  She let out a delightful squeal, then flung herself straight at him. “We found it, Trey. The real thing! This is wonderful!”

  Laughing, their arms holding each other tightly, they jumped up and down together with pure jubilation.

  When the celebration finally ebbed and they stood catching their breath, Nicole tilted her head back and looked anxiously up at him.

  “Oh my, you didn’t lose the nugget in all of that, did you?” she asked.

  Drawing his left arm from around her waist, he opened his fist to reveal the golden pebble. “No chance.”

  Smiling, she continued to gaze up at him. “I’m so happy for you, Trey.”

  “Don’t be happy for me,” he corrected. “Be happy for us. It’s ours—together.”

  Still beaming, she shook her head. “No. That’s to go in your savings. For the ranch you want.”

  Even though the nugget would probably bring no more than two or three hundred dollars, the fact that she wanted him to have it touched Trey deeply. “Now Nicci, that’s not how this is going to work. We agreed before we started that we’re in this prospecting together.”

  “Right! So I have a say on how I want to spend my share. I’m investing it in you and your ranch. You can repay me with your first calf crop.”

  He chuckled, and then, because he couldn’t help himself, he pulled her even tighter against him. “Nicci—I—I’ve never known a woman like you,” he murmured.

  “I’m glad.”

  Her words were muffled by the front of his shirt, and he gently lifted her face up to his. “You are?”

  “Very glad. That way you won’t forget me.”

  “No chance of that happening, either.” His gaze dropped to her lips and suddenly nothing m
attered but kissing her, tasting all of that sweetness.

  Trey lowered his head toward hers, but the second his lips landed on hers, his brain turned to a mass of swirling fog. With her soft body draped against his and her lips urging him to deepen the kiss, he was totally lost.

  Eventually, as the embrace wore on, he began to register the hot sun baking his back and shoulders and a trickle of sweat rolling slowly down the middle of his chest. Behind them, he heard the wind swishing through the salt cedars and desert willows, the faint buzzing of the bees and the distant screech of a hawk. But none of those things were enough to overpower the taste of her lips and the incredible pleasure pouring through him.

  At some point, he realized her arms were wrapped tightly around his neck and the front of her body was pressed so tightly to his that her breasts were flattened against his chest. One of his legs had found its way between her thighs, and his hands were gently cupping the fullness of her bottom.

  By the time she opened her mouth and invited his tongue to delve deeper, he was only too happy to fulfil her wish. As he explored the ribbed roof and the sharp edges of her teeth, desire exploded in his loins and shot straight to his brain. He wanted her. So much so that he was practically paralyzed with the need to make love to her.

  Did she want him as badly as he wanted her? The question was racing through his mind when a loud sound of falling dirt and overturning rocks forced him to pull away from her.

  Stunned by the interruption, they both looked to a spot some fifty or sixty feet on down the arroyo to see a small herd of horses descending a steep bank and gathering to drink around one of the deeper pools of water.

  “Wild mustangs,” Trey said as he struggled to regain his senses.

  Swiping strands of tumbled hair from her eyes, she focused her attention on the horses. “I don’t think they know we’re here,” she whispered.

  “They know. They’re just too thirsty to be concerned about us,” he murmured.

  The shaggy winter coats of the animals were beginning to shed, exposing darker patches of hair along their necks and around their flanks. Most of them appeared thin from the lack of winter grazing, and their long manes and tails were ratted. Even so, they were a magnificent sight.

  She said, “Something about them being wild and free makes them even more beautiful.”

  “I wish I could adopt the whole herd.”

  “Why don’t you?” she asked.

  He turned his gaze back to her face, and when it settled on her pink, swollen lips, desire clenched deep in his gut. If the horses’ arrival hadn’t interrupted them, how much longer would he have gone on kissing her? How much time would’ve passed before he carried her off to some grassy spot and made love to her?

  “I don’t have enough pastureland.” He sounded like a robot, but that was only because he couldn’t think straight. Not with his body still aching for hers. Not when he was having to fight like crazy to keep from reaching for her.

  Turning back to him, she rested her palm against the side of his face. “When you get that ranch you want, you’ll have pasture space for plenty of mustangs,” she said, her voice full of gentle certainty. “And that’s going to be sooner than you think.”

  Darn, but he wanted to believe her. Not only about the land, but also the passion he’d felt in her kiss. The tenderness in the way she touched him. Did she really want him that much? Believe in him that much? He was afraid to think about it. Afraid these moments with her were all too good to be real.

  “You keep this up and I’m going to have a fat ego.”

  She laughed softly, and then her expression grew somber as her fingers played with the hair curling over his ear. “In case you haven’t yet guessed, you’re making me feel pretty good about myself, too.”

  “That’s good. I—uh—” Pausing, he tried to assemble the right words to convey how he was feeling about her and the two of them together. But he quickly realized that was impossible. Not without making himself sound like a goofy sap. “Nicci, that kiss—I don’t know about you, but it meant something to me.”

