Carrie led him into the house and turned on a light. She was astounded at the immensity of the living room in which she stood. The central feature of the room was a fireplace built of the same stately gray stone as the house itself. The floor was polished wood with Arapaho rugs scattered throughout.
“Bedroom’s up there.” Judson pointed.
Even under such benign circumstances the words sent a flame racing along her nerve endings. The illicit thoughts she entertained as she studied the polished banistered staircase leading from the living room to the loft would surely make a nun blush. Admonishing her- self for her lack of self-control, Carrie wondered how Judson was ever going to manage that flight of stairs. She thought about simply making up the couch for him, but considering the possibility that he might wake up disoriented in the night, attempt to maneuver his way up the stairs alone and end up hurting himself, she quickly dismissed that idea. What if he somehow man- aged to make his way up to his room and stumbled upon her asleep in his bed? The very thought centered a quiver low in her stomach.
Carrie was shaken from her dewy fantasy by the re- alization that she needed to get Judson to bed as quickly
as possible. Although he had all his senses, he was groggy from the pain pills the doctor had prescribed.
Tackling the stairs together as a team, Judson held on to the banister with one hand and his caretaker’s slender shoulders with the other. Aware that he was trying his best not to crush her beneath his weight, Car- rie knew how hard it was for such an independent man to rely upon anyone else—and her in particular, the out- sider whom he had openly denounced as being unfit to persevere upon his turf.
Opening the door to Judson’s bedroom, Carrie felt her already racing heartbeat quicken. In the middle of the room sat a king-size brass bed. It was impossible not to imagine snuggling naked with Judson between warm sheets, serenaded by the sound of a roaring fire- place below. With difficulty, she donned a professional nurselike attitude, pretending that she wasn’t bothered in the least by what she had to do next.
Turning back the covers, she helped him to the edge of the bed and announced coolly, “Let me help you out of your pants.”
“Listen here.” Judson’s husky voice had the same effect upon the blood coursing through her veins as a pint of smooth whiskey. “I’m too old to be tucked in with just a kiss on the forehead. There’s only one reason I’ll let you take my pants off, and I think you know what it is.”
Carrie’s heart careened against her chest as a wet heat spread through her. Her eyes were drawn to the worn fly of his jeans. What she saw there left little doubt that his concussion had not affected the other working parts of his body.
Her hands were sweaty, her heart was hammering out a lusty song, and her body felt heavy and sweet with
desire. She was sorely tempted to put that masculine boast to the test.
How, she wondered miserably, was she ever going to survive her nursing internship with such a testosterone- driven hunk of a patient with either her heart or her reputation intact?
Giving him her best I’m-in-charge-now look, she calmly informed her patient, “You just do as you’re told, and we’ll see about attending to your ‘other’ needs later.”
The slow smile Judson gave her as he stretched his long body across the bed threatened to obliterate any sense of decency Carrie ever had.
Since the logical place to start was with his boots, she grasped one worn boot firmly in both hands and pulled…and pulled…and pulled. Clearly this wasn’t go- ing to be easy. Placing the heel of the boot against her stomach, she gave another tug. When the boot came off in her hands, she was thrown off balance and fell back against the wall.
Woozy as he was, Judson had never been so aroused in all of his life as he was by the sight of this sweet thing struggling to divest him of his boots. She was so adorable it made his mouth water with wanting her. Little did it matter that his head was pounding a rhythm akin to ancient war drums when the throbbing in the lower half of his body demanded his immediate atten- tion. Though his natural inclination was to dismiss his reaction as nothing more than a bad case of lust, deep in his heart Judson knew that it was far more than that.
He wondered how he could possibly defend his heart against a woman capable of staring down a bear, an animal traditionally honored for its valor in Indian lore and legend. That this remarkable woman had been able
to connect with sister bear on some metaphysical plane was as mystical as the bond that connected them. Judson knew only that he was no more able to break that bond by an act of simple willpower than he was able to stop himself from breathing.
As she swept a stray lock from her eyes with the back of her hand, he was struck by the loveliness of that face, flushed with exertion. Her eyes were so wide and won- drous that he felt certain the mysteries of the entire uni- verse were contained within their depths. By the time his tousle-haired nymph had his second boot off, Judson was on the verge of exploding with desire.
With fingers that felt thick and clumsy, Carrie began the process of unbuttoning his shirt. Her remonstrance to stop them from shaking was for naught. Judson took her trembling hands into his own and brought them to his lips. Slowly she raised her eyes to meet his and saw the passion glistening there. The raw need.
Shirt hanging open to reveal his smooth, muscular chest, Judson pulled her hands down to cover his heart. It was a gesture so tender, so intimate, that its simple eloquence brought tears to her eyes.
