Iron Cowboy (16 page)

“Which is?” she probed.

“Will you marry me, Sara?”

S
ara just looked at him, with her heart plain in her eyes. “Do you love me?” she asked, hesitating.

He smiled tenderly. “Yes,” he said. “Of course I love you.” He hesitated. His dark eyebrows lifted. “Well?”

“I loved you the minute you walked into the bookstore,” she replied breathlessly. “I didn't really think you were an ogre, you know.”

“Maybe I was, sort of,” he returned, smiling. “But you've reformed me. So what do you think about getting married here and moving back to Oklahoma?”

“I don't mind where we live, as long as we're together,” she told him. “But Morris the cat has to come with us.” She paused. “Do you have pets?”

He laughed. “Do I! I've got saddle horses, cattle dogs, two huge Persian cats, an emu and an Amazon parrot.”

“Oh, goodness,” she exclaimed. “Why do you have an emu?”

He traced her mouth. “Ellen wanted one,” he said simply. “I'd never even seen an emu, but a rancher I know was experimenting with them. We got Ellen a baby emu. She was crazy about him. We named him Paterson, after the Australian poet, and raised him with two border collies. The collies chase cattle, and the emu runs right along with them.” He laughed. “It's quite a sight.”

“I imagine so.”

“We'll have cat furniture set up for Morris. After a few days of being spoiled, he'll adjust.”

“What about your cats?”

He shrugged. “They'll all spit and fuss for a week, then they'll curl up and sleep together at night.”

She smiled. It was usually the case when two sets of cats met. “We could be married here?” she asked, still having trouble believing it.

“Of course.”

“I could wear a wedding gown, and carry a bouquet?”

“You can even have a photographer,” he replied. “So that we have nice pictures to prove that we're married.”

“That would be nice.”

“We'll fly up to Dallas. You can have a gown from Neiman Marcus.”

“I could buy something off the rack,” she protested.

He brought her small hand to his lips and kissed the palm. “I'm fairly notorious,” he said. “There will be news coverage. You wouldn't want me to look like a cheapskate on national television, would you?” he asked reasonably.

She laughed. “Nobody would think such a thing.”

“Ha!”

Her head was spinning. She couldn't believe how quickly it had all happened. But there was that other thing, that worrisome thing…

He was watching her expression closely. He knew what the problem was. They were alone in the house. Old Morris had wandered off into the kitchen. He was safely established, for the time being. He pursed his lips as he looked down into Sara's worried face.

“There's no time like the present,” he murmured.

“Excuse me?”

He bent and drew his mouth tenderly against Sara's. “Don't think,” he whispered. “Don't worry. Just let go.”

While he was talking, his hands were moving over her in soft, light caresses that made her mind overload. She wanted to tell him something, but he'd unbuttoned her shirt and his mouth was already on her breasts.

She gasped at the sensations. They weren't like last time. He was insistent, and expert. As the heated minutes sped past, she was as frantic to get her clothes out of the way as she had been to escape him the last time he'd touched her this way. But the sensations she was feeling now were explosive, overwhelming. She arched up to his ardent mouth and sobbed as his hands found her under the concealing cloth and created exquisite waves of pleasure.

She was under him. She felt the cold leather under her bare back, the heated weight of his body over and against hers. His mouth trailed down her body and back up again, in soft, arousing kisses that trespassed in all sorts of forbidden areas.

He asked her something, but she was already too far gone to hear him. Shivering, aching for satisfaction, she drew her legs up to ease his path, she arched up to his devouring mouth. It was the closest to heaven she'd ever imagined.

When she finally felt him, there, she dug her nails into his hips and held on for dear life as he buffeted her on the sofa. She was aware of the ceiling overhead, and the sound of his rough breathing, of her own frantic little gasps, as the pleasure began to build.

It was like climbing, she thought breathlessly, from one level to the next and the next and the next, and the pleasure increased with every fierce downward motion of his hips. She was dying. She couldn't survive. The pleasure was so deep and throbbing that it was almost pain. She strained for some goal she couldn't quite reach, her hips darting up to meet his, her body arched in a strained posture that was painful. She was almost there, almost there, almost…there!

He pushed down, hard, and she felt the world drop out from under her as a wave of white-hot pleasure racked her slender body and held her, motionless, in its vise-grip.

