McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [115]
He touched her nose with the tip of one index finger, and even that slight touch sent fire roaring through her. “You’d have a husband. A home. Children.”
“A hateful husband,” Lorelei pointed out. “A home I’ve never seen and might well despise—” But the children. Oh, the children. There was a prospect she couldn’t argue against. Suddenly, she wanted them so desperately that they might already have existed. She could almost see their faces, hear her own voice calling their names from the front porch of some distant ranch house….
“I’m not hateful,” Holt said, with damnable confidence and despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. “The Triple M is one of the biggest ranches in the Arizona Territory, and I have a fine house. You’d like it, Lorelei, and you’d like me—at least part of the time. I’d be on the range all day, and at night—well, I think we’d get along just fine.”
“You are insufferable!”
He shrugged. “Maybe so, but you know I’m right.”
“I know nothing of the sort!”
He smiled. “I could prove it. Tomorrow night, in Reynosa.”
Lorelei opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Can you possibly have the effrontery to suggest…?”
“That we spend the night together? That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”
If the idea hadn’t appealed to her so much, Lorelei wouldn’t have been so furious. “Why, you—you rooster!”
Holt laughed. “Better a rooster than a chicken,” he taunted.
“If you think you can goad me into immoral behavior—”
“Would you rather go back to that pissant place of yours and play at being a rancher?” Holt challenged.
“You and I both know it’s just a game, a way to spite your father.”
She gave him her back, started to walk away, back to the heart of camp, where there were people. Where she would be safe from Holt McKettrick’s audacious brand of persuasion, if not from Comanches. But he stopped her with one more challenge.
“We’ll be spending tomorrow night at an inn in Reynosa,” he said. “If you want to live your life, instead of just pretending to live it, leave your door unlatched.”
Lorelei didn’t turn to face him. She was too afraid of what he might see in her eyes if she did. “Good night, Mr. McKettrick,” she said.
He laughed again. “Good night, Lorelei,” he replied smoothly. “Not that you’ll sleep very much.”
HOLT HAD BARELY closed his eyes when dawn crept over the eastern horizon and teased him awake. The things he’d said to Lorelei—what the hell was he thinking?—had doubled back on him like a herd of frightened longhorns turning from the edge of a canyon.
He crawled out of his bedroll, rubbed the back of his neck and reached for his hat. Rafe snored on the ground beside him, but John was already up, with coffee brewing over the campfire.
Lorelei crawled out from under the wagon, sent a poisonous glance his way and headed for the bushes.
The sight of her cheered Holt, though the truth of it was, if he could have taken back the challenge he’d issued the night before, he would have done it.
He glanced down at his brother. If he told Rafe about the deal he’d offered Lorelei, his brother would either laugh out loud or punch him in the mouth, one of the two. Since he didn’t need the aggravation, Holt decided to keep it to himself.
Lorelei had returned to camp by the time Holt got to the coffeepot. She looked fitful, and a bit frazzled, and he felt a stab of guilt. She’d been thinking about his rash proposal, the same as he had—probably for the better part of the night.
She came to a stop, like a coyote at the dim edges of a campfire’s light, and gazed with naked yearning, not at him but at the coffee.
Some of Holt’s guilt receded. He took a languid sip from his mug, let his eyes smile at her over the rim.
She blushed. Took a step forward, halted again.
John, watching from the other side of the fire, where he was mixing batter for what he called pancakes, flung a sour look in Holt’s direction, reached for a cup and filled