Kit Gardner (11 page)

She snapped her mouth closed, feeling the rage now like a swelling thing in her chest. “How dare you, sir! How dare you talk to Sadie McGlue...and...and... Do you realize she invited me to tea Thursday next? What the devil was I to say?”

“I would imagine a simple yes or no would have sufficed.”

“Simple?”
she yelled. “Nothing about this is simple. I daresay you understand nothing of the fairer sex, Stark, least of all me.”

“On that alone, ma’am, we can agree.”

She ignored the sarcasm lurking in his tone. “Indeed. And trust me, you are not alone in suffering from this malady. It runs rampant throughout the male populace. And is something I am determined to vanquish in my son.”

“Reason and logic are admirable traits, ma’am. Are you quite sure you want to vanquish them?”

She sucked in a breath and lurched to her feet. “You, sir, are making humor of this.”

“Someone has to,” he muttered. And then he grabbed her wrist, just as the buggy lurched over a rut. “Sit down, Jess, and smile. You’re going to tea Thursday next.”

Her rump met with the leather seat. “I am not,” she said with a huff, yanking her wrist free. “And quit calling me that.”

“And if Avram won’t take you, I will.”

“You will do no such thing. I shall go alone.” She swept her hands over her skirts with force, then shoved her hat on her head. “If I go at all, that is. I truly have
never
wished to have tea at Sadie McGlue’s.”

“Yes, you have, Mama. You talk about it all the time. That’s why you want that new dress at Ledbetter’s.”

“I most certainly do not talk about tea at Sadie McGlue’s
all the time.
Now and then, perhaps. And as for that dress in Ledbetter’s window—”

“The ugly gray one,” Christian said to Logan Stark.

Jessica pursed her lips. “It matches my eyes.”

“Your eyes aren’t gray, ma’am.” He was looking at her now in a way that made her want to leap from the buggy.

She glanced swiftly away, feeling a strange fluttering deep in her belly, as though part of her were poised in anticipation of something.

“Mama wants to wear that dress when she marries Reverend Halsey.
He
says it matches her eyes.”

She stared at her fingers, twisting together in her lap, very much aware that Stark still watched her.

“Oh, yeah, and for tea at Mrs. McGlue’s,” Christian said.

“I truly do not wish to go to tea at Mrs. McGlue’s,” Jessica said quietly.

“Do you still want to walk, Mama?”

Jessica folded her hands in her lap and jutted her nose skyward.

“Keep driving, Christian,” Stark said.

T
he stones were broad and flat, each weighing a good hundred pounds. Stacked neatly side by side, they made a fence even a cow of exceedingly high aspirations would never attempt to plunge through. Not that Jessica Wynne’s cow would ever harbor such ambitions. Nor did it matter whether she ever would. What
did
matter was that Jessica wanted her “charming” stone fence rebuilt. No, she wanted nothing to do with that barbed wire notion, no matter how practical it might be. Might hurt the cow, were the cow to stroll into it, and God knew, wire wasn’t the least bit charming or picturesque and it didn’t match the house or provide the perfect complement to all her flowers. Stone did. Rance’s only wish at the moment was that someone else would wander down that road and offer to build the damned fence for him. At least for a few hours.

He heaved another stone atop the pile and felt the muscles in his back again contract and rebel. This time, however, the knots crept into his limbs and fused into one focused throb. He straightened and shoved his kerchief over his forehead, his neck, over his bare chest, then stuffed it again into his pocket. Midday. Hot, arid, cloudless sky. Merciless sun baking his skin. Even the wind was hot, billowing with dust and choking him, providing no relief. A hell of a time for a man to be heaving stone about—were he a reasonable man, of course, not one bent upon punishing himself.

Punishment. Perhaps. But the burning in his muscles had never felt so damned good. Cleared the mind. Focused him. Dulled the throb still lingering in his left shoulder. Made him forget, however momentarily, the man he’d spotted in Twilight four days prior, when they’d headed out of town. The tall man with the fancy topcoat and brown bowler. Something about that bowler, the set of the man’s shoulders in that coat, the leisurely rolling of his gait, stoked a memory of Wichita. And Cameron Spotz.

Then again, maybe Rance was only seeing ghosts, driven to this, of course, by the irrepressible Jessica Wynne. A more maddening woman he had yet to meet. If there had ever been a woman put on this earth to muddle a man’s brain...

“Stark.”

He blinked the sweat from his eyes. She stood there, as if conjured by his thoughts, like a daisy in the sunlight. An odd circumstance, her being here, given that she’d gone out of her way to avoid him these past four days. He’d had enough of the
Oh, so sorry
’s and her swift about-faces whenever she happened upon him, whether it be in the barn, where the place needed the most work, or anywhere near the house. He’d decided it best to let her keep to her routine. God alone knew what a disruption to such a precisely adhered-to schedule might do to the poor girl. So, here he was rebuilding her sorry stone fence, purposely well out of her path, whichever she happened to choose on any given day. And today was...wash day. No, cleaning day. Had to be. She’d been beating rugs all morning and leaving them to air in all this dust. At the moment, other than heaving stone, he could think of nothing less rewarding than housekeeping. But a woman like Jessica would take inordinate pleasure in a neat and tidy house, regardless of the pains taken to get it there. Even more so for that very reason. Damned peculiar woman. And yet...