He lifted his head seconds later, drenched in sweat and barely able to get a whole breath. She was shivering in the aftermath. Her soft eyes were drowned in tears of joy as she lay under him, satiated.

“Now do you understand what was missing, the last time?” he whispered tenderly.

“Oh, yes.” She locked her arms around his neck. She was trembling. “Is it always like this?”

“No,” he murmured, smiling as his hips began to move again. “It gets better.”

“You're kidding…!”

It was the last remark she was able to make for some time.

The wedding was beautiful, Sara thought, amazed at the media that gathered to watch Jared Cameron merge his oil empire with an unknown little bookseller in Jacobsville, Texas. One of the newswomen just shook her head, having covered stories that Jared featured in years ago. This little retiring Texas rose didn't seem at all the type of woman he'd marry. But then he looked down at his new bride, under her veil, and the look they exchanged made everything clear. Love, the reporter thought, was truly an equalizer.

Harley Fowler congratulated them with a bittersweet smile. Sara hugged him and thanked him for all he'd done, especially scaring away the kidnappers in the bookstore. He wished them well. Sara was very fond of him, but she'd never felt romantic toward him. He knew it, and accepted it.

All the mercs showed up at the wedding, along with just about everybody in town. Sara felt like Cinderella at the ball. And now she was going away with her very own version of Prince Charming. She'd never been so happy.

Several days later, Sara had packed up everything, including Morris the cat, and Tony had arranged for Sara's possessions, plus Morris, to travel to the house in Oklahoma City, where Jared lived most of the time. Morris rode in a chauffeured limousine, with one of Tony's old comrades, and Jared's new bodyguard, Clayton, at his side.

“Morris will never get over that,” Sara told her new husband.

“It was the safest way I could think of,” Jared replied, smiling. “Clayton will take great care of him. Tony trained him. He's good.”

“We won't have to worry about kidnappers again, will we?” she worried.

He drew her gently into his arms. “
We
won't worry. We'll let Clayton worry. That's what he gets paid for.”

“I thought Tony worked for you all the time,” she commented.

“He was borrowed, for this assignment,” he told her, and didn't offer any further information.

“He's rather mysterious, in his way,” she said.

Jared raised an eyebrow. “You have no idea how mysterious,” he assured her.

“Tell me.”

He chuckled. “Not now. We've got work to do. You have to help me pack, now that we've got you covered.”

“I'll miss Jacobsville,” she said.

“I know you will, honey,” he replied. “But you'll get used to it. Life has to be lived. You can't sit by the road and watch it pass.”

“Maybe when we're old,” she began.

He nodded. “Yes. Maybe when we're old.”

“It was sweet of Dee to give us those rare World War II memoirs for a wedding present, wasn't it?” she asked.

“Yes, it was. And sweet of you to pack up all your grandfather's collection to bring with us. I'll only read one a week, I promise,” he said when he saw her expression.

She frowned. “That reminds me, are you a sports fan?”

“I love soccer,” he replied.

She beamed. “It's my favorite sport!”

“In that case, we'll make plans to go to the next World Cup.”

“We could? Really?”

“Yes.” He drew her against him and kissed her. “I love you.”

She smiled. “I love you back.”

“No regrets?”

She shook her head. “I'm going to take very good care of you.”

He kissed her eyes closed. “And I'm going to take very good care of you.” He rocked her in his arms. “Just for the record, any unusual nausea?”

She drew back and looked up at him, grimacing. “I'm afraid not. In fact, something monthly started up this morning. I'm sorry.”

He kissed her. “We won't rush things,” he said gently. “We'll grow together before we start a family. We'll travel. We'll go shopping. We'll find a nice location for a bookstore.”

“You meant that?” she exclaimed.

“Of course I meant it,” he said, smiling. “You can have anything you want, Sara.”

She moved into his arms and pressed close. “Most of all, I want you, for all my life. I love you very much.”

He swallowed hard and his arms closed around her. Grief had almost destroyed him, but this sweet, gentle woman had brought him back into the sunlight. She was his world now. He rested his cheek on her soft hair. “I love you, too, baby. I'll make you happy and keep you safe, all my life,” he promised.

And he did.