"I don't want memories. I want now, Matty."
She bent to reach the soap and he groaned as her derriere pressed against him. He reached for her, but she stepped around him, feeling the beat of the water on her back now.
"You wanted to get clean, didn't you?"
"Not especially." But he didn't fight her as she soaped across his broad shoulders, down a back contoured by the muscles of ranching, over the rear end and tough legs of a rider. She gentled her touch to bare contact over the discoloration that remained at his ankle, then scooted around to in front of him, and began to work her way up.
At the top of his thighs, he growled a warning, and she skipped to the top of his shoulders. Soaping over his chest, circling slowly around the male nubs that turned hard and beaded at her touch, then following the path of the dusting of hair as it narrowed, leading her down between his ribs, below his waist, before widening.
"Matty."
But she was done being warned. She cupped him, watching his response shrink the relative size of the soap bar like it had been in a deluge. She felt the length and silkiness of him with her fingertips, shifting the soap to one hand in order to curl the other around him.
"My turn," he declared with another growl as he drew her hand away.
He took the soap and was gliding it over her back as his arms encircled her. He slid his tongue into her mouth, slow and deep, his arousal pressing insistently against her belly, her breasts sliding against his chest.
When she arched her back, his soap-slicked hands dropped lower, over the curve of her cheeks, down to the tops of her thighs. Then higher into the cleft, gently probing. She shuddered with the first touch.
The soap clattered to the tub, and he dropped to one knee in front of her. His hands holding her while his mouth found her. Some part of her was aware of the warm water streaming over her, of her hand gripping the towel bar for support, while the other tangled in his wet hair. But that awareness was a faint shadow to the gush of sensation centered on her core.
"Dave–"
Tremors racked her, and all that kept her knees from giving was the steadiness of his hold on her.
"Matty." He straightened to slide his tongue down her throat along her collarbone, then lower, until he flicked her nipple with a motion that nearly buckled her knees again. "I want to be inside you. Come to bed, Matty. Come to bed."
He wrapped her in a bathsheet, tucked another towel around his hips, then led her to the bed. But she saw his wince as he started to guide her down.
"Dave. Let me." She saw the question in his eyes, but he didn't resist as she gently pushed him back against the pillows. "Let me, so you won't hurt your ribs, your ankle. I don't want this to hurt you. Dave."
"You could never hurt me." In his gruff, rumble of a whisper she recognized her own words from their first lovemaking so many years ago.
Her eyes were misty with memories and tenderness as she brushed the wet hair from his temple. But beneath the softness, a hard hunger pushed, and she saw it echoed in the sharpened planes of his face as she reached into the bedside table's drawer and brought out a packet.
She tried to be gentle, but the moisture lingering from their shower mingled with his sweat before she'd finished. His groan, though, told her it wasn't pain. At least not the kind he wanted to end.
She straddled his upper thighs, then bent to flick her tongue across his nipples while she cupped his weight in her hands. She felt the surge then, against her hands and under her as his hips rose in a response as old as man.
"Matty. Inside...I want to be inside you."
She gave in to that demand because it was what she wanted too. She positioned herself, then guided him to her entrance. His hands bracketed her hips, flexing into her flesh, but he didn't try to hurry her. His hazel eyes seemed to burn with the heat arcing between them as he stared into her face as she lowered herself to take him inside, inch by glorious inch.
Sheathing him completely, she felt the tremors already starting. Or maybe they had never finished from earlier. Feeding them set the rhythm, built the pace until she was gasping to find oxygen in the overheated atmosphere.
His face was taut, his body glistened, and she felt the power of him beneath her, inside her. A part of her, as he always had been. Her love.
She called out as her body clenched with the power of a tremor. Dave's hips lifted, then again and again, driving her higher and higher, until the tremor metamorphosed to a glittering star shower that rained sensation through her blood and skin and bone, tingling and trembling there as she heard his harsh groan and felt the power of his release inside her.
And as she lay pillowed on Dave, still connected so intimately, that magical star shower slowly ebbed, gathering back in her heart, where it had originated, though leaving a flutter of sensation here and a shiver of satisfaction there.
* * * *
"All right, Currick what's all this?" Matty came into the room the next morning carrying an armload of files with his briefcase hooked on one hand and trying to look stern.
"You're asking me?" he teased. "You're the one holding whatever it is."
"Mr. Innocent, huh?"
He'd been far from innocent the night before, and he liked it that way just fine. His campaign of not giving Matty too much time to let those doubts of hers take hold had been working very satisfactorily for the past twenty-four hours. Very satisfactorily.
"Like you have no idea that these are files Ruth dropped off because you threatened to fire her if she didn't bring them out here for you to work on."
"Well, if you let me drive into town–"
"Doc said no driving for two more days, and quit trying to change the subject from your having half your office delivered here."
"Hey, I'm getting behind. Besides, I've read three books and a half-dozen magazines. I can't take TV. Although..." He drew it out with a wicked grin. "I can think of a much better way to pass the time than working on legal files if you'd cooperate."
He reached for her, and she swiveled away with a chuckle. "Oh, no you don't. I noticed you wincing, and you can't tell me your ribs aren't tender. You're not in any condition to be thinking of staying in bed all day that way today."
