by Alison Kent
She turned to her side and punched up her pillow then mashed a depression the size of Gardner’s hard head in the center of the second pillow’s case. So much for honesty. And so much for spending her time off with Gardner.
She’d told him how she felt and now here she lay. Alone.
Not that he’d said he wouldn’t join her but she didn’t think he would. Making love would only be a bandage on the problems they’d left unresolved. Their differences were not insurmountable. If a woman could climb Mount Everest, well…
The attic session was worthy of a confessional or a psychiatrist’s couch. While hurtful memories had made Gardner reject love, they’d deepened her need for the same. She’d dredged up a lot of past angst and two of the major reasons for her conviction. Her parents and Brad.
Each had offered casual attention and affection—fine if she’d been the family dog. But her psyche demanded more. She wanted love. And she wanted it from Gardner Barnes because in him she saw such promise, a chance at the relationship she’d wanted all her life.
If only she could convince him that the love he said he didn’t believe in was an inherent part of the man he was. She’d seen it in his dealings with Tyler and Jud and felt it in his heartbeat, in his very breath, while lying close in his arms.
Yeah, but you’re forgetting something really big here, Harley. The man wants children and you don’t.
And even as she thought it, she knew it was a lie.
She wanted to scream her lungs out at that first Little League win, hold her breath those first few yards without training wheels, stay up till midnight and hear all about that first date.
She wanted Gardner Barnes to be her children’s father.
It had taken the finding of the man she wanted, the man she truly loved, to resurrect the dream. The career options she’d laid out earlier would incorporate easily into a mother’s life. And she wouldn’t have to worry about parenting alone—not with the importance Gardner placed on family. She had no doubt he would be as involved as a father could be.
Only one minor obstacle remained: Gardner’s closed heart. The attention and worship she was flexible on. And she was more than willing to make the necessary career adjustments. But her insistence on pure and perfect love, for herself and her children, was nonnegotiable.
The phone on her night table shrilled. She grabbed it up without hesitation. “Gardner?”
He chuckled, a resonant rumble that warmed her skin like winter’s first fire. God, she’d grown to love that laugh.
“I was thinking you might not answer.” But he sounded glad that she had.
“Habit, I guess. I didn’t stop to think where I was.” And if he believed that, she had a couple of oil wells…
“No, I mean, I didn’t know if you would want to talk to me.”
Men. Go figure. “When have I ever not wanted to talk to you?”
“How about two hours ago in the attic?”
“Oh, yeah. Then.” Tyler’s interruption had put their conversation on hold though it was by no means finished. Neither was it a discussion she wanted to continue on the phone. “Where are you?”
“’Bout a mile from the house.”
“I thought I just heard you upstairs.”
“Must’ve been Jud. He was afraid he’d disturb you if he used the bath at the head of the stairs. I told him to clean up in mine.” The connection buzzed, then cleared. “Uh, Harley?”
“Hmm?”
“If you thought you heard me upstairs, that means you were thinking about me.”
Oops. Caught in a web of her own deceit. “Yeah, I guess I was.”
“You guess?”
“Okay. So I was.” But no way would she tell him she’d been wishing he was with her.
“Do you want me there with you?”
Now he was telepathic. “What happens if I say no?”
“Then that’s the end of it.”
The end of what? This phone call? Her time on the ranch? The chance to show this man what he was missing?” And what if I say yes?”
“Why don’t you say it and find out?”
She wanted to. She really wanted to. “I don’t think the nuns would approve.”
“What the nuns don’t know…” His comment dragged suggestively.
Harley curled her toes deep into snowy sheets. “C’mon, Gardner. How can they not know?”
“You’re right.” That wicked chuckle came again. “You do know how to make some noise.”
“Gardner,” she moaned, thankful that he couldn’t see her face, then wondering why it mattered. He’d seen everything else.
“Embarrassed, Harley?”
Whipping up the covers, she ducked under, phone and all. The close quarters only amplified her groan.
Gardner laughed out loud. “Harley Golden, you are one funny lady.”
She pouted for effect, then remembered he couldn’t see. “Funny ha-ha? Or funny strange?”
“After all we’ve done with each other, all we’ve said, I can’t believe you’re embarrassed by those lusty little sounds that purr up your throat.”
The flame on her face burned its way down her chest. “You’re not exactly the strong silent type yourself.”
He snorted. “I’ll give you the silent. But I think I showed considerable strength resisting you as long as I did.”
Feeling a touch of triumph, Harley eased from beneath the covers. “Such willpower. I think a whole sixty minutes elapsed from the second time I saw you until we were in bed.”
“What can I say? I’m a sucker for a woman in white panties.”
Harley cringed. “About those panties…”
A victorious laugh echoed down the line. “Don’t even think you’re going to get them back.”
What did he expect her to say to that? “You said you’re about a mile from the house?”
“Yeah, sitting in the Rover with the door wide open. I finished up with the foreman at Acre 52 and ran over a buried gate hinge on the way back. I had to stop and change the tire and, well… this is my favorite spot on the ranch. I haven’t been out here in a while.”
The Rover’s door slammed and Harley heard the give-and-take of metal. “Are you on your way back?”
