Everything in her stilled with the veiled promise in his deep voice. The depths of his eyes were as fathomless and warm as anything she could imagine. Amelia pushed away from him. “I suppose you think you’re that man?”
“Amy, darling,” he said in a deeper voice, “I know I’m that man.”
More butterflies fluttered in her stomach and her breath caught. She wiped her damp palms down the sides of her skirt.
Jenny shoved the door open at that moment. Colt smiled in the manner Amelia was beginning to realize was for Jenny alone.
“All done with my horse, Jenny?”
The girl nodded. Her pointed gaze fell on Colt’s shoulder and she lifted her brows in a silent query. He spared his shoulder a glance. “All bandaged and it’s going to be fine. Come here. You’ve still got chocolate ice cream on your chin.” He picked up the discarded washrag from the table and dabbed the dried splotch from Jenny’s chin.
Jenny’s smile wreathed her face. Amelia turned away, ashamed by the twinge of jealousy she felt for her little sister’s easy relationship with Colt Evans. Jenny was just responding to Colt as she herself did.
****
Amelia walked from the barn to the house, deep in thought, a half-empty milk bucket in her hand. The last bit of daylight had faded, leaving the land bathed in gathering shadows of gray and black, and the sky streaked with myriad hues of blue, purple, red, orange, and yellow. The Medicine Bows rose in the west, the peaks golden in the last of twilight. A vesper sparrow sang lustily from a small bush near the house, whistling the day to sleep. This was a beautiful place, and she did love it here, despite the harshness of the land and the difficulty of forcing a living.
Amelia sighed. Dolly was dry. She was going to have to talk to Marshal Taylor about getting her bred. She stumbled to a halt when Colt emerged from the deepening shadows of the small porch.
“What the hell was your beef with Jenny this evening?” he asked, his face set in harsh lines and his voice tight.
“What are you talking about?” Guilt stabbed Amelia.
“You snapped her head off when she said she didn’t want to go to bed. If you’re still angry about that dandified twit this afternoon, or with anything I’ve done, take it out on me.” He raked a hand through his hair, dragging it from his brow. “I’m an adult and I can snap back. She’s just a kid.”
“It was past her bedtime and I was not going to have her stand there, shaking her head at me and giving you calf-eyes to plead her case. And she didn’t say she didn’t want to go to bed. She won’t talk.”
“Oh, yes, she does talk. You just have to listen to her. She makes herself known in very uncertain terms.”
“You’re coddling her.” Amelia started past him.
He caught her arm and spun her around. Milk sloshed from the bucket, splashing Amelia’s skirt.
“Oh, no, look at what I just did. Now, I’ve got to wash this skirt again. If I wasn’t so—”
“Don’t you dare say you’re clumsy, because you didn’t do it, Amy. I did when I caught your arm.” Colt stepped closer to her. “What is eating at you? This isn’t like you.”
“That is twice today a man has told me I’m not acting like myself.” Amelia jerked her arm free of his hold and sloshed more milk onto the fieldstone porch. “You don’t know me well enough to know how I should or shouldn’t be acting. I’d like to think that I know how to be myself without other people telling me I’m not.”
She stalked past him into the cabin and set the milk bucket on the table. She searched for a clean towel to cover the bucket until she could get the milk into the churn.
Colt grabbed her elbow from behind and spun her into his chest. Before she could react, his injured arm snaked around her waist. He caught her chin in his other hand, fingers splayed across her cheek, and bent his head to her.
Amelia’s breath caught in her throat. Butterflies darted through her stomach when he ran the pad of his thumb along her lower lip. Without thought, Amelia trailed the tip of her tongue along the path his thumb had traced, and met his gaze, startled to see the cool gray was gone, replaced with molten pewter.
When he pressed his lips to hers, they were light as a downy feather, and Amelia stilled. He tightened his arm around her waist and lifted her closer, while his lips coaxed her mouth open. She shivered as his teeth grazed her lower lip. She parted her lips to the demanding pressure and his opened mouth claimed hers.
It wasn’t butterflies in her stomach now. They were huge, soaring hawks.
His hand crept up her back and his palm pressed between her shoulder blades.
