Cowboy's Kiss (20 page)

“No, not tonight. I only wanted them then because I had those dumb ol' butterflies in my tummy like before, but they're gone now.”

“And how about the sad feeling? That was back this morning, too, wasn't it?”

Meggie frowned. “I wish I was the new baby and my daddy was here with me.”

“I know, sweetheart.” Ally smoothed her daughter's forehead and waited for the tears that this conversation was likely to bring on.

But they never came.

Instead Meggie yawned and snuggled into her pillow.

“Hans said the momma pig was havin' her babies tonight so we'll get to see ‘em tomorrow. They'll be so cute....”

Meggie's eyes had closed as she talked and Ally watched her drift off to sleep, amazed that the subject of her father had been so easily passed over. But that single comment seemed to have been the sum and substance of it.

Grateful for that, at least, Ally kissed her daughter's tiny, bruised brow and silently made her way out of the room, carrying with her the knowledge that no matter how substantial the improvements in Meggie were, they could be reversed in the blink of an eye.

She eased the door shut after herself and found Jackson waiting for her in the hall the way he'd been the night before.

Tall and muscular, he was dressed in a black T-shirt that fit him like a second skin, tight blue jeans whose pockets sported his thumbs, and his ever-present boots—one crossed over the other at the ankle, the pointed toe spiked against the floor. He looked heart-stoppingly handsome. And Ally wished she weren't so drawn to him that she felt complete only when she was with him.

“You're not lookin' happy tonight, darlin',” he observed in a lazy drawl.

“I'm just a little tired,” she answered. He didn't need to know that the weariness was more emotional than physical.

“Too tired for some wine and stargazin'?”

Never too tired to be with you,
she thought. And even though she knew she should decline the invitation, she said, “I could probably stay awake for that.”

She turned in the direction of the stairs, but he caught her arm and pulled her the other way. “Best place for it is on the deck off my room. Less light.”

But lots of privacy.

Again Ally knew she shouldn't be doing something that could only make ending her time here more difficult if that's what she decided—and it
was
what she was thinking she needed to do.

Yet how could she refuse herself what might be the last time with him?

She couldn't. No matter how strong the reasoning, her feelings for him made her will too weak.

So instead she went to his room.

It was dimly lighted by only his bedside lamp. The French doors on one wall were open to the balcony beyond, and a small table there was set with crystal glasses and a silver bucket of ice that chilled an open bottle of wine.

“Pretty sure of yourself, aren't you, cowboy?” she joked as he closed the door behind them.

He only grinned at her, a grin that sent sparkles all through her.

She loved him
so
much.

So much it scared her....

He took her hand and pulled her out onto the balcony that faced the wide-open countryside, away from the pool and patio, the barn, the bunkhouse, the garage, the caretaker's cottage, so that the glow of the moon and stars was undisturbed.

Then he poured them both wine and handed her a glass, taking his own with him where he went to prop a hip and one thick thigh on the railing.

Ally joined him there, but while she looked up at the sky, he watched her.

She couldn't help feeling as if he were waiting for her to say something,
expecting
her to say something, and she felt obliged to address the subject she believed was on his mind.

“I can't give you an answer about getting married,” she said quietly, even though she knew what she
should
say. She
should
say that quite likely she'd turn him down, because staying on the ranch just seemed too dangerous. That even if Meggie's mental state was improved, not only was it merely a temporary thing, it seemed more and more possible that her physical well-being was threatened.

But just then she couldn't make herself say any of that, any more than she'd been able to keep herself from accompanying him to his room.

But Jackson solved the immediate problem for her, if not the longer-range one. “We don't need to talk about marriage,” he said, sounding as if that were the last thing on his mind. “In fact, we don't need to talk about anything. We just came out to do some star-gazin', remember?”

She glanced over at him, at the small smile that peeked out from beneath his mustache as he went on studying her as if to memorize her face.

“It isn't stars you're looking at,” she observed.

“Sure I am. It's just that I'm lookin' through that extra set of eyes I have out of the back of my head.”

“Funny, I never noticed them before. Where are they exactly?” she teased, giving in to the urge to slide her free hand up into his hair as if in search.

“Careful you don't blind me, now,” he joked back, dipping to allow her better access and kissing her lightly at the same time. “Find ‘em?” he asked a moment later.

“Lumps, maybe. But no eyes.”

“You complainin'?”

“Who, me? I'm wild for men with lumpy heads.”

He kissed her again, smiling as he did. “And I'm crazy for a sassy woman.”

