Baby My Baby (A Ranching Family) (17 page)

Warm honey sluiced through her and made her forget that they were out in public. She couldn’t resist watching him, drinking in the sight of his chiseled profile as she fought the urge to caress his head the way he caressed her belly.

Then, as if to say hello to its father, the baby gave a solid kick.

“Hear it?” Danny demanded at about the same time.

“I do,” Ash assured him.

“Wa’s it said?”

“Something about letting him out of there so he can see the fireworks.”

“Well, let ‘im out, Aunt Beth,” Danny chastised.

“Sorry. I can’t do that. The baby has to stay awhile longer, I’m afraid. Next year it can see the fireworks.” Then she wiggled a little to let Ash know his time was up. “Now it’s saying it needs to go to sleep,” she added pointedly, because the longer Ash stayed like that, slowly, sensuously rubbing her, the more things he was awakening inside of her, things that she should absolutely not be feeling at that time and in that place.

He finally sat up, but his hand remained, still working its wonders.

“We better has ice cream now,” Danny said very solemnly, and as if there had been some segue into it.

Beth was grateful for the suggestion of anything that would save her from herself and from Ash’s arousing touch. “Ice cream?” she asked.

“I promised,” Ash explained, finally dragging his hand away, though clearly with reluctance.

Or was it something else that caused him to slide his hand so lazily across the whole mound of her middle before actually letting her go? Maybe he was
trying
to turn her on.

Ash stood then and turned to help her to her feet. But what she needed more than ice cream was time to gather her wits. “I think I’ll just wait here for you guys. Don’t be long—the fireworks should start soon.”

After finding out if she wanted something, Ash lifted Danny to his shoulders the same way Jackson had earlier in the day and headed across the park to the booth where ice cream was being sold.

Beth’s gaze followed Ash the whole way.

And as she watched him, a shiver danced up her spine at just the thought of how right it had felt to have him touch her.

At how much more she craved.

And at just the idea that there could ever be someone else taking her place...

* * *

The fireworks were spectacular. By the time they began, Ash and Danny had had their ice cream, and Jackson had rejoined them all. To make room on the blanket—or so he claimed—Ash pulled Beth very close beside him, casually keeping his arm stretched along the tree’s unearthed root behind her and urging her to lie back with him to more comfortably see the display.

She probably shouldn’t have, but she did. And as beautiful as the lights bursting in the air were, the longer it went on, the more her senses tuned in to Ash lying next to her instead of what she was supposed to be paying attention to.

The lean, hard length of him was pressed ever so slightly to her side. His arm pillowed her head. His hand did a slow massage of her shoulder and reminded her of the more subtle one he’d given her stomach earlier. His deep, rich voice washed over her every time he praised a particularly impressive explosion. His after-shave lingered faintly to drift to her like the scents of a far-off forest.

What she wanted, she realized with the rapid rise in her heartbeat and the feeling that all her nerve endings had risen to the surface of her skin to tingle to life, was for them to be the only two people there at the moment. She wanted to turn to him, wrap her arms around his neck, meld herself to that exquisitely masculine body of his and make love with him for hours and hours....

“That’s it,” Jackson said just then, interrupting her fantasy.

Beth hadn’t even seen the end of the fireworks; she hadn’t realized she’d been lost in her own thoughts and imaginings for so long. But the sky was quiet and smoky, and all around them blankets and picnic gear were being gathered, letting her know it really was over.

Then she heard Ash say to her brother, “Go ahead and get that boy home to bed. Beth and I can collect all this stuff and I’ll drive her back.”

Forcing herself to sit up, away from Ash and his effect on her, she glanced at Jackson, who was holding a very sleepy Danny on his lap.

“You don’t have to do that,” her brother answered Ash’s offer. “It’ll only take a minute to clean up, and then you won’t have to come all the way out to the ranch.”

