The Widow and the Wildcatter: A Loveswept Classic Romance (16 page)

Arms linked, Joni and Chance started down the gentle green hill. They hadn’t found black gold. But thanks to his grandfather and hers, they’d found something far more precious than the oil they were originally seeking. They’d found love.

Two cans of sweetened condensed milk, two tablespoons of vanilla, one quart of whole milk, one pint of half-and-half, and one pint of whipping cream—

“What’re you doing?”

“Making ice cream.”

Chance lazed back against the kitchen counter and let his eyes have free rein with those long, freckled legs and that scantily clad bottom. He should have left a week ago, but he kept finding excuses to stay. “I thought you had to cook it first.”

“Not this recipe.” Joni stirred the rich mixture with a wooden spoon until it was thoroughly blended, then poured it into the four-quart freezer
can. That done, she set the whole kit and kaboodle in the refrigerator to chill before churning.

“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just go buy a gallon of ice cream at the grocery store?” He wondered what she was wearing under her pink flowered short shorts. The bikini panties that barely covered her titian curls or the French-cut teddy that sent his pulse into overdrive?

“Easier, yes.” She rinsed her hands at the sink and dried them on a towel, then got a metal hammer from the tool drawer and a glass measuring cup out of the cupboard. “Better, no.”

Bikini panties and no bra, he decided when she turned around to face him. Raising both hands, he lightly raked the backs of his fingers over her small, firm breasts. Her nipples hardened against the soft cloth of her fuzzy pink tank top, and he felt a corresponding stiffness in his jeans.

Joni almost lost her grasp on the utensils she was holding as lightning splintered along her nerve endings, striking deep at the molten core of her. Day or night, it never failed. All he had to do was touch her and her control went flying out the window.

“Here,” she said, breaking the charged atmosphere by handing him the hammer before she dropped it. “Make yourself useful as well as distracting.” Turning then, she led him toward the back door.

Chance kept his eyes on her trim bottom as he followed her from the kitchen to the enclosed back porch. Funny, how his taste in women had changed. He used to prefer candy-box curves. But recent
and frequent experience had convinced him that the meat was always sweetest close to the bone.

His blood came to a full boil when she raised the lid on the chest-style freezer that stood against the west wall and leaned down to get something out of it. “How long does that stuff in the refrigerator have to chill?”

She came up with a bulging cloth bag and an impish grin. “About as long as it’ll take you to chip fifteen pounds of ice.”

He pulled a grudge of a face. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

She wrinkled her nose in mock disapproval. “If you want to eat ice cream, you have to help make it. House rules.”

“I’ve worked up an appetite,” he grumbled good-naturedly, reaching for the heavy bag she held, “but not for ice cream.”

Joni laughed and measured out three cups of rock salt to mix with the ice he was crushing. This last week had been the happiest of her life—packed with more laughter and more loving than she’d ever dreamed possible. Just as sure as the world’s turning, though, their time together was drawing to an end.

“Speaking of which … Tex called while you were outside working on the tin lizzie.”

“What’d he want?” He halted in mid-action, his expressive green eyes locking with her anxious blue ones. They both knew that the old car was just an excuse—and a flimsy one at that—for him to hang around the house a little while longer.

Keeping her voice casual, she carried the rock
salt into the kitchen. “He said the core samples at the new site look great, and that he’s ready to raise the rig whenever you are.”

“I’ll call him when I’m finished with this.” Chance gave the ice a vicious
whack
with the hammer, crushing a good five pounds with one blow. He’d never been torn between a woman and his work before. But then, he’d never been in love before either.

She set the full cup on the counter and, alone, pressed her fingers to her lips as if that might help her control the urge to beg him not to leave her. When she felt properly composed, she drifted back to the doorway and began stockpiling another memory to sustain her in his absence.

Naked to the waist, he wielded the hammer with strength and surety. Afternoon sunshine poured through the jalousied windows and sweat sheened his copper skin, running down the muscles that rippled with each lithe movement of his chest and arms.

