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It was a long, slow warmth that gradually took possession of them. Jessy swayed into him, her body growing heavy against his while his enfolding arms gathered her in. Her heartbeat quickened, her blood running sweet and fast. There was something earthy and stimulating in the kiss that never lost its gently insistent quality. He was solid and strong, the smell of him mingling with fire smoke in her livening senses.
There was no hesitation on either side, no testing of the ground to see if it could support what was being built on it. It was the coming together of two equally strong forces, and in their seeking probe of each other, they touched depths of feeling where passion was not required to create intimacy.
It was too new, invading their systems too quietly for either to recognize its power. They came apart as slowly as they had come together, each seeking a reaction in the eyes of the other. Jessy turned again to the fire, feeling a wonderful calm and a steady glow within.
Neither spoke of the kiss, treating it as if it had never happened. Ty reached for his coffee cup, resuming his leaning stance against the mantel, and contemplated the fading flames of the fire. Taking her cup, Jessy moved to the armchair previously occupied by Ty and curled her long legs onto the cushion to sit crosswise. She, too, looked at the fire, completely comfortable, following her own track of thoughts.
After a long length of time, Ty straightened and drained the last of the coffee from his cup. When his idle glance swung to Jessy, she was watching him. “More coffee?” she offered.
“No.” He shook his head, then looked at her with a steady, slightly curious regard. “How come you suggested I should call Tara and talk to her?”
“It seemed logical that you’d want to discuss what had happened with her,” Jessy said, glancing briefly at her cup, then back to him.
“If I had wanted to talk it over with her, I wouldn’t have come here.” Ty sounded irritable, overtaken by a restlessness and agitation.
The moment of ease was destroyed. Something got between Jessy and her comfortable feelings. There was a hard, puzzled look in his eyes. The loneliness of the cabin pressed in on her again, abetted by the chilling wind that seeped through the walls and whistled through the crack in the door. She felt her spirits sinking.
That intense closeness between them was broken. All the uncertainties that had never entered her mind earlier returned now. Jessy watched him, knowing his mannerisms and silences and their meaning. His thoughts were heavy on his mind, shadowing his features.
“Jessy—” Ty began in a tone that was much too serious and loaded.
“I hadn’t realized how dark it was in here,” Jessy interrupted him, sounding casual but inwardly frightened by what he might be intending to say. Rising from the chair, she walked to the standing lamp and pulled its chain.
It was a calm exterior she showed him when she turned. She didn’t want to hear any apology from him or an expression of regret—nor some false statement of his feelings toward her. They would only hurt. She didn’t want his gratitude or his sympathy—nothing that might bind him to her. He was in love with Tara, whatever their problems. The shared closeness of that kiss might make him feel obligated to say something. And anything he said would only wound her.
Across the space, now illuminated by
the lamp, he seemed to be measuring her, trying to judge something. Jessy moved, striving for resiliency.
“Ty ... I told you once that you were always free to come here,” she said quietly. “And you’re always free to go.”
As she met his eyes, Ty saw none of that deep feeling that had so oddly sprung between them. There was only that level-eyed calmness that seemed to attach little importance to what had passed. Yet he was relieved, too, that she’d given him an out. He had not meant for that kiss to happen—just as he’d not meant the other one, although the circumstances were completely different.
With a lifting of his shoulders, he seemed to gather himself and walked to the hook by the door where he’d left his hat and coat. “I guess it is time I was going to my own home,” he admitted and shrugged into his coat. While he pushed his hat onto his head, Ty spared her a glance. “Thanks for the coffee, Jessy.”
“Anytime.” After the door had closed on the taunting howl of the cold wind, Jessy repeated her response, very softly. “Anytime.”
19
The vision of Tara that Ty carried in his mind when they were apart was never as vibrant and stunning as the sight of her gliding toward him after another separation. So dark and compelling was her beauty, garbed in ermine against the late-winter Montana cold, that he could forget the loneliness of his nights and the hunger she always aroused.
Ty was impatient with the presence of her father and Stricklin, wanting her all to himself and knowing that moment had to be postponed until they were alone. His arm stayed possessively around her petite frame, keeping her at his side, while he turned to greet her traveling companions, her fragrance stirring him. He was too conscious of the constraints he placed on his own feelings to notice the trace of reserve in her attitude.
“Hello, E.J.” He shook hands with his father-in-law. “To be truthful, Tara caught me by surprise when she phoned the other night to say she’d be flying back with you. I was under the impression you hadn’t scheduled any trip north until April.”
“That’s true; I hadn’t,” Dyson admitted smoothly. “However, there was something I wanted to discuss with your father. I probably could have handled it by phone, but since Tara was returning, I thought I’d come along and speak to him in person.” He sounded very casual about it, although the matter was obviously serious enough to bring him all this distance. Ty was too preoccupied with Tara’s nearness to experience more than a passing curiosity over the possible subject.
“It’s good to see you again, Ty,” Stricklin greeted him with more warmth than he usually mustered.
While they stood on the unprotected flats beside the airstrip, the luggage had been unloaded from the twin-engine plane so it could be pushed into the shelter of an empty hangar shed. The mesa top offered a bleak landscape of snow-crusted brown grass beneath a massive sky. Its big blueness, icy and unforgiving, had its effect on Tara, making her feel even smaller in stature. A raw March wind was beating at her. She was glad of Ty’s arm around her, stopping that wind from flattening her. She could not cope with these wild elements that cared nothing about who stood before them, nor that terrible feeling of inadequacy they evoked within her.
“Must we stand here to talk? It’s brutally cold.” Everything about this land seemed brutal to her whenever she was out of sight of The Homestead. There, at least, the stately structure was proof that someone ruled.
“I’d forgotten you aren’t used to it after being in Texas.” Ty smiled warmly, not realizing that she had learned to accept many things but she had never gotten used to them. He bundled her protectively against his side and led her to the car, the motor idling so the interior would be warm for its passengers.
Maggie Calder was on hand to welcome her arriving guests, relieving Ty of the obligation to act as host to Dyson and his assistant. Instead, he gave the cowboy a hand carrying Tara’s luggage and packages to their suite of rooms on the second floor. She’d barely said anything to him, but her silence wasn’t that unusual in the company of a third party, especially when that party was hired help.
Ty observed the silence, breaking it only to inquire where she wanted the packages left. “Anywhere is fine,” she returned indifferently while she slipped out of her full-length ermine coat and took the time to hang it up in her bedroom closet. Ty gestured to the cowboy to leave them in the sitting room.