But Ash wouldn’t have it any other way, and even though Beth knew it was dangerous to accept his offer when she was all churned up inside, she finally ended the debate by siding with him.

Jackson accepted her decision without any more protest, said good-night and carried Danny off. But he’d been right about it not taking any time at all to gather their things, shake out the blanket and join the weary exodus from the park, because he was barely out of sight by the time they had finished.

“We could have packed up in the time we argued about who I was going home with and saved you the trip,” Beth mused as they walked to the lodge to get Ash’s car.

“What makes you think I wanted to be saved the trip?” Ash asked in a husky voice for her ears only.

Not much more was said after that. Unlike the previous evening, they didn’t have the street to themselves, but even if they had, Beth would have been a little uneasy about pursuing an explanation of his intentions and discovering his train of thought was on the same treacherous track as hers.

As they reached the lodge, the crowd around them thinned. Beth wondered if Ash would again invite her into his cabin.

And if he did, if she’d go.

Because if she went, she knew that this time it wouldn’t be for just a half hour of conversation.

But her wondering was all for naught, because Ash went straight to his car, pulling his keys from his pocket this time instead of needing to go inside to get them.

“Are you tired?” he asked when he’d put the picnic things into the back seat and they were both in the car.

Tired? No, she wasn’t tired. Her wandering imagination during the fireworks had left her wide-awake. “It’s not really late,” she answered a little vaguely.

He tossed her a rakish smile and a sidelong glance that seemed to say more than words. “Are you in a hurry to get home?”

Something purely sensual skittered up her spine. “No,” she said in a voice three octaves higher than normal. She cleared her throat. “Did you have something in mind?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

He didn’t offer any more information, and once again she was afraid to ask for fear of appearing too eager. What if she was misreading his intentions based on her own thoughts and feelings during the fireworks? After all, his room would have been a better choice if he was thinking and feeling what she was.

Neither of them spoke as he drove out of town, and when he reached the road that led up to the ranch house, he went past it, going about half a mile farther out before he turned onto a dirt path that would take them to a small, secluded lake on Heller property.

“I’m surprised you remember this,” Beth said when she realized where he was headed. “I brought you here only once, the first time you came to meet Shag.”

“It’s one of my better memories of your old hometown.”

That surprised her. She’d have guessed just the opposite.

The lake was a mile across and two wide, surrounded by a soft, loamy beach and pine trees that grew all the way to the water in some spots. Their relationship had been new that single other time they were there. And Beth had been embarrassed by what had happened just before they’d come. She didn’t remember anything else about it, and she certainly couldn’t think why it would be memorable for him.

Ash stopped the car at the end of the road and turned off the engine. He removed his shoes and socks, leaving them on the floorboard, then grabbed the picnic blanket from the back seat and got out.

Beth expected him to do or say something that included her. But he didn’t come around to her side or so much as invite her to go with him, and she had the sense that she was being given a silent choice.

To leave the car and join him was to accept that tonight there would be no stopping short when passion flared between them, as surely it would. If she didn’t want it to happen, she knew she’d better not get out.

She watched Ash in the distance, spreading the blanket near the water’s edge. He sat in the center of it, his legs stretched in front of him, his upper body braced back on his hands. Then he tilted his face up to the star-filled sky as if greeting the moon.

And the moon answered by christening him in a silvery glow, reflecting off the sharp crests of his bones and leaving deep shadows in the hollows. He looked regally primitive, elemental, so in sync with nature’s beauty and grace that it was difficult to picture him ever sitting behind a desk or dressed in an expensive English suit.

And what he was waiting for, she knew, was for her to shed all of her own self-imposed restraints to let nature take the course it had been so strongly striving for since he’d shown up here.

But could she do that?

Letting go to enjoy his company in the middle of a whole town full of people was one thing. But this was very different. To do this she would have to ignore what was in their past. To forbid herself to think of the dark tunnel of their future. To allow him to see that she really did still care for him...

