He carried her upstairs and stood her beside her bed.
“I think I’m nervous,” she said.
Jack swallowed. “Me, too.” He ran his hands up and down her arms, aching to feel her flesh but determined to go slowly.
“You?” she asked.
“I’ve never made love with a pregnant woman before.” He splayed one hand over her stomach. “She’ll be all right, won’t she, if we’re careful?”
Right then Lisa would have walked through fire for Jack Wilder. “She’ll be fine.”
“Do you mind if I turn on the lamp?” Jack asked.
If she could have thought of a way to see him in the dark, she would have said no, that she wanted the light off. But she desperately wanted to see him. If that meant he would be able to see her, she would try not to think about it. Instead of answering, she turned to the nightstand and switched on the lamp herself. The room filled with a soft buttery glow.
“But I warn you,” she told him nervously, “what you’re about to see is not a pretty sight.”
“If you’re talking about this,” he said placing his hand over her belly again, “I’ll have to disagree. I’ve told you that before.”
Yes, he had told her before that she wasn’t fat, that her extra bulk was caused by the miracle of life. That he liked the way she looked. Still, he had yet to see her without her clothes. He might yet change his mind. But when he started kissing her again, she forgot to worry about what his reaction might be.
“You might not like what you see beneath my clothes, either,” he said.
“Oh—” she undid the first button on his shirt “—I can pretty much guarantee I will.”
“I hope so.” He let her continue unbuttoning his shirt while he nibbled his way across her face and down her neck. “I want to please you. I want to make you feel all the things I feel when you kiss me.”
Lisa’s fingers fumbled at every nibble. Maybe it wouldn’t matter that she wasn’t any good at this. He seemed to be good enough for both of them. And she had a feeling she was soon going to be extremely grateful for that.
“There’s another reason I call you cupcake.” With both hands he stroked gently down to her breasts, then over her abdomen. “Because I can’t wait to peel you out of your wrapping and gobble you up.”
Who would have thought, Lisa wondered, that talk of cupcakes could make a woman’s knees turn to water?
Jack caught her as she swayed against him, and then he did what he’d been wanting to do. He peeled off her shirt and felt her bare flesh beneath his fingers. It was every bit as soft and silky as he’d imagined. Her bra was pale blue lace, almost too pretty to be covered up all the time. He had no trouble getting it off her.
“So beautiful,” he whispered, stroking the peaks of her breasts.
Lisa sucked in a sharp breath. The sensation of his fingers on her nipples struck tingling heat straight to her core. His name left her lips on a breath. Then the room spun and the floor tilted away. It took her a moment to realize that Jack had picked her up in his arms and was taking them both down onto the bed.
In seconds he had shed her of the rest of her clothes. He did it so fast and so easily that there was no time for her to be embarrassed or self-conscious before he was stroking her bare belly.
“This is…amazing. It’s harder, firmer than I expected. And your skin—it’s so delicate to begin with, it’s a miracle it can stretch so much. Does it hurt?”
He was so sweetly, wonderfully absorbed in her belly that Lisa felt her heart turn over. “No, it doesn’t hurt.”
“She’s quiet in there.” He bent down and pressed his lips to the spot just below her navel. “You just sleep in here, you hear? You’re too young for what your mama and I are about to do.”
Lisa smiled while her eyes misted over. He would make such a wonderful father—if only he would let himself love a woman. He said it was because he simply didn’t have it in him. He thought he wasn’t capable of that kind of love. But he was wrong. She wished she knew a way to convince him, but then it might sound as if she was trying to talk him into loving her. She couldn’t do that to him. He trusted her with knowledge that was personal and private. She could not, would not do anything to make him think she might betray that trust. Just as he wouldn’t betray the trust she’d given him by confessing that she was a failure at satisfying a man. He hadn’t believed her any more than she believed him.
When he took off his shirt and she pressed her hands against that hard-muscled chest, he made a sound deep in his throat, half growl, half groan, that sent a rush of pleasure through her almost as great as when he stroked her. As they touched each other, learned each other’s shapes and textures, he let her know in a dozen different ways that he very much liked her touch.
