Marry Me (29 page)

“Of course it didn’t.”

He waited, but she didn’t ask. “Your father still has the younger Beaufort boy helping him out. Wyatt says Danny’s kept the place from falling down around Judah’s head.”

“Danny’s a hard worker. He helped me with the horses now and again so he knows his way around the place.”

“Well, it seems to be working out.” Cole tapped his cup with his index finger. “Wyatt asked me if you ever saw Judah around town. I told him I didn’t know. You never mentioned it.”

“I haven’t.”

“But you’d tell me if you did, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Is it important?” She frowned at him. “Why are you talking about Judah?”

“Wyatt believes he’s been around.”

“He’s allowed, isn’t he? No one’s put up a fence to keep him out.”

“No, but the sheriff seems to think that he has no reason for being here. What supplies he needed, Danny got for him before hard winter set in. If there’s something else that comes up, Will or Wyatt will take it to him. He hasn’t asked for anything.”

“I don’t understand.” She could feel her agitation growing and tried to quell it. “Has someone seen him or not?”

“No one can say for sure. Wyatt’s had a couple of reports of someone that might or might not be Judah coming into town late at night. Will said that Sid Walker saw someone passing on the outskirts of the open mine. It could have been Judah, but Sid couldn’t swear to it. Except for his brief stay in the jail, I understand that it’s been a long time since the good citizens of Reidsville rubbed elbows with your father.”

“That’s the way Judah wanted it.”

“Can you think of something that would bring him around?”

“No. I think people are mistaken.”

Cole considered that. It was what he and Wyatt wanted to believe. “You’re probably right, but as soon as there’s a break in the weather, I’m going out to see him.”

Rhyne’s stomach roiled. “Leave him be. He’ll put a bullet through you. Don’t think that he won’t. His fingers might be a little stiff, but his vision’s keen.”

“Wyatt said he asked for me.”

“Does that seem right to you? Did the sheriff say that Judah was sickly?”

“He said he was favoring his left side more than usual.”

“Well, that should tell Wyatt that it isn’t Judah coming into town.”

“I thought of that, too.” So had Wyatt. They hadn’t dismissed the idea that Judah was laying a trap. “I won’t be going alone, Rhyne. Will or Wyatt will accompany me.”

“You better take the sheriff because Judah definitely won’t spare that no-account Beatty boy.”

“All right.”

Rhyne stood. “I’m going to bed before I get all riled up again.”

Cole let her go, but he suspected it was already too late for that.

* * *

Rhyne stared at her reflection in the vanity mirror. She fiddled with a lock of hair that kept slipping out from behind her ear. In a fit of frustration, she spit on her hand, twisted the lock into submission, and tucked it in place. “I’d spit on you, too, Coleridge Monroe,” she whispered, “if I thought it’d tame your cussed ornery ways.”

She pushed at her brush so that it skittered across the top of the vanity and banged against the mirror. She had a powerful urge to hit something with her fist. It felt as if she was losing her mind … her
woman’s
mind. The image in the mirror didn’t help her. It was like staring at a stranger.

Rhyne turned around on the tuffet and put her back to the mirror. She hugged herself, not because she was cold but because she needed the comfort. When Judah got her this peeved, she’d take her Winchester and go out for a spell. Sometimes she’d stay out all night. Sometimes she’d come back and sleep under the porch.

She had her Winchester, but it was an awfully cold night for contemplating sleeping outdoors. And what would she do with her rifle in town? Sheriff Cooper frowned on folks carrying loaded weapons. There was even some kind of ordinance against it. She’d end up bunking in the jail.

It was not completely unappealing.

“Squirrelly,” she murmured under her breath.

She stretched her legs toward the stove and wiggled her toes. The woolen socks were as thick as mittens. She could track through the house without a sound, as stealthy as a fox hunting in the dead of night.

Rhyne rose and ignored the invitation of the turned-down covers on her bed in favor of the ones she knew she’d find in Cole’s room. She was careful to step around the floorboard that would have announced her presence outside his door.

Except for the orange glow through the stove’s grate, his room was dark. She allowed her eyes a moment to adjust before she crossed to his bedside. He was turned away from her, toward the middle of the bed, and he didn’t stir the entire time she stood there.

