Beverly Jenkins (29 page)

“Lord, I missed your cooking,” he said, picking up his fork and digging in. “My men don’t believe me when I tell them how you feed me. They also think I’m lying about how pretty you are.”

Cara responded to the compliment with a shy smile as she filled a plate and sat down. She wondered again how she and Chase measured up against other married couples. Did other husbands make love to their wives on the kitchen table after lengthy separations? Did other wives enjoy being made love to on the kitchen table? Cara certainly had. Just looking at Chase now made her want to repeat the interlude.

“Is there more?” he asked, holding out his plate.

She nodded, and he fetched himself another large helping.

When he was done, he pushed back his plate and sighed. “Now I can sleep for a week.”

He did look tired, she saw. Earlier she’d been too ecstatic at just seeing him to notice the weary eyes and the tired slump of his broad shoulders.

“After you take your bath you can sleep for as long as you like.”

“That would be wonderful.”

Cara stood and came over to where he sat. He looked up at her with his tired eyes and she reached out and stroked his clean-shaven face. “Welcome home, Chase.”

He took her hand and turned the palm to his lips. “It’s good to be home, Cara Lee.”

Upstairs, she was going to show him the bedroom, but he stopped her before she could enter. “Hold it,” he said. “By law, I have to carry you over the threshold.”

Cara snorted and rolled her eyes, “By whose law?”

“By the Jefferson rules of marriage. Law number five says: When entering shared quarters for the first time, the male is obligated to carry the female inside.”

“Law number five,” Cara repeated skeptically.

“Law number five.” He scooped her up. She locked her hands around his neck and smiled up into his teasing gaze.

“Law number five makes it easier to do this.” He bent down to kiss her passionately.

Cara immediately saw the advantages of law number five.

“How do you like the room?” she asked from her perch in his arms. He turned her this way and that as he took a look at all she’d accomplished. There were curtains at the windows, the newly sanded floor sparkled, and the walls had been painted a soft blue.

“You did all this by yourself?”

“No. Asa helped with some of it. I finished the floor alone, though.”

“You did a great job.”

“Why, thank you.”

He set her on her feet.

Cara looked up at him and asked the most pressing question in her mind. “How long can you stay?”

“Fourteen days, then to Fort Leavenworth. The army has some new guns they’re considering buying, and Colonel Grierson wants me to take a look at them.”

For Cara, two weeks of having him near seemed like a lifetime after all the time he’d been gone. She would take the two weeks and be content.

Later that morning after the fire had been stoked to warm the room and the water was hot in the tub around him, Chase lay with his head back and drank in the pleasures of coming home to a good woman. He’d ridden four days, the last two without sleep, to get to her, and it had been worth every long, cold mile. He couldn’t have asked for the companionship of a woman more passionate or more playful than his Cara. He’d bragged about her so much and so often to his men, they’d had to tell him to shut up about her. Chase made them envious, they said in explanation.

In Chase’s mind he had to be the most envied man in the country.

“Chase, are you asleep?” Cara asked him softly.

He opened his eyes, saw her beautiful face, and smiled, “No, darlin’, just relaxing.”

“Well, please don’t go to sleep. There’s no way I can pull you out if you do.”

“Then we need to fix that.”

Before Cara could blink, he’d lifted her and placed her atop him in the warm water.”

“Chase!”

“Now if I go to sleep, you can sleep right here
with me,” he said, nuzzling her neck. “How does that sound?”

“That sounds fine,” she replied, paying no attention to her now-soaked nightclothes and robe or the soggy feel of the woolen socks on her feet.

“Chase?”

“Hmm?”

“Will you do something for me?”

“Anything.”

“Will you wake me the next time you leave? I don’t like waking up and finding you gone.”

Chase saw the seriousness in her eyes. He replayed his departures from her in his mind. “I’ve done that, what, three times?”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry. When I left after the first time in May, you were asleep. I barely had time to get my men geared up to leave, thanks to you,” he accused with a smile.

Cara smiled shyly; that had been a particularly vivid encounter.

