Sweet Autumn Surrender Read online

  He didn’t pull her closer, he dared not; and his senses were still under his control to the extent that he could at least resist. Or could he? he countered, feeling her eager response.

  Before she knew it, Ellie’s hands had crept up his chest. She felt his beating heart beneath her palm. Her lips opened to his tender assault. Her hands moved.

  She stopped them. How easy it would be to give in to his passion—and her own. Hadn’t she dreamed of doing so, both awake and asleep, ever since their first magical night together? She had never experienced a need quite so great as that of lying in his arms, loving and being loved, reliving that moment of total fulfillment.

  But her fear was greater. If she satisfied him now, he would have no reason to remain once his family arrived. If she held him off, perhaps he would stay. Not for good, she didn’t expect that…but for a while longer. She wasn’t ready to lose him. Not just yet.

  With a heavy sigh, she pulled her lips from his. They remained inches apart; the urgency to fall into his arms seemed unbearable.

  His hand tightened on her waist, but he didn’t pursue the kiss. “You’re hell to resist,” he mumbled against her mouth.

  Her heart skipped precariously. “Lust is a hard thing to control.” Turning, she clasped her arms tightly about a support post, wishing instead they were wrapped around Kale’s neck.

  Even though his brain admonished him to bid her goodnight and walk away, he was powerless to leave. Studying her from behind, he saw her shape in silhouette: the delicate curve of her neck beneath her upswept hairdo, the tight bodice of her gown, the nipped waist. It was the first time he had seen her in a gown that did her justice, other than that bewitching green silk kimono. With two steps he stood behind her, forcibly restraining himself from taking her in his arms.

  He trailed his fingers lightly across her shoulders. He felt her tense. “Lavender was right about one thing,” he said, his voice husky, mesmerizing. “Your gown is lovely. And you’re…beautiful.”

  Moving closer, he rested his lips on the top of her head, savoring the silky feel of her curls against his skin. Without thinking, he removed the combs and let her hair fall around his face. “And you’re right, too. Lust is a powerful thing.”

  His touch, his voice burned into her senses. Absently she lifted her hand to receive the combs when he took them from her hair. Desperate for some way to break this encounter short of ending up in his arms, or in his bed, she beseeched her brain to function. She felt the combs lying hard and cold in her hand.

  She held them up to the moonlight. “Do you recognize these?”

  As though he had been waiting for an invitation, his arms came around her. He cradled her hands in his, studying the combs, absorbing the essence of this woman. “They look familiar.”

  “They belonged to your mother. Benjamin said your father gave them to her just before he left; that she never wore them. She saved them to wear when he returned.” As she related the story, his arms stiffened against hers. Then he dropped them, retaining the combs in his hands.

  Moving to lean against another post, he stared hard at the combs. “My father—”

  “I’m sorry, Kale. I shouldn’t have worn them.”

  “That bastard!” he continued, unhearing. “He never returned.”

  “I’m sorry I wore them. I shouldn’t—”

  “No,” he insisted. “It isn’t that. I want you to have them, to wear them. It’s…me.”

  He squeezed the combs in his hands so tightly she listened to hear them crack. When he lifted his eyes to hers, she felt a sharp physical pain at the anguish she saw there. “I don’t want to be like him, Ellie. But I am.”

  Her mouth went dry; she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his. The hurt in his voice brought a sob to her throat.

  “I’m going to California.”

  “Of course you are,” she managed. “After this mess is cleaned up, after you get me settled with the man of your choice—”

  “Ellie—”

  With great effort, she smiled. “There’s nothing wrong with you going to California. You aren’t like your father. He left a wife and a houseful of children, but you’re free, Kale—free.”

  She watched his jaw twitch. Finally he broke their gaze and stared out into the growing darkness. Dropping to the floor, she sat on the edge of the porch and swung her legs over and thought how she’d never be able to make such a speech again.

  “What did you start to tell me up at the shelter that day? About what you intend to do with the money from your friend Mack’s venture?”

