Schulze, Dallas (13 page)

“Why? Someone else was raising the two children you already had.”
She was pleased to see the impact of her words in his eyes.

The room was filled with other diners. The sounds of their voices
and the clink of silver against china lapped against the sudden silence that
fell between Bishop and Lila.

“That was a mistake,” Bishop said, his voice low and grating.

“A mistake?” Lila widened her eyes and gave him a patently false
smile. “And now you’ve been able to use me to rectify that mistake. Isn’t that
nice?”

Without giving him a chance to reply, she pushed her chair back
from the table and rose. Her intention was to sweep out of the dining room and
leave Bishop sitting alone, not a genteel action but a thoroughly satisfying
one. But his fingers clamped around her wrist before she could take so much as
a step.

“Sit down.” Bishop spoke quietly but there was an undercurrent of
pure steel in his tone.

Lila tilted her chin and looked down her nose at him. “I’d prefer
to leave.”

“Sit. Down.” The two words were separate and distinct. His eyes
were clear blue and hard as ice.

Lila debated her options. She was aware of the other diners
casting them curious glances. Though they hadn’t raised their voices, it must
have been obvious that there was more than a simple conversation going on
between them. She could still pull away from Bishop and walk out. Surely he
wouldn’t risk causing a scene by trying to stop her. As if in answer to her
thoughts, Bishop’s fingers tightened subtly around her wrist.

“Sit down, Lila,” he said almost gently. “Now.”

She sat.

He should have let her go, Bishop thought as he released her wrist
and sat back in his chair. And he would have, except he couldn’t shake the feeling
that he owed her an explanation. Obviously, Lila agreed.

“I didn’t plan on taking the children with us,” he said.

“Then perhaps you shouldn’t have bought them tickets for the
train,” Lila suggested with sweet sarcasm.

Bishop ground his teeth together and grabbed for his temper. Never
in his life had he known anyone with the ability to make him so angry with so
little effort.

“I went to see them today to tell them that I’d be sending for
them in a few months.”

“When did you plan to tell me about them? When they arrived on the
doorstep?”

“I would have told you before then.”

“The way you told me about them before you brought them here this
morning?” Lila’s huff of disbelief came perilously close to being an unladylike
snort.

“I didn’t have a chance to tell you this morning.” Bishop thrust
his fingers through his hair. Drawing a deep breath, he spoke in a tone of
strained reason. “I know this came as a shock but I couldn’t leave them there.”

“Why not?”

Why not?
Bishop stared at her. It was a reasonable question but that
didn’t make it any easier to answer. How was he supposed to explain what he’d
felt when he’d heard Gavin say that his father didn’t want them, seen the weary
acceptance in the boy’s eyes?

“They were unhappy,” he said simply.

Lila stared at him. What was she supposed to say now? That he
should have left the children with their grandparents anyway? That she didn’t
care if they were unhappy as long as she didn’t have to deal with them? Feeling
suddenly very tired, she sighed. “I hope they’re not poor travelers.”

***

She had assumed that the children would make the long, arduous
journey even more difficult, but that expectation was not met. They endured the
confinement and boredom with more grace than she could have imagined possible.
Considering the way their lives had been turned upside down, Lila would not
have been at all surprised if they had been fussy and ill-tempered. Heaven
knows, she was feeling more than a little cranky about the abrupt changes in
her own life. But Gavin and Angel showed no sign of missing their grandparents
and the home they’d had with them, which gave credence to Bishop’s statement
that they had not been happy there.

Though the idea of being a stepmother terrified Lila, it turned
out, at least in the beginning, to be not nearly so difficult as she’d
expected. The children were remarkably self-sufficient. Gavin, in particular,
seemed old for his age. He appeared to expect nothing from the adults around
him, either for himself or for his sister. And, from the way Angel turned to
him for companionship, it seemed she shared his lack of expectations.

But there was an edge of sullen resentment in Gavin’s attitude
that was lacking in his little sister. Angel seemed to live up to her name.
Lila had never met a more sunny-tempered child. When they first boarded the
train, Angel settled into her seat and pressed her face to the window to watch
the hustle and bustle of the station. Though Gavin pretended indifference, Lila
noticed that he was not completely immune to the excitement.

For a while after leaving St. Louis, the children were content to
watch the passing countryside. Lila divided her attention between them and the
book she had open in her lap. Susan had given her the book— a novel detailing
the highly improbable adventures of a young woman who seemed to have more hair
than wit, in Lila’s opinion. Not that she had the right to throw stones in that
regard, she admitted with an inaudible sigh. Certainly her own judgment had not
been above reproach in recent months.

She stole a quick glance at Bishop. He was looking out the window
at the farmland they were passing through. Seeing his attention elsewhere, Lila
took the opportunity to study him. He really was a remarkably attractive man.
His thick black hair was neatly combed and worn just long enough to brush the
collar of his plain black coat. His features were even, handsome by any
standards. The heavy black mustache gave him an air of danger that was
undeniably appealing, and the sharp, vivid blue of his eyes added the final, lethal
touch.

She certainly wasn’t the only woman to find him attractive. More
than one feminine glance had been cast his way as they made their way through
the station. She couldn’t deny feeling a certain satisfaction, maybe even a
touch of possessiveness, that he was walking next to her.

“Something wrong?” Bishop’s question startled Lila into a
realization that she’d been caught blatantly staring at him. She cursed her
fair skin as she felt color run up under it. She must look like a guilty
schoolgirl, caught mooning over a handsome tutor.

Lifting her chin, she scrambled for something intelligent to say.
“I was just thinking that Gavin looks very like you.”

