He groaned tightly and let his head fall back on his neck. It wasn't true. None of it. And she had no business trying to make it real.
"In time, we will give it to our son," she said, "when he's chosen his mate."
Son? Jonas blinked and realized she'd moved away from him toward the bed. She stopped at the edge of the wide oak frame and turned to face him.
"Our son?" he heard himself ask and was surprised to find that his voice worked.
"Yes," she said and gave him a smile that rocked him to his heels. Still reeling from everything she'd said already, he barely understood her now as words tumbled from her mouth in a rush of nervousness.
In the soft lamplight, he saw deep pink color flood her cheeks before she dipped her head momentarily. She seemed to gather her strength before lifting her chin and looking at him again. Swallowing heavily, she started talking.
"I'll help you, Jonas. I'll help you remember who you are and what you come from." Her hands twisted together at her waist and even from this distance he saw her knuckles whiten. "When our first son is born, he'll be a strong warlock, in heart and power. He'll care for the sisters and brothers we give him, Mackenzie. The joining of our families will strengthen the Guild for years to come."
She gave him a tremulous smile and took a deep, steadying breath before she began lifting her nightgown up her legs. "Of course"—she kept talking, nerves making her words tumble from her mouth in a stream of sound—"we'll have to be married right away, but there's no time like the present to start our first child."
"First child?" he muttered, his gaze locked on expanding length of creamy white skin exposed to as she drew her nightgown higher and higher. Ankles shins, knees, thighs. His breath came hard and fast. His pulse pounded in his head. He felt the roaring of his blood and his body thickened and hardened until he thought he might burst.
"You are the Mackenzie, after all," she was saying, "so I'm sure if you concentrate all of your will you should be able to give me a baby tonight." She paused to sigh, with the hem of her nightgown just below the apex of her thighs.
Palms damp, mouth dry. Jonas watched her, unable to move.
"I suppose you can tell I'm a little nervous," she said softly. "But this is my destiny. And yours. It's why I'm here. With you."
"Uh-huh."
"A baby, Jonas," she went on, her voice dreamy now, "will seal our joining. Won't it be wonderful? Won't we have a splendid life together?" Humming slightly to herself, as if to bolster her courage, she pulled on the nightgown and he caught a heart stopping look at the soft golden curls that lay at the base of her abdomen.
He sucked in air like a dying man.
And still she went on, pulling the fabric up and up and over her head. She shook her hair back from her face as she dropped the nightgown and stood before him as naked as the day she was born.
Stunned speechless, Jonas nonetheless took advantage of the moment to admire her shapely body. Narrow waist, rounded hips, straight, slim legs, and full luscious breasts topped by pale pink nipples, already erect and calling to him.
"I'm ready, Mackenzie," she whispered and crossed her arms over the breasts his hands itched to touch, caress.
"Ready?" He reached up and shoved both hands through his hair as she jumped up onto the mattress and edged herself into the exact center of the bed.
From somewhere in the shadows, Hepzibah yowled.
"Ready for what?" he asked, squeezing the words past the knot in his throat.
"To be taken," she said, as if he should have known that already. Then she settled her head onto one of his pillows.
Jonas groaned. Just when he thought she couldn't surprise him again, she managed to make a liar out of him. Heart pounding, body hard and tight, he stared at the tiny woman in his bed.
She looked like a picture he'd seen once of a fancy statue lying atop a stone tomb. Her legs were locked together as if she'd been tied up, her arms crisscrossed her breasts, her eyes were closed, and her lips pursed as if she'd been sucking on something sour.
Like a damn sacrifice, he thought and felt the mad rush of desire that had been crowding him ebb just a little. Then snippets of what she'd been saying began to rise up in his mind and Jonas told himself that he had to start paying closer attention when she talked.
Did she really believe that telling him a story about his belt buckle was going to change his mind about marriage?
Turning, he walked across the room and snatched up his boots. The damn cat scuttled out from behind a chair and he gave it a look that should have scalded it.
"Jonas?"
