The Humbug Man Read online

  “Me, too,” he murmured, lazily studying the way her pajama top was shaking with her heartbeats. Her breasts were hard tipped. He could see their outline, and he wished for a moment that he had more experience, but since she wasn’t put off by it, why should he worry?

  “Stop that,” she whispered, embarrassed, and crossed her arms over her chest.

  He chuckled. He liked her reactions. He liked her. “Get some clothes on.”

  He opened the door and went out, and it was almost a minute before Maggie could even move. She tasted him on her lips, she smelled the clean scent of him on her pajama top. She and Blake were going to his house, to live with him until the snow stopped.

  Until the snow stopped. She blinked. Christmas was next week, and soon she and Blake had to leave Montana. She winced. It was going to be harder than she’d expected. She didn’t want to leave Montana. She didn’t want to leave Tate. She turned back to her chest of drawers to get out a blouse, wondering how this sudden attachment to him had come about and how she was going to cope with it.

  Tate had his own four-wheel-drive Jeep outside, and he carefully loaded Blake into it, then Maggie, along with the clothes she’d packed quickly, and they headed for his place.

  Fortunately, it was a big house, and there were four bedrooms. Tate had renovated one of them and made it into an office where he did his book work, but there were three rooms with beds left. Tate had the biggest, filled with antique furniture in dark oak shades and a bed that was king-size and boasted a quilted coverlet with a Western motif.

  The others were alike, pine-paneled rooms with modern furniture and trimmings in shades of brown and beige and green. Earth colors that suited him. Maggie took one room and Blake had the other.

  “Who cleans the house for you?” Maggie asked as she joined him in the huge living room with its cathedral ceiling and large stone fireplace. The furniture was heavy and dark, made for comfort. There were stone ashtrays and several potted cactus plants, and even a rubber tree in one corner.

  “One of my men has a compassionate wife,” he murmured, smiling at her curiosity as she went around the room looking at the Indian pottery on the mantel, at the huge Hereford bull whose masculine beauty was captured in a painting above the mantel.

  “Who is he…was he?” she corrected, indicating the bull.

  “King’s Honor,” he said proudly. “He was a champion sire. Lived to be twenty years old and kept the ranch going when nothing else could. His progeny are still well-known in cattle circles.”

  “I wish I knew more about ranching.”

  “Plenty of time to learn,” he said, his eyes twinkling as they met hers.

  She loved to look at him. It became a habit as the day wore on. Maggie cooked supper, grilling steaks on the big expensive range in the kitchen. She made creamed potatoes and cooked some frozen beans and even made bread to go with it.

  Tate was fascinated with the bread. “I didn’t know women still made it,” he confessed as he finished his third buttered slice.

  “Mom loves to cook,” Blake grinned.

  “Mostly out of laziness,” she confessed. “I hate eating out.”

  He laughed gently. “So do I.” He glanced at Blake’s sudden grimace. “How about something else for that leg?” he asked the boy.

  “I don’t really need it,” Blake said.

  Tate turned his chair around, staring at the boy. “I broke my leg once. Got backed up on by one of my bulls. I learned that pain hurts, and that if you don’t overdo pain medication, it gets you over the bad spots. You don’t have to prove anything to me,” he added with a quizzical smile. “You kept your head eye to eye with a wolf. That told me all I needed to know about you.”

  Blake actually flushed with pleasure. “It wasn’t so bad,” he mumbled.

  “Now how about that capsule?” Tate persisted.

  Blake sighed. “OK.”

  Tate waved Maggie back down when she got up to get it. Instead, he rose and brought back the bottle. “Have one, then I’ll teach you how to play chess. Or do you already know?”

  “I can play checkers, but nobody ever taught me chess.”

  “No time like the present to learn,” Tate said and smiled at the boy.

