The Pride of Jared MacKade (12 page)

He could see the trio of rocks where he often sat, the fallen trunk where he had once sat with her. And in the
distance, just a hint through the shadows, was a glow of light that signaled his home.

For a moment, he wasn’t sure he could speak. “When did you do this?”

“I just finished it a few days ago.” A mistake, she thought, cursing herself. A sentimental, foolish mistake. “It’s just something I’ve worked on in my spare time. Like I said, it’s no big deal. If you don’t like it—”

Before she could finish, his head came up, and his eyes, swirling with emotion, met hers. “I can’t think of anything I’ve ever been given that could mean more. It’s the way it looked the night we made love for the first time. The way it’s looked countless times I’ve been there alone.”

Her heart stuttered, then crept up to lodge in her throat. “I was going to paint it the way it would have been in autumn, during the battle. But I wanted to do it this way first. I wasn’t sure you’d… I’m glad you like it.”

He reached out, cupped her face in his hands. “I love you, Savannah.”

Her lips curved under the gentle caress of his, then parted, heated, as he steadily deepened the kiss. His fingers tangled in her hair, still damp from the rain. Her arousal was slow and sweet.

“I should hang it for you.”

“Mmm…” Quite suddenly, as her body pressed to his and her mouth began to move, he had a much better idea. He tucked an arm around her to hold her steady and reached over his desk to pick up the phone. “Sissy? Why don’t you go to lunch now? Yeah, take your time.”

Savannah’s gaze followed his hand as he replaced the receiver. Then her eyes shifted blandly to his face. “If
you think you’re going to seduce me here in your office, have me rolling over your fancy new carpet with you while your secretary’s out to lunch…”

Jared walked over, closed the door. Locked it. Arched a brow. “Yes?”

She tossed her hair back, leaned a hip on the desk. “You’re absolutely right.”

He shrugged off his jacket, hung it on the brass coat hook by the door. His tie followed. Keeping his eyes on hers, he crossed back. One by one, he loosened the buttons of her shirt.

“Your clothes are damp.”

“It’s raining.”

Very slowly, very deliberately, he peeled the bright cotton away. His eyes never left hers as he slipped a finger under the front hook of her bra. Never left hers when he felt the quick quiver of her skin and heard the little catch in her breathing.

“I want you every time I see you. I want you when I don’t see you.” With a flick of his thumb and forefinger, he unsnapped the hook. “I want you even after I’ve had you.” Lightly he traced his fingertips over the curve of her breast. “You obsess me, Savannah, the way no one and nothing ever has.”

She reached out for him, but he shook his head and lowered her arms to her sides again. “No, let me. Just let me.”

His thumbs brushed over her nipples, his eyes stayed focused on her face. “I lose my mind when I touch you,” he murmured. “This time I want to watch you lose yours.”

Fingers, thumbs, palms, cruised over her. Rough, then
gentle, tender, then demanding, as if he was refusing to let any one mood rule. Driven, she pulled at him, tried to tug him closer. But each time she did, he stopped, patiently lowered her arms until she had no choice but to grip the edge of the desk and let him have his way.

No one had ever made love to her like this, as if she were essential, as if she were all there was and all there needed to be. As if her pleasure were paramount. Pinpoint sensations percolated along her skin, chased by others, whisper-soft, then still more that seeped slyly through flesh to blood and bone.

She arched back on a keening moan when he closed his teeth over her, shot her to some rugged ground on the border between pleasure and pain.

“Just take me.” Her arms whipped around him, her body straining, pulsing.

But he took her hands, locked them to his as he kissed her toward delirium. Her mouth was a feast, full of hot flavor and a hunger that matched his own. But this time he wasn’t content to sink into it, or her. He used his teeth to torment, his tongue to tease, until her breath came in tearing gasps.

“Let me touch you,” she demanded.

“Not this time. Not yet.” He closed her hands over the edge of the desk again, held them there while his mouth raced to her throat, down her neck, over those tensed and beautiful shoulders. “I’m going to take you, Savannah.” He eased back, because he wanted her to see his face, and the unshakable purpose there. “I’m going to take you inch by inch. The way no one ever has.”

For her pleasure, he told himself. But he knew a part
of it was his own pride. He wanted to show her that no man before, and no man after, could make her feel what he could.

So he showed her, traveling like lightning down her torso, her flesh damp now, not from rain, but from passion.

She gave herself over to him as she had never done with any man. Surrender complete, she braced herself on the desk and let him ravage her, body and mind.

