Frontier Woman (23 page)

“It’s all the help I can give. After supper, would you help me write the invitations for the reception?”

“Are you sure you want to have this party?”

“Absolutely,” Amy said with a smile.

“Will I have to dance?”

Amy laughed. “Only once, Cricket. It’s traditional for the bride and groom to have a first dance together.”

After supper, Amy and Cricket sat down in the parlor with pen and paper to invite the surrounding planters and their wives to the party. “We should have plenty of time this week to get ready,” Amy said.

And that gives me one week to learn how to dance, Cricket thought. She shifted her gaze to Creed, who sat on the other side of the room, talking with Tom.

Creed was restless. He wanted to go to bed, and he wanted Cricket to come with him. But how was he going to ask? Since he’d thrown her in the river, she wasn’t talking to him. Things might have turned out so differently if he’d had a little more self-control—or a little less, he thought irritably. He rubbed the back of his neck to ease the tension. She’d caught him off guard with all that touching. If he wasn’t careful, Cricket was going to incite him to consummate this marriage, and he didn’t want
that
to happen. Did he?

For their own reasons, both Creed and Cricket wanted to be alone to talk. So when Creed’s restlessness finally drove him from his chair, Cricket asked, “Is it bedtime?”

“Yes, yes it is.” Creed extended his hand to her.

Cricket rose and crossed to him, putting her hand in his, as it seemed natural to do. The touch was electric, jolting both of them.

Cricket’s new awareness of him transmitted itself to Creed. He tried to ignore the need that spread through him like a brushfire.

Cricket pretended there was nothing different, but her stomach was doing somersaults. Great. Now he was making her sick.

Tom and Amy exchanged a conspiratorial smile. The two lovers might have had a brief spat, but it was obviously mended now.

“Good night, Jarrett, Cricket,” Tom said.

His words broke the trance, but not the spell. Cricket and Creed never took their eyes off one another as they ascended the staircase to privacy.

He wanted nothing from her.

She wanted nothing from him.

At least, that’s what they told themselves as they headed for the bedroom.

Chapter 15

LOOK AT YOUR LEG!”

Creed had been dressing and undressing in the dark for the past three days, so this was the first time Cricket had seen the spot where she’d bitten him. It looked awful. She reached out to touch the horrible black-and-blue discoloration, which was surrounded by a perfect set of teeth marks. His naked thigh felt hot under her fingertips.

At Creed’s sharp intake of air Cricket looked up at him and asked, “Does it still hurt?”

Creed grabbed her wrist and removed her hand. “No, it’s fine.” Creed’s trousers were halfway down, but he pulled them up again.

“Cricket, we have to—”

“Creed, we need to—”

“Talk.”

They both smiled, but it did little to relieve the tension. Creed gestured for her to sit on the edge of the bed, and when she was settled, he sat down next to her. Cricket forced her eyes to stay on Creed’s face, despite their desire to drift downward to his naked chest.

“Ladies first,” he said.

As anxious as she was, Cricket would have agreed to anything. “All right.” She took a deep breath.

Creed waited patiently, saying nothing until she finally blurted, “I need you to teach me how to dance.”

When Creed’s brows rose, Cricket glared and said defensively, “Amy says you and I have to dance at the party she’s giving. And I . . .” Cricket paused.

“. . . don’t know how,” Creed finished for her.

“There wasn’t any reason to know how. Who was I ever going to dance with?” she said. “Well?”

“I see your problem. Of course, I’ll be glad to teach you.” Creed wondered if Cricket knew how unusual it was for her to be concerned about doing the conventional thing.

Cricket’s relief was tangible. “You will? You’ll teach me to dance?”

“Yes, Brava, I will.” Creed smiled at her, wondering how she’d managed to make him feel giddy and young and caught up in an adventure. This had to stop.

“I’ll teach you to dance, but I have something to ask in return.”

The sparkle wavered in Cricket’s eyes, and the tension slipped back into her body. “What do you want?”

Creed wasn’t really sure of the answer to that question. He wanted Cricket warm and supple in his arms. He wanted to bury himself deep inside her and stay there. He’d begun to feel a husbandly possessiveness that was entirely inappropriate under the circumstances. He was also very much afraid that if he ever made Cricket his wife in fact, it wouldn’t be so easy to give her up once the business with Sloan and Antonio was resolved. There was no room in a Ranger’s life for a woman, especially a woman who promised to be as much pure hell-raising trouble as Creighton Stewart.