Rhyne went around the bed, skirted the trunk at the foot, and came up on the other side. She’d been wrong that there would be an invitation, but it didn’t deter her. She’d come to the place where she could find her mind again, the woman’s mind that eluded her when he was too long out of her sight.

Raising the covers, Rhyne carefully maneuvered herself onto the bed. She unfolded along the length of it, then inched backward until she could feel the heat of his body. She listened to his breathing, and the steadiness of it was its own comfort. Reaching behind her, she found his hand and eased it around her waist. The slight curve of his body allowed her to fit her bottom neatly in the pocket of his groin. Only then did she release the breath she’d been holding.

At her back, Cole smiled. Holding Rhyne meant that sleep was finally within his grasp.

It was the warmth that made her so reluctant to leave his bed. A sliver of rosy light defined the edges of the curtains. The sun was not properly up, and she craved a few more minutes of the peace she’d found in Cole’s bed. She’d already determined that escape would not be as easy as entering had been. Sometime during the night their positions had changed, and now she was on her back with Cole resting one of his knees across her thighs.

There was also the matter of his hand cradling her breast. If his thumb moved even a fraction, it would caress her nipple. To her astonishment, she’d no sooner thought it than her nipple became a bud that thrust against the fabric of her nightgown. She blinked. His thumb hadn’t moved at all, but her breathing had quickened.

Slowly, she slid her hand along her side until it was within inches of her breast. She walked her fingertips up the curve but stopped short of reaching the peak. Raising her hand a fraction, she let her fingers hover a moment before she extended a single nail and dragged it across her nipple. The small burst of pleasure made her eyes widen.

“Let me do that for you.”

Cole’s voice was husky, thick with sleep and wanting. It touched off a current of heat in Rhyne that ran all the way to her toes. She let her hand fall back to the bed and kept her eyes on his. When she spoke, it was merely a thread of sound. “All right.”

Cole moved his thumb precisely as she’d imagined. Pleasure radiated across her skin, and she felt her breast swell in the cup of his hand. He’d moved closer, though she didn’t know how that was possible. His breath was warm against her ear, and she realized they were sharing a single pillow. His thumb made another lazy pass across her breast. Several long moments passed before it came again. She held herself very still, her breath lodged firmly in her throat in anticipation of another pulse of pleasure.

When his thumb didn’t so much as twitch, she turned her head to the side to look at Cole. His face was largely in shadow, but she could tell he was watching her. She put her fingertips to his mouth to sense the shape of it. The curve was so slight that she could have been convinced she’d imagined it. The gleam in his eye, however, was no trick of the firelight.

“You haven’t fallen back to sleep,” she said.

“Hardly.”

She laid her hand over his at her breast. He resisted her small effort to move him. “Then what are you doing?”

“Anticipating.”

Her lips parted on the first sound of her question and then she was silenced by his mouth. His kiss was as maddening as his touch had been. His mouth advanced and retreated as if he were engaged in a campaign and kissing her was a strategy. When he captured her mouth, it was to pleasure himself with deep, drugging kisses that made Rhyne glad that she was lying down. There was a moment’s respite when he lifted his head to catch his breath, but he used that time to plan his next foray, this one a perfect raid on her senses.

He dropped kisses on the corner of her mouth, her jaw, and the tender hollow at her temple. His lips traced the sensitive cord in her neck. At her shoulder, he pushed aside her gown and put his mouth against her skin. The ribbon that held her nightdress fast disappeared into his hand and then his hand disappeared under the gown. This time when his thumb passed over her nipple, it was flesh to her flesh.

He created a steady pulse of pleasure that continued to throb in her breast long after he’d moved on. His knee pushed between her thighs. The barrier of her nightgown frustrated him. His lips tickled her throat, then moved to her chin. Finally, they hovered just above her mouth. She tried to nudge his lips with hers, but he held himself just out of her reach.

“Lift your gown.” He turned more fully onto his side and removed his knee from between her legs.

