Kit Gardner (12 page)

“I’m fidgeting as any man would if he were as disturbed by events as I,” Avram huffed. “Gently, Jessica. You don’t want to scare the rest of it out of my head, now, do you? I shan’t abide being bald, I tell you.”

Jessica applied her fingertips to the areas surrounding the top of his head, alarmingly aware that these thrice-weekly applications seemed to be having rather an adverse effect upon Avram’s problem. Yes, she could well imagine Avram Halsey without a hair on his head in relatively little time. Poor man. Best to ease him into the idea. “I don’t know, Avram. I would think you would look rather distinguished without hair. You could grow whiskers in its stead.”

“I’m afraid, my dear, that would be impossible. Unlike that grizzly bear you’ve got laboring in your yard, I find myself blessed to be one of the significantly hairless of my kind. Thankfully so, as far as my beard and chest hair goes. Awful stuff, I tell you.”

He sounded proud of this, his tone laced with a goodly amount of pious pomp. Jessica, however, found herself besieged by the image of water droplets glistening on Logan Stark’s densely furred chest. A now familiar yearning bubbled to life within her, and suddenly the vinegar, this task, even the sight of Avram’s sparsely haired head sent a fleeting abhorrence through her.

“Enough of this talk around the child,” Avram said.

“I’m not a child,” Christian grumbled.

Halsey barely paused. “So, when are you going to start listening to reason and abandon this foolhardy quest for this farm, Jessica? You can start by releasing that savage from his post.”

“I’m afraid I cannot do that, Avram,” Jessica replied, applying a good deal of pressure to his scalp. “You see, he’s building my fence.”

“I know what the devil he’s doing. And it’s all for naught, I tell you. Fences do not profitable farms make.”

“Perhaps. But they make for lovely, secure homes, Avram. Besides, Mr. Stark has helped considerably with the irrigating of my plants.”

“A resourceful fellow, isn’t he?” Avram snorted.

“Remarkably.”

“He fixed our wagon,” Christian said, with a good deal of taunting in his tone.

Jessica threw him a glare of warning. “Weather permitting, and barring any sort of catastrophe, I shall have a plentiful crop for sale. And hopefully enough of a profit to fully repair the house and barn. Be happy for me, Avram. Wash your hands, Christian, then back to your slate. You’ve your numbers to practice.”

“Keep hoping, my dear, though little good it will do you. I’d be happier if you were pounding sand. Do you yet fully realize the money you could make from the sale of this place? Why, the numbers these fellows from the East Coast are talking about—”

Jessica pressed her nails ever so slightly into Avram’s scalp. “Have you been listening to them, Avram?”

“No, not directly,” Avram replied blithely. “Of course not. I simply overheard Widow Brown discussing it with her lady friends. Let me tell you, my dear, the amount—”

“Means nothing to me,” Jessica interjected crisply. “To your slate, Christian.
Now,
” she tossed over her shoulder to Christian, who had managed to lever himself against the sink, the better to peer out the window.

“But Logan hasn’t eaten supper, Mama.”

“Get your feet off the sink, Christian, and back to your slate.”

She heard the thumping of his bare feet upon the floorboards and his scurrying behind her. And then the door opened and Christian yelled, “Logan, come eat supper.”

“No!”
Jessica shrieked. No, she did not want Stark here, in her kitchen with Avram and all this vinegar, not
now.
Not minutes after he’d...he’d...and she’d... Good grief she could still taste his mouth, the feel of his tongue caressing hers. And the scent filling her nostrils was not that of vinegar and almonds and Avram’s hair tonic, but that of warm, passionate male...

“He’s coming, Mama,” Christian beamed from the doorway.

“Good heavens,” Avram muttered, lurching from his chair and attempting, without success, to smooth his hair back over his vinegar-soused pate. At that precise moment, a broad-shouldered shadow filled the doorway, blocking out all sunlight.

