After the Frost (24 page)

Across the table Charlie lifted a curious eyebrow. "Things
have
changed," he said, and there was a needling sharpness in his voice that made Rand uncomfortable. "I remember days when Mama didn't send anyone till two or three—if then."

"We have a busy day tomorrow," Rand said stiffly.

Charlie gave him a skeptical smile. "I see."

"Surely you can stay for a minute or two," John said, sliding over on the bench and patting it with his hand. "Sit a spell, play a hand or two. Belle's winnin' all our money."

"So I heard."

Abe grinned. "So you'll join us? Have a beer? It's been a while since we've seen your face 'round these parts, Rand."

Rand shook his head reluctantly. "I'd like to, boys, but I can't. Maybe some other time." He put his hand on the back of Belle's chair, gave it a little shake. "Come on, Belle. Let's go before it gets too late."

This time she twisted to look at him, her cards held tightly between white fingers, her chin raised. Her eyes were dark and unfathomable in the dim light, but he felt her anger.

"I'm not goin' anywhere," she said tightly.

He smiled—at her, at the rest of the table. "Come on, Belle," he said as calmly as he could, adding a bit of pleading to his voice just for show.

She made a sound of disgust and turned around again. "Later. I'm in the middle of a game."

The vision was fading before his eyes, the whole reason he was here suddenly falling out of reach. Desperation made him unscrupulous, lent an edge to his voice. "Sarah's waiting to say good night."

It was a terrible lie, but it worked, just as he knew it would. Belle stilled. "Sarah's waitin'?" There was a hint of hope in her voice, a carefully optimistic note that made Rand feel mean.

But not mean enough to stop. "Yes," he said.

"Well, then." She put her cards on the table and pushed back her chair. "Guess I've got to go, then, boys."

Charlie nodded. "Tomorrow night? We need a chance to win back all our money."

"If I can." She smiled at him and then at the others, and then she turned to Rand, and the smile died. "All right," she said, and there was no forgiveness in her voice, no compromise at all. "Let's go."

Chapter 17

T
he muffled sounds of the tavern filled the silence between them as they stepped outside, a low hum of noise that was somehow reassuring in the quiet darkness. Rand watched as she moved ahead of him to the edge of the porch. She hugged herself as if she were cold. Her breath came in frosty clouds of air.

She stopped at the step. "Where's the wagon?"

He licked his lips, feeling oddly nervous. "I didn't bring the wagon. Just Duke."

"Just Duke?" She turned, frowning, and then abruptly she put it together. He knew the exact moment she realized he'd lied to her. Her expression froze, and her eyes immediately shuttered. "You didn't come to take me home."

"No."

"Sarah's not waitin'."

"No."

She swallowed. She looked at him for a moment, and he saw her struggle to keep her expression even, saw the way she pressed her lips together as if the motion would keep her from saying something she didn't want to say. She hugged herself tighter and turned to look at the canal winding below the hill, a black satin ribbon in the moonlight. "Then why are you here?" she asked, her voice hard and too loud. "If you came to yell at me again, you can just turn around and head back home. I'm not listenin' to it anymore."

He took a deep breath. "That's not why I'm here."

She stiffened. "No? Then why?"

"I came to tell you I'm sorry." The words were out before he had time to think about them, and Rand cursed himself, furious at their starkness. He'd wanted to wrap them up in pretty sentiment, in properly chastened phrases. But now they stood between him and Belle, and he knew he had no choice but to continue. "I didn't mean what I told Sarah—about not being alone with you. I was—wrong. I should have trusted you. I should have believed you. I'm sorry now I didn't."

She snorted in disbelief. "And you think that makes it better, Rand? You think just sayin' you're sorry makes everythin' all right?"

Rand frowned. A twinge of dread crept through him. He wished like hell she would turn around and look at him. "I don't know. Doesn't it?"

