Sleepless in Montana (32 page)

Her eyes had that steely glint that meant
Jemma was determined to have her way. “I never miss a call that
will get me a profit like this one, Hogan. Let go.”

“Never?” Hogan studied her, this woman that
could evoke tenderness and romantic fantasies within him, a woman
who fascinated and delighted him, and decided he could settle for
passion. The sensual challenge was too much to resist.

He eased Jemma to straddle him, fitting her
heat to his arousal and watched her eyes darken. He took her mouth,
kissing her with all the emotion in him, hiding nothing, and while
Jemma met him hungrily, he eased into her.

In their time on the mountain and last night,
Jemma was a traditional lover, learning quickly to meet his rhythm,
but this new position— her dominance shocked her. He wondered how
she would react and couldn’t help smiling at her stunned
expression. “Hogan—I’m not certain—oh! Oh! Hogan!”

“What were you saying about business?” he
asked before the firestorm hit him. He guided her hips into the
rhythm, pulled her knees up tight to his thighs, and spun out of
control.

When she slumped upon him, her heart racing
with his, Hogan couldn’t resist teasing her. “Time to go, Jemma.
All that money is just waiting for you.”

“I can’t move. I’m still seeing red
stars..... Hogan, a designer who can produce good garments is hard
to find. No one does modesty panels like Cecilia.”

“What’s a modesty panel?” He sucked in his
breath as Jemma’s body quivered, the remnants of her climax
fading.

She went into herself, taking in the last
pleasure, and relaxed. “You walk around naked. Modesty isn’t
something you’d know about... A modesty panel is a strip of cloth
beneath the buttons. When a woman’s blouse gaps, that extra cloth
panel hides her bra....You rat. I’m not going to comment on your
sizable, nonstop, more than adequate, athletic equipment. You’re
too full of yourself already.”

He heard himself laugh, and wondered when a
woman had ever spoken to him, moved him like Jemma could. He
smoothed her trembling body, still filled with his, and flicked her
earlobe with his tongue. He smiled as she groaned and shivered
against him; a man had his pride after all. “Do I understand that
you would rather be here with me, than punching cash register
buttons and stuffing your bank account?”

“You’re teasing me. I don’t know if I like
it.”

“What are you going to do about it?” he
asked, challenged by her and filled with anticipation.

When Jemma looked at him, her expression was
tender, her hand smoothing his jaw. And later he would think how
that quiet, intent look—that contented and well pleasured look
could be more dangerous than her sultry one....

All in all, it was a good way to start the
day, Hogan thought later as he sat with his bare feet propped up on
the wooden rail of his sprawling porch.

In the distance, the Crazy Mountains surged
into the blue sky, wrapping peace around Hogan. He sipped orange
juice, inhaled the fresh midmoming air, and examined the glow
within him. Harmony in his emotions was a surprise and Hogan picked
through the elements and they all led to Jemma— She’d changed him,
eased him.

Taking care of a woman’s sexual needs was one
thing. Hogan had always been very careful in that respect. But his
lingering enjoyment of Jemma and the unfamiliar need to provide for
her was new and tenuous. Hogan smoothed the rough earth-tone
texture of the pottery mug he’d created while high on designing the
Kodiak Design trademark.

Jemma.
He enjoyed watching Jemma rush
out the door, flustered and still warm from making love with him.
The gentle sway and bob of her breasts said she’d forgotten that
lacy bra that was crushed somewhere at the foot of his rumpled bed.
He’d never felt the need to keep a woman in his bed all night, to
make breakfast while she was taking a shower.

He’d never stood by the door for a woman as
he had Jemma. As she’d rushed out, he handed her a mug of
peppermint tea and bacon wrapped in whole-wheat toast. Not a fan of
beef or pork, Jemma had looked at the food gratefully, grabbed it
and stopped. She’d looked at him, and Hogan’s breath caught as a
blush moved up her cheeks.

“I’ve got to go to Ben’s.... My file on this
deal is there.” She’d stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Thanks
for the breakfast. You’re not so bad,” she whispered, leaving him
with the scent of her freshly bathed body and that soft, sweet kiss
upon his scarred cheek.