“Not yet. I’m standing outside, leaning against the fender, enjoying the view. There’s an oak tree here whose limbs spread out over a stock pond. And right now there’s at least a million stars twinkling off the water’s surface.”
Harley closed her eyes and joined him. The blue velvet sky appeared overhead; stars sifted like fairy dust behind her closed lids. The cane blades of the ceiling fan ruffled air through her hair and stirred up the scent of outdoors.
Gardner cleared his throat. “One day, Harley, I’m going to bring my kids here. I want them to climb this tree and look out over this land. Their land. Land that stretches forever. I want them to see a sky that touches the ground.
“I want them to hear the night. The crickets and frogs at the edge of the pond. The splash of a crappie feeding on bugs. Cattle when they drink. Coyotes from miles away. The wind.”
Harley heard it all and more. Gardner’s voice was resonant with awe and respect and love for the land he called home, and Harley reinforced her determination to discover the reason he thought he couldn’t give a woman the same.
“Sounds like heaven. I’d love to see it.”
“I tell you what” Metal creaked and the phone line whined, then silenced. “Looks like I’ll have some free time Friday thanks to Tyler and Jud. We can pack a picnic supper and I’ll show you the Barneses’ concept of camping out.”
“Our second date?”
“A date. A seduction. An assignation. Call it whatever you want. Just don’t be surprised when I skip the main course and go straight for dessert.”
She remembered him naked, remembered him inside her, and decided she’d starve before Friday arrived.
“I don’t know if I can wait three days.” He echoed her sentiment with low-spoken words.
>
“Neither do I,” she admitted, feeling light-headed already.
“Do you know why I’m not with you right now?”
“I’ve got a good idea.”
“Then you agree that we both have a lot of thinking to do after today?”
Nodding, Harley sighed, knowing it would be a miracle if they solved anything before Friday. “Thinking is all I’ve been doing since I got into bed.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. You. In bed. Or rather, you and me in bed this afternoon. About how you’d look pregnant with my child.”
“Gardner—”
“I know. You don’t want kids.” Already husky, his voice dropped to an even lower pitch. “When I have children—and I will have them, Harley—there’ll never be a doubt in their mind that they’re wanted. I’ll be there for them twenty-four hours a day.”
A brick wall couldn’t have hit her any harder. Why was he twisting her words? Why was he turning on her this way? Why now?
Gardner went on. “There won’t be any weekend road trips where they stay at home alone. And they’ll never climb in bed at night and wonder why I haven’t talked to them all day.”
Oh, God. He wasn’t only talking about her past. He was talking about his own, as well. And he’d just boiled down their conflict to the reason she wouldn’t bring children into a home without love.
“I have no doubt that you’ll want them. But will you love them?” Taking a deep breath, Harley forged ahead.
“Will you be annoyed by those midnight calls for a glass of water? The bedsheets that have to be changed hours later? Will you resent spending your night nursing a fever when you need your sleep for a meeting the next day?
“Those things require love, Gardner. I should know. Everly loved me enough to do them for me when Buck and Trixie didn’t have the time.”
When he didn’t say anything, she wondered if she’d gone too far. She heard a heavy sigh and then, “Do one thing for me, Harley.”
His voice was gruff and it gave her pause.
“If I can.”
“If anything happens because of this afternoon, you let me know.”
Harley pressed her hand low on her belly. “Nothing’s going to happen, Gardner.”
“Condoms aren’t one hundred percent effective. We both know that,” he said, then released a long audible breath.
“What’s wrong, Gardner?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Then what is it?”
He groaned. “I can’t imagine anything more beautiful than one of your babies. Except for you.”
Harley closed her eyes and let the thrill of his words give her hope. The beauty he referred to was not of the flesh but of the kind they’d created together in bed. She had to believe that. Her hope started there, knowing that Gardner was a man with deep feelings.
And by damn, she’d convince him he could extend those feelings to love.
“Well,” she began, her voice hoarse, her concentration thrown. “I think you’re beautiful, too.”
He gave a short laugh. “C’mon, Harley. A man? Beautiful?”
“Yes. Beautiful. And caring.” Time to inject a new mood. She purposefully lightened her voice. “Granted, a little gruff but it’s nothing we can’t work on.”
“We?”
“Yeah, we.” This time her smile was true. “I’m not going anywhere until I get my picnic… and my panties.”
SIXTEEN
STANDING IN HIS STOCKING FEET, Gardner leaned over to stare into the refrigerator, one arm propped on the open door. The house had been quiet when he’d come in but he’d still left his boots in the washroom.
Jud had been trying to whip Gardner into proper husband material ever since he’d brought Harley home. Leaving mud tracked across the kitchen wouldn’t do. Neither would working until 11:00 p.m.
What should have been another short trip to the drilling site had turned into three hours. Not that he didn’t trust the crew to handle emergencies. He did. And he’d hated going off and leaving Harley after supper again.
But if he didn’t keep his finger on the pulse of Camelot’s operations, he’d lose everything he’d worked for his entire life.