Jessica felt her heart skip a beat, then slam into her lungs. With hands buried in her apron, she spun about and busied herself at the stove, spooning the remainder of the vegetable stew onto a plate. Best to let him eat, of course. A man couldn’t work in all that heat on an empty stomach. Perhaps he would kindly remove himself to the barn—

A chair scraped against the floorboards. With a certain dread, Jessica slowly turned about, plate in hand. He’d donned a shirt and a lazy grin that crinkled the skin around his eyes. He was looking at her through half-hooded eyes, like a beast intent upon a kill.

And he was sitting in Frank’s chair. Casually, with massive forearms braced upon the table and his thighs clamped about the chair, as if never to release their hold upon it. His eyes flickered directly across the table to Avram and narrowed further. One corner of his mouth twitched slightly. He seemed entirely unconcerned, and certainly not unaware, that all present watched him with mute stupefaction.

“Kindly remove yourself from that chair,” Avram said at length.

“It’s fine,” Jessica hurried to interject, placing the plate before Stark and hurrying away before one of those big hands could reach out and grab her.

“But, my dearest—”

“That was my pa’s chair,” Christian graciously provided in a soft, conspiratorial tone. He perched himself at Stark’s side and, with mouth grimly set, looked eager to defend his champion against Avram Halsey. “Reverend Halsey never sits in it.”

“Indeed I don’t,” Halsey said huffily. “Not suitable, I tell you.”

“Odd,” Logan mused, shoving a huge bite into his mouth. He glanced up, eyes full of dancing sunlight, when Jessica placed a warm loaf of bread on the table. She felt those eyes upon her even when she again hastened back to busy herself at the stove, the sink, anywhere but near him. “This chair provides the best view. Little wonder your husband chose it, ma’am.”

This prompted a curious glance from her. She watched him tear into the bread, his fingers so long and strong, yet so gentle...

Avram’s hoarse bark echoed through the kitchen. “Indeed, Stark, whatever are you saying? From this chair one has the most glorious view of the window and the prairie beyond.”

“I wasn’t talking about the window,” Logan said.

Jessica blushed furiously and spun back to the stove, her fumbling hands sending two gravy-laden spoons clanging to the floor. Damn and blast, he was flirting with her, and in Avram’s presence! How could he? She should soundly lambaste him, shouldn’t she? Ah, but surely Avram would. Wouldn’t he? Fiancés should be inordinately sensitive to that sort of thing, shouldn’t they? Perhaps she’d merely imagined it. Yes, she must have, otherwise Avram wouldn’t be sitting there contemplating his fingernails. He would be giving Logan Stark a good dressing-down for such impertinence.

Still, there was little use in denying the twittering in her limbs. Hastily she bent to retrieve the spoons and, upon jerking to her feet, jarred against the iron handle of the stew pot. One hand barely caught the thing before it hurtled to the floor but the remaining hot stew splashed over the bodice of her dress, several drops scalding the exposed skin of her neck. A groan escaped her lips.

A chair’s legs scraped upon the planks.

“Sit down, Mr. Stark,” she blurted without looking up, applying a damp cloth to her neck. “I’m fine. Just a bit clumsy, is all.”

“Ma’am—”

“Heatstroke,” Avram supplied from his chair. “Had her all but swooning in your arms when I arrived. I told her to lie down—”

“You did not,” Christian said accusingly. “You wanted her to give you supper and put that stuff on your hair to make it grow.”

“Now, see here, you impudent scalawag—”

“I am not!” Christian yelled.

“Christian, come with Mama now.”

“But, Mama, he called me a scala...scala...”

“Now.”

Avram executed a smooth glide from his chair, sweeping his coattails behind him. He turned about, dismissing Christian entirely, and regarded Jessica with a mildly reproachful brow. “I’d best be off, my dearest. Plans for the church picnic. You’ve helped so very little with it, you know.”

Jessica pasted on a penitent smile. “I realize that, Avram.”

“Do you? These things mean so much to me, you know. And thus to you, as well.”

