Loving Linsey Read online

  “No, Addie. As long as you give her this power over you, you can never fully be your own self.”

  “Oren, please try and understand—Linsey is more convinced than ever that she will not live out the year, and I’m beginning to fear she’s right. Sometimes I think this is all that’s keeping her going. What if she does die, and I haven’t lived up to my promise? I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

  His features closed, going as dark and stony as an abandoned cellar. “Then you and Doc have a good life.”

  As Addie watched him turn away, it felt as if her world had just crumbled to ash. How could he expect her to turn her back on her sister?

  Then again, how could she let him believe he would be second to any other commitment she made? How could she let go of the one person she wanted to be with more than anyone on earth?

  She couldn’t. Before, it had never been important to take a stand against Linsey on an issue—because before, there hadn’t been anything at stake. Now there was. If she didn’t do this one thing, if she didn’t confess her love for him to her sister, if she didn’t find the strength to stand up for them, she’d lose him. He’d walk out of her life, and she’d never get him back again.

  “All right!”

  He stopped, looked over his shoulder, and waited.

  “I’ll tell her,” Addie said in a rush. “I’ll tell her tonight—under one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You give me twelve more babies like Bryce.”

  The next thing Addie knew, she was being swept up in Oren’s powerful arms.

  “You dad-blamed woman—I thought you’d never come to your senses.”

  “I love you, Oren.”

  He gave her a slow, wicked smile that had her nerves sizzling and her toes curling. “Show me.”

  Ask your sister.

  The words pounded through Linsey’s brain as she searched high and low for Addie. She remembered seeing her in the hotel, but when she went back to look for her, she wasn’t there, nor could anyone tell Linsey where she had gone off to. Home, maybe? Why, she couldn’t guess, but neither could she think of anyplace else her sister might be.

  She crossed Wishing Well Lane, thankful that at least she didn’t have to worry about Bishop jumping out of the woodwork anymore. Several of the men at the reception had heard the ruckus and had come out to investigate. Linsey had quickly explained what happened. Her report had aroused the men’s protective instincts as well as their outrage, and they vowed to send someone to track down the county sheriff. She’d press charges against Bishop if she thought it would do any good, but the best she could hope for was that the mayor and Mrs. Harvey might at last see their son for what he really was, and take measures to see that he didn’t accost another woman.

  Linsey frowned, her thoughts once again circling around to Daniel—to his defense of her, to his astounding declaration. She’d never been so angry to hear anything in her life. It just wasn’t fair. Even if she didn’t have one foot in the grave, she could never betray Addie by stealing the man she adored. Already the guilt of having kissed Daniel, of having fallen in love with him, was almost too much for Linsey to bear.

  Ask your sister.

  Again the words echoed in her mind. What could he possibly know about Addie that she didn’t?

  As she passed the smithy, a feminine giggle wafted through the doors, followed by a masculine rumble of laughter. Linsey’s steps faltered. There was something very familiar about that giggle.

  Linsey pushed on the door with her fingertips. Brows drawn, she peeked inside the shop, the darkness broken only by the mellow glow of a lantern hanging on a hook outside a stall.

  She knew better than to barge into a neighbor’s property uninvited, and yet the playful noises coming from within compelled her farther into the shop.

  But when she peered over the stall, she gasped at the sight that met her eyes—a man and a woman, locked in a passionate embrace. She recognized Addie’s long, straight blond hair instantly. She couldn’t see the man’s face, for he had it buried between Addie’s breasts, yet Linsey knew only one man would ever be allowed such liberties.

  Daniel.

  Anguish seared her heart. A tight fist of betrayal plowed into her middle, stole her breath, drove her backward. She choked on a sob and spun around, blindly seeking escape. She stumbled over her skirts, against a barrel, and it toppled over with a crash.

  Linsey regained her footing. Behind her, she heard a violent rustling, then a slam of a door being flung open.

  “Linsey . . .! Oh, my heavens . . . Linsey, wait!”

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t bear the sight of them.

  “Miss Linsey!”

