A Lawman's Christmas_ A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller [63]
She looked up at him, confused and probably startled by the uncommon length of the speech he’d just given. He could see that she was still afraid to hope, afraid to trust, when it came to any personal dealings with a man. She bit down on her lower lip but didn’t speak.
Clay smiled, kissed the top of her head. She wasn’t wearing her bonnet, and her hair was coming loose from the knot at her nape, tendrils falling around her cheeks and across her forehead.
I love you, he thought. He was ready to say it right out loud, but he wasn’t sure Dara Rose was ready to hear it, so he put the declaration by for later.
“I think we’d better get over to the house and decorate the Christmas tree,” Clay drawled, enjoying the soft, pliant warmth of her, standing there in his arms, innately uncertain and, at the same time, one of the strongest women he’d ever encountered. “You see, Mrs. McKettrick, if we stay here much longer, I’m liable to seduce you, and I surely do not want our first time together to happen in a jailhouse.”
She pinkened in that delightful way that only made him ache to see the rest of her, bare of all that calico, and mischief danced in her upturned eyes. Every signal she was sending out, however subtle, said she was a woman who enjoyed the intimate attentions of a man, who wasn’t afraid or ashamed to uncover herself, body, mind and spirit, and then lose herself in the pleasures of making love.
Glory be.
“You seem to have a great deal of confidence in your powers of seduction, Mr. McKettrick,” she remarked, after twinkling up at him for a few spicy moments. “What makes you think you could persuade me to give in?”
He cupped her chin in his hand, bent to nibble briefly at her mouth. Another shiver went through her at his touch. “Trust me,” he said gruffly, after drawing back. “I am a persuasive man.”
She sighed. “Yes,” she admitted. “I believe you are.”
He steered her in the direction of the door, whistled for Chester, took his hat and coat from their pegs. “For instance,” he teased, as they stepped out onto the blustery sidewalk, the dog following, “I talked you into marrying me, when we’d only known each other for a few days. And I didn’t even ask you to work as my housekeeper for a year before I decided whether to keep you or throw you back.”
Dara Rose elbowed him, walked a little faster. “I agreed to your proposal,” she whispered, though there was no one on the street to overhear, “only because I was desperate to keep my family together, with a roof over our heads.”
“Speaking of your children,” Clay drawled, “did you leave them home alone to come over here to the jail and hector me?”
She stopped, right there on the sidewalk, with Clay between her and the empty street. “Of course not,” she said, as indignant as a little hen with her feathers ruffled. “Alvira Krenshaw is with them.”
“The schoolmarm?”
Dara Rose nodded pertly. “The woman you probably considered courting before you turned your charms on me,” she said.
Clay slipped an arm around Dara Rose’s small waist and got her moving again, in the direction of the house where he’d be spending another night on the front room floor, with his dog. “Miss Krenshaw,” he said, “was never in the running. And how did you manage to wrangle a woman who herds kids for a living into looking after those two little Apaches of yours?”
“Alvira dropped by with a book she wanted to lend to Edrina. A thick one, with lots of pictures, likely to keep that child busy until school takes up again, after New Year’s. Anyhow, I made tea.” Dara Rose continued to walk, but she’d turned thoughtful. “Alvira sat down to talk and, well, there’s something about tea, it seems, that causes a person to drop her guard, at least a little. The whole story—most of it, anyway—just poured out of me.”
Clay suppressed a chuckle, knowing it would not be well-received. Remind me to dose you