She was not cheating on him, Brady told himself firmly, the entire time he was outside taking care of the horses. And there was no reason to think that might be so. Kelsey wasn’t even all that interested in having a fling with him. She hadn’t had the time or the inclination to go after another man. Besides, they were married. The deed to her beloved family ranch was on the line. She wouldn’t do anything to screw that up.
But when he saw her run out of the house in a dress and high heels, looking pretty enough to pose for wedding pictures, he was no longer sure of anything.
His options were limited. He could deliver Dani’s computer to her, and then return home and sit here at the ranch and wait for Kelsey to come back. Or he could follow her and find out what she was up to tonight. Even before he emerged from the barn, Brady knew what he was going to do.
For a while, as the two of them drove the country roads, Brady was worried Kelsey might realize he was behind her. But she didn’t. And when she turned into the Gilded Lily and parked in front of the nicest restaurant in a thirty-mile radius and was helped out of her car by none other than a dark-haired man in a suit and tie, he understood why she had dressed up so much.
She was having a secret rendezvous!
Teeth gritted, Brady watched as his wife was escorted into the restaurant by her “date.” When they had disappeared inside, he guided his truck all the way into the parking lot. He didn’t know why he was so hurt. It wasn’t as if he and Kelsey were really man and wife. Brady just knew that he was hurt. But maybe that was his fault, too, he conceded. For not following through on what she had obviously wanted and making her his woman as well as his wife from the beginning.
The question was, was it too late to go back and do what he should have done on the very day they married?
“YOU’VE GOT TO RELAX, RAFE.” Kelsey smiled as he helped her into her seat.
“Sorry. I’m just so rusty at all this. I feel like I’m all thumbs.”
“Patricia is not going to mind if you eat your salad with your dinner fork and your dinner with your salad fork, or forget to put your napkin on your lap before your first sip of water.”
“But she will mind if I do something stupid like close her dress in the door,” Rafe said.
“I think you should just be yourself,” Kelsey soothed. Seeing how nervous Rafe still was, she reached over and took his hand in hers. “Honestly,” she said, staring deep into his eyes with as much confidence-inspiring intensity as she could, “everything is going to be fine. You’ll see.”
At the door there was a commotion. A shadow fell over them. Kelsey looked up to see Brady glaring at both of them. “So this is what you’re up to tonight,” he said grimly.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Kelsey said quickly, standing, too.
“Oh, isn’t it?” Brady volleyed back. He crossed his arms in front of him and his jaw hardened all the more.
“No,” Kelsey spelled out, just as plainly as her heart took on a rapid, thudding beat. “It is not.” She propped her hands on her hips and gave Brady a stern look. “And if you’ll calm down, and sit down, Rafe and I will explain.”
To Kelsey’s chagrin, Brady’s blue eyes turned even stormier. Up till now, Brady had always been so easygoing, even in the tensest situations. She hadn’t figured he had a jealous bone in his body. That showed how much she knew!
“The only explanation I want to hear from you is going to be at home,” Brady told her in a low tone that brooked no arguments. Brady took her by the elbow.
Kelsey shook off his grip and tilted her chin at him. “I’m not leaving here, Brady. Rafe and I have a date tonight—”
Looking as if he had just been pushed to the absolute limit, Brady stared at her. “And you see nothing wrong with dating him while you’re married to me?” he queried coolly.
Given the fact they had yet to exchange anything except a few heated kisses and a lot of empty promises? “As it happens, no, I don’t.”
Sensing trouble, Rafe stood, too.
His nervousness of just moments before gone, he looked at Brady like the calm, personable elementary school principal he was. “Brady, I think you should listen to her,” Rafe advised quietly.
“Oh, you do, do you?” Brady countered sarcastically as heads turned all around them, and all other conversation in the room ground to a halt as the diners gawked at the three of them.
“Yes,” Rafe replied urgently, on Kelsey’s behalf, beginning to sweat. “It’s all perfectly innocent.”
Brady shook his head and continued to look as if he longed to punch something.
“If you think that, you’re as messed up as she is….” Brady swore at Rafe in a low, furious voice.
The maître d’ hovered behind them, like the referee in a boxing ring. “Please, folks. No scenes.”
Brady turned around grimly. “Don’t worry. There isn’t going to be one,” he told the maître d’. “I’ve seen all I need to see.” Ignoring Kelsey altogether, he turned on his heel and walked out of the restaurant.
“YOU NEED TO GO AFTER HIM,” Rafe whispered as soon as Brady had bolted out the door.
Kelsey sat down at the table. She was so embarrassed her face felt as if it were on fire. She had always hated it when people underestimated her, or thought the worst of her, without first taking the time to try to understand what was going on with her. Her sisters had been doing it for years. When they weren’t jumping to conclusions, they were assuming she would fail at whatever she attempted. Only Brady had been different.
