by Diana Palmer
“Are you sore?” he asked, noting how she stood in the stirrups occasionally.
She nodded. “I haven’t done much riding lately.”
“Have a hot bath. It will help.”
“I’ll do that.”
They rode on in silence, watching a hawk fly over and, closer, a rabbit jump and run for cover. It was so beautiful here, around Whitehorn, she thought wistfully. She was going to miss it terribly. But she’d have to go somewhere away from Chayce. Just being with him was a sort of torment. She couldn’t bear living in the same house with him and knowing that he was never going to be able to return the feeling she had for him.
Her brush with the horned mother cow had shaken him, but so had seeing her with the wedding gown in Madame Lili’s shop. He’d still left the ranch, regardless of the tenderness he’d shown her.
“What did you tell Madame Lili about the gown?” he asked suddenly, and she jerked, because it was as if he’d read her thoughts.
“That I hoped she’d find someone who would love it as much as I did,” she said stiffly. “I’m sure she will. It was…exquisite.”
He glanced at her quietly, seeing the pain and resignation and love in her soft eyes that she tried to hide. He sighed with a kind of resignation and smiled to himself as he urged his horse forward at a faster clip. Four years hadn’t worn down her feeling for him. It was a fair bet that what she felt wasn’t infatuation, and he’d never been more sure of what he felt himself. It was time to stop running.
Abby languished in a whirlpool bath when they got home, having left Chayce heading for his study without a backward glance. He could forget her so easily. All he had to do was walk away. Abby had never been able to do that, not in any way at all. She closed her eyes and let the jets soothe away the soreness that stabbed at her tired muscles. The warm water felt so good, and so did the bubble bath she’d added to it. The fragrance was of violets and it wafted around her nostrils in a delicious haze.
The sound of the jets had canceled out any other sounds. She didn’t realize that she was no longer alone until the jets suddenly stopped and she looked up in time to see Chayce move his thumb from the button that controlled them.
Her breath caught in her throat. The bubbles covered her, just, but the most shocking thing was that Chayce had just come from a bath himself. He was wearing a long silk navy blue bathrobe; and apparently nothing under it.
“Go ahead,” he invited as he drew the towel from the warming rack. “Ask me what I’m doing in here.”
She had to clear her throat before she could speak. Her face was flushed, and not from the heat of the water. “What are you doing in here?” she asked.
He held the towel in one hand and searched her face. “Make a guess.”
“You ran out of water?”
He smiled and held the towel. “Come out.”
She flushed even more. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Chayce, I don’t have any clothes on,” she said in an abnormally high-pitched tone.
He shrugged. “Neither do I.”
“You’re wearing a robe!”
He glanced at it. “So I am. Does it make you feel at a disadvantage?” His black eyes twinkled. “That’s a problem that’s very easily solved.”
He took one lean hand from the towel, twitched open the tie that held the robe and shrugged it off.
She didn’t mean to look. She didn’t want to look. And then she couldn’t stop looking. He was beautiful all over. Her eyes searched him like caressing hands, helplessly.
He held the towel up. “Now we’re even,” he said.
With a sigh of resignation, and feeling as if she were taking a step off the edge of a cliff, she got to her feet and stepped out of the tub.
He looked at her for a long time before he wrapped her in the towel, his eyes possessive and quiet and full of tenderness.
“Is it hard to breathe?” he asked gently as he toweled her dry. “You’re all but gasping for air.”
“I’m afraid,” she whispered, avoiding his piercing gaze.
He leaned to speak into her ear. “It won’t hurt.”
She flushed. “Chayce!”
He chuckled. “It’s wicked to tease you. I’m sorry. Maybe you don’t realize that it’s as difficult for me as it is for you.”
“What…is?”
He searched her eyes. “This first time.”
Her lips parted. Her heart was running wild. “First time…for what?”
He didn’t answer what must have sounded like an inane question.
“Becky’s right downstairs!” she said in a squeak.
“She’s gone to spend the rest of the day with her sister. She may not even be back tonight.”
He finished drying her and tossed the towel into the laundry hamper. He met her eyes levelly. “Do you want me to protect you?”
“From…what, you?” she asked on a high-pitched laugh.
“From becoming pregnant,” he said solemnly. “Children should be planned and wanted.”
She swallowed. This was getting entirely out of hand. She couldn’t believe that they were standing together stark naked talking about babies.
“Yes, and you don’t want to get married,” she said in a rush.
He took her face in his warm hands and searched her frightened eyes. “I love you,” he said quietly. “I want to get married. I want children. What I’m asking is if you want them this soon with me.”
She blinked in sweeping confusion. Her heart felt as if it might explode from the sheer joy of what he was telling her. “I don’t understand.”
“I called Madame Lili,” he whispered. “She still has the wedding gown and the veil. I said that we’d be in to get them tomorrow.”
“In the…but, I told you, I called off the wedding!”
