by Nora Roberts
Gathering her forces, she climbed the steps to the porch and went inside. By the time she’d removed her hat, hung it on the hall rack, Ben was coming down the stairs.
He’d seen her from the office window, watched her almost staggering progress toward the house, her deliberate squaring of shoulders as she saw the police cars.
And he’d had enough.
“How’s Lily?”
“Bess won’t let anyone but Adam near her.” Willa took her coat off slowly, certain that any sudden move would bang her aching bones together. “But she’s resting.”
“Good. You can follow suit.”
“The police will want to talk to me.”
“They can talk to you later. After you’ve gotten some sleep.” He took her arm and towed her firmly up the stairs.
“I’ve got responsibilities here, Ben.”
“Yeah, you do.” When they reached the top of the stairs and she turned in the direction of the office, he simply picked her up bodily and carried her toward her room. “The first is not to end up in a sickbed yourself.”
“Let go of me. I don’t appreciate the caveman routine.”
“Neither do I.” He kicked her door shut behind him, strode to the bed, and dumped her. “Especially when you’re playing the caveman.” She bounced up, he shoved her down again. “You know I’ve got you outmuscled, Will. I’m not letting you out of here until you’ve had some sleep.”
Maybe she couldn’t outwrestle him, but she thought she could outshout him. “I’ve got cops in my office, a sister too sick to say two words to me, a bunkhouse full of men who are speculating on just what the hell happened up in high country, and a ranch nobody’s running. What the hell do you expect me to do, let it all go to hell while I take a nap?”
“I expect you to bend.” She’d been wrong, he could outshout her too. The explosion might have knocked her back if she hadn’t already been down. “Just once in your damn life, bend before you break. The cops can wait, your sister’s being taken care of, and your men are too damn tired to speculate on anything but who’s snoring the loudest. And the ranch isn’t going to fall apart if you turn off for a couple hours.”
He grabbed her boot, wrenched it off, then heaved it across the room. She reached for the second, gripped the top in what would have been a comic struggle if his eyes hadn’t been so raw with temper. “What the hell crawled up your butt?” she demanded. “Just cut it out, Ben.”
The second boot slid out of her fingers and went flying. “You think I didn’t see your face when you walked into that cave? That I don’t know what it did to you, or how you were holding yourself together by your fingernails all the way back down?” He grabbed her shirtfront, and for a moment she was certain he intended to haul her off the bed and toss her after her boots. “I’m not having it.”
She was stunned enough that she didn’t react until he’d unbuttoned her shirt and yanked it off her shoulders. “Just take your hands off me. I can undress myself when I’m ready. You’re an overseer around here, McKinnon, but you don’t run my life, and if you don’t—”
“Maybe you need somebody to run it.”
He lifted her off the bed—clean off, she thought in wonder, as her feet dangled inches above the polished wood floor. And she realized he was as furious as she’d ever seen him, and she’d seen him red-eyed furious plenty. She’d never seen him like this.
He added a quick, teeth-rattling shake. “Maybe you need to listen to somebody besides yourself now and again.”
It was the shake that snapped it. The humiliation of it. “If I do, it won’t be you. And the only place you’re going to be running is for cover if you don’t turn me loose—” Her hand was fisted and ready when he dropped her onto her feet.
“Take a swing at me.” He ground out the dare. “Go ahead, but you’re going to bed if I have to tie you to the headboard.”
She grabbed the hands that grabbed at her shirt. “I’m warning you—”
“He worked for me.”
That stopped her, stopped them both as they struggled with her thermal shirt. “What?” Now her hands covered his, dug in. “Jesse Cooke?”
And her hands went limp as she remembered. That day on the road to Three Rocks, that pretty, smiling face at the window of her rig. They’d been that close, as close as Ben and she were now, with only that thin shield of glass between them.
What would he have done, she wondered, if her door hadn’t been locked, her window up?
“That’s where I saw him.” She shuddered when she thought of how he’d flashed that grin at her, called her by name. “I couldn’t put it together. He was right there all along. He’s been here, playing poker with the men. Right down in the bunkhouse playing cards.”
She shook herself, looked at Ben, and saw the weight he was carrying. Not anger so much as guilt, she thought. And she knew the sharp edge of it too well. “It’s not your fault.” She touched his face, and her words were as gentle as fingertips. “You couldn’t know.”
“No, I couldn’t know.” He’d chewed over that until it had made him as ill as spoiled beef. “But it doesn’t change it. I had him work on Shelly’s rig. She had him in for coffee—her and the baby alone with him. He fixed my mother’s bathroom sink. He was in the house with my mother.”
