by Fran Baker
What she hadn’t planned on was Tony’s animosity.
Granted he was still grieving for his grandfather. And he must have been terribly surprised to find his mother in such a compromising position with a man he hardly knew. But his rudeness went beyond sorrow or shock, almost bordering on resentment.
So now, with the cake plates sitting empty and Martha pouring coffee, Jeannie’s great expectations had shrunk to the size of the coconut crumbs littering the linen tablecloth.
As she lifted her cup to her lips, her eyes inadvertently met Rafe’s. He was sitting across the table from her, the very enactment of her fantasies in a casual white shirt that complemented both his coloring and his broad shoulders. Despite the sartorial elegance, his tanned face was a picture of patience and pain. She loved him so much she ached with it. And it broke her heart to think that their son didn’t even like him.
Dropping her gaze, she set her cup back down on its matching saucer. The yellow primrose pattern on the china suddenly reminded her of something she’d meant to bring up earlier.
Jeannie glanced around her with a hopeful smile. “Does anyone happen to know where that yellow rose on my mother’s grave came from?”
Rafe shook his head. Tony shrugged and went back to balancing his fork between two fingers, obviously killing time until he could be excused from the table. Rusty spilled his coffee and immediately cursed the arthritis that made him so clumsy. Then he apologized for cursing.
Martha rushed to the ranch manager’s aid. After checking to be certain he hadn’t burned his hand, she pulled a paper towel from her apron pocket and used it to soak up the brown lake in his saucer.
“There was another rose?” she asked as she finished mopping up and refilled Rusty’s cup.
“Yesterday morning.” When she’d first seen it from her bedroom window, Jeannie hadn’t given it a second thought. Every Saturday for almost eighteen years she had awakened to find a single yellow rose lying at the base of Laurrinda Crane’s tombstone. As the day wore on, though, she’d begun to wonder how it had gotten there. Big Tom was dead. So, unless his reach extended beyond the grave—
“Call the florist in Bolero,” Rafe suggested.
“I did, yesterday afternoon,” Jeannie told him. “I figured Big Tom might have had a standing order, and I thought I’d cancel any future orders and settle the bill.”
“What did he say?”
“He said Big Tom had never ordered any roses from him.”
Martha looked thoroughly baffled now. “That’s odd.”
Jeannie nodded. “Isn’t it, though?”
“What makes you think it was Grandpa who was putting the roses on Grandma’s grave?” Tony seemed intrigued enough by this mini-mystery to string more than two syllables together.
Good question, Jeannie thought. And one she really didn’t have a real good answer for. She lifted her bare shoulders in a helpless shrug and said, “Well, he was her husband.”
“Yeah, but maybe somebody else—”
“If you all will excuse me,” Rusty interrupted, scraping his chair back and standing up, “I’ve got a couple of hundred bawling calves that need a baby-sitter, so I’d better call it a night.”
“Can I sleep out with you?” Tony wasn’t as close to the foreman as he had been to his grandfather, but he was always ready for an adventure.
“Not tonight.”
“Then when?”
Rusty smiled—a little sadly, Jeannie thought—as he reached over to ruffle Tony’s hair. “Maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, if you work real hard and if it’s all right with your mama.”
“Wednesday night would be best,” Jeannie said, remembering that Rafe would be spending the day in court and probably wouldn’t be back till late. Remembering, too, that he’d promised he’d be back with bells on … bells she intended to ring to her heart’s content.
“Fine,” Rusty agreed before bidding them all good night and heading for the front door.
“Well,” Tony said around a huge fake yawn that failed to hide his excitement over the prospect of camping out with the cowhands, “I guess I’ll go to bed now too.”
Martha reminded everyone that breakfast was at sunup, and not a minute sooner, before she gathered the empty plates and cups and carried them out to the kitchen.
“That little stinker,” Jeannie said through gritted teeth as the sound of Tony’s bedroom door banging shut echoed back down to the living room. “He didn’t even kiss me good night.”
