Deborah Camp (10 page)

“You thought wrong.” Cassie stood and went to the door to look out, wishing again to be in the saddle and involved in something other than her own silly mean-derings about fathers and husbands and the like. The rash on her arms and neck began to itch, and she resisted the urge to scratch. Time for more poultice. “Oh, I hate being cooped up in here!” She swung away from the door and stomped into her bedroom.

At two o’clock in the morning, Cassie paced with Andy in her arms and waited for the catnip tea to brew. The stove’s fire had died to embers, and she’d had to replenish it with wood and stoke the coals into flames. Meanwhile Andy fretted and whined and sobbed, bedeviled by his swollen gums. “Hush, baby,” Cassie whispered, when Andy’s cries grew louder. “Don’t
wake the house. Once we get this tea down you, you’ll feel better. Suck on this cloth.”

But he wouldn’t. He shoved the wet rag aside and cried, his little chin quivering and glistening with drool.

The squeak of a floorboard alerted her, and she turned to see Drew climbing down the ladder from the loft. He’d pulled on his trousers and an old shirt, left unbuttoned. His hair stood up in back, mussed by his pillow. He must have seen her eyes on it because he smoothed the unruly hair with the flat of his hand.

“I tried to keep him quiet so he wouldn’t wake you,” Cassie said.

“Is it his gums again?”

“I think so. I don’t think it’s colic. When this tea boils … Ah, finally!”

“Let me take him while you do that,” Drew said, already removing Andy from her arms so that she could strain the catnip tea and let it cool in a saucer.

“You don’t have to trouble yourself,” she said.

“No trouble. He can’t help it, can you, little fella?” Cradling Andy in one arm, he walked the length of the cabin and spoke as softly to him as he did to his precious horses.

Cassie blew at the tea, transfixed by this man who could be so gentle with her baby, who reached out and plucked him from her arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to care for her son. She wondered what he’d been like as a boy.

“Before you were sent to prison, did you have yourself a girl?” she asked, speaking before giving thought to how the question might sound to him.

He stopped in his tracks and regarded her intensely
until she felt blood heat the remaining rash patches on her neck, her arms, and her forehead.

“A girl?”

She cleared her throat. “Yes, you know, a lady of your own. Were you courting someone?”

He scowled. “I don’t remember.”

“Just tell me it’s none of my business. That’s better than a lie.”

“I’m not ly—” He pressed his lips together, interrupting his own denial. “There was a girl. Name of Rosy. But I hear she married a preacher and moved way off to New Hampshire.”

“Rosy. Was she pretty like her name?”

“Yeah, I reckon. Pretty enough for a jughead like me.” He shifted his gaze to the saucer of tea. “That ready?”

“Yes. Bring him over here.” She sat down at the table and took Andy into her lap. Carefully, patiently, she spooned the tea into his mouth and made him swallow it. He fussed and fidgeted, but his cries diminished to grunts and sniveling. She rested him against her breasts and shoulder and rocked back and forth with him. “Thank you,” she mouthed.

Drew shrugged, dismissing his acts of kindness.

“You’re not a jughead, but you must know that.” She wrinkled her nose and pitched her voice to a whisper. “It’s called mock vanity. I figure you face yourself in the shaving mirror every morning and see a good-looking man staring back at you. I bet you had more than Rosy trying to catch your eye.”

“I don’t stare at myself in the mirror. I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

She rolled her eyes. “Speaking of that, I’m riding
with you tomorrow, if I can get this baby to sleep in the next hour.”

“Tomorrow or today?”

She smiled. “I mean, today. Wonder what time it is?”

“Close to two-thirty, I reckon.”

Cassie stretched her neck wearily. “It’s going to be another long day.”

Andy raised his head from her shoulder and blinked owlishly at her. Then he looked up at Drew and grinned.

“Hey, there, cowboy. Feeling better?” Drew placed his hands on his knees and leaned down until his face was level with Andy’s. “No more crying? No more… Hey! What’s that shining in your mouth? Is that a tooth?”

“What? Where?” Cassie pulled back to get a better look at her son.

“Right there in front. That white spot.”

Cassie eased a finger between Andy’s lips and felt his gums, which were noticeably cooler to the touch. The bump was sharp. “A tooth! It’s a tooth!” Smiling happily, she looked to Drew to share the moment of triumph. “His first.”

