The Humbug Man Read online

  His black eyes moved back up to hers. “You fascinate me,” he whispered tautly. “All of you. Your body, your heart, your mind. I’ve always thought of women in physical terms until now. But, I touch you and I wonder…”

  “Wonder what?” she asked in a soft whisper, because it was almost reverent with him.

  “I wonder how it would be if I gave you a child,” he whispered, his tone full of awe.

  She stopped breathing. His words held that kind of impact. Her eyes searched his face, and she lifted her hand to touch his mouth, to trace the thick mustache, the hard cheek, the thick brows. His eyes closed and he sat quietly and a little tensely while her soft hand went over him, learning the contours of his face.

  She arched then and touched her mouth with aching tenderness to his. Her fingers found his, pressing them down over the softly mounded flesh, holding his palm there while her mouth made slow, sweet love to his.

  “You’re killing me,” he whispered on a tortured laugh.

  “You aren’t doing my metabolism much good, either,” she whispered at his lips. She was sitting up on his lap, with both hands on his chest, and her eyes were full of emotion. Their color was soft, like gray doves.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to pull her jersey down, smoothing it around her waist. “I’ve got to go to work,” he groaned. “My God, I hope I can pitch hay bent over double.”

  He was laughing, though, and her eyes blazed with triumph, with delighted knowledge on her part in his downfall. She smiled at him, and her hands smoothed back his thick dark hair, lingering at his temples.

  “What would you like for lunch?” she asked.

  “Anything,” he replied. “As long as I get to look at you while I eat it.”

  “Oh, Tate.” She put her mouth over his and clung to him, feeling him move, feeling his lean hand gather her hips suddenly against his.

  He felt her tauten. His head lifted and he looked into her wide, frightened gray eyes. “I won’t hurt you, Maggie,” he whispered. “I just want you to know how much a man I am with you. It isn’t a threat. It’s…” He paused. “I don’t know. Pride, I think,” he decided finally, and it was in his eyes, in his whole look.

  She met his level gaze and the fear was gone, all at once. She relaxed into him, forcing her taut muscles to give, forcing her body to trust him. “It’s difficult,” she said softly. “I’ve spent years holding back.”

  “I understand.” He kissed her closed eyelids and then he let her go, helping her back onto her feet as he rose and towered over her. “I didn’t bring you here to seduce you,” he added, framing her face in his warm, strong hands. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “But I am afraid,” she whispered, frowning as she looked up at him. “Tate, I… We mustn’t…”

  He put a long finger against her soft lips. “I have to go.” He brushed his hard mouth over her forehead, and the mustache tickled. “Let’s live one day at a time. OK?”

  She forced herself not to panic. “OK,” she agreed.

  He smiled. He seemed to do a lot of that lately, she thought, watching him go down the hall to his bedroom. But, then, so did she.

  * * *

  The days that followed were magic. Tate didn’t touch her again, although she could see the banked-down fire in his eyes when he looked at her; she could read the hunger there. He spent time with Blake at night when he wasn’t working, talking cattle and marketing, things that went right over Maggie’s head, but that Blake seemed to understand and really enjoy. And when Tate loaned him his Stockman’s Handbook to study, the boy was over the moon.

  “It’s got a whole section on feedlot management,” Blake said enthusiastically.

  “We could use a feedlot around here. I just never seem to get time to look into the possibilities,” Tate said, leaning back on the sofa with a cup of black coffee and smoking a cigarette. “But it’s interesting all the same to see how they’re operated. There’s more to it than just grouping numbers of cattle together and feeding them twice a day.”

  “This is interesting, about the danger of explosive gases,” Blake murmured.

  Maggie looked up from her Ranch magazine, where she was going over a recipe for a beef casserole. “Gases?”

  Blake went into a long and nauseating explanation of how the unvented waste from livestock could create explosive and toxic gases, while Tate watched, faintly amused at her wide-eyed disgust.

