Houston began unwrapping food. “It means that when we return to Chandler, your reputation as the most romantic man in town will be further enhanced.”
“My what?”
“Yes,” she said as she unwrapped a package of Vienna rolls. “It started when you carried me out of the Mankins’ garden party and was added to later when people began repeating the story of how you ran the cowboys who accosted me out of town. And then there was the romantic dinner party you gave at your house with the pillows and candles.”
“But it’s because I ain’t got any chairs, and I spilled food all over you, and was I supposed to stand around and let those cowboys bother you?”
Houston opened a can that contained creamed lobster soup. “Whatever the true reason, the result is the same. By the time we return, I expect adolescent girls to stare at you on the street, and to tell each other that they hope they marry a man who drags them away from their own weddings to a lonely mountain cabin.”
For a moment, Kane said nothing, but then he grinned and came to sit by her. “Romantic, am I?” he said, kissing her neck. “I don’t guess anyone’ll see that it’s the lady I married that’s keepin’ me from lookin’ like a fool in front of ever’body. What’s that gray stuff?”
“Pâté de foie gras,” she said, spreading some on a cracker with a little pearl-handled knife Opal’d included. She put it in his mouth for him.
“Not bad. What else you got?”
There was a piece of Stilton cheese, an artichoke which Kane thought was a waste of time to eat, tomatoes, soft-shell crabs, chicken croquettes, Smithfield ham, sirloin steak in onion gravy, and fried chicken.
When Houston saw the chicken, she laughed. It hadn’t been on the menu that she’d planned for the wedding. No doubt Mrs. Murchison had prepared it especially for her dear Mr. Taggert. Houston wondered how many other people had been involved in packing the food for her “secret” runaway.
“What in the world is this?” Kane asked.
“I thought the wedding might be a good place to introduce a few foreign foods to Chandler. That is a German pretzel, and some Italian pastries were served, but I don’t think any were packed for us.”
As Houston talked, she unwrapped more food: a cloth bag filled with fruit, a tin of Waldorf salad, a big round box filled with slices of several different pies, gingerbread, a bag of peanut candy, one of fudge. There were three loaves of bread, a box of sliced meats, cheese, and onions, a jar of olives, another of mustard.
“I don’t think we’ll starve. Ali! Here it is.” She showed Kane the inside of a metal box that contained a large section of wedding cake.
He took the little knife from the bed, cut a piece of cake and fed it to her from his fingertips. Houston held his hand and licked away every last crumb. He put his hand to the side of her face and kissed her lingeringly.
“A body could starve to death with you around,” he murmured. “Why don’t you feed me before you seduce me again?”
“Me!” she gasped. “You’re the one who . . . ”
“Yes?” he said as he picked up a piece of fried chicken. “I did what?”
“Perhaps I won’t pursue that line of thought. Would you pass me that can of soup?”
“Did you find my weddin’ present to you? In that little leather trunk?”
“The one in the sitting room?” When he nodded, she said she hadn’t had time to look at it. “What’s in it?”
“Wouldn’t that spoil the surprise?”
Houston continued eating for a moment. “I think that wedding gifts should be given on the day of the wedding. And since we are here, and the trunk is there, I’d like another gift.”
“You ain’t even seen what’s in that trunk and, besides, how can I buy you somethin’ up here?”
“Sometimes, the most precious gifts aren’t purchased in a store. What I want is something personal, something very special.”
Kane’s face showed that he had no idea what she was talking about.
“I want you to share a secret about yourself with me.”
“I already told you all about myself. You wanta know where I have money hidden in case some of my investments fall through?”
Delicately, she cut herself a piece of Camembert. “I was thinking more in the line of something about your father or mother, or perhaps about your hatred for the Fentons, or maybe about what you and Pam talked about in the garden this morning.”
Kane was too stunned to speak for a moment. “You don’t ask for much, do you? Anythin’ else you want, like maybe my head on a platter? How come you wanta know things like that?”
“Because we’re married.”
“Don’t you go puttin’ your lady face back on. A lot of married people are like your mother and that sober ol’ man she married. She calls him Mr. Gates out of respect, like you used to do to me. I’ll bet your mother never asked Gates questions like you’re askin’ me.”
“Well then, maybe I’m just terribly curious. After all, it was my curiosity that made me want to see your house, and that led to now, and . . . ” She let her voice trail off and the blanket slide down another two inches.
Kane looked at the sliding blanket with amusement. “You sure do catch on fast. All right, I guess there is somethin’ I better tell you ’cause Pam says it’s gonna be all over town in just a few days.”
He paused a moment, looking down at the food. “You ain’t gonna like this too much, but there ain’t much I can do to change it now. You ’member that I told you that Fenton kicked me off his land when I was a kid ’cause I’d been messin’ around with his daughter?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“I always thought that somebody’d snitched on us and told Fenton, but today Pam said she was the one that told him.” He took a deep breath, looked at her with an air of defiance, and continued. “Pam told her old man that she was expectin’ my kid and she wanted to marry me. Fenton, bein’ the bastard he is, sent her away to marry some ol’ man that owed him money, and told me Pam never wanted to see me again.”
