Slow Fever (8 page)

Fidelity sniffed elegantly. “That’s a start. If you stay on
the straight and narrow, I’ll see what can be done about removing you from the Cull bin.”

“I’d be grateful, ma’am. I’ll try.”

Kylie could have killed him. Michael knew as well as she that the women had come to investigate his intentions. “Nothing is going on,” she said flatly to the women she’d known since birth.

“Two nights,” Fidelity stated crisply. “One here and one up on the mountain.”

“What are your sources?” Kylie asked and nudged Michael, who had come to stand beside her. He wasn’t providing logical explanations why they’d been together. She glared up at him and blinked, for Michael had never looked so innocent.

“Michael’s black four-wheeler parked beside your white little truck along the path leading up to the mountain. They were there all night, intimately side by side, a rendezvous in the mountains,” Sadie stated haughtily.

“Car trouble?” Kylie managed to provide without much sincerity.

“There’s no need to conceal facts, not from us. We’re only concerned about the unmarried, and maintenance of the married women here in Freedom Valley. Tanner, your brother, said you needed protection. Michael offered. He’s helpful that way, aren’t you, Michael?” Fidelity asked quietly. “Thank you for fixing my radio. It’s very dear to me, a gift from my dear departed Alfonso.”

Her wise blue gaze brushed Kylie’s flushed face. Then Fidelity slowly studied Michael’s expression, the way he stood close and protectively beside Kylie. The way he took her hand and met Fidelity’s gaze evenly. “Yes,” the older woman said quietly, as if she had settled the matter in her mind. “I think we should be going now. It’s clear to me that Michael is only taking care of Kylie because of his love for Anna. Kylie, dear, do put me on your massage list.
Henry at the retirement home says you do wonders with your hands, just like your mother’s herbal teas and ointments used to do. Come along, girls. We’ve got work to do. I’m certain that if Michael ever decides to court a woman, he’d ask for The Rules for Bride Courting. You’ll do that, won’t you, Michael?”

“But he’s a Cull,” Sadie protested hurriedly. “He’s impregnated so many women that—”

“Michael assured me that those were not his babies, and that those women were his friends. I believe him,” Kylie stated firmly. She didn’t know why she believed Michael, but she’d trusted her heart and her instincts all her life. She gripped Michael’s large callused hand tighter when he would have moved away. She would protect him, even if his hackles were rising and he was withdrawing into a protective, cold shield.

“You stand by him, then?” Fidelity pushed.

“I do.”

“You are very much like your mother. The world needs people who are soft and loving and believing. There are people who take advantage of a kind heart, but not Michael. There was a time that Kylie’s father came to me and though he knew he wouldn’t be long for the world, he spoke to me of Michael. Paul spoke as a father fond of a son, smoothing the path for when he was gone. From time to time, good men speak up for their sons and Paul spoke for Michael. Time…that is what this is all about. Come along, girls,” Fidelity stated crisply while Dahlia’s knowing chuckle floated on the autumn air. “Michael, you’ll be very careful with Kylie—I mean with her mother’s quilts, won’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Michael agreed firmly, as if taking another vow.

“Good boy. You may kiss my cheek now—and don’t
worry, Sadie. I’m past the age of conceiving from a kiss, or anything more likely.”

When the women were gone, Michael studied Kylie. Her eyes were bright with anger, sunlight shooting a halo of sparks around her head, the tendrils dancing in the autumn breeze. With the old patchwork quilts strung on the line behind her, she looked sweet and hot and volatile, glaring at him. He wished he could pick her up and twirl her around and listen to her laughter. Yet, he reconsidered, simmering suited her, too. He couldn’t resist teasing her. “You’re blushing. Do you know how fascinating that is?”

“If you ever—” she began a threat that died when Michael’s lips brushed hers.

“I can’t decide whether your eyes now are glittering like blue topaz or sunlight on the clearest blue stream. When they’re wide and clear and blue as the Montana sky, a man could give his soul to have you look at him.”

She stared at him and tried to align the romantic phrasing and Michael’s hard mouth, now curved with humor. “Huh?”

He lifted her chin with his thumb and studied her while her heart stopped and flopped and her blood surged wildly through her trembling body. “That’s it then. For me,” he said before brushing a light kiss over her lips. “What’s next? The sheets?”

