“You’re lucky,” Troy told her. “That was a nasty ditch you drove into. You and the car could have ended up in a bad way.”
“Yes, I was lucky,” she agreed. Over the rim of her punch glass, she glanced at Chance. “Especially lucky that Chance rescued me.”
Troy gave his cousin a pointed grin. “Looks to me like Chance is the lucky one,” he told Lucinda. “The only thing he ever gets to rescue is a sick calf or cow. Beautiful women aren’t his forte.”
Smiling down at Lucinda, Chance asked, “Did I tell you that besides being the sheriff of Parmer County my cousin is also its biggest flirt?”
Tonight, for the first time in ages, she felt like a woman again. She felt wanted and desired and the nearest thing to happiness that she could imagine. Chance actually seemed proud to bring her into his circle of family and friends and she couldn’t help loving him for that.
“No,” she answered Chance’s question. “I don’t believe you told me that about him.”
Laughing, Troy slapped Chance on the shoulder. “What did you tell her about me, buddy?”
Chance put his arm around Lucinda’s shoulders and edged her away from the young sheriff. “Not anything that would ruin your reputation, cuz.”
They moved on through the crowd, where Chance introduced her to several neighbors, an uncle, another cousin and a second cousin. Stories and news were swapped, a table of food eaten, and Merry Christmas wished to everyone before the crowd finally broke up and headed home.
On their way back to the ranch, Lucinda leaned her head against the seat and sighed with contentment.
Chance glanced away from the highway to look at her. “Did you have a good time?”
A wide smile curved her lips. “Oh, yes. The play was so beautiful and your mother and sister’s duet was wonderful. And all your friends and relatives were so—”
“Hayseed?” he asked with a chuckle.
She grimaced. “There’s nothing wrong with being hayseed or homespun. I liked all of them. They made me feel so welcome and a part of everything.”
“I’m glad.”
The quietness and the fact that they were alone again began to settle in on Lucinda. Trying her best to ignore it, she looked at him and smiled again. “Thank you for bringing me. I’ll never forget this night.”
Chance would always remember it, too. He would only have to think of Christmas and Lucinda would be there in his mind. After this week, he doubted he would ever be able to separate the two. And what would it be like without Lucinda this time next year? he wondered. Where would she be? What would she be doing? Spending her Christmas with some other man and his family?
It was a good thing they were already in the driveway at the front of the house; otherwise, Chance would have simply stopped the pickup on the side of the highway.
“Chance, what are you doing?” she gasped as he grabbed both her hands and tugged her toward him.
“Making damn sure you don’t forget tonight, or me,” he growled softly.
Forget him? How could she, when her heart, every fiber of her being seemed to be beating just for him?
One hand slid into her hair, cupped the back of her head and urged her face up to his. Lucinda couldn’t deny him. A soft sigh parted her lips and caressed his face with a silent invitation.
Groaning, Chance bent his head and closed the small gap between their lips. Lucinda lifted her arms around his neck, smoothed her hands across his back and sank herself into the heat of his kiss.
Chance had never tasted anything as sweet and intoxicating as Lucinda. Each time he touched her, kissed her, it was like a whole new journey for him. She hadn’t just awakened his sex drive. No, she’d shaken up everything inside him. And where Chance had only been existing before, now he felt alive and thirsty for all the things he’d been without. The touch and the love of a woman. Hope for tomorrow and the next, and the next.
Breaking the contact between their lips, he gasped, “Oh, Lucy, Lucy! I want to make love to you.”
More than anything, Lucinda wanted to simply draw his lips back down on hers, guide his hands to her breasts and let her body show him how much she wanted the same thing. But she couldn’t do that. She had a dark, unsettled past. She had to move on from here, make sure it never followed her or spilled over onto Chance or his family.
“Chance, I—don’t go around having sex with—”
Suddenly his hands were cupping her cheeks, his gray eyes were delving into hers. “Lucinda, you’re not hearing me. I didn’t say I wanted to have sex with you. I said I wanted to make love to you.”
