by Diana Palmer
“I want you, too,” she whispered. “No, don’t pull away. There’s nothing to be afraid of. You won’t hurt me or the baby. I want you.”
“Kate,” he groaned. “The risk…!”
“Darling,” she breathed, moving softly, “the only risk is in your mind. This baby is going to happen. Now you just lie still, Mr. Donavan, and let me show you how desperate I am….”
He felt her hands at his belt, and he actually gasped. She’d never touched him like that. She’d never ventured past his belt, but her hands were bold. They trespassed under the fabric that covered him, and he arched up and groaned with a shuddering kind of pleasure at her tentative touch.
“Oh, yes, I like that,” she whispered. “I like pleasing you. Up until now, you’ve had to do it all. But I want to learn. I want to know…how to please you. Show me, Jason. Teach me.”
He didn’t know if he could get enough breath to teach her anything. His body was already shuddering. He pushed her hand hard against him and he found her mouth. And seconds later, explosions of pleasure rippled down his back.
That was only the beginning. She kissed him and caressed him, undressed him and learned his body with her hands and her mouth. And all the while he watched her with delicious disbelief at the things he was letting her do. This, too, was new; this ability to let himself be touched, to give in to her. To deliberately lose control.
She seemed to sense it, because she was smiling. Until he found her mouth and eased her under him. His hands began to smooth down her trembling body, arousing her lazily, bringing her softness gently against his hardness. And then she gave in to him, smiling against his mouth, laughing through the fierce passion, until tremors shot through her and she arched up toward him.
“I love you,” she whimpered at the last. “I love you.”
“I love you,” he whispered into her soft mouth. He moved down against her hungrily, feeling his mind explode into the achingly sweet fulfillment that he only knew with her. He groaned. And finally, there was peace.
“Jason, it’s Christmas,” she whispered later, lying against his broad, sweaty chest in the darkness. She smiled and kissed his shoulder. “Our first Christmas together.”
He tangled her fingers with his, feeling his wedding ring on her finger. “Yes.” He nuzzled his mouth against her soft hair. “Warm enough?”
She was nude, as he was. They’d both been too tired to worry about clothing. “I’m warm enough,” she murmured drowsily. She curled closer. “See?”
“You’ll see something, if you do much of that,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m still hungry.”
“So am I.” She slid her arm around him. “Again,” she murmured, moving sensuously. “Please.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, and when he leaned over her, she could see the concern in his eyes from the faint light coming through the window.
“This time, I’m sure,” she said, smiling. She reached up, her arms soft and loving. “Merry Christmas, my darling.”
“Tomorrow,” he murmured, “I’ll have the moon gift-wrapped for you….”
“Why would I want the moon, when I’ve got you?” She smiled lovingly, and put her mouth softly to his.
Christmas morning dawned, and excitement lay like a soft blanket over the reunited family.
Kate and Cherry helped Sheila in the kitchen, while Mama Donavan and her boys got to know each other all over again.
“Isn’t it terrific?” Cherry sighed. “Oh, gosh, I never dreamed that Jason would actually go looking for his and Gene’s mother.”
“Neither did I,” Sheila confessed. “But I hoped he would, someday. I didn’t know about the baby that J.B. cost her, but I did know that they never stopped loving each other.”
Kate glanced at Sheila. “The gossips always said that you had a crush on J.B.”
She smiled. “Gossips always find something to talk about. Honey, I was deeply in love with a man who went to Korea in 1952. He never came back, and I never wanted anybody else. J.B. wasn’t my kind of man from the beginning. We’d have fought like cats and dogs, and believe me, that’s no way to make a marriage. You have to have things in common.”
“But J.B. and Nell did,” Cherry said. “Didn’t they?”
“They had a lot in common,” Sheila agreed. She finished the dressing and put it in the oven to bake in a huge pan. “But once he started drinking, there was no stopping him. Eventually, he let it take him over and destroy his life. It almost destroyed the boys, too. They never talk about him. He left scars on them that they’ll never really get over. Jason, especially.”
