My Heart's Desire (38 page)

She was regretting telling Jarret she loved him. That hadn't been fair. She had wanted him to know more than anything, but she hadn't been fair. Rennie stared blankly at the far wall.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

She couldn't tell him the truth. She lightly massaged his chest in a circular motion. "How did you become a bounty hunter?"

"That's
what you've been thinking?"

Rennie turned her head enough to touch his musky-scented skin with her mouth. "It's what I want to know," she said.

Jarret breathed in the sweet fragrance of her hair and said quietly, "It was more by accident than design. When my parents were murdered I went after their killers."

"You were just a boy then."

"Hardly. I was twenty-two. A man's age by anyone's ruler."

"Did you find the men?"

He nodded. "It took six months, but I found them. I brought one in alive, the other dead. Daniel Border was the first man I killed. I was sick for three days."

"But you didn't give it up."

"I never got used to it either. I bring most of my men in alive."

"And the women?"

"Dee Kelly was the first woman I ever had to track. Next time I'll be smarter. Women don't fight fair."

Rennie rubbed one foot against his calf. Her fingers walked across his abdomen and fiddled with the drawstring of his drawers. "I thought you liked it that way."

"Sometimes," he said, stilling her busy hand. "Sometimes not."

"Have you ever wanted to do anything else?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I was going to save some money... try my hand at ranching. I thought about breeding horses, cattle." Jarret stroked her fingers. "What about you? Have you always wanted to run a railroad?"

Had she? she wondered. "I've always thought so."

"Only..."

She shifted, settling more comfortably against him. Her knee rested on his thigh. "Only lately I've been thinking I just wanted to be close to my father."

It was quite an admission, Jarret thought, and he understood that Rennie was only thinking aloud, testing the words and motives, searching for reasons of her life's devotion to a railroad. He remained silent, waiting.

"He was always around," she said after a moment. "He never forgot a birthday or a holiday. He was attentive and loving, and none of us have ever doubted how he adored our mother. But it seems to me that Jay Mac was a
force
in our lives, rather than a presence. He rarely asked anything of us; Jay Mac had a tendency to issue directives."

Rennie smiled now at the memory. "Mary Francis always accepted them to his face, then did exactly as she pleased. She was so serene in her opposition that Jay Mac barely noticed her defiance until it was a done thing. He was apoplectic when she announced she was joining the convent."

Jarret guessed. "Moira brought him around."

"That's right." She glanced up at him briefly, pleased that he understood. "People often think Mama is completely influenced by Jay Mac, but nothing could be farther from the truth. She's fierce about her convictions, and though she's stayed with Jay Mac all these years, knowing that marriage wasn't possible, I don't think Mama's ever deferred to him on any other issue."

"She's the diplomat."

Rennie nodded. "Always. Skye's been arguing about going to college this past year. She wants to travel first. I doubt Papa would be so adamantly opposed if Skye wanted to travel somewhere he considered reasonable. He'd probably permit a tour of Europe; but Skye's got it in her head she wants to see Africa, and Jay Mac says absolutely not. Of course, Skye's been just as inflexible about her wishes."

Jarret chuckled, imagining Moira in the middle between intractable Jay Mac and fiery Skye. "So your mother's negotiating with both of them."

"Exactly. It's the sort of thing that happens all the time. Maggie mostly goes her own way. She's quieter than the rest of us, almost always an observer in any fray. She talks about being a doctor, but Jay Mac hasn't been very supportive. He's always wanted us to be independent, but when we are he's a little uncomfortable with our decisions."

"He couldn't have been pleased with Michael's position at the
Chronicle."

"God, no," Rennie said vehemently. "Michael and Papa have always been at loggerheads. She resents him almost as much as she loves him. It's the very rare occasion that she asks him for anything. It wasn't until she met Ethan that she began to have some appreciation for how Mama feels about Jay Mac. Before that Michael was quick to judge them both." Rennie's faint smile was poignant. "You saw them at Michael's wedding. It's plain to anyone with eyes in their head how much they love each other."

Jarret agreed. If Jay Mac hadn't been married when Moira came to work in his home, if she had been Protestant or he had been Catholic, if they had cared a little less about certain conventions and a little more about others, perhaps they would have had a last name in common and five daughters who did not have to struggle with the brand of illegitimacy. He remembered what his own parents had shared, and he felt something inside him stir, a certain longing for permanency and commitment drift through the edges of his thoughts. "What about you and Jay Mac?" he asked quietly.

"I'm not like the others," she said. There was regret in her voice. "I can't listen quietly, then do as I wish like Mary Francis. I don't know how to withdraw like Maggie. I can't wear him down like Skye, and I care too much about pleasing him to charge ahead like Michael."

"I've seen you stand up to him, Rennie," said Jarret. The back of his finger trailed across her cheek and along her jaw. "You challenge him in ways different from your sisters, but you do it."

"Shaking in my shoes."

Jarret laughed. "I bet Jay Mac doesn't know that." He gave a tendril of hair at her temple a slight tug as he wound it around his finger. "What is it that you want from him?"

"I want him to approve of me, of my choices. I want him to respect my work and acknowledge my skill."

He paused in playing with her hair, thoughtful, his brows drawn together. "Rennie, did you tell your father the problems with putting down rails at Queen's Point?"

