“I certainly hope she doesn’t, because then she won’t be able to come out the ranch and have dinner with us.”
Rosa’s mind spun out of control. She had not heard from Analisa except for a short note delivered a week ago that advised her to wait a while longer before she returned to Mountain Shadows for a visit. Now that Analisa had sent for her she was suddenly nervous.
“But—”
Quentin shot a glance at Floss. She waited as anxiously for his response as Rosa did. “Analisa sent me to fetch you, Rose. She said it’s Christmas and that you and Kase should be together.”
“And Kase?” Rosa asked.
The big man shrugged. “I don’t know what he’s thinkin’ anymore.”
Rosa turned to Floss and grabbed the woman’s hands. “What should I do,
signora
?”
Flossie’s eyes searched Rosa’s for a moment before she squeezed her fingers and urged, “Don’t keep your ride waitin’. You hurry on now and dress, and I’ll keep Quentin company.”
Suddenly brimming with hope, Rosa reached out for Flossie and gave the woman an exuberant hug. She swung around and set her skirt twirling, then called out over her shoulder to Quentin. “
Un momento,
Signor Quentin, and I will be ready.”
The sleigh ride out to the ranch stretched Rosa’s patience to the limit. The minutes crawled by as Quentin insisted on chatting amiably all the way. Although she nodded at all the right times, she had no idea what he was talking about. Her imagination had taken possession of her mind.
Wrapped warmly in her cocoon of woolen blankets, her ears and mouth muffled against the cold by her shawl, Rosa tried to foresee the scene that would unfold once she was face to face with Kase again.
He would be stronger, more like the Kase she had known before the shooting. He would tell her how much he had missed her, what a fool he had been, and how he could not live without her. If he cared even half as much for her as she did for him, he would have suffered through the long weeks of separation.
She shifted on the seat, afraid of wrinkling her black velvet dress. Flossie had altered it so that she no longer felt lost in the voluminous layers of heavy velvet. It had been cleaned and pressed and was ready for just the moment when she would see Kase Storm again.
Aware of an abrupt halt in Quentin’s stream of conversation, Rosa looked around and discovered that he had drawn the sled up beside his porch and was waiting for her to comment.
“Are you ready to go in?”
Rosa glanced up at the second-story window of Kase’s room and took a deep breath. The moment she had been awaiting was at hand. She smiled behind the shawl. Her eyes were bright, her heart fighting to keep up a steady rhythm without skipping beats. It would be wonderful just to see Kase again. She had missed him terribly and had wondered when he would ask Analisa to send for her again, and now the time had come. Christmas was a time of love, of giving. Perhaps he had waited until today to see her so as to make their reconciliation that much sweeter.
Greetings were exchanged all around in the entry hall. Festive garlands of pine adorned every available surface and twined around the banister. The rich smell of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves spiced the air and added to the warmth in the room. Analisa and Caleb did not hesitate to welcome Rosa with familiarity, bestowing hugs and smiles that she knew were genuine. Analisa looked regal in a deep burgundy satin that enhanced her upswept golden hair. As Rosa let Caleb help her out of her coat, she wondered if the severe black of her gown would inject a note of sadness into the happy holiday gathering. Then she recalled Flossie’s compliment. Her friend had assured her that the dark gown, which now fit perfectly, lent sophistication to her youthful beauty. She clung to the hope that Floss was correct as she smoothed the fitted bodice and straightened the waistline.
Instead of her usual, unmanageable hairstyle, she had chosen to wear her hair in a crown of braids, as Analisa had done on the day they met. It was a style she had often worn in Corio, but felt far too plain for America. Having seen how elegant the simple style looked on Analisa, Rosa had hoped to achieve the same effect.
“I have brought food,” she announced, remembering Quentin, who stood just inside the door laden with covered plates. “Crostoli. My little friend in Busted Heel says they are cookies.” She shrugged, unsure if G.W.’s comparison was correct. “And I have also brought fresh bread with herbs and some tortellini.”
“How wonderful, Rosa. You should not have gone to so much trouble for us,” Analisa said graciously.
