Someone Like You (11 page)

“That was our second bottle,” Dahlia said in her softest tones.

All the anxiety drained out of Susannah’s body.

She had never felt so many different emotions in one day. This must be what made a person grow old, for truly she felt as if she had aged ten years since breakfast. She could not believe it, so she asked her aunt, “That was your second bottle?”

Dahlia nodded. “I opened it not long before Vi passed out.”

“Why?”

“Because she drank what was left in the other bottle. If I was going to get any, I had to open a new one.”

Reed leaned over and gathered Violette into his arms. “If you’ll show me to her room, I’ll carry her to bed.”

“This way.” Susannah picked up a candle and led the way. She stood to one side of the door as Reed walked into the room and gingerly placed Violette on her bed.

“Get her out of this dress and into something loose and comfortable so she can breathe. Let her sleep as long as she wants. If she feels bad in the morning, let me know. I can mix up a little seltzer water for her to drink.”

Dahlia, who had trailed them, now opened the wardrobe and crossed to her sister. She held one of Violette’s gowns. “I’ll get her ready for bed,” she said.

Reed, Susannah noticed, was beginning to look a bit uncomfortable, and for good reason. He did appear to be out of place in her aunt’s bedroom.

“I guess I’ll be getting on back,” he said. “Call me if you need me.”

“We will,” Dahlia replied. “Thank you.”

Reed nodded.

Susannah watched him cross the room, but she said nothing. She couldn’t. She was too lost, too deep in thought, too confused to be able to push aside what she had just seen—or what exactly it could mean.

How calm he had been. How professional. How correct. Him. Reed Garrett. The same Reed Garrett who had ridden into their lives a short while ago, a homeless drifter.

Without realizing she was doing it, Susannah followed him, a jumble of questions in her mind. How had he known to take her aunt’s pulse? What was he doing when he’d gently thumped her chest and felt along her neck? How did he know to lift her eyelids and, more important, what to look for when he did?

Reed reached the front door and turned to Susannah. “Go on to bed and get some sleep. Don’t worry about your aunt. She’ll be fine tomorrow. You’ve got my word on it.”

“Who are you?” she asked boldly.

If her words caught him off guard, he did not show it. He was good at hiding his emotions, but for the slightest fraction of a second there was a glimmer of a response in his eyes. It had been there just long enough for Susannah to see it.

“Who are you?” she whispered again. “What are you? What are you hiding?”

“I’m no one you should be afraid of, so rest easy on that score.”

“You’re hiding something. I know you are. You are not what you say you are…what you want us to believe.”

“I am what I said I am.”

“But, Aunt Vi…”

“I am a drifter, a man down on his luck, as I said. I needed work and your aunt was kind enough to give it to me. You are trying to blow things out of proportion. Naturally you’re worried about your aunt. Tomorrow you will feel foolish for asking these questions. Good night.”

Before she could say anything more, he walked out the door.

She watched him tramp down the porch and into the night. Her pump was primed, and Susannah had never been a woman to let a primed pump go to waste. Once she focused on something, she stayed focused. She never left anything undone. Tomorrow she would get her answers. No! She would get them this very night.

Chapter Eleven

Susannah had gotten only as far as the orchard when she saw the orange circle of a cigarillo glowing brightly in the dark. Suddenly it flew through the air in an arc, a scattering of sparks lingering for only a moment.

Reed stepped into her path. “My, my, you must be very curious indeed. Unless I miss my guess, I’d say this is the first time you’ve ever sought out a man’s company in the dark. That sort of thing is a little out of character for you, isn’t it?”

Her heart skidded to a stop, thumped erratically and began beating as if she were running up a hill. The lateness of the night, coupled with the potential intimacy of their being alone together, made her feel terribly nervous. It occurred to her, too, that charging into the night after him was an impulsive act that he would probably see as more panic than poise.

She took a step back. “I…”

He moved closer, out of the darkness into the pale wash of moonlight, the angles of his face etched with shadow and giving him a frightening look. She inhaled deeply and was assaulted by the sweet, familiar smell of peach blossoms mingled with the scent of his body. A man’s warm body. A man breathing heavily.

The scent and sound brought back memories of her childhood, memories of the time before she came to live with her aunts. Sudden panic overtook her. She began to run.

She darted through the trees, feeling the shower of pale, velvet-skinned peach blossoms; they brushed her skin with the texture and softness of a fawn’s nappy nose.

Reed was following her, calling out her name again and again.