Rennie was caught off guard. "I wasn't talking about that."

"Weren't you?" he asked. "What did he say when you showed him your work and your conclusions?"

Behind her lids Rennie's eyes ached with unshed tears. Her voice was barely audible. "He said I should put my own house in order before I tell him how to run his."

Jarret's arm slipped around her shoulder. "I see," he said. And he did. He remembered quite clearly listening to Rennie explaining her work on the Queen's Point rails, her judgment that the surveyors had been wrong. He also recalled that she was not quite as confident in her abilities as he would have thought, that she was not prepared to argue convincingly in support of her own conclusions. "He's decided to trust Hollis and the surveyors, is that it? The tracks will be laid along the wrong route."

"It's already begun. The work started months ago." She sensed Jarret was going to argue with her and went on. "He's seen me make a mess of too many things to trust my assessment."

"But surely those were personal, not professional." Jarret couldn't imagine that Jay Mac had made a success of every business venture he touched by confusing the two.

"I'm his daughter," Rennie said. "There are different rules. It's what we all fight. I just do it more clumsily than the others." Her low laughter was humorless. "The irony, of course, is that I'm the one who tried to join the battle on his side. Mary Francis chose the convent; Michael, the
Chronicle.
Maggie
will
be a doctor someday, and Skye will go to the moon if she has a mind to. I thought Northeast Rail would bind Jay Mac and me. Instead we spar all the time."

"Your sisters are all doing what they want to do," Jarret said. "Can you say the same?"

Rennie did not answer immediately. She knew what Jarret was asking, and she wasn't prepared to respond in that same vein. Instead she raised herself up, folding her arms on Jarret's chest, and met his gaze squarely. "Right now," she said, "I'm doing
exactly
what I want to do."

When she leaned forward and kissed him full on the mouth, Jarret was glad she was.

* * *

"You're awake," she said. She whispered because she wanted to keep dawn at bay. "Does this mean we're leaving soon?"

"It means I'm thinking about it."

Rennie stretched lazily, then curled like a contented cat. She fit her bottom snugly against Jarret's groin. "Think about it all you like. I want to sleep."

"You'll understand if I don't really believe you." He lifted the hair at the back of her neck and nuzzled. She murmured her contentment. The sound of it vibrated against his lips. He smiled, breathing in her fragrance, and kissed her softly.

"Hmm."

"Like that, do you?"

"Mm-hmm."

Jarret's hands slipped around her and cupped her breasts through her nightgown. His thumbs massaged her nipples, provoking them to hardness. She shifted, rubbing her backside against him. "Like that, do you?"

He playfully nipped her neck in response. "There are some things I can't hide from you."

Rennie turned in his arms. "You're not going to let me sleep, are you?" Even as she spoke Jarret was raising her shift above her thighs.

"That's what I said a few hours ago," he reminded her. "And you didn't listen then."

"That's because you're a very lucky man."

"Thank God." He kissed her mouth with breathtaking thoroughness. Rennie pushed at his drawers and took him into her hands. It took some adjustments, some laughter, but then she was guiding him into her, taking all of him, accommodating the fullness and the heat, and matching his rhythm.

Urgency swept them. Her mouth slanted across his; her tongue ran along the ridged line of his teeth, pressing entry in the way he had pressed his. His lips moved over hers, and he tasted her need as if it were a tangible thing, like succulent oranges or sweet, ripe cherries. The flavor of her kiss was like the fragrance of her hair, capable of reaching him, arousing him just below the level of his consciousness on some deeply felt primal plane.

He was a pressure inside her and a presence all around her. She felt his arms across her back, his legs flush to hers. His mouth touched her throat, her shoulders, her breasts. His skin was warm. Tension arced between them, and the air was dry and crackling. She thought they might spin wildly out of control like Roman candles.

Then they did.

Rennie listened to their breathing slow in unison. She touched her thudding heart as though she could calm it from outside her chest. She glanced at Jarret. He was watching her, the black centers of his eyes slowly receding in the aftermath of their loving. Her shadowed smile appeared slowly. "That was quite something," she said softly, a little dazed.

He nodded, more than a little dazed himself. He had never experienced anything like he had just shared with Rennie. The intensity of the pleasure had driven him hard against her and into her. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

She shook her head. "No... not at all." She touched his shoulder just above the starburst scar. "I think I bit you," she said, equally surprised and embarrassed.

Jarret's brows rose, and he tilted his head to get a look at his shoulder. The faint indentations of her teeth were visible. "I'll be damned," he said. He turned, and his slow grin transformed his face. "You
are
tenacious."

Chapter 11

Traveling together was a different experience for them now. Jarret, although he held to his promise of not making allowances for Rennie, was more inclined to ask rather than order. Rennie rode abreast of him often, no longer wary of interjecting the occasional question. The journey had become something to be shared and would never be remembered from the framework of a single person's recollection or viewpoint.

They rode on opposite sides of a narrow, rushing stream with the packhorse following Jarret. The run of icy water was a steady and pleasant whisper in their ears, interrupted only by the crunch of snow beneath the horses' hooves. There was almost no wind. The air was dry and bitterly cold, and the sun offered light, but little in the way of warmth. By the time Jarret decided to stop for the afternoon meal, Rennie felt as if she'd been riding for days.