Cowboy's Kiss

by Victoria Pade

  It looked very festive, with flowers from Marta’s garden in the center of three place settings of fine bone china.

  Ally assumed she, Meggie and Jackson were celebrating the birth of Beth and Ash’s baby, but it surprised her a little that Jackson felt the inclination.

  Not that he wasn’t a proud uncle, because he was. He’d congratulated his brother-in-law with gusto. He’d kissed his sister and held her hand all the way to the helicopter that whisked the small family to the hospital. And he’d been the one to tell the story of it all to Marta and Meggie when they’d come running back to the ranch to see what had happened.

  But Ally hadn’t expected him to celebrate with dinner in the dining room, complete with linen napkins and candles.

  Meggie came through the swinging door from the kitchen as Ally was surveying the scene; she stopped short at the unexpected sight of her mother.

  “I was just comin’ to get you!” the little girl said. “You’re bein’ late for your own party.”

  “Party?”

  “Well, not really a party, just you and me and Jackson. But Jackson says it’s like a party ‘cuz it’s in your honor for helpin’ the baby get borned. Whatever in your honor means.”

  “Oh,” Ally said, more surprised to hear that than she had been to think Jackson was just celebrating.

  “Marta pinched Jackson’s cheek when he asked her for some flowers and said what a nice man he was and brought us some cake and ice cream for dessert, too.”

  “Marta’s right, this is a nice thing to do.”

  “I told ‘em Dad used to help babies get borned all the time so it was no big deal, but they all think it is anyway, and we get cake and ice cream like it really was a party, so it’s okay.”

  “I guess we better go into the kitchen and see what we can do to help, then,” Ally said, wanting to avoid the subject of Meggie’s father.

  However, she noticed that Meggie hadn’t gotten the dejected look on her face she usually got when she mentioned him. In fact, the reminder of her father didn’t seem to disturb the little girl at all tonight.

  “No, you can’t go in the kitchen,” Meggie was saying as Ally studied her for signs of depression. “I’m s’pose to make you sit in the big chair and you have to just wait for us to serve you like waitresses.”

  Happiness was all Ally spotted in her daughter and after all the excitement of the day, it was a private joy of her own to see it. “The big chair, huh?” she asked as she played along.

  “Yep. I’ll tell Jackson he can take the tornados off the grill.”

  “Tornados?” Ally repeated as Meggie ran back the way she’d come. “Could she mean tournedos?”

  Meggie returned a few minutes later, carefully carrying a salad while Jackson followed her in with a tray that held a breadbasket, three fruit cups, baked potatoes, and a platter of bacon-wrapped fillets that were, indeed, tournedos, not tornados.

  “Wow,” Ally breathed as he set the tray down.

  Jackson cleared his throat and grinned a little sheepishly at her. “Thought you’d earned a nice supper playin’ midwife today.”

  Ah, so that was what it took to get appreciated around here! Killing herself to meet his demands didn’t mean anything, but doing an emergency delivery of the latest Heller offspring made her in like Flynn, she thought. But she didn’t say it aloud. Instead she answered his smile with one of her own and said, “It looks great.”

  Meggie went around the table to Ally’s left and Jackson served the three of them from her right. Then he lighted the candles and poured full glasses of wine for Ally and himself, and a splash for Meggie so she could join the toast he stayed standing to make.

  “To you, for saving the day.”

  “And to the new baby, who really didn’t need all that much help from me,” Ally demurred.

  They did a round of clicking glasses and sipping a dry red wine that Meggie made a face at and clearly had no intention of finishing. Then Jackson sat down and they all began to eat.

  “Ash called a few minutes ago,” he told them as they did. “The baby is five pounds, one ounce—not bad for being early, the doctors said. She’s healthy and Beth’s doing fine, and everyone seems to agree that no one could have done a better delivery than you managed.” He looked directly into Ally’s eyes with those gorgeous blue ones of his. “I know I couldn’t have done as fine a job.”

