“I know.”
Jake leaned in and met her mouth in a deep, delicious kiss, groaning then with the thought of what she wanted to do, something that in all their years together he’d never asked of her. “Damn,” he said amid more kisses, “I wish I didn’t have these stitches in my side.” He felt her smiling in the midst of another kiss.
“Now you have something to think about,” she teased. “Something that will give you reason to heal faster.”
There it was—that attempt at the old teasing remarks they always shared when making love. “Well now, here I am in bed with the woman who makes me crazy, and I can’t do anything about it. This is more painful than these damn stitches.”
Randy moved her arms around his neck, and they shared an even deeper kiss. “There are times when I like making you suffer, Jake Harkner. There are a few things you’ve done during our marriage that you deserve to suffer for.”
“I won’t argue that one.” More kisses. Jake gently moved a hand over her breasts through her soft flannel gown. “Tell me again you’re sure, Randy, because when I’m well—”
“I’m sure.”
He ran a thumb over a taut nipple. “And here I thought I might be losing you. I was imagining you turning to another man, someone who wouldn’t put you through the hell my past keeps dredging up to come between us—someone like Peter Brown.”
Randy gasped and pulled away. “Jake Harkner! How could you think such a thing?”
Jake grinned. There was the spark. “Hell, the man has loved you for years. If he got the chance, he’d sweep you right away from me.”
“He wouldn’t get the chance. You’d shoot him first.”
“You bet I would.” Jake grimaced as he managed to lay back down. “Randy, you have to always tell me the truth, understand?”
Randy snuggled closer. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do, but you wouldn’t listen.”
Jake sobered. “Let’s get something straight, and I want to hear it from your own lips. What those men did didn’t change one thing for how I feel about the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth. They never touched you. Understand? You know I’m right, so say it.”
She curled tighter against him. “They never touched me.”
“Say it again.”
“They never touched me.” Jake felt her shiver. “They never touched me.” She burst into tears.
Jake held her close, refusing to let on he was in any pain. She needed this. “Let it out, Randy. You’ve been pretending everything is fine, but you still need me in your sights night and day. You’re stronger than that.”
She broke into such heavy sobs that Jake’s eyes teared. “Who is holding you, baby?”
She could barely get the words out. “Jake Harkner.”
“And who do you belong to?”
“Jake Harkner.”
“You bet.” This was the closest she’d come to her old self in months. He loved her more for being too bashful to tell him what she wanted. Thirty-one years together and she sometimes acted like they’d just met. He would have to be so damn careful. How was he going to do what she wanted without bringing back bad memories?
He ran his thumb back and forth over her lips, then leaned over and found her mouth again, invading it with a long, slow kiss that was so deep it was like making love to her with his mouth. He ached to be inside her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m just…” She put a hand to her face. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Randy, who the hell have you been living with all these years?”
She reached under her pillow for a handkerchief and used it to wipe at her eyes. “A man who’s done it all and might laugh at me asking something like that.”
“You know me better.”
“You were so…adamant…about not doing that. It’s okay, Jake. I’m your wife. It’s not disrespect. I just… I don’t know how else to make what they did go away. And I feel better…just telling you.” She wiped at her eyes again. “I know you well enough to know how hard this has been for you. You’ve devoted practically every minute of every day to me since last winter, and I love you for it. I promise to eat better and give you some freedom.”
“I don’t need freedom—not from you. We’ll take things a day at a time, all right? I’ll leave you on your own more often, and the other—it will just happen when it happens. We won’t plan it, and we won’t talk about it. How’s that? We’ll just know when it’s right.”