And she liked his. He made her feel things she’d never felt before. Such pleasure, such joy. With words and touches, kisses and small love bites that shot jolts of electricity through her, he loved her, encouraged her. For the first time in her life Lisa reveled in the sheer power and excitement of being a woman.
But she wanted more. She wanted it all, wanted him inside her. “Jack.”
“Yes.”
She was gratified to realize that he was as breathless as she.
“Like this,” he added. He rolled to his back and lifted her astride his hips.
“Oh…” She didn’t wait, couldn’t. “Yes.” With her hands braced on his chest, she lowered herself and took him in.
Jack held his breath against the need to slam into her, but this was too good to rush. As he looked up at her rising above him, her face tense with pleasure, her full gorgeous breasts filling his hands, her womb expanded with the miracle of life, he knew he’d never seen anything more beautiful or more erotic in his life.
Then she lifted herself up slowly, so slowly, and slid back down. Then again. And again. Until he thought he might die of sheer ecstasy. That wasn’t a word he normally used, but it was the only word in his mind when he felt her inner muscles contract as she shot over the edge.
His control snapped. He gripped her hips and thrust up so hard and high that his back came off the mattress. He thought he cried out her name as he pumped his life force into her, but his mind shut down, so he couldn’t be sure. It didn’t matter. Only the pleasure mattered, and the woman who so generously shared it with him.
Lisa lay on her side where she had collapsed, half on, half off Jack. If she didn’t move, he was going to feel the tears she couldn’t seem to stop.
“No,” he said when she tried to push away. “Don’t—you’re crying.” He eased her onto her back and raised over her. “What’s wrong. Did I hurt you? Is it the baby?”
“No, no,” she said in a rush. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m sorry. Nothing’s ever been more right. I mean that, Jack. I don’t know why I’m crying.” But she did know. She was crying because she knew now, without a shadow of doubt, that she had done the unthinkable. She had fallen in love with him.
“Well, then.” He nuzzled her cheeks and sipped the moisture away. “I guess you know this means I won the argument, hands down.”
At his smug teasing tone, she sniffed away the last of her tears. “What argument?”
“The one about whether or not you’re any good at this.”
Lisa smiled. “I guess I was, huh?”
An intense look came into his eyes. “If you were any better, I don’t think I would have survived.”
Twice more they made love. Sometime during the night Jack must have turned off the lamp, for when Lisa awoke, the room was dark. The glowing numbers on the digital bedside clock told her it was nearly three in the morning.
The night had been a revelation to Lisa. She’d never dreamed she was capable of that kind of uninhibited response to a man. Never dreamed a man could be so gentle, yet sometimes fierce with it.
She’d never dreamed, even during those first heady days with Roger, before their troubles began, that she could love a man so deeply that she ached with it.
He slept beside her now, his breathing deep and even, his strong arms enveloping her in warmth and security. “Oh, Jack,” she whispered. “You’re so wrong about yourself. You are the most loving man I’ve ever dreamed of. I love you.”
But Jack wasn’t asleep. When she’d started talking, he had almost answered her. Then, as she went on, he was incapable of answering. She couldn’t mean what she’d said. She couldn’t love him. Not really.
But what if she did? If ever there was a woman he might be willing to take a chance on, a woman who could teach him how to love, it was this one curled up in his embrace.
It would never work. She couldn’t afford to gamble her future, her happiness, the welfare of her child, on whether or not he learned what it was to love a woman.
He could promise her loyalty. She would never have to worry about other women. He could promise her security, and more nights like tonight. He could make her laugh, keep her warm, take care of her and her child. He could give her his name, his home, his family. He could give her more children. He could give her everything he was, everything he had inside him.
Would those things be enough for Lisa if he never found that illusive love inside himself to give her? Or would she one day grow discontent to live without the love she deserved?
The deeper her breathing grew, the greater his confusion. What was he supposed to do—let her walk out of his life?
When he thought of the future, he couldn’t imagine it without her. And that terrified him. Because she would leave him. Even though she thought she loved him, she would leave him. She wasn’t looking for a permanent man in her life; she’d said so often enough. The women in his life always left him.
