His for the Taking

Nine



Usually, challenges seemed less daunting to Cole the next morning. Not today. Too much was at stake.

As soon as the sun flamed like a red-hot ball of fire against a mauve horizon, Cole dragged himself out of bed and made coffee. Although he had a headache from hell and burned with impatience, he had called Juan about the well. Fortunately, the driller had just arrived, so Cole could vent some of his frustration by blasting that glib, overpaid shirker who thoroughly deserved it. After the call, he went for a run before he drove over to Miss Jennie’s.

Morning doves cooed in the treetops above Miss Jennie’s house. Shadows from her big oaks slanted across her overgrown lawn. The last traces of ground fog hovered at the fringes of the brush where his ranch bordered her property.

For a long moment Cole stayed in the cab of his truck and observed the single light burning in the kitchen window. Maybe Maddie hadn’t been able to sleep very well. He knew he hadn’t. No, after dropping Maddie off last night, he’d lain in his bed, tossing and turning, torturing himself with visions of her lying in her fiancé’s arms.

Gathering his courage, he dragged himself out of the truck and walked up to the front door and knocked. He was about to raise his hand again when the door opened and Cinnamon wheeled around from the back porch, yapping.

Propped on crutches, Miss Jennie, whose wrinkled face was softened by her bright blue eyes, beamed up at him sweetly as Cinnamon rushed inside.

“Good mornin’, Cole. I expect you’re here to see my darlin’ Maddie.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Well, she’s in the shower. The poor thing’s as pale as a ghost this morning and seems plumb tuckered out. I don’t think she slept much last night. I heard her pacing early this morning, but you come on in…that is, if you don’t mind waitin’ for her.”

He removed his Stetson. “I don’t mind,” he said politely, feeling ashamed of his own violent emotions as he stepped inside Miss Jennie’s quiet, orderly parlor, which was filled with faded carpets, well-used antiques and the scarred piano that every kid in town had hammered on, including him.

“I have a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen. Or if you’d prefer a soda, there’s several in the fridge. I think I’d like a soda myself. Maybe you could open one for me, and we could chat at the kitchen table while we wait for our girl. Or sit on the screened porch.”

“Wherever it’s cooler.”

“That would be the kitchen. I’ve got the air on.”

Cole poured himself a mug of coffee and set a chilled can of soda before Miss Jennie, who was quick to thank him.

“I can’t manage these crutches and get a soda out of the fridge at the same time,” she said. “Not enough hands. Maddie’s been so good to come here and help me with little things like that. She’s fed Cinnamon and chased him, watered the plants and done the laundry. Mainly, though, we’ve caught up on our visitin’. I’m mighty proud of how she turned out.”

He nodded courteously. He had immense respect for Miss Jennie, who had been his senior English teacher as well as Maddie’s, only Miss Jennie hadn’t championed him. Quite the opposite. Once, when his grades had fallen, she’d kept him from playing football for six weeks even though his parents and the coaches had pressured her to relent.

“I never knew you were friends with Maddie back when she lived here, you being a Coleman and all. She never once mentioned you until that awful night when she came here and said she had to leave Yella for good. She told me plenty about you that night, though. Cried her heart out, she did, poor thing, because you were so high-and-mighty, so far out of her reach. I told her to call you and lay it all out—to give you a chance. But that only made her weep harder because she said she already had and that you’d made it clear you thought she was trash and didn’t want her.”

Cole clenched his hands into fists and then unclenched them.

“There was nothing I could say to cheer her after that. She just said, ‘He doesn’t want me. He never will. I’m scared. You’ve got to help me get out of this town, or I’ll end up just like my mother.’ So I did.”

Whatever else Maddie might have been that night, he now knew she’d been scared, and he hadn’t been there for her. He was going to find out what the hell had happened to her that had made her run. It might take a while, peeling through the layers of the truth, but he was determined. First, though, he had to deal with Noah.

“She turned out real nice, didn’t she?” Miss Jennie’s blue eyes drilled into him.

“She did turn out nice,” he muttered, feeling defensive.

“Miss Jennie!” Maddie stood in the doorway. Her stern voice and her ashen face were enough to make Miss Jennie swallow whatever she’d been about to confide.

