The Brands Who Came For Christmas Read online

Chapter 3

  He got out of the truck to run around to her side, open her door and help her get in. It was no small distance from the pavement to the pickup floor, after all. And she wasn’t long legged.

  Funny, he hadn’t noticed that before. He usually liked leggy women, taller and thinner than this one. More coiffed. More “done.” Or maybe he only thought that was what he liked because he hadn’t met Maya Brand.

  He stood there watching her the way a scientist would watch an unknown species. She settled into the seat, flipped back the hood of her dark blue raincoat, thrust her fingers into her hair and shook it. He had no idea what that little, ritual was, but he liked the result.

  Then he realized she was staring at him.

  “You’re getting all wet again, standing there in the rain, Caleb.”

  He was, he realized. His shoulders were damp, and a steady drip was running from the brim of his battered hat. He closed her door and ran around to the driver’s side to get in. Then he put the truck in gear and prepared to pull out of the parking lot, into the wet, shining, deserted road. “Which way are we headed?”

  “South,” she said.

  He frowned at her, and she smiled. Damn, what a smile she had. “That way,” she told him, pointing a finger toward his side of the vehicle.

  He turned the wheel, and they were off.

  He hated being this noble. But she had been drinking a little bit tonight. And then there was her reaction to the remark that jerk had made about her sexuality. Caleb had been all prepared to take Maya Brand somewhere private and explore that question for himself. But he couldn’t do that to her now. So he’d just stick around in this town for a day longer, see her again when she was clearheaded and he could be sure she was with him because she wanted to be.

  She told him where to turn off the main road, and he found himself driving over what was little more than a muddy path, barely wide enough for one vehicle. He worried where he would go if another one came along.

  “Are you sure this is the right way?” he asked her.

  “Uh-huh. I sure am. Just keep going.”

  He flicked the wipers down a notch as the rain seemed to ease off, and he kept going.

  “See that turnoff there?”

  “You mean that deer trail?” he asked, sounding skeptical.

  She laughed. It was a deep and throaty sound that made him squirm with awareness. “Trust me,” she said.

  She had, he mused, an honest face. So he turned. But he didn’t find a boarding house when he drove in through the tall red pines lining the path. What opened out before him was startling enough to make him hit the brake pedal. Then he put the truck in Park, shut it off and just looked.

  He’d driven right up to the face of a waterfall so big that about all he could see through the windshield was a wall of froth. He didn’t say anything, and after a moment, he realized he was holding his breath.

  “No one should come to Big Falls without seeing…well, the big falls,” Maya said. As she spoke she was opening her door, sliding out of the pickup truck.

  Caleb followed suit, stepping out of the truck onto a flat, stony bit of ground that seemed solid enough. Tipping his head back, he looked up to where the falls began, high above. A few yards ahead of him, the ground ended, and when he looked down over the drop he saw a river unwinding below. That river was all that stood between him and the massive waterfall.

  “This is incredible,” he told her.

  “I thought you might like it.” She walked away from him, and he turned to see what she was up to. He watched her as she looked around, then she frowned, shaking her head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Look.”

  He did, seeing what she was pointing out. A ring of stones, surrounding the charred remains of someone’s campfire. Around that, on the ground, a dozen or more beer cans and soft drink bottles were scattered. She bent and started picking them up. “This is a favorite spot for partying.” She carried an armload of cans to the truck and tossed them into the back. “We can dump them in the bin back in town.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” He went to pick up the rest of the cans and took them to the truck. Then they both stood there, beside the pickup. He pretended to be looking at the falls, but mostly he was stealing sideways glances at her. He didn’t really know what to do next…what she’d had in mind when she’d steered him way up here.

  Licking her lips, seeming just as nervous as he was, she said, “The rain’s letting up.”

  He tipped his face up to the sky, then took off his hat and shook the water off it. “Looks like it’s stopped altogether.” He opened the pickup door, tossed the hat inside, didn’t bother closing the door again. Maya was right, it had stopped raining. The only moisture hitting his face now was the spray from the falls. He watched the clouds skitter away from the tiny sliver of the waning moon above. A few stars managed to shine, too.

  When he looked down again, it was to see Maya staring at him, her face tipped up to his. Licking his lips, and knowing he shouldn’t, Caleb slid his hands around her waist anyway. “I’m going to kiss you now, Maya Brand,” he said.

  “It’s about time, Caleb Cain,” she replied, and her palms slid up the front of him to curl around his shoulders.

  He lowered his head and pressed his mouth to hers, pulled her closer, kissed her. It was good. He’d been wanting to kiss this woman for hours now, and it was every bit as good as he’d imagined it would be. Her lips were soft and willing to do whatever his suggested. So when he nudged them apart, she complied right away. She shivered against him just a little when he touched the soft curve of her upper lip with his tongue, and he felt the breath stutter out of her mouth into his. Encouraged, he delved deeper, tasted her fully. She tasted like beer. And that was a reminder to him that none of this was a very good idea.

  But then her hips arched against him, and he groaned and kept kissing her. His hands slid down to cup her backside, and when he squeezed her closer, she wriggled against him in a way that almost made him roar as loudly as the falls were doing.