“Stop.” She did bend, enough to put her arms around him, to draw him down until he sat beside her. “He’s done now.”
“He’s done, but it’s not.” He took her by the shoulders, turning her so they faced each other on the edge of the bed. “Whoever killed him, Willa, works for you, or for me.”
“I know that.” She’d thought of it, thought of it constantly on the racing ride back from the cave, during her helpless pacing of Adam’s living room. “Maybe it was payback, Ben, for the others. Maybe Jesse killed the others, and whoever found him did it for them. Lily wasn’t hurt. She was alone, and sick, but he didn’t touch her.”
“And maybe one at a time’s enough for him. Will, the chances that we’ve got two men who do that with a knife are slim. Cooke carried a small boot knife, a four-inch blade hardly bigger than a toy. You don’t do that kind of damage with an undersized blade.”
“No.” It all played back in her head. “No, you don’t.”
“Then there’s that first steer we found, up toward the cabin. No way he did that. I’d barely signed him on. He didn’t know his way around high country then.”
She had to moisten her lips, they’d become so dry. “You’ve told all this to the police.”
“Yeah, I told them.”
“Okay.” She rubbed her fingers dead center of her brow. There wasn’t a headache there yet, just intense concentration. “We go on the way we have. Keep the guards, the men working in teams and shifts. I know my men.” She rapped a fist on her knee. “I know them. The two new ones I just hired on—Christ, I shouldn’t have taken on any new hands until this was done.”
“You have to stop riding out alone.”
“I can’t take a damn bodyguard every time I’ve got cattle to check.”
“You stop riding out alone,” he said evenly, “or I’ll use the old man’s will to block you. I’ll put down that I consider you incompetent as operator. I can convince Nate to go along with me.”
What little color she had left drained out of her face as she got to her feet. “You son of a bitch. You know goddamn well I’m as competent as any rancher in the state. More.”
He rose as well, faced her. “I’ll say what I need to say, and I’ll do what I have to do. You butt against me on this, you risk losing Mercy.”
“Get the hell out of here.” She whirled away, balled fists at her sides. “Just get the hell out of my house.”
“You want to keep it your house, you don’t ride out without Adam or Ham. You want me out, you get into bed and get some sleep.”
He could have forced her down again. It would have been easier than saying what he had to say. “I care about you, Willa. I’ve got feelings for you, and the
y go pretty deep.” It was harder yet when she turned and stared at him. “Maybe I don’t know what the hell to do with them, but they’re there.”
Her heart hurt all over again, but in a way she didn’t expect. “Threatening me is sure a damn fool way of showing them.”
“Maybe. But if I asked you nice, you wouldn’t listen.”
“How do you know? You never ask nice.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, regrouped. “I’ve got to get through my day too. Worrying about you’s putting a hitch in my stride. If you’d do this one thing for me, it’d make it easier.”
This was interesting, she thought. When her mind was clear again, she’d have to ponder it. “Do you ride out alone, Ben?”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“Maybe I’ve got feelings too.”
That was unexpected—and something worth considering. So he considered it, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “Do you?”
“Maybe. I don’t want to punch you every time I see you these days, so maybe I do.”
His mouth curved up. “Willa, you do have a way of flushing a man’s ego and then shooting it down. Let’s take it forward a step.” He came toward her, tilted her face up with his finger under her chin, and brushed his lips against hers. “You matter to me. Some.”
“You matter to me too. Some.”
She was softening. He knew she wasn’t aware of it, but he was. Under different circumstances it would have been time to make gentle love to her, perhaps say more. Perhaps say nothing. Because he knew that was just what she’d expect, he kissed her again, let it deepen, let himself sink into her, into that sensation of intimate isolation.
Her arms came up, circled his neck. Her body went pliant as he gathered her closer. The muscles he stroked, kneaded, began to relax under his hands. This time, when he lifted her onto the bed, she sighed.
“You’d better lock that door,” she murmured. “We could have the cops in here. Get ourselves arrested.”
He kissed her eyes closed as he unfastened her jeans. He kissed her curved lips as he drew the jeans down her legs. Then he threw a blanket over her, got up, and lowered the shades. Her eyes were heavy, smiling lazily as she watched him move back to her, bend down, touch that warm mouth to hers again.
“Get some sleep,” he ordered, then straightened and strode to the door.
She popped up like a string. “You son of a bitch.”
“I love it when you call me that.” With a chuckle, he closed the door.
Steaming, she plopped back on the pillows. How was it he always seemed to outmaneuver her? He’d wanted her flat on her back in bed, and by God, that’s just where she was. It was mortifying.
