Читать книгу Twilight - Kit Gardner - Страница 8

The heat of him penetrated muslin, cotton and bone, leaping into her blood like the first roar of a flame. He was all male, potent, savage, and as raw and untamed as an untouched wilderness, his eyes full of frenzied, mysterious fire. A man so different from the few she’d known. It struck her that she felt no fear, even when his fingers squeezed into her upper arms. Something told her she should be afraid. Yet she felt nothing but this slow, deep burning.

Their breaths came matched, hers shallow, his tortured, a palpable stirring of the sliver of hot night air that dared to pass between them. His scent filled her lungs. Her belly curved into his. Her breasts pushed into his chest, the peaks swelling against fevered bands of muscle—

Too late she realized she’d shoved a fist into his wounded shoulder. Breath hissed from between his teeth, and he released her to sag once again against the barn wall.

“Good heavens, I’m sorry!” she blurted.

Dim lantern light threw his face into deep shadow, yet she recognized the subtle tightening of the lines around his mouth, the downward tilt of his brows over his nose. He shoved a big hand through that unruly mane of blue-black, smoothing the perspiration that dotted his forehead and bathed his torso from neck to waist in a filmy sheen. For one long, unconscionable moment, she allowed her eyes to drift over the breadth of that furred chest and along the ridges of his belly.

She watched his fingers threading through his hair, as if he were massaging some deep ache there. Perhaps it was some trick of the flickering lamplight, but she thought she could detect the faintest trembling in those fingers.

Instinctively, as would any mother, she reached a palm toward his forehead. His eyes angled abruptly at her. Her hand dropped to twist into her skirt.

“You could be feverish, Mr. Stark.”

His lip barely curled with his words. “More than likely it was all that damned hot soup.”

She sucked in a breath of indignation. What was it about this man that stirred her so swiftly to anger, despite his wounded state, despite the fact that she needed him? Despite the fact that she wanted to like him. With pursed lips, she watched him shove himself from his hay bale and move past her, deeper into the shadows. He paused to stare into the night from the open barn door, presenting his back to her.

Jessica pondered that broad expanse, a back not at all unlike a bronzed sculpture she’d once seen at Ledbetter’s General Store, the same sculpture she had yearned to establish with pride upon her mantel...if Frank would ever have allowed such indulgences, of course. Sadie McGlue, upon mere sight of the thing, had all but proclaimed it priceless treasure straight from Boston and had snatched it up. Yet Jessica still remembered the feel of that cool sculpted bronze beneath her fingertips. Stark’s back looked as if fires burned just beneath the skin’s surface.

Her itching fingers twisted more securely into her skirts.

“Mr. Stark.”

No reply. She had the distinct feeling his mind was miles from here, where she’d found him, deep in some fevered, tortured pit of darkness. His silence, even the manner in which his hair hung in those riotous loose curls, seemed to mock her curiosity. But why the devil should she care if some memory or nightmare tormented him? He was probably most deserving of such torture, though a most disturbing one it must have been to rouse such raw and primitive emotion in him. She could still feel the solid, heated wall of him pushing against her, the unchecked tensile strength in his hands.

She ground her teeth and swung her gaze away from him, anywhere, and found herself wondering how the devil the man would sleep comfortably upon all this hay with only a thin bedroll.

“Don’t look at me, if you wish, though I would like to know what grievance you could possibly have with me. I simply came to check your bandage. And I brought you a sheet and a blanket, but I see you have—”

Her voice trapped in her throat when he suddenly turned about and moved slowly toward her. Perhaps it was then that Jessica experienced her first serious twinges of doubt about keeping this man anywhere near her farm. It was in the subtle swagger of his lean hips, the simple manner in which his faded denims hugged his thighs, the sinewed length of his muscled arms, and those hands. And the look in his eyes. A tiger’s golden eyes. An outlaw’s eyes, full of wicked, sinful promise.

He paused not a hand’s breadth from her, and Jessica battled an overwhelming desire to flee. Her breath had found her voice, somewhere...only she could find neither.