Oh, heavens, this wasn’t anything like the cool, fast kiss Donnie Morris had claimed from her.
Her breasts were crushed to his hard chest, and she tingled everywhere his body made contact with hers. That new ache jolted through her, warming her and coiling in her innermost region.
His mouth left hers and burned a path down her throat. She arched back against the arm holding her captive. Her skin felt branded where his mouth had been and a delicious shudder passed over her when his tongue flicked at the pulse throbbing in the hollow of her throat.
Without any warning, Colt released her and stepped back.
Caught off balance, she staggered a step forward. Breathing in short gasps, Amelia stared at him. A satisfied smile twisted up the corners of his mouth.
“I told you that you needed to be kissed, and kissed by a man who knows what he’s doing. I also told you I was just the man to do it.”
Infuriated and embarrassed, Amelia lifted her hand to slap him. Lightning-quick, he caught her wrist. A mirthless smile crossed his face as he slowly uncurled his fingers and released her wrist. “Never try to outdraw me, Amy. Even with my arm in a sling, I’m still a hell of a lot faster than you.”
Shocked, Amelia lowered her hand and stepped back from him. She had barely seen him raise his hand to block hers.
He dipped his head to her. “I think it’s time we both went to bed.”
He walked into the bedroom, and shut the door with a quiet click behind him.
****
Colt eased his arm from the sling. He crossed to the window and let the cool night breeze wash over him. Stars glittered in the velvety expanse. Somewhere in the darkness, a coyote lifted his voice in a yapping song. Colt was trembling and he wasn’t sure whether it was a physical reaction to Amelia’s charms or a more honed reaction to her upraised hand.
It was both, and he knew it. She was sweeter than hell. Holding her against him, claiming her mouth and feeling her trembling against him had just about driven him mad. He leaned his head against the window jamb and concentrated on the cool glass against his forehead. Jesus…he envied the man who would marry her.
He shook his head. She’d marry some dandified twit like Donnie Morris and the damn fool would never know what he had. And then, like an even bigger fool, he’d taunted her. No wonder she tried to slap him.
Colt straightened and walked to the bed. He struggled to unbutton his shirt. With one hand, it was damn near impossible, but thanks to Donnie Morris, his other shoulder hurt too much to risk moving it anymore than he had already done—not if he wanted to keep his stomach where it belonged.
At last he had the buttons parted and he shrugged out of the black fabric. He tossed it across the foot of the bed and sat down to work his boots off. He fell back on the bed, boots still on. Hell with it. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept with his boots on, and probably wouldn’t be the last either.
A timid knock on the door interrupted his self-disgust. “Yeah?”
Amelia pushed the door open. “Do you need some help getting out of your boots?”
He sat up. In the dim glow of the single lamp on the nightstand, her loosened hair shimmered like a halo around her face. “Yeah, I do.”
He held a foot up to her. She straddled his leg and presented her bottom to him. The calico pulled tight over the soft curves of her behind while she struggled to pull his boot off. As she tugged on the boot, her bottom wiggled in a most suggestive manner. Colt knew this wasn’t a deliberate attempt at seduction on her part, but it didn’t change the fact the tenuous hold he had on his desire was strained to the breaking point.
The first boot dropped to the floor.
“Damn, Amelia…turn around.”
Startled, she dropped his foot and whirled. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her onto the bed with him. Before she could scramble away, he pinned her under him. Her face was flushed and only inches from him.
“I just kissed you in the kitchen and made an interesting discovery. I like kissing you. I don’t know if you know it, but you are one fine-looking swatch of calico. Take my other boot off, but not the way you pulled the first one off or I am not going to be responsible for my actions.”
Her eyes widened and her mouth formed a perfect O. He rolled off her, wincing with the motion. Amelia scrambled from the bed and backed to the door. He lifted his still-booted foot. “My other boot?”
Wordless, she crossed the room to him. She gripped the toe and heel and pulled, dropped the boot to the floor, and then bolted to the door. To his amazement, she paused in the doorway. “Can I tell you something?”
He nodded. “Amy, you can tell me anything you want.”
She fidgeted with the front of her skirt, balling the fabric between her hands, not saying anything.
“Amy?” he prompted.
