Rocky Mountain Man (Historical) (13 page)

“Oops.” Betsy resembled a snowbank more than a fancy town lady, but the shrug of her slim shoulders sent an avalanche of ice from her face and neck, revealing her delicate bobbin of a chin.

Oops? What kind of an answer was that? “You could have killed yourself!”

“Well, not
killed,
but perhaps a little frostbite on my nose, anyway!”

She didn't look the least bit repentant. “Well, that didn't solve anything. You open the door, if you will, and I'll go outside—”

“You're not going outside!” She had no common sense. It only went to show she was just as he figured she'd be—a pampered, sheltered princess—and it made him even madder because he wanted her to be different—and couldn't face it if she was it.

She needed someone to take care of her; her old crone of a grandmother and her ass of a brother
weren't here to do it, and he hated to be stuck with the job.

He didn't want a woman. He didn't want to feel hot and hungry with need every time he was around her. “What are you gonna do? Carry in one stick of wood at a time?”

“No, I mean, why did you say it like that? As if I weren't perfectly capable of carrying more than that?”

“Because look at you!” He couldn't stand the way she stood there so serenely, not understanding at all. “You'll freeze to death, and then I'll have to explain how I let a little woman like you go out into the blizzard and freeze to death. Believe me, your family isn't going to be too kind if I let that happen.”

“My family. They can be difficult, but I love 'em.” She sighed, blowing at a spiraling strand of hair that had frozen to her nose…and remained. Ice crackled as she tried to blink her eyelashes.

“Hold still.” He took her by the shoulder and used his sleeve cuffs, as ice-driven as they were, to brush the snow frozen to her lashes and eyebrows. To rub away the layer disguising her face.

It was strange, Betsy thought, to watch him go from yelling barbarian to gentle man. For the moment he was tame, and she watched him through her lashes, not daring to move, feeling the hard, possessive grip on her shoulder—and the answering curl in her heart.

He was lost in the dark, hardly more than a shadow, but she could feel every inch of him as if she saw him. Felt him with the awareness of one soul mate recognizing its other.

How often does a gift like this come along?
Her
throat closed up tight and she struggled for breath, but he kept stroking the fraying cuff on his sleeve—she'd have to remember to mend that—over the bridge of her nose, rubbing as if to scrape away every particle of snow.

She'd clamped her teeth together to keep them from chattering and a knot of cold cinched round her middle and yet she was warming, melting like ice in the sun, and it was his doing. The air in the cabin was slowly warming, but their breaths rose in foggy clouds.

A powerful heat seemed to flow from his hand on her shoulder straight into her spirit, into the deepest part of her. How was that possible?

She watched in fascination as an entirely new Duncan, one neither beast nor savage nor fierce mountain man, quirked the corner of his mouth into a real smile. “That's a freckle. I guess that isn't gonna come off.”

She fell—just like that. Between one breath and the other, between one beat of her heart and the next. A love so strong surged through her, more silent than the blizzard that had blustered through the cabin, but tenfold more powerful. She saw him in the darkness—the real Duncan Hennessey—a tender soul who nudged her to his snowy chest, so wide and strong, and enfolded her against him.

Her cheek lay on his sternum and beneath it the fast pulse of his heart. Too fast for a man not affected. For a man not in love.

She knew, for it matched the rapid flutter of her own.

He looked down at her, meeting her gaze, and it was as if he'd penetrated her, although it made no sense, did
it? She felt the connection and it was as if they were lovers, joined in that rare, amazing intimacy, and her heart fell wide open. Oh, why do I love him so much?

He cleared his throat and she could feel the rough edges of his emotions surging through her as he cupped her face in his broad palm. “I don't want you going out into the storm. Do you understand?”

She heard what he didn't say, knew it with certainty as if his thoughts had somehow entered her mind, too. What would he do if she became blown off course and lost in the forest?

Pain worse than he'd ever known coursed through him and he felt ten feet tall, ready to tear the world apart if he had to, to keep her safe. He didn't want her cold or lost or afraid. He didn't want her struggling against an impossible wind.

He wanted to keep her warm and safe forever.

Then it happened, the most amazing thing of all. He bent to her, as the inches separating them shrank and her pulse fluttered with his. Her breath caught at the same exact moment. Neither blinked. Neither broke their gazes.