Was he trying to say that he loved her? Both joy and fear burst inside her, making an anguished groan slip from her throat.
Laying her palms against both sides of his face, she said softly, “I’m not the person you think I am, Chance. You—”
Suddenly his hands were on her shoulders, urging her down on the pickup seat. “I don’t want to hear about your past, Lucy. I want to know if you want to make love to me, too?”
With the heat of his body covering hers, his finger delicately outlining the edge of her lips, she couldn’t lie to him. How could she say no, when all she could think about was the fire in her body and the exquisite pleasure of having Chance cool the flames?
“Yes. I do want to make love to you,” she whispered truthfully.
A groan, exultant and deep, ripped from his throat and then his mouth was back on hers, tasting, teasing, begging her to show him exactly what she wanted.
She returned his kiss with a fierce passion. At the same time, Chance reached for the buttons on her blouse. Before he could get the last one undone, he lowered his head to the curves mounded above the cups of her lacy bra.
Lucinda gasped as his teeth grazed her soft skin, nipped delicately at her nipples through the thin French lace. Fire was racing along her veins, mounting an attack on her senses and creating an ache inside her such as she’d never known.
“Oh, Lucy. My sweet love,” he mouthed against her, his fingers fumbling with the button on her waistband.
Far beyond resisting him now, Lucinda reached to help him. At the same moment, the sweep of headlights flashed the cab of the pickup.
Dazed, they looked at each other as though neither of them were sure of where they were. Finally it was Chance who cursed under his breath.
“It’s Mother and Sarah Jane.”
Galvanized by his words, Lucinda snatched her blouse together and tumbled out of the pickup. Ignoring the pain in her ankle, she raced into the house and down the hallway to her room long before the other two women parked the car.
Chance, however, remained in the truck. Like a man who’d been running for miles, his forehead dropped against the steering wheel and his lungs sucked in long breaths of cold night air.
By the time he felt collected enough to go in, the lights in the house had long gone out and his hands had grown cold. But there was warmth in his heart. And for a man who’d been close to death for nearly ten years, that was a hell of a feeling.
Chapter Ten
“I am dead on my feet,” Sarah Jane groaned.
“I think Dr. Campbell would tell me I’ve overdone it,” Lucinda replied, flopping down onto one end of the couch and flexing her aching ankle.
The two women had spent the entire morning and a big part of the afternoon making a shopping trip to Amarillo and back. They’d purchased several yards of material for Sarah Jane’s new clothes and at the last minute, Lucinda had decided to purchase a Christmas gift for Chance.
After what had happened between the two of them last night in the pickup, Lucinda wasn’t sure if giving him a gift would be the right thing to do. She didn’t want him to get the wrong idea and think he was becoming special to her.
He has become special to you, Lucinda. The inner voice taunted her and dared her to deny it. But Lucinda couldn’t argue with the little voice, or herself. Chance had somehow managed to fill her heart. Somewhere between the moment he’d carried her out
of her wrecked car and now, she’d fallen in love with him.
She knew it was foolish and crazy and something she could never hope to act upon, but it was there in her heart anyway. As for the gift, she couldn’t let Christmas pass without giving him something.
A knock at the front door caught both women’s attention.
“I wonder who that could be in the middle of the afternoon?” Sarah Jane mumbled as she pushed herself off the couch and headed to the door.
Seconds later, Sarah Jane turned away from the door with a huge Christmas bouquet and a bubbling smile on her face. “It was the florist truck! Look at this!”
“James really splurged on you,” Lucinda exclaimed.
“Sarah Jane, who was at the door?” Dee asked as she stepped into the room. The moment she saw the bouquet, she gasped with surprise. “Wow! Someone felt mighty generous! If James sent you those, Chance is going to kick his butt. You know he thinks you two kids should be saving your money.”
