Lucy's Liberation [Elk Creek 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (10 page)

“You know what I mean. Our relationship isn’t real.”

“Of course it’s real. It’s as real as we make it.”

She sighed and shook her head.

He detested when she did that, exhibited that defeatist attitude that told him she’d been browbeaten too often to believe she could have what she wanted, what she deserved.

Ki noticed the longing in her face whenever she watched Maia and Thayne together. The look wasn’t the look of a money-hungry fortune hunter as his mother believed her to be. It was the look of a woman hungry for affection and tenderness but afraid to go after them, even if they were right in front of her. “I won’t hurt you like my uncle did, Lucy.”

“No, but you’re a smart man. I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to hurt me differently.”

Ki frowned at the telling statement. Not for the first time, his heart ached for this woman-child he’d asked to be his wife. “It’s stuffy in here. Let me take you out to lunch.”

“I have to finish this inventory.”

“I can wait.”

“I’m going to be a while.”

“Lucy, you can’t put me off forever. We have an agreement.”

“I know that. I would never go back on my word and I don’t plan to put you off forever.”

No, just as long as you can get away with it.
“When are you going to move out of Sabrina’s boarding house and into Uncle Rance’s with me? It’s half yours, or will be soon.”

“I’ll move in once we’re married.”

“Why not sooner? Get used to the idea of living with me.”

“Living in sin, you mean.”

Ki chuckled. He did love the spitfire Lucy more than the doormat Lucy. “If that’s what you’d like.”

“Why do you visit so often, Ki? Do you think I’m going to change my mind?”

“Is that what you think?”

She shrugged. “Why else?”

Did the woman not know how gorgeous she was? Of course compared to the ladies in town of more means with their silk and satin attire and fancy jewelry and makeup and fashionable shoes from back East Lucy might have seemed plain to the undiscriminating. Those women, however, didn’t have the most important thing Lucy possessed—natural, inner beauty.

Standing in that storeroom with a smudge of dirt on her pert nose that Ki longed to wipe off, her head tilted back to stare him in the eyes, and cheeks flushed with irritation, Lucy was more beautiful than any fancy painted lady in several surrounding towns.

Ki let his eyes roam over the bright cherry dress Lucy wore. The pretty but simple red calico in cotton garment with lace trim at the neckline and cuffs might have been demure if worn by a woman without the inviting sweet curves Lucy had. She couldn’t have been more fetching, more seductive, if she were one of Rebel’s co-workers in revealing corsets and short skirts.

“What are you staring at?”

The catch in her voice brought his attention back to the situation at hand but he did nothing to hide the bulge in his pants when he noticed Lucy’s glance home in on his crotch right before her eyes widened.

“I think you should go now.”

“Fine.” He stepped forward, placing his palms on the wall behind her on either side of her face before he bent his head to kiss her. He heard her sharp intake of breath right before his mouth made contact with hers and fireworks exploded inside his head. His face and the tip of his ears heated as he thrust his tongue between her parted lips and stroked her tongue.

Ki’s hat and Lucy’s journal hit the floor almost simultaneously as Ki slid his hands from the wall to press against her back and draw her closer, but neither of them noticed.

He heard Lucy moan deep in her throat, and the noise spurred him on as much as the feel of her hands burrowing through his hair. When she fisted a length of hair at his nape and whimpered against his mouth, it took everything in him to pull away.

Ki opened his eyes to glance down at her, saw that her gaze was as stunned as he felt. He homed in on her kiss-swollen lips and his cock pulsed in his trousers, clamoring for release. Unable to fight it anymore, he raised a hand to her face and thumbed off the smudge of dirt before leaning in to give her nose a brief kiss.

“I’ll see you later this evening.” He turned to go without waiting for her answer and could have sworn he heard her say, “Not if I see you first,” right before he reached the door.

He had to love that spitfire Lucy.

By the time Ki made it back out to the store’s main floor, Maia had joined Sabrina at the counter and she, Sabrina, and Rebel were all staring at him.

He had adjusted himself and dusted off his hat after he’d picked it up off of the floor, so he didn’t think he looked too askew.

“So, how’d it go with our Lucy?” Maia asked.

“As well as could be expected.”

The three women nodded as if in sympathy. He had already gotten the if-you-hurt-Lucy-we’ll-turn-you-into-a-eunuch speech at the end of his first visit, so knew where all the ladies stood as far as his and Lucy’s relationship was concerned. He respected their allegiance and was glad that Lucy had people in this town who cared about her so much.

“A little word of advice,” Maia said.

Ki perked up his ears and came closer to lean on the counter.

“Rance really did a number on that kid. So it’s going to take some time before she can start trusting you.”

“I appreciate your input.” He nodded. “So, have you changed your mind about selling me any of your paintings?”

“Not yet, but…” She leaned close with a conspiratorial look lighting her dark eyes. “I do have a little something to tide you over though until I do…”

Ki had a strange feeling he was about to be inveigled and would like it.

When Lucy came out of the storeroom, it was to the sight and sounds of Maia and Sabrina arguing and Rebel standing by, watching like a referee.

The two women rarely disagreed on anything to do with the business, so Lucy assumed it was something personal and that it was none of her business. She didn’t want to interrupt except that after Ki’s visit and being in such close quarters with him
kissing
her until the crotch of her bloomers was soaked, she needed to get out of the store for a breath of fresh air and to think.

When Maia noticed her standing at the storeroom door she cut herself off mid-dispute and stared at Lucy as if she was a kid who had just been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing.