  He stared into the darkness, wondering why he didn’t turn and go to bed. It wasn’t right for him to catch Ellie up in something beyond her power to control.

  She patted the floor beside her. “Come on. Tell me. I’m interested. I’ve never heard much about California.”

  With a shrug, he dropped to the porch beside her. If he didn’t touch her or look at her, perhaps it would be all right, he justified. As long as she thought what she felt was only lust, perhaps they were safe.

  “Some of the richest, most fertile land on the whole continent is in the northern valleys of California,” he told her. “Figured I’d take my share and buy me a place, raise some cattle. The Spanish Californians—Californios, they call themselves—are big cattle raisers.”

  His words brought tears brimming to her eyes. She didn’t dare look at him; she scarcely dared draw a breath. Kale Jarrett had just committed himself to settling down, and he apparently didn’t even realize it. Far be it from her to challenge him on this.

  “What a splendid idea, Kale. Tell me more about this wonderful land.”

  In the following days Ellie held Kale’s confession in her heart, considering, quite without wanting to, what it might mean to her future, to their future. She had a mind to tell him that if he wanted to settle down, he didn’t need to go all the way to California to find a fertile valley where he could raise cattle; that he was already in a fertile valley, and it would be far less trouble to stay here than to travel halfway across the continent.

  She didn’t. She figured that would likely run him off faster than Lavender’s interference could do. But more, if by some miracle he decided to stay, it must be because he wanted to.

  Because it was his idea to stay, his dream. He could only stay because he wanted to live here—with her. She wouldn’t have him any other way. And right now all he wanted was her body. He was incapable of hiding the fact.

  It was evident in everything he did and said—in the way he went to extremes to avoid touching her or making eye contact; in the casual, offhanded manner he tried to effect, to the end that his words were often clipped, his sentences left dangling.

  She recognized it because she saw her own actions reflected in his, her own stress and short temper, her own desperate longing. When by chance their eyes did meet, his wanting for her shone clear, as clearly as her own must surely be to him.

  Lust…a powerful adversary.

  Armando Costello did not come out the next day, and Ellie was glad for it. She knew she had Lavender to thank for his staying away, and she felt a pang of guilt at her relief. Although he had been helpful during her crisis, and had provided her with welcome companionship as well, she was glad not to have to deal with the added tension his visit would create between herself and Kale.

  The day after Lavender’s visit, Kale’s family began converging on the ranch; by Friday three of them had arrived. Ellie recalled Kale’s message to the Raineys. She wondered whether Ira and Till had carried word to the Circle R, and if so, whether they described Kale’s brothers as rangers.

  Rubal and Jubal, twins two years younger than Kale, and Baylor, an uncle the same age as the twins, rode in together. They certainly looked like rangers to her. Tall, dark-headed, and broad-shouldered, like Kale, they would have intimidated her just walking across the clearing shoulder to shoulder, or setting out on horseback, riding abreast—formidable foes, indeed.

  But she was clos
e enough to hear their laughter and a few of their light-hearted jokes; she saw the smiles on their faces and the compassion in their eyes.

  Their eyes weren’t blue, of course. And although they treated her with the deference and concern due the widow of their oldest brother, they didn’t cause her heart to flutter; they didn’t set her soul aflame. Only one of them, her blue-eyed Kale, did that…and more.

  When, a couple of days later, a wagon lumbered down the hill, its canvas billowing over its frame like an overstuffed snowbird, all hands stopped work. Ellie rushed from the kitchen; Kale caught up with her, coming from the barn. Others came from the creek bottom, from the opposite hillside.

  “It’s Ginny and Hollis,” Kale said.

  “And Delta.” Ellie’s heart beat against her chest. She felt as if it was her birthday, or as if she was awaiting a sister, a sister whom she knew but hadn’t seen for ever so long.

  “Now we’ll see how—” Kale began.

  “How tall she is,” Ellie teased.

  Hollis Myrick, Ginny’s husband, drove. He was a stout man—a newspaper man, Benjamin had said. He looked almost square-shaped next to the lanky Jarretts.

