Dancing With the Devil (24 page)

“Yes, you should,” she cried, grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him down again. Her lips moved over his, silently pleading for him to kiss her back.

This was beyond torture.

“Rhea.” Still kneeling between her legs, he took her hands in his and kissed each knuckle. “You know I
want to, but you’ve been through so much today…it wouldn’t be right.”

“It wouldn’t be right?” she cried, her voice full of blatant anger and frustration. “Get off me.” She shoved both her hands against his chest and pushed as hard as she could, sending him back down on the bed. She pulled her legs out from under him and moved over to the other side of the bed.

“I’m only trying to do what’s right,” he said, pulling himself back up. His cuts screamed against the exertion, and if he wasn’t mistaken, he’d just split open the ones along his right side again.

“For whom?” Rhea snapped. “You? Or me?”

“Why are you mad?” He reached for her hand, but she snapped it away before he got anywhere near it.

“Why? Oh, for—”

It was almost funny how mad she was, but Deacon wasn’t completely stupid. Laughing at her right then was tantamount to suicide.

“I. Don’t. Need. You. To. Protect. Me.” As she spoke, she slapped her pillow to emphasize each word. “Was that clear enough for you?”

He couldn’t help it. He battled it back for as long as he could, but the second he opened his mouth to answer her, he laughed in her face.

Judging by her color and the fierceness of her fists, Deacon half expected smoke to come pouring out her ears. She grabbed up her pillow and smashed him in the side of the head before flopping down on the bed with her back to him.

“Rhea,” he laughed. “Don’t be mad at me. Come on.” He knelt closer, resting his hand on her hip. She promptly slapped it away. “You have to admit it’s a little funny.”

“No, not even a tiny bit.” She yanked the blanket up until it reached just below her earlobe.

“Of course it is. I mean, look at us. You’re the good Christian woman and I’m the son of the devil, for crying out loud. Of the two of us, it really shouldn’t be me doing the right thing.”

“Fine time for you to grow a conscience,” she snapped.

Deacon chuckled as he slid down to lie beside her. “I’m not overly excited about the timing myself.”

Stiff as a board, Rhea stayed tucked under her blanket, without so much as twitching a muscle.

“Come on,” he murmured. “Are you really going to sleep that way all night?”

“Yes.” She twisted her head around and smiled sweetly. “I’m sure your new conscience will be happy to keep you warm to night.”

So much for that idea.

“You can’t stay mad at me forever.”

“Watch me.”

“But you know I’m right.” Was that his voice sounding so weak? So desperate? “If we had made love to night, it would have been one more thing you’d be worrying over in the morning.”

“And how, exactly, does that concern you?”

He wrapped his arm around her, blanket and all, and rolled her back to face him. “Because when we make love, Rhea—and you can be certain we
will
make love—it’s not going to be something either of us regrets or has to worry about the next morning.”

Her mouth opened to argue, but he was quicker this time. He pressed a kiss against her lips and smiled down at her frustrated frown.

“I’m right and you know it.”

Her eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second before her body relaxed against the bed. Deacon lay next to her, lifted his arm and waited.

As the seconds ticked by, his confidence wavered
slightly, but he continued to hold his arm where it was until finally,
finally
, she resigned herself to what they both wanted.

Once she was pressed up against his side again, with her head tucked under his chin and her fingers grazing his chest, he let himself relax.

Damn conscience could get a fellow into trouble.

Rhea curled tighter against Deacon as the sun inched its way higher. A new day, something she usually welcomed, but not this morning. This new day shone its glaring light on what she’d learned about her parents, until all she wanted to do was bury her head under the blanket and hide there all day.

She wouldn’t, but she’d sure like to.

In hindsight, Deacon had been right about last night. So now, to add to her anger and confusion, she was half naked, with her drawers on the floor somewhere and her dress kicked off the edge of the bed.

“Good morning.” His voice was full of sleep, but that didn’t stop him from kissing the top of her head or wrapping his arm tighter around her shoulder.

“Morning.”

“How are you feeling?”