  “I’m glad I could help.”

  For a moment he held her gaze with his, frowning slightly, as if he were taking a much closer look at what he’d been trying not to see since she’d gotten here.

  That gaze, much like the one they’d shared just after the birth this afternoon, warmed her from the inside out and Ally couldn’t help wondering if her delivering his niece had somehow even altered his feelings about sharing his precious ranch.

  Well, whatever that heated gaze and pampering meant, she wasn’t going to question it. Or anything else that might have caused a change in his attitude. She was just going to sit back and enjoy it, for the moment at least. Because today she’d earned it.

  Jackson refused to let Ally so much as remove a dish from the table when they were finished and instead sent her to the living room with a glass of wine while he and Meggie cleaned up.

  When they’d finished, it was Meggie’s bedtime.

  “Please can Mutt sleep with me again tonight?” she begged as Ally tried to herd her upstairs.

  Ally looked to Jackson to see if he minded and he answered her daughter.

  “It’s all right with me if it’s all right with your mom.”

  “Ple-eease?”

  “Sure, I don’t see why not.”

  “I’ll go find him and be up in a few minutes,” Jackson promised.

  While Meggie put on her pajamas and brushed her teeth, Ally turned down the bed and gathered the toys her daughter used as a bumper pad. Then she waited as the little girl climbed in and bolstered herself. But tonight she only used about half of them.

  “I don’t need so many. Last night they got in my way,” Meggie informed her as if it were strange for Ally not to have known.

  Instead the little girl chose only her favorite dolls and discarded the stuffed animals to the floor.

  Ally stared in amazement, unsure whether to congratulate her daughter or praise her or question her or act as if it were no big deal that for the first time in three years Meggie wasn’t surrounding herself with over a dozen toys to sleep.

  But the moment to say anything at all passed just then when Jackson knocked on the door.

  Meggie called for him to come in and with him arrived Mutt to jump onto the bed, lick Meggie’s face and curl up at the bottom of the mattress as if he’d been doing it all his life.

  “How’d you girls like to spend tomorrow in town?” Jackson asked then.

  “Instead of working?” Ally said, her shock shooting the words out before she even realized they were coming.

  “We’ll do a few chores in the morning and then take the rest of the day off for a little holiday. Seems like it’s about time you had the grand tour of Elk Creek, for what it’s worth.”

  He really was in a good mood tonight, Ally thought, jumping on the offer before he could rescind it. “That would be great. Wouldn’t it, Meggie?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Meggie agreed, already half-asleep.

  Ally chuckled at her daughter and joked to Jackson, “Meggie thinks it would be great, too.”

  He stood by as she kissed the little girl good-night and moved the pile of discarded toys closer to the side of the bed just in case Meggie should change her mind and need them during the night. Then Jackson followed her out into the hallway.

  “It’s only eight-thirty and there’s still half a bottle of wine downstairs. What do you say we finish it?” he asked then.

  Ally hadn’t planned to go to bed just yet, but the invitation was another surprise in a day full of them.

  Was this really Jackson Heller, chivalrously suggesting they spend the end of a
quiet evening alone together with a bottle of wine?

  And was she out of her mind to accept?

  Whether or not she was, she heard herself say, “That sounds nice.”

  And before she knew it, there they were, back downstairs, both of them on one couch as Ally sat straight forward in the center and Jackson angled toward her from the corner, much the way they’d been positioned when she’d awakened to find him treating her blisters the night before.

  Tonight, though, his shin wasn’t pressed against her thigh—there was an inch or so separating them—and he wasn’t concentrating on her palms, he was studying her face.

  But differences aside, there were still enough similarities to give Ally a vivid memory of the kiss they’d shared, and it both unnerved her and washed heat through her at once.

  “How is it you know about deliverin’ babies?” he asked when he’d refilled their glasses and handed her hers.

