Morning Light (18 page)

“Oh.”

“Any other concerns?”

“Yes. I, um, don't think it's wise for us to—”

“Hold the thought.”

The deep timbre of his voice seemed to enfold her in warmth. He curled a big hand over her shoulder. Through the jacket, the gentle grip of his fingers radiated heat, making Loni wonder how it might feel if no fleece shielded her skin. Madness. Their gazes locked. For just an instant it seemed to her that the world fell away. She glanced at his firm lips, how they shimmered in the firelight, and suddenly, instead of feeling alarmed, she wanted him to kiss her more than she'd ever wanted anything.

As if he sensed that, his burnished face drew closer, his dark eyes holding hers until her vision was eclipsed by a coffee brown blur. As lightly as a butterfly wing his lips touched hers. She expected him to deepen the kiss. That was how it had always happened before, anyway, not that she'd ever particularly enjoyed the wet press of a man's lips on hers or the scrape of teeth that often followed. But Clint kept the contact almost nonexistent, a tantalizing caress that made her breath hitch with expectancy while her heart began to slog, each beat knocking hard against her ribs. She pressed closer. He murmured something, groaned, and slipped a hard arm around her waist. Loni made tight fists on the front of his shirt.

She
wanted.
He tasted faintly of the whiskey, too, slightly sweet and completely intoxicating. His lips felt like sun-warmed silk as they grazed hers. She leaned in, needing, yearning. It was the first time in her life she'd ever felt true desire, and it was a heady experience. Her limbs felt weak and tingly. An electrical sensation moved through her torso, everything within her quivering at the zing.

Catching her chin in one hand, he pressed gently on her jaw to part her teeth. Then he angled his head to deepen the kiss, the tip of his tongue tracing her lips and then plunging deep to taste the recesses of her mouth. As the urgency between them mounted, every rational thought in Loni's head evaporated. Abandoning her hold on his shirt, she hugged his strong neck. He moaned again, the sound thrumming through her. Then he tipped her back over his arm and gently lowered her to the sleeping bag. Through her fleece jacket, his chest abraded her breasts, making her body arch and tremble. Then she felt his palm on the bare skin of her midriff.
Yes.
She wanted his hands all over her.

To her great disappointment he suddenly lifted his head. She blinked dizzily, trying to bring his dark face back into focus. He kissed the end of her nose, then trailed his lips lightly up the bridge to kiss her forehead.

“Wow,” he whispered huskily.

Shivering with yearning, Loni closed her eyes and smiled.
Wow
was right. Some things in life were so wonderful it was hard to let them end. He was right to stop, though. Practically speaking, they'd known each other for a very short time. It didn't matter that it felt like much longer. There were also her moral convictions to be considered. Though a part of her resented still being inexperienced at thirty-one, a much larger part of her believed that sexual intimacy outside of marriage was wrong. She wasn't willing to lose her virginity to just anyone, especially not a cowboy with whom she had almost nothing in common. When this was over they'd undoubtedly go their separate ways and probably never see each other again.

He sat up, offered her a hand, and drew her up beside him. Then he reached behind her to reclaim his hat, which she must have sent rolling when she hugged his neck. After settling the Stetson just so on his head, he treated her to a long, questioning study, his mouth curved in a slight smile. He reached to straighten her cap and brush a curl from her cheek, the graze of his knuckles making her skin tingle.

“I'm thinking we need to call it a night. We'll have to be awake and at it well before dawn.”

Loni's legs protested as she got up. Hooter's salve had worked wonders, but she was still sore. Clint rose and collected the sleeping bag in his arms. Inclining his head for her to lead the way, he fell in behind her as she walked to the tent. She was grateful for the illumination of firelight so she could see.

“No worries, okay?” He lifted the tent flap and shook out her sleeping bag. “I'll be sacked out by the fire only a few yards away. If you need me, just holler. I'm a light sleeper.”