Better with his fingers dancing up and down her arm like that, but after last night, she couldn’t very well tell him that. She buried her face in his neck and laughed.

“I think mortified is probably the best way to describe it.”

“Don’t be silly.” But he was laughing, too. “If anyone should be mortified, it should be me. I don’t know what I was thinking last night…”

“Seemed to me we were thinking the same thing,” she answered dryly. “For a while, anyway.”

“Hey.” He tipped her chin up and stared down at her with those deep blue eyes. “It wasn’t the right time.”

Rhea sighed and shrugged in resignation.

“Believe me,” he murmured, “when the time is right, it’s going to be amazing.”

Her whole body flamed in embarrassment.

“What?” he laughed. “After what you did last night, you’re embarrassed by that?”

“After what
I
did?” she cried, pulling out of his hold. “You’re the one who—”

He tipped his head, grinned and gave her that “tell-the-truth” look.

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t just you,” she conceded before moving back into his embrace. “But I never would have carried on that way with anyone else, so you’re not entirely innocent, either.”

His chest expanded beneath her ear. “When you put it
that
way, I’m happy to accept the blame.”

All the anger and frustration from yesterday seemed to fade when she was wrapped up next to him this way. She inched closer, sliding her leg on top of his and wrapping her arm around his body, careful of his bandage.

“You’re being so good to me,” she whispered. “I’m not sure why, and I’m even less sure I deserve it, but I
am
sure it feels good.”

“Rhea?” His voice sounded tight, gravelly.

“Hmm?” She slid her foot lower, so her toes touched his. The warmth of his skin, the beat of his heart beneath her ear and the feel of his kiss against her head; it all added up to one thing—a sense of home.

“I’m pretty new at this whole ‘doing-the-right-thing’ business,” he said.

“Mm-hmm.”

“So you’d be helping me out a lot,” he hissed, “if you’d stop doing that.”

Rhea froze. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He pulled his leg out from under hers, then nudged her over a bit. “Just save it for…later…when I’ll be free to…”

“Okay, okay.” She laughed and rolled onto her back. “I have to get up anyway.”

“What for?” He was already reaching for her, but she ducked out the other side of the bed and scrambled to find her drawers.

“I have a business to run.”

Deacon sat bolt up in bed, sucked in a breath and stared straight at her, his hand resting across his bandage.

“You’re not seriously going to open the store today?”

“Of course.” She snapped her dress up off the floor, shook it out and slipped it over her head.

“But what about—”

She sat down on the edge of the bed next to him and took his hand in hers.

“It’s not going to get any easier by hiding out here.” Weak as it was, she smiled at him. “Not that I wouldn’t like to, though.”

Deacon sighed and shook his head at her. “You’re amazing.”

“Why?” she snorted. “Because I can’t seem to get out of one mess before falling headfirst into the next one?”

“Well, that too.” He laughed for a moment, then stopped and looked at her with eyes as blue as a July sky. “You just don’t know how to quit, do you?”

“Oh, I know
how
to quit,” she said. “I’ve just never been very good at knowing
when
to quit.”

“And you don’t think now’s a good time?”

“Not a chance.”

He grinned a slow grin and shook his head again. “Stubborn to the core.”

“So I’ve been told.”

She pushed up from the bed and continued buttoning her dress. Without her brush, she could only imagine what her hair must look like, but she fumbled it into a braid, using her fingers as a comb, and fastened it with yesterday’s ribbon.

Deacon was climbing out of bed as she finished.

“Give me a minute,” he muttered.

“You don’t have to come with me,” she said. “In fact, you should stay in bed and rest—those wounds aren’t going to heal easily.”

But Deacon was already doing up his trousers. “No wife of mine is going to go to work and face the vultures of this town while I lounge around in bed. It’s not right.”

Rhea started to argue, then stopped. She didn’t need Deacon to hold her hand through this, but it would certainly make it easier.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

G
ood morning, Ernest.” Rhea spoke quietly, moving into the store ahead of Deacon. Without a word, he locked the door behind them and they made their way toward the counter side-by-side, Deacon’s hand resting lightly on the small of her back.