“Oh, he seems to be managing all right,” Kate said demurely.
“Don’t get smart,” Sheila said. “Anybody can get pregnant. Look at Cherry.”
Cherry’s face lit up. “Kate! Are you pregnant, too?!”
“I don’t know yet,” Kate replied. “But there’s a very good possibility. Although,” she added with a dark glance at Sheila, “it’s amazing how everybody seemed to know it before I suspected. I seem to remember that Sheila asked me point blank.”
“Some of us are perceptive,” Sheila returned. She lifted an eyebrow and extended a pan of boiling potatoes in Kate’s general direction, watching Kate fight down nausea. “You did that same thing when you were pregnant before. Couldn’t stand the smell of boiling potatoes. It doesn’t take a mathematician to add two and two.”
“It’s more like one and one making three,” Cherry murmured dryly.
Kate chuckled and Sheila grinned.
They ate Christmas dinner before they opened the presents. Mrs. Donavan seemed to manage very well without help. She asked Kate to fill a plate for her and tell her where everything was, like the face on a clock. Kate described beans at three o’clock, turkey at six, and so on until she’d gone around. Mrs. Donavan grinned and dug in, and she ate heartily.
Kate produced the blue robe first thing. She hadn’t wrapped it. She placed it on Mrs. Donavan’s lap and watched the sightless woman touch it, caress it, feel the length and width and shape of it.
“Oh, my,” Mrs. Donavan gasped. “Satin brocade. A robe.” She touched it again, lightly. “Kate, it’s blue, isn’t it?”
Kate laughed delightedly. “Yes!”
“Amazing,” Jason murmured.
“Color perception,” Gene agreed. “I’ve read about un-sighted people being sensitive to colors, but I didn’t believe it until now.”
“The body compensates,” Mrs. Donavan told them. “I hear better than I ever could before. I sense things. It’s a nice recompense. Thank you for my robe, Kate.”
“I whipped it up last night, while you were talking to Jason and Gene,” she admitted.
“You sewed this yourself?” Mrs. Donavan gasped.
“I’m a designer,” Kate said proudly, and she smiled at Jason, who didn’t fuss or protest. He only smiled back.
“You certainly are, if this is a sample of your work. I’ll treasure it,” the older woman said softly.
“I’ll play Santa Claus for the rest of us,” Gene volunteered. He passed out packages and for the next few minutes, everyone in the house, Sheila included, tore off ribbons and paper, ooohing and aahing over their gifts.
Kate sat in Jason’s arms that night, under the Christmas tree lights shimmering in colors around the lighted fireplace. The two of them listened to Christmas hymns while Gene and Mama Donavan and Cherry talked about the Christmas season and Gene told her about their forthcoming baby.
Kate wore around her neck a delicate silver filigree necklace with a crystal charm enclosing a tiny mustard seed. It was the sparkly thing Jason had bought for her—an expensive little bit of nothing, but with a profound message. It came from a passage in the Bible, which referred to all things being possible if the believer had only faith as a grain of mustard seed. Jason smiled at her, the wonder of shared love in his dark eyes. And when Kate felt his warm, strong hands linking it around her neck, and he whispered that he loved her, she cried.
/> His watch had less of a message, but he was proud of it just the same. But his finest, most precious gift, he told her, was his Kate.
Jason looked down at Kate with delight, his fingers lightly brushing her waistline, smiling tenderly.
She pressed his hand against her. “It’s still too soon to be sure,” she whispered.
“I know. Let me dream,” he whispered back.
“You look so different,” she murmured lazily, nudging him with her head. “Relaxed. Less tense.”
“I should, after last night,” he whispered. “My God, what a Christmas present you gave me!”
“I got one back,” she said, smiling. “Jason, I’ve never been so happy.”
“Neither have I.” He glanced past her at his mother and Gene, heads together, looking so much alike that it touched his heart.
“She’s happy, too. I’ve talked her into staying a week. Gene and I want time to get to know her. We’ve got a lot of time to make up.”
“She’s a character,” Kate mused. “I love her to bits already. I want Mama to meet her.”
