Tallchief for Keeps (6 page)

“How did Alek get the earring, Elspeth? The last I remember, you were wearing it when you took off for Scotland.” A methodical thinker and well paid for it, Calum began laying out the facts.

“You’re not yourself. I don’t like it.” Duncan’s statement was
blunt, demanding an answer.

Birk glanced at her studio. “You’re weaving night and day, Elspeth. You’ve got circles under your eyes. You always weave when you’re upset. You almost killed that bread dough. What’s wrong?”

“I think I’ll have a little talk with Alek.” Duncan glanced meaningfully at his two brothers.

“I am weaving more than usual because I want to complete my orders before I start with the gallery. Duncan the defender…you will not,” Elspeth tossed at him.

“Aye, I will,” he returned doggedly. When a Tallchief used the word
aye,
it was a pledge Calum dropped a tidbit that didn’t ease her stormy mood. “Alek bought the old newspaper office. He’s planning to put the
Sentinel
back in business.”

Birk stepped into the battle. “I’m lending him some power tools. He’s just bought the old Potts place—”

“He didn’t!” Elspeth held her breath.
“The Potts place? Next door?”

A contractor by trade, Birk nodded. “It needs work from foundation to roof. Alek said he’s got nothing but time. Says after all he’s seen torn apart, he wants to rebuild something.”

“He’s a busy little boy, isn’t he? He’ll have to pick somewhere else.” Elspeth regretted the bite to her tone. She glanced out the window to the old house, overgrown with trees and shrubs. She quickly poured a bracing cup of tea to settle her nerves. At the moment, she felt as if she could weave a road straight up to Tallchief summit and back down again. She took a sip, disliking the unsteady emotions caused by the mere mention of Alek Petrovna.

“You’ll be neighbors,” Duncan stated as though willing to set up a fortress to keep Elspeth safe.

“I’ll talk to him.” Calum, married to Alek’s sister, was primed to investigate whatever storms Alek had created for Elspeth.

Elspeth discarded the safety
of silence; her panic stayed. “Calum, spend anything from my accounts to buy him out.”

“It’s not worth what he paid for it, Elspeth,” Calum reasoned after a glance at his brothers. “And he’ll want to make a profit.”

“What is it with you and Alek?” Birk studied his sister.

“I will not have that man living on my doorstep.

Duncan pulled on his leather gloves. “You’re right, Birk. She’s too sensitive about Alek. We’ll have to find out why. If she won’t tell us, he will.”

Elspeth’s brothers stood up, flinty eyed and powerfully built westerners ready to protect what they held dear.

Elspeth rounded on them, her hands
on her waist. “Back off.”

“This isn’t like you, Elspeth,” Calum reasoned. The three of them, all inches taller than her five foot nine inches, looked at her steadily. “Alek isn’t the kind to play games, Elspeth.”

“He wants you.” Duncan tossed away Sybil’s hours of tutoring his curt manners.

“It’s more than that,” Calum added. “There’s something there, running between them. Talia doesn’t know anything other than that Alek has been interested in Elspeth’s life. My wife is hoping for a little thing between you called romance.”

“Romance? With Alek?”
Elspeth’s fingers wanted to grab a shuttle and let it fly through the weave, easing her emotions. Instead, she grasped at the hope Alek would disappear. “He’ll get tired of Amen Flats. In a way, he’s like Fiona, always searching for something, as though a piece of them was missing and needing an anchor to make them whole. There’s not enough excitement here to keep him interested.”

Women. Alek Petrovna needed action and a variety of women.
She chewed on the thought. Alek wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d pitted himself against the hardest assignment or a woman who fascinated him.

“Maybe he’s found what excites him more than anything else…it can move that way between a man and a woman sometimes. In the past week, I’ve seen how Alek watches you—when the family is together. Sybil and Emily agree.” Duncan now drew in the support of his wife and his fifteen-year-old stepdaughter.

“The earring, Elspeth. Why is
Alek wearing it?” Calum prodded.

For once, Birk was too quiet, then he stated slowly, “Elspeth hasn’t been the same since her studies in Scotland five years ago. She’s more cautious and she’s built walls, not letting anyone come too close. Lacey, who practically lived with us after Mother faced down Mrs. MacCandliss about her treatment, or lack of care of Lacey, said the same. Now that I think back, Elspeth was as much of a fighter as Mother—once her dander was up. Not as wild as Fiona, but subtle and effective. I haven’t seen that since she returned from Scotland. Except for her midnight forays to Tallchief Mountain.”