“Am I feverish?” His voice, smooth and rich and so very mellow, hinted that perhaps he did indeed read Keats and Byron before retiring each night. No outlaw could ever have been blessed with such a voice.

Jessica felt her mouth open and...nothing. His fingers encircled her wrist and drew her palm to his cheek. A day’s growth of beard, and heat burned into her palm, or perhaps it was simply that her hand had gone ice-cold. His covered hers, entrapping her fingers in gentle warmth, then retreated.

“I—” She licked parched lips and wished to God the man would stop looking at her so intensely. “I should really feel your forehead, if I am to properly...Mr....”

“Logan,” he replied softly. Again, gentle fingers found hers and moved her palm to his forehead. Crisply curling hair seemed to stroke her fingertips. He stared at her mouth. “Well?”

So very faintly that she might have missed it, the corner of his mouth lifted. Yes, this must amuse him greatly, a woman barely capable of simple breathing and speaking. And suddenly it was all too much, the sheer immensity of him, his scent, that voice, that look in his eyes...and the seductive shadows encircling them.

She snatched her hand away from his skin and found her fingers fidgeting at the buttons high at her throat. “Yes...I mean, no...you’re not feverish. Quite well, I’m sure, I—”

Before she could spin about and flee, yes, flee, while she still retained some thread of sense, he again trapped her hand.

“And my wound?” he said. “You did just punch me in the shoulder, remember?”

She swallowed and gave the bandaged shoulder a glance. “I’m sure it’s fine until morning.”

A dark brow lifted, a hint of devilish mockery there. “Are you quite sure? You wouldn’t want me expiring from infection some time during the night, would you?”

This gave her sufficient pause, and she sensed that he had known it would. Confounded arrogant man. As if he knew her so very well after one day. As if she were so very simple to know.

And yet...she had never been one to neglect anything, had forever endeavored to do the proper thing at the proper time, to whatever degree was required, and then some. A perfectionist, her father had proclaimed her with more than a hint of pride. Avram appreciated that quality in her as much as Frank had seemed needled by it...when he had taken the time to notice her, that is.

Indeed, why bother with anything if you weren’t going to do it right...whether it be tending a farm, raising a child, or healing a rifle wound you had inflicted through your own panic and bothersome lack of control?

She cocked her head with renewed self-assurance and sniffed, “If worrying about it shall keep you from rest, then indeed I shall tend to your wound now.”

“Ah, I need my rest.” He leaned slightly down and forward. She needed barely to reach out to touch him.

“Indeed you do.” Her voice had again taken on that uncharacteristic breathy quality, one common to women like Sadie McGlue and her society sisters, who cinched their corsets a few notches too tight on Sundays for church. They all seemed mere seconds from crumpling in colorful heaps of starched New England taffeta and satin ruffles...as though their lungs weren’t getting sufficient air. Those women had an overindulgence in pastry to blame. She...she hadn’t had pastry in years. And she hadn’t the money for a corset. So what the devil was her problem?

She forced her attention to peeling away the bandage, to the raw wound she probed beneath, away from the feel of his chin brushing against her hair, his warmth encircling her like invisible arms, his voice rumbling in his chest.

“Will I survive the night?” he asked. It was a simple question, yet emitted in that deep, soft baritone, as potently male as any Jessica could imagine. She could endure this torture no more.

She did a miserably inept job of securing the bandage in place again, her fingers fumbling like a five-year-old’s. She spun about and nearly tripped over her skirts in her haste to put a healthy distance between them.

She jerked her arm toward a nearby hay bale. “There—I—I’ve brought you sheets. Perhaps they will make it easier for you to achieve all that rest. You will need it for the walk to town early tomorrow for supplies and the like.” She barely glanced over her shoulder at him. “G-good night, Mr. Stark.”

“Logan” was the last she heard before she sought haven in the darkness.

* * *

Oh, but what the dawning of a new day could do for a girl, particularly one of Jessica’s nature. Indeed, accomplishment before sunrise could wipe away the last traces of pesky memories from last eve, could provide ample reassurance that she was in complete control of herself, her life, her response to Logan Stark. Little matter that she’d tossed fitfully upon her mattress for most of the night. And when sleep finally, mercifully, ensnared her, she’d dreamed only of those awful moments in the barn with Stark. A shirtless, sun-baked Stark.

