AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With that, he walked into the bedroom and shut the door. Cat stared at it, still wavering between fury and astonishment. Her first impulse was to charge in and throw the bedding at him. But that would put her in his bedroom, the last place she wanted to be.
Faced with no other satisfactory option, she strode into the living room and tossed the bedding on the sofa. In quick order, she closed the front door, locked the dead bolt, retrieved her overnight bag by the door, and disappeared into the bathroom, every movement sharp and brisk with controlled anger. Minutes later she came out, her temper still simmering, a robe of peacock blue satin hanging open over her matching nightgown, her face scrubbed clean of makeup. She set the overnight bag next to the ancient and ugly platform rocker, laid her dress and undergarments across its seat, made up her bed on the sofa, then checked Quint one last time. Leaving the hall light on for him, she turned out the rest of the lights and shrugged out of her robe, draping it over an arm of the sofa before crawling beneath the covers of her makeshift bed.
From Logan’s room came the telltale creak of bedsprings. Cat gave her pillow a vicious punch and rolled onto her side.
“Some wedding night,” she thought, and suddenly found herself fighting tears.
Logan’s mental alarm clock went off promptly at five o’clock, as always. Dawn’s pearl-gray light shone through the bedroom windows. Rolling over, he sat on the bed, stretching his shoulders in a flexing shrug in an attempt to throw off the heavy tension that continued to grip him. From childhood, he had been a light sleeper, able to come fully awake and alert in an instant. But last night had been a restless one, dogged by the knowledge that Cat—his wife—was in the living room. That thought brought back all of last night’s needs and frustrations.
He pushed off the bed, all taut energy again with no release available. Crossing to the chair, Logan snatched his suit pants up and stepped into them, pulling them on over his briefs. Barefoot, he padded into the bathroom, steadfastly refusing to glance toward the living room.
A shower wasn’t part of his routine first thing in the morning. That would come later, before he changed into his uniform and assumed his role as acting sheriff.
Back during the years he had lived in the city, he would have used these early morning hours to go for a ten-mile run, work out in the gym, or spend time on the shooting range. Now he spent the hours checking cattle, fixing fence, and making any needed repairs or improvements plus half a hundred other chores—seasonal or otherwise—that had to be done on the ranch.
But none of it before he had his morning coffee.
Fully dressed in boots, jeans, and a work shirt, Logan came out of the spare bedroom and headed for the kitchen. All his fine resolve not to look at Cat went up in smoke when he caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye. It stopped him, turned him, and held him motionless.
She was stretched on her side, her eyes closed in sleep, her black lashes lying thick and frill together, one hand clutching the blanket under her breasts. Sometime in the night she had kicked her legs free of the covers, and the satin nightgown she wore had ridden up, showing him the shapely length of her legs even as the clingy material outlined every curl and swell of her breasts.
She had a natural beauty that would arouse any man. Logan was no exception. Yet, looking at her, he found himself coming face-to-face with a cold, hard truth. He wanted more than her body. He could have her in the physical sense any time he wanted her; he had proved that to himself—-and to her—last night.
No, he wanted her. All of her. It shook him to realize just how much he wanted that.
Pivoting on his heel, Logan walked swiftly from the room. Once in the kitchen, he went through the motions of putting on coffee.
Something pressed on her arm. Cat shifted away from it and rolled onto her stomach, drawing up a knee and coming instantly against the back of the sofa. She groaned an irritated protest at the narrow confines of her bed.
The pressure came back, this time jiggling her shoulder with gentle insistence. “Mom,” Quint whispered. “Mom, I can’t find my socks.”
“Look in your bag,” she mumbled into the pillow.
“They aren’t there. Mom, I need my socks. I gotta go help the sheriff feed the horses.”
The mere mention of the man who was the reason she hadn’t been able to get a decent night’s sleep turned Cat stubborn. “Tell the sheriff to look.”
“He’s already at the barn. I saw him from the window. Mom, I’m gonna be late.”
An aching stiffness registered in a dozen different places as Cat levered up onto her elbows, so tired she wasn’t sure she could move. “I’ll get up.” Untangling herself from the twisted covers, she sat up and pushed the rumpled mass of her hair away from her face. “Where’s my robe?”
“Here.” Quint handed it to her.
Standing, she pulled it on and absently belted it, then followed Quint to his room on legs that felt wooden. The missing socks were quickly located, jammed deep inside a cowboy boot. His eyes positively beamed with gratitude when she pulled them out.
“You found them!” He promptly sat down on the floor to put them on, then hastily tugged on his boots. Scrambling to his feet, he managed a quick, “See ya, Mom.”
Then he pounded from the room at a run. By the time Cat made it to the hallway, the squeaky screen door banged shut behind him. She cast a longing glance at the sofa and knew she had to be really tired if it looked inviting. Vowing there and then that she had slept on it for the last time, she headed for the kitchen.
To her everlasting joy, she found the coffee already made. Judging by the absolute blackness of it, it had been brewed some time ago. Cat didn’t mind in the least. A concentrated dose of caffeine might be just what she needed to get rid of this heavy, drugged feeling from too little sleep.
She drank the first cup standing at the sink and carried the second cup to the bathroom, stopping along the way to collect her overnight bag.
After an invigorating shower, Cat felt almost human again. She returned to the living room, folded up the blanket and bedsheet, stacked them in a pile with the pillow on top, and carried them to Logan’s bedroom. Resisting the urge to see if the unmade bed was as firm and Comfortable as it looked, she walked over to the straight-backed chair in the corner and dumped the bedding onto it.
As she turned away, the pillow slipped off the pile and knocked over the metal wastebasket beside the chair, spilling pink, yellow, and white flowers onto the room’s slate blue carpet.
Kneeling, Cat picked up a pink daisy, its head drooping in the first stages of wilt. A faint dampness clung to its short stem. Rising, she spotted a small crystal vase sitting atop the tall bureau. Droplets of water clung to the outside edges of its inner base.
