Promises: Promises Prevail Part 56

Gray shook his head, his long braids swinging with the motion.

"Killing a man is hard, even if he deserved it."

"It is already getting easier."

"Then why are you up?"Gray's gaze skirted his to touch on Jenna as she lay on the bed. He tickled Bri's cheek with one hand while the other clenched in Danny's rough fur. A sure sign he was working up to something big. Clint rubbed Bri's back, waiting him out. Finally, the boy raised his face, his jaw clinched and his shoulders set for battle.

"She is not happy."

"She had a tough time of it out there." So he wasn't the only one who'd noticed the change in Jenna.

"I do not want to lose another mother." The boy's mouth was set in the same determined line as his jaw.

"Jenna's not going anywhere."

"She is an easy person to love." The boy's expression went from stubborn to mutinous.

"I know." That was the truth. Falling in love with Jenna was as easy and as natural as breathing.

"Then why doesn't she know you love her?"

"Because I haven't told her."

"I will take Hope on the Mist, and you will tell her."

The look of disgust the boy gave him said more than words. Gray reached for Bri. Bri went to him willingly.

Clint untangled her fist from his hair while she dangled sleepily between them.

"I was planning on telling her at the social." He'd come up with the plan after Mara had let slip what thatb.i.t.c.h s.h.i.+rley had said about his reasons for marrying Jenna. Sat.u.r.day's social was going to be a territory-wide party, celebrating his marriage to Jenna, and right in the middle of it he was going to work up the courage to get down on one knee before G.o.d and the territory and ask Jenna to marry him again. It was going to be the granddaddy all of romantic gestures. It would embarra.s.s the h.e.l.l out of him, but he'd do it for Jenna. Dorothy and Elizabeth were handling the arrangements. Lorie and Patricia were helping. After the social, there wouldn't be any doubt in anyone's mind that Clint McKinnely was head over heels in love with his wife, and he'd married her for love and nothing else.

"Three days is too long to wait," Gray countered, stubbornly clinging to his point.

Jenna moaned. Clint glanced over. She was trying to turn onto her back. One hand reached for him. Her fingers splayed over the empty side of the bed. Her fingers closed, her arm relaxed, and that sad resigned expression he'd come to hate took up residence on her face.

He sighed and shook his head. The kid was right.

He'd have the party, and he'd make Jenna a legend with how she'd brought Clint McKinnely to his knees, but he wouldn't make her wait any longer for that last piece she needed from him."I suppose it is." He cupped Gray's shoulder and kissed Bri's head. "Do you think you and Bri might want to spend a couple days visiting with Uncle Asa and Aunt Elizabeth?"

"You will tell her?"

"Yes." It was a measure of how much the boy loved Jenna that he even hesitated, seeing as being with Asa meant being with his horse. The boy's smile flashed brighter than suns.h.i.+ne off a mirror.

"We will leave in the morning."

"Take Jackson with you."

"I can handle myself."

"I know you can," Clint handed Gray the bottle and the burping rag, "but a baby limits a man's ability to react, and it's better not to take chances." He expected the boy to argue, but instead he nodded, his eyes taking on that too-old look.

"I will not take chances. You do not have need to worry."

"I'm not worried, son, just naturally cautious."

Before Gray could cite stories to the contrary, Clint turned him by the shoulders and pointed him down the hall.

"If you want me to be making peace with your mother, I suggest you give me s.p.a.ce to do it in."In two seconds, he had all the s.p.a.ce he needed.* * * * *

Clint shucked his denims and sat on the side of the bed, turning sideways as he carefully eased the thick rope of Jenna's braid from behind her. He loved the way she looked bathed in moonlight. Her skin taking on the color of cream and roses. Her hair s.h.i.+ning with an ethereal light. She looked like one of those angels from the paintings. Plump, sweet, and as tempting as sin itself.

He tugged the tie from her braid and worked the silken strands free. He arranged them around her face, smiling as the waves fell where they would despite his plans. He leaned over, bracing his hands on either side of her torso. He brushed her ear with his lips, his smile broadening as she s.h.i.+vered in her sleep and goose b.u.mps sprang up on the one arm he could see.

"Wake up, Suns.h.i.+ne."

She stirred. "Clint?"

He braced his palm on her spine before she could roll back and hurt herself.

"Easy, baby."

Her right eye cracked open and she nuzzled into histhigh. Lord help him, he even loved the way she came awake in stages like a plump, sleepy little kitten, cuddling up to the warmth of his body.

"What's wrong?" She cupped his knee and stroked her thumb over the ridge of bone.

"Nothing."

He hitched his hip higher on the bed, urging her closer until her cheek rested high on his thigh and the soft silk of her hair fell across his groin.

"It's still night," she yawned. "Did Bri wake up?"

"Yes. Gray has her."

"He couldn't sleep?"

"No."

"But he's okay?"

"Yes." Her other eye cracked open.

"So there's no need for me to be up?"

"There's a need." He took a handful of her hair in his hand and rubbed it over his aching c.o.c.k simply because it felt so d.a.m.ned good.

"You want to make love?"

"You're still too banged up." He couldn't tell how she felt about the idea from her tone of voice.

"So you did wake me up for no reason." She tipped her head back, her smile as soft as her skin."No." He eased his thumb between her lips, letting the moisture inside her mouth coat his flesh before sliding his thumb along the full curve of her lower lip, pulling it away from her teeth, teasing himself with the heat of her mouth. "I woke you up to tell you I love you."