Not that she was staying. In just a minute she would get up, take a bracing shower. Then she’d get back to work.
In just a minute.
She wasn’t closing her eyes, wasn’t going to sleep. If she did, she was certain she’d be back in that cave, back in the horror. But that wasn’t the reason, she assured herself as she struggled to force her eyelids open again. It wasn’t fear that was pushing her along. It was duty. And as soon as she got her second wind, she was getting up to fulfill that duty.
She wasn’t going to sleep just because Ben McKinnon told her to. Especially since he’d told her to.
She fell like a rock and slept like a stone.
PART FOUR
SUMMER
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
—Shakespeare
TWENTY-FIVE
T HERE WASN’T A DISH IN THE SINK, NOT A CRUMB ON THE counter or a scuff mark on the floor. Lily stared at the spotless kitchen. Adam had beaten her to it. Again. She stepped to the back door, through it. The gardens she’d planned were tilled, with the hardier vegetables and flowers already planted.
Adam and Tess. Lily hadn’t even gotten soil on her garden gloves. And oh, how she’d wanted to.
She struggled not to resent it, to remember that they were thinking of her. She’d been ill for two weeks, and for another, too weak to handle her regular chores without periodic rests. But she was recovered now, fully, and growing weary of being worried over and pampered.
She knew the freezer was stuffed to overflowing with dishes that Bess or Nell had prepared. Lily hadn’t cooked a meal since the night Jesse had come through the door where she now stood looking out at the tender green buds on the trees, feeling the gentle warmth of the May air on her face.
It seemed like years since that cold and bitter night. And there were blank spots still, areas of gray she didn’t care to explore. But she was to be married in three short weeks, and her life was more out of her control than it had ever been before.
She hadn’t even been permitted to address her own wedding invitations. It had been discovered, to everyone’s surprise, that Willa possessed the neatest handwriting among them. So Tess had assigned the job to Willa, with Lily playing only a minor role.
They’d let her lick the stamps.
The flowers were ordered, the photographer and music settled on. And she’d let them, all of them, lovingly step over and around her to handle the details.
It had to stop. It was going to stop. Closing the door firmly at her back, she marched toward the stables. Or she began in a march and ended up with dragging feet. Every time she ventured toward stables or pasture, Adam found a way of whisking her home again. Never touching her, she thought. Or touching her so dispassionately it was more like doctor to patient than lover to lover.
He stepped out of the stables as she approached, which made her think, not for the first time, that he had some sort of radar where she was concerned. He smiled, but she saw that his eyes remained sober, and searching.
“Hi. I’d hoped you’d sleep longer.”
“It’s after ten. I thought I’d work with a couple of the yearlings today, on the longe line.”
“There’s plenty of time for that.” As usual, he guided her away from the stables, his hand barely touching her elbow. “Did you have breakfast?”
“Yes, Adam, I had breakfast.”
“Good.” He resisted picking her up and carrying her back to the house, tucking her away where she’d be safe and close. “Did you finish that new book I brought you? It’s a pretty morning, maybe you could sit on the porch and read. Get a little sun.”
“I nearly finished it.” Had barely started it. It made her guilty, knowing he’d made a special trip into town to buy her books, magazines, the little candied almonds she was so fond of.
And she hated the book, the magazines, the almonds. Even the flowers he was constantly bringing home to cheer her.
“I’ll bring the radio out for you. And a blanket. It can get cool when you’re just sitting.” He was terrified she’d catch a chill, lie shivering in bed again with her hand limp in his. “I’ll make you some tea, then—”
“Stop it!” The explosive shout stunned them both. In the time he stared at her, she realized she’d never really shouted at anyone before. It was a powerful and thrilling experience. “Stop it, Adam. I’m tired of this. I don’t want to sit, I don’t want to read. I don’t want you bringing me tea and flowers and candy and treating me like a piece of cracked glass.”
“Lily, there’s no need to get upset. You’ll make yourself sick again, and you’re barely out of bed.”
For the first time in her life she understood the wisdom of counting to ten before speaking. Another time, she decided, she might even try it.
“I am out of bed. I would have been out of bed days before I was if you hadn’t been hovering around me. And I am sick. I’m sick of not being allowed to wash my own dishes or plant my own garden or run my own life. I’m sick to death of it.”
“Let’s go inside.” He treated her as he would a fractious mare, with great patience and compassion. “You just need to rest. With the wedding only weeks away you’ve got a lot on your mind.”
That tore it. She whirled on him. “I do not need to rest, and I do not need to be placated like a cranky child. And there isn’t going to be any wedding, not until I say differently.”
She stalked off, leaving him stunned, speechless, and staggered.
