Tallchief for Keeps (7 page)

“Why don’t you make it easy on yourself and tell me about the legend? Your edges are showing, fair Elspeth.” Edges, he thought, nice little edges to explore, to fit together until the puzzle was complete.

“I wonder why.” The
whip in her voice took him by surprise. She leapt to the porch and switched off his tape player. Without thinking about the why of it, Alek leapt up to the porch and bent to brush his lips across hers.

She jerked back, flattening against the old boards, her eyes widening with surprise and then narrowing as her temper flared. He reveled in the blaze of emotions, trolling a fingertip down her flushed cheek.

Then Birk yelled at Lacey, doors
slammed and Elspeth frowned up at Alek. She spoke in a controlled tone, the effort clearly costing her. “Amen Flats is a small, boring town. Other than for Talia—and she shares my beliefs about overly protective brothers—there is absolutely no reason for you to be here, Alek. Especially living next to me. I don’t like noise while I’m working, or half-naked men parading in front of my studio window.”

“So you’ve noticed me.” He leered at her, pricking at her edges. What right did she have to keep all that heat bottled inside her, when the scent of her caused him to steam? “It’s beautiful you know, when you weave. Your arms and hands are flowing, artistic, and there’s a timelessness about your movements. But I wondered what you thought about when you wove and now I know. You ogle men from the corner of your eyes, Elspeth-mine. It’s nice to know you admire me, that I am the object of your lust.” Alek delivered the taunt and watched her struggle for control. For effect, he reached out a sweaty arm and flexed his muscle. He was showing off like a teenager, trying to get a girl to notice him. Alek tossed the mocking thought aside, and gave himself to studying Elspeth.

Her gaze slowly skipped to his arm;
she wasn’t as immune as she pretended to be. When her eyes locked to his, they were steel gray, shooting sparks at him.

“Lust doesn’t come into it. What do you think you’re doing, Alek?” she asked too carefully, her face very pale.

“Settling down, fair Elspeth. Making my nest. Issuing a town paper in two weeks. The middle of April is a wonderful time for a first issue. I’m shopping for a work truck and a Chevy classic in that order. Take care of business, that’s Petrovna’s law—finishing what I start. What do you think I’m doing?”

“I think that you are being stone headed and totally obnoxious. You thought you had a score to settle, but there is no score now. And there is no Petrovna law in Amen Flats. Leave me alone.”

Alek took a step closer. “We’re
not done, Elspeth.

Not by a long shot.”

“Back off.”

“Stand and fight. Isn’t that what
the Tallchiefs say?” Alek caught her scent, clean and yet exotic, and realized that his body was taut, remembering that night.

“There will be no fight, Alek.”

“No? Because
you
say so?” He knew the air had shifted between them, warmed by the past and enticed by the future. He leaned closer. “You think you can cut me out of your life? Forget that I would have been the father of our child? I can still see you, smell you, after all these years. What was that about the Marrying Moon, Elspeth? What did you mean that night?”

She gasped slightly and moved back. Alek took her wrist. Her pulse fluttered and raced beneath his fingertips as he brought her wrist to his lips. “You knew what you were doing, Elspeth. It was there in your eyes, heat and smoke burning me.”

“I knew what I was doing, but not that you
needed a substitute for your wife. I didn’t know you were grieving for your wife until Talia told me last October, when Calum brought her here.” The words were hushed and rapid, held too long and now rushing out “Do you know how I felt after and for years later, thinking I had given myself to a married man?”

Pain and guilt over hurting Elspeth tore at him; instincts told Alek to protect himself against her barb. “I didn’t know you were a virgin until it was too late. You were twenty-eight, and ready.”

“And you took.”

Alek’s head went back. The truth hit him like a fist. “And we made a child. I want another.”

He hadn’t meant to state the thought, the need to be a father, but once the words caught the wind, he knew he meant them. He saw into Elspeth Tallchief, the strength in the silence, the fire rising out of the smoke. Then the fine control leashing her emotions. He’d wanted children, ached for them, dreamed of holding them in his arms. If Elspeth would have come to him, perhaps he could have—

Yet that high pride of hers—and his own actions—kept her from notifying him.

If he’d never known about the child, perhaps the ache would have been less…but now he’d had a taste of the dream, and so the loss had deepened.

And with it came a new kind of bitterness.

