Courageous

Now here he was taking her up on her stupid offer, and thinking she was experienced and she didn’t even know what to do. Worse, he was scaring her to death. She’d never felt an aroused man’s body. It was oddly threatening, like the lips that were forcing hers apart in a kiss that was years too adult for her lied-about worldly experience.

Her small hands were against his shirtfront, pushing. She tried to turn her face aside. “Ple … please,” she choked out when she managed to escape his devouring mouth for a few seconds.

His head was spinning. She tasted like the finest French champagne. She felt like heaven against him. She was soft and warm and delicately scented, and she aroused him as no other woman ever had in his whole life.

She’d had men. She bragged about it. But as sanity came back in a cold rush, he became aware of her nervous hands on his chest, of her whispered, frantic plea. He lifted his head and looked point-blank into her wide, soft green eyes. And he knew then, knew for certain, that she’d never had a man in her young life.

“Stand still!” he bit off when she tried to move her hips away from the press of his.

The urgency in his tone stilled her. She swallowed, hard, and swallowed again, while he slowly moved back from her, his hands clenched as he turned away. A visible shudder went through his straight back.

She barely registered it. She was shaking. She leaned back against the barn wall, her arms crossed over her breasts. They felt oddly tight and swollen. She felt swollen someplace else, too, but she didn’t know why. She should have listened more carefully in health class instead of reading books on archaeology while the teacher droned on and on about contraception, and the clinical details. Boring. Theory and practice, she decided, were sometimes unrelated, it seemed.

After a minute, Grange drew in a long, steadying breath, and turned back to Peg.

She couldn’t meet his eyes. She was flushed and nervous and shattered.

Her vulnerability took the edge off his temper. He moved back to her, cupped her oval face in his big, warm hands and forced her eyes to meet his.

“You little liar,” he chided, but he was smiling. He didn’t even seem to be mad.

She swallowed once more.

He bent and kissed her eyelids shut, tasting salty tears. “Don’t cry,” he murmured tenderly. “You’re safe.”

Her lips trembled. The caress was out of her experience. It was so much more poignant than the hard, insistent kiss that had come without respect or tenderness. This was a world away from that.

Her hands flattened against his soft flannel shirt, feeling the muscle and warmth and heavy heartbeat under it. She savored the feel of his lips on her skin.

“And now we know that making false claims and being aggressive can lead to misunderstandings, don’t we?” he murmured.

“Yes, well, we should have paid more attention in health class instead of covertly reading archaeology journals,” she said unsteadily.

He lifted his head. “Archaeology?”

She managed a weak smile. “I like to dig in the dirt. Planting things, digging up artifacts, it’s sort of similar, isn’t it?”

He laughed softly. “If you say so.”

She searched his eyes, feeling vulnerable. “You’re not mad?”

He shook his head. “Ashamed, a bit, though.”

“Why? It was my fault,” she pointed out bluntly. “I was really out of line. I’m sorry.”

He sighed. “Me, too.”

She peered up at him. “You still want to take me to the ball, don’t you?” she worried aloud.

His eyes narrowed. “More than anything,” he replied, and his voice was like deep velvet.

She flushed. She smiled. “Okay!”

He kissed her nose. “Get out of here. I’ve got to check on my heifer.”

“Cow,” she corrected. “She’s a cow, now that she’s a mother.”

His eyebrows arched.

“Sorry.”

He chuckled. “I have to check on my cow,” he corrected.

She grinned and started to leave.

“Peg.”

She turned. Her name on his lips had a magical sound.

“My father was a minister,” he said quietly, and watched her flush as she recalled the things she’d spouted off to him.

“Oh, gosh,” she groaned.

“He wasn’t a fanatic,” he added. “But he had a very solid take on what life should be, as opposed to what other people thought was permissible. He said that the only thing that separated human beings from animals was the nobility of spirit that went with respect for all life. Religion, he said, along with the arts, was the foundation of any civilization. When those two things fell, so did society.”

She searched his face. “One of my archaeological journals talks about the Egyptian civilization,” she said, moving back to him. “The arts went first, followed by the religion that had been practiced for centuries. Or like Rome, when it absorbed so many other cultures and nationalities and they couldn’t mix, so they ended up dividing the nation and it fell to internal conflict.”