Gavin’s head snapped around, his eyes startled. His gaze shot from
her to his father. Lila thought she read something that might have been
pleasure in his expression, but it was gone so quickly she couldn’t be sure.
His eyes chilled and he looked suddenly older and harder than seemed possible
for a boy his age.

“Grandmother always said that blood would tell, especially if it
was bad,” he said, his calm tone holding a bitter edge that made Lila catch her
breath in shock.

Bishop’s face was an emotionless mask as he met his son’s look.
The muscle that ticked in his jaw was the only sign that he’d understood Gavin’s
meaning. They stared at each other for the space of several heartbeats,
involved in some silent, masculine duel that transcended age and relationship.
In that moment, the resemblance between them was striking. From the color of
their hair, to the solid strength of their jaws, to the ice blue of their eyes,
it was like looking at daguerreotypes of the same person, man and boy. It was
Angel who broke the tense exchange.

“I think Gavin and Papa are very pretty,” she said, giving them
both a sunny smile.

“Pretty?” Bishop repeated, looking less than flattered.

“Boys can’t be pretty,” Gavin told his little sister firmly. Lila
was amused to see that he was blushing and suddenly looked very much like a
twelve-year-old boy.

“You’re pretty,” Angel repeated firmly, showing a stubborn streak
beneath the soft blue eyes and pale-gold curls. “So’s Papa.”

Gavin and Bishop exchanged looks. There was no challenge this
time, only mutual dismay.

“There’s no sense in arguing with her when she takes that tone,”
Gavin said, sounding disgusted. “It’ll just make her say it more.”

Lila smiled. Whatever the conflict between father and son, at
least they agreed on something.

***

Afterward, Lila remembered the trip as being one long, dusty blur.
She tried, on several occasions, to engage Bishop in conversation, but, though
he was polite, he was not particularly communicative. She managed to pry out of
him the fact that he was the sheriff in Paris but not much else. The news that
he was in law enforcement filled Lila with mixed emotions. On the one hand, it
was certainly a respectable calling. On the other, it seemed a somewhat
uncertain profession. And wasn’t there a certain amount of danger inherent in
it?

The thought made her suddenly very aware of her dependence on him.
Not only hers but the children’s. If something happened to Bishop, she could
always turn to Douglas. Despite the distance that had been between them when
she left, she knew he would always be there if she needed him. What about Gavin
and Angel?

Lila felt her heart sink at the realization that they were now her
responsibility. As their stepmother, it would be up to her to see that they
were cared for, to raise them—alone, if something should happen to Bishop. The
thought was overwhelming.

The children occupied the seats opposite her and Bishop. Outside,
all was darkness. Inside the coach, lanterns had been lit. They cast a thin
light over the passengers. Angel was stretched out across two seats, her head
in her brother’s lap, a battered rag doll clutched in one arm. She looked like
her namesake, her sweetly rounded face flushed with sleep, her lashes creating
shadowy crescents on her cheeks. Gavin slept also, one arm in his lap, the
other flung across his sister. In sleep the wariness that usually marked his
expression disappeared, leaving him looking very young and very vulnerable.

Lila tried to imagine herself raising the two of them alone, but
her imagination boggled. And it wouldn’t be just Gavin and Angel, she thought,
remembering the child she carried. In a few months she’d have a brand-new baby
to care for, someone smaller and even more dependent than Angel.

She touched her fingers to her still-flat stomach, trying to
imagine the child inside her. Would it be a boy or a girl? Would it have red
hair or black? Her green eyes or Bishop’s blue? Other than the disruption it
had created in her life, Lila hadn’t given much thought to the child she
carried. In some odd way, it hadn’t seemed quite real to her. She’d been too
busy worrying about other things to think of the child as anything more than an
enormous complication. But looking at the sleeping children, she was suddenly
aware of the life she carried as something apart from both herself and Bishop.
Feeling someone watching her, Lila turned her head and met Bishop’s eyes.

He’d been watching her for several minutes, watching the
expressions flicker across her face in the thin light from the lamps, wondering
what she was thinking. When she set her hand against her stomach, he’d realized
that she was thinking about the child she carried—his child. The thought filled
him with a restless hunger. He wanted to see the changes his child had wrought
with her body. If he set his hand over hers, would he feel a new curve to her
stomach? Were her breasts fuller now? More sensitive?

Those were the thoughts passing through his head when Lila looked
up and saw him watching her. She was startled by the raw hunger in his gaze.
Since he’d seemed in no hurry to consummate their marriage, she’d assumed that
whatever desire he’d felt for her three months ago was gone. But from the way
he was looking at her now, she couldn’t have been more wrong. The depth of
hunger in his eyes was almost frightening. Even more frightening was the echo
of that same hunger within herself. She had only to look at him to remember
what it had felt like to lie in his arms, to feel him kissing her, touching
her, loving her.

Lila wrenched her gaze away from his, aware that she was breathing
too quickly. It was wrong to feel the way that she did. Wrong to feel this desire
for a man she didn’t love. Married or not, without at least affection between
them, what she felt could only be called lust. And wasn’t it lust that had
gotten her into this situation in the first place?

Bishop thought he saw an echo of his own hunger in Lila’s eyes,
but then her expression stiffened and she looked away. He let his own gaze
linger on the smooth curve of her cheek, the determined thrust of her chin. Her
hair seemed to catch and hold the light, glowing as if with its own inner fire.
He wanted to reach out and tug loose the pins that held it, warm his hands in
the silken fire of it.

He’d almost certainly draw back a bloody stub if he tried, he
thought with a quick stab of black humor. She’d made it clear that she was in
no hurry to become his wife in fact as well as in name. Last night she’d slept
in the same room with Angel, leaving him to bunk with Gavin.