Emily knew what he wanted, but she would wait, would make him wait. As she was waiting for what she wanted.
His skin was firm and salty on her lips. She loved the taste of him. The hair on his legs was soft and dark. His feet long and broad. And ticklish, she noted with a smile as she kissed his arch and he jerked.
On her way back up his long lean body she used her hands, feeling the bone and muscle that made up the man she loved. Would she ever touch him this way again after today?
She couldn’t think about that. They were here together for now. That had to be enough. She would make it enough.
When she reached the tops of his thighs, she wrapped a hand around his erection and felt it leap in response.
Sloan thought his heart would stop when she enclosed him in that soft hand. It did stop a moment later when she swiped her tongue across the head. His hips rose from the quilt and he thrust himself hard into her hand. He didn’t know how much more he could take, but he was willing to find out.
She placed open-mouthed kisses up his chest and straddled his hips again. With her gaze locked on his, she grasped him in her hand again and started to take him in. Only then did he remember.
“Wait.” His voice came out as a harsh rasp. “Jeans.” He reached for them. “Pocket.” He fumbled until he found the red packet and tore it open.
Emily waited, on fire for him, while he put on the condom. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten about it. Again.
When the condom was in place Sloan rose up and reversed their positions, settling himself between her legs. His weight anchored her, made her feel safe and cared for. Aroused her.
Then he was pushing himself inside her. She opened herself and breathed his name. He filled her as she had never been filled before. She would swear he touched her heart. When he was inside her she felt complete and beautiful in a way she had forgotten, or maybe had never known. The beauty of it stung her eyes.
They moved together, slowly at first, give and take, in and out. She gave him everything she had, everything she was, hoping it would be enough to keep her in his mind when she was gone. She knew she would remember him and their lovemaking for the rest of her life.
Heat pooled. Points of fire licked. Nerves stretched tighter and tighter until slow was no longer an option. Faster. Harder, hotter. On and on.
Emily felt herself reaching for that peak, the top of the world, where she could hurl herself into nothingness. Closer. Almost there. Almost.
It was on her with surprising force, hurtling her off the edge of the world and sending colored lights exploding to blind her. That he followed her into oblivion so quickly, that they were so in tune with one another and could bring each other so much pleasure, brought tears to her eyes.
Sloan didn’t want to come back to reality. He wanted to stay in the warm, sweet world of Emily’s arms and let the real world just float on by. This had been the most incredible experience of his life. He raised himself onto his elbows to relieve her of some of his weight and looked down at her closed eyes.
He just wished he didn’t have the sinking feeling that with every kiss, with every touch, she had been telling him goodbye.
He also wished, he thought wryly, that his vision would clear. Was he going blind? What had happened to the light?
A glance over his shoulder made him swear. He wanted more time. Time enough to start over and love her again as completely as it was possible for a man to love a woman. Time to savor being with her.
They weren’t going to get it.
“Storm’s coming in.”
Emily blinked open her eyes. “I think it’s already been here.”
He smiled. “You are the most remarkable woman.”
She smiled back and closed her eyes again. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
He dropped his forehead to hers. “We’ve got to get out of here. Damn it, this isn’t how I wanted the evening to end.”
“I know. Me, neither.” She placed her hand on the side of his face.
Sloan turned his head and buried his lips in her palm. A deep rumble of thunder sounded in the near distance. “That storm’s not going to wait. It’s coming in fast and looks nasty.”
“Then I guess we better go.”
He would have felt better if her voice hadn’t shaken.
Chapter Eleven
They raced the storm all the way home. They beat it, but just barely. It proved, according to Sloan later that night, to be the worst storm of the season. The initial gust front had winds clocked at seventy-two miles an hour. Hard, heavy rain pounded the ranch for hours as the storm front stalled, trapped between the cool dry air from Kansas to the north and warm moist air blowing up from the remnants of a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico.
A few minutes after Emily and Sloan had taken care of their mounts and made it to the house, the rain had come in torrents. Then had come the hail. It had viciously hammered everything under the sky. After several minutes it eased off.
The family had trooped out onto the front porch to find the ground covered in millions of small white pellets of ice about as big around as a nickel.
“We’ll be checking the roofs on all the buildings in the morning for damage,” Sloan said.
When the rain started up again, hard and heavy, they all went back into the house.
While the girls and the family watched television Emily divided her time between making popcorn and fresh iced tea, pacing the kitchen floor and watching the clock. Brenda had called while she and Sloan had been at the pond. She was supposed to call back at nine.
Emily looked at the clock again. It was 8:55. “Come on, come on,” she muttered to the minute hand. “Move.”
Time had raced while she and Sloan had been together. Now it hung motionless like thick, heavy smoke.
The minutes were crawling. What could Brenda want? It had to be about the job at the factory, and it surely couldn’t be good news.
This was killing her. She had a week left on the Cherokee Rose. After today she and Sloan might not find a chance to be alone together again. The storm had cut their time together today short, and now this worry over Brenda’s call was eating at the one nerve she had left.
