by Jillian Hart
“Yes.” His hand skidded down her throat and he gazed at her bare breasts. “I saw you with Emma and I thought what a good mother you would be.”
Libby pressed a bold kiss to the hollow of his throat where his heart beat hard and quick and steady. What might have happened between them if she were coming to him untouched? What if he had planted the life that now grew within her?
“But I could never do that to you, get you with child,” he whispered, his throat strangled. “I can’t get you pregnant now.”
“No,” she agreed as his warm hand closed over her left breast, so full and aching.
Sensation bolted through her, twisted tightly around the life inside her. She put her hand there, but the baby was safe. It was just pleasure. Tender, loving pleasure.
Then Jacob caught her nipple with his mouth. He suckled, deepening the strange twist inside her. She caught a groan of pleasure in her throat and held it there, afraid to let him know.
“Relax, Elizabeth. It’s all right.”
He nibbled along her jawbone. His hot breath fanned her cheek, tickled in her ear. All resistance fled. She whimpered, relaxing into his arms as he brushed her mouth with his.
Aching kisses teased at her own needs, physical and emotional. Open kisses explored her mouth, leaving her breathless. Libby mated her tongue with his, gasping as he pressed her back onto the bed, nudging her legs apart with his knee.
She opened for him, feeling the hard length and breadth of his body move over her, and then his erection as it nudged against that part of her. She stiffened, but he kept kissing her, hot, wet.
Libby closed her eyes, knowing what would happen next. The pleasure, hot and loose in her core, faded into something cold. Jacob touched her face.
“Open your eyes,” he said tenderly. “It’s just me. Jacob.”
“Jacob.” She looked into his dear face, so familiar now. and precious. “I’m afraid.”
“I know.” Sadness crept into his gray eyes. “But it will be different with me. I promise.”
A man of honor. Her throat tightened, and she pressed her face into his chest to hide her tears. She wrapped her arms around his strong back, holding him tight. Only he could ease all the pain of her heart.
Jacob cradled her in his strong arms and positioned her on the bed so that they lay on their sides, facing one another. Libby held on, afraid to let go.
“Let me show you,” he said, kissing one tear from her cheek. “Will you trust me?”
His gaze held hers, and she could see such affection, such tender caring. No one had ever looked at her that way. Libby reached up to catch his mouth with hers, kissing him as deeply as he kissed her.
Love. She could feel it in his touch. His hand cupped her breast, squeezing, kneading deliciously. That warm tightness coiled itself back around her stomach, twisting wondrously taut as his hands burned sensation across her bare skin. Her breasts. Her stomach. Her inner thighs. The soft damp entrance to her body.
“I need you,” he whispered, rising back over her when she feared he might move away and stop. Libby gazed up into his face as he pressed her thighs apart. Then he smiled, lighting up his eyes.
“Oh, Jacob.” How could she tell him all he meant to her? She could find no words, only feelings. Powerful, frightening emotions wavering in her heart.
She wanted him. All of him. No matter how afraid she was, how unpleasant she knew this intimacy could be. But when he whispered into her hair and she felt the hard thickness of his engorged shaft pressing against her, she wasn’t afraid.
It didn’t hurt, yet. Libby gasped, unprepared for the stretching full sensation of him filling her. She moaned as he trailed tender kisses along her forehead. She felt so small beneath him, but her body felt so incredibly full.
Libby held him to her as he moved, pulling delicious sensation through her with each withdrawal, pushing frighteningly intense pleasure with every satisfying thrust. A thrilling tightness twisted through her, able to snap her in two. At Jacob’s gently murmured urgings, she relaxed, moved up to meet him, accepted him so deeply she lost her breath. Explosive light burst in her spine, shattering her entire body, breaking every piece of her heart.
Breathless, Libby clung to Jacob as his body tightened, and he plunged faster, deeper. The groan started low in his throat and she held him tightly, unable to let go, feeling the hot pulse of wetness spilling deep inside.
So this is what love feels like. Tears burned in her eyes.
