AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A short minute later, he set her down outside her room and took a step back. Did he not mean to carry her inside?
Need thrummed in her body. She took a step toward him. “Are you coming inside?”
His nostrils flared, and his gaze dropped to her lips. “Do you really want me to ruin you?”
Connecting ruin to something that felt so right didn’t make sense. It was as if his kisses had rendered her stupid. A part of her screamed yes. She didn’t want to stop, but she couldn’t be foolish. “I don’t know.”
She put her hand on his chest, feeling his harsh breathing, the tension under her fingers, as if her touch affected him as deeply as his touch affected her. “I’ve never felt like this. I don’t want it to end.”
“Anna, I want you more than you can know.” He cupped her cheeks and brushed his lips across hers. Then he pushed her back and turned her to face her door, so she couldn’t reach him. “But you have to know what you want.”
Never had she felt so needy, as if she couldn’t go on if he didn’t finish what they’d started. But he seemed almost blasé about it.
How could she know what she wanted if the person she’d come to marry hadn’t been around for her? But Daniel had. Her mind swirled.
She wanted Daniel with an ache that went bone deep. “What would it mean if...” She searched for the right words, to ask the question he hadn’t.
“It would mean you couldn’t marry Rafael.”
A cold spike lanced through her arousal. Would it mean more than that? Perhaps Daniel needed prompting. “I want to be married.”
“I know,” he answered softly. “To a man—”
“Yes.”
“—of means.”
“To a man who can take care of me.” She waited. Hadn’t she made her position clear earlier? That if she was going to sleep with a man, she expected him to marry her. Was that why he was balking?
As the seconds ticked by the proposal never came. He hadn’t spoken once of caring or love, only wanting. She clenched her eyes shut. She was just another foolish woman mistaking a man’s desire for more than it was. For a woman it was all woven together, the strands inseparable, but not so for a man.
“Go to bed, Anna. I have to go put out the lamp and make sure no animals can get into the storage room. We left the back doors open.”
She cast one look over her shoulder at him, but he was looking toward the doors to the passageway.
Coldness seeped through her, finally numbing her desire. She turned the knob and stepped inside her room. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
* * *
Daniel stared at the door, wishing more than anything he could follow Anna inside, make love to her until exhaustion set in, but he had to go figure out where Juanita had gone and if Anna had seen the wagon. He suspected Rafe was disguised as a lumpy sack of cornmeal.
His fists clenched, he ran across the courtyard and into the breezeway. He secured the doors, then retrieved the lamp from Rafe’s room.
He carried it into the storage room. “You can come out now.”
The burlap sack didn’t move, but Rafe’s wheezing echoed in the silent room. He set the lamp down and reached for the sack. He pulled it up, and yellow bits covered Rafael’s hair and back. Juanita appeared in the doorway. She dropped down to her knees beside Rafe and brushed the cornmeal from his hair.
“Can’t...breathe.” Rafael scrabbled at the barrel, while Juanita pulled the sacks she’d tossed over his legs away.
All the time Daniel had been kissing Anna—more than kissing—he’d expected to feel Rafael’s hand on his collar, yanking him away. Instead, his brother was in earshot, barely breathing.
His chest slammed as if a horse had kicked him square center, dispelling the last lingering haze of desire. How could he have been lusting over his brother’s bride when his brother was in here fighting for his life?
Rafe slapped Juanita’s fussing hands away, twisted and grabbed Daniel’s arm. “Bastard.”
It wasn’t an epithet Rafe used often, seeing as how it could be said of him without malice.
Daniel’s insides twisted.
Juanita rolled back to her heels and looked uncertainly between them.
“Well, the minstrels I hired to distract Anna didn’t show.” He’d had to do something or she would have started tearing apart the house looking for Rafael, or he would have had to lie to her again. Kissing her had seemed liked the best option. Didn’t hurt that he wanted to kiss her every time he looked at her. Still, he hadn’t needed to go as far as he did. And if he hadn’t known Rafe was nearby, he might not have been able to stop. Anna went to his head faster than whiskey.
“Juanita, would you go get those blankets and pillows?”
She nodded and popped to her feet.
The second she left the room, Rafe hooked his fingers in Daniel’s collar at the throat and yanked him down. “Least wait...’til...dead.”
Rafe’s hand dropped, and he labored to breathe.
Daniel’s throat tightened. “I’m going to get a doctor.”
Rafael shook his head. “Then...have to...say...cousin...shot me.” He spun his finger by his ear.
He was right that the explanation was loco, and if too many people heard it, the whole story would fall apart. Hell, Anna didn’t even believe it all the way. “I’m not going to let you die. People will think I killed you because you wouldn’t sell me the land you promised me.”
For a second Rafe’s eyes crinkled.
Relief poured through Daniel. It must have just been the thick burlap sack that had been impeding his brother’s air and now that it wasn’t over his head, he was at least no worse.
“I’m going to go help Juanita with the mattress. I’ll be right back.”
Rafael nodded. “Close...th’ door.”
Daniel went out the back of the house and looked for the wagon. It was no longer standing where he’d parked it.
Juanita rounded the corner, her arms full of bedding.
“Where is the wagon?”
She rocked her head toward the front of the house.
The quiet girl was smarter than he thought. “Gracias.”
Juanita shook her head and went through the back door and slipped. She wobbled, her back arching and her arms coming up, but she didn’t fall. She twisted, looking at the tiles as she continued on.
Hairpins. She’d slipped on one of Anna’s hairpins. And he was going to have to gather the damn things up and get them back to her, or she’d come searching for them. The trouble was if she opened her door to take them, he didn’t think he’d be able to resist her. He knew if she asked for the moon, he’d promise it to her—or marriage, which would be a hell of a thing. A woman shouldn’t be engaged to two brothers. Not that he was anywhere close to being ready to take a wife.
* * *
Anna picked up the folded paper with her name on it. It had been slipped under her door sometime in the night. The writing was familiar; she’d seen it dozens of times. Before she came her heart had soared with each letter she’d received from Rafael, but she dreaded opening this one.
Had Rafael come back in the night? He must have to have written her this note.
She unfolded the paper, and her hairpins dropped out. Her breath snagged as the memory of Daniel threading his fingers through her hair flooded her mind.
Squinting at the note, she read the one line.
Much as I hate that you will use these to restrain your beautiful hair, thought you might miss them.
Daniel
Her hand went to her hair. But then she knew he liked it. Funny, she’d always envied Olivia’s pale blond locks and Selina’s rich dark tresses. Her hair had always seemed like just another thing that marked her as Irish, like her freckled nose, and not in a good way. But Daniel made her feel beautiful, and her anger with him eased just a bit.
She flipped it over and looked at her name. Goodness, the brothers had very similar hands. As isolated as their ranch was, they had likely been taught to form their letters the same way by the same teacher.
The relief that went through her as she realized Rafael wasn’t back didn’t make sense. Or perhaps she didn’t know what she would do with him. She was, after all, still engaged to Rafael. And Daniel had ignored her hints. Still, she gathered the pins and quickly dressed.
She wouldn’t lose her head like she had last night. She couldn’t.
A knock on her door had her rushing toward it. She threw the door back, her heart nearly in her throat.
Juanita stood there, her eyes downcast. “Visitor for you.”
A visitor. She didn’t know of anyone locally but Selina. She took a deep breath, trying to still the butterflies that had begun in her stomach. She would be excited to see Selina, but she wondered what could have brought her to the ranch so soon. She jabbed the last of her hairpins in her bun, hoping it would hold. “Is it my friend?”