He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her atop him on the bed. Running his hands beneath her sweater, he captured the creamy swells of her breasts in the palms of his hands. Judson thrust aside any lingering doubts he had about the past. The sound of Carrie’s whimper centered his need directly on the present. This all-consuming desire was too much to fight, and the truth of the matter was that he didn’t want to fight it anymore. This wasn’t his fickle high-school sweetheart he was holding in his arms; it was Carrie, all sweetness and ripe womanhood, exploring his body with hungry need.
This couldn’t be her boss, Carrie thought to herself as Judson tasted the sensitive hollow of her neck with his tongue. This was the man she loved. No past experience or job-related reasoning could alter the irrefutable fact that despite her best efforts to the contrary, she had fallen helplessly, hopelessly, in love with Judson Horn. To deny it was to deny fate itself.
His mouth sought hers, and he traced her soft pliant lips with the tip of his tongue. Feeling the quickening thud of his heart against her palm, she submitted to what was surely her destiny. The deep ache inside her burst into an iridescent glow that radiated throughout every cell in her body, blotting out all reason. It felt so very right, and her need was so urgent, so overpowering. Shivering with desire too long suppressed, Carrie moaned a soft surrender.
He continued to brush his lips over hers in a provoc- ative prelude that left her quivering in awe. Melting beneath the sweet exploration of his tongue, Carrie blindly responded. Her hands devoured the smooth plane of his chest. Hungry for more, she sought the broad expanse of his shoulders, slipping his shirt down his arms, ridding him of it entirely. She caressed the breadth of his back.
It took a moment for her mind to register what those raised ridges of flesh beneath her fingertips actually were. Judson’s back was hideously scarred. “As tough as old leather,” the doctor had said. Apparently some- one had treated Judson Horn as little more than just that.
Her eyes filled with tears as she broke away from his kisses. “Who did this to you?” she demanded in a hoarse whisper.
The answer to that question came from behind her.
“Somebody just like you….”
L
ike an adolescent caught necking by a local police officer, Carrie jumped off the bed. Red-faced, she wheeled around to face Brandy, who was standing in the doorway with her arms akimbo and her eyes ablaze.
“Why would you say that? I would never do any- thing to hurt your father. I—I love him!” she stam- mered in self-defense.
At this heartfelt proclamation, Brandy’s eyes nar- rowed to slits. “It was love of a white woman that al- most got him killed before!”
With that, the girl slammed the door and faced down the hallway to her room. Torn between her desire to stay with Judson and to chase after his distraught daugh- ter, Carrie was relieved when the matter was settled with a gentle entreaty.
“Let her be for the time being. You and I need to talk.”
Looking into eyes of shimmering green was to peer into Carrie’s very soul, Judson realized. This beautiful
woman was far too guileless to hide her emotions be- hind the kinds of barriers that he had so skillfully erected around his own heart. It was impossible for Car- rie to willfully hurt anyone she loved. And if he could believe his own ears, he had just heard her admit to loving him.
It was a miracle. Something too good to be true.
Fearing that she would dismiss his apprehension about the consequences of racially blended relationships as trifling, Judson wanted her to understand the mag- nitude of his concern. It was imperative if they were to ever commit to a future together.
But how could he dredge up a past so willfully sup- pressed for so long? Holding out his hand, Judson pulled Carrie down beside him on the bed. At last the time had come to open the pages of a book too long sealed shut.
Longing to ease his pain, Carrie offered Judson the solace of her body. Remembering Estelle Hanway’s words about the brothers who hadn’t taken kindly to their sister’s involvement with a half-breed, she ran her hands along the width of that scarred back and mas- saged his knotted flesh.
The scars you can see ain’t nothing compared to those you can’t.
At the time those words seemed cryptic; Carrie had thought them spoken in a state of drunken confusion. Suddenly they made perfect sense.
“I told you that my mother was an alcoholic,” he began quietly. “I didn’t tell you how very much like you she was—beautiful, kind and gentle.”
Judson paused to study Carrie’s face between his hands, her features more precious than the most exqui- site jewels.
“When she told the man she loved she was pregnant, he refused to accept the child as his own. Unwilling to admit siring a bastard breed, Mr. High-and-Mighty Ar- thur Christianson turned his back on us both and pre- tended we simply didn’t exist.
“A mongrel dog feels more responsibility to its off- spring than my father did. Though money was never an issue for him, he didn’t contribute so much as a dime to our welfare,” he stated contemptuously.
All the years of locking the past up in his heart hadn’t lessened Judson’s pain any. It glittered in his eyes.
“Still, Mother never gave up hope that her shining white knight would someday return to claim me as his son, to restore me to my rightful ‘throne.’ Her people interpreted that obstinacy as a denial of her own kind. Nobody protested her decision to keep my name off the Indian rolls; there were plenty of full-bloods who needed financial help more than any whelp breed. Cursed by my Indian brothers for my blue eyes and whites for the color of my skin, I was accepted by nei- ther.”