“I guess that makes us wild and crazy.”

“Yes, ma'am, I guess it does.” He chuckled and kissed her yet again, longer this time.

Then he reached over and set his wineglass on the table so he could rest a hand on each of her hips and guide her to stand between his legs. Once more his mouth met hers but there was nothing wild or crazy in it. Instead it was leisurely, languorous, as if they had all the time in the world.

Maybe she should warn him that they might not have, Ally thought. That this could actually be the end for them...

But his lips were so soft over hers, so warm, so wonderful, that somehow when words found their way out she said, “Lumpy head or not, you kiss better than anyone I've ever known.”

He smiled through another one and she couldn't be sure if it was because he was glad she thought so or because he already knew it. “Don't wait for any complaints from me, because you won't be hearin' any,” he said between the end of one kiss and the beginning of another as he took her glass and set it on the table with his.

Ally gave him a lazy smile of her own and slipped her other hand into his hair, too, and that was the last of the talking they did as Jackson drew her close, into powerful arms that wrapped around her and a kiss that was so deep she drifted away on it.

There was something different going on between them tonight that Ally couldn't quite put her finger on. Not that it was bad. Not at all. Just different. The hunger, the urgency that usually drove them both was suppressed, and in its place was a sense that these moments, this closeness they shared, needed to be cherished.

They stayed on the balcony a long time, just kissing, before Jackson took her to his bed. And even then there was no intensity. Instead, when their bodies entwined, their hands explored, caressed, aroused unhurriedly. Their mouths and tongues did the same, learning the secret spots to delight and delight in, discovering that even nuances could awaken passion.

All with a pace so slow, so tender, it savored every moment, every touch, every sensation. A pace that allowed them to revel in each other, in the magic their bodies made together, in the emotions that were so strong they were nearly tangible, in a poignancy so sweet it almost hurt....

Hours later, when Ally lay in Jackson's arms, replete and exhausted, he whispered very, very solemnly, “I love you, Ally.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered back, meaning it with all her heart, believing that he did, too.

And yet, as sleep pulled her toward it, somehow she couldn't help feeling that it was as if they'd each just said goodbye.

I
t was after seven when Ally woke up the next morning. She was still in Jackson's bed. But she was alone. He was nowhere in sight and the room was too quiet for him to be even in the connecting bathroom.

Ally got up in a hurry, both because she didn't want Jackson to accuse her of being a slugabed and because she didn't want Meggie—who could be waking up anytime—to catch her there.

In her own bathroom, she took a quick shower, gathered her hair onto the crown of her head with an elastic ruffle, applied a little mascara and blush, and slipped into a pair of jeans and a sleeveless chambray shirt.

Then she went downstairs, expecting that Jackson had already gone outside for the day.

But the kitchen was where she found him.

He was sitting on a stool at the butcher block, his forearms resting on either side of an untouched plate of biscuits and gravy. But apparently he hadn't just sat down to his breakfast, because the gravy was beginning to congeal.

“Jackson?” she said as if she weren't sure it was really him behind an expression that was as sober, as remote, as what he'd shown her when she'd first arrived at the ranch.

“‘Mornin',” he answered in a low rumble of a voice.

She was about to ask him what was wrong when the place setting across from him caught her eye. A plate, a juice glass, a coffee mug, a napkin, silverware, and a check attached to a handwritten note.

“What's this?” she asked instead, on her way to see for herself.

He didn't say anything. He just waited for her to pick up the papers and read them.

The check was for ten thousand dollars. The note was an IOU for the rest of the best offer yet to buy out her share of the ranch.

Ally propped a hip on the bar stool on her side of the counter for the support she suddenly needed and stared at what she held in her hand.

“You and Meggie don't belong here,” he said before she could wade through her thoughts and feelings. “You aren't right for this life. Neither one of you knows what you're doing, you get yourselves into trouble, get hurt, could get hurt even worse. A lot worse. It's time we faced up to reality and did something about it before that something worse happens.”

“Guess this is your way of telling me to stop thinking about your proposal,” she countered, incensed, hurt, and letting it all sound in her voice.

“It isn't marrying me you've been thinking about, anyway,” he countered. “You're leaning toward leaving, proposal or not. Don't deny it.”

How could she when, for the most part, it was true? But it shocked her to learn that he'd realized it.

“That's a fair offer,” he said with a nod at the check and promissory note. “I won't take no for an answer this time. What's best for both you and Meggie is to get the hell out of here.”

“Is it what's best for you, too?” she demanded, challenging him.

