Authors: Janette Kenny
Cowboy Come Home (17 page)
Home. She smiled, for when they connected as only a man and woman could, she felt at home too. Protected. Safe. She felt the rightness of it seep into her soul.
Another groan ripped from him as he held her there, making her take him in slowly when she wanted all of him now. Wanted everything he had to give her.
“So good,” she said as her body stretched to take all of him.
“I ain’t complaining,” he said, voice choked now.
Then he started moving in her, deep, strong thrusts that set every nerve in her on fire. Coherent thought skittered away on an exhaled breath.
She held onto him as he took her into the place only they’d been together. A place where fear didn’t exist. Where he was her anchor in this world and beyond.
“Trey,” she gasped as she soared past the stars to that place of contentment that only he could take her to.
Distantly she heard her name on his breath, a reverent whisper that touched her more deeply than anything ever could. She jerked once more as stars exploded around her, clinging to him, feeling his heart thundering against hers.
She collapsed on him, spent in body and mind. Her last thought before she drifted off to sleep was that she never wanted this moment with this man to end.
Trey had always banked on two things that would knock him out. Getting sloppy-assed drunk and sex.
The first had never failed him, though as he’d gotten older and wiser, he’d refrained from that particular endeavor. Sex, though, he could count on every time.
Or had been able to until he’d met Daisy Barton.
He had attributed his inability to doze off after he made love with her the first time to an innate sense of survival. He sure as hell hadn’t wanted to get caught buck naked with the boss’s equally naked daughter in his arms.
All the stolen moments with her after that he painted with the same excuse. Getting nookie on the side did have its risks.
But there was no accounting for why he was lying here with her snuggled up against him while he was wide awake.
No reason except the bald fact that she wanted something from him that he didn’t think he’d be able to give. He didn’t know what love was. Didn’t understand how a man felt if afflicted with the emotion.
He’d shared a strong bond with his foster brothers, but he’d never loved them. He respected Reid and Dade. He knew he could count on them to be there for him through thick and thin.
At least it’d been that way for a dozen or more years until Reid had turned on them.
How the hell could he make her understand that he’d be there for her until she drew her last breath? That she could depend on him to protect her and pleasure her?
He didn’t know. She wanted those flowery words. He could promise her anything tangible. He’d be at her side always. But he couldn’t tell her something that didn’t exist—at least for him.
He skimmed his palm down her bare back to the inviting curve of her hip, certain he’d never known a more perfectly formed woman. Never met one who fit him like a glove until Daisy.
A contented sound escaped her in sleep to torment him, for that pleased rest she enjoyed was eluding him now. She had him between a rock and a hard place.
He gathered her close and buried his face in her silken hair. She needed him. Needed a man to guard her back.
She surely didn’t want Dade telling her what to do. And wouldn’t that be one helluva row when he learned Daisy had grit?
Nope, she wanted Trey to be her husband, the man she leaned on in hard times, the one she clung to when wounds needed to be salved. The man who would show her pleasure the best he knew how for as long as he drew breath.
But she didn’t want him unless he loved her. Shit, he couldn’t lie to her. But the truth would have her walking away, and he couldn’t let that happen either.
She was his. Had been his since the first time he took her innocence. Why couldn’t she see that? Why couldn’t she be happy with what he could give her?
Women! Hellfire, what was he going to do with Daisy Barton?
Daisy woke with the first pale fingers of dawn that stretched into the smoky sky and filled the adobe with a warm glow. She loved this time of morning when the air was cool.
She loved this morning more because she finally awoke with Trey beside her. He looked younger in sleep. Untroubled. Handsome.
His body was honed. Lean. And horribly scarred.
Whitish strips banded his hips and thighs, though the left side looked worse. The marks from being dragged behind a horse. Left for dead.
Like Sam Weber. That man had died, but somehow Trey had survived.
My God, how he must have suffered!
She eased from the bedroll and quietly dressed. Everything between them was still so much of a jumble.
She loved him. Always would.
He wouldn’t admit to any tender feelings, yet every kiss, every caress, left her feeling wanted. Cherished.
Now he wanted to marry her.
If only he’d proposed to her instead of suggesting in a roundabout way that they marry.
If only it was for love, but she knew his offer was based on two reasons. He wanted the land that passed to her. And he likely felt duty bound to marry her because she was Dade Logan’s sister.
His loyalty to her brother was admirable but misplaced in this. Trey had to want her more than anything. Not because of the land. Not because of who she was.
Not even because the world stopped twirling when they made love.
She slipped from the cabin and attended to her needs behind the sage nearest the adobe. This land was unforgiving, never bending. She’d grown up here knowing no different, yet the past few days living at the Circle 46 had been a welcome change.
“What am I going to do, Daddy?”
Like she had all the mornings spent at the JDB since his death, she walked toward the fenced cemetery on the knoll. Without the barn and the house, the land looked more bleak than ever.
The sun sat on the horizon like an arc of white fire by the time she reached the cemetery. She dropped to her knees at his tombstone and stared at the inscription.
Beloved husband to Corinne and loving father to Daisy.
She hadn’t realized how true those words were until she had learned her daddy’s secret. Jared Barton had taken in an orphan and raised her as his own, all because his wife pined so for a child.
Her lost memory had been an asset to him as well, for Daisy had never questioned her paternity. She never had a reason to do so.
