“Much.” Hope said, and cuddled up. She wrapped her hands around my thumbs and watched my face. “Your hands are warm. There’s an old saying, ‘cold hands, warm heart.’ Is the reverse true?”
“Warm hands, cold heart?” I was surprised. “Why would you ask that?”
“I didn’t mean to say that, but I guess I did. It isn’t because you seem cold-hearted. I mean … The news and all sometimes make lobbyists out to be the root of all evil. I’m getting a little cognitive dissonance.”
Expected Hope would bring that up sometime, so I wrapped her in that blanket a little closer. “Look, my aim is to save an old tradition from a changing world, and I’m at peace with what I do. Sometimes—with compromises and all—I find myself with strange bedfellows. That’s politics.
“How about you? You’re a professional. Are you always happy with what you do?”
The question made Hope look away. “Not always. Sometimes my clients have agendas I didn’t expect, but I do the job anyway.” She looked into my eyes, and we were nearly nose-to-nose until she drew back. “I have to learn to deal with that.”
I caught her hand, kissed her fingers, and opened the button at her wrist. “I can help you deal with it. Help you keep it all together—body, mind, and spirit. Maybe your clothes are too tight. They’re blocking the flow of your spiritual energy.”
Hope laughed at me, but she didn’t stop me. I opened her cuffs and stroked her wrists, and the welcoming scent of anticipation mingled with her perfume. She lifted her chin to let me unbutton her collar, and I stroked the sensitive skin on her throat and behind her ear. I knew I shouldn’t have asked, but I wanted to know. “Does Steve do this?”
Hope tensed and studied my face for a moment. “Not your business, Cowboy.”
Damn my curiosity. Hope took a moment to relax again, and then I worked slowly, one button at a time down past her breasts until I could slip my hand under the fabric to touch her soft skin.
I brushed Hope’s lips with mine, and she pressed her body against me. She was as eager for that kiss as I was. Her lips were honey-sweet, and her tongue was soft and yielding when it met mine.
It seemed like I could still feel Hope’s breath brushing my cheek even after we broke that kiss. She lifted her legs over my lap and started unbuttoning my shirt under that warm blanket, and she was biting her lip when she looked up at me. “Do cowboys still ride ponies? I’ve never been on a horse.”
Her fingers traveled over my chest, and she made it hard for me to think. “Not for work.” I said. “Horses are expensive to buy, hard to train, and expensive to keep. We use trucks and ATV’s mostly. They’re easier.” I reached up under her long, black dress, touched the back of her knee, and slipped my hand up inside her thigh. “We still have horses at home, just not for work.”
I found Hope’s soft cotton knickers before I went on. “We have a big, gentle gelding mostly for my sister’s kids. I could teach you to ride—he’d be great for you.”
Hope smiled for a moment as I slipped my hand to her hip and tugged at the bow on the drawstring, but then her smile vanished. “That sounds like a ‘meet the family’ date,” she said. “I’m not going there, Adam.”
Didn’t mean it that way—at least, I didn’t think I did—but that’s how it came out. I dropped the subject, and after a little squirming, I dropped Hope’s knickers behind me.
Hope stroked her fingers down over the bulge in my jeans and ground the heel of her hand along the length of my hardening shaft. She made me moan in her ear, and it was time for us to go. I threw the blanket off, she snatched her bag from the floor, and I stood with her cradled in my arms. Hope laughed all the way to bed.
I got to know the bits of Hope’s body that I’d overlooked the first time, and it seemed too soon when I had to blink back the bright morning light. I climbed over Hope to get out of bed and parted the curtains to find out why it was so bright. When I turned away from the window again, I found her sitting on the edge of the mattress. She was checking her messages.
“Snowed while we were busy, but the sun’s clearing the streets pretty fast.”
“Good,” Hope said. I sat down beside her before she looked up. “I need you to take me home pretty soon.”
“What’s the hurry? I thought we could spend some time together.”
Hope didn’t have a hint of a smile when she answered. “One of the engineers I work with is writing a proposal. The deadline is just after the first of the year, and they want my part today. I have work to do.”
I know my face fell. “I’m going to Tesuque this afternoon to visit a friend—more work for me than play, but he has orchards and horse pastures along the creek. The orchards are bare right now, but I still thought you’d love it there.”
“Maybe I would.” Hope folded her hands around her phone and settled them into her lap. Her eyes searched my expression for a moment before a little smile flitted over her lips. She nudged me with her shoulder. “Look, Cowboy. I’ve enjoyed almost every minute we’ve spent together, but if you need to take a woman along to make your contacts more comfortable, then maybe you need a wife—not me.”
* * *
Dale McMillan was sort of a fraud, but I needed his help. I carried my hat and a wrapped gift through the corridors. I dodged busy nurses and dieticians, and patients who slowly walked off their surgeries. “Adam!” he said, when I finally found his room. Dale extended his hand from his bed and asked, “What brings you to these sunny halls?”
He knew why I was there. “The session starts in two days. I’m here to warn you—if you can’t make it there by yourself, then I’ll throw you over my shoulder and haul you to the Senate chamber myself.” It made him laugh, and that was what I wanted.
The Senator from Portales was a professor at the little university there. He was elected and re-elected on a “support our farms and ranches” platform, but the State’s small colleges were his secret love child.
My hat hung on the back of a chair while I sat, and we talked about agendas until Dale’s phone rang. I dropped my gift—an old print of Zane Grey’s “Riders of the Purple Sage”—where he could reach it, and I left him talking with the minority whip.
I pulled my jacket shut and my hat down to brace for the bright, cold day outside the turquoise doors, and I looked up when a man in a dark suit walked around the corner with a woman on his arm.
Looked once then had to look again. It was Hope. She had makeup on, and her long braid fell down the back of a business suit. I stared until she caught sight of me, and her pale complexion blushed pink. Steve nodded without smiling, but Hope pulled herself against his shoulder and looked away, concentrating on—well, a spider on the wall, I guess.
It was just two days before the session started, or at least that’s what I reminded myself. I shoved Hope to the back of my mind, and tried to keep her there.
It didn’t work. I was at my office trying to frame some kind of schedule for the next two weeks when my urge to call Hope won the battle. I sat back with my boots on my desk, and she answered her phone with “Look, Cowboy, I don’t owe you an explanation.”