She never tired of looking at him—at the angle of his jaw, the line of his eyebrow, the crisp black thickness of his hair. More than anything, she wanted to be with him on a full-time basis—to sleep with him every night and to wake up with him every morning. For now, though, that was an impossible dream.

“All done,” he announced, setting the hammer aside and smiling at her from across the porch.

“I’ll make the ice cream while you make your phone call.” She turned away before she burst into tears.

Forty-five minutes later the ice cream had been packed for hardening and Joni sat on Chance’s lap, facing him and helping him lick the dasher clean. Her thighs were draped over his and she held a dinner plate between them to catch the melting drops they missed.

When the dasher was all licked up, they set it and the plate on the table. Then she looped her arms around his neck and he linked his hands at the small of her back.

“You’re smeared from ear to ear,” he murmured, touching his tongue to the corner of her sticky mouth.

“So’re you.” Laughing now, she returned the favor, the taste of him making her feel as woozy as those sips of wildcat whiskey she used to sneak as a teenager.

“Uh-oh.” His lips were cold, his breath warm, as he bathed her face like a mother cat washes her kitten. “I missed a couple of spots.”

“Those are freckles,” she protested softly, her body pulsing in places she wished he’d cool when he turned his attention to the sensitive, speckled column of her throat.

Neither one of them had mentioned his impending departure yet, partly because their tongues were already occupied and partly because talking about it would have spoiled the playful mood.

Eventually, though, she had to ask and he had to answer.

Joni ensnared his hair in her fingers and lifted his head. “When are you leaving?”

Chance slid his strong hands up her slender
thighs and under the legs of her shorts. “Sunday morning.”

So little time …

“Will you miss me?” She gave a start, then grew lax and soft when his adroit thumbs slipped inside her bikini panties.

He discovered to his great delight that she was already wet for him. “Would the heavens miss the stars?”

They kissed, sharing their vanilla essence with unselfish ardor. His mouth captured her moans while his tongue and thumbs circled gently. She dropped her hands to his broad shoulders, clung crazily as he took her through peaks and valleys and left her panting for more.

“How long will it take the ice cream to get hard?” he asked when they broke apart.

“A couple of hours,” she whispered breathlessly. “Why?”

He stood with her a-straddle his waist, her legs locked behind him, and carried her out of the kitchen. “ ’Cause it’s going to take me at least that long to get soft.”

“Tired?” he asked at the bottom of the stairs.

“Kind of,” she admitted at the top.

It had been a busy day, what with Chance helping Joni pick tomatoes and Joni helping Chance pack for tomorrow’s trip. After supper they’d cleaned up and gone out to the crossroads so he could make his good-byes. They’d danced once, a slow dance, and then come straight home to spend the rest of the night alone.

“
Too
tired?” Considerately, he put his heart’s desire on hold as he paused to open the door to the bedroom they now claimed as their own.

“Never.” Casting a look of invitation over her shoulder, she preceded him into the relatively austere room that was in such stark contrast to her old lace-and-wicker retreat.

Moonlight filtered in through simply curtained windows and reflected off polished wood and white plaster, magnifying the feeling of space and suspending all sense of the world beyond.

Furnishings, while minimal, were made of bird’s-eye maple and had a history all their own. The mirrored dresser had come from Scotland with Joni’s great-grandparents, the chest of drawers had been her grandfather’s wedding present to her grandmother, and the nightstands her father’s gift to her mother.

A delicately colored checkerboard quilt covered the antique brass bed that four generations of her family had been conceived in. Joni hoped to continue the tradition with Chance.

“Whew!” His smile now would have charmed the stripe off a skunk. Not to mention the clothes off a redhead. “You had me scared for a minute.”

“What’s the matter, tough guy?” After folding back the quilt, she left her blue jersey dress and half-slip, her bra and bikini panties in a heap on the floor. Then, wearing nothing but her freckles and a puckish grin, she spread her arms out to her sides and fell backward onto the bed. “Afraid you’ll have to go without a proper good-bye?”

By way of answer, he dropped his shirt and
jeans and shorts in a haphazard trail from the door to the bed and laid down on top of her. Wedging her knees apart with his, he settled his body between her receptive legs and kissed her long and hard.

