"We have an agreement, remember?" Kicking his bedroom door open, he dumped her on the bed, and came down on top of her, pinning her there. "I'm at your disposal. Tell me what you want me to do."
He could never do what she wanted him to do. She wanted him to love her, and she knew he never would. She was suddenly as shy as a school girl. "Would you let me undress you again?"
He released her, then sat up on the side of the bed. His smile was positively wicked. "I think I can endure that."
Her hands reached for the grippers on his shirt front. "I love the way your eyes light up when I touch you." Impatient to feel the roughness of his skin, she yanked the shirt open, and ran her fingers through the abundance of hair that grew on his chest, then slid them to his back. "You feel so good."
He bent this lips to her ear. His breath came in erotic little puffs. "You will be gentle?"
"I want you." Her breathing was shallow and raspy as she tugged at the sleeves of his shirt. She tossed the shirt in the corner and straddled his leg, tugging at one of his heavy boots.
He nudged her backside with his other foot. "Did anyone ever tell you that you have a beautiful behind? From here it looks like a valentine."
The boot slid free, and Kate tossed it toward his shirt. Straddling his other leg, she tugged at the remaining boot. "This is taking too long. You will have to help me." Hank threw back his head, and laughed. "Kate, you are one of a kind." Pulling her around to face him, he kissed her passionately, letting his tongue slide into her gasping mouth to explore the hidden places inside.
She responded with ardent abandon, melting like sugar in hot coffee, until she was consumed into the heat of his embrace.
He dispensed with her clothes in short order, sending them to rest atop his boots and shirt. Then, standing, he let his jeans fall around his feet, revealing his muscular thighs covered only by a pair of tight jockey shorts that hugged and outlined the massive evidence of his desire.
Kate's breath caught in her throat and hung there on a little gurgle. He was too beautiful to be real. Her hands, hot and sweaty, grabbed the flimsy under garment, pulling it down around his knees, then her fingers crawled up his legs to caress the object of her affections. "You are so magnificent!"
Her sudden movements upset his precarious balance, and sent him tumbling face down on the bed. "You did promise to be gentle."
By now words were a waste of time. Kate was lost to anything except the passionate need that surged through her like a tidal wave. "I want you now!" Her demand was accompanied by a tug to pull him over her. "Please, Hank, now."
She had wanted this to be a slow, sensuous encounter, but her spiraling need exploded into an intense demand for release. Mouth slack, eyes glassy, Kate opened her legs and moved her hips about as she arched her body toward him. "Now!"
He crawled atop her slight frame, and slid inside her with practiced perfection. "Like this?" Then he lay very still, as she moved about beneath him.
He was a hot brand burning into her backbone. Liquid fire blasted through her veins, detonating little bursts of flame along every nerve ending in her body.
Slowly, sensuously, he began to move inside her. The blaze leaped to a raging inferno that burned out of control, spiraling higher and higher with each thrust, until exquisite joy and glorious release swept over her.
Hank exploded inside her. He collapsed with a grunt of total satisfaction, then lay still and panting for several seconds before he rolled over, and pulled her into his arms. Snuggling there, feeling content and sated, Kate promptly fell into a deep sleep.
She woke slowly, and stretched, then turned over. Hank was sitting across from her, barefoot, and wearing only a pair of form fitting jeans. He was staring at her with studied intensity. "I thought you might sleep all night."
She pulled a sheet over her bare breasts. "What time is it?" As she remembered where she was, and what had happened, shame replaced her relaxed compliancy. She had behaved disgracefully. Hank must think her completely wanton. "I have to go home.
Mamma will be worried."
Hank yawned and stretched his arms over his head. "I sent Jake and Billy Jack over to Paradise to round up a few head of steers. They took Ringo home. I asked them to tell Mamma you would be home later."
She wanted him to go, so she could dress and leave. What must he think of her? Clearing her throat, she asked, "Do you mind?"
"I don't mind. Get dressed, and I'll drive you home." He made no move to leave.
"You have to step outside."