Hogan sipped his coffee, then traced the scar
with his fingertip as he viewed the Bar K. Ben was down in the
pasture, replacing a salt block. The bright day settled over the
lush fields and the grazing cattle, a peaceful day.

Peace.
Hogan wondered at the peace he
found with Jemma, at the peace that eluded him.

Hogan didn’t know what he would find with
Jemma, but he did want the answers Ben could give him. Everyone
else had gone into town, and there wouldn’t be interruptions, nor
interference in his need for the truth.
Dinah had said Ben was
ready now—

A half hour later, Hogan swung down from Moon
Shadow and walked to where Ben stood next to his battered pickup.
He watched Hogan walk toward him, and then turned to continue
studying his cattle, calves frisking in the field. Hogan joined him
and shared the view. Father and son knew how to share silence, but
not their lives.

“Coffee?” Hogan asked, noting a hawk’s
soaring flight across the sky, its swift dive to take a field
mouse.

The thing about waking up with a passionate
woman who fascinated him, Hogan thought darkly, was that it left a
man in an unsteady, emotional mood—too drained and body-pleasured
to think straight. One wrong word between Ben and him would ignite
old wounds.

For the moment, however, both were enjoying
the meadowlark’s trill and the sense of peace and harmony rarely
experienced by either man.

Ben nodded, and Hogan handed him a thermos
that hung from his saddlebag. Ben reached into the seat of his
pickup and handed Hogan another thermos. “Trade you.”

“Carrot juice?”

“I’m going to turn orange,” Ben grumbled,
opening the thermos to pour the juice onto the ground. “I’m hoping
Jemma will run out of the store-bought carrots. She must have
planted an acre of them in the garden. I’ve been thinking about
hiring Winnie Manfred’s rabbits one night and clearing out the
whole mess.” He poured coffee into the thermos cup with a long,
satisfied sigh.

“Think of the carrots that died for Jemma,”
Hogan found himself saying and wondered where the closest
natural-foods market was. If he wanted Jemma in his home, he’d
better learn how to feed her. He had the contented sense of
settling into a relationship that he intended to enjoy—and work at,
if need be. With Jemma, he enjoyed giving, and he enjoyed taking.
Did he know how to care for her? How to say the right things? To
be there when she needed him?

“You’ll take care of the girl. You’re worried
about that now, because you think your heart is a cold lump, no
more than an empty hole. But you’ll warm to the idea... maybe you
already have.” Staring at the rugged Crazy Mountains, Ben spoke as
if he were remembering his own emotions when first seeing Dinah.
“Jemma said I should tell you about your mother. She said I’d been
cruel not to. She’s a pushy thing, sweet and sassy one minute, and
the next coming on like a bulldozer, ramming it down my throat that
maybe you and I still have a chance.”

“I didn’t send her after you, Ben. You do
what you want.” Hogan didn’t want Jemma battling for him, entering
his dark corners. The wall had been between Ben and him for years;
he didn’t expect it would come down easily.

“I want my grandkids swinging in the front
yard and my wife— I want my wife wearing my wedding ring and this
time, by God, I’ll make her a husband, if she’ll have me. Or what’s
left of me.”

The statement came so harsh and deeply
emotional that Hogan studied Ben. Ben’s face was hard, but his hand
trembled as he rubbed his cheek. “Jemma got me one of those new
battery- operated shavers, so I wouldn’t look so woolly during the
day, if Dinah came to see me. She does that sometimes, brings me
lunch. She’s a giving, sweet woman, always was.”

Ben inhaled and glanced at his son. “But you
want to know about your real mother and here’s the short and sweet:
You’re all mine. I was just seventeen when I met her in that camas
field up in the mountains. She was a pretty little maiden,
part-Kootenai, part-white, and real pretty.... Real pretty,” Ben
repeated, as though going back through the years. “She felt things
in her, like you do, earth and wind and trees moving in her. She
liked to touch and take things into her that way, studying them,
making them a part of her. She could draw, too.”

Hogan swallowed and remembered the field
where Ben had taken him to play as a child. His mother was
Kootenai.... A sense of wonder and belonging began to curl around
him. “By Willow Creek?”