A crisply made bed, a loaf of bread baking in the oven, coffee roasting, a fresh muslin gown and neatly combed hair—yes, this was all that was necessary to get her day off to a smooth and even start. None of that awful pell-mell from yesterday, as though the ground were in constant shift beneath her feet. The idea! That one man, after a single day, possessed the ability to render her an insomniac! Ridiculous. Preposterous. She was in complete control of her life, her farm, her son, her emotions. A woman had to be, after all, if she was to succeed. And she would succeed with this farm, with her son, regardless of the difficulties. These she would overcome. After all, obstacles merely served to sift out the weak and the timid, of which she was decidedly neither.

It was with a certain deeply felt smugness, though she knew not why, that she peered from her brightly curtained kitchen window into the eerie gray of predawn. A curve softened her mouth. No sign of life from the barn. No doubt the beast still slumbered, accustomed, as she’d often heard those heathen types were, to wallowing about until midday. Well, she’d show him the stuff she was made of, and what she expected of him if he intended to retain his post under her employ.

She found herself again before her dressing table, smoothing the flyaway curls escaping her neat and tidy chignon, a coiffure she never managed to accomplish with any ease. Perhaps this was why she lingered here before the glass longer than usual. Yet she was journeying to town today, and this did require some care with her appearance. The proper hair, the best of her muslins, perhaps even her straw hat with the pressed pale blue ribbon.

Her fingers suddenly trembled upon the frayed lace at her collar. She pressed a hand to the twittering in her belly and grabbed the two-inch excess of fabric there at her waist. In the gray light of dawn reflecting off her looking glass, her cheekbones seemed to poke through her skin, and purple shadows dusted beneath her eyes. The ravages of time...and she not yet twenty-three. Was this what Stark saw when he looked at her?

She watched the color blossom through her cheekbones. Avram, not Stark. Avram. If a woman was so lax as to find herself preoccupied with thoughts of a man, that man should be her betrothed. Though, now that she gave it some thought, she’d never once felt the least bit conscious of her appearance with Avram, nor had she ever felt compelled to seek her looking glass for his benefit. Then she was indeed doing right by marrying him. She certainly couldn’t bear to be all fidgety for the remainder of her life. Yes, that was it. She’d been far too fussed up and fidgety to suit anyone.

Her own hollow eyes stared from her reflection. Where indeed had the sparkle of youth flown? What had responsibility and widowhood done to her?

She forced her gaze from the glass and found herself staring at the framed photograph of Frank. Then again, anger and bitterness of this magnitude certainly could not content itself with eating only at her insides. It had to leave its mark upon her face and body, ravaging her so that no man would find comfort in looking at her. Her husband’s dying gift to her, as if he hadn’t left her with enough burdens to bear. His perfidy had been the very least of it.

Her fingers coiled around the gilt frame, and she battled, as always, the urge to fling it across the room, to crush it beneath the sole of her shoe, to lay waste to him as he had done to her. But, no. Christian must forever remember his papa lovingly. He deserved that far more than she deserved some sort of violent recompense, one that was certain to leave her just as bitter, and her son nothing but confused.

Christian. Good heavens, consumed with her own thoughts, she’d allowed him to wallow away in his bed until past sunrise. Laziness could insinuate itself into a five-year-old in the span of one quiet morning.

She spun from the dressing table and headed directly for the narrow flight of stairs leading to her son’s bedroom. She found his bed empty, the pillow cool.

Feeling the first stirrings of annoyance, she marched down the stairs and through the kitchen, yanking open the back door with more fervor than she would have ever wished to display. She nearly tripped over the full pail sitting on the stoop.

She lifted it and scowled. She should be pleased. She should be delighted. She wasn’t. After all, she’d never gotten that much milk from any cow, much less her miserable excuse for a bovine. The pail met solidly with the stoop once more, and then she was off, stomping toward the barn. Upon passing the paddock, she directed a scowl at Maggie, her dairy cow, chewing her cud with a certain mocking disdain.