He rained kisses across her face. She felt too full to speak. When a drop of wetness dotted her forehead, Libby knew Jacob was crying too.
After he loved her a second time, he slipped from the bed, granting her one needy, lingering kiss before pulling on his trousers.
Libby sat up, tired but sated. Her body thrummed with his touch, her heart felt full with his loving. He stood beside her bed, dressing. She did not want him to leave her, even to go downstairs. Sitting up, she reached for her clothes.
“Would you like some coffee?” Jacob took her by the hand.
She wanted more than coffee. “Yes.” It was a start.
He led her across the room and down the ladder in silence. Even in the kitchen, as he set the coffeepot to boil on the stove, he didn’t speak.
The sweetness between them was enough.
Light washed over him, limning him like moonlight in the windowless room. He worked without looking at her, kneeling to throw more small shreds of wood into the black stove.
Libby stood staring. She could still remember the feel of his body filling hers and the tender, tear-stained kisses along her brow.
Jacob closed the stove’s little door and faced her. The silence between them was broken only by the sounds of the fire. They were alone with what they’d done. Alone to face separate futures.
As if he were aware of this, too, Jacob crossed to the table and set two tin cups on its polished surface. He said nothing, busily putting out the sugar bowl and two spoons.
He kept his back to her while he worked. She felt so close to him; still, a part of him felt so distant.
“The coffee’s nearly done.” His low voice hummed with a small tenderness.
Somehow that loving touch in his voice hurt more. “Thank you.” Woodenly she sat in the chair he offered her like a polite southern gentleman.
“I suppose we need to talk about this.” The other chair scraped as he pulled it out. “About how I compromised you.”
“You didn‘t—” He thinks you lie with any man you get close to, she chided herself. Libby stared at the cup he placed before her, wet on the outside from a washing, brimming with steaming black coffee.
“I did. I wanted you, and you were there.” His hand covered hers with a firm certainty.
Did he blame her? No, the honesty in his eyes said differently. “I hope you don’t think that I...” She couldn’t finish.
“No.”
Tears burned behind her eyes. “You needed me.” He would never know the depth of her affection for him, changed now after the love they’d made.
His hand over hers didn’t pull away. Libby stared down at the contact of their fingers as if it held personal significance.
“Jacob.” Tears glimmered in her eyes. “You must think...”
She bowed her chin.
“I know the kind of woman you are, Elizabeth.” His gaze latched onto hers. “Loving. Decent. Honorable.”
Elizabeth was alone in the world, full of need, quietly aching to love someone. The thought of her lying with another man enraged him; he wanted to unleash all his anger at that bastard who used her loneliness to his gain. Hell, he was no better.
“The storm has stopped.” She fingered the steaming hot cup, testing the temperature. “It’s morning, and I need to figure out what’s happening with the stage.”
“You still plan on leaving?”
She snapped her gaze up to his. “Yes. I have to think of my future. There’s no one I can rely on. I need to work all day, and I can’
t take care of a baby at the same time. I need help.”
“You don’t have to go.”
“I do. I care for you, Jacob.” She tucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “That makes it more difficult. Can’t you see?”
He did. But he didn’t want her to leave. His heart felt raw. “Maybe I could help you.”
“Jacob, thank you, but no.” Pride shimmered in her eyes.
How many women would have manipulated to stay with him, to marry him? But not Elizabeth. And he wanted so much more from her than he knew how to ask.
“Elizabeth, you don’t need to be alone to fend for yourself.”
He covered his face with his hands. Why was it so hard to say what burned in his heart? It felt so risky to be that vulnerable. He didn’t know how to begin to tell her.
“You didn’t leave me alone.” Her soft voice soothed like morning light “You paid for my room and board even when I didn’t want you to.”
Jacob ached. “It was the right thing to do. Your condition surprised me. I needed time to think, to make sense of my fear.”
She lifted her chin. He saw confused pain in her eyes, and it matched what tore at his heart. He wanted her—but what about that baby?