It was an odd feeling being back at the store; it seemed she’d been away from it for years, when in fact it had been less than a full day. But everything was different now.

Ernest fidgeted with the jars of candy on the counter, moving the cinnamon-flavored sticks in front of the peppermint, then back again. He neither spoke nor looked up from the candy.

“Back there.” Deacon moved behind the counter and held the curtain back for the others to pass through.

Head down and shoulders slumped, Ernest was barely behind the curtain before he started.

“I’m real sorry, Miss Rhea, but it weren’t my place to tell you.”

“Please.” She motioned for him to sit, but he refused, choosing instead to pace the short length of the room, jamming his fingers through his hair every few steps.

Deacon followed them into the room and snapped
the curtain closed. If he was trying to intimidate the boy, it was working. Rhea flashed him a warning look, then turned back to Ernest, who continued to pace and ramble on.

“The sheriff told me you was some upset when you found out, and I can’t say as I blame you, but I gotta know, Miss Rhea…” He stopped and looked right at her, his fingers twisting at his waist. “Are you going to fire me? I would if I was you, but there ain’t no other job anyone’s gonna give me.”

“Ernest.” Looking at him now, she began to see similarities between him and the rest of her family. Different colored hair and eyes, but there was something in the way he tipped his head, something in his stance that was suddenly so much like Colin.

So much like their father.

“I’m gonna have to move Ma to another town somewhere, I guess.” He didn’t seem to be speaking to either Rhea or Deacon anymore, but more to the walls. “Prob’ly should’ve done that before now, but…”

Ernest slumped back against the wall and moaned. “Polly.”

Deacon leaned close to Rhea. “You better say something or the boy’s going to have a heart seizure.”

With a quick nod and a smile, she stepped toward the fretting young man—her brother—and reached out her hand.

“Ernest,” she said. “I’m not going to fire you, for goodness sake.”

He looked up at her and frowned. “You’re not?”

“Have you done anything that would give me reason to?”

“Well, no, ma’am, but the sheriff said—”

“Yes, I know what he said, and he’s right. I was upset.” She squeezed his hand between her own. “And
I’m going to be upset for a long time to come, but that has nothing to do with your job here at the store.”

“What about…I mean…” He stared at their hands and chewed his bottom lip. “I just figured what with it bein’ my ma and all…”

Rhea stiffened until Deacon eased up behind her and set his hand on her hip.

“What they did was wrong, Ernest, but you’re not any more to blame than I am.”

He didn’t look convinced.

“I’m angry with you,” she said, “but only because you didn’t tell me the truth.”

“It weren’t my place.”

“Whose place was it, then?” The frustration she’d been trying to rein in came bubbling out all at once. “If it wasn’t yours and it wasn’t Colin’s, then who do you think should have told me?
Your mother?
”

“Rhea.” At the sound of Deacon’s voice, she froze, mortified at what she’d just said.

“I’m sorry.”

A loud tapping sounded on the glass window out front. Rhea’s body moved on instinct, but Deacon stood between her and the curtain, his arms crossed over his chest.

“They can wait.”

The tapping came again, louder this time, but Deacon just shook his head and remained where he was. This would be the second time in a week she’d opened late; she could only imagine what people were saying about that.

“Ernest.” Rhea pulled the chair toward her and sank down on it. “I’m sorry. This can’t have been easy for you, either. Have you always known?”

He shook his head slowly. “Ma told me after my pa…after he died.”

Rhea’s stomach sank like a stone. She’d never understood why Mr. Miller shot himself, but now it made a bit more sense. It also explained why Mrs. Miller never left their farm.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Weren’t your fault. Ma done what she done.”

Deacon’s boots scuffed the floor behind her. “You’ve done well by her, Ernest,” he said. “Lots of boys would have taken off running by now, but you stayed.”

Finally Ernest raised his head. Red streaks stained his eyes and he was a ghastly shade of gray, but he didn’t cry. Thank goodness.

“No matter what she done, Mr. Deacon, she’s still my ma.”

The tapping on the glass came again, more insistent. Rhea didn’t even turn her head this time.