Lance looked down, his gaze fixing on her flat abdomen. Reverently, as if he feared he might hurt her, Lance reached down to touch her stomach. “Are we really going to have a kid?”
“I think so. I hope so. I’ll know in another week if my courses are late.” She frowned, recalling what he had once told her about not wanting to make her pregnant. “Do you want a child, Lance?”
His black eyes lifted to hers. “I…don’t know. I don’t like to think of what he’s going to have to go through with me as his pa.”
“Oh, Lance.” Her heart ached. “We’ll figure out something. Together.”
“Together,” he repeated, and yet his tone held doubt.
“We will. We’ll start over…from this moment on. As long as we love each other…” Summer raised her fingers to his lower lip, tracing the firm fullness with a gentle caress, her own features soft with love. “Will you marry me, Lance Calder? Will you be my husband till death do us part? Will you live with me as my lover, my friend, the father of my children?”
His solemn expression never wavered as he gazed at her searchingly.
“We’re already married, I know,” Summer added quietly. “But I want a real wedding this time. With my family in attendance. And this time when we say our vows, I’ll mean every word of it.”
When still he remained silent, Summer smiled up at him, a tender, teasing, alluring smile, with only the slightest hint of forced gaiety. “Well, what do you say, Lance Calder? Don’t you know it isn’t polite to keep a lady dangling on tenterhooks? Your mama should have taught you better.”
“My ma taught me just fine,” Lance growled as he turned with Summer in his arms and pressed her down on the mattress.
“Will you marry me, then?”
“Yeah, I’ll marry you. If you’re sure you want a savage breed for a husband.”
Reaching up, she entwined her arms carefully around his neck, conscious of his wounds. “I wouldn’t have anyone else.”
In response, Lance raised a hand between their bodies and began unfastening the buttons of her gown’s bodice.
Summer’s breath caught in her throat. “Lance, you can’t mean…You were just shot! Aren’t you hurting too much?”
His faint grin was part pain, part hungry wolf. “Yeah, I’m hurting. And y
ou’re the only one who can make it better, princess.” He winced as he tried to shift his weight over her. “But I think you’re gonna have to do the honors for a while, at least till the stitches in my side stop pulling.”
Her own smile held a hint of worry, but was mostly smug. “Well, finally you’re going to let me help you for a change. It’s about time you admitted you need me.”
Lance’s expression sobered at her artless remark. He needed her, all right. He needed her to fill the empty place in his soul, to heal the raw chasm of hunger in his heart. He needed her like the air he breathed. God help him, he needed her.
Lowering his head, Lance captured her mouth with a fierce possessiveness, intent on showing her just how much.
Chapter 26
The week that followed was a time of healing, for the body as well as for soul and heart. Summer and Lance built on the fragile trust they’d begun by declaring their love—sharing their feelings and thoughts, opening themselves to each other, exposing vulnerabilities, guardedly testing the limits of their delicate new bond.
Summer tried in countless ways to show him that her devotion was real, and Lance cautiously started to believe. Every time he so much as kissed her, she responded like a woman desperate to live, desperate to love. And he felt himself turning into a lovesick kid all over again—fiercely hungry for the sight of her, for the touch of her, for the laughing light in her eyes that came more readily now.
All the vicious hurt dealt him by others, his ravaged pride, his humiliation, his physical injuries, no longer meant so much, not with Summer there to heal him. He had her, and that was all that mattered. Maybe he was a selfish bastard for wanting her so damned much. Maybe he didn’t have any right to ask her to suffer as an outcast with him. But Summer was his, and he would never let her go.
It looked as if she felt the same way. She babied him shamelessly, insisting on taking care of him after all he had done for her. And he shamelessly let her. Except in the mornings, when their roles reversed.
Summer was sick most mornings, almost certainly a sign of pregnancy. The thought filled Lance with wonder and fear. Wonder that his kid might be growing inside her. That she wanted to have his baby. Fear that he wouldn’t be able to protect them both from the kind of life he’d led. It was only then that his rage returned to haunt him—rage over his helplessness, despair over his impotence.
He’d had to be satisfied with a sort of slim justice. Prewitt had left the county, run out by the same men who had nearly lynched him. But there was no saying it wouldn’t happen again, or that his neighbors wouldn’t take up arms against him and his family. He meant to live at Sky Valley as one of them, and he knew better than anybody how unlikely it was for white society to tolerate with equanimity the presence of a bastard breed settling in their midst.
At just this moment, though—the afternoon of his second wedding—Lance had no thought for the future beyond the immediate present. For the ceremony, he’d borrowed a fancy suit of Summer’s late brother Tyler, and the thing was killing him. The high starched collar choked him, and the stitches in his side itched like crazy as he waited with Dusty in the front parlor for his bride to appear. Plus the air had started to turn warm, what with the audience of all the Weston ranch hands and their wives crowded into the elegant room. And yet he was willing to endure worse tortures in order to give Summer her special day.
“What’s taking so long?” he asked Dusty in a low voice. “You think maybe something’s happened?”
“You just asked me that two minutes ago,” Dusty returned in a calming tone. “Settle down, Lance. It isn’t even five o’clock yet. Nothing’s happened. She’s just getting spruced up. You know how women are about those things.”