The Widow and the Wildcatter: A Loveswept Classic Romance (13 page)

“Three,” Joni corrected her friend, and went on to describe her scaffold ride, skipping the details of her fight with Chance.

“You went up against your fear and it worked.”

“Surprised the heck out of me too.”

Loretta looked at Chance, who stood head and shoulders above the other men gathered around the beer keg. “He’s been good for you in ways that Larry never was.”

Joni turned a puzzled glance on her friend. “How so?”

“Understand, I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead.”

“I understand.”

The blonde pursed her heavily glossed lips, as if
trying to think how to phrase it. “Larry took the sparkle out of your eyes and the smile off your lips long before he died.”

“I felt so guilty because I couldn’t make him happy.” Joni plucked a blade of grass and split it in two with a smooth oval thumbnail that had profited from regular exposure to an emery board. “I still feel guilty sometimes.”

“But some people are just born unhappy.” The cut-out arms and straight, tight skirt of Loretta’s red leather body skimmer set off her curves to full advantage. Now she tucked her legs under her and settled into a more comfortable position. “It’s part of their genetic makeup or something.”

“It’s an interesting thought, I’ll grant you that.”

Loretta nodded in the direction of the picnic table. “Look at your grandfather.”

A smile curved Joni’s lips when she saw Grandpa stacking the deck against Dr. Rayburn, who’d joined him for a game of pitch. “He’s really something, isn’t he?”

“If anybody ever had good reason to put a gun to his head, it was him.”

“I remember him saying once that he’d been dusted, busted, but never rusted.”

“Why do you think he’s one way and Larry was the other?”

“The difference in their personalities, I suppose.”

Loretta smiled her butter-almond smile. “I rest my case.”

She then gave her spindrift hair a proud pat. “Who says all blondes are airheads?”

The two women looked at each other and burst
out laughing. When their mirth subsided, they whiled away the afternoon talking about this and that.

Loretta had a new boyfriend, but she wasn’t naming names. “I’ve had such bad luck in my relationships, I’m afraid I’ll jinx it if I say too much.”

“He’s single, I presume?” Joni remembered the supposedly divorced truck driver whose wife and three children had shown up on Loretta’s door-step one revealing spring day. As it had turned out, Loretta was just one of several girlfriends along the guy’s route.

“For sure,” Lorette said fervently. “One thing I learned from that last jerk is that a man who’ll cheat with me will probably cheat on me.”

Joni played Twenty Questions, trying to guess the identity of the man who’d captured the perennial bridesmaid’s interest, but she didn’t know any more about him when the supper call came over the loudspeaker than she had when she’d started.

“Keep me posted,” Joni said as she stood and turned toward her picnic table.

“You’ll be the first to hear,” Loretta promised.

Joni lifted their platter of fried chicken from the basket and almost dropped it when Chance came up behind her and began nuzzling her neck right there in front of God and Grandpa.

She set it down and spun around, only to find herself trapped between the concrete table and his long, equally hard body. “Have you been drinking, for heaven’s sake?”

“No, ma’am.” He handed her his paper cup and she took a tentative sip.

“Lemonade!” she exclaimed, surprised.

“Yes’m.” His smile packed a hundred-proof wallop all its own. “I want to be in full control of my faculties tonight.”

The minister asked everyone to bow their heads just then, and Joni was only too happy to comply. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for guidance, but she knew that something that felt this right couldn’t be wrong.

“Amen,” the picnickers said together, then sat down at their individual tables and dug in.

“Pass the tomatoes,” Dr. Rayburn requested when he had some of everything else piled on his plate.

Grandpa pointed a well-gnawed chicken leg at Chance. “You know the only two things that money can’t buy?”

Chance smiled, expecting a joke. “Can’t say as I do.”

Grandpa glanced at Joni, then back at Chance, as if silently bestowing his blessing on them. “True love and homegrown tomatoes.”

The lemonade in Joni’s cup sloshed perilously close to the rim as she lifted it to her lips.

“Haven’t heard that one in a blue moon,” Dr. Rayburn said as he reached for another bread and butter sandwich.