  So that was what this was all about—he just wanted his curiosity soothed.

  Ally knew a moment’s disappointment before she buried it. What had she thought? That there had been something romantic behind his invitation? And why on earth should it bother her that there wasn’t? Better that it had just been a friendly gesture to go with his good mood tonight.

  A mood she didn’t want to sour by not answering his question, even if it did mean getting into the subject she’d been avoiding up until now.

  She sipped her wine, sank a little lower in the cushions and rested her head against the sofa back, trying to think of them as any two people who were just getting to know each other. “My ex-husband was an obstetrician,” she began.

  “Meggie’s father?”

  “Right. I spent more hours than I could count quizzing him on the how-to’s of birthing babies as he studied. Then I watched him perform several deliveries, and actually got to do it myself—basically—when my sister had her son. She had a home delivery and the midwife was a friend, so she sort of oversaw my doing the deed, while Doug was in the other room just in case there was a problem. Today was the first time I flew solo, though. Lucky for us all it was an easy, uncomplicated birth.”

  “You seemed so calm and confident I thought maybe you were an old hand.”

  “‘The patient’s needs come first. A physician must ignore his own feelings and think only of the good of that patient,’” she recited. “That was a quote from one of my ex’s instructors. But the truth is, it all happened so fast today I didn’t have time to be nervous or doubt myself. I just did what needed to be done.”

  “The same way you look at the chores I give you.”

  She only shrugged and took another sip of wine.

  “If you were that involved in your husband’s studies and work, the two of you must have been pretty close.”

  “I thought we were.”

  “Then what happened?” he asked bluntly, clearly not considering his probing question out of line. But then, that was Jackson. There was no beating around the bush with him. And suddenly Ally decided to give that practice a rest herself. In this instance, anyway.

  “I wish I could tell you an original story, but the truth is that about the time Doug finished his residency and could have set up practice so all the schooling and training finally paid off, he decided he wanted a different life. With different people in it. In particular, a very young woman he’d met a few months before. No sooner was the ink dry on the divorce than he married the model and disappeared. My guess is to play vagabond through Europe—something he’d talked about before. All I know for sure is that when the fourth child-support check didn’t show up and I called him, his phone had been disconnected. And when I went to his house, someone else was moving into it and no one knew—or would tell me—where he’d gone. That was three years ago and we haven’t heard from him since.”

  Jackson’s eyebrows dropped into a dark frown. “The way Meggie refers to him—”

  “I know. As if he’s away on vacation and will be back any minute. I guess that’s what she needs to pretend in order to deal with it. She was upset when he moved out, of course, but when he turned his back on her completely and then vanished, she went over the edge into that depression I told you about before.”

  “So you brought her up here.”

  The calm, quiet tone of Jackson’s voice made Ally realize how shrill her own had become. There had been a time—a long time—when she’d wanted and needed to talk about her divorce, her ex’s misdeeds. But that time had passed; it wasn’t cathartic anymore. Dredging it all up just aggravated her.

  “So I brought her here,” she answered, taking a deep breath and sighing it out. Then she drank more wine, letting it relax her again. “I’m sorry for that little tirade. I’ve worked through my own feelings about the divorce and being deserted, but seeing your child in pain and not being able to do anything to fix it—you never get over that.”

  He was watching her very intently, those striking eyes of his studying her. He reached an arm across the sofa back to finger a strand of her hair. “So you’re trying to compensate for what you can’t fix.”

  “Sure.”

  “Men like your ex should be horsewhipped.”

  “That’s what your father said.”

  “No wonder he left you part of everything to help get you and Meggie through. I’d have done the same thing.”

  Those words meant a lot to Ally. She hadn’t actually realized how uncomfortable she’d been with having received a portion of what rightfully belonged to him and Linc and Beth, or how that uneasiness had hinged on Jackson’s feelings, until he revealed his acceptance. Suddenly a great relief washed over her.

