Читать книгу Prim And Improper - Liz Ireland, Liz Ireland - Страница 11

While Caleb attacked the kitchen with a broom, Ty reclined in a woven-back chair, stretching his legs out across the already sparkling clean kitchen floors. He’d scrubbed them himself the night before, but Caleb insisted on sweeping them this morning, just to make sure the house looked especially pristine for Louise’s impending arrival. All Caleb had done for the past day and a half was clean, clean, clean.

Ty took a leisurely sip of coffee, watching his brother skitter nervously across the room in a pinafore-style apron, his knobby elbows sticking out from the broomstick. Cal was tall, but a bit on the gangly side, with a boyish charm and genuine kindness that attracted women. Certainly Sally had fallen for those qualities, but Ty worried that Louise wouldn’t appreciate Cal. Beneath that armor of modesty and refinement, Louise seemed like a woman who might be more attracted to someone more controlled, more masterful, someone…

Well, someone like himself.

Cautiously he cleared his throat. He didn’t want to get his brother more nervous than he already was. “It’s not exactly housekeeping skills that impress a woman, you know, Cal.”

His brother looked up, an expression of sheer panic on his face. “But I thought you agreed that we should have the house as nice as we could, so Louise would think we were civilized.”

Ty nodded. “But if you really want to impress a woman, you have to be manly, as well as conscientious.”

“Manly?” Cal asked, leaning on his broom. “How?”

Ty stood. “First, get rid of the apron.”

“But I just washed this shirt!”

“Men get dirty,” Ty instructed, freeing his brother. “Now, when you walk, try not to bob up and down so much. Keep your head high, your shoulders back, your chest out—like the old rooster out in the yard.”

“He bobs up and down,” Cal countered as he tried to assume the same position and took a few stiff steps forward.

Ty sighed. The results of his efforts were far from impressive. Holding his head high seemed to make his brother’s neck look even longer than it was, emphasizing the huge Adam’s apple in residence there. Keeping his shoulders back did look better, but Cal’s bony chest was best left on its own.

“Forget the rooster,” Ty said. “Think of it as more of an attitude. You have to assume an air of detached superiority for women, let them know that you’re in charge.”

Cal deflated from his rigid stance. “That wouldn’t work with Louise Livingston. She likes to be in charge of things herself.”

How true, Ty thought. He sank back down in his chair. “Oh, just be yourself. You certainly seem to have impressed Sally. When I spoke to her the other day in town, she couldn’t stop asking about you.”

A dreamy smile broke out across his brother’s face. “I can’t believe she lied to her own sister, just to protect me.” Just as suddenly, his smile vanished. “We can’t go on lying to Louise, Ty. I’ve got to tell her the truth about Sally and me.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Ty said. “I’ve got Louise here for a week, and for that week we’re going to show her a study in contrasts. By the time she leaves, you’ll look like a saint compared to me. She’ll probably go home and beg Sally to marry you.”

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“It certainly would,” Ty agreed. At this point anything sounded better than having a moonstruck brother. “So don’t muck up our plans by worrying about the truth.”

Caleb frowned. “I hope Louise doesn’t leave disliking you too much, Ty.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Well, if Sally and I married, we’d all be in-laws.”

Ty grunted.

“And besides, I kind of get the impression that you like her.”

“Like her!” Ty shot up out of his chair. “That persnickety old maid? Where did you get that crazy idea?”

“You haven’t stopped talking about her for days, Ty. Every meal, you’ve rehashed each word she said to you.”

“That’s because I can’t believe a woman like her can be so prejudiced, so snippy—”

Cal interrupted his tirade. “By ‘a woman like her,’ do you mean you think she’s pretty?”

Ty scowled, then admitted, “Well, of course she’s pretty. But I prefer women to behave more like females than shrews.”

“Then why didn’t you marry Vera Calloway all those years back when we lived in Kansas? She was pretty and sweet, just exactly what you say you want.”

“Maybe I should have,” he replied defensively.

“You said then that if you married her you would be bored to death.”

“I was young and foolish.”

