The Texan's Diamond Bride: The Texan's Diamond Bride / The Texas Tycoon's Christmas Baby

Chapter Six

He put his hands on her again, same place as before, this time as gentle as he could be, rubbing slowly with his thumbs at the soft flesh of her inner arms. She looked wary, but she let him.

“I’m truly sorry,” he said. “I don’t treat women that way. It’s just that…ever since I heard about Charlie, I couldn’t help but worry and wonder…what it was like for him, growing up a McCord.”

She gave him a look that just about had him on his knees. A look that said she understood completely and could forgive, not that he felt he deserved it.

“No one in my family wants to hurt him,” Travis promised her.

She hung her head. He saw tears falling down one perfect, pale cheek and a curtain of red-gold hair shielding the rest of her from view. She shivered a bit.

He had to remind himself he didn’t get to keep her warm tonight, that the time when he was welcome to do that was long over. “What is it, Red?”

“I don’t see how Charlie’s ever going to belong anywhere now. Not with the way things are between your family and mine.”

Honestly, Travis didn’t either.

Paige shivered, and Travis had to get up or he was going to take her in his arms, despite all the reasons he’d told himself he couldn’t.

He pulled the covers up around her and eased her back down onto the bed, while she looked up at him, her eyes sad and full of regrets. He let himself touch her in one small way, a hand to her cheek, wiping away those tears, and then she looked even sadder. All sad eyes and tears and that glorious hair spread out on a pillow in a bed in a cabin with him and no one else around for miles.

He wondered what she’d do if he kissed her right then, if she longed for the way it had been between them the night before. If she wished they hadn’t been careful or cautious. He could have done anything to her that night, and she would have let him. He knew it.

But it was cold and wet, and the ground was hard, and she was just so soft and feminine, her body yielding completely to his. Not the kind of woman a man had on a bed of solid rock.

He’d wanted something better for her for their first time together, time, a soft bed, a fire and roof over their heads.

But mostly…time.

He’d been sure they’d have it, couldn’t foresee anything that would keep them from having that time.

What a fool he’d been.

And now he’d always wonder what it would have been like, despite who she was and who her family was.

“I’m going to build up the fire. Just go to sleep. One of the ranch hands will likely come for us by midday, and we’ll go to the ranch house and…I don’t know, Paige. I don’t know what we’ll do from there. Get your Jeep for you and…I don’t know.”

Let her go? Just like that? No. He didn’t want to do that. But what choice did he have? Forget about her? He didn’t think he could.

“I just don’t know,” he said again, then turned back to the fire, made himself lie down and stare at it, not at her, until at some point he finally fell asleep.

Someone walked into the cabin at first light.

Travis got up, sore from a night spent on a floor that was just a tad more comfortable than the rock he’d slept on the first night, and there stood Calvin Waters, a man who’d been working the ranch since Travis was a kid.

“Sorry, Boss,” he said. “You said to take care of the animals first, and we did. Just took a little longer than we thought, and then—”

He broke off as Paige rose from the bed on the other side of the room, looking all rumpled and sleepy and gorgeous in the morning light, her hair like pure fire, a curly, sexy mess.

Travis thought he heard Cal swear in utter appreciation and could have done the same himself.

Cal turned to Travis and shot him a look that said, What the hell are you doing on the floor when you’ve got someone like her in the bed?

Travis shot back his own look that said, Don’t say a word.

Cal nodded. “I didn’t bring enough horses. Didn’t know you had company.”

“We got caught in the storm together,” Travis said. “Paige, this is Calvin Waters. He knows more about the history of the ranch than anyone, because he’s about a hundred years old and I don’t think he’s lived a day anywhere but here. Cal, this is Paige.”

He deliberately left off the last name, because that would cause a stir throughout the ranch, and he didn’t want to answer any questions about her, especially since he had no answers where she was concerned.

“Hello, Mr. Waters,” Paige said, giving him a polite smile.

“Oh, ma’am, it’s just Cal. Glad to see you two found some shelter. It’s a helluva storm out there. Let up a little this morning, but it’s still miserable.” Then he turned to Travis. “I only have my horse and yours. Want me to go back to the ranch and—”

“No.” He wouldn’t put Cal or the horses through the extra trip. “Paige and I will be fine on Murph.”

He told her to get her things together and put her coveralls on. That would keep some of the rain off of her. He took care of the fire and soon they were outside.

