Diamond Spur. Diana Palmer
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and he and some of the vaqueros put up a shanty just for him to sleep in. Soon after that, he married a Mexican girl and had seven kids in rapid succession. He built a house very much like the one I live in now, but the legend goes that he and the Mexican girl stood off a Comanche war party in that very cabin.”
“Where the mesquite stand is?” she asked, gesturing toward a thick grove of trees with long, feathery green fronds blowing in the wind.
“The very one. There’s a legend that she saw her patron saint standing beside the river, and he promised her that she and her husband would be spared. The name San Frio came loosely from it—San for Saint and Frio for the Frio River.” He glanced at her and grinned. “Even legends have some truth, but Blalock was a gambler and a realist. He wrote in his diary that it was rain as much as divine intervention that saved them.”
She leaned back against the Bronco’s door beside him, trying not to notice the powerful lines of his body, or the thick shadow of chest hair that peeked out at the unbuttoned neck of his shirt. “Rain?” she coaxed.
“Comanches lashed the arrowheads on their arrows with rawhide,” he explained. “When it rained, the humidity, so the story goes, made the rawhide relax.” His dark eyes twinkled down at her. “So the arrowheads had this tendency to fall off in wet weather, before they got to the intended victim.”
She laughed gently at the irony of it. Of course, those warriors surely had other weapons just as deadly, and they were fabulous horsemen and fighters. But it was one tiny Achilles’ heel in an otherwise terrifying memory, and she liked knowing that even those men had one.
“The things you never learn in history class,” she mused.
“They say that one of my ancestors was a Comanche,” he remarked. “A lot more were Spanish and Mexican.”
“I guess most of mine were Irish,” she sighed. She watched the horizon, fascinated with the broad reach of open land. “There can’t be a more beautiful place on earth than this,” she said suddenly.
“It’s that,” he agreed, smiling with faint possession and pride as he followed her gaze. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “From a few scraggly longhorns to this,” he mused. “It was a long road, Kate.”
“And a hard one,” she murmured. Her eyes lifted to his face, tracing the hard lines. “Your age tells on you sometimes.”
“I guess it does. I feel it more these days.” He turned his head and looked down at her, and without warning, the world narrowed to black eyes and green ones. Around them, the skies were growing dark, the thunder rumbling. The wind kindled like cool fire, whipping across Kate’s face as she met and wondered at the sudden lack of expression in Jason’s features, and the curious narrow glitter in his black eyes as his chin lifted slightly and his body stilled.
Lightning striking, Kate thought while she could. Her heart was as wild as the wind around them, her breath stuck like a cactus in her throat. Jason was looking at her in a way he never had, not in all the years she’d known him. Something in that look made her toes curl in her boots, making her body feel as if his hands had stroked it.
He shifted, the movement slow, easy, turning so that his side was against the Bronco. His right hand, holding the dead cigarette, rested on the open window. The other was suddenly at Kate’s neck, brushing stray wisps of long, dark hair, tracing an artery that was pounding crazily.
Jason was so close that she could smell the tobacco and leather scents that mingled with his spicy cologne. She could feel the warmth of his muscular body, the quiet threat of his masculinity. His dark eyes searched hers quietly with a new kind of curiosity. And then, all at once, they dropped to her soft bow of a mouth and lingered there with veiled intent.
The static from the CB radio was overloud drifting out the open window of the deserted cab, and Kate tried to concentrate on it, not on the very disturbing way Jason was looking at her. Any minute, everything she felt was going to start showing, and she couldn’t bear to have him know how vulnerable she was.
But he already did. His dark eyes had caught every single giveaway movement of her body—her swollen breasts, her quick breathing, the yielding softness of her eyes. He wasn’t all that experienced, and for the past few years he’d lived almost like a monk because of Melody’s painful defection. But Kate was even less experienced than he was, and everything she felt was visible.
It gave him an odd sensation to know that she was aroused by him. He wasn’t a handsome man. He was rich, and his wealth had given him opportunities with women even if he was still too bitter to accept them. But he couldn’t remember a time when a woman had wanted just him, craggy face, mean temper and all. Even the one woman he’d loved had only wanted what he could give her. But Kate was looking at him in a way that made his blood run hot, and he realized suddenly that if he tried to kiss her, she’d more than likely let him.
When he realized that, reason deserted him. It was a new experience, having Kate want him. Breathing just a little unsteadily, he reached behind her tilted head, loosening the ribbon that held her long braid in place. With deft, easy movements, he loosened her hair and his fingers smoothed it down her back, slowly bringing her even closer to him.
“There’s a storm...coming,” she remarked in a quick, breathless voice.
“A hell of a storm, Kate,” he breathed as his free hand slid to her waist and then around her, roughly pulling her closer so that the tips of her breasts came into sudden contact with his chest.
Kate felt electricity rustle through her body at the feel of him so close against her. Her hands went to his shirt instinctively and pressed there, feeling the cushy softness of his chest hair against hard, pulsating muscle. It was wildly arousing, and she couldn’t hide her sudden trembling.
The wind whipped through her hair and the dark skies over Jason’s head outlined the set of his jaw, the shadowy darkness of his eyes. “Jason?” she whispered in what was half question, half protest.
His gaze fell to her mouth while his lean fingers dug in and pulled her even closer. He was burning now, the cool wind making the fever bearable as he breathed in the scent of roses that clung to Kate’s soft body. All the reasons he shouldn’t let this happen fell away at the hunger that drew his head down. He wanted her. She wanted him. There was nothing in the world but Kate and her mouth, parted, softly tremulous, welcoming....
He tilted his head as it bent to hers, and he watched, fascinated, the way her mouth lifted for him, the way she caught her breath, the way her nails drew like tiny claws against his chest.
“The storm,” she breathed dizzily.
“Damn the storm!” he whispered roughly. “Oh, God, honey, open your mouth...”
She felt the first tentative touch of his hard, warm lips on her mouth. Just then the loud roar of an approaching vehicle shattered the spell as surely as the pitchfork of lightning that shot down on the horizon and shook the earth seconds later.
Kate actually jumped, her gasp mingling with the odd sound that burst from Jason’s lips simultaneously.
He stood erect, his breathing only a little rough as he glanced past her with eyes she couldn’t read. “It’s Gabe.”
“Oh.” She hoped that her confused frustration didn’t show, but it was too late for camouflage because Gabe was already out of the truck and even with them.
“Howdy, boss man,” he told Jason, grinning. He looked past him at Kate, and the grin grew wider. “Miss Kate. I hope you got sewed up proper, boss, because we have got trouble.”
Jason dropped the forgotten cigarette in his hand and quietly lit another one, giving himself time to recover before he answered Gabe. Damn his own vulnerability! “When haven’t we got trouble? And you have got more than most,” Jason said with a cold, level smile. “I know how Kate accidentally happened to ride over to the Bottoms....”
“No time for that now,” Gabe said quickly. “You know that black Angus bull of Mr. Henry