The Texan's Dream (25 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

KARA WATCHED AS JONATHAN’S BODY SLAMMED into O’Toole, knocking both men to the ground. The sound of the shot shook her senses like liquid thunder rattling through her veins. Fear robbed her breath and panic chained all reason.

She waited for Jonathan to move, afraid to even hope that the bullet had missed him. He’d plowed into O’Toole, flattening the man in the snow-covered dirt. He’d risked his life for her without hesitation. And in the risking, he may have lost.

For a long moment, the men were both silent, both still. The wind’s low howl whirled around them, erasing the echoes from the gun.

Until now, Kara had never realized how much she loved Jonathan. Until she may have lost him. Her already grieving heart pounded out each beat as she stared at the men.

The Irishman remained on the ground, but slowly, Jonathan rose to his feet.

Kara closed her eyes, thanking the saints for watching over him.

With a deliberate jerk, Jonathan ripped the weapon from O’Toole’s fingers. The Irishman moaned and rolled to his side in the dirt.

Kara still tasted panic in her throat. “Are you hurt?” she whispered between sobs. “I thought when you charged the gun, he’d surely kill you, even with a damaged weapon.”

“I’m all right.” Jonathan hugged her close, proving he was sound. “I had no other choice, for I would have been mortally wounded if I lost you, Kara. He wasn’t taking you off Catlin land while I was still alive.”

She cupped the side of his face, guessing that he must have felt her leaving as dearly as she feared his loss.

“I’m all right,” he whispered against her hair.

She couldn’t stop the tears. “Lucky the gun was damaged.” She buried her face against the leather of his coat.

“A Catlin wouldn’t have a weapon that wasn’t true on the ranch,” H. B.’s low voice came from a whirlwind of snow several feet away.

Jonathan laughed. “I knew you were there, old man. Smelled you when I walked up. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I figured you could handle it He knelt to make sure the Irishman was still breathing. ”Knocked the wind out of the poor man.” H. B. lifted O’Toole’s body and tossed it in the buggy with no more effort than if it had been made of straw. ”No sense in a guardian angel working overtime. I’ve been following the buggy since it left headquarters. Didn’t plan on letting any harm come to Miss Kara.”

Jonathan bundled her in his arms. “You took your time helping out. Can you get the Irishman back to the barn? I’d like Kara to ride double with me, if she’s not too cold.”

“I’ll be warm enough,” she answered. She pulled a blanket from the buggy as Jonathan and H. B. uprighted it from the ditch.

“Have any idea where we are?” H. B. asked.

“A little. The way O’Toole kept turning, he never would have gotten off Catlin land.”

H. B. agreed, then added, “Up ahead a few hundred yards is the strangest sight. I saw it through the snow.”

“What?” Jonathan had had enough surprises for one day.

“A pine growing out of a boulder.” He said the words slowly as if they held a secret meaning.

“We might just have to check that out before we head back.” Jonathan swung onto his horse, and offered his hand to Kara.

“Stay warm,” H. B. warned as he tied his horse to the buggy and climbed in beside O’Toole. “If the Irishman wakes up on the way home, I may have to put him to sleep again.”

The old man looked like he was truly enjoying the thought.

Jonathan turned his horse toward the pine and held Kara close as she wrapped the blanket around them both. “We’ll be plenty warm,” he whispered against her hair. “For once, I plan to have a little time alone with you if you have no objections, Miss O’Riley.”

“None at all,” she whispered.

He held her tightly as they climbed the trail toward the lone pine at the top. Jonathan didn’t want to go back to the party, and H. B. had offered him the excuse he needed.

“Russell told Gideon once that he found the flowers he sent into headquarters at a place where a huge pine grows from a rock.” Jonathan told the story in Kara’s ear as he held her. “No one really believed it, but all the guards have been watching for the spot. No one dreamed it would be along this stretch of dry, rocky land.”

But, there it was, Jonathan thought, as they neared. A tall pine stood square atop a boulder as if its roots sank deeply into the stone.