He loved babies and he hated himself for his feelings—the child Elizabeth carried was an innocent life, not to blame for its existence just as it would not be to blame for what could happen at its birth. Emma was not responsible for Mary’s death—he was.
Lantern light glowed across Elizabeth’s face. She was a beautiful woman with a big heart and large eyes the color of a morning sky. He remembered the untutored way she had lain beneath him on the bed. He remembered her strangled, surprised gasp of pleasure.
She’d given him her innocence, even if she hadn’t been able to give him her virginity. Jacob had seen enough in this world to know the difference between taking and giving.
“Stay here with me. With Emma.” The words—risky and vulnerable—caught in his throat. He wanted to ask for more, but this was enough to risk. For now. “We need you here with us.”
Her face crumpled. “Jacob, I just can’t stay.” Heat crept up her face.
Lord, she thought he just wanted sex. Anger ripped through him. He pushed back the chair, wood grating upon wood. “That isn’t what I meant.” He didn’t know how to speak from his heart.
“I don’t expect you to marry me, Jacob.” Her voice quivered.
He paced away to the main room and tossed more wood on the dying fire. Even now his body thrummed with the heat of their passion. He ached for more. How he ached for more. But at what cost to Elizabeth?
He marched back into the kitchen. She was standing before the pantry, pulling out the makings for breakfast.
“I just can’t walk off without speaking to her.” Elizabeth didn’t turn around.
The lamplight shone on her unbound hair, floating freely down her back, curling at her knees. Her dress shivered around her slender form as she carried his biggest bowl to the table.
“I didn’t mean I wanted—” Hell, he didn’t know how to say it. Sex wasn’t something a gentleman discussed with a lady. Neither was his heart. “I don’t want you to leave. If you think I only want to use you, if that’s the reason you’re determined to leave, then I’ll make you a promise. I won’t touch you again, if that’s what you want.”
“Oh, Jacob.” Her mouth trembled. “I can’t stay. You can’t give me what I came here for.”
“I want to try.” He meant it with his entire soul.
“Trying isn’t what I need.” She gestured to her abdomen helplessly, to the baby within.
He took her hands in his. Her palms felt cold and clammy, betraying her feelings. How did he say it? How did he reach past the fear and the words he couldn’t find to let her know he needed more than sex, more than just her presence in his life. “I have to know. Do you need me? Am I enough to keep you here?”
“Yes.” Tears sparkled in her eyes. “You are more than enough for me, Jacob Stone. I’ve never met any man as good and as gentle as you.”
Grateful tears spilled silently down her soft cheeks.
She was so wrong. He felt as if he were standing on a cliffs edge, the earth crumbling beneath his feet. He’d been falling with nothing to hold on to for so long. Now he had Elizabeth.
“Do you want sausage and bacon, or just bacon?” she asked, her chin set, pride steeling her spine.
“Emma likes both.”
He pulled her into his arms right where she belonged, tucked beneath his chin, close to his heart.
Libby stood over the hot stove, frying sausage and bacon, listening to Jacob coaxing Emma from bed. With the storm gone, the silence felt loud and the smallest noise traveled through the snug cabin, even Jacob’s low voice.
Emma answered. She sounded cranky, but strong.
This is what she’d traveled so far to find: the cozy sounds of home, the snug feeling of belonging. It seemed so little now compared with what she might have with Jacob, if he wasn’t so scarred inside.
No, meeting him, seeing what might have been was not the worst thing that could have happened. She could have fallen in love with him. No man had treated her with such respect, such amazing gentleness. The strength of him, all steel-muscles, power and tender heart. The combination intrigued her, just as it had in his letters.
He was no longer fantasy, no longer a flesh-and-blood stranger, but a man filled with pain. She felt it in the tender way he’d loved her. She knew only lies before Jacob; now she knew how love felt. What she didn’t know, that was a risky thing. Would he ever heal his broken heart? Would he love her?