Sarah Jane set the arrangement on the coffee table in front of the couch. “Chance is going to keep his feet and his opinions to himself,” she said, quickly prowling through the holly and red carnations for a card.
Dee laughed and winked at Lucinda.
“This little white bear is adorable,” Lucinda said, touching the button nose of the stuffed animal nestled among the leaves and flowers.
Sarah Jane finally found the card, then immediately gasped with surprise as she read it. “This isn’t for me! They’re for you, Lucy!”
Stunned, Lucinda’s head began to wag back and forth. “Me? But they can’t be. No one around here would send me something like this? No one even knows me!”
Giggling at the mistaken assumption that James had sent them to her, Sarah Jane handed the card to her. “Well, someone did.”
“Merry Christmas, Lucinda,” she read aloud. “Is that all? Does the envelope have the sender’s name on it?”
Sarah Jane shook her head as she flopped the square of white paper over in her hand. “Not a thing.”
“Well, perhaps it was Chance,” Dee spoke up. “Maybe he wanted to do something nice for Lucy.”
“Oh, no! These aren’t from Chance,” Lucinda quickly countered. “I don’t think your son is the bouquet type.”
“Lucy’s right. I’ve never known of Chance sending flowers to anyone. Besides you, Mother.”
Dee shook her head. “It beats me. Unless the—”
“The flowers are from someone Lucinda met at church last night,” Sarah Jane finished her mother’s sentence. “Troy probably. He always was a romantic.”
Lucinda didn’t think Troy was the sender. She’d gotten the impression that the sheriff considered her Chance’s property, and she’d said or done nothing to make him think otherwise. No. The flowers were from someone else. And the sick fear in the pit of her stomach told her that someone else was probably Richard.
“Troy or not,” Dee said wistfully, “it’s a beautiful Christmas gift. Too bad Doc didn’t think of sending me one.”
“I’ll put in a hint for you, Mother. The flowers will go perfectly with that diamond engagement ring he’s getting for you.”
Dee waved her hand airily. “That old man isn’t getting me a ring! I wouldn’t take it anyway.”
Sarah Jane laughed, but Lucinda didn’t. Her mind was in turmoil as she stared at the flowers and the little white bear.
“Oh, yes, you will, Mother,” Sarah Jane went on. “You’d die before you let Doc give that ring to some other woman.”
Dee stuck her chin out. “He doesn’t want any other woman. He wants me.”
Laughing, Sarah Jane gave her mother an affectionate hug. Across from them, Lucinda rose to her feet.
“If you two will excuse me for a while I think I’ll go for a walk,” she said.
Her expression suddenly serious, Sarah Jane quickly pointed out, “You’ve been on your ankle too much already, Lucy. Don’t you think you need to rest?”
Lucinda couldn’t rest. Nor would she be able to, until she was absolutely sure Richard hadn’t sent her those flowers.
Pulling on her coat, she said, “I’m fine. I’d just like some fresh air. I think I’ll go look in on Caesar and make sure he’s doing all right.”
Since the weather had turned out to be another cold and cloudy day, there hadn’t been much thawing. Snowdrifts were still piled next to most of the buildings and the fence posts.
With her head bent and her arms wrapped around her waist, Lucinda picked her way around the slushy puddles of ice and water. The cold air helped clear the fatigue of driving back from Amarillo, but it did little to push away the nagging fear that Richard had somehow tracked her here to the ranch.
“Have you lost something? Or are you just counting all the piles of cow manure you’ve stepped in?”
Lucinda looked up to see Chance approaching her on Traveler, the horse she’d ridden with him. Had that been only three days ago? No, surely it had been longer. So much had happened since then. Chance and his family had changed her. Her heart, her wants and dreams were so very different now.
“I’m trying to stay out of the mud holes,” she told him.
