The Cowboy (2 page)

She had felt clumsy, because she hadn’t had much practice kissing. She had tentatively touched his shoulders and marveled at their strength, then held her breath, as she felt his arm slide around her waist and draw her tightly against the full length of an aroused male for the first time in her life.

She had blocked out all knowledge of who he was and who she was and lost herself in his kiss. He had teased her lips with his tongue seeking more, demanding more, and she had let him in, answering the thrust of his tongue with her own. Her body had squeezed up inside as though someone had pulled a lasso tight.

She had ignored the warning bell jangling deep inside, reminding her that this man was a Blackthorne and she was a Creed. She had clung to Trace, believing in her heart that they were meant to be together, two ragged halves of one perfect whole.

Even then it was too late to save her heart from breaking.
It was his from the first moment he had asked for it eight months ago.

They had long since decided to defy their parents and get married when Trace graduated in May. They had planned to honeymoon over the summer in Australia, where they both had distant relatives. Only that wasn’t going to happen now … or likely ever.

“Callie, sweetheart, please. Tell me what happened. Let me help,” Trace murmured.

There was no sense putting it off any longer. Callie did her best to control the tears, but it was a losing battle. “Sam was at f-football practice after school. He leaped up for a pass and got hit really hard. When he came down, he f-fell wrong and b-broke his neck.”

She felt Trace’s arms tighten around her.

“I want to be there with you, Callie. At the hospital, I mean. I guess there was never going to be an easy way to let our families know we’re a couple. But I don’t want you to have to go through this alone. We might as well tell your father now that we don’t intend to let this insane feud of his with my dad separate us ever again.”

She shrugged herself free of his embrace and slid off his lap, staring at the sheet that was tangled around him. “You c-can’t come home with me. Trace.”

“Why not?”

She stood and walked away, putting the first distance between them, then turned and spoke. “Your brother Owen was the one who tackled Sam. Your brother Owen is the one who broke his neck.”

She watched the color leach from Trace’s face before he met her gaze and said, “Sam getting hurt on the football field has nothing to do with us loving each other.” He
gripped the sheet in hands that had become fists. “It was an
accident
for Christ’s sake!”

“My father doesn’t think so.”

“He can’t believe Owen did it on purpose! Owen doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

“What words could I use to explain why I’ve brought you with me? What could I possibly say? ‘Oh, by the way, Daddy, I’m going to marry the brother of the man responsible for putting Sam in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. We can let bygones be bygones, can’t we?’ My father would throw me out and tell me never to come back.”

Trace rose, letting the sheet drop. “So? You can come live with me.” His eyes asked her to give them a chance. His lips slowly curved into a cajoling smile.

Callie couldn’t take her eyes off him. She focused on the smile first, because he flashed it so seldom, and then on the powerful, rangy body that had given her so much pleasure. His frame was lean and ropey with muscle, his chest covered with black hair that narrowed into a single line of black down at his navel.

She forced her gaze upward and saw the anticipation in his eyes of her imminent surrender. She held a hand up, palm out, to stop him in place. “I can’t abandon my family, Trace. They need me.”

“I need you, too.”

“Not as much as they do.”

She saw the flare of hurt in his eyes before he reached for his Jockey shorts and jeans. “You either love me or you don’t!” he said, stuffing his legs into worn Levi’s and buttoning them up. He snatched a Texas Longhorns T-shirt off the floor and tugged it down over his head. “Which is it?”

She stared at him in disbelief. “You know I do! But surely you can understand—”

“I understand our fathers have made it impossible for us to live our lives the way we want,” he said, yanking on Nikes and tying knots with fists that looked ready to strangle flesh. “I’m done playing their games. I’m leaving the States in May, with or without you.”

She took a step toward him. “If you could just wait—”

“One year? Two?” He shoved a hand through his dark hair to get it out of his eyes. “How long before someone else in my family offends or embarrasses—or cripples—someone else in yours? Or vice versa? That goddamned feud is never going to end! The best thing for us to do is start a new life away from all of them.”

“I love my parents and my brothers and sister. I don’t want to be separated from them forever.”

“Not even if it’s the only way we can be together?” He crossed the room in two strides and grabbed her by the arms. She could feel the desperation in his grasp, see it in his eyes as they bored into hers, hear it in his panting breaths. “I love you, Callie. I want to spend my life with you. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“You’re being unreasonable,” she argued.

His arms suddenly folded around her, and he nestled his nose against her throat. She could feel the effort it took for him to gentle his strength. His powerful hands caressed her with infinite care. “Callie,” he murmured in her ear. “I need you. Let me go home with you. We can make your father understand. Give us a chance, sweetheart. Please.”

Callie closed her eyes and bit her lower lip to keep from agreeing. Trace had rarely asked her for anything.
This request was especially difficult to refuse, with Trace holding her so tenderly in his arms, reminding her of what she would be giving up if she forced him out of her life.

His lips moved across her throat, leaving a trail of lingering pleasure. He made a carnal sound, as he molded their bodies together. Callie felt herself responding to the raw animal heat that had never failed to excite her. In a moment, it would be too late to escape without causing both of them more pain.

“Trace, no. Stop.” She shoved at his chest with the heels of her hands. When he lifted his head, she met his wary gaze and said, “I can’t. I’m sorry. It’s over.”

He let her go abruptly and took a step back. She rubbed her arms, holding herself tightly as she watched the dawning realization in his eyes of what she had known since she’d let the phone drop back into the cradle. They were not going to live happily ever after.