Cal shook his head pityingly.

“Now don’t go getting any more crazy notions,” Ty warned him. “Just because you’re in love doesn’t mean the whole world is. And certainly not me.”

As he spoke, the sounds of a horse trotting up their hill reached them, and they both stood for a moment in the middle of the kitchen, listening. Ty felt a tightening in his chest at the thought of seeing Louise again. Dread, he assured himself. But dread couldn’t be the cause of the smile he felt pulling at his lips. Or the way his pulse picked up. He tamped down the uncomfortable sensations with a low growl.

Suddenly, unable to contain himself any longer, Cal bolted out the door, only to run back in a second later and drop the apron in his hand onto the table.

Taking a deep, fortifying gulp of air, Ty snatched his hat off a peg near the door and jammed it on his head. “This had better work,” he muttered to himself as he went out to greet their guest.

Louise slowed her horse to a walk as she neared the Saunders’s little house. A million worries battled in her mind. She wasn’t sure what the next week would bring, isolated as she would be with two ruffians. But she was equally worried about the people she was leaving behind. She hadn’t liked the gleeful, secretive smiles she thought she’d spied on the faces of her siblings as they’d pushed her out the door.

“Hello, Miss Livingston!”

Caleb Saunders was loping toward her, which made Louise—and Blackie—nervous. The horse pranced uneasily beneath her, and Louise gripped tightly to the saddle, prepared for the worst. At least the ground was drier than it had been the previous week.

“Let me help you down, ma’am,” the young man offered, grabbing the reins near Blackie’s bridle with one hand and holding out the other toward her.

“I can manage just fine myself,” Louise replied. She swung down as quickly as she could and dusted herself off.

“I’ll get your bag for you, Miss Livingston.”

Caleb took her traveling bag off the back of her saddle right away. His overtly polite manner gave her the feeling that she was checking into a fine hotel, not the week of servitude she would have done anything to avoid.

“It’s about time you showed up.” The words were barked out in a loud, obnoxious voice. Louise pivoted and found herself staring into Ty Saunders’s dark, glowering face. “It’s midmorning already.”

“You didn’t stipulate the hour I was supposed to arrive,” Louise retorted primly. She was not going to start off on the wrong foot by letting this man believe he could ruffle her feathers.

“I said morning.”

“Ty…” Cal said, his voice anxious.

“Which, as you said, it is,” she replied coolly. “Now if you’ll just show me where to go, I’ll be happy to begin my week of enslavement.”

“I’ll show you the kitchen, Miss Livingston,” Caleb said. He would have taken her arm, except that between her baggage and the horse, his hands were already full. “No, first I’ll show you your room. I hope you like—”

“Mornings here begin at the crack of dawn,” Ty insisted rudely.

Louise turned back to him in a huff. If this was the way he was going to be, it would be a long week, indeed! “I’ll be certain to remember that—tomorrow.”

“See that you do.”

“I will!” she cried in exasperation, almost forgetting her vow concerning feather ruffling.

Caleb thrust Blackie’s reins toward his older brother, then put a steadying hand on Louise’s arm. “I’ll show you the house,” he said, leading her away before they could continue their spat.

Louise hated to think what shape the inside of the modest wood-frame house would be in, but she steeled herself for the worst.

So it was with no small degree of astonishment that, led by Caleb, she traipsed through room after tidy, dusted room. She could hardly believe it. This house was neater than her own!

“And this is the kitchen,” Caleb announced, ushering her through a doorway at the back corner of the house.

Louise took one peep at the spacious, perfectly organized kitchen and was stunned. A counter that lined one wall, with open shelves beneath it and a closed cupboard above, was scrubbed until the blond pine practically glistened, Over a sink was a large window that looked out onto the yard behind the house. Next to the door was a woodstove, with a gleaming copper kettle sitting atop it, and across the room was a small oak table surrounded by four woven-back chairs.

“The pump’s right outside,” Caleb said, apparently anxious that she see everything at once. “And just this morning, I killed and dressed a chicken for us. All you’ll have to do is—but of course I’ll help however I can—oh, and let me show you the wood I brought in for you.”

