Big Bad Professor(49)
Amy smiled.
“Well that was kind of you, Thomas,” she praised him, adding as she took another hearty bite of her steaming hot pancakes, “Are your folks still living?”
Thomas shook his head.
“My pa has been gone for six years, my ma for three. I miss them so much,” he revealed, adding as a telltale veil of tears brimmed forth from his aquiline eyes, “I’m sorry, Ma’am. I know a cowboy ain’t supposed to cry.”
Amy said nothing, just wrapped her arms around his muscled shoulders and pulled him closer to her; telltale tears escaping her own eyes as the two tilted their foreheads together and their hands clenched between them.
“Do not even dream of apologizing to me,” Amy insisted, adding as she ran a comforting hand through the silken lengths of his thick gold hair, “I reckon that, at this point, we both need a good ol’ cry.”
The couple said nothing for several moments, just leaned into one another as their hands remained clenched and their tears fell free between them.
A wave of warmth coursed free through Amy’s being as she tilted her chin upward; smiling soft and tender as her doting host wiped the tears from the surface of her fair-skinned cheeks.
This smile broadened moments later, as a warm-eyed Thomas tilted her delicate chin in his hand and covered her mouth with his.
Touching her lips with a whisper soft kiss, Thomas massaged her mouth with his in a tender advance that nonetheless resounded with a certain, unmistakable passion.
Kissing him in kind return, Amy plied his lips with tender affection as the two drew closer, her senses lulled and her worries forgotten as they lost themselves in a peaceful—if passionate—reverie.
The feeling fled them all too soon.
“God Almighty,” the rancher swore softly, breaking their kiss as he jumped from Amy’s bed and made fast tracks toward the door. “What am I doing, taking dreadful advantage of an expectant woman like this?”
Amy shook her head.
“No Thomas,” she countered, adding as she made a broad gesture between them, “I wanted you to kiss me.”
Yet he was gone.
“Criminy,” Amy exhaled, adding as she lay back in her bed with a frustrated sigh, “Why can’t anything in my life go smooth? Just one thing? Lordy, I guess it’s simply too much to ask.”
*****
He hated himself.
For the first time in a life guided by the concepts of civility and nobility, and always overseen by the Biblical verses his mother had taught him as a child, Thomas Wyatt felt shame and self-loathing; alien emotions that plagued his heart and addled his troubled soul.
Standing in the midst of a fragrant rose patch that needed his attention, Thomas nonetheless picked at the soil beneath him with a weary, lethargic hoe; his face downturned below the brim of his hat as his mouth turned downward in a woebegone frown.
“What foul demon possessed me just now? Why did I have to go and take advantage of a proper, innocent lady?” he paused here, adding with a slight shrug, “OK well perhaps she’s not so innocent, considering the fact that she’s in the family way—but she is without a doubt a proper widow still in love with her husband, God rest his soul. I betrayed the both of them when I kissed Miss Amy; the woman who I promised to treat with the upmost propriety and respect. And I also betrayed her unborn child, kissing its mother weeks before its birth.”
Throwing aside the hoe with a frustrated growl, Thomas sighed as his shoulders sank with the weight of his culpable guilt.
“Devil take me!” he bellowed, balling his fists beside him as he added, “I deserve the punishment. Or if God does see fit to grant me another chance, then please send me some sort of a sign—some message that I am not as foul and sinful as I perceive myself to be on this day.”
“Shut yer pitiful mouth and get to work, oh Sultan of Self Pity. Now!”
His head shooting upward, Thomas pursed his lips in a show of keen curiosity as his desperate summons was met by the sound of a distinctly feminine voice.
“Well now Ma always did theorize that God was a woman,” he mumbled, casting a wide-eyed curious glance in the direction of the sky. “Guess she was right.”
“Indeed, she was, and don’t you forget it, Cowboy.”
Thomas jumped, this time recognizing the delicate Southern lilt of his guest at the ranch.
He smiled in spite of himself at the sight of a scowling Amy, now dressed in a basic denim work dress with her arms folded firmly before her.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she admonished him, adding as she walked forward with purposeful steps and retrieved the fallen hoe, “We have work to do.”
Soon the pair stood side by side at the center of the rose patch, tending Thomas’ prized crop as he continued to steal cautious looks in Amy’s direction.