Promising Hearts Read online

  “Lord, Kate,” Jessie whispered, arching beneath her touch. “I can’t think when you do that.”

  “How long do we have before Jed starts to worry and comes looking for you?”

  “He won’t, not for a good while.” Jessie struggled for breath. “Especially with him knowing that you’re new to the ranch.”

  “Then come upstairs and give me my hour.”

  Jessie pushed up on rubbery legs, her coffee forgotten, and turned to take Kate in her arms. She kissed her forehead, her eyes, her mouth. Kate had twisted her hair into a loose coil at the back of her neck and tethered it there with a ribbon. Jessie loosed the tie and released the black gossamer to shower around Kate’s shoulders. “The way I’m feeling right this minute, I don’t think I’ll last anywhere near an hour.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Kate said, opening the next button on Jessie’s shirt. She kissed the valley between her breasts, then higher into the hollow at the base of her throat, then the underside of her jaw. When she reached her mouth, she brushed her lips lightly back and forth until Jessie opened for her. With short, quick, teasing strokes, she danced her tongue over the moist, warm inner recesses until Jessie’s hands fisted in her hair and pulled her head away.

  “Kate,” Jessie grated. “You can’t know what you’re doing to me.”

  “I know,” Kate panted. “I know and I love it.”

  “All these months I waited, missing you so much. Wanting you so much.” Trembling, her eyes hot, Jessie tugged at the laces on Kate’s bodice. “Every time I went to your house, I was afraid they’d turn me away.”

  “No.” Kate framed Jessie’s face, her own steady, tender gaze soothing the apprehension in Jessie’s eyes. “Nothing will ever keep me from you again. I promise.”

  But Jessie knew that something could. She’d almost lost her. She’d knelt by her bedside as Kate had slipped away. The agonizing desolation of that moment was burned into her consciousness deeper than any brand, the memory a living nightmare that haunted her day and night. She pulled open Kate’s dress and filled her hands with her, lifting her breasts free and lowering her mouth to taste the life that coursed through her. “Oh, Kate, Kate. I need you so.”

  Kate cradled Jessie’s head to her breast and caressed her cheek. When she felt tears, her own heart nearly broke. She had no words to ease her lover’s fears, no reassurances where none could truly be given. Her pledge could only be to live, day by day, loving her. “Jessie, darling. Take me upstairs so we can touch everywhere. I want you everywhere.”

  Jessie, taller and stronger, was lost in the grip of remembered loss and desperate desire. The weight of her passion as she drew a nipple into her mouth forced Kate back against the wall. Groaning, Jessie wanted, craved, more. She grasped the bottom of Kate’s dress and pulled it up, wanting flesh against her flesh.

  “Jessie,” Kate murmured tenderly, catching Jessie’s hand where it roamed restlessly over her thigh. “Jed. Jed might come.”

  The sound of Kate’s voice, the touch of her hand, splintered the pain like glass on stone. Joy rode through her, and the relentless, choking dread eased. Jessie drew a long, sweet breath, then raised her head and gently gathered the front of Kate’s dress together, covering her breasts. She kissed her softly on the mouth. “Forgive me.”

  “Oh, my darling. There’s nothing to forgive.” Kate laughed shakily. “I can only hope you always want me this way.”

  “More.” Jessie grasped her hand and pulled her into the hall and toward the stairs. “More every day.”

  Hastily, they shed clothing and hurried back into bed, finding it still warm beneath the quilt as Kate had predicted. Kate opened her arms and pulled Jessie on top of her, wrapping her legs around Jessie’s lean hips.

  “Now,” Kate urged, “now touch me.”

  Jessie laughed, the memory of those long winter months of uncertainty dissolving like snow in the sunshine. Kate was here, alive and loving her. This time when she sought the beat of Kate’s heart with her mouth pressed to her breast, it was with elation, not pain. Nothing ever made her feel as whole as these moments alone with Kate when there was nothing between them but the love they felt for one another. When she smoothed her hand down Kate’s body and found her wet and waiting for her, she wanted to weep for the beauty of it. She held Kate’s passion in her palm, lost in Kate’s murmurs of pleasure and soft pleas for more.

