Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
Max’s heart froze for an instant. “You’re not supposed to…”
“To know? I’ve been to this rodeo before,” Livia said. “Time travel, from what all I’ve heard and experienced, isn’t all that random.”
He gazed at her for a long moment, then out at the tumbling water, the bright sun sparking and dancing in the river. “I don’t know.”
“But you suspect,” she said in a low tone.
He turned his gaze back to her. Hell , yes , he wanted to say. Hell , yes , he suspected Hugo. But he couldn’t say it. Not aloud.
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I don’t know what he did,” he said. “Not specifically.” Not enough to know when or how or even if Evil Prince Hugo had harmed Miss Calliope, and he was determined not to say more than what he already had, not wanting any vigilante justice to wipe out his ancestor—and him. “That’s the hell of it. All I can do is make sure he doesn’t do anything.”
“Even if you’d be happier chasing outlaws with Sam?” Livia said with a shrewd expression in her kind eyes.
“It’s coming to the same thing,” he said. “All Creede has done since I arrived two days ago is deal with Hugo’s actions. No, Livia. After seeing what Hugo did today, trying to kidnap a young child just to get his way over a stupid fence, I’m staying right here.”
“At Cally’s side.”
“It’s not what you think, Livia.”
“I’m starting to get a pretty good idea,” she said, her voice solemn. “Like I said, people usually travel through time for a reason.”
That night, Max, restless and unable to sleep after the events of the day, slipped out the back of the ranch house through the kitchen into the moonlight. The ranch was quiet, the house darkened. The suitors, after a successful barbecue, and a somewhat late night drinking with Bart and the other men—except for Max, who’d still been on butler duty—were all in bed in the guest cabin.
A successful farewell for the suitors, Max thought. Or for at least some of them. One, perhaps, might return in the near future, with Miss Calico as his wife.
Fighting a scowl, Max slipped through a series of vegetable and herb gardens that gave way to the pine and aspen growing behind the house. A gravel path wound along the top of the nearby riverbank, and it was this he followed, crunching quietly across the gravel to the back of the bluff, where the Summer River plunged over the cliff edge with a roar, landing hard onto the Long Meadow below, water spray shimmering in the silver-lit air, water pounding, roaring, the tumult matching that in his heart, and he questioned again what had happened to him, what was still happening, this crazy journey through time that had pitted him against his own great-great-great-grandfather, and had placed in his path the loveliest young woman he’d ever known.
A dirt trail branched off from the river path, and wanting some quiet, some time to think, to sort things out, he took the tree-lined trail along the edge of the bluff to a flat, rocky outcropping and looked out over the meadow.
A carpet of stars, thick and abundant, filled the dark sky, brilliant despite the moonlight, and he felt his heart opening to the land. A peacefulness he’d rarely experienced at home filled him, a peacefulness he’d found at the Crown of the West in his own time, and his determination to bring it back to its natural state found new fervor, for his own sake. For the sake of people like the James family.
A rustle came from among the trees behind him. His body tensed, and he stepped away from the edge of the bluff into a patch of shadow along the trail, wondering if Hugo had somehow infiltrated the ranch.
A hint of rosewater scent carried on the warm air.
His heart bumped.
A shadowy figure came toward him along a second dirt trail he hadn’t noticed that cut through the trees from the direction of the house.
Miss Calliope. He knew it was her, long before the shadowy figure resolved itself into a more substantial one. He knew it by her athletic grace. By the vitality of her step, her assuredness among her surroundings, even in the moonlit dark. She stopped ten feet in front of him, her long dress—the one she’d worn at that evening’s barbecue—looking elegant, soft.
Virginal, and that right there should have had him turning back immediately for the house.
“Miss Calliope?” he said instead with a bow as elegant as her dress, her presence sending his heart beating faster.
She should have grinned at the formal bow; she always had before. But now her pretty face was grave in the silvery light. Grave. Serious.
Questioning.
Max gave her his own questioning look, wondering what on earth could cause such seriousness in his vibrant, life-embracing tomboy. “Miss Calliope?”
“Mr. Gidding kissed me when he got back from fishin’,” she said, “and I wanted to?—”
“He what ?”
“I dealt with him, prince, don’t you worry none. But I want to kiss you again to see?—”
“Dealt with him how, Miss Calico?” But even as the question left his mouth, his body hummed at the thought of another kiss, his legs ready to stride forward, his arms to grasp her to his body, and remembering his promise to her brother, he knew it was insanity.
She grinned, finally, at the nickname. “I told him any man who tried to steal a kiss without an invitation wasn’t a man I’d marry.”
Max glanced through the trees in the direction in which she’d come, half-expecting Bart or her mother to be following to herd her back to the house, after rebuking an innocent Max. “You broke his heart, in other words.”
“Not his heart, prince. I reckon his heart is set on other things.”
“Like the Sky Top?”
She nodded.
He took a step forward. He couldn’t help himself, it was as if he were a piece of iron, and she a powerful magnet, always drawing him closer, always drawing him in. “This is the guy who had a fit when Finn beat him this morning in the horse race across the Long Meadow?” he said, mentally planning to beat the hell out of Mr. Pop Idol Pretty Face Gidding before the suitors left the ranch.
Damn, that morning seemed a hell of a long time ago.