  He lifted his head and stared down into her glittering, heavy-lidded eyes. “If you want to stop, Maya, now would be the time to tell me.”

  She shook her head once from side to side and shucked off her jacket, letting it fall to the rain-wet ground.

  “You…you’ve had a few beers.”

  “Not that many.” Her hands came to his chest, her fingers flicking the snaps of the denim shirt open and pushing it down over his shoulders.

  “You were upset by what that redneck said in the saloon.”

  “Was I?” Her hands went to her own blouse now. It was white, button-down, clean. She undid the buttons one by one, opening the blouse. She wore a white cotton bra…which she filled to overflowing.

  “It’s…it’s cold and d-damp out here.”

  The blouse came off. She tossed it to the ground with the coat. The bra came next. “You’re right, it is.”

  “Oh, hell.” His hands covered her breasts before he could give them permission. Weighty and full, nipples taut with the bite of the chilly air. He ran his thumbs over them and watched her catch her lower lip between her teeth and close her eyes.

  “You’re an adult woman,” he said. “Who the hell am I to tell you what’s good for you?”

  Her hands again, tugging his T-shirt over his head, and he didn’t want to let her breasts go long enough to take it off, but he did, and when he touched them again he used his mouth. The hell with nobility. She’d only had three beers. He’d counted several times in his head since they left that bar. Three beers. She was not incapacitated.

  And she was not young or innocent or naive. And he was only human.

  Warm flesh and stiff nipples on his tongue made him hungry for more, and when her fingers tangled in his hair to hold him to her, he suckled her harder, nipped with his teeth, tugged and pulled at her nipple until she made whimpering sounds and fell back against the side of the pickup. Her nails dug into his back
. He attacked her other breast, pressing her back to the cold metal of the truck as his hands tugged at her jeans, found the button, found the zipper, shoved them down, baring her from waist to ankles in one hurried motion. She kicked the jeans off, tearing free of her boots at the same time. He looked her over and shivered. Then he closed his hands at her waist and lifted her, set her bare bottom on the seat of the pickup, shoved her legs apart and bent to bury his face in between. He tasted her. Salt and woman coated his tongue, and he delved deeper, spread her wider, tasted every part of her, until she was quivering and moaning and tugging at his hair and shaking. So close to ecstasy. But he didn’t take her there…not yet.

  He fumbled with his jeans, freed himself, and again clasped her waist and lifted her, pulling her forward this time, and down. Wrapping her legs around his waist and settling her over him, he managed not to move for one brief moment. Jaw clenched, he whispered, “You sure, Maya?”

  Her answer was a pleading sound from deep in her throat as she rocked her hips. So he pulled her lower, sheathed himself slowly inside her heat. And it was so good his knees nearly buckled. And when she moved lower and cried out, his knees did buckle, and he lowered them both to the ground, because he couldn’t do otherwise.

  Her coat was his bed as he fell backward, pulling her with him. They moved together, and he forgot to think, to perform, to do anything, as they rolled and clung and twined around each other. Until at last he lost himself to his climax as she trembled and murmured his name and then screamed it out loud.

  Breathless and weak, he enfolded her in his arms, and they lay there on the damp ground for a few moments, sated. But then their body heat cooled, and she shivered in his arms.

  “Let’s get you out of the cold,” he told her.

  She didn’t reply. He pulled back so he could look at her face. Closed eyes, relaxed features, maybe a hint of a smile. And another shiver.

  “Sound asleep,” he muttered. “Guess that says a lot about my technique, doesn’t it?”

  He got to his feet, and began to put her clothes back on her. Her pretty white blouse was stained with mud here and there, but he pulled it over her arms as she hung like a ragdoll in his. Then he buttoned it up with no small amount of regret. Her coat was going to be a real mess, once they got off it and picked it up off the wet ground. But before he could do that, he had to replace her panties, which were easy, and her jeans, which were not.

  She stirred when he wrestled her into the jeans, opened her eyes and smiled crookedly at him. And it occurred to him for one, panicked moment that maybe she’d had more than three beers tonight after all. Maybe she’d been drinking before he’d ever arrived on the scene.

  A rush of guilt swamped him, and he closed his eyes. Please, Fate, he thought, don’t let me have taken advantage of a woman too inebriated to consent. He was a lawyer before he’d ever been a politician. That was the way it was done in the Montgomery family. And he knew damned good and well what a rape charge would do to his political career.

  “Caleb,” she muttered.

  He looked at her, at the pure honest goodness of her. “I’m an idiot. You’re not the vindictive type, are you, Maya?” He asked the question as he put on his own clothes.

  “Hmm?”

  He cupped her chin. “Tell me you wanted this.”

  She smiled. Then she hiccuped. Caleb closed his eyes tightly and felt a bit ill. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “How much have you had to drink tonight, Maya?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t drink,” she said.

  “Not ever?” He blinked in surprise.

  She shook her head. “It wouldn’t look good…you know, to the church ladies.”

  “Church ladies, huh?”

  He wrapped his arms around her and helped her get to her feet. She leaned against him as he picked up her coat, but it was soaked almost clear through. So he put the denim shirt he’d been wearing around her shoulders, and walked her toward the passenger side of the truck.

