The Rawhide Man (7 page)

She beamed. “I like decorating trees. We bought all sorts of things to put on it.”

“Yes, I know,” he said with a rare smile. “A turkey and a ham.”

She laughed gaily, and it changed her eyes. They were filled with warmth, and her creamy complexion glowed. She tossed her head, and her silver gold hair caught the sunlight and shone like metal. Jude stared at her for a long time before he moved abruptly and went to join Katy.

The tree the little girl wanted was a huge pine over eight feet tall. Jude tried to steer her toward something smaller, but it was the only tree she wanted and she wouldn’t change her mind. So Jude gave in, growling a little, and handed the man with the cash box a large bill. Bess and Katy had gone back to the car because the wind was coming up and it was cold. But Bess glanced back in time to see Jude refusing any change, and she wanted to cry. It was just a little victory, but it was solid gold.

* * *

Jude put the tree into the stand for them and set it up; then he glared at both of them and went into town for his meeting, announcing that he’d have dinner there before it started.

Bess giggled, and Aggie came in with a puzzled frown. “He never eats in town,” she said. “I do not understand.”

“He’s in a snit,” Bess explained, laughing at the older woman’s puzzled expression. “He’s furious because he had to buy us a tree.”

Aggie laughed. “But such a magnificent tree!” she exclaimed, sighing over it as she dried her hands on her apron. “Of course, at home we always made a
nacimiento
—a nativity scene. But the tree is lovely, too.”

“We bought a little nativity scene, though, Aggie,” Katy told her excitedly. “And we got lights, and all sorts of stuff! I have to call Deanne and tell her!”

She ran off and Bess sighed, smiling, as she studied the huge tree. “She’s been like that all afternoon,” she confided. “So happy and excited. I could have cried.”

“The men tell me the
señor
has never liked to see celebrations,
señora,
” Aggie said sadly.

“Well, we’re having one this year,” Bess said shortly. “I insisted. We’re even going to have turkey. And a ham, and all sort of trimmings. I have a recipe book—I had a recipe book,” she added on a sigh. “I know, I’ll call the caretaker and have him send it out here express mail!”

“You have sold your home?” Aggie asked.

“Oh, no. I had Jude hire a caretaker for it,” she said. “It’s been in my family for a hundred years. I just couldn’t sell it. It was part of the marriage contract. I gave him his blessed shares, and I got my home. And part of the living room,” she added, glancing toward the tree. “He said he wouldn’t have it in his house. I figure part of the house belongs to me now that we’re married, so I told him I wanted half the living room.”

Aggie laughed. “
Señora,
you have him on his head. I have never seen him so confused. He curses all the time. But I have seen him smile when he looks at you. A true smile, that of a man who is pleased with what he has.”

That was shocking. Bess had to restrain herself from pumping Aggie about her remark. But she didn’t dare hope. Jude was determined to keep her at a distance, so she’d better not expect very much from him.

She and Katy decorated the tree, finishing just before Katy’s bedtime. When Bess plugged in the lights, the young girl stared at it as if she’d never seen anything so beautiful. She hugged Bess hard.

“I love you,” she choked out, and then ran away before Bess could reply.

She stood watching the tree with tears in her eyes. Who’d have thought it would mean so much to the little girl? She thought about Christmases when she was a child, and the trouble her mother and father had gone to to make them special for her. The tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. They’d been such a happy family, so happy. Then her father had died and her mother had married Crystal’s father, and Bess’s fragile happiness had collapsed. She couldn’t help feeling sad about the past. It had been so lovely to have a family, to be part of that warmth. That was why she wanted to make it beautiful for Katy. A little girl should have some sweet memories to look back on when she grew up.

It was midnight when Bess went up to bed, and Jude hadn’t yet come home. She was still amazed that he’d agreed to her demands. But, then, he was full of surprises, and she wasn’t certain yet that he wouldn’t get even with her for forcing his hand. Maybe Katy’s expression on Christmas morning would be enough to stall him.

* * *

As it turned out, Jude didn’t make any snide remarks about the tree; in fact, he pretended it wasn’t there at all. But she saw him bring in a big, bulky package one night before Christmas and take it upstairs without saying a word about it to anyone. And suddenly her heart soared with happiness for Katy.

