A Cattleman's Honor Read online

  “Is something wrong?” she asked, her voice puzzled.

  “No. Not a single thing.” He drew back and searched her eyes, holding them while he looked for more secrets, hoping that he’d hit on the right one. “How do you feel about me, sweetheart?” he asked gently.

  “I... I want you,” she stammered, embarrassed.

  He shook his head slowly. “Sex wouldn’t be enough for you. Even good sex. Not with your background. Try again.”

  She hesitated. It was hard to lay her heart down in front of him, but clearly that was what he wanted.

  He brushed his thumb over her soft lips. “It takes a lot of trust, doesn’t it? But I trusted you enough to tell you the most painful secret I have.”

  That was true. He had. She was the one lacking in trust, not him. She drew a slow, steadying breath and looked up at him. “I love you, Gene,” she said simply.

  “Do you?” he asked huskily.

  The expression on his lean, hard face made her confident. “With all my heart,” she whispered.

  He traced the soft contours of her mouth with fingers that were faintly unsteady. “Forever, little one,” he breathed, bending to her mouth.

  Tears stung her eyes as she closed them. “Forever!”

  He kissed her with aching tenderness and picked her up in his arms, sitting down in an armchair with her in his lap. He tucked her face into his throat and sat just holding her close for a long, long time before he finally leaned back with a heavy sigh, still cradling her close.

  “Now, you’re going to tell me about your parents.”

  She shivered. “I can’t.”

  “You can. We’re part of each other now. There’s nothing you can’t share with me. Tell me about them.”

  She lay quietly for a minute. Then she began to speak. She told him about the countries where they’d lived, the conditions of unspeakable poverty they’d endured.

  “They never let it get them down,” she told him. “They were always sure that things would get better. If we ran out of supplies, they were confident that new ones would come in time. And they always did,” she said wonderingly. “I’ve never known people like them. They really lived what they believed in. And then, one day, it all came down around our ears. The regimes changed so quickly.” She hesitated.

  He pulled her closer, sensing her feelings. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. Tell me what happened.”

  “We were arrested for giving comfort to the enemy,” she said, giving in to the terrifying memories. She pressed closer. “They locked us up overnight. Even then, my parents were sure that we’d be set free by the government troops when they arrived. But the next morning we were marched out of the village along with some other political prisoners and stood up against an ocotillo fence.” She swallowed. “We could hear firing in the distance. I kept thinking, if we can just hold on for a few minutes, they’ll come, they’ll rescue us. Just as I thought it, the guns started firing. My father, and then my mother, fell beside me. I closed my eyes, waiting.” She shivered and he held her close, bruisingly close. “A bullet whizzed past my head and I knew the next one was going to get me. But before it hit, gunfire erupted around the three of us who were still alive. I was taken out of the village by a priest we knew. He got me to safety, although how is still a blur. Of all the people I knew, Winnie was the only one I could trust, so I called her and she brought me here.”

  He thanked God that she was with him, that he was holding her, that the bullets had missed and the soldiers had saved her. “So that’s why you came here.”

  She nodded, staring across his broad chest toward the window. She sighed heavily. “It was a nightmare. Sometimes I still wake up crying in the night.”

  “If you wake up crying from now on, I’ll be there to hold you,” he said gently. “Starting tonight.”

  “But, Gene...!”

  He put a finger over her lips. “I’ll leave you before morning. No one will know except the two of us.” He searched her soft eyes. “God, honey, it’s going to be hell being separated from you even while I work, much less at night, do you know that? I don’t want you out of my sight!”

  Her lips parted on a rush of breath.

  “Are you shocked?” he asked huskily, searching her rapt face. “I thought you knew by now that I’m hopelessly in love with you, Allie.”

  “Oh, Gene,” she whispered, shaken.

  “I never knew what love was,” he said softly. “I’m not sure I was even alive until you came along.”

  “I feel the same way,” she whispered. Her fingers touched his hard mouth tenderly. “I’d die for you, Gene.”

  His eyes closed and he shivered. He’d never felt anything so intense, or so special.

  Allison kissed him softly, again and again. He looked as if he needed comforting. Incredible, for such an independent, self-sufficient man.

  “What about your career, little one?” he asked later.

  “I can’t go back to it,” she murmured, without mentioning the blemish on her reputation from the night in the line cabin that would cost her that career. There was no need to make him feel worse than he already did. “I couldn’t ask you to leave here and follow me around the world. And I couldn’t go without you. Besides,” she said gently, “there’s every possibility that I could be pregnant now. Today was the very best time for it to happen.”

  “Was it?” he murmured, and smiled tenderly, laying a big, lean hand on her belly. “Kids and cattle sort of go together, you know. It takes a big family to manage these days.”

  “I’d like a big family,” she said drowsily, curling up in his hard arms. “I hope we can have one.”

  “If we can’t, there are plenty of kids around who’d love to be needed by someone,” he murmured, smiling. “Raising them makes people parents, not just having them.”

  She smiled back. “I’m sleepy.”

  His arms contracted. “Too much loving,” he whispered. “I’ve exhausted you.”

  She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Only temporarily,” she whispered. “I love how it feels with you when you love me, Gene.”