More importantly, would he come to love her baby? Babies were vulnerable. They required love and care. Things Jacob did not feel he could give his own daughter—why else would he advertise for a wife he never meant to love?
“You’re still here!” Emma padded into the kitchen, her dark hair disheveled, her face drawn. Pleasure sparkled in her eyes.
“I am.” Libby turned from the pantry. “I guess the stage can’t leave with all the snow outside.”
“It’s deep! I wish you could take me out to play.”
“I doubt you’ll be going out to play anytime soon, missy.” Libby couldn’t hide her smile. “Not with that cough.”
“I just had to ask, you know.”
“I know.” Her heart felt light as air. “Sit up to the table. I’ll have pancakes for us soon.”
“Do you know how to make ’em in shapes?”
“Yes, I know how to make shapes. How does a cat sound?”
“Good. But do you know how to make a horse?”
“Hmm. I bet I can figure it out.” Libby turned to lift the last of the bacon from the sizzling pan. She felt so happy.
Playing house did not make this her home. She needed to remember that This happiness was temporary; it wasn’t hers for a lifetime.
“Can I watch?” Emma had already hopped off her chair and stood ready.
“If you’re very careful of the stove,” Libby consented. She could never say no to Emma, just as she could never say it to Jacob.
Did that mean she would stay? What would she sacrifice for another man’s needs? What would she sacrifice for her own?
“Goody,” Emma cheered, dragging the chair across the floor with an ear-breaking racket.
Libby helped her climb up near the stove. At Emma’s trusting touch, her heart filled. A daughter of her own. Would she be so lucky?
“Pa likes horses,” Emma said, mischief dancing in her eyes.
Libby wasn’t fooled. Emma wanted her to stay. Jacob wanted her to stay. Her heart twisted, felt torn. She could only guess at the depth of Jacob’s grief, only imagine if he might one day overcome his past.
As Emma leaned closer, Libby cradled the pitcher filled with batter, cold against her hands. What if she stayed, only to find the wounds in his heart too deep to return her love? Libby was strong; she could live without love. It wouldn’t kill her. But she wou
ld not risk her heart again. She’d made a mistake with Arthur by wanting him desperately to be what she needed. And he was not If she stayed, would she make the same mistake with Jacob?
The tight knot in Jacob’s chest softened a bit at the sight of his daughter standing on a chair beside Elizabeth, helping make the morning meal. The rich scent of coffee and bacon filled the air, making his mouth water, awakening more than just his hunger.
“We’ve made a surprise for you, Jacob.” Elizabeth turned, her face flushed from the heat.
A hard hammering pounded behind his heart. He wanted to touch her, lay his hand against the sweet curve of her face. “A surprise, for me?”
“It was my idea, Pa.” Emma covered her mouth with her hand, coughed, then jumped down from the chair.
Elizabeth’s hand reached out, settling on Emma’s back, to keep her from falling accidentally against the stove.
“Your idea, huh?” he acknowledged. “I can’t imagine what you’ve come up with this time.”
“Look at the pancakes!”
Horses. He met Elizabeth’s gaze over the plate. But he was thinking of the spinning excitement he’d felt in her arms.
“Emma tells me you have real maple syrup.” She brushed past him, her gaze falling, suddenly shy. “I’ve never had it before.”
“It was my mother’s favorite—she always had maple syrup. It just came into Ellington’s. I had to special order.” The memory came rushing back. Elizabeth made him remember times he’d come to Montana to forget. Connections to family, to home. “You’ll like it.”
She granted him a small smile. “Everyone sit down. I’ll get the eggs from the oven. Emma, you forgot to get the napkins.”
“Sorry.” The girl sauntered to the pantry, making noise as she went.
Jacob grabbed the coffeepot and began to pour two cups full, keeping his back to Elizabeth. He could smell her, a soft rose water scent that warmed his blood, hear her as she deftly carried the plates of food to the table.
“Jacob.” Her sweet voice rippled across his back like a touch. “Let me do that. It’s the least I can do.”
