Two in the Saddle

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  He looked into her eyes and was sure she was reliving it, too, by the fire in her gaze and the quickening of her breath. He cleared his throat. “I need to go. Lizzie’s getting hot.”

  Gwen smiled at that and slipped her finger out of the baby’s grip. “I’ll bet.”

  “See you soon.” He left the kitchen while he could still walk. What a mess, he thought as he went out the front door into the rain-dampened morning. Gwen was the ruler of her pretty Victorian house, and his mother ruled the cabin tucked into the forest in Utah. Unfortunately, he couldn’t imagine either of them giving up their kingdoms.

  12

  ONCE TRAVIS WAS GONE Gwen pulled on a light trench coat and went for a walk around her tidy little neighborhood. She’d been cooped up too long in the house and the fresh air would help her think. The minute she stepped out on her front porch and breathed in the pine scent of the blue spruce in her front yard, she knew she’d made the right decision.

  The morning breeze was brisk but the sun warmed the wet grass and the sidewalk was already beginning to dry. Everywhere she looked were signs of spring—trees budding, birds chirping and tulip and daffodil bulbs sending shoots up through the damp earth in the neat flower beds that trimmed nearly every home. Snow might still drape the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, but the valley would soon overflow with blooming color.

  No doubt about it, she loved this place. She’d made it a point to meet her neighbors so that she could call out a greeting whenever she saw them. At Christmas she took home-baked goodies to each of the houses on her block, and Halloween meant giving all her little friends treats as they proudly showed off their costumes.

  She’d grieved with elderly Mrs. Jackson over her dearly departed cat, and given weaving lessons to ten-year-old Lisa Henry. She’d baby-sat for the Johnsons when the young couple had desperately needed a night away, and she’d taken soup to Ethel Sweetwater when she’d come down with the flu. Her neighbors automatically included her in family celebrations and happily spread the word about her bed and breakfast, bringing her more guests every year.

  For the first time Gwen began to wonder how loving Travis might change all that. He had a winter home in Utah, but he traveled to Colorado every summer to work for Matty. Now he’d be working for Matty and Sebastian. Assuming she could overcome whatever obstacle was keeping him from a commitment, would he expect her to live in Utah and only spend summers here, like a tourist? Could she uproot herself after so carefully and painstakingly making the little town of Huerfano her home?

  Huerfano meant orphan in Spanish according to her brother, who’d said it was a melancholy name for a town. Gwen had always liked it. She thought of this place as a haven for anyone who felt orphaned, which she had, in a way, despite having parents. To her, an orphan was someone who had no real home, no place where they belonged, and until she’d moved to Huerfano, she’d felt like that.

  She hoped that Travis’s place in Utah wasn’t anything special to him. With luck it was a typical bachelor’s hangout, with no real character. He liked her house. She could tell by the way he’d made himself so completely at home.

  And at home with the lady of the house, too. She still felt a thrill of shock and desire whenever she thought about him coming into her bathroom like that. She doubted those sorts or things happened much among her conservative neighbors. But that kind of daring was one of the things she loved about Travis, one of the reasons she hadn’t been able to get excited about a more conventional man.

  Oh, Travis excited her, all right. When she turned the corner and saw his black truck parked in front of her house already, her skin flushed and her heart started beating faster. She hadn’t expected him back so soon. She hoped he’d been so eager, he couldn’t help but rush to her side.

  He sat on the porch in her wicker rocker, holding Elizabeth on his lap and rocking slowly back and forth. He’d shoved his Stetson to the back of his head and unbuttoned his suede jacket. Even surrounded by white wicker and flowered cushions, he looked incredibly masculine, incredibly sexy. Elizabeth seemed drowsy, but she wasn’t asleep.

  “Sorry,” Gwen called as she hurried toward the porch. “I took a little walk to work the kinks out. I didn’t think you’d beat me home.”

  “You have kinks?” He watched her come toward him with that hot, penetrating look that melted her bones.

  “Um, not really.” She felt herself blushing. He must have thought she’d strained something during their morning lovemaking. “It was just an expression. I’m sorry I made you wait, though.”

  “No problem. We haven’t been here long. But I think Lizzie’s ready for her noontime bottle and a nap.”

  Gwen’s pulse quickened. A nap for the baby could mean playtime for the adults. She had no doubt Travis was thinking exactly the same thing, especially after his comment about kinks. “What did Doc Harrison say about her cold?”

  “We have it on the run.” Travis smiled. “He was real pleased with how we got her through this. He says that he thinks her teething will be no sweat for us, now that we’ve weathered this cold.”

  “Teething?” Surprised, Gwen studied the baby. “So soon?”

  “She’ll be getting teeth before we know it, he said.” A note of pride crept into his voice as he looked down at Elizabeth. “She’s advanced for her age. She’ll be an early crawler, he said.”

  Gwen was afraid he was setting himself up for heartbreak by making the assumption that Elizabeth would be around in a few weeks when she started teething, and later, when she started crawling. She hated to burst his bubble, but she thought someone should keep him rooted in reality.

  “Jessica could show up between now and then,” she reminded him gently.

