Sleepless in Montana (38 page)

The caress was still new to him, and he
remembered an old scarred tomcat who leaned into petting as if he
couldn’t get enough.

“The right way. Sooner or later, we’ll get
whoever has been threatening Carley, but she needs to tell Ben and
Dinah. It’s all going to come out.” Hogan had spoken to Aaron and
Mitch about the need to reveal the family’s deep secrets.

He’d missed years of knowing who he was,
because Ben hadn’t revealed Hogan’s mother, he knew the damage
secrets and lies could do.

“Carley can’t bear to tell them what happened
that night. Don’t ruin it now, Hogan. It’s been so long since
everyone was happy—if they ever were.” Jemma smoothed his hair,
twined it through her fingers, and Hogan leaned slightly into her
touch, noting again how she soothed the raw edges within him.

“You’re always so practical. I know
everything needs to come out, but it’s just so nice now. Can’t we
let everyone be happy for just a bit more?”

With a sigh, Hogan let the heady peace
overrule his sense that disaster loomed too close to the Kodiak
family.

He stroked Jemma’s back and held her close.
When she suddenly sat up, Hogan jerked back to safeguard his chin.
From experience, he knew that Jemma’s head, elbows, and knees were
all potential weapons. She looked at him, her expression vividly
alive. “I’ll pose for you. You can paint me.”

He snorted at that and studied the sun
catching the varied shades in her hair. He could almost feel the
drag of the brushes, the smell of the paint.... “You can’t sit
still long enough.”

Jemma wiggled her eyebrows, leering at him.
“Who said anything about sitting?”

*** ***

Mrs. Coleman was a birdlike shadow of a
woman, confined to her wheelchair, an afghan covering her legs.

She seemed more like a piece of furniture in
the small cluttered parlor, laden with keepsakes and doilies. “I’m
so glad you came, girls. Goodness, it’s hot for the second week of
June,” she said cheerfully, pouring tea into elegant china cups.
“Richard, would you please get the tea cozy? We mustn’t serve our
lovely guests tepid tea. Goodness, Carley, but you’re looking rosy.
Jemma was always quite colorful, but you’ve blossomed into a
beautiful young lady.”

Jemma had just caught Mitch and Carley
kissing in a closet, and Carley still wore that dazed,
floating-in-heaven look. From the look of Mitch, he was steaming
nicely and quite in love.

Mrs. Coleman glanced at the kitchen door,
closing behind Richard, and leaned close to whisper to Jemma and
Carley. “He’s just like his father. He may seem sweet, but
underneath he’s a monster. He makes me take medicine that—”

Jemma met Carley’s look. During their visits
with her, Mrs. Coleman had seemed disoriented, confusing her son
with his militant, demanding father.

“What was that you were saying, Mother?”
Richard asked as he came back into the room.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Coleman’s hands trembled.
“Only that I’m so tired, dear, and that you’re taking such good
care of me. Maybe the girls would like to help me to my room.”

Richard’s thin face warmed in the dim light,
filtered by the lace curtains at the window. “I will, Mother. It’s
time for your medicine anyway.”

“Girls, you will take that box of old
clothing and mend it? Before donating it to the church thrift shop?
I’d appreciate that so much. I used to—”

“Come along, Mother,” Richard said
firmly.

When Richard wheeled his mother away, Carley
shook her head. “That’s so sad. She was always so nice. She’s lucky
to have Richard. He’s taking good care of her. But she says things
like that when he’s out of the room.”

Through the lacy curtains, Jemma glanced at
Hogan. He leaned against his pickup and waited for them as if he’d
wait forever. Richard’s two big Rottweilers didn’t like the tall
stranger. The dogs raised a furious row, pacing back and forth in
their pens.

Jemma ached for Hogan’s loss, for an uncle
he’d never really known and for the mother he’d just discovered.
She knew that she made him happy, and that he did not like the
thought of her coddling a television producer.

He’d stunned her, a man who had never spent
all night with another woman, and who wanted her to live with
him.

Hogan was, at his roots, an old-fashioned
man, and Jemma knew that he wanted a commitment from her. He was
taking his time, that slow careful way he handled his life, and he
wanted her. One dark sizzling look could take away her breath and
make her skin tighten.