"Why?" Laughter rumbled in his chest.
"So I can dress." He should know why. Was he trying to be difficult?
He sobered suddenly. "Are you asking me to get out of my own bedroom?"
Put that way, her request sounded absurd. "I don't have any clothes on." She pulled the sheet a little higher.
A smile crawled across his rugged face. "You don't say?"
Looking about, Kate asked, "Where is the bathroom?"
Hank inclined his head toward a door across the room.
"Oh." She twined the sheet around her. "Is it all right if I take a shower?"
"Be my guest." He extended one hand toward the door.
As she surveyed the space between her and the bathroom, she realized that she would have to walk within inches of Hank's chair to get there. "Don't you have something you need to do?"
Hank stretched his legs out in front of him. "Not a damn thing."
Holding on to the sheet with both hands, Kate put her bare feet on the thick carpet, and pointed them in the direction of the bathroom. With each cautious step, suspicion grew. Stopping just out of his reach, she asked, "What are you up to?"
"Not a damn thing."
"Can't you say anything but, 'Not a damn thing',?" Her voice dropped, as she imitated, to perfection his deep, mocking tone.
Like a bullet shot from a gun, Hank bolted from the chair caught the end of the sheet, and pulled hard. "Not a damn thing."
The sheet fell in puddling folds around her feet, leaving her standing, bare and beautiful before him, Her entire body fused with a ruddy color. "Hank?"
She watched as lights leaped and danced in the green of his eyes. "God, you are beautiful." Folding her into a tight embrace, he rubbed the hair on his bare chest against her naked breasts, creating a delicious friction. "From the top of your head to the bewitching red triangle between your legs."
Scooping her into his arms, he kicked the bathroom door open. "I think we both need a shower. You to clean up, me to cool off."
"Hank?"
"Yeah? Do you have something to say?"
She wrapped her arms around his neck, and held on. "Not a thing, not a damn thing."
Kate had never before considered that a warm shower could be an erotic experience. After today she would know it could be. As Hank stepped from his jeans and kicked them aside, she gave herself over to the seductive magic that only he could create.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Spring eased into summer. The days grew long and lazy. It seemed only yesterday that April's buds had blossomed into May's bright blooms. And now, in a matter of days, June's mature radiance would be only a memory. The past three months had been the happiest of Kate's life. But behind that happiness lurked an ever present fear that nagged at her at the most inopportune moments. Sometimes after Hank had made love to her, Kate would watch him as he slept, and wonder how she would survive when he left her for someone new. She had never doubted that someday he would do just that.
She struggled to live for the moment. Most of the time she succeeded. But those lapses into reality always left her shaken and afraid.
It seemed the more complex and unsure her relationship with Hank became, the more the remainder of her once topsy-turvy world seemed to right itself.
Belle's alliance with Cody was, indeed, a marriage made in heaven. Their happiness touched everyone around them, and seemed to grow stronger and more satisfying with each passing day.
Kate had w
orried that her refusal to accept Jim's plea that she return to Dallas and marry him would alienate her children. The opposite turned out to be true. She was
overjoyed when Michael wrote to say that she had made the right decision in refusing Jim's proposal. He also apologized for his own high-handed role in trying to bring his mother and father together again.
Suzie's acquiescence was more subtle and came much later than Michael's sudden change of heart. She and David came to Paradise one weekend in late May to visit. The next morning over breakfast, Suzie admitted that Jim was seeing a widow who lived in nearby Ft. Worth. Suzie described the lady as being fat and forty, with the ability to bake a wicked apple pie.
Kate had to smile. Jim courting a fat widow seemed poetic justice after his unhappy escapade with Lila. "Maybe he has found happiness," Kate told her giggling daughter, adding that she fervently hoped so.
Michael and Sharon's visit in late June had revealed, without words, to Kate, that she would soon be a grandmother. Her eyes glued to Sharon's distended stomach, Kate asked, "When?"
Sharon put her arm around her mother-in-law. "The first week in October. The baby's a girl."
"You know already?" Kate questioned.