Loni nodded, already dreading his departure. It was so dark away from the fire, and the nylon tent offered scant protection. Nevertheless she bent at the waist, entered, and called good night as she tied the little nylon strings that held the flap closed, no easy task in the dark. Then she patted the ground to find the sleeping bag, sat to remove her cap and boots, and hugged her knees to say her prayers. In the middle of a Hail Mary, she imagined Clint kneeling by his sleeping bag to pray, just as she was, and she lost her concentration.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized it wasn't really so dark after all. Light from the fire washed over the walls of the tent, illuminating the interior slightly. She finished her prayers, saying the last one for Trevor, and then crawled into bed, zipped the bag, and ordered herself to go instantly to sleep.

Fat chance.
Her heart hurt, and this time not over Trevor. She felt sad for herself. Why did the only man she'd ever met who could make her blood run hot have to be a cowboy who waded around in horse manure all day? As much as she liked him and enjoyed his company, she couldn't picture herself in a lasting relationship with him. Their backgrounds and life experiences were too different. She could never be happy living on a horse ranch, and he'd be miserable in town. Her idea of entertainment was a movie and dinner out, or going to a play in the city. His was to go horseback riding in the wilderness.

How could two people who were so fundamentally different ever build a life together that fulfilled both of them?

S
leep eluded Clint. Head pillowed on his saddle, he tried counting stars instead of sheep, but thoughts of Loni kept circling in his mind. That kiss…It had been amazing. He'd kissed his share of lady frogs and a few princesses as well, but never in his memory had one simple kiss aroused him so completely or touched him so deeply. He kept remembering the wide, wary look in her eyes, and then the awkward first contact, her soft lips pursed, her teeth clamped closed. Years ago, when he and his brothers had still been young enough to occasionally come across an inexperienced female, they'd called it the “virgin pucker.”

Maybe he was misreading her. That had to be it. He guessed her to be in her late twenties, maybe even early thirties. Beautiful women, even clairvoyants who'd never been in a lasting relationship, didn't make it to that age without garnering a good deal of sexual know-how along the way. Maybe she hadn't believed him about the chewing tobacco. That would explain the pursed lips and locked jaw. Even for Clint, who greatly enjoyed a few pinches of Kodiak on Friday nights, the thought of kissing a woman with that crap in her mouth wasn't a pleasant thought.

Counting stars wasn't working, he finally decided. Giving up, he settled his hat over his eyes. That had to be it, he concluded wearily. She'd been afraid he had something nasty in his mouth. He sighed and stared into the absolute blackness provided by the crown of his Stetson. He had probably just imagined that hesitant sweetness when she'd finally parted her lips and surrendered to the kiss, and it must have been a figment of his imagination that she hadn't been sure where to put her hands at first. But he was positive about one thing: The shiver that had run the length of her slender body when he touched her bare midriff had been caused by desire—or his name wasn't Clint Harrigan.

Enough.
What the hell was wrong with him, anyway? He didn't normally obsess about women. It was the long time since he'd been with someone, he supposed. His body was clamoring for release.
Too bad, so sad.
He'd made a promise to himself about never again having sex with anyone outside the bonds of holy matrimony, and he meant to keep it.

It seemed to Clint that he'd only just fallen asleep when something woke him. He nudged his hat up and saw Loni huddled near him by the fire, her sleeping bag drawn like a lumpy, oversize cape around her narrow shoulders. As the haze of sleep parted, he noticed that her face looked chalk white.

Pushing up on one arm, he asked, “You sick?”

She shook her head and reached to pull the sleeping bag closer around her body. It was then that Clint noticed how badly she was shaking. He unzipped his bag to sit up.

“What's wrong?”

“Bad dream.”

A bad dream had caused this? Clint had been treated to some doozies over his lifetime, and to his shame he'd jerked awake, trembling with fright, even as a grown man. But it passed quickly. He always just opened his eyes, determined where he was, and reasoned the fear away.

“When I have bad dreams,” he offered, “I just remind myself they aren't real, and then I'm okay.”

“Th-this dream is.”

“Is what?”

“R-real. It h-happened.”

Clint's heart skittered and missed a beat. “Did you dream about Trevor?”

She shook her head. At the movement, a sheen of perspiration became visible on her face in the firelight. “Ch-Cheryl Blain.”

It took Clint a second to remember who that was.

Loni finally met his gaze. Her lovely eyes were now a dark, stormy blue. Clint mentally circled what she'd just told him.
Bad dream, Cheryl Blain.
The Blain girl had been tortured before she died.

