The Ranch Stud

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  He shook his head. “You misunderstood,” he repeated flatly.

  Had she? Thus far, he really hadn’t explained much of anything. Patience smiled at him sarcastically and knew that he was still hiding every bit as much as he was revealing to her. “I don’t think so,” she replied in a soft, bitter voice, furious she had been made a fool of once again. “You see, Josh, I know when I have been lied to,” she said softly, tears stinging her eyes. “And you have lied to me from the very start of this ridiculous ‘engagement’ of ours. And probably Max, as well.”

  He tightened his hold on her possessively. “Listen to me, Patience. Nothing is what it seems.”

  “Tell you what.” Patience flung herself away from him. “We’ll let Cisco and my brothers sort it all out. Maybe they can figure out who you really are and why I am dead right not to trust you. Maybe they can help me figure out just where it was that you and I have met before, and why you don’t want me to recall any of it.”

  For a second, a flicker of hurt was reflected in his silver-gray eyes. It was gone as quickly as it appeared, making Patience wonder if she had really seen it there at all. Or had she just wanted to see it? “Give me a chance to explain,” he urged gruffly.

  “Why should I?” Patience retorted fiercely, the hurt inside her mounting to an unmanageable level. “When all you’ve done is make a fool out of me and Max and heaven only knows who else from the very first!” She stepped past him militantly.

  He crossed his arms over his chest, his actions as slow and deliberate as hers had been impulsive. “Where are you going?”

  Patience shrugged and refused to turn around to look at him. “It doesn’t matter,” she stated defiantly, knowing it was true, “as long as I am far away from you.”

  Josh moved between her and the door. “I’m sorry, Patience.” He regarded her implacably, every inch of him tensed and ready for battle. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

  “GET OUT OF MY WAY, JOSH.”

  So it had come to this, Josh thought as he met Patience’s dagger-eyed stare equably. “Not until we find a way to work this out,” he said with quiet authority. He did not want to get in a wrestling match with her. He preferred to talk this out calmly and quietly, but if she gave him no choice, he would do what was required, just as he had done what was required of him years ago. And the sooner she understood that, the better.

  Patience picked up the gauntlet. “First you tell me where exactly we have met before.”

  He regarded her in stony silence, knowing he couldn’t answer. Patience’s frustration mounted, as he had expected it would.

  “Your showing up here on the ranch was no accident, was it?”

  He felt the fury swirling around them. “No. It wasn’t,” he said wearily.

  Patience reeled backward, as if he had slapped her. “Then why are you here?” she demanded emotionally, looking as if she might burst into tears at any second.

  It was all Josh could do not to drag her into his arms and kiss her and hold her until the pain in her eyes went away. “Because I know what Alec put you through,” he said hoarsely, wishing like hell he could tell her everything, “and I wanted to see if you were all right.”

  She blinked. “And yet you expected me to hate you if I ever found any of this out.”

  Josh edged toward her, aware his bleak prophecy was already coming true despite all the pains he had taken to try to protect her from just this. “I’ve already told you all I can, Patience,” he said sternly. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “How can I do that when I just heard you and Holly Diehl admit the five years the two of you spent together won’t ever really be over!” The tears she had been holding back poured down her cheeks.

  “Nothing of our past ever will be, Patience,” Josh told her with strained equanimity as he advanced on her slowly, deliberately. “Our past is what makes us who we are today.”

  Patience couldn’t dispute the truth of that. “And yet you, Josh, want me to forget all about Alec!” she cried, even more upset.

  “Because he was the wrong man for you,” Josh said flatly. Because he never would have been strong enough to protect you.

  “I will never believe that,” Patience swore, whirling away from Josh once again. She returned to her half-finished glass of cider and picked it up with shaking hands.

  His heart going out to her, Josh watched her gulp it down. “I didn’t say he meant to hurt you,” he told her softly.

  Patience wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “Then why did he leave me the way he did?”

