Wild Heat (Northern Fire) (22 page)

Where the hell did she come up with this stuff? “Pity is the last thing I feel for you.”

“But you do see me as a project. Something you need to
fix
,” she spat.

“Hell no. You’ve done a great job of fixing yourself.”

“Liar!”

“I’m not. Sure, at first I used that to justify giving in to the desire that’s ridden me for a good portion of my life, but, Kitty, you’re the one who got you better. Not me.”

“I’ve eaten better since we started having sex,” she said like an accusation.

“I
would
be lying if I said that didn’t make me happy, but it in no way diminishes what you’ve done to get yourself better.”

“My therapist thinks our relationship is unhealthy for me.” Kitty glowered at him triumphantly.

“You’re seeing a therapist?”

“Dr. Hart, from California. We Skype.”

“Damn, sweetheart, every time I think you can’t, you impress me even more.”

“You’re impressed I’m talking to my therapist again?”

“Hell yes.”

“You don’t think it means I’m still sick?”

“I think it means you are determined not to be sick any longer.”

“You’re right,” she grumbled, like she didn’t want to admit it. “I
don’t
want to let the eating disorder rule me ever again.”

“And you won’t.”

“That’s why we have to stop this thing between us.”

“You’re right.”

She stared at him like he’d stabbed her. “I am?”

“Yes. No more casual sex.”

“Right.” She stepped back. “No more sex.”

“Like hell.”

“What? You’re confusing me, Tack.”

Welcome to his world. “We’ll have plenty of sex, but we’re both going to stop lying and pretending it’s anything but serious.”

“Are you saying you love me?”

“Are you saying you don’t love me?” he tossed back at her.

She opened and closed her mouth several times, no words coming out.

“Right. Neither of us is ready for declarations, but we’re both ready to stop hiding.”

“No.”

“No?”

“If we can’t say it, we’re still hiding.” She sounded pretty sure of that.

He grinned. “Well, then I guess we’ll have to say it.”

“Don’t joke about it.” Her eyes went misty. “It’s too important.”

Yeah, it really was. “Who said I was joking?”

She spun around and grabbed a pair of jeans off the floor. They must have been the ones she’d been wearing earlier. Leaving them on the floor like that showed the emotional state she’d been in.

His wildcat was a neatnik.

She yanked the jeans on. “Let’s go eat dinner.”

“You going to leave my shirt on?”

She was swimming in it, the collar dipping to reveal one clavicle bone. The soft washed cotton didn’t hide the fact she wasn’t wearing a bra, but he sure as hell didn’t mind.

“Yes.” She glared up at him defiantly, daring him to argue with her.

“Okay, then.” He swept her up in his arms. “Let’s go have some of your gran’s award-winning cooking.”

“You’re carrying me again.”

“I like doing it. Besides, you aren’t wearing any shoes.”

“Aunt Alma’s going to have a fit. I’m not supposed to come to the table without shoes.”

“She’ll forgive you this one time, I’m sure.”

“Only if Aunt Elspeth told them about the call from Nevin.”

“What did he say?”

“He wanted me to know he still had power in my life,” she said with disdain, and then told him about the rest of the call.

“What a tool.”

“That’s what I thought.” She sighed. “I’m worried he might actually come up here to try his intimidation tactics in person.”

“I hope he does.”

“You can’t!”

“Oh, hell yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“I owe that man a beatdown that may or may not leave him walking without the aid of a cane.”

“No, Tack. That’s not the way to handle this.”

“Wildcat, you handle things your way and I’ll handle them mine.”

She smacked him on the chest with the side of her fist. “I mean it, Tack. No fighting.”

He wasn’t making any promises like that. “What did Miz Moya make for dinner? You know I’m missing Gran’s Cock-a-Leekie soup and
Aana’s
fry bread to go with it.”

“You could have eaten with your family.”

“No, Kitty, I couldn’t.”

She sighed and subsided against him, her head resting against his chest when he carried her into the dining room.

The guests looked up from the long table, different levels of shock or disapproval showing on their faces. The Grant sisters didn’t appear surprised in the least, though, or upset by Kitty’s state of haphazard dress, her lateness to the table, or that Tack was carrying her.

Miz Alma harrumphed. “Finally.”

“You have taken your own sweet time working things out between you.” Miss Elspeth giggled.

