San Antonio Rose (13 page)

Jeannie pulled her hand away and looped her arms around Rafe’s neck, tangling her fingers in the thick and silky waves of hair at his nape. His hands shifted to her back, his palms caressing her warm, bare skin as he drew her nearer. Moving of one accord then, they tipped their heads until their lips met again.

Their loving reunion came to an end when, simultaneously, they realized that their thundering heartbeats weren’t all that they heard. Bootsteps, slowing from a loping run down the hall to a screeching halt in the living room doorway, broke them apart. And belligerent blue eyes fairly shouted disapproval when the startled couple looked to find their son standing there staring at them.

“Dinner’s ready,” Tony announced abruptly.

Ten

Dinner was a disaster.

Jeannie couldn’t fault the food. To the contrary, Martha’s pot roast was fork-tender and her mashed potatoes butter-melting fluffy. Her hot rolls were the yeastiest yet, perfect for dipping in the savory beef gravy, and her coconut cake could have won any bake-off hands down.

No, it wasn’t the meal that made Jeannie’s tongue cleave to the roof of her mouth with every bite and her throat rebel against swallowing. It was the demeanor of her male companions. And it was the table conversation—or, more accurately—the
lack
of conversation among them.

Rafe had tried to get the ball rolling. He’d asked Tony all kinds of questions about
school, wanting to know which subjects he liked best, who his favorite teachers were, and what sports he played. But Tony, who could talk the leg off a chair if the spirit moved him, had turned into a monosyllabic wonder. And Rusty, not really loquacious to begin with, had literally eaten in silence.

Jeannie had planned on this week being a turning point. The end to bitterness as father and son finally made each other’s acquaintance and began to form a bond. A rebirth of the sweet life as Rafe and she took advantage of this second chance they’d been miraculously afforded.

What she hadn’t planned on was Tony’s animosity.

Granted he was still grieving for his grandfather. And he must have been terribly surprised to find his mother in such a compromising position with a man he hardly knew. But his rudeness went beyond sorrow or shock, almost bordering on resentment.

So now, with the cake plates sitting empty and Martha pouring coffee, Jeannie’s great expectations had shrunk to the size of the coconut crumbs littering the linen tablecloth.

As she lifted her cup to her lips, her eyes inadvertently met Rafe’s. He was sitting across the table from her, the very enactment of her fantasies in a casual white shirt that complemented both his coloring and his broad shoulders. Despite the sartorial elegance,
his tanned face was a picture of patience and pain. She loved him so much she ached with it. And it broke her heart to think that their son didn’t even like him.

Dropping her gaze, she set her cup back down on its matching saucer. The yellow primrose pattern on the china suddenly reminded her of something she’d meant to bring up earlier.

Jeannie glanced around her with a hopeful smile. “Does anyone happen to know where that yellow rose on my mother’s grave came from?”

Rafe shook his head. Tony shrugged and went back to balancing his fork between two fingers, obviously killing time until he could be excused from the table. Rusty spilled his coffee and immediately cursed the arthritis that made him so clumsy. Then he apologized for cursing.

Martha rushed to the ranch manager’s aid. After checking to be certain he hadn’t burned his hand, she pulled a paper towel from her apron pocket and used it to soak up the brown lake in his saucer.

“There was another rose?” she asked as she finished mopping up and refilled Rusty’s cup.

“Yesterday morning.” When she’d first seen it from her bedroom window, Jeannie hadn’t given it a second thought. Every Saturday for almost eighteen years she had awakened to find a single yellow rose lying at the base of
Laurrinda Crane’s tombstone. As the day wore on, though, she’d begun to wonder how it had gotten there. Big Tom was dead. So, unless his reach extended beyond the grave—

“Call the florist in Bolero,” Rafe suggested.

“I did, yesterday afternoon,” Jeannie told him. “I figured Big Tom might have had a standing order, and I thought I’d cancel any future orders and settle the bill.”

“What did he say?”

“He said Big Tom had never ordered any roses from him.”

Martha looked thoroughly baffled now. “That’s odd.”

Jeannie nodded. “Isn’t it, though?”

“What makes you think it was Grandpa who was putting the roses on Grandma’s grave?” Tony seemed intrigued enough by this mini-mystery to string more than two syllables together.

Good question, Jeannie thought. And one she really didn’t have a real good answer for. She lifted her bare shoulders in a helpless shrug and said, “Well, he was her husband.”

“Yeah, but maybe somebody else—”

“If you all will excuse me,” Rusty interrupted, scraping his chair back and standing up, “I’ve got a couple of hundred bawling calves that need a baby-sitter, so I’d better call it a night.”

“Can I sleep out with you?” Tony wasn’t as close to the foreman as he had been to his
grandfather, but he was always ready for an adventure.

“Not tonight.”

“Then when?”

Rusty smiled—a little sadly, Jeannie thought—as he reached over to ruffle Tony’s hair. “Maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, if you work real hard and if it’s all right with your mama.”

“Wednesday night would be best,” Jeannie said, remembering that Rafe would be spending the day in court and probably wouldn’t be back till late. Remembering, too, that he’d promised he’d be back with bells on … bells she intended to ring to her heart’s content.

“Fine,” Rusty agreed before bidding them all good night and heading for the front door.

