Chapter Fourteen #2
Winnie stood in the doorway, absolutely dumbstruck. There were four people in the bed. Two of them were in uniform.
“I’m not bringing trays up here,” she announced. “Anybody who wants breakfast has to come downstairs and get it.” She grinned. “There’s enough for company, too.”
“Are we company?” Hayes asked drowsily.
“Apparently,” Kilraven replied.
“I suppose we all have to get up,” Hayes sighed.
“It is my bed,” Boone pointed out. “And Keely and I were here first.”
Hayes sat up. He frowned. “What are you doing in bed with Keely?”
He produced the revolver from his pocket.
“Gun!” Kilraven exclaimed.
Boone just shook his head and laughed.
* * *
The guests stayed for breakfast and then went on their way.
Kilraven was giving Winnie an odd look. She was subdued with him now.
It was as if all the joy and bubbly fun had gone out of her forever.
She knew there was no chance that he’d ever care for her in any permanent way, and she wasn’t the sort for temporary liaisons. It broke her heart.
Kilraven tried to catch her eye as he and Hayes headed out the front door, but she wouldn’t look at him. She said goodbye in a perfectly natural, pleasant tone and went back to the table. Kilraven was frowning when he left.
“Don’t you have a meeting with some visiting cattlemen today?” Winnie asked Boone.
“Yes, for a couple of hours. They want to see our artificial insemination labs.”
“I have to get to work,” Winnie said reluctantly. She glanced at Keely. “Clark’s already gone up to Dallas for a meeting with some investors, and Mrs. Johnston’s gone shopping.”
“Bailey will protect me,” she told them, reaching down to pet the old dog.
“You won’t need protecting now,” Boone said gently. “Your father and Jock are safely behind bars at the detention center in San Antonio. They don’t lose prisoners.”
“So we hear,” Winnie had to agree. “Make sure you keep the doors locked,” she cautioned Keely.
“Of course I will,” she said, smiling. “Don’t worry. I survived a rattlesnake bite.”
“You’re tough all right,” Winnie had to admit. “I’ll be back as soon as I get off work. Take care.”
“You, too,” Keely said gently.
Winnie bent to kiss her and Boone before she left for her job. She managed to hide her heartbreak from them. She didn’t want to spoil their joy in each other.
* * *
The house was very quiet, with only the two of them in it, both still in their pajamas. Boone looked at Keely with an expression she’d never seen on his face before. He got up slowly, pulled out her chair, swung her up into his arms and started for the staircase.
“Time for dessert,” he whispered, bending to her mouth.
“It was breakfast. You don’t have dessert with breakfast.”
“Yes, we do.”
He kissed her hungrily. After a few seconds, Keely forgot her protests, wrapped her good arm around his neck and kissed him back with enthusiasm.
He laughed softly at her innocent eagerness, and proceeded to teach her the proper technique.
By the time they got back to his room, she was ready for promotion to the next level.
He put her down long enough to close and lock the door. His high cheekbones were faintly flushed with the force of his desire. “It’s been years,” he bit off, his dark eyes blazing down into hers. “I want you.”
She was breathless, frightened, exhilarated, all at once. But those old scruples were grinding away at her.
“I know,” he said softly. “You want to wait for a ceremony. That’s weeks away.” He pulled her to him, pushed her hips against the hard thrust of his body. “Don’t make me wait,” he whispered huskily.
“Boone…” She was torn, tortured.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the jewelry box.
He opened it. Inside were an emerald solitaire and an emerald and diamond studded yellow gold set of rings.
“Everybody in this house knows that I intend to marry you. I’ve had this set of rings for weeks, waiting for Hayes to get enough evidence to put damned Misty and her father out of business!
A piece of paper with a seal isn’t going to make that much difference.
With this ring,” he said tenderly, sliding the emerald solitaire onto her ring finger, “I thee wed. The rest will come later. I love you, Keely,” he added with reverence.
“I’ll love you until I die. Will you marry me? ”
She could barely see the ring or him for the blur of tears. “Yes,” she whispered.
He bent and drew his lips over hers, teasing them apart, coaxing them to admit the long, slow thrust of his tongue into her mouth.