From the very moment they met, he had ignored what everyone else said about her, or thought about her, and accepted her for what and who she was. That was one of the reasons she had found herself willing to form a partnership with him, and also why she had begun falling in love with him.
But now he was like everyone else.
Automatically thinking the very worst of her.
And it hurt. A lot.
But maybe that was what she got, Kelsey thought, for opening up her heart to him, and making herself vulnerable.
Well, no more.
He was either going to have to clean up his act and go back to trusting her again or go back to wherever it was he had come from. And she was going to tell him that as soon as she caught up with him again.
Meanwhile, she had a vow of her own to keep. She looked at Rafe and smiled. “I promised you I would help you get over your jitters and I will. Now, let’s just sit here and have dinner and a nice conversation and I’ll tell you if I see any red flags about the way you intend to carry out your date with Patricia….”
As Kelsey had suspected, Rafe was not nearly as rusty as he thought.
He forgot to ask her if she wanted dessert before he consulted with the waiter, and he stepped on her toes several times when they were dancing after dinner, but all in all, he was fine. And a lot more confident at the end of their two-hour date than at the beginning of it. The two of them said good-night, and then, her stomach in knots as she thought about seeing Brady again, and probably continuing the fight that they had started but not really finished in the restaurant, Kelsey drove back to the ranch.
Brady’s truck was out front, but the ranch house was dark and silent. She went inside, wondering if he was already in bed for the night, even though it was barely ten o’clock, but he was nowhere to be found.
She went out to the barns and looked around. He wasn’t there, either.
Kelsey went back to the house and sat down to wait.
One hour passed, then another. Finally, around midnight, she heard the sound of an approaching rider on horseback. She looked out and saw Brady ride into the yard next to the stables. He swung down off the horse, and then proceeded to take off the saddle and rub down the animal, before turning him out to pasture for the night with the other horses on the ranch.
His strides heavy but purposeful, he disappeared into the stable with the rest of the tack. Another five, ten, fifteen minutes passed and he still didn’t emerge.
Tired of waiting for him, Kelsey walked out to the stables. She heard the sound of water running as soon as she was inside the cement-floored building with the wooden stalls.
She headed down to the stable manager’s office. Brady had turned it into his private quarters when he moved out to the ranch. There was still a desk and file cabinets there, but he had pushed those to one side of the room. The other side of the small room held an old-fashioned iron cot, made up with white sheets and green wool blankets. The original bathroom with sink and commode had been left intact, but Brady had put in the kind of utilitarian metal-walled shower stall they used in high school locker rooms beside that.
He was currently in the shower. He had obviously stripped off his clothes the moment he walked in—they were hanging over the sides of the stall. Kelsey thought about backing out of the room, then decided against it.
They were married.
And she’d already seen him naked.
She could handle this. His intimate parts were shielded from view. All she could see from her vantage point were his legs, from his calves on down, and his head and shoulders above the metal sides.
He turned to glare at her as she came in, then, his mouth clamped shut furiously, finished shampooing his hair in utter silence. He ducked his head under the stream, rinsed off, and then shut off the water.
The silence that followed was broken only by the sounds of the water running down the drain next to his bare feet.
Her heart pounding at the showdown to come, Kelsey stayed where she was until he emerged from the shower stall, dark blue towel slung low across his hips, in a way that made his broad shoulders and muscled chest look even sexier and more buff. With difficulty, Kelsey tore her eyes from his slicked-back hair and damp skin. “What do you want?” he said.
“Exactly what you’d think,” Kelsey replied, mocking his sarcastic tone to a T. “To talk to you.”
He quirked a discerning brow. “Without your boyfriend?”
Kelsey’s temper flared. There was nothing she hated more than having those close to her simply suppose the worst about her, instead of taking the time to understand. She smiled at Brady tightly and moved away from the wall. “Rafe is not my boyfriend.”
Brady shrugged and went over to the sink. He lathered up his face and began to shave. “Could have fooled me and everyone else in that restaurant.” He looked at her in the mirror. “Or do you hold every guy’s hand like that?”
Determined to set the record straight, Kelsey moved closer yet. She continued to hold Brady’s eyes in the mirror while he shaved with quick, precise strokes of the blade. “I was doing him a favor.”
Brady finished and rinsed his jaw. He patted his face dry with a hand towel, then said in a low, bored tone, “Maybe you really shouldn’t tell me any more.”
Clamping her lips together in frustration, Kelsey stalked even closer. “It was a pretend date, Brady.”
“Well, that’s a new one,” Brady drawled as he slapped on a generous amount of wintry-smelling aftershave.
