The Humbug Man (5 page)

“Oh, no,” he said suddenly, and his lean hand contracted in her hair, tugging her face up to his. “No, you don’t, lady. I’m not going that route again in one lifetime.” He let go of her all at once and opened the door.

Maggie felt nerveless. She didn’t understand what he’d said, unless he was insinuating that he’d loved his wife and didn’t want to risk his heart twice. She even understood. But she hadn’t been trying to tempt him…or had she?

She watched him get Blake out of the Bronco and thanked him tersely as he laid the boy on the bed in his room and went back out again.

“I’ll bring the Bronco back later, when I get one of my men to ride with me,” he said coldly. “Is there anything you need?”

He was as icy as the wind. She wouldn’t have asked him for a crumb if she’d been starving. “No, thank you, Mr. Hollister,” she said with remarkable calm, considering how churned up she felt. She even managed to smile faintly. “Thank you for all you’ve done.”

He searched her face with eyes that didn’t want to see the pain he’d just caused with his remoteness. He turned to the door. “No problem,” he said curtly and left without a backward glance.

Chapter Three

B
lake rested fairly well that night, thanks to the medicine the doctor had prescribed for him. But Maggie was wakeful and restless. Her mind kept going back to Hollister, to a day that was going to live forever in her memory, like the man who was such a part of it.

She hadn’t wanted this complication in her life. For years she’d kept men at a safe distance. She’d dated, but with the careful stipulation that she was searching only for friendship. Once or twice she’d had to ask to be taken home because some of her dates had been quite sophisticated and certain that they had the perfect cure for her reserved attitude about sex. But Maggie wasn’t interested in cures or even in men. Her brief marriage had left her unsatisfied and a little embarrassed at her own sexuality. She didn’t understand the restlessness she’d been feeling lately or her rather frightening attraction to Tate Hollister. She knew so little about men and intimacy. Far too little to handle a violent emotional upheaval in her life. All she wanted now, she told herself, was her job and her son. Or she had. The trouble was that Tate Hollister was suddenly coloring her world.

It was the longest night in recent memory. She didn’t sleep until the wee hours of the morning and woke to freezing cold. Dragging herself out of bed in her blue flannel pajamas, she went to the thermostat and tried to turn on the furnace, only to discover that there was no electricity. Again.

She moaned. Well, wasn’t this just the berries, she thought gnashing her teeth. Infuriated, she went to the fireplace, where she’d laid a fire the night before and searched for matches. Then she remembered that she’d used up the last one and hadn’t thought to ask Hollister for the loan of a pack. Not that they’d have done much good. She didn’t have any wood except what was in the fireplace. Nobody had cut any more.

She sat down on the sofa and burst into tears. Her whole life seemed to be falling apart.

The knock on the door came as a shock. She stared at it, frowning because it was barely dawn. Could it be one of the men? She went to it, hesitating because she was in her pajamas and didn’t have a robe handy. She opened the door just a crack and found a familiar hard, mustached face.

Her heart jumped, and the light that came into her face seemed to paralyze the man on the porch for a split second. He studied what he could see of her with a faint twinkle in his own eyes.

“Your generator’s down again,” he said.

“Yes, I noticed. How did you know?”

“I wanted to see if my jury-rigging was going to hold since the temperature dropped so much last night,” he said with a curious inflection that made her suspicious.

“Did you?”

“I can’t fix it without the proper supplies, anyway,” he said impatiently. “So I guess that being the case, you and Blake had better come home with me until this weather lets up.”

Her heart ran away. She had doubts about it, and she wanted to ask more questions about that generator because he did look suspicious. But his dark eyes had found hers, and she couldn’t quite look away from them.

“Come…home with you?” she faltered.

“Mmm-hmm,” he murmured, as oblivious to what they were saying as she was. She was pretty even without makeup, and her gray eyes were oddly welcoming.

“Would you…like some coffee?” she asked, without realizing that if she didn’t have any power, she certainly couldn’t make any.

“Sure,” he replied.

She opened the door, moving back, and she flushed scarlet when he came in the door and got a good look at her pajama-clad, barefoot figure.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, pausing while she tried to decide what to do.