  He could see the fight draining out of her as swiftly as it had appeared. The situation was still bad, he reassured himself firmly, but not unsalvageable, and it wouldn’t be unless he lost his head. “That I can’t tell you.”

  Patience swung around to face him. “And I am supposed to just accept that and not ask anything else,” she retorted, her lower lip trembling.

  “Yes.” He stepped close and took her in his arms.

  “Damn it, Josh—” she wedged her forearms between them “—you have to know I can’t leave it at that.”

  “If you don’t, Patience, you are going to end up putting us both in danger.”

  Her blue eyes blazed. Without warning, the truth of all he had told her was beginning to sink in, and he could see she was beginning to believe him. “How?” she whispered, her hands flattening across his chest.

  If only he could tell her everything, but that was out of the question and always had been. Josh tightened his hold on her and released an exasperated breath. “You’re better off not knowing.” If only he could make her believe that.

  She stiffened and gave him a withering glance. “I was better off never having met you!”

  Josh sighed. “As much as I hate to admit it, I agree.”

  Abruptly, she stared up at him. “Tell me how I know you,” she whispered emotionally. “Tell me why you seem so familiar.”

  Josh gritted his teeth. The last thing he wanted was her remembering anything, especially now. The emotions they were both feeling were dangerous. That was why he had avoided them these many years. But they also made him feel alive. They made him feel like taking risks. “You’re just going to have to forget you ever heard that,” he said gruffly, still wanting to protect her, if necessary with his life.

  A combination of melancholy and hurt filled her eyes. Abruptly, she seemed on the verge of tears again. “You’re asking too much,” she murmured.

  The way she looked at him, he could tell she wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe in him with all her heart and soul. It was up to him to make that happen. “The way things look to you right now, I know you don’t have any reason to trust me. But everything I have done, I have done to protect you,” Josh told her gently as he smoothed the hair from her face. “If I could have made it so that Alec could have come back to you, I would have,” he confided emotionally, telling her all that was in his heart and had been for many years. “But it didn’t work out that way.” He ran one hand down her spine, cupped the other beneath her chin.

  Her blue eyes widened as she struggled to understand. “So instead you decided to come here and take his place, is that it? You’re here in his stead?”

  Josh tried not to think about how good she felt as he held her in his arms again, how right, and how much he wanted to make love to her again and again and again. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” he murmured as his hands skimmed up her sides, over her ribs. “Alec back? And if not him, the next best thing, someone who knew him intimately, someone who knew how much he loved and desired and cherished you.” He drew the pad of his thumb across her lower lip, reveling in the softness. “Someone who knew how to kiss you.” He traced the bow-shaped curve of her upper lip and watched her eyes grow smoky with passion. “Someone who knew how much you needed to be loved, held, touched.” And she did need that, he thought. So did he.

  “Josh—”

  His touch as gent
le as he could make it, he gathered her close again and worked his hands down her spine. “Tell me you don’t want me,” he whispered. Hands on her hips, he tugged her close, fitted her intimately against him.

  Patience closed her eyes and rested her forehead against his. The warmth of her breath brushed his cheek. Her breathing was every bit as unsteady as his, her body soft and giving as she confessed, “You know I can’t.”

  He kissed her brow, the shell of her ear, the slope of her throat, and gloried in her soft, trembling response, even as he was impatient for more. “Tell me you haven’t been lonely,” he urged.

  Her hands curled around his shoulders, held tight. She moaned soft and low as he found her lips again. And then her throat. “I can’t.”

  Knowing the bedroom was where they both wanted to be, Josh picked Patience up in his arms and carried her there. He set her down on the covers and lay beside her.

  Pleased she hadn’t uttered a sound of protest, he rolled so she was beneath him, the softness of her length fitted closely against the hardness of his.