  “Don’t make me wait.” Kate clutched Jessie’s shoulders as her body shivered with need. “Take me as many times as you want, but don’t make me wait. Please, Jessie. Please.”

  Jessie pushed up on one arm to watch Kate’s face as she filled her. Kate’s eyes were hazy black pools reflecting the twisting urgency in Jessie’s belly. She shifted to press her center against Kate’s thigh, clenching against her in time to the slow, deep thrusts of her hand.

  “More,” Kate gasped. With one hand she touched Jessie’s face, brushing trembling fingers over her mouth. She forced her other hand, palm up, between Jessie’s legs and laughed unsteadily when Jessie jerked and cried out in surprise. “I missed you, too. All these months.”

  Now they were joined—by their flesh, by their passion, by their promise. They held one another’s eyes as they pushed deeper, body and soul, rising together and finally, releasing together.

  “Kate, Kate,” Jessie groaned, trying to move her weight from atop Kate’s body and failing. “How can you make me feel so strong and me not able to move a muscle?”

  “You’d better catch your breath,” Kate warned, sliding her hands up and down Jessie’s back. “I don’t think my hour is up yet.”

  “Can’t.” Jessie groaned. “I have to ride this morning.”

  Kate laughed. “Then you’ll be thinking of me.”

  Jessie raised her head. “I’m always thinking of you.” She kissed her swiftly, then rolled over onto her back. “I can see now why the boys get a little loco when they’ve been out on the line for a few weeks.” She turned her head and grinned at Kate. “I think I’d get a little loco after a couple days without you.”

  “You’ll have to leave me sometimes, won’t you?” Kate asked quietly, turning on her side and curving an arm around Jessie’s middle.

  “Now and again.” Jessie had been trying to work out how she was going to do that, and she mused aloud, “When I do, you can stay with your parents.”

  Kate grew very still. “I can?”

  “Yes. That way, I figure you’ll be safe and comfortable.”

  “You do?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “While you’re out on the range—where there’s outlaws and wild animals and every other kind of danger, I can stay with my parents in town.” Kate sat up, her eyes blazing. “Like some pampered city girl. Someone you keep here to warm your bed and then send packing while you go off to do the real work.”

  Jessie gaped. “I didn’t say that.”

  Kate threw back the covers and jumped from the bed, reaching for her chemise. She pulled it angrily over her head and glared at her confused lover. “You didn’t have to. It’s obvious you have it all figured out.”

  “Not all of it,” Jessie muttered, climbing from the bed in search of her pants. She couldn’t defend herself without her pants on. “I just thought it would be best—”

  “You thought. You thought.” Kate watched Jessie pull on her pants and remembered the first time she’d seen her undressed, in the hotel room in New Hope the first afternoon they’d gone walking together. She’d never seen such a beautiful woman before, so confident and strong. She had fallen in love with her in that moment. Because she was confident and strong and Jessie. “Jessie Forbes.”

  Something about the way Kate said her name made Jessie stop with one arm thrust into her shirt. The tender look on Kate’s face made the tension in her belly drain away. Softly, she said, “What?”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Lord, yes.” Jessie shrugged into her shirt and started toward Kate, but stopped when Kate held up her
hand. Heart thundering, Jessie said urgently, “Kate, how could you ask me that?”

  “Then what am I to you?”

  “What…I…” Jessie pressed her hand to her heart. “You’re my life.”

  “And you are mine.” Shaking her head, Kate put her arms around her. “This is my home. I’ll not leave it for any reason.”

  Jessie held her tightly. “Then I guess we’re going to need some more shooting lessons if you’re going to stay here while I’m away.”

  “Now that’s a much better idea.” Kate rested her cheek against Jessie’s shoulder. “And I need to learn to ride astride.”