“Yes, Avram.”

“Good. Perhaps you’d best take a lie down. You do look rather haggard, and your dress—”

“Thank you, Avram,” she replied, acutely aware that Stark was watching their exchange. Avram seemed concerned with this, as well. And not mildly so. Instead of his usual kiss on the cheek, he gave her a stiff, very proper nod, then turned on his heel and, without a glance at Stark or Christian, left the house.

“I don’t like him,” Christian mumbled.

“You will learn to like him,” Jessica gently admonished. “In the meantime, you will give him your respect. Now, get your slate at once.”

Christian gave a secretive smile. “It’s outside. In the barn.”

“Whatever were you doing in the—?”

“Get it,” Stark said softly.

Christian scampered for the door, and Jessica took to the hall and her room. She had her dress to change, after all. Besides, she had no desire to linger alone in the kitchen with Stark.

* * *

Rance swallowed the last of the cool water and set the cup in the sink with a satisfied groan. He stared from the kitchen window and listened to the soft chiming of a clock in the parlor. And then silence. Peace wrapped around him like the comforting aroma of Jessica Wynne’s cooking, no matter that the temperature in the kitchen had swelled beyond that out of doors.

His gaze swept again to his stone fence. Yes, there was an undeniable puffing-up of his chest when he looked at it. Job well done, and all that. Still, some damnable instinct would have him linger here,
with her,
rather than return to all that heaving and hoisting of stone, no matter how satisfying he found it. Far more satisfying than anything he’d done in a long time.

He turned and took three steps toward the hall, then stopped. Again, silence. Not a whisper of sound from down that shadowy hall. So, she slept. He frowned at a bookcase stuffed with all her How-to books. His thumb brushed over the frayed and well-worn bindings.
Ladies’ Indispensable Assistant. The Good Housekeeper.
How to be a goodly, kind, worthy...

He doubted one of those books advised a goodly, kind and worthy wife to nap her afternoons away.

Surely she hadn’t succumbed to some sort of heatstroke? God knew toiling over a stove and hot stew on such a day would test even the most sturdy of women. And the most determined. He set his teeth and peered down the hall.

He would have heard her, had she crumpled to the floor. Then again, she weighed next to nothing, and even in such a deranged state would have undoubtedly contrived to fall upon the bed, lest she mar her floor or disturb all those beaten rugs.

His feet moved soundlessly upon the floor. It was a skill he had honed some time ago. He was trespassing. No, he was seeing to her welfare. She’d looked...
overcome,
that was it, when she spun from that stove. Not haggard, damn Halsey to hell and back, but pale. Fragile as a sparrow, as though the burden had suddenly grown too much for her delicate wings to bear, no matter the stoutness of her heart.

Her door was slightly ajar. He stared at the wooden knob, his ears straining for some sound of her deep breathing. The wood was smooth beneath his palm as he pushed against it, gently.

And then he saw her. And, for a brief moment, the world ceased to spin.

T
urn around, you damned fool....

Of course, his conscience would choose such a time to find itself and roar to life. Odd, but he couldn’t remember such a thing ever happening before, particularly when he’d come upon a woman in a tumbled state of undress. No, he usually left his conscience with his horse, soundly tethered outside the saloon, where it belonged. Of course, those women had been saloon girls, and their “startled” dishabille, an art form much perfected. Those women had wanted nothing to do with his conscience.

But Jess...

She sat at her dressing table with head lowered, as yet unaware that he loomed, the trespasser, in her doorway. He could simply turn around, as stealthily as he’d ventured here, and she need never realize...

If only he could convince his legs to move, his eyes to cease their feasting on her, no matter conscience’s dictates. A fool he was, to think this woman incapable in any way, or the sort to submit to heatstroke. Fragile, yes, her limbs fine and slender, her skin smooth as the finest white porcelain. Looking at her here, demure and silent, clad only in her white cotton camisole and pantalets, he was struck immediately by her innocence, her youth, the utter vulnerability of her, like that of a sapling facing a fierce winter’s wind. Yet in the next moment he was overcome by the unadulterated sensuality of her...and all that slumbering power there.