Lisa awoke with the sun streaming in through the window. That she was alone in her bed did not surprise her—he had a ranch to run, after all, and couldn’t loll around in bed all morning. But she couldn’t help the ache that formed around her heart at waking up without him. It was a crippling ache, for she knew that Jack didn’t return her feelings. Yet it was a good ache, because it felt absolutely wonderful to be in love.
Now all she had to do was find a way to survive—if she couldn’t convince Jack to trust her with his heart.
None of the men were coming in for lunch. Jack had left her a note saying they would all be out repairing fences and not to expect them until supper. He had addressed the note to Cupcake. Lisa held it to her heart and smiled. Never mind the dull ache in her lower back. She felt as if she could dance on air. It was amazing what a few good orgasms could do for a woman.
But now that she had an entire day to herself, she intended to clean the house. Belinda and her family were due back in two days, and Lisa thought of her earlier resolve. She wanted them to find the place as clean when they returned as it was when they left.
She gathered a few cleaning supplies from the pantry and carried them out into the kitchen. She set them on the counter next to the sink, then turned—and stifled a shriek.
“Hello, Lisa.”
Her heart jumped right up into her throat. “Roger. How did you get in?”
“I hope you don’t mind. The back door was unlocked.”
“So you just let yourself into someone else’s house?”
“I’m sorry. I missed you so much I couldn’t stay away any longer.”
Lisa nearly choked. He was putting on his sincere act, obviously thinking she still suffered from amnesia. She wondered just how far he would go.
“Please say you’re ready to come home with me, darling. I can’t bear the thought of going home without you. Shall I help you pack?”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Oh, but you must, sweetheart. You have no idea how lonely I’ve been these past days without you. If not for your amnesia, I know you would have been desolate without me. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that it took me so long to get here.”
Lisa had heard enough. With a sarcastic smile, she started clapping.
Roger blinked in confusion. “What are you doing?”
“Applauding your performance. You won’t win any Oscars with it, but someone who doesn’t know you might buy it for a few minutes.”
His gaze sharpened. There was recognition in her eyes. She knew him now.
The temperature wasn’t quite forty, but Jack had managed to work up a sweat wrestling with stubborn wire torn down by a herd of elk. With his hands occupied, he turned his head and wiped his forehead against his shoulder, then rubbed at the nagging itch on his left ear.
“What’s eating you?” Trey demanded.
Jack grunted and took another hitch with the come-along to stretch the wire tighter. “Nothing’s eating me.”
“The hell you say. Hold it there.” Trey held a staple in place over the wire and hammered it into the fence post. “One minute you’re all dopey-eyed and grinning like a possum in the corn crib, the next you look like you just ruined your best boots.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“Hmm.” Trey hammered in another staple. He knew a man with woman trouble when he saw one. “So how’s Lisa?”
“What do you mean?” Jack snapped.
Trey nearly laughed out loud. “Nothing. Just asking. Has she remembered anything else yet? Anything about that guy who showed up claiming to be her husband?”
Jack grunted again.
Trey noted that there’d been a lot of that going on this morning.
“Ex-husband,” Jack muttered.
“What?”
“He’s her ex-husband.”
“She remembered that?”
Jack scratched his ear again. “She remembered everything. Just boom, and it all came back to her. Damnedest thing.”
“Hold that there.” Trey stapled the wire to the next post, the one nearest Jack. “Okay, ease off. I’m taking a break.”
“Come on, we’ll never get finished if you keep taking breaks,” Jack complained.
Trey taunted him with a grin. “In a hurry to get back to the house, are you?”
Jack’s only answer was a snarl. Wiping his forehead with the back of his gloved hand, he headed for the jug of water in his rig.
“So, she’s not married, huh?”
“No,” Jack replied tersely.
Trey chuckled. “Oh, I like this, bro. You find out she’s not married, then you start acting all strange.
Yep, I’d have to say you’re hooked.”
“What do you mean, hooked?”
“Okay, pop-quiz time. Do you think about her all the time?”