“Yes, dear. They
do
make a lovely couple,” Miz Moya said to her invisible companion, and then she beamed at Tack and Kitty.

There were two open seats together, complete with place settings, between her and her youngest sister-in-law, clearly left for him and Kitty.

He settled his wildcat next to her aunt Elspeth before taking the chair beside her gran. “Dinner smells delicious.”

“It’s Elspeth’s venison stew.”

“My favorite.”

“We know.”

“How did you know I’d be here for dinner?”

“I wasn’t just sitting there waiting for a call, Tack,” Miss Elspeth said with one of her gentle smiles. “I would have made one of my own if necessary.”

“You knew I’d come.”

“Of course we did, dear boy,” Miss Elspeth replied, including her sister and sister-in-law in the claim. “You didn’t really think we didn’t know about the nights you came and got our Kitty to take to visit at your house, did you?”

Well, hell. “I shouldn’t have. I can see that now.”

Miz Alma nodded as if he were finally showing some sense.

Tack smiled at Kitty. “Your family is every bit as meddlesome as my mom.”

“Don’t say that like it’s a bad thing,” Miz Moya admonished. “Your mother is an excellent matchmaker.”

U
nable to comprehend how she’d gotten here, with plans to spend the night with her gran’s approval no less, Caitlin stared into the empty fireplace of Tack’s great room. The pristine grate had no answers for the thoughts darting like fireflies around her brain.

“Did you want a fire?” Tack, darn him, lounged on the sectional as if he didn’t have a worry in the world.

Maybe he didn’t.

She shrugged.

“No.”

She turned to face him, her gaze skittering away from his after a brief encounter. “No, what?”

“No shrugs. No this-doesn’t-matter shit. Do you want a fire or not, Kitty?”

“Sheesh. Does it really matter?” He chose the strangest things to get upset about.

“Yes, Caitlin Elizabeth, everything about you matters to me. If you haven’t figured that out by now, you’re not paying attention.”

“Grant,” she whispered nonsensically, his words reverberating through her mind, shaking the very foundation of her certainties.

Only, when he used her full name, he always added the
Grant
.

“Not for long.”

“What?”

“You’re not going to be a Grant for much longer.” His tone was so very serious.

All the air whooshed out of her lungs and her knees just went to rubber. Caitlin plopped down on the raised hearth, rubbing the goose bumps on her arms, not sure if they were from chill or shock.

Maybe both.

“Well?” he asked.

She stared at him, every thought in her brain frozen by that claim. Was he asking her for an answer to his proposal? Was it a proposal?

“Do you want a fire?” he clarified.

Relieved the question was back to the mundane, she said, “You’ll be too warm.”

“I’ll strip down to my shorts. It won’t be a hardship.”

Not for her either. “Okay.”

He got up and came across the floor space to where she sat and dropped to his haunches in front of her. “We’re going to figure this out, Kitty.”

“It sounds like you think you already know what’s going to happen.”

“I know what I want to happen and I’m going to fight like hell to make sure it does.”

It was fair warning, but unnecessary. “I’m not stupid enough to give up everything I could ever want a second time.”

“You’re not stupid at all.”

“I was.” She swallowed, trying to hold back the emotion that threatened to spill over.

He cupped her nape and leaned forward so their foreheads touched. “We both have to let the past go, sweetheart.”

She nodded against him, her heart so full she couldn’t speak.

He squeezed her neck and then leaned back. “Let me get this fire started, Kitty. Then we’ll talk.”

Words trembled on her lips, but he put his finger against her mouth, like he knew. She nodded in silent agreement to wait.

He lifted the lid on the wood-box built into the stone base of the raised hearth and pulled out everything he needed to get a cheery blaze going. When he was finished, the heat warming her faster than she expected, he stood and stripped his shirt and jeans like he’d said he would.

His body naked but for the dark knit boxers inspired lust, but the love pouring through her was about a million times stronger.

He put his hand out to her. “Come on, we’ll sit on the couch, okay?”

She let him lead her to the sectional, where they ended up cuddled and facing the fire, her own jeans gone along the way. His shirt and her panties her only clothing. And somehow that was just right.

Like this was where she belonged every night before joining him in the big bed upstairs.

“I didn’t want to love you,” she admitted.

He went stiff beside her. So, not so relaxed, then. “Then or now?”

“Both, but for different reasons.” She laced her fingers into his, needing the additional contact.