The words themselves evoked memories of cruel, childish taunts, of blackened eyes and bloody noses, of threats more often than not carried out with the security of numbers on their side. Hearing the raspy sound of his own voice cracking, Judson struggled to master his emotions.
“We went it alone for years, living in a hovel that caused the authorities to periodically inquire about health conditions.”
Tears glistening in her eyes, Carrie longed to give Judson permission to wrap the past back up in its fragile cocoon. But she couldn’t. Not when she knew a ca- tharsis was necessary before deep healing could begin.
She doubted whether he noted the gentle pressure of her hand squeezing his. Lost in the mist of the past, Judson was far, far away.
“Lord knows, she tried hard to be a good parent, but the day she found relief in a bottle, my mother crawled inside and never found her way back out.”
With a dry, self-deprecating cough, Judson spared himself no measure of mercy.
“I was the world’s youngest enabler. I did whatever it took to cover up. Stole, lied, denied. Missed lots of school trying to keep things together. Terrified that So- cial Services would declare my mother unfit and take me away from her, I did everything I could to hide our problems from the world. Little did I know that by not making my mother face her problems I was only con- tributing to them.”
“You were only a little boy! You’re being too hard on yourself,” Carrie protested.
“A little boy who came home from school one day to find his mother dead.”
Judson’s voice was like the wind whistling over the desolate stretch of his weathered heart. “To a certain degree, I’ll always blame myself for her death.”
The little cry of pain Carrie heard was her own. Her heart swelled with empathy for the child who had borne such an unfathomable load upon his narrow shoulders. If only there was some way to get the man to forgive himself.
Having seen the same look reflected in numerous so- cial workers’ faces, Judson loathed the pity glistening in Carrie’s eyes. It was almost too much to bear.
“The next several years a string of well-intentioned psychologists and social workers tried to ‘absorb me into the system.’ But ultimately the system rejected me.
Nobody wanted to adopt a mixed-breed teenager with an attitude.
“Most of the foster families I lived with just wanted the extra money the government gave them for housing me. It was even worse in the families where I did form an emotional attachment to my foster brothers and sis- ters. I never stayed long in one place, and I learned fast that caring led straight to heartache.”
That certainly explained a lot to Carrie. No wonder he had flinched at her recommendation to get Brandy some counseling. Tenderly tracing the scars on his back, she massaged the corded muscles. Her trembling fingers fluttered like butterflies against his flesh.
Bitterly self-conscious about the scars that curled around his back like so many writhing snakes, Judson was surprised that he did not recoil from her touch. Heightened by the eroticism of her gentle caresses, his body reacted as if she were playing a worn, well-loved guitar.
When he resumed speaking, his voice was little more than a husky whisper. “I was well on the road to reform school when Cheryl Sue McLeashe started making goo- goo eyes at me in high school.”
A self-effacing smirk underscored his quick synopsis. “It was the typical story—a perky socialite falling for the bad boy renegade. Convinced by the system that I was unlovable, I’d made up my mind not to have any- thing to do with her. But Cheryl Sue was determined to prove that status and race really didn’t matter to her. Like a fool, I hoped to break out of the destructive pattern that marked not only my own family history but the history of a nation.”
His voice was devoid of any emotion as he relayed
the milestone that had changed the course of his life. “We eloped right after graduation.”
A lump the size of a fist formed in Carrie’s throat. It was foolish, she knew, to be intimidated by ghosts from the past, but what woman can compete with a man’s first love? Anger against the girl who had first laid claim upon Judson welled up in her heart. However genuine her motives, Cheryl Sue had stolen Judson’s inno- cence—and his faith in love. Had she rendered him in- capable of ever trusting his heart again?
“You can tell by my back just how well her family took the news. Didn’t matter to her brothers that Cheryl Sue claimed she was in love with me. All that mattered was that I was a breed—and as such a totally unac- ceptable marriage partner for their sister.
“They whipped me until I passed out. Like Brandy said, they would have probably killed me if Cheryl Sue hadn’t thrown herself at them, begging for my life… threatening to take her own if they didn’t stop.”
The barriers were down in those haunted blue eyes that had marked Judson an outcast from birth. In their cerulean depths, Carrie spied a glimpse of hell.
“Unfortunately,” he continued with the honest re- flection born of hindsight, “it turned out Cheryl Sue was more in love with the romantic notion of sampling forbidden fruit than she ever was with me. A young idealist, she was completely unprepared for the social ostracism that comes with mixed marriages. Her daddy had our marriage annulled almost before it was official. And I’m told he tried to make her get rid of the babies she was carrying, too. But to her credit, Cheryl stood up to that old devil, carrying the twins to term without his blessing.