  Her gray eyes were solemn as she studied his face for long, long seconds, and then the corners of her lips tilted upward in an expression so soft it reminded him of a moonbeam, filling his heart with silvery light.

  “It meant something to me, too,” she whispered.

  He wanted to reach for her, to kiss her again and let their desire for each other play out to the finish. He wasn’t sure when, or if, there would be a right time for them to make love. But something told him that now definitely wasn’t the time to put their relationship to the test.

  Smiling down at her, he clasped a hand around her arm and turned her back to the stream. “Come on. We still have a few hours of sunlight left. It’s time we got back to being prospectors.”

  Laughing, she squeezed his hand. “One nugget found and several more to follow.”

  Off to their left, the herd of mustangs finished drinking, then disappeared on down the arroyo. As Trey watched them go, Nicole’s prediction about him getting a ranch of his own circled through his thoughts once again.

  The land, the cattle and the horses would mean nothing to him without her at his side. Even if she hadn’t realized that fact yet, he had. And it was a damned scary feeling.

  Chapter Seven

  “Trey, take the end of this tape measure and start walking. Don’t stop until I tell you to.”

  Trey turned a frown on Chandler. The two men were at the large barn that sat on a high knoll behind the animal clinic. Five minutes ago, they had finished doctoring a small herd of cattle suffering pink eye and were about to leave for a ranch call up in the northern part of Yavapai County. A job that, if they were lucky, would get them back here to the clinic by closing time.

  “What are you doing? I thought we were driving up to the Bar 40 to take care of those bulls for Mr. Seeley.”

  “We are,” Chandler told him. “This won’t take five minutes.” He thrust the end of the metal tape at Trey. “Get going. Straight north from where we’re standing.”

  Trey took off walking with the tape unfurling behind him. When Chandler finally called out for him to stop, Trey turned and looked back at his boss for further instructions.

  “That’s eighty feet. Think that will give us enough space?” Chandler asked.

  Trey glanced around at his surroundings. Off to the left were several holding pens made of iron pipe, beyond was a loafing shed and next to it was a larger barn they used for examining cattle.

  “Depends on what the space is for,” Trey answered. “More parking area for trucks and trailers?”

  Rolling in the metal tape, Chandler started walking toward the spot where Trey was standing. “Heck no! We already have plenty of room for parking. Where is your mind anyway? Don’t you remember me talking about a new stalling barn for the horses?”

  Trey could’ve told him that his mind was stuck on the clinic’s receptionist. But he wasn’t ready to admit to Chandler that he was already a cooked goose. Or that Nicole had him so mixed-up he hardly knew whether he was coming or going.

  Biting back a sigh, he said, “I remember. But that’s been months ago. I thought you’d scrapped the idea for a bigger and better horse facility.”

  “Why would I scrap it? The hospital needs improvements, and I’ve finally located a contractor to do the work.”

  “I hope he’s better than the last one who put a new roof on the clinic.”

  Chandler groaned as he slipped the small tape measure into the pocket of his jeans. “Don’t remind me of that disaster. No, this guy does excellent work, and he’s dependable. All I need to do is make sure I have the blueprint designs exactly how I want everything.”

  Trey shot him a wry look. “You don’t want a stalling barn. You want a horse hotel with all the amenities. Like air-conditioning, heating and a therapy pool.”

/>   “What’s wrong with that? A sick or injured horse deserves the best of care. Extra comfort means faster recovery. Plus, the more available treatments I have, the better. I’ve talked Blake into building one just like it on the ranch. Holt has needed such a facility for a long time. And it will make things much easier for me in both places.”

  “You already have a damned nice foaling barn on Three Rivers. It has luxury stalls.”

  “That’s for the brood mares and foals. Holt needs this for the whole remuda—’cause there’s hardly a day goes by that a few of them don’t require treatment for one thing or another.”

  Trey shook his head. “You’re talking about lots of money, Doc. You think it will actually pay off in the end?”

  “I’m not worried about the profit,” he said. “Not here at the clinic or on the ranch.”

  No, Trey thought, Chandler was all about the care of the animal. Not the cost.

  The two men left the knoll and began walking toward the white work truck they intended to drive to the Bar 40.

  “Speaking of money,” Chandler said, “I heard you found a small fortune on your panning expedition this past Sunday. Why hadn’t you mentioned it to me?”

  Two days had passed since Trey and Nicole had panned the arroyo up near Congress, but the time they’d spent together was still just as vivid in Trey’s mind as if it had just happened. Before the waning sunlight had finally forced them to leave the stream, he and Nicole ended up finding three more gold nuggets. But compared to the passionate kiss they’d shared, the gold was insignificant to Trey. Now the memory of having her in his arms was burning a hole right through his brain.

  Not bothering to look in Chandler’s direction, he said, “I guess you heard that from Ros.”

  “I hate to say it, but she’s almost like a mother hen to Nicci. I’ve told Ros she needs to mind her own business, but they’ve been friends since they were little girls.”

  “No matter. It’s no secret,” Trey said, while wondering what Chandler really thought about Nicci spending time with his assistant.