"Actually, I'm in exactly the condition for staying in bed all day that way."
Her gaze dropped to his lap, and he saw the answering heat flush her throat. But she was not to be swayed this time.
"I'll give you an hour–."
"That'll be a good start."
"To work on the files," she clarified with her mouth so firmly turned down that he knew she was fighting a smile.
He took most of the files from her to free her arms, leaving her to set down his briefcase. He was flipping through files when her sudden stillness caught his attention. He looked up to see her holding a single file, with an envelope sticking out far enough to see the return address.
"You have a letter from the grant commission, Dave? There's not a problem is there? They're not after you or–."
He saw the precipice but couldn't let her worry like that. "No, no nothing like that, Matty."
"Then why are they writing you? Does this have something to do with the Flying W's grant, Dave?"
He wouldn't have chosen this way to tell her. Hell, his first choice would be to never have her find out. But now that she was wondering, she'd never let it go. And with things so good between them, she'd understand.
"There is no Flying W grant."
Her eyes went wide. "I got the official notification."
"Yeah, you did. They gave the Flying W the grant, but I wrote to them and turned it down on your behalf."
She sank down on the edge of the bed near his feet. "You what?"
"I said that you'd reconsidered and you were withdrawing your request."
"But the grant money for the Flying W, the checks I've been getting? Where's it from, Dave?"
He knew from her voice that she already knew. "It's from me. I repaid that first check you got, then
sent the rest myself through an account I set up. I couldn't let you get in trouble."
"You couldn't let me get in trouble?" she repeated in an odd voice.
"No," he said cautiously, wondering what that tone meant. He didn't think he'd ever heard Matty use it before. It wasn't angry, but it sure wasn't happy, either. "I can't be certain they'd raise a big stink if anybody found out–as you said nobody was using that money–but I read all the conditions and checks and oversight they listed in that agreement and I decided it wasn't worth the risk."
"You decided." The words were as flat as the plains of Kansas.
"Yeah," he confirmed warily.
"You didn't believe I could turn the Flying W around without you pulling the strings."
"It wasn't a matter of faith. I knew you'd sunk all your money in the ranch."
"How could you know that, Dave? I never told you."
The question was calm and cool. It scared the living daylights out of him. But he answered it with equal calm.
"I didn't go nosing around, Matty. Joyce Aberdick mentioned it the day she gave me those papers to bring on to you–the papers that confirmed all your retirement accounts had been converted to cash for the ranch."
"All my...?" Her eyebrows had dipped over her nose in puzzlement, but now one tilted up at an angle. "The IRAs."
"Yeah, that's what Joyce said. Your IRAs."
"Dave, those were the kind of IRAs that can be withdrawn without penalty. And that's not all my retirement money. I have a 401k in addition to some profit sharing. I am gambling on the ranch, but I wouldn't be destitute if it doesn't work."
"I didn't know."
"No, and you didn't ask me."
"If you're mad, I think I like it better when you yell, Matty."
"I'm not mad, Dave."
That didn't reassure him. "What are you then?"
"I'm...I'm touched that you cared about me that way and that you still look out for me, but..."
"But what?" He hadn't experienced dread before, not like this, but he recognized it. And he knew it came from the misery he saw in Matty's eyes.
"It's what drives me away." A single tear slid through her bottom lashes and dropped to her cheek. "I know my leaving the morning after you married me and after we made love hurt you, and I'm so sorry for hurting you, Dave. But I've needed to go off by myself sometimes and think things through. To make a decision. My own decision. Because it's been so hard to make decisions around you. I think that's why I didn't tell you about the seed contract until it was a done deal. Maybe that's hard for you to get used to because I used to run to you and let you make my decisions."
"You make yourself sound like some weak-willed cream puff. You've never been like that."
"Then why do you try to treat me like one?"
"Are you still talking about my being the one to decide we should see other people six years ago?"
"We can start with that–you decided, and I had no voice in it. The night we came back here after the reception, you said you would decide the next morning how we would work out the details, clearly not wanting any input from me. After we made love, you said we'd stay together. Period. No discussion, no input from me. You'd decided, so that was it. But I can't live that way."
She dropped the grant commission envelope. It landed on his leg, balancing there for a moment before it slid off and fell to the floor.
"I thought all the problems between us were about the past," Matty continued. "But solving the past doesn't fix the future, Dave. It doesn't even fix the present. This isn't going to work."
"Matty–"
"I've been trying to fool myself into thinking you understood how I'd changed. I was wrong. You see me as I was when I was twenty, except for when you're seeing me as I was at twelve or five. Dave, I do jump into things. I am impulsive. And stubborn. But I don't need to be protected from that. It's who I am, and if that gets me into problems, then I get myself out of them. I have for a long time. At first it was scary, not having you around to rescue me. But, you know, after a while, I learned it wasn't all bad. And it's a hell of a lot better for my self-respect. I'm not the girl you knew. I'm not the girl who loved you so blindly, so unthinkingly."