Sun-kissed curls in every imaginable shade of blond framed her face in lush disarray. Her hair wouldn’t smell like dust and prairie, but like warm lemons...and he wanted to grab a fistful of it and watch it spill through his fingers. Maybe then those lips would ease from their perpetual purse and her eyes would dance with glorious blue fire. A man’s imagination could run amok while he slowly baked...and lead him astray, if he let it. And Rance had never been prone to that sort of thing. The heat, maybe, did this to him, made him too conscious of her lithe and graceful body outlined in vivid detail when the wind blew her loose gray cotton dress flat against her body. Made him remember the way her fingers had softly stroked her son’s hair, the serene look on her face as she’d done so....

Yes, sunstroke, that was it, it filled his mind with the image of her in some scoop-necked sapphire silk concoction, her hair all a-tumble, a mischievous glint in her eye...

“Stark.”

He blinked again, and the image evaporated.

“Are you quite all right?”

“Hot,” he said, the word rasping from his parched throat. He reached for the wooden bucket at his feet and poured what little was left of the water over his head. A groan rumbled through his chest as he shook the water from his hair, then half sat against the stacked stone. Some part of him grew inordinately pleased that the thing didn’t crumble beneath his weight. Odd, but he couldn’t remember having built anything in his life.

She was looking at his fence. Not assessingly. More as if she’d rather not look at
him.
Tender sensibilities and all that, no doubt much required of every goodly wife by that damned Miss Beecher. But he’d be damned if he’d wear a shirt while he worked in this heat, not even the one he’d worn when she shot him. The one she’d mended with stitches so tiny he couldn’t see them. The one he’d found lying on a hay bale in the barn, clean, pressed, and smelling vaguely like lemons.

The wind sent her skirts billowing around her legs, and he watched her feet fidget back and forth in the dust. She did a lot of that fidgeting and twisting of her fingers into her skirts.

“The fence looks marvelous.”

“It better,” he muttered wryly, massaging a trickle of water over the ache in one biceps.

“Are you quite sure it’s high enough?”

He set his teeth and folded his arms over his chest, one black brow arched. “I don’t know, ma’am. What do you think?”

She gave him a perplexed look, entirely missing his sarcasm. “I don’t know.
I’m
not building it.
You
are. Therefore, I am assuming you’ve thought of everything, like height and breadth and the fact that I might one day own a cow who might get it into her head to jump over it. You have considered all this, haven’t you? You see, I’m merely seeking reassurance.”

An exasperating woman, capable of irritating him with one innocent exchange of words. So little faith she had in him. Little wonder he was possessed by the maddening urge to grab her and shake her...until she clung to him and begged him to kiss her.

“Don’t you trust me, Jess?”

“I don’t believe it’s a matter of trust, precisely. But you’re—”

“A man.”

She swallowed and blinked furiously. “Of course you are.”

“And therefore unworthy of your complete confidence.”

“That goes without saying. Men are forever fouling up the simplest of projects. Can’t ever get anything quite right without a bit of female guidance. Nevertheless, you’ve strength—”

“Ah. You concede that point.”

“A moot argument, at best. Whereas we women—”

“You think of everything.”

“Indeed we do. We are most thorough. We possess exceptional foresight, and we are inordinately fair.”

“I see nothing fair in this conversation.”

“Why, if women ran the country—”

“Ah, hell.” He bent to heave another stone. It was by far the lesser of two evils at this juncture.

“Take the war, for example.”

“Save it for your fellow suffragettes.” He braced his legs, lifted, and every muscle in his stomach and arms popped.

“I am no suffragette, intent upon wearing your trousers. I merely wish to explain a simple bit of reason, if you would just listen to me, Stark. I—”

He groaned and hoisted the stone atop the others, then glanced at her when her characteristic tumble of chatter failed to come. She was staring at his flexed arms and his heaving chest. Her lips parted, soft and full and so tempting. She looked entirely incapable of speech...vulnerable, womanly, and completely aware of him as a man. Desire flooded through him, unbidden, unwanted, and entirely undeniable. It made no sense. But, hell, his being here made less sense the longer he stayed.

He moved toward her, deriving almost painful pleasure from the widening of her eyes as he drew nearer.

“What’s wrong, Jess? I’m listening. Odd, but you’re not talking all of a sudden.”

She took a stumbling backward step. “M-Mr. Stark—”

“Call me Logan, dammit.”

“Don’t swear at me, sir.” Her shoe tangled in her hem, and she stumbled again.

“And don’t call me sir.” He broke that invisible barrier before she crumpled in a heap. He gripped her upper arms and resisted the urge to shake her, to yell at her, to demand to know why she, of all women, had the power to rob him of logic. How would an innocent know such things? An innocent...staring up at him with fear and a spark of anger in her eyes.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Jess,” he said.

“I know that.”

