Lorraine Heath (27 page)

With his arm snugly wrapped around her, his body protecting her from the wind, Dallas escorted Cordelia outside. They walked briskly up the boardwalk and to the far end of town where the red-brick hotel stood.

Dallas shoved open one of the doors, and Cordelia rushed inside.

She took a moment to enjoy the aromas filtering out from the restaurant, the scent of fresh wood, the sight of new red carpet, the candles flickering in the chandeliers in anticipation of dusk.

She looked at Dallas. “You aren’t really going to register us for a room are you?”

His eyes grew warmer than the fire blazing within the hearth at the far side of the lobby. “Let’s stay the night.”

“I didn’t bring any clothes.”

“You won’t need any.”

Anticipation and joy spiraled through her. She had never expected him to lavish as much attention on her as he did: his touch was seldom far away, his gaze constantly seeking hers as though he needed her as much as she needed him. Every night she slept within his arms. Every morning she awoke to his kiss.

“I want to check on the restaurant while you get the room,” she said.

With a smile that promised no regrets, he kissed her lightly on the lips before he strode to the front desk. The child within her kicked. She slipped her hand within the coat and stroked the small mound. If only Dallas would love her as much as he already loved this child.

Turning, she walked into the restaurant. “Mrs. Leigh!”

She smiled warmly at the restaurant manager. “Hello, Carolyn.”

With rosy cheeks, Carolyn James carried excitement within her hazel eyes. “I was wondering if you would mind if we held a Christmas celebration here Christmas Eve. I thought it might be nice for the girls, ease the loneliness of being away from family.”

“I think it would be lovely.”

She blushed prettily. “Perhaps your brothers would like to come.”

“I’m sure they would. Is everything else going well?”

Carolyn nodded. “Very well, although I’ll be glad when additional girls arrive in the spring. Some of these cowboys eat four and five meals a day.”

Cordelia smiled, knowing their appetites had little to do with the need for food, but with the desire to simply watch a woman. “We’ll discuss the details of the Christmas celebration next time I come to town.”

“Don’t leave it too long. Christmas will be here in two weeks.”

Two weeks. As Cordelia walked back into the lobby, she thought it hardly seemed possible that she had been with Dallas for seven months, carrying his child for almost five. She hadn’t decided what to give him for Christmas. He had everything he wanted. Maybe she would simply tie a big ribbon around her belly.

At the absurd thought, she bit back her laughter as she approached the front desk where Tyler Curtiss was talking with Dallas. Dallas slipped his arm around her. “This is the woman you need to talk to.”

“About what?” Cordelia asked.

Tyler looked at Susan Redd as she stood behind the counter, her chin angled.

“Red, here—”

“It’s Miss Redd to you,” she said, her voice smoky.

The moment Cordelia had met her hotel manager, she had liked her. Her auburn hair was swept up, curling strands left to frame her face.

“Miss Redd,” Tyler said, “isn’t inclined to give my workers a discount on the rooms. With this cold spell blowing through, I thought they might enjoy a few nights in the warmth of the hotel, sleeping in a real bed instead of on a cot. Since they built the hotel, it only seemed fair to offer them a special rate.”

“I’ve seen your workers. Most are filthy. No telling what sort of bugs they’ll bring with them,” Susan said.

Cordelia placed her hand on the counter. “Offer them a discount, half the normal rate, on the condition that they visit the bathhouse before they register. That should satisfy both of you.”

Tyler smiled warmly. “Thank you, Mrs. Leigh. I’ll work out the details with Miss Redd and let the men know.”

She patted his arm. “See that you get one of the nicer rooms.”

Dallas secured her against his side and began walking toward the stairs. “I think working out the details with her is what he intended all along,” he said in a low voice near her ear.

Cordelia jerked her head back. “You think he has an interest in Susan?”

“Yep.”

Before she could turn around to observe that interest, Dallas was escorting her up the stairs. At the landing, she stepped into the hallway. “Which room?”

He scooped her into his arms and carried her up the next flight of stairs.

“Dallas, this floor isn’t ready.”