“We’ll have her over to dinner tomorrow night.”
“That would be nice.” She yawned. “Goodness, I get tired easily these days.”
“No wonder,” he teased.
She linked her hand into his. “Will you be terribly disappointed if I’m not pregnant?”
“No. Because the way things are between us, before much longer you will be.” He kissed her forehead. “I love you, sweetheart.”
She smiled, tingled at the words. “I love you, too.”
The days passed lazily after Christmas, and Kate grew close to Mama Donavan, as her boys did. But all too soon, the older woman grew restless for her own familiar room in the nursing home, and Jason reluctantly agreed to drive her home.
“I’ll come back,” she promised. “But I miss my friends. You don’t mind, really, do you?”
“I mind,” he told his mother gently. “But we’ll keep in touch now. You’re part of us. We’re part of you. We won’t ever be strangers again. Or enemies.”
She hugged him close, her eyes full of tears and love. “Thank you,” she managed huskily. “Thank you for coming to see me. Thank you for forgiving me.”
“There was nothing to forgive,” he said quietly. He kissed her wrinkled cheek. “Tell Kate good-bye. Then I’ll drive you over to Gene’s and you can say good-bye to him.”
“I’ll see you when the baby comes, Kate,” Mrs. Donavan murmured as she kissed Kate warmly. “Take good care of my boy.”
“The best I can,” Kate promised, and hugged her back. “Godspeed, Mama Donavan.”
“You’re a good girl. I’m glad you’re my daughter-in-law. Okay, son, let’s go,” she told Jason. “And don’t think you can drive me around in circles and bring me back here and tell me we’re in Tucson. I may be blind, but I hear really well.”
Jason chuckled. “Okay. No tricks.”
“And when we get to El Paso, you can let me drive,” the older woman said with a twinkle in her eyes. “I’ll get you through that city traffic in no time!”
“She might do better than you do, at that,” Kate began.
Jason glared at her. “At least I can get the car through the gate without losing a fender,” he shot back, and grinned when she blushed. She’d done just that not a day before.
“I didn’t see the gate,” she defended herself. “It jumped out in front of me.”
“Sure it did, honey.” He bent and kissed her softly. “Take care of yourself until I get back.”
“You, too,” she murmured, and kissed him back. “I’ll put a candle in the window.”
She watched him drive away and this time she smiled. It was so different from the last time he’d left. But now he’d be back. And she knew almost certainly that she was carrying his child. Life was going to be sweet from now on. She touched the tiny mustard seed charm around her neck, marveling at the small miracle that was even then growing in her body.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Is he awake, do you reckon?” a drawling voice murmured.
“I don’t think so. He looks pretty flat to me.”
“Maybe he’s hiding.”
“Could be. I heard the baby crying most of the night. My God, that kid’s got a set of lungs!”
“So has his daddy,” came the laconic reply. “And if you wake him up, you’ll hear ’em.”
“Well, we can’t get anything done until he tells us what to do about that new lot of cattle he bought.”
“Let’s try calling him,” another voice suggested.
“How about if we do that from outside?” a younger one replied.
“There’s a bucket of water by the front porch.”
Jason opened one eye under the concealing brim of his hat. The cowboys were gathered around the bunk he was lying on in the bunkhouse. Red Barton was grinning, Gabe looked worried, and the others were just plain amused.
“What do you want?” he asked curtly.
“New breeding stock’s coming in, boss,” Gabe announced. “Where you want us to put the heifers?”
“And do you want the bulls in with them, or in a separate pasture?”
“And what about that crazy looking bull?” Barton asked. “My God, boss, he’s so ugly, one of the boys threatened to quit if he had to look at him more than once.”
“He’s just like the Indian bull I got last year that pulled us out of the hole and saved your jobs,” Jason reminded him. “You thought he was beautiful when I sold that lot of calves he sired and you got a bonus.”
“All that money made my eyes go bad, I guess,” Barton sighed. “Anyway, right now, he’s a sitting bull,” he added, grinning. “He won’t get up. And he looks lonely.”
