Nobody's Dream (63 page)

Cassie’s heart pounded to a halt before beating wildly again. Sweat broke out on her upper lip. She didn’t want O’Keeffe to blame her for breaking her free, wild spirit.

Before she went into a full-blown panic attack, she needed to go to her babies. “I had better settle the girls for the night.”

She ran into the stall wishing tomorrow would never come.

*     *     *

Luke brushed Picasso while Cassie took care of her alpacas. What a roller-coaster day. Between his parents’ arrival and that mind-blowing horseback ride with Cassie, he was ready to hit the sack. Only thing holding him back from heading straight there—other than making sure Cassie had some supper—was that he knew the minute he closed his eyes, he’d see his Peruvian beauty naked, arms stretched up to the heavens, chanting who knows what to the gods. Or her goddess, more likely. Man, he’d about come in his jeans at the sight. Reminded him of the night he’d found her in her hot tub on her mountain.

Hot damn!

How was he supposed to view her from now on without seeing her high, firm breasts and wanting like hell to touch them? Squeeze them. Lick them. Hell, even nibble on them a bit!

Aw, hell.

He needed to pull himself together—and maybe take a cold shower—before going into the house with her.

Cassie wanted friendship from him, nothing more. The minute he’d seen her in that stream—well, maybe the minute after that—he’d hightailed it away far enough for her not to sense his presence. And, well, to stop gawking at her in such a private moment.

When he’d checked on her again by the stream, wondering why she hadn’t headed home yet, she had been asleep on the rocks beside the water. Half-naked, although he hadn’t seen anything. He may have looked like a perv, but he couldn’t just let her lie there vulnerable to whatever animal came alone.

He’d watched her for more than an hour. Her face changed when she slept. Peaceful. No edge. Her mouth and jaw relaxed. He didn’t realize how tense she was all the time until then.

He wished he’d had a sketchpad, although he watched her long enough the images from today were seared into his brain. He’d put them on paper tonight when he went back to the workshop.

“All done.”

He glanced over Pic’s back to see her standing at the closed stall door. Thank God the horse hid his raging hard-on. He set down the brush on the ledge of the stall and patted Pic on the neck. “Let me go heat up your supper.”

“No need. I can find everything, I am sure. Thanks for the…ride, Lucas.”

Don’t even think about riding her, Denton.

“Night, darlin’. Get a good night’s rest. We have a lot of work ahead of us tomorrow.”

He liked the sound of that “we.” Having her with him tomorrow would make a huge difference.

He sure would miss her when she left.

Now he’d better try and catch some shuteye himself.

*     *     *

The alarm blared, and Luke reached out to slap it into silence. He lay there a few minutes, surprised he’d slept until five-thirty. Usually, he was up an hour earlier, but as he’d predicted, the night had been filled with horny thoughts of the girl sleeping in his bed.

Without me.

Just the thought of her lying there gave him a hard-on. Okay, maybe this one was just because it was morning. He tossed the blanket off and headed for the bathroom. By the time he relieved himself, he remembered what he needed to be doing and decided to skip the shower and dress quickly.

Momma and Dad’s Jeep was parked in the drive. As he approached the front porch, he saw three silhouettes through the window at the dining room. Hell. Dad would think he was a lazy slouch for sleeping in so long. He hoped his folks hadn’t arrived too early and awakened Cassie before they needed to. No doubt Momma would have a full-on breakfast for them, but he wasn’t going to eat too much knowing it would all be coming right back up after a few attempts to mount O’Keeffe.

He walked into the house to the sound of Momma’s laugh. He’d missed hearing that. One thing a good ol’ country boy never did was stop needing his Momma. When he entered the dining area, he saw Cassie’s face with a big smile across it. Her eyes danced with humor.

God, I missed you, too, Sweet Pea.

“Mornin’!”

“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” Luke’s attention turned to his dad, expecting some kind of censure, but Dad just smiled. “Your girlfriend here was telling me how you gave mouth-to-snout to a baby alpaca.”

A quick glance at Cassie indicated she hadn’t taken any offense at being referred to as his girlfriend.
If Dad only knew
. She cast her gaze down at her plate, though.

“I couldn’t sit by and let Cassie lose her first cria if I could do something.”

When his stomach growled at the smell of bacon and eggs, he turned his attention to the spread Momma had placed on the table. Then his gaze went back to Cassie’s plate where he saw a bowl of cereal with milk and a slice of buttered cinnamon bread. He hoped that was enough for her.

“I wasn’t going to eat much before we do the deed, but Momma, how can I pass on trying some of this at least?” He kissed her cheek and gave her a hug before pulling out a chair and sitting down. “You sit and eat, too, Momma.”

“Don’t worry about me. I can eat while you all are out working.”

She returned to the kitchen to do Lord knew what. Momma rarely just sat down with them for an entire meal. She was always remembering to grab something else she’d made. This time she returned carrying a large bowl of fruit.

“Cassie woke up early and made a delicious salad for us.”

“I thought it might set better on your stomach than something…heavier.” She glanced around the spread on the table, everything from biscuits to bacon. Bless her heart, she was trying to keep him from upchucking his breakfast.

“Thanks, Cassie.” Luke reached out for the bowl. “This looks great. Really healthy, too.”