It made no sense. None of it. Hadn’t he long preferred tall, amply rounded brunettes sturdy in their seasoned wit and expertise, women who wore their audacity and brazenness as boldly as they did their red satin petticoats and black lace garters? Not some persnickety, befuddling, not to mention exasperating, half wisp of a blonde who had somehow come under the ridiculous notion that she should be able to take on the world, without anyone’s help, and accomplish it all to her own exacting and utterly impossible standards.

He was incapable of remembering even one face, one name, one encounter amid the blur that had become all those women. And yet
her
face had indelibly stamped itself upon his mind from the moment he stuffed that locket into his pocket. He could see no other when he closed his eyes and conjured forth a woman to ease his stirring passions.

He’d long been known for being hard-hearted, even callous, entirely immune to any woman’s teary plight, contrived as most were...yet here he stood, awash in the entirely proper thing to do, at once fraught with concern for her, yet consumed by the thought of easing himself upon that smooth white flesh. And so very little of all this had to do with exacting his penance and undoing all he inflicted when he’d killed Frank Wynne. No, far greater powers were at work here, powers suddenly beyond him. And he suddenly knew that this woman—the one woman who had no business doing so—this woman had captured him and now held him as soundly as she did the ivory-handled hairbrush she passed slowly through her unbound hair.

Sunlight ignited liquid fire through those blond curls. He watched the brush stroking, watched one curl spring back to coil against the thrusting peak of her breast. Through the thin cotton, the nipple swelled and pushed against the fabric.

His eyes met hers in the looking glass. Her lips parted in a hushed breath. Silence hung as thick as the heated air. Rance drowned in the fierce power of desire. She stared at him, her hand slowly placing the brush upon the dressing table. She made no move to cover herself, simply touched trembling fingertips to the narrow pink ribbon binding her camisole.

He moved into the room, and lemon scent enveloped him like a lover’s soft arms, luring him nearer, even when she rose from her stool. Still, she didn’t turn to him, or flee, or voice a protest. No, she couldn’t. She musn’t. He wouldn’t be able to bear it, not to be able to touch her.

He moved behind her, so close he could hear her breathing, feel her heat, fill his lungs with her womanly smell. He drank in the sight of her. She swayed slightly, that willow in the wind, and his arm slipped about her waist, catching her. The stool crashed into the wall with one vicious swing of his booted foot, dissolving the last of the barriers.

His chest met with the sweep of her back, and he flexed his arm, lifting the lush roundness of her buttocks against his pelvis and burying his face in the curve where her shoulder met with her neck.

“Please...” The word rasped like a plea from a dying man. And he
was
dying, in that lonely, lost part of his soul that had finally found solace with someone...this woman. She wasn’t simply that which would stoke and sate his lust. He wanted to lose himself within her, find all that he’d never thought to find...

What the hell had she done to him?

Her pulse beat rapidly against his palm as it moved over the curve of her belly. He shared her breath when her head arced closer to his. She tasted of dew, of sweet summer rain and windblown meadows, along her neck, where the skin bore several tiny blisters from the spattering stew. He pressed his lips there, and she quivered against him, his dove, but it was he who was held, trembling in her hand. It was she who wielded all power.

“Stark—” Her hand covered his when his thumb hooked in the strap of her camisole and slid it slowly from her shoulder.

“Jess...sweet, beautiful Jess...let me take you to heaven.”

“No—” she whispered hoarsely, her eyes fluttering closed when his mouth moved over her bare shoulder. “You wish to rob me of my will.”

“I’m not going to take anything from you,” he murmured. “I want to give you pleasure. I want...so much, and I don’t understand any of it. Fire me if you want, but let me, Jess...let me...”