He smiled. “You should go to college and study anthropology.”

“Chance would be a fine thing.”

“Jason Pendleton endows scholarships at several universities. If you really wanted to go, he’d send you.”

She flushed. “Wow! You think so?”

“I do.”

She grimaced. “Well, there’s that living in coed dorms thing,” she said reluctantly.

That was when he remembered their talk on that subject earlier, before she’d claimed experience she didn’t have. He should have remembered that while she was making her outspoken claims. A woman who didn’t want to live in a coed dorm obviously wouldn’t approve of sleeping around. He’d forgotten.

He touched her hair. “You could live off campus.”

She looked up at him, searching his dark eyes. “Who’d take care of you and Dad?”

He felt a jolt in his heart. It hadn’t occurred to him until then how well she took care of him. Freshly washed linen on his bed, dusted surfaces, little treats tucked into his saddlebags when he went riding the fence line, his coat always prominent in the front of the closet so that he had easy access to it.

“You spoil me,” he said after a minute, and he wasn’t smiling. “It isn’t wise. I’ve lived hard most of my life in the military. I don’t want to get soft.”

“That won’t ever happen,” she assured him. “You have that same refined roughness that Hannibal was supposed to have when he fought Scipio Africanus, the famous Roman general, in the Punic Wars.”

He blinked. “You know that, and you don’t recognize the names of Patton and Rommel?” he exclaimed.

She shrugged. “You like modern military history. I like ancient history.” She grinned. “One of Hannibal’s strategies was to throw clay pots of poisonous snakes onto the decks of enemy ships. I’ll bet the crew jumped like grasshoppers to get into the water,” she countered.

“Bad girl,” he said, shaking a finger at her. He pursed his sensual lips, still a little swollen from the hard contact with hers. “On the other hand, that’s not a bad strategy even for modern warfare.”

“Oh, it would never do,” she replied. “Groups of herpetology advocates would march in the streets to protest the inhumane treatment of the snakes.”

He burst out laughing. “You know, I can believe that. We live in interesting times, as the Chinese would put it.”

She raised both eyebrows.

“An old Chinese curse. ‘May you live in interesting times.’ It means, in dangerous ones.”

“I see.”

He sighed, smiling as he studied her face. She wasn’t pretty, but she had regular features and beautiful green eyes and a very kissable mouth. He stared at it without wanting to. “No more teasing,” he said unexpectedly. “I have a low boiling point and you’re not ready for what might happen.”

She started to protest, but decided against it. She grimaced. “Rub it in.”

He moved forward, and took her by the shoulders. “It wasn’t a complaint,” he said, choosing his words. “Look, I don’t indulge. I was never a rounder. I don’t like men who treat women like disposable objects, and there are a lot of them in the modern world.”

“In other words, you think people should get married first,” she translated, and then flushed, because that sounded like she wanted him to propose. She did, but she didn’t want to be blunt about it.

He shifted a little. “Marriage is something I’ll eventually warm to, but not now. I’m about to be involved in a dangerous operation. I can’t afford to have my mind someplace else once lead starts flying, okay?”

Her stomach clenched. She didn’t want to think about the possibility that he might get hurt and she wouldn’t be there to nurse him. She wouldn’t think about worst-case scenarios. She wouldn’t!

“Don’t go getting nervous,” he chided. “I’m an old hand at tactics and, not to blow my own horn too much, I’m good at it. That’s why General Machado has me leading the assault.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “Dad thinks you have great skills at leadership. He said it was a shame you got forced out of the military.”

He shrugged. “I believe, like my father did, that things happen for a reason, and that people come into your life at the right time, for a purpose.”

She smiled gently. “Me, too.”

He touched her soft mouth with his forefinger. “I’m glad that you came into mine,” he said, his voice deep and soft. He drew back.” But we’re just friends, for now. Got that?”

She sighed. “Should I get a refund on my prophylactics, then?” she asked outrageously.

He burst out laughing, shook his head and walked away.

“Is that a ‘no’?” she called after him.

He threw up a hand and kept walking.

She grinned.