Jack frowned. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Some.”
“Some?”
“All right, damn you, yes, I think about her all the time. So what?”
“Do you make up excuses to go see her?”
Jack just glared at him.
Trey whooped. “I’ll take that as a yes. Does your heart pound when you’re around her?”
Jack’s gaze narrowed.
“Uh-huh. When you kiss her—you have kissed her, haven’t you? Never mind. You’ve kissed her. Does she make your knees go weak?”
“Low blood sugar. That’s all it was.”
“Low blood sugar, my aunt Fanny.”
“You don’t have an aunt Fanny.”
“You’re in love, big brother. And bite me on the nose if it’s not the real thing this time. You’ve got that same dopey look in your eyes that Ace has had ever since Belinda showed up.”
Trey’s words startled any response right out of Jack. His heart began to beat triple time. Could it be true? Could he really be in love with Lisa?
“No.”
“No, what?” Trey demanded. “It’s not something you decide. It just happens.”
“So says the world’s expert on love, right?”
“Hey, I know it when I see it in other people. You knew it about Ace and Belinda before they did. Why can’t I know it about you?”
“Forget it. I don’t have what it takes to love a woman the way Ace loves Belinda.”
“What kind of bull is that? You just never met the right woman before, that’s all.”
Jack opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Could it be that simple? Could he simply have been waiting all these years to find the one woman he trusted enough? The one woman who would truly, sincerely love him back?
“Well, hell…” Trey said with trepidation.
“What?”
“I just realized you’ve been scratching your ear for about the last ten minutes.” Trey looked out over the range toward headquarters five miles away as if trying to see whatever it was that was wrong that, inexplicable as it was, made Jack’s ear itch. “Was Stoney feeling all right this morning?”
Jack barely heard him. Everything inside him shut down and filled with dread. “Lisa!”
Jack whipped out his cell phone, but knew what he’d see on the screen as he did. The screen read No Service. They were in a hollow where the signal didn’t reach.
For the first time in either of their lives, Jack and Trey left their tools and equipment lying on the ground. Trey barely made it into the rig before Jack hit the gas. Small rocks, grass, mud and slush from the melting snow flew from beneath the tires.
Jack swore under his breath and tried to tell himself he was overreacting. It didn’t help. He didn’t care if she had merely stubbed her toe, but something was wrong. All he could think of was the baby. And the fact that it was too damned early. What if their love-making last night had harmed the baby? Jack would never forgive himself.
The terrain simply would not permit him to drive fast enough to suit him until he cleared the pasture and made it to the road. Hell, they were all the damn way on the other damn side of the damn ranch. It would take forever to get home.
“It was all an act,” Roger accused.
“It wasn’t an act. I did have amnesia,” Lisa told him. “But the doctor was right—it cleared up on its own. I want you to leave now.”
Roger saw his best chance slip through his fingers. If he could have gotten her home and safely married before her memory returned, he’d have had it made. Now it was too late for that, but he still refused to give up. There was more than just a partnership in the firm at stake, and she knew it, the bitch. His entire future was on the line.
For months he’d played the fool for her, trying to convince her to marry him again. She had rebuffed him at every turn, yet he had persisted. He hadn’t known how he was going to change her mind, he’d only known that he must. So he’d started planning their wedding. He’d wanted her willing, even if pressured.
Now he would take her any way he could, and civility be damned. Because if he didn’t get his hands on the extra quarter of a million dollars that came as a bonus with the partnership, he was a dead man. He was in too deep with the gambling syndicate. They weren’t the type of organization that would send him a polite past-due notice.
No, first they would break his thumbs. The next time they would get serious.
Lisa was going to save him from that.
“I’m leaving, all right.” He grabbed her by the arm. “And so are you.”
Stunned that he would actually lay hands on her, Lisa tried to jerk free, but his hold was too tight. It felt as though his fingers were pressing all the way to the bone in her forearm. “Let go of me!” she cried. “Roger, you’re hurting me!”
“I’m going to do a lot more than hurt you if you don’t come with me peacefully and do what I tell you.” He pulled a notepad and pen from his inside jacket pocket and tossed it onto the table in front of her.