She gasped as a charge of passion as powerful as a lightning strike shook her slender body. The shock was in her eyes when she met his.
“We begin here, now, Keely,” he said solemnly. “The first day of the rest of our lives. Let me love you.”
She was already too far gone to think of refusing him. His hands were under the gown, making nonsense of her fears about her scars. She closed her eyes, moaning softly, as his fingers smoothed expertly over the thrust of her breasts, followed in short order by his hungry mouth.
“Yes,” she whispered unsteadily. And for long, passionate minutes, she said nothing more.
He paused just long enough to protect her. “It’s too soon for babies,” he whispered against her damp breasts. “We have a lot of living to do first. Then, when we’re comfortable with each other, they’ll come naturally.”
“I love children,” she said softly.
He smiled. “So do I.”
Her arm protested when she reached up to him, but she ignored the pain.
He pleasured her for a long time, until she was shivering all over with desire, pleading for an end to the anguish.
At that moment, she felt him lose control.
She arched up eagerly to meet the hard downward thrust of his body and tensed, crying out softly, as the barrier protested its invasion.
He hesitated, his whole body pulsing. “I hurt you,” he ground out.
“Only a little,” she whispered, because he looked as if it hurt him, too. “Don’t stop.”
“As if I could,” he managed to say. He laughed as he moved again, and then he groaned and drove for fulfillment, helpless to stop himself.
She moved with him, blind with need, pulsating with delight that grew sharper and more pleasurable with every single second.
She felt him in an intimacy that she’d never dreamed possible.
Her last thought was that the culmination was going to kill her.
The pleasure was so intense that, at the end, she cried out in a high-pitched, keening little tone that she’d never heard torn from her throat in her lifetime.
They clung together in the aftermath. He was spent.
He could hardly breathe. Under him, Keely was holding tight, biting into his muscles with her short nails, still moving helplessly against him as the pleasure ebbed and flowed in her untried body.
She was only just learning that the peak wasn’t really the peak.
She could feel the echoes of that intense, shattering climax happen over and over, just by moving in the right way.
He indulged her for a time, but then his lean hand caught her hip and stilled her. “No more,” he whispered. “You’re very new to this. It will be uncomfortable if we don’t stop.”
“Oh,” she protested.
He kissed her tenderly. “Besides,” he whispered, “we’re tempting fate. These things are only good for one use. They can break.”
Her eyes opened and looked up into his. They widened. “They can?”
She’d sounded almost hopeful. He chuckled. “It’s rare, when that happens. We don’t need a baby right now, at the beginning of our marriage.”
“Are you sure we don’t?” she asked.
He kissed her again. “I’m sure. And it isn’t because I don’t want one,” he clarified. “I want time for us to travel and learn about each other.”
“Travel.”
He chuckled. “Anywhere you want to go.”
“You mean, we could go to Wyoming and see Old Faithful?” she asked excitedly.
He propped up on one elbow. “I was thinking of someplace more exotic.”
“Oh. Like Florida.” She nodded.
He scowled. “The pyramids. Chichén Itzá. Sacsayhuamán. Zimbabwe. Those sorts of places.”
“You mean, go overseas?” she exclaimed. “We could do that?”
He studied her rapt, pretty little face, and he smiled again. “Yes. We could do that.”
“Wow.”
He kissed her once more and withdrew, wincing when she winced. “I told you,” he mused. “It takes time and practice to avoid these little pitfalls.”
“I suppose so.” She looked at his broad chest, where deep scars cut across it. There were more on his belly, and one, much worse, on his broad thigh. She reached out and touched them, testing the hard ridges with her fingertips, exploring. “Badges of honor,” she murmured aloud.
He was watching her watching him, his dark eyes keen and alert. He smiled. “I’ve been self-conscious about these for years.”
“They aren’t that bad,” she replied.
His own eyes were on her shoulder, her scars equally as deep as his and less cared for. “If you want to have plastic surgery, you can,” he told her. “But I’d love you if you were missing an arm or a leg. Nothing will ever change the way I feel. And I don’t mind your scars.”
“I don’t mind yours.” She reached over and kissed his chest, where the thickest, hardest ridge ran right across it, diagonally. “I’m so glad that stupid woman ran from you,” she murmured.