"No." As if she'd heard his unspoken wish, she turned slowly to face him. "I don't want your apologies. They don't mean anythin' to me." She took a step backward, tilted her face to look at him, and the moonlight fell across her cheekbone and her jaw, glinted on her hair, and sent her eyes into shadow. But still he saw her expression. It was tight and angry. "Don't tell me your lies, Rand, I don't want to hear them tonight. I know you don't believe a word I say. I know you wish to hell I was a thousand miles from here. Don't lie to me and tell me it's not true. Just don't lie."

Then before he knew it, she was stepping from the porch and hurrying down the rise, stumbling away from him. He stared after her, stunned. This was not the Belle he knew, not the vision he'd expected. What happened to the soft smile, the warm brown eyes? Where the hell

was her quick forgiveness? She was walking away, just walking away. ... His panic rose, but for what he didn't know; why, he couldn't tell. All he knew was that he couldn't let her go. Not yet.

He raced after her, catching up to her halfway down the hill.

"Belle." He breathed. "Belle, wait."

She kept walking.

"Belle." He stepped in front of her, forcing her either to stop or to walk over him.

She stopped. Looked up at him without even a hint of emotion on her face. He'd never seen her this way. Never so remote, so—so untouchable. As if she might break if he touched her. He hated it. He hated the look of it, the shutters in her expressive brown eyes and the stiff way she held her soft mouth. Hated the way it made him feel. Lost, as if there was something he expected to find in her face, something he wanted—needed—to see.

But it wasn't there. It wasn't there at all.

"You hate me, don't you?" he asked quietly. The words surprised him. He had no idea where they came from or even why he said them.

But Belle didn't seem surprised. She only took a deep breath and looked away. "Yeah."

Her voice was flat, but he heard the feeling beneath it, the pain she tried to hide. And suddenly he remembered. That voice, that familiar monotone, slid over him, plunged him back into a memory, into another night, another time. That summer night when it all began. The taste, the smells, the sounds—they were all around him: the lightning bugs flashing across the wheat fields like tiny stars, the midsummer air warm and balmy on his skin. The rhythms of a fiddle and an old guitar blended with laughter and voices, and the scent of spicy ginger beer and roasted corn was heavy in his nostrils.

She was just fifteen. And beautiful. The most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Blond and vivacious, always laughing, beguilingly honest. She had blossomed during the spring he'd spent in Cleveland with his uncle. He saw the way she laughed and talked with the boys, who hovered constantly around her, and he told himself he shouldn't care, though he did. Sitting there across the fire from her, watching her talk and laugh with Charlie Boston while some of the others danced, he cared. He watched the way firelight danced along her hair, her face, watched the golden dappling of it on her skin, and the hunger, the longing, was so great he couldn't stand it.

But it was wrong to feel that way about her. She was too young. She was his responsibility. Hell, there were a hundred reasons why he shouldn't want her, and so he fought it, and searched out Elizabeth Thornton and asked her to dance. Spun her around the fire to the strains of the guitar until they were both dizzy. Looked into her pale blue eyes and saw brown ones. Touched the softness of her red hair and pretended it was blond. And then, after the dance, he'd pulled her, laughing and protesting, to the fire. He kissed her, slowly, lingeringly, and pulled away to find Belle watching him from across the flames.

Her face was white, her eyes overly bright. She caught his glance and jerked to her feet, hastily stumbling away as if something were after her, running until her sprigged gingham dress was a pale shadow in the darkness. And despite every ounce of sense he had, despite the voice inside telling him, ordering him, to leave her be, Rand lurched away from Elizabeth Thornton, leaving her sitting alone by the fire as he raced after Belle.

He found her in the shadows a short distance away, behind a haystack. She was crying.

That was enough to stun him into silence. He'd never seen her tears before, and they rocked him to his core, brought a realization he didn't want to acknowledge, hoped he could ignore. But they also worked magic on her face, made her skin luminous, brought reflections of moonlight glittering across her cheeks, and he got lost in that and forgot the rest.

"Belle," he said, but when he tried to touch her, she flinched away. "What is it? What's wrong? Did Charlie say something—Jesus, please—don't cry. Don't cry. Ah, God." He pulled her into his arms, cradling her against his chest. Slowly, slowly she melted into him, and he felt her mouth against his shoulder, felt the wetness of tears on his throat. "Shhh, little girl, it's all right," he murmured into her ear over and over. "It's all right."

