Man of Ice (17 page)

He kissed her. His mouth was hungry at first, insistent, almost cruel in its devouring need. But he felt her weakness and his arms loosened their tight grip. His mouth became caressing, tender.

When he lifted his head, he looked dazed. This was his woman. She loved him. She had his child under her heart. She was going to be his wife. He felt as stunned as he looked.

“We can…if you want to,” she murmured sheepishly. “I mean, I’m not that sick.”

He smoothed back her damp hair. “I wouldn’t be much of a man if sex was all I had in mind right now,” he replied quietly. “You’re carrying my child. I could burst with pride.”

It was an odd way to put it, but it touched her. She smiled shyly. “One time and I’m pregnant,” she said pensively. “If we don’t want twenty kids, I suppose one of us is going to have to do something after the baby comes.”

“I’ll do something,” he said. “I don’t want you taking anything that might put you at risk.”

“I don’t have to take something. I can use something.”

“We’ll see.”

She touched his face, his shoulder, his chest. “I could get drunk on this.”

“On what?”

“On being able to touch you whenever I want to,” she said absently, unaware of the effect the words had on the man holding her. “I used to dream about it.”

“Even after France?” he asked with sudden bitterness.

“Even after France,” she confessed. She looked up. “Oh, Dawson, love is the most stubborn emotion on earth.”

“It must be,” he said.

She leaned forward and kissed his eyelids closed. “When do you want to leave for Sheridan?”

“Now.”

“Now? But…!”

“I want to get married,” he said firmly. “I want to do it quickly, before you change your mind.”

“But, I wouldn’t!”

He wasn’t sure of that. He’d made so many stupid mistakes already that he couldn’t risk another one. “And we won’t sleep together again until the ring is on your finger,” he added.

“Why, you blackmailer,” she said.

He cocked an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

“Withholding your body to make me marry you. Well, I never!”

“Yes, you did,” he murmured.

She liked the way his eyes twinkled when he was amused. She smiled. He might not love her, but he liked her, and he wanted her.

“Yes, I did,” she agreed. “Okay, if you’re in such a hurry to give up your freedom, who am I to stand in your way? I’ll pack right now!”

Ten

C
ORLIE
wasn’t at all surprised to see Dawson walk in with a radiant Barrie. She hugged them both and went away with a smug expression to make them a pot of coffee.

“Coffee,” Barrie began. “I really should have milk…”

Dawson put his finger over her lips and looked sheepish. “Don’t. I’ll go and tell her we both want milk.”

“She’ll be even more suspicious of that,” she whispered.

He shrugged. “Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe you are, too,” he continued. “We don’t even know for sure yet.”

She leaned into his body with her eyes closed, feeling secure and at peace for the first time in years. “Yes, we do,” she said.

He rocked her in his arms. “Yes, we do,” he agreed after a minute. He closed his own eyes and refused to give in to the fear. It would be wonderful to have a child with her. Surely nothing would go wrong, as it had with his mother. And she wasn’t going to make him jump through hoops. His eyes opened and he stared past her. He felt troubled and turbulent. Trust came hard to a man with his history. He didn’t know how he was going to cope with what lay ahead.

* * *

They were married quietly in the local Methodist church with Corlie and Rodge for witnesses. Antonia Long and her husband sent flowers and congratulations, but the baby had a cold and they wouldn’t leave him, even for such a momentous occasion as to see Barrie and the “ice man” get married.

Dawson kissed her with a tenderness she’d never expected from him and Barrie felt on top of the world. Since their return to Sheridan, he hadn’t touched her except to hold her hand or brush a light kiss across her mouth.

But tonight was their wedding night. She marveled at her excited anticipation, remembering the pleasure his body had taught hers to feel. It wasn’t fear she was feeling now when she thought of lying in Dawson’s arms in the darkness. And surely, after the honesty he’d shown her about his past, they could cope with his emotional scars. If he wanted to make love with the lights out, to conceal his vulnerability, she wouldn’t even mind that. She only wanted to lie in his arms and love him.

But if she expected the wedding band to make an immediate difference in their relationship, she was in for a shock. Because that afternoon Dawson, who’d been restless and prowling ever since the reception, suddenly packed a bag and announced that he just had to see a man in California about a seed bull.