  “I can see you’ve got some ideas of your own you didn’t mention.”

  Kate laughed, thinking they’d survived their first fight and were no worse for it. “Maybe just a few.”

  Chapter Six

  “Talk to you, Jess?” Jed Harper asked as Jessie was about to bring one of the horses she intended to saddle-break out of the corral.

  “Sure.” Jessie leaned an arm over the top rail of the gate and regarded her foreman. He was a good head shorter than her, tanned and tough like good leather. She could guess his age, but not from looking at him. He had the ageless, weather-beaten face of a man who’d spent his life outdoors doing hard work. She’d known him as far back as she could remember. He’d been one of her father’s closest friends, and after Tom Forbes’s death, he’d been Jessie’s strongest ally. She was pretty certain that a lot of the men had stayed on with her as boss, even though she was a woman and only eighteen, because Jed had talked them into it. His faith in her had helped her get through a time in her life when she’d lost everything that mattered except her land. “Something wrong?”

  “Could be.”

  Jessie made sure that all the hands at the Rising Star knew that she was the boss, but she also let Jed handle the day-to-day affairs with the twenty or so men who worked for her. Some were long-timers and lived permanently in the bunkhouse when they weren’t out in the line shacks or riding herd on the stock. Almost as many were chuck-riders, men who showed up in the winter when work out on the range was scarce, looking for a warm place to roost until the weather turned friendly again. Some stayed on, but most moved on. Men who had no permanent home and no desire for one. Regardless, she could count on Jed to get an honest day’s work out of them, and she paid them what they were worth, which made her as popular as a boss could be. When Jed brought a problem to her, she knew to listen. “Trouble with the men?”

  He shook his head. “No more than usual. Charlie Baker came down from the north quarter late last night. He’s been up there looking for stragglers and taking count of the mares and foals for the last couple weeks.”

  “I know. Isn’t Johnny Earley up there with him?” Throughout the year, the horses free-roamed, searching out the best shelter and richest grazing land. The size of the scattered portions of the herd could range from a few dozen to over a hundred animals. The herd covered a territory that took men weeks to ride, so shacks were built at various intervals along the borders of the ranch and in the high country where a couple of the men would stay for weeks at a time keeping track of the horses.

  “Yeah. He stayed behind while Charlie come down to say we’re missing some stock.”

  Jessie’s mouth tightened into a grim line. There were any number of reasons horses went missing. Sometimes they died in falls, were killed by wild animals, were stolen for food by Indians who had been displaced from their hunting grounds, or were rustled by men who drove them south to sell to the army or ranches along the way. “Charlie say how?”

  “Thought at first it might be bear,” Jed replied. “There’s been signs of some around, but he hasn’t seen any. Hasn’t seen any carcasses either.”

  “Could be they’re dragging them off to a cave somewhere.”

  Jed nodded. “Pretty unusual not to see any bits left behind, though.”

  “How many?”

  “Charlie’s not sure. At first he said he thought it was just one or two straying off, maybe joining another herd. But then he started keeping count every day. Says it’s one or two every couple of days.”

  “That’s a lot of horses.” Jessie knew there was only one thing to do. “I guess we’re going to have to go take a look. Get word to the rest of the men out on the line.”

  “That’ll take a good few days. Maybe longer.” Jed glanced up at the house. “No need for you to come.”

  “If it wasn’t Charlie,” Jessie said, “or if it wasn’t more than a horse or two, I wouldn’t. But Charlie’s a good man. If he says there’s a problem, then there is.” Jessie flicked off her hat and slapped it rhythmically against her thigh. “If there’s trouble on my land, then I have to see to it.”

  “Kate’s not been here more than a week. I don’t imagine she’s settled yet.” Jed looked uncomfortable. “She probably shouldn’t be here on her own just yet.”

  Jessie smiled. “You might not want to say that around her.”

