Because he wanted…Oh, God.
Ginny’s knees buckled a little, and she consciously had to lock them to keep herself upright. Cole took her face in his hands and stared at her. His touch electrified her. Terrified her. Made her want to pull him closer at the same time she was desperate to push him away because the sensory overload was almost unbearable.
“You’ll enjoy it,” he whispered against her lips. “I promise you. I’ll make it so good for you you’ll want to do it again and again…” He brushed his lips against hers. “And again.”
Then he kissed her, a kiss so deliciously deep and breathtaking that she practically fainted from the feeling. It was slower, more languid than the other kisses he’d given her, as if he had all night to explore her mouth with his. But while Cole was doing his best to warm up any part of her body he touched, something deep inside her remained cold.
He didn’t want her. He wanted any woman whom he’d been able to convince to marry him. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been somebody else. She had no meaning to him at all.
If only he’d been content to kiss her forever, she’d have given him carte blanche. But he clearly wanted more. More of something she had no idea how to give him. More of something she had no business giving him.
Still kissing her deeply, he slid his hands to her hips. He pulled her against him, and her heart skipped a beat when she realized what it was he’d pulled her against. He wound his left hand around the small of her back, then skimmed his right hand along her ribs. She felt mounting anticipation as his hand eased closer to her breast, and when he finally circled it with his hand and squeezed it softly, she let out a breathy gasp and tried to pull away.
“Cole. Don’t. Please don’t.”
Still he held on to her, waiting patiently until she stilled against him. Then he laid his palm along her neck, his thumb grazing her cheek. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I know you’ve never done this before. You’re probably just a little scared.”
No, actually, she was a lot scared, but that was beside the point. She’d dreamed about sex since she was old enough to know there were people doing it and she wasn’t. But it wasn’t actually sex she’d dreamed about. She’d dreamed about making love. With a man who loved her. When Cole touched her, it excited her in ways she never knew she could be excited. When she looked into his eyes, though, she saw a void, something missing, something essential that went deep to the heart of a woman when a man looked at her, something that for all her inexperience she knew should be there. It wasn’t.
“I asked you to stop,” she said.
“Relax,” he whispered, touching his lips to her neck, her cheek. “It’ll be—”
“I said no!”
He pulled away with a startled expression. Almost immediately, his surprise gave way to something that looked a lot like anger, and all at once she realized she didn’t know a thing about the man she’d just traveled a thousand miles with. The man she’d married. The man who just might insist she fulfill her wifely duties even though she’d never even been touched by a man until last night, and the thought of that scared her to death.
“Please don’t force me to do this,” she whispered.
Cole physically recoiled, his eyes wide with astonishment. “Force you? Is that what you think? That I would force you?”
“I—I don’t really know you, Cole. So I don’t know what you’d do.”
His jaw tightened with anger. “I’ve never forced a woman to do anything she didn’t want to do, and I sure as hell don’t intend to start now. If you don’t want to have sex, fine. But trust me when I tell you, sweetheart—it’s your loss!”
He turned and stormed into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him with a solid thunk.
Ginny looked around helplessly. The room was suddenly so quiet, echoing the lost, lonely feeling welling inside her. She was in a Las Vegas hotel room a thousand miles from home, married to a man she barely knew, a man who right now wasn’t happy with her in the least.
She sat on the bed, and all at once her mother started talking again, in that uncanny beyond-the-grave way she had that made it seem as if she were still alive, standing over her, berating her within an inch of her life.
Are you out of your mind? You’re in Sin City with a man who’s only using you to get what he wants. What kind of a fool are you, anyway?
Ginny squeezed her eyes closed, wondering how she could have gotten herself into this mess. It appeared that everything her mother had ever told her about men was absolutely true. Cole thought just because they were legally married, he was free to take advantage of her any way he wanted to.
She sat up straighter, feeling a new sense of resolve. She decided right then that he wasn’t entitled to anything just because he had her name on a marriage license. He could only take advantage of her if she let him.
And she wasn’t going to let him.
COLE TURNED the shower on full blast and ducked under it, letting the water beat down on him, hoping it might help ease his frustration. It didn’t.
It’s your loss.
Yeah, right. Her loss? She couldn’t have cared less. He was the one still feeling as if he were about to explode.
That had been an incredibly stupid thing to say, but he’d been so astonished that she’d turned him down he’d barely known what to say. After all, hadn’t she begged him to kiss her at the Lone Wolf last night?
He ran the bar of soap over his body, scrubbing with an intensity that just about peeled his skin off. Technically they were married. Weren’t there laws about this kind of thing? Didn’t a woman have to have sex with her husband?
He sighed. No. Of course she didn’t. This was twenty-first-century America. But damned if he didn’t feel like calling his congressman to see how fast he could resurrect a few of those archaic laws and get them back on the books.
By the time he turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, he was starting to feel a little guilty. She was so innocent, and he’d come on way too strong, pushing her to do something she wasn’t the least bit ready for.