It had been a long shot from the start because of the feud, but also because they’d been raised with such different values. Perhaps because the Blackthornes had always had so much land—and had never been in any danger of losing it—Trace took his heritage, and the financial security that went along with it, for granted. He had grown up as a young prince in his family’s Texas kingdom, bowing to no man—except, of course, to his father, the king.

Trace’s father, Jackson Blackthorne, was called Boss to his face and Blackjack behind his back. Callie had heard several versions of how he’d acquired his nickname. One was simply that he had hair as black as a crow’s wing. Another was that he liked to gamble and usually won—by fair means or foul. Her father claimed
that Jackson Blackthorne was called Blackjack because he had a coal-black soul.

Callie had accepted her father’s version of how Blackjack had earned his nickname—until she’d gotten to know Trace. She didn’t think someone with a coal-black soul could have raised a son like Trace. He had his father’s crow-wing black hair, all right, but Trace was honest and fair. And loving. Where would he have learned such attributes, if Blackjack were really as sinister as her father had painted him?

But Blackjack hadn’t been a perfect father, either. He’d taught Trace everything he needed to know to run the Bitter Creek Cattle Company, then made it plain he had no intention of relinquishing control of the day-to-day operations of the ranch to his eldest son anytime soon.

Callie knew Trace chafed at his father’s strictures. She knew he wanted to make his own way in the world, away from his father’s vast sphere of influence. She had tried very hard to want what he wanted. But her needs were very different from his.

The Creeds had always lived on the brink of financial disaster. Callie had learned early to make do, to cut corners, to bargain and plead and placate. She treasured her home at Three Oaks all the more because she knew at any moment it could be lost. As the eldest, she had always been given a great deal of responsibility. Her father had needed her help just to make ends meet. She had yearned for the financial security, and the freedom to get up and go, that Trace took so much for granted.

She couldn’t walk away from her family, because they needed her. He couldn’t bear to stay with his, because they didn’t.

There were things she could say that would make Trace stay with her, but there was no hope that anytime in the near future her father would welcome a Blackthorne across his threshold. So what was the point?

“I love you, Trace,” she said sadly.

“Just not enough to defy your father and marry me,” Trace replied bitterly. “I should have known better than to get involved with a Creed. My father always said you couldn’t be trusted. What about the promises you made to me, Callie? Were those all a bunch of lies?”

Callie’s stomach clenched. “Please, Trace. You’re angry and upset right now because we can’t be together, but—”

“You’re the one pushing me away, Callie. You’re the one afraid to take a chance. Remember that. Because I won’t come crawling back.”

Callie felt the acid rising in her throat.
Not now. Oh, God. Not now.

Trace grabbed his canvas backpack on the way to the door. “I don’t have to get my teeth kicked in more than once to learn my lesson. I’m out of here.”

The door slammed, and she was alone. Not quite alone. She let her hand rest on the small mound below her waist. She swallowed several times, but it was a losing battle. Callie raced for the bathroom.

Afterward, she pressed a cool, damp washcloth against her mouth as she stared at herself in the mirror. Eighteen and pregnant. And unmarried.

You should have told him.

I will. Someday. If he ever comes back.

“Y
OU
B
LACKTHORNES ARE ALL GREEDY
, thieving sons-of-bitches!”

Trace kept his features even, but his heart was thudding, and beneath the ancient oak desk, his hands were fisted on rock-hard thighs. He barely resisted blurting,
Those are fighting words, Dusty.

They were, of course. But it sounded too much like dialogue from the barroom showdown in a western B movie. The scenario was classic Louis L’Amour, but Trace resisted the comparison, because he would have been forced to cast himself as villain, rather than hero.

“Just sign the papers, Dusty,” he said in a level voice.

But the young man sitting across from him had apparently crossed some threshold between rational being and trapped animal. Dusty Simpson scrabbled for the pair of crutches lying beside his chair. One crutch fell beyond the carpet, clattering across the polished hardwood floor. He shoved himself upright on the crutch he had left and stood, wavering on a single leg, the other having been amputated just above the knee. “Come and get me, Trace. Come on, take a swing!” Dusty yelled.

Trace met Dusty’s furious gaze—furious, he knew, because Dusty must have felt so impotent—and said, “I don’t fight cripples.”

He watched the blood drain from Dusty’s face, taking the fight along with it.

“Sit down, Dusty.”

The one-legged man, his whole body quivering with anger, stubbornly balanced himself between his booted foot and the crutch. “How do you live with yourself? Mine isn’t the first small ranch that’s been gobbled up by you Blackthornes. But you were best man at my wedding! You’re godfather to my two girls! What kind of friend are you?”

“I’m only following orders,” Trace said through tight jaws.

“Yeah. I know,” Dusty replied, a sneer twisting his features. “If Blackjack told you to jump off a cliff, you’d find yourself dead in the rocks below by sundown.”

Trace’s eyes narrowed. He’d made the mistake, when he’d had one too many Lone Stars on Dusty’s back porch, of confiding the truth to his friend. It might look to the world like Trace Blackthorne had managed the Bitter Creek Cattle Company since his father’s heart attack three months ago, but Blackjack held a tight rein on everything Trace did and roweled with sharp, painful spurs when he wanted his dirty work done. Like now.

Trace watched as tears welled in his friend’s eyes. He’d sat beside Dusty’s wife Lou Ann at the hospital while Dusty had the surgery that took off his leg, leaving him unable to compete in the arena on a cutting horse and thus unable to pay the mortgage on his ranch. Trace hated what Blackjack was forcing him to do. But he had no choice.

“What happened to you, losing your leg in that car accident, was a tragedy,” Trace said. “But if we hadn’t bought the Rafter S, it would have gone into foreclosure.”