The day of the Cattleman’s Ball, she was so nervous that she burned the biscuits at breakfast. It was the first time since she started cooking, at the age of twelve, that she’d done that.

“I’m so sorry!” she apologized to her dad and Grange.

“One misstep in months isn’t a disaster, kid,” Grange teased. “The eggs and bacon are perfect, and we probably eat too much bread as it is.”

“Frankenbread,” Ed muttered.

They both looked at him with raised eyebrows.

He cleared his throat. “A lot of the grains are genetically modified these days, and they won’t label what is and what isn’t. Doesn’t matter much. Pollen from the modified crops gets airborne and lands on nonmodified crops. I guess those geniuses in labs don’t realize that pollen travels.”

“What’s wrong with genetic modification?” Grange asked.

“I’ve got a documentary. I’ll loan it to you,” Ed said grimly. “People shouldn’t mess around with the natural order of things. There’s rumors that they’re even going to start doing it with people, in ‘in vitro’ fertilization, to change hair and eye color, that sort of thing.” He leaned forward. “I also heard that they’re combining human and animal genes in labs.”

“That part’s true,” Grange told him. “They’re studying ways to modify genetic structure so that they can treat genetic diseases.”

Ed glared at him. He pointed his finger at the younger man. “You wait. They’ll have human beings with heads of birds and jackals and stuff, just like those depictions in Egyptian hieroglyphs! You think the Egyptians made those things up? I’ll bet you ten dollars to a nickel they were as advanced as we were, and they created such things!”

Peg got up and glanced around her worriedly.

“What are you doing?” Ed asked.

“Watching for people with nets,” she said. “Shhhhh!”

Grange burst out laughing. “Ed, that’s a pretty wild theory, you know.”

Ed flushed. “I guess I’m getting contaminated by Barbara Ferguson who owns Barbara’s Café in Jacobsville. She sits with me sometimes at lunch and we talk about stuff we see on alternative news websites.”

“Please consider that those websites are very much like tabloid newspapers,” Grange cautioned. “I do remember that Barbara was saying that electrical equipment could sustain an electromagnetic pulse by being stored in a Leyden jar. It’s a Faraday cage,” he explained. “She was very upset when I corrected her, but I pulled it up on my iPhone and showed her the scientific reference. She quoted a source that was totally uninformed.”

“Dang. I guess I’ll have to toss my Leyden jar, then,” Ed said with twinkling eyes, and grinned.

“If you can build one, let me know,” Grange requested.

“Don’t look at me,” Ed replied. “I took courses in animal husbandry, not physics.”

“I flunked physics my first three weeks in the class in high school, and had to transfer to biology.” Peg sighed. “I loved physics. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around it.”

“I took courses in college,” Grange said. “I made good grades, but I loved political science more.”

“You might end up in Machado’s government,” Ed mused. “As a high official. Maybe Supreme Commander of the Military.”

Grange chuckled. “I’ve thought about that. Plenty of opportunity to retool the government forces and make good changes in policy.”

Peg felt her heart drop. That would mean he might not come home from South America, even after the assault, if it was successful. She might never see him again. She studied him covertly. He was the most important thing in her life. She hadn’t slept well since that unexpected, passionate kiss in the barn. He wanted her. She knew that. He hadn’t been able to hide it. But he wasn’t in the market for a wife, and he didn’t do affairs.

Her sadness might have been palpable, because he suddenly turned his head and looked straight into her eyes. There was a jolt like lightning striking her. She flushed and dragged her gaze away as quickly as she could, to avoid tipping off her father that things were going on behind his back.

Her father was pretty sensitive. He looked from one to the other, but he didn’t say a word.

Later, though, he cornered Peg before she went into her room to start dressing for the ball.

“What’s going on between you and Grange?” he asked quietly.

She sighed. “Nothing, I’m afraid. His father was a minister and he doesn’t sleep around.”

Ed, shocked, let out a sudden burst of laughter. “You’re kidding.”

She held up both hands. “Hey, I’m just the messenger. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t … well, indulge. He thinks people should get married first. But he doesn’t want to marry anybody.”

Ed’s expression lightened. “Well!” Grange went up very high on his respected list.

