Heart of Ice
Page 8
“I’m not,” she protested dazedly.
“Then kiss me,” he murmured.
She didn’t understand what he meant until the pressure of his mouth forced hers open and she felt his tongue in a slow, even penetration that made her blood surge.
She gasped, and he deepened the kiss even more. She felt his body tremble, and he groaned softly—deep in his throat—like a man trying to control the impossible. He whispered her name under his breath and his arms went around her like chains. He crushed her into the taut muscles of his body until she hurt, and she didn’t care. She wanted to be closer than this, even closer, with nothing in the way…!
“Kati?” Ada called from the living room.
In a fever of hunger, Kati watched Egan lift his head and take a slow, steadying breath.
“We’re talking, all right?” he asked in what sounded like an almost normal tone.
“Oh, excuse me!” Ada called back. “Never mind!”
Egan’s eyes burned down into Kati’s. “Are you all right?” he whispered, watching the tears shimmer in her eyes.
“Yes. I…just…just feel kind of shaky,” she stammered.
He took her hands to his hard chest and held them over the vest. “So do I,” he said. “From the neck down. My God, you stir me up!”
Her eyes searched his slowly, curiously. “You’re a passionate man,” she whispered. “I imagine most women make you feel that way.”
He shook his head very slowly. “I’m not promiscuous, Kati. I’m selective. It takes a very special woman.”
She felt unreasonably flattered, but then, she wasn’t thinking straight. How could she, this close to him, wanting him with a fever that was burning her alive?
“I’m scandalous, remember?” she said. “I seduce men to help me with my research—”
He stopped the words with a touch to her lips. “I’m not a virgin. How can I sit in judgment on you?”
“If you’d listen to me,” she said softly, “I’d tell you.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” he said curtly. “The past is over. We’ll go from here. Are you coming home with me?”
And there was the question she’d wanted and dreaded, staring her in the face. She looked at him and knew she wasn’t going to be strong and sensible. She could feel herself falling apart already.
“You won’t…expect too much?” she asked hesitantly.
“Listen,” he said, brushing his fingers over her warm cheek, “as far as I’m concerned, you’re coming to learn about ranching for a book. You don’t have to pay for your keep, Kati. In any way,” he emphasized. “I’ll let you come to me. I won’t ask more than you want to give.”
She lowered her eyes to his vest and wondered again, for the hundredth time, what it would be like with him—and knew that it was suicide to think about it.
“Come home with me,” he said, tilting her face up to his. “The snow’s sitting like a blanket on the Tetons, and the river’s running through it like a silver thread. I’ll show you where the buffalo used to graze and the mountain men camped.”
He made it sound wildly romantic, and his eyes promised much more than a guided tour. It was crazy! She was crazy!
“I’ll go home with you, Egan,” she whispered.
His breath caught and he studied her eyes for a long moment before he bent to kiss her softly, slowly on her swollen lips. “There’s a bear rug in front of the fireplace in my den,” he breathed at her lips. “I’ve wondered…for years…how it would feel on bare skin, Kati.”
A tiny, wild sound escaped from her throat, and he lifted her in his arms to kiss her roughly, possessively, until the whole world compressed into Egan’s mouth and arms.
“Er-ahmmmm!” came a loud noise from the doorway.
Egan drew away with shaky reluctance and let Kati slide back to her feet just as Ada peeked around the corner.
“Marshal and I wondered if you’d like to go walking and look at the city,” Ada asked, trying not to look as pleased as she felt.
“I’d like that,” Egan said, smiling down into Kati’s rapt face. “Would you?”
“Yes,” she said dreamily.
“I hope you don’t mind living alone for a couple of weeks, Ada,” Egan added as he grabbed his hat and topcoat. “Because I’m taking Kati to Wyoming.”
“You are?” Ada burst out, her face delighted.
“To help her with the book,” he added, glaring at his sister. “Research, period.”