  Maggie did the dishes and then curled up on the sofa to watch the game. Tate was patient in a way she’d never expected him to be, going over and over the moves with Blake until he understood. Her first impression of him had been that he never stopped or slowed down for anybody. But all those first impressions were undergoing change. She found that he had a dry sense of humor, that he wasn’t really a bear at all and that he was rather a lonely kind of man. There was nothing in this elegant house to indicate that he was wealthy, except for the sheer size of the ranch around it. He didn’t put on airs, but she imagined that he could have if it pleased him.

  “It must get lonely,” Maggie said absently, smoothing one of the Indian blankets that lay over the back of the sofa.

  Tate looked up from the chessboard while Blake frowned in concentration over his next move. “It does,” he answered her. “Especially for a woman.”

  She blinked, averting her eyes.

  “I guess loneliness is pretty portable, though,” he added, watching her. “Because I’ve known people who could be alone in a crowd.”

  “That’s true enough,” she conceded, trailing her finger over the design in the blanket while the fire roared like a fiery lullaby in the hearth. She was oddly sleepy. That was new, because she’d been a little jumpy at the cabin, even with Blake nearby. But here, in Tate’s house, she felt safe. She smiled secretively and closed her eyes.

  Tate’s dark eyes wandered slowly over her face, aware of that dreamy expression on it as he tried to reconcile his misgivings with a new and staggering hunger.

  Blake caught the look on the man’s face before he could erase it, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from smiling. So far, so good, he thought.

  Chapter Four

  Blake went to sleep during a chess move, and Tate lifted him carefully, cast and all, and carried him into his room.

  “Get me his pajamas,” he called over his shoulder, “and I’ll get him into them.”

  “It will take a miracle to get them over that cast,” she sighed.

  He smiled at her gently. “Good point. Well, get his jacket anyway, and I’ll loan him a pair of my bottoms.”

  “I can see him now with the legs tied around his neck to hold them up,” she mused.

  He actually laughed. He put the boy down on the bed, hesitating as he stood watching him sleep. His dark eyes narrowed. “Nine going on ten,” he said softly. “He’s a hell of a boy.”

  Maggie caught her breath at the quiet affection in that statement and wondered if he realized how much emotion he was betraying. But after a minute he moved, frowning, and went toward his own room as if he was preoccupied.

  She got Blake out of his flannel shirt and into the pajama top just as Tate came back with a pair of cotton trousers that looked new in one lean hand.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t let him have your newest ones….” she protested.

  He gave her a faintly mocking smile. “Honey, I don’t wear anything in bed. I keep a couple of pair in case of fire.”

  She flushed beet-red without understanding why. After marriage and a child and despite his admitted lack of experience, he could so easily reduce her to shyness.

  “Sorry,” she said, then added as she backed toward the door, “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

  He turned toward Blake, still smiling.

  Minutes later, he was back. He eased down onto the sofa beside her and lit a cigarette while the fire crackled and wind occasionally whistled down the chimney.

  “Does he miss not having a father?” he asked with studied carelessness.

  “Sometimes I think so,” she confessed. She tucked her feet under her, bare below the hem of her jeans, and folded her arms over her cotton top. It was the same shade of blue as the one Tate was weari
ng, and she wondered if he’d noticed that their taste in color seemed to match. “It’s especially hard on him at school, although a number of the boys have divorced parents. Most of their mothers seem to have remarried or at least have boyfriends who come to the events at school.”

  He leaned a long arm over the back of the sofa and studied her face openly. “And there aren’t any men in your life.”

  She smiled, not embarrassed. “I’m hopelessly old-fashioned,” she explained. “I guess Blake thinks I’m a dinosaur.”

  “I’d bet you that he doesn’t,” he replied, surprising her. “He told his grandfather that he thinks you’re the best mother a boy could possibly have.”

  Her breath caught, and she smiled. “He said that, really?”

  “That’s what Jeffries told me,” he agreed. He took a draw of the cigarette. “I used to spend a lot of time at his place, when you and the boy were in Tucson. I heard about you until I felt as if I knew you. But I didn’t, of course. Not at all. I had a totally different picture of you. I thought you probably went out a lot, but were very discreet,” he added with a faint smile.

