The Texan's Diamond Bride. Teresa Hill
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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