Already as if joined, it was no surprise when his mouth captured hers in a brief, thrilling taste. The caress of his rougher, firmer lips fitting over hers and gently sucked.

On a sigh, she surrendered, parting her lips for a deeper kiss, to give him anything he wanted because she was already his. But he didn't invade with his tongue and he didn't take what she was offering.

Instead he kissed her again, tenderly, dragging it out as if he could not stand for it to end. Then he pulled
away, kissed the tip of her nose and held her as if she were the most precious thing in the world to him.

Because she was.

Duncan held her until she stopped trembling, from cold or passion, it didn't matter. The fire was flickering down, the cabin was chilly, and he could not seem to let her go.

In his entire life he'd never felt like this, as if his heart were on the outside of his chest instead of inside. Exposed. Vulnerable. Maybe, for this one moment in the dark, it was all right to taste her kiss one more time.

And to treasure the knowledge that kissing her was sweeter than morning dew on roses, than dawn on the craggy peaks of the Rockies, than any single thing he'd ever known before.

Or ever would again.

E
ven hours later, the kiss remained an unspoken tension between them. Not mentioned, but felt. An invisible cloud of smoke that seemed to choke the air and make Duncan seem distant, when he was only on the other side of the kitchen stove.

The wood he'd brought in was nearly gone to feed the greedy fire, and the main room had proved impossible to reheat in the rapidly dropping temperatures as evening came. They'd retreated to the kitchen where, with the door closed, the potbellied stove could burn more efficiently, but it didn't seem to be driving out the cold.

In fact the chill seemed to creep like a thousand cold, black hairy spiders through the minute cracks in the solid wood floors and beneath the bear fur blanket. And under her petticoats to bite her skin.

If she were this cold, then how frozen must Duncan feel? He'd braved the vicious winds and lethal temperatures to bring in the wood that was by now almost gone. And because he'd refused to say a word to her
other than “Stay by the stove, don't you move!” it was hard to know how he was truly doing. Although the way he sat with jaw clamped and trembling beneath his fur seemed pretty clear.

He was colder than she was, and soon he would have to face that wind again.

The fierce set of his face told her she should not volunteer to go out into the storm again. He was not in a good mood.

No, that was an understatement. Duncan exuded such a powerful rage that one glare could send a pair of grizzlies running in the other direction.

That's how he looked at her—the woman he'd deliberately kissed. The tingling thrill of it remained on her lips like a fiery brand. Never had she been kissed like that. And how did it affect him? It made him glare at her with distaste and anger.

It's a good thing I've kept my real feelings to myself.
She felt shame roll through her and she stared at the shadowed wall, the chinking stripe between the logs was perfect—she turned her attention to that instead of on the man a few scant feet away. Maybe she could forget the sinking disappointment weighing her down and the shame that she'd let him so easily kiss her when it wasn't about love. It wasn't out of affection. When it was something he regretted an instant later.

She rubbed her face with her hands, as if she could rub away the tears building behind her eyes. Her throat ached and she was glad he refused to speak with her for the only reason that the emotion aching in her throat would give her away. She was in love with him. And
he wasn't in love with her. He didn't even like her. In fact, he seemed to detest her even more that she'd allowed that kiss.

Her mother's scolding echoed in her head, words she'd heard a thousand times before while growing up.
Give a man a reason to disrespect you, and he will. A decent man will be disgusted by a forward woman.

Apparently, Duncan was a very decent man because he refused to look at her or even in her direction. And his sneer…

Her stomach tumbled and shame filled the void where it used to be. She was miserable as she wrapped her arms around her knees and shivered, growing ever colder beneath the thick, flannel-lined fur. Did he think she'd been hoping for a kiss? For more? That she was the kind of woman who gave her affections easily, as if they were nothing?

Why was his opinion of her so deeply important? Because his kiss burned on her mouth as powerful as if it hadn't been three long hours ago? She let her head roll forward and rested her forehead against her knees. If she closed her eyes she could still feel the intoxicating caress of his surprisingly gentle mouth on hers and the surge of his tough tenderness that rolled from him into her.

So much tenderness. She sighed, wanting and wishing for a second kiss just like it. To close her eyes, surrender and know true love again.

Except it wasn't true love for him.