“I think it is, yes,” he answered very solemnly and without missing a beat.

“And it's what you want?” And
she
wasn't what he wanted, a little voice in the back of her mind said bluntly. Just like she hadn't been what Doug had wanted in the end.

“What I
don't
want,” he nearly shouted, “is to come home one day and find you gone. And it'll happen, Ally. If it doesn't happen now—because of Meggie's accident—it'll happen after the next fall from the hayloft, or the next kick of a mule, or the next snakebite. But I know damn good and well that it
will
happen. So let's just get it done.”

“I'm too much like your ex-wife, is that what you're saying?”

“You're nothing like my ex-wife.”

“But you're sure I'll do the same thing.”

He confirmed that with silence.

And, much as she wished she could, there was no arguing with something he was right about.

Oh, she might not have made up her mind completely about whether or not to leave here, and she would never sneak away behind his back with no more of an explanation than a note and some divorce papers. But the truth was, she had been thinking more about leaving than about staying and marrying him, and that told her it was the likelihood.

“I can't lie to you and say I haven't been wondering if the bad of being here didn't outweigh the good,” she admitted. “But—”

“But nothing. Once you start thinkin' that, you never stop. You'll be seeing dangers and hazards and hardships and things you can't abide lurking everywhere. You already are, if the truth be known, and don't bother denying that, either.”

“What is it you want me to say, Jackson? That yes, you're right, I have been wondering if I should take Meggie away from here before something else happens to one of us? That maybe Meggie and my leaving
is
for the best?”

In spite of all he'd said to push her to it, the words seemed to hit him like a thunderbolt.

Had he been testing her? Just wondering if she'd fight him down? If she'd still stand her ground about staying even now that she'd seen the worst he and this life had to offer?

But this was no game, she told herself.

Any more than it had been a game when Doug had rejected her. When she'd tried to believe that eventually he'd come to his senses, that he didn't really mean the hurtful things he'd said and done, that he couldn't possibly be throwing away all they'd worked for together, all they'd shared, all they'd been to each other...

No, the bottom line here was that Jackson didn't want her. Just the way Doug hadn't wanted her. And at that moment she knew that she was facing the most real danger of being on this ranch—Jackson. And her feelings for him. And how she could be crushed beneath them if she didn't run as far and as fast as she could.

He stood, taking his uneaten breakfast to the sink. “You put a good effort into living here. I poured on the work thicker than I should have, but you kept up. Don't feel that you didn't give it a good try,” he said as if to put a kinder edge to firing a ranch hand who hadn't been able to do the job. “It just wasn't meant to be.”

“Funny, but it felt like it was,” she murmured sarcastically from the part of her that was hurting.

He turned to face her again. “Yeah, well, things can seem that way even when they aren't.”

“I should have just been smart enough to have taken your offer from the start and saved us both a lot of trouble,” she added for him.

His eyes stayed on her but suddenly they softened. “I wouldn't change anything,” he said quietly. “I'm grateful for the little we've had. There just can't be more of it. Get your things together and I'll drive you to the train station.”

Then he headed for one of the sliding glass doors, each boot step firm, final, and leaving Ally with nothing but the view of his broad, proud back.

* * *

Ally didn't know how much or how little time passed as she sat on the stool at the butcher block, staring at the door Jackson had walked through. But when she heard the sounds of Meggie stirring upstairs she realized she had to rise out of that limbo and go to her daughter.

She felt numb as she moved back through the house, and between that and focusing on how Meggie would accept the news that they'd be leaving the ranch, it helped keep the horrible pain that lurked on the fringes at bay. Somewhat, anyway.

Meggie was just dressing when Ally knocked and slipped into her room.

“Good morning,” she said, hating the shakiness in her voice when she'd wanted to sound cheery.

“Hi,” Meggie answered as she pulled a T-shirt over her head and tucked it into her shorts.

Her bumps and bruises were better, and just before the shirt covered her completely Ally noticed her daughter had put on a pound or two and wasn't as emaciatingly thin as she'd been when they'd arrived.

Keeping her fingers crossed that the good that had come from being here wouldn't be lost in leaving, Ally sat on the bed beside Meggie while the little girl put on her socks.

“I have something to tell you, sweetheart,” Ally began.

“Did the momma pig have her babies?” Meggie guessed excitedly.

“I don't know. That isn't what I have to say.”

The sober tone of Ally's voice seemed to register just then. Meggie stopped short of pulling on the cowboy boots she was so proud of and looked directly at her mother, waiting expectantly.