He reined the horse to a stop and stepped down from the saddle. Lucinda stood to one side of the path and waited until he was standing next to her. Even though her mind carried a constant vision of him, it never compared to the real thing. The shape of his long, muscular legs were evident beneath the blue jeans he’d jammed into the tops of his black cowboy boots. The brown suede sheep-lined coat he was wearing made his broad shoulders appear that much wider. Although he’d been clean shaven for their outing at church last night, he’d obviously neglected the chore today. Black whiskers shadowed his jaws and chin and upper lip, giving him a hell-for-leather look. It suited him. Just as the ruggedness of these great Texas plains suited him, she thought.
“I see you and Sarah Jane made it safely back from Amarillo. Did you have a good time?”
It was such a simple question, but his asking it meant more than she could possibly ever tell him. To think that he wanted her to be happy, that he wanted her day to be a good one, filled her with an undescribable joy.
“Yes, I did. Sarah Jane is such fun to be with. I’m going to miss her terribly once I leave here.”
So she was still planning on leaving after Christmas, Chance thought. Why did that surprise him? She’d been saying that very thing all along. Because, damn it, he argued with himself, she’d very nearly made love to him last night. If his mother and sister hadn’t shown up when they did, nothing would have stopped them. Just thinking about it now left a ball of heat in the pit of his stomach.
“Are you going somewhere in particular?” he asked.
“I was going to visit Caesar. Where are you going?”
“I was coming to fetch you.”
She glanced up at his face, which was partially shadowed by the brim of his hat. Nothing on his features hinted that he was expecting her to mention flowers.
“Me?”
Taking her by the arm, Chance began to walk her toward another barn situated several yards beyond the one that housed the horses.
“Yeah, there’s something I want you to see.”
Inside the building two other cowboys were spreading alfalfa in a long hay manger. They glanced around as Chance and Lucinda walked nearby.
“We’re gonna check on the new additions, guys,” Chance told them.
“They’re doin’ fine, Chance. Already been eatin’ like they were starved to death,” one of the men called to him.
Chance gave him a thumbs-up signal, then guided Lucinda to a pen toward the back of the building.
At first, all Lucinda could see was a big black cow chewing a mouthful of hay.
“Look behind her on the ground.”
Lucinda bent her head in order to see under the cow’s feet, then squealed with soft delight as she spotted the two baby calves.
“There’s two of them! And they look exactly
alike! Isn’t it unusual for a cow to have twins?”
Resting his forearms across the top board of the pen, Chance smiled at her excitement over the newborn calves. “It happens about as often as it does to humans.”
“Then it’s a special event,” she said, her eyes still on the matching pair of calves. “When were they born?”
“About forty minutes ago. I’ve been down here watching her the biggest part of the day. We thought we were going to have to pull the first one, but once she had him, the little heifer wasn’t any problem at all.”
Lucinda was amazed. Looking up at Chance she asked, “You mean this cow gave birth less than an hour ago and she’s already up eating?”
Chance nodded. “If everything goes all right during birth, a cow gets up immediately afterward and begins to clean her baby. Before the calf hardly has time to dry, it will stand and begin to nurse.”
Marveling at the whole idea, Lucinda glanced back at the babies. “A few days ago, I didn’t know what living on a ranch meant, or what it was like to be around animals.” Feeling suddenly foolish, she shook her head, then looked up at Chance. “Of course you know that. I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you for wanting to show it all to me.”
Reaching over, Chance slid his hand down her arm, then curled his fingers around hers. “I’ve never met a woman like you, Lucy. Such simple things please you.”
Disturbed by the sudden intimacy of his touch, Lucinda’s eyes dropped from his. “That’s because I’m a simple person, Chance.”
He shook his head. “No. You’re not simple at all. You’re special.”
“I don’t want you to think that.”
“Why not?”
She didn’t answer immediately. Chance tightened his hold on her hand and drew her a step closer to him. “Why not, Lucy?” he repeated.
Lifting her eyes to him, she said, “Because it would be better if you’d just think of me as your friend.”
“I do think of you as my friend. My closest friend. And a whole lot more,” he murmured.
A Cowboy for Christmas Page 13