They both owed each other a dream, Alek raged
silently. They owed each other a child.

“This won’t work, Alek. You’ll get tired of whatever game you’re playing and move on.”

“Sometimes you have to dig beneath the surface…make things happen.” He lifted an eyebrow to spear at her with his gaze. “I always finish my stories and tie up loose ends. I happen to like puzzles, Elspeth. Get used to it.”

Sunlight skimmed along her lashes as she glanced beyond him. Anger flashed, steely, hard and bright before she looked up at him. “You have a visitor, Alek.”

Alek stepped back and glanced at a young woman with too-tight jeans. He recognized the hungry smile; the casserole dish she carried caused more excitement than her look.

To set Elspeth simmering, he turned to greet the
curvaceous blonde bearing his food.

Laden with scents of mountain pine and newly tilled gardens, April 1 usually entered Elspeth’s open windows as she wove. The sound of Alek’s power saw ripping through lumber grated; the sound of his hammer caused her headache. His dented pickup needed a muffler badly, and when he wasn’t working on the house, Alek tinkered with the truck. This drew the Tallchief brothers and a host of teenage boys, complete with the teenage girls tagging after them—to say nothing of the boys on bikes. The rubble stacked in his backyard grew daily, and big new windows now faced her house.

A meandering line of daffodils divided their properties, punctuated by the old rosebushes, which Alek had trimmed. At least she’d have the roses this summer, some small token after he’d invaded the quiet street.

Elspeth longed for the old Kostya place, which bordered Duncan’s ranch, but it wasn’t for sale. There she could have her privacy with no irritating, half-naked, muscle-flexing, arrogant, grinning Alek Petrovna.

Elspeth kept to herself, finishing Talia’s present
and the order of woolen throws. She sketched her new wall hangings for the exclusive contract. The dealer already had several of them, and when they were first shown, the price would be outrageous.

Outrageous.

We made a child. I want another.

She wanted to free herself of Alek’s statement, to stop it from tearing into her thoughts. Yet that
I want another
remained, despite her will, nagging at her. It seemed just as permanent and irritating as the man himself.

To free herself from her new neighbor, Elspeth pitted herself against the heavy loom until her body ached. Alek had women running after him, eager for a taste of the worldly bachelor who was settling down in Amen Flats.

Elspeth firmed her back. Alek could flirt with an army of women bearing casseroles, and she wouldn’t notice. He could flex his muscles and—Elspeth inhaled sharply. Alek’s muscles had been the object of her wandering eyes, and she regretted that. She jerked down the beater and regretted that, too, because she’d made the weave too tight.

Then she glanced out the window. Alek stood on a ladder,
hammering away at the rain gutter, his body taut. The sun glistened on his muscles, which were pulsing with each blow. Elspeth found she was holding her breath and let it out in a rush. Alek did not affect her, not in the least.

Just then, Alek wiped the sweat from his forehead with one hand and caught her gaze. He blew her a kiss.

Hours later, Elspeth smiled at Sybil, Duncan’s wife, and kissed her niece, Megan. “How is Marcella Port-way?”

Sybil groaned dramatically at the mention of her client. ‘That woman will drive me to fake her ancestry. I’ve never done that, but the thought appeals—just to get rid of her.” A genealogy expert, Sybil had been hired to track Marcella’s family gene pool to a Spanish nobility that didn’t exist. “By the way, Duncan has been worrying about you.”

“Are you scouting?” Elspeth watched Megan toddle to her mother. At ten months, Megan was already a handful, ready to explore.

Sybil laughed and kissed Megan’s black hair.

“Something like that. Come on, Elspeth, don’t
tell me that Alek isn’t appealing. He’s got all those rough edges that women love to smooth out. Add all that charm and the dark, Gypsy look, and any woman would be happy to have him interested. He’s very romantic and absolutely enthralled with Talia’s pregnancy. Now she has four men clucking over her.”

Elspeth helped Megan crawl up onto her lap and handed her a tea cookie. “I’m certain some women would find him fascinating.”

Sybil laughed outright and grabbed Megan’s fingers before she could snatch Elspeth’s notebook. “Elspeth Tallchief, you know very well that Alek is interested in you. He’s flirting outrageously with you. Sharlene Davis almost fainted when he pushed your shopping cart at the grocery store and you walked off and left him. You’ve avoided him when possible, and he’s not giving up.”