“Is not trouble for me,” Rosa assured them with a smile and shake of her head. She could not keep her glance from straying to the parlor beyond the wide archway. Was Kase willing to leave his room yet?
Caleb sensed her impatience to see his stepson. “Would you like to go up to see Kase? Anja has everything nearly ready, but take your time. We’ll eat in an hour.”
Rosa turned to Analisa. “Kase is not eating with us?”
The woman’s smile dimmed, and she looked at her husband for support. Caleb answered, “I’m afraid not, Rosa. He still hasn’t been downstairs. His stubborn pride won’t allow him to let us carry him down, and he refuses to let us celebrate up there with him.”
“Then I will eat in his room.” It seemed a simple enough solution until she watched them all exchange worried glances. “Is a problem?”
“Analisa didn’t tell him we invited you,” Caleb said softly, his voice apologetic. “We wanted to surprise him. We thought you might be able to entice him to come downstairs.”
“I see,” Rosa said. Suddenly the bountiful fullness of the day diminished. Kase had not sent for her. He did not even know she was joining the family. Everyone seemed to be waiting expectantly for her to do something, say anything to relieve the tension in the room.
“I will go up and surprise him, then,” she said, mustering her spirit and donning a wide if tremulous smile.
She lifted her skirt and carefully held it aside as she walked up the steps. Rosa could feel everyone in the hallway below watching her ascend the stairs, and for a moment she felt like a condemned prisoner walking toward her fate. She shook herself mentally and called to mind the scene she had envisioned in the sleigh. In a few moments she would be laughing at her fear.
Below her in the entry hall, Analisa Storm leaned back against her husband and called upon his steady strength. “I hope I have done the right thing,” she whispered.
“I do, too,” Caleb said. “I hate to see her hurt, but I know how our son is once he’s made up his mind.”
“Kase?”
Rosa stood just inside the door. Her gaze going directly to the bed, she found Kase missing. Then she heard a sound and turned to find him sitting near the fireplace in a straight-backed chair.
When she entered the room on the soft hush of velvet over rustling petticoats, Kase thought he had conjured her up. When she spoke his name aloud with the accent and inflection he knew so well, he was certain the vision was real, but he could not speak. He must have made some sound, for he watched her turn wide, startled eyes in his direction. She paused like a sparrow about to take wing before she crossed the room and stood close enough for him to become enveloped by the scent of her, a delicious, tempting scent that he could almost have sworn was vanilla.
“Hello.” Her voice cracked on the word and she was unable to say more.
“Buon giorno.”
“You speak good Italian,” Rosa said, longing to throw herself into his arms.
He let himself feast on the sight of her. The once oversized, baggy dress now fit her with maddening perfection showing off her full breasts and narrow waist. Zach’s words came back to haunt him and he stared hard at her. She looked thinner than when he’d seen her last. “I haven’t had much practice lately, though. You look”—he stopped short of saying
ravishing
— “nice.”
Nervously she ran her hands down the front of he skirt.
“Grazie.
Signora Flossie haltered my dress.”
Kase knew there was no use fighting the smile her innocently mistaken disclosure inspired.
Rosa’s heart tripped as she watched the familiar light blossom in his eyes and his sensual lips turn upward as he smiled.
“I think you mean she
altered
it for you. A halter is something a horse wears, Rose.” There, he thought. He had said her name aloud and nothing much had happened. Nothing except that the blood was surging through him in a way it had not in weeks. He still wanted her. Even his body was betraying him.
He did not ask her to sit down, but she sat in a chair across from him and stared at him for a moment, trying to gauge the extent of his recovery. He had regained his color; he had even smiled at her mistake.
“You, too, look nice,” she said, her words halting and suddenly awkward. “I am glad to see you are not in bed.”
He refrained from making a comment she knew she would not understand. “I’m feeling better every day. Still not walking, as you can see. But Caleb and Quentin insist on moving me around the room, so to keep them from nagging, I let them. It doesn’t seem to be doing much good, but then, it doesn’t hurt either.”
She nodded, hating his casual, offhand tone, wishing he would ask her to move closer, to sit beside him.
He stared back, wishing she would pull her chair closer to him.