Chance noticed that Joni had been doing more sipping than supping. He placed a deviled egg on her plate, his eyes making promises galore, and said matter-of-factly, “Gotta keep your strength up.”

Joni looked down at the paprika-sprinkled egg all alone on her plate and smiled. She knew exactly what he meant. “Pass the chicken, please.”

But if she thought he was going to leave her to eat in peace, she had another think coming. His leg touching hers under the table, their thighs brushing when he leaned forward to reach for the salt shaker, his fingers skimming along her sensitive palm when he handed it to her—by the time she finished supper, even the fine hairs on her arms were attuned to his covertly erotic signals.

Exhaustion and excitement finally caught up with Grandpa. Dr. Rayburn offered to run him home and help him into bed, and by way of thanks, Joni gave him the rest of the angel food cake.

“Grandpa seemed stronger today then he has since I’ve been here,” Chance remarked when they were gone.

“Don’t expect it to last.” Joni’s voice quavered as she explained that Dr. Rayburn had recently warned her that Grandpa’s old heart couldn’t with-stand too many more of those terrible coughing spells.

Chance drew her into his arms, hurting for her, and buried his face in her cascading hair. “Cry if it’ll help, little darlin’.”

Joni laid her cheek in the warm hollow of his wide shoulder, but the tears she badly needed to shed just wouldn’t come.

They stood for a long time in the cricket-stitched silence, just holding each other.

“I owe you an apology,” she finally whispered against his muscular chest.

“For what?” He sounded perplexed.

“For what I said when I slapped you.”

“But not for slapping me?”

“No.” She raised her head and met his mildly amused eyes. “You deserved that.”

“I guess I did,” he admitted with a rueful smile.

Twilight lay like a gray velvet mantle over the park as they broke apart and began clearing the table.

Joni packed up their basket and Chance put it back in the trunk of the Thunderbird. Then he took out the soft blue blanket he’d brought, spread it under the lacy branches of the cottonwood, and drew her down with him.

The fireworks weren’t scheduled to start until full dark, and everyone seemed to have the same idea as Chance.

Mothers sat and rocked fussy babies. Fathers called the older children back to the family fold. Young couples necked in dusk’s accommodating shadow.

“Didn’t you want children when you were married?” Chance smiled when a rebellious little boy reached over and pulled the pigtails of the cute little girl on the next blanket. Damned if it didn’t remind him of something he’d have done at that age.

“We discussed it.” Joni made out a man’s shape on Loretta’s blanket. He looked familiar to her, but she couldn’t see his face in the deepening twilight. Silently she wished her friend good luck in her new relationship.

“But?” he prompted softly, sliding his hand up her slender back and under her rich red hair.

“We never got beyond the talking stage.” And she wouldn’t have felt right about bringing an innocent baby into their foundering marriage.

“Never?”
he asked teasingly, trying to lighten the maudlin moment he’d unwittingly promoted.

The answering tinkle of her laughter told him that he’d succeeded. “You know what I mean.”

Someone produced a fiddle then, someone else a guitar, and soon the strains of “Old George Gans” made time roll by. The music arose in Scotland, followed its migrant people across ocean and mountain, and finally settled in Redemption, Oklahoma.

Everyone raised their voices in song for “Blue-tail Fly” and “Frère Jacques,” then one of the picnickers requested “Red River Valley.”

Chance kept one hand lightly on the back of Joni’s neck as he sang along. Ripples skipped up her skin as she joined in, her husky contralto in perfect accord with his clear, resonant baritone.

Seesawing between sensation and sadness, Joni looked at Chance. Butterscotch drops of moon
drizzled down through the cottonwood branches, the golden light glancing off his high-planed cheekbones. She could smell his evergreen soap and see the wanting in his eyes. And she realized she couldn’t let him leave Redemption without showing him how much she loved him.

“Let’s go home.” Were they her words or his? It didn’t matter, for two minds had the same thought.