He rubbed his thumb over the top of her hand. “You loved me anyway.”

She stared up at him. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t, but I guessed. Once I realized why you really left Cailkirn, a lot of things started making sense. They still hurt like hell, but I understood better.”

She didn’t tell him she hadn’t meant to hurt him. He knew and it didn’t matter, because she had. She’d hurt them both so much. “Everything was muddled in my head.”

“You wanted to live out your parents’ dreams for them.”

He understood her like no one else ever had, or ever could. “They were gone. Somebody had to.”

“No, Kitty. They already did it. They moved to Arizona. They built a life. They had you. They got their dreams. It’s time you got yours.”

“That’s what Dr. Hart says.”

“She’s a smart lady.”

“Mmm.” Kitty nuzzled into Tack’s chest. “You scared me. If I didn’t let myself love you, you couldn’t be taken away.”

“But then you pushed me away yourself.”

“Like I said, stupid.”

“Confused. Hell, Kitty. If only I’d known. If any of us had realized how much you were still hurting, how you made Cailkirn the reason for your pain and not the loss.”

“So, I just kept losing because everything…
everyone
I needed was here.”

“We still are.”

Tears were leaking from her eyes and she let them. “You’re the only person I’ve ever felt safe enough with to cry.”

“You’re the only woman whose tears don’t make me want to run for the hills.” He sounded aggrieved by that fact.

She giggled and wiped at her eyes. “Today scared me.”

“We almost screwed it up again.”

“I’m glad we didn’t.”

“Me too, sweetheart.” He kissed the top of her head. “Me too.”

“I didn’t think I could do love and marriage.”

“I was determined not to consider either with you.”

“We were both wrong.” She tilted her head back so their gazes met again, his filled with emotion that she realized had always been there. “Right?”

“Yes. I love you, Caitlin Elizabeth.”

His words stole her breath, the very ones her heart needed more than anything. “Even after everything?”

“Especially after everything. More now than before. The love I had for you back then was the emotion of a young boy. I wanted the perfect Kitty Grant you showed to the rest of the world.”

“And now?”

“Now I want the woman who doesn’t always make sense, who gets mad when I don’t expect, and who apologizes for things that aren’t her fault so my mom won’t feel bad, who has messy emotions and turns me inside out with her sensuality.”

A band that had constricted her heart for nearly a decade loosened and fresh emotion flowed through, filling her with joy like she’d never known. “You mean that?”

“Every word.”

She climbed over his lap, straddling him so they were face-to-face and then cupped his cheeks with both her hands. “I love you, Taqukaq, with every tiny bit of my heart and I always have. I’ll never deny it to myself or to you again. I promise.”

“Thank God.” And it was a prayer.

The kiss they shared was profound and flavored with tears and commitment. The lovemaking that came after was intense and deeply emotional.

When he was buried deep inside her, their gazes locked, words of love fell from his lips to hers, and she returned them, affirming feelings that had been denied for too many years over and over again until they both came with shouts of love.

Tack carried a tray with breakfast into his bedroom, the sight of Kitty in his bed glowing in the morning light so amazing, he had to concentrate to keep breathing.

She rolled onto her back, her eyes opening, their blue so bright they looked like a reflection of the summer sky.

The most beautiful smile he had ever seen took over her features. “Good morning, Tack.”

“Morning, sweetheart.” He set the tray on the table beside the bed, picked up the ring sitting between their coffee cups, and climbed in beside her.

He loved the way she rolled right into his body and rubbed against him with the affection of the kitten she’d been nicknamed. “This is so wonderful. I wanted it so bad.”

“Me too, even if I wouldn’t let myself think about it.”

She grinned up at him. “I’m not the only one who was a little too good at denying my feelings.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“We have to talk about them sometimes. You do realize that, right?”

“Yes. But only with you.”

“Our children may want to come to you sometimes for emotional advice or support.”

“Our children?” he asked, wondering if she realized what she was offering.

“I’ll have to gain a few more pounds, but the doctors said there should be no problem with conception or carrying to term. At least no more trouble than any other woman might have.”

Relief flooded through him. “I didn’t know.”

The information he’d read on eating disorders and pregnancy was varied, not that he’d admitted a personal interest in the issue himself at the time.

Kitty grinned, offering her heart and her future right there for him to share, to shelter and to protect, even if she didn’t realize it. “How many do you want?”