  “Caleb?”

  He looked down at her. “What, hon?”

  “Is sex always…so…so…you know? Good?”

  Caleb stopped walking. “Well…no. Not always. At least, it hasn’t been for me. How about you?”

  Her grin was shy and beautiful as she lowered her head. “I wouldn’t know,” she said very softly.

  She might as well have picked him up over her head and tossed him into that river. “What do you mean, you wouldn’t know?” She reached for the door handle. “Maya? Are you telling me that this was…that you were a…a…?”

  “Virgin.” She said it flatly.

  “Oh, hell.”

  She shrugged. “Tomorrow’s my birthday,” she said. And she smiled a smug little satisfied smile as if that was supposed to mean something quite profound. Then she stepped up into the pickup, only she missed the step and almost fell face first—would have, if he hadn’t caught her.

  What the hell had he done here? He could see the headlines now.

  Senatorial Candidate’s Night On The Town:

  Montgomery Deflowers Virginal Good Girl After Getting Her Too Drunk To Say No!

  “Oh, hell,” he said again. He helped her into the truck. Closed the door. Then he went around to the other side and got in himself. He started the engine, then sat there a minute resting his head on the steering wheel.

  “Are you all right, Caleb?” she asked him.

  He glanced sideways at her. Wide eyes just as blue as the sky on a clear summer day. That sprinkling of freckles. The look of pure relaxed contentment. She was not a political disaster waiting to happen. She was an angel who’d given him a night he would never forget. Smiling crookedly, he reached out, cupped her face with his hand, and said, “Probably you’d do well not to tell anyone about this.”

  She smiled back at him. “I might be tempted to. I mean, just to prove that the current theory is wrong.”

  He knew what she meant. What that redneck at the saloon had said, that she was either frigid or gay. The jerk didn’t have a clue. Maya Brand was made for loving.

  “I won’t tell, though,” she said. “Caleb…tonight was about proving something to myself, not so much to the rest of this town.” She shrugged. “Besides, I really think I’m starting to make some inroads with the church ladies. No sense blowing it now.”

  He nodded. “No regrets, Maya?”

  She shook her head, then tilted it to one side. “Not a one. You?”

  “Not a one.”

  “You’re a good man, Caleb Cain,” she told him softly. “I can tell.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He backed the truck around, drove down the path from the falls, and turned onto the road to head back the way they’d come.

  “Whoever is trying to tell you what to do with your life…don’t you let them. I get the feeling a man like you won’t be happy unless you’re doing what you want to do…not what someone else thinks you should.”

  “What did you do, Maya? Catch your sister’s ESP?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe I did. Turn right down here.”

  He did, driving in silence along Main Street. It was charming, small. Rockwellesque, with an Oklahoma twist.

  “That building there on the left—that’s Ida-May’s boarding house. Our place is another five miles along this road. Think you can find your way back alone?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good.”

  He kept driving. She was silent, but he got the feeling she wanted to ask him something. Finally he pulled into the driveway of the old-fashioned farmhouse, white with red shutters. Every light inside blazing. A small red barn stood off to the left. Maya turned to him and said, “You are staying the night at the boarding house, aren’t you, Caleb?”

  He smiled at her. “Of course I am. I want to see you again, lady.”

  She brightened. Then he pulled her close and kissed her, long and slow. And even while a little voice told him this was not possible, his heart kept
whispering that it was. That it had to be.

  When he lifted his head she flung open her door, jumped out and ran all the way to the house, not even giving him a chance to walk her to the front door. She waved once, then went inside.

  Caleb turned the truck around and drove away.

  It was late. He was feeling guilty. Decidedly guilty. Running away from his life was a selfish thing to do. Not that he regretted it. But maybe it was time for him to do what Maya had suggested. Figure out what he wanted his life to be, instead of continuing to live by the expectations of other people.

  Maybe it was time he made his own decisions.

  He flipped open the glove compartment and pulled out his cell phone. He’d had it turned off, until now. But he supposed the right thing to do would be to call his father, tell him that he was having some doubts about his future, and that he would be back just as soon as he decided what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

  Maybe he didn’t want to tie himself to the city. To a senate seat. To a political alliance instead of a marriage.

  He hit the power button on the phone. Glanced down at the lighted number pad. Before he could punch the first number, the phone bleated in his hand, startling him so much that he damn near dropped it.

  Frowning, he brought it to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Caleb! Thank God we’ve finally reached you!”

  His heart iced over at the tone of the voice even before he recognized it as that of Bobby McAllister, his longtime friend and adviser, even before Bobby said the last words Caleb had expected to hear.

  “You’re father’s had a stroke, Caleb. We need you to get home right away.”

  For a moment he couldn’t speak. He was too stunned to speak as the information registered. And when it did, his first instinct was to deny it. To accuse Bobby of lying, but of course he knew better. “My God,” he finally managed. “Is he—”

  “We don’t know anything yet. He’s in the hospital. It’s…it’s serious, Caleb. Please, get home.”

  “I’m on my way,” he said. He tossed the phone down and pressed the accelerator to the floor.