He laughed. “So am I, now.”
She cuddled close to him, more secure and less embarrassed. It seemed to be a natural thing, this combining of bodies. It was certainly fulfilling.
He wrapped her up in his arms, careful not to jar the sore one any more than he already had. He closed his eyes. He’d never been so happy in all his life.
* * *
He’d planned to have a big wedding, but his conscience got the better of him, so the next day he drove Keely over to the probate judge’s office in Jacobsville and married her.
“You really are a prude, you know,” Keely teased him when they were back on the street wearing wedding bands, with the license in Keely’s handbag.
He shrugged. “Pot calling the kettle black,” he replied, smiling tenderly.
She pressed close against him, still a little weak and shaky from the snakebite, but so happy that she felt like bursting. “There’s one thing left that we have to do,” she said reluctantly.
“Yes. Do you want to call Carly, or shall I?”
She linked her fingers into his. “I’ll call her.”
* * *
They had the funeral a week later, a small memorial service at the cemetery, where Ella Welsh was buried next to her parents. It was a sad interlude in a happy whirl, because Winnie had insisted on a society wedding. Boone and Keely reluctantly gave in. Winnie’s enthusiasm was contagious.
So they were married in the autumn, with the maples wearing glorious red and gold coats, and chrysanthemums for Keely’s bouquet.
She tossed it outside the church and watched with amusement as her bridesmaids scrambled for it.
But it was the best man, Hayes Carson, who caught the bouquet.
He grinned widely and gave a courtly bow when everyone stared at him.
A glowering Dr. Bentley Rydel had also attended the wedding, along with Keely’s coworkers, and Carly, who cried buckets and said that Keely was the most beautiful bride she’d ever seen.
Boone and Keely went away for a month, touring Spain and Africa and much of Europe. They came home weary of travel, but with beautiful memories.
“You’re not going to be happy giving morning teas for brides and hostessing dinner parties, are you?” Boone asked when they’d finished supper and were sitting in front of the fireplace in the living room.
“I’m not cut out for it,” she replied worriedly.
He grinned and pulled her close. “Then do what you please.”
“I’d like to go back to work for Dr. Rydel,” she said slowly. “I guess you wouldn’t like that?”
He looked down into her wide, soft green eyes.
“We’ve already agreed that you have skills, and they apply to animals.
I think it would be a good idea. I’ll have days when I have to be out of town on business, and I’ll have workshops and conferences to go to.
You can come to some of them, but you won’t like being on the road so much.
Work for Rydel.” He kissed her. “Just don’t forget where you live and who loves you. ”
She grinned and kissed him back. “I could never forget that.”
He stretched and yawned. “Clark’s got a new girl, Winnie says,” he murmured after a peaceful silence. “A nice one, this time. She works in a library.”
Keely smiled. “Good for Clark. How about Winnie?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know. She’s changed. She’s gone all silent lately. Probably mooning over Kilraven.” He shook his head. “That bird isn’t going to settle down in some small town. He’s got big city written all over him.”
Keely promised herself that she’d make time to talk to her best friend and let her cry it all out.
“Sleepy?” he asked.
She nuzzled against his shoulder. “Not really. Why? Did you have something in mind?” she teased.
“In fact, I did.” He leaned closer, brushed his mouth over hers in a whisper of contact. “Yeast rolls.”
Unprepared, she burst out laughing. “Yeast rolls?”
“I haven’t had a decent roll since before we married,” he pointed out, “and you’re all healed now. Besides, nobody makes bread like you do.”
“Well, if that’s how you feel, I’d love to bake you some yeast rolls!” she replied. Her eyes shimmered with amusement. “But I’d need a little encouragement, first.”
He pursed his lips. “What sort of encouragement?”
“Be inventive,” she coaxed.
He got to his feet, swung her up into his arms, and started for the staircase. “Inventive,” he assured her with a chuckle, “is my middle name.”
She tucked her face under his chin and listened to the heavy, hard beat of his heart and smiled with anticipation.
She felt as if she were being reimbursed for all the long years of loneliness and sorrow that she’d endured.
Her scars, she decided, didn’t matter so much after all.
And the happiness she’d found with Boone was worth every one.
* * * * *