he added, kissing Caroline’s cheek. Slipping a small, thin arm around his neck, she hugged him and Zach smiled at her.
He took Emma’s arm to go to his car and in minutes they were on the road driving back to his ranch.
“I’m going home, kicking back and having a beer. Caroline looks so little and frail. That scared me. I still feel as if my insides are shivering.” He glanced at her. “How did you keep so calm?”
“You were calm.”
“I just had it all bottled up, but it’s coming out now.”
Emma was amazed, because Zach seemed so tough, and today, cool when he had taken charge to call his men and then get to Will’s ranch quickly. He had traveled and worked in dangerous jobs all over the world where he’d had to keep his wits, yet now he was coming apart. She saw his hands had a tremor. “I don’t know how you were calm,” he repeated.
“Positive thinking and prayers, Zach. Expecting a happy outcome.”
“You’re the eternal optimist,” he stated, shaking his head. “I’ve seen too much, Emma. Positive thinking and prayers can’t guarantee happy endings.”
“Neither can giving up hope and imagining all sorts of scary scenarios. Then if something happens, because of your imagination, you’ve suffered more than once. We’re very different people.”
“Amen to that one,” he said. “There’s the one thing we can agree about,” he added and she smiled.
As soon as they were inside the house, Zach built a fire, got the wine she requested and a beer for himself. While he sipped, he stretched out on the floor. Firelight flickered over him and her breath caught. He looked virile, appealing. Broad shoulders, long legs, thick curls. She wanted to join him, but that was a path to deeper complications.
“How do people have kids and not have nervous breakdowns when they do something like Caroline just did?” he asked.
“You cope with it, just the way you and Will and Ava did. You do whatever you can,” Emma said.
“I’ll never understand how you could stay cheerful and optimistic that we would find her. I know the reason you gave me, but I still don’t get it”
“We did find her,” she reminded him, sitting near him to sip her drink. He removed it from her hands and drew her down into his arms to kiss her. “I just try to focus on the positive, Zach. And Caroline hadn’t been gone long when everyone started looking for her.”
“I keep thinking she had reached the highway and if the Tanners hadn’t come along—”
“But they did come along, so don’t think about the other possibilities,” Emma said. He held her in his embrace as they were stretched on the floor together. She had been frightened for Caroline, but certain they would find her. Now to know Caroline was safe and with Will, Emma felt as if they had been given the biggest Christmas gift early.
Desire, relief, joy all buoyed her and she wrapped her arms around Zach to kiss him hungrily. Instantly, his arm tightened around her waist and he pulled her closer. “I need you tonight, Emma,” he said in a rasp. “This is an affirmation of life and all’s right with our world,” he said, his blue eyes darkening as he drew her closer.
Relief transformed into lust, and loving Zach was an affirmation of life.
Heat from the fire warmed her, but not as much as Zach’s kisses that sent her temperature climbing.
Sex with him became paramount. To be alive, to be able to make love with Zach, to have loved ones safe—her emotions ran high and she threw herself into kissing him, tangling her fingers in his thick hair.
She thought Zach was caught in the same emotional whirlwind, relieved, celebrating life and that all was okay now because his kisses became more passionate as he concentrated totally on pleasuring her.
In seconds they loved with a desperate hunger. With ragged breathing, she kissed him while her fingers traced muscles and planes of his body. Wild abandon consumed her and when they were joined, they rocked together until she cried out his name with her thundering release.
“Zach, ah, love,” she gasped, the word slipping out and she hoped he hadn’t heard her. Rapture enveloped her, a moment in time when they were in unison and meant something to each other. A moment she wanted to hold, yet would be as fleeting as the snowflake she had caught and watched disappear in her warm palm.
Afterwards, as they drifted back to reality, he held her close in his arms while he showered her face and shoulders with light kisses that made her feel adored.
She turned on her side to look at Zach, drawing her fingers along his jaw to feel the rough, dark stubble. “This isn’t what I expected tonight. Yet it’s a rejoicing of sorts.”
“A definite celebration of life for me.” He sighed and traced his fingers over her bare shoulder. “I hope next week is another occasion for cheer. I have a doctor’s appointment and I have high hopes I can get back into a normal shoe.”
“When you do we’ll be through here. Zach, I still urge you to keep those letters. You don’t know if Caroline will want them one day. If you destroy them, you can’t get them back.”
“I know you’ve scanned most of them into the computer, so now we have electronic copies.”
“The original letters are far more important.”
He smiled. “Emma, you’re a hopeless romantic. You’re talking about letters written over a hundred years ago.”
“I feel as if I know that part of your family. They were brave, intelligent and your great-great-grandfather had a sense of humor. I’ve found touching letters by your great-great-grandmother, too. I think the letters are priceless. And the fact that the letters date from over a hundred years ago has value, Zach. The electronic copies hold no value except they are copies if the originals are destroyed.”
“I think you’re placing too high a value on old letters. Now the things we’ve found mixed in with the letters, the gold watch, the Colt revolver, the Henry rifle—those are valuable. I can’t believe someone put a Colt or a rifle in a box of letters.”
“They put together what was important to them.”
“No way are those letters as valuable as that Colt.”
“Maybe not in dollars, but I think the letters are more valuable. The letters are a window into your ancestors’ thoughts and dreams and lives.”
He rose on an elbow to look at her. “We are polar opposites in every way. How can we possibly have this attraction that turns my insides out?”
“It does other things to you,” she said, caressing him.
“You know what you’re doing to me now,” he said in a deep voice.
“Zach,” she whispered, knowing the one part of their lives where they were