Lisa had a brief flash of hysteria. Only Roger would show up for a kidnapping in an Italian suit, complete with notepad and a two-hundred-dollar fountain pen.
Then sanity returned and she glared her hatred at him. “If you think I’m going anywhere with you, you’re out of your mind. You’ll never get away with this, Roger. You can’t make me marry you.”
“That’s up to you, of course. I can always simply kill you and forge the marriage license. So tragic, they’ll all say. They finally found their way back to each other, and with their first child on the way, when some stranger shot her.” He slipped a small chrome pistol from the pocket of his slacks and let it dangle threateningly at his side. “Or maybe I’ll just drug you. What a nice docile wife you’ll make.”
Lisa’s blood turned to ice in her veins. Terror locked the breath in her throat. He meant it. The truth was in his eyes. He would kill her.
She swung at him with her fist. Pain shot up her arm. Blood sprayed from his nose.
“You bitch!” He backhanded her across the cheek. “One more move and I’ll hit you in that grotesque mound you call a belly.”
“No!” She covered her abdomen with her free arm. “You wouldn’t hurt your own child.”
“I’ll do whatever I have to do.” He aimed the gun at her stomach.
Dear God, he must have lost his mind. She’d never been afraid of him before. But now, standing in the Wilders’ kitchen, she found herself looking into the eyes of a madman and was terrified.
Roger dictated the note and, with a hand that shook despite her best efforts to conceal her fear, Lisa wrote. Then he dragged her out the front door toward his waiting BMW.
They were halfway down the walk toward the car when Stoney, whistling “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” came around the corner of the house carrying a bucket of eggs. He stopped and eyed Roger, and the way Roger held her arm.
“Miss Lisa?”
Roger maintained his grip on her and made sure she saw him slip his hand into the pocket that held his gun.
Oh, God, she couldn’t let anything happen to Stoney, but maybe there was a way to let him know something was wrong.
“Everything all right?” Stoney asked her.
“Sure, Stoney. This is my husband, Roger. He’s taking me home.” Her knees were knocking and her heart thundered. The wind sliced through her and made her shiver. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to make that ham like I promised, but there’s plenty of that shrimp casserole left over from last night. All you have to do is heat it up.”
“But—”
Roger cut him off. “We have to go, Lisa.” He tugged on her arm, pulling her down the sidewalk.
“Goodbye, Stoney,” she called. “Give my best to your wife.”
With narrowed eyes, Stoney watched them climb into the car and pull away from the house. Something was wrong. Bad wrong. Miss Lisa never made them any shrimp casserole. They’d had ham last night, best ham he’d ever had. And what was that business about his wife? Miss Lisa knew he didn’t have a wife.
Lordy, lordy, something was bad wrong, and he’d best be finding Jack and letting him know about it.
Jack and Trey were working on the north fence. That meant Stoney was the only one around. He would just go back to the bunkhouse and call Jack on that fancy cell phone of his and let him know something curious was up.
But just then things got curiouser. The driveway that led to the front of the house, where that fancy black car had been parked, circled back on itself and came out onto the main drive. From there, to leave the ranch, you turned right. That wasn’t what the black car did.
Inside that black car Lisa was trying to think of any way she could to keep her and her baby safe, but she knew that if Roger got her away from the Flying Ace, neither of them would ever be safe again. If he got her all the way to Denver—provided he didn’t kill her en route—she would never be free of him.
It was easy to tell herself that he couldn’t drug her without her cooperation, but she knew better. She had to eat. Slipping something into her food would be all too easy. She had to sleep. He could inject a drug into her before she could stop him.
Dear God, what was she going to do? She had to keep Roger on the ranch and give Jack time to find her.
That Jack would come for her she had no doubt. Stoney would find him and tell him something was wrong. The man was old, but he was smart, and he knew as well as she did what they’d had for supper the night before.
When Roger hit the end of the circle driveway and started to turn right toward the county highway, Lisa thought fast. “Don’t go that way.”
“Shut up.”
“All right.”