  “Son, I don’t think your mother’s in raptures over the gory details,” he murmured. “She might find some tips on range management a little easier to take.”

  “Right,” Blake agreed readily, flushed because his idol had actually called him “son.” He looked at Tate with more emotion than he realized, so hungry for a father of his own that he was as open as a book.

  Tate, watching that expression unfold, felt a wild stirring inside himself. A protective stirring, just as he had the morning he’d shot at the wolf when it threatened Blake. The boy and the woman were getting to him, growing on him, taking him over. Once, he’d have drawn back in anger from that kind of affection. But now…

  He looked at Maggie, his eyes quiet and tender on her down-bent dark head as she read her magazine. She and Blake were already part of his life; it was as natural as breathing. He looked forward to coming home at lunch, at night. He looked forward to every new day. That was when it dawned on him that Christmas was five days away and they’d be going back to Arizona soon afterwards. He felt sick all over.

  To ward off thought of the future without them, he got to his feet. “What are we going to do about a tree?” he asked suddenly.

  They both stared at him.

  “Well, we have to have a tree,” he explained. “It’s going to be Christmas in five days.”

  Maggie felt the same sickness he’d just experienced at the thought of what came after the holiday, but she forced herself to smile. “What are we going to put on it?” she asked. “Do you have any decorations?”

  “We could put one of my hats on top, I guess,” he mused, “and whip a rope around it for a garland.”

  “We could put it in one of your boots,” Blake chuckled and got a black glare for his pains.

  “Suppose we make decorations?” Maggie pondered. “I can bake cookies in different shapes to go around it, and do you have some popcorn and thread?” Tate nodded and she grinned. “We can make garlands of popcorn. But what about Christmas dinner? Tate, can you get a ham and a turkey?”

  “There are three hams in the deep freeze,” Tate replied. “But a turkey…” He frowned. “I guess I could get one from Jane Clyde, over the mountain.”

  “Is it far?” Maggie asked.

  “Just an hour’s drive or so.”

  She thought of him on that winding road, of how dangerous it was in snow and ice. “We don’t need a turkey,” she said. “Really, I hate turkey. And so does Blake,” she added, daring her son to argue.

  But he was quick, was Blake. He’d already followed her reasoning and was agreeing with enthusiasm that turkeys were the curse of civilization.

  Tate didn’t say anything else about going over the mountain to get a bird. But he smiled to himself when he left the room. They weren’t fooling anybody—he saw right through them.

  For the next few days, Maggie and Blake worked on decorations and made presents. Since the nearest store was down the mountain, they decided to make do with what they’d brought with them from Tucson. Maggie had Tate run her back to the cabin to check on everything, and she dug out the shopping bags full of things she’d brought with her from the city for Christmas.

  “More decorations,” she murmured, tossing out tinsel and gently laying a box of colored balls on the sofa. “And this is what Blake especially wanted for Christmas.” She showed him a computer game, one of the very expensive ones with graphics and three diskettes.

  He pursed his lips. “Very nice. I have a PC compatible, but I hadn’t realized that Blake had an interest in computers.”
/>   “You have a computer?” she asked with vivid curiosity because she was thinking up a present for Tate, since he was the one person she hadn’t foreseen a need to buy one for.

  “Sure. Over 600 kilobytes of storage space, double disk drive, with a modem and a daisy wheel printer.” He smiled at her fascination. “I keep my herd records on computer these days. It beats the hell out of having to handwrite every entry.”

  “Do you have a spreadsheet program?” she fished.

  “I do, indeed,” he said and named it. It was one of the more expensive ones, so that program was out.

  “What I don’t have,” he sighed, studying Blake’s disk, “is a good word processing program. I could use one of those to write letters with.” He glanced at her, noticing her rapt expression, and he grinned again. He had two word processors, but he wasn’t about to tell her. He’d rush home and hide those disks, fast!

