Come Spring (47 page)

Buck paused, wondering how Kase Storm could look at such a robust, healthy infant and even ask the question. He glanced at Annika, who was also waiting expectantly for his answer. “He’s fit as a fiddle, far as I can tell. By the time he’s grown his punch will probably pack the same wallop his daddy’s does.”

Buck carried away the afterbirth in a china washbowl. He had quickly draped a towel over it when he saw Annika blanch at the sight. All he needed now was to have her passed out on the floor.

The Storms inspected their son while Buck waited patiently. Finally, he interrupted. “Annika, why don’t you and your brother go downstairs for a few minutes and leave Rose in peace? When we’re through here, I’ll call you.”

Annika couldn’t hide her pride when Buck issued the smooth command. His bedside manner was as practiced as any doctor she’d ever seen, city or country. She volunteered to act as nurse, but Buck shook his head. “You look exhausted. Just close the window and then get me some silk thread, a needle, and more hot water. I can manage.” To reassure Kase he said, “It will just take a few minutes.”

“I can’t understand why your brother allowed that man in this house.”

“Richard, I’m really too drained to answer now.” Seated at the kitchen table, Annika pressed her hands to her burning eyelids and tried to focus. Buck had yet to come down from Rose’s room, although Kase had been granted entrance. She had too much to think about now that the crisis with Rose had passed to want to deal with Richard Thexton.

But he wouldn’t let her rest. “Obviously,
your brother
isn’t thinking clearly—”

“His name is Kase.”

“Well, I still contend he’s not thinking clearly, Annika, or he wouldn’t abide that man’s presence.”

“Buck just saved their child. I imagine Kase will give him anything he wants.”

Richard stopped pacing across the kitchen floor and glared at her. “Including you?”

“That was uncalled for.”

“Was it? I think you’re glad to see him, as crude and uncouth as he is. That’s why you are barely able to sit there on the edge of your chair, why you jump at every sound—you can’t wait for him to come down. I think you’ve been waiting for him to come back ever since you were rescued. Am I right?”

Tension mounted upon tension forced her to snap. She slapped her hands down on the surface of the table and pushed off her chair. Annika paced across the room until she stood before Richard Thexton, refusing to back down. “You’re right,” she said in a menacing tone. “In fact, you’re right about everything you’ve said today. I am waiting to see Buck Scott again. And if he’ll have me, I intend to go wherever he wants me to.”

He looked as shocked as if she had slapped him.

She wished she had. “I guess it’s just my wild Indian blood, Richard. The blood you were so very graciously offering to overlook a few hours ago.”

He reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders. This untamed fury was a side of the usually unruffled man that Annika had never seen or even suspected he possessed.

“You little bitch.” He spoke from between clenched teeth. “You think you’re so high and mighty. If you hadn’t been tucked away in school or under your parents’ wings all your life, you’d have had your eyes opened and know where you stand.”

“Say what you have to say and get it over with, Richard.”

“Your brother slunk out of town after he attacked a client in his law office. Your mother was forced to marry that half-breed Caleb Storm because she’d already been some Indian’s Dutch whore. Where do you actually think that precious ‘brother’ of yours sprang from?”

She tried to twist away. “Let me go.”

He gave her a vicious shake instead. “Have you ever asked them, Annika?”

“I said let me go!”

“Have you asked?”

She tried to blot out the sight of him leering down at her by closing her eyes.
Yes,
she wanted to scream. Yes, she’d asked them, but the answer was always the same. Kase was her half brother. Her mother had been married before Caleb, but the past was too sad for her to talk about. The subject had always been so swiftly and effortlessly changed that afterward she hardly remembered she had asked. As she grew older, she grew afraid to hurt her mother, and even more afraid to find out that Kase was not her half brother at all, but perhaps was some foundling that Analisa and Caleb had raised. So she stopped asking. Kase was simply Kase. Her idol. Her big brother. It didn’t matter who had fathered him—but now this man she had almost married was accusing her mother of whoring, even suggesting Analisa was not good enough to marry anyone but Caleb Storm, a half-breed.

“I guess blood will tell,” he said in a tone just above a whisper. “My mother tried to tell me that. Thank God this wild streak in you came out before we married.”

His fingers pressed into her forearms, bruising her. The sound of the rain beat a heavy staccato on the roof of the veranda, ran in streams off the lip of the porch overhang, and splashed into puddles that surrounded the house.

Annika tried to wriggle free, twisting against his punishing fingers. “For the last time, let me go!”

Buck Scott stepped into the kitchen. “Let her go, Thexton.” He didn’t know what was going on, but he had heard Annika demand release and intended to see that Thexton carried through.

“Gladly,” Richard sneered. He shoved Annika aside so hard she hit her hip against the table and nearly stumbled over a chair.

Buck flew across the room, tackled Richard, and shoved him backward until both of them crashed into the back door. The hinges gave way and the door fell with them on it, scarring the white enamel paint on the veranda. With a stranglehold around Thexton’s throat, Buck drew back his fist, ready to plunge it into the man’s startled face. Somewhere behind him, he heard Annika pleading with him to stop. He had hated this man on sight, and when he saw Richard Thexton shaking Annika, when he heard her demanding release, it triggered an immediate reaction. All of his bottled-up anger and frustration erupted. Thexton would be lucky if he didn’t kill him outright.

