Home To Texas - Ransom My Heart Part 29

"What did you do with him?"

*-luyt VY Ub'Ol't L.D "I called the sheriff on Drake's car phone. Turned him over to Val Verde County on an attempted-murder charge. That's what took me so long. Sam'll have to press charges for the other. You and I will have to testify.""Poor Sam," she said."Because he trusted the wrong guy?""Because everyone will know. You know what they'll think. That he's past it. Just another senile old man, conned by a crook. G.o.d, he'll hate that."

"You don't have to be old to be conned," Chase said.

"I think it might make you feel more foolish if you are.At least ... I think Sam will feel that way. Like everyone's laughingat him. That's always been so important to him."

They rode in silence for a while, the quiet miles slipping by in thedarkness."Will you at least let me tell him?" she asked.He turned his head, looking at the perfect line of her profile."You think I'm going to gloat?" he asked."I just think I owe it to him," she said.

"I'm his daughter.

Sometimes ... I forget that. Forget that he might need me. Forget what family's for."

"Picking up the pieces," Jenny had reminded him.

"You tell him," he agreed.

"I won't even go in. I'll drop you off and go on back to Jenny's."

She turned to face him.

"I didn't mean that," she said.

"I want you to come home with me."

Only, Sam Kincaid's ranch wasn't home, he thought. Not by any stretch of the imagination. The only place that he and Samantha might consider home was the house he had built with his own hands. The house where she and his daughter were already living.

"Later," he said softly.

"You promise?" she asked, glancing at him again, uncertainty in her voice.

"I swear to you on my mother's grave," he said, think lxansom v, y heart ing of Mandy's kidnapper. A man of honor.

"And or Mac's," he added softly. For the first time since he'd been home, when he thought about Mac, his lips curved slightly, almost into a smile.

Chapter "Fifteen.

Chase realized only when the car had stopped that she had changed her mind. Judging by the poor quality of the roads, if by nothing else, he should have figured out a long time ago that they weren't headed to Sam's ranch, but he hadn't.

The surfaces they'd been traveling on, both good and bad, had all felt like washboards to him.

After he'd told her about Drake, he'd just sat, eyes closed, cradling his left arm protectively against his body, his right hand cupping the elbow, trying to keep it from moving with the motion of the car. When Samantha had finally stopped the car, he opened his eyes and found they were parked in the moonlight next to the old cottonwood.

"I thought you were picking up Mandy," he said.

His heart had begun beating a little too fast, and he was trying to find some logical explanation for why she had brought him here. Some explanation other than the one that had immediately been there, full-blown in his consciousness, the one that had too much to do with his memories of what had happened in this house. Of being alone in it one night with Samantha Kincaid.

"I decided it's too late to wake them up. Mandy's fine, I know that, and it's the middle of the night. Why wake them up?" she asked reasonably.

It made sense, but it didn't really explain what he was doing here. Not unless... Don't even think it, he warned gansom ivly l-leart himself. Those were his fantasies, his dreams. They weren'l necessarily hers, and he knew that they might not ever hers again.

"You want me to take the car on to Jenny's?" he holding his breath while he waited.

"Well, Chase," she said softly, "don't you think it': probably the middle of the night over there, too?

There was a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt in her voice, and she was looking at him. He could feel the force of her, in the quiet darkness. Finally he worked up enough to turn his head and meet her eyes.

"But your virtue's safe from me," she said. And then she added, "If you still want it to be."

Silence drifted between them again, but it wasn't like the other times. The quality of what was happening was fe rent and he couldn't decide why. Maybe because there was no longer any bitterness in the memories of what they had shared.

For him that bitterness had been replaced by the of a little girl who was glad to see him whenever he showed up. And by Samantha's open acknowledgment that Mandy was his daughter and that she had always wanted her to know him.

But he couldn't explain why the bitterness had disappeared from the green eyes that were watching him now.

Or why she had brought him here or why she had said what she had just said. He hadn't made much of an explanation about why he'd disappeared from their lives five years ago.

At least not any that he could ever have hoped would beO enough to overcome the pain of that desertion. But somehow, it seemed, he might have been wrong about that, too.

"I'm not sure I had much virtue to begin with," he said, "But whatever I've got, I'm not afraid to lose it," "Okay," she said simply.

"Think you can get out of the truck?"

He had to think about that, and as he did, he began to realize that he had set himself a d.a.m.n difficult task. Not getting out of the truck. h.e.l.l, he could fall out of the truck.

But managing the other? He wasn't so sure about his success at that.About how it would be for her."Maybe this isn't such a good idea," he suggested. That came from his brain. His body's response to what she had said had been just likealways. Hard. Automatic. Samantha."You need some help?" she asked."I can do that.""I wasn't talking about getting out of the truck," he admitted."Neither was I," she said, and then she smiled at him.

"I'm STILL NOT SURE this is a good idea," Chase said.

He was standing in the same bedroom where Mandy had been conceived, standing in the same moon-touched darkness, surrounded again by the haunting fragrance of Samantha Kincaid's perfume.

"This is not exactly..." He paused, then wondered how he was going to

get out of finis.h.i.+ng that one.