Richard came back into the room and frowned
at the barking, furious dogs outside. “I should go quiet them. They
are so excitable. Vicious dogs, but I need them for security.”

He smiled at Carley and Jemma. “Would you
like to see my collections? I built a room onto the back— quite the
place, really. Perfect controlled humidity and quite the display of
everything I’ve collected over the years.”

“We’d love that, Richard,” Carley said.
“Wouldn’t we, Jemma?”

Jemma shot a lingering, aching glance at
Hogan and watched as he walked to the penned dogs. He crouched and
starting talking quietly with them. Hogan had a gentling way with
animals, just as he did with her. The dogs quieted and Richard
peered out the window. “How nice. Hogan always did have a way with
animals.”

Then he smiled, adjusted his thick glasses,
and led them to the back of the house. They entered a huge,
well-lighted room, layered with collections of butterflies, World
War II memorabilia, stamps, and a carved jade collection. He leaned
close to Carley as she studied a glass-enclosed display of opulent
jewelry.

“I still have the ring you gave me,” she
said.

“You should wear it,” Richard said briskly,
and continued his tour of each collection. “Come back when you
like. I’ll let you try these pieces on.... Jemma, you, too.
Beautiful jewelry should be worn, but I’ve never—”

He looked down at Carley and smiled. “I’m
glad you’ve come back.”

“I’m glad, too,” Carley returned, and stood
on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

“I’m trying to pinpoint what is different
about you,” Richard said, running his hand across Carley’s short
boy cut. “It’s not only the haircut. But you seem more alive,
almost glowing. Carley, you’ve lost weight just since you’ve been
here. Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine. Ranch work, you know. I’m riding
again. Dad’s got a great reiner. Richard, do you think Dad is okay—
I mean feeling okay? Not sick or anything?”

“He’s never come to me for a checkup, but
just seeing him, I’d say he’s the same as ever.” Richard looked at
her more closely. “Is there something else here that’s changed you?
Are you certain you don’t need to come in for an exam?”

“Maybe.” She blushed and glanced at Jemma,
who knew that Carley had been thinking about lovemaking with
Mitch.

When Jemma and Carley left the Coleman house,
Mrs. Coleman peered down from the second-story window of the large,
ornate house, giant ferns swaying gently on the porch.

“Poor thing,” Carley murmured. “Richard says
she imagines the worst things. He’s changing her medication.”

Seated next to Hogan in his truck, Jemma
noted his silence, the hard set of his jaw. “Hogan?”

He smiled briefly, glanced at Carley, and
placed Jemma’s hand upon his hard thigh, his hand over hers.

His look said he was deep in thought and he’d
closed her away. Because she suspected Hogan was still mourning his
mother and Joe Blue Sky, Jemma raised her arm to the back of his
seat and stroked his crisp blue-black hair. She sensed that he
liked petting, though he’d never ask her to caress him.
Experimenting, she eased her fingers down to his scalp and massaged
as he had done to her.

Hogan’s dark eyes slid to hers, heat sizzling
between them. “Stop that.”

She flicked the tiny earring, and Hogan’s
expression softened; he reacted so nicely to play. He reached out
his arm, circled her shoulders, and drew her against him, and Jemma
glanced curiously at him.

“Nope, never drove with my girl tight against
me, either,” he said.

Hogan could make her feel so wound-up, so
young and waiting for the world to spin off its axis. Jemma looked
at Carley, uncertain of how her best friend would react.

“I’m glad,” Carley whispered. Just that, a
simple blessing from a friend Jemma loved with all her heart,
filled her with sunshine. She took Carley’s hand and held it,
because she was never letting her go— her best friend, an
almost-sister.

*** ***

While the bumblebees hovered over the alfalfa
blooms and the third week of June simmered on the huge bales of
hay, Mitch’s beautiful mouth curved as Carley drew the blade of
grass around it.

They’d just finished swimming. She was fully
dressed in a blouse and cutoff jean shorts, and he in his jeans.
“Snake” had become a part of her life, and lying beside him in the
hot June sun, she wondered about— just there where his stomach
flattened and ran into his sagging, wet jeans, and above his
thighs. She wanted to touch him....

When Mitch tensed, she looked at him and
blushed.

