Hard headed texan, p.7
Hard-Headed Texan, page 7
“Yeah. My youngest brother Cory pretty much grew up without a mom, too. She died when he was a little kid. But at least he had Beth—my sister. She was a teenager when she died and kind of a little mother to him.” He went on thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, I guess we always had my mother or Beth there to interpret.” He grinned at her. “You know, tell us what we were all feeling. ‘Dad’s so proud of you for winning the blue ribbon at the county fat stock show.’ ‘Cory’s hurt that you didn’t look at his plastic brick tower.” Probably James and I could have used some of that.”
“Probably.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Care to come over and translate for us every so often?”
Antonia smiled. “I think you two can handle it.”
“I don’t know. You may be giving us too much credit.”
They had reached the corral beside the barn, where Daniel had already bridled and tied two horses. One was a sorrel gelding with a white blaze down his face, and the other was a black mare. Two pairs of ears twitched forward, and the horses regarded Antonia with interest. While Daniel went into the barn for the saddles, Antonia made friends with them, talking in a low, melodic voice and reaching out to stroke their necks. The black-and-white dog sat down beside her, tail thumping the ground. Antonia reached down to scratch him behind his ears.
“You ready to go for a run, too, fella?” she asked.
“Beautiful horses,” she commented to Daniel as he put a blanket and saddle on the sorrel. “You obviously take good care of your animals.”
“Thank you. I try. The mare’s Alabama. She’s lively but gentle. Tambor’s strong and fast, but he’s got this gait that’ll jar your teeth out of your head. I figured not your first time out.”
“Sounds like a wise choice. And Alabama looks absolutely beautiful to me. Here. I can do that,” she added as Daniel swung a saddle onto Alabama’s back.
“Sure?” Daniel stepped back. “You’re my guest.”
“Ah, but not, I hope, a bothersome one,” Antonia retorted. “I intend to get invited back.”
Daniel smiled, his dark eyes lighting with warmth. “I wouldn’t worry about that.”
Antonia felt heat rising in her cheeks. “I—I’m sorry. I wasn’t really angling for another invitation. I was just…talking. You must think me terribly rude.”
“Not at all,” he assured her. “I’m glad you would like to come back.” His gaze flickered down to her mouth for an instant before he added teasingly, “Even if it is just the horses you want to come for.”
“Daniel!” Antonia started to protest but realized that she would just be digging herself in deeper if she went on. Instead, she contented herself with shooting him a look, then set to the task of buckling on her saddle.
Her hands moved quickly and expertly, with years of practice. She concentrated on the job, aware that Daniel was covertly watching her. Even though she was a veterinarian, she knew that he would not be completely certain of her ability to saddle and ride a horse until he had watched her. The fact did not upset her; she, too, would have to see a person’s competence before she would trust him with a horse, no matter how much of an expert he claimed to be.
They led the horses out of the corral, mounted and rode eastward, the dog, whose name she had found out was Solo, trotting happily at their side. Antonia let out a sigh of pure pleasure at being on a horse again. It had been at least three months since she had ridden, and even before that, she had not ridden as much during the year she had worked in Houston as she was accustomed to.
Alabama was, as Daniel had promised, biddable, but quick and energetic, as well. Antonia concentrated on getting acquainted with her and with riding again. Daniel rode alongside her in comfortable silence.
Antonia looked over at him and smiled. “This is wonderful! Thank you so much for inviting me.”
“Any time,” he replied. “I enjoy the company. I thought we’d ride over to the mesa.” He pointed to the flat-topped upthrust of land rising off to their right. “There’s a little creek there, and some shade.”
Antonia turned her horse’s head in the direction he indicated. They rode along through the sparse vegetation, winding through feathery-leafed mesquite bushes, sagebrush and spiny prickly pear cacti. Now and then a yucca plant raised a long stem upward, adorned at the top with a cluster of white bells. It was different seeing the land close up like this, Antonia thought, instead of viewing it through the window of her truck as she sped along the highway. She could feel herself relaxing, lulled by the rhythm of the horse and the heat of the sun shining down on them. A breeze rustled the leaves of the bushes and lifted her hair, caressing her cheek. It wouldn’t be hard to be content out here, she mused, not when one could always saddle a horse and ride one’s cares away.