“You sure? Thought it was.”

“Only the bridal—” Her voice knotted around the tears forming in her throat.

In long strides, he walked to the end of the hallway, bent his knees, and inserted the key into the lock. “Seemed right that you should be the first to use your special room.” He gave a gentle push and the door swung open.

A fire was already burning lazily in the hearth, and she realized his real reason for coming into town was not to talk with the tanner as he’d told her that afternoon, but to bring her to this room.

“You deserved something better than what you got on our wedding night so this is a little late in coming.”

“What does it matter when you’ve given me so many special moments since then?”

“I plan to give you more … a lot more.”

Because she carried his son. What did the reasons behind his thoughtfulness and kindness matter? His generosity was directed toward her.

But the reasons did matter. In a shadowed corner of her heart, they did matter.

Contentment swept through Dallas as gently as dew greeting the dawn. He’d never before experienced this immense satisfaction, not only with himself, but with his life, because always before, no matter how much he had—something was always missing.

That something was now draped over half his body, her breathing slowly returning to normal, a glow to her warm skin that spoke of her enjoyment as eloquently as her gasps had only moments before.

He combed his fingers through the ebony hair fanned out over his chest. He loved the silken strands. He loved the brown of her eyes and the tilt of her nose. He loved the tips of her toes, even though they were growing cold.

She started rubbing them along his instep. He loved that as well.

He loved her.

And he didn’t know how to tell her. Sometimes, he would mention that he was happy, and she would smile at him, but something in her eyes made her look sad, as though she didn’t quite believe him.

He thought all his contentment might seep out like a hole in the bottom of a well if he told her what was in his heart and the silent disbelief filled her eyes.

He’d brought her here to tell her, to share his feelings in the special room she had envisioned for women to spend their wedding night, but she’d given him that look before he’d ever spoken the words, so he’d shoved them back and tried to show her his feelings instead.

He smiled with satisfaction. If her moaning and shuddering were any indication, he’d successfully shown her.

Still, he’d like for her to hear the words … Where her stomach was pressed against his belly, he felt the slight rolling of his son. His contentment increased. He slipped his hand beneath Dee’s curtain of hair and splayed his fingers over her small mound.

Dee wasn’t growing as round as Amelia was. He figured it was because Amelia was short, and her baby had nowhere to go but out. Dee was tall, giving their child a lengthier area in which to grow.

He enjoyed watching the changes to her body. The darkening of her nipples where his son would nurse, the slightest widening of her hips, the hint of an ungainly walk.

Sighing, she wriggled against him, opened an eye, and peered up at him. “Mmmm. I knew this room was a good idea. It’ll be hard to let people I don’t know sleep in here now.”

“Then don’t.”

Her other eye popped open, and she lifted her head. “That’s the purpose of a hotel.”

He trailed his thumb along the side of her face. “Nothing wrong with the owners having a private room that they can use at their convenience, anytime they want.”

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Is that why you told me I’d need two rooms—”

Leaning up, he began to nibble on her lips. She shoved him back down. “You planned to use this room all along, didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time, an even better one now that we’ve tried it out.”

Laughing, she snuggled into the crook of his shoulder, trailing her fingers over his chest, each stroke going a little higher, a little lower. “Maybe I’ll give you this room as a Christmas present.”

“Give me something I already own for Christmas? What kind of gift is that?”

She lifted her face. “You have everything.”

“No, I don’t.”

“What else could you possibly need?”

Your love.
He swallowed hard. “Something that can only be given if it isn’t asked for.”

She stared at him. “What does that mean?”

“Hell if I know. Get me a new saddle.”

“Oh!” She rolled off him.

He came up on an elbow. “What?”

She looked over her shoulder as she began to gather her clothes off the floor. “I just thought of something.”

“Something to get me?”

She waved her hand dismissively through the air. “No, silly. I just thought of something I need to tell Carolyn.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No, she wants to have a Christmas celebration here. I want her to go ahead and have Mr. Stewart at the newspaper office make up invitations and announcements that we can send out over the area.”