  His jaw tensed. “So do I.” He drew in a steadying breath. “We’d better get out of here before it happens again. You make me insatiable.”

  “I hope to keep you that way, when we’re married,” she said shyly.

  “I’ll hold you to it,” he promised. He lifted her and got up, too. “I have something for you. In the heat of things, I forgot to give it to you.” He opened his desk drawer and removed a felt-covered box. He opened it and slid a marquise diamond onto her engagement finger, leaving the companion wedding band in the box.

  “Do you want me to wear a ring when we’re married?” he asked seriously.

  “Of course,” she replied. “If I wear your brand,” she said with a mischievous smile, “you have to wear mine.”

  He chuckled. “Nelson’s brand, is that it? I like the sound of it. No trespassing allowed.”

  “And don’t you forget it,” she said.

  She clung to his hand, wonderingly, astonished that her life could have changed so much in such a short period of time. All her nightmares were going to fade away now, she was sure of it.

  Gene was equally sure of it. He’d laid his own ghosts to rest, including his worst one. Allison had said that environment played a big part in shaping a man’s character. Perhaps it did. Maybe his real father had had a hard time of it and couldn’t cope. Whatever the reason, it didn’t have to affect his own life unless he let it. He could live with being an adopted Nelson. Marie and Dwight loved him, there was no doubt about that, and he and Dwight were going to work out the rest of the problems. He’d never been so certain of anything. He looked down at Allison and felt as if he were floating.

  * * *

  Dwight was able to go to the wedding the following week. He and Marie and Winnie
witnessed at the small, quiet ceremony where Allison Hathoway became Mrs. Gene Nelson. She wore a simple white dress and carried a bouquet of daisies, and Gene thought he’d never seen anyone so beautiful. He said so, several times after they arrived at the hotel in Yellowstone National Park where they were spending part of their honeymoon.

  “The most amazing thing is that nobody discovered we were sharing a bed until we got married,” Allison said with a shy smile.

  “Sharing it was all we did,” he murmured ruefully, “because of your conscience. Not to mention my own. But it was sweet, honey. I never dreamed anything could be as sweet as holding you all night in my arms, even if we didn’t make love.”

  “And now we never have to be apart again,” she whispered, lifting into his arms as he began to kiss her very softly.

  “Did you notice the reporter?” he asked against her mouth.

  “The one you sent sprawling into the mud puddle?” she whispered, laughing involuntarily when she remembered the astonishment on the journalist’s face. “Amazing that he finally found me, and by the time he did, it didn’t matter anymore. They’ve started releasing all sorts of information through the international forces. I’m old news now.”

  “Thank God. He won’t be hounding us anymore.”

  “I just wish my parents could have gotten out with me,” she said, allowing herself that one regret.

  “So do I, little one,” he replied gently. “I’m just glad that you did.”

  She pressed close to him, drawing strength from his lean, powerful body.

  “Make love to me this time,” he whispered at her ear.

  “But I don’t know how,” she said softly.

  “No problem. I’ll teach you.”

  And he did. He guided her, smiled at her reticence, laughed at her fumbling efforts to undress him. But when they were finally together on the big bed, softness to hardness, dark to light, the laughing stopped and they loved as they never had before. From tenderness to rough passion, to lazy sweetness and sharp demand, they didn’t sleep all night long. By morning they lay exhausted in each other’s arms, too tired to even move.

  It was lunchtime before they stirred. Allison opened her eyes to find Gene sitting on the bed beside her, watching her as he toweled his hair dry.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Nelson,” he said softly.

  She opened her arms, smiling as she dislodged the sheet and felt him lift her against his bare chest while he kissed her tenderly.

  “Was it good?” he whispered.

  “I thought I was going to die,” she replied huskily.

  “So did I. And I still may.” He groaned, sitting upright, and then he laughed. “I think my back’s broken.”

  “Married twenty-four hours, and you’re already complaining,” she moaned.

  “That wasn’t a complaint,” he chuckled. He kissed her again and pulled her out of bed, his eyes sliding possessively over her soft pink nudity. “God, you’re beautiful. Inside and out. You’re my world, Allison.”

  She pressed close against him. “You’re mine. I’ll never live long enough to tell you how much I love you.”

  “Yes, you will.” He smoothed her hair. “Now get dressed. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved!”

  “Come to think of it, so am I,” she said, blinking. “Gene, we never had supper! Not to mention breakfast or lunch!”

  He chuckled. “We didn’t, did we?”

  “No wonder we’re hungry!”

  “Amen. So get moving, woman.”

  She got dressed, with his dubious assistance, which took twice as long. They had a leisurely supper and then went out to see Old Faithful erupt. Later they drove up to the mud volcano, past the fishing bridge, and sat beside a little stream that cut through towering lodgepole pines with the jagged Rocky Mountains rising majestically in the distance and Yellowstone Lake in the other direction.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he said when they were back in the hotel room, curled up together in bed.

  “So it is,” she replied.

  He sighed softly and pressed her cheek to his bare chest. “They have church services nearby,” he said. “I asked. Suppose we go?”

