Rexanne Becnel (8 page)

Then again, when had he ever had anything to do with proper women? His mother, despite her good heart, had still been a common
whore. No use denying that fact. Except for a few youthful flings, every woman he’d had he’d paid well for her efforts. But this woman … this woman was the kind of woman you married and made a home with. He didn’t have a home. At least not yet.

“You cook it like you would venison,” he finally said, killing his confusing thoughts. “You can salt the extra. Or dry it for jerky.”

She nodded, causing her heavy hair to fall in two shining arcs on either side of her face. God, but it was long, he thought, and it gleamed in the slanting light like the finest silk. Once more he shifted, but he hid it by sidling the weary Mac nearer the wagon gate. “Here.” He untied the haunch from his saddle horn and thrust it toward her.

She stepped from beneath the wagon tent to take the hefty haunch. As she stood there clutching the crudely butchered piece of meat, Tanner was struck by incongruities of her appearance. She could have been a dark-haired Indian woman, receiving the bounty of her man’s hunting trip. But her dress proclaimed her as straight-laced and proper as they came, covering her from chin to wrists to toes. Only her face and hands showed. And yet those were tanned to a warm color not typically seen on proper women. Then there was her hair. No matter how hard she tried to maintain a prim appearance, that hair was her undoing. It fairly cried out to be touched, and Tanner wanted to answer that cry in the worst way. Part lady, part Indian maiden, and part wanton, she appeared at the moment. The best of all three, he realized.

“Thank you,” she murmured when the silence began awkwardly to stretch out.

He nodded his head curtly and with only the lightest move turned his horse. He didn’t have to go. He’d saved her piece of meat to deliver last. But now he knew it had been a foolish idea. He had only one reason to linger around Abby Morgan, and that was to determine if she was Hogan’s granddaughter. While he heartily hoped she wasn’t, he knew that in either case it really didn’t matter. If she was the girl he searched for, he’d take her back to Chicago then leave her there, never to see her again. If she wasn’t his quarry, he’d still never see her again. She was heading to Oregon, and anyway she was the wrong kind of woman for him to be worrying about right now. Maybe one day, but not right now. She belonged with someone like that preacher.

“Wait. Don’t go.”

Tanner drew up at her soft call. He stared at her, conscious of the dust motes swirling red-gold between them in the afternoon sun. She pushed her hair behind her shoulders and took a deep breath, as if searching for courage. But what Tanner saw most was the fullness straining behind her bodice. She was not so slim as her narrow waist had indicated, at least not everywhere. His fingers tightened on the reins even to remember how she’d felt beneath his hands. Within his arms. On his lap.

“Will you stay to dinner with us? Please?” she added when he didn’t immediately respond.

Tanner hesitated. A home-cooked meal and from the hands of a woman like her. Only a fool would turn down such an offer. And yet he could not bring himself to accept right away.

“What about your father?”

A slow flush crept into her cheeks. “He … ah … I’ll speak to him. He’ll … he’ll agree.”

“He doesn’t like me,” he persisted. “Doesn’t approve of the likes of me. There’s no use pretending otherwise, Abby.” He smiled knowingly at the familiar use of her name, then perversely let his eyes slip over her in a way calculated to unsettle her even more. “He won’t want to give me the chance to get to know his little girl.”

“I’m not a little girl,” she countered, despite the pretty blush that indicated otherwise. She might be a fully grown woman, he knew, but she was as innocent as any little girl.

Tanner pushed his hat back on his head and studied her a moment. What was he doing anyway? Why was he toying with so unsuitable a woman? “No, you’re no little girl. But I doubt your father sees it that way. Thanks for the invitation, Miss Morgan, but it would be better for you if I didn’t accept.”

Once more he moved as if to go, and once again she halted him.

“He’s not as stiff-necked as you think.” When Tanner only raised one brow and waited, she continued. “When I told him you read the classics, well, he softened a bit.”

The classics. Tanner repressed any show of amusement. His references to Venus usually impressed only the ladies. How ironic that her father should be swayed by his handy line about Venus. Then his thoughts quickened. Did that mean the man had read the classics himself—that he could be the schoolteacher Bliss?