He tugged off her shoes. She let her head fall back, let herself moan deep as he eased her jeans low on her hips, caressed that revealed flesh with his lips. She shuddered, nearly sobbed, as his hands kneaded and his mouth closed over her, fire to fire.

She crested fast and hard. Terrifying. Wonderful. He never stopped, and as the pleasure whipped her ruthlessly higher, she prayed he never would. Naked, stripped of clothes and all defenses, she could do nothing but experience, absorb and give.

He’d never known this kind of desire. To take and to take, knowing as he did that he was filling her with unspeakable pleasure. The blood swam in his head as he felt her peak yet again, heard that breathless cry catch in her throat.

The strong muscles in her legs were quivering. He ran his tongue over them, lingering over the symbol she’d branded herself with, before making his way, purposely, greedily, up that long body.

Her eyes were closed. He used his mouth only to keep her poised and ready for him as he stripped off his shirt. He toed off his shoes, whipped his trousers aside. And dragged her to the floor.

The animal that had been pacing restlessly inside him sprang free. He drove himself into her, mindlessly, shuddering with a dark thrill when she cried out his name, hissing with hot pleasure as her nails scraped his back.

It was all heat and speed and plunging bodies, a rhythmic, tribal beat of flesh against flesh. The blood hammered in his head, his heart, his loins, relentlessly. She arched up to him, straining, straining.

His vision grayed, his world contracted. He emptied himself into her.

Savannah thought, if she really tried, she might be able to crawl to where her clothes were heaped. And she would try, she told herself. In just another minute or two.

Right now, it was so lovely and decadent to lie there on the antique carpet in Jared’s quietly elegant office with his body heavy on hers.

She had been, she realized, thoroughly and mind-numbingly ravished. As exciting as making love with him had been before, this was a different level entirely. She certainly hoped they would strive for it now and again in the future.

“I have to get up,” she murmured.

“Why?”

“To make certain I’m not paralyzed.”

“Did I hurt you?”

She kept her eyes closed, let her lips curve. “Another few minutes of that, and you’d have killed me.” Making the effort, she found the energy to stroke a hand through his hair. “Thank you.”

“Anytime.” He let out a long, heartfelt sigh before he
pressed a kiss to her throat. “Of course, I don’t know how I’m ever going to work in here again.” Moaning a little, he rolled off her. “I’ll have a client sitting in the chair while I go over the details of his case, and I’ll get a flash of you leaning naked against the desk.”

She laughed, then discovered she really did have to crawl. Her legs might never support her again. “He’ll get suspicious when you get a stupid grin on your face.”

“And start drooling.” Spent, Jared reached for his shirt. He angled his head to get a glimpse of her tattoo. “Hell of a way to kick off the new color scheme.”

“Didn’t you ever kick off the old one?”

He had to concentrate on remembering how to button his shirt, so it took him a minute. The snort of laughter came first. “You mean me and Barbara? I’m not sure she ever unbuttoned her double-breasted blazer in here. Not her style.”

In her underwear, Savannah turned to study him. “You
were
married to her, right?”

“That’s what it said on the license.”

“Why?”

“It has to say that. It’s the law.”

“Why were you married to her?”

“We had a lot in common. I thought.” He shrugged it off. “We both wanted to establish ourselves in our respective professions, knew a lot of the same people, attended a lot of the same functions.”

It disturbed him still how empty it sounded when he pulled things apart and looked at all the pieces. “She was a sensible, reasonable and sophisticated woman. That’s what I wanted—or thought I did. A kind of contrast to
the hotheaded-troublemaker image I’d carved out for myself when I was younger.”

“You wanted dignity.” Still sitting on the floor, Savannah buttoned her shirt.

“That’s accurate enough. It seemed important then.”

“It’s still important. It always is.” Though she realized it would sound a bit foolish while she tugged herself into her jeans, she said it anyway. “I always wanted it, too. Not in the double-breasted-suit sort of way. Not
my
style. Just in the way people look at you, what they see when they do.”

She pulled on a shoe. “That’s why I like living here. I can start fresh.”

“We all look back.” He walked over to the coatrack for his tie. “It’s human nature.”

“I don’t.” She said it almost fiercely as she pulled on the second shoe. “Not anymore.”

He gave his full attention to the tying of his tie. “There’s no one? Of all the people you’ve known, the people who’ve touched you?”

She started to answer lightly, but then it struck her. He didn’t mean people. He meant men. And she remembered what he had said as he made love to her, made her churn and shiver.

The way no one ever has.

And so, she thought, hurt, that was the crux of it. “You mean lovers.”

“You said lovers. I said people.”

