Page 37 of A Christmas Baby for the Cowboy
Later still, Ramona woke up to hear the shower running. She crawled out of the warm bed and went into her pretty little bathroom to join him there, and she couldn’t keep herself from smiling when she stepped into the shower stall.
He kissed her again and again by way of a greeting, and then she’d nestled into him as the shower came down all over them.
And it made her heart feel like it was singing.
In the morning, he woke up insatiable, but she was even hungrier. So Ramona crawled on top of him and went up on her knees, then sat herself down on him. She took all of him, thick and long, until she felt so full of him that she was surprised her body didn’t break open.
She braced her hands on Knox’s hard chest and she leaned over him as she began to lift herself up and settle down on him again. Her hair fell all around them like a kind of curtain, but she could still see him.
And all that intensity in his golden gaze.
His hands gripped her hips and his gaze stayed on hers. And he let her ride him at her own lazy, then frantic pace, until they both shouted out their explosive finish within seconds of each other.
It was so good, Ramona thought, that it was no wonder it hurt.
When they finally got out of bed, it felt painful to tear herself away from him but she managed it. She wrapped herself up in his flannel and pulled on her heavy socks. Then she went into her kitchen and blinked in the morning light, then made them a big, hearty breakfast of eggs and toast and sausages—all bought from a local farmer she knew by name.
She still got a kick out of that.
They sat in the kitchen the same way they had last night, but Ramona felt that everything was different. They were different. That everything had changed.
And she did not remind herself that she had felt this way before. More than once.
That was the old Ramona. The new Ramona was going to live in the freaking present, even if it killed her.
When they finished eating, Knox did the dishes. They showered and got dressed again—though they were both a little too tempted to delay things a little longer.
Once again, it hurt to deny herself.
It really didn’t get better with time.
Knox held her hand as they walked away from the temptation of her bed and went down the stairs, and she pretended it didn’t make her feel butterflies in her stomach. When they got to his truck, he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it.
Ramona couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
She leaned in and kissed him back, then they climbed into his truck, and headed out toward Billings.
Where there would be answers, Ramona hoped. Of one sort or another.
And she would be there with him no matter what.
Chapter Nine
It was an easy couple of hours to Billings. The hardest part was getting down Copper Mountain without sliding off of it, but that was always true. The road the locals liked to call Desolation Drive was treacherous even in summer. Once they made it down the mountain in one piece, the drive from Marietta to Livingston and on to the interstate was a breeze.
Montana was used to its winter storms. And though the drive east was snowy, the road was clear. They reached Billings by midmorning.
Knox had always liked Billings. As they drove into the biggest city in the state, he saw flashy signs for the sporting goods chain that was owned by Billy Grey, the brother of Jason Grey who owned and still ran the bar at Grey’s Saloon in the center of Marietta. It was kind of like when he’d been looking for property to buy up by Flathead Lake and he’d kept running into the influence of Jonah Flint, who had a big spread up that way. Jonah was the twin brother of Jasper Flint, who’d opened Knox’s favorite microbrewery, Flintworks, in the old Marietta train depot, while he was busy romancing the woman who was now his wife. And the mayor.
There were Marietta connections everywhere, and even though Knox and his family were Cowboy Point people going back to the community’s founding as a mining camp, he claimed Marietta as his own too. Technically, Cowboy Point was a part of Marietta.
Sometimes Knox felt like Montana was a small town all its own, despite its size. Sometimes that felt claustrophobic. Other times it felt the way it did today, like little markers wherever he looked that he was always home.
He found himself rubbing at his chest, because it was funny how much like home any and every part of Montana felt when Ramona was sitting beside him in his truck, playing him the music she liked and even singing along.
Alarm bells should have been ringing in him at that, but it was all strangely quiet.
Almost… peaceful, he might have said, when that had never been their thing. They were either making up or breaking up, and in between they’d been in bed. He had nothing to compare this to—but he liked it.