“Is that the reason you hate Mr. Fenton?”
He looked her in the eye. “No, it ain’t. I just learned all this today. The point of all this storytellin’ is that Pam’s come back to Chandler to live, and with her is her thirteen-year-old son who also happens to be my son. And accordin’ to Pam, he looks enough like me to set a few tongues waggin’.”
Houston took her time in replying. “If everyone will know this shortly, it’s not really a secret, is it?”
“It was damn well a secret to me until a matter of hours ago,” he said with some anger in his voice. “I didn’t know I had a kid somewhere.”
When needed, Houston’s stubbornness could match his. “I asked for a real secret, not something that next week everyone will know and be discussing over tea. I want to know something that only you know about yourself, something that even Edan doesn’t know about you.”
“How come you wanta know about me? How come you can’t just put the furniture away and sleep with me?”
“Because I’ve come to love you and I want to know about you.”
“Women are always sayin’ they love you. Two weeks ago you were in love with Westfield. Damn it! All right, I’ll tell you somethin’ that’s none of your business, but you’ll probably like hearin’ it. This mornin’ Pam came to me and told me she’d been in love with me all these years, and she wanted me to leave with her, but I turned her down.”
“For me?” Houston whispered.
“Ain’t you the one I married? With no thanks to that idiot sister of yours, I might add.”
“Has something happened between you and Blair that makes you two snarl at each other?”
“One secret to a weddin’ day,” he said. “You want another secret, you gotta work for it. And the best way you can work is to get that food off this bed and take that blanket off and come rub up against me.”
“I’m not sure I can stand such torture,” she said, as she frantic
ally removed food and tore the blanket away at the same time.
“I like obedient women,” he said, holding out his arms to her.
“I have been trained to be the most obedient of women,” she whispered, putting her lips up to be kissed.
“As far as I can tell, you ain’t obeyed me once yet . . . except maybe here in this cabin. Damn it, Houston, but I never thought you’d be like this. Maybe you’re more like your sister than I thought.”
She pulled away from him. “You thought I was an ice princess, too?”
With a smile, he pulled her back to him. “Honey, what happens when you apply heat to ice?”
“Water?”
“Steam.” He moved his hand down to her firm backside and pulled her between his legs, covering her body with his.
Houston loved the sensation of being close to him, of feeling his skin against hers. She’d been warned that the wedding night was very painful, but this night had been all the joy she’d hoped it would be. Perhaps it was Kane, and the fact that she felt approval coming from him, rather than the criticism that she’d always received from the other men in her life, but now she felt free to react in any way she truly felt.
Kane began to stroke her body, her legs, the back of her, and his touch made her feel beautiful in a way that no compliment or pretty dress ever had. She closed her eyes and gave herself to the lovely sensations of the darkened room, the sound and warmth of the fire, and this man’s big, wide, hard hands going up and down her body, curving over surfaces that she’d not even been aware that she owned until this night. He stroked her hair, spreading it out on the pillow, running the back of his fingers along her cheekbones.
When she opened her eyes to look at him, she saw a softness in his face that she’d never seen before. His eyes were dark and hot-looking.
“Kane,” she whispered.
“I’m right here, baby, and I’m not about to go away,” he said as he began touching her again.
As she closed her eyes again, his hands became more insistent as he clutched her hips, burying his thumbs in her soft flesh. Her breath came faster as he moved to put one of his big, hard thighs across her smooth soft ones. His hands were on her breasts as his mouth sought hers and she opened to him like a flower to a bee.
Crushing her to him, his mouth clinging to hers, he put his hands on her buttocks and raised her to meet him.
Houston gasped at the first thrust, but there was no pain as she began to move with him. He pulled her closer and close, until their skin was as one person’s, fusing them in this act of love.
Instinctively, Houston wrapped her legs around his waist and clutched his neck as he lifted her from the bed, supporting her weight with his arms and on his knees.
He shoved her against the rough cabin wall and increased the passion of his thrusts as Houston threw her head back and loudly exclaimed her pleasure. And when the last hard, fiery thrust came, Houston screamed.
For a moment, Kane held her suspended and she clung to him as if for her life.
After several long minutes, he eased both of them down to the bed, and snuggled her so close she could barely breathe. “A screamer,” he murmured. “Who would a guessed that a lady would be a screamer?”
Houston was too exhausted to reply before she fell asleep in his arms.
Chapter 17
When Kane woke the next morning, it was full daylight. After a few long moments of grinning at Houston’s nude body cuddled next to his, he caressed her bare rump.
“Time to get up and fix me some breakfast.”
“Ring the bell on the table and the maid will come,” she murmured as she buried her face deeper into his warm chest.
With one eyebrow raised, he looked at her. “Oh, good mornin’, Mr. Gates and Leander. So nice to see you.”
Houston reacted at once, sitting up poker-straight in the bed, grabbing the sheet, and wrapping it about her so that only her face could be seen.
It took her only seconds to realize that Kane was teasing. “What a terrible trick to play!” she accused, but Kane had started to laugh at the sight of her covered so primly, and all of it done so quickly. She tried her best to not laugh with him, but found it impossible.