He didn't look at her. Didn't trust himself to be able to leave if he did. "Go to bed, Hannah."
"I am in bed."
"I mean your bed." He tugged his boots on, stamping into them.
The mattress creaked and groaned as she sat up.
Don't look, he told himself firmly and grabbed his hat.
"But Jonas," she said, clearly confused, "I'm ready."
And so was he. That was the problem. He put on his shirt, stuffed the tails into the waistband of his jeans.
"Hannah…"
All right, one last look. He spun around to face her and regretted it almost instantly. Her creamy skin seemed to glow in the lamplight. Her hair fell around her shoulders and hid her breasts, with only the rigid pink tips peeking from behind that golden, shimmering curtain.
But it was her eyes that nearly undid him. Wide and miserable and disappointed, they stared at him, tugging at what used to be his soul.
"I am not going to marry you, Hannah," he said slowly, carefully. Then, taking one step closer to the bed, he grabbed his jacket off the bedpost and draped it across her, covering her from chest to thigh. His breath came a little easier even as he told himself he'd be damn cold outside without that jacket. Still better she wear it now. Protect them both from something far worse than the cold.
She clutched at his coat, holding it in front of her and he thanked her silently for it.
Proud of himself for being able to resist the tempting package she made, he said, "Don't get me wrong. I want nothing more than to make love to you right now. It's taking everything in me to resist the urge."
She smiled, but her eyes still looked wounded. "Don't resist, Jonas," she said softly. "This was meant."
Meant. Destiny. Witchcraft.
His brain raced with everything she'd told him Everything his gut told him was true and his brain insisted was a lie. Hannah swung her legs off the bed and stood up in front of him. Her eyes met his as she let the jacket drop to the floor. He groaned tightly and watched a slow rush of color warm her cheeks.
"We are meant," she said.
Good intentions or no, he was only human.
Reaching out, he drew her to him, wrapped his arms around her, and lowered his mouth to hers. She sighed as their lips met and he took her breath inside him. This kiss was deeper, more intimate than that first brief meeting of lips. But like then, a flash of white-hot energy erupted between them, sizzling through his veins, humming across his brain. Something inside him trembled as awareness fluttered to the surface of his mind. And then it was gone and there was only this moment. His hands smoothed up and down her spine, learning her curves, feeling the silky softness of her skin.
She leaned into him and when he parted her lips with his tongue, she gasped quietly and trembled against him. Another, stronger shimmer of something he'd never experienced before shot through him and Jonas's soul shook. He wanted to lose himself in her. Dive into her sweetness and submerge himself in the innocence he saw shining inside her.
Yet he realized that if he did, he might stay lost in her forever. Reluctantly, acting against every instinct he possessed, he drew back, breaking their kiss and the strange, almost electrical thread joining them together.
"Jonas?" she whispered.
He didn't… couldn't answer. Turning around, he left her, walked through the house and out into the cold, clear, empty night.
Chap
ter Nine
The cold night air hit him with a fisted punch.
He sucked in a gulp of the frosty night and hoped the chill would cool the fire in his blood. But somehow, he doubted it.
Jamming his hands into his jeans pockets, Jonas jumped off the back steps and hurried across the ranch yard to the barn. Visions of Hannah dashed through his mind, her bare skin, creamy in the lamplight. Her lips soft and full and eager beneath his. The brush of her breath against his cheek, the feel of her body beneath his hands. Her eyes, wide and green, shining with passion as she talked about his future—their future.
"Married," he whispered, disgusted. "Not me. Not again."
Never again would he be responsible for someone else's life. Happiness. The burden of that one miserable failure had weighed him down for ten years. He couldn't imagine another such burden being heaped on his shoulders.
He yanked the double doors open and stepped into the shadowy barn. Instantly, the scent of horses, straw and weathered wood invaded him, making his breath come easier.
His bootsteps echoed eerily as he walked down the center aisle to the stall at the end. The big black horse whinnied a greeting, lifted its head, and stretched out its nose toward him.