“Hello, Cole,” Maddie said stonily.

He stood up awkwardly, having forgotten all he’d intended to say to her after Miss Jennie’s startling revelation.

It didn’t make sense that Maddie had come to see Miss Jennie, of all people, on the night she’d been so mad with love she’d supposedly run off with Vernon. And Miss Jennie had confirmed what Maddie had told him about having tried to call him. What did it mean that she’d been crying her heart out because of him, and yet she’d still left with Vernon?

“We have to talk,” he muttered gloomily.

“I don’t have long,” Maddie said in a crisp tone. “Miss Jennie needs me.”

“I’ll be fine right here with my soda and my morning paper. You two take Cinnamon out into the back garden and talk. There’s some shade, so it’s not too hot at this hour with the breeze. But mind that you make Cinnamon leave Bessie’s chickens alone, so George, her husband, doesn’t take a notion to shoot him again. You take all the time you need. I’ll be just fine in here.”

Tension throbbed through Cole as he pushed the screen door open and called to Cinnamon. The dog wheeled between their legs, barking. Then, of course, the dog rushed straight for Bessie’s chicken coop.

“I hope George doesn’t take aim at Cinnamon and shoot you or me by mistake,” Cole said to lighten the mood. “He’s a lousy shot.”

A tight-lipped Maddie whirled on him as soon as they were where Miss Jennie could neither see nor hear them. “We have nothing to say to each other!”

“Why don’t we start with the fact that I’ve had a son I haven’t known about for six damn years.” Deliberately, he kept his tone soft.

When she shut her eyes, he was sure it was to block him out, not because the sun slanting through the oaks was so brilliant.

“I want to see him,” Cole said. “To know him. For him to know me. As soon as it can be arranged and you feel that Noah is prepared, I want to meet him. Is that so wrong?”

“This has all happened so fast, I can’t think. All I know is that you weren’t there when we needed you. We’ve built a life—apart from you. It wasn’t easy, I’ll admit. I know you said you could do a lot for Noah, but the man I’m going to marry, Greg, can take care of us. He’ll work hard to make us happy.”

“Noah’s still my son,” Cole said. “I want to meet this other man, who’s going to have a big part in Noah’s life.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Cole saw Bessie’s shade lift.

“Please, if you ever felt anything for me…just go on with your own life. I was doing just fine without you.”

“Well, maybe I wasn’t doing just fine—not even before I knew about Noah. Maybe I want some answers. For six damn years I believed you jilted me and ran off with Vernon. In your letters that I stupidly didn’t open, you said that you believed Noah was Vernon’s. You sounded glad that he wasn’t, like you were glad to think I might be Noah’s father. Why? Miss Jennie just told me that you came to her right before you left Yella.”

“Miss Jennie shouldn’t be talking to you.”

“Well, she called it an awful night. She said you told her about us, that you were crying and that you were in some kind of trouble. If that’s true, I hope you’ll trust me enough someday to tell me what happened.”

“It’s too late.” Her flat voice was so faint he could barely hear her.

“Why did you tell her all about me if you were going to run off with Vernon? What the hell really happened that night?”

Her eyes grew huge and filled with pain. “I’m going to marry Greg, so none of this matters.”

“We have a son. I want to know what happened.”

“I can’t go back there.”

“I’m not asking you to go back. I’m asking you to communicate…honestly.”

Refusing to look at him, she bit her bottom lip.

“Why did you sleep with me yesterday?”

“Because I’m weak and cheap…like my mother.”

Was she? Grimly, he studied her wan face. He wished she could trust him enough to level with him.

Feeling so frustrated he wanted to shake her, he balled his fists and slid them into his pockets. “Maybe I would have been fool enough to buy that story before yesterday, but not now. I think you ran away from Yella because something terrible happened to you. I think you were scared and helpless, and I wasn’t there for you. I think the woman who put herself through college while she raised my son alone, the woman who has a decent job now and a schoolteacher fiancé who’s reputedly a damned paragon—that woman is the last thing from weak and cheap. I want the truth!”

