Rawhide and Lace (23 page)

"Losing me," she repeated ironically. "As if you could. I adore you. I love all the nooks and crannies of this face." She touched his lean cheeks while his eyes closed and he shuddered and thanked God for the fact that love was blind. "I love all of you, with all of me. And there is no man on the face of this earth who is handsomer or sexier or more tender than you are. Oh, you sweet big dumb man, you," she said lovingly, drawing him down to her. "I'll love you until I die. Until you die. And forever afterward."

He crushed her up against him, burying his face in her throat, shuddering with the fulfillment of every dream he'd ever had. "Erin," he whispered.

The unashamed adoration in his tone made her tingle all over. She bit his ear gently and cupped his face in her hands, making him look at her.

"Ty," she said softly, searching his eyes, "I'm not taking the Pill."

"Aren't you?" he asked unsteadily. His hands found her macramé belt and loosened it. Then they eased the hem of the sweater up over the lacy little bra she was wearing.

"You could make me pregnant if we..." She hesitated, feeling oddly shy with him.

"What a hell of a turn-on," he whispered, biting tenderly at her lips. He lifted his head and looked right into her eyes. "Say it."

Her lips parted, trembling, because she knew what he wanted her to say. It was the right time, at last-for the healing balm for all the wounds they'd inflicted, for the ultimate expression of the love they felt for each other.

"Give me a baby, Ty," she whispered with aching tenderness. "This time, let's make it happen."

He searched her eyes for a long moment, then slowly bent his head. And it was a kind of tender loving that erased every other time, that healed all the wounds, opened all the doors. He held nothing back, and neither did she. And what they shared was so profound, so exquisitely sweet and fulfilling, that she cried for a long time when it was over-tears of pure ecstasy-lying in the arms of the man she loved most in all the world.

She looked up at his face, adoring it, pushing back his damp black hair with hands that trembled. "I love you," he whispered.

"If I hadn't known already," she replied, "I'd know now. We never loved like that. Not even that day in the stall when you made me cry."

"I wasn't sure of you then," he said gently. "I wanted to see if I could make you tell me what you felt. But I couldn't."

"You couldn't read my mind," she murmured. "Inside, I was screaming it."

"So was I." He bent to her mouth and smiled as he kissed it. "Come home, Erin," he breathed. "I'm lonely."

"I'm lonely, too." She nuzzled her face against his chest and smiled again. "But I never will be again, and neither will you. I'll never leave you."

He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. His mouth brushed down upon hers, and the fires began to burn again. She reached up her arms and closed her eyes and kissed him back.

Epilogue

Ed Johnson checked his briefcase one last time before he knocked on the door at Staghorn. Conchita let him in, grinning from ear to ear.

"You look like the cat left all alone with the canary bird," he said. "What's going on?"

"Senor, you will have to see it to believe it," she assured him. "Such changes in this house in the past year! I am constantly amazed. Come. I will show you."

She led him to the doorway of the den, and he stopped there, staring. Tyson Wade was lying on his back on the carpet with a fat, laughing baby sitting on his flat stomach, and Ty was laughing with it.

He turned his head sideways as Ed entered the room. "Good morning."

As he spoke, a second baby crawled up from his other side and pulled at his hair, cooing.

"You're baby-sitting the twins?" Ed asked.

"Erin's upstairs," Ty told him. "But I change a mean diaper. Got the papers?"

"Right here," the attorney said, patting-the briefcase. "You made a hell of an amazing recovery, you know. Last year about this time, you'd just escaped bankruptcy."

"I had a strong incentive." He grinned. "A pregnant wife can sure light a fire under a man. And twins put wood on it."

"How old are they now?" Ed asked, kneeling beside Ty to grasp a pudgy little hand and be cooed at.

"Just five months," Ty replied. "We sit and stare at them sometimes, trying to believe it."

Ed remembered the baby Erin had lost and smiled at the tiny miracles. "Twin blessings," he murmured.

"Thank God." Ty looked up at the older man and laughed. "If you'll hold up that contract, I'll try to sign it."

"No need," Erin said, smiling as she joined them. "I'll take the boys while you do the honors."

"There's just one thing," Ty told the attorney as Erin scooped up Jason and Matthew. "If Ward Jessup blows a gusher under just one of my cows..."

"He won't. And he promised to lease just what he needed. Amazing," he murmured, watching Ty scrawl his signature on the contract, "how the two of you finally sat down and ironed out your differences. That feud's been going on since you were barely out of your teens."

"Not so amazing," Ty said, glancing past his attorney at Erin, who was cuddling the babies on her lap and looking so beautiful that his breath caught. "No, not so amazing at all."

Ed followed his rapt gaze and smiled. Ty had changed, and so had his outlook. He wondered if Erin knew how great a difference she'd made in the taciturn rancher's life, just with her presence.

She looked up at that moment and met his curious gaze. And she grinned. Yes, he thought; she knew, all right.

He packed up the contracts and said his goodbyes. As he walked out the door, he looked back and saw Erin handing Ty one of the boys with a look of such love that he turned away, feeling as if he were trespassing. Outside, the air was sweet with the smells of summer. He drank in a deep breath of Texas air. Maybe there was something to that marriage business, he decided. He'd have to start looking around. Babies were pretty cute, and he wasn't getting any younger.

He got into his car. The windows were down, and just as he started the engine, he heard the sound of deep, vibrant laughter coming from the open windows of the house. Ed smiled to himself and drove down the winding driveway. Out by the fence, the prickly pear cacti were in full bloom. Sometimes, he thought, the ugliest plants put out the most beautiful flowers. He guessed there was a man back the road a piece who wouldn't argue with that statement one bit. And neither would the woman who'd put the bloom there.