Rafe reached across the table and took her hand. The light from the crystal chandelier shone down on the raw black silk of his hair. “I’m afraid our son is angry at both of us.”
“Because of what he saw in the living room?” she asked, staring at the buttons on his shirt.
“That’s part of the problem.” His voice was as gravelly and emotion-packed as hers.
“What other reason could he possibly have?”
“I’m sitting in Big Tom’s place, and you put me here.”
She studied the hand that held hers—engulfed it, actually. Neatly trimmed nails tipped the long, lean fingers. Blue veins corded the burnt-sienna skin. Dark hairs swooped down from that strong wrist. “What are we going to do about it?”
The latter should take care of itself, since we’ll be eating most of our meals in camp.”
Jeannie was afraid she already knew the answer to her next question, but she asked it anyway. “And the former?”
Rafe’s thumb traveled the peaks and valleys of her knuckles, taking her stomach along for the ride. “I think we’d better cool it for a while.”
“How long is ‘a while’?”
“A couple of days.”
She sighed in disappointment. “And nights.”
“ ’Fraid so.”
“How do you feel about children going to visit their relatives over spring break?”
He laughed, a throaty sound that told her he shared her frustration. “I think travel broadens their horizons.”
“I’ll pack his clothes.” Jeannie was only joking, but the idea had merit.
Rafe dipped his finger into the hollow of the fist she’d made of her hand, causing her to squirm in her seat. “And I’ll drive him to your aunt’s in Houston.”
Their conversation had dropped to an intimate pitch as the sexual tension had mounted between them.
Her head came up and she forgot all about their refractory son as her world narrowed down to the man who had fathered him. She could see the longing in his deep-blue eyes, a longing that rippled through her entire body to the farthest extremity of her soul, and she wanted nothing more at that moment than to fulfill their mutual desires.
But he released her hand and with a rueful smile said, “Well, I guess if I’m going to get up with the cows, I’d better go to bed with the chickens.”
As he rose from the table and replaced his chair, she stared at him in disbelief. She had to swallow hard before saying hoarsely, “You’re leaving?”
“Walk me to the door?” he asked, cutting around the table to stand politely behind her.
With him all but pulling her chair out from under her, what other recourse did she have? “Of course.”
Rather than stopping at the door, she walked him out to the porch. The sun was but a memory, having made its exit a little over an hour ago. A gold doubloon of a moon outshone the silver shower of stars. That perpetual Texas breeze blew a warm promise for the morrow.
It was a night for fond farewells, for lovers to be clinging regretfully and whispering romantically, seasoning the fecund air with spring fancies and sweet nothings.
Jeannie just knew that Rafe was going to kiss her before he left her, and she was really primed for it. She tipped her head back, the better to accommodate his firm mouth upon her pliant one, and moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue in feverish anticipation.
It came as a complete shock when, instead, he cuffed her lightly under the chin and said a soft “good night” before turning and bou
nding down the porch steps.
Crestfallen, she watched him disappear into the night, realizing suddenly that starting over again could be the pits.
The bedroom light came on, shining invitingly through an aluminum screen and a swirl of antique lace.
A woman wearing a slither of a white silk nightgown, her golden hair spilling in siren’s waves to her bare shoulders, stepped to the window. She stood perfectly still for a moment, her gray eyes trying to pierce the darkness below, her head tilted as if listening for something … a signal perhaps.
A bullfrog concert came faintly from the creek bank. Whippoorwills piped their prairie lullabye for lowing calves and lonesome cowboys. Cicadas churred a song of their own.
But otherwise all was silent.
A man, drawn like some hapless summer insect by that rectangular patch of light, stood stock-still in the shadows cast by the spreading tree branches beneath the window. A rock, worn smooth by wind and rain, fire and frost, burned a hole in the palm of his hand. All he had to do was throw it and the woman would come running.
But he couldn’t bring himself to throw it. Couldn’t force himself to move away either. He could only remain as he was, completely bewitched by the beauty who owned his soul.