“Carley,” he whispered, bringing her face
down for a long sweet kiss.

“Do you want me?” she asked against his lips.
How long had he been inside her heart? How long had she wanted
this very gentle man?

The light summer breeze moved through the
willow branches above them as it always had.... Mitch was the same
and yet different.

Mitch eased away, his hands trembling as they
smoothed her face. “I’ve always loved you, Carley, right from that
first moment. There’s never been anyone for me, but you. When we
make love, it will be with all my heart and soul.”

“I saw your face that night.... You were the
first one there, and I never wanted you to see me again like that.
I’ll never forget how you looked as though you’d stepped into hell
and were helpless to—’’

“Shh.... Are you afraid for me to look at you
now?”

She lay down beside him as she had always
done, her head resting on his shoulder. “No, and I want you.
Now.”

“Angel, nothing is going to happen to you.
This ugliness will all be behind you soon. You’re protected here
and—”

She raised up and placed her hand over his
lips. “You beautiful man. My wanting you has nothing to do with
fearing that my life will end before I’ve had the great
Mitch-experience. Would you? Mitch, what if I—I mean, what if I get
scared at the last minute and—”

“We’ll stop.” He made it sound so casual,
leaving her to make choices, not forcing her.

Mitch was already kissing her gently, drawing
her closer to him, there on the sunlit bank with the stream rolling
by. His body trembled, and through her excitement, Carley knew that
he leashed his needs for her. He’d been her brother and tormentor;
he’d been her friend, and now he would be her lover. As she knew he
would, Mitch was careful to use protection.

Later, lying shattered by the intensity of
Mitch’s gentleness, the way he insisted on cleansing her, Carley
smiled.

Floating in the aftermath of Mitch’s care,
she knew that their lovemaking wouldn’t always be this way— that
Mitch had been very careful with her this first time.

She lazily smoothed his scarred back. She
knew so little about him before he came to them; she knew the man
that he was now, the tender loving man, taking care of her,
teaching her how to move against him gently— always gently and
asking, never forcing, even when his passion rode him. “We didn’t
stop. You didn’t have time….”

Mitch tugged her hair. “Proud of yourself,
aren’t you?”

“Umm. Very.”

Mitch’s expression suddenly changed. He
solemnly opened his hand over her soft belly, where babies could
nestle and grow; his hopes were in his eyes. “Someday I want—”

She placed her hand over his. “I know. So do
I.”

*** ***

Chapter Fifteen

Jemma recognized Carley’s dreamy expression
when she came into their bedroom; the aftermath of Hogan’s
lovemaking left Jemma looking just that way.

The lace curtains fluttered at the window;
she drew them away to look at the three men squatting on bent knees
in a circle near the barn. Hogan and Aaron’s Western hats were all
tipped at the back of their heads and Mitch’s black waves gleamed
in the sun. Ben leaned against the corral.

“I wonder what school teaches that?” she
asked, as Carley came to stand by her side after a long, long time
soaking in the bathroom. Carley’s unmistakable rosy look hadn’t
dimmed, her blue eyes the color of cornflowers.

“The same one that teaches them how to spit,
pee, and use their pocketknives to clean their fingernails, clean
fish, and then cut cheese. The primitive male-bonding-ritual
school,” Carley answered, drawing back the curtains to study the
men.

The tinkling of Dinah’s new wind chimes
floated up to them. Jemma put her arm around Carley’s shoulders,
and Carley placed her arm around Jemma’s waist.

“It’s a good time, isn’t it?” Jemma asked as
they stood and rocked together. “What do you suppose they’re
talking about?”

“Soap operas. Dad is really into them… Aaron,
too. Hogan has been too busy with you and Mitch—” Her breath caught
and with her face aglow, she smiled up at Jemma. “Mitch is—”

“Mitch. He’s always loved you.”

“I can’t believe it,” Carley whispered in
awe. “He wants to marry me. He wants children. He wants me to take
my time and decide what I want. He’ll live anywhere, but I think
Montana is where I belong. He’s got so much to offer, though.
You’ve heard how he talks about the kids he’s helping. I don’t know
that he can find that fulfillment in a rural area.”

Jemma ruffled Carley’s short damp hair. “He’s
waited a long time for you. It will work out.”