So what he wanted had very little relationship to what he planned to ask of Cricket. Quite simply, she had to keep her hands off him. Creed felt a flush rising on his neck. The mere thought of her fingertips on his skin made him hard. He tried to summon anger at his predicament, hoping that would take his mind off his urgent need. The worst of it was, he knew Cricket’s desire to touch him was merely the result of her insatiable curiosity. What had happened between them today could have happened with any man. She was learning for the first time what it meant to have a woman’s feelings and, ironically, acted very much like a child with a new toy.

However, if she continued teasing him the way she had this afternoon, he wouldn’t be responsible for the consequences. He’d created his own
diablito
, and he wasn’t sure of the best way to control her. Knowing Cricket, if he demanded she leave him alone, she was likely to do the exact opposite. Suddenly, Creed chuckled to himself. If he wanted her to stop touching him, maybe the solution was to demand that she continue her affections.

“After the incident at the river today, I think it’s clear we have to establish some new rules,” he said.

“New rules?”

Cricket had suspected this conversation was coming. Rather, she’d anticipated it. Still, she wasn’t sure whether she was ready to do “it” with Creed, because she wasn’t yet sure of her feelings. Amy had said she’d know when she was in love. She’d expected to feel something momentous, something extraordinary. The most she could say was that she didn’t find the idea of spending time with Creed distasteful at all. Was that what it meant to be in love?

“A man has certain needs, Cricket, that have to be satisfied when he’s aroused by a woman. If you intend to continue teasing me as you did today, then I intend to see that you satisfy those needs.”

Cricket bristled automatically at Creed’s demanding tone of voice but forced herself to curb her antagonism while she took time to evaluate his speech. She’d encountered a lot of new feelings lately. Maybe the same thing had happened to Creed. Unfortunately, even based on her limited knowledge, what he’d said didn’t sound like the words a man used to a woman he loved. But then, what did she really know about love?

Creed enfolded her in his embrace and gently lowered her so they were both stretched out face-to-face on the feather bed. He emblazoned her face and neck with kisses that tingled, but he kept their bodies separated, murmuring to her across the distance that separated them.

Cricket felt her bones melting until she was as limp as a day-old starched shirt, pliant and malleable beneath Creed’s persuasive kissing. She let her fingertips roam across his bare chest, caressing the smooth skin over hard muscle, while she tried to listen to what he was saying . . . something about satisfying needs. . . . Maybe her woman’s intuition had been mistaken. He was certainly acting as though he cared. Would he show her what it meant to be a woman in a man’s arms? Would he make her feel those incredible spiraling sensations again?

“It pleases me to be touched by you, Brava.”

That sounded encouraging.

“But I’m like any other man when a beautiful woman touches him . . .”

That was even better—he thought her a beautiful woman.

“. . . I have animal urges that have to be satisfied—or it becomes very painful.”

Animal urges?

“At times like that, any woman will do.”

Any woman?

“So I’ll be counting on you to take care of that little chore for me. Okay, Brava?”

Chore?

Cricket grabbed a hank of Creed’s thick black hair and yanked his head away from where he was nuzzling her neck so fast he yelped in pain. His eyes were lambent with desire, and his lips were parted in readiness for another kiss.

“Listen, you shaggy-haired ravager of women, I stopped doing
chores
when I turned ten,” she raged. “If my touch is so distressful to you then I think I can manage to control myself. I trust you’ll do the same.” She yanked his hair once more for good measure before she shoved herself away from him to the other side of the bed.

“Does this mean we won’t be sleeping together tonight?”

Cricket looked down at the hard floor and compared it to the feathered comfort beneath her. “Now that we’ve settled this matter of touching one another once and for all, I don’t see any reason why we can’t share the bed.”

Cricket turned to arrange the sheet at that moment, or she would have seen the agonized expression that crossed Creed’s face. She continued, “And you can expect to lose your hand—or any other part of you—if it so much as slips an inch over on my side. Furthermore, in the future I’ll expect you to keep your hands to yourself.”

“That’s going to make teaching you how to dance rather difficult.”

Cricket’s tirade sputtered to a stop. She’d forgotten all about the dancing lessons. She steamed and stewed for a moment before she said, “I’ll tell you where and when to touch, Creed, not the other way around.”

“Fine, Brava. Now that we have that all settled, how about let’s get some sleep.”