Roger hit the breaks so hard Lisa’s shoulder strap was the only thing that kept her from bouncing into the dash.
“Why do you not want me to turn right?” he demanded.
More shaken than she’d ever been in her life—even more than the night she’d stumbled upon the knife-wielding “burglar” in her home last year—Lisa struggled to concentrate. She couldn’t let him know how terrified she was. That would just become another weapon he would be able to use against her.
“Go ahead,” she told him. “In fact, please do. This ridiculous farce will be over that much sooner. We’ll meet the rest of the men coming back from town.”
“If we run into anyone, you just wave and I’ll keep driving.”
She managed a nod. “Whatever you say.”
He licked his lips nervously. That scared Lisa more than anything. She had never seen Roger nervous. Never seen him anything but completely self-assured.
“What’s to the left? And don’t lie to me, or I’ll make you sorry.”
She was already sorry. Sorrier than she could say about ever having met Roger Hampton. Except for the baby he’d given her. The baby he was threatening. The baby that was worth everything to her.
Roger gripped her already bruised arm and shook her. “Answer me.”
Lisa winced. “If you go left, you’ll find another road about two miles from here that veers off to the left. It cuts through some rocks and ravines and angles south.”
God, she’d done it now, she thought as Roger turned left. The side road was there just as she’d described it, but it led only to the family cemetery. What she would do when Roger figured that out, she had no idea. She was praying that Jack would come after her, but it might take a long time for Stoney to find him, then for Jack to find her.
Jack, please come. Please, Jack.
Jack barreled through the back door of the house frantically calling Lisa’s name, praying he was mistaken and that nothing was wrong.
“Lisa!”
No answer. He ran upstairs and searched every room. “Lisa! Lisa, answer me.”
The house was empty. He raced back downstairs, more frantic than ever. Where could she have gone?
“Jack!” Trey called from the kitchen.
“She—There’s a note.”
Jack took the piece of paper from Trey and felt the blood drain from his head.
“Jack,” it began, “I’ve gone home with my husband, where I belong. I’ll let you know where to send my things.”
Yes, he realized, her clothes and things had still been in her room upstairs.
For a second, no longer than that, he believed it. She had left him. When he finally thought he’d found the one woman he could trust, to whom he could give his heart, with whom he could share his life, she—
Then he swore. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t do that.
“Hey, man,” Trey said. “I’m real sorry, Jack.” Jack swore again. “She despised that bastard. She would never willingly go anywhere with him.”
“Then what…”
New fear gripped Jack by the throat. “He took her.”
“Kidnapped her?”
Stoney banged through the back door. “There you are. We got trouble. Miss Lisa left, but she was actin’ awful funny, talkin’ about shrimp and wives and all. I tried to call you, but you musta been down—”
“What about Lisa?” Jack demanded. “When did she leave? What did she say? Was she all right?”
“She said we should heat up last night’s shrimp for our supper.”
Jack nearly exploded in frustration. “I don’t give a damn about supper! What did she say about why she was leaving?”
“Jack,” Trey interrupted. “we didn’t have shrimp last night. We had ham.”
“So she was confused. Rattled.”
Trey held Jack’s gaze. “She’s never fixed us shrimp. She wasn’t rattled that much. Remember Stoney’s joke the first night she cooked for us, about never fixing shrimp casserole? My money says she knew exactly what she was saying.”
Stoney scratched the side of his nose. “That’s the way I figure it. An’ she said I was to tell my wife goodbye for her.”
“Your…” Jack squeezed his eyes shut. “Okay, she was trying to tell you something was wrong.” He headed for the door. “How long ago did they leave? Was he still driving that black BMW?”
“All I know is that it was shiny and black. Looked new. Left about five minutes ago. And that was real curious,” he added.
Jack was halfway out the door. “What was curious about it?” he demanded.
“They headed west.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“I know east from west. They headed west. I already called the sheriff,” Stoney added as Jack disappeared out the door.
“Damn.” Trey ran after his brother, but he was too late this time. Before he could catch up, Jack had jumped in the rig and was tearing out, headed west.