He felt the trembling of her, the uncertainty, heard the clamoring of his conscience...and still he wanted more. All of her, the sweet creaminess of her breasts swelling above her camisole, the promise of all the joy he would find within her arms, deep inside her. And then, above the rush of the blood in his ears, he heard the slam of the back door.

“Mama, I found my slate!”

Rance’s eyes met with hers in the glass, and he saw so very much in that one moment... A fleeting regret? Or simply the imaginings of a lust-crazed male animal, yet again to be denied?

And then she looked positively stricken, all blood draining from her face. In one sweep of his arms, he lifted her and carried her to the bed.

And she commenced with a sputtering and squirming entirely unsuitable for her circumstances. “Good heavens, surely you don’t mean to...to...on my bed...right now...
Stark!
”

“Don’t think the idea hasn’t crossed my mind, at least once today,” he muttered, yanking back the coverlet and depositing her and all her flailing limbs on the bed.

“Mama! Where are you, Mama?”

“She’s in here,” Stark called out, much to Jessica’s obvious horror.

She blinked up at him with mouth agape. “B-but, I— H-he cannot possibly see me in this bed, and y-you here in m-my—”

“Lie down,” he ordered, firmly shoving her back on the pillows. He leaned close over her and brushed his thumb over her full lower lip. “And shut up.”

“I most certainly will not!” she sputtered, legs thrashing at the coverlet, fists shoving at his shoulders as she struggled to get up. “You might find having your way with me rather like a stroll in the park, but as for my son—”

“Mama?”

Christian suddenly appeared in the doorway, slate in hand. A curious look passed over his features as he stared first at Rance, then at his mother. Rance wondered if guilt emblazoned itself upon his face. Guilt, hell, that was the least of it. To her credit, Jessica clutched a hand to her bodice and collapsed against the pillows.

Rance swiftly drew the coverlet clear to her chin. “Your mama’s not feeling well, Christian,” he said.

“She looks fine to me,” Christian replied, with a decidedly dubious look. He moved to the bedside and frowned at his mother. “You’re never sick, Mama. She’s never sick, Logan. And you’re mussing up your bed, Mama. It’s not nighttime yet. You’re not supposed to muss up your made bed, right, Logan?”

“I think she wants us to leave,” Rance said, well aware of the sparks flashing in her blue eyes.

“How come she’s not wearing her nightclothes? She’s supposed to be wearing nightclothes, not that girlie stuff. Were you helpin’ her get undressed, Logan?”

“Thank you, Christian,” Jessica quickly said. “I shall find my nightclothes.”

“Is Logan gonna help you?”

“I think your mama would prefer to be alone for just a while.”

“But not for too long,” Christian said. “She has to make us dinner. She might forget.”

“She would never forget,” Rance replied, urging the boy from the room with the slight pressure of his hand at his back.

“This means I don’t have to practice my numbers, right, Logan? Right?”

“Practice your numbers and then you can help me build my fence and exercise Jack.”

“Oh, boy!” Christian shouted, dashing for the back door. “I want to learn to ride him. Can’t I? Are you coming, Logan?”

Rance paused just outside Jessica’s bedroom, unable to keep his eyes from drifting back to her. She sat in a slanting ray of sunlight, with the coverlet clutched to her breasts, eyes wide and shining amid a wild tumble of blond curls. For all her prior sputtering and thrashing, she now looked terrified. Of him...or herself? An ache like nothing he’d ever known burgeoned low and deep in his gut and spread through his limbs, into his chest, to tighten like a fist around his heart.

Had Christian not barged into the house when he had, Rance knew, he’d have taken her there on that virginal white coverlet, perhaps against her dressing table, on her hooked rug, without guilt or conscience or remorse. Driven by this lust, this...this...
need.
Why, dammit? Why her? Why not ride to the nearest saloon and find his surcease with some faceless woman?