Sybil kissed Megan’s soft cheek. “Didn’t Una call it the awakening? That’s what it felt like when Duncan came calling. It was as if I’d been waiting for him all my life, maddening creature that he is.”

“Una said the awakening is when a man comes calling softly, when he places himself in a woman’s care, needing the softness within her. Then she awakes, cherishing the gentleness he’s shown only to her, wanting to heal his scars with her touch. If I have shadows under my eyes, it’s because of hammers and saws. Alek is too—”

“Passionate, Elspeth—passionate, emotional, fierce and proud. He likes to laugh and play and flirt. He’s everything Talia is and more—heavier, deeper, as though he’s been tempered by life’s hardships. I’m a survivor and I’ve recognized that something horrible prowls through Alek in his dark moments. From what I know of him, his wife died tragically. His scars are from trying to save her. They’d been in love since they were teenagers, and he had to give permission to unhook the life-support equipment that kept her alive.”

Elspeth’s fingers trembled slightly, and she held Megan
tighter. She refused to think about the texture of Alek’s face that night, how he had taken her exploring fingertips and kissed them.

The brisk knock on her kitchen door startled Elspeth, and she rose, holding Megan on her hip, to open it. Alek, a carpenter’s pencil tucked above his ear and dressed in his usual tattered olive drab T-shirt and worn jeans, looked at her through the screen door. Megan, spoiled by the Tallchief males, squealed and leapt at him as Elspeth opened the door.

Alek reached for the toddler, cuddled her and grinned. “Now, this is a girl who knows how to greet a man. She’s got good taste, too…blackberry jam. Want to share, kitten?”

Megan laughed and held up her fingers to Alek’s mouth, and he sucked them noisily, making approving noises of how she tasted.

Elspeth moved back slightly, overpowered by the way Alek stormed into her quiet home. “Come in, Alek.”

He tugged her braid as he passed, reached for the platter of freshly baked cookies and handed Megan one. She giggled and offered it to him. Around the granola cookie, Alek said, “Thanks. The smell of these things has tormented me for hours…. Sybil, how’s the article on genealogy coming? I need that for the first edition.”

“I’m just polishing it. Emily is thrilled about the paper and the column you’ve opened for budding writers. Mrs. Freeman has the older circle working full-time on stories about pioneers. I understand you’re just getting the newspaper in running order and then you’ll step back.”

“I’m working with Brad Klein. He wants to stay in the area and use his journalism degree. If things work out, he’ll take over pretty quickly. It’s a shame that all the equipment hasn’t been in continuous use. It’s like a woman left to waste when she should be loved.” Then he turned slowly to Elspeth. “Hello.”

She stiffened; his Texas drawl was back, intimate and sexy
and curling around her. There was no mistaking the message in his eyes as they lowered to her lips. Elspeth hated the heat moving up her cheeks and the quick amusement in Alek’s expression. He swept a finger down her cheek and tapped her beneath her chin, startling her with his play.

“She’s shy.” Alek grinned at Elspeth.

Sybil laughed. “Elspeth doesn’t know how to take you. I think Megan and I need to be going along.”

Megan pursed her lips at Alek, and laughing, he bent to give her a kiss. A bit of Megan’s blackberry-jam feast transferred itself to Alek’s cheek and stayed there.

Minutes later, with Megan and Sybil gone, Elspeth faced Alek, who leaned against her counter, long legs crossed at his ankles. She tried to keep from looking at the juicy glob of jam stuck to his unshaven cheek. “Shouldn’t you be leaving?”

“Nope. I’ve got business here. I’d like to do a story on Una’s journals. Or would you consider doing a story on weaving?” He munched on another cookie.

“My family inheritance is private, and there are
other weavers. My mother taught them, the same as she taught me.” Elspeth snatched the remainder of the cookie from his fingers and tossed it away. She grabbed Megan’s washcloth and swiped at his cheek. “I should think you would have enough food in your house. Every woman in Amen Flats has brought you a casserole. You could have opened a restaurant.”

“Every woman but Elspeth Tallchief. Bothering you, is it?” Alek’s expression darkened. “If you don’t know how to take me, then I’ll have to make certain you figure it out, won’t I?”

Elspeth refused to answer to his bait and began to move past him to the safety of her workroom. “You may leave. I have work to do.”