  The deep, drawling voice yanked her to a stop two feet from the smithy doors. Slowly she looked over her shoulder. Addie was hastily buttoning up her gaping bodice. Behind her loomed Oren Potter—his clothes rumpled, straw clinging in hair dark as coal.

  “Mr. Potter?” she asked in confusion. “Addie? What’s going on here?”

  “I didn’t want you to find out like this. I meant to tell you . . .”

  She sank to the crate. “I don’t understand. I thought you wanted to marry Daniel. I thought you loved him.”

  “No.” Addie shook her head sadly. “Oren’s the man I love. And he loves me.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “There wasn’t any certain day. It just started . . . and grew.”

  “That long? For the love of Gus, here I’ve been shoving you and Daniel together, and the whole time you’ve been rolling in the dirt with the smithy?”

  “Now see here, Miss Linsey—”

  “No, Oren, please. This is between me and my sister.”

  It was the first time Linsey had ever heard such backbone from her sister, and amazingly, she’d done it with nothing more than a soft tone and a gentle hand to the strapping man’s arm.

  Addie stepped forward, smoothing her rumpled skirts and licking her kiss-swollen lips. Her eyes were filled with sorrow, and maybe a little regret, yet Linsey had a difficult time seeing past the haze of betrayal. The whole time she’d borne the burden of guilt for kissing Daniel, the timid, proper sister she’d cared for for fifteen years had been trysting with the local blacksmith—and never said a word about it.

  “Linsey, I never meant to keep this a secret from you.”

  “But you did! How could you not tell me? Your own sister?”

  “I wanted to tell you—I tried to tell you.” She gave a watery laugh. “God, I can’t count how many times I’ve lain awake over these last weeks, trying to find the words.”

  “Why didn’t you just say it?”

  “Because you were so busy planning your death and my life that you wouldn’t listen.”

  The statement drove through her like a pickax. Daniel had said almost the exact same thing to her only hours before.

  “Linsey, I love you. And I know you had your heart set on me marrying Daniel . . . but he isn’t the man of my dreams. Oren is. I want to walk at his side down the center of town. I want to fix his meals and share his home and bear his children. I want to spend the rest of my life looking at him, touching him, being with him. I don’t want to look back one day and say, ‘I had love, and I threw it away,’ and it isn’t fair for you to make me feel guilty about that. Because I do love him, Linsey, with all my heart and soul—and if you can’t accept that, then you’re not the sister I’ve looked up to all these years.”

  Slack jawed, Linsey could only sit in amazed silence, partly over the strength of Addie’s commitment, partly over her own blindness to what should have been noticeable all along. “I had no idea you felt this way. If I had known . . .” She swallowed and blinked back a film of moisture gathering across her eyes. “Addie, I never would have tried to force you into doing something you didn’t want to do. All I ever wanted was to make sure you would be happy.”

  “I am happy. With Oren.”

  She was. Linsey could see it
in the shy glow in her cheeks, in the sparkle in her eyes. Addie had found her Prince Charming.

  It just wasn’t Daniel.

  He stood on the banks of Horseshoe Creek, skipping rocks in his black coattails, looking more handsome than a body had a right to. His Sunday suit fit him to snug perfection, emphasizing those incredibly broad shoulders, that lean waist, those straight hips and long muscled legs.

  As always, the power of him lured her like a blossom to sunshine. Linsey picked up a flat-sided stone and joined him at the banks. She let the stone fly. It bounced twice across the smooth surface, making double plops.

  “Not bad,” he said.

  “I used to be better.”

  The idle chatter didn’t cover the underlying tension between them. There had been so many words flung at each other, so many emotions brought to the surface. . . .

  She was probably making a fool of herself by coming here and seeking him out. She imagined what it must have cost this proud man to say what he’d said earlier: that he . . . that he loved her. They were the most beautiful words a woman could hear from the man who had stolen her heart, and what had she done? Screamed at him like a shrew.

  It still infuriated her the way he and Addie had conspired against her, but he’d warned her of the consequences of her meddling. By pushing Daniel and Addie together, she’d nearly cost Addie the love of her life and saddled Daniel with a wife he never wanted. For that, she owed him an apology.