“So he’s taking me to a ball but not to a motel afterward, in case you were worried, I mean,” she added with twinkling eyes.

He shrugged. “I’m out of step,” he confessed. “I don’t know how to live in this world anymore.”

“I guess you and I live in the best place for dinosaurs,” Peg pointed out. “We have plenty of company.”

He grinned. “Yes, and we all live in the past. Look at the town square, all decked out for Christmas, with lights and holly and Santa Claus and his reindeer.”

“With decorated trees in every public and private office, too,” she added, laughing. “I love Christmas.”

“So does Gracie Pendleton,” Ed reminded her. “She’s got their place in San Antonio decked out like a light show, and the ranch here is sparkling with seasonal color as well.”

“I’m going to be sparkling tonight, in my new borrowed designer evening gown,” she said. “I had the beauticians teach me how to do my hair, and I’ve got Mama’s pearls. I thought I’d wear them.” Her face was sad. Her mother had died five years past. They both still missed her.

“She loved parties,” Ed recalled with a sad smile. “But only occasionally. She was like me, a misfit who never belonged anywhere. Except with me.”

She hugged him. “You’ve still got me.”

“Yes, and you’ve still got me.” He hugged her back, and then let her go. “I hope it’s the best night of your life.”

She smiled with breathless anticipation. “I think it might be.”

The gown was silver, with black accents. It draped across her pert, firm breasts from one shoulder, leaving the other arm bare. It was ankle length, with a tight waist and flaring skirt, in a clingy fabric that outlined every soft curve. The bodice was bow-shaped across with the drape from her upper arm diagonally to her other breast. The effect was exquisite, displaying her creamy skin to its best advantage.

The pearls were a single strand, off-white, with matching stud pearl earrings on her small ears. She put up her pale blond hair in a bun with little tendrils escaping, and a set of pearl combs, artificial but pretty, to keep it up. She used a minimum of makeup, just powder and lipstick, no eyeliner or messy mascara. Fortunately the nice boutique owner had even loaned her a pair of pumps to wear with the gown. Peg’s shoes were mostly sneakers and an old pair of scuffed loafers. Her budget didn’t run to fancy clothing.

Finished, she looked in the mirror and beamed at her reflection. She was never going to be beautiful, but she had good teeth and pretty lips and eyes. Maybe that would be enough. She hoped she could compete with all the really pretty women who would be at the ball. But most of them were married, thank goodness, so there shouldn’t be too much competition there.

She had a nice coat that her father had bought her last winter, but when she looked at it in the hall closet she grimaced. It was a shocking pink, hardly the thing to wear with a couture gown. It was very cold outside today, with a high wind. She’d need something to keep her warm.

In desperation, she went through her own closet, looking for something that might do. It was useless. Except for a sweat jacket and a short and very old leather jacket, there wasn’t anything here that matched her uptown outfit.

While she was agonizing over her lack of accessories, there was a knock at the front door. She went to answer it when she remembered that her father had gone out to the barn to check on the new calf and its mother, Bossie.

When she opened the door, she got a shock. It was one of Jason Pendleton’s cowboys with a garment bag over his shoulder.

He grinned. “Got something for you, Miss Peg,” he said, offering it. “Mrs. Pendleton said you’d need a coat to go with that dress, so she’s loaning you one of hers. She said it might be just a little long, but she thinks it will do nicely.”

Peg was almost in tears. “Oh, it’s so kind of her!”

The cowboy, an elderly sort, smiled. “You sure do look pretty.”

She flushed. “Thank you!” She took the bag and opened it. The coat was black, long, with a mink collar. Real mink. She stroked it with breathless delight. “Please tell Mrs. Pendleton that I’ll take great care of it. And thank her very much for me!”

“She said you’re welcome. You have a good time tonight.”

“Thanks,” she said, beaming at him.

He grinned and went back to the ranch pickup he’d driven over in.

Peg went back inside and tried on the coat, with its fine silky lining. She looked at herself in the mirror and couldn’t believe that the pretty woman there was actually plain Peg. She just shook her head.

“I feel like Cinderella,” she whispered. “Just like her!”