She caught her breath. “Okay…like I keep telling you, the truth is that last night—the sex, I mean—was a mistake that I deeply regret.”

“Not for me, it wasn’t! It’s the first good, completely honest thing that’s happened to me in six years!”

It was bad timing that he’d read her letters right after that and had been forced to confront her about Noah. It would have been so much better for both of them if they’d had time to grow their relationship before they’d gotten into anything so heavy. But here he was—in too deep—with a woman he wasn’t sure of. It was either sink or swim. He, for one, was determined to swim.

“I can’t believe that,” she began. “You’re a Coleman, and I’m Jesse Ray’s no-good daughter.”

“Will you stop using the way everybody abused you as a weapon to club me? You’ve always been way more than that, and you know it.”

Hardly knowing what he intended, he spanned the distance that separated them. So what if Bessie’s shade notched up another inch or two. Wrapping Maddie, who smelled of shampoo and soap and her own sweet self, in his arms, he pulled her close.

“Even though you don’t want me right now, you feel perfect in my arms.”

When she tried to push free, he tightened his grip. Freeing her hands, he slid his arms around her waist.

“Cole, don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”

“Kiss me,” he begged. “You’re going to have to prove to me you regret the sex.” He paused. “I now believe you tried to call me the night you ran away. I believe my mother said something terrible that hurt you very deeply when you were already upset and terrified. I don’t know why she doesn’t want to admit it. I can only imagine she sensed the depth of my feelings for you and was too scared to confront me because she was afraid I’d choose you. No doubt she thinks she was acting in my best interests. Baby, I want you to trust me enough to tell me what happened that night.”

“It’s too awful.”

“Maybe it will be easier to bear if you tell me.”

Her lovely face crumpled. “I don’t think so.”

“I let you down. Okay. I know. I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

“I don’t know who you’ll really believe—me or the gossips.”

“If you’d talk to me, it would give me more ammunition against the gossips, wouldn’t it?”

When she sighed, he hoped that maybe he was getting through to her.

“I’m such a fool,” she murmured as she laid her head upon his chest. “I always was where you were concerned. I shouldn’t listen to anything you ever say…especially when you hold me. I can’t think.”

“I was the fool. I never should have married Lizzie just because you’d run off and my dad was dead and my mother was hounding me all the time about Adam. I should have left Yella, left them all, and tried to find you.”

“Maybe it would have just made things worse. By then, I knew I was pregnant. My life was such a mess. I was needy and desperate and struggling to find myself and carve out a new life. I wouldn’t be who I am now if anything had been different. But all that’s over and done with.”

Stroking her hair, he held her. “I hate it that you had to face all that alone. I’m here now, and what I want is for you to marry me instead of Greg.”

“What? You don’t know what you’re saying. That’s impossible.”

“Why? Noah’s my son.”

“But you’re a Coleman, and I’m who I am. Marriage would mean we’d have to make a life together. We’ve been apart for six years, so we don’t even really know each other at this point. You had a three-month secret affair with a girl who was forbidden, and we had yesterday. What else do we have?”

“Noah. Last night. Chemistry.”

She blushed. “My mother ruined her life because her libido led her to make so many terrible choices. And there’s your mother, who hates me.”

“She’ll either change her mind, or she won’t see much of me or her grandson.”

“There’s Noah and how his grandmother’s condemnation of me might damage him. I don’t want what she and other people here think about me to make him see me as cheap.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Other children, other people, can be so cruel. You don’t know, since you never suffered the kind of cruelty I did while growing up here.”

“I’d be giving him my name and my protection. That will count for a lot in the future, just as it counts for a lot to everybody in Yella.”

“Other people would side with your mother, her friends, everyone in Yella, even Adam…. They’d make me feel like I used to feel. I want to forget the past—all of it.”

“We don’t have to live here. And you’re wrong about Adam. He and I don’t agree on a lot of things, but he likes you. When he told me how beautiful and classy you were, nothing could stop me from racing back to Yella.”

“Really?”

“I was irresponsible as hell to leave my oil well. I came back solely to see you.” He held her tightly. “I’m sorry about the past,” he whispered.

