Love's Sweet Revenge (34 page)

“I don't doubt that.” Kraemer nodded to Brian and walked down the steps to mount his horse. “Remember the offer, Jake. I'm sure it will still be there next spring if you change your mind.” He tipped his hat once more to Randy, then turned his horse and rode off.

Jake turned to Randy. “You didn't really think I'd take a job like that, did you?”

“I wasn't sure.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “I couldn't stand it, Jake. After Oklahoma—”

“I know. I don't want to be away from you any more than you want me to go.”

“I'm glad you decided against it, Pa,” Lloyd told him.

“God knows you'd be good at it, but taking that job would have been hard on Evie, too,” Brian told Jake.

Evie came out of the house. “Daddy, it's time you were always here with us. Four years away in that awful prison, and then always being gone when you were a marshal—it wouldn't be fair to Mother for you to take that job.”

“I didn't consider it for one second,” Jake told her, keeping hold of Randy's hand.

“Hey, look here,” Lloyd told them, scanning the mail. “We got a letter from Peter Brown.” He handed it to Randy.

“It must be a thank-you letter from when he and his wife visited,” Randy commented. “I'm glad they were able to come here. I think they were quite impressed, and that beautiful palomino you gave Peter's wife—she was so taken by that, Jake.”

“She was taken with
Daddy
, you mean,” Evie teased.

“Well, if that's so, then it's proper revenge on Peter,” Jake answered. “If he can ogle my wife, I can ogle his. She was quite beautiful.”

“In a rich-lady, purebred kind of way,” Lloyd joked. “I thought she'd faint dead away when I talked about castration.” They all laughed. “And I was beginning to wonder if she ever takes those gloves off.”

They laughed more, and Lloyd noticed Katie making her way over to them. “I was going crazy over at the house, wondering what was going on with that marshal,” she said as she approached.

Lloyd hurried down the steps and took her arm.

“Lloyd, I'm just pregnant. I'm not an invalid.”

“I don't like you walking around in this heat. Get up here on the veranda where it's cooler. We got a letter from Peter.”

“Might as well take the time to listen to Randy read the letter,” Jake told them. “We've already lost half an hour talking to Kraemer.” He glanced at Lloyd, their gazes holding in mutual understanding.

“You made the right choice, Pa,” Lloyd told Jake. “If you'd decided to take that job, I would have had to beat some sense into you.”

“Oh, sit down,” Randy told him as she opened the letter. “Boys, come out here! We've heard from Peter Brown.” She sat down in her favorite porch rocker and wiped at more tears as she scanned the letter. Stephen, Ben, and Little Jake came out to stand behind Jake.

Jake smoked quietly as Randy began reading platitudes of how much Peter and his wife enjoyed their visit and how impressed they were with the J&L.

“
Although your home wasn't the fancy hotel Katrina is accustomed to, she thought our room was wonderfully warm and comfortable and inviting. Jake and Randy, your whole family was the same way—warm and inviting. We are both happy you are all together and life is so much better for you now than it was in Oklahoma. Katrina is immensely grateful for the beautiful palomino. The horse more than pays for my services, which I would never have charged you for in the first place.
”

“Mmm-hmm.” Jake sighed. “And we all know why he did it.”

“Daddy, I think he really cares about you,” Evie told him.

“I suppose. I just couldn't get over wondering if he was going to leave his wife behind and try riding off with your mother when they left here.” He winked at Randy.

“Well, maybe you would have been perfectly happy if he'd left his own beautiful wife behind,” Randy quipped.

Jake grinned. “She wouldn't last two days on the J&L as a true rancher's wife.”

“They don't make them like Mom,” Lloyd put in, reaching over to take Katie's hand, “except for my sister and Katie.”

“Yes, well—” Randy stopped for a moment as she scanned more of the letter. She put a hand to her mouth and started laughing. “Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!” She laughed again.

“What is it?” Evie asked.

Randy handed her the letter and wiped at what was left of her tears as Evie looked at it and then also broke into laughter.

“Oh, this is wonderful!” she told them. “We've got Daddy and Lloyd both on this one!”

Jake rose and moved to lean against a porch post. “All right, what are you talking about?”

“Oh, Daddy, you are always trying to embarrass us, especially poor Katie. Now we have one on you!” She laughed again. “I have a feeling Peter was wishing he could see the look on your face when we read this to you. He knows it would embarrass you.”

Jake shook his head, taking the cigarette from his lips. “Get on with it, Evie.”

Evie chuckled with teasing glee as she continued the letter. “
The J&L is like heaven, according to Katrina, and since Jake is always looking at me like I might try running off with Randy at any moment, I thought he should know what my wife said about him. She told me she thought Jake was
”
—
Evie again stopped to laugh. She could hardly stop long enough to get the words out—“
quite magnificent.
”

“
Magnificent?
” Lloyd asked.