  Travis glanced up, and his eyes glinted with determination. “So what? She walked out on this kid.”

  “She probably had a good reason.”

  “She’d better hope to hell she did. Sebastian and I have talked about this, and unless she had a damned good reason, she’s gonna have a legal fight on her hands if she expects to waltz back in and take this kid away. I have rights, too, assuming I’m Lizzie’s father, which I’m sure I am.”

  “You’d want custody?” Hope blazed bright as she considered that Travis might be thinking of settling down.

  The light went out of his eyes. “No, probably not.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I’d want Sebastian and Matty to have her, though, and they’d let me see her all I wanted. It would be almost like having her with me.”

  So he wasn’t thinking of settling down. Glancing away while she battled her emotions, she took the key from her pocket and fit it into the lock. “Let’s go in. I’ll fix us some lunch while you give Elizabeth her bottle.”

  Travis stood and followed Gwen into the house. He’d hated seeing the disappointment on her face when he’d told her he wouldn’t seek custody of Lizzie. The truth of the matter was that he’d love to have custody, but it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t be dragging the little girl to Utah for the winter and back to Colorado again for the summer. In Utah his mother could help with her, and would probably love it, but he wouldn’t leave Lizzie there for the summer and be away from her all that time.

  She needed a mother and a father, full-time, and that’s what Sebastian and Matty could give her. They were ready and willing to do that, although part of Sebastian’s urge came from his stubborn belief that he was Lizzie’s father. Any fool could look at the baby and know that wasn’t the case. She was Travis all over.

  He was positive he’d crawled early, too. He’d done everything early, he thought with a grin as he remembered the incident with Cindy Rexford in the hayloft the summer he turned fifteen.

  “Are we gonna have some of that soup?” he called out to Gwen as he took Lizzie upstairs to get rid of her outdoor clothes and his jacket.

  “Not for lunch,” Gwen called back. “It needs to simmer longer.”

  Travis paused on the stairs. “Leftover lasagna?”

 
; “Sure.”

  As he continued up the stairs, he could almost taste that lasagna. Man, that woman could cook. And after lunch, when Lizzie had gone to sleep, then he and Gwen could snuggle up and…of course he was forgetting about the talk they needed to have. He would like to put that off, but he didn’t think Gwen would let him do that.

  He wished life could stay the way it was right now, with the three of them sharing this house and living so easily together. He didn’t know about Gwen, but for him this was paradise. He had his baby near, the most delicious food he’d ever tasted, and a woman who satisfied him completely. What more could a man want? To have it go on forever, he thought with a sigh.

  He brought Lizzie down for her bottle and discovered Gwen had it waiting on the table. “Thank you,” he said. One more example of what it was like to have a woman like Gwen around, he thought. He sat down and fed Lizzie while he watched Gwen move around the kitchen getting lunch ready.

  The room smelled like heaven with soup on the stove and lasagna warming in the oven. When he noticed the loaf of bread she was cutting didn’t have any store wrapper on it, he realized she’d probably baked that, too.

  “You’re amazing,” he said.

  She paused in the act of slicing the bread and glanced at him. “Not really.”

  “Really. How many other women these days bake bread and do all this cooking?”

  She resumed slicing the bread. “They don’t because they’ve found better things to do. They run companies and discover medical cures or get elected to office. Or they run a ranch, like Matty. I’m outdated.”

  “Bull. And besides, you run a bed and breakfast. I’ll bet a lot of people go broke trying that, but you seem to be doing great.”

  “Thanks for saying so.”

  He was surprised by how grateful she sounded, as if she didn’t really think much of her contribution to the world. He thought her contribution was just about perfect. “You know, all those women who are company presidents and scientists and lawyers and God knows what else need a cozy place to rest and recover from all that stress. They need places like this and people like you.”

  She wrapped the bread in foil and popped it in the oven. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

  “Well, think of it.” He felt good, being able to say something that might make her see herself in a better light. She’d done that for him. He noticed that she had a little smile on her face as she set the table for lunch, and he liked to believe he’d helped put it there.

  When he’d finished giving Lizzie her bottle, he made sure he got a good burp out of her. Then he stood. “She’s really sleepy. I’ll go change her and put her down before we eat.”

  Gwen’s glance was almost shy. “Okay.”

  His body tightened with desire. The aroma of the lasagna made his mouth water, but he could always eat that later. Gwen was a hell of a lot more tempting right now. Maybe they wouldn’t make it through lunch, after all.

  He hurried upstairs and had Lizzie changed and down for her nap in record time. Before he went back downstairs he reached in the pocket of his jacket, took out the box he’d tucked in there and retrieved a couple of foil packets. The trip to Doc Harrison’s had taken no time at all. He’d been able to swing by Sloan Drug on the way back to Gwen’s house.

  Gwen had the lasagna dished out by the time he walked into the kitchen, and she was putting the bread into a straw basket lined with flowered material. Everything she did had style, he thought. Even the smallest things. And especially the way she made love.

  He looked at the lunch she’d gone to so much trouble to fix for them. Then he looked at her. He had no trouble making the choice, but the man he was trying to be would offer her one. “Gwen.”