They talked of Busted Heel. Kase asked after everyone he could think of, which was everyone in town, and Rosa told him all she knew. Things were slow now that the snow had come. Even the farmers from outlying homesteads had given up coming into town. Slick, Paddie, Flossie, and the girls kept her busy cooking for them. Floss had once again asked her to move in and cook for her exclusively now that winter had diminished the restaurant trade. Rosa told him she still refused.
“Stubborn as ever,” he said softly.
As you are, she wanted to respond, but she bit her tongue. “A person should take care for themselves.”
“Independent.”
“Sì.
Independent.”
If it had not been awkward to do so, Kase would have been content to sit and stare, to memorize every detail of her features, from the way her lashes curled upward at the tips to the way her full lower lip tempted him to kiss it. Her eyes shone like two huge, evenly matched topazes beneath her fine, arched brows. He knew without touching her that her skin was as smooth as satin and as warm as the velvet she wore.
“I brought you some cookies,” she said, trying to break the spell his lazy gaze had cast over her.
“Thank you. I can’t wait to try them.”
“Your father said you will take dinner here. I will eat with you.”
“I don’t want you to miss the fun downstairs.”
“You have no wish to join them?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m getting used to it here. It’s a good place to think.” He watched her stiffen and straighten on the chair.
“You think of me?”
“Sometimes,” he lied. He could not tell her she was never out of his thoughts.
She tried to read the truth in his azure eyes, but his feelings were shuttered away. With every passing second, Rosa fought to ignore the tension building between them. It did no good for her to look away from his eyes, for everything about him made her want him more. The brilliant white shirt he was wearing only accentuated his smooth copper skin. His dark hair was neatly combed into place, no longer subjected to the wind that continually tossed the wayward, endearing lock over his forehead. The eyes, the nose, the lips she had come to love had not changed. It was the shuttered expression his features assumed—the cold, unswerving aloofness so reminiscent of the way he looked at her when they first met—that she could no longer stand.
She should never have come back.
—Abruptly Rosa stood. “I still love you,” she blurted out.
“Rose, listen—”
She cut the space between them in two. “To give up is the coward’s way.”
“Rose, stop.”
She refused to beg, but she knew that if she had the least hope it would work, she was not too proud to try. This was her last chance. Soon he might be gone. She remembered what Flossie had said earlier:
Some men are too proud to bend.
Rosa leaned down, braced her hands on his shoulders, and pressed her lips against his.
Kase let her kiss him, but he steeled himself against the inevitable reaction. He kept his hands clamped around the edge of the chair seat, afraid to touch her, afraid of crushing her to him, of pouring out words of love.
When she did not end the kiss, but demanded more of him—deepened the pressure on his lips and played her tongue against the seam of his mouth—Kase felt his body come alive with sensations he had denied himself for far too long. The blood pulsed in his veins and surged into his loins with every heartbeat as his desire and need for Rose heightened. He fought against overwhelming need, refused to take advantage of her willingness when he knew it would only lead to pain.
Rosa let go of his shoulders and cradled his face between her palms. Now that she had tasted his lips, there was no turning back. She would make him love her, make him see that they belonged together forever. Under her unrelenting assault, his lips parted and she groaned with the pleasure of success as she slipped her tongue into the warm recesses of his mouth. Their tongues met and parted time after time as Kase and Rosa reveled in the reunion of senses.
His willpower crumbled as easily as dry leaves turned to dust underfoot. Kase enfolded her in his arms until he crushed her against him and she was lying across his lap.
Rosa melted into his embrace, her heart singing with joy. Kase loved her still. Just as she could not keep herself from loving him, he could not resist the temptation she offered. Aware of her position, she became suddenly wary, afraid of causing him pain or further injury, but when he pressed her closer and reached out to shift her against him until she was more comfortable, she felt the proof of his desire burgeoning beneath the pin-striped wool of his pants.
She slipped her arms about his neck and clung to him, afraid to speak for fear she might break the spell of love that bound them together. She knew that as long as she lived—whether she convinced him they belonged together or not—she would never forget this moment or the overwhelming desire and love that welled within her.