The rain had let up, but had by no means stopped. They stood under the narrow overhang, and the horse came up to Travis and nudged him in the shoulder.

“I think he missed you,” Paige said.

“No, he’s reminding me that he was smart enough to know that storm was coming and I wasn’t.”

Paige laughed and fussed over the horse, rubbing his nose. “Smart and beautiful, then. Good for you.”

“We’re going to have to ride double, and we’re going to get wet one more time,” Travis told her. “But at the end of this trip is a real bathtub with a huge hot water tank and it won’t matter if we did lose power. We’ve got a generator. So you’ll be warm, and you can have a hot meal, too.”

“Sounds heavenly,” she told him.

No, not quite, he thought, remembering that first night with her. But it was as good as things were going to get, he feared.

He climbed aboard Murph, eased back as far as he could in the saddle and then reached for her, holding out his right hand and a booted foot.

“I assume you know how to ride?”

She gave him a look of mock outrage.

“Just making sure. Put your foot on top of mine, and don’t be afraid to step down hard to lift yourself up. Take my hand with both of yours, and we’ll swing you up into the saddle, sideways in front of me.”

“I can do it,” she said. And ended up making it look easy, or maybe as if she rode double with him all the time.

It meant she was practically in his lap. He eased her against his chest, trying to ignore how that felt, and Cal handed him a blanket from the cabin that he wrapped around her. They were still going to get wet but hopefully it would offer some protection.

Cal mounted his horse and off they went, making slow but steady progress through the rain, the whole world gray and gloomy, Travis feeling that way himself, save for the fact that he had her in his arms.

It was a sad day when a man was grateful to be riding through a cold, driving rain just because it gave him one more chance to hold a woman in his arms.

But that was the shape he was in.

Grateful, despite the cold and the rain, and annoyed as hell at her whole family and his.

Paige huddled against him inside her blanket, rain finding a way to get inside, running cold down into her clothes and finding flesh. Which only made her try to get even closer to him.

She fought it. She really did.

She told herself all the reasons she couldn’t have anything else to do with him, and that she really didn’t know him and she shouldn’t trust him. She planned that she’d be gone from here soon, and then it would be hard to believe she ever even considered…doing anything with him.

Anything else, she reminded herself. She’d already done more than enough.

It was just that, this close to him, when she closed her eyes against the misery of the cold and the rain, she tended to remember only that she was curled up against him, absorbing the heat of him, taking shelter in his arms. And despite knowing better, eventually her thoughts kept turning to that first night with him. How kind he’d been, how gentle, and how those big, hot hands of his had moved so slowly, relentlessly over every inch of her.

Teasing and teasing and teasing, until she just went mad in his arms.

Most men were in such a hurry these days. They’d forgotten how to tease and tempt and take a woman to the point where she was insane to have them.

He’d made her nearly insane with it.

The only thing that had made her wait, in the end, was knowing they would be together and that it would be all the sweeter for the wait.

How was she supposed to ignore that when she was this close to him?

He was the only thing warm in the world, his body swaying against hers, beneath hers, from the motion of the horse, his arm holding her fast, his heartbeat thudding beneath her ear. She was cold, and her whole body ached, and she just wanted to forget all of that. The memory that kept playing through her mind was of him kissing, stroking, teasing her.

“Almost there,” he said, his mouth practically pressed against her ear, warm breath leaving her shivering, and not from the cold.

If she reached up and kissed him, took that warm mouth of his with hers, she wondered what he’d do. If he’d push her away or if that would be enough for her to know he was thinking of that night as much as she was, that maybe he had the same regrets, impossible as anything was between them.

She wanted him to have those regrets, she decided, pointless as that was. She just needed to know he felt the same way she did.

It is pointless, she reminded herself. Absolutely pointless.

The ride seemed interminable, impossible, and then finally, finally, they came to a stop.

She lifted her head and realized they were at the door to a house, his house, she suspected. He’d ridden right up to the door.

“Let me get down first, okay? And then I’ll help you.”

She nodded, immediately feeling the cold so much more as he lifted himself up and off the horse.

“Now, just slide down. I’ve got you.”

She did, but her legs were numb from the cold and buckled the moment she hit the ground. The only thing that kept her from landing in a heap in the mud was him.

He caught her hard against him once more, and she couldn’t even manage to help hold herself up by hanging on to him.

“It’s okay, Red,” he said, adjusting his grip and then lifting her into his arms.