Her hair—the sun of his heart, the source of his heat—gleamed from repeated brushings and rippled like golden threads to her shoulders. The bodice of her nightgown, held up by straps as fine as mandolin strings, cupped her full breasts. Her nipples, the enticing hollow of her navel, her hips, the exciting vee where her legs came together … all knew the kiss of white silk.
The man grew hard, his palm slippery, and that rock grew heavier with every passing minute.
The woman held her listening pose for a little while longer before she turned away from the window and turned off the light.
The man watched the window go dark before dropping that damn rock and moving deeper into the shadows.
Eleven
“Can I try?” Blue eyes dancing with excitement, Tony reached for the handle of the branding iron, which glowed a dull red in the campfire.
“No!” Rafe reacted instinctively, grabbing the boy’s wrist and yanking his hand back from the hot rod.
Jeannie, her heart galloping like a wild horse in her chest at the thought of how close he’d come to burning himself, said gently, “You forgot to put your gloves on, honey.”
Twin flags of embarrassment stained Tony’s cheeks as he reached into the back pocket of his jeans for the work gloves he’d taken off at lunchtime.
Orchestrated chaos prevailed in the camp. Dust clogged the nostrils of humans and horses alike. Calves lowed plaintively for their mothers, cows for their offspring. The afternoon sun burned a brand of its own into the backs of unprotected necks and hands.
“Now you’re ready,” Rafe said, motioning a regloved Tony over to the campfire so that he could teach him the trick of making a clean brand on the calf being wrestled to the ground.
But the boy was either still smarting over his earlier gaffe or he was digging his heels in deeper as the day grew longer. Maybe a little of both. Whatever, he scuffed the toe of his boot in the dirt and shook his head. “I want Rusty to show me.”
“Rusty’s busy vaccinating the calves.” Jeannie realized that it wasn’t her place to interfere, but he was up to his old tricks again, and she was almost at the end of her rope in the patience department. “So why don’t you let Rafe—”
“I’ll wait for Rusty,” Tony said sullenly, then turned and walked away.
He knows, Jeannie thought, her irritation collapsing under a mother lode of love and guilt as she watched him take up his post at the kneeling ranch manager’s shoulder. Somehow he knows and he’s just trying to sort things out.
Rafe, surprisingly enough, seemed to be taking Tony’s reticence in stride. He grabbed the branding iron and, wielding it with all the expertise of old, pressed its glowing red end firmly onto the exposed flank of the Hereford calf.
“Let ’im up,” he ordered, stepping back from the bawling calf who now wore the Circle C brand and nodding to the man holding the frightened animal down.
The cowhand let go, and the calf scrambled to all fours. No sooner had the first Hereford hightailed it out of there than a second was dragged kicking and baw-w-w-wing to the ground to be vaccinated and branded.
Calf after calf, it went like clockwork.
Jeannie didn’t notice the way Rafe’s lean muscles rippled beneath his blue chambray work shirt when he knelt to sear the hot brand into the calf’s hide. Nor did she pay any attention to how red and sunburned Tony’s nose was getting as he helped Rusty with the vaccination. All she saw were a man and a boy keeping a painfully polite distance within the tightly knit circle.
Suddenly she wanted to scream at both of them. At Tony for his stubborn rejection and at Rafe for his stoic acceptance. Father and son were tearing her apart, much as father and lover had all those years ago. And she either had to get away or go crazy.
“You take over the ear tagging,” she told one of the cowhands. “I’m going to look for strays.” Then she gathered the reins to her horse, swung into the saddle, and rode out of camp.
Jeannie had made her escape with a perfectly legitimate excuse. Mavericks often concealed themselves from the roundup crew, taking cover in the scrub oaks and shrubby mesquite trees that crowned the rocky hills or in the tall cottonwoods and knobby cypresses that lined the creek bank. Accordingly she made a last sweeping search of the areas where they were most likely to hide.