“He enjoys them also?” he asked with a careful show of nonchalance.

“Oh, yes,” Abby replied. “Especially Homer.
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
are great favorites of his. He’s even read them in Greek.”

Tanner knew he was onto something, though a part of him would have preferred otherwise. “I like the myths myself,” he drawled. “Zeus. Venus.”

She swallowed at his deliberate reference to the goddess of beauty and took an unsteady breath that tightened her bodice most becomingly around her high breasts. Though his conscience told him she was too easy a mark for his practiced lines, another part of him thanked the one teacher who’d spun stories of mythological beings and rousing adventures. He’d had but two years of schooling, and little enough to show for it. But good old Venus melted down even the coldest-hearted woman—and Abigail Morgan was far from cold, he suspected.

“Do you … do you read the Bible also?” she asked in a voice gone low and breathy.

That brought him up. “The Bible?” He shrugged, debating how best to answer. “Not as much as I should. Not since I was a boy,” he added, affecting a chagrined expression. After all, women loved to save a man from his wicked ways. Maybe this particular woman needed both the Roman gods and the Christian one to soften her up. “Is your father a preacher?”

She set the haunch on a crate, then leaped lightly to the ground. “No. No, not a preacher. He’s a—” She broke off and straightened up a bit, lifting her face to stare up at him. “He’s just a farmer. A farmer like most of the other men in the company.”

Tanner nodded. She was a lousy liar, and that realization made him focus back on his task. If she was lying, it was for a reason, and if that reason was to hide from Willard Hogan, then he’d found his Chicago society heiress.

But he had to be sure.

He urged Mac nearer. Then with a creak of saddle leather, he leaned over and extended a hand to her. She hesitated, clearly confused by the gesture. But when he smiled encouragingly, she lifted her hand to take his. With the gentlest of tugs, he drew her closer, then bent down to skim her knuckles with his lips. Just a feather-light kiss, not so forward as to be deemed offensive. But his eyes promised more, and her wide-eyed gaze told him she’d received the message.

“I accept your offer, Abby. And I promise to be on my best behavior with your father.”

Abby had to remind herself to breathe as she watched Tanner McKnight ride away. Lord, but had there ever been a more unsettling man? At the same time that he drew her like a magnet drew steel, he also managed to frighten her clean out of her wits. How could she want to be closer to him and yet also want to flee every time she saw him?

She pressed one shaking hand to her stomach and tried to calm her racing pulse. He was coming to dinner. Now what was she to do? She turned and hefted the generous portion of antelope in her hands. Good manners dictated that she cook his offering. But what if it came out awful? What if it was too chewy? Or tasteless? Then she remembered what Tanner had said. Cook it like venison.

Feeling a little better, she set the haunch down again, her mind whirling with thoughts. First she must do her hair and freshen up. She climbed back up into the wagon, and it was then that she spied the dried strips of cloth still dangling in broad view.

“Botheration!” she muttered, snatching them down from their conspicuous placement. Why hadn’t she thought to remove them before he showed up?

She was still muttering to herself, whipping the comb through her tangled locks with brutal efficiency, when her father called out to her.

“Abigail? Where are you, girl?”

“Here, Papa. I’ll be out directly.”

She heard his footsteps near the tailgate. “And what is this?”

Nervous about what she had to tell him, Abby contented herself with fastening her hair into a single loose braid tied with a length of green ribbon. She made her way out of the tightly packed wagon.

“It’s a haunch of antelope,” she answered in what she hoped was an appropriately casual tone. “Mr. McKnight’s hunt was successful, and this is our portion.”

She leaped to the ground, then faced him, studying his suspicious expression. “It’s the man’s job,” she added defensively.

“Well,” her father finally replied. “We should all be pleased that he’s so adept at it.”

Abby covered her nervousness by lowering the plank table and propping the leg up. “Yes, we should. In fact I went so far as to invite him to share our dinner with us.”

“You did what?”

“Just as you have frequently done with Reverend Harrison,” she hurried on.

“You cannot begin to compare—”

“They are both men traveling alone. Both in need of a home-cooked meal.”