“You called off one wedding,” he said, correcting her. He bent and touched his mouth softly to hers. “You didn’t call off ours. We’re getting married by a Methodist minister right here on the ranch. We’ll hold the ceremony in a marquee with arches of roses and as many guests as we can fit in the yard. We’ll have a catered reception afterward. The minister said that he could perform the ceremony the second week of August. By then we’ll have the rings, the blood tests, the license and invitations sent out.”
She stared up into his black eyes. “Married? Us? You and me?”
“Married. Us.” He drew her against him, flinching a little at the intimate contact. He inhaled sharply and shivered. “Oh, God, Abby…”
She reached up to him. Her hands, cool and nervous, slid into his thick hair and tugged his face down to hers. She kissed him with all the love she’d hidden for so many years and felt his immediate, explosive response.
He swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bed, following her down without lifting his mouth away. With all the barriers down, it was like a brushfire burning. His mouth was all over her, warm and thrilling and insistent, his hands touching her intimately, rousing her with expert deliberation.
She was weeping when he finally gave in to her pleas and, holding her eyes starkly, slid down to become part of her shivering body.
She gasped at the feel of him, so intimate, so invasive.
“Too quick?” he whispered tenderly, pausing to let her get used to him like this. He smiled even through his raging hunger. “I’ve waited a long time. I can give you all the time you need.”
She swallowed. “It…stings a little,” she whispered, dazed by being with him like this.
“Yes.” He brushed back her damp hair. “It won’t be uncomfortable for very long. Look at me, Abby,” he whispered, bending to nibble her lips. “Watch me.”
It was so erotic. She thought she’d never experienced anything in her life that was so vividly intimate. He talked to her. He whispered things that made her blush, moved against her, laughed with pure pleasure as she responded suddenly and starkly to the teasing, caressing motions of his body.
“I’m…sorry!
” she gasped when she realized that her nails had scored his shoulders.
“For what, Abby?” he asked huskily. His eyes seemed to blaze, his face was alive with passion, his body expert in the skill of kindling it. She sobbed, shocked by the sudden transformation of pain into throbbing, hot pleasure. She surged under him, shivered, gasped with the sensation of it, with his piercing stare as he watched her face.
“It’s so intimate,” she gasped.
“The most intimate thing a man and a woman can do together,” he agreed. “And the most beautiful, where love exists.” His body became insistent, demanding. Above her, his face hardened as the pace increased.
She held on for dear life, certain that what she was feeling now was going to kill her. She looked into his eyes and he vanished in a red haze of pure surging ecstasy that left her arched stiffly and convulsing. And still he watched and watched, until finally she felt his body join hers in the exultant surrender to fulfillment.
They lay together, not speaking, not moving. His skin was damp against hers and their hearts throbbed in a disjointed unity.
She felt him in every pore of her body, with every beat of her heart, as if he were part of her very breathing. Her hands touched his back experimentally, to make sure that he was real and it was no dream.
“You never answered me,” he whispered after a minute.
“About what?” she whispered back.
He smiled tenderly and his lips teased at her throat. “About whether or not you wanted me to make you pregnant.”
Chapter Six
She felt his heartbeat quicken and his arms tighten around her, as if he were poised, waiting for her answer.
She smiled against his warm, damp throat. “I want lots of babies,” she whispered, nuzzling him.
He caught his breath and then let it out. “Thank God,” he breathed at her ear. “Thank God, thank God…!”
He found her mouth and kissed her until they had to come up for air. His eyes were blazing with his feeling for her, with love so sweeping that a blind woman could have seen it.
“I couldn’t stop,” he whispered, tracing her mouth. “I’m sorry, I meant to give you a choice.”
“I made a choice,” she replied softly. Her eyes searched his. “I love you with all my heart. I never stopped loving you. I want it all, marriage, children, living with you, working with you. I never dreamed it would happen.”
“You seem very sure that it has.”
She nodded and touched his hard mouth. “You’d never have done this unless you loved me,” she said simply.
He nodded. “I love you too much. I’ll never know if I did the right thing by coming home. Perhaps you’ll be sorry one day that you didn’t marry Troy.”
“Never,” she said with certainty. She sighed. “I wish we were already married.”
He pursed his lips. “Do you?” He chuckled, looking down the length of their bodies, pressed so closely together. “I don’t think even marriage would get us closer than this, Abby. But I take your point.” He drew away from her, laughing at her expression. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Of course I will.” She sat up, her eyes full of wonder as she looked at him. “What are you doing?”
“Getting dressed. Put on something. Anything. It doesn’t matter.” He shrugged into his shirt and picked up the telephone.
Two hours later, they were in Las Vegas, standing together in the same clothes they’d worn that afternoon in a wedding chapel where a justice of the peace was performing a brief ceremony.
When Chayce kissed her, she cried. It was unbelievable. “But what about my beautiful wedding gown, and the ceremony,” she blurted out.
“A lot of people have both a civil and a religious service,” he said pointedly. He grinned. “You’ll feel even more married then,” he added, holding her hand tight in his. “And for years, people will talk about the prospective bride who was carried off in the middle of the night by her ardent husband-to-be,” he added wickedly.
“Nobody knows about it,” she scoffed.