“Then why don’t you go sing him a lullaby?” Jason muttered darkly.
“Looks like somebody else could use one of those,” Gabe remarked, cocking an ear toward the house. “Your son and heir is at it again.”
“Miss Kate will leave you for sure,” Barton assured him. “Poor woman.”
“It’s tough being a baby,” one of the older hands observed. “Can’t do anything except lay there and have people talk funny to you. I don’t blame the little guy for crying. I’d cry too if I couldn’t drive the truck or eat chili.”
“Fire that man,” Gabe told the boss.
“Just before roundup?” Jason asked, sitting up wearily. “Bite your tongue.”
“Then fire him after roundup. He snores.”
“I do not,” the old hand grumbled. “It’s my deviated septum.”
“I’ll deviate your septum if you don’t stop snoring!”
“What time is it?” Jason groaned. His back was half broken. The bunk was harder than his mattress.
“Nine o’clock,” Gabe offered. “You must have really been tired.”
“First Kate rocked him. Then I rocked him. Then his grandmother rocked him. Then Sheila rocked him. And he never stopped, not for a minute. The doctor says it’s colic. He gave us some medicine for it, but Kate won’t use it.”
“The baby just stopped crying,” Barton remarked. He grinned. “I guess Miss Kate just gave in.”
“Oh, thank God,” Jason moaned.
“Poor Daddy,” Gabe patted him. “There, there, you’ll make it until baby graduates college.”
Jason glared at him. “Of course I will,” he muttered. “He’s just a baby, he’ll grow.”
“His lungs already did,” Barton said, tongue in cheek.
Jason got to his feet, unshaven and still wearing his jeans and checked Western shirt with its blue plaid wrinkled from being slept in. He hadn’t even taken off his boots. He reached down and picked up his hat, stretching painfully.
“My God, how do you sleep on those things?” he asked, glaring at the bunk. “If I had the money, I’d buy you all decent mattresses.”
“We’re too tired to care where we sleep,” Barton reminded him. “Like you must have been last night, bo
ss man.”
“I thought babies slept,” Jason said dazedly. “I swear to God I did. Everybody said so. He doesn’t sleep. He’s been here for weeks, and he hasn’t slept yet.”
“He will,” Gabe assured him. “Eventually.”
Jason went out, followed by the men. He told them what to do with the new cattle and went into the house to check on Kate.
“You traitor,” she accused the minute he walked in the door. “Hiding in the bunkhouse. Your men told on you!”
“Well, I ought to fire them,” he sighed. “But I guess I deserve everything I get,” he agreed with a grin. “Wait here while I load you a gun to shoot me with.”
“Don’t be silly.” She went into his arms, kissing him lazily. “Our son is asleep. I finally broke down and gave him the medicine. I guess Dr. Harris figured I would when I couldn’t stand any more of the colic. But so many people said I shouldn’t give him medicine for it…”
“Dr. Harris wasn’t one of them,” he reminded her. “How’s baby’s mama?”
She smiled up at him. “Baby’s mama is still overwhelmed with being baby’s mama. Oh, Jason, isn’t he a little miracle, huge lungs and all? Every day he does something different, or he makes a sound he hasn’t made before. He watches me and he makes the cutest expressions…. I adore him.”
“So do I.” He kissed her forehead tenderly. “Being with you, when he was born, was something I’ll never forget. That was a miracle, too.”
She nuzzled her face against him. “You poor man. These long nights are hard on you, I know, when you have to work so hard.”
“Not all that hard.” He smiled. “I’ve gotten us out of the hole and operating in the black. And your new collection made a bundle, Mrs. Donavan. And with this new licensing thing, I guess you’ll have it made.
“Fame and fortune are fleeting,” he whispered at her lips. “But loving lasts a long time. And you and I may set new records for it the next hundred years.”
She laughed delightedly. “That suits me. As for my designing, most of that will be done at home, now. I don’t want little Cade left with a baby-sitter. Besides, that wouldn’t be easy since I’m nursing him.”