As he took aim at Thexton’s face, a grip with the strength to match his own arrested Buck’s downward swing. He tried to shake off the hand that held his wrist but couldn’t, so he turned to glare at the offender.

“Don’t do it,” Kase warned. “I don’t really have the energy to fight you again, but I will if you push me.”

Annika stood beside Kase, clutching her brother’s arm, but her eyes were for Buck alone. She silently appealed to him to stop.

Buck took another look at Thexton and then at the splintered door frame and shattered glass of the oval window.

He had made a mess of things again.

Buck unstraddled Richard and stood up. There was no apology in his tone when he said, “I guess I’ll be leaving.”

“Leaving?” Annika couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. She turned on her brother. “Richard insulted me. Buck only did what you would have done if you had heard him, Kase. You can’t let him leave.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Kase ordered Buck. “Not until I’ve had a word with you.” He extended a hand to his sister’s former suitor and jerked Thexton to his feet. Kase then said bluntly, “You, on the other hand, Thexton,
are
leaving. If you hurry, you can catch the last train headed east from Busted Heel.” As Richard brushed past him to pack his bags, Kase lifted the oak door and leaned it against the house and then walked to the edge of the veranda. Over the sound of the rain, he whistled loud and long until a man appeared at the bunkhouse door. He shouted to the cowhand across the yard, “Will two of you come and get this door put back up, Tom? Can’t have the house get cold, not with my new boy in here.”

The man in the doorway waved back and shouted, “Right away, boss.”

Beaming despite two purpled eyes and a swollen nose, Kase Storm walked back inside and poured himself a cup of strong black coffee. His expression sobered as he pointed to two empty chairs at the table, took in Buck and Annika with a glance, and said bluntly, “You two sit down. We need to talk.”

Annika held her breath, certain that Buck would bristle at her brother’s authoritative tone. She didn’t think she could watch the two of them come to blows. Instead, when Buck immediately pulled out a chair for her and waited for her to sit down, she simply stood and gaped at him.

   24   

“A
NNIKA
?”

She glanced up at Kase, read the impatience in his eyes, and plopped down onto the chair Buck was still holding for her. Buck chose a chair opposite her brother’s. He leaned back, hooked an arm over the back of it, and appeared resigned to listen to whatever Kase had to say.

“Coffee?” Kase asked.

Buck shook his head. Annika declined, glancing from Buck to Kase and back. They reminded her of two titans ready to do battle. Everyone in Busted Heel must still be talking about their fight.

“I know what went on between you and my sister, Scott,” Kase said without preamble.

Annika felt her cheeks flame and knew without looking over at him that Buck’s eyes were on her. “Kase—”

“Because of what you’ve done for Rose, and for me, I don’t intend to force you into anything.” Kase waited until Buck looked at him again. “But under the circumstances, I won’t have you under the same roof with my sister tonight. You’ll sleep in the bunkhouse.”

Because he knew the man was right, because he would have handled the situation in exactly the same way, Buck listened to Kase Storm without uttering a word. He refused to glance over at Annika again but he knew by the riot of color that had stained her cheeks, she was completely embarrassed by her brother’s frankness.

There was nothing Buck could say to Kase Storm, no excuse he could give for what had happened at Blue Creek. Staring down at his torn and filthy shirt, the blood stiffened on the front of the plaid fabric, at his scarred, work-worn hands, Buck wondered how he’d ever dared to touch her in the first place.

Even now she looked like a ray of sunshine in the afternoon gloaming. Despite all she’d been through that day, her colorful striped gown was still nearly spotless. Perched as she was on the edge of her chair—all prim and proper like—he could not even believe that she had ever made love with him on his own table. It didn’t matter that his memory told him different. Nor could he imagine this new, elegant Annika Storm ever living in his cabin again.

“What did Richard say to upset you?” Kase demanded of Annika.

Buck looked up and watched Kase interrogate his sister. He, too, wanted to know what Thexton had said to upset her so.

Annika, to her credit, drew a deep breath, locked stares with her brother, and told him, “That’s something I want to discuss with you later. Right now, since you’ve insulted both of us, I think Buck and I are entitled to at least one conversation alone. That is, if you are finished upbraiding us like two disobedient schoolchildren.”

Buck bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling. He had to hand it to her: there weren’t many women who would have faced up to a man as forbidding as Kase Storm. He watched Storm drain his coffee mug, then surprisingly enough set it down, turn, and walk to the kitchen doorway. “I’m going up to see that Richard leaves immediately, then I’ll visit Rose and Joseph. I’ll expect to speak to you in the library when your conversation with Mr. Scott is over, Annika.”

When he left the room, Annika sighed. Buck could not relax as he stared at her openly for the first time. She remained on edge, perched as if the first loud noise would send her flying. She traced a knothole in the wood on the table. “I’m sorry about my brother’s rudeness, especially after all you’ve done for him today,” she said.

“Yeah. I beat him up, broke his door, hit your fiancé. I’d tally that as a good day’s work, all right.” His words hinted at humor, but he failed to smile.

Boot heels louder than the rain sounded on the veranda outside as two of the hired hands came across the porch to fix the door. They set their tools down with a clatter and then stared curiously at Buck and Annika as they fit the door in the opening.

“Do they know all about us, too?” Buck asked softly as he watched the men.