“Ah, honey.” It was all he could think to say.

“I miss Hannah, I guess. She sleeps with me. After a dream she always makes me f-feel better.”

Clint could understand that. Just the dog's warmth and the sound of her breathing probably helped Loni to ground herself in reality again. Not allowing himself to think beyond the moment, he pushed up on his knees, caught Loni in his arms, and then sat back on his bed, depositing her and the tangle of sleeping bag in the V of his bent legs.

“No, no, I'm f-fine,” she protested. “I don't n-need—”

“The hell you don't.” Clint tightened one arm around her and tucked her head under his chin, determined to hold her until the night terrors abated. “I may not be Hannah, but I'll do my best to fill in for her.”

He felt her relent, her body going soft against him. “Hannah s-snores and farts.”

Even now she had a sense of humor. “If I fall asleep, I'll definitely deliver on the snoring part. You may have to wait until tomorrow night to hear my version of a flatulent symphony, though.”

“Why t-tomorrow night?”

“Chili with beans for supper.”

She chuffed with laughter and snuggled closer. Clint thought she was shaking less now, but it was hard to tell for sure through all the bedding. Turning his wrist, he noted the time: a quarter after two in the morning. He'd hold her for fifteen minutes, he decided. Give her plenty of time to escape the clutches of the nightmare, and then he'd get her tucked back into bed.

“I miss all my dead bolts and the security system, too,” she whispered. “After a Cheryl dream I wake up so frightened it feels like my skin is being turned inside out.”

“I can't provide any dead bolts,” he murmured against her hair, “but out here I'm a damned good security system. I have a sixth sense of my own when it comes to camp perimeters. I wake up if anything comes around.”

“You didn't wake up when I came to the fire. If I'd been a serial killer, you'd be dead.”

“You belong here at camp. I don't wake up when the horses move around, either. My sensor only goes off when something or someone comes in from the surrounding woods. Even chipmunks have been known to startle me awake. You're safe, I promise, serial killers notwithstanding.” He waited a beat. “Need to talk about it? The dream, I mean. Sometimes it helps.”

“Heavens, no. There aren't words.” She stirred slightly. “Besides, we always talk about me. I'd rather hear about you for a change.”

“What would you like to know?”

She took a second to reply. “Why is it so hard for you to say you're sorry?”

His heart panged. “That's a story I've never told anyone.”

“Maybe so, but I'd really like to hear it.”

Clint heard an echo in those words and smiled against her hair. He'd said almost exactly the same thing to her earlier that evening. And she had a point, he supposed. He'd told her very little about himself. He just wished she'd asked a different question.

“It's a long story, dating way back to my childhood.”

“I don't care. It'll take my mind off the dream.”

Clint gathered his courage. In all these years he'd never talked with anyone about it, not even his brothers.

“It was five days after my seventh birthday,” he began huskily, and as he said the words, he was taken back through the years to a cold March day, when the anemic winter sunlight had barely thawed the crust of ice on the ground from the previous night. “My mom was pregnant with my sister, Samantha. At the time I didn't pay much attention, but looking back on it now, I think she must have been in the latter part of her eighth month and due to drop anytime.”

“Drop?”

“Buckaroo lingo. Due to go into labor, I mean. I was out in front of the house, playing with my new puppy, a birthday present from my folks. His name was Tug, and he'd crawled in under the porch. I thought he was stuck.”

“That's a cute name. Did he like to play tug-of-war?”

“Oh, yeah. Anyway, my mother opened the front door.” In his mind he could still see her clearly, only now through the eyes of a man. “She was pale, very pale, only I didn't register it then. I was too busy worrying about that silly dog. I was also lying on the ground, with the porch deck blocking my view of her from the hips down. She said, ‘Clinton James, I need you to run and get your daddy. Tell him I need him at the house straightaway.' I said, ‘Okay, Mama,' and went back to calling Tug the instant she closed the door. I probably dawdled for five minutes, maybe less, maybe more, until Tug finally came out from under the step. Then I ran to find my father, just like Mama told me to.

