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His chest lifted on a deep breath; then he was removing his arm from behind her and turning to sit up on the edge of the bed. This physical as well as mental withdrawal from her seemed to confirm what Lorna hadn’t wanted to believe.
“Is … is she your mistress, Benteen?” She had to know.
There was a short, heavy laugh from him, followed by a shake of his head. “No, Lorna, she isn’t my mistress.” He combed a hand through his hair. With his back to her, she couldn’t see his face. “She’s my mother.”
“What?”
This time, Benteen turned his head to look at her. “She’s my mother.”
It seemed incredible. Lorna scrambled out of bed and pushed her clothes off the top of the trunk. Raising the lid, she rummaged through the contents until she found the framed picture. She stared at the young blond-haired woman with dark eyes. It was true.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She swung around to stare at Benteen.
“Because … I wasn’t sure if I wanted anyone to know.” Confusion etched deep lines in his face. “I hated her. You know how much I hated her.”
She moved to the bed. “And now?”
“Now … I don’t know what I feel.” He sighed heavily. “She’s a stranger—a fascinating stranger.”
“Why is she here?” That sounded too blunt, too unfeeling. “I mean … she must have wanted to see you again. Is that why she came?”
“She claims I’ve been on her mind since she saw me in Dodge City and that she wondered if we could get together again,” Benteen indicated. “She’s here, so I guess it’s true.” A faraway look entered his eyes as he stared into a dark corner. “When I was a young boy, my pa used to tell me she’d come back someday. I wanted to believe him. I used to dream about her. After a few years, the dreams became nightmares—she’d come back, promise to never leave me, then laugh and fade away while I cried for her.”
For the first time, he’d opened a door for Lorna and let her see inside him—his anguish and his loneliness—this man who had always seemed so self-sufficient, so strong. But he had human needs, too. Lorna climbed onto the bed and knelt on the mattress.
“Why haven’t you talked to me like this before?” she asked. “Why did you keep all this to yourself? Didn’t you think I would listen or care? I don’t understand why you haven’t let me get close to you.”
His gaze swept slowly over her as the slashed corners of his mouth deepened in a faint smile. “Why didn’t you sit on the bed like that on our wedding night?” he countered. “It might have given me a hint of what I was letting myself in for.”
Lorna realized she was unashamedly naked, but there wasn’t an inch of her that he wasn’t intimately familiar with. She looked again at the framed picture she was holding.
“What does that have to do with what I asked you?” She lifted her glance to frown.
His smile was more pronounced as he took the photograph from her and set it aside. Then his gentle hands were firmly pushing her onto the mattress while he stretched out full-length on his side, facing her, as naked as she was. His fingers reached for the face she turned toward him and trailed over her temples, pushing the tendrils of silk-brown hair aside.
“I thought I had married a well-brought-up young lady who was warm and giving and happy. When I discovered on our wedding night that she was also passionate, I was that much more pleased by my choice,” Benteen murmured while his fingers continued to trace over her face, touching her nose and following the line of her cheekbone. “I thought I had a wife I could safely love.”
“You aren’t making sense.” Lorna searched his velvet dark eyes and the warm expression on his angular features. The little scar near his eye stood out as a white line on sun-bronzed skin.
“Yes, I am.” He smiled. “It wasn’t long before you began challenging me. You didn’t simply accept things the way I thought you would. You argued, you defied me. But more than that, you began crawling inside me. Instead of a tame little wife, I had a stubborn little rebel who wore man’s pants and insisted on getting involved in my life.” He let his fingertips run lightly over her lips. “Lorna Calder was a handful that I didn’t know how to handle. You can be very irritating.”
“Not half as irritating as you can be.”
“That’s because you were demanding too much. You started to mean too much to me. Suddenly it wasn’t safe to love you anymore. If I gave you too much of mys
elf, what would I have left? So I tried to keep some things back. I tried to fence you in, but you kept cutting the wire.”
“Benteen Calder—building fences?” she chided the absurdity of the idea that an open-range man would put up wire. “If it’s a fence you want to build, then build it around us. Put both of us inside it, then I won’t have any reason to tear it down.”
“Not even to get out?” he asked quietly.
“I never should have threatened to leave you,” Lorna admitted. “That was a young girl’s foolishness. All I ever wanted was for you to love me—and to let me love you. But you wouldn’t tell me what you were thinking, feeling, or dreaming.” His hand was on her throat. She took hold of it and carried his palm to her lips. “I know your body almost as well as my own, but you haven’t let me know what’s in your heart.”
“I love you, Lorna. One way or another, you’ve managed to leave room for little else,” he declared huskily. “God help me, but I love you.”
When he kissed her, the world was filled with light. She murmured his name over and over against his hard lips. They were equally strong in spirit, pride, and will, forged by a land and a time that recognized only strength, but love made them unconquerable.
Elaine studied her son with a keen interest. There was a new ease about him, a freeness of manner that hadn’t been present before. He had always projected the image of a man sure of his purpose, but now there was an added confidence.