  “I wouldn’t know how,” she sighed. “If I were involved with someone, Blake would know it instantly. I can’t hide how I feel.”

  “Thank God,” he said and meant it.

  Her eyes came up, curious.

  “I hate lies,” he said unexpectedly. “I hate social convention and subterfuge and polite verbal warfare. I say exactly what I think, and I appreciate it when other people do. You and I got off to a rough start, but after what we said to each other back at your house, I think we’re on the way to something good.”

  “What kind of…something good?” she asked, still a little wary of an intensity in him that she didn’t quite understand.

  “You tell me, Maggie,” he replied quietly. He bent then and brushed his mouth very softly over hers. “Sleep tight.”

  He got up in one smooth motion, leaving her staring after his broad back.

  “It’s only eight o’clock,” she said to the room at large.

  “I get up before dawn. Cattle don’t keep city hours,” he added with a slow smile. “Turn out the lights when you’re sleepy.”

  “OK.”

  She sat a little longer by the fire, spinning dreams, thinking about how it would be if they were a family, she and Tate Hollister and Blake. But they were only dreams, she reminded herself, and soon enough she’d be back at her desk at work, with only memories.

  * * *

  The next morning, something woke her before daylight. A sound. A movement. She got up, feeling bright eyed because she was accustomed to rising early when she had to work. She dressed in jeans and a pullover gray jersey, pausing to run a brush through her hair before she tiptoed down the hall to Blake’s room and peeked in.

  He was still sound asleep. She smiled, closing the door, and went into the kitchen in search of coffee. Only to find somebody else bent on the same course.

  Tate was there, in his stocking feet wearing nothing but his blue jeans. She stopped dead in the doorway, her eyes helplessly drawn to a body that would have made a male centerfold look anemic. Muscles rippled under darkly tanned skin as he rose from peeking into the oven, and when he turned toward her, she wondered if it was permissible for a modern woman to swoon.

  His chest was completely obscured by thick black curling hair. Muscles rippled in his big arms, down his flat stomach, and she knew there wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on him. She’d never liked hairy men, but this one was a work of art. He didn’t have tufts of hair on his arms and shoulders as some men did. No, it was all on that broad chest, thick and gleaming with faint moisture, as if he’d just come from a shower. Probably he had, because his shaggy head was a bit damp as well, his straight hair falling roguishly over his forehead.

  “Good morning,” he murmured, his eyes running over her face with blatant interest. “No makeup?”

  “I hate the stuff,” she blurted out.

  He laughed. “So do I. Get some cream out of the refrigerator and I’ll pour you some coffee.”

  “I didn’t think you were so handy in the kitchen,” she remarked as he took up the toast he’d been watching under the broiler and added it to a platter of thick bacon and scrambled eggs.

  “Oh, Jeffries used to tell a story about one of my hands quitting because I fed him, but I’m handy enough, I guess. I was a marine, honey,” he added with a quick glance as he filled two thick white mugs with coffee. “Cooking is one of the easy things you get taught.”

  She opened her mouth to make a comment but thought better of it. He put the coffee on the table and sat down.

  “I didn’t expect you to be up and about this early,” he said as he filled his plate.

  “I like to watch the sun come up,” she confessed. “It’s magic in Tucson, when dawn hits the Santa Catalina mountains. They change color. Sometimes they’re red, sometimes black, then they turn pink and rust…they haunt me.”

  “I’ve seen my own mountains change, but from blue to purple,” he told her. “And dead white in winter. Have some eggs. You need feeding up.”

  “I never gain weight,” she confessed as she reached for a piece of toast to go with her slice of bacon. She watched as he dumped eggs on her plate. “That’s too much,” she told him.

  “If you’re going to live on a ranch, you have to keep up your strength. Blake will tell you that.” He was through his eggs already and working on homemade jam and toast.

  “I won’t be out pitching hay and fixing fences and checking on cattle,” she reminded him.

  “What did you plan to do?” he asked curiously.