"As of last week. We already have a name. We are going to call her Katherine Jane."
Kate's eyes brimmed with tears. The acceptance she had sought for so long from her daughter-in-law had come at last. She hugged Sharon to her. "That's the nicest compliment I've ever had."
Sharon returned Kate's hug. "If she grows up to be half the woman you are, Kate, I'll be happy."
Later that evening, Kate sat on the front porch, watching the first stars of the night peep through a hazy sky. She would soon have a granddaughter who would bear her name. Maybe Daddy had been right to name this place Paradise.
Then, from nowhere came the memory of her last rapturous encounter with Hank. Each time they came together the union was a little sweeter, a little more intimate. Anything she had ever felt for Jim paled to a shadow in the substance of the love she held in her heart for Hank. If only it could last. It wouldn't, of course. Nothing ever did.
She knew when the time came for them to part, Hank would be kind. There was none of the cruelty that was an innate part of Jim, in Hank. He would let her down gently. When they said good bye, at least her pride would be intact. She laid her head against the porch post and counted the few stars that peeked down at her. Hank would find a new lover, and move on, but Kate knew she would never love again.
From the doorway, Belle called, "I brought you a glass of iced tea." Worry lines creased Belle's forehead as she came across the porch, and sat down beside her daughter. "What's troubling you, Kate?"
Kate pasted a smile on her face. "Nothing, Mamma."
Belle looked up at the darkening sky. "Are you wishing on a star?"
"No, Mamma, I was thinking." Kate took a sip of the cold tea.
Wiping her wet hands along the sides of her jeans, Belle sighed. "Lord, Kate come October, I'm going to be a great-grandmother. Where did all the years go?"
Kate shook her head. "Time does fly, and there is no way to call those years back. Jim once asked me if I ever wished I could go back and live my life over. I said no. Now I'm not so sure. Did you ever wish you could do it all over again, Mamma?"
"Are you asking me if I have regrets?" Belle shook her head. "My only regret is, I didn't find Cody twenty years ago."
"Is that all?" Kate's heart was bruised by a new sorrow. "What about Mark?"
"He's one of my most treasured memories." Belle's features softened. "I loved him enough to let him go. I've never regretted setting him free. The pain goes away after awhile, leaving only bittersweet memories." Belle brightened considerably. "And now I have Cody, and Paradise."
"Paradise has been our salvation, Mamma." Kate reminisced, "Remember the first night we spent here? The coyotes scared me out of my wits. You told me I'd learn to like the sound, and I didn't believe you, but it's true. I listen every night for those mournful wails."
"I always thought," Belle said with conviction, "That cry was a coyote's call to her lover. And all the answering yelps are little assurances from her mate, telling her he's near, and he cares." Belle stared in the gathering night. "Silly isn't it?"
"No, Mamma, I think it's beautiful." An old ache moved in around Kate's bruised heart. "You're an incurable romantic."
"Do you have regrets, Kate?" In the dim twilight, Belle squinted to see Kate's expression. "Would you really want to go back, if you could?"
Kate pondered the question for several seconds. Would she? "No. Mamma. I wouldn't change a single thing." The words were uttered slowly, and with finality. "Does that sound insufferably smug?"
Belle probed, "So everything is perfect here on Paradise?"
"Perfect? No." Kate felt her way through the maze of thoughts that crowded into her mind. "If -- when I wake some morning and find that my paradise has flown like a migratory bird to some other palace. I'll be content that I had that lovely Eden for a little while."
"No regrets?" Belle asked relentlessly, "No sorrow?"
"Sorrow? Yes." Fireflies flitted across the yard, blinking in the new darkness. "Regrets? No." How could she ever regret having loved Hank or knowing the sweet delight of having him love her? "No regrets, Mamma."
As time made it's relentless progression toward a hot July, those words came back to mock Kate. She watched, with growing concern, as each day Hank grew increasingly restless and distant. She could only guess why. He had begun to tire of her. The realization broke her heart, but she accepted that inevitability with stoic apathy. The last thing she wanted was Hank to be unhappy. Soon he would deliver his much dreaded ultimatum. Patience was not one of Hank's virtues. It was apparent to Kate that he wanted out, and he would soon say so.