“Traitor,” she grumbled. Blasted outlaw, and damned and blasted cow. Far too much cheek to display for an animal who seemed incapable of fathoming that she could, with very little effort, escape that crumbling excuse for a fence.

Jessica lengthened her stride. Arrogant man, thinking to disrupt her household, her farm, her cow, her life, what little success she’d made of it, thinking to prove her inadequate of managing the place. The pins tumbled from her chignon, her hair spilled with its own version of mockery about her shoulders, and she only cursed him more.

She entered the barn, hands on her hips and a dozen or more truly inspirational words of warning itching upon her tongue, only to stop short when she spied her son. He stood, in his nightshirt, no less, with thin legs braced wide, atop what she knew well to be the broken seat of a buckboard wagon long left to disrepair. In his fists he held the reins to a monstrous black horse who looked just moments from plunging through the sagging side of the barn.

Those inescapable talons of maternal instinct gripped her. “Christian, good God, get down! Now!”

The horse blew furiously and pawed the hay-strewn floor, casting her a dubious sidelong glance. And her son made no move to comply with her order. Instead, he did the inconceivable.

Her son looked at her blankly for a moment then twisted about and glanced over his shoulder into the shadows on the other side of the buggy. The movement caused his bare feet to slip on the leather seat, and he teetered precariously upon his perch. “Logan, it’s okay if I stay up here, isn’t it? You fixed the seat and you said I could climb up here...”

Jessica could stand it no longer. In three huge strides, she reached the buggy, hoisted her skirts to midthigh and launched herself up. She snatched her son from the jaws of danger, clutched him painfully close, and would have executed a smooth descent from the thing...somehow...only she found herself grasped about the waist and lifted from her feet. Intimately, actually, too intimately, or perhaps it was simply her knowledge of the strength required of those arms to perform the task so effortlessly. And one of those arms injured, at that. Then again, her terror had sapped all air from her lungs long before her feet again met with the floor.

Releasing Christian, she spun about, only to hear her mouth snap closed with an undeniable click. He stood so close she had to crane her neck, her gaze enduring an interminable path from his chest, which was graciously covered in an expanse of butter-colored cloth, past the red kerchief knotted at his throat, over the arrogant thrust of his jaw and that annoyingly deep cleft in his chin...

Her insides compressed, forcing what was left of her breath from her lips in one long, hideous sigh. He’d shaved. And bathed. And combed his hair. He smelled of clean leather and spice.

And he looked absolutely marvelous. Not the least bit like an outlaw. For one brief moment.

And then he grinned, a flash of startling white that set the sun ablaze in his golden eyes and set Jessica’s anger to boiling.

How dare he stand there and look so god-awful smug, as though he’d enjoyed a restful night of sleep?

She opened her mouth and...

“Good morning, ma’am.”

Jessica sucked in a hissing breath, feeling frustration like a clamp about her chest. “I should say not, Mr. Stark. How dare you allow my son to clamber about on that broken-down—?”

“He fixed it, Mama.”

“I don’t care if he birthed it this very morning. You could have been killed, and that animal—”

“His name is Jack, Mama.”

“A true misnomer if there ever was one. He looks like a Hades to me, entirely untrustworthy, capable of eating you alive and—”

“We’re gonna go to town in the buckboard, aren’t we, Logan? We don’t have to walk ever, ever again.”

There it was, that undeniable reverence in her son’s voice, something so entirely recognizable because Jessica had never heard it before in Christian’s voice. Damn and blast this outlaw, thinking to point out her shortcomings, to outdo her, her, the inept female. His job was simply to help.

She glared up at him. “Mr. Stark—”

“Logan.” How infuriating the smooth mellowness of his voice, just as infuriating as the mocking serenity of this morning. “You’re awfully angry, ma’am, and the sun not yet risen.”

“As if a woman’s emotions are governed by the simple rising of the sun.”

“No, that would be too simple, ma’am.”