  Ginny sat beside him. Hair wisped from beneath her bonnet. She wasn’t lanky, Ellie noticed, but then, she had borne four children.

  Suddenly a delighted squeal erupted from the wagon itself and a calico-clad figure jumped from the back and ran toward them even before Hollis set the brake.

  Ellie caught her breath. Dark hair flew around Delta’s lovely face, from which shone the bluest eyes she’d ever seen—besides Kale’s.

  Delta threw herself into Kale’s startled arms. Ellie watched patches of color blossom on his cheeks. Awkwardly he returned Delta’s embrace, then reached to tousle her hair.

  His eyes found Ellie’s; she shrugged and laughed. He held Delta back and looked her up and down, wonderment glowing from his face. When he turned to Ellie, she saw moisture glisten in his beloved blue eyes.

  “This is Ellie, Delta,” he said. “She told me you were all grown up, but I guess…hell, I guess I didn’t believe her.”

  Then, at week’s end the brother whose arrival all had anticipated rode up to the hitching rail and stepped down: Zachariah Jarrett, now the eldest, and as such, the family spokesman.

  By this time Ellie was too busy to worry over family politics, however, what with so many mouths to feed and so many bodies to find beds for.

  Ginny and Delta pitched right in, and Ellie soon felt as if she had known them forever. Of course, Benjamin had related the family history in great detail, and more than once. It had been a favorite topic for both of them: Benjamin because he was lonesome for his family; Ellie because she had never known a family.

  Kale helped her, taking charge of everything from procuring meat to seeing that enough wood was chopped, that the cow was milked, the eggs gathered. At times she felt as if she had a maid.

  One afternoon when she and Delta were hanging clothes to dry on the fence rail, he arrived with a dozen quail and two deer.

  “We’ll have the quail for supper,” he told Ellie. “I sent the twins and Uncle Baylor down to the creek bottom to kill one of those wild hogs. We’ll grind the pork and venison together to make sausage. I found an old grinder in the barn.”

  Ellie laughed. “Lucky you’ve had experience feeding a crowd. I’d never figure it all out on my own. Thanks.”

  He shook his head. “No need for that, they’re my family…ah, our family. I told you it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “You also said they weren’t coming for a party, but so far everyone seems to be enjoying himself in spite of the reason for being here.”

  “That’ll change as soon as Zachariah comes,” he told her. “Since he’s head of the family now, we have to await his approval before we lay down the law to the Raineys.”

  As he walked away, Ellie noticed Delta staring after him.

  “He certainly turned into a handsome man,” Delta sighed. “Funny, how I remember him.”

  “How’s that?” Ellie asked.

  “He was my favorite brother, I suppose because he played with me, roughhoused, Benjamin called it.”

  “Do you want to know how he remembered you?” Ellie asked.

  At Delta’s nod, she commenced to relate her conversation with Kale the night he arrived at the ranch. “He had trouble believing you and I were the same age. In his mind you were still twelve years old.”

  Ginny had come to help them finish the wash. She, too, stared after their wandering brother. “Benjamin would’ve been pleased with the way he turned out.”

  Ellie sighed. “I wish you’d tell him that. He worries that he’s like your pa. Calls himself a wandering man.”

  Ginny stared after Kale until he disappeared into the house, carrying two buckets of water. Then she turned amused eyes on Ellie. “Appears to me his wandering days may be fast coming to an end.”

  Zachariah arrived at the end of the week. He resembled Benjamin in so many ways it gave Ellie a start, from his height and lanky build down to the sprinkling of gray hair at his temples and the solid white streak across the top of his head.

  That evening after supper they sat on the porch, spilling out into the yard, talking, laughing, catching each other up on their doings since last they met. They spoke of Carson who, as far as anyone knew, was still down in Mexico chasing bandits, and of , a cousin up in Wyoming at a place Ellie had never heard of, Jackson Hole, and of Aunt Tizzy, whose rheumatism prevented her from making the trip to see her oldest nephew interred properly.