“I know what you said, Jared. No, there’s no one who was important enough to look back to.”

Bryan’s father. He nearly said it, nearly asked, but it
stuck in his throat. In his pride. “You’re angry,” he stated, noting the glint in her eye.

“It just crossed my mind that what happened here was a kind of demonstration. A chest-beating male sort of thing, to illustrate that you’re better than anyone I might have had before.”

Now his own eyes glinted. “That’s a remarkably stupid observation.”

“Don’t tell me I’m stupid.” She snapped it out, then managed to pull herself back under control. Don’t let it matter, she reminded herself. Don’t let it sting. “You can relax, Jared, you proved your point. You’re an extraordinary lover. Right over the top.” She sauntered over to brush a hand over his tensed jaw. “I enjoyed every minute of it. But now I don’t have time to hang your paintings. I’ve got some errands to run before I head back home.”

He put a hand on her arm. He understood her well enough now to know that careless arrogance was one of her ways of covering anger. “I think we have something to talk about.”

“It’ll have to wait.” Reaching behind him, she flipped open the lock. “We’ve eaten up your lunch hour, and I imagine Sissy’ll be breezing back any minute.” She gave him a light, careless kiss before shaking her arm free.

“We have something to talk about,” he repeated.

“Fine. You get it all worked out in your head, and we’ll talk about it tonight.” Knowing she was goading him, she curved her lips in a cocky smile. “Thanks for the demonstration, MacKade. It was memorable.”

She wouldn’t have gotten two feet if Sissy hadn’t
rushed in below. “Hey, Savannah,” she called up cheerfully. “The way it’s coming down out there, you’re going to want to trade your car in for an ark.”

“Then I’d better get moving,” Savannah said, and walked down the stairs without looking back.

H
e bought flowers. Jared wasn’t sure whether he was apologizing or he’d simply gotten into the habit of picking them up once or twice a week because Savannah always looked so surprised and pleased when he walked in with a bouquet.

He didn’t like to think the clutch of late-spring blooms was an apology, because he didn’t think he’d been completely wrong. Technically, he hadn’t asked, he’d only intimated a question. And why the hell shouldn’t he ask?

He wanted to know more about her, the who and what and why of her past. Not just the pieces she let drop from time to time, but the whole picture.

Of course, his timing and delivery had been poor. He could admit that. He could even admit that it had nipped
at his temper that she’d seen through him so easily. But the bottom line was, he had a right to know. They were going to have a calm, reasonable talk about just that.

Perhaps because he was so primed, so ready, he found himself simmering when he drove up the lane and saw that her car was gone.

Where the hell was she? It was after six. He stood by his car, frowning, looking over the land. The rain had left the tumbling flowers on the bank vivid and wet. The azaleas she’d planted had lost most of their blossoms, but their leaves were a rich and glossy green.

He remembered the first day he’d seen her, digging in the earth, with pots of flowers surrounding her and the rocky, neglected bank waiting.

She’d done something here, he thought. Those roots she’d talked about were still shallow, but she’d dug them in. He needed to believe that she had made that commitment, and found comfort in the green of the grass she preferred to mow herself, in the mixed colors of the blooms she tended religiously, in the woods beyond that they both seemed to share on such a deep, personal level.

He saw Bryan’s bike standing beside the walkway, a bright orange Frisbee that had ended its flight in the middle of the sloping lawn, a wheelbarrow full of mulch parked beside the porch.

Details, he mused, little details that made a home.

And it hit him suddenly and forcefully that he wanted, needed, it to be his home. Not just a place where he left a few of his things so that it was convenient to spend the night. Home.

He didn’t want Savannah to be just the woman he
loved and made love with. He’d failed at marriage once, and had been sure, so sure, that he would never put himself in the position where he could fail at something so personal and public again. Hadn’t he told himself he would be content to drift along in this relationship?

But he’d been lying to himself almost from the beginning, because he hadn’t been content and didn’t want to drift. So he poked at her, prodded, subtly and not so subtly, for those answers to who she was, where she’d been. While part of him, the part that was pride and heart, was wounded every time she didn’t simply volunteer the answers.

He wanted her to confide in him, to share with him every part of her that had been, that was, that would be. He needed her to turn to him when she was troubled or sad, or when she was happy.

He wanted, Jared realized, drawing a slow, steady breath. He wanted her to marry him, have children with him, grow old with him.

He started up the walkway, pausing to lay a hand on Bryan’s bike. He wanted the boy. That, too, was fresh and revealing news. He didn’t want Bryan to be Savannah’s son, but their son. Helping Bryan with his homework, boning up on baseball, cheering from the bleachers at a game. Jared realized he’d gotten used to those things, looked forward to them. Looked forward to that quick grin, the shouted greeting.