She glanced over at her companion. It was no wonder that Daniel exuded such strength and calm. He had grown up like this, riding the land with his dog by his side, surrounded by the love of animals and the beauty of nature. It was, she thought, one of the best things anyone could give a child. No wonder he found it hard to understand why his son, given the same upbringing, wanted other things.
“It must have been wonderful growing up here,” she told him.
He smiled. “I didn’t always think so, particularly when I had to get up at five o’clock to do my chores before the school bus came. But, yeah, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I never wanted to live anywhere else.” He grinned. “Little different from Virginia, though, I guess.”
“Yeah. But it’s beautiful, too, in its own way. I like the land out here.” She gazed out over the rugged landscape. “But you have to wonder what people thought when they moved here, years and years ago. So different from home, so empty and vast.”
“A bunch of ’em probably turned right around and went back. That’d be my guess. The rest of them just saw opportunity. My great-great-grandfather came out here after the Civil War. They had five kids. Only two of them lived to be adults. His wife died in childbirth. His brother came out with him, but he wound up going back to Alabama. There’ve been Suttons here ever since. Dad’s land is just over there. Mine abuts it. This was my grandmother’s land. She and her sisters divided her father’s ranch when he died. It’s not big enough for running cattle, really, but it’s enough for my horse farm.”
“You’ve done a good job with it.”
“I’ve tried. But sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing. Maybe I was selfish, staying here. James’s mother hated it. Now he wants to leave, too. Maybe they would have been happier in the city.”
“No. Don’t think that way. Maybe James does want to live somewhere else, do something else, but he will always carry this with him. I’m sure he’s better and stronger for having the kind of life he had here. What about your brothers and sister? They don’t live here, do they? But it’s part of them.”
“Yeah. Cater bought a house here and a little piece of land. He comes back a lot. Says he can think better here. And when Beth had problems, she came back to the ranch.” He looked at her and smiled. “You have a real knack for that, you know.”
“For what?”
“Making me feel better.”
The warmth in his eyes sent a funny flutter through Antonia’s insides. Warning signals went off all through her. This wasn’t just a Saturday morning ride, and Daniel wasn’t just one of her clients. It was a date, and he made her feel like a teenager when he smiled at her.
Antonia knew she was getting into dangerous territory and ought to pull away right now. The feelings she had around him were much too intense for comfort—or security. Yet she could not seem to make herself take that step back. She could not quell the excitement and anticipation rising within her.
They approached the bottom of the mesa, where a line of greenery indicated the presence of water. As they neared the mesa, however, Antonia could see that whatever water there might be was nowhere visible. There was a shallow creek bed, along the edge of which were stretched a few larger mesquite bushes and even a tall cottonwood tree, but the bed was dry and cracked.
“Wet weather creek,” Daniel explained. “This time of year, it should have some water in it, but…” He shrugged, his voice trailing away.
Antonia did not need an explanation. She was well aware of the drought that had been plaguing Texas for quite some time now. It was the bane of her clients’ existence; local ranchers were having to sell off cattle they could not afford to feed because the lack of rain had killed off not only much of the natural vegetation their cattle fed upon but also the hay they raised to supplement their feed. Purchasing feed for the animals quickly wiped out all profit. In a vicious cycle, selling off the cattle drove the prices even lower, with the result that more than one local rancher had been driven out of the business entirely.
“At least it’s still shady,” Daniel commented. “You want to get down and rest a spell? There’s a nice spot to sit over on that rock.”