“
Magnificent
!
” Evie repeated.

They all broke into hearty laughter, including the three boys.

“Grampa's magnificent!” Little Jake screeched.

Jake just shook his head and grinned, then pulled his hat farther down over his eyes.

“I'll be sure to tell the boys out at the bunkhouse that from now on they should call you ‘The Magnificent Jake Harkner,'” Lloyd teased.

“You do that, and I'll put a pitchfork in you,” Jake answered.

“I'll bet women like Dixie and Gretta would agree with Katrina's description of you, Daddy,” Evie put in.

“Oh, he's magnificent, all right.” Randy laughed. “He has a magnificent bravado when it's necessary, and sometimes just a magnificent ego around women!”

“Oh, wait!” Evie told them. “There's more! Wait till you hear what Peter's wife says about you, Lloyd!”

Lloyd frowned. He stood up and walked closer to Jake. “I don't think I'm going to like this.”

“Well, according to Katrina—” Evie broke into laughter again. “Oh, this is so hard for me to say about my own brother.” She wiped at tears of laughter and read, “
Not only does she think Jake is a magnificent specimen of man, but she said that Lloyd is like a—
” She laughed again. “
Lloyd!
My
brother
! Oh, this is too much.”

“I think we need to leave,” Lloyd told Jake.

Jake moved closer to the porch steps. “I'm thinking the same thing.”

“Oh, it's so much fun embarrassing you,” Evie told them. “It says here that Katrina compared Lloyd to a Greek god.”

The women broke into screeching laughter.

“Let's get out of here,” Jake told Lloyd.

The men headed down the steps.

“You sure you can work alongside a Greek god?” Lloyd asked Jake, the ring of the women's laughter filling the air.

“As long as you can admit your father is magnificent.”

“He's a magnificent sonofabitch who can't stay out of trouble.
That's
what he is.”

They kept walking while the rest of the family continued their laughter.

“Do Greek gods wear their hair down to their waist and wear chaps and spurs?” Jake asked his son.

“Hell, I don't know. I never studied them much. Maybe I should start.”

“Well, you have a goddess of a wife. That's a start.”

“She's something, all right. Any woman who puts up with a Harkner man
deserves
to be called a goddess.”

“That's for damn sure.” Jake stopped walking. “Do you realize we'll never live this down if the men hear about it?”

“Jesus, I never thought about that. We're dead meat.”

“Not if I threaten to shoot any man who dares to bring it up.”

“Good idea.” Lloyd put an arm around his father's shoulders. “Magnificent, huh?” He burst into laughter.

Jake gave him a shove. “Don't make me beat up on a Greek god.”

They walked off together.

Randy watched them from the veranda. “Magnificent, indeed,” she said softly. She shivered, secretly thanking God that Jake turned down the cattlemen's offer of range detective. She couldn't take one more day of watching him ride off into danger and wondering if he'd make it back.

February 1897

Randy finished her letter to Jeff Trubridge by the dim light of an oil lamp. She'd always felt obligated to keep him updated on what was happening with the family. They'd received another royalty check for the book about Jake's life, and she thought how that life was still unfinished, an unfolding story that brought Jake farther and farther out of the pits of hell in his mind and saw him rise above all of it into a much stronger human being on the inside. She wrote:

On January tenth, Lloyd and Katie had a little boy they named Donavan Patrick after Katie's father. Just a month earlier, Evie gave birth to a beautiful little girl with light hair like mine. They named her Esther Miranda after my mother and me. Goodness, if someone had told Jake back when we first met and he was still a wanted man that someday he'd have six grandchildren, he would have shot them for lying.

A grandfather clock in a corner of the great room ticked softly. It was night and very quiet. Ben was sleeping, and even Little Jake and Stephen, who were staying the night, were sleeping soundly. Jake was finishing a bath upstairs.

I suppose I sound more like I am reminiscing in a diary than writing a letter, but I know you understand like few others would. I guess age is getting to me. My Jake is sixty now, and I'm fifty. No one who doesn't know better would believe Jake's age, and he remains an energetic man who is hard to keep up with. He has his aches and pains, but he's as hard-edged as ever, still strong and sure. The streaks of gray in his hair just make him even more handsome. He still has that beautiful smile that few men his age can boast about. His secret is scrubbing his teeth every day with baking soda. I have no idea how he learned about that, but I think he is secretly egotistical about that smile of his. Some people are just blessed with certain attributes, and good health and good looks seem to be Jake's. I cringe to think I might show my age before he does, but he teases that I have ten years on him, so that will never happen. And, being Jake, he has his way of always making me feel beautiful.