But it wasn’t enough. It didn’t make them family.

Love would. He’d grown to love the boy in a very short time, without even realizing it. Marriage would. Not just the legal contract, Jared reflected. The promise.

He and Barbara had broken that promise, and had proceeded to negate the legal contract without flinching with another. All very clean, very tidy, very civilized.

Wasn’t that the core of it? There was nothing very civilized about the way he felt about Savannah or Bryan. He felt protective, proprietary, possessive. They were difficult emotions. Untidy emotions.

Wonderful.

Calmer now that he’d sorted through the problem, and its solution, he went into the house.

There were shoes where there shouldn’t be, books and glasses and toys scattered instead of in their proper place. A pair of earrings tossed on a table, a trail of mud that hadn’t been quite scraped off on the mat.

It was home.

But where the hell were they?

He’d grown accustomed to finding them there. Bryan in the yard, or poring over his baseball-card collection in his room. The radio should have been blaring, or the TV turned up too loud. She should have been in the kitchen, or in her little studio in the back, or taking one of her cat naps on the sofa.

He went into the kitchen, laid the flowers down on the table. No note. No hastily scrawled explanation tacked to the refrigerator. Frowning, he laid his briefcase beside the flowers. The least she could have done was leave him a note.

They’d agreed to talk, hadn’t they? He had reams to talk about, and she wasn’t even here. He looked in her studio. A half glass of watered-down lemonade stood on her worktable near a clever, sly sketch of a flying frog.

Under other circumstances, it would have made him smile.

His mood darkening by the minute, he headed upstairs. Dragging off his tie, he walked into her bedroom.
Her
bedroom, he thought, sizzling. By God, that was going to change. He tossed the tie on the bed, followed it with his suit jacket.

They were going to have a long, serious discussion, he and Savannah. And she was going to listen.

He grumbled to himself as he changed into jeans and hung his suit in the closet amid her clothes. His teeth were set. One of the first things they were going to do was add another closet. A man deserved his own damn closet.

In fact, they were going to add on another bedroom, one big enough for his things, as well as hers. And another bathroom, while they were at it, because they were going to have more children.

And an office. She wasn’t the only one who needed work space.

Then he was going to build Bryan a tree house. The kid should have a tree house.

They needed a garden shed for her tools, and the lane needed work. Well, he would see to those things. He’d see to them because… He was going insane, Jared admitted, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

He hadn’t even told her they were getting married, and he already he was adding on to the house.

What was he getting so worked up about? Why was he so angry with her, with himself? Panic, he wondered. Little licks of fear. Worry that when he mentioned
marriage, she would laugh and tell him that wasn’t the kind of thing that interested her.

Dragging his hands through his hair, he rose. She was going to have to get interested, he decided. And fast.

He might have calmed again, might have gone reasonably downstairs and started dinner for the three of them. He might have done that. It was in his mind when he noticed the box on her dresser.

He caught the glint of belt buckles. Big, showy buckles. Rodeo. He lifted one and studied the embossed horse and rider. Her father’s things. She’d received her father’s assets. And she hadn’t told him.

There wasn’t much. The prizes Jim Morningstar had won years before, bits and pieces of a man who had obviously traveled light and without too much sentiment. There was a larger box beside the dresser. Old, worn boots, a battered hat, a few articles of clothing that were still folded, as if she hadn’t touched them.

He saw the letter from his colleague in Oklahoma, the standard cover for the dispensation of effects, the itemized list, the offer to assist if there were any questions.

Jared shifted it aside. And found the photographs.

Most were crinkled, as if they’d been carelessly shoved in drawers, badly packed in a move. He saw Jim Morningstar for the first time. An impressive candid shot of a man, face hard and set, eyes narrowed as he sat a horse in a high, narrow stall.

The dark coloring, the high cheekbones Savannah had inherited. But there was little else in this tough, leathery face that had been passed to her, unless it was
the set of that chin, he mused. The set that warned that if life aimed a fist, this one would meet it straight on.

He found another, poorly framed, of the same man standing beside a young Savannah. Jared’s lips curved as he studied her. She was maybe thirteen, fourteen, he thought. Tall, her body, tucked into jeans and a plaid shirt, already curving, her hair raining out of a cowboy hat.

She looked straight at the camera, her lips hinting at that knowing woman’s smile she’d have in later life. She stood hip-shot, a certain arrogance in the stance. One of her hands rested lightly on her father’s shoulder. Jim Morningstar had his arms folded over his chest. He didn’t touch his daughter.