She tried to draw away, but he kept her there, anchored to his chest, letting her pull back just enough so that he could see her face. She wouldn't look at him. The tears were running down her cheeks, and she wiped at them angrily, looking away from him. Her voice was a strange, flat monotone: "I'm sorry. I'm just a fool, that's all. I thought—" She licked her lips, took a deep breath. "I didn't know you cared for Elizabeth."

"I don't."

She laughed—a wavering, nervous sound. "You have a funny way of showin' it. You kissed her."

Because I wanted to kiss you.
The words caught in his throat. He tried to swallow around them. "That doesn't always—it doesn't always mean anything, little girl."

She nodded shortly, and they stood there in silence for a few minutes. She wanted to say something; he saw the movement of her mouth as she struggled with the words, and he waited, because he wanted nothing so much as to just stand there and watch her, just smell the clean, soapy scent of her skin, the smoke of fire in her hair. Then she pulled away from him. Reluctantly he let her go.

"Rand, I've been thinkin' maybe we shouldn't spend so much time together. I've been watchin' you since you came back from Cleveland, and I know—" She paused, he thought he heard a break in her voice, and she looked away for a moment. "I know there are—other people you want to spend time with. Maybe you should. Maybe I just get in the way."

Her words stabbed into his heart, and the hell of it was that he knew she was right. Not for the reasons she gave him but because of other reasons, because he wanted her so badly, he could scarcely think. He knew he should agree with her, should tell her it was what he wanted too, and he opened his mouth to say the words.

But then she looked at him again, and he saw the fierce longing in her gaze.

It was then he knew.

She was sweet on him.

She was sweet on him.
The realization made cold sweat break out on his skin. He'd been blind. Fiercely, horribly blind. They had always been good friends— even more than that, best friends—but now he saw the last month had been different. There had been an intensity about her, a yearning he'd mistaken for friendly affection. He'd seen the tears in her eyes tonight and assumed they were because of Charlie or something else, but they weren't. They were because she was sweet on him and he had hurt her by kissing Elizabeth.

Oh, God, how had he not known?

The thought sent him into a new kind of hell. Because he had counted on Belle to keep him at bay, and he knew now that she wouldn't, and he wanted her so badly, he was willing to take her even this way, knowing she was too young—God, only fifteen—too young to know her own mind, too young to really be in love, though she probably thought she was. He knew all that, and he didn't care, and he hated himself for it.

Sweet Jesus, what was he going to do?

Run away,
the voice inside him said.
Run now, while you still can, while you still have the strength.
But he didn't. He looked down into those eyes, at her wary, uncertain expression, and he suddenly didn't have the strength at all. Maybe he'd never had it. He smiled at her, and the darkness he was so afraid of hovered on the other side of that smile, waiting to pounce.

Run away. Run away.
But instead he stepped closer, and the words he'd been wanting to say for so long came out in a rush, falling over his tongue before he could stop them, control them. "I want to kiss you, little girl," he whispered, and with the words came a surge of desire so strong, it terrified him. But then he heard her soft gasp of surprise. He saw the hesitation in her eyes, the pleasure threatening to curve the corners of her mouth, and he forgot everything.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," he said slowly. "I didn't know."

She moved back to him then. Wrapped her arms around him and leaned into him until he felt her breasts pressing against his chest, felt the softness of her hair. "It's all right," she said, smiling a quick pardon. "I'll forgive you. But only if you stop callin' me little girl. And only if you kiss me."

". . . only if you kiss me. ..."

"Rand? Rand, are you all right?"

The sound of her voice—real now, not memory— jerked him back from the visions. He stared at her, unseeing for a moment, still reeling from the force of the emotions that had shaken him in the past. But then he looked at her. Really looked at her, as he'd tried not to since she returned two weeks ago. Looked at those vulnerable brown eyes and the brave way she held herself, as if daring the whole world to hurt her.