  “My, my, they do come in handy, don’t they?” she mused and quickly hid the one she’d bought for Blake. Blake could wait another Christmas for a word processing program; he wasn’t getting this one.

  They loaded her packages in the car after she’d taken time to wrap them. “Tate, I never thought,” she said as they got into the jeep, “is there anyone you spend Christmas with? Your family?”

  “My parents are long dead, Maggie,” he said quietly. “I have no one.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  He took her slender hand in his and pressed his mouth to the palm. “You and I aren’t going to have any secrets from each other,” he said tenderly. “I don’t mind telling you anything you want to know.”

  He let go of her hand and started the Jeep, and she thought about what he’d said all the way home.

  * * *

  Home. It felt like home. She finished the last of the icing on the Japanese fruitcake she’d made, with its one mince layer and two white layers and exotic candied fruit icing with coconut all over it. It was like the cake her mother had always made back home. She wondered if she could ask Tate later about phoning her youngest brother Michael on Christmas Eve and charging the bill to her phone in Tucson. Oddly enough, she hadn’t missed having a telephone at the cabin, but she knew Tate had one because she’d heard him talking on it occasionally. Michael still lived in Tennessee, and he kept in touch with the rest of the family. Maggie wanted to know how Jack and Sam and their families were, and Michael was always good about passing messages along. Dear Michael, with his hair as dark as her own and eyes almost as gray as hers.

  “What are you dreaming about?” Tate asked, reaching past her to refill his coffee cup while he and Blake took a short break from one of the old computer games Maggie had brought over.

  “About Michael,” she said without thinking and looked up to see a flash of lightning in Tate’s black eyes.

  “Who’s Michael?” he asked tersely.

  “Oh, I like that,” she said softly and smiled up at him. “I like the way you sound when you think there’s another man in my life. But there isn’t, you know. Michael is my younger brother. He’s just twenty-two, and he looks like me, except in places.”

  He mellowed. His lean fingers brushed back her thick hair. “Does he?” He bent, nuzzling her cheek with his. “I’m getting possessive. Does it bother you?”

  “Look at another woman and you’ll see how much it bothers me.”

  He lifted his head, searching her eyes quietly. “I see what you mean,” he mused.

  “What?”

  He rubbed his nose against hers. “I like it, too.”

  His breath was on her mouth. “Like what?”

  “Having you get possessive. Open your mouth.”

  She did and his brushed against it, open, too. He bit at her lip, his mustache abrasive, his mouth hard. He grasped the back of her neck and pulled her closer, crushing her mouth under the warm pressure of his.

  “Would you bring me a cola, Mr. Hollister?” Blake called suddenly from the office, shocking them apart.

  Maggie could hardly breathe. Tate seemed to be having a bit of a problem in that direction himself. He stood up, blinking. “A what?” he called.

  “A soda.”

  “Sure.” He shook his head, whistling through his teeth as he got one out of the refrigerator. “Heady stuff.”

  “What is, cola?” she murmured dryly, although her heart was still pounding.

  “You,” he whispered and kissed her again, softly, as he went past her to the study.

  She leaned against the counter, watching his broad back disappear into the room with the computer, and she thought dreamily how sweet it would be if they were married and she never had to go back to Tucson.

  But despite their closeness and the way Tate was with them, she had to remember that she was only a guest and in less than five days she and Blake would be in Tucson and this would only be a memory.

  Tears stung her eyes as she finished icing the cake. Only a memory, perhaps, but one that would haunt her the rest of her life. The thought of being away from Tate now was worse than the threat of death. And whatever he felt, he was keeping his own counsel. He wanted her, that she knew. But there was a chasm between wanting and loving, and one was nothing without the other.

  Chapter Five

  Getting Blake to go to bed on Christmas Eve was like trying to put a pair of pants on an eel, Maggie thought as she watched him make his fourth reappearance.

  “Mr. Hollister, is there or isn’t there a Santa Claus?” he asked Tate.

  Maggie stared blankly at Tate, who was struggling valiantly not to give the show away.