“Oh, of course,” Ada said, getting a firm grip on herself. “What else?”
Kati didn’t dare look up. It would have blown her cool cover to pieces. Then Egan caught her small hand in his big one as they went to the elevator, and every thought in her head exploded in pleasure. Her fingers clung, locking into his. She walked beside him feeling as if she owned the world, oblivious to the beauty of New York City in holiday dress. Her present was right beside her.
It was almost dark when they came back to the apartment, after looking in store windows and eyeing the decorations around Madison and Fifth Avenues. Then they exchanged presents, and Kati was overwhelmed when she opened Egan’s gift. It was a silver bracelet—pure silver with inlaid turquoise, and surely not a trinket. She looked up, pleasure beaming from her dark eyes, to thank him.
“Do you like it?” he said on a smile. “I like mine, too.”
She’d given him a new spinning reel, something Ada said he’d appreciate. Although, at the time, pleasing Egan hadn’t been on Kati’s list of priorities, now she was glad she’d bought it. She saw the real appreciation in his eyes.
All too soon it was bedtime, and Ada was seeing Marshal out in a protracted good night.
“You’ll have to get up early,” Egan told Kati as they said their own good night at the door of her room. “I want to be out of here by eight.”
She smiled. “I’ll pack tonight. I have to bring my computer.”
“One of those portable ones with a built-in telephone modem?” he asked knowledgeably.
She nodded. “It’s my lifeline. I can’t manage without it. It even has a printer built in.”
“I carry one with me when I travel,” he said. “We inventory our herds on computers these days, and use them to print out the production records for sales. I even sell off cattle by videotape. Ranching has moved into the twentieth century.”
“I’ll feel right at home,” she said, laughing.
“I hope so,” he said, his face softening as he looked down at her. “No strings, baby. I won’t back you into any corners.”
She nodded. “Sleep well.”
“Without you?” he murmured wistfully. “No chance.”
He bent and kissed her lightly. “Night.”
And he was gone.
She walked into her room and closed the door, feeling impossibly happy and terrified all at the same time. What was going to happen when, inevitably, Egan discovered that her reason for going wasn’t his reason for inviting her? Because things were bound to come to a head. And either way, he’d discover for himself that she wasn’t the worldly woman he thought her. What would he do? She shuddered. He’d probably be furious enough to put her on the first plane to New York.
She reached for the doorknob. She almost went to tell him that she’d changed her mind. But the prospect of even a few days alone with him—to glory in his company—was like the prospect of heaven. And she was too besotted to give it up. Just a day, she promised herself. Just one day, and she’d confess everything and let him do his worst. But she had to have that precious time with him. It would last her all her life. It would be all she’d ever have of him.
Chapter Eight
Her first sight of the Tetons as she and Egan flew over Jackson Hole made Kati catch her breath.
Seated beside Egan in the ranch’s small jet, she stared down at the velvety white tops of the jagged peaks with wonder.
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” she whispered. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”
“Snake?” Her ears perked up and she looked at him apprehensively.
“River,” he added. “From the ranch house, we overlook the Snake, and the Tetons look like they’re sitting over us.”
“I knew it was spectacular in the spring and summer,” she sighed, staring back out the window. “But this is magic.”
He watched her with quiet, smiling eyes. “I was born here, but it still sets me on my heels when I come home. A lot of battles have been fought over this land. By Shoshone and Arapaho and the white man, by ranchers and sheepmen and rustlers.”
She glanced at him. “Are there still rustlers out West?”
“Of course, but now they work with trucks. We have a pretty good security system, though, so we don’t lose many. Feeding the cattle during the winters is our biggest problem,” he said. “We’re pretty fanatical about haying out here, to get enough winter feed. A cow won’t paw her way through the snow to get food, Kati. She’ll stand there and starve first.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said, fascinated.
“You’ve got a lot to learn, city lady,” he said with a soft laugh. “But I’ll teach you.”