He continued. “In August, I wasn’t even supposed to be spending the night. I was supposed to be attending to army business, not you. And I had to leave you the way I did after the first of the year—had to.”

“Why?”

“I’d’ve spent the winter here if I hadn’t. Army calls that desertion, you know.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Yes, I am. Your cooking by itself is enough to make me go over the wall. Throw in this lovely little body and it isn’t so hard to imagine.”

Cara didn’t know what to think or what to say.

“But I had no idea I was hurting you, leaving that way. I’m sorry.”

Cara knew then and there that he was a very
special man. His allusions to how her presence affected him made her feel as if maybe she’d already won her quest for a place in his heart. He reached out and touched his finger to the crescent-shaped scar above her brow. She went very still. He traced its shape for a moment, his eyes serious.

“Are the memories bad when I touch this?”

Held by his power, she shook her head no. His touch, so potent, sent all thoughts of sadness and pain very very far away.

Chase’s vow to keep her safe flared as he moved closer to brush his mouth across the pale sliver. He wanted to transform the spot; kiss it, heal it until it became a reminder of his passion for her. When she looked at the scar in the mirror, he didn’t want her to think of Sutton, or horses, or how close she’d come to dying. He wanted her to be reminded of the feel of his lips upon it and how it had led to them making love the night or moment before. If he could have his wish, the sight of it would bring sensual memories, not sadness. “I should have killed him the first time he put his hands on you.”

Cara could sense the shadows rising between them. “Chase, none of what happened was your fault. Can we not talk about him?”

He assessed her a moment, then acquiesced with a slight nod. “What do you want to talk about?”

She relaxed again. “Did you get my letters?”

“I got two. Did you get mine?”

“No.”

He looked surprised. “Are you saying you didn’t get the bank drafts I sent?”

“The drafts I received fine. I never received any letters.”

“Cara, the letters were with the drafts.”

Confused, she tried to sort out the mystery. In her mind, she replayed how’d she’d opened the envelopes and removed the contents. There’d been the draft and—narrowing her eyes she punched him in the shoulder, “That was your letter? ‘Dear Cara, use the draft for whatever you need. Chase.’ You call that a letter? I’ve seen telegrams with more words. Chase Jefferson, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

But she was laughing and so was he. “I tried, Lord knows I did, but every time I tried to put words to what I wanted to say . . . Cara Lee, you have no idea how you make me feel. There are no words.”

He stroked her bottom lip, then tilted her face up for his kiss. As it moved over her, lighting fires as it deepened, she thought the kiss was worth more than a thousand letters.

He ran a wandering palm over the point of one breast through her dampened gown, and when the bud hardened shamelessly and he could see the unbridled passion flaring like ripples across her face, asked, “Did you miss me?”

Cara’s eyes slid closed as heat and fire took hold. “Terribly.”

“I missed you, too, schoolmarm,” he confessed, slowly reclaiming her lips. “Terribly.”

They ignored the cooling water in the tub and came together, hands exploring, soft sounds echoing, taking their time to enjoy the feast of passion. They’d each dreamed of moments such as these over the last two months, and for the next fourteen days they had all the time two lovers would ever need.

Plying her mouth with his kisses, filling his hands with her breasts, Chase began to undo the soggy buttons centering her gown. The fabric, too
drenched to enable him to conquer the buttons with ease, caused him to pull away from the honey of her lips.

“You’re overdressed.”

When he had the gown unfastened to her navel, the clinging cotton sticking to her lush lines, he toured a big hand inside over her damp skin, then pulled her closer until she knelt between his open knees.

With a slowness that only intensified Cara’s anticipation, he removed the gown from one shoulder and then, after a soft kiss on her parted lips, the other. He worked it down until it hung at her waist, leaving her bare to his brilliant gaze. “Stand for me, darlin’ . . . then hold up your gown.”

Cara did and trembled as his hands pulled her long drawers down her legs. She lifted one leg, bracing herself on his strong arm so he could free her of them and the socks. He tossed them onto the floor.

“Now just stand here a minute . . .”