“On our wedding day?” Barrie exclaimed, aghast.

He looked more uncomfortable than ever. “It’s urgent. I wouldn’t go otherwise. He’s threatening to sell it to someone else.”

“You could just buy it,” she suggested.

“Not without seeing it first.” He closed his bag. “It won’t take long. A few days.”

“Days?”

He grimaced at her expression. He tried to speak and made a curt gesture with one hand instead. “I won’t be away long. Corlie’s got the number where I can be reached if you need me.”

“I need you already. Don’t go.”

He paused to tilt her face up to his worried eyes. “I have to.” He ground out the words.

She had a feeling that the confinement of marriage was already making him nervous. He’d faced so many things in the past few weeks, including a sudden marriage and a pregnancy. He was trapped and straining at the ropes. And if she didn’t let him go now, she might lose him for good. She was wise enough to know that he needed a little time, a little room. Even if it was on their wedding day. She couldn’t corner him. She had to let go.

“Okay.” She smiled instead of arguing. “If you have to go, you have to go.”

He seemed surprised at her lack of protest. His impatience to leave lessened. “You don’t mind?”

“Yes, I mind,” she said honestly. “But I understand, perhaps better than you realize.”

He glared at her. “It’s only a business trip. It has nothing to do with our marriage or the baby.”

“Of course not.”

He didn’t like the expression in her eyes. “You think you know everything about me, don’t you?”

Her eyebrows raised. “I haven’t even scratched the surface, yet.”

“I’m glad you realize it.”

She reached up and kissed him beside his mouth, very gently, feeling his tall body tense at the unexpected caress. “Do you mind if I kiss you goodbye?” she asked.

He stared at her. “No.”

She grinned. “Have a safe trip. Are you taking the Learjet or a commercial flight?”

“Commercial,” he said surprisingly. “I don’t feel like worrying with maps and vectors today.”

“Good. As long as you don’t feel compelled to tell the pilot how to fly,” she added tongue in cheek, remembering an incident in the past when Dawson had actually gone into the cockpit to instruct the pilot to change his altimeter.

He averted his eyes. “He was a novice commuter pilot and he was so nervous that he had his altimeter set wrong. Good thing I noticed. He’d have crashed.”

“I suppose he would have, at that. And he never flew again, either.”

“He realized he wasn’t cut out for the stress of the job, and he had the guts to admit it.” He looked down at her with calmer eyes, searching over her face. “You look better than you did in Tucson,” he said. “But don’t overdo, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And try to eat more.”

“I will.”

“Don’t drive anywhere unless Rodge and Corlie know where you’re going.”

“Okay.”

“And if something goes wrong, call me. Don’t try to handle it yourself.”

“Anything else?”

He began to look uncomfortable. “Stay away from the horses. You shouldn’t go riding until we know for certain.”

“You’re a case,” she murmured with twinkling eyes. “Imagine that, you worrying about me.”

He didn’t react with humor, as she’d expected. In fact, he looked more solemn than ever. He took a long strand of her hair and tested its soft texture, looking at it instead of her while he spoke. “I’ve always worried about you.”

She sighed, admiring his rare good looks in the tan suit he wore. “I can’t believe that you actually belong to me, now,” she reminded him, noting his shocked expression.

It should have pleased him to hear the note of possession in her voice. It didn’t. Combined with his fears of being vulnerable in her arms, it made him angry. He dropped her hair and moved away. “I’ll phone you tonight. Stay out of trouble.”

She colored at the snub, because that’s what it was. She wasn’t through walking on eggshells with him, she realized at once. She’d only just begun.

“Dawson?”

He paused, looking back with obvious reluctance.

She hesitated, frowning. She was going to have trouble approaching him at all from now on. She had to do it right the first time.

“Marriage doesn’t just happen,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “It takes some cooperation, some compromise. I’ll go halfway, but no further.”

He looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“You’re my husband,” she said, tingling as she said the word.

“And now you think you own me, because I married you?” he asked in a dangerously soft tone.

Her face felt tight. She just stared at him for a minute before she spoke. “Just remember that I didn’t ask you to marry me,” she said quietly. “It was
you
who came after
me.
Not the reverse.”