"Hope you're feeling up to riding night herd," Jonas told the animal as he ran a still-shaking hand over the horse's jaw and neck. "I need to get out of that damned house."
"Run you out, did she?" a voice from behind him asked in a tone half colored with subdued laughter. Scowling, Jonas looked the horse in the eye and muttered, "You could have warned me." The stallion shook its head, sending a long, black mane flying.
"So, what'd she do now?" Elias asked as he stepped out of the stall across the aisle and latched the half door behind him.
Instead of answering, Jonas looked past the older man to the pregnant mare Elias had been checking on. "She all right? Her leg healing?"
Elias tossed a glance at the gray. "She's fine. I was just feelin' a bit restless. Thought I'd sit with her awhile." Turning his gaze back to Jonas, he asked, "What're you up to?"
With only the barest hint of moonlight entering the barn, Jonas saw his old friend as a silhouetted shadow against the darker blackness behind him. "Couldn't sleep. Figured I'd spell Billy on night herd."
"Uh-huh."
Jonas grimaced tightly and turned to snatch the saddle blanket off the stall wall. As he spread it over the horse's back and smoothed out wrinkles, Elias went on.
"Seems a mite cold out tonight to be ridin' without a jacket."
Jonas closed his eyes briefly, trying not to remember the sound of that jacket dropping to the floor at Hannah's bare feet. "I'll take Billy's when I send him in."
The older man chuckled, a harsh, grating sound in the stillness. "She did run you out, didn't she?"
"Nobody runs me out of my own house, you coot."
"So what'd she do?" Elias prompted, obviously unconvinced.
Jonas lifted his saddle and set it down on the black's back. Leaning his forearms on the worn leather, he swiveled his head to look at the man who'd raised him.
"She started talking about getting married. Having babies, for Christ's sake." He wasn't about to tell the other man about Hannah undressing and laying herself down across the bed. Some things a man just didn't talk about.
"Ah…" Elias stepped closer to the stall and leaned against the door.
A world of understanding was contained in that heavy sigh and for the first time that night, Jonas started to relax. Elias knew. He'd been a witness to that long-ago night. He knew why Jonas had closed himself off from everything that most men wanted and worked toward.
The tightness in his chest eased a bit. Then the memory of Hannah's face swam in front of him again and his insides coiled up like an overwound watch spring. Gritting his teeth, he flipped the stirrup up and across the saddle. Bending down, he grabbed the cinch strap and threaded it through the buckle.
"I never should have hired her," he said with a shake of his head. "I knew she was trouble the minute I saw her." He yanked on the strap one more time, then secured it and set the stirrup back into place. Leaning both elbows on the saddle seat, he scrubbed his face with his hands. "Damn it, I knew I'd regret it and I hired her anyway."
"You needed her."
Jonas heard the shrug in the man's voice and, turning his head to look at him, said, "I needed her like a bullet to the brain."
"She's a good cook."
"Yeah," he admitted.
"Hard worker, too," Elias went on. "That girl's goin' at a full gallop all day long."
True. Hannah did her share of work and more. The whole damn ranch had been running better since her arrival. The men worked harder because their bellies were satisfied. The ranch yard was cleaned up, laundry done, and he was even getting used to the fresh wildflowers she left all over the house.
She'd put her stamp on his house and she'd only been there a couple of weeks. God help him.
"I've got no complaint with her work. It's the rest."
"What rest?"
The haunting of his dreams. The unsettling of his soul. The unleashed snatches of the past that seemed to dog his every footstep here lately.
"So," Elias said softly, "what you don't like is her making you think about living again."
"What?" He stared into the blackness, but Elias's gray eyes were lost in the shadows.
"This talk of marriage and children," the man said quietly. "It's makin' you think. Remember."
"Hell. I don't need somebody to remind me," Jonas muttered thickly. "How the hell could I forget?"
"It was a long time ago." Elias said.
"Ten years." Years filled with regret and thoughts of what might have been.
"Maybe it's time you let it go."
