by Carol Arens
“Not to you, certainly.” Mrs. Cahill’s hug was firm, her smile bright. “If you don’t call me Addie K., I’ll be distraught.”
“I’ve come to visit my brother, Addie K., if he’s willing to see me.”
“Come inside.” Addie K. preceded them up the front porch steps, clearly comfortable as lady of the house. “I’ll have Elda bring you tea while I send Quin down.”
She took three quick strides away, then turned and dashed back.
“Welcome home, Annie.” She gave her another quick hug, then dashed up the stairs to the second story two at a time.
“There’s Mama’s bowl on the mantel.” She walked forward and touched it. She took it down and pressed it to her heart. “Quin must have glued it back together.”
“That’s all I ever wanted, Annie,” came Quin’s voice from the top of the stairs. “To be the glue, to hold things together.”
Leanna set the bowl carefully back in its place.
“We knew that, Quin. I loved you for it, but…”
“It’s all right.” Quin came down the steps showing no signs of the wound he had recently recovered from. “I was as wrong as anyone else.”
Quin spoke all the right words, but he was distant, not the same brother she had known. But which one of them could honestly say they were the same?
Not Leanna by a far shot. She had come home an unwed mother. Quin would have a hard time getting over that.
“You’ve grown up, Annie.” He faced her, unsmiling, with his hands stiff at his sides. From four feet away she felt his pain.
“Not the way you had hoped, though.”
“I shouldn’t have kicked you out the way I did. Whatever awful things happened to you are my fault.”
“Nothing awful happened to me.”
“But you have—”
“One of the most perfect children the good Lord ever made.” That would need setting straight from the get-go if she and her brother were to reconcile.
“His name is Cabe Quin,” Cleve put in. Oddly, Leanna thought he sounded as proud and defensive of Cabe as she did. “After his uncles. I’m Cleve Holden, by the way.”
Wasn’t she the social ninny? With the high emotion of seeing her brother she had neglected to introduce Cleve.
“My employee and friend,” she added, grateful that he didn’t seem offended by her lapse in manners.
She hadn’t noticed Addie K. come back down the stairs but she stood beside Quin, her love for him apparent.
Quin crossed the distance between them to shake Cleve’s hand. He stood close enough that Leanna would be able to touch her brother if she reached out.
“The house looks different, but I still feel Mama here and there.” Her brother didn’t move, unless you counted the welling moisture in his eyes. “I missed you every day, Quin.”
Addie K. nudged Quin in the ribs with her elbow. He shot his wife a frown.
“He missed you, too,” Addie K. stated. “He’s just too stubborn to admit it.”
“My wife, as always, is right and not afraid to let me know.” Quin took Mama’s bowl from the mantel. He placed it in her hands. “You keep this…forgive me, Annie.”
With great care, she handed the bowl to Cleve.
“If you forgive me.” She flung her arms around Quin’s neck; he lifted her up and she wept silently on his shoulder.
An hour later Leanna rode away with Cleve while her brother and his wife waved them goodbye. She was beyond grateful that they wanted to meet Cabe the moment they returned from the East Coast.
Leanna felt lighter than she had in some time. Her son now had two uncles who would watch out for him.
Cleve breathed in a lungful of summer air, held it, savored it and let it go. Afternoon sunshine grazed his shirt. It warmed his skin clear to the bone.
He’d met another Cahill brother, this one as powerful a man as Bowie. The Cahills, he was coming to discover, were a tight family, in spite of their recent estrangement. Even had he followed through with his plan to take Cabe away, he realized now he’d have met with a good deal of resistance. Probably in the form of drawn weapons.
But he would have faced that threat in order to raise his nephew and honor Arden. The thing he could no longer face was breaking Leanna Cahill’s heart…and Cabe’s in the bargain.
He glanced at her riding beside him. She sat in the saddle with her back arched, her face lifted to the sky.
He would need to figure out another way to be in his nephew’s life, to teach him things that a boy needed to know, to protect him from gossips and to avenge him the loss of his mother.
His job working at Leanna’s Place gave him a good reason to stay close. Even more, watching over Leanna’s doves made grieving his sister more bearable. In a small way it made sense of her loss, in that something meaningful might spring from tragedy.
He owed Leanna too much to heartlessly rip the boy from her arms.
Leanna sighed and he had to glance away to keep from rudely staring at the rise and fall of her chest. That particular vice was quickly becoming a habit.
Out of the blue an idea came to him. To be honest, it wasn’t the blue. It was more likely out of the depths of his being that the plan came to him.
It was a good idea, one that might achieve his goal without anyone being hurt.
The odds of her agreeing to it were slim, but he was a persistent fellow. The land had taught him that out of rock-hard soil came the most amazing abundance.
“The 4C reminds me of my ranch, but a whole lot bigger,” he said. And more profitable. He had to admire Quin for being able to hold everything together when his life had fallen apart.
“There’s something about the land,” he added a moment later.
“It calls you home.” Leanna pointed out the very feeling nibbling at his soul. He had never wanted to give up his little ranch, but fear for Arden had forced his hand.