He said something to Cal about the horses, and the next thing she knew, she was being carried inside, dripping wet, into a mudroom where a stern-looking older woman, probably his housekeeper, started fussing over her and him.

He put her down in a hard wooden chair, took off her muddy boots and sopping wet socks, took away her big, wet blanket from the cabin, then reached for the zipper on her coveralls.

His housekeeper put a big, fluffy towel into her hands and then helped her dry off her face a bit and get the worst of the moisture from her hair.

Paige’s own hands were trembling so badly, she wasn’t much help at all.

“Marta,” he said. “Why don’t you go run a hot bath in my bathroom. I’ll bring her up in a minute.”

He’d gotten her coveralls unzipped as far as he could with her sitting down, then took a moment to pull off his own boots, wipe the water from his face and the worst of it from his hair.

“Your bathroom?” she asked, even her voice trembling from the cold.

“Biggest bathtub in the house, Red. Looks like a fancy horse trough, but it’s made of cast iron, extra long and deep. Trust me. It holds heat like nothing you’ve ever been in. You’re gonna love it. You’ll never want to get out.”

She gave him a wet, weary smile.

“Come on. Up on your feet.” He took her by the hand and drew her up. Her legs were kind of working again as he stripped her of her coveralls, left the rest of her wet clothes on her and lifted her into his arms again.

It wasn’t necessary, she thought, fairly certain she could walk as far as his bathroom.

Still, it wasn’t like she ever expected to be in his arms again.

She let her head fall to his chest once more, gave herself up to his gentle care. A few moments later, he set her down in a bathroom, big and modern and thoroughly masculine.

“We work hard here, Red,” he said, as if he could read her mind. “Muscles get sore, they ache. Warm water helps.”

She looked from the tub to him. She went to try to unbutton the flannel shirt she wore and mostly just fumbled with it, her hands still cold and clumsy.

He watched her do it, standing still in front of her, his face growing more and more grim with every passing second. Then he groaned and came to her, his hands replacing hers.

“I won’t look,” he said.

He turned her around, putting her back to him, reached around her and unbuttoned those buttons with the same no-nonsense kind of approach he might have used to undo his own shirt buttons.

He left the shirt on her, but reached up under it in back to undo her bra, then found the string tie of her borrowed sweatpants and undid them, too, while she stood there, mute, still shaking, not feeling anything but grateful for his tender, very thorough care.

He slid the borrowed pants and her borrowed boxers down a bit, then put an arm around her waist and lifted her against him and up off the floor, while he worked her pants and boxers off. Before she knew it, she was back standing on the floor in a long, flannel shirt that hung at least halfway down her thighs.

“There you go. I didn’t see a thing,” he said. “Think you can handle it from here?”

She nodded, then turned sideways and said, “Travis?”

He kept his eyes on her face, while she clutched the ends of that shirt together in front of her.

“Thank you.”

“I’d say anytime, Red, but…well…”

“I know,” she said.

“So, I’m going to walk out this door. Right now. Lock it behind me.”

And then he was gone.

She locked the door with a trembling hand, slipped out of her shirt and her bra and into that blissfully warm tub.

Warmth slowly seeped into her cold body—life, heat finally.

She let her head fall back against the tub, her whole body immersed in blessed warmth.

He was right. This was a fabulous tub, about two feet deep and more than long enough for her to stretch out in. She let the tub fill almost to the brim, then cut off the water, rolled up a towel and put it over the rim to cushion her neck. She leaned back in absolute bliss and decided this was the best bath she’d ever had in her life.

She could have thoroughly enjoyed it if she had been able to think of anything but him. How kind he was mostly, how tenderly and gently he’d taken care of her, like she was the most precious thing in the world to him.

Which she wasn’t. She knew it.

So that kindness, the tenderness, the care…That was just…Who he was? A part of him?

Travis Foley?

No one would ever believe her if she tried to tell anyone that. At least, no one she knew.

Yet she couldn’t imagine anyone taking better care of her.

Paige let her eyes drift closed as her muscles went slack and soft from the heat. The bathroom smelled faintly of him, a hint of spices and some indefinable thing she’d smelled when she had had her face pressed against his skin.

It was blissfully warm, the first time she’d truly been warm in days.

Her body was slowly coming back to life, her mind was filled with lazy, sensual thoughts of him. Him somewhere in this house, stripping off his wet clothes. He’d be impatient, methodical, almost mechanical, and she thought under the circumstances he’d opt for a quick, hot shower.