  Her breath caught. She sat up, looking at him in the light from outside the room. “Do you mean it? You really want to?”

  “I mean it,” he said quietly.

  She had to fight tears. “Oh, Gene,” she whispered, because she knew what a giant step it was for him to make.

  He brushed away the moistness from her eyes. “I love you,” he said. “From now on, we go together—wherever we go.”

  “Yes.” She laughed, so full of happiness that it was all but overflowing. “Oh, yes!”

  He pulled her close and rested his cheek on her soft hair. Minutes later, he heard her breathing change as she fell asleep. He watched her sleeping face with quiet wonder for a few minutes before he pulled the covers over them and settled down beside her, with her cheek resting on his broad, warm shoulder.

  Outside, a bird was making sofÁt night noises, and his eyes closed as he relaxed into the mattress. He’d been looking for a place in life, somewhere he belonged, somewhere he fit. Now he’d found it. He fit very nicely into Allison’s warm, soft arms—and even better in her gentle heart. She made him complete. He closed his eyes with a slow smile. He’d have to remember to tell her that in the morning.

  * * *

  The Wedding in White

  For Irene Sullivan, my friend

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter One

  “I’ll never get married!” Vivian wailed. “He won’t let me have Whit here at all. I only wanted him to come for supper, and now I have to call him and say it’s off! Mack’s just hateful!”

  “There, there,” Natalie Brock soothed, hugging the younger girl. “He’s not hateful. He just doesn’t understand how you feel about Whit. And you have to remember, he’s been totally responsible for you since you were fifteen.”

  “But he’s my brother, not my father,” came the sniffling reply. Vivian dashed tears off on the back of her hand. “I’m twenty-two,” she added in a plaintive tone. “He can’t tell me what to do anymore, anyway!”

  “He can, on Medicine Ridge Ranch,” Natalie reminded her wryly. Medicine Ridge Ranch was the largest spread in this part of Montana—even the town was named after it. “He’s the big boss.”

  “Humph!” Vivian dabbed at her red eyes with a handkerchief. “Only because Daddy left it to him.”

  “That isn’t quite true,” came the amused rejoinder. “Your father left him a ranch that was almost bankrupt, on land the bank was trying to repossess.” She waved her hand around the expensive Victorian furnishings of the living room. “All this came from his hard work, not a will.”

  “And so whatever McKinzey Donald Killain wants, he gets,” Vivian raged.

  It was odd to hear him called by his complete name. For years, everyone around Medicine Ridge, Montana, which had grown up around the Killain ranch, had called him Mack. It was an abbreviation of his first name, which few of his childhood friends could pronounce.

  “He only wants you to be happy,” Natalie said softly, kissing the flushed cheek of the blond girl. “I’ll go talk to him.”

  “Would you?” Bright blue eyes looked up hopefully.

  “I will.”

  “You’re just the nicest friend anybody ever had, Nat,” Vivian said fervently. “Nobody else around here has the guts to say anything to him,” she added.

  “Bob and Charl
es don’t feel comfortable telling him what to do.” Natalie defended the younger brothers of the household. Mack had been responsible for all three of his siblings from his early twenties. He was twenty-eight now, crusty and impatient, a real hell-raiser whom most people found intimidating. Natalie had teased him and picked at him from her teens, and she still did. She adored him, despite his fiery temper and legendary impatience. A lot of that ill humor came from having one eye, and she knew it.

  Soon after the accident that could as easily have killed him as blinded him, she told him that the rakish patch over his left eye made him look like a sexy pirate. He’d told her to go home and mind her own damned business. She ignored him and continued to help Vivian nurse him, even when he’d come home from the hospital. That hadn’t been easy. Natalie was a senior in high school at the time. She’d just gone from the orphanage where she’d spent most of her life to her maiden aunt’s house the year before the accident occurred. Her aunt, old Mrs. Barnes, didn’t approve of Mack Killain, although she respected him. Natalie had had to beg to get her aunt to drive her first to the hospital and then to the Killain ranch every day to look after Mack. Her aunt had felt it was Vivian’s job—not Natalie’s—but Vivian couldn’t do a thing with her elder brother. Left alone, Mack would have been out on the northern border with his men helping to brand calves.

  At first, the doctors feared that he’d lost the sight in both eyes. But later, it had become evident that the right one still functioned. During that time of uncertainty, Natalie had attached herself to him and refused to go away, teasing him when he became despondent, cheering him up when he wanted to quit. She wouldn’t let him give up, and soon there had been visible progress in his recovery.

  Of course, he’d tossed her out the minute he was back on his feet, and she hadn’t protested. She knew him right down to his bones, and he realized it and resented it. He didn’t want her for a friend and made it obvious. She didn’t push. As an orphan, she was used to rejection. Her aunt hadn’t taken her in until the dignified lady was diagnosed with heart failure and needed someone to take care of her. Natalie had gone willingly, not only because she was tired of the orphanage, but also because her aunt lived on Killain’s southern border. Natalie visited her new friend Vivian most every day after that. It wasn’t until her aunt had died unexpectedly and left her a sizeable nest egg that she’d been able to put herself through college and keep up the payments on the little house she and her aunt had occupied together.