Very gently, he leaned down and laved the back of her ear with his tongue, causing her to flush beguilingly.

“Stop! I can’t think when you do that,” she whispered, her voice soft and breathy. “And I have to think.”

“No. You’ve been doing too much thinking. Feelings count, too, you know. I think we fell into bed last night because we both wanted each other so badly we couldn’t resist.”

“In my life, lust has been a destroyer.”

Slowly his fingers tucked her hair behind her ear. “Okay. I’ll admit to a tad of lust, but not to the destroying kind. I never got over you, Maddie Gray. Because I cared about you.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Only because, after what you’ve been through, you’re too afraid. I don’t blame you. But if you’d only give me another chance—”

“You’re just lonely…because of Lizzie.”

“I was hellishly lonely after you left…even after I married Lizzie.”

“You haven’t had time to think this through. Don’t you see that it would never work?” She brushed at her throat with her fingertips as if suddenly she was too hot. When she tried to remove his hand, he wove his fingers through hers and brought her knuckles against his warm lips, his gentle kisses causing her to shudder.

“We’ll have to find a way to make it work,” he said.

When she glanced up at him, her beautiful eyes were aglow with fear and a wild, desperate hope.

“Let me go!” she begged.

Lowering his head so fast she couldn’t dodge his lips, he claimed the exquisite softness of her mouth. When his tongue slid inside, she rasped in a breath.

“You have to break up with Greg,” Cole muttered hoarsely. “You have to know that such a marriage wouldn’t stand a chance when it’s me you really want…in bed anyway.”

“I can’t care about that.”

“You must, if you marry him wanting me. I could tell you a thing or two about marrying for the wrong reasons. About trying to make the wrong relationship work.”

“Your argument doesn’t stand. You and I would be marrying for the wrong reasons. I had this perfect plan….”

“You don’t think I had a few plans myself? Last night blew all our plans to bits.”

“I won’t be bullied into a loveless marriage.”

“Put like that, my proposal stinks. But your assessment is inaccurate. We’d be marrying for love—for the mutual love of our son.”

“You don’t know him.”

“He’s mine. I want him to be legitimate. I’d think that would matter to you since your mother didn’t marry your father and people looked down on you for it.”

“Oh… You do play dirty.” She stared at him, aghast.

“When I have to. It’s very simple. Go back to Austin. Tell Greg about me. Say you’re confused, that you need time. In the meantime, introduce me to Noah as a good friend of yours, so we can start preparing him to accept me as your husband and his father. Then slowly we’ll sort this out…together.”

“No.”

“I want to give Noah a stable life,” he said smoothly.

“Do you think I don’t want that?”

“Good. We agree on the fundamentals. We both want what’s best for our son, and we both want each other.”

“You don’t love me.”

“You don’t love me either, but I’m not whining about it. I’m asking you to marry me.”

“You’re impossible…arrogant…entitled…”

He smiled as he waited for her to finish cataloging his many faults.

“But I want to marry you. I want to take care of you. I want to make up for six years of neglecting you and my son. Surely that makes up for two or three of my sins.”

“You don’t love me,” she repeated.

Maybe not, but no way was he letting her go again, not after last night. For better or worse, she was his. Just like Noah was his. She just didn’t know it yet.

He didn’t like it that she’d intended to keep him from ever finding out about Noah, and he didn’t like that she’d planned to marry Greg, but he had to focus on what he wanted—Noah and her—if he was going to win her over to his point of view. He didn’t want another man being a father to Noah now that Cole was free to marry and claim his son.

As he held her and stared down at her lovely face, his blood began to thrum as he remembered how she’d felt last night in his arms. Suddenly, he was tired of arguing. As always, he marveled that she could arouse him so easily, so quickly—and that he could do the same to her.

“Maybe I don’t love you, but I like a lot of things about you. For one thing, you’re too damn beautiful to argue with and you’re making me unbearably hot,” he said.

“What?”

“Since everybody already thinks you lured me to my pool to go skinny-dipping yesterday, why don’t we go there now…and actually do it?”