He loaded up on fruit, but couldn’t hurt his Momma’s feelings either, so grabbed two biscuits and four crispy strips of bacon. The eggs he decided to go easy on. That could be a disaster waiting to happen.

Sure didn’t want to embarrass his wife by puking his guts out.

Twenty minutes later, as he and his parents exited the barn, Luke picked up the football. He tossed it over the railing before opening the gate to the corral, gesturing for his folks to enter first. Once the gate was latched again, Luke turned and kicked the ball in the direction of O’Keeffe who was maintaining her distance at the opposite end. Soon, though, she took a few steps forward and kicked the ball back toward them.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Luke glanced over and saw his dad grinning. It had been a while since he’d seen that response from the man about anything he had done.

“That’s some trick. How’d you manage that?”

“Dumb luck. But it’s the first thing that connected the two of us.” Luke walked over to the ball and gave it another kick.

His dad shook his head. “I guess all those years of practice with the Longhorns paid off after all.”

Here we go with the football career regrets.

Luke turned to his dad, who hadn’t put on his sunglasses from when they were in the barn. His old man’s eyes didn’t appear to be nearly as disappointed as Luke remembered them being most of the time when he looked at his only son. Luke thought he saw approval there now, but that might just be overly optimistic.

O’Keeffe kicked the ball back toward them, but it bumped against Dad’s shin. Luke watched in surprise as Dad took a step back and then sent the ball sailing toward O’Keeffe.

Please don’t let it hit her.

The ball landed a few feet in front of the horse. The old man had always had a steady kick, probably even better than Luke’s when he was at the top of his game.

“Well, Bill, I guess you haven’t lost your touch, either. Maybe you should have taken that Ohio State scout up on his offer back in high school.”

Dad glanced at the ball and the horse, but remained silent for the longest time. Luke didn’t know his dad had ever dreamed of playing college football. Then his dad said, barely above a whisper, “My father thought football was foolishness. Better to find myself a job in the oil fields or work the pipeline, like he did.” Dad faced Luke. “I guess I lived out my dream of playing by watching you make it to the college level.”

Luke had no clue what to say. This was a side of his father he never knew existed. Sure explained a lot about why performing well for recruiters while in high school was so important to him.

“Guess I pushed you where you didn’t want to go.”

“No worries, Dad. If not for football, I might not have been able to go to college at all. That degree helped me reach where I am today. Besides, being at that college brought Maggie into my life.” He thought a minute about Cassie and her talk of karma and the interconnectedness of souls. Whoever orchestrated the Universe left him in awe. “I’m real happy with my life now, Dad.”

He almost thought he saw tears in his old man’s eyes before his dad turned back to O’Keeffe. Dad never cried.

“Proud of you, son.” His voice was more gravelly than usual.

Momma brushed a tear from her cheek. She’d tried to play peacemaker between the two of them for as long as Luke could remember. A sense of acceptance came over Luke for the first time ever with his dad. Maybe this visit wouldn’t be as bad as he’d been expecting after all.

“Day isn’t getting any longer,” Dad said. “Let’s get to work.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

C
assie joined the Dentons after leading her alpacas out to pasture. Lucas gently introduced O’Keeffe to the feel of something on her back using only the flick of the rope in his hand. The rope almost caressed the horse’s back and hindquarters before slipping away. He repeated the motion over and over. O’Keeffe jumped the first few times, but she seemed to be enjoying the stroke of the rope now.

“’Atta girl.”

Something tingled in the pit of Cassie’s stomach at his encouraging words. He’d been working with the horse all morning, and she knew he’d performed these steps many times over the week before as he had prepared her for today. O’Keeffe didn’t fight him as much as she did the first time Cassie had seen Lucas working with her.

Bill—he insisted she call him Bill—brought the blanket over and handed it to Lucas, who placed the folded cloth lightly against O’Keeffe’s midsection. The horse danced away, trying to dislodge the foreign object from her back. But with the lunge rope in Lucas’s gloved left hand and a firm command, she settled.

“Good girl.”

Again Cassie’s stomach quivered. She probably shouldn’t have eaten this morning. Her nerves were right on the edge. How long would it take him to break this horse to the saddle? She hated that term. Lucas called it training, which was better, but she knew O’Keeffe was not happy with all this attention.

Lucas stroked the mare’s withers and came close to O’Keeffe’s face, rewarding her with one of his endearing smiles. Without warning, he glanced over the horse’s nose and shared that smile with Cassie.

She was going to lose her heart to this man if she did not take precautions.

“How’s she doing?”

Cassie had nearly forgotten she had a job to do here, so wrapped up was she in the sensual dance of man and horse. She shifted her focus to O’Keeffe’s right eye and stepped close enough to whisper to her.

“How are you doing, baby? You are such a good girl. Daddy is going to be gentle with you.”

Lucas chuckled, bringing her up short.

“What’s so funny?”

“Daddy?”

“If I’m
Mamá
to my alpacas, I just assumed you are Daddy to your horses.”

“Go ahead. Sorry to intrude.”

Confused, she shook her head and went back to work speaking softly to O’Keeffe. “Promise you will let me know if you become frightened or confused, but Daddy would never hurt you. You understand that, right?” The horse nickered and expressed her trust in Lucas.

Cassie gazed at Lucas. “She is ready now.”

He kissed her on the cheek for no reason and went back to work applying the weight of the blanket to O’Keeffe’s back.