That, she thought, was what she feared. But she only smiled and watched the familiar lines of the big two-story white frame house come into view as they headed for the landing strip beyond it.
“How old is the house, Egan?” Kati asked after Egan had told the pilot to take the jet to the Jackson airport where it was based.
“Oh, I guess around eighty or ninety years,” he said. He led her to a waiting pickup truck. “My grandfather built it.”
“And called it White Lodge?” she asked, remembering that the ranch also was called by that name.
“No. That was my grandmother’s idea. She was Shoshone,” he added with a smile.
She studied him quietly. “And your grandfather? Was he dark?”
He nodded. “The sun burns us brown. Despite all the damned paperwork, I still spend a lot of time on horseback.”
“Hi, Boss!” Ramey yelled out the window of the pickup truck.
“Hi, Ramey!” Egan called back. He opened the door and put Kati inside, jerking a thumb at Ramey to get him out from behind the wheel.
“I ain’t such a bad driver,” Ramey grumbled.
“I don’t care what kind of driver you are,” Egan reminded him as he got in next to Kati and shut the door. “Nobody drives me except me.”
“On account of Larry ran him into a tree,” Ramey explained as he shut his own door just before Egan started down the snowy ranch road. The young boy grinned at Egan’s thunderous look. “Broke Larry’s nose.”
“Hitting the tree?” Kati asked innocently.
“Hitting the boss’s fist afterward” Ramey chuckled.
Kati glanced at Egan. “And I thought you were the sweetest-tempered man I’d ever met,” she said dryly.
Ramey’s eyebrows arched. He started to speak, but Egan looked at him and that was all it took.
“Don’t reckon you got a Chinook tucked in your bag somewheres?” Ramey asked instead, his blue eyes twinkling.
“A what?” Kati asked blankly.
“Chinook,” Egan said. “It’s a warm wind we get here in the winter. Melts the snow and gives us some relief.” He looked over her head at Ramey. “How’s the feed holding out?”
“Just fine. We’ll make it, Gig says. Gig is our foreman,” Ramey reminded her. “Kind of came with the ranch, if you know what I mean. Nobody knows how old he is, and nobody’s keen to ask him.”
“The answer might scare us,” Egan chuckled. “Damn, this stuff is deep!”
He was running in the ruts Ramey had made coming to the landing strip, but it was still slow, hard going, and powdery snow was beginning to blow again.
“It’d be faster if we walked,” Ramey suggested.
“Or rode.” He shot a quick glance at Kati, letting his eyes run over her beige dress and high heels and short man-made fur coat. “God, wouldn’t you look right at home on horseback in that? I almost made you change before we left Ada’s.”
She started to object to the wording and then let it go. Why start trouble?
“No comeback?” Egan chided. “No remarks about my tyrannical personality?”
“Why, Mr. Winthrop, I’m the very soul of tact,” she said haughtily.
“Especially when you’re telling me to go to hell,” was the lightning comeback.
She flushed, noticing Ramey’s puzzled look.
“We, uh, sometimes have our, uh, little differences,” she tried to explain.
“Yes, ma’am, I recall,” Ramey murmured, and she remembered that he’d been nearby when she had walked furiously off the ranch that summer.
She cleared her throat. “Well, you do have the Tetons at your back door, don’t you?” she asked Egan, who seemed to be enjoying her discomfort.
He followed her gaze to the high peaks rising behind the house. “Indeed we do. And the river within sight of the front door,” he added, indicating the winding silver ribbon of the Snake that cut through the valley far below the house.
“Elk and moose and antelope graze out there during the winter,” he told her. “And buffalo used to, in frontier days.”
“I’ve never seen a moose,” she said.
“Maybe this time,” he told her.
She watched as Egan’s elderly housekeeper waddled onto the front porch, shading her eyes against the blinding white of the snow. Egan left the truck idling for Ramey and lifted Kati off the seat and into his hard arms. The sheepskin coat he wore made him seem twice as broad across the chest and shoulders.