  “I thought I’d clean the house, if you don’t mind—not that it needs it, but the beds will have to be made.” She dropped her gaze. The sight of his bare chest at close range was making her weak in the knees. “I wouldn’t want to interfere with your cleaning lady, of course.”

  “You won’t interfere. Do whatever you like. Within reason, of course. I get funny about lace on my undershirts.”

  “Do you wear one?” she blurted out, and blushed as she realized how intimate the question sounded.

  He was watching the way her eyes glanced off his chest, and she couldn’t know how much a man her shy appreciation made him feel. His dark eyes narrowed on her face. “No, I don’t,” he answered the question. He finished his toast and swallowed the rest of his coffee. “Want a second cup?”

  “Yes. I’ll get it.” She got up, but as she went past him, his lean hand shot out and caught her wrist.

  “No, you won’t,” he murmured dryly, and jerked.

  She fell across his lap, gasping, one slender hand coming into sudden, shocking contact with all that bare chest. She couldn’t even protest. Her gaze fell to where her hand was half-buried. She didn’t want him to see how vulnerable she was, but it took too much work to try and hide her blatant interest.

  He pressed her hand flat against him, looking at the small ovals of her nails without polish. She had nice hands, very slender and graceful. “Stop hiding from me.” He tilted her face to his so that he could see all the doubts and nervousness. His black eyes were kind for all the darkness growing in them. “This is as new for me as it is for you, so don’t think I’m going to make fun of the way you’re looking at me. I’d be staring just as hard at you if your shirt was off.”

  Her lips parted. “Really?”

  “Really.” He moved her hand against the thick hair and hard, warm muscle beneath it, watching the movement, feeling its instant effect on him. He laughed, the sound deep and low and pleasant in the early morning stillness. He looked up to see an arrested fascination in her eyes. “I thought I was immune. Feel.” He put her hand over his heart and let her feel its hard, heavy beat.

  “I guess none of us are…immune, that is,” she whispered.

  “Is yours beating that hard?” he asked softly and, still holding her gaze, his lean hand pressed just under the soft breast. But his other arm came up a
t the same time, arching her, and he eased her down into the crook of it while his long fingers spread. The tips of them just touched the soft underswell of her breast, bare under the jersey, and she couldn’t breathe. She began to tremble and her eyes darkened to old silver, staring up into his black ones.

  “Tate,” she whispered huskily, her breath catching.

  “I suppose there are rules about this sort of thing,” he said tautly, holding her eyes as his fingertips traced the swell of her breast. “Back in the Dark Ages when I was a boy, nice girls would slap a man for what I’m trying to do to you.”

  “I’m a widow, not a girl,” she breathed shakily. “And I…like…what you’re doing to me.”

  “You aren’t supposed to tell me that, Maggie,” he whispered as his head bent toward her. He brushed his lips over hers once, twice, and then they settled on her mouth. His hand searched for the hem of the jersey, found it and went up until it found a warm, soft mound with a hard tip that arched into his palm even as she shuddered with rapt sensation.

  She moaned under his mouth. He tasted her, felt her hunger, drowned in her yielding softness.

  When she tensed again, without taking his mouth from hers, he pushed the jersey out of the way and pulled her against his bare chest. She tensed, gasping as her breasts melted into the thick hair and warm muscle of him. His head lifted, because he wanted to see her face.

  His dark eyes narrowed. She looked…wild. Abandoned. Her lips were swollen, her eyes half-closed, misty and faintly savage all at once. She was flushed and her body arched toward his.

  His eyes went down to her breasts, and he looked at the contrasts between what he could see of her pink and mauve flesh and his hair-matted darkly tanned chest. His arm tightened, but he lifted a little away, because it had been years since he’d seen a woman without clothes, and he wanted to look at Maggie’s soft breasts.

  She saw him visibly start at his first real sight of her that way. His face hardened, his eyes began to glitter. He frowned slightly, looking intently at her body. As if fascinated, one lean, dark-fingered hand came up to touch the round contour with its blatant hardness, and she gasped at that tender tracing because the excitement she was feeling was so intense.