His eyebrows rose at the haughty tone. “I came after you to save you from an unwed pregnancy,” he informed her with a mocking smile. “Or did you think I had other motives? Do I look like a man who’s dying for love of you?” he added with biting sarcasm.

“Of course not,” she said in a subdued tone. “I know that you don’t love me. I’ve always known.”

He didn’t understand the need he felt to cut her, especially now. He’d drained all the joy out of her green eyes, all the pleasure out of her radiant face. She looked tired. If she really was pregnant, as they suspected, upsetting her was the very last thing he should be doing. But she had him now, and he burned for her. He wanted her with a headlong, reckless passion that could place him forever in her power. And that wasn’t the only fear he was nursing. He had cold feet and they were getting colder by the minute. He had to get away now, to be alone so that he could get a grip on himself. Dear God, why did she have to look that way? Her very silence made him feel guilty.

Her chin lifted and she managed a smile. “Have a good trip.”

His eyes narrowed. “You won’t run away while I’m gone?” he asked abruptly, and watched her face color. “Damn it…!”

“Don’t you swear at me!” she snapped back. Her lower lip was trembling, her hands clenched at her sides, her eyes glittered with tears of anger and hurt. “And I’m not the one who’s running, you are! You can’t bear the thought of a wife, can you, especially me!”

Her loud voice brought Corlie into the hall. The housekeeper stopped dead, aghast at the scene before her eyes. There was Dawson with a suitcase, looking as unapproachable as she’d ever seen him, and Barrie crying, shivering.

“You’ve only just got married,” she said hesitantly, looking from one of them to the other.

“Why don’t you tell her the truth, Dawson? We didn’t get married for love. We got married because we had to!” Barrie sobbed. “I’m pregnant, and it’s his fault!”

Dawson’s face went white as the words stabbed him like a knife right out of the past. He was oblivious to Corlie’s shocked expression as he glared at Barrie. “Don’t make it sound like that. You couldn’t possibly know for sure yet!” he snapped at her.

“Yes, I could,” she said in a ghostly tone. “I used one of those home pregnancy kits, and it says I am!” she growled.

Thinking it was one thing. Hearing it, knowing it, being sure—that was something entirely different. He stood with the suitcase in his hand and he didn’t move. She was really pregnant. His eyes went to her stomach, where one of her hands was flattened protectively, and then back up to her hurt, wet face. But he wasn’t seeing Barrie. He was seeing his mother, blaming him for her marriage, blaming him, and then at the last, in the casket, with the little casket beside her…

“Well, you’re married,” Corlie said, trying to find a glimmer of optimism. “And you both love children…”

Barrie wiped her wet eyes. “Yes, we love children.” She glared at Dawson. “What are you waiting for? There’s a bull standing in a pasture in California just dying for you to rush out there and buy him, isn’t there? Why don’t you go?”

Corlie glanced at him. “You’re going to California to buy a bull on your wedding day?” she asked, as if she couldn’t have heard right.

“Yes, I’m going to buy a bull,” he said belligerently. He slammed his hat on his head, ignoring his guilt at the way Barrie looked. “I’ll be home in a few days.”

He stalked to the front door and jerked it open. He knew both women were watching him, and he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to go rushing to Barrie’s bed like a crazed animal begging for favors, and she needn’t expect it. She had to learn right from the beginning that he had the upper hand, and that he wasn’t going to be some sort of sexual toy for her. She already blamed him for getting her pregnant, for ruining her life. She was going to be like his mother, she was going to torment him. He had to escape while he could.

That he was behaving irrationally didn’t even occur to him. Not then, at least.

But by the time he was ensconced in his California hotel suite, the world seemed to snap quite suddenly back into focus.

He looked around him with vague shock. He’d walked out on his wife of two hours, left her alone and pregnant, to go and buy a bull. He couldn’t believe what he’d done, what he’d said to her. He must have been out of his mind.

Perhaps he really was, he thought. He’d tortured himself with thoughts of making love to Barrie, but once again he’d have to submit to the madness she created in his body. He’d be helpless, vulnerable, weak. She’d watch him…she’d see not only his surrender to her body, but what he really felt. In the heat of ecstasy he wouldn’t be able to hide it from her.