“The first of many,” Drew said, smoothing a hand over Andy’s blond curls. “Way to go there, little man. Bet that feels better, doesn’t it?”

“I can’t believe he’s growing up so fast,” Cassie said wistfully. “He’s got his first tooth and he’s trying to walk. He pulls up on everything so he can stand.” She caressed her baby’s dimpled knees. “Pretty soon he won’t need me.”

“Aw, hell, that’s a long way off,” Drew said, scoffing at her sentimentality. “That boy’s going to need you when he’s got gray in his hair and a bow in his back.
Sons don’t get shed of their mamas so quick. If my mama hadn’t died, I figure she’d be here with me and I’d be asking her good opinion on just about everything and everyone.”

“Really?” Cassie asked, her heart softening toward him.

“Why, sure.” He looked down at his bare feet, and a shy expression crept over his face before he clamped down on it. He brought his head up, his eyes frank, bold. “You think a man like me couldn’t love his mother?”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” she protested, then Andy grabbed a handful of her robe and squealed with delight. She blinked at him and laughed at his antics. “Are you happy about your tooth, baby?”

“He seems to be,” Drew observed. “Maybe he’ll drop off to sleep before sunrise.”

“I hope so.”

A crease appeared between Andy’s eyes and Cassie knew the sign. He wanted nourishment so that he could fall asleep. Strangely, she found she didn’t want to leave Drew’s company, although she always had before when she fed Andy from her breast. With her heart anchoring her to the chair, she shifted, angling her back to Drew as she eased open the parting of her robe to let Andy suckle. His lips locked around her nipple, and the pull made her womb tingle and her blood heat. She closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the pleasant sensations. Looking down into Andy’s face, she saw her own milk bubble at the corners of his mouth and his eyelids begin to droop.

Standing behind her, Drew scarcely breathed. He knew he should go back up to the loft and give Cassie privacy while she fed her babe, but he couldn’t make
his feet move. He gazed over her shoulder at the slope of her breast and the melding of the baby’s hungry mouth to her nipple. Soft sucking noises filled the silence, punctuated by an occasional satisfied grunt from Andy. Drew thought he might die. All the blood in his body swam to his loins and stiffened his member.

Shame was what he should be feeling, he knew, not unyielding lust. But there it was, grappling with his mind and overtaking his better judgment. Lust. He wanted to take his father’s widow right there, right then. On the floor, the table, in the chair with her baby nearby. He didn’t care anymore. The wanting was so immense it squeezed the life out of all reasoning.

Cassie glanced over her shoulder to find that Drew had not moved from his stance near her. Shadow bathed his face. “He’s already getting sleepy,” she whispered.

Drew’s nod was his only response, so she turned back to Andy, watching peace settle over his face. Gradually his lips grew slack and he let go of her nipple. Cassie adjusted the sides of her robe and shifted Andy to lie against her shoulder. Smiling, she looked up, then froze when her gaze connected with Drew’s. He had distributed his weight from one foot to the other, and light from the fire in the cookstove now slanted across his face.

Her womb tingled again and her blood heated, but this time for an entirely different reason. She knew that look of longing in his eyes, and her body responded hungrily. Her nipples tightened, and tendrils of sweet sensations flowered in her belly and spread between her thighs. Good Lord, she wanted him to kiss her. No. She wanted far more than that!

As if reading her mind, he leaned down, his face coming
closer and closer until his lips were but a fraction of an inch from hers. She could feel his breath upon her face, could see a pulse beating below his left ear. Cassie let her lashes fall and gave herself over to fate.

His lips brushed hers, incredibly warm and soft. With a mewling sigh she leaned into him. His hand cupped the back of her neck and steadied her while his lips opened over hers, sucking gently, making hers slick. She wished she didn’t have her baby in her arms so that she could have raked her fingers through his hair and pressed her tender breasts against his bare chest. She couldn’t remember the last time she had wanted so much from a man… if ever.

Undone by the unconditional surrender of her kiss, Drew took time to explore her taste and the incredible gentleness of her seductive mouth. He curled his fingers at the nape of her neck beneath the soft fall of her hair and breathed in her particular aroma—milk and honey, leather and greening earth. And soda and oatmeal, a corner of his mind registered, making him smile against her lips. The poison ivy rash was nearly gone from her sweet, heart-shaped face, but the scent of the healing paste remained on her skin.