He slicked his hands through his hair, then grabbed a towel and dried off, telling himself to calm down. Yes, she was his wife, but it might take a little while for her to be comfortable with that. The last thing he wanted was a woman in his bed who didn’t want to be there.
Calm and cool. That’s what he needed to be.
He came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his hips, and headed for his suitcase. Ginny was sitting on the bed, still wearing that immaculate little dress, looking as if she were parked front row center in church listening to a particularly scathing sermon. She didn’t turn around.
“Cole?” she said, staring at the dresser.
He pulled a pair of sweatpants out of his suitcase. “Yeah?”
“I don’t want you ever to do that again.”
“Do what?”
“K-kiss me.” She picked up her skirt and twisted it nervously between her fingers. “And other things. Our contract says nothing about me being required to…submit to that.”
All Cole’s resolve to remain calm and cool flew right out the window. Submit to that? As if he were asking her to take a beating?
“Promise me, Cole. For the next six months, promise me you won’t—”
“No. I’m not promising any such thing!”
“You have to. Right now. If you don’t, I’ll…” She squeezed her skirt so hard that her knuckles whitened.
“You’ll what?”
She raised her chin, and even five paces away he could see it quivering. “I’ll have our marriage annulled.”
Annulled? Annulled?
He thought he’d foreseen all the potential problems of marrying this woman, but not once in his most pessimistic moment had he expected to face an obstacle like this.
“Actually, Ginny, you can’t do that. Our contract states that you’re not allowed to divorce me for six months.”
“Yes, but it says nothing about annulment.
”
Cole had no idea if such a challenge would hold up in court or not, but he sure as hell didn’t need that kind of complication when so much was riding on the outcome.
“Are you sure about this, Ginny? You don’t want sex?”
She bowed her head and stared at her lap. “That’s right.”
“Not now, or not ever?”
“Not ever.” She paused. “Well, eventually, I suppose. With the man I marry.”
“We are married.”
“Yes, we are. Contractually speaking. But—”
“Would you forget about the damned contract for a minute? Sex with your husband is not a sin!”
“I never said it was. When I have a real husband, things will be different.”
Cole wanted to scream. He’d never thought for one second that he’d be on the verge of begging his wife to have sex with him. It was downright humiliating.
“Fine,” he said. “I won’t touch you. Any particular distance I have to stay away from you?”
“No. Just don’t…do what you did tonight.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.”
“Good. That’s…good.”
For the first time she turned to face him, then immediately averted her eyes. “Cole, please put some clothes on!”
“I don’t think I’m obligated to do that, Ginny. Contractually speaking.”
“If you don’t—”
“What? You’ll get an annulment? Are there any other rules you’d care to make?”
“I don’t think simple modesty is too much to ask.”
Any other woman would be tearing his clothes off him right about now, and the fact that Ginny wanted him to put his clothes on, and on their wedding night, no less, was just about more than he could tolerate.
“Fine,” he said. While her back was still turned, he pulled the towel loose from around his hips, hurled it to the floor, then yanked on his sweatpants. He grabbed the bedspread and whipped it aside.
“It’s late,” he told her. “I’m sleeping in this bed. If you want to join me, fine. If you don’t, that’s fine, too, but you’ll have to make other arrangements yourself.”
Ginny sighed. “Well, I suppose we’ve already occupied the same bed once. One more time couldn’t hurt. And it’s a large bed. As long as you stay on your side—”
“Should I draw a line down the middle?”
Ginny stared at him a moment, as if she were considering taking him up on that. “No. I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
While Cole lay in bed, still fuming, she took her overnight bag into the bathroom. He heard tooth brushing, toilet flushing, water running. She emerged minutes later wearing a nightgown—a long pink creation that contained so damned much fabric he could barely see the top of her head or the tips of her toes. In his opinion, any woman Ginny’s age ought to be draped in something short, black and slinky. Period. But when he tried to imagine her in sexy lingerie, the sight of all that fabric squelched any fantasy he tried to work up.
She slid beneath the covers on the other side of the bed, hugging the edge and taking up only a tiny ball of space, staying as far away from him as was physically possible. That really irritated him. He’d offered her a night of pleasure she would never forget, and here she was treating him as if she couldn’t stand the thought of him touching her. She turned out the light, and after a few moments, her rhythmic breathing told him she’d fallen asleep.
He tucked his arm behind his head, suddenly wide awake. Fifteen minutes passed, then thirty. He found the more he tried to sleep, the more he thought about the warm, untried little body curled up next to him inside those yards and yards of flannel.
Damn, this was crazy. It was Ginny White on the other side of that bed, a plain, inexperienced little thing whom he wouldn’t have looked twice at before last night, and now all he could think about was touching her.
He knew now that he’d come on too strong tonight, thinking he’d sweep her right off her feet, underestimating her fear of the unknown.
He wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
6
COLE BARELY SPOKE to Ginny the whole way home on the plane and during the drive to Coldwater. Every minute seemed to stretch on endlessly, and soon her stomach had tied itself into knots of dread at what lay ahead. Ever since last night, when she’d insisted on the no-touching rule, Cole had extended it to include no talking, too.