Louise was all astonishment as she was tugged outside to inspect the tidy grounds. Either these were the two neatest, fussiest men she’d ever had the good fortune to come across, or one of them had made certain that she received a good impression of them when she came.

Even after her brief observation of both men, it was clear that only one could wear the neat title. And it wasn’t hard to guess which brother might have done the careful preparations in anticipation of her arrival. But why? She had hoped to make the week go by faster by keeping herself busy. Now she wondered what on earth she could possibly do here for an entire week.

Caleb finally left her alone in the kitchen, but all day he checked in on her, making certain that she wanted for nothing. Usually while he was there, he would perform some task for her, hauling water or bringing in more wood for the fire. She couldn’t have been more surprised at the difference in the man.

Probably, she guessed, he wanted to raise the Saunders name in her esteem for his brother’s sake. He asked her often about Sally, and always spoke of her youngest sister in the most glowing, respectful terms.

Ty, on the other hand, never so much as mentioned Sally’s name. Not that she had seen much of the man—thank heavens. Only occasionally had he clomped through the kitchen, black hat on his head, boots spewing dirt across the clean floors. He spoke in grunts and murmurs, and his lips were turned down in a permanent surly frown.

Every time she saw him, she knew she had been right to give in to his demand that she come here. Ty would be a terrible influence on impressionable Toby, and the thought of him touching her sister repelled her.

Even more important, seeing the beast in his lair made her more certain about her own feelings. She realized that the amount of time she had spent thinking of him lately had nothing to do with male-female attraction. The man simply irritated her. It was no wonder she couldn’t get him out of her thoughts: he was the most brutish being she’d ever met. And his table manners! Louise had never heard such slurping and smacking and belching as she did that night, all coming from Ty’s side of the table, not Caleb’s. It was a puzzle that two such different brothers could have been raised in the same household.

Throughout dinner, she tried to figure it out. The two brothers even looked nothing alike. While Caleb was tall and scrappy, Ty was simply a mountain of a man, all brawn and muscle. Caleb was clean shaven, and had light brown hair that was cropped short but still grew in unruly waves. His brother, of course, was a dark, brawny creature. She would have doubted they truly were brothers were it not for the gray eyes they shared.

Only Caleb’s didn’t disarm her as Ty’s did. The younger man’s eyes shone with friendliness and a desire to please, while Ty’s…well, sometimes it was as if the man could see right through her clothes. How could a single pair of gray eyes make her so terribly uncomfortable?

A loud, heartfelt belch echoed through the kitchen, and Ty threw his napkin down on the plate he had just scoured clean with the last piece of a biscuit. Louise cringed, but she gritted her teeth and held her tongue on the breach of etiquette. She did pointedly remark on Cal’s surprising ability to make polite dinner conversation, an observation that his brother met with a cavemanlike grunt.

After that, she remained silent.

“That wasn’t half bad,” Ty said finally, stretching his arms above his head and letting out a big yawn.

“I’m glad you liked the meal,” she answered with definite reserve.

“I didn’t say it was anything to crow about,” Ty retorted.

The sheer audacity—

“I thought it was wonderful,” Caleb said, looking anxiously at his brother.

She sent her adversary a satisfied smile.

“Cal would think that, since he did most of the cooking.”

Louise’s cheeks heated in fury, but she couldn’t deny that Caleb had been a big help. It was clear that she had misjudged the young man on her previous visit to the ranch. He was twice the man his muscled-up brother was.

Besides, she thought, remembering their roll in the mud mere days before, anyone was bound to slip on a rainy day.

Ty got up and tromped out the back door without a word.

“He usually smokes a cigar after dinner,” Cal explained. “I’ll help you clean up.”

“That’s not necessary,” Louise told him. She also felt like assuring him that he didn’t have to explain his brother’s rude behavior. It wasn’t his fault, after all.

“I insist,” he said, helping her clear the table.

Caleb brought in water and kept her company as water heated over the stove. Later, as they stood over the filled sink washing dishes, he said, “Ty just hasn’t been himself lately.”