Our grandsons are getting tall, and so is Ben, who has turned out to be such a blessing. I think the day Jake rescued him from his father's beating was the day Jake started growing stronger on the inside. Ben was a healing for him, his chance to live his own boyhood over as someone loved and wanted. Stephen is a young man, and Little Jake goes around holding his chin up and strutting as though he's trying to look much older. He so wants to be like his grandfather, and he will be, because that boy has Jake's spirit in him. When my Jake is gone from this earth, he will live on in Little Jake. And I surely will live on in my granddaughters, and I guess that's what family is all about.

I am happy to know you have a son now, which makes me smile when I remember the nervous young reporter who came to Guthrie with a dream of writing a book about Jake Harkner. I'll bet you never thought you'd be a part of all the things that happened after that. Once a person gets to know Jake, he or she never forgets him. It's impossible. When he rode into my life back in Kansas, I knew even then that I was lost forever…and there would be no turning back.

She stopped to reload her fountain pen, thinking about Evie and how happy she'd been to have another girl.

The ranch is doing well, but it's been a bitterly cold winter with a lot of snow, so we're worried about how many cattle we might lose.

She secretly lamented that she and Jake never went back to the line shack like they'd planned. After Denver, things got busy, because they'd been gone so long, and before they knew it, snow was falling and the holidays came and babies were born. Jake had promised that this summer, after roundup, they would finally spend time at the line shack while the men took the cattle in to Denver. Randy couldn't think of anything better than spending time alone with her husband instead of going into the city again. She wasn't sure she ever wanted to go back to Denver.

“Put that pen down and come to bed, woman.” Jake came downstairs shirtless and wearing only his long johns. “It's late, and the boys are sleeping like babies.”

“I only have a little left to write,” Randy told him, preparing to fill her fountain pen.

“Never mind that.” Jake walked over and literally lifted her right out of the chair. Randy stifled a scream and laughter as he grasped her under the hips and slung her over his shoulder. “You're coming to bed.”

“Jake, the boys might wake up!”

“They're fine.”

“Jake Harkner, put me down!” Randy told him in a gruff whisper. “You'll mess your back up.”

He shifted her to hold in his arms. “What the hell does that mean? Are you saying I'm too old for this?”

“Well…no, but—”

“You weigh less than Ben, and by now probably even less than Stephen, and I've carried them to bed more than once. And I'm damn well not too old for what I'm about to do to you, and you aren't too old to want it.”

“Is that so?”

“You know it is.” He set her on her feet and closed the bedroom door, walking up to Randy and untying her robe. “You're as beautiful as ever, although sometimes I worry how small you're getting. One of these days I'll look for you under the covers and won't be able to find you.” He pulled off her robe.

“Oh, you'll find me all right. You'd search for me through the jungles of Africa for sex.”

He grinned. “That's what you still do to me.” He untied a drawstring at the neck of her nightgown. “I was sitting in that warm water and remembering what we did that time we bathed together, and that got me to thinking about your beautiful breasts and your perfect bottom.”

“I thought your hip was bothering you again.”

He finished untying her nightgown and pulled it down over her shoulders. “The hot bath helped.”

“Well, maybe
I'm
hurting from working so hard scrubbing the kitchen floor this morning.”

“That was your mistake. You let me see you on your hands and knees with that beautiful bottom begging me to touch it. Now step out of that nightgown.”

Randy obeyed, laughing softly. She reached up, and he folded her into his arms, kissing her hungrily and lifting her so her feet were off the floor. He carried her to the bed, and they fell onto it together. Jake rolled on top of her, kissing her deeply again. He had a way of waking up her deepest needs without her even knowing they were there. Just a moment ago she'd been writing to Jeff, and this was the last thing on her mind. “Mmm, you smell good from that bath,” she told him when he left her mouth to caress her neck with butterfly kisses.

“Well, after shoveling horse manure part of the day, I figured I'd better scrub up good.” He kissed his way down to her belly, then got to his knees and pulled off her drawers. “Don't you move,” he told her then.

Randy drank in the sight of him when he got up from the bed and pulled off his long johns. No. There was still nothing old or soft about Jake Harkner.

“Have I told you lately how beautiful you are?” Jake asked, leaning down to move between her legs.

“You're a wonderful lover who tells me every day how beautiful I am, even the times when I know you don't really mean it.”

“I really mean it
every
time. When have you ever thought I didn't?”

“When I'm a mess from cooking and cleaning, and all you want is to relieve your needs.”

“And even when you're a mess, you're still beautiful, which is
why
I have needs. You create them.” He kissed her again, softly groaning with the want of her, then moved to kiss her eyes. “Randy, if you're really too tired for this, let me know.”

“Oh,
now
you ask.”

He sobered. “
Are
you?”

“Too tired to have Jake Harkner in my bed? Or to have Jake Harkner inside of me? Surely you jest.”

He nuzzled her neck with a growling laugh. “You bathed while I was outside working earlier, didn't you? You smell like roses again.”

