LoversFeud (19 page)

“It comes down almost to your knees. I don’t think I like the way my pajama top covers up so much of you, but it ought to keep you from freezing. Mom used to tease me for liking my bedroom so cold. She’d say she ought to make me sleep in the walk-in refrigerator downstairs.” He undressed, and she thought he hesitated for a minute before putting on the pajama bottoms.

The silk hung low on his hips, giving her a mouthwatering view of six-pack abs and impossibly broad shoulders. Not to mention that it caressed his long, muscular legs and did little to disguise his burgeoning erection. “I bet you usually sleep nude. You don’t have to cover up on account of me.”

He grinned. “You’re right. The PJs will be coming off before we crawl in bed.” Grabbing her at the waist, he picked her up and deposited her on the bed, standing there for a minute before striding into his bathroom.

She lay there, luxuriating in the feel of what had to be the softest sheets ever made and watching him collect a box from a cabinet, bring it to the bedroom and drop it into a drawer in the nightstand next to the bed. “What’s that?”

“Never having brought a woman in here before, I hadn’t given a lot of thought about where I should store my condoms. I went and moved them so they’d be handy.” Bye dropped his pajama bottoms on the floor and crawled in beside her. “Just in case,” he whispered as he drew her into his arms.

She was tired and so was he. It was late, and they’d had way too much excitement for one day. She couldn’t help wanting him, though. “You’re so damn hot. I don’t think I could ever get too exhausted to want you.”

“Me either. Well, maybe in fifty years or so I’ll be able to crawl in bed with you and not get an instant hard-on.” The silk of his pajama top caressed her skin as he slid it along her belly and higher. When he pulled her tight against his erection, she opened her thighs to take him between them. “Want some of this, do you?”

“Oh, yeah. Being this close to you makes me crazy to have you inside me. Besides, I owe you at least one climax for what you did for me down at the hot spring this morning.” It was a debt she couldn’t wait to pay.

“Tasting you is damn near as good as being inside you.” Bye rolled over on top of Karen, loving the way she wrapped her legs around his waist. Her wet heat almost sucked him in, but he managed to pull away long enough to tear open a condom and sheath himself before sinking into her wet, welcoming heat. “One of these days I’m gonna lose it, sweetheart, and take you bareback. Not tonight, though.”

She cupped his face between her hands and drew him down into her kiss. “Someday I’d like to have your babies.”

“I’d like that also.” He’d take her love over the Bar C and all his old man’s money any day if it came down to that, which he doubted now that it would. What he wouldn’t do was risk her life if they couldn’t manage to get her father to end the feuding. “Don’t think, sweetheart, just feel.”

He’d never before been so attuned to a woman. She moved with him in perfect harmony, as though fate had destined them for each other. Her softness…his hardness… He slid his hands behind her back and held her so close neither of them could tell where he left off and she began.

Her warm, damp breath tickled his throat. She spoke so softly he could barely hear the words, “Love…you. Love you so much.” She punctuated each word with a kiss, and those kisses touched his heart.

“I love you, baby. I want us to have forever, together.” Moving inside her slow and deep, he coaxed out one climax, then two.

She turned fierce on him then, sliding her legs higher, taking him deeper inside her. “Come for me now, Bye. Don’t hold back.”

Something snapped inside him. He shifted positions and fucked her hard. No restraint. No tenderness, just raw need rushing toward satisfaction. “You asked for this, so now you’re getting it.” The words came out harshly, from deep in his chest. Pressure built in his balls. Each stroke brought him closer.

Then he saw colors, red, green and blue, swirling like a kaleidoscope before his eyes. His muscles tensed. His body shook. One last thrust and he came inside her in long, hot bursts that left him drained. So weak he could hardly roll away to spare her his dead weight.

A long time later he got up and disposed of the condom. When he came back to her, he stood beside the bed, just looking at her beautiful face relaxed in sleep. Standing there in the bedroom where he’d lived all his life, he made a silent vow.

Whatever it takes, I’m going to bring you home with me for good. You’ll be my lover, my partner—and my wife.

* * * * *

The next morning the distinctive ring of Bye’s cell phone startled him from a deep sleep. Blinking to clear his vision as he picked up the phone, he saw it was Jack and turned on the speaker. “I see you got my message.”