If she stayed in the car, she felt sure he’d just come back. That he wouldn’t say anything. That he wouldn’t act as if she’d rejected him.

But they’d both know she had. That she’d closed a door he’d opened for them again.

That he really wasn’t hers anymore...

A single click and the car door opened.

She kicked off her shoes and left them on the floor, just the way Ash had his, swinging her bare feet to the ground and getting out. She closed the door behind her carefully, as if not to disturb the night, and went to join him on the blanket.

Sitting down with her legs curled to the side, she studied his profile. He went on looking at the sky in stone-statue stillness, as if he were hardly aware of her. Though she knew that couldn’t be true, because why else would he be smiling that small, pleased smile?

“How can this place have a good memory for you when we came out here after Shag had blasted our getting married?” she asked, as if no time at all had lapsed in their conversation.

His handsome face turned to her then, that smile stretching a bit wider. “It was the only time you ever said you loved me. Not directly, of course, you never did that. But in the process of railing about your father and his poorly concealed prejudice, you said that no matter what he thought, you loved me and were going to marry me.”

“I said it other times,” she claimed, though without much conviction, because she knew she hadn’t been very forthcoming with those sentiments. It just wasn’t her way.

“No,” he corrected evenly, “you said ‘me, too’ when I said it. Or ‘same here.’ Or ‘thanks’—that was the worst,” he added, but with enough levity to take the sting out of it. “But you never looked me in the eye and said ‘I love you.’”

And apparently that had had an impact on him, on their whole marriage, since he’d believed the reason she wanted the divorce was because she not only didn’t say it, but didn’t feel it, either.

“I’m sorry,” she said, unsure how else to respond. But she could sense that it was inadequate. “I did, though,” she added in a barely audible voice, staring out at the lake over her shoulder because she was too uncomfortable to venture it while she was looking at him. “Is that why you’d been thinking about divorce yourself—because you thought I didn’t love you?”

“That, and because I was so damn frustrated with the fact that you never let me in—emotionally. When your father died and you wouldn’t come out of that bathroom, when you wouldn’t let me comfort you...I guess I just started to wonder what the hell we were doing together at all.”

His words hung there between them as Beth let them sink in, as surprised by this as he’d been by her reasons for wanting to end the marriage. Not only was it nearly impossible for her to let anyone see her weaknesses, but she’d believed she was doing him a service by sparing him the sight.

Then Ash interrupted her thoughts. “So, if you honestly did love me then, what about now?”

“Now everything is confused,” she said without having to think about it, because she was so lost in just that.

She could feel him watching her, waiting. She knew he wanted her to say more. That he wanted her to say she loved him, that she always had.

But she couldn’t, especially not now when they weren’t even married, when everything between them was so ambiguous, so uncertain.

After a moment, he seemed to let her off the hook. “I know for a fact that I want you,” he said with a note of hopefulness in his voice, as if maybe he could get her to admit that much.

But still the best she could do was, “I guess that’s what we’re doing out here, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is.”

Then stop all this talking, and—

He raised a palm to her cheek and brought her face back to him. He searched her eyes with his, captured them, held them, conveyed with the solemnity of that gaze that he meant business here, that she’d better be willing to go the distance this time.

But she didn’t need to think about it any more than she already had. She’d made that decision before she got out of the car. So she merely reached up and covered his hand with hers.

He waited another moment, as if wondering if she’d pull his hand away. But when she didn’t, he brought her toward him and pressed his mouth to hers in the sweet nectar of the kiss she was craving.

His lips parted over hers, urging hers open, too, so his tongue could unite them, and before she knew it, she was lying on the soft, blanket-covered earth with Ash beside her, his big body partly over her, lost in the hungry, yearning play that told her she hadn’t been the only one having fantasies this evening.

He crossed a heavy thigh over her lap and Beth let her hand rest on it, reveling in the feel of the power there as wanton images flitted through her mind.