When they were within twenty feet of the top, Jonathan found a sheltered place big enough to leave the horse. He slid from the saddle, then helped Kara to the ground. He secured his rope to one of the elm trees that circled the boulder. In summer, when the elms bear leaves, the pine would be impossible to see. But in the dead of winter, it stood forever green among the bare-branched skeletons.

Snow dusted the surface of the rock, but not so deep Jonathan couldn’t walk on it. He had no idea where the flowers grew, but he figured if he could make it to the top of the rock, he’d see them.

Kara followed. When they reached the pine and stood atop the outcropping, they could see nothing but a sheer cliff of stone in front of them and the way they came behind them.

Kara moved closer to the tree. “The flowers have to be here somewhere.” As she bent a low branch of the pine aside, she studied the tree’s base. “Look, it grows from a hole in the boulder.”

Jonathan turned in time to see her disappear, vanishing into the tree as if the branches had swallowed her up.

“Kara!” he yelled.

As he reached the spot where she’d been, his foot gave way to the incline of the rock. He slipped, falling down into the crevice where the tree was rooted.

Kara laughed as he landed next to her atop years of pine needles. They both looked up, five feet above, where they’d stood only a moment before. “I hope we can get out of here.” Kara laughed as she crawled deeper into the cave and out from beneath the branches.

Jonathan lifted the end of rope he’d managed to hold onto. “We can climb the tree, or the rope. Getting out is no problem, but still no flowers. At least part of the story was true.”

His eyes adjusted to the light. Glancing around, he realized the opening they’d fallen through widened into a cavelike crevice that appeared open on one side.

Kara followed the light to the opening, carefully testing each step as she moved across the cave. Jonathan was a step behind. Ten feet into the cave, one wall widened to the light.

The sight before them shocked them both into silence. The opening, like a ten-foot canvas, spread in front of them in brilliant color. Nature had painted a tiny valley hidden between two cliffs with bright, beautiful wild-flowers.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Kara whispered. “It’s magical. Flowers everywhere, and the snow has disappeared.”

Jonathan guessed there was little magic involved. The overhanging cliffs sheltered the valley and somehow reflected sunlight, making a natural greenhouse.

They walked out into the meadow. Flowers as high as his knee grew for a hundred feet around. Indian paintbrush, bright scarlet sage, bluebonnets and dozens of others that he didn’t know the names for.

“Oh, Jonathan, it’s beautiful.” Kara’s fingertips lightly brushed the petals. “It’s like a paradise hidden from the world. The loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Yes, it is,” he whispered without taking his eyes off of her.

They walked to the far edge of the clearing where the field stopped. Ten feet past the meadow, the air cooled once more to near freezing and the land dropped off suddenly, again becoming rocky.

Jonathan looked down at the wide box canyon below. A river ran through the only entrance of the canyon. To his amazement, he saw cattle. His cattle.

“How did those get in here? They’d have to swim the river upstream to reach this canyon.”

“How long do you think they’ve been here?” Kara asked as she moved back to the warmth of the natural green house.

“Since the storm a month ago when it snowed and everything froze up.” He studied the river. “Everything froze.”

Kara followed his thoughts. “You think they came up the river when the water froze?”

Jonathan nodded. “And when it thawed, they had no way out.”

“Then you were right. The flowers were the answer. Only they weren’t in a ravine, and the cattle never left your land.”

Jonathan smiled. “I can hardly wait to get back and tell the guard. No one will believe this until they see it. Except for a few times a year when the river freezes, the only way in or out of this canyon is through the small opening we dropped through at the pine.”

“But first, before we tell anyone,” Kara took his hand. “we stay awhile. This is the first time we’ve been alone, truly alone, for weeks.”

They strolled across the field. “There’s so much I have to say,” Jonathan admitted. “I’m not sure where to begin.” He took a deep breath. “It feels so good to be able to talk to you without others listening, and suddenly I can’t think of what to say.”

“I know,” she answered, removing her glasses and placing them in her pocket. “In my mind, I’ve had hours of conversation with you. Sometimes when I’m alone in the study I try to figure out the books by imagining myself explaining them to you.”

“And did we only talk ranch business during those times?”

Kara looked away. “Not always.”