What’s next? What’s next?
That night the words ran through Kylie’s mind as she lay alone, tossing in her lonely bed. She held a pillow against her for comfort, then flopped over on it, just as she’d wanted to pin Michael to the earth and kiss him.

As she was drifting off to sleep, she thought she heard her mother’s soft laughter.

The third week of October, Kylie opened Soft Touches. After a hectic week, her massage therapy business had been installed into the large shop at the front of Michael’s 1880s building. With his friends, Tanner—a carpenter—had split the area into a waiting room, a therapy room and a bathroom. For a free massage amid the noise and the rubble, Ollie Liefstrom had painted the big front window with an 1880s-style scrolling bold, Soft Touches. Dorothy Polson donated the blinds from her refurbished beauty shop to add privacy for waiting customers. A temporary loan from Tan
ner and Gwyneth financed the town’s required business license, the massage bench and basic supplies.

The first three days Soft Touches was open, Kylie worked from early morning until evening, and then dragged herself home. That third night, she slowly, achingly got out of her pickup and trudged up the steps. She shoved open the door, entered and then walked back out. “Where’ve you been?” she asked the tall man sprawled on her mother’s front porch swing. “Check with me tomorrow, and I’ll work you into my schedule. I need the deduction from the rent money I owe you.”

She stepped back inside to close the door; Michael’s big workman’s boot prevented the door from closing. He pushed a large paper sack marked Wagon Wheel Café into her hands. He added a small white sack from Eli’s Bakery. While she was dealing with the delicious aroma, he smoothed the tousled curls back from her face and smiled gently down at her. “Tired?”

Michael and good food from Willa’s Wagon Wheel Café and Eli’s pastries were too much even when she wasn’t tired. Kylie nodded and wanted to lean against him, just to let him hold her. “Thanks,” she said and wondered why just looking at him took her breath away. All her tired muscles seemed to tense, and her heart started flip-flopping wildly. “Where have you been? I haven’t seen much of you.”

She’d seen him when the aroma of his slow cooker soup pot beckoned. There always seemed to be an extra sandwich for her and Michael apparently loved morning pastry with his coffee. “Eat ’em before they get old,” he’d said, tossing her one before going back to his work.

“I’m rewiring that old Jenkins house.” Michael had explained little in his lifetime. Yet she sensed that explaining his whereabouts to her was important to him.

“That’s not all you’ve been up to. Winter is coming and people are busy with fix-up work. I heard you do free work at the retirement home. Talk is that with all the free work you do and the way you live, you must have an outside income. Rewiring Macy’s chicken brooder house should have cost more than a few eggs and an occasional chicken dinner. And repairing the Fines’ milking machines wasn’t easy. You could have charged.”

“Hey. Free milk, cheese, buttermilk and eggs. A guy has to eat, and when I want my pick of the cat or dog litters, they’re free,” Michael returned with a shrug. He studied her in that wary, assessing and quiet way. “You’re driving yourself too hard.”

“I like work. It’s what I need now.” She needed to give ease, and thus help herself mend. She’d worked past the allotted schedule with Blanche Loring, who had wrenched her back lifting a bale of hay. The woman’s tight muscles needed relaxing and she’d hugged Kylie gratefully. That hug was enough pay for the extra time.

Michael’s finger prowled through the tendrils around her ears. “Take it easy, Kylie. You can’t solve everything in a few days.”

The sacks crackled in Kylie’s tightening fists. He’d kissed her hungrily, placed his hand upon her breast and a river of emotion swept through her. On one hand, she wanted him in her bed. On the other, she wanted to understand her emotions for him. She wanted to understand why he had kissed her so desperately and so tenderly. Michael acquired few attachments and his touch left little doubt that she appealed to him sensually. His body had been too tight and lean and hot to deny that attraction.
She would not be one of his women.
“You’ve never had a pet that I know of. Your horse is practical, isn’t he? That’s why you have him?”

He nodded and Kylie sensed that Michael’s life had twisted over many dark paths. He wasn’t a man for companionship or warmth, preferring his solitude. He gave little of himself and yet he stood in her mother’s house, offering her food. The chilly autumn wind had whipped his hair, and her fingers ached to smooth the thick, black strands. His jacket collar was turned up and loneliness stirred in the shadows enfolding him. She scanned the hard planes of his face, the shadows around his deep-set eyes. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him tight. “Don’t tell me about where you get your income. I don’t want to know.”