“Well,” Tony said around a huge fake yawn that failed to hide his excitement over the prospect of camping out with the cowhands, “I guess I’ll go to bed now too.”

Martha reminded everyone that breakfast was at sunup, and not a minute sooner, before she gathered the empty plates and cups and carried them out to the kitchen.

“That little stinker,” Jeannie said through gritted teeth as the sound of Tony’s bedroom door banging shut echoed back down to the living room. “He didn’t even kiss me good night.”

Rafe reached across the table and took her hand. The light from the crystal chandelier
shone down on the raw black silk of his hair. “I’m afraid our son is angry at both of us.”

“Because of what he saw in the living room?” she asked, staring at the buttons on his shirt.

“That’s part of the problem.” His voice was as gravelly and emotion-packed as hers.

“What other reason could he possibly have?”

“I’m sitting in Big Tom’s place, and you put me here.”

She studied the hand that held hers—engulfed it, actually. Neatly trimmed nails tipped the long, lean fingers. Blue veins corded the burnt-sienna skin. Dark hairs swooped down from that strong wrist. “What are we going to do about it?”

The latter should take care of itself, since we’ll be eating most of our meals in camp.”

Jeannie was afraid she already knew the answer to her next question, but she asked it anyway. “And the former?”

Rafe’s thumb traveled the peaks and valleys of her knuckles, taking her stomach along for the ride. “I think we’d better cool it for a while.”

“How long is ‘a while’?”

“A couple of days.”

She sighed in disappointment. “And nights.”

“ ’Fraid so.”

“How do you feel about children going to visit their relatives over spring break?”

He laughed, a throaty sound that told her he shared her frustration. “I think travel broadens their horizons.”

“I’ll pack his clothes.” Jeannie was only joking, but the idea had merit.

Rafe dipped his finger into the hollow of the fist she’d made of her hand, causing her to squirm in her seat. “And I’ll drive him to your aunt’s in Houston.”

Their conversation had dropped to an intimate pitch as the sexual tension had mounted between them.

Her head came up and she forgot all about their refractory son as her world narrowed down to the man who had fathered him. She could see the longing in his deep-blue eyes, a longing that rippled through her entire body to the farthest extremity of her soul, and she wanted nothing more at that moment than to fulfill their mutual desires.

But he released her hand and with a rueful smile said, “Well, I guess if I’m going to get up with the cows, I’d better go to bed with the chickens.”

As he rose from the table and replaced his chair, she stared at him in disbelief. She had to swallow hard before saying hoarsely, “You’re leaving?”

“Walk me to the door?” he asked, cutting around the table to stand politely behind her.

With him all but pulling her chair out from
under her, what other recourse did she have? “Of course.”

Rather than stopping at the door, she walked him out to the porch. The sun was but a memory, having made its exit a little over an hour ago. A gold doubloon of a moon outshone the silver shower of stars. That perpetual Texas breeze blew a warm promise for the morrow.

It was a night for fond farewells, for lovers to be clinging regretfully and whispering romantically, seasoning the fecund air with spring fancies and sweet nothings.

Jeannie just knew that Rafe was going to kiss her before he left her, and she was really primed for it. She tipped her head back, the better to accommodate his firm mouth upon her pliant one, and moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue in feverish anticipation.

It came as a complete shock when, instead, he cuffed her lightly under the chin and said a soft “good night” before turning and bounding down the porch steps.

Crestfallen, she watched him disappear into the night, realizing suddenly that starting over again could be the pits.

The bedroom light came on, shining invitingly through an aluminum screen and a swirl of antique lace.

A woman wearing a slither of a white silk
nightgown, her golden hair spilling in siren’s waves to her bare shoulders, stepped to the window. She stood perfectly still for a moment, her gray eyes trying to pierce the darkness below, her head tilted as if listening for something … a signal perhaps.

A bullfrog concert came faintly from the creek bank. Whippoorwills piped their prairie lullabye for lowing calves and lonesome cowboys. Cicadas churred a song of their own.

But otherwise all was silent.

A man, drawn like some hapless summer insect by that rectangular patch of light, stood stock-still in the shadows cast by the spreading tree branches beneath the window. A rock, worn smooth by wind and rain, fire and frost, burned a hole in the palm of his hand. All he had to do was throw it and the woman would come running.

But he couldn’t bring himself to throw it. Couldn’t force himself to move away either. He could only remain as he was, completely bewitched by the beauty who owned his soul.

Her hair—the sun of his heart, the source of his heat—gleamed from repeated brushings and rippled like golden threads to her shoulders. The bodice of her nightgown, held up by straps as fine as mandolin strings, cupped her full breasts. Her nipples, the enticing hollow of her navel, her hips, the exciting vee
where her legs came together … all knew the kiss of white silk.

The man grew hard, his palm slippery, and that rock grew heavier with every passing minute.

The woman held her listening pose for a little while longer before she turned away from the window and turned off the light.

The man watched the window go dark before dropping that damn rock and moving deeper into the shadows.

Eleven

“Can I try?” Blue eyes dancing with excitement, Tony reached for the handle of the branding iron, which glowed a dull red in the campfire.

“
No!
” Rafe reacted instinctively, grabbing the boy’s wrist and yanking his hand back from the hot rod.

Jeannie, her heart galloping like a wild horse in her chest at the thought of how close he’d come to burning himself, said gently, “You forgot to put your gloves on, honey.”