Their gazes locked in silent battle, his eyes angry, hers determined.

“There is a considerable difference of circumstance, daughter. I had hoped you and the Reverend Harrison—” He broke off, and his heavy brows lowered even farther. “You cannot possibly be envisioning you and this hired hand—”

“We are all children of God,” she said, throwing one of his favorite quotes back at him. “We should not judge, lest we be judged.”

“Yes, but God the Father does not expect his children to behave like fools. Your heavenly Father looks after your spiritual well-being, while your earthly father—me—looks after your physical well-being. And I would hardly consider that sort of man—”

“Just what sort of man
is
he, Father? From everything I have observed, he is polite, well spoken. Well read,” she emphasized. “And a hard worker. Surely adequate enough qualifications for a dinner guest.”

Though she silenced him temporarily with her list of Tanner’s attributes, Abby knew from his sharp scrutiny that his objections were far from assuaged. There was a dangerous quality about Tanner McKnight. She recognized it and so did her father. And while it both frightened and attracted her, it only worried her overprotective father.

Their eyes met and held, and in the silence a quick rush of understanding washed over Abby. Her father’s life was changing too fast for him to deal with. He’d lost his wife and left his teaching position. Then their move. Now it must seem to him that his only child was ready to abandon him as well and find a new life of her own. What would he do then, alone in a strange land?

Her expression softened and she reached to take his hand. But he stepped back with a harrumphing sound. “I’ll suffer him at our fire this one time, Abigail. One time only. Then you will consider your Christian duty toward him sufficiently exercised.”

As he turned and stalked off, Abby gritted her teeth in frustration. Why must he be so pigheaded? Her understanding of her father’s position fled as she recounted all the ways he created his own misery. They hadn’t needed to leave Lebanon. He wouldn’t feel so alone in the world if they were still surrounded by their friends in Missouri. But he’d
had
to go, and still refused to tell her why. If he was depressed and lonely, it was all his own doing.

If only her mother hadn’t died.

That sobering thought squelched her rising anger. It all went back to that. But although Abby would give anything to have her beloved mother back—and to know what had precipitated their sudden flight to Oregon—there nonetheless was a part of her that no longer regretted their move. Though difficult, their weeks on the trail were still an unfolding adventure, bringing something new to learn and experience every day.

And Tanner McKnight was the latest and most exciting part of that adventure.

Tanner presented himself shortly after dusk, freshly washed and in a clean blue chambray shirt, buttoned up to the throat. When he removed his hat and extended a hand to her father, Abby noted the damp tendrils curling at his neck. He’d gone to a lot of trouble, and she appreciated it. But would her father?

Robert grudgingly shook Tanner’s hand, then retreated to his chair and his pipe.

“Sit down. Sit down.” Abby fluttered around nervously, indicating a chair to Tanner. “Dinner is almost ready. I made the antelope. I hope it turns out all right.”

“It smells delicious, Miss Morgan,” Tanner replied.

At such a polite use of her name Abby sent him a grateful smile. The last thing she needed was for him to antagonize her father.

“Well, we’ll soon see.” She shot a speaking look at her father. With Reverend Harrison he’d been swift to boast of Abby’s cooking skills—and needlework and housework as well. But with Tanner he remained unremittingly silent.

“I hope you like corn bread,” she said, beginning to feel awkward.

“Corn bread is one of my favorite dishes.”

At that gallant answer her father cleared his throat. “Where are you from, McKnight?”

Tanner leaned back in his chair and turned his attention on her father. “From … Indiana,” he answered after only the briefest hesitation. “But I hope to make Oregon my home.”

Abby held her breath, hoping her father would relax his stern demeanor just a little. He always acted so suspicious of everyone these days. Only with Dexter did he ever appear trusting. But a quick glance at Tanner indicated that he was not in the least perturbed by her father’s attitude. No doubt he’d expected this cool sort of reception after the men’s two previous meetings. The fact that Tanner would brave her father’s ill humor at all brought a heated glow to her heart. He did it for the pleasure of her company.

“What did you do in Indiana?” Robert asked, drawing out the last word until it almost sounded like a sneer. What in the world was he implying?