  “Santa Claus is like a spirit, Blake,” he finally told the boy as he sipped his coffee on the sofa. “So in a sense, yes, he exists.”

  “But he doesn’t come down fireplaces?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Tate replied.

  Blake bit his lower lip, leaning heavily on the crutch Tate had loaned him. “But there’s a fire in it,” he groaned.

  “Fire,” Tate improvised, “can’t possibly hurt a Christmas spirit like old Santa. He can get right through it to the stockings.”

  “Are you sure?” Blake asked worriedly.

  Tate put his hand over his heart. “Blake, would I lie to you?” he asked.

  Maggie had to bite her tongue almost through to keep from laughing at the expression on Tate’s face. But Blake let out a pent-up sigh and grinned.

  “OK,” he said. “I just wanted to be sure. Good night. See you early in the morning!”

  “You, too, darling,” Maggie smiled, kissing his forehead gently. “Sleep well.”

  “Ha, ha,” he muttered, glancing ruefully at the huge pine with its homemade decorations in the corner by the window. All lit with colorful lights and smelling of the whole outdoors, it had turned out to be a better tree than anyone had expected. But the crowning touch was some soap flakes that Maggie had found in the kitchen cabinet. She’d mixed them with water and made “snow” to go on the branches. The finished product was a dream of a Christmas tree, right down to the paper snowflakes that Blake had cut out—something he’d learned to do in art class in school.

  Maggie sighed as she looked at the tree. “Isn’t it lovely?” she asked absently.

  “Not half as lovely as you are,” Tate remarked quietly, his dark eyes possessive on her body in its sleek silver dress, a long camisole of sequins and spangles that had impressed her with its holiday spirit. With her dark hair short and curled forward, she looked like one of the twenties flappers.

  “I’m glad you like it,” she curtsied for him with her coffee cup held tightly in one hand. Like him, she didn’t drink—rarely even a glass of wine. They were celebrating Christmas with black coffee, despite her dress and his suit slacks, white shirt and navy blazer.

  He turned off the top light, leaving the winking, blinking colorful lights of the tree to brighten the room. His arms slid around her waist as they looked at the paper angel Blake had made for the tip-top. “I’m sorry we couldn’t ge
t you up there,” he mused. “You’d make a pretty angel.”

  “I’d rather be just a woman,” she said, turning. Her eyes ran over his face quietly although her heart was beating her to death. It had been forever since that morning when he’d made such sweet love to her in the kitchen. And she wanted that, and more, tonight. Her whole body ached for him.

  He touched her throat with the very tip of his forefinger, watching the pulse throb there, watching her lips part. She was his. She didn’t even have to tell him. He could see it in her eyes, in her face, in the body that leaned toward his in the semibright darkness.

  He took a step forward, so that he was against her, and his head bent to hers. His mouth brushed her open one, feeling with shock the sudden darting movement of her tongue against his upper lip.

  He caught his breath and her eyes opened lazily, looking at him.

  “It…it’s something I learned when I was in my teens,” she faltered.

  “It’s damned arousing, do you know that?” he asked quietly. “Having Blake in the house wouldn’t even slow me down, Maggie, so don’t look for miracles if you start something tonight.”

  He made it sound as if she was making him a proposition. Well, she was, but he didn’t have to make her feel cheap for it. She’d taken certain things about their relationship for granted, but perhaps she’d presumed too far. She’d wanted a memory of him, something warm and private, just for the two of them. A Christmas memory that she could take back to the desert with her to last all the long, lonely years that she was going to spend grieving for him.

  Her head bent. Her hands clenched around her coffee cup. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  His breath caught. He hadn’t expected her reaction. He hadn’t meant to shame her, for heaven’s sake. He’d just been hesitant to let things get out of hand before he could get up his nerve to ask her if she might consider staying at the ranch—she and Blake. He started to speak when a thunderous knocking at the front door broke the spell.