His heart thundered while his mind filed away every detail of these moments. His mouth mated with hers, and his body swayed closer, yearning for a more complete coupling. He sent the tip of his tongue over her lips, and she parted them, wanting to taste him, to fully experience him. Moaning, he took more, but withheld his tongue because he knew if he deepened the kiss, he would be helpless to stop himself. And there was still a sliver of caution left in him, reining him in, scrambling for control.

His mouth continued to court hers, lifting and pressing, one kiss quickly followed by another until her lips tingled and throbbed.
More, more
, she chanted to herself. She wanted more than kisses.
Needed
more.

“Drew… oh, Drew…” The sound of her own voice emerging in a husky, lust-laden whisper brought her back to herself. She stiffened away from him, suddenly ashamed to be kissing him ardently with her son held between them. “I-I—uhmm.” She looked down at Andy. “I can’t do this.” Not now, she thought. Why did he start this when she was holding her baby? His timing left much to be desired.

“You’re right.” He shoved himself away from her and walked backward until he bumped into the sofa. “I shouldn’t have. But, well…”

“Don’t apologize,” she implored him, not wanting to end this sweet session on that sour note. And did it have to end? Couldn’t he suggest that she put the baby in his cradle and come back to him, up to the loft with him? She trembled, shocked by her own wanton thoughts. This was the man she hadn’t trusted, the man who wanted to take all that was hers, except for her son.

“Nothing to apologize for,” he said almost angrily.

“That’s right. We’re both grown.”

He nodded, looking awkward for the first time since she’d met him. “But it’s wrong. ‘Night.” He turned and climbed the ladder, his movements uncommonly jerky.

“Good night.” She stood slowly so as not to awaken Andy and went to her bedroom. After placing Andy in his cradle, she covered him with a light blanket. What had Drew meant about it being wrong to kiss her? Was he simply taking what she’d blurted out and agreeing
with her, trying to appease her? Or did he think it was wrong to kiss his father’s widow?

Cassie sat on the edge of the bed and twisted the cotton spread in her hands. It
was
wrong, she told herself sternly. Wrong, wrong, wrong to be entertaining notions of kissing and caressing a man like Drew Dalton. A man who lived right under the same roof with her and was hell-bent on taking over her ranch and running it as he saw fit.

Yes, his kisses were a soothing balm to what ailed her, but they weren’t worth the ranch and her future, her son’s future. No man’s kisses were worth that.

Oh, but his lips had been so son… and arousing.

She fell back on the bed with a tortured groan and stared at the fly-specked ceiling until dawn crept across it, coloring it coral and then gold. Her head and heart hammered, but she rose up, determined to join the men today, determined to look Drew Dalton in the eye and not flinch, and determined to act as if nothing had happened between them.

T
hrowing down the bale of wire, Cassie glared at the crown of Drew’s dark-blue hat. “You know, we can’t go on acting as if nothing happened between us.”

He whirled on the balls of his feet and peered up at her. “Why not?”

“Because that’s what kids do. We kissed and that’s that. We should own up to it.”

“I never disowned it.” He swiveled back to the fence he was mending.

“The hell you say! You’ve not said a word and hardly even looked at me. When I said I’d ride with you today and leave T-Bone to ride with Gabe, you almost choked. Don’t be grumbling and swearing under your breath, Drew Dalton. I saw you gulp like you’d swallowed a bug.”

“Maybe I did swallow a bug. Maybe my mood this morning has nothing to do with you.”

“Oh? Then why are you as sore-tempered as a broke-tailed cat?” she challenged, hands on her hips.

“Because so far this morning I’ve spied six of our
cattle grazing on Monroe’s land, that’s why.” He straightened and pulled taut the wire he’d strung to repair the fence. “I reckon we should wait for his hands to weed them out and bring them to us, but it galls me to see the Square D brand mixed in with the Star H cattle.”

She jutted out one hip and her lower lip. “Cattle on your mind, huh?”

“That’s right. Should be on your mind, too.”

“Oh, they are,” she assured him, looking past him to the cows lowing in the distance. “Roe will bring ours back to us. He’s been nothing but fair with me.”