Chase ran his hand over the soft damp hair crowning her thighs, and his manhood pulsed sharply as he watched her respond. She was naked but for the held-aside gown and he pleasured her lustily, tenderly, erotically, making her moan beneath his fingers, and then he brought her forward to the heated delving of his mouth and tongue.

“Now . . . you can come back down here.”

Cara did not trust her legs to obey his invitation. She was swollen with her desire for him, and his fingers hadn’t stopped. They were slyly stroking the burning center of her world, coaxing her to the very edge of her control. “I can’t sit if you won’t stop . . .”

“Me? What am I doing?”

He brought her forward and flicked his tongue over her navel, then backed away. “Are you going to sit, Cara Lee Jefferson?”

He’d taken his hands from her, but that did not stop her spiralling senses or lift the haze from her mind. The throbbing between her legs seemed to pulse from every cell of her body.

While he smiled at her like a pleased potentate, she went back down on her knees between the vee of his legs. “You are too talented for your own good, Chase Jefferson.”

“I know a schoolmarm who tells me that all the time . . .”

In the long silent moments that followed, they lost themselves in the pleasure of each other, kissing, stroking, seducing. Chase thought he would die when her hand lowered to settle warmly around his straining prize, and Cara thought the same as his hand below the waterline increased her throbbing need.

They paid scant attention to the sloshing water and even less to the now tepid temperature. Desire leaped another notch, caresses became wanton, intense.

Somewhere in the distance, Cara heard a voice and footsteps. Her mind dulled by the drug of passion took a few seconds to clear so she could speak. “Chase, someone’s in the house.”

“I know, darlin’,” he answered thickly. “Just hold still.”

The bold play of his hands beneath the water, the wicked flirting of his tongue and her own need to devour him in return, kept her out of focus. “What are you going to do?”

“Besides this?”

Cara bit her lip to keep her moans from spilling out into the hallway.

“I’ll take care of them . . . whoever it is . . .”

With one hand he fed himself the dark-nippled confection of her breast, while the other hand reached behind him to extricate his Colt from beneath his clothes folded on the chair by the tub.

He worked a trail of magic back up to her lips, claimed them possessively, and pointed the big gun toward the door.

When the door opened slowly, Cara, shielded behind Chase’s big body in the tub, tried to make herself smaller.

But her eyes widened as William Boyd, of all people, stepped inside. “William?”

He blinked. “Cara?”

She forgot herself and would have left the tub had Chase not pressed her back. “Where the hell are you going?” he asked.

Her state of undress immediately came to mind, and she slunk back down. “Sorry,” she whispered. But William? Here?

“Now let’s start over,” Chase said harshly. “You are?”

“Uh, Cara’s friend. William Boyd.”

Cara could see that the sight of her angry husband and the dangerous-looking long-nosed gun in his hand were making William more than a bit nervous. She sought to smooth the waters. “Chase, this is my friend William from New York. William, this is my husband, Chase Jefferson.”

William seemed to swallow nervously. “Pl-pleased to meet you.”

Chase offered no such pleasantries in return. “You always walk into a bedroom unannounced?”

“Chase!”

“Uh, no,” William said hastily. “You see, I just got into town and the man at the mercantile said Cara lived here, and, well—the door was unlocked.
I called from downstairs. No one answered . . .”

William looked as if he couldn’t decide which scared him most: the gaping bore of the firearm or the wintry scrutiny and large physique of the man pointing it his way.

“Back out of the door,” Chase instructed.

When William made the mistake of looking to Cara for verification, the loud click of the Colt’s hammer immediately sent his attention back to Chase, who warned quietly, “Keep your eyes off my wife and do as I asked.”

Cara could feel the tenseness in her husband’s back and prayed William wouldn’t argue. Dragging her gown tighter, she urged, “Wait downstairs, William, please?”

Cara and William greeted each other with hugs. “It’s so good to see you,” Cara told him.

“It’s good to see you, too, Cara Lee. Sorry about walking in on you and your husband like that.”

“I know it wasn’t intentional. Come on in here and sit.”

They sat at her kitchen table, sharing grins.

“It is real good seeing you, girl,” William spoke again. “Real good.”