by Gayle Wilson
“Sam liked Mac.”
“Hell,” Chase said, “everybody liked Mac.”
“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you, too.”
“I’m not trying to win any popularity contests with the old bastard.” The old bastard who was her father, he realized. “Sorry,” he said.
She smiled, her lips tilting in memory of how closely that echoed her own assessment. “Conniving old bastard,” she corrected. And then, knowing he couldn’t understand what had prompted that comment, she added, “Somehow that makes it even harder for me to understand how he could have so badly misjudged Jason Drake. That’s not like Sam.”
“You said it yourself. He’s seventy-four years old. He needed some help. We all make mistakes about who to trust.”
“How did Drake do it?”
“Since he’s been working there he’s just wormed his way into your father’s confidence. He had access to almost everything. He’d even figured out the combination to the safe Sam was so careful about,” he said. Then he told her, because for some reason it was surprising to him, even a little sad, to think about Sam Kincaid being sentimental, “The combination was based on the numbers of your mother’s birthday. I guess everybody does stuff like that, even Sam.”
“So Drake just took out the ransom note and read it.”
“He was ahead of us all the way. He hired a Mexican shooter to go with him because the guy knew the country and because he worked cheap. They picked us up in Melchor Múzquiz and followed us when we left Maybe that’s why I kept feeling we were being watched. The shooter knew the back trails so they could get ahead of us once we’d given away our destination by making the turn to the west, to the mining camp.”
“They intended to kill us?”
“They intended to get the money, but I don’t think Drake put any limitations on how they did it I don’t think he cared.”
“But the guy missed us. How could he miss us and hit everything else?”
“Good cover fire?” Chase suggested sarcastically. “Luck. Moving targets. Even the best hunters miss a lot of the time. And it’s a lot harder to make yourself shoot people.”
“And tonight? How did Drake know about tonight?”
“Because I told him,” Chase said, sharp disgust in his voice.
“You told him?”
“At the airstrip. He was still standing around when I told Sam how bad I’d screwed up the original payoff and that the kidnapper wanted the additional half million. I wasn’t thinking about who was around because I was so mad that you and Sam hadn’t told me about Mandy. And because you let Drake carry her off the chopper.”
“McCullar tantrum,” she said, remembering Chase’s eyes that day.
“When I came to the ranch tonight to pick up the bag that supposedly contained the money, all Drake had to do was follow.”
“What did you do with him?”
“I called the sheriff on Drake’s car phone. Turned him over to Val Verde County on an attempted-murder charge. That’s what took me so long. Sam’ll have to press charges for the other. You and I will have to testify.”
“Poor Sam,” she said.
“Because he trusted the wrong guy?”
“Because everyone will know. You know what they’ll think. That he’s past it. Just another senile old man, conned by a crook. God, he’ll hate that.”
“You don’t have to be old to be conned,” Chase said.
“I think it might make you feel more foolish if you are. At least…I think Sam will feel that way. Like everyone’s laughing at him. That’s always been so important to him.”
They rode in silence for a while, the quiet miles slipping by in the darkness.
“Will you at least let me tell him?” she asked.
He turned his head, looking at the perfect line of her profile. “You think I’m going to gloat?” he asked.
“I just think I owe it to him,” she said. “I’m his daughter. Sometimes…I forget that. Forget that he might need me. Forget what family’s for.”
“Picking up the pieces,” Jenny had reminded him.
“You tell him,” he agreed. “I won’t even go in. I’ll drop you off and go on back to Jenny’s.”
She turned to face him. “I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I want you to come home with me.”
Only, Sam Kincaid’s ranch wasn’t home, he thought. Not by any stretch of the imagination. The only place that he and Samantha might consider home was the house he had built with his own hands. The house where she and his daughter were already living.
“Later,” he said softly.
“You promise?” she asked, glancing at him again, uncertainty in her voice.
“I swear to you on my mother’s grave,” he said, thinking of Mandy’s kidnapper. A man of honor. “And on Mac’s,” he added softly. For the first time since he’d been home, when he thought about Mac, his lips curved slightly, almost into a smile.
Chapter Fifteen
Chase realized only when the car had stopped that she had changed her mind. Judging by the poor quality of the roads, if by nothing else, he should have figured out a long time ago that they weren’t headed to Sam’s ranch, but he hadn’t The surfaces they’d been traveling on, both good and bad, had all felt like washboards to him.
After he’d told her about Drake, he’d just sat, eyes closed, cradling his left arm protectively against his body, his right hand cupping the elbow, trying to keep it from moving with the motion of the car. When Samantha had finally stopped the car, he opened his eyes and found they were parked in the moonlight next to the old cottonwood.
“I thought you were picking up Mandy,” he said.
His heart had begun beating a little too fast, and he was trying to find some logical explanation for why she had brought him here. Some explanation other than the one that had immediately been there, full-blown in his consciousness, the one that had too much to do with his memories of what had happened in this house. Of being alone in it one night with Samantha Kincaid.