“That was her name—Willow. I couldn’t say the
other Indian name. She was a half-blood, raised by her mother. Old
Susan hated men, especially white men, and there I was, a
blue-eyed, blond white man courting her daughter. Your grandfather
Aaron would have had them run out of town, if he’d known. In those
days, he had the power to do most anything. Then out of the blue,
Willow sent me a note by carrier pigeon—she was really good with
birds and animals, just like you, and could she ride a
pony....”

Ben looked toward the foothills, his voice
soft and uneven as he threaded through the past. “Well, by the time
I met her in the rough cabin we’d made up in the mountains by that
clearing at Willow Creek— to be together— she was already in
childbirth, needing help, and something was wrong.”

Ben’s voice caught, and then he was silent
for a time, taking another sip of coffee. “I didn’t even know you
were coming— I guess she feared for me, too. Old Aaron had already
taken a belt to me for—well, for a lot of things. Her mother had
secretly given her herbs to miscarry, because she didn’t want
another white child in the family, and because Willow wouldn’t harm
you on her own. Willow used her last strength to protect you. She
knew her mother would most likely give you away at birth. She got
Joe Blue Sky to help her to that cabin.”

Hogan couldn’t move, his heart pounding so
hard in his chest that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. A
chasm of pain opened and swallowed him. He looked at Ben, hated
him, for keeping his mother away from him. “But you didn’t marry
her. You couldn’t lower yourself, could you? A rich rancher’s son
and a—”

Ben swallowed roughly. “I would have had a
minister marry us, but Willow said a ceremony between us was what
she wanted. That’s what we did, under a new moon. She knew old
Aaron would cut at me— and he did later, when he found out, mad as
blue blazes, but it didn’t matter. I tried to convince her that I’d
leave, go anywhere to be with her. Hell, I was so green, I didn’t
know the signs, and I was a cattleman, bred and true. I didn’t even
know she was pregnant. There was no time to take her down the
mountain to see a doctor— old Doc Coleman wouldn’t have treated her
right anyway— you remember how he was, that bigot. She was too
weak, a poor little pitiful girl, giving birth to my baby, my first
son. I knew about calving and Joe knew about herbs, and between us,
I think we eased her. Then you came out with a howl and a mop of
black hair, and you were mine.... My son, hungry as a bear after a
winter sleep. Willow faded out of life, but not before she made me
promise—”

Hogan slammed his fist onto the pickup’s
hood, the metallic sound echoing violently in the quiet country
morning. “You were afraid to bring your bastard home—”

“I took you to Old Susan’s first. Not because
I didn’t want you, but it seemed a woman might want a grandbaby
from her daughter—and Willow was gone. I didn’t know anything about
babies or women, and I wanted my son to know a woman’s softness.
She slammed the door on us and left town. By the way, Old Susan
died years ago— so I brought my son home to Kodiak land. I left no
doubt in anyone’s mind that you were mine, a part of me. I didn’t
know how to handle the woman part, how to tell you how sweet and
caring she was…. Even as she died, she thought of you and of me. I
didn’t know how to tell you in words. But you were mine.”

“You cold son of a bitch—” Hogan’s body was
taut with the need to hit Ben, to make him pay for a lifetime of
uncertainties and pain.

“I knew you’d take it hard. I should have
told you right away, but you seemed so complete and strong. I was
too young, too, but that’s no excuse for being a poor father. I’d
been brought up to think that we had jobs to do.... Mine was to
provide food and shelter for you, yours was to grow up. I buried
her up there, where we’d been happy and where she wanted to lie. I
promised to take care of her uncle, Joe Blue Sky, and I took you
home. You were mine. My fine son.”

Anger slashed at Hogan, his hands shaking as
he poured coffee and downed the hot fluid quickly, welcoming the
burn. “That’s a simple story. You could have told me that long
ago.”

“I was a boy when you were born. I had a
crazy dying father, a twelve-thousand-acre ranch to run, horses to
break, a baby son, and the whole works depended on me. Old Aaron
had left his hard mark in me, but I take the blame. I didn’t know
how to tell you that I— I loved you, to say the right words.”

“Did you love her? Or did you use her?” Hogan
needed to take the knowledge inside him and weave it into sense.
He’d lost a lifetime of knowing.

“Hell, yes, I loved her. My first sweetheart
will always be with me. I see her every time I look at you.”

“You didn’t look at me that much.” Hogan’s
statement was as brutal as he felt.