When he caught up with her, he grabbed her by the arm. As he spun her to face him, the world about her shattered. She was too surprised to move. Before she knew what was happening, she felt the touch of his lips on hers. The suddenness caused an inadvertent response within her, and she shivered. His hands moved over her back, lifting her to him, fitting her body against his as he began to kiss her neck.

Reality slapped her in the face. It was a cold awakening and she felt an instant surge of anger. She shoved him and when he would not release her, she fought him, swinging her arms, feeling her hands come in contact with his flesh. She pulled one arm free and hit him hard.

She heard him grunt, then exclaim, “What’s the matter with you?”

She threw her head back and closed her eyes, feeling her back pressed against the rough bark of a tree, the feather weight of peach blossoms dropping onto her, their fragrance suddenly sickeningly sweet.

“Look at me.”

She shook her head. She couldn’t. Not now.

He was a man, and long ago she had branded men as the enemy. Yet deep, deep down within her she knew that it wasn’t really this man who was the enemy. The enemy lay within her, a legacy, an inheritance from her mother, her beautiful, honey-voiced mother who had died at the age of twenty-nine in a bordello in New Orleans and left behind a daughter who knew far, far more than any child should.

“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me what it is that you are afraid of.” His voice was whisper soft, his presence, his very nearness frightening, and yet somehow welcome. “Tell me what it is. Tell me what you fear.” His voice was lyrical, as if he treasured each syllable he spoke. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you.”

How could she tell him? How could she make him understand that it wasn’t him she was afraid of? How could she explain that the greatest fear in her life was that she would turn out to be exactly like her mother—her lovely mother, who threw her life away in a whorehouse on Basin Street and gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, a “trick baby”, delivered upstairs in the attic by a backstreet midwife?

Would he understand that she spent the first years of her life growing up with the knowledge that she would one day join the ranks of many scarlet sisters, mother-and-daughter combinations, of which there were a number in all New Orleans brothels, a duo that would bring as high as fifty dollars a night for both of them together?

Susannah turned her head away. Shame seeped into her very soul. No, he would not understand. How could he, when she did not understand herself? How could she expect it to matter to him that her mother was born a lady, refined and educated, or that she had once worn real silk stockings? Presented engraved calling cards at the homes of friends and acquaintances? She hadn’t words to explain that her sweet, sophisticated mother, who always smelled like honeysuckle and roses, had been a whore.

She felt the warmth of his hand as his palm shaped itself over her cheekbone. At the touch of his flesh against hers, she stiffened, and the rest of his words seemed barely audible, their meaning unintelligible to her. He drew his hand back and she stared at it, at that same hand that had mesmerized her when he had tended to Aunt Vi.

Those beautiful hands. She fought the urge to turn her face against them, to kiss the palms, to absorb their strength. She remembered a drawing she had seen of Michelangelo’s sketches. In it the hand of God was stretched out, his forefinger extended to his newly created Adam. She’d known exactly what it meant. By touching only the tip of His finger to His lowly creation He could bring it to fulfillment.

Reed had such hands. If they touched her, could she resist him?

Her mind went blank. She could process no thoughts. There was no apparent avenue of escape. She could only stand there and stare at him, stupidly feeling herself at the mercy of those hands. Only her body told her just how very frightened of him she was. She saw her own hands come up, as if they would cover her face. She closed her eyes and prayed he would disappear.

She heard him chuckle. Then he said, “I am a man of infinite patience.”

His nearness made her throat feel strangely tight. She opened her eyes and saw the white of his smile.

“There,” he said, “that’s better.”

“Better for you, perhaps.”

“You are painfully shy around men, aren’t you?”

Painfully shy around men? Her?
She wanted to throw back her head and howl. Should she tell him how every part of the male body looked—
every
single part? How foolish he was. How gullible. She almost laughed out loud

Still, she thought,
Miss
Eleanore Savannah had protected her daughter enough that she was still a virgin when her great-aunts had come swooping into Madame Broussard’s Parisian Club, like two avenging angels swathed in gray bombazine. And Reed might actually be impressed to learn that even now, sixteen years after Vi and Dahlia had brought her back to live with them in Texas, she was still a virgin: pure of body…if not of mind.

“Tell me something,” he asked.

“What?”

“Why did you follow me?”

She did not answer.

He reached out a long, well-shaped hand to cup her chin, drawing her face farther into the soft moonlight. “Infinite patience, remember?”