  Threading his hands through the silk of her hair, he urged softly, “Tell me you haven’t wished that every day and every night since Alec left you could have this kind of closeness and intimacy in your life again, that you could feel so close to someone it was almost as if you were two halves of a whole.” He knew it was all he had dreamed about. Wanted. Despaired over. For what seemed forever. And try as he might, he couldn’t just walk away from her. Not again, even if, damn it all, she didn’t remember this…and she should.

  “You think you can do this for me…make me forget? Make me want to go on?” She sucked in a tremulous breath as he bent and kissed her, and Josh knew from the way she responded to him that his just being there had opened up possibilities for her that had not existed before.

  “I know,” he promised, kissing her deeply. He sifted her hair through his hands and fitted his lips to hers for another long, leisurely kiss. He held her tight, knowing that despite the irony of it all, there was no better man for the task. No one who would love her more.

  Then, looking her straight in the eye he passionately repeated, “I know.” And no matter what happened after this, today he knew he would remember this moment for the rest of his life.

  Patience knew she should fight him. After everything she had seen and overheard, she had no reason to trust Josh. But she did. She had no reason to want him in her life and in her bed. But she did.

  Listen to your hearts. ‘Cause if you do, I guarantee you’ll know what to do, Max had said in his last message to her. And her heart was telling her that Josh was not what his furtive conversation with Holly Diehl would have her believe. Her heart told her that Josh was the kind of man who would always be on the right side of the law.

  He was the man who had taken charge of the horse operation for Max, the man who had teased and provoked and held her tight. He was the man who had kissed her with shattering intensity, catapulting her from her outwardly successful but lonely existence into the tumultuous yet satisfying present.

  Max wouldn’t have trusted Josh if he hadn’t believed he was good for me, Patience reassured herself firmly. Max wouldn’t have suggested we have a child together. Max wouldn’t have left part of the ranch to Josh unless he had thoroughly checked Josh out, if he hadn’t believed Josh was on the right side of the law, too. Was it possible, Patience wondered, shocked, that Josh was here incognito on some sort of official government business? If so, that would certainly explain Holly’s demand he remain here only if he could do so incognito.

  “Let go of the past, Patience, and just believe in us,” Josh whispered between long, drugging kisses. His hands swept over her, lovingly charting her dips and curves, the tenderness in his touch freeing them from everything but the moment and each other.

  How long had it been since she had really taken a chance on anything, never mind the kind of reckless yet satisfying love he was promising? Here was her chance, Patience thought, awash in pleasure, to make her dream of having a baby a reality….

  And suddenly she knew she could no more resist the chance to discover what lay at the very heart of this whirlpool of danger and excitement she found herself in than she could dive back into the self-imposed cocoon of celibacy in which she’d been hiding these last seventeen years.

  As his lips touched hers, she cried out softly and surged against him, the passion between them so strong and so right and so total it didn’t seem quite real. His hands were moving over her, unfastening the buttons on her blouse, parting the edges to reveal the lace-edged cotton camisole beneath. He tugged it from the waistband of her jeans and slid his hand beneath it, his nimble fingers ghosting over the curves of her breasts and settling warmly on the jutting crowns. A deep heat began in her middle, radiating outward in searing waves, and suddenly it became important to be touching everywhere.

  Still kissing, she reached for the buttons on his shirt. He reached for the zipper on her jeans. Efficient moments later, their clothes landed in a heap on the floor. And then they were kissing again, losing themselves on that glorious edge between heaven and hell. His fingers were searching out the silken core of her, and she was lifting her hips, pleading wordlessly for a more intimate union.

  Josh wanted to prolong Patience’s pleasure, bring her to the brink again and again and again, but she was beyond waiting as she cradled him in her hands and urged him close, first to the sensitive entrance to her being, then just inside. Holding back with all his might, Josh reached for the foil packet in his jeans. He had never reacted to a woman’s touch with such all-consuming need, but there were precautions to take before this went any further.