  Again.

  It seemed she was always apologizing to Daniel.

  “I found my sister with Oren Potter tonight,” she finally said, flinging another stone.

  Daniel followed with an impressive triple skip of his own. “She loves him.”

  “She told me.” Linsey looked over at him. He wasn’t looking at her but at the shimmer of moonlight bridging across the water. “You’ve known all along, haven’t you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And you never said anything.”

  “It wasn’t my place to say.”

  “I feel like a fool,” she said. “Here I was, thinking she needed me to help her find someone who could make her happy. Turns out she didn’t need me at all. She did it on her own.”

  “You might try taking a lesson from the teacher. Be the one in charge of your own fate, instead of letting it be in charge of you.”

  Linsey stared at the rippled glow across the creek’s surface while emotions circled inside her like a tide pool. Fate. What a fickle creature it was. Giving. Taking. Teasing. Forbidding. So profoundly kind . . . Her gaze strayed to Daniel . . . So unbearably cruel.

  She committed to memory every detail of the exasperating, arrogant, loveable man who had stolen her heart. The brooding tilt of his eyes. The proud angle of his nose. The stubborn slope of his jaw and the sensuous turn of his mouth.

  He turned, and caught her watching him. The moment froze. Emotion swirled between them, captured like stardust on a moonbeam. Past and present merged into one, filling Linsey with a yearning so keen it nearly brought her to her knees.

  Maybe he was right. She was so tired of dying. Tonight, she wanted to live. With Addie no longer between them, why squander another moment? She had so little time left.

  She took one step forward, then another, and yet another until she stood before Daniel. With a boldness that surprised even her, Linsey reached for the narrow black tie he wore and worked it loose from its knot.

  His hands gripped her wrists in a firm but tender hold. His lashes fell, coal fringes against tanned skin. “What are you doing, Linsey?”

  “Taking charge of my own fate. I need you, Daniel. I have for months. And I think you’ve been needing me, too.”

  He sucked in a swift breath. Desire equal to her own glittered in his eyes. “There’s no going back after tonight.”

  “No, there isn’t. There’s just now. Sometimes that’s all we’ve got.” She slipped the tie from his neck and let it drop to the ground. “Will you share it with me?”

  She felt his hesitation, his control. It tightened his body, battered at his control.

  Finally his hands, Daniel’s beautiful hands, smoothed their way up her arms to her shoulders, leaving goose bumps in their wake. His fingers curled into the ruffle of her sleeve.

  And she knew beyond a doubt that the weeks of fighting this unruly attraction had finally reached an end.

  With a tug to her sleeves, he slipped the gown off her shoulders. It shimmied down her body to pool at her feet like a satin cloud.

  He drew back and his heavy, smoldering gaze raked her body.

  One by one, he released the hooks of her stays. Her breathing quickened; her heart began an almost painful thump. Anticipation tightened her breasts as he peeled the corset away, then tossed it aside, leaving her to stand in only her petticoats, chemise, and her Token of Good Fortune. With one fingertip, he drew a line across the swell of her breast. It expanded at his touch, became eager and aching, straining against the flimsy cloth.

  The first contact of his mouth at her collarbone made a shiver spiral down Linsey’s spine. She closed her eyes, her mouth parted, and her senses filled with the scent of bay rum and cool moon and forbidden wishes. Yes, this was what she craved—for Daniel to awaken every nerve in her body, make her blood hum, and her head spin. Another kiss, moist and tender, to her neck, and another to the pulse beneath her ear, intensified the dizzying sensation.

  She unfastened the buttons of his vest, then his shirt, revealing hard male chest inch by tantalizing inch. A tremor rocked through him as she peeled the fabric away. Dusky nipples went pebble hard as the cool night air caressed him. A thick, dark mat of hair on his chest narrowed into a thin line to his waistband, as if pointing the way to pleasure.

  Linsey could only stare in awe at the sheer beauty of him.