“You’re hardly equipped for walking in the snow,” he murmured, indicating her high heels. “I hope you packed some sensible things.”
“Hiking boots, jeans and sweaters,” she said smartly.
“Good girl. Hold on.”
She clung as he strode easily through the high blanket of snow and up onto the steps, his boots echoing even through the snow against the hard wood. Dessie Teal was watching with a grin, her broad face all smiles under her brown eyes and salt-and-pepper hair.
“I never would have believed it,” she muttered as Egan set Kati back on her feet. “And I don’t see a bruise on either one of you.”
“We don’t fight all the time,” Egan said coolly.
“Well, neither do them Arabs, Egan,” Dessie returned, “but I was just remarking how nice it was that you and Miss James seemed to be in a state of temporary truce, that’s all.”
“She came to research a book about Wyoming in the old days,” Egan told the old woman gruffly, his eyes daring her to make anything else of it.
Dessie shrugged. “Whatever you want to call it. A book about frontier days, huh?” she asked, leading Kati into the house. “Well, you just go talk to Gig, he’ll tell you more than any book will. His daddy fought in the Johnson County range war.”
Kati asked what that had been about and was treated to fifteen minutes of Wyoming history, including references to the range wars between cattlemen and sheepmen, and the ferocity of Wyoming winters.
“My brother froze to death working cattle one winter,” Dessie added later, when Kati had changed into jeans, boots and a sweater and was drinking coffee with the housekeeper in the kitchen. “He fell and broke his leg and couldn’t get up again. He was solid ice when one of the men found him.” She shivered delicately. “This ain’t the place for tenderfeet, I’ll tell you.” She paused in the act of putting a big roast into the oven. “How come you and Egan ain’t fighting?”
“He’s trying to get me into bed,” Kati returned bluntly and grinned wickedly at the housekeeper’s blush.
“I deserved that,” Dessie muttered and burst into laughter. “I sure did. Ask a foolish question…Well, I might as well make it worse. Is he going to?”
Kati shook her head slowly. “Not my kind of life,” she said. “I’m too old-fashioned.”
“Good for you,” Dessie said vehemently. “Honest to God, I don’t know what’s got into girls these days. Why, we used to go two or three dates before we’d hold hands with a boy. Nowadays, it’s into bed on the first one. And they wonder why nobody’s happy. You gorge yourself on candy and you don’t want it no more. At least, that’s how I see it.”
“You and I should join a missionary society,” Kati told her. “We don’t belong in the modern world.”
Dessie grinned at her. “Well, speaking for myself, I ain’t in it. Can’t get much more primitive than this, I reckon, despite all the modern gadgets Egan bought me for the kitchen.”
“I understand what you mean.” She leaned back in the chair and sipped her coffee. “Did Egan really not want to be a rancher?” she asked.
Dessie measured that question before she answered it. “I don’t think he knew exactly what he did want. Politics used to fascinate him. But then, so did business. And that’s mostly what ranching is these days—it’s business. He has Gig to look after the practical side of it while he buys and sells cattle and concentrates on herd improvement and diversification.” She grinned sheepishly. “What big words!”
“Is he happy?” Kati asked, because it mattered.
“No,” Dessie said quietly. “He’s got nobody except Miss Ada.”
Kati studied her coffee cup, amazed at how deeply that hurt her. “He’s…not handsome, but he has a way with him. And he attracts women,” she added, remembering Jennie.
“Not the right kind of women” came the tart reply. “Not ever one he could bring to this ranch. Until now.”
Kati blushed to the roots of her hair.
“Now what are you doing?” Egan growled from the doorway, taking in Kati’s red face and Dessie’s shocked expression at his sudden appearance. “Talking about me behind my back, I guess?”
“Well, who else is there to talk about?” Dessie threw up her hands. “I never see anybody except you. Well, there’s Ramey, of course, but he don’t do nothing interesting enough to gossip about, does he?”