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“Do you know when you get angry, your eyes flash fire and your lips lay all tight together?” he mused aloud.
“Don’t change the subject, Ty.” The fire in her eyes leapt a little higher.
“Why not?” He shifted a hand to the side of her neck and stroked his thumb over the clean line of her jaw. “I’ve made my request. I’m not going to try to talk you into it. You’ll either agree to it or you won’t.”
Ty bent his head and tested the tightness of her lips. When they failed to soften immediately, he shifted his attention to her cheek and the shell of her ear.
“Give me one good reason why I should agree,” Jessy challenged, but in a voice that suggested she might be open to reason.
“That’s easy,” Ty murmured, smiling as he nuzzled her neck. “Because you love me.” His arms encircled her, molding her T-shirt-clad body to his length.
“That’s not fair.” But Jessy smiled the protest and slipped her own arms around him, spreading them over the corded muscles along his back to increase the closeness.
Pretending to misunderstand, Ty drew his head back to look at her. “You mean you don’t love me?”
“You know very well I do,” Jessy chided, her eyes shining with love as she ran her gaze over his face.
“Good. Because it’s becoming more and more obvious to me that there is nothing under this T-shirt but your skin.” In a silent reinforcement of his statement, his hands glided down the small of her back and over the womanly shape of her firm buttocks and hips.
“And you are wearing way too much.” Her fingers worked to loosen the waist of his jeans.
“We’ll have to do something about that.” At the moment he was more interested in exploring the giving taste of her mouth. There would be time later for the heat and urgency of skin against skin.
Stretched in a limp sprawl with Ty’s warm flank against hers, the bed covers kicked to the foot and a fine sheen of perspiration covering her body, Jessy reveled in the tingling aftermath of their lovemaking. It mellowed the stand she had previously taken.
“I’ve been thinking,” she murmured as an opening.
“So have I.” Ty stifled a yawn. “Three-thirty is sounding earlier and earlier.”
A smile curved the wide edges of her mouth. “Actually I was thinking about something else.” Jessy rolled onto her side to study the craggy male lines of his face. “Roundup wi
ll last another two weeks or more. I can’t guarantee I’ll stay close to headquarters that whole time. But if I do leave, I promise I will be extra cautious.”
For a woman who loved open country and the feel of a horse beneath her, it was a major concession, and Ty knew it. Reaching out, he drew her into the hollow of his shoulder.
“I’ll rest easier in my mind knowing that,” he murmured.
Yet her assurance did little to chase away the shadows that lurked at the edge of his consciousness, without shape or identity.
PART FOUR
The summer grass, it grows brittle and dry.
And heads are hangin’ forlorn.
’Cause it turned red
With blood from the dead.
And a Calder has reason to mourn.
Chapter Nineteen
By the end of the first week, the routine had been established. Every morning Ty was up and away at the crack of dawn. Most evenings he returned around ten o’clock. True to her word, Jessy didn’t venture from the Triple C headquarters. But being bound by that promise seemed to increase her restlessness.
Friday morning she stood at the kitchen sink and gazed with longing at the big sweep of country beyond the window. Laura sat on the floor, happily playing with one of her dolls while Trey tore around the kitchen in a release of overabundant energy.
With neither child requiring her attention, Jessy let her thoughts roam where she couldn’t. The summer roundup had shifted its operation north to the Broken Buttes country, an area she knew well.