The scars on Michael’s body weren’t ordinary, especially the slash across his forearm. The tiny white lines down his back had been barely recognizable in the light of the campfire, but Kylie remembered her father cutting up Michael’s father’s belt. Her father had been furious then, his uncustomary display of angry frustration frightening her.

Michael recognized her look, those wide blue eyes searching his face; he couldn’t be one of her orphans, dragged in from the cold. He didn’t want Kylie’s sympathy.

He’s lonely, she thought, and missing my mother.
Michael shrugged, still studying her and she didn’t understand the warmth swirling around her. “Get some sleep, dear heart,” he said before brushing a kiss across her lips. The light, electric connection of their mouths dived into her blood and made it zing.
Dear heart,
the tender name her father had given her mother.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she said firmly, and resented the lips that spoke before her brain circled the dangers of Michael within grabbing distance. She resented the hand that shot to his jacket and prevented him from leaving her. When Michael’s dark gaze slowly took in her pale fist and followed it up her arm to her throat and then to her
lips and then to her eyes, Kylie shivered. She uncurled her fingers from his jacket, dug into Eli’s pastries and bit into a raspberry filled bismark. “Come in.”

Michael followed her into the kitchen and when Kylie placed the sacks on the table, he eased her coat from her and removed the second pastry from her mouth, placing it aside. “You’re working too hard. You’ve got circles under your eyes, and you’re not eating right.”

“Same to you. You don’t look any better.” Kylie plopped two plates and silverware onto her mother’s kitchen table where many serious life decisions had been made. “Take off your coat and sit down. I’m running this show. Gwyneth, Tanner’s wife, told me about his little chat with you and the rest of his friends—my friends, who are on my schedule right now and good paying customers. My brother takes his position seriously, but I am capable of making my own decisions. There’s gossip already about you and me—”

Michael sat slowly, unpacking the food from the sack. The lock of his jaw, the stiff set of his shoulders, the methodical unpeeling and folding of the tinfoil covering the dishes spoke of his thoughtful mood. “Does it bother you?”

“Of course not. I know that nothing is happening between us. But sharing the same building, we need to establish basic rules. Do not glare at my men customers.”

He leveled a dark look at her. “Maybe I’ve got a reason.”

“Maybe you don’t—oh, yum! Willa’s shrimp alfredo and salad. Yummy, yummy, yummy.” On impulse, because right then her life was full and good—she had a good start on a business she loved, she had good food to eat, and because she had Michael across the dinner table from her—Kylie leaned over to kiss him. “Thanks.”

“Is that all it takes—food?” he asked warily as she ate. A sensual quiver played around him and he tried not to stare as she licked her lips and closed her eyes in delight. He wanted her eyes open the first time they made love, filling with him….

“Yum,” was all Kylie could say gratefully, looking at him as she ate a sugarcoated donut. With his dark shaggy hair tousled by the wind and a maroon sweater and jeans, he looked delicious. She noted that his jaw was gleaming, as though recently shaven. The morning on the mountain when he was grumpy, his jaw had been dark with stubble, his expression stormy. Either way, she wanted to place her hand on his cheek and soothe whatever ran dark and troubled inside him. “Thanks.”

“Sure. Anytime.” Then he leaned over to lick her bottom lip. He smiled as the jolt shot through her, the need to leap upon him. “You had powdered sugar on your lips. Do you always dive into everything, racing through it, like you just did dinner?”

The underlying question could have been anything, but at the moment, kissing Michael was on Kylie’s mind. The past few relaxed moments were blasted away by the electricity charging through her. “What’s happening, Michael?”

His dark simmering look had frightened her. “Leon didn’t like sexually aggressive women. Do you?” she blurted out and wondered why. She wondered what he would do if she kissed him as she wanted, put her hands on him as she wanted…tore his sweater off as she wanted and his jeans and—but she wouldn’t.

“An active woman is preferred.” Michael continued to study her. “Come here,” he whispered, taking her hand to draw her onto his lap. “Afraid?” he asked when she resisted, perching stiffly on his lap.

“I ache in every muscle possible,” she whispered as he nuzzled her throat, those hard lips warm and open upon her skin. She arched when his big warm hand found and kneaded the knots on her shoulders.