“Before I answer that question, I have one for you.” He shouldn’t be nervous. Not after last night, but he was.

“Yes?” she asked, her expression so guileless, he got the feeling she really didn’t know what he was about to ask.

Of course, they’d been talking like it was a done deal since last night. And it was mostly his doing, but they were doing this right. From start to finish.

He rolled onto his side so they were looking right into each other’s eyes. “My gran always told me she believed every soul has its mate, but not everyone is blessed enough to meet theirs.”

“She and your granddad fit like two parts of one whole,” Kitty agreed.

“So do we.”

Kitty’s eyes misted and he didn’t think he’d ever get used to her showing this vulnerability to him. “We do. We always have.”

“Since we were six years old.”

“The first time I thought of being your wife, I think I was eight and someone had just gotten married in town. You were the only person I could imagine sharing my room with.” She laughed. “My concept of sharing was very different back then.”

“You never said.”

She nodded. “If you’ll remember, talking about the future wasn’t something I did a lot of, not as a child, not as a teenager, not as a young woman.”

He’d noticed back then, but he’d just chalked that up to being Kitty. Now he understood that she hadn’t trusted the future enough to talk about it.

“We’re going to be doing a lot of planning for the future.”

“Yes, we are.”

“Starting with this.” He lifted the diamond ring he’d bought ten years ago and never shown another soul. Until this moment. “Will you marry me, Caitlin Elizabeth?”

She gasped, her eyes rounded and watered, and then she was hugging him so hard he could barely breathe. “Of course I will. You’re the other half of my soul, Taqukaq. Always and forever.”

“I love you, Kitty.”

“I love you too. So much,” she choked out with a happy laugh as he put the engagement ring on her finger.

They kissed until making love became an inevitability.

Still breathing harshly, he rubbed his hand up and down her back. “Four.”

“On a scale of what? Because I’d give it a twelve and a half at least.”

He laughed, thrilled he would be sharing his life with a woman who was going to fill his days with emotion and humor and incendiary love. “Four children.”

“Are you kidding?” she asked with wide eyes, her voice going into that high register that warned him his emotional wildcat was a second from showing herself.

“Not even a little. Da and
Aana
raised three all right.”

“But four? We don’t live with your parents like they lived with your grandparents.”

“Technically you don’t live here yet at all.”

“And I won’t officially move in until after the wedding. Gran would have a fit.” Kitty snuggled closer as if that would take away the sting of her words.

He didn’t want to upset her gran, but he wasn’t waiting any longer for Kitty to move into the house he’d built for her. “If we fax the application to Anchorage today, we can pick up the marriage license on Monday.”

“You have tours on Monday,” she said without a word for how fast he wanted to move.

“I’ll get someone to cover for me.” He had a network of friends in the guide community, and as much as he hated putting his business in someone else’s hands, this was worth it.

“I take it you don’t want a big wedding?” she asked in a tone that said she didn’t mind that one bit.

“If you mean big production?” He shuddered in revulsion. “No. If you mean a lot of guests, I figure we can say our vows on the back porch of the Homestead. The clearing will hold a good five hundred easy.”

She gasped, her face paling. “Five hundred?”

“Sure. We don’t have to invite the whole town.”

“Just most of it.”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

She jerked away from him and sat up. “Now, you listen here, Taqukaq MacKinnon. One, we are not having four children until I’m sure I can do a good job parenting the first two. Then we’ll talk. Second, we are not inviting
five hundred
people to a last-minute wedding!”

“Deal on the kids.” His wildcat would be an amazing mom, but if she wanted to stop at two, hell if she wanted to stop at one, he wasn’t going to be a bastard about it.

That wasn’t Tack’s way, but he was pretty sure they’d end up with four like he wanted. Kitty Grant-almost-MacKinnon had a helluva lot of love to give.

“And the wedding?” she asked suspiciously.

“We’ll ask your aunts and my mom and grandmothers.”

“That’s as good as guaranteeing a thousand guests show up, not just five hundred.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“We won’t be able to get married until the end of the season.” She didn’t sound very happy about that.

Good. Because he wasn’t waiting for her to move in for another five months. “No. If it means waiting, we’ll elope to Anchorage and come home with the deed done. Our families can throw a reception after the season is over.”

“Gran and my aunts would be hurt. So would your family. Every one of the MacKinnons expects to watch you say your vows.”