Night Mares in the Hamptons (23 page)

Ty had spread a blanket over the wicker sofa's cushions, and had another to use as a lap rug. He also had the wicker coffee table, with his booted feet propped on it. He patted the space beside him, then raised the blanket for me to slide under. I set the milk and napkins on the table and sat down. The sofa was only a two-seater, and he took up more than his half, sprawled in loose-limbed comfort. We were closer than I would have liked, but not quite touching, so I leaned back. He held a cookie up to my mouth, and held it while I took a bite.

Who knew cookies and milk could be so sexy?

Who was I kidding? It was the cowboy who was sexy. He could be feeding me lime Jell-O with canned fruit floating in it and I'd think that was sexy, too. Like now, when he used his thumb to brush a cookie crumb off my lower lip, and his touch was soft and tender and stayed way longer than there were crumbs. I licked my lip, and he inhaled deeply.

“You know, you were right,” he said.

“About trying to find the colt first?”

“No, about the coffee can. I have no idea if these animals can eat our food. Maybe they live on moonbeams.”

I thought back. “The troll was huge, but I don't think I ever saw him eat. And the little boy we were all looking for never thrived here, so he had to leave in order to live. And I dreamed the colt didn't like the food he was given. Maybe that's why he seemed so weak to me.”

“But this”—he waved his arm at the whole yard, the piles of stuff I could see in my backyard—“was all I could think of to do.”

Instead of putting his arm down, he put it around my shoulders and pulled me a little closer. I felt warmer that way, so made no protest. “You could have helped me dream.”

“Darlin', if I were lying next to you, we wouldn't be dreaming. And if I did fall asleep, maybe out of satisfied exhaustion, I'd only dream about waking up next to you for another go-round.”

I tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip. “I'm not being pushy, just honest. Besides, the only dreams I ever remember are more about fillies, the two-footed kind, than about horses. Much as I love them, they don't figure in my dreams.” He finished his milk and another cookie. I shook my head. I was done eating.

“That's the problem, Willow. I do love the horses. It's in my blood, just like liking women, but different. I have to try to help if they're in trouble. That's what I do, who I am. It's part of being so close I know what they're thinking most times. Like the other side of the coin, or the small print on the contract. I have a gift; I have the responsibility to use it. So when I got the call to come and saw the situation for myself, I knew I had to find the mares and try to help them. I can't dream up the colt, but I can maybe work with the white ladies. I had to try.”

I understood. It was kind of like going to doctors with a problem. You got a different opinion from every one. A surgeon tells you that you need an operation. An oncologist prescribes treatment. A shrink says it's in your mind. They had their specialties, their fields of expertise. I still didn't know what mine was, but it wasn't facing danger, not if the peril was in sitting next to a warm, muscular body, inhaling the scent of spices and horse and virility, staring at an empty lawn. “Is that a roundabout apology for not letting me try my way?”

“Hell, no. Real men don't admit they're wrong. They try to make you understand why they act dumb, is all.”

I smiled. “No explanation needed.”

He leaned over and brushed my forehead with his lips. Cookies and kisses, what a night! What a seduction, no matter what he said.

I pulled the blanket tighter under my chin, a physical barrier and a silent sign in body language any guy could understand. You didn't need to be a horse whisperer or a mind reader to interpret a wool wall. Lord knows I did not need the blanket on top of me, but I wasn't giving in to a rogue and a rambler, not even if the heat from his arm around my shoulders was raising my temperature a few degrees already. To say nothing of where our sides were pressed together. I could feel the warmth right through my sweatshirt and his denim shirt. The only thing is, the heat was coming from inside, not out. I was glad for the darkness and the blanket, so he couldn't see where my nipples were making little tents on the front of my shirt after that oh-so-brief touch of his mouth on my skin. I took a deep breath—which only made the evidence of my interest more prominent—and asked, “So what have you seen so far?”

He stroked my shoulder with his hand, but almost absently, as if he were used to petting Paloma Blanca as they rode, just for the contact. I had to pull the blanket away before I started to perspire.

“Fireflies,” he said, now kneading the muscles of my shoulder and neck. He must have taken the lowered covering as an invitation I couldn't rescind without acting like a prissy spinster.

“That's all?”

“A couple of little bats. I don't know what breeds you have here, and they moved too fast to tell.”

I shuddered. “Bats.”

He rubbed my neck. “Don't worry. They're just keeping the flies away.”

“Anything else?”

“A doe leading her fawns toward the grains I spread around. Two raccoons fighting over the apples, and a rat carrying off a carrot.”

What a guy! The man could talk and turn my insides to mush at the same time. And chant. But that was on tape, wasn't it? So the beat I heard this time really was my heart, or his. I tried to gather what wits I had left. “Wow, you managed to bring vermin to my back yard with your cockamamie plan. Lovely.”

“They were always here. You just never saw them. Besides, you don't have plague-carrying city rats. Yours are wood rats.”

“How can you tell?”

“These are the woods, aren't they?” He pointed toward the pine trees at the back of the property.

I wasn't sure about his reasoning, but I was certain the hand that did the pointing didn't belong under my sweatshirt. “Um . . .”

“And a couple of mosquitoes, but not as many as you'd find in Texas. I thought I heard an owl, so I hope the mice won't come. I'd hate to think I baited them out in the open to make a meal for someone else.”

“But no white mares.”

“Not yet.”