“Every now and again.” He gazed at the gentle slope of the earth with bluebonnets nodding their petals at the matching sky. “I feel like a tree that got chopped down and hauled away for this or that, but my roots stayed put where they were.”
“That’s almost poetic, Cleve. Are you as good a rancher as you are a gambler?”
“No. How about you?”
“My brothers did all the work. I just tagged along after them having fun. I’ve made money—quite a bit of it, really—dealing cards. You might guess, Quin isn’t overly pleased by it,” she said.
“Would you want to try ranching again one day?”
“I will, one day. I want that for Cabe.”
So did he. Raising Cabe on a ranch had been his intention since the day he’d ridden away and left his land behind.
“You love that boy like he was your—” Cleve nipped his tongue. He’d come within a word of revealing that he was wise to her secret. “Your very own heart.”
He’d nearly ruined everything with a single careless moment. He could never let her know who he was. She would see him for who he was—a deceiver. He would end up in a more difficult situation than he was now. Those brothers of hers would be tough in a fight.
“My little Boodle is all that and more.”
That was no secret, but something else was.
“Why won’t you tell who his daddy is?”
Raising Cabe was only one of the things he needed to do. He would not draw an easy breath until he made the man who had ruined Arden pay.
“Some things are better left unknown.” Leanna dismounted Fey and led the horse to a pool of clear water several yards away. “When a woman makes a mistake, the child shouldn’t have to pay the price of that.”
Cleve slid off his horse. It followed Fey to the water.
He sat down beside Leanna in the shade of an aspen. Its leaves twisted and whispered against one another; they shimmered in the sunshine. Arrows of light shot through and glimmered in her hair.
“He’s a good-for-nothing, I gather?” He forced his voice to be casual when he wanted to
tear the man apart word by word. If he blurted out his anger, though, he might never discover who the bastard was.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Think about that a minute. What if he decides he wants Cabe and tries to take him from you? It would matter then.”
Pity the man who tried to take Cabe from the good and decent woman who loved him. That change of attitude would have stunned Cleve, even yesterday.
Life, he was quickly learning, had a way of shuffling a fellow’s goals and dealing him a new hand.
“I’ll tell you one thing about him, Cleve. And that’s more than anyone else knows.” Leanna leaned back against the tree bark and closed her eyes. Black lashes skimmed fair skin. “He doesn’t even know he’s Cabe’s father. I didn’t tell him.”
“The boy is going to need a father.”
Her eyes came open slowly. Her gaze rested on him. She was by far the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
“You’ve met two of my brothers. The other one is every bit as devoted to family as Quin and Bowie are. He’ll have all the fathers he needs.”
“Those are uncles. They’ll have children of their own one day. Cabe needs a pa who is all his.”
“The next time you see a respectable man with respectable intentions coming toward me, point him out.” Leanna drew her knees up to her chest and locked her arms about them. “I won’t settle for anything less for my son.”
Well, dammit, neither would he.
Cleve pounded his chest with his thumb.
“Marry me, Leanna. I’ll treat you and Cabe with all the respect you need.”
“What? Cleve, I can’t marry you!”
He’d stunned her for sure. Her pretty mouth fell open. She blinked like a blue-eyed owl.
Maybe he ought to have worked up to the proposal, wooed her a bit.
Marriage, though, was the perfect solution to his problem.
It would be good for her, as well. As her husband he would be able to protect both Leanna and Cabe, day and night. It wasn’t right, but there were those in town who did not wish Cabe’s lovely mother well.
Leanna’s reputation might take another slide if she married a gambler, but in the end how much worse could it get? As far as he could tell, the benefits would be greater than the cost.
One benefit to the marriage was obvious. Sharing a bed with Leanna Cahill would be… The thought distracted him so thoroughly that he nearly forgot the true purpose of his proposal.
“I’ll be a good husband to you. I’ll love your boy as my own flesh and blood.”
“Why?” Leanna stood and brushed blades of dry grass off her skirt. “We’ve known each other barely more than a blink. Why would you settle for a ruined woman and her child when you ought to be looking for a family of your own?”
She paced around the trunk of the tree. After three revolutions she stopped to gaze down at him.
“You don’t love me,” she pointed out.
“That could change.” He stood and backed her against the tree trunk. He twined his fingers in hers, then lifted her hands and kissed each one. “I admire you with all my heart. You are one of the finest women I have had the pleasure to meet.”
“I have four very dear friends working for me who feel the same way.”
“Not the same.” With their fingers joined, he drew them behind her back and tugged her to him. Her heart beat against his ribs. He breathed in the scent of her flesh where it was tender, just between her ear and her jaw. He tasted it with a slow flick of his tongue.
She melted against him. He kissed her hard…ardently.
“There’s this between us and you know it,” he whispered in her ear.
She tipped her head so that the curve of her ear met his lips. Her hair tickled his nose with the echo of meadow flowers.
“I expect you’ve kissed a passel of woman this way. I’m far from the first to share this dalliance with you.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “As lovely as it is.”
“I’ll admit, I’ve dallied with a few, but I’ve never proposed to one of them.” He nipped her earlobe and she sighed.
