Riding the storm - By Julie Miller Page 0,72
it counts the most, I won’t be able to get the job done. I won’t be able to save you.”
Jolene frowned. “Save me?” When it counts the most? Was it wrong to feel a little frisson of hope? Did she count to him? “Nate. I don’t need saving.”
She tried to push some space between them so she could read his expression. But he’d picked her up and was stumbling backward. She held on so she wouldn’t trip him and fall. She’d done enough damage to him already.
“Don’t you?” He sank onto the edge of the bed as if the grave responsibility he carried with him was suddenly too much to bear. He fell back across the bed, bringing her down with him. “You’re so busy taking care of everybody else—including me—that you don’t take care of yourself. You came in here wanting to talk about making love for the first time. And now we’re dealing with my crap.”
His hands slid beneath the hem of her shirt and he asked, “Was it good for me? Yes.” He worked the shirt up over her head and tossed it aside. “Were you any good? Incredible.” Her bra disappeared next and his hungry mouth teased her heated flesh. “Did it change anything between us? Probably. It made me believe this was the way things could be between us. That this was real.”
Soon there was nothing but the towel between them. A moment later, not even that. Jolene opened herself to his desperate need. She opened her heart and gave him everything.
“I want us, Nate. It doesn’t make any sense, but I want there to be an us.”
He didn’t answer her with words, but his body told her how much he needed her. How much he wanted to be with her. She didn’t question herself or him or the moment.
Nate cried out his release deep inside her. Carried her to her own climax. Whispered thanks and praises against her ear as they panted for breath afterward. He pulled her with him under the covers and held her and the baby within the sure grasp of his hands.
Jolene fell asleep knowing that, for tonight at least, she’d been everything he needed.
She’d been enough.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HE WAS LEAVING.
The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the floods were receding. And he was leaving.
Give her a hurricane any day.
Jolene rubbed her stomach to squelch a nervous sense of dread as she watched Nate saddle up Checker and tie the food and supplies she’d packed for him behind the big bay’s saddle.
Technically this wasn’t the dramatic wave from the shiny BMW when April Kannon had flipped her blond hair and told her stoic husband and weeping little girl that she just couldn’t do this anymore. Sorry.
Nor was it the heart-wrenching quiet of holding Joaquin’s cold fingers after his breathing machine had been disconnected and the doctor called his time of death.
Nate was working again. He intended to ride out to check how far the creeks and sloughs had receded to the south to see if he could get through to the Brownings’ Rock-a-Bye ranch and make contact with her father and the rest of the outside world.
But it still felt like leaving.
Jolene tried to put on a game face and pretend that surviving forty-eight hours through heaven and hell with this man hadn’t changed her life. They knew each other’s secrets, their fears, their needs. She knew how much he liked to have his face touched and nuzzled; he knew she had a thing for his butt. She knew he was a talented cook and he knew that her appetite—at least for the next four months or so—was a bottomless pit.
He knew she could be a pretty good listener, despite the way her mouth ran on at times.
And she knew that she loved him.
“Why can’t I go with you?” she asked for the umpteenth time since he’d announced his plan over their breakfast of grilled toaster pastries and bacon.
His shoulders rose and fell beneath the snug white T-shirt he wore. When he turned to face her, his voice was patient, his expression kind. “We talked about this. We don’t know what conditions are like out there. I’m not thrilled with the idea of you being on a horse over good terrain. What’s out there now is anything but good. If we hit a mudslide or washout, or the river’s still impassable—or we find another one of Rocky’s kinsmen from another ranch running loose—it wouldn’t be safe.”
“If it gets too tough,