Poor Cal. Louise’s heart went out to him. He probably led such an isolated life out here in the middle of nowhere with his brother that having someone actually observing them in their home was painful. And yet, their house showed signs of having had a civilizing influence sometime. There was a cabinet with china inside it in the sitting room, and a nice, finely carved sofa with velvet cushions, and several bookcases.

“He’s just acting so strange because…because you remind him of Sally.” Caleb sighed. “He misses her so.”

Louise pursed her lips disapprovingly. “He wouldn’t be missing her now if he hadn’t started seeing her on the sly to begin with!”

The young man’s face turned crimson, and again her heart went out to him. It wasn’t his fault his brother was such a clod. “Don’t blame yourself, Caleb. It’s not as if you lured Sally out here, or poor impressionable Toby.”

He wiped a plate dry and swallowed, his Adam’s apple making a long, tortured journey up and down his throat. “No,” he agreed hoarsely, “I had nothing to do with Toby.”

“And I suppose I shouldn’t put all the blame on Ty, much as I’d like to. Sally was at fault, too.”

A smile brightened Cal’s face. “Oh, I think Sally’s a marvelous girl.”

Louise clucked her tongue unhappily. “She has a mischievous streak a mile wide. One your brother was perfectly willing to take advantage of, I might add.”

The frown returned to Caleb’s face. “Please don’t blame her too much, Miss Livingston, or me—I mean, my brother—either. People can’t always control their reason when they’re in love.”

It was practically the same little speech Toby had given her! “Are you telling me that Ty is in love with my sister?”

“Oh, desperately!”

She shook her head. “I’ve been here an entire day and he hasn’t even bothered to ask after her health.”

“That’s because…” Caleb bit his lip, appearing to search for a plausible reason for yet another of his brother’s shortcomings. “Because he’s so much in love with her that he can’t bear to say her name.”

“I can’t believe it,” Louise said. Somehow, it was much easier to think of the man as a heartless seducer than a lovelorn swain.

“He’s been out of spirits ever since you came calling last week,” Cal said. His words had a ring of authenticity. “At night I can hear him pacing the floor.”

She thought of Sally’s incessant hums, then shook her head.

“It’s no wonder you can hear him, with the way he clumps around in those boots!” Yet the picture Cal was painting in her mind disturbed her. It would make sense that a man in love would lose sleep. Even her own thoughts had been keeping her awake lately, and she certainly couldn’t claim to be in love.

She frowned. Could Ty actually be pining for her sister?

Since her first encounter with the man, she had simply assumed that Ty had been using Sally, dallying with her young, vulnerable heart. And he’d led her to believe this was the case. But perhaps this had just been more of his bravado. Maybe she was keeping apart two people who were desperately in love.

Spoiler wasn’t a role she relished. Though she had never been in love herself, and never expected to be, she had always known that someday Sally would find a husband. She looked forward to that day—and to being an aunt, too. Never, never had she meant to prevent her sister from finding happiness. She’d only hoped that Sally would be selective in her choice of mates.

But judging from what she had seen of the house, its contents and the grounds, Ty Saunders did not live in barbaric circumstances, and would have little trouble supporting a wife. And according to Cal, his disposition was only disagreeable because of his pining away for Sally. And perhaps she was letting her own prejudices stand in Sally’s way. Some women preferred the, well, rustic type. If Ty truly loved Sally, the match wouldn’t be the terrible disaster that Louise had concluded at first that it would be.

It would only be a small disaster.

If Ty actually loved Sally.

Ty frowned as he paced outside the house, the ash of his cigar glowing red in the darkness. Usually he enjoyed evenings—the peacefulness of night sounds, the satisfaction of having completed another day’s work, the prospect of a long night’s slumber. But tonight he savored none of those things. Instead, all he could think of was that woman. Louise.

It hadn’t been difficult to pretend to be in a bad mood all day. Just looking at her did something to him. Irritated him, he guessed. He couldn’t get his work done. He couldn’t concentrate. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to get any sleep.