She felt him move before the rustling sounds and the groan of pain told her he'd stood. Awareness sparked through her like sunlight through a creek and nothing
could stop it, nothing could dim it. Not even her will as she tried to still her heart. Silence her feelings. She told herself over and over again, He doesn't want you, Bets, not that way, but there was no other way she would be with a man.

The hinges of the old potbellied cookstove groaned and the flames flared, licking dangerously around the top edges of the door, as if trying to escape. She lifted her face and the blast of heat tightened the skin on her cheeks, and she welcomed it. Her face felt hot, but the rest of her shivered.

“There.” Duncan broke the silence between them after he'd used the last of the wood, filling the stove full. He brushed the bark from his sleeves, lumbering away from her.

He stopped at the door to jam one arm into his fur coat. “Stay by the fire until I return. I don't want you near the door. I won't be able to see. You understand?”

It wasn't his tone, which was brusque, but the harsh glaze to his black eyes that warned her his temper was on a short wick. So she nodded, not trusting her voice, shuttering her heart so he couldn't see the truth.
Why do I love him so hard it hurts?

There was no answer as the wind and dark stole him from her sight.

She tried to imagine what Mama would think of him. Lucille Gable would take one look around this dark cabin, give Duncan a doubtful arch of her left brow and say, “You could do much, much better than this.” For it had been something her mother had said numerous times before.

No one—not even Charlie—had been good enough
for Lucille's only daughter.
Why not that nice banker? He's a widower and there's no one more respected in the county.

That was something Mama liked to say, too.

Betsy felt the cold blast of arctic fury as the door slammed open, the sounds of Duncan struggling to dump wood on the floor lost in the deafening noise. Then suddenly the driving ice bits fell, the air cleared and there was only the sweep of inches-thick snow settling to rest on the floorboards and on the armful of wood tossed out of the way of the door.

Somewhere in the dark reaches of the far room, a musical bong counted off the hours, a dulcet soothing chime that surprised her. Duncan seemed the type that would have an abrasive, booming clang. Not something so musical it made her yearn for her piano back home.

It could have been the first strains of a Brahms or Bach concerto—but the bells silenced at the second chord. It wasn't anywhere near two o'clock. The wind raged like a snarling beast outside, ever louder and harder than before.

It had to be noon. What she should be is back home by now and arriving at her mother's house, no one the wiser for her quick jaunt up into the mountains. This dang storm! It was the only reason she wasn't driving Morris up her family's long curving drive and into the shade of the magnolias.

Sundays at her mother's was a big event. Her brothers would already be there. Betsy closed her eyes and knew that at this exact moment, because Mama lived on a rigid schedule, that she would be in the kitchen, bustling
around, ordering Anya the maid to hurry with the pie crust.

About this time Betsy would walk through the doors of her childhood home, into all the warm memories of her life growing up. Upon seeing her, Mama would drop whatever she'd been preparing, wipe her fingers on her apron swathed around her fashionably plump waist and march like a general across the sunny kitchen.

“Oh, it's my Bets, come home. It's about time! You're late, as always.” Mama would wrap her in a wonderful hug, scolding even as she pressed a kiss to Betsy's cheek. “Come, tell me all about it and peel the potatoes for me.”

The wisps of memory tore apart as the door banged open, more snow and wood and wind exploded through the dark cavern of the door and then as suddenly closed. Alone in the impossibly colder room, Betsy's stomach rumbled. It was early, but there was no better way to warm up than to eat some nice hot food. Duncan told her not to move, but that was because he wanted her to stay out of his way.

Maybe once he got a nice steaming cup of coffee—no, she'd best make him some soothing tea. If she got to work now, she'd have something hot for him when he returned, since he was seven times more headstrong than her mother and meaner than a wounded bear by insisting he'd be the one to risk the storm.

Surely it couldn't last much longer. Usually, back home on the plains, a mere twenty-two miles away, the more violent the storm, the shorter its duration. Maybe by the time she'd washed and wiped their supper
dishes, she'd be able to head home. Although what about the buggy? There was no way those wheels could work in any real depth of snow.

She filled the teakettle and set it on the stove to heat. Perhaps she'd simply ride Morris barebacked home. Not that she knew how to ride on a horse—Mama was adamantly against anything that involved a female parting her thighs in any way.