Air hissed past his thumb, bathing it in a wash of moist warmth as she blinked at him. Both eyes were totally open now, s.h.i.+ning deep blue in the dim lamplight. She didn't say a word, didn't move, didn't breathe for three seconds. Then she blinked again, sucked in a staccato breath, and those beautiful eyes began to fill with tears.

"Ah baby, those had better be happy tears."

"I've waited so long for you to say that." Her tongue touched the pad of his finger, sending streaks of need shooting up his arm.

"I know." He caught a teardrop as it s.h.i.+mmered on her cheek. "Too long."

"But why now?" She asked, as she shook her head, letting her hair flow erotically down over his b.a.l.l.s.

"Because I realized even if you wanted an out, I'm never going to give it to you." She was his own little piece of heaven, his personal treasure, and he could no more give her up than he could give up his soul. "I can't let you go, Suns.h.i.+ne.""I don't want to go."

"I'm beginning to believe that now." He slid his fingers across her cheek, behind her head, keeping his thumb against her lips, needing the contact.

She tucked her elbow under her torso and pushed up. Her flinch cut him to the bone. He'd have to take much better care of her. He supported as much of her weight as he could as she pulled herself higher against him.

"Hold me," she ordered. He did, groaning as the smooth skin of her inner arm slid over his thigh. Son of a b.i.t.c.h, she tempted him.

"You thought I'd want to leave?" she asked on a sigh of satisfaction as he gave her weight back to her gradually. She made it sound as if it was the most ludicrous idea that could ever cross a man's mind.

"Suns.h.i.+ne, as much as you like to think otherwise, beyond a hefty bank account, I'm not much of a prize."

"I decided long ago that you are no judge of people."

"I beg your pardon?" He was known far and wide for his ability to scent a lie before it was spoken.

"You should beg for it, making me wait so long for your heart." She trailed the backs of her fingers up the inside of his thigh."You've always had my heart." He tilted his hips forward a bit, giving her better access. "I just didn't tell you about it."

"Why?" She clasped his c.o.c.k through the blanket of her hair, closing her fingers with that delicacy that was so much a part of her.

"I'm not the man you think I am." He looked down at her plump white hand wrapped in the moonlight-gilded blonde of her hair as it encompa.s.sed his c.o.c.k. She was so pure compared to him. So innocent. He fought back the selfish l.u.s.t that raced through him. She didn't look shocked or upset, just patient as she waited for him to elaborate.

"Jack Hennesey didn't die in that fire."

Her "I know" was a bare whisper.

"You do?"

"He slammed the door behind him when he left."

She shuddered and he cupped her cheek, helpless to remove the memory that terrified her. "I knew he wouldn't be coming back."

"I killed him." The stark statement landed hard in the silence. He couldn't read anything in her slow blink, her stillness.

"How?" she finally asked.

"I was coming up to check on you-""Check on me?"

"Hennesey had been spouting a bunch of nonsense in the saloon." She didn't need to know that the man had suggested that anyone willing to lay out a gold piece could have her.

"And?"

"When I got there, the shack was on fire. Hennesey was outside. There was blood all over him, but not much damage."

"I told him I was leaving him. He went crazy."

"Not as crazy as I went when he told me I was too late. That you were dead." He covered the shaking in his hand by stroking her hair. "I snapped his worthless neck when he tried to stop me and went in after you."

"He told you I was dead?"

"Yes." The light had gone out of his world in that second. Even Cougar hadn't been able to hold him back.

He'd needed to see for himself, to touch her one last time, wanting to howl right along with Danny at the thought of her loss.

"And you still came in after me?"

He gave up trying to cover the trembling. He cupped her cheek in his hand, rubbing his thumb over her lips, holding her close, remembering the agony, the searing heat, the despair when he'd entered that inferno,knowing no one could survive that heat, but unable to bear the thought of her soft body turning to ash.

"I couldn't let you burn."

"You could have been killed."

"I wasn't leaving without you." He hadn't thought he'd be leaving at all until Cougar had chopped through the back wall providing an escape route. He hadn't cared either. He wasn't letting her leave this world scared and alone.

"I love you." Jenna's eyes filled with tears. She touched the scars on his chest.

"Does this mean you might work up to forgiving me?" He hugged her to him carefully, everything inside of him strained to the breaking point with the most fragile of hopes.

"There's nothing to forgive."

There was-a h.e.l.l of a lot,-and he knew it.

"I murdered your first husband." A G.o.d-fearing woman like Jenna couldn't just forget about that.

"I know. And he tried to murder me. It might make me a bad person, but I'm glad you came, glad you got me out, but mostly, I'm very, very glad that you took me for yourself." Her hand on his chest was infinitely soothing.

As if it had only been waiting for this moment, all theemotion he'd ever denied welled in a surge for freedom.

He choked it back as Jenna stoked his chest, took a breath and then whispered, "I used to pray to G.o.d to give me the strength to get through every day." She touched the middle of the scar on his chest. "Sometimes, when it was really bad, I'd pray that He'd send an angel to take me away.

"He sent me you." Her finger followed a scar up over his collarbone to press against the pulse in the hollow of his throat.

He pulled back, took a shuddering breath and stroked her temple. "You think I'm an answer to a prayer?"

She shook her head, her hair rustling against his thigh.

"I think you're a dream come true. A man who sees me for what I am, and loves me anyway."