I groaned when his fingers found those hardened nipples and the sensitive skin at the sides of my breasts. His fingers were warm and callused, but not rough. Just right. I groaned again. Wanting more? Needing to end it all right here? I couldn't think straight enough to decide.

He kissed me, which was no help at all. Lips, tongue, teeth. Sparks, flames, fire. His hand at the elastic of my sweat pants, my hand reaching for his neck to bring him closer, except the brim of his hat got in the way and brought me back to reality. “Hey, Tex, do you go to bed with your boots on, too?”

“Only if I'm in a hurry.” He took off the hat, but I had my hormones under control by now. “I better go in.”

“Shh.” He put his finger over my lips. “Look.”

“The mares?”

It was a fox, trailed by three kits. You seldom saw foxes these days, except as roadkill. A mange had nearly wiped them out a few years ago, letting the rabbit population explode. Now the foxes were coming back to feed on the bounty. These were coming to check out the vegetables. “If they get a taste for Grandma's crops, you're in big trouble.”

“The fences will keep them out of her gardens. Unless she has chickens, too.”

“No. One of her friends supplies the eggs for the farm stand and Grandma's kitchen.”

We stayed quiet to watch the young foxes tumble around, then wrestle over an apple two of them wanted.

“Thank you.”

“For the kisses? That was nothing, darlin'.”

“For giving me the night.”

“I
'D GIVE YOU THE MOON AND THE STARS if I could,” Ty said. “And I'd do anything to keep you from dreaming about that colt.”

“Like seducing me?”

“Hell, pumpkin, that idea came way before I knew what was really going on. I was hard at the first sight of you in that sassy little sundress, all legs and eyes and attitude. No heft to you at all, but there you stood, ready to defend your lambs from the big bad wolf. I was a goner. I wanted you then. I want you now. I'll likely want you for a good long while.”

I noticed he didn't say he'd want me for forever. I doubted the word was in his vocabulary, or in his genes. Not that I blamed him. How long had we known each other, anyway? It's not that I wanted happily ever after with him, either. I just wanted the happily ever after part. Didn't everyone?

Crickets joined his chant. Maybe tree frogs. I couldn't tell. It sounded good, a night chorus. So did his low, rumbling voice with its soft drawl: “But wanting you has nothing to do with wanting to keep you out of that young horse's head. Colts are skittish and easily spooked at the best of times. The idea of you sharing nightmares with another creature, an alien creature at that, terrifies me. People who go down that rabbit hole sometimes don't come back.”

“I know.”

“And your colt is already half out of his head with fear and despair.”

“I know.”

“But you want to do it anyway?”

“I have to do it. Like you said about helping the horses. Somehow I got connected. I dreamed him. I drew him. Now he's my problem.”

Ty leaned back and slouched lower against the cushions. “You know, a person could lose an arm or a leg and still be himself. He could manage. But to lose your mind? That would be the worst thing I can imagine. Trapped in your head, drowning in bad dreams? That's too big a sacrifice, too big a chance to take.”

Without his touch, I was feeling the cool night air again. Or maybe it was his words sending a chill down my back. Did he think I wasn't afraid of going bonkers? I spend half my life worrying that I'm already crazy. And that's without the colt's night terrors. “I won't get lost in the baby's thoughts,” I told him, trying to sound confident enough to reassure both of us. “I didn't before. Now I know what to expect. I'll be stronger.”

“Easy to say, and you are strong. Strong-willed, anyway. But you have no control over your own dreams, less over someone else's. Make that some
thing
else's. And you'd be on your own. I can't go there with you. You and I both know that. I couldn't get there if you needed help.”

I reached over and took his hand. “But I am not yours to protect and defend.”

He brought my hand to his cheek and kept it there, a comfort. He made a half-laugh. “I guess I am just hard-wired to look after people I care about.”

He did care about me, not just sex. I knew that in my heart. Maybe happily for now was possible, and enough. “It seems to me that you're hard-wired for a lot.”

“Sex and protecting my woman? Honey, that comes with the apparatus. It's called survival of the species.”

“For a caveman.”

“So I'll beat my chest. I'd toss you over my shoulder and drag you back to my cave if I thought I could get away with it.”

That could not be the cave my father warned me about. The cowboy might be larger than life, but he was not Batman. “You wouldn't get far or for long, not with me kicking and screaming the whole way. I hate caves.”

He laughed. “I can't say I like them much myself. I like open spaces, big sky.” He tilted his head back to look up. “Like this one.”

More of the clouds had drifted away and you could pick out galaxies, if you knew what you were looking for. I found the Big Dipper, which was about the extent of my astronomy. We did have nice night skies here at the end of Long Island, far away from city lights.

In comfortable silence, we enjoyed the view and the feeling of being the only two people in the world, together. Then he said, “I gave up the macho crap years ago. Brawling and drinking and tomcatting. I'm still a man. My stepmother taught me to be responsible. My father taught me to never hit a girl. You have a problem with that?”

“No. I like knowing that chivalry isn't dead. And that you worry about me. What I don't like is you telling me what to do, or what I can't do. Or trying to keep me from what I know is the right thing to do.”

“Yeah, I figured you didn't like anyone taking the reins. So why did you send for a rider if you thought you could mend your own fences?”

“Why do people take their cars to a mechanic? Because it's the right person for the right job. Sure they could learn to fix it themselves, but no one could learn to do what you do. I can draw and I can dream, but I'd never know how to communicate with the mares. I need you. I just don't need you interfering with my part of the job.”