“I know my husband well, and we haven't done this for a few days, so I had a feeling you might be needing this.”

He studied her lovingly, smoothing back her hair. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Smell like roses. Sometimes even the bed smells like roses.”

“Why do you think I insist on having a lot of rosebushes?”

“I just figured you liked raising them and looking at them.”

“Well, when I trim them, I keep the petals, sometimes the whole flower, and I crush them up and use the oil to rub over myself and sometimes over our sheets. I save enough to use all winter.”

“How could I have lived with you so long and not known that?”

“A woman has to have
some
secrets.”

“Oh? What else are you keeping from me?”

“I'll never tell. And I could ask you the same thing, but it would probably take the rest of the night to tell me all of it. And I would probably be horrified.”

Jake moved his lips and tongue down over her breasts, her belly. “You probably would.”

Randy grasped his hair. “I think I'm better off not knowing.”

He moved back up to her breasts, tasting them fervently. “You're always saying these beautiful breasts aren't perky anymore.”

“You have a way of perking them up.” Randy breathed deeply as he kissed his way back down to secret places and moved fingers inside of her, stroking her erotically in the way he had of destroying all reservations and making her forget that earlier she thought she was too tired for this. She felt adored sexually. Jake never asked for anything he knew she wouldn't want to do, yet had a way of making her want to give him more than she had to give. In spite of all their years together and getting older, her climaxes were as intense as always, usually because she couldn't get over the memories of all the times she'd watched this man ride away with no guarantee he would ever make it back. She couldn't imagine life without her Jake, or ever imagine any other man doing this to her.

He moved back over her body, pressing his hardness against her belly, then reaching down to move inside of her. She winced at how he filled her, with tremendous pleasure but now sometimes pain. She refused to tell him. He was too sensitive and might think she didn't want this, but she did…she did so want it and always would…always…as long as they could do this, and as long as they needed each other this way. Sometimes this was what brought both of them the strength they needed to face the past, the dangers, the lingering worry that this could end. She'd lived with that fear for thirty years. This is what kept her fears at bay.

They moved in sweet rhythm for several minutes. He grasped her bottom gently, whispering to her in Spanish. She felt lost beneath his big frame and leaned up to kiss his chest as she ran her hands over the hard muscle of his arms and shoulders until she felt his life pulse into her. He pushed harder with his release, groaning her name, then settled on top of her.

“Jake, I can't breathe,” she told him.

“Shit.” He rolled to her side. “I'm sorry. Did I hurt you?”

“No, but there
is
a bit of a difference in our weight.”

He pulled her close, kissing her hair. “Randy, just because you love me and want to please me doesn't mean you can't say no once in a while.”

“Why on earth would you say that?” she asked lazily. “I can never say no to you, Jake. I'm happiest and feel safest right here in your arms.”

He sighed. “Well, sometimes I sense things—more than I let on. You tell me if I'm hurting you.”

She smiled, loving him more. “How many men would say that…or care? Only my Jake. I don't like the
reasons
you know women so well, but you're so sweet to ask.”

He put a big hand to the side of her face and leaned down to kiss her eyes. “Baby, I can read your every physical reaction, whether because it feels good or because it hurts. Things change. I know that.”

“Are you saying
I'm
getting old?”

“Hell no!” He moved only partly on top of her. “I'm saying I love you beyond this. I'll always want you this way, but not just because I draw strength from being inside of you or because you're so damn beautiful. I want you this way because I want to please your every need.” He kissed her gently.

“Then please me again. It only hurts at first sometimes when it's been a while.” She leaned up and captured his mouth, kissing him suggestively before moving to kiss his throat. “Don't be worried about hurting me. It's a nice kind of hurt.” She kissed him again. “I love you, Jake. And if the day ever comes when we can't do this anymore, all I'll ever need is these arms around me. I'm safe here. So safe.”

He grinned, moving between her legs again. “Yeah? Well, maybe you aren't always so safe when I'm going nuts with the want of you, whether you want it or not.”

“You'd stop in a second if I asked you. I knew that clear back in that wagon when we first did this. You didn't scare me one bit.”

He laughed lightly and kissed her ear. “Baby, I absolutely can't guarantee I wouldn't have kept going, even if you said no. I never wanted a woman so bad in my life as I wanted you that night. If I'd have had to wait one more day to be inside of you, I would have considered shooting myself.”

He entered her gently again, moving softly, slowly. “Tell me if it hurts.”

“Not a bit,” she whispered.

He rocked her rhythmically, moving in that way he had of bringing on another climax without her even needing any other stimulation. This time it lasted even longer before he came again in his own groaning release.

He moved to her side and pulled her into his arms again. “Thank you…for all of it, Randy—all the sacrifices, all the waiting alone, all the forgiving and forgetting.”