“They were barely a week old when I found them
on my front step, two tiny angels bundled up in match- ing pink and blue blankets.”
Judson’s eyes softened with the memory before turn- ing the color of armor-piercing bullets. “Left on my front porch like somebody’s garbage.”
Though his rage was under control, it was clear to Carrie that it had not dissipated with the passage of years.
“I was young and in pretty bad shape at the time, and I couldn’t imagine having anything so little and innocent and needy totally dependent on me. To be hon- est, there were times I didn’t think we’d make it. Times when all we had was each other.”
It was easy to see how Judson’s children had bonded so completely to him. How Brandy could come to see any romantic interest shown her father as an infringe- ment upon her sole, proprietary turf. Though Carrie wished there was some way to simply make Judson’s anguish disappear, the truth was, the past could not be undone. Considering what he’d just revealed, it was in- conceivable that he would simply throw his heart wide open to her raw, reckless admission of love.
Still Carrie wouldn’t have retracted it if she could. Even if he spurned her, demanding she get out of his life for good, she knew that silencing the fact that she was a woman in love wouldn’t lessen that earth- shattering reality one iota.
Outside a coyote howled a baleful tune to the rising moon as Carrie considered a lifetime of loving a man so deeply scarred. There were her wounds to consider, as well. Though not as visible as Judson’s, she, too, was marred by the past, haunted by her own demons. Could love really triumph over so much mutual pain?
As if reading her thoughts, Judson stepped into the
deep grass of those gentle eyes. “Sweetheart, I don’t think you’ve fully considered the repercussions of lov- ing a breed.”
“Shh…”
Putting a finger to his lips, Carrie shushed him in an act so sweet and sensual that it turned his protests to a feral growl. He took her hands into his own and kissed their open palms.
“Don’t you realize that just being here with me jeop- ardizes your standing in this community? You deserve a better life than a crazy blue-eyed breed with two mixed-up kids.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” Carrie countered with a stubborn lift of her chin.
Undoubtedly there were obstacles to overcome: his past and her own. But, after all, history was only his- tory. The shadows of the past were behind them; the sunlit fields of the future lay ahead. Judson was no longer the boy he once was. He was a man with the courage to put family first, and she, a woman strong enough to fight for what she wanted.
Opening her hands to encompass their tasteful sur- roundings, she gently reminded him, “You’re not such a bad catch after all. I wouldn’t exactly describe this as the ‘hovel’ of your childhood. And don’t forget, it was the people of this community who elected you to a seat on the school board.”
Judson flinched at the conclusion to which she had jumped. His wry smile was tinged with derision. “You can chalk all that up to my old man. The only good thing he ever did for me was to up and die.”
Carrie tried to understand Judson’s callousness as he tried to disenchant her with the unpleasant facts of his life.
“Believe me, nobody was more surprised than me to find out that Arthur Christianson left me his entire es- tate. Funny how his death bought me what he refused me during his life—a modicum of respectability.”
This startling disclosure didn’t stop Carrie from rush- ing to his support. “But you’ve got to remember that you’re the one who’s held on to it. Surely you don’t think you were elected by your peers to be chairman of the board out of pity!”
The bold spark dancing in those emerald eyes com- municated complete belief in him. Had Cheryl Sue but been able to have trusted him even a fraction such as this, Judson was sure his life would not have been so riddled with self-doubt, recriminations and regrets.
Vowing not to let pride smother the wisdom of his heart, he wrapped his arms tightly around Carrie and pulled her close.
“You’re a remarkable woman,” he murmured into the soft cascade of her hair.
In that instant Judson realized the only thing standing between him and happiness was his own fear. Like a cat, he had bared his claws for so long that he had forgotten how to purr, how to trust in innate goodness when it was staring him right in the face. Truly as beau- tiful on the inside as the outside, Carrie Raben was woman enough to take whatever the world had to throw at her. Judson couldn’t believe that he had been willing to allow a past marred by other people’s bigotry to come between him and the best thing that was ever going to happen in his life.
His lips claimed hers in a kiss borne of desperation and fate. Soft. The parting of those exquisitely soft lips to accept all that he had to offer aroused him fully, invoking an insatiable longing Judson had never before
felt. The reciprocal thrust of her tongue against his own almost sent him over the edge.
Growling deep in his throat, Judson reveled in the seductive curves that molded so perfectly to his hard, angular body. Unable to get enough, his hands moved hungrily over her, his savage virility threatening to con- quer the virgin innocence that had captivated him from the very first day he had been entrusted with her well- being. Knowing that Carrie was not the kind of woman to accept intimacy on a merely physical plane, Judson knew where this was going.