His dark eyes raked over hers, and there was a faint flush high on his cheekbones.

“I…I’d better get something on,” she began.

“You better had,” he agreed.

But she couldn’t seem to convince her legs because they wouldn’t move. She stood helplessly, feeling her breasts swell, feeling her heartbeat shaking the low V of the pajama top so that he had to be able to see it. In fact, his eyes had dropped there and narrowed as he looked, and that flush on his cheekbones that was so puzzling got even darker.

Her lips parted. No, it wouldn’t work. She was afraid to go with him, afraid of what was happening. “Blake and I…had better stay here,” she said huskily. “But thanks anyway.”

Her breath stopped as he suddenly bent and lifted her in his hard arms, carrying her straight back to her bedroom. His booted heel caught the door and slammed it. He put her down then, slowly, with her back to the door.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked quietly.

She felt the cold door at her back and the even colder floor under her feet, but her body was blazing with sensation as he paused just a foot away. “You,” she confessed.

His dark eyes went over her like hands, fascinated, intent. “I guess that should flatter me?”

She moved restlessly under the pressure of his black stare. “You’ve been married,” she said hesitantly. “So have I, but only for a few months, and I haven’t dated very much since Blake was born.”

That surprised him, although with what he was learning about her, it shouldn’t have. He tilted his hat back, watching her face. “No sex?” he asked quietly, not dressing it up.

She blushed scarlet and her eyes dropped. She shook her head.

His lean hand went to her chin, tilting it up, and for all its cool deftness, it didn’t insist. “Yes, I was married,” he said gently. “To a woman who avoided the very touch of me.”

She stopped being afraid and just stared, astonished. “But…you had a child.”

He sighed heavily. “Most people think that. I’ve let them think it to prevent gossip for the sake of her people.” He touched her hair lightly, as if its dark silkiness fascinated him, while her rapt gaze remained fixed on his hard face. “She was my brother’s girl. He was killed in a skiing accident several years back, just weeks before they were to be married, and he left her pregnant with his child. She was from good stock, churchgoing people with hard ideas about anticipating marriage vows. It was my nephew she was carrying. So we married, for the child’s sake.”

“She didn’t love you?” she asked gently.

His chin lifted pugnaciously. “I’m not a lovable man,” he said with a cold smile. “No, she didn’t love me. She loved my brother and grieved for him the whole time we were married. Even after the baby came, she could hardly bear to let me touch her.” He studied her mouth as he spoke, as if the words were coming harder by the second. “We’d taken Kip on a camping trip, up into the Rockies, and for the first time, Joyce was showing some interest in life. I’d let them ride in the trailer we were towing, against my better judgment.” His eyes closed, his whole body going rigid. “The coupling came loose. They went over….”

She didn’t even stop to think. She slid her arms under the shepherd’s coat, around him, and pressed close, holding him as hard as she could, rocking him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her eyes closed as she gave him what little comfort she could. “I’m so sorry.”

He was astonished at the gesture. His hands touched her shoulders lightly as he tried to decide what to do. The feel of her lightly clad body under his coat was disturbing him. He could feel her soft breasts pressing into him. She was clinging too hard, making his mind whirl with sensation, with soft woman smells coming up into his nostrils and making him hungry in a way he hadn’t been since Joyce’s death.

“It was a long time ago,” he said finally. His lean hands smoothed over her hair, holding her cheek to his chest as he stopped fighting it and gave in to the feel of her against him.

“You loved her.”

He hesitated. “I thought I did, yes,” he agreed and wondered why he qualified it that way when he’d always assumed that it was love. Now it seemed more likely that he’d pitied Joyce, that he’d wanted to make up to her the loss of his younger brother. But now, with Maggie holding him, he wasn’t sure anymore.

And the boy.”

He drew in a steadying breath. “Especially the boy,” he confessed. “I missed him like hell. I still do, Maggie.”

The sound of her name on his lips made her go warm and soft all over. That startled her into stiffening.

“Sorry,” she said, starting to draw back.