Silently they stood and folded the blanket, their fingertips grazing as they brought the corners together. Arm in arm they walked to the Thunderbird, their pulses setting the pace.

He circled her shoulders with his right arm and studied her upturned face, his conscience speaking louder than his body now. “You understand I have to leave when I’m finished with the well?”

Joni swallowed the lump in her throat, knowing that trying to tie him down would be like trying to tether the wind. “When will that be?”

If she backed out on him now, he’d never forgive himself for opening his big mouth. He had to answer her honestly, though. “A couple of days, a week at the most.”

But her heart had already made up her mind. “Then let’s make good use of the time that’s left to us.”

Grandpa was sawing ’em off on the sofa sleeper, Sooner at his side, when Joni and Chance got home.

The bluetick hound raised its black nose in greeting when they tiptoed into the dining room, then snugged it back between its paws when they left on equally silent feet.

Chance turned off the porch light, Joni the hall light, and then there was only moonlight streaming through those sparkling windows and the dark at the top of the stairs.

Nervous now, she wiped damp palms on her chiffon skirt and tried to think of something to say. Something clever like, “My room or yours?” But her throat and mouth felt so cottony, the words wouldn’t come.

He realized this was a big step for her and wanted to help her along. Scooping her into his
arms, his widow with the warrior’s heart, he said softly, “Let’s go upstairs.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, only too happy to let him take charge, and breathed into the dark rain cloud of his hair, “I’m sorry—it’s been a while.”

“For me too,” he admitted throatily, the thought of finally having her naked beneath him making him feel a little dizzy as he lithely climbed the stairs.

Joni raised her head and searched those eyes of incandescent green, almost electric in their intensity. Dare she ask? She jumped in with both feet. “How long?”

“Does it really matter?”

“Yes and no.”

Chance remembered the women he’d known before, the ones who’d demanded nothing of him. Not even honesty. But the woman in his arms now deserved more. “There’s been no one else since I met you.”

She bit her lip, relief mingling with a vague regret for those who’d gone before her. “It’s been three years for me.”

He hated himself for being glad she hadn’t given herself to anyone since her husband, but was glad nonetheless. “Sounds like we’ve both got some catching up to do.”

Not wanting any ghosts coming between them tonight, he bypassed her room in favor of his. She thrilled to his flexing muscles as he let her feet slide slowly to the floor. From the beginning she’d felt his fire. Now she wanted to feed the flame.

He crushed her to him, molding her legs, her hips, her breasts to the fevered length of his body. From the first he’d made her for a scrapper. Now he wanted to make her burn.

Neither heard the tick of the bedside clock as their mouths met. And neither thought of the calendar hanging in the kitchen when their tongues mated. Time lost all meaning as their deliciously heated kiss deepened into an act of love.

His fingers located the buttons at the back of her spun-sugar dress and, one by pearly one, undid them. Despite four years of marriage, being undressed by a man was a new experience for her. But as she slid her hands up the silky lapels and under the broad shoulders of his jacket, she found that two could play this exciting game.

No matter what they were doing with the rest of their bodies, they were determined to stay joined at the mouth.

It made for some funny gymnastics and laughter bubbled between their lips when Joni couldn’t get his polo shirt off without breaking the connection.

Then he reached to switch on the bedside lamp and she made a grab for his hand. “Please—leave it off.”

Chance’s breathing was ragged. “I want to see you.”

“I’m not very … big.” Joni’s voice was as thin as vapor.

“More than a handful’s a waste.” He cupped her bare breasts in his callused palms, finding her all the woman he’d ever want.

And later, when the light did come on, the volcanic pleasure in his eyes touched her in a way his hands could not.

Her doubts dissolved, her hands indulged in their own orgy of discovery. No amount of imagining could have prepared her for the feel of him.

She found him sinuous and tough, scarred and lean. His neck and shoulders were as smooth as polished bronze, yet alive and supple. The hair on his chest—so crisp and curly—softened the sharp edges of his pectoral muscles. She loved the way it swirled around his flat nipples, then made a racing stripe down his springboard of a stomach before fanning out again at the base of his …