“I decided it’s too late to wake them up. Mandy’s fine, I know that, and it’s the middle of the night. Why wake them up?” she asked reasonably.
It made sense, but it didn’t really explain what he was doing here. Not unless…Don’t even think it, he warned himself. Those were his fantasies, his dreams. They weren’t necessarily hers, and he knew that they might not ever be hers again.
“You want me to take the car on to Jenny’s?” he asked, holding his breath while he waited.
“Well, Chase,” she said softly, “don’t you think it’s probably the middle of the night over there, too?”
There was a hint of amusement in her voice, and he knew she was looking at him. He could feel the force of her gaze in the quiet darkness. Finally he worked up enough courage to turn his head and meet her eyes.
“But your virtue’s safe from me,” she said. And then she added, “If you still want it to be.”
Silence drifted between them again, but it wasn’t like the other times. The quality of what was happening was different, and he couldn’t decide why. Maybe because there was no longer any bitterness in the memories of what they had shared.
For him that bitterness had been replaced by the wonder of a little girl who was glad to see him whenever he showed up. And by Samantha’s open acknowledgment that Mandy was his daughter and that she had always wanted her to know him.
But he couldn’t explain why the bitterness had disappeared from the green eyes that were watching him now. Or why she had brought him here or why she had said what she had just said. He hadn’t made much of an explanation about why he’d disappeared from their lives five years ago. At least not any that he could ever have hoped would be enough to overcome the pain of that desertion. But somehow, it seemed, he might have been wrong about that, too.
“I’m not sure I had much virtue to begin with,” he said. “But whatever I’ve got, I’m not afraid to lose it.”
“Okay,” she said simply. “
Think you can get out of the truck?”
He had to think about that, and as he did, he began to realize that he had set himself a damn difficult task. Not getting out of the truck. Hell, he could fall out of the truck. But managing the other? He wasn’t so sure about his success at that. About how it would be for her.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” he suggested. That came from his brain. His body’s response to what she had said had been just like always. Hard. Automatic. Samantha.
“You need some help?” she asked. “I can do that.”
“I wasn’t talking about getting out of the truck,” he admitted.
“Neither was I,” she said, and then she smiled at him.
“I’M STILL NOT SURE this is a good idea,” Chase said.
He was standing in the same bedroom where Mandy had been conceived, standing in the same moon-touched darkness, surrounded again by the haunting fragrance of Samantha Kincaid’s perfume. “This is not exactly…” He paused, then wondered how he was going to get out of finishing that one.
She folded the shirt she’d just helped him remove and laid it over the footboard of the bed before she looked back at him to ask, “Not exactly…?”
“What I’ve been imagining all these years,” he whispered.
Her hands moved to the waistband of his jeans, her fingers brushing against the golden hair below his navel. Her hands were cool against his overheated skin and the muscles of his stomach flinched away from them. Again she looked up at him and smiled.
“I don’t know why I always have to do all the work around here,” she said, her voice teasing. “I swear, I don’t know why I put up with it. Just working myself to death. Inviting you,” she said, running the back of her hand slowly across his stomach, the tips of her fingers between the inside of his jeans and the ridged muscles. Her knuckles were as teasing as her voice.
“Undressing you.” She bent her head and touched her mouth to his chest. In contrast to her fingers, her lips were soft and warm, and his eyes closed suddenly.
“Seducing you,” she whispered. Her mouth was close enough that he could feel the warmth of her breath as she said those words. It fluttered like a moth in the fair hair that matted his chest. “Everything, always, just left up to me to…handle,” she finished softly.
She raised her head and met his eyes, her hands already beginning the task of unfastening the metal buttons of his fly. There was no answering amusement in his face. “Amused” wasn’t any part of what he was feeling right now.
He lowered his head, bringing his lips down to hers. Her mouth lifted, opened. Her hands paused in what they had been doing, with maybe three or four of the buttons undone.
This was the first time he’d kissed her in almost five years, he realized. And nothing had changed about this, either. It was like a current moving between them. He couldn’t think of anything else to compare it to. Circuit completed. Electricity arcing between hot wires. Jolting. Powerful.
Her hands left the buttons of his fly and moved again, slipping down into the waistband she’d loosened, into his briefs. Now her palms were moving against his skin. Her thumbs rubbed over his hipbones and then her hands shifted, coming together, centering on his body.
His lips pulled away from hers, gasping out his response to her touch. He shuddered, the impact of what she was doing moving through his whole body. Heat poured into him, igniting every nerve ending, running along them until the fire centered exactly where her hands were. Touching him, moving against his bare flesh, their coolness ravishing his heat. Not tempering it, but stoking, adding fuel to the flame that was already threatening to engulf him. To consume whatever shred of reason and restraint he had left.
“Please,” he begged, the soft words almost a groan. “Oh, yes, sweetheart. Please.”
Instead of obeying, her fingers moved back to the buttons, completing the task they had begun. Hurrying now. And then she was stripping the jeans off, pulling them down to the floor. She followed their fall, kneeling at his feet. He opened his eyes and looked down at her. Seeing her in the moonlight, he knew why the kidnapper’s daughter had thought she was an angel. So damn beautiful. She always had been.