She laughed, the sound sending light straight into his heart, joy into his soul. “That’s the one. I’ve seen how he’s ogled the Sky Top, prince. He’s here for my money and my stake in this land, just like the rest of them.”
“I doubt that’s the only reason,” Max said. She was too lovely in her own right, forget the land and money, too everything a man could want in a wife in one beautiful package. “It’s a long way to come just for some land.”
She stared at him, shock on her pretty face. “Land is everything in these parts.”
Well, if Max thought about it, land was everything where he came from, too. God knew how many wars and battles had been fought over where the boundary lines of countries would go. “Enough land for these men to ride seven hours from Mule Stop, after another ten hours by stagecoach or carriage from Laramie, and more hours back to Denver and Cheyenne?” Max, as part of his plotting against Hugo, had gotten the scoop on transportation and travel times from Finn.
“I reckon so. I’d ride that far and farther for someone to give me a piece of the Sky Top.” Her gaze turned to the Long Meadow, cattle showing as tiny white-and-dark splotches against the grayed-out grass, the stars unaccountably brighter in her presence, and he wanted to take her in his arms and give her the kiss she was asking for.
She leaned closer, and taking a swift breath, he realized that they’d unthinkingly closed the gap between them, her rose scent in his every inhale, in his every cell, and God help him have the strength to tell her no.
“You reckon them tiny lightning bolts will come again if we touch?” she said, setting the tip of a tentative finger on his chest.
Nothing happened. At least in the way of outward sparks.
Inside, however, Max’s body was beginning to hum, to heat, to… He caught her finger in his hand and held it to his plaid shirt. “I thought I was dreaming them,” he told her, trying to change his body’s subject.
She grinned. “I did too.” The grin faded away. Her feet brought her another inch closer. “So are you goin’ to kiss me or not?” she said, her voice low and quiet and determined, her feminine tone and tomboy words all rolled together into one alluring sound.
He cleared his throat. Gently, he let her hand go. “Your mother would say not. So would your brother. I actually told him at the Crown that I wouldn’t kiss you again.”
“Why not? You kissed me this afternoon.”
“I do beg your pardon. Stealing a kiss without an invitation. It was thoughtless of me to put you in that position.”
“But did you enjoy it?” she asked, and he realized she was in earnest. Not being coy. Not flirting. She really wanted to know.
He really wanted to tell her. “I shouldn’t be kissing you, Miss Calico,” he said, his voice going rough. “Your brother reprimanded me—rightly—over our little interlude this afternoon by the porch. Let’s talk about something else.”
“That ain’t an answer, prince,” she said and leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.
Cally’s eyes closed as her lips latched onto Max’s firm mouth, her heart beatin’ fast, a rush of something she couldn’t name filling her body—hormones, she reckoned.
She’d had the most disturbing dreams of her prince last night, her body doing lady things with him that her ma had told her about, lady things that married women did with their husbands. She’d woken all discombobulated, and longing for something she couldn’t name.
When she’d seen him standing there half shadowy, half moonlit, a man of strength and power, his muscles straining against his shirt and trousers, her heart had nearly stopped. His face had seemed as glad to see her as she was to see him, though she reckoned he was more surprised at the sight than her, seeing as she’d heard him leave the house and had taken the shortcut through the woods in the hope he’d gone to the bluff’s edge for the peaceful nighttime view.
Ma would have a conniption fit if she knew Cally was here with him alone, but Cally couldn’t have stopped herself if she’d wanted to. Not after her dreams last night.
She pressed her breasts against Max’s chest. Her hands clasped his soft plaid shirt, pulling him closer.
His mouth, seeming stunned for a moment, took another moment to catch up with hers, then they were keeping pace with each other, having already gotten acquainted that afternoon, the acquaintance deepening now. That same longing from her dreams rushed through her, sending her thoughts reeling in a mix of pleasure and excitement, something in her body driving her along, something that felt womanly and forbidden…
Max wrapped his arms around Miss Calliope’s lithe frame, her womanly heat filling his senses, her sweet peppermint mouth insistent on his, and he pulled her closer. Their kiss from that afternoon had stunned him. This kiss—her trust, her caress, her lips—touched him in a deeper way.
No moment of impulse, of heady exhilaration as in that afternoon, but a deliberate awakening of desire, desire unfolding swiftly with the touch of her hand behind his neck, the touch of his on the small of her back, that unconscious drawing nearer happening again, their bodies pressed together, like iron to magnet, her soft breasts to his hard chest, her firm waist beneath his strong hands, and he lost himself in her touch, her mouth, not particularly wanting to find his way out.
A nighthawk gave a cry high in the sky.
Reluctantly, Max pulled back from his Miss Calico. “Which is the real you?” he whispered, his lips full of her softness, his mouth savoring her peppermint taste, his heart thrumming with want and joy. An open book, he’d thought her, but there were deep waters here, deep waters in which he was threatening to drown.
He cupped her beautiful moonlit face in his palms, as if she were the rarest of treasures. “The demure lady or the lively cowgirl? Which is the real Calliope James?”
“They’re both me,” she whispered back, her pupils dilated with a desire his own body felt.
“But deep inside,” he said. “Which one is the true you?”
“You’ll have to figure that out, prince,” she said, tomboy words spoken in her refined lady’s voice, then her lips met his with a tentative brush, and before he could get lost again in her touch, she was gone.