The only unpleasant note in the week before Christmas was a card from Crystal, saying that she’d only just gotten Bess’s note about the wedding and would come to spend the holidays with her and Jude. That was enough to spoil the spirit of anticipation that was building inside Bess. Crystal was all she needed right now, to shatter the delicate truce she was establishing with Jude.

She could have cried. Crystal had always taken things from her. Crystal, who was beautiful and fragile and spoiled. But Bess had never minded losing before. Now it was a different story. She had Katy and at least the hope of some kind of relationship with Jude if she was patient. What if Crystal decided she wanted Bess’s new husband? A black cloud settled over the holiday preparations, like the despair of the days before Bess’s mother had died. She felt old suddenly, and afraid.

Chapter Five

“W
hat in the hell is this supposed to be?” Jude asked Bess as she was setting the table for supper on Christmas Eve.

She glanced at the gracefully folded napkin beside his plate. “It’s a napkin,” she told him.

He glowered at it, and abruptly lifted it in his lean hand and shook it out. “If it’s a napkin, suppose you let it look like one! This isn’t your plantation, little Georgia peach.”

She glared at him. “You’ll find napkins done that way in elegant restaurants all over the country,” she said with deliberate sarcasm. “If you’d rather wipe your mouth on your sleeve…”

His eyes flickered with a burst of emotion. “Like a savage?” he taunted. He threw the napkin down onto his plate. “That’s what you’ve always considered me, Bess. From the early days.”

“That’s not at all true,” she said quietly. She stopped lining up silverware and stood erect, her hair long and soft, floating around the shoulders of the white Victorian dress she was wearing.

“Isn’t it?” He laughed shortly. He bent to crush out his cigarette in the big ceramic ashtray she’d put out for him. “Then why do you throw pots at me, and try to slap my face, and…”

“Jude…” she said beseechingly. “Why can’t we let bygones be bygones?”

“Do you really think we can ignore the way we react to each other?” he said in surprise, and even smiled a little. “My God, I can’t remember the last time a woman fought me like you have.”

The remark brought embarrassing pictures to mind—Jude with a woman. She’d never thought about him in bed with a woman before, and it shocked her. Unfortunately, the shock was quite visible to his piercing eyes.

“That isn’t what I meant,” he murmured softly.

“Don’t read my mind,” she grumbled, turning back to her chore with fingers that trembled.

“Was I? What were you seeing in that suspicious little mind of yours? I didn’t think ladies ever dwelled on such sordid subjects as sex.”

She ignored the deliberate taunting. “Katy should be down any minute,” she said quietly. “Please don’t make fun of the dress I bought her to wear to the Christmas Eve service at church tonight.”

He looked frankly insulted. “I never make fun of my daughter.”

“Our daughter,” she said coolly, staring at him.

A corner of his chiseled mouth curled upward. “Excuse me.
Our
daughter.”

She finished arranging the silverware. “And would you say something nice about the way she looks?”

“Hold it, honey,” he said silkily, noticing the way her head jerked up at the careless endearment that he’d just used for the first time in their stormy relationship. “I’ve let you get away with murder for the past week, but there’s a limit to my patience.”

“Do you have any?” she asked conversationally.

His chin lifted and his eyes narrowed. “Given the right circumstances, I have quite a lot,” he said, in a tone that rippled along her nerves like a teasing finger.

She hated the hot surge in her cheeks and lowered her hands to rearrange one of the place settings. “That’s something I’ll never know about,” she said.

He didn’t reply, and she looked up straight into his unblinking stare.

It was like lightning striking. She couldn’t have dragged her eyes away from his to save her life, and the intensity of the look they were exchanging made her tingle all the way to her toes. Jude’s nostrils flared with a harsh breath and he moved abruptly, coming so close that she could smell his tangy cologne and feel the heat of him.

He slid one hand into the small of her back. The other pressed against her cheek, and he watched her curiously while his thumb began to move slowly, sensuously, across her lips, back and forth in a rough caress that had the oddest effect on her pulse.

“Cool,” he breathed, “like ice to the touch, even your mouth. I’ve wondered for years what it would take to unstarch you.”