Instead of answering, Cricket pulled the sheet down and slipped underneath. Even lying stiff as a board, the feather bed was pure heaven. She wasn’t sorry she’d given up the floor, even if it meant she had to lie beside Creed without touching all night. She held tightly to her anger because she very much feared the alternative was a deep and abiding despair. Was that all she was to Creed—just another woman? She’d been ignorant of relations between husbands and wives, but she was learning fast, and some of the lessons weren’t at all pleasant.

Cricket waited while he blew out the candle, discarded his trousers, and joined her in bed. Then she drew a line down the center of the bed, right through Creed’s naked thigh.

“Move it!” she commanded.

Creed grunted, but obeyed. If he wanted to wake up in one piece, he thought, he’d be smart to sleep on the floor himself. But he wasn’t about to let her talk him out of his own bed. At least now he wouldn’t have to worry about her throwing herself at him. He wondered why that made him feel as though he’d lost something very important.

It had begun to matter less and less that Cricket couldn’t make biscuits or find the right spoon at the table, and she should never hide those firm buttocks and long legs under the current fashions. He’d thought her less than a whole human being because she didn’t act like other girls, but how mistaken he’d been.

Despite outward appearances, she cared deeply what others thought about her. He now knew she’d kept all those feelings hidden because she’d been hurt by the painful criticisms, like his own. But he wasn’t sorry he’d forced her to acknowledge she was a woman. It had been like glimpsing a cactus unfolding its vivid blossoms to observe Cricket as she accepted her femininity.

Like that desert flower, she had proven to be surprisingly soft, incredibly fragile, much more vulnerable than the thick-skinned, prickly surface that protected what was deep inside. When he held her in his arms, and her body naturally molded itself to him, when her mouth opened under his, she was all the woman a man could want.

Oh, he wanted her, all right. But he wasn’t going to have her. Once he dealt with Sloan Stewart and got the information he needed to put Antonio Guerrero out of business, he’d send Cricket back to her father. And that was the end of that.

It was Cricket who woke first the next morning. Creed’s arm was curled around her, and she could feel his iron grip on her ribs through her chemise. The flat of his hand splayed possessively across her belly. It amazed her how secure she felt. He held her possessively, his hairy thigh imprisoning her under its weight. The uneasy feeling crept over her that she was caught like a rabbit in a snare. Escape became imperative. She slipped from Creed’s grasp and dressed quickly, determined to spend the day under the Texas sun. Perhaps it was only the three days cooped up inside which had caused that uncomfortable trapped sensation.

She went to the dining room hunting for something to eat and discovered Tom there ahead of her.

“I didn’t think you’d be up so early,” he said. “Where’s Jarrett?”

“Still sleeping.”

Cricket turned away from Tom’s speculative look, helping herself to a cup of coffee before she joined him at the table.

Tom perused the young woman who sat across from him. She wasn’t what he’d expected. Since the death of his Indian wife, Jarrett had always preferred small, feminine blondes like the American chargé’s daughter, Angelique LeFevre. This auburn-haired Amazon in osnaburg trousers hardly fit the bill. It was a shame how she’d been raised, but Amy liked her and seemed to think she was perfect for Jarrett. From the flush on Cricket’s face, his wife was probably right.

His next thought found its way out of his mouth without conscious thought. “I never thought Jarrett would marry again, after the way he mourned when his Comanche wife died.”

Cricket’s head whipped around to face Tom. “He had a Comanche wife?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Jarrett told me he’d lived among the Comanches, but he didn’t tell me much else.”

“I guess that’s not surprising. None of us talk much about what happened.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t suppose Jarrett would mind me telling you. He and our mother were both captured by the Comanches when he was eight. He spent nine years with those Red Devils before we managed to get him back.”

“Did you ever meet his Comanche wife?”

“Summer Wind? I saw her once, the day we got Jarrett back from the Comanches.”

When Tom offered no more, Cricket’s curiosity prodded her to ask, “Was she pretty?”

“She was a squaw, like any other. I thought Jarrett was going to kill Pa, though, when he separated him from her. Jarrett didn’t want anything to do with white men. He was Comanche through and through, and he must have loved that squaw, because all Pa had to do was threaten to kill her, and Jarrett came with us after that.”

“What happened to your mother? Was your father able to rescue her, too?”

“Oh, he found her all right. But she was some Comanche chief’s paraibo by then. Pa didn’t have any use for a squaw, so he left her there.”

“But what happened to her wasn’t her fault. She had no choice in the matter,” Cricket protested. “Couldn’t
you
have helped her?”

“Wasn’t my place. The decision was Pa’s.”

“But if it had been up to you—”