“Anyway, she was hemorrhaging. While I scooted around on my belly on the frozen ground, my mother was inside bleeding to death.” Clint swallowed hard, not sure he could finish. A lump had lodged in his throat, making it difficult for him to talk. “When Dad and I got to the house there was blood all over the kitchen. Mama was sitting on a chair, too weak to stay standing, I guess. I'll never forget the pool of red all around the chair. She looked up at Dad, her face so white she looked dead, her eyelashes fluttering as if she could barely keep her eyes open. ‘What took you so long?' she asked my father. ‘I told Clinton James to get you straightaway.'”

“Oh,
Clint.
”

He blinked, glad now that her head was tucked under his chin because she couldn't see his tears.

“I realized then that I should have raced to get my father immediately. As he scooped Mama up out of the chair to carry her to the car, I started crying and saying, ‘I'm sorry, Mama. I'm sorry, Mama. I didn't know you were bleeding. I didn't know.' My father couldn't walk for me getting in his way, and he yelled, ‘Sorry never fixed nothin', boy. Stop your blubberin' and open the damned door for me!' So I ran ahead, doing as he told me, so scared…well, let's just say I've never been that scared in all the years since. And I had every reason to be. Once Dad got her to the hospital, they tried to transfuse her and go in to fix whatever was causing the hemorrhage, but she died on the table. They performed an emergency C-section to save Samantha.” He swallowed again. “So there you have it. That's my story. ‘Sorry never fixed nothin'.' And my dad was right. Saying I was sorry sure as hell didn't fix my mother. To this day I still have trouble saying those words.”

She said nothing for what seemed to him a very long time. “Guilt is a terrible thing. You still blame yourself for her death. Don't you?”

How could he not? The five minutes he'd wasted trying to coax Tug from under the porch might have made the difference between life and death for his mother. A week later he'd given Tug away, a self-inflicted punishment, and he'd never owned another dog since.

“Yeah, I blame myself,” he admitted.

“You need to talk with your dad. You haven't ever, have you?”

“No. There never seemed to be a good moment. When I was small I was afraid to bring it up. He loved my mother more than life itself, and he grieved for her for years. Later…well, it just never felt right, somehow.”

“He needs to say those words to you, Clint.”

“What words?”

“The words that never fix anything.” She rubbed her cheek against his shirt, leading him to suspect he wasn't the only one with tears in his eyes. “He never should have said that to you. You were just a little guy. It wasn't your fault she started hemorrhaging.”

“No, I understand that now. But knowing something and feeling it, deep down inside, are two different things. As for my dad, he was in a panic. He probably doesn't even remember what he said to me. He's a good man, my dad, and a wonderful father. It's the only time in my whole life that he ever said anything cruel to me, and I don't think he meant to then.”

“Let him tell you that. Talking with him may not make it easier to say you're sorry, but the feelings you have about your mother's death aren't healthy. You need to talk to him.”

Clint knew his feelings weren't healthy. His brothers treasured their memories of their mother, while he tried never to think of her. “I'll consider it.”

“Please do. You're a good man. You don't deserve to feel guilty over something that was never your fault in the first place.”

He released a shaky breath. “I just wish she'd told me. You know? Instead she acted as if nothing really bad was wrong.”

“Of course. You were just a little guy. She probably didn't want to frighten you.”

“She didn't, and she died for the mistake.”

“But it was
her
mistake. She should have at least made you understand how important it was that you find your father immediately. Because she didn't, you dawdled for a couple of minutes, a very typical thing for a child to do. Have you ever stopped to think that she might have died anyway, Clint? Your ranch is quite a drive from town. Chances are, your dad couldn't have gotten her to the hospital in time no matter what.”

Clint had never thought of that, but he realized Loni might be right. It was a very long drive to town—such a distance, in fact, that they'd recently had a family conference to decide the best course of action if an emergency with Frank occurred. Though Clint's dad was in excellent shape for a man his age, he was still at risk now for stroke or cardiac arrest, and the emergency response time to his home would be slow. Frank had eased his children's minds by saying he'd rather die of a heart attack than leave the land he loved so much. Quality of life mattered more to him than quantity, and he didn't want his kids worrying needlessly over the inevitable. One of these days he would have a health crisis, and if he died en route to the hospital, no one would be to blame. It was his choice to make, and that was the way he wanted it.