  She glanced up from the bread basket.

  “We could, um, keep lunch warm in the oven.”

  She gave him a long, serious look that didn’t bode well for his chances. “We could, but we won’t,” she said. “While we eat, I want you to tell me what’s keeping you from settling down with a wife and children.”

  He’d half expected her to ask him at the next opportunity, but he’d sure like to stall this discussion. “We could be wasting precious time talking. No telling how long Lizzie will sleep.”

  She walked over to the table, the breadbasket in her hand. “It’s not a waste of time.” Her gaze held his. “Our future depends on it.”

  His stomach lurched, and suddenly he wasn’t hungry anymore. He gripped the back of the kitchen chair. “We don’t have a future,” he said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m a bad deal. We can enjoy a couple of days here, but then maybe we should just go our separate ways.” His stomach hurt even more as he said that. He wasn’t sure he could live through losing Gwen, but he couldn’t think of any other option.

  “You don’t want that any more than I do. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “What I want and what I can have are two different things.”

  She slammed the breadbasket down on the table so hard the bread popped right out of it. “Dammit all, Travis, why is that?”

  He swallowed. “Because I promised my dad before he died that I’d take care of my mother. For the rest of her life.”

  She stared at him as if he’d grown two heads, and then she started to smile. “That’s all?” she said. “That’s it?”

  “That’s enough.” He might have figured she’d react this way. Most people would if they hadn’t met Luann Evans. “You don’t know my mother. She’s high-maintenance. She—”

  “Hold it right there.” Gwen came around the table and cupped his face in both hands. “You are not going to put our happiness on hold because your mother needs you. No way.” Her eyes glowed with purpose.

  He’d never seen her look more beautiful. But she didn’t understand a damned thing about this situation. “I can’t leave her. I won’t leave her. Not even for you, Gwen.”

  “I’m not asking you to do that,” she murmured, edging up against him so he had no choice but to let go of the chair and grab her. “You can bring her here.”

  He laughed. “Oh, sure. Right. I’m sure that would work.”

  “Why wouldn’t it? This is a big house. She could have her own room upstairs, unless she has trouble with stairs. In that case we could—”

  “She doesn’t have trouble with stairs.” The velvet outfit Gwen had on sure felt good when he wrapped his arms around her.

  “So she’s not handicapped, then. That’s wonderful. I think she’d like the room in the back. It’s bigger, and we might even be able to put in a small half-bath for her.”

  “You don’t get it.” He closed his eyes as she began moving sensuously against him, the velvet rubbing against the material of his shirt, the fullness of her breasts luring him. Much more of that and he wouldn’t be able to think straight. “She wouldn’t have trouble with the stairs, but she would have trouble with you,” he said.

  “Me? Why?”

  His hands automatically cupped her behind and began a gentle kneading motion as he gazed into her eyes. Ah, she felt so good, looked so good, smelled so good.

  “Why, Travis?”

  He tried to remember what she’d asked him. Oh, yeah. Why his mother would have trouble with her. “Because she’s used to being the boss in her house, and so are you.”

  “It’s a big house.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “We could work it out.”

  He loved her touch. Needed it. “And besides, she’s used to having me all to herself. I’m the only kid. She’s spoiled rotten, if you must know.” He discovered her velvet pants had an elastic waist and he slipped his hands inside, encountering silk panties. His erection strained against his jeans. “But I promised my dad, and I’m keeping that promise.”

  “Of course you are.” She cupped the back of his head and urged him down toward her full, delicious mouth. “But you can do that here, with me.”

  “I don’t think so.” He could think of lots of things he’d like to do he
re with her, but co-existing with his mother wasn’t on the list. Gwen was living in a dream world. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to kiss her. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to make love to her until they were both wrung out and as limp as Lizzie’s sock monkey.

  “You’re giving your mother too much power,” she whispered, her breath soft against his mouth.

  “You don’t understand. She’s—”

  “Kiss me, Travis. And kiss me good.”

  He didn’t need to be asked twice. With a groan he took the bounty she offered. She was so lush, so sweet, yet so bold. He wondered if kissing her would always remind him of that first time, when she’d used her mouth so generously to give him the most incredible pleasure of his life. He thrust his tongue deep, remembering.

  He kissed her until they were both breathless and working at each other’s clothes. He had the fastening on her bra undone and she’d pulled the snaps of his shirt open by the time they looked at each other and smiled.

  “The lasagna’s getting cold,” she said.

  “That’s about the only thing that is.” He slid his hands under her shirt and caressed her full breasts. “I’ll bet your lasagna’s good cold.”

  She pulled his shirt from the waistband of his jeans. “Want to find out?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She ran her hands up his bare chest. “Travis, I want you to bring your mother here for a trial visit.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re saying. It would be a disaster.” He shivered as she leaned forward and kissed his nipples. “Do that again,” he murmured.

  “It wouldn’t be a disaster.” She ran her tongue over each tight nipple.

  His breath caught. He liked that little maneuver. Liked it very much. There was so much they had yet to learn about each other. It would take a lifetime. “It would be a disaster,” he said.