He nodded toward a large rock with a flat top at the edge of the dry creek that was shaded by the cottonwood tree. They dismounted and tied their horses’ reins to a nearby mesquite bush, then crossed the dry creek to sit on the rock. A breeze stirred the air, lifting Antonia’s hair and cooling her cheek. It was a soft, pleasant spring day, with everything turning green around them. The mesa rose behind them in an almost sheer cliff, and on all three other sides, the land stretched away to the horizon, flat and tan, dotted with green bushes and an occasional stand of trees. The sky was bright blue, with little white wisps of clouds. It was peaceful and expansive.
Antonia crooked her knee, setting her heel against the rock, and circled her upraised knee with her arms, contemplating the scenery around her. Beside her, Daniel braced his hand against the rock, leaning back.
“It’s beautiful out here,” Antonia commented softly.
“Mmm-hmm. Beautiful.”
Antonia turned her head to look at Daniel and saw that he was watching her as he spoke, the underlying meaning of his words clear in his eyes. It was a little thing, and Antonia had been told more than once before that she was beautiful, but somehow the word from this taciturn rancher made her heart leap in response. She could feel the heat rushing into her cheeks, and she cursed her fair skin that showed everything she felt.
“I meant the land,” she said with as much severity as she could muster.
“It’s beautiful, too,” Daniel replied. His eyes drifted down over her face. “But I’d rather look at you.”
Antonia gazed back at him, unable to pull away. He leaned forward, and she knew that he was going to kiss her. Something deep inside told her it was a bad idea, that this was her last chance to back out. But even as a warning voice whined that she would regret it, she knew that she would not stop him. She wanted Daniel to kiss her. She wanted to kiss him back. She was, at that moment, alive in an exciting and electric way that she had not felt in years.
His lips touched hers and clung. It was a soft, almost tentative kiss, without the force of pent-up emotion that had permeated their first kiss the other day. His mouth was gentle, exploratory, easing gradually into heat and hunger. She relaxed into him, kissing him back, feeling the fever between them grow. His hands cupped her face, then sank into her hair, holding her still as his mouth grew more and more eager. They kissed again and again, tongues clashing and caressing, their breath coming shorter in their throats. He pulled her to him, burying his lips in hers, a low moan escaping him.
Heat exploded through Antonia, rushing throughout her body. She shook under the force of her fierce hunger, all the nerve endings in her skin suddenly tin-glingly alive. She threw her arms around Daniel’s neck, pressing her body up into his, loving the feel of his hard, muscular body against her softer one, aching to feel more. His hands moved down, caressing her body through her clothes, gliding over her back and hips and legs, then moving back up her sides until settling on her breasts.
He cupped her breasts, squeezing the fleshy mounds gently, and Antonia’s nipples tightened in response. Her breasts were full and aching beneath his touch, her nipples hardening with desire.
“Antonia…” He breathed her name as his lips left hers and began to travel downward, trailing over the soft white flesh of her throat.
Antonia shivered at the touch of his lips, letting her head fall back to expose the full length of her throat to him. His arm went around her back, supporting her, as his other hand went under her shirt and up to caress her breasts. Only the lace of her bra separated her skin from his, and the contrast of the faint roughness of the lace against the supremely soft flesh of her breasts excited him. His breath shuddered out harshly.
Daniel quickly unbuttoned her shirt and kissed his way across her skin, exploring the texture and taste of her, velvet soft over the hard bones of her rib cage. He reached at last the upswelling of her breast, pillowy soft. He nuzzled beneath the lacy edge of her top, drunk with the scent and feel of her. Antonia twined her fingers through his hair, clenching them as a new frisson of pleasure darted through her.
She felt giddy and wild, teetering on the edge of a precipice. She wanted to make the leap, to let go and fall into the heat and passion of the moment. Yet even as she relaxed, giving in to the moment, some other part of her jerked back, scared of the dizzying sensation of freefall. Antonia tightened, and her mind began to work again. Whatever was she doing out here in the middle of nowhere, necking like a teenager with Daniel Sutton? It was ridiculous, impossible. It didn’t matter how good it felt—where could it lead? Did she intend to have wild sex right here on this rock? On their first date?