  Rolling his shoulders, Daniel helped her remove his shirt. It fell to the ground and he stood before her, naked to the waist and glorious, kissed by moonlight and loved by the sweet Texas wind.

  She flattened her palms against his supple skin, kissed the scorching flesh at his collarbone. Her hands, curious and bold, roamed down the flat, rippled muscles of his abdomen. They clenched, quivered, filling Linsey with a power that made her smile in wicked delight.

  “Witch,” he whispered.

  She tossed her head. “Wretch.”

  He smiled that dimpled smile that had been melting hearts all over Henderson county for the last decade. Then he covered her mouth in a soul-searing kiss. Linsey’s knees went weak. She curled her arms around his neck to drag him closer, even as he swept her against the powerful breadth of his chest.

  She felt him guide her to the ground, dimly aware of him spreading his coat beneath her back just before he laid her upon the warm wool and covered her body with his own.

  The kiss grew hotter, harder, deeper.

  Consumed by the fever of Daniel, Linsey met his open-mouthed assault with a hunger of her own, twining her tongue around his, plunging her fingers through his silky hair, gently scoring his scalp, until nothing mattered but tangled hair—tangled tongues—tangled desires.

  Daniel pulled back. Linsey gasped for breath. Their gazes met, and in the dark depths Linsey recognized his hunger, for she felt it, too.

  He tugged at the ribbon of her chemise. She shivered, a hot, delicious shiver of eagerness for him to quit this torment and touch her. When he did, she thought she’d died and been launched to paradise. Dragging the folds of her chemise aside, his mouth pressed moist, scalding kisses to the sensitive flesh of first one breast, then the other. His breath teased her nipple; his tongue flicked over the distended bud. Linsey closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out. Just when she didn’t think she could bear the sweet torture any longer, his mouth closed over her, drawing her breast inside.

  “Daniel!”

  Oh, God! She’d thought his hands gifted, but that was before she knew what pleasures his mouth could bring. Her hands, clutching the tight muscles of his b
are back, began to rub up and down the length of smooth skin, anxious, needing something from him she couldn’t name, but knew only he could give. Toned muscle surged beneath her palms, a curious bulge hardened against the inside of her thigh.

  She whimpered when he drew back and reached for him, feeling suddenly chilled and empty at his desertion. Then she saw him going for his waistband. Licking her bottom lip, Linsey covered his hands with hers. They were clumsy, inexperienced, shaking as she tugged at the stubborn button, yet she wanted to see him, to feel him, touch him.

  Daniel finally seemed to take pity on her, for he swiftly worked the fasteners open, then slid his trousers down hard, muscled legs. He sprang free of the confines.

  She stared at him in shock and wonder.

  She’d never seen a naked man, never imagined that one could be so . . . beautiful. Daniel was. His manhood, rising proud and strong from a mat of thick black hair, should have frightened her. It didn’t. It only made her curious, more eager to explore him. Daniel groaned and buried his face in her hair when she closed her fingers around his shaft. She caressed his hardness, gloried in the feel of silk-on-steel leaping at her touch.

  His hand slid beneath her petticoat to begin a slow journey up her bare thigh, over her bottom to the sensitive crease of her pelvic bone.

  Linsey arched at the wild sensation.

  Gentle hands. Gifted hands. Sensual touch. He seemed to know just where to stroke to give her the most pleasure. Her hip, her belly, the mound of curls between her thighs.

  Feeling herself grow hot and damp, Linsey clutched Daniel’s head to her breast. His finger probed at her entrance, searching, teasing, tempting, until her thighs parted and her hips rose of their own accord. His finger slipped inside her and she caught back a whimper, unable to believe the feelings of wonder, of desire that flooded her.

  “Daniel!” His name escaped her on a sigh as he plunged his finger inside her and withdrew it, only to taunt her again. And again. Urgency built inside Linsey. She wanted to beg him to go faster and yet savor the slowness at the same time.

  When he covered her, sliding between her thighs, pausing with his strong shaft pressed to the entrance of her body, he took her face in his hands.