"And how do I do that?" he asked, weariness tingeing his voice.
"By livin'."
A flash of anger shot through him and was gone again. "You were there, old man. You saw it. You saw her." His voice shook and he cleared his throat deliberately. "I can't just pretend it didn't happen."
"No one said you had to," Elias said.
"You just said –"
"I said it's time to leave the past in the past." Elias straightened up and shuffled his feet on the straw-littered dirt. "It's beyond time. What's done is done. There's no changin' it."
"Don't you think I know that?" Jonas nearly yelled and instantly lowered his voice again as the black sidestepped anxiously and rolled its brown eyes. "Hell, if I could change it, I'd have done it that night."
A long pause stretched out between them. Just when Jonas was hoping Elias would leave it lay, the older man spoke again.
"She would have loved this, y' know."
His fingers tightened around the lip of the saddle, fingernails digging into the worn, butter soft leather. "What?"
"You bein' miserable. You sufferin' for the rest of your life."
A stab of pain sliced at him and he wanted to argue with the man he thought of as a father. But he couldn't do it. Maybe time hadn't let him forget his failures, but it had sure enough defined the truth about the woman he'd married so long ago.
Back then, he'd been young enough to be taken in by a sweet smile and the promise of heaven on a mattress. But that heaven had become a hell on their wedding night, when his bride had ‘done her Christian duty' with a stoic forbearance that still made him shiver to think about it.
But Elias didn't know any of that. What he referred to was the crying, the complaining, the dissatisfaction that had driven Marie to make everyone's life miserable.
"It wasn't all her fault," he felt compelled to defend her, even now. She'd been his wife and he'd failed her. If he'd been a better husband, she wouldn't have been so unhappy. "She was young."
"So were you."
"It's different for a man."
Elias spat. "Jesus, boy. You think all women are like that? Take a look around you." He rubbed one hand across the top of his skull. "Most women out here are li
ke Hannah. The kind to stand beside their men. Sharin', workin', livin', and dyin'. Just because you picked the wrong one the first time don't mean you'd do it again."
Something inside him snapped. "Why are we always talkin' about me? If you think so highly of marriage, how come you never got hitched yourself?"
"It wasn't for lack of tryin'!" Elias said just as angrily. "But I let her slip away—just like you're fixin' to do with Hannah."
Stunned, Jonas stared at him. He'd known the man all his life and never once had Elias mentioned a lost love. His whole world was spinning. Nothing was the same as it had been only a couple of weeks ago. Even the man he'd thought he knew better than anyone else had secrets. Jesus. Couldn't he count on anything? "You never said anything about a woman."
"No point in talkin'—thinkin' –" he added meaningfully "—about what's done and gone. Like I been sayin'."
But Jonas wouldn't be diverted back to talk of Marie, not before he got a few answers. "What happened? Why didn't you marry her?"
"Was a long time ago," Elias said, his voice quiet now, as shadow-filled as the barn. He sighed and added, "Nearly thirty years now. Hard to believe."
He would have been about thirty-five then, Jonas thought and tried to imagine Elias young and in love.
"Met her on a ship."
"A ship?" Jesus, what else didn't he know about the man?
Elias chuckled. "Don't sound so surprised. I was workin' for a ranch in Texas and the boss shipped a few dozen head of longhorns to England. I was one of the cowboys that went along. She was a passenger, too." His voice softened in memory and even in the dim light, Jonas saw his friend's expression gentle. "Pretty thing," he was saying. "Tall and slim, with a smile that lit up the dark spots inside me the first time I saw it."
Caught by the other man's story, Jonas silently admitted he'd felt the same way about Hannah the first time he'd laid eyes on her.
"Anyway," Elias went on, his voice rougher now he eased further away from the memories, "we fell in love."
He shook his head as if he still couldn't believe that she'd loved him. "A cowboy and a beautiful lady. Oh, I knew I wasn't good enough for her… but no other man could have loved her more."
Wish Upon a Cowboy Page 12