  Uncle Baylor brought out his fiddle and played some of the old songs, “Turkey in the Straw” and “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain,” and one that appeared to be Kale’s favorite, “My Darlin’ Clementine.”

  He sat across from her, resting his back against the trunk of the oak tree. Ellie watched him through the flickering lantern light, his face all smiles, his slightly off-key but nevertheless robust baritone raised above the others’.

  When it was over, Delta requested “Down in the Valley,” and Ellie found herself joining in, her earlier inhibitions conquered by the acceptance of the group. She studied each member in turn, recalling the things Benjamin had told her about them.

  Their spontaneity invigorated her, and she laughed and sang and listened, taking it all in. Absently she crossed her arms, clasping her hands about them to ward off the slight evening chill, enjoying to the fullest this sense of camaraderie and more, a sense of family, of belonging to a family.

  “You’re cold.” Kale’s whispered voice took her unawares, for until he spoke she hadn’t known he’d come to sit beside her. When he lifted her shawl up over her shoulders, his fingers lingered a moment on her back before he withdrew his hand.

  The fire he kindled inside her remained, though, heightened by his presence, and by the fact that he had gone to her side here in the midst of his family.

  When the song ended, Rubal burst into a rowdy rendition of a song Ellie had never heard, something about a woman named Anne Bonny, obviously a pirate, and her lover, a pirate called Calico Jack. Jubal joined his twin, and soon the others had chimed in, all except Kale.

  “Cut it out,” he called above the raucous chorus. “We don’t want Ellie to think we’re uncivilized.”

  “Aw, Kale, don’t be a stick-in-the-mud. Anne Bonny was our great-grandmother.”

  “Ellie’s one of us. She might as well get used to family lore.”

  “No offense, Ellie,” Rubal offered. “I figured since you’re one of the family—”

  “Thank you,” Ellie told him. “I’m grateful to be considered part of the family. And I’m enjoying the song. Please don’t stop.”

  But Kale persisted. “It’s getting late. If we’re going to settle this thing with the Raineys tomorrow, we’d better hit the sack.”

  To Ellie’s surprise, they dispersed with little grumbling, the men to the barn, the three women to the house. Ellie had banked the fire and just blown o
ut the wick in the kitchen lamp when the familiar squawk of the back door drew her attention.

  Kale held two buckets sloshing water. “With all the revelry, I forgot about water for coffee in the morning.”

  “Thanks.” A shaft of moonlight shone through the open door, illuminating the sun-streaks in his hair, outlining him in the doorway.

  He set the buckets on the cabinet, hesitant to leave, she could tell.

  “They can be a rowdy bunch sometimes,” he offered. “Thanks for putting up with them.”

  She thought about the rowdy crowd she’d been raised with. She started to mention it, but Kale knew it as well as she. “There’s no need to thank me,” she said. “I’m enjoying them, each and every one. They’re like family to me, too. I love them.”

  And one most of all, she sighed later, trying to fall asleep, hoping to dream. In her dreams he never went to California.

  Kale knew the minute he stepped into the barn something was amiss. It didn’t take him long to find out what.

  Zachariah did the talking. “You’ve convinced us of Benjamin’s killing, Kale. Tomorrow we’ll see what the lot of us can do to settle it.”

  “Fine.” Kale shook out his bedroll, sat down, and started to remove his boots. That’s when he noticed that the others were still dressed. They sat in a semicircle, staring at him.

  “Tonight we have another matter to resolve.”

  Zachariah’s somber voice reflected the atmosphere Kale felt permeating the room. He looked from one to the other of the men, curiosity beginning to stir. “Okay, boys. Have at it.”

  “It concerns Benjamin’s place here, and Ellie,” Zachariah told him.

  Alarm sounded in Kale’s brain. “It’s Ellie’s place now.”

  “We can’t leave her here by herself,” Rubal said.

  “We owe it to Benjamin to see her taken care of,” Jubal added.