But he held her. “No,” he said quietly at her temple. “I haven’t had a woman this close in years. It feels good.”

His admission was shocking. She lifted her gaze to search his black, intent eyes. “Years?” she asked hesitantly, and with that one word, she was asking how experienced he really was.

He didn’t want to tell her. But the way she was looking at him wasn’t mocking or amused. He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “Years,” he confirmed, and that strange flush was back on his cheekbones.

Her lips parted because she wanted to know, needed to know, had to know. “Were there…many?” she whispered.

He swallowed. His eyes went over her face gently. “No,” he whispered back. His jaw clenched. “Only one, if you can’t live without having the whole truth,” he added harshly, because he hated admitting it. In fact, he didn’t know why he was even telling her.

She had to catch her breath. He looked so sophisticated, so worldly. And he was telling her blatantly that he was as inexperienced as she was. She felt a thrill go through her body that was beyond anything she’d ever felt.

He was rigid, waiting for the laughter. It didn’t come. And the way she was looking at him made fires in his blood. His head lifted, and he looked down at her quietly, curiously. “No smart remarks?” he asked, challenge in the very set of his dark head.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, her expression soft, adoring. “There was only my husband, you see,” she replied. “And I was innocent and very young. He wasn’t terribly experienced, either. We did a lot of fumbling, and I don’t know if either of us was ever…satisfied.” She buried her red face in his hard chest, feeling his heart pounding under her forehead. “I could never say that to anyone before. I could never talk to a man like this.”

He felt like throwing his head back and laughing with the sheer delight of what he was learning about her. He smiled to himself, secretly, triumphantly. “And here I thought you wrote the book on city sophistication,” he murmured with a soft sound that was almost a chuckle.

“Fooled you, didn’t I?” she asked dreamily.

In more ways than one, but he wasn’t letting his guard down that far. His hands smoothed her hair, savoring its softness. “Then come home with me, you and Blake. Until the snow’s gone, at least. You’ll need help bathing him, if nothing else,” he persisted. “I remember how I was at his age. I’d have raised hell before I’d have let my mother give me a bath.”

She laughed delightedly and lifted her head, her gray eyes sparkling, beautiful in her soft face as she looked at him. “I guess he would, too,” she agreed.

“I won’t hurt you,” he murmured. “I don’t have enough experience to seduce women. Even green little girls like you.”

She smiled even wider. “Thank you, Tate,” she said gently.

The sound of his name in that soft, husky tone made his heart stop beating. He searched her eyes, watching the smile falter at the intensity of the look they were exchanging. “Say my name again,” he whispered.

“Tate,” she obliged, her voice breathless now.

His lean hands framed her face, and holding her eyes, he bent toward her. His hard lips touched her mouth hesitantly, the mustache tickling. He was a little awkward, and his nose got in the way before he finally pressed his mouth to hers.

“God, I’m rusty,” he whispered on a husky laugh. “I think I’ve forgotten how!”

She laughed, too, because it was delicious being with a man who was as inexperienced as she was herself. It was the sweetest kind of pleasure. She reached her arms around him and tilted her head back. “I don’t mind,” she whispered. “Could we try again? I’m kind of rusty, too.”

He smiled, a real smile this time, and bent again. This time he wasn’t awkward. His hard lips brushed hers, once, twice, and then settled, moving gently until the contact suddenly became electrically charged.

She felt the very moment when his big body stiffened, when his breath caught. She started to speak. The opening of her lips coincided with the downward movement of his, and he tasted her.

“Maggie,” he groaned. He eased her back against the door, and his big body moved down, pinning her there with exquisite strength but so gently that it didn’t frighten her. She felt his mouth, tasted its hard, moist crush, and her lips parted for him with a soft little cry.

She couldn’t remember the last time a kiss had aroused her. Even during her brief marriage she hadn’t felt this oddly weak and trembling vulnerability. Tate might be inexperienced, but there was a powerful chemistry between them if this shuddering need was any indication. She loved the hard crush of his lips, even the abrasive tickle of his mustache. And the feel of his muscular body so close was making her tingle from head to toe.

He lifted his head, and his dark eyes were black as they searched her face.