This was not how she had wanted this evening to be.
When the phone rang she jumped as if electrocuted.
“Emily,” Rose called from the living room. “Would you mind getting that? I’m sure it’s for you anyway.”
“No problem,” she called back.
She answered the wall phone in the kitchen. Rose was right, it was Brenda.
“They’ve changed their hiring schedule at the factory,” Brenda told her.
Emily’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean? Changed it how?”
“They’ve moved it up. You have to be here Wednesday if you want to get your application in the first batch.”
“Wednesday? But my car surely won’t be ready by then. We’re waiting on a new part and it’s taking a few days.”
“What are you going to do?” Brenda asked.
“Can you come get me?” She had already decided she might have to call Brenda next week and ask this very thing. The timetable had just been moved ahead one week. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’ll pay you back, I promise. I can buy the gas. You could come Saturday or Sunday.”
“Are you kidding?” Brenda laughed. “When I tell Tommy I’m coming to the Cherokee Rose ranch, just try keeping us away. He’ll want to drive me there himself.”
“You’ll come then?”
“Saturday. Is that okay?”
Emily’s stomach twisted into a knot. “Saturday is fine. I’ll see you then.”
When Emily hung up the phone and turned back toward the room, Sloan was standing there. His face was a blank mask.
“You heard?” she asked, wondering what he was thinking.
“I heard.”
“Day after tomorrow. My cousin’s coming to get me.”
“Why? I thought you had another week
.”
“The factory moved up their hiring schedule. I have to be there to put my application in by Wednesday, and Saturday is the only day Brenda can come get me.”
“I could have taken you.”
She shook her head and hugged herself against a sudden chill. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask. I’m offering.”
“Why?” she asked, her heart breaking in two. “So we can have an extra day or two? I have feelings for you, Sloan. You have to know that. The longer I stay, the harder it’s going to be for me to leave.”
He closed the distance between them and stood before her, out of sight of the living room, and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m not ready to let you go.”
“I don’t have a choice.” Unless you offer me one.
He pulled her gently to his chest. “I know.”
Those two pieces of her heart shattered into tiny shards. She didn’t know why it hurt so much. What had she expected? That he would offer her some miraculous alternative? There was no alternative, if he wasn’t in love with her. If he didn’t think she was strong enough for life on a ranch.
“Em.” He held her tighter. His nose nestled against her temple.
Emily turned her face, and his mouth was there, waiting for hers. She met it and, for a moment, took what he offered with all the desperation she felt. Then she pulled back, determined not to make a fool of herself.
A brief fling was obviously enough for him. It was startling to realize that she wanted so much more. Of course, she would be equally shocked to realize that a brief fling would satisfy her. She’d never had a fling, brief or otherwise, in her life. She didn’t think she was cut out for it.
But she’d had a fling now, and it had been brief. Yet she knew in her heart it had not been wrong. She and Sloan, they had been so right together. Even now, standing here in his arms with goodbye only a heartbeat away, he still felt right to her.
“I better go,” she told him. “The girls will come looking for more popcorn any minute.”
No sooner had she spoken the words than Janie stepped into the kitchen. She looked at her mother, then at Sloan, and back to her mother. “What’s the matter?”
Emily forced a smile for her daughter. “Nothing, honey.”
“Was that Cousin Brenda on the phone? What did she say?”
Emily hadn’t planned to tell the girls just yet, because she knew they would be upset. But Janie had asked, and Emily would not lie. She told her daughter what was happening.
“Saturday?” Janie cried. “But that’s day after tomorrow.”
“I know, honey.”
Libby joined them. “What’s day after tomorrow?”
Janie looked at her mother accusingly. “Cousin Brenda’s coming to get us and take us to Arkansas.”
“Mommy, no! Not yet,” Libby wailed.
Emily knelt before her daughters. “I know it’s sooner than you want, but it can’t be helped. Now, go back in there and watch the rest of your movie, okay?”
They hung their heads. “Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison.
When they returned to the living room, Emily stood and turned back to Sloan.
He shook his head. “I don’t know how you do it. If it was me, I’d promise them anything to chase that hangdog look from their faces.”
Emily pursed her lips. “And they would have you wrapped around their little fingers in no time.”
He shrugged and grinned. “I can think of worse places to be.”
So could Emily. Namely, Arkansas.
When Emily put the girls to bed as soon as the second Disney movie was over, she took her shower and went to bed herself instead of joining the family in the living room. She was still awake when she heard the last of them go upstairs for the night.
Sloan was the last to go up, except for Justin, who had yet to return from his hot date. Funny how she could tell Sloan’s footsteps on the stairs from those of his brothers.
She was still awake when the rain finally quit, and later when Justin came in, and three hours after that when the sky lightened near dawn. The lessening of the darkness surprised her. She had determined that it just might last forever.
