Christmas Kisses with My Cowboy. Kate Pearce

us. He said that so few people could do his job, that many men would have died if he hadn’t been there to do it. So I guess it evens out, in a way. But yes, it’s still fresh. A few months’ distance helps. It doesn’t heal.”

      “It takes years for that.” He lifted his head and looked where Teddie was opening her bag to another handful of treats from a merchant. “You know, when you have an old dog that you love, and it dies, they all say the best thing for the grief is to go right out and get a puppy.”

      Her heart skipped. “They do, don’t they?”

      He turned to her. “We’re not speaking of dogs.”

      She just nodded. She was spellbound, looking up into those dark, dark eyes.

      He moved a step closer, not intimately close, but enough that she could feel his breath on her forehead. “We don’t have to get totally involved, just to have a hamburger together or take Teddie to a movie. Right?”

      Her heart was going wild. It surprised and almost shamed her, because she hadn’t had such a violent physical reaction even to her late husband. “N-no,” she stammered. “I mean, yes. I mean . . .” She just stopped, staring up into his eyes.

      His jaw tautened and he averted his gaze. “Don’t do that,” he bit off. “It’s been a long time. A long time,” he emphasized. “I’m more vulnerable than I look.”

      She swallowed, hard. “Sorry,” she said in a gruff whisper.

      He shifted on his feet, feeling the hunger all the way to his toes. “I would love to drag you behind the nearest building and kiss you until you couldn’t stand up by yourself.”

      Her lips parted on a shocked breath. She turned toward Teddie, not looking at him. “I would love it . . . if you did,” she blurted out.

      “Oh, God,” he groaned.

      “‘Four score and seven years ago’,” she began reciting Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

      She turned around again and he looked down at her in shock.

      “It’s what I did at school when I got all embarrassed and couldn’t think of what to say to somebody,” she explained, and flushed, and then laughed self-consciously.

      He burst out laughing. “I started calculating the absolute value of Pi,” he replied, and now his dark eyes were twinkling.

      “Lincoln’s address is much shorter,” she pointed out.

      He grinned. “So it is.” He caught her hand in his and linked their fingers together. “People will talk,” he added softly.

      Her fingers tangled in his. “Let them,” she said huskily.

      He pulled her along with him and they went to find Teddie.

      * * *

      Teddie, of course, noticed the new attitude between both the adults in her life, and she smiled mischievously when they got back to the ranch house.

      “Thanks for driving us, Parker,” Teddie said on the front porch, and impulsively hugged him and then ran to unlock the front door. “Happy Halloween!” she called back as she went inside. “I’m going to eat candy and watch TV!”

      “Not too much!” Katy called after her.

      “Okay!”

      Parker chuckled. “She doesn’t miss a trick, does she? I guess we might as well be wearing signs.”

      “She’s intuitive,” she agreed.

      He reached out lazily and pulled her to him. “How about a movie Saturday night?” he asked. “We can take Teddie to see that new cartoon one that came out.”

      “I’d love to go to a movie with you.”

      He bent his head toward her. “We can’t make out in a theater,” he whispered. “Probably a good thing.”

      “Probably a very . . . good . . . thing,” she agreed as his mouth brushed slowly over hers.

      “Come up here.” He lifted her off the ground against him and his mouth grew gently invasive. “You taste like honey,” he whispered, and smiled against her lips as he drew her closer.

      She smiled, too. She loved the way he kissed her. He wasn’t impatient or demanding. He was gentle and slow and seductive.

      “I like this,” he whispered.

      “Me, too,” she whispered back.

      He drew in a quick breath and slowly lowered her back to her feet. “One step at a time,” he said huskily, holding her just a little away from him. “We could get in over our heads too quickly.”

      She nodded. She was staring at his mouth. It hadn’t been enough. Not nearly enough.

      He read that hunger in her. “Too much too soon is dangerous,” he said firmly.

      She nodded again. She was still staring at his mouth.

      “Oh, what the hell . . . !”

      He swept her close, bent, and made a meal of her soft lips, pressing them back away from her teeth so that his tongue could flick inside her mouth and make the kiss even more intimate, more seductive.

      She moaned helplessly, and he ground his mouth into hers, his arms swallowing her up whole, in a silence that exploded with sensation too long unfelt, hungers too long unfed, passion that flared between them like a wildfire.

      Finally, when her lips were almost bruised, he eased her away from him. His heartbeat was shaking the jacket he wore with his T-shirt. He sounded as if he’d run a ten-mile race, his breathing was so labored.

      She just smiled, all at sea, deliciously stimulated, feeling as if she’d finally taken the edge off a little of the hunger he kindled in her.

      “Well, that was dumb,” he muttered. “Now we’ll have hot dreams of each other every night and I’ll wake up screaming.”

      She laughed. “I’d love to see that,” she teased.

      He laughed, too. “If I do, I’ll phone you.”

      “You could text me,” she said. “Even when I’m at work. I wouldn’t mind.”

      He smiled softly. “You can text me, too, even at two in the morning. I don’t sleep much.”

      “I could?”

      He nodded. He touched her cheek gently. “We have differences,” he said. “My culture is not the same as yours. Even though my father is white, I was raised a Crow, in a Crow community.”

      “I’ll study.”

      He smiled. “That’s the idea.”

      “But whatever the differences, I won’t mind,” she said. Her face was radiant. “I’ll adjust.”

      He nodded. “I know you will. Meanwhile, we’ll try to keep it low-key. Okay?”

      She flushed. She’d started this. “I should probably feel guilty, but I don’t,” she added pertly.

      “Neither do I. Some things are inevitable.”

      “Yes.”

      He drew in a long breath. “Well, I’ll go home and try to sleep. If I can’t sleep, I’ll text you, and you can call and sing me a lullaby,” he said outrageously.

      “I actually know one,” she said. “I used to sing it to Teddie when she was little. It always worked.”

      He brushed her mouth with his. “It will take a lot more than a lullaby to get me to sleep, I’m afraid,” he said.

      “Bad memories?”

      “Very bad,” he said. “And not all from combat.”

      She wondered if his