Dallas flopped back onto the pillow. “That can wait until the morning. Come to bed.”

She was hastily donning her clothes. When she got an idea she was like a dust devil kicked up by the wind.

“It’ll just take me a few minutes.” She hurried to the door. “Besides, I’ll no doubt get cold when I get downstairs, and you can warm me up all over again.”

“Count on it!” he called out to her as she slipped from the room.

Good Lord, she was more obsessed with empire building than he’d ever thought about being, or maybe she simply enjoyed it more.

He’d be content these days to do nothing more than sit on the veranda in their bench swing. That gift had pleased her so much that he’d had a smaller one made—one that he’d hung on the balcony outside their bedroom.

He shoved his hands beneath his head and stared at the ceiling. He’d tell her that he loved her when she got back, whisper the words in her ear just before he joined his body to hers. If she didn’t distract him with all those glorious sounds she made and the way her body moved in rhythm to his.

Smiling, he let his eyes drift closed and began to plan his seduction. Seducing her was so easy. Pleasuring her carried rewards he’d never known existed.

A scream shattered his thoughts. A scream of terror that he’d heard once before—on his wedding night.

He leapt from the bed and jerked on his trousers, buttoning them as he rushed down the stairs, his heart pounding, his blood throbbing through his temples.

On his way down, he met Susan Redd on her way up, her brown eyes frightened. “There’s been an accident.”

“Dear God.” He tore past her.

“She’s behind the restaurant!” Susan called after him.

He raced through the lobby, the restaurant, and out the kitchen. Wooden crates that had once been stacked outside now lay helter-skelter. Tyler Curtiss was lifting one off Dee’s sprawled body.

Oblivious to the cold winds hitting his bare chest and feet, Dallas knelt beside his wife and touched his trembling fingers to her pale cheek. The cold numbed his senses. He couldn’t feel her warmth or smell her sweet scent. “Dee?”

She looked like a rag doll a child had grown tired of playing with and thrown aside.

“She swore she heard a child cry,” Carolyn wailed, her voice catching. “I didn’t hear anything … but she came outside … I heard a crash, her scream … is she dead?”

“Go find the goddamn doctor!” Dallas roared and the people surrounding him ran off in all directions.

He needed to get her warm, needed to get her inside. Gently, he slipped one arm beneath her shoulders, the other beneath her knees.

It was then that he felt it, and fear unlike any he’d ever known surged through him. He’d carried too many dying men off battlefields not to recognize the slick feel of fresh blood.

He had brought her home, thinking he could somehow protect her better, keep her safe.

But as she lay beneath the blankets, bathed in sweat, her face as white as a cloud on a summer day, her hand trembling within his, he feared nothing he did, nothing anyone did, would keep her with him.

With a warm cloth, he wiped the glistening dew beading her brow. He didn’t want her to be cold.

If she died, she’d be cold forever. He couldn’t bear the thought, but it lurked in a distant corner of his mind like an unwanted nightmare, keeping company with the sound of her scream.

He would forever hear her scream.

She moaned and whimpered, a pitiful little sound, that tore his hear into shreds.

Where was the damn doctor when he needed him? He was going to find another doctor for Leighton, a doctor who knew how to keep his butt at home so he was there when he was needed, not a doctor who gallivanted around the countryside caring for people Dallas didn’t even know.

Dee released a tiny cry and tightened her hold on his hand. He’d never in his life felt so utterly useless.

He had money, land, and cattle. He’d bathed in the glory of success and what the hell good was it doing him now? He’d trade it all for a chance to turn the clock back, to keep her in that room with him.

“Dallas?” Amelia placed her hand on his shoulder. “Dallas, she’s losing the baby.”

“Oh, God.” Pain ripped through him so intensely, so deeply, that he thought he might keel over. He bowed his head and wrapped his fingers more firmly around Dee’s hand. He’d never known what it was to need, but he needed now, he needed Dee’s quiet strength.

“Just don’t let me lose her,” he rasped. “I’ll do what I can. If you want to leave—” “No. I won’t leave her.”