“Don’t think…you could do it,” she whispered shakily.

But he could see the effect his hard thumb was having on her, he could see her lips parting helplessly, feel the in and out of her breath on his chin.

“I’m a man,” he said quietly. “That’s something you seem to have overlooked for a long time. I have all the usual needs, and I’m no virgin.”

She felt her heart beating wildly and she wanted to move away, but when she tried, that steely hand behind her brought her legs against the powerful muscles of his own.

“Stop running, I won’t hurt you,” he growled, watching her mouth. “Not this time, at least. I’m curious about you. I want to know why you’re so damned cold with me.”

“You make my life miserable,” she said jerkily, “you carry me off from my home and force me into a marriage I don’t want, you insult me…and then you have the audacity to wonder why I back away when you come toward me!”

His eyebrows lifted. “You were backing away from me long before I brought you here. Two summers ago. The summer before that.”

Her eyes fell to his chiseled mouth and she tried not to want it. “I’ve only tried to defend myself.”

“After you attacked and set me off,” he agreed. He sighed quietly. “I guess I am pretty hard on you sometimes.”

That admission was startling, because he’d never admitted any such thing before. She glanced up, curious.

“You don’t know why, do you?” he asked, searching her eyes.

She nodded. “Because you dislike me.”

He laughed shortly. “God, you’re green,” he murmured. “Grass green and as out of place here as hothouse orchids.” He caught her chin and tilted it. “That reminds me. I want you to stop putting those damned flowers in my study. Bandy made a remark about it this morning—and about the damned tree you put in the living room. Said you were softening me up.”

She gave him her most belligerent glare. “And what’s wrong with that, Rawhide Man? You’re so hard you can’t enjoy the simple pleasures of life.”

That made him angry. “We don’t need all that,” he said gruffly. “Christmas trees and wreaths on the damned door…next, I’ll find lace sewn on the edges of my damned underwear!”

The thought of it made her giggle. She put up a hand to muffle her laughter, but he caught it savagely and pressed it against his chest.

Her fingers felt the heavy rise and fall of his breathing. The hand at her back involuntarily drew her closer, and with a shock she realized that the closeness of her body was beginning to have a noticeable effect on him.

Apparently he wasn’t anxious to have her know that, because he immediately loosened his hold so that several inches separated them.

His eyes went down to the slender hand resting on his white shirtfront. His own hand touched it lightly, tracing the pale blue veins on its back, running over her long fingers.

“You play something, don’t you?” he asked in a deep, slow drawl. “The piano?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“You have…lovely hands,” he murmured. His breathing was growing more ragged by the second. Slowly, almost absently, he flicked open two of the top buttons of his open-necked shirt and drew her fingers inside.

She went rigid at the feel of him, at the hair-roughened warmth and strength of the hard muscles of his chest, just below his collarbone.

His lips parted as he watched her hand against his body. He opened another button and guided her hand from one side of his chest to the other, letting her fingers rest finally on one rigid male nipple.

She hadn’t realized that it happened to men the way it happened to women, and she looked up with the discovery in her eyes.

His eyes held hers for a long, static moment. He bent his head just enough for her lips to come within reach of his, and she could feel the banked-down fire in him like an imminent explosion.

“Open your mouth, and fit it to mine,” he whispered in a deep tone that hypnotized her.

She obeyed him in silence, a thick silence that throbbed with new emotions, new knowledge. She stood up on her tiptoes, staring at his mouth, and opened hers very slowly.

Holding her breath, she fitted her lips exactly to his hard, open mouth, and a gasp caught in her throat at the exquisite sensations that rippled through her body.

His breath mingled with hers, coming quick and harsh. Both his hands moved to her waist and lifted her gently up against his hard body while his mouth slowly increased its intimate pressure.

Her hands, both of them exploring his hard chest now, tangled in the thick mat of hair over the warm muscles and pulled, like a kitten kneading a soft cover in pure pleasure. He moaned sharply, and his mouth was suddenly demanding, hungry and relentless, forcing hers into a deeper union that drew a moan from her own mouth. She slid her hands up around his neck and pressed her breasts hard against his chest. She felt as though she were drowning in new and exquisite pleasures.