“Yeah. Damn it, man, I feel bad that Deidre’s so determined to leave home. Tell the truth, I don’t like feeling partially responsible for messing up her mind.”

Bye thought of Four, and the guilt that was weighing him down. “I understand. Our father is taking this pretty hard. He feels more responsible than you, I’m afraid.”

“He should.” Jack’s words sounded harsh.

“Yeah, well, Four is used to being in control, and when your mother sprang that scene on him after my mother’s funeral, I’m sure he saw more red than a bull with the matador’s cape flung in his face.” Bye imagined he’d be equally as pissed off as Jack if their situations were reversed, but he found himself needing to defend their father. “I don’t have any sympathy for your mother. She deserved whatever Four may have done. I’m not faulting you for it, though. It was pretty obvious you didn’t know she planned to spring her announcement when she did.”

“You’re right. If I’d had a clue what Mother had in mind that day, I’d have done my best to stop her.” Jack cleared his throat. “Can we drop the subject of my mother? I called because I’m worried about Deidre. What’s going on?”

“We’re expecting a visit this afternoon, from the private investigator Four hired to track her down. Hopefully they’ll have located her by then. They have orders not to confront her, just to keep track of where she is and what she’s doing. It didn’t work very well the other day when Four had her detained down in Midland and flew down to drag her back home.”

When Karen opened her eyes and snuggled up next to Bye, he put an arm around her to draw her closer. “I’m talking to Jack, sweetheart.”

“Hi, Jack.”

Jack chuckled. “Hi, Karen. I assume you two are playing over at the Neon Lasso.”

“No. We’re at the Bar C.” Bye imagined the shock that must be playing over Jack’s battered face. “If you’d like, I’ll call and let you know what we find out from the investigators.”

“I’d like. I may not ever have wanted to make it with your sister even before I realized she was my sister, but I didn’t want her to get hurt, either. I’ll go now and let you get back to whatever you and Karen were doing.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”

* * * * *

At two thirty that afternoon, the lead investigator Four had hired met with Bye, his father and Karen, who was sitting in on the meeting at his father’s request, as their legal adviser.

The investigator showed them a map detailing Deidre’s journey. “We were able to track her with the GPS signals from her phone, and reconstruct her stops by accessing her credit card usage. Here, for instance, you can see she stopped for gas outside Abilene around midnight.”

“I’m not particularly interested in every gas station and fast food restaurant where my daughter stopped. I want to know where she is now.” Four seemed practically at the breaking point, Karen thought.

“We got really lucky. Deidre limped into the Mercedes dealership in San Antonio this morning. After they saw the wreck of a pickup she wanted to trade, the sales manager called the bank where her Visa was issued to verify that she had enough funds to pay for the new car she’d picked out—an SL550.”

Bye let out a low whistle. “My sister doesn’t do anything halfway, does she?”

When Four chuckled, Karen looked between the two men and the investigator. “What do you mean by that, Bye?”

“That model starts at over a hundred grand. I’m glad you didn’t know that. Dad, take notice, my woman likes the simple pleasures of life.”

“I’m glad someone does.” Four turned to the investigator. “So what happened then?”

The investigator explained how the bank manager had called him because he had notified the bank to put a watch on Deidre’s bank account and Visa card use. “Once I knew exactly where she was, I sent a San Antonio affiliate to the dealership with orders to follow Deidre when she left there.”

“Where is she now, man? I don’t have all day.” Four’s agitation was obvious.

“According to my operative, Deidre went directly to the Riverwalk and bought enough clothes to stuff the trunk and backseat of her new car. She drove north on I-35 to the New Braunfels exit and went along some local roads to Canyon Lake. She now is at a quite nice home on the lake, staying with a young woman named Barbara Williams.”

“Barbara was Deidre’s college roommate, Dad.” Both Bye and Four seemed relieved.

The investigator seemed confused. “Do you want me to have my operative go get her and bring her home?” He shot a look at Karen as though he thought she might mention the lawsuit risk that doing that might entail.