After an hour of beating the bushes, she hadn’t come up with any strays but she had calmed down considerably. Her mare, a gleaming chestnut she’d trained herself, whickered softly and tugged at the bit as they approached the creek.
“Thirsty, girl?” Jeannie asked as she dismounted and led her horse toward the silvery rush of water that was fed by the Guadalupe River.
Listening to the mare suck in the liquid in noisy slurps, she realized her own mouth felt dry. She removed her hat, a straw Stetson, and laid it on the ground. Then she shook her hair free after hours of being tucked up under the crown, rolled back the sleeves of the oversize white cotton shirt she’d knotted at her waist, and stretched flat on her stomach on the grassy bank to get a drink.
The water, which she scooped up with one hand while keeping hold of the reins with the other, was spring-thaw cold and so clear she could see the glistening rocks on the creek bottom.
Jeannie had just taken her last drink when she felt a pull on the reins. She tightened her grip and looked up to find that the chestnut had lifted its head in sudden alertness. As she pushed to her feet, she heard the drumming of a horse’s hooves fast approaching.
Rafe slowed the restive black gelding he’d chosen from the working remuda that morning to a long-striding walk when he saw her standing there. He sat tall and straight in the saddle, his strong hands controlling the reins and his lean thighs straddling the broad back of his mount.
A crow cried in alarm as he guided the gelding into the clearing. Squirrels scampered for cover. Even the leaves on the cottonwoods and cypresses trembled in his wake.
From the red bandanna holding his ebony hair back to the spiky rowels on his spurs, he looked like a comanchero riding out of the Old West and into the New. His coppery skin, dark beard stubble, and bold smile all served to reinforce the image. As did the silver-bladed knife sheathed at his belt.
His smile widened as his glance skimmed from the bits of green still clinging to the front of her shirt to the grass-stained knees of her jeans. “Been lying down on the job, I see.”
Jeannie dropped the reins and raised her palms in a gesture of surrender. “Caught red-handed.”
“Wet-handed is more like it.” Laughing now, Rafe lithely dismounted and let his horse dip its nose into the clear-running creek.
She could feel the swift pace of the blood in her veins as he leisurely approached her. Wiping the palm of her damp hand on the seat of her pants, she shrugg
ed and said, “I got so thirsty looking for strays, I decided to stop and get a drink.”
“Did you find any?” A lazily seductive gleam entered his blue eyes as he plucked a blade of grass from her cotton-covered breast.
“Not a one.” Her voice slipped a notch when he lifted yet another piece of green, this time from the tail of the knot over her bare stomach.
“Too bad.” His thumb moved up to the deep vee of her neckline to whisk away a blade stuck to her first button.
“Mmm-hmm …” Pleasure burgeoned in her lower body when his hand slid to the second button.
Slowly but thoroughly, as if he had an eternity to complete the project, he picked her shirt clean. The light touch of his dark fingers was both physically and visually stimulating. By the time he finished, her nipples had tightened into hard points against the soft cloth, and her gray eyes held the turbulence of desire long denied.
They hadn’t been alone all day. At the breakfast table they’d been surrounded by a half dozen hungry cowboys. In the barn Rusty had been issuing orders left and right. During branding, Tony had been as daunting as a bad conscience.
Now it was just Rafe and Jeannie. One man and one woman.
“Come here,” he said gruffly.
She gladly obeyed his command.
This was no gentle embrace they shared. He caught her cornsilk hair in one hand, clamped the other over the bare skin between her shirt and jeans, and jerked her against him. She dug her nails into the ropy muscles of his back, and arched into him.
Nor was this the tender kiss that every giddy teenage girl dreamed of and every awkward adolescent boy wanted to get just right. This was an open-mouthed, tongue-thrusting, teeth-grazing act of adult passion and raw need.
Jeannie reveled in the savage male essence of Rafe. He smelled of saddle leather and sweat. Tasted of salt. His heart slammed like a blacksmiths hammer against her breasts. And he was so rigid with want, she couldn’t tell where the knife at his belt ended and his body began.