Only she was hoping against hope that her carriage wouldn’t turn into a pumpkin and that her gorgeous clothing wouldn’t melt into rags at the stroke of midnight.

3

Grange came home to dress about a half hour before it was time to leave. Peg stayed in her bedroom. She didn’t want him to see her until they were ready to go. She heard the shower running upstairs and sat down to watch the news on her small television while she waited for him. The news was too depressing, so she turned over to a documentary on the history channel instead. It was about the development of weapons, and how the spear of Paleo-hunters turned into the bow because of the speed of whitetail deer—which was the anthropologists’ take on the innovation.

She was so engrossed in it that she forgot the time. A tap on her door startled her. She glanced at the clock and grimaced as she turned off the television and ran to answer the door.

She opened it, flushed and pretty with breathlessness. Grange, in a dark suit with a bow tie, stared at her with flattering speechlessness.

“Will I do?” she asked hopefully.

“Honey, you’ll more than do,” he said in a soft, deep tone which, combined with the unexpected endearment, almost burst her heart with joy. He smiled. “Ready to go?”

“Yes!” She grabbed her coat and started to slip it on.

Grange got behind her and helped, letting her slide her arms into the silky fabric underlay of the rich wool coat with its mink collar.

“Mrs. Pendleton sent it down,” she said. “I guess she knew that I wouldn’t have a coat fancy enough to go with this dress.”

He didn’t let go. His big hands contracted on her shoulders.” That was nice of her.”

“Yes. She’s a sweet person.”

“So are you.” As he spoke, his thumbs eased the coat back. His head bent and he kissed her, tenderly, right on her neck where it joined her shoulder. He felt her shiver, heard her shocked intake of breath. “You taste like candy,” he whispered, and his lips opened on the soft, warm flesh.

She leaned her head back, her breathing unsteady, her eyes closed. His hands moved to her waist. He turned her, ever so gently, and his mouth traveled to her throat, past the pearls, down, slowly, down to the very edge of the fabric over her breasts, and moved there in a sensual caress that shocked a defenseless little moan from her throat.

“I could pull the bodice down,” he whispered, his head spinning, “and slide my lips over your breasts until I found that sweet hardness hiding there.”

She shuddered. She arched back, helpless, hopeful, breathless with anticipation as he began to move the softly shaped fabric out of his way. She felt his mouth open, felt the warm moistness of it pressing against the swell of her breast. She moaned. Her body trembled as she arched again, pleading for relief from the tension that grew to unbearable need in seconds.

“What the hell,” he ground out.

His hand came up and found the zipper, eased it down. He pulled the fabric away and looked at the rosy, hard tips of her pretty breasts for just an instant before his mouth went down and covered one of them.

She cried out helplessly, which only made him more hungry. His mouth opened on the sweet flesh, his tongue traced the nipple, dragging against it to produce sensations Peg had never felt in her life.

Her nails bit into the fine fabric of his suit jacket. She was spinning like a top, burning, aching with desire that she’d never even dreamed of before this.

Somewhere a truck engine sounded loud even in the heated silence of Peg’s room. She heard a door slam.

“It’s … Dad!” she exclaimed hoarsely.

He barely heard her. He lifted his head, his eyes riveted to the stiff nipple. He cupped her breast and bent his head again to explore the soft flesh with his mouth. “Dad?” he whispered.

“Dad,” she managed to say, and moaned.

His hand contracted gently around her soft breast. “Damn.”

“Damn,” she echoed with a shaky laugh.

He lifted his head with a steadying, deep sigh. He held the bodice away from her breasts, smiling warmly at the faint red marks he’d left there in his passion. “Beautiful,” he whispered.

She flushed. Her body felt stiff and swollen. She wondered if his did, too.

With a rueful expression, he reached behind her and reluctantly zipped up the dress, hiding what he’d done to her. Fortunately no marks showed over the bodice.

She looked at him with awe.

He touched her soft mouth with his forefinger. It wasn’t quite steady. “We’d better go,” he said huskily.

She nodded.

He went out of the room and she came out behind him, retrieving the small evening bag the designer had also loaned her from her dresser on the way.

They were in the hall on the way to the front door when Ed came in. He looked from one of them to the other. They looked oddly flushed, but quite presentable.