When Hank suggested they go to the Fourth of July celebration at Johnny Blue's, Kate agreed. Hank seemed to unwind in that loud, boisterous place. Maybe a change of scenery would help ease some of the tension between them. "It sounds like fun," she told him, watching for some sign of the relaxed Hank she had know in the beginning, and seeing none.
"Good." His reply was short. "And I reserved a room at the motel."
This was it. Her heart fell to the pit of her stomach. Hank was going to tell her it was over between them. "What time do you want to leave?"
He pulled his hat down. "About two."
"I'll be ready." Kate promised, as he walked away.
All too soon, July the fourth dawned, bright and humid, promising a long hot day. Kate dressed with care for her outing with Hank, choosing instead of jeans, a flaring denim skirt and a lacy white blouse. If this was to be her swan song, she would go out with style and dignity. No tears, no pleading. A clean break was the last gift she could give the man she loved.
Hank's look of admiration as she opened the door of his pickup truck told her she had made the right choice in clothing.
"Ready?" He pulled the pickup into gear.
Kate felt like she was putting her foot on the first step of a gallows. "Ready."
As he drove, Hank kept his eyes on the ribbon of highway that stretched before them, seemingly lost in his own morose thoughts.
Because she could think of no way to break the heavy silence, Kate watched the center stripe of the road as it sped by, and prayed for this afternoon and night to be over soon.
When the silence finally became unbearable, she blurted out, "Michael and Sharon are going to have a baby."
Without taking his eyes from the road, Hank asked, "Yeah? When?"
"The first week in October."
"That's nice." Hank never took his eyes off the road.
Oppressive silence set in again. The drone of the motor was the only sound to be heard for several miles.
Striving for frivolity, Kate said, "I'm going to be a grandmother."
"Does that bother you?" She heard the shifting nuance in his voice, and it made her frown. He sounded as remote as the hills.
"No. I'm happy about it. The baby's a girl."
Hank's face was a blank mask. "That's nice." Was he deliberately pulling away from her, or did he feel excluded because he had no family to claim as his own? A fateful fusion of faith and fear offered hope that was, at once, terrible and sublime. Did she dare believe that Hank might be jealous of her children? She crushed that absurd thought. She must not find excuses to spin foolish dreams.
Kate pressed her lips together, and remained silent until Hank had pulled the pickup into the parking lot, and was setting his emergency brake. "There's quite a crowd here today."
"It's an annual event." Hank unfastened his seat belt. "Around noon there was a chili cook-off."
Kate wasn't sure what a chili cook-off was. Given Hank's present mood, she decided not to ask.
Hank glanced toward the sky. The cook-off was over three hours ago. He took Kate's arm. "Let's go inside. Maybe there's some chili left."
They pushed through the milling crowd, found a table near the back of the huge room, and sat down.
"Do you want beer with your chili?" Hank asked over the hubbub of many voices.
Kate nodded her agreement. Looking around the room, she thought she had never seen so many boisterous people in one place before. The dance floor was overrun with couples dancing to the music of a loud five piece band.
Hank pushed back his chair. His lips formed the words, "Let's dance."
Kate followed him onto the floor, and slipped easily into his embrace. The feel of his muscular thighs pressing against her body sent a surge of bittersweet longing through her. She laid her head on his shoulder, and flowed into his strength, following every intricate move of his body, thinking she would like to stay here in his arms forever.
All too soon the dance was over, and they were back at their table, sipping beer and eating chili, as Kate made small talk in an effort to ease the tension that stretched between them like a taut bow string.
Hank sat across from her, morose and silent, using those hard eyes to intimidate her completely.
Dropping her chin to escape his piercing gaze, Kate decided she had to get away. She had taken all she could stand. Before she could give voice to her sudden decision, Gina Morton emerged from the crowd at the bar, and moved with purpose toward the table, and Hank.
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