And then he knew, simply looking at her he knew, why the thought of another woman hadn’t even entered his mind, why the thought of those to come suddenly seemed beyond him...why he’d rather remain here and torture himself with the prospect of some sort of self-imposed celibacy for the sake of righting his wrongs.

Jessica Wynne needed a man to make incessant, impassioned love to her far more than she needed a barn repaired or a fence built or all those plants irrigated. She ached with it, craved it, every sinuous movement of her body screamed with it, even if she didn’t yet know it for what it was. It was in her eyes whenever she looked at him, all her pious notions be damned. A woman’s passion, newly stoked, too potent to be denied. He wondered how long she could withstand it. And what man who was only mortal could resist such a temptation? A man who had everything to lose, perhaps. A man who, by giving in to such temptation, would practice the greatest deceit yet upon this woman, and possibly commit his most grievous injustice, one he could never undo.

It was with this grim realization that Rance closed the bedroom door and turned to seek the blistering sun and all that stone once more. An inconsequential penance to pay, considering what he had come so very close to doing.

* * *

Jessica had long ago learned the wisdom of heeding instinct, particularly where it concerned her son. And this niggling at the back of her head was not some bothersome fly or the effects of too much sun. It was instinct telling her in no uncertain terms that far too long a time had passed in utter peace and quiet.

Wiping the back of one dirt-smudged hand over her brow, she sat back upon her heels and surveyed the lively row of newly planted pink and red geraniums lining her reconstructed stone fence. Yes, there was no denying the man had done a magnificent job, far better than she’d envisioned, to be perfectly honest. He’d since directed himself with equal diligence to the woefully bowed side of the barn, achieving remarkable results in only several days, and with surprisingly few funds. Indeed, he had yet to come to her for additional money for lumber, paint and the like, despite the four return trips he’d made to Twilight for more supplies. He had a stack of lumber sitting in the barn that reached nearly to her chest, cans of paint, tools...all purchased with the coins in that one straw purse.

This caused her a moment’s pause. Avram’s estimates for refurbishing the farm had always far exceeded the money she’d managed to scrimp together for that purpose, all of which she had given Stark over a week prior. Of course, Avram had admitted with a certain visible pride to never having had to build a thing in his life. The callings of his congregation required little in the way of building expertise, after all. Still, as was his wont, he’d professed himself possessed of the knowledge to do so, if need be, and promptly declared financing such a project well beyond her means. Either Stark was a wizard in disguise, capable of squeezing all the money he wished from very little coin—possible, given his myriad abilities, but highly unlikely—or Avram had purposely inflated his estimates, the quicker to convince her to sell her farm. Her teeth slid together, and she shoved her spade deep into the soil. One could view his actions as bordering on the dishonest and self-serving, if one were naturally inclined to think such things. Which she’d truly never been. Until now, blast it.

Indeed, Avram had seized upon any sort of visible progress with the fence and the barn not as a means of displaying a newfound support of her quest, but rather as the ideal opportunity to commence with a recitation of the boundless reasons for her to regain both her faculties and her senses and
sell.
As though any progress whatsoever merely strengthened both his argument and his resolve! How, pray, was the barn going to
keep
itself painted and upright, the house from crumbling to the ground, once they married and Stark rode his black beast back to wherever it was he came from? Perhaps Stark need not leave so soon....

Whence this ridiculous notion had sprung, Jessica hadn’t the faintest idea—and for it to leap as it had from her tongue! Avram, of course, had gaped at her and then stomped about, blustering and barking about her duty as his wife to
obey him,
to heed his wishes, what
he
believed was best for her and her son. Never once had she detected the slightest hint of jealousy in his voice. Not that she’d been particularly attuned for it, mind you, but he hadn’t even
mentioned
Stark or made any hint of a brutal reference to his habit of stalking about sans anything but those low-riding, thigh-hugging, faded denims. No, Avram’s male animal was not challenged in any way. Odd. Then again, perhaps she had succeeded in fooling at least Avram...though certainly not herself any longer. As for Stark...