Four hesitated a minute, glanced at Karen then cleared his throat. “No. Just keep a tail on her 24/7. Bye and I have talked this over and believe that so long as Deidre isn’t in danger, she may benefit from spending some time away from here. Three days ago she left, and we brought her back more or less by force, only to have her leave again yesterday.”

Karen watched the investigator take a few notes. “What do you want us to do, then?” he asked.

“Tell your operatives that they’re to stay back and observe her, and to intercede at any time they believe she may need help.” When Four sat back in his chair, he looked more at peace than he had during the short time Karen had known him.

Chapter Twelve

“All right. I think this is finished.”

When Karen leaned back from her laptop late that afternoon, Bye stood behind her chair and massaged her shoulders while he read the chronology they’d pieced together like patchwork. “This looks good. Between what we found in the diary, the court records Jack dug up and bits of information Buck and Four were able to give us, you managed to piece together a pretty good picture of a pretty ugly story about why the feud never quite went away.”

“Every few years it seems as though something happened to keep it going. I’m afraid my father and grandfather caused more than their share of the trouble.” Karen shook her head, as if that admission came hard.

As far as Bye was concerned, the blame belonged equally to Oakleys and Cadens. “Not really. Cadens acted like jackasses too. They might have been even worse than your relatives, because none of them had the excuses of being drunk or desperate.” He wasn’t pleased to have to claim quite a few of his relatives, especially his great-grandmother Alyssa.

Karen smiled. “You’re being kind. Buck’s the only Oakley male who wasn’t or isn’t pickled in alcohol. Even Buck contributed to the impression that we’re all ungodly, unprincipled people when he got caught selling beer to high-school kids.”

“I admit I bought some from him when I was a teenager. At the time I thought he was doing Caden County a great service, keeping us close by when we wanted to party. When he got sent to prison and the Neon Lasso closed, we had to drive all the way to Lubbock when we wanted to drink more than we could sneak out of our parents’ liquor cabinets.” Bye paused and dropped a kiss on Karen’s cheek. “I felt bad when they didn’t give Buck back his liquor license once he’d done his time, that is until he opened the club. He’s saved a lot of us who like to play BDSM games from having to go clear to a club in Dallas or Fort Worth. I like the guy.”

“Buck likes you too. I think he’d appreciate getting a copy of this report we’ve put together.”

“Good idea.” Bye didn’t mind playing with her at the Neon Lasso, knowing how she liked to get off, watching and being watched. What he didn’t want was for her to play with anybody but him, and he realized he wasn’t interested in playing around with anyone except her. “Let’s take this to him tonight, after we fax a copy to your pop’s psychologist. The sooner they can start reprogramming Slade to accept us being together, the sooner I can go ask him for your hand in marriage.”

He watched Karen’s eyes widen. “Did you just propose, Bye Caden?”

“I guess I did, at that. Will you marry me?” It seemed right. He’d never before wanted a woman all to himself. Until he’d found Karen, he’d pretty much thought one playmate was as good as the next. “I’m happy to keep on playing sex games, but I find I only want to play them with you. And I only want you to play them with me. What do you say?”

She didn’t answer right away. By the time she got up and stood in front of him, holding both his hands, he was downright anxious that she was about to let him down. “I love you. Sure, I’ll marry you as soon as I feel sure my pop won’t blow you to kingdom come. But the Rocking O isn’t part of my dowry if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Bye didn’t blame Karen for making that provision. After all, the Caden history of gobbling up adjoining land through marriage was right in front of her and covered more than a hundred thirty years. It had continued with every generation since Luke Caden had married Bertha instead of doing the right thing by Tessa Oakley. Four said he had loved Bye’s mother, but he’d picked up another forty thousand acres of the oil-rich high prairie on the day they’d married. Not only that, but the old man was already scoping out the widowed Mavis Wolfe, now that he was single again.

“It’s not what I’m thinking, sweetheart. I’d take you with nothing—just as I decided a while back that I’d give up all I have if I could just have you. I hadn’t even thought of what you might bring me other than your hot, sweet little self.”

Bye bent and kissed her, relieved now that he’d finally put his feelings into words. “I’d like for you to wear Mom’s engagement ring, but if you’d prefer a new one, that’s okay too.”