Marie Ferrarella - The Parks Empire - Secrets, Lies and Loves - Romancing the Enemy

Nodding, she urged the mare to a faster gait as Stacy waved impatiently for the two laggards to hurry. A few minutes later, they tied their mounts to a low branch on a scraggly cedar and walked to the crest of the hill.

From there the full vista of the sea spread before them like a painting. Seagulls wheeled overhead. Far away loomed the darker silhouettes of islands, barely visible on the horizon. A young couple walked down a long flight of steps toward the lighthouse on a promontory.

A park ranger stood beside a low building to her right. He smiled and spoke to them. A sign declared the area to be the Point Reyes National Seashore.

“Let’s go down,” Cade suggested. “Stace, hold the railing and don’t run.”

Sara held on, too. The stairs were steep and narrow. She noticed resting places at intervals along the side. “It’s a long way down,” she said over her shoulder to Cade.

“Three hundred steps. Just wait until we start back up.” His smile felt as warm as the sun that caressed her shoulders as they descended.

They, along with the couple, explored the well-kept lighthouse from top to bottom. Stacy decided she wanted to live there when she grew up and turn the light on and off for the ships at sea.

By the time they returned to the crest—all three hundred steps—Sara was ready for a rest. They admired the colorful flowers of the lupine plants in the area and the orange mossy lichens on the rocks before mounting and riding back to the cottage along the cliff overlooking the beach.

They spotted the ranger setting up road signs in a parking area a mile from the lighthouse area.

“When the parking lot is full up here,” Cade informed Sara, “he’ll stop traffic down there until someone leaves, then the next in line can come up.”

“I had no idea it would be that busy,” she told him. “It seemed so isolated when we arrived.”

“City dwellers like to get out on weekends. I don’t blame them. If I didn’t have the ranch to go to, I think I’d go stir crazy or something.”

His eyes went dark for a second, then he smiled at her, which generated a ripple of electricity throughout her body.

For the rest of the day, they ate and played games and napped. In late afternoon, they helped the farmer and his two sons and two hired hands with the milking.

Stacy proved quite adept at washing the cows’ teats in an iodine solution before the animals went into the milking parlor. Sara was conscious of four hooves near her head as she bent under the rounded bellies and followed the girl’s instructions. The cows were on a platform three feet higher than where she stood, which conveniently brought the necessary parts close to hand.

Behind her, Cade chuckled each time she gave him a mock fearful glance as she did the chore.

“Good job,” Stacy told her, obviously thinking her teacher needed some encouragement.

Cade suppressed a chortle as one sassy cow swung her tail and slapped Sara upside the head, startling her and making her slosh the cup of antiseptic solution on the concrete.

“You’ll pay for that,” she assured him as she refilled the cup and dipped each fat teat in the liquid before wiping it down with a soapy cloth.

“This,” he assured her, “will give you a deeper appreciation for farmers next time you’re at the grocery.”

When the cow whacked her again, Sara handed the washcloth to him. “You need to increase your own appreciation.”

He stepped up and circled her with his arms, then expertly performed the task. “This is the queen cow,” he said, looking over her shoulder, his mouth close to her ear. “She has two or three ladies-in-waiting who come in first to make sure it’s okay. They always enter in the same order.”

“What happens if another cow wants to be queen?”

“The ladies-in-waiting put her in her place.”

Sara felt his chest move against her back as he chuckled, then he stole a quick kiss just under her ear before returning the cloth and moving back.

Her own breath caught, then she cleared her throat, gave him a warning glance, then waited as the gate to the milking room opened and the queen regally ambled through, her tail swinging from side to side. Another cow stepped forward, and Sara started the dipping and washing again.

“Thanks for the help,” the farmer said when, after an hour, the three left the barn and returned to the cottage.

After grilling chicken strips and vegetable kabobs, they ate outside, the two dogs politely lying at their feet but keeping an eye out in case a morsel should happen to drop to the flagstone patio. Sara saw Stacy slip a couple of bites to each. So did Cade, but he pretended he didn’t.

Sara smiled contentedly while her heart flitted around like a drunken butterfly as she waited for night to fall.

After Stacy’s bath, Sara read her a story. The girl’s bedroom was similar to the guest room in furnishings. A large teddy bear shared the bed with her. There was another bathroom upstairs and, of course, Cade’s bedroom.

Sara had glimpsed a queen-size bed with an old-fashioned quilt over it in there. Tables with matching lamps were on either side of the bed. A cedar chest was next to the wall under a window. Scenes of a happy family preparing for the night after a busy day kept popping into her head.

“Ready for a back rub?” Cade asked Stacy, coming into the child’s room when the story ended.

Sara moved to the end of the bed while he rubbed his daughter’s back, then turned out the lamp and kissed her forehead. “Sleep tight.”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” Stacy replied. She yawned and pulled the cover to her neck. “Good night, Sara, I mean, Miss Carlton.” She giggled, then closed her eyes.

Sara and Cade left the room, leaving the door ajar. He turned out the hall light when they reached the stairs.

At the bottom of the steps, he took her into his arms. “Alone at last.”

His husky murmur was sexy and intimate. Sara wrapped her arms around his neck and met the kiss halfway. She, too, had been impatient for this moment.

His hands roamed her back, her sides, then moved between them to caress her breasts. She tilted her head back so he could reach all the sensitive places along her throat with his magic lips. When he slipped his hands beneath her and lifted, she swung her legs up and around his waist, clinging as he carried her to the privacy of the guest room and locked the door behind them before flicking on the lamp.

He sat in the cane-backed chair with her straddling his lap. With hands on her hips, he urged her to move against him. He was as ready for her as she was for him, she found.

When he smiled, she did, too, and felt a wrench deep inside, as if part of her already knew that the closeness of the day and the passion of the night were fleeting things, the elusive dreams of what might have been.

“You’re thinking again,” he scolded, touching the slight frown line between her eyebrows.

“I’ve never found it easy to live in the moment,” she admitted. Or to deal with a guilty conscience, she added silently, wondering if he’d noticed her prying.

“Let’s see what we can do about that,” he suggested.

They kissed again and made love, then slept together until shortly before dawn. He woke her with his gentle touch and made love to her again. Later, she heard him in the shower, but she didn’t get up until he called her and Stacy to join him for breakfast.

Then it was time to go back to the city.

“All good things come to an end,” she murmured as they drove over the cow-guard and away from the ranch.

“I hope not,” he said, smiling at her before facing the winding road back to the highway.

“We can come back next weekend,” Stacy assured her.