Her luminous eyes went so dark and shot so many sparks at him, he was afraid she was about to pull back her hand and take a swing at him. When she didn’t, when she simply stared at him with what became a charming, incredulous expression on her blushing face, he relaxed and grew even hotter for her.

“Now?” she demanded. “We’re in the middle of an argument. You can’t be serious!”

Relieved that she hadn’t said no, his hands twisted in her hair. He pulled her head back and her body flush against his own so that she could feel his erection. She gasped and cast a frantic look toward Bessie’s window.

“Feel what you do to me,” he whispered, right before he kissed her long and passionately. “Believe me—I’m very serious.”

“But we were arguing about getting married. You can’t just switch gears—”

“Who’s switching? Obviously, everything we do together turns me on, which proves how much fun marrying you would be.”

“Bessie’s probably watching,” she murmured, struggling to free herself.

“So? If we’re going to be talked about, Miss Gray, we might as well give the old biddies an X-rated kiss or two to speculate about, don’t you think?”

When he laughed, her lips quirked as she attempted to suppress her own smile. “Just because I can’t stay mad at you doesn’t mean I intend to marry you.”

“I can’t stay mad at you either, which I take as a good sign for two people considering marriage,” he countered.

She smiled a little.

“Hey, do you have a picture of Noah?” Cole asked, feeling vulnerable at his sudden need to see a snapshot.

She nodded slowly. Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she scrolled to her pictures. “Here,” she said, placing the device in his palm. “I can email any you like.”

Noah appeared to be a normal, happy, rambunctious little boy in every picture. His tumbled hair was coal-black. The kid’s lively green eyes grabbed Cole’s soul and refused to let it go. He looked just like Cole had at the same age.

He had a son who was everything a man could want in a child.

In one shot, Noah raced exuberantly toward a swing set with two other boys about his same size. The untied shoelaces of his sneakers flying, he was clearly ahead.

Competitive, Cole thought, remembering his days as a star quarterback in high school.

“Does he know how to tie his shoes?” he asked.

“Yes. But not all that well because too many of his shoes have had other types of fasteners.”

“Then we’ll have to work on that,” Cole said.

In another shot, Noah was on the yellow roof of a red playhouse with a smiling blonde girl who was missing a front tooth. His goofy grin and wide-eyed look of adoration tugged at Cole’s heart.

“Somebody’s got a crush,” he whispered.

“Her name’s Missy. And you’re right. I couldn’t believe it when he told me he brushed a spider off of her. He hates spiders with such a passion I knew she was special.”

In another, Noah hung upside down from a tree limb like an impishly grinning bat while an admiring Missy smiled up at him.

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll break something?” Cole asked.

“Oh, yes. He already has.”

She took the phone from him and flipped through the pictures until she found the one she was looking for. Then she handed it back to him.

The picture was of Noah lying on a hospital bed. There were dark circles under his worried green eyes as he studied his suspended arm in its white cast.

“What happened?”

“He broke his arm at school while racing a kid down a hill on the playground. Not that a broken arm slowed him down. Within a day he’d learned to do everything one-handed. The only time he complained of pain was when the doctor twisted his arm before he set it. Oh, and he did wax philosophical when he was snuggling with me in bed one morning about how easy it was to break an arm.”

“He sleeps with you?”

“No. But he comes in a lot of mornings to cuddle before my alarm goes off.”

His son was tough. But he was affectionate, too. Pride swelled inside Cole, and so did another, less easily defined but fiercely possessive and all-consuming emotion.

His gaze locked on Maddie’s face. She was the mother of his son. Was that why he felt a profound need to claim her?

“I’ve gotta go,” she said.

“It’s a nice day for a swim.”

She shook her head. “There’s Miss Jennie to see about. She is the reason I’m here.”

“Well, you call me if you change your mind. Since we never went skinny-dipping, I say it’s time you earned your bad reputation.”

“You’re incorrigible,” she whispered with a grin, lowering her lashes as if she hoped that would lessen the sexual charge of their nearness.

“Call me if you want to swim,” he repeated. He touched her arm, running his knuckles down the smooth skin, which caused her to shiver.

“You come over here and try to bully me into a marriage. Then you have the gall to invite me to go skinny-dipping? Neither is going to happen!”