The crude oil wells didn’t provide the income they once had but a dollar was a dollar. Beef prices fluctuated as did the profit from the acreage he occasionally leased. So far, King’s stud fees seemed to be generating a steady income but there was no guarantee for the future.
Gardner put in whatever time he had to. Because making every dollar, every hour, every venture, count had gotten him where he was today.
And as much as he wanted Harley, once he’d gotten her on the ranch, things changed. He’d seen how easily she’d become a distraction, how he’d wanted to spend time with her instead of on business. Staying out until eleven the past two nights hadn’t been easy. But it had been necessary.
He’d worked eight years to undo the damage his father’s negligence had caused the family business, the damage it had done to his sons. Gardner wouldn’t let an emotion as controlling, as destructive, hell, as abused and distorted as love wreck what he’d built out of Camelot—for his family, or for himself.
Just about the same time he realized the refrigerator held no answers and he wasn’t hungry, anyway, he heard a squeal of delight and a loud yell of “Checkmate” from the den. He padded down the hallway and stopped.
Jud sat forward in his recliner, his chess set open on the coffee table squared in front of his chair. Harley sat opposite him on the floor, her legs curled to her side, her hair a halo in the low lamplight.
Her exultant smile lit her eyes and she threw her head back and laughed. “I can’t believe it. I won. I actually won.”
Gardner didn’t hear his uncle’s reply. He was too busy staring at Harley. He started to retreat, head back through the kitchen to the washroom, grab his boots, shove his feet deep inside, and spend the night on the prairie. Or at the drilling site. Or at the two-bit motel in town.
But as if she sensed him standing there, Harley turned. And no matter how badly he needed to move, he couldn’t.
She was glad to see him. More than glad. Her face was brighter than sunshine, her eyes telling him she’d been waiting for him to come home. He wanted nothing more than to cross the room, scoop her into his arms, carry her up to his bed, and let her soothe his aches and pains.
Instead, he walked into the den and collapsed on the far end of the couch.
“Can you believe it, Gardner?” Harley asked. “I finally won over this wily old uncle of yours.”
From the dazed look in his uncle’s eyes, Gardner knew it to be true. Jud hadn’t let her win. She’d done it. And no doubt earned herself a place of honor in the old man’s heart.
“So, Jud, how much did you lose?” Gardner flung one arm along the back of the couch and stretched his legs out wide.
“It’s the damnedest thing I ever saw.” Jud shook his head and looked up. “And I didn’t lose anything but a couple of hours’ sleep.”
“How’s that?” Gardner asked.
“Harley had agreed to do breakfast if she lost this round.”
“And now I get to sleep in,” Harley said, grinning. “I like my eggs over easy if you don’t mind.”
“After a game like that you deserve to have them delivered to your room,” Jud said, getting to his feet and patting Harley’s shoulder as he passed. “Your turn, Gardner. See if you can salvage the Barnes reputation.”
“Not tonight.”
“Can’t stand the thought of losing?” Harley asked, swinging around on her knees to face him. Her face was alive with playful traces of the girl he’d imagined making cutout cookies. Yet the next minute all he saw was the woman to whom he’d made love.
He had to be careful or the combination would be his undoing.
He shook his head. “Can’t find the strength to even think.”
“Well, I’m off to bed.” Jud headed out of the room, stopping once at the door. “But
don’t think I’ll forget our date,” he said to Harley. “I’ll be expecting you about seven.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me,” she groaned.
Once Jud was gone, Gardner settled deeper into the couch cushions. “What was that all about?”
“I lost the first game.” She crinkled her nose. “I have to do the breakfast dishes.”
“I told you I didn’t want you working while you were here,” Gardner said.
“Ease up, Gardner,” Harley replied, storing the chess set under Jud’s lamp table. “I need something to do to keep me busy.”
Damn it, she was right. Keeping his distance was no way to treat a guest. He was tired of the distance, tired of the fight within himself. Tired of his father’s mistakes ruling his life.
He spread his legs wider, pulled his shirt from his jeans, and popped the first button on his fly. “Why don’t you crawl up here in my lap and let me keep you busy?”
She pushed the coffee table back into place and stood. Arms crossed, she pointedly frowned at his erection. “I’m not sure this is the time or place for your idea of busy.”
Gardner rolled his eyes. “Harley, I’m tired. I’ve been in these clothes for eighteen hours. I’ve got grit and sweat in places I don’t want to think about.” He pressed his hand to the rise of his fly. “That’s not going to stop me from getting hard and wanting you more than I want to breathe.
“But right now all I want is for you to climb up here, settle your bottom on my lap, and kiss me until neither one of us can see straight. I’m too exhausted to manage anything else. And if that’s too much to ask, I’ll settle for a good night hug.”
He’d barely managed to open his arms before she’d snuggled deep into his body. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged them both, wondering when anything had ever felt so perfect in his life, wondering how he was going to manage once she went home.
Long minutes later, Harley looked up. She smoothed her thumb over the corners of his eyes. “You look tired.”
Gardner dropped his head back against the couch. “I am tired. And dirty. And I no doubt reek.”
She buried her face in his chest and inhaled. “You smell like hard honest work.”