Jessica sucked in yet another breath and flung her arm at the buckboard. “How could you allow a small boy to...to—? Have you any notion what harm could have befallen him? Or were you so distracted by your own little whatever it was that you were doing—”

“Oiling the wheels, ma’am.”

“See there? You were far too consumed with your oiling to even take notice of his safety, much less his state of undress. But, of course, that is left to the womenfolk of the world. You men wander aimlessly about, entirely consumed with your—”

“Ma’am.”

“We women, why, we’ve been bred for centuries to be able to do ten things simultaneously, not the least of which is to see to the menfolk’s complete care, divine happiness and—”

“Ma’am.”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses, Mr. Stark. Trust me, I’ve heard them all before, and—”

“Ma’am.”

“I’m not finished, Mr. Stark.” Ah, but all this letting go of her anger felt so divine, even if a part of her realized a good bit of that anger had nothing to do with Stark. The blood pumped vigorously through her limbs, filling her with a vitality she hadn’t felt in months. Yes, she could remain unmoved by the slight shifting of his brows, the narrowing of his eyes upon her, as though she had given him a window to her very soul. Indeed. A man like him, short on book learning, thinking himself long on cunning. Ha! “I’ll have you know, Mr. Stark, my son never, never attempted such shenanigans before you arrived.” She punctuated this with a jab of her finger into the middle of his rock hard chest.

He quirked a brow. “Really? Funny, but—” He paused, shook his head and stuffed his hands in his pockets in an abominably cavalier manner. “I don’t suppose that matters.”

Jessica stared at him, feeling the blood slowly draining from her face. “What? What doesn’t matter? Are you saying that I would allow my son—”

“I would never even imply that, ma’am, knowing you as I do. No, there are some things even a mother like you won’t ever control in her child, shenanigans being the least of it. Especially a boy.”

“Well, I can. And I will.” Again, she jabbed his chest. And then something in his eyes, a deep and wild darkening of gold to bronze, sent a shaft of warning through her, despite all her exhilaration. She turned away from him, seeking her misplaced son under the buggy. “Christian, come with Mama now. You’ve got to get dressed and eat. I baked some—” She jerked upright and froze. Her mouth sagged in horror. “My bread! Good heavens, my bread has been in the oven for—!”

She spun right, nearly slammed into the buggy, whirled left and almost plowed into Stark’s beast. She spun again and slammed right into Stark’s chest. A solitary wail of despair fled her lips before she could snatch it back in dismay.

“Jess—” Her name flowed around her like warm sunlight, soothing. As though she would ever require or need his comfort. She would have pummeled that chest if he hadn’t caught her arms and held her fast. “It’s okay, Jess. It’s only one loaf of bread.”

“And I burned it!” she yelled up at him, almost stricken when she felt the hated burn of tears at the backs of her eyes. No, she would never, never, allow this man to see any emotional weakness. She might need his physical strength, but never anything more from him. “No, you would never understand that, would you?”

“Yes, I do, Jess.”

“Don’t call me that!” she spat, twisting from his grasp. And then she fled the barn without turning back, because the tears did fall then, and she couldn’t stop them.

* * *

She’d barely looked at Rance, much less her newly restored buckboard, as he handed her up onto the freshly polished seat. Instead, she gave Jack a glare full of dire warnings and then directed all her attention to something far out on the bleak distant horizon for the duration of the ride to Twilight—that is, when she wasn’t fussing over Christian.

A sound ignoring, that was what it was. She sat ramrod-straight, her straw hat angled abruptly away from him, white-gloved hands folded in her lap over a small straw purse, upturned nose poking skyward, full lips stalwart and compressed as if she were sucking very hard upon a lemon.

Rance had a hell of a time keeping his eyes off her.

All that stubborn pride. He’d never encountered so much in a man before, much less a woman, even the gun-toting bandit queens he’d encountered. And yet in her he found it compelling, too damned compelling, and her not a harsh and cynical version of a woman, but innocent still. And young, younger than her years. The sunlight spilling through her hair, the delicate curving length of her neck, the trembling of her chin when she’d yelled up at him. And the feel of all that injured pride against him, rousing a deeply yearning hunger in him.