“Aye,” Duncan and Calum
stated together. The word sounded like the growl of wolves who had sniffed the danger near their pack.

“Haven’t you three got something to do?” Elspeth asked more sweetly than she felt, and reached for Duncan’s ear. One tug widened his eyes. One by one, she pushed them out her door.

The old Potts place sat in full view of her studio, and Elspeth gripped a shuttle tightly as she stood before the large windows lining the room. She looked past the large rack of beams that served as her wool-dying shed, her gaze skimming her dead herb garden and resting on the house next door.

Alek was there, piling old boards, limbs
and weeds into a huge pile. Dressed in his laced boots and worn camouflage clothing, he moved easily, powerfully, leaping over a branch before hauling it to the pile. He tossed the For Sale sign on top with the air of a man who was sinking in his roots to stay. A tall, powerful man, Alek braced a boot on a stump and surveyed the house. With his back to her, Alek was all long legs and wide shoulders.

No man should have that much black, curling hair, nor look as if he hacked at it with a knife when it got in his way. It glistened in the sun, touching his shoulders and mocking her. Her fingers itched to trim it, to cut it as she did Birk’s—but with her hands near Alek’s hair, she didn’t trust herself not to pull hard.

Elspeth wished Alek and her brothers into another country.

She studied her new work, which was just beginning to take shape. The design waited for her, springing not from her usual paper layouts, but from something simmering inside her. Elspeth sat at the rack that had been used by her mother and grandmothers before her and chose a tan wool. Whatever beckoned to her from inside the design had waited and now wanted life—it simmered and heated beneath her fingers.

Alek hadn’t expected his smoky-eyed neighbor to welcome him with a tuna casserole, freshly baked bread and a smile. And she hadn’t.

In his new house, Lacey MacCandliss, a petite,
curly-headed elf and adopted member of the Tallchief family, raged at Birk, who yelled back. The two contractors had taken time away from competing long enough to help Alek with the basic necessities of safe electricity and major plumbing.

He’d expected Elspeth’s offer to buy and Calum’s methodical dissection of why he might want to consider another home. Calum was already questioning Alek’s motives and Elspeth’s reaction to him.

A tall, cool blonde with cornflower blue eyes had stopped to introduce herself. She had been distracted by Birk’s yell at Lacey and had listened intently to them. “I’m Chelsey Lang. Birk and I are going together. He’s busy now or I’d talk with him. Tell him I came by, okay?”

Alek nudged a loosened foundation stone back into
place with his boot. He’d planted himself near Elspeth’s castle, near enough to spot her looking at him through the huge windows of her studio.

Alek blew her a kiss.

She reached to the side, and shades slashed down between them.

Little kept Alek from leaping over the picket fence that separated them. On a second thought, he began working the rotted old fence free from the ground and dragged it into the pile to be hauled away. He wanted no fences between Elspeth and himself, on any level. Thorns from the old rosebushes raked across his hands and arms, and when Alek could no longer avoid it, he looked at his scarred hands.

His palms were soft, and he wanted calluses from working outside in the fresh air. He wanted roots and growing plants and babies.

He wanted a woman to hold in his arms at night, to hug
in the morning—Alek fought the churning, cold pit inside him. He didn’t know if he could put down roots, but hell, he would try.

When Elspeth had entered his life, he’d been a desperate man, one wanting to survive. Now he wanted more than to survive. He wanted a life here in Amen Flats. He took the leather gloves from his back pocket, an inheritance from Mr. Potts, who could no longer do yard work. Alek intended to get his calluses and along the way, he’d get Elspeth’s secrets.

At forty, he should have been immune to teenage sexual hormones raging in his body. But one look at Elspeth, and he wanted to examine firsthand just how long she could remain untouched.

He worked furiously, needing the late-March wind cooling
him and the labor to dull the fine edge riding him. That damn soft promise of a mouth had haunted him for a week, no less enchanting than the first time he’d kissed her. She had tasted as sweet as the Scottish heather smelled in the night air; the taste of her haunted him. He swiped the sweat from his cheek and whipped a handkerchief from his pocket, tying it around his forehead. He pitted himself against the disaster of the yard with an intensity that eased his need to pull Elspeth against him and kiss her until she melted.