Lucy immediately wondered what had transpired between the women and Ki. She had after all, seen him in action and he had the magnetism to charm a nun out of her habit. She also knew how much all three ladies liked Ki and thought that his and Lucy’s impending marriage was a good thing for her. Maia, especially, liked telling her she needed to get back on the horse.

And Lordy, isn’t Hezekiah Benjamin a nice piece of flesh I could be riding.

That little exchange in the storeroom was definitely going to her head…or her pussy more than likely. Her mind hadn’t climbed out of the gutter since Ki had left. She’d had to go out back to the pump and splash her face with cold water before she came back in out to the main floor to face anyone, praying that there weren’t too many customers in the store.

“Everything okay out here?” Lucy asked.

“Fine and dandy,” Maia said.

“If you don’t tell her, I will,” Sabrina grumbled.

“Oooh, this is going to be good.” Rebel rubbed her hands together as if she was about to sit down to a nice juicy steak dinner.

Lucy looked at all three women and the butterflies that had been doing battle in her belly until Ki left just a few minutes before, began waging again. “What’s going on?”

“You made a sale!” Maia beamed.

Lucy frowned. “What exactly did I sell?”

Maia opened the register drawer, removed a twenty dollar bill and handed it to Lucy. “Aren’t you pleased as punch?”

“Why don’t you tell her what you sold?”

“It’s not as if I sold something you wanted to keep. I actually found it in the trash and…”

Lucy shook her head and backed away. “You didn’t.”

“I couldn’t stand to see a piece of art like that waste away like garbage. So I took it out of the trash and put it in a nice frame.”

“You wouldn’t sell him any of your paintings, but you sold him my…garbage?”

“It’s
not
garbage. And evidently Ki agreed, because he paid me for it. I think he would have paid even more had I asked. I probably could have named my price. That’s how much he liked your work.”

“But it was mine.”

“Finders keepers, losers weepers.”

Lucy would have burst out laughing if she wasn’t so ready to break down crying.

Sabrina must have sensed how frustrated she was, for she came from behind the counter and put an arm around her. “Look at it this way, kid. Maia didn’t tell him who the artist is.”

“Yet,” Maia chimed in.

“You can’t tell him,” Lucy said.

“Why on earth not?”

“I don’t want him to…to pity me.”

“Pity you? Whatever for? He paid for that picture without even knowing who you were. That means he saw talent, pure and simple like I see when I look at your work. Pity is not even a concern.”

After years of being told she was a dummy who couldn’t draw her way out of a paper bag if her life depended on it, Lucy found Maia’s contention hard to believe.

All Lucy could see was Rance sneering as he snatched and crumpled her doodles before throwing them away, calling them useless garbage.

Maia came from behind the counter now and put her arm around Lucy, too. “I honestly thought I was helping your career get off the ground.”

“Career?” What career? She didn’t have any talent.

“Yes, your career. You can’t let talent like yours go to waste.”

“You really think I have talent?”

“Trust me,” Sabrina said. “She’s always bending my ear about how your work should be on display in a gallery somewhere in New York or Paris. You have talent, Lucy.”

Lucy took a deep breath.

“Okay now?” Maia asked.

“I think so.”

“No more doubting yourself or your gifts.”

“I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try not to.”

Maia, Sabrina, and Rebel all laughed and Lucy joined them, feeling a little less fretful than she had several minutes ago.

“So, what did Pretty Boy want?” Rebel asked.

Lucy winced at Rebel’s nickname for Ki, despite it fitting him to a T. She shrugged in answer, not knowing what to say to the other women or how to say it without them judging her a fool for not rushing down to the Justice of the Peace the minute Ki had asked her to marry him.

They just didn’t understand why she was stalling now that what she wanted was well within her grasp.

She wanted Peyton’s. She wanted the house she had decorated with her heart and soul and lived in for the last several years. It used to be a gilded cage, with Rance as her jailer, but now it could be a place she could actually call home. Except that she
didn’t
want to be married, not this soon after Rance and not to someone she barely knew. She’d gone down that road before with Rance when she didn’t have a choice. Now she had a choice, at least half of one.

Six months for half of everything.

It had seemed like such a good deal at the time, but now she was wondering.

Could she survive six months in that house, alone with Ki, as Ki’s
wife
, without falling victim to that fatal charm she had seen in action all too often this last week? Could she survive him hurting her, if not the way Rance had, then some other horrible way?

She told herself she was young, she was strong, and she was a survivor. Even a mighty oak could crack under the right amount of pressure, though, and she was nowhere near as sturdy and solid as a mighty oak. During the last six months before Ki had showed up, she’d felt as fragile as an egg sometimes. She was afraid to lose her newfound freedom taking a risk on such an unknown quantity as Rance’s nephew.

He’d asked her to give him a chance. He’d told her that he wasn’t the monster she was making him out to be.

Could she take that risk?

The bell over the entrance tinkled, breaking Lucy out of her daydream and pulling her attention to the front door where Ethan Crawford stood just on the threshold. He looked as lost as most of the men who came into the shop unchaperoned by their wives or girlfriends.

“Can we help you?” Sabrina asked.

Ethan only gave Sabrina a passing glance before peering at
her
. “I came to see Lucy.”

“Well, aren’t you the popular lady today,” Rebel teased.

“Me?”

“Can I speak to you in private?”

“Whatever about?”

“Not here. Please.”

Lucy frowned at him. She’d never seen Ethan in such a state before. He looked nervous and…desperate. “O–okay.”