Page 37 of Snow Kisses

“Thanks a hell of a lot,” Cade snapped back, grabbing the picnic basket. “If you need extra help here, hire it. Or quit. But don’t bother me with it. I’m slam out of patience, Calla.”

And he slammed his hat over his brow and stormed out the back door ahead of Abby.

“Watch out,” the housekeeper said sympathetically. “Something’s eating him today.”

“If he keeps that up, I’ll find something that really will eat him!” Abby promised. “A wandering cannibal…” she muttered as she followed him out the door.

Cade drove them through pastures where there were little more than ruts for the truck to follow, and Abby held on to the seat for dear life, afraid to say a word. His face was grim, eyes doggedly on the ruts, and he looked as if the slightest sound would set him off.

But later, after he’d stripped off his shirt and rewired two or three strands of barbed wire in a pasture near the river, he seemed to have worked off some of his irritation.

Abby, who’d already spread out the picnic lunch under the cottonwoods near the river, wandered through the towering break of pines and spruce to find him.

He was leaning back against the truck smoking a cigarette, his eyes on the distant mountains across the rolling grasslands. His hat was off, his gloves were still in place and he looked as much a part of the land as the tall grasses that grew there. With his shirt gone, his chest was revealed, the thick wedge of hair damp with sweat, his tanned shoulders gleaming with moisture. Abby almost closed her eyes at the sight of all that provocative masculinity so close and tempting. She wanted desperately to touch him, to run her hands over those broad shoulders and feel the texture of the thick hair that covered the bronzed muscles of his chest. But she didn’t dare.

“Lunch is ready, when you are,” she said quietly.

He glanced at her solemnly. “I’ve patched the fence,” he said. His eyes went back to the mountains. “God, I love this country,” he added in a tone deep and soft with reverence. “I could stand and look over it for hours and never tire of the sight.”

“It wouldn’t have been much different in the old days, when trappers and fur traders and explorers like William Clark came here,” she remarked, going to stand beside him. The wind was tearing at the tight bun of her hair, but she pinned it back relentlessly.

“It’s different,” Cade said shortly, his eyes straight ahead. “It’s damned hard balancing between environmental protection and progress, Abby.”

“Between mining and ranching, agriculture andindustry?” she asked gently, because it was a subject that could set him off like a time bomb.

“Exactly.” He glanced toward one of the grassy ridges that faced away from the mountains. There was mining a few miles beyond that ridge, on land Cade had leased for the purpose. It had been a struggle, that decision, but in the end he’d bowed to the nation’s struggle for fuel independence.

“I wanted to keep the ranch exactly as it was, for my sons to inherit,” he said, his voice strangely intense. His eyes searched hers for a long moment. “Do you want children, Abby?”

The question knocked her sideways. She hadn’t thought much about children, except when she was around Cade. Now she looked at him and pictured him with a child on his knee, and something inside her burst into wild bloom.

“Yes,” she murmured involuntarily.

His gaze dropped lower, to her slender body. “Aren’t you afraid of losing your figure?” he asked carelessly, and averted his head while he finished the cigarette.

She didn’t dare answer, afraid that her longing for his children would be evident in her voice. Instead, she changed the subject. “Where do you plan to get those sons to leave Painted Ridge to? Are you adopting?”

His dark eyebrows shot up. “I’ll get them in the usual way. You do know how people make babies?” he added, a mocking smile shadowing his hard face.

She flushed and turned away. “You always say marriage isn’t in your book, Cade. I just wondered, that’s all.”

“Maybe I’ll be forced to change my mind eventually,” he remarked, tossing his gloves in the open window of the truck as he followed her back through the trees to the river.

She knelt on one side of the red-checked tablecloth, where she’d laid out foil-covered plates of food and the jug of coffee Calla had packed in the basket.

“Are you going to taste it first?” he asked, moving to the river to slosh water over his face and chest while she dished up the food.

“I think I’ll let you, after what you said to her,” Abby replied. “She might have put arsenic in it.”

“She didn’t have time.” He came back to the cloth, grabbing up one of several linen towels in the basket. He dabbed at his face and chest, and Abby watched him helplessly, hungrily, as his hands drew the cloth over the warm muscles with their furry covering.

He happened to look up, and his eyes flashed violently at her intense scrutiny.

She couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so intimidated by him or so attracted to him, all at once. She dropped her eyes back to the cloth and dished up the fried chicken, potato salad and rolls, with hands she could barely keep steady.

“Nervous of me, Abby?” he asked quietly, easing his formidable bulk down beside her, far too close, to take the plate she handed him.

“Should I be?” she countered. She poured him a cup of black coffee and automatically added cream before she handed him the foam cup. “After all, you’re theone who should be worrying. I seem to make a habit of throwing myself at you,” she added with bitter humor.

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