He let out a groaning sigh, then chomped down on his cigar. They were one of the few items he bought at the Livingston Mercantile. Did Louise realize that? Did she know how much this customer of hers had secretly enjoyed going into town all these months?

He’d never really given it much thought before now. But in the week since she’d galloped up his hill, he’d done little besides dwell on every moment they’d spent together over the years. Always, he had admired her, both for her looks and her sharp mind. And on occasions like that church social, he’d longed to tell her how much he wanted to see her more often, for something more than cigars.

But a few quick rebuffs had cleared all thought of doing any such thing out of his mind. How could you approach a woman who clearly had her own ideas about how she was going to run her life? The answer was, you couldn’t. Not unless you were prepared to be rejected, just as she had rejected the idea of her sister falling in love with a Saunders. The idea still got him steamed.

He couldn’t wait for this week of torture to be over. Hopefully, Cal and Sally would get married soon, take the house and land, and Ty could move somewhere far away and begin anew. Someplace that didn’t have a gorgeous headstrong female running the show.

As if in answer to his thoughts, the front door opened and Louise appeared, alone. She lingered for a moment on the porch, probably expecting that he would come keep her company.

She could just forget about that. He wasn’t making any friendly overtures.

After silently watching him for several minutes, she came down the steps and approached him, a tentative smile on her lips. “It’s a lovely evening, isn’t it?”

Her innocuous question—along with that smile—immediately put him on guard. “I was just about to go in,” he said tightly.

“Oh.”

He felt rooted to the spot where they stood, only a few feet separating them. She was wearing a dark-colored dress, which only made her lovely face stand out in higher relief, framed by her thick brown hair piled high atop her head. As the moonlight touched her creamy skin, the vision of her nearly took his breath away.

He looked toward the pasture rolling unseen down below in the darkness, feeling an uncomfortable tightness in his gut. “I’d think you’d be tired,” he said tersely.

“Not at all.”

He frowned. “We’ll have to find more for you to do tomorrow,” he said.

“Absolutely,” she agreed with gusto. “Otherwise, I’ll feel useless.”

Ty rolled his eyes. He should have known that Little Miss Busy-Busy would want more of a challenge than simple house chores. By the end of her week she would probably be ready for a cattle drive! “If I could convince Caleb to stop coddling you, that might make your days a little less useless.”

He looked over and noted with satisfaction that her chin jutted out in that stubborn way of hers. Nevertheless, she kept her tone even as she replied, “Don’t blame Cal.”

“Oh, so it’s ‘Cal’ already?”

Her fists balled at her sides, and he felt a surge of excitement upon seeing the spark in her eye. “I believe your brother was attempting to create a good impression for me, since you seemed determined not even to try.”

“Don’t see why he bothered.”

She let out a huff of frustration. “For you, you stupid lug!”

“Obviously he did wonders reversing your low opinion of me,” Ty said wryly, enjoying the passion in her eyes when she became wrapped up in an argument.

“You can’t even understand your brother’s noble intentions.”

“Oh, I can’t?” Ty asked, puffing on his cigar.

She waved a cloud of smoke away from her face. “Do you know he nearly had me convinced that deep down you’re actually a sentimental man?”

Ty barked out a laugh.

“Cal said that beneath that gruff exterior you were just a sad soul, pining for love.”

Ty leaned close, his lips turning up into a suggestive grin. “Oh, I’ll admit to pining for love as much as the next man.”

“You don’t have an honorable intention inside you,” she asserted with disgust.

He waggled his brows together. “No, but I’m full to the brim with dishonorable ones.”

“That I can believe! Never once today have you mentioned poor Sally.”

“She’s a pretty little thing,” he told her with a negligent shrug. “She’ll find someone else, maybe even someone you can approve of. I hear there are a few unmarried princes left over in Europe.”

“My sister is not a thing,” she lectured angrily. “She’s a young woman with a vulnerable heart.”

“Unfortunately, my heart is invulnerable.”

“I’ve never met anyone so callous in my life!”