She remembered. “I wanted to know who you are…who you really are.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you aren’t just a drifter. There is more to you than meets the eye. You have an air of refinement about you, and it’s obvious that you are educated. I cannot help wondering why such a man would choose the life of a drifter, a ranch hand, when he has obviously been accustomed to so much more.

“I watched you with my aunt tonight. You have done that sort of thing before. You were too comfortable, too knowledgeable, too confident. No mere drifter would have been so practiced, so skillful. Tell me. Are you a doctor?”

He did not answer.

“You are not the only one with infinite patience.”

He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. “There was a time in my life when I wanted to be a doctor. I even went so far as to study medicine for a year in Edinburgh.”

It was a good attempt and a valid explanation, but she did not buy every slice of that pie. She would bet her best Sunday bonnet
and
her paisley shawl that this man was hiding something. But he had so disturbed her emotions that she knew she’d best let it ride for now. She was about to head back to the house when he changed the tone of things.

“I must say that I’ve never encountered anyone as charming as your Aunt Violette and her fondness for port.”

Susannah could not help smiling at that. “She does love her port.”

“She has earned the right.”

“Yes, she has.”

“I think that might apply to you as well.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do. I think you know exactly what I mean, but you are afraid to admit it.”

Something twisted in her heart, a subtle wrenching. It hit her that she was experiencing a feeling she had never felt before, a feeling she warily identified as desire, the one thing she had been terrified of all her life—terrified that it ultimately would cause her pain. How strange that when desire did come, it was not terrifying, nor did it fill her with shame or pain.

Instead, it filled her with longing, and the knowledge of just how truly empty her life had been.

Odd. How could something be so new and yet so familiar? It was as if her senses had suddenly come to life, for she was acutely aware of the nearness of him, of the scent of his flesh, even of the texture of the softly troweled earth beneath her feet, the fragrance of warm air that floated over her, the rhythm of her beating heart. She wanted to turn away from him, to run as fast as her legs would carry her back to the house, to the safety of her room, but something stopped her.

“What would you do, I wonder, if I touched you?” he asked. “If I drew my finger down the side of your face, or traced the line of your neck where it forms the curve of your shoulder? How would you react if I put my arms around you, as I have thought about doing so often these many weeks? Would you slap my face? Or would you turn and run away?”

“And if I did neither—what would you do?”

“I would keep on touching you,” he said, “touching you and touching you, until I had to know more.”

“More?”

“Much more. I have thought of little else since coming here.”

“Tell me,” she dared to whisper.

“The way your body would fit itself against mine if I took you in my arms like this. The way your breath would feel against my skin when I kissed your face as I am doing now. The feel of your mouth opening under mine. The sound I knew you would make when you kissed me back.”

His lips touched the curve of her cheek, petal light. Her breath caught in her throat, overpowered by the strength of the heartbeat that constricted her chest and made her temples ache. The mouth that had been searching her face and whispering such mesmerizing words closed over hers. Knowledgeable as she was, she was completely unprepared for the flush of feeling that seemed to be everywhere at once, rushing even to the extremities of her body.

She suddenly understood that all her knowledge, taken from observation, was a world away from real knowledge based on action and feeling. How clean he smelled, how soft was his hair skimming along the side of her face, how warm those lips that moved over hers with such a gentle, searching pressure that left her mouth tingling, her heart pounding with excitement, her mind screaming
more, more, more!

Afraid she would fall, she gripped his shoulders, wondering if he could feel the way her body trembled.

“I think we have found a far better way of communicating, and as difficult as it is to stop, I think this could be continued in a more comfortable place.”

A shudder passed over her, and she stared at him through a thick haze of longing, but the words he had spoken began to penetrate the fuzziness in her brain.
Continued in a more comfortable place…

Visions of naked bodies entwined upon a bed came rushing back. That was reality, not this heady feeling. Well she knew that no matter how ardent, how heated, or how passionately it was expressed, desire did not last.

But shame did.

She shoved him, and he stumbled back far enough for her to dart beneath his outstretched arm. A split second later she was again rushing between the peach trees. She dashed up the path toward the house, leaving nothing behind save the man with a look of regret etched on his face and the peach blossoms that fell like snowflakes onto the ground.

With a curse, Reed brought his forehead to rest on the tree trunk. Later, when he had regained his composure, he took out his knife. Moved by thwarted desire, he carved a heart and then her initials into that tree.

At that moment he would never have guessed that the next afternoon she would come seeking the very spot where they had caressed, would stand beneath the tree’s knotted boughs and kiss the heart and the initials she found there.