“If that’s good-bye,” she said throatily when he raised his lips from hers, “I can hardly wait for hello.”

His hand stroked up the inside of her thigh and his dexterous fingers found her dewy with anticipation. “You know what they say about all good things coming to those who wait.”

They kissed again, taking time to savor every bit of each other before impatience claimed them for the first of many farewells that night.

“I love you, Joni,” he whispered as he sheathed himself in her satiny warmth, making her body a part of his and his a part of hers.

“I love you too, Chance,” she murmured as she palmed his firm buttocks and drew him in so deep, he could feel her heart beating.

The wind swished the curtain on the sill.

He sank his fingers into her red, red hair and spread it across his pillow. “I still get the shakes when I remember you running onto the drilling site the day of the blowout.”

She gently bit the meaty muscle of his bicep, thrilling to the taste and the texture of his living flesh. “I thought you were going to die and I wanted to die with you.”

“If you ever do anything like that again, I’ll …” He lowered his head and nipped her neck in loving punishment.

“You’ll what?” she challenged him softly.

Now he let his tongue make reparation.

She threaded her fingers through his thick hair and pulled on it until he raised his head. “You’ll what?”

“I’ll …” He made a grinding motion with his hips that robbed her of breath. “That’s what.”

She smiled and answered with a movement of her own. “Remind me to have my running shoes resoled.”

They kissed then, handing themselves heart and soul into the other’s keeping.

“I want to see us …” Chance levered up and hung his head to watch their bodies mingling.

Joni’s eager eyes followed.

Moonlight cast a mellow glow on the place where dark met fair, where male met female, illuminating the physical evidence of a spiritual bond that neither time nor distance could ever dissolve.

He reared his head back then, his eyes and his body boring into hers with all the passion and power a woman could want.

Joni had lived in Redemption her whole life, while Chance had been a roamer for as long as he could remember. Together now, they came home.

“Joni?”

“In here.”

Chance paused in the kitchen doorway, his mind entertaining several provocative ways to say good-bye, when she turned away from the counter and
he saw that she was wearing one of his old white dress shirts. The sleeves had been rolled back to her elbows, and the hem struck her mid-thigh, accenting those freckled legs that went on forever.

Joni curled her bare toes on the morning-cool linoleum but stood perfectly still otherwise as his electric-green eyes traveled from the shadowy triangle at the top of her thighs to the magnificent halo of hair that framed her pensive face.

“You’re not making this any easier,” he chided her quietly.

“Good,” she said fiercely.

He studied her, standing there in his shirt and her own stubbornness, and decided this was going to be his last trip for a while. A
long
while.

She looked at him, dressed to leave her in clean jeans and bleached white T-shirt, and wished he’d give her something tangible to hold on to until he came back.

“I’m finished packing the car,” he said, his eyes never wavering from her sweet-sad face.

“Did you find that people bag I made?” she asked, her mouth trembling mutinously.

He nodded. “I put it in the cooler.”

She glanced at the clock over the stove, trying not to dote on the hard-muscled sight of him filling her doorway. “I guess this is good-bye then, huh?”

“No.”

“No?” Her startled gaze returned to his face, and what she saw there made her runaway pulse throb at her throat.

He crossed the kitchen in two purposeful strides
and pulled her to him, nearly lifting her off the floor. She wore nothing beneath the shirt, having shed her inhibitions about her body in his arms, and the rough denim of his jeans rubbed enticingly against her legs. Then his mouth came down on hers, hot and hungry, and she melted into his kiss.

“
That’s
good-bye,” he whispered gruffly when he raised his head.

Her fingers wanted to linger in his dark hair, but she forced them down. “Good-bye, Chance.”

Taking her hands in his, he turned them over and pressed his lips to the center of one and then the other of her now healed palms. “Promise you’ll wear your work gloves while I’m gone.”

Nodding, she raised her eyes to his and extracted a promise of her own. “Swear you’ll wear your safety line when you go up on the platform.”