A Husband for Christmas: Snow Kisses / Lionhearted

She looked up at him, tracing his shadowed face with eyes that ached for what might have been. “You look so at home in the saddle,” she remarked.

“I grew up in it.” He reached down an arm. “Step on my boot and come up here. I’ll give you a ride home.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t ride a horse the way you drive,” she observed.

“That’s not a good way to get reacquainted,” he said shortly.

“It’s only the truth. Donavan wouldn’t even get in a truck with you,” she reminded him. “Although I have to admit that you’re a pretty good driver on the highway.”

“Thanks for nothing. Are you coming or not?”

She wanted and dreaded the closeness. He was so very strong. What if she panicked again, what if he demanded an answer to her sudden nervousness?

“Abby,” he said suddenly, his voice as full of authority as if he were tossing orders at his cowboys. “Come on.”

She reacted to that automatically and took his hand, tingling as it slid up her arm to hold her. She stepped deftly onto the toe of his boot in the stirrup and swung up in front of him.

He drew her back against him with a steely arm, and she felt the powerful muscles of his chest at her shoulder blades.

“Comfortable?” he asked shortly.

“I’m fine,” she replied in a voice that was unusually high-pitched.

He eased the horse into a canter. “You’ll be more comfortable if you’ll relax, little one,” he murmured. “I’m no threat.”

That was what he thought, she told herself, reacting wildly to the feel of his body against her back. He smelled of leather and cow and tobacco, and his breath sighed over her head, into her loosened hair.

If only she could relax instead of sitting like a fire poker in his light embrace. But he made her nervous, just as he always had; he made her feel vulnerable and soft and hungry. Despite the bad experience in New York, he appealed to her senses in ways that unnerved her.

He chuckled softly and she stiffened more. “What’s so funny?” she muttered above the sound of the horse’s hooves striking hard ground.

“You are. Should I be flattered that you’re afraid to let me hold you on a horse? My God, I didn’t realize I was so devastating at close range. Or,” he added musingly, “is it that I smell like a man who’s been working with cattle?”

Laughter bubbled up inside her. It had been years since she and Cade had spent any time alone, and she’d forgotten his dry sense of humor.

“Sorry.” She sighed. “I’ve been away longer than I realized.”

His big arm tightened for an instant and relaxed, and she let him hold her without a struggle. His strength was less intimidating now than it had been the last time, as if the nightmare experience were truly fading away in the scope and bigness of this country where she had grown up. She felt safe. Safer than she’d felt in years.

“Four years,” he murmured behind her head. “Except for a few days here and there, when you could tear yourself away from New York.”

She went taut with indignation. “Are you going to start that again?”

“I never stopped it. You just stopped listening.” His arm contracted impatiently for an instant, and his warm breath was on her ear. “When are you going to grow up, Abby? Glitter isn’t enough for a lifetime. In the end, it’s not going to satisfy you as a woman!”

“What is?” she asked curtly. “Living with some man and raising children?”

He seemed to freeze, as if she’d thrown cold water in his face, and she was sorry she’d said that. She hadn’t meant it—she was just getting back at him.

“It’s more than enough for women out here,” he said shortly.

She stared across at the horizon, loving the familiar contours of the land, the shape of the tall trees, the blueness of the sky. “Your grandmother had ten children, didn’t she, Cade?” she asked, remembering the photos in the McLaren family album.

“Yes.” He laughed shortly. “There wasn’t much choice in those days, honey. Women didn’t have a lot of control over their bodies, like they do now.”

“And it took big families to run ranches and farms,” she agreed. She leaned back against him, feeling his muscles ripple with the motion of the horse. Her eyes closed as she drank in the sensation of being close.

“It was more than that,” he remarked as they approached the house. “People in love want children.”

She laughed aloud at that. “I can’t imagine you in love,” she said. “It’s completely out of character. What was it you always said about never letting a woman put a ring through your nose?”

He didn’t laugh. If anything, he seemed to grow cold. “You don’t know me at all, Abby. You never have.”

“Who could get close enough?” she asked coolly. “You’ve got a wall ten feet thick around yourself, just like Donavan had. It must be a McLaren trait.”

“When people come close, they can hurt,” he said shortly. “I’ve had my fill of being cut to the quick.”

“I can’t imagine anyone brave enough to try that,” she told him.

“Can’t you?” He sounded goaded, and the arm that was holding her tautened.

She got a glimpse of his face as he leaned down to open the gate between them and the house, and its hardness unsettled her. He looked hurt somehow, and she couldn’t understand why.

“Cade?” she murmured before he straightened again.

His eyes looked straight into hers, and she trembled at the intensity of the glare, its suppressed violence.

“One day, you’ll push too hard,” he said quietly. “I’m not made of stone, despite the fact that you seem to believe I am. I let you get away with murder when you were younger. But you’re not a child anymore, Abby, and the kid gloves are off. Do you understand me?”

How could she help it? Her heart shuddered with mingled fear and excitement. Involuntarily, her eyes went to his hard mouth and she remembered vividly the touch and taste and expertness of it.

“Don’t worry, Cade, I won’t seduce you,” she promised, trying to sound as if she were teasing him in a sophisticated way.

He caught her chin and forced her eyes back up to his, and she jumped at the ferocity in his dark gaze. “I could have had you that night at the swimming pool, Abigail Jennifer Shane,” he reminded her with merciless bluntness. “We’re both four years older, but don’t think you’re immune to me. If you start playing games, you could goad me into doing something we’d both regret.”

She tried to breathe normally and failed miserably. She forced her eyes down to the harsh rise and fall of his chest, and then closed them.

“Just because I had a huge crush on you once, don’t get conceited and think I’m still stupid enough to moon over you, Cade,” she bit off.

As if the words set him off, his eyes flashed and all at once he had her across the saddle, over his knees, with her head imprisoned in the crook of his arm.

She struggled, frightened by his strength as she’d been afraid from the beginning that she would be. “No,” she whispered, pushing frantically at his chest.

“Let’s see how conceited I am, Abby,” he ground out, bending his head to hers.

One glance into those blazing eyes was enough to tell her that he wasn’t teasing. She groaned helplessly as his hard mouth crushed down onto hers in cold, angry possession.

It might have been so different if he’d been careful, if he hadn’t given in to his temper. But she was too frightened to think rationally. It was New York all over again, and a man’s strength was holding her helpless while a merciless mouth ground against her own. Through the fear, she thought she felt Cade tremble, but she couldn’t be sure. Her mind was focused only on the hard pressure of his mouth, the painful tightening of his arms. Suddenly she began to fight. She hit him with her fists, anywhere she could, and when the shock of it made him lift his head, she screamed.