  She caught his hips in her hands, moving against him in imperative circles that drove him ever closer to the edge. “No. Now, Josh,” she breathed restlessly in a way that told him that nothing was more important than holding on to the hope of love and the promise of the future. As he looked into her eyes, he saw she trusted him completely. She trusted him with her heart. It meant the world to him.

  “I want this,” she whispered, her expression as stubbornly insistent as it was hopelessly romantic. And he knew then, even if she hadn’t yet dared to say the words to him, that she was falling in love with him, too. “I want your child,” she whispered softly. “I want you.”

  Maybe they had both played it safe for too long, Josh thought. Maybe it was time he took a chance, not only on the present and Patience, but on their future together, as well. “I want you, too, sweetheart.” I want to preserve this moment for eternity. “I want our baby.”

  Slipping a pillow beneath her hips, he lifted her up and eased into her, being careful not to overwhelm her with his size and weight. And then they were kissing again, the soul-searing sensuality of their coupling shaking them to the core, calling forth a response that dazed and drove them both. He kissed her and held her, touched and took her, until they were both drunk on the sensations of overheated bodies and clinging lips, until his need for her was like a thick, aching pain inside of him that would not, could not be eased. Until they were nearly one, heart and soul.

  “Damn, Patience—” His self-control evaporated, as did hers. When she locked herself around him, he drove deep, glorying in the trembling sensations, deliberately intensifying the breathless pleasure. And then they were spinning out of control, into the rich seduction of oblivion.

  PATIENCE LAY wrapped in Josh’s arms, every inch of her deliciously sated and trembling, one thought rushing through her mind over and over again. We just made a baby.

  Intellectually, of course, she knew it was too soon to tell. But she felt the distinct possibility of new life in her heart and in her soul. And she knew if she hadn’t succeeded in creating a child with Josh this evening, she was most definitely willing to try again and again and again.

  The old-fashioned way. Just as Josh—and even Uncle Max—had wanted.

  Smiling, she extricated herself enough to rise up on one elbow. And that was when she not
iced what she had failed to see before. “What is this?” She touched the scars on his shoulder. The ones on his knee. The jagged one running down his chest, just beneath his ribs. “What happened?”

  Josh shook his head, as if he didn’t want to spoil the miracle of their passionate lovemaking by talking about that. He caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her fingertips. “It was a long time ago.”

  But it had still happened, Patience thought, upset. Her throat ached. “I can’t bear the thought of you in pain.” And if he was some kind of undercover law officer, as she half suspected, then his life would be in danger.

  His expression unperturbed, he drew her close. “Then don’t.”

  “Josh-”

  Rolling so she was beneath him once again, he kissed her breathless until she melted against him once again. Yet even as he swept his hands down her body, evoking a passionate response from them both, Patience knew that making love again would not solve all their problems, even if it was the only solution he had to offer them. Finally, he drew back, looking down into her stilltroubled eyes as if to gauge her skyrocketing emotions. “You’re never going to tell me everything, are you?” she whispered.

  He grimaced, letting her know in an instant he was not about to make his struggles hers. “Forget the past, Patience,” he advised her softly, gathering her close. “Enjoy the present.”

  But how could she? Patience wondered as he quickly shut her out of his life again. What secrets was Josh still holding from her? Reality came crashing down on her, and she realized just exactly what it was she had done, the risks she had just taken, the kind of risk she would warn her readers never ever to take. It was time for some cool thinking. She couldn’t do that as long as they were both holding each other this way.

  Grabbing her clothes, she began to get dressed.

  He sighed. Looked disappointed, but not surprised. “You’re angry again, aren’t you?”

  Angry? Hurt? What was the difference, when he had just shut her out again, big-time? She threw her clothes on haphazardly while he reluctantly did the same. “Who are you, Josh? Who are you really?” Patience demanded as she snatched up her jeans. And how was it possible that he, a relative stranger to her, could so quickly and effectively reach her heart in a way no one save Alec Vaughn, long ago, had ever done?