There was another of Savannah, a still younger Savannah, astride a horse. It was a classic pose, the buckskin-colored horse rearing up, the rider with her hat swept off her head and lifted high in one hand.

She looked, Jared thought, as if she would dare anything.

There were more of Morningstar with other men—grinning, leather-faced men in hats and boots and denim. Backgrounds of corrals, stables, horses. Always horses.

It played through his mind that they might clear space for a paddock, use the barn at the farm and get a horse or two. Savannah obviously loved them, and Bryan might—

Every thought leaked out of his head as he stared at the last photo.

Yes, she would have been about sixteen, though her body was fully a woman’s, clad in a snug T-shirt tucked into tight jeans. Yet the face had a softness, a slight fullness that announced that the girl hadn’t quite
finished becoming a woman yet. She was laughing. The camera had frozen her in that full-throated moment. He could almost hear it.

She was wrapped around a man. And the man was wrapped around her. Their arms were entwined, their faces were laughing at the camera. The man’s hat was pushed back on his head, revealing curls of shaggy blond hair. He was tanned, lean, tall. His eyes would have been blue, or perhaps green. It was hard to tell from the snapshot. But they were light, the corners crinkled with the smile.

The mouth that was cocked crookedly in that smile had been passed on to Bryan.

This was Bryan’s father.

Jared felt his anger begin to pulse. This was the man. A man, he repeated in his head, not a boy. The face was undeniably handsome, even striking, but it didn’t belong to a teenager. This man had seduced a sixteen-year-old girl, then abandoned her. And nothing had been done.

Morningstar had kept the photo. Because, Jared thought with a tight-lipped snarl, he’d known.

And nothing had been done.

Savannah watched him from the doorway. Her emotions had been on a roller coaster all day. This looked like one more dip.

She’d wanted to forget the edginess, the anger she’d felt when she left Jared’s office. She’d hoped to come home, find him here and share with him her small triumph in selling Howard Beels three paintings.

With a very good possibility of more.

She and Bryan had cackled about it all the way home.
Over Howard himself and the way he’d hemmed and hawed over what she considered a highly inflated asking price, and settled on an amount that had been considerably more than she’d anticipated.

She’d even stopped off and bought a bottle of champagne so that she and Jared could celebrate. So that she could celebrate with him the fact that her long-buried wish of painting for a living was working its way to the surface.

But she could see there would be no celebration now. Not with that look on Jared’s face as he studied what her father had left her. She didn’t know where his anger came from. But she had a feeling she was going to find out.

The hell with it, she thought, and pushed away from the door jamb. Let’s get it over with.

“Not much of an estate, huh?” She waited until his head came up, until his gaze shifted to hers. The fury in them almost buckled her knees. “I imagine most of your clients have a bit more to deal with.”

He knew how to take things one step at a time, to start at one point and work his way to the heart. “When did you get the shipment?”

“A week or two ago.” She shrugged, then walked over to the window to look down. “Bry’s down in the yard. We picked up the kittens. He’s in heaven.”

Jared MacKade also knew how to stay on a point. “A week or two. You didn’t mention it.”

“What was to mention? I took out the check and gave it to that broker you recommended. I didn’t feel like dealing with the rest, so I put it aside until this morning. I guess I’ll put the buckles away for Bryan. He might want them one day. The clothes’ll go to charity, I suppose.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why should I have?” She turned back, vaguely annoyed, vaguely curious. “It’s not a big deal. No long-lost lottery tickets or pouch of gold dust. Just some old clothes, older boots, and papers.”

“And photographs.”

“Yeah, a few. He wasn’t big on souvenirs. There’s one of him in the chute I like. It shows who he was, always gearing up for the next ride. I figured Bryan might like to have that, too.”

“And this one?” Jared held up the snapshot of Savannah and the cockily smiling cowboy.

She lifted a brow, shook her head. “I don’t know how I got into those jeans. Look, I’m going to throw some burgers on the grill.”

When Jared shifted into her path, she was genuinely surprised. She tilted her head, studied him. And waited. “Have you shown this to Bryan?”

“No.”

“Do you intend to?”

“No. I don’t think he cares what his mother looked like at sixteen.”

“He would care what his father looked like.”

She could almost feel her blood slow, go sluggish. “He doesn’t have a father.”

“Damn it, Savannah, are you going to tell me this isn’t Bryan’s father?”

“I’m going to tell you that isn’t Bryan’s father. A couple of rolls in the hay doesn’t make a man a father.”