Just because she’d insisted he not touch her, didn’t mean she wasn’t preoccupied with the thought of it approximately fifty-nine minutes out of every hour. In the close confines of the plane, occasionally their arms had brushed against each other. That was all it took for Ginny’s thoughts to be dragged to last night, when she’d felt so hot and flushed from his kisses that she could barely speak to tell him never to do it again. No wonder her mother had warned her about men. Every time Cole kissed her it turned her brain to mush.
Before going to the ranch, she suggested he take her by her house to get her car and pick up some clothes to last her for a couple of days. She would decide later what to do with her house and the rest of her belongings. But Cole had been adamant about putting in an appearance at the ranch first and declaring it their official residence. According to his grandmother’s will, this was the last day for them to move in, and he told Ginny he had no intention of Murphy catching him on a technicality.
As they drove through the front gates of the ranch, Ginny stared in awe at the huge turn-of-the-century prairie-style residence with its massive wraparound front porch, forest-green shutters and meticulous landscaping. It sat on a rise in the distance, postcard-picturesque against a canvas of blue sky mingling with the orange light of the evening sun. Her fears concerning living with Cole were instantly put to rest. In a house so large, their paths might not even have to cross.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured.
“Yeah,” Cole said. “It’s beautiful, all right. Unfortunately, Murphy still lives there.” He pointed down the road. “That’s where we’ll be living.”
Ginny looked in the direction he pointed, and panic set in all over again.
It was a house. Barely. The plain little structure couldn’t have been more than seven hundred square feet, whitewash dull with a light gray roof. A couple of window-unit air conditioners protruded from its sides. It was the kind of place that a few shrubs or flowers might have been able to brighten up, if only someone had bothered to plant any.
“It’s the foreman’s house. Nobody’s used it in years. My grandmother specified in her will that I’d have to use it while I’m here.”
“Oh,” Ginny said, disappointment welling inside her. “It’s very…cozy.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
Ginny looked past the house to the ranch land beyond it, which, unlike the house, was nothing but wide open space. Lush hills rolled majestically as far as she could see, with trees leafed in full summer splendor. Farther down the road stood a large barn with adjoining corrals that were filled with horses.
Ginny felt a rush of excitement. She’d wanted a horse since she was old enough to say the word, but of course, her mother had given her a lecture on the nebulous horrors that would befall a young girl who dared to sit astride such a wild, powerful beast. Ginny had come away thinking that maybe riding a horse was a sin, but she hadn’t been completely certain.
“Do you think I can learn to ride a horse?” she asked Cole.
He looked toward the corrals, then shrugged. “If you want to. And if I know Murphy, he’ll be happy to put you to work.”
Ginny felt a rush of exhilaration at the prospect of even touching a horse, much less riding one. Then Cole pulled up in front of the foreman’s house and they went inside, and the little bit of elation she’d felt was immediately forgotten.
What had looked small on the outside looked positively microscopic on the inside, with sparse, utilitarian furnishings, wood floors and bare walls. It was neat and tidy, but musty-smelling from being closed up.
She took the ten-second tour and realized there was a much bigger problem than she’d anticipated.
It had only one bedroom.
Did Cole actually expect her to share a bed with him for the next six months? For a moment she felt faint. She wasn’t good at telling him no. If she had to do it every night, sooner or later something was going to happen between them that she was sure she was going to regret.
She met him in the living room, and all at once he seemed more big and imposing and sexy than he ever had before.
“Cole?”
“Yes?”
“You knew this was a one-bedroom house,” she said.
“Yes. I did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would it have mattered if I had?”
“Yes! This house is tiny! With both of us living here—”
He held up his palm. “All right, Ginny. All right. I’ll sleep on the sofa. You can have the bedroom. Does that make you feel better?”
She felt somewhat relieved, but still there was only one bathroom, one bedroom closet, one dresser…
Nothing was going to be easy about this deal they’d made. Absolutely nothing. But then again, she could accommodate a lot of inconvenience for twenty-five thousand dollars, couldn’t she?
She sighed with resignation. “I suppose it’ll be okay, as long as you respect my privacy.”
“You might as well kiss the privacy thing goodbye right now. You’re going to have to lighten up a little if we’re going to make this work.”
“No. The only way to make this work is to plan ahead. First of all, I realize it’s not fair for you to have to sleep on the sofa the whole time. We can take turns. And we can set up a schedule for the bathroom, and as far as cooking—”
All at once she heard a car engine out front. “Who’s that?”
Cole glanced out the window. “Looks like Murphy saw us drive in.”
They stepped onto the front porch, and Ginny watched as an older man got out of a shiny red pickup truck and walked slowly to the porch steps. He stopped, staring up at them, a hat shading his craggy face. A toothpick protruded from the corner of his mouth, a mouth that seemed to be set in a permanent frown.
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