Ignoring his sarcasm, Kelsey propped both her hands on her hips and continued explaining her actions in the most matter-of-fact tone she could manage. “Rafe wants to ask Patricia Weatherby out and he came to me for help. He thought if he had a trial run of the evening he planned for himself and Patricia, the real date with Patricia would go a lot more smoothly. All I was doing tonight was giving him dating tips. There was nothing of a romantic nature going on.”
Finished, Brady turned to face her and leaned against the sink. His glance roved her mocha-brown stretch-velvet dress, taking in the way the fabric molded snugly to her every curve before swirling prettily to mid-calf.
“Yet you stayed at the restaurant with him,” Brady said, his eyes roving the high neck and fitted long sleeves, before returning to her face. “Instead of coming home with me.”
Kelsey shrugged and paced the room restlessly, her high heels clicking against the cement floor. She knew what Brady wanted, but she refused to apologize for not giving in to Brady’s husbandly demands. “He’s a friend and I had promised to help him,” she said. As far as she was concerned, that should be explanation enough.
“Yeah, well—” Brady leaned closer as she strode past. He caught her arm and swung her around to face him, “I’m your husband.”
“In name only,” Kelsey corrected him icily, still seeing red over the way he was behaving, as she pried his fingers from her upper arm. “And where do you get off acting so possessive, anyway?” she demanded indignantly. “It’s not as if we’re really man and wife.”
Brady’s brow lifted in a manner that was all the more possessive. He backed her up against the wall, so his hips pressed into hers. “Well, maybe we should be,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Brady leaned in even closer. He let his towel drop to the floor and his hands came up to cup her shoulders. “What do you think it means?”
Engulfing her with the heat and strength of his body, he lowered his head and delivered a breath-stealing kiss. She moaned, and he kissed her again, shattering what little caution she had left. Her lips parted beneath the pressure of his as his tongue swept her mouth with long, sensuous strokes. He encircled her with his heat and strength until Kelsey’s whole body was alive, quivering with urgent sensations unlike any she had ever felt.
“Brady—” Kelsey moaned again as his hands swept down her body, molding and exploring through the soft, stretchy fabric of her dress. It felt so good to be wanted and touched. It felt so good to be held against him like this. To have the barriers between them start coming down. Desire trembled inside her, making her tummy feel weightless, soft. She melted helplessly against him, thigh to thigh, sex to sex. She could feel his erection pressing against her, hot and urgent, his heart pounding in his chest.
“I’m through pretending I don’t feel the way I feel. I want you, Kelsey,” he whispered, raining kisses down her throat, across her cheek, her lips. Framing her face with his hands, he forced her mouth up to his. “I want you to be mine.” He tunneled his hands through her hair, tilted her head back and kissed her with surprising tenderness. Lifting his head from hers, he asked in a low voice that seemed wrenched from his very heart, “What do you want?”
He was so strong and wonderful. He tasted so good, so undeniably male, so right. “You,” she whispered, her hips moving against his as he continued to watch her in that unsettling way. “I want you….”
“No more holding back, then,” he promised her softly. “This time we’re really going to do this.”
“Yes,” Kelsey said, quivering at the tightening of his muscles beneath her fingertips and the heat flowing into his bare skin. She had never experienced anything like this intense, aching need. She didn’t care if she was behaving recklessly once again. She wanted to see where the passion would lead them. Would it bring her as close as she wanted to be to Brady? Would making love link them forever, make them truly man and wife?
His legs pinning hers to the wall, he bent his head and kissed her with a passion so hot it sizzled. His tongue flicked across the edges of her teeth, before delving deep in a slow mating dance. Joy swept through her and Brady’s hands moved behind her. The zipper of her dress slid down. The next thing she knew, he was pushing it off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. His whole body was quaking as he regarded her transparent black lace bra, thigh-high stockings and damp bikini panties. “You are so beautiful. So sexy,” he murmured, and then those came off, too.
Wanting to remember everything about this night, Brady let his glance sift slowly over her. Kelsey was gorgeous, no matter what she was wearing. But she had never looked more radiant than she did at that moment, with color blushing her freckled cheeks, and her cinnamon-red hair tumbling over her pale shoulders.
His gaze moved over her supple curves, her long slender legs and silky thighs, the shadowy vee. He knew they were far from solving all their problems, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to make her his.
She trembled as he bent and kissed her ripe coral nipples one by one. She clasped his shoulders and sagged against the wall as his mouth moved urgently on her breasts. He slid down her body, kissing the hollow of her stomach, stroking the soft insides of her thighs. He traced her navel with his tongue, then dropped lower still, to deliver the most intimate of kisses, until she was awash in pleasure, shuddering.