She reached up, and his briefs followed the jeans, dropping to pool around his feet. He put his right hand on her shoulder and stepped out of both garments. He was nude. Pretty blatantly nude, he realized, looking down at the slender figure at his feet.
He supposed he should be thinking about consequences. About what Sam would think about this. About something. Only his brain wasn’t functioning too well right now. And if there were consequences…
“I didn’t think it would matter,” she had said about the first time. He would welcome another child. Another chance. One he probably didn’t deserve, but one that Samantha was willing, apparently, to give him. Maybe tonight they’d make the grandson Sam had always wanted, he thought. Maybe tonight.
“This is going to be even tougher if you’re planning on keeping your clothes on,” he said.
She held up her left hand and he reached out and took it in his right. With its support, she stood. She seemed unembarrassed about his nudity—about the fact that he was undressed and she wasn’t. Her eyes didn’t avoid what was happening to his body. It would be pretty hard to avoid, he thought, but her eyes didn’t reflect any coyness or hesitation. Her fingers found the hem of the short-sleeved silkknit shell she was wearing, and arms crossed, she lifted it over her head and pulled it off.
Her hair fell back around her shoulders, a red-gold cloud around the beauty of her face, and then she reached behind her back to unhook her bra, quickly slipping the straps off her shoulders. She tossed the garments on top of his shirt that lay across the footboard.
“I should have been the one to do that,” he said.
Only, he knew it would have happened much slower if he had. Taking his time. Touching his lips to the soft hollow at the top of her shoulder where the sweat-dampened sweetness of scent clung to her skin. Then moving to the flawless, slim perfection of her neck. And into the shadowed darkness between her breasts.
His eyes examined what she had revealed. Her breasts were fuller, of course, but they were high and firm, beautifully shaped. Tentatively, he put the fingers of his right hand against the outside of her breast. The skin there was like satin, incredibly white in contrast to the callused brown of his hand.
“What the hell happened to us?” he. said softly. It wasn’t really a question. Or if it was, he didn’t expect her to answer it. She shook her head, but she caught his fingers in hers and held them for a moment, looking down at them. Finally she flattened her palm, allowing his big hand to rest, open and exposed, on hers.
“I’ll never forget how you touched me that night.”
“I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted you so much, had wanted you so long, that I was afraid…I was afraid I’d lose control. Scare you off,” he said, his eyes on her downturned head.
She looked up at that, and what had been in her eyes that night was there again. “You didn’t scare me,” she said. “It was…perfect. What I had always imagined it would be—the way I’d imagined you would be.”
“Tonight…” he began, and then he hesitated.
“Tonight I show you.”
“Show me what?” he asked, the question tinged with amusement.
“How I want to touch you. I want to show you what you gave me that night. What it feels like to have someone make love to you. So you don’t have to think or plan or please. Just feel. Just let me make you feel.”
The thickness in his throat would probably have made speech impossible, but he truly didn’t know what to say in response to that. Except suddenly he did. He knew exactly what to say. What he had wanted to say as he had worshiped her body that night five years ago. What he had wanted to say to her through the dozen long years he had felt it.
“I love you,” Chase McCullar whispered.
Her eyes didn’t change, didn’t widen in shock or fill with tears. T
hey rested steadily on his, accepting what he had said, accepting who and what he was. Just as they always had, he finally realized.
“I know you do,” she said softly. “I think I’ve always known that you do.”
HE WAS LYING BACK on her bed, still cradling his arm against his body, his trembling fingers locked around the elbow. Eyes still closed. Breathing in aching gasps.
But nothing was the same. Not like it had been in the car. The exquisite agony he was suffering was Samantha, moving above him in the darkness.
“I want to show you,” she had said.
Then she had made that desire reality, touching his body in ways that were intimate beyond his wildest fantasies. Her hands had moved tonight in the scented darkness. Exploring. Sliding with deliberate slowness over his shivering skin. Her tongue flicking against his extended flesh, hot and sweet. More than his fantasies. Beyond any dream of her he had ever had. Until everything except her hands and her mouth and her tongue were forgotten, buried in the sensations that shook his frame, that shook the lonely isolation in which he had somehow existed without her. Not lived, but existed. He knew that now.
He opened his eyes. She was astride him, her head thrown back, exposing the slender column of her throat, white against the blackness of the surrounding night. Her hair was touched with moonlight, as the candles had touched it. It floated as she moved, drifting over her shoulders, burnished with light.
He reached out, the tips of his fingers pressing against the damp, shadowed hollow between her breasts and then gliding downward, pulling against her skin, over her stomach, where she had carried his child, his seed. And then lower still to where their bodies were joined. One. They had always been one, but it seemed it had taken them a very long time to realize that.
He almost sensed her reaction, the trembling response beginning and then building as her body moved above his. Then she arched backward, her breathing audible now, gasping, echoing his own. Her fingers caught the hand with which he touched her and tangled in his. Grasping tightly. Holding on to him. Anchored by him.