"Are you're saying you don't love me?" She looked to her now empty hands. When her lips parted, he wouldn't let her say the words he couldn't bear to hear. "That's bull. I know you love me, Matty. I know it by the way we make love. I know it by the way your eyes shine. I know it because you never, ever cut me slack unless I really need it. I know it in my bones. So don't try to tell me you don't love me."
"I'm not trying to tell you that, Dave. I do love you."
He'd waited so long to hear his Matty say that again; now it only made him think of heartbreak. But he wasn't going to give in. "That's fine, because I always loved you, too."
"No," she said with soft finality, "it's not fine. Don't you see, Dave? You don't love me. You love the memory of me. I'm not that girl any more. Maybe...maybe I never even was the girl you thought I was."
"Matty, I know you have doubts, but–"
A memory of his own thoughts swept across him. The night they'd made love. When he'd been so certain that he could answer every doubt she had. Was this what she was talking about? That he thought he could take care of everything for her? Was her doubt really that he would ever let her take care of things herself? He shook that off because it was too dangerous to consider right now.
He started again. "This doesn't change what's between us, Matty. Just because I decided the grant–"
The echo of the word in his own voice felt like a rock dropped into his gut.
"You decided. That's right. You decided it wasn't worth the risk. Hell, you're probably right, too–you often are, which is one of your less endearing traits. But even when you're right and I'm wrong, I need to make my own decisions. And if there's a piper to pay, then I have to pay."
"Matty–"
"You can't spend your whole life rescuing me. I won't let you. You'd get tired of it eventually and I...well, I'm tired of it already. My self-respect can't take it. Even if I let you rescue me, it wouldn't work, not long-term. Not in a partnership. And that's what I want. That's what I need."
* * * *
She was gone. Again.
Only this time it wasn't in a tornado of hurt and anger like six years ago. And it wasn't slipping away quietly before dawn as she had twice since they'd married.
It was calm and deliberate.
She even listened carefully when he tried to talk her out of it later that night. Listened carefully, then shook her head with tears glinting in her eyes, but her voice firm and repeated, "It won't work, Dave. It can't."
She'd packed some of her things, said she'd get the rest of them later, announced she'd arranged for Pamela Dobson to come look after him until he could get around. Then she stood at the door of his room and said goodbye.
He'd sat there, on the bed where they'd made love as if they were really starting a life together, and watched her go.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Matty sat across the desk from Taylor and waited for her to finish going over the papers she'd brought in.
"You said this is all covered under attorney-client privilege, and nobody could make me say anything against Dave, right? Not even if I'm not his wife any more."
Taylor gave her an odd look. "I don't think it would come to that, Matty. I can't see any problem, since the grant commission signed this waiver and the money's been paid back. It's just that in the wrong hands, this could be made to look... Well, it is uh, unusual."
"He did it for me. To rescue me." Matty blinked hard. "It's what Dave's always done. And I've let him. But not this time. Taylor, I want you to draw up those documents for me."
* * * *
"Matty? Matty, are you in here?" It was Lisa Currick.
Matty wiped her eyes, then blew her nose. She'd been watching a tape. The song "They Can't Take That Away From Me" always did get to her, with Fred Astaire singing it
to Ginger Rogers to let her know that with their romance apparently over he'll always cherish vivid memories of her in his heart.
So far she'd replayed it six times in a row, and she was nearing the bottom of a box of tissues.
Matty had heard Lisa knocking, and ignored it. Just as she'd ignored Cal's glares when he'd come in morning and evening the past two days. At least he hadn't said much. Except this morning, when she'd said she was sorry to be leaving him shorthanded, and she was sure she'd shake off this flu bug in another day or so.
He'd cast a skeptical glance at the residue of her eating habits. "Way you're acting, I don't want you around any Flying W stock, let alone heavy machinery."
The song ended again as Lisa reached the doorway. From the corner of her eye, Matty watched Lisa's razor-sharp look cover the empty soda cans, the drawn curtains, the jumble of movie cases. Without looking up, Matty rewound the tape to the song's beginning, knowing precisely how long to hold the button.
"Oh, great," Lisa muttered, apparently in response to the lyrics.
She crossed the room, swept an empty cracker box and a piece of paper towel off the couch and sat one cushion away, with the tissue box between them.
"Well," started Lisa, drawing out the word ominously, "how appropriate, a film festival. Joyce was telling me the other day that she put the tape of your reception–yours and Dave's–on a cassette. Sort of a belated wedding present."
"Tell her to throw it out."
"Don't you dare, Matty Currick." Lisa swung around to sit on the coffee table in front of Matty, squarely between her and the screen. "You scream, you holler, you keep crying your eyes out. But don't you give up. Not with all you got going for you."
Stunned, Matty stared at her.
"Even if he is my brother, if you think that man did you wrong, then you do something about it. You don't just fold up! If he's scum, you let the world know it. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to–"
"Dave is not scum!"
For half a second, Matty wondered where that shout had come from. Then she realized it had come from her. The other woman blinked, apparently as stunned by the outburst as Matty was.
Matty sat back, feeling drained of energy and emotion. "And he didn't do me wrong. It's complicated. Please, just go away. Please."
"Okay. I've seen what I came for–to see if you're in as bad a shape as Dave, and you're close."