“You’re working too hard.” Michael loved how she fitted his hands, how her body flowed to his stroke. He’d given ease to the women he’d been with, but he’d remained detached, giving only enough for relief. Now, with Kylie, he wondered what it would be like to touch her every day like this, to tend her, to listen to those long, pleasured sighs. He swallowed roughly, unfamiliar with those tender emotions, uncertain and awash in them. He’d kept himself apart for years and the incredible tearing sensation of his heart stunned him.

“Sleepyhead,” he whispered tenderly against her lips. “You’re barely keeping your eyes open. Why don’t you take a shower and go to bed? I’ll do the dishes.”

“I couldn’t—”

“Sure, you can. You can do anything you want.”

“Do you really think so, Michael?” She searched his face to see if he was mocking her.

“I do.” Michael’s tone was just as firm as if he were taking a vow. His dark eyes were soft and warm upon her, just as her father’s gaze had considered her mother.

“Michael?” Kylie gave way to the need to smooth his hair. He held very still beneath her touch. “Why did you buy that building on the square? It’s old like the rest, and you’ve had to repair so much, the old adobe outer walls worn by weather. You’ve got a storage building at your place and you have only a few things in the back room.”

He shrugged again and his expression closed as he looked away. “Poker parties?”

Kylie’s hand smoothed his hair and Michael held oddly still. She considered how this powerful man needed petting
and cuddling and how his beautiful soulful eyes met hers. “Try this. You wanted to preserve the building for its history. If you hadn’t bought it, it would have been demolished for a parking lot. That’s an awful lot of money, Michael, and no one really knows all the good you do, do they? You’re uncomfortable with that—the good in you. Don’t be.”

His mouth firmed as he looked at her. “There are women like you, who believe in good and honor that just isn’t there. Life isn’t always a fairy tale for them.”

“Mmm. Stop trying to be such a tough guy.”

“You never stop, do you? Believing? Dreaming?”

“Nope. I had a rough bump in life, but I believe.” Kylie closed her eyes as Michael’s lips came closer, lightly brushing hers.

The next day, Michael couldn’t force his thoughts from Kylie. He wasn’t pushing her too soon; he would be very careful with her. She was Anna’s daughter and she was basically untouched, uncertain of herself as a woman. She needed time to adjust to her life, to take it back. Michael cursed her ex-husband for that damage.

He cursed the luring scent of oranges and the gentle music coming from the front part of his building. He wondered who was relaxing beneath Kylie’s knowing hands. There was no real reason for him to be here; he had what he needed in his truck. Yet he wanted to be close to her, to hear her voice, to hear that gurgling husky laughter suddenly burst through the shadows like sunshine. She’d laugh if she knew how much care he took to see that she had lunch, making more food than he could eat. Since she’d opened the shop, he’d hurried to Eli’s Bakery. Carrying out a sack filled with raspberry bismarks, Michael ignored the
baker’s broad knowing grin. “I got my wife with an apple pie. When you want the recipe, let me know.”

In the shop, Michael had worried over the arrangement of the pastries, trying for an artful careless look, just to hear Kylie’s delighted morning “Yum.”

He wasn’t a match for emotionally wide-open and trusting Kylie. Around her, his hands trembled, aching to skim over her body, to shape those round breasts, to taste her—he swallowed roughly and shook his head.

The previous night, while her shower ran, Michael had cleaned away the dishes and leashed himself from stepping into the steamy room. Instead, he’d turned on the television and Kylie had padded out into the living room, a towel wrapped around her head. Over her blue flannel pajamas, she wore a pink chenille robe and white socks covered her feet. With damp ringlets escaping the towel on her head, she had looked deliciously fresh and sweet and sexy. The soap and flowers scent she brought into the room had delicately curled around him. Michael’s senses had reacted immediately when she’d yawned and stretched. He had forced his eyes away from the thrust of her unbound breasts beneath the heavy fabric. Due to the odd tightening in his throat, his words had been uneven and hoarse. “Go on up to bed, Kylie.”

He shook his head again. The image of Kylie, scrubbed and soft and ready for bed had circled him all night. He didn’t want to think of her in lace or nothing—creamy freckled silky skin, all those curves a man could lock onto and—

“Michael!” The feminine object of his thoughts peered around the stack of boxes, her hair tied up in a ribbon as blue as her eyes. “I’ve got a free hour. You haven’t had that massage yet and you haven’t seen what I’ve done since
you did the wiring in the rough layout. How about stepping into my parlor?”