But surely Morris would be accommodating, he was such a sweet old fellow. She couldn't imagine him objecting since he truly hated traveling up the mountain now that they'd been attacked. Likely as not, he'd be ecstatic to be heading home.

The door swung open and the driving gale pierced through her layers of cotton and muslin as if they weren't there. As if she were standing naked in the kitchen. A chill crawled inside her, curled up and took root in her abdomen. Teeth chattering, she held out her hands but could not feel the stove's heat.

She saw in the weak flicker of the single lantern's light Duncan's furious face and his mouth growling words she could not hear over the blizzard. He pointed one fur-gloved hand at her place where the blanket lay abandoned and spit out an obvious curse word. The slam of the door made the wild storm seem meek.

He's mad.
It was hardly a new concern. He'd been angry and cursing since the day she'd met him, so what did it matter now?

When he returned, he could shout all he wanted. She hardly cared. She was hungry and she was going to eat. And, with any luck, get enough food inside him to warm him up, since he was cold on her behalf. She was
not the wisest woman to care so much, but she'd always placed more importance on heart than intelligence.

By the time he'd fought the door closed for a final time, she had beans heating in the tiny oven, the tea steeping and the sandwiches warming on the stovetop, along with the jars of pickles, relish and mustard that were trying to freeze. Wrapped in a damp cloth, it took no time at all for the bottoms of the jars to warm. And as Duncan shook off the layers of ice and crackling snow from his wraps, she deftly popped open the lids and set them aside to hand him a steaming tin cup.

The cup looked miniature cradled in his huge hands. Hands scarred and rough. Hands that looked capable of great violence and great strength.

And incredible tenderness. Betsy swallowed, trying to will away a rising desire she couldn't give in to. It would only lead to heartbreak. See how he wasn't even looking at her? He didn't thank her. Somehow he was grimacing at her while he was slurping down the hot tea, certainly no easy accomplishment.

And here she was hoping…for what? She turned away before he could see the blush on her face, hot and scalding even in the frigid air. Her breath rose in great foggy clouds as she flipped the sandwich over, checked to make sure the meat was warm and no longer partly frozen, and then, satisfied, slipped several slices of tomatoes between the meat and the bread and handed him a plate piled high.

He crooked one brow, as if in a silent question, but did not speak. He did not look at her. He seemed more a part of the shadows and the storm. As if irrevocably lost. He retreated and the darkness seemed to thicken
as it did in the desolate hours after midnight until she could not discern him at all.

Lonesome in the light of a single flame, Betsy turned the wick higher but the lantern did not shine more brightly. The blackness seemed to devour it until there was only the faintest of golden light struggling to burn.

His voice, when he spoke, sounded as merciless as a snarling wolf. “I'm not fooled.”

“Fooled?” The man was harder to understand than if he were speaking a completely different language. He might as well be speaking in his ancestor's language. She had no notion, no notion at all, what he meant.

She spooned the steaming beans from the crock into a chipped bowl. “Duncan, you're going to have to explain. I'm too tired, cold and starving to try to figure out your meaning.”

“I suppose the helpless, can't-understand-anything act works with other men.”

“What other men? You mean, my laundry customers?”

“Customers? Is that what you call them?”

The booming insinuation in his voice made it sound as if…as if… Fury snapped her to attention, searching for any sign of him in the nearly hopeless dark. “Why do you say it like that? As if I'm not a proper businesswoman making a living laundering shirts!”

“Well, I wasn't talking about that…not exactly.” He jerked the bowl from her hands, as if he stood directly before her.

She could not see him, only feel the cold radiating off him. Not only the ice from the storm but that which was his heart. It was a shocking thing, to feel something
so barren. Sympathy welled up in her so fiercely, she wanted to wrap her arms tight around him and hold him until he'd thawed, until he was no longer bereft.

And yet she knew he would not want that from her. He did not want her. Already there was the faintest whisper of a footstep far in the corner of the room, where the blackness was deepest.

Aching for him without knowing why, she filled a bowl for herself. Cupped her hands around the warm stoneware and, stomach growling, eased to the floor where her blanket lay crumpled, no defense against the creeping cold.

“I mean, a woman like you. Of a certain age.” His accusation came flat, emotionless and cruel. “Your laundry business must be a good way to meet eligible bachelors. Widowers. Men you could marry.”