  To thank him for it, she opened up to him even more. “Your father was there to see just how tough things were for Meggie and me. I’d been the only one working—and just as an assistant chef—while Doug went through school. I didn’t make terrific money, so there were huge debts by the time he finished. The kind of debts with payments that were deferred until he was through. But that was when he disappeared and since I’d been silly enough to cosign the loans, everything fell to me. I was actually in worse shape financially than when I’d been supporting him, even though I’d been promoted to chef by then. Meggie and I had to move in with my mother—and Shag when he was with her. Which was how we got to know him so well.”

  Jackson shook his head in disgust, his stoic expression turned stern. “Horsewhipping is too good for somebody who would do all that to you.”

  Or to anyone else, Ally thought. And yet, that small qualification from him sent a surge of feelings through her that added to her gratitude to him. Jackson cared. She could see it as plainly as the long, thin, chiseled nose on his face. He was angry on her behalf. Outraged. Protective.

  And it was nice. It was comforting. It was sexy.

  “What’s worse than what Doug did to me,” she went on in a hurry to escape that wandering of her mind, “is what he’s done to Meggie. She adored him and he just threw her away, like a toy he’d tired of or a pet that was too much trouble—something he just couldn’t be bothered with anymore. How do you explain that to anyone, let alone to a little child?”

  And where had the tears that suddenly flooded her eyes come from?

  Ally blinked furiously, but one escaped to roll down her cheek.

  Before she could brush it away, Jackson caught it with the backs of his fingers, smoothing her skin at the same time in a soothing gesture.

  “You don’t explain it,” he said quietly. “You let her come to it herself, in her own good time.”

  The tears were gone as quickly as they’d come, chased away by the sparks that came to life at his touch. But fighting those was not nearly as easy as fighting not to break down in front of him.

  “You’re right,” she said, again using the subject to help keep scarier emotions at bay. “There’s nothing I can do but let her figure this out for herself. And I know she will. I’ll just have to be there to pick up the pieces when it happens.”


  “Oh, I don’t know. She may surprise you and not fall apart at all,” he said with such confidence that Ally hung on to it as if it were an ironclad guarantee.

  She smiled at him, thinking that there seemed to be more to him than she’d given him credit for before. More compassion. More caring. More kindness.

  And Lord, but the man was great looking. Especially when he smiled at her in a way that seemed to wrap around her like silk and make her feel as if she were floating on a cloud.

  It occurred to her then that maybe she’d had a little more wine than she should have, on top of yet another day of marathon hard work and a whole variety of excitements. It all left her very vulnerable to this calm after the storm. To the comfort of nearly lying back on that overstuffed couch with her feet up on the coffee table. To Jackson and the warmth that his cornflower blue gaze bathed her in, making her feel as if they were the only two people in the world....

  He leaned forward and put his wineglass on the coffee table. Then he took hers and set it there, too.

  But when he straightened, he was suddenly just above Ally. So near she breathed in the scent of his after-shave.

  “You’re quite a woman, Ally Brooks,” he said very softly and maybe with a hint of reluctance, his eyes delving into hers almost as if he wished he weren’t seeing what he was.

  Then his big, callused hands slipped up her neck into her hair and lifted her head just slightly, at the same moment his mouth lowered to hers in a kiss that began slowly, softly...

  It didn’t stay that way for long.

  Instead his lips parted; he deepened the kiss and it quickly grew hungry and insistent.

  Not that he needed to insist on anything, because even before he’d reached for her, Ally had been hoping—deep down—that he was going to kiss her again. And when he did, she met him willingly, every bit as hungry as he seemed to be for more of what they’d only toyed with the previous night.

  Her own lips parted in answer to his and she gave in to an urge she thought she’d had since she’d first set eyes on him—raising her hands to the bulging muscles of his biceps.

  They were as hard as they looked, as magnificent. And so were his shoulders, she found, when she slid her hands up to them. And his back, when she reached her arms around him...