“Here’s the truth, Leanna.” And it was. No matter what else might be lies, this was true. “There is something between us. You know I feel it, and I know you feel it.”
“It’s not enough.” She sighed, but the protest was weak. He’d show her that she didn’t mean it.
“Let me prove it.”
“You can’t prove a feeling.” A bee buzzed about her hair and he blew it away.
“I’ll wager that I can.”
“A night’s pay, then.” Her wager came in quick, shallow breaths. “You win, you make double. I win, you work for free.”
“Deal.” While she sounded breathless he had all but choked on that one word.
He let go of her hands so that he could slide open three buttons at the collar of her dress. He cupped the back of her head in his palm, loosening neatly coiled curls and letting them slide between his fingertips. He pressed his lips to the hollow of her throat, tasted woman and velvet flesh.
A tremor skittered against his mouth.
“Did you feel that?” He figured that alone would prove is point.
“I did not.” She blinked her eyes, wide and certain.
Well, then, she’d have to notice that he’d slid open the buttons of her gown to the waist. He trailed his fingers over the curve of her breasts where they swelled over the top of her corset.
“What about that?”
“I might have, just a little,” she whispered with her eyes dipping shut.
His heart tripped. She liked pretty underthings. Ivory lace and satin ribbons parted under his fingertips.
“Marry me,” he croaked because the sight of her full, pink-tipped breasts spilling out, bare to the dappled sunshine, stole his breath and nearly buckled his knees.
He longed to take them in his mouth, to taste and tug at the summer-berry flesh. But this was a wager, not a wedding night.
“You’re trembling.” Damn, so was he! “That proves my point.”
When he looked up, he found that she had been watching him watch her. Their gazes held for a long time, then she turned around and began buttoning her dress.
“You’re so damn beautiful, Leanna. This could be enough for a start.”
“I’ll double your wages for one night.” She spoke firmly. But glancing over her shoulder, her eyes looked soft and languid. “That does not mean I will marry you.”
She turned about, her clothing restored but the blush-colored cheeks as vivid as a moment ago.
“Tell me you’ll consider it.”
“I’m not the woman you want,” she murmured, her voice no louder than the leaves rustling in the tree overhead. “I can’t marry you.”
“Maybe not today.” He kissed her again because he wanted one that had nothing to do with proving a point and everything to do with the sweet seductive flavor of her. “But you will and then I’ll do a whole lot more than look at you.”
Chapter Six
Marry Cleve? What a completely ridiculous idea.
Leanna stared blankly at her reflection in the vanity mirror with her brush in one hand and a hank of tangled hair in the other. Crickets in the yard below chirruped out their nightly song. The melody washed through her open window sweeter sounding than she had ever noticed before.
His proposal flattered her; it tempted her, even.
But to stand before the preacher and say, “I do”? What a perfectly preposterous idea.
While Cleve was not precisely a stranger, she really had known him only a short time. The very last thing she should do is commit her life, and Cabe’s, to him.
But he had won the bet. There was something between them. It was there in a word, or a glance…or in a kiss.
Even now, remembering the way he had gazed upon her breasts, naked to everything but the dappled shade, made them pucker, twist and ache to be touched.
Just in case the evening itself wasn’t hot enough t
o tempt a person to run about naked, Cleve’s declaration that he intended to marry her and “do a whole lot more than look” was about to blister the nightclothes right off her.
On any other night her shift, made of the softest cotton, grazed her body as gently as flower petals.
Not tonight, though. Tonight it shifted over her flesh like a gambler’s sensitive fingers, touching here and dealing pleasure there.
Leanna set the brush down. She watched her reflection frown. Even if she did want to marry Cleve, she couldn’t.
She was a virgin, for mercy’s sake! Her secret wouldn’t hold an hour after the wedding vows were recited.
Besides all that, she hadn’t come home to get married. Finding out who murdered her parents must come before anything else. She couldn’t consider a future without resolving the past.
A breeze filtered through the open window. She crossed the room and leaned her head out to watch the stars blink and blur in the heat.
“I miss you, Mama. Tell Papa I miss him, too, and that we will make whoever took you from us pay for what they did. You and Papa were—I mean, are—even from way up there, the best parents anyone could have. I guess you know that Cleve has asked me to marry him? He doesn’t love me—I reckon you know that, too. The thing is, you and Papa were in love from the first time you looked at each other. I know it’s silly for me to hope for the same thing, being in my position. I can’t marry Cleve, can I?”
A day and a half had passed since that intimate moment under the tree. It was a wonder that she’d gotten a single thing done. Dealing cards felt like dealing slabs of lead. Ordinarily smiles from ordinary men turned into Cleve’s seductive grin. No matter what direction her thoughts took, they ended up of Cleve. She couldn’t even give the stray dog at the back door a scrap of food without wondering what it would be like to have a man—Cleve, to be exact—to pet and feed morning and night.
Below her in the yard movement caught her eye. Walking between shadow and moonlight it came toward the house from the stream, revealing a slender womanly form. It was only Dorothy, cooling off in the heat.
“Why not?” Dorothy asked, looking up at the window. “Why can’t you marry him?” Moon glow sharpened the angular lines of her face.