Her mouth trembled just inches below his, beckoning, robbing him of what was left of his reason. “Then why are you so afraid of me? Why can’t you trust me?” Grasping her hand, he pressed it beneath his against his chest. “Touch me, Jess. You want to almost as much as I want you to.”

“I...cannot...possibly...touch... Please let go of me.”

“No.” His arms flexed and drew the slender length of her against him. “You need to be held and touched, Jess,” he rasped. Desire spiraled through him when she offered no resistance and her hands fluttered at his biceps like frightened birds. He felt every sinuous curve of her pressing like fire into his overheated flesh. “You need to bury the past, Jess, forget all the pain. Just like I do.”

“Please...I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

He lowered his head until his mouth hovered just a hair’s breadth above hers. “Quit fighting me at every turn, woman. Let me help you. That’s why you hired me, remember?”

“No,” she whispered, her full lower lip trembling. “I don’t need anyone’s help living my life. Just do your work and leave me alone. I’m quite capable—”

“Yes, you are. More capable and determined than any woman I’ve known. But you still need me, in more ways than you know.”

She was staring at his mouth. “I’m betrothed, sir.”

“A minor inconvenience.” He lifted her against him, unable to keep his arms from crushing her, his hand from plunging into her hair, his lips from finding hers. She tasted of sweet innocence, fragile, young and untouched. Like a drug. He drank of it. And he wanted more. So much more.

Desire had never been so painful, so potent, perhaps because of his circumstances. Perhaps simply because of her...the sweet parting of her lips beneath his, the melting of her all over him, the urgency in her hands clutching at his shoulders. And he would have taken her here, beneath the sun in the dust and heat, without regret, had she not twisted from him with a hoarse cry. Still, he caught her hand and yanked her hard against him, his hand, at the back of her head, forcing her gaze to his.

“Don’t run from me,” he said.

“I...I thought I heard—”

“It’s the blood rushing in your ears,” he muttered, pressing his lips to the tender flesh along her neck. He filled his lungs with warm, sweet lemon and tasted her skin. “Sweet Jess, it’s the sound of all those damned inhibitions fleeing you. Get used to it. It can be addictive.” And then he heard it, too, the undeniable sound of a horse’s hooves upon dirt road. His teeth met. “Ah, hell.” He didn’t release her, merely glanced up to see a lone figure on horseback moving swiftly toward the farm, a billowing cloud of dust in its wake. Rance recognized the rider simply by his awkward seat. He had, after all, watched him amble down that road at precisely this time for the past four days. “Halsey.”

“Avram?”
She shot upright, spun around, then sagged back against his chest. “Good heavens, it can’t be Avram. His horse doesn’t move that fast.”

“Perhaps Halsey gave him good reason.”

“He’s seen us.”

“Without question.”

“Good grief.” She plucked at her hair and her dress and furiously patted her flushed cheeks. She didn’t even glance up at him. “What the devil am I to do? What possible explanation—?”

“Tell him you won’t marry him.”

“He shan’t be pleased. I don’t even have his supper ready for him—” She froze and blinked up at him. “What did you say?”

“Your dress is wet.”

“My—” With a horrified look, she plucked at the cotton molding her breasts, then glowered at his damp chest.

“Don’t look at me like that, Jess, or I’m liable to kiss you again.”

Color flamed clear to her hairline and she commenced with a vicious smacking at the pleats in her skirts. “If you do, I shall sack you, on the spot. I trust you will keep that clearly in mind.”

He cocked a brow. “Trust, you say? My dear, Jess, you yourself know you can ill afford to do that. Particularly now.”

She pursed her lips and balled her fists and most probably stomped her foot somewhere under that dress. Stalwart once more, attempting to smooth all her ruffled feathers. Attempting, without success, to obtain the last word.

Apparently willing to give up the battle, she scurried over to meet Halsey before the thing came to blows. The good, kind reverend bellowed and barked, flapped his arms and gestured wildly at Rance, who merely grinned and waved and resumed his work once they headed for the house.

* * *

“That stinks,” Christian said, making a great show of plugging his nose as he maneuvered around Avram Halsey’s chair to the kitchen sink. Again he slanted Avram a sideways look, grimaced with dramatic fervor, then sent the dishes tumbling into the sink. “Yuck.”

“That’s not a word, Christian.” Jessica said. “Choose another or, better yet, keep your distaste to yourself. Hold still, Avram. You’re fidgeting. And if you fidget, the vinegar will drip and soil your topcoat.”

Avram immediately drew up stiff in the ladder-back chair. Jessica could tell this from the severe tightening of his scalp beneath her massaging fingertips. She emptied a small vial of almond oil directly on top of his head, a spot all but abandoned by hair. This calamitous circumstance had proven even more vexing to Avram than obtaining the necessary funds to complete the refurbishment of his church. Knowing this, Jessica had combed through every book she owned for some remedy for thinning hair. Of course, she’d found one, in
The Complete Housewife.
A mixture of vinegar and almond oil extract, to be applied directly to the afflicted areas as often as was practicable. Ladies were so very thorough.