His conscience didn’t help,
especially when the townspeople chatted with him about his neighbor. Full of life and as fierce as any of the Tallchiefs, she’d laughed and gone off to Scotland. Una’s shawl had come from the Paisley town mills in Scotland, where Elspeth had journeyed to seek her heritage.

According to Mr. Potts, the whole town had seen her off, and then Duncan and his brothers had brawled with any takers. The townsfolk cherished friendly brawls—a tradition in Amen Flats. Fiona and Lacey had jumped into the fray, banging heads and riding shoulders. At some point, Birk had tossed Lacey over his shoulder and carried her out into the street, instructing her to stay put and safe. She was on him instantly, landing a punch in his stomach and crawling up a ladder that wouldn’t support him. Birk had yelled threats to her, watching her cross the rooftops to Maddy’s Hot Spot Tavern. Then he’d stopped to accept a kiss on his cheek from an elderly woman who had changed his diapers. He helped her carry her groceries from the store into her car and accepted another kiss before he stalked back toward Maddy’s.

The sheriff had ignored the brawl at Maddy’s request. The lawman had turned up his radio, an Italian tenor shrieking loud enough to set off the town’s dogs.

Stories about the Tallchiefs saturated Amen Flats, and sorting them out, Alek found that Elspeth’s adventures had stopped after visiting Scotland,
He’d changed her life, shredded it with one night.

Alek jerked a rotten post from the ground, tossing it onto the pile. He was responsible for the Elspeth who had returned to Amen Flats: she’d built a home for herself, was too cautious about relationships and had settled into her safe castle, weaving into the night.

Alek’s shirt tore and he ripped it away, just as he wanted to rip away the past and his guilt. Yet she should have told him—He switched on the tape player, turning up the passionate Russian folk music that stirred his blood.

“Alek.”
Elspeth’s call stopped Alek as he braced his bare shoulder against a loosened post supporting the back porch.

Dressed in a loose
cream blouse over a long chambray skirt and moccasins, Elspeth picked her way over the rubble. The ends of her dark red shawl, wrapped tightly around her against the biting wind, reminded him of the flying banner of a lady going off to war. From the yard, she looked up at him on the porch. Alek leaped to the ground and strolled to her; he wanted to see every expression on her face and know when he had fired her passions enough to ignite.

Alek studied her braids, wound like a coronet on top of her head. Oh, yes, he wanted to see her ignite. To lose that fine hold on her emotions. He’d seen her heart break, and to soothe his guilt, he needed the heat of her temper.

She backed up a step, pleasing him. Like it or not, Elspeth Tallchief had been affected by him. He admired the way she lifted her head; she wasn’t a woman to give herself easily and yet, she had five years ago. Why?

“You can’t do this, Alek. You cannot move in next door to me.”

He laughed at that. He’d always gone where he wanted, and this would be his first home. “Says who?”

He enjoyed the way she
struggled for control, the flash of smoke in her eyes and the flush spreading slowly up her cheeks. The reluctant skip of her gaze down his sweaty chest and then the control that took it upward to meet his eyes caused his senses to leap. Without effort, Elspeth possessed more sensuality than any woman he’d ever known, and he resented the lurch of his body. Alek studied the quickening pulse along her throat and found himself lost in the clean smell of her—the scent of wildflowers and herbs, and Alek breathed very slowly, inhaling a light, exotic scent.
Elspeth—

Her sea-gray eyes darkened, stormed and locked to his. The pulse in her throat pounded heavily, and Alek wondered what she’d do if he placed his lips upon it. She inhaled and he found himself wondering if she wore lace or plain white lingerie.

Elspeth’s breath came out in a hiss. “It won’t work—you living next door to me.”

“I’ll live where
I want. You lit a flame or two before you left for Scotland, and the locals say that Tallchiefs have a backbone of steel. You’ve changed, Elspeth.”

“I’ve changed for the better. If it comes to rooting you out, I will.”

He stroked a gleaming strand of hair away from her cheek, tucking it back into the black braid flowing down her breast. Unable to stop, Alek allowed his fingertip to slowly move downward. Elspeth stepped back instantly, her eyes flashing with anger.