“I’m callous?” Ty asked. “What about you? You’re the one who told your lovesick sister she couldn’t be seen with the likes of me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “And apparently I was right to do so!”

Ty looked into her lively eyes and couldn’t help smiling. In spite of himself, he liked her pluck. He was even beginning to admire the way her pointy chin stuck out so stubbornly.

Caleb had done a good job of softening her today, and now Ty had performed equally well in riling her. But he was too tempted by the opportunity the moonlight and melodic night sounds presented to let Miss Livingston storm inside just yet.

Maybe he was just too tempted by Louise, period.

Either way, he knew just what to do to make her livid, and confirm her good opinion of Caleb’s character.

“You know,” he said, calculating his words to have the most infuriating effect, “I think you might be jealous of your sister.”

Her face turned the color of a Mexican pepper. “Jealous!”

“Come now,” he said, taking another step toward her. “Don’t think I’ve missed those little looks you’ve given me when I come into the store.”

Louise’s full red lips parted in horror. She took a step backward, then swallowed in a gulp of air. “Looks?”

“It’s understandable, you know,” he assured her in a low, purring voice. “An older woman like yourself…alone…around all those men.”

She let out a muffled shriek. “How dare you even suggest—and I’m not old. I’m twenty-three!”

He slipped an arm around her shoulders and hauled her against his chest. Her body was as rigid as an old creaky board, and her breathing came in shallow gulps.

“Then maybe all you lack is a little experience,” he said, tossing aside his cigar and then dipping down to taste her lips.

She gasped in surprise and pressed her palms flat against his chest to push him away. Only the push never came. Ty pulled her more tightly against him and moved his mouth against her lips teasingly, testing her response. Her body remained still, both unyielding and unprotesting, as if in anticipation of what his next move would be.

Unable to resist, he deepened the kiss, tasting her sweet mouth with his tongue. At the same time, he drank in her delicate, clean, soapy scent, and ran a hand up to feel the luxurious thickness of her hair. She moaned, and he suddenly realized what a sweet, tantalizing trap he’d fallen into. It had been too long since he’d held a woman in his arms. In fact, the last time had been when he’d held this woman in his arms. His body was as tightly wound as a steel coil. He wanted her.

And yet he had succeeded in making himself the last man on earth she would want.

With a silent groan of regret, he lifted his head, putting an abrupt end to their kiss. His hands dropped to his sides, and he took a short step back.

Her round, unblinking eyes looked dazed at first, then sparked with indignation. “How dare you!” she cried, heat visibly flooding her cheeks even in the moonlight. “Let go of me!”

“I did.”

She looked down in dismay at her freed limbs. Her embarrassment at this discovery only added fuel to her ire. “That was the most despicable thing you’ve done yet!”

He couldn’t help but smile. “Letting go of you?”

“Kissing me!” she cried.

“You seemed to enjoy it,” he told her, assuming an air of arrogance while at the same time attempting to discern whether there was any truth to his words. “Leastwise, you didn’t kick up much of a fuss.”

“I was in shock!”

“A lot of women say that,” he said, posturing proudly. “It just takes a certain prowess.”

Her eyes narrowed and her fists rested on her hips. “Tyrone Saunders, you’re lower than low. I’m leaving here tomorrow and I never want to lay eyes on your hide again.”

“We had a bargain,” he warned her. “A week, remember?”

“You can’t expect me to stay here now!”

“I would expect that you would be a little less forward during the rest of your stay, as befits a woman of your superlative breeding.”

“Less forward? Me?”

He shot her an innocent glance. “I was out here minding my own business, enjoying my solitary stroll with only my cigar for company.”

“A smelly old cigar is about all the company you’re fit for!” she said angrily. “You can rest assured that I won’t throw myself at you again!”

She twirled and stormed to the house, coming just short of slamming the door behind her.

He should have been smiling, but he couldn’t. Though the encounter had been a triumph in terms of making Louise think he was a boorish lout, he’d hit upon a disturbing discovery while kissing her. His heart wasn’t so invulnerable after all.

At least, not to one particular woman.