“Can I hold the reins, Logan?” Christian asked. “You said I could, remember?”

Rance kept his gaze between Jack’s ears on the twin ruts that cleaved through the prairie, but even so he felt the heat of her glare over her son’s head far more than he did the sun slapping at the back of his neck. The leather hung loose in his hands, a sure testament to the trust he’d placed in his animal long ago. His gaze shifted over the desolate horizon. “Maybe your mama would like to try first.”

“Mama?” Christian squawked. “She’s afraid of everything.”

“I am not,” came the hot retort.

“Yes, you are, Mama. Remember that horse Pa had? You said he was a nasty old thing that cost too much money and ate your flowers and bit.”

“Precisely,” Jessica retorted. “He indeed ate every last one of my geraniums, and he bit your pa.”

Christian grinned wickedly at Rance. “In the butt.”

“Christian! Don’t ever say that again.”

“Say what, Mama? That he bit him? He did. Right in the butt.”

“Oh, good grief.”

“Mama had to clean it and bandage it, and my pa howled like a coyote-wolf.”

“Christian, shut your mouth at once.”

“He couldn’t sit without a pillow for a week. Mama was so mad. She said she wouldn’t make him supper till he sold that horse. But he said no and she made him supper anyway, ‘cause Miss Beecher says a good wife don’t send her family to bed on an empty tummy.”

“Doesn’t send,” Jessica said quickly. “Not don’t. Now, keep quiet.”

“Who’s Miss Beecher?” Rance asked.

“Mama has her book.”

“Of course I do. Miss Beecher projects sound views on thrift, morals, and improved diet. We could all stand a good browse from time to time.”

“Mama always looks in it.”

“I most certainly do not.”

“Yes, you do, Mama. You have lots of books to help you be a good wife. You’re lookin’ in them all the time.”

“Christian, I don’t want to hear another sound from you.”

“You were afraid of Pa’s horse, Mama.”

“Anyone of sound mind would have been. Give me those.” She reached one of those pristine white-gloved hands across her son and grabbed the reins. Rance had the impression that she did so solely to quiet her son. She didn’t seem the sort to want it known her departed husband’s hind end had once been fodder for some animal. Still, the image brought Rance a certain deeply felt satisfaction, as did her sputtering. He had to struggle to keep a bemused look from his face, and he directed his scowl at nothing in particular.

Jack would have kept to any pace simply on Rance’s verbal command. It mattered little in whose hands the reins were gripped. But Jess didn’t know that. And damned if Rance didn’t detect the slightest softening of her mouth, a decided satisfaction in the angling of her silly hat down at her son. No, but she wouldn’t allow her eyes to even alight upon him. Damned proud woman. He wondered if she had any idea how beautiful she looked with that ribbon fluttering like wings about her and her hair ablaze with prairie fire.

She kept the reins all the way to Twilight, smack down the center of Main Street, and even managed to haul back on them with a bit too much fervor when they pulled before Ledbetter’s General Store. Perhaps because of all those curious stares they’d drawn since the moment the buggy rolled into town, stares that seemed to force Jessica’s nose up another notch. But Rance had far more to occupy his thoughts at the moment. Far more, in the form of his own Wanted handbills, fluttering in the hot midmorning breeze upon nearly every storefront, amid all the other handbills. Twenty-five hundred to the man who could bring him in alive. A thousand for his dead body.

Spotz must be itching to watch him die to offer bounty like that.

He’d purposely cropped his hair short to fall over his forehead, and he’d shaved and pulled his hat well over his eyes. Had even chosen a light-colored shirt and kerchief, the better to go unrecognized. No, he looked nothing like some artist’s rendering of the long-haired, black-garbed, bearded outlaw Rance Logan. Yet his own bleak stare seemed to taunt him from every handbill as he alighted from the buggy and attempted to assist Jessica. But she’d already hopped down, obviously spurning his attempt at gallantry. Surely this was not in deference to his shoulder.