Minutes later a knock sounded on her door.
Linnea's heartbeat stumbled. She pushed off the light sheet and padded to the door. "Yes?"
"It's me." Will's voice.
She pressed a hand to her breast. He'd never come to her room except for something important. She raised the wooden bar and opened the door.
Will shot a glance toward Aggie's room, then took a step forward. Automatically, Linnea backed up for him to enter.
He pushed the door shut.
She took stock of him in the darkness. "Is something wrong?" she asked softly.
"We weren't finished…were we?"
She caught her breath.
"It's not proper for me to be here, I know, but we never have time alone." His voice, rough and low, stirred something to life inside her. "Tell me to go. and I will."
She said nothing. He smelled like a combination of the soap she'd made and fresh summer air. Her skin tingled all over at the sensory onslaught.
"I want to kiss you again."
Chapter Twenty-Four
Heaven help her, she wanted that, too. She wanted more of the sweet nerve-tingling sensations he created with his gentle kisses and reverent touches. He had never demanded or expected or forced himself on her, and she had begun to experience something altogether new and wonderful.
She took a small step that brought her breasts almost to his chest and looked up expectantly.
Will placed a hand on each shoulder and drew her closer. With an infinitely slow and purposeful movement, he lowered his head and covered her lips with his. He tasted like coffee and enchantment, his hands gentle on her shoulders, his hard chest grazing her breasts.
Linnea leaned into him, learning the length and masculine strength of his body against hers. She gave in to the need to touch him and flattened her palms against his chest, feeling the heat of his skin through his shirt. Moving one hand to his jaw, she hesitantly explored the rough exhilarating texture.
Will angled his mouth over hers, kissing her more deeply. Her entire body warmed and she returned the kiss.
His touch slid from her shoulders to her back, and one hand drew circles on her spine, the other held her waist. His touch made her light-headed and eager for more, and she moved against him, drawing a groan from his throat.
He lowered his hands to cup her buttocks, where only a thin layer of cotton separated him from her flesh. Her heated reaction to the intimacy was startling and unexpected. She loved his gifted hands on her, the gentle kneading, the measured stroking. Her body quivered with the potent pleasure he was creating.
Will rained kisses across her lips and chin, nipped her lower lip, drew a line across her lips with his tongue. Linnea hesitantly opened to his unspoken request and their tongues met in a deep erotic mating. In the cocooning darkness, they tasted and discovered, stroked and sighed, blindly caught up in the euphoria of new sensations.
Linnea's legs grew so weak, she clung to Will for support, but he didn't seem to mind. Eventually, without breaking the kiss, he moved her backward until her knees touched the mattress. She sat, and he knelt before her, his head now inches below hers, changing the slant and manner of their kiss.
Taking his mouth from hers, he pressed his lips against her neck, licked her collarbone and sent shivers skittering along her spine and across her scalp. These feelings were new and surprising…and wonderful. "I feel so strange," she said, her voice weak. "So—I don't know, not like myself."
"Is it a good feeling?" he asked.
"Oh, yes."
He cupped her face and smiled at her in the dim light that filtered through the curtains.
Linnea threaded her fingers into his heavy shoulder-length hair as she had always wanted to do, enjoying its cool texture. She understood then, as she hadn't before, his fascination with her hair. She untied her braid quickly, and in seconds the loosened tresses spread over her shoulder.
Will ran his fingers through the mass, drew it to his nose and inhaled. He kissed the end of her nose, her eyelids. "I want so much more, Linnea."
Something dropped like a lead weight in her belly.
Did she understand? A smothering sensation dimmed her pleasure as she remembered her husband's demanding physical attentions and the way the repulsive act made her feel. But then Pratt had never made her feel the way Will did—had never tried. Her husband had demanded and taken and hurt. Will stroked and inflamed and titillated. She had recognized the differences in a hundred other ways. This was different, too.
"Do you want me to lie on the bed?" she asked.
His hands stilled on her back. "Only if you want to."
Withdrawing from his embrace, she moved across the covers to lie down.
Will stood slowly, placed a knee on the mattress, causing her weight to shift, then crawled to where she lay, He stretched out beside her, braced on one elbow, and feathered her hair out over the pillow.
Linnea grasped his wrist and studied his face, wanting all those strange and delightful feelings to be there before anything more happened, and afraid they wouldn't be.
"What is it?" he asked. "What's wrong?"
She shook her head. "Nothing. I'd like you to kiss me again, if you wouldn't mind."
He chuckled before saying, "That's no great hardship, Linnea."
He lowered his head, and she met him eagerly, wrapping her arm around his neck and trembling with her need to recapture the incredible sensations she'd known only moments ago.
But Will was slow and tender and deliberate and didn't respond to her impatience. Instead, he plied her mouth with his, took her in his arms and held her so that she felt every inch of him along her barely clad body—the rough denim of his trousers, the hard metal of his belt buckle…
He held her as though she was fragile and would break beneath his touch. Which only made her bolder, more eager to prove herself a worthy match. Her fear of losing those new feelings abated and she relaxed into him, under him, smiling against his kiss until he stopped and questioned her.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing's funny. I'm just happy, that's all. I never knew what wanting was before."
"What do you want?"
"I'm not sure."
He brought his hand from her back and placed it beneath her breast. "Is it okay? To touch you here?"
She nodded. Her heart thumped crazily. Her breasts felt tight and tingly, an unfamiliar sensation.
He cupped her breast through her cotton night dress, held it as though learning the weight and feel of her. Linnea's eyes drifted shut and she allowed herself to simply feel. This was the first time they'd been so close since Rebecca's birth, the first time the obstacle of her belly wasn't lodged between them, and she felt wonderfully free and unencumbered.
Will leaned over her, pressing her into the mattress, and his weight was sublime pleasure. "I don't want to hurt you," he said.
"Your belt buckle is a little uncomfortable," she admitted.
Will took his hands from her to rise and unfasten his belt. After a