She’d had a good life as the Bartons’ daughter. Spoilt. Her daddy coddled her. Protected her the best he could.
She’d had a carefree life. She’d been loved. God only knew what would have become of her if Jared Barton hadn’t come into her life.
An image of cowering in a carriage with an austere man flashed in and out of her memory. She tried to catch it, to examine it, but it was gone.
She shook her head, wondering what mysteries her memory still held. Wondering if there’d be more secrets that would come to life and send her world tipping on its end again.
“Oh, Daddy, why didn’t you teach me how to run this ranch?” she asked and then laughed wryly. “I know. There was no need. You aimed to marry me off to Kurt. He’d pick up where you left off. He’d take care of me.”
But she couldn’t marry a man she didn’t love. Wouldn’t marry a man when she was carrying another’s baby.
Her hand stole to her belly, and her eyes drifted shut. She’d never been afraid of her daddy, but she’d feared telling him the truth about her and Trey. But even before she’d known she was with child, she’d known she had to tell him the truth because she couldn’t go through with a loveless marriage.
“I rehearsed how to tell you so many times,” she said. “There just wasn’t any easy way.”
So she had just told him straight out that she wouldn’t marry Kurt. That she loved Trey. That they’d become lovers and she wanted to marry the cowboy. And then she had braced herself for his explosion of anger.
It’d been a terrible thing to witness. She’d never been afraid of her daddy before, but she’d cowered that day as he ranted and raved and heaped invectives on Trey March.
Later, her daddy had been her silent supporter when she’d told Kurt that she didn’t want to marry him. Kurt had begged her to reconsider, begged her father to force her to do as promised, but her daddy had remained her champion.
“Sorry, my friend. It’s Daisy’s choice,” her daddy had said, and Kurt had left the house in a red-faced huff.
Then her daddy had vowed to find Trey and drag his ass back here. A shotgun wedding had loomed in her future then, weeks before she’d known she was pregnant.
But Trey had vanished. Day after day, she had gone to the hayloft and clung to bittersweet memories.
Months later, a shotgun wedding was no longer necessary, for she’d stepped wrong in the loft and took that awful fall.
She rubbed her brow and looked up into the now full sun, wishing it would burn off the fog that swirled around that heartbreaking event. As many times as she’d been in that hayloft, how could she not have noticed that a feeding door had been left open?
She closed her eyes, seeing herself stumble. Fall.
But she forced herself to relive that scene again and again. She’d been near blinded by tears. Weak with heartache over Trey abandoning her when she needed him most. Her heart hurt too over disappointing her daddy so.
She’d stumbled. Fell.
An accident. She’d simply lost her footing as she walked across the thick hay in the loft.
No! She went still as a biting chill swept over her.
She hadn’t been alone. Someone had been waiting for her in the loft. Laying a trap.
But she hadn’t realized it until she was walking toward the haymow. Until she’d heard the scuff of a boot. Until she turned and saw the shadowy form of a man reaching out for her.
“Oh, my God,” she’d said, pressing a trembling hand to her mouth and feeling strong hands yank her against him. “Let me go!”
“I’ll make you forget March.” His voice was a rumble of sound. Threatening. Distorted and terrifying as the memory.
“No!” But a hand over her mouth stifled her scream.
She had clawed at the hands that tried to lift her skirt, hands that were pulling her down to the bed of hay. Panic choked her, but the sweet memories she’d made here with Trey gave her strength.
She shoved hard and heard him fall, felt his grip loosen just enough for her to break free. She ran to the mow, drawing in air to scream her lungs out.
And fell through the trap door that had been left open. Her scream died in her throat as she hit her head going down. Pain blinded her, then exploded within her as she lay on the hard ground below. Then blackness. Blessed blackness that stayed with her for days and that had shrouded her already shaky memory for over six months.
“It wasn’t an accident, Daddy,” she said. “I was running from a man in the loft. Oh, God, he was going to rape me.”
“Wondered when you’d remember that,” Ned drawled, his voice too close, too similar to what was going through her mind.
She shot to her feet and whipped around, shocked that he’d sneaked up on her now and furious that he’d robbed her of her baby. Hers and Trey’s baby. “Why did you do it?”
He flashed her an oily smile that made her skin crawl. “I didn’t.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He shrugged. “Makes no never mind to me. I wasn’t the only one who knew you’d been sneaking off for a roll in the hay with March. Knew it was just a matter of time before Barton found out and arranged a quick wedding, whether March knocked you up or not. Then I’d be out on my ass.”
She saw the truth in his dark eyes and cringed. “So you had to get rid of Trey first.”
A cruel smile pulled at Ned’s mouth. “Thought I had, but when your old man said he aimed to find March, I went back to look for his carcass and haul it back here, but there wasn’t nothing there. Knew if varmints had gotten to him, I’d have found parts of him scattered about. So I figured the chances were good he was alive. That he’d recover and come back gunning for me.”
Which is exactly what had happened. Her fingers bunched into tight fists when she thought of what this man had put her through. What he’d put Trey through.
“So you decided to kill me instead?”
He affected an indolent shrug that made her want to wretch. “Hell, no. I wanted you alive. Didn’t even care if you was carrying that bastard’s brat. Your old man would have been more desperate to marry you off to hide the shame. Then Barton would’ve doted on the heir to his dynasty.”
“Which was his right!”
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