“I guess I don’t have to worry ’bout Westfield anymore,” he said as he left the bed and began to rummage in the food that had been packed for them.
Houston lay back in the bed and watched him with a great deal of interest. His body was indeed better than that of the strongman she’d invited to The Sisterhood meeting, strong muscles, wide shoulders tapering to a small rear end atop heavy thighs—thighs that could rub on hers and make her body sing.
Casually, Kane turned to glance at her, but when he saw her expression, he dropped the food he was holding, stood and held out his hand to her.
She took it and he pulled her out of the bed and drew her close.
“I hadn’t planned to spend much time up here, but maybe you wouldn’t mind it if we spent a few days alone together, like a honeymoon, except not in Paris or some place like that.”
“I’ve been to Paris,” she whispered, moving her hips closer to his and gently rubbing against him. “And I can honestly say that here is better than there. Now, what were you saying about breakfast?”
With disbelief on his face, Kane pushed her away. “If there was one thing that I learned as a kid, it was that toys are precious and you don’t wear them out on the first day.”
“I’m a toy to you?”
“A grown-up toy. Now, get some clothes on and let’s eat. I thought I might show you some old minin’ ruins around here. I just hope I’m man enough to spend all day with you.”
“I think you are,” she said through her lashes as she coyly glanced down at the part of him that showed no qualms about “wearing her out.”
Quite firmly, he took her shoulders in his hands and turned her around. “I got a extra shirt and pants over there and you go get dressed—and I want every button done up and nothin’ left hangin’ out to drive me crazy. You understand that?”
“Completely,” Houston said, her back to him; she was grinning so hard that her skin was stretching.
When they were dressed and had eaten, Kane led her up the side of the mountain. Chandler was at 6200 feet elevation and now they were at about 7500 feet, making the air cold and crisp. Kane didn’t seem aware of the fact that Houston wasn’t used to the climbing or that her riding boots weren’t made to grip the slippery rock, but led her straight up, past overhanging rock that looked as if it were about to fall on them.
“Is it much farther?” she asked once.
Turning, Kane held out his hand to help her over a particularly difficult rock. “How about a rest?” he asked as he began to remove the pack of food from his back.
“I would appreciate it very much,” she said as she took the canteen he offered and drank deeply of it. “Are you sure there’s a mine up here? How could they get the coal out?”
“Same way they get all coal out, I guess. What do I know about coal mining?” He was looking at her intently and, when he seemed satisfied that she was going to live, he turned away.
“Do you come up here often?”
“Whenever I can get away. Look through there at those rocks. Ever see anythin’ like ’em?” Down through the mist of the valley she could see a razorback formation of rock that rose straight out of the ground, looking unnatural and dangerous. “What do you think caused somethin’ like that? It’s like some giant tried to pull the rock out of the ground, got it halfway up and stopped.”
Houston was eating one of the pretzels that Kane had put in the pack. He’d already declared them to be one of nature’s best foods, and she was to have them always on hand. “I think that perhaps a geologist would have a better explanation. Wouldn’t you love to have had the opportunity to go to school and learn things such as why those rocks are shaped like that?”
Very slowly, Kane turned to look at her. “You got somethin’ to say, say it. My schoolin’s g
ot me by enough to earn me a few million dollars. It ain’t good enough for you?”
Houston studied her pretzel. “I was thinking more in the line of people less fortunate than you.”
“I give as much to charity as anybody else does. I do my part.” His jaw was set in a hard line.
“I just thought that perhaps now was a good tune to tell you that I’ve invited your cousin Ian to live with us.”
“My cousin Ian? That ain’t that sullen, angry-lookin’ kid that you saved from the fight, is it?”
“I guess you could describe him like that, although I rather thought he had a look of your . . . determination.”
Kane ignored her last remark. “Why in the world would you volunteer to take on a problem like him?”
“He’s very intelligent, but he had to quit school to help support his family. He’s only a boy, yet he’s been working in the coal mines for years. I hope you don’t mind my asking him without consulting you first, but the house is certainly big enough, and he is your own first cousin.”
Standing, Kane began to strap the pack on his back. As he started to walk again, this time on flatter ground, he said, “It’s fine with me, but keep him away from me. I don’t like kids much.”
Houston started to follow him. “Not even your own son?”
“I ain’t even met the kid; how am I supposed to like ’im?”
She struggled to throw her leg over a fallen tree blocking the way. Kane’s pants that she wore were so large on her that they snagged on branches, and caught debris inside them. “I thought perhaps you’d be curious.”
His voice came from behind a clump of white-barked aspens. “All I’m curious ’bout right now is whether ol’ Hettie Green’s gonna sell me some railroad stock she owns.”
Panting, Houston tried to catch up with him, but caught her shirt on a tree branch. Fighting to free herself, she called to him, “By the way, did you get your apartment building from Mr. Vanderbilt?”
Kane turned back to help her, gently freeing her shirt and then her hair from the rough branches. “Oh, that. Sure. Though it wasn’t easy, what with bein’ out here ’n’ all. For what I’m spendin’ in telegrams, I could own that company.”