Amanda dropped onto the edge of the bed, warmed more by that smile than by any fireplace or dry flannel. Feeding on that smile, savoring it like first sunlight. Then she saw the quick betrayal on Jake’s face when he bent to pull off her boot.
“Jake, no!” she protested. “Your ribs.”
“Don’t start again,” he grated, unzipping the high-quality leather and sliding it off her foot. “My ribs are fine.”
“Oh, yeah,” she challenged, suddenly afraid again. “They look great.”
Jake lifted his head and met her glare with a heat that silenced her. “Now, let’s get those hands in some warm water.”
Amanda didn’t know what misery was until the feeling came back in her fingers. Jake had to physically hold her hands in place to keep her from pulling them out. First they tingled. Then they burned. And then they shrieked.
She sobbed then.
“I told you to wear my gloves,”’ Jake told her, rubbing her hands between his own as they sat on the big couch in front of the fireplace.
Amanda couldn’t even answer. She tried to pull her hands back. She tried to bend those throbbing red fingers and couldn’t.
“Shh,” Jake soothed, pulling her closer, chafing her hands, his arm circling her. “It’ll be all right. It’ll only be a few more minutes.”
Amanda buried her head in his chest and bit back every swear word she’d ever heard. “I’m... sorry,” she gulped, desperate for composure, knowing she wasn’t going to find any soon as she soaked the shirt Jake had changed into. “I’m a... dumb greenhorn.”
Jake chuckled, stroking her hair with his free hand, his other capturing Amanda’s awakening digits. “No, you’re not,” he argued gently. “You’re just not a Wyoming rancher. Next time it snows we’ll make sure you’re at the ranch already.”
“Next time I’ll visit in July.”
His hands were so rough, so callused from hard work. How could they be so very gentle? How could his voice, so hard and commanding, be so tender? Amanda ached with the comfort of his hand in her hair, with the warmth of his breath on her cheek, with the steady strength of his heartbeat so close to her ear. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to his care, gradually losing the pain in her fingers, gradually losing the tears of frustration and fear.
Jake’s hands slowed. His breath quickened. Amanda heard the silence grow in the room, felt the stumble of his heart. She heard her own heart follow, and realized suddenly just where she was.
The fire crackled and popped. Outside, the wind whined, and somewhere a clock ticked. There on the couch, the silence stretched and tautened and gelled into something completely different. Something sensate. It smelled of leather and wood smoke and hard work. It sounded like the rasp of labored breathing. It felt like the frayed bonds of control.
Jake lifted her hand to his mouth. Amanda’s gaze followed. His eyes were closed as he kissed those swollen, aching fingers. His jaw was tighter than tensile steel. The sudden thunder of his heart betrayed him.
Amanda lifted her sore fingers and rubbed them against the rasp of his jaw, and something deep inside her melted. Something well-built and jealously guarded crumbled. Jake opened his eyes and Amanda was lost.
He wrapped her into his arms just as he had on horseback, but tighter, closer, more completely, so that nothing could come between them. He bent to whisper her name, the sound of it ragged as the wind. He kissed her, and Amanda knew the feeling of freedom.
She’d never known that hunger could be so delicious. That command could taste so sweet. He brushed her lips and then returned, his mouth as soft as morning air. He lifted a hand and wrapped his fingers into her hair. And then he took the kiss that he wanted. He sipped, he plundered, he bruised with an intensity that stunned Amanda to her very core, that kindled a dark fire Amanda had never suspected. She met him, opened to him, parried with him in a honeyed waltz of desire and need.
Amanda sank into him, into his touch, into his smell and sound. She drank his harsh moan and offered her own sigh of surprise. Lightning leaped from his fingertips and curled from his mouth. Celebration exploded into yearning and swept away objection. Amanda arched against him, her breasts aching for the brush of him. She tortured her own fingers with the silky mantle of his hair and partnered her tongue with his. And when she felt his hand drop to cup her breast, she knew that this was what she’d been searching for all this time.
“Boss!”
The back door slammed, and boots clattered on the mud-room floor. Amanda almost came right up off the couch. She was sure her heart stopped completely. The only way she knew Jake was as shaken as she was that he had to lower his head and collect himself before answering Clovis’s anxious page.
“What, Clovis?”
By the time the little man burst into the living room, Amanda and Jake were a respectable distance apart on the couch. Amanda clutched her hands in her lap and Jake raked his through his hair.
“Willy just got back. We got three more pregnant mares we can’t get rounded up.”
Jake didn’t even turn to acknowledge his foreman. He nodded, his eyes flinty. “Saddle Bill for me. I’ll be right there.”
Amanda didn’t get the chance to object.
“Don’t say a word,” he said as he climbed stiffly to his feet. “This isn’t going to get done without me, and without foals, I have no ranch.”
Amanda fought the urge to reach out to him. His forehead was taut again. His skin wasn’t blue anymore. It was paper white. He was too tired and sore to go out again, and they both knew it. And Amanda knew that there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