He tugged at her hand. She stopped walking and faced him. Staring at him with eyes that had the depth of forever. “You don’t have to imagine now. I’m right here. Talk to me, Kara.

“Until I met you …” He brushed a strand of her hair away from her face. “I was traveling from place to place, all different views of hell. Nothing mattered to me. I felt like I died years ago, but my body was still walking around on earth.” Somehow he had to make her understand how he felt. He never wanted to worry about her leaving again without knowing.

She removed her jacket as he talked and laid it among the flowers.

“I know I rushed you when I kissed you,” he stammered as he watched her remove her belt. “And I want you to know I didn’t mean to frighten you the last time we were alone.” He tried to think of the proper order he needed to say everything. “I sometimes have trouble being what others think I should be. Part of me wants to run wild like I did when I was young.”

She slipped off her shoes and smiled up at him.

“There’s just something restless inside of me.” He tried to concentrate on what he was saying as she slid her skirt to the ground and stepped out of it. “I’ll try to keep myself in check and be the kind of gentleman you deserve.”

She added her stockings to the growing pile of clothes and faced him as she unbuttoned her blouse. He saw the rise of her breasts just beneath her undergarments.

He closed his eyes, trying to remember what else he needed to tell her. When he opened them again, she was unbuttoning the rest of her blouse. He could endure the torture no longer. “Kara, what are you doing?”

She smiled that little smile that drove him wild. “I’m waiting for you to finish talking so we can make love. I’ve dreamed of it for days, but before the sun goes down this day, I won’t have to dream. By tonight, I’ll be remembering.”

All he thought so important to say to her, all he’d planned to tell her, all he swore he’d tell her … vanished.

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, loving the feel of her next to him. With hundreds of wonderful fragrances around him, it was the smell of roses against her skin that drove him mad. He’d been holding back, afraid his need for her would frighten her and now she was running full speed into his arms.

Breaking the kiss, he knelt in the flowers, pulling her gently with him. When she leaned back, he leaned above her and let his fingers slide over the opening in her blouse. The warmth of her body radiated through the material of her camisole.

“Don’t you have anything to say to me?” he asked as he tugged the last few buttons free.

“Yes,” she whispered, “I want to lie beside you until dawn.”

He laughed as she repeated the words he’d whispered to her the night of the dance.

“Are you sure?”

“Jonathan, take off your clothes,” she answered with no doubt or hesitation in her voice.

For the first time in his life, he gladly followed orders.

If he lived to be a thousand, he’d see no more beautiful sight than Kara lying among the flowers. Her dark hair fanned out over the green leaves. Her eyes full of longing. Her arms pulling him closer.

He watched the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the thin layer of her camisole. His hands hesitantly lowered the straps from her shoulders. He couldn’t hurry for she took his mind and body hostage, intoxicating him completely.

Her beauty had slipped up on him slowly and now he wanted to treasure her a little at a time. He played with the ribbon between her breasts, brushing lightly over the material.

When he tugged the garment lower, she closed her eyes and smiled, enjoying the game as much as he did.

Slowly, an inch at a time he moved his fingers over her body, exploring, worshiping, savoring the feel of her. For a long while, he watched her sway gently to the movement of his hands along her flesh. Her face blushed with pleasure when his hands finally covered her breasts and molded them against his palms.

He bent over her and kissed her full and long, then moved away to caress her once more. Her body rocked gently with his touch and with a longing that grew with each breath. When his mouth returned to hers, she was hungry and ready. He tasted deep and long, then pulled her up to her knees so that their bodies brushed one another as the kiss continued.

Slowly, she grew bolder, touching him, letting her hands roam over his skin, laying claim to his flesh as completely as she’d claimed his heart.

When he finally moved over her, her entire body welcomed him. The feel of her moving beneath him sent a bolt of pleasure through him so great Jonathan wouldn’t have been surprised if it shattered his brain.

This was it, he sighed with the weariness of a lonely traveler. This was home.

Wrapping his arms around her, he rolled, pulling her atop him. When she braced her hands on his shoulders and rose above him, he would have stopped her from pulling so far away, but the sight before him drowned his senses. She was perfection.