Dreaming Of A Western Christmas: His Christmas Belle / The Cowboy of Christmas Past / Snowbound with the Cowboy

“Seems to me like a man and a woman have two choices. They can fall into bed with each other and damn the consequences. Or they can do what men and women do to spend time together—takin’ walks by the river and dancin’ with each other and goin’ on picnics and all those things. Then they can—”

“Fall into bed with each other,” she supplied.

His laugh stuttered into the quiet.

“It is the same in the end, is it not?” Her voice told him he should drop the subject, but something inside him wouldn’t let it go.

“Might not be the same, no. Might be that if she looked hard enough at a man she’d see something in him that should warn her off.”

“And you wish your sister had done just that.”

Brand looked past her hunched shoulder into the soft darkness. “Yeah. If she had, she’d be alive today. If I ever meet up with the bastard who destroyed her, I’m going to kill him.”

She hesitated. “What good will that do?”

“It’d get him off the face of the earth, for one thing. And it might make me feel better about my sister.”

Suzannah said nothing. After a while she refilled his coffee and then her own and sat sipping it slowly. He watched her slim, delicate fingers cradle the tin mug. An army wife? He didn’t think so. Even an officer’s wife, like the colonel’s lady, Violet McLeod got pretty well ground down between sandstorms and Indian skirmishes and God knew what else out here in the West.

“There’s precious little to compensate a gently reared woman at an army post,” he said carefully.

“There is her husband,” Suzannah insisted. “There is always the love of her husband.”

What the hell, her mind was made up. She didn’t want to see the danger staring her in the face. And anyway, what difference did it make if she wanted to throw her life away out in Oregon? But it ate at him just the same.

Something he said must have whanged into her because she sat looking down at him for a long time, her eyes troubled. Slowly he reached up and touched her shoulder, spread his fingers against her warmth and drew her down to him.

His lips grazed her forehead, moved to her cheek and then hovered a scant inch from her mouth.

“Suzannah,” he murmured. “Don’t do it, Suzannah. Don’t marry him.”

Chapter Ten (#ulink_9ea43092-b524-57d3-8964-4c0b289d4da3)

If she lived to be a hundred, Suzannah would never understand her feelings at this moment. Brand slipped his hand behind her neck and tugged her down until his mouth met hers. His lips were warm and firm and gentle with restraint, but she could feel his wanting. She tasted salt and coffee and hunger, such a deep hunger that her breath stopped.

He made a sound in his throat and wound his fingers into her hair. Colors danced under her closed eyelids, like starbursts, and she felt his heartbeat grow ragged. What is happening?

“Brand...”

“Don’t talk,” he whispered against her lips. He kissed her again, and then again, each time inviting. Enticing. This is glorious. Unbelievable.

Surely she was dreaming! His hand cradled her head and his mouth...his mouth was so insistent, so delicious on hers. Was this how a man and a woman felt when...when...?

She pulled away but hung mere inches from his mouth, listening to their breathing. His heart beat against her palm and she wondered if he could feel hers fluttering against his chest.

“I’m not sorry I did that,” he said at last.

I am not sorry, either, she sang inside. Not sorry at all.

With a wry smile he let his hand fall to his side. “Must be dreamin’,” he breathed.

Dreaming, yes, that was it. She had to be dreaming.

“No more whiskey for either one of us,” she managed. Then she realized she had not had a single, solitary drop of liquor. Nevertheless, she still felt intoxicated.

And now she understood what the Indians meant by “strong medicine.”

* * *

Brand woke near dawn to find Suzannah snuggled close to him, her head tucked between his chin and his good shoulder, her small hands folded under her chin. His heartbeat thundered against his ribs and he fought to keep his arm by his side and not wrap it around her sleeping form.

He sure wasn’t thinking clearly when it came to this woman. She made him feel more off balance than he could ever remember, and sure as God made green grass and peach trees, he didn’t need this complicating his life.

But he drifted off to sleep smelling her hair and remembering the feel of her mouth under his.

In the morning he eased his aching body away from her and packed up everything one-handed, trying to keep his eyes off her sleeping form. He managed to make coffee before she woke up, and when she finally did open her eyes he busied himself with saddling both horses.

She didn’t say a word while she downed her mug of coffee. Wouldn’t look at him, either. Guess he’d overstepped last night. Sure would like to overstep again, but they had about six days of riding ahead of them, and at the end he’d have to hand her over to another man. Smart thing would be to keep his hands off her.

She braided up her hair like she always did, settled her hat on her head and pulled it so low he couldn’t see much of her face. Then she walked to her mare, stuck her foot in the stirrup and pulled herself up into the saddle. She sat waiting while he slung both saddlebags on their mounts and kicked dirt over the fire.

He moved out in the lead and tried not to think about another week on the trail with her. Looked like it’d be a long, long day today. Quiet, too.

That lasted until the sun told him it was around ten o’clock and, even though they’d ridden side by side for the past three hours, she still hadn’t said a word. It was hell trying to figure out a woman, especially this woman. She was delicate and tough, and both smart and dumb; her head was stuck so deep in the sand over this John of hers she’d be ninety before she wised up.

Each time they stopped to rest and water the horses, Brand kept a sharp eye out for a telltale puff of dust behind them. None showed, and he’d seen no sign of another living soul. His shoulder ached, and the longer he rode the stiffer it got. He tried to work his arm back and forth every hour or so and prayed it would heal clean. Last thing she’d need was a guide with a fever and a bum arm.

By late afternoon Suzannah still hadn’t spoken a single word, and he couldn’t stand it any longer. He pulled air into his lungs and twisted to look at her.

“Sure wish you’d say something.”

“Very well.” Her voice reminded him of his mother’s primroses, all neat and proper with nary a petal out of place. “Do you think we are still being followed?” she asked.

“Nope. I gulled them into turning south, heading for Texas. Forgot to tell you last night.”

“How did you accomplish that?”

“Told ’em a bunch of lies.”

“How many were there?”

“Lies? Or men?”

She sniffed. “Men, of course.”

“Three.”

They rode across a valley and up into some green foothills, following a good-size stream. Dusk started to fall.