  “Wouldn’t consider it.” The angle of Jed’s mouth danced upward for a second. “I’ve seen her when she’s mad, that time in town when you took that bullet in the shoulder. If she could’ve got her hands on them that done it, she would’ve made short work of them.”

  “I’ll talk to her. She doesn’t know how lonely it can get way out here, and driving back and forth into town alone isn’t such a good idea either.” Jessie huffed out a breath. “Not until she can shoot a little bit better than she can right now.”

  “There’s a couple of the boys I would trust to keep an eye on things here, if she stays.”

  “That’s good.” Jessie settled her hat low on her brow. “But not just yet.”

  Jed stared past Jessie to the foothills that rose into the mountains on the far-distant border of the Rising Star. The mountains, timeless and indestructible, provided a kind of comfort as they loomed above them, an anchor in the wide, wild country around them. He’d ridden the line for weeks at a time out there, never seeing another soul. He’d never been lonely. He’d forgotten that for all Jessie was capable of doing as good as any man, she wasn’t one. “You never said.”

  “Never said what?” Jessie asked quizzically.

  “That you were lonely.”

  Jessie heard the bit of hurt in his voice and smiled. “It’s one of those things you don’t know you are until you aren’t anymore.” She glanced up toward the house and saw Kate come out the kitchen door. “And now I’m not.”

  *

  Kate carried the washbasin to the side of the porch and poured the rinse water over the rail onto the wildflowers that were just beginning to break through the hard-packed crust. May mornings in Montana were cold, and she hadn’t intended more than a very brief trip outside. Then she saw Jessie across the yard with her back to one of the corral gates talking to Jed. There was something in the way Jessie stood that caught Kate’s attention. The first time she’d seen Jessie, Jessie had been walking down the street in town, and Kate had taken her for one of the cowboys who seemed to be everywhere. It had only taken her a moment of watching to realize that Jessie was not a man, and from that instant on, she’d loved to look at her. She liked nothing better than to view Jessie through the lens of her camera, capturing her unique combination of beauty and strength forever. She could tell Jessie’s moods by the way she walked, by the way she tilted her hat, by the way she hooked her thumbs over the wide belt of her holster. Jessie was the only person she knew whose body and spirit were so intimately one. Kate flushed hot, thinking about lying with Jessie, knowing that when Jessie touched her, it was from the heart.

  “Kate?” Jessie stood at the bottom of the steps looking up, wondering at the faraway expression in her lover’s eyes. “You’ll freeze out here.”

  Kate smiled secretly. “Not when I have my thoughts to keep me warm.”

  Jessie took the stairs in two long strides and slid her arm around Kate’s waist. “You can do your thinking just as well inside.” She drew Kate along with her an
d into the kitchen and then checked to see that the stove had enough wood.

  “Is there some trouble?” Kate asked.

  Jessie carefully replaced the lid on the top of the cast-iron stove and turned. Kate stood by the counter, drying dishes and watching her expectantly. “What makes you think so?”

  “I saw you with Jed. You had that look you get when there’s something serious going on.”

  “No trouble,” Jessie said, at least none that she was certain of. “One of the men was worried that the herd was scattering in the high country.” That part was true enough. She didn’t see the point in discussing what might be the cause. Not when it would be sure to worry Kate.

  Kate put down the dish towel. “And?”

  “I need to see about it.”

  “When do you need to go?”

  “If Jed and I get started today, we’ll be there by first light tomorrow.”

  “You’ll ride all night?” Kate asked as nonchalantly as she could.

  “We’ll overnight somewhere on the way. Rest the horses. Besides, a night ride’s too hard on them if you don’t have to do it.”

  As capable as Kate knew her lover to be, she hated to think about her sleeping on the cold ground in wild country that Kate had never seen. She had to remind herself that Jessie had been doing this since she was a young girl. And she wouldn’t be alone. Jed would be with her. “I’ll help you get ready. Tell me what you’ll need.”

  “Kate,” Jessie said, clasping both her hands. “I didn’t plan to be away so soon after you came.”