Achingly aware of every soft warm inch of her, Brady laid her down on the cot and stretched out over top of her. Savoring the sweetness of her unexpected acquiescence to him, he closed his eyes, lowered his mouth to hers and let her lead him where she wanted to go. He groaned as their tongues twined urgently and his body took up a primitive rhythm all its own, until there was no doubting how much they needed each other, needed this. And then she was lifting her hips, pleading wordlessly for a more intimate union. He edged her knees apart, lifted her up and eased into her, past that first fragile barrier, not wanting to hurt her for anything. Her eyes widened in surprise, in pain, even as her body stretched to take him.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he whispered, deepening his penetration even more as he kissed her slowly, thoroughly. “Take all of me.”
Kelsey didn’t think it was possible. He was so big, so hard. She was so tight. But as he slid one arm beneath her and arched his body up and all the way into hers, she found it was possible after all. Not only possible, but wonderfully sensual, hot and wild. Loving the tender but fierce way he was possessing her, she closed her eyes, awash in sensation. Brady kissed her again, his body taking up the same slow, timeless rhythm as his tongue. And then she was moaning again, moving against him, with him, able to hear the soft, whimpering sounds in the back of her throat, and the lower, fiercer sounds in his. What few boundaries that still existed between them dissolved. She ran her arms along his arms, across his shoulders, down his back. Their spirits soared as he pressed into her as deeply as he could go, withdrew, then filled her again. And they were lost in the ecstasy, free-falling into pleasure unlike anything Kelsey had ever known.
LONG MOMENTS PASSED as they clung to each other, still trembling, still in awe at what they’d done. Finally, Brady rolled onto his back. Kelsey had only to look at his face to see his regret. “It shouldn’t have happened like that.”
She rolled onto her side, disappointed he didn’t look as happy about what had just happened as she was. She had thought this would change everything. Apparently not. At least not in the way that she had hoped.
She felt her defenses go back up, as surely and swiftly as they had come down. “What do you mean?” she asked warily, doing her best to hide her hurt that he could find anything wrong with what had just happened between them.
Brady turned troubled eyes to hers. “Here,” he told her, not bothering to mask his guilt. “On a cot in the stable. In the midst of an argument. You are—were—a virgin, for heaven’s sake. Not to mention, my wife. At the very least, it should have been in a real bed,” he said thickly. “With candles and roses all around. Maybe even some champagne and strawberries or something.”
The source of his worry identified, Kelsey smiled and began to relax. Brady’s concern for her was sweet but hopelessly misguided. The fact was, had the consummation of their marriage happened any other way, except in such a hot, wild manner, Kelsey probably would have had time to think about it, weighed the pros and cons and lost her nerve. And that would have been a shame because, whether the two of them were really married or not, she wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. She rolled over, so she was lying on his chest, looking up at him. Unable to keep herself from touching him even one second longer, she ran her fingers through the tufts of dark hair on his chest and looked up at him earnestly. “That was exactly the way I wanted it to happen, Brady. It was exciting and—” she flushed, but forced herself to continue “—wonderful….”
He smiled at her unabashed praise and reached over to gently brush the hair from her cheek and kiss the back of her hand. “Still—”
“Still, nothing,” Kelsey interrupted, scooting closer yet. She draped one of her legs between the warmth of his. “I know I’m inexperienced here, Brady. Not as inexperienced as I was—” she grinned mischievously as one hand drifted playfully lower “—but inexperienced nevertheless.” She paused, looked deep into his eyes, before continuing seriously, “But I’m also an adult who’s been on my own for a long time now. I know what I wanted, Brady. And what I wanted was you,” she said softly, earnestly.
“I wanted you, too. Still do, as a matter of fact.”
He moved so he was on top of her once again. The possessive look in his eyes made her catch her breath. She could blame their first bout of lovemaking on a combination of passion and recklessness. If they made love again, the way he clearly wanted to make love to her, slowly and deliberately, it was bound to mean much more. It was bound to make her fall all the way in love with him.
Kelsey wasn’t sure she was ready for that. She wasn’t sure she was ready to let him all the way into her heart. Because doing that would make her vulnerable in a way she’d never been before. She swallowed around the sudden lump of emotion in her throat. “Brady—” she whispered tremulously.
“I’ll be a lot more gentle this time,” he whispered, mistaking the reason for her unease. “I promise.”
It was all Kelsey could do not to sigh at the languid nature of his touch. She pouted as his hands moved over her, butterfly soft, accommodating. “I don’t want you to be gentle.” She didn’t want him protecting her. She wanted to be his partner, his equal, in every way. But Brady, it seemed, had ideas of his own.
He grinned, already bending his head and kissing her thoroughly. “Tell me that after, and I’ll believe you,” he teased. “Until then, we’ll do this on my time frame, my way.”