Feeling hollow-headed from lack of sleep, Emily rose and prepared to start her last full day on the Cherokee Rose.
She had breakfast well under way when the family started making their way downstairs. She had expected Sloan to be the first, but instead it was Justin.
“Good morning, sunshine.”
Emily’s lips twitched. It was as gray as winter outside. “I guess that means your date went well.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “A gentleman never tells.”
“Since when,” Caleb said as he rounded the corner into the kitchen, “were you ever a gentleman?”
“Hey, I’m always a gentleman,” Justin protested.
“Shame, Grandson.” Rose entered the room. “I taught you better than to lie.”
“Well, I’m usually a gentleman.”
“Try again,” said Sloan, joining them.
“Okay, okay. I was a gentleman once. I’m sure I was.”
With a round of laughter, they took their seats at the table. Emily was grateful for the laughter and for Justin’s protests that he was being unfairly maligned, for it took the attention off her and her impending departure.
Sloan did not ignore her, but neither did he initiate any conversation. She was grateful for that, too. This day was going to be difficult enough without starting it off with more tension than she already felt.
“I’ll start checking the buildings for damage.” Having finished eating, Sloan tossed his napkin on his plate and slid his chair back from the table. “You two ride out and check on the stock. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
“I’ll ride out with them,” Rose said.
“You don’t need to do that, Grandmother,” Sloan objected.
She arched one dark eyebrow. “You don’t need to tell me what I don’t need to do, Grandson.”
Sloan clenched his jaw. “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered. This was getting to be a habit with him, he realized. Trying to protect the women in his life from hardship. A habit that was going to get his ears boxed if he tried it on his grandmother again.
There was no shame in a strategic retreat, he told himself as he made it out the back door. If he rushed a little faster than normal, well, that was his business, wasn’t it?
When the door closed behind him, Rose eyed her other two grandsons. “And let that be a lesson to the two of you.”
“What lesson would that be, Grandmother?” Justin asked with a cheeky grin.
“That would be that I’m not so old yet that I need to be coddled. You take care of your work, I’ll take care of mine.”
“Hey, I never said otherwise,” Justin protested.
“Me, neither,” Caleb said, his hands raised in innocence.
“Just be sure you don’t.”
Emily smiled at their byplay. Within a few minutes they were all outside following their plans for the day. She began cleaning up the kitchen and getting ready to fix breakfast for her daughters, who would be up within the hour.
“Mommy?” Libby asked when the girls had finished eating. “Can we go outside and play?”
Emily glanced out the window over the sink. The sun was breaking through the clouds. She looked at the puddles dotting the ground and thought of the girls’ white sneakers. “I don’t know, baby, it’s pretty messy out there.”
“Please, Mommy? We’ll be careful.”
“Please, Mother?” Janie added.
It would be good to have them out of the house; she planned to give the house a cleaning the likes of which it had never seen, as a farewell to the family that had welcomed them with open arms. Besides, who knew when the girls would get the chance to run and play outside again, especially in a place where she didn’t have to worry about the dangers of traffic or strangers.
“All right,” she told them
. “But try not to get too muddy, please.”
“Oh, thank you, Mommy.” Libby hugged her hips.
“We’ll be careful,” Janie promised.
When Libby and Janie went outside, they sat on the concrete steps leading to the utility porch.
“It’s my fault,” Libby said sadly.
“What is?” Janie asked.
“That we have to leave.”
“How can it be your fault?”
“It’s because I got scared of the snake and screamed.”
“No, it’s not,” Janie protested. “Besides, then it would be my fault, too, ’cause I made you watch that show about cobras that scared you.”
“Mommy thinks I’m too scared to stay here. That’s why we have to leave.”
“No, it’s because of that job in Arkansas,” Janie explained.
“I bet if I found that snake and showed everybody I wasn’t scared of it, we’d get to stay and Mr. Sloan would get to be our daddy.”
Janie shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Libby looked at her older, wiser sister earnestly. “But we could try, couldn’t we?”
Janie shrugged. “I don’t think it will help, but I don’t guess it will hurt anything, if you wanna look for the snake. As long as we don’t get all muddy.”
“We won’t.” Libby jumped to her feet. “Come on. Let’s look in the garden.”
All the plants in the garden were sopping wet from the rain. The girls couldn’t walk down any pathway without brushing against one plant or another. They got wet in no time. But the ground in the garden had drained well, so the mud was kept to a minimum.
“Here, little snake,” Libby called. “Here, Snakey, Snakey.”
“I don’t think they come when you call them,” Janie said.
“How do you know? He ran away when I screamed, maybe he’ll come if I talk nice. Come on, little snake, I won’t hurt you.”
“That sounds really silly.”
“Look!” Libby pointed to a bean bush whose lower leaves, which rested on the ground, rustled. “It’s him, I know it.”
Janie would have expressed her doubt, but just then a small gray snake slithered out from beneath the bush, across the path and into the tomato plants.
The Daddy Survey Page 18