“Jackson and I had a talk this morning and we've decided it would be best if you and I didn't live on the ranch after all. If we went back to Denver.”

Meggie's face fell. “Why?”

“Well, since we've been on the ranch all you and I seem to do is get into one scrape after another. Things that are pretty scary. Things that get us hurt or could.” Ally smoothed a curl of her daughter's hair away from the wound on her brow. “I just think it's too dangerous for us to be here.”

“I'm not scared! I don't want to go back to Denver. I like the ranch and the animals and Jackson and Hans and Marta—”

“I know you do. I do, too. But—”

“I promise I'll be more careful and next time Jackson tells me something I'll do it right then, I won't pretend like I didn't hear him.”

“Honey, it isn't as if you did something wrong.” Ally addressed the sound of guilt in her daughter's voice. “It's that right or wrong, the ranch is a dangerous place.”

“But I can be careful. Like when I ran out in the street after my ball at Gramma's and about got hit by the car—I was more careful after that and I never did it again. And I stayed away from Grampa's lawn mower like you told me to, and I didn't ride my roller skates down the big hill after I crashed and got all scraped up, and I never talk to strangers or nothin' like I'm not s'pose to. I can learn about stuff I'm not s'pose to do here, too, and then it'll be okay. Okay?”

“Meggie—”

“No!” her daughter shouted, jamming her feet into her boots and making a dash for the door. “I'm gonna go talk to Jackson and tell him I'll be good so he'll let us stay.”

And out she went, leaving Ally to helplessly watch her go, much the way she'd watched Jackson just a little while before.

Ally took a deep breath and blew it out in a frustrated, forlorn sigh, resting her elbows on her knees and dropping her face into her hands.

The last thing she'd intended to do was make Meggie think she'd done anything wrong. Sure, maybe she'd been overeager to help with the brushfire and hadn't stayed away from it the way she'd been told to, and she'd ignored Jackson's telling her to leave Sunshine and go into the house in the storm, but she was only a little kid and little kids did things like that.

Just the way they did things like running out in the street without looking for cars, going out of control on roller skates, trying to help mow the grass. Kids didn't always think about how dangerous something might be and Ally didn't expect Meggie to. Not on her own, anyway. Not without being warned first and sometimes barreling in even then. Whether she was here or...

Or in the suburbs....

That thought suddenly struck Ally, and with it, something she hadn't considered in all of her thinking about how dangerous the ranch was—that there were plenty of dangers in living where they'd lived before, too. Or in living anywhere for that matter. That the dangers might be different, but they were dangers just the same.

And yet, somehow, the near-miss accidents and scrapes and bumps and bruises Meggie had had during the years before, even the more dire possibilities like kidnapping or any of the perils she'd warned her daughter of, had never seemed like
dangers.
Just the stuff of everyday living that a child either got into or needed to be made aware of. They didn't loom like ominous dark clouds over every moment, the way Ally had begun to think of things around the ranch.

And Ally had never been in a panic over them. Or ready to move at the drop of a hat to try avoiding them.

So what had gotten into her now? Why, in the past few days, had she been so lost in fear and worry over living here that she'd hardly been able to think about anything else, even Jackson's marriage proposal?

Ally straightened up and stared into space as light began to dawn in her mind.

What had she thought in the kitchen just a little while ago? That Jackson and her feelings for him and her attraction to him were the
real
dangers here...

Ally shook her head in amazement at herself.

Sure, the things both she and Meggie had encountered here had been unnerving, but it suddenly seemed very suspicious that she'd been able to take the first ones in her stride. Her fears and worrying had only grown out of proportion at about the same time her feelings for Jackson had blossomed, when she'd begun to lose the battle against her attraction to him, when she'd let down her guard completely and made love with him.

“Camouflage,” she muttered, wondering if it was possible that rather than confront her very real and potent fear of a new relationship, a relationship with Jackson, and maybe a repetition of what had happened with Doug, she'd focused all of her fear on the ranch itself.

It was not only possible, it suddenly seemed more than likely.

Not that there weren't real perils in living here. Things and situations that needed more care than she or Meggie had given them. But life-threatening danger didn't wait around every corner as she'd begun to think.

Only Jackson did.

And the truth was, she realized, she was really afraid of being let down by love, by another man, more than she was afraid of anything else.

“Really smart, Al,” she said out loud. “And while you were hiding it from yourself you walked right into it.”

The numbness receded and a wave of pain as powerful as what she'd felt at the end of her marriage washed over her.

So much for protecting herself.