His eyebrows rose over indulgently amused eyes. “Think so? Wait and see,” he retorted.
They slept very late the next morning in Chayce’s big bed after the return flight from Las Vegas, tired and relaxed and both wearing wedding bands. These they were obliged to show to a shocked and gasping Becky who opened the door to Chayce’s room at ten o’clock in the morning and found him in bed with Abby.
“But…what…where…how?” Becky cried from the doorway.
“Las Vegas,” Chayce said. He put a finger to his lips. “The local service is the second week of August, right here at the ranch, and it will be performed by a minister, not a justice of the peace,” he added. “So you don’t know that we’re already married. Understand?”
Becky was quick. She put a finger to her lips, gave them both a rakish, gleeful grin and closed the door.
Chayce rolled over, ripping the sheet away from Abby’s relaxed body in the process. “I want to test a theory,” he whispered with a grin as he bent his mouth to her soft body.
“What sort of theory?” she gasped, moving restlessly under the sweet contact of his lips.
“I want to see if it feels different with a wedding band. Game?”
She lifted her arms around his neck and raised her face to his. “Oh, yes,” she whispered. She drew him down to her. “I’m game. I love you, Chayce.”
“I love you, too, Mrs. Derringer,” he whispered. And after that, he didn’t say anything intelligible for a long, long time.
“Well?” she asked on gasping breaths, much later.
“It’s definitely better with the ring,” he murmured against her mouth.
She smiled under his demanding mouth. “I thought so, too.” She sighed. “And the nice thing is that nobody will know we’re already married.”
After twenty people had congratulated them in Whitehorn the next morning, Abby made a face and looked sheepishly at her new husband.
“I told you so,” he said comfortably with an arm around her as they walked down the street.
“But how?” she asked.
“That will probably be one of the remaining mysteries of life,” he replied. He looked down at her with pure pride. “But we’re having all the prewedding parties and a big society wedding just the same.”
“I’m glad,” she replied. “I wanted so badly to wear that wedding gown for you.”
“As you will,” he said, searching her eyes. “Just seeing you with it was enough to tear the heart out of me. I came back early because I knew I couldn’t let Troy marry you.”
“You said you came back to talk me into marrying him!” she gasped.
“I lied,” he said with a faint smile. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t change your mind. I gave in while I was away. I’m fifteen years your senior, but I don’t guess it really matters if you love me and I love you.”
“I tried to tell you that,” she murmured dryly.
“Next time you try to tell me something, I’ll listen.” He drew her closer. “I’ve been an idiot, Abby. But I woke up in time, thank God.”
She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek to his shoulder. “I was so afraid that you were going to let me go.”
“I don’t think I could have, when it came down to it. It was best that you broke the engagement when you did. I had visions of stealing you away in the middle of the night and flying you off to Las Vegas to marry me while you were still engaged to Troy. That would really have started tongues wagging around here!”
She glanced around them at hastily closed curtains. “I think they’re already wagging,” she said pointedly.
He turned her to him on the deserted sidewalk. “They might as well have a reason,” he whispered. And he kissed her right there, with enough passion and tenderness to prompt a whole new wave of gossip.
The wedding was a local occasion. There were showers and parties and all the celebration Abby could ever have hoped for. The wedding itself was
the culmination of weeks of festivities. Even though most people knew that Chayce and Abby had already been married, this exquisite service was just for Whitehorn. Not only were almost all the local citizens packed onto the Derringer ranch for the ceremony and a huge catered reception with tents to follow, even the news media had been allowed in. Cameras flashed as Abby walked down the red-carpeted makeshift aisle to Chayce in the wedding gown that he’d bought for her. She caught a glimpse of a tearful Madame Lili crying and nodding her head as she saw the radiant face of her client.
Chayce smiled at the picture Abby made in the gown, with the gossamer veil pulled over her eyes as she spoke her vows in a floral arch to the minister with his vestments and open Bible. When Chayce lifted her veil at the end of the service, and looked at her, she thought her legs might give way. On his face was an expression that she’d never seen in a man’s eyes before, not even in Chayce’s. It was beyond love.
“Forever, Abby,” he whispered raggedly, and bent to kiss her with such breathless tenderness that sobs were heard in the audience.
“Forever,” she whispered back, her soft eyes full of tears and overflowing love.
Eventually they remembered where they were and stopped looking at each other long enough to smile sheepishly and accept the minister’s congratulations before they walked back down the aisle.
Abby paused and looked out at the people in the crowd, neighbors and friends alike. Troy was standing with his arm around a radiant Eve Payne, and Abby grinned at him as she realized that he’d found his own heart’s desire, and vice versa.
She gathered up her gorgeous bouquet of white roses and lily of the valley and baby’s breath and fern and with a sharp breath, tossed it into the crowd.
She’d hoped that Eve Payne would catch it. But with the irony that sometimes accompanies best wishes, the bouquet seemed to suddenly develop a mind of its own. It flew, as if guided by some unseen hand, right into the hands of Chayce Derringer’s bachelor foreman, Kirk Conroy, who’d also served as best man for the service.