Rhyne’s fingers were curled into the sheet on either side of her. They remained there as if frozen. Under the covers, Cole slid the heel of his hand from where it rested between her breasts all the way to the juncture of her thighs. The heat from his hand as it passed over her flat belly seemed to thaw Rhyne’s fingers. She dug them into the folds of her flannel gown and began taking handfuls of the material until she felt the hem brush the tops of her thighs. She closed her eyes as Cole’s fingers dipped between her legs.

He leaned over her. “You haven’t fallen back to sleep, have you?”

“Hardly.”

“Then what are you doing?” “Anticipating.”

He kissed her. Slowly. Deeply. Then his fingers began to move.

Rhyne thought about the things that she had come to savor: a clear, cool night when stars were falling out of the heavens; nuzzling the neck of a horse she’d finally gentled; being the one left standing when the fighting was done. And this. If she didn’t count those moments when he simply held her in his arms, what Cole was doing to her now was easily at the forefront of everything.

Between halting breaths, she told him so.

He made a sound that might have been a chuckle or might have meant he was choking. She didn’t especially care. She told him that, too.

Cole quieted her with his mouth. It helped to quell his smile.

She was damp against his fingertips. He stroked her until she was wet. He watched her arch her neck and felt the rise of tension in her arms and legs. Her hips rose and fell. He drew back the hood of her clitoris and slid his finger over it. Her heels dug into the mattress, and she twisted as she lifted off the bed. Her lips parted. She sucked in a draught of air, held it, and sucked in another.

He whispered against her ear. “Let it out. It’s all right. I want to hear you.”

It was tempting. He tempted her. But if she gave in, it was a certainty that she’d wake the dead. Whitley was just sleeping down the hall. Rhyne clamped her teeth together and the only sound she surrendered whistled sharply between her teeth.

“Mule-headed.” Even to his own ears it sounded suspiciously like an endearment.

Rhyne fell back on the bed. Her limbs were as thick and heavy as molasses. She was so liquid and lethargic that she could imagine pleasure rippling her skin. She felt Cole’s hand leave her thighs and come to rest at the curve of her waist. Her breathing slowed, and she opened her eyes. She stared at the ceiling.

There was considerably more light in the room than there had been when she woke. Cole’s face was no longer in shadow. She did not have to guess that the slim smile hovering on his lips was a satisfied one. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’ve been into the cream.”

If anything his smile deepened. “Haven’t I?” He thoroughly enjoyed watching the tide of rosy color that washed over her face. The elbow she jabbed into his abdomen did not make him enjoy it less.

“You tried to trick me,” she said. She removed his hand from her side and pushed at her nightgown.

Cole turned on his back and cradled his head in his palms. He let Rhyne rearrange her gown and shift the blankets until they were as high as her neck. “Shutting the barn door? Isn’t it too late?”

“You think so? The way I figure it, that horse hasn’t been ridden yet.” She quickly rolled on her side, clamped a hand over his mouth, and muffled what surely would have been a shout of laughter. “Stop that! You’re going to bring Whitley down on us.” She waited for the rumble in his chest to subside and could admit to herself that she was a little sorry when it was gone.

She tentatively lifted her hand, waiting to see if she could trust him.

“I don’t think you’d mind at all if that floorboard started to creak,” she said.

He took her wrist and moved her hand out of the way.

“I’d mind,” he said. “A little.”

“You were hoping I’d bring her running.” “How’s that?”

“When you said you wanted to hear me.”

“You’re wrong. I merely wanted to hear you. You’re so quiet. I wasn’t thinking of the likely consequences just then.”

Rhyne wasn’t sure that she believed him. She raised herself on one elbow and studied his features. He looked remarkably sincere. “I have to leave,” she said.

“I know. Go on. I’m not going to try to make you change your mind.”

Rhyne slipped out of the room as quietly as she’d come, relieved by what he’d said at the end. She knew he could have done it.

Chapter 10

She came to him the following night and the one after that. She slept in her own bed on Saturday because she didn’t think she could face Pastor Duun in the morning, and on Sunday night Cole was called away when Teddy Easter developed an earache that fevered him. That was the evening Whitley came looking for comfort and crawled into her bed and stayed there. Rhyne didn’t begrudge Whitley the solace she sought, even when she heard Cole come in by the side door and climb the stairs to his room.