“I don’t think I liked being kissed like that,” she said from the doorway, and then fled.
Colt laughed. “The hell you didn’t like it, Amelia McCollister,” he murmured after a moment. “We both liked it too damn much.”
****
Amelia undressed slowly in the darkened room. She tingled all over with the remembered contact of his firm, muscular body. Deep inside her, that ache she realized had never been present until Colt’s arrival in her life, throbbed. Her hands trembled as she unbuttoned her chemise.
She pulled her nightdress over her head and slipped into bed with Jenny. Jenny thrashed her arms as if to push Amelia away, and then stilled.
Amelia stared up at the ceiling. She tried to recall anything her mother had ever told her about what happened between a man and a woman, but she couldn’t recall any conversations like that with her mother. Somehow the topic just never came up. She had never doubted her parents loved one another. She couldn’t count the times she had seen them kiss, but those kisses hadn’t been anything close to the kiss Colt Evans had given her. The kisses she had seen her parents share fit more into the category of a “peck on the cheek.”
Her brow knit. Had her parents kissed differently at night, behind the privacy of their door? Had her father made her mother feel like she did now? That thought was even more disquieting.
Troubled, Amelia flopped onto her side and curled an arm under her head. She wished her mother were there, so she could have asked. Tears burned her eyes. Momma wasn’t there and never would be again.
Jenny rolled over and slipped her slender arm around Amelia’s waist. Her warm breath stirred the hair across Amelia’s cheek.
What was it like to share a bed, every night, with a man? Not just any man, but Colt?
Amelia gritted her teeth. This was foolishness. Someone like Colt would never think to stay in a place like this. That was like wishing for the moon. She could hear Daddy telling her to get her head out of the clouds.
Forcing her musings away, Amelia began to recite the chores needing to be done at first light. Gather the eggs, feed the chickens, milk the cows, feed them, fix breakfast for Saul and Jenny and Colt…
Colt. There he was again, large as life, invading her thoughts.
The stifling heat of the last few days finally broke during the night. A gray, cold, drizzling mist accompanied by a fierce northwesterly wind heralded the new day.
At least Saul would be happy, Amelia thought, as she tossed a seasoned log onto the banked coals of the stove. He wouldn’t have to water the garden today. Amelia wrapped her shawl tightly around her shoulders, shivering with the mournful sound of the wind seeping through the chinking in the house. Another job to be done before winter set in.
She opened the door, gasped with the cold, and raced from the house to the barn. Angel whickered, as if scolding her for being so late with his breakfast. Captain roosted on Buttercup’s back and the two cows lowed in impatience.
“I’m hurrying,” she said. “You don’t even need milking, Dolly.”
“Did you check the kitchen, Amy?”
Startled, she whirled to the doorway. Mist beaded Colt’s hair and shirt, shimmering like so many glittering, twinkling diamonds.
“Milk’s already there. You overslept, and I could hear them hollering.” He walked into the barn, a few chickens following in his wake. “The other cow’s gone dry. That one there,” he said, nodding toward Buttercup, “is going dry. Even if you introduce them to a bull, you’re going to need a milk cow or two until they calve.”
“You milked the cows? With one hand?”
“I milked seven when I was a kid every morning and every night. Believe me, I got real good at it.” A grin creased his face. “It took a little longer than if I’d used two hands, but I got the job done. Milk is in the kitchen,” he repeated, “covered with a clean towel. Didn’t know what you wanted to do with it.”
“Thank you.” She picked up the hay-fork and speared a flake for the cows. She wished she didn’t instantly respond to his nearness. He made it impossible to think, made her heart pound as if she had run forever, and left her feeling like a giddy, giggling school girl. She was a grown woman of nearly nineteen, for heaven’s sake. Most girls her age were already married, and several of them already had children.
Colt stepped closer to her and took the hay-fork from her. “You aren’t paying too much attention this morning. I’ve already fed them all too.”
She scanned the mangers, feeling foolish. Was she this scatterbrained because of him? Amelia shut her eyes. Yes, she was this way because of him and the way he had kissed her. She had tossed and turned most of the night, unable to find a way to soothe the ache deep in her core. She glanced at Colt over her shoulder and murmured, “Thank you.”