She folded the s.h.i.+rt she'd just helped him remove and laid it over the foot board of the bed before she looked back at him to ask, "Not exactly...?"

"What I've been imagining all these years," he whispered.

Her hands moved to the waistband of his jeans, her fingers brus.h.i.+ng against the golden hair below his navel. Her hands were cool against

his overheated skin and the muscles of his stomach flinched away from them. Again she looked up at him and smiled.

"I don't know why I always have to do all the work around here," she

said, her voice teasing.

"I swear, I don't know why I put up with it. Just working myself to death.

Inviting you," she said, running the back of her hand slowly across his

stomach, the tips of her fingers between the inside of his jeans andthe ridged muscles. Her knuckles were as teasing as her voice."Undressing you." She bent her head and touched her r fingers, her lipsc12I,"

soft and warm, and his eyes closed suddenly.

"Seducing you," she whispered. Her mouth was enough that he could feelthe warmth of her breath asl said those words. It fluttered like amoth in the fair haiti that matted his chest.

"Everything, always, just left up me to ... handle," she finished softly, I

She raised her head and met his eyes, her hands al read

Yl beginning the task of unfastening the metal b.u.t.tons of his1 fly.

There was no answering amus.e.m.e.nt in his face'l "Amused" wasn't any part of what he was feeling right now.

He lowered his head, bringing his lips down to hers. Her mouth lifted,opened. Her hands paused in what they had been doing, with maybe threeor four of the b.u.t.tons undone This was the first time he'd kissed herin almost five years, he realized. And nothing had changed about this,either. It was like a current moving between them. He couldn't thinkof anything else to compare it to. Circuit completed. Electricityarcing between hot wires. Jolting.: Powerful.

Her hands left the b.u.t.tons of his fly and moved again, slipping downinto the Waistband she'd loosened, into his briefs. Now her palms weremoving against his skin. Her thumbs robbed over his hipbones and thenher hands s.h.i.+fted, coming together, centering on his body.

His lips pulled away from hers, gasping out his response to her touch.He shuddered, the impact of what she was doing moving through his wholebody. Heat poured into him, igniting every nerve ending, running alongthem until the fire centered exactly where her hands were. Touchinghim, moving against his bare flesh, their coolness ravis.h.i.+ng his heat.Not tempering it, but stoking, adding fuel to the "I flame that wasalready threatening to engulf him. To consume whatever shred of reasonand restraint he had left.

"Please," he begged, the soft words almost a groan.

"Oh, yes, sweetheart. Please."

UUytC' ttSUlt&.& Instead of obeying, her fingers moved back to the b.u.t.tons, completing the task they had begun. Hurrying now.

And then she was stripping the jeans off, pulling them down to the floor. She followed their fall, kneeling at his feet. He opened his eyes and looked down at her. Seeing her in the moonlight, he knew why the kidnapper's daughter had thought she was an angel. So d.a.m.n beautiful. She always had been.

She reached up, and his briefs followed the jeans, dropping to pool around his feet. He put his right hand on her shoulder and stepped out of both garmems. He was nude.

Pretty blatantly nude, he realized, looking down at the slender figure at his feet.

He supposed he should be thinking about consequences.

About what Sam would think about this. About something.

Only his brain wasn't functioning too well right now. And if there were consequences... "I didn't think it would matter," she had said about the first time. He would welcome another child. Another chance. One he probably didn't deserve, but one that Samantha was willing, apparently, to give him. Maybe tonight they'd make the grandson Sam had always wanted, he thought. Maybe tonight.

"This is going to be even tougher if you're planning on keeping your clothes on," he said.

She held up her left hand and he reached out and took it in his right. With its support, she stood. She seemed unembarra.s.sed about his nudity--about the fact that he was undressed and she wasn't. Her eyes didn't avoid what was happening to his body. It would be pretty hard to avoid, he thought, but her eyes didn't reflect any coyness or hesitation.

Her fingers found the hem of the short-sleeved silk-knit sh.e.l.l she was wearing, and arms crossed, she lifted it over her head and pulled it off.

Her hair fell back around her shoulders, a red-gold cloud around the beauty of her face, and then she reached behind her back to unhook her bra, quickly slipping the straps off lUn,"Ufft 1 1y I'IUFI her shoulders. She tossed the garments on top of his s.h.i.+rt that lay across the foot board.

"I should have been the one to do that," he said.

Only, he knew it would have happened much slower he had. Taking his time. Touching his lips to the soft low at the top of her shoulder where the sweat-dampened sweetness of scent clung to her skin. Then moving to the flawless, slim perfection of her neck. And into the shadowed darkness between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

His eyes examined what she had revealed. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were fuller, of course, but they were high and firm, beautifully shaped. Tentatively, he put the fingers of his right hand against the outside of her breast. The skin there was like satin, incredibly white in contrast to the of his hand.

"What the h.e.l.l happened to us?" he said softly. It wasn't really a question. Or if it was, he didn't expect her to answer it. She shook her head, but she caught his fingers in hers and held them for a moment, looking down at them.