“No,” she murmured, her hands coming down and bracing against his chest. “Wait.”
Daniel froze, his breath rasping in his throat. Slowly he raised his head and looked into her eyes. His dark brown gaze burned with a fierce flame.
“We can’t,” she said a little desperately, aware suddenly of the iron strength of his arm, the firm wall of his chest beneath her hands. Daniel Sutton was a strong man, and at this moment there was a wildness in his eyes that nudged awake her deepest fears.
He relaxed, letting out a muffled curse, and his arms fell away from her. He moved back.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. Wait—I didn’t mean—” Antonia pushed back her hair, feeling suddenly bereft, as if she had lost something important. “I’m sorry. It’s just—this time, this place.” She glanced around at the empty landscape. “It’s too early. For me, I mean…. Oh, you must think I’m hopelessly muddled.”
Daniel chuckled, surprising her. “Actually, I kind of like you muddled. Makes you human, like the rest of us.”
“Makes me human?” Antonia looked at him, startled. “What am I the rest of the time?”
“Oh, you know, above us lesser mortals. Beautiful, intelligent, cool, calm.”
“Is that what I seem like? A snob?”
“No, not a snob. Just…sort of perfect. The kind of person who doesn’t make mistakes.”
Antonia let out a wry laugh. “Believe me, I have made tons of mistakes. Horrible ones.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“It’s true.”
“What? Tell me some big, horrible mistake you made.”
“Well, my ex-husband, for one,” Antonia retorted.
“Ah. So you have one of those, too.”
“I told you, I’m anything but perfect.” She slid off the rock, straightening her clothes. “That’s just…a mask, I guess, that poised, aloof thing. Part of it was the way I was raised—‘a lady doesn’t cry,’ ‘a lady doesn’t scream and hop about’—and part of it was being a woman in vet school. I couldn’t let things faze me or everyone would think it proved I didn’t have the right stuff to be a veterinarian. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to come off stiff….”
“You don’t,” Daniel assured her, sliding off the rock to stand beside her. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “I wasn’t criticizing you. I like it when you look like a princess.” He smiled down at her. “It’s a challenge, you know? Makes me think about melting that reserve.” The fierce light was there again in his eyes, then gone as he went on. “But I like it when you’re muddled, too. We can go slow. Folks will tell you that I’m none too fast-moving anyway. We can do whatever you like.”
He slid his arms around her loosely, cuddling her, his cheek resting against her hair. It was awfully nice, Antonia thought, to be with a man tall enough to do that. It was, in fact, awfully nice in every way to be with Daniel Sutton. There was no reason to be on edge or to pull back. She leaned her head against his chest.
“I like this,” she admitted.
“We could go on doing this a while, then.”
“Okay.” Antonia smiled and slid her arms around his waist. This was a very good place to be.
Chapter 5
They rode back to the house, and Daniel threw together sandwiches for lunch. Two of James’s friends were there, and she could hear the reverberation of a heavy bass all the way from his room.
“And his door’s closed, believe it or not,” Daniel told her wryly, casting a pained look toward in the general direction of his son’s room. “I’ll go tell him to turn it down.”
“That’s okay. I don’t mind.” In fact, the steady vibration was a little annoying, but Antonia wasn’t about to say anything that would cause friction between Daniel and his son, and she figured that after a few minutes the vibration would probably become part of the background, like a clock ticking.
“Really?” Daniel turned to look at her. She nodded, and he returned to his sandwich making, saying, “I can’t stand it. Just sounds like this ‘boom, boom, boom’ all the time. No music.”
He turned, plates in hand, and crossed to the table, grinning. “I sound like my father now. Parenthood does terrible things to you.”
He put the plates on the table and went back to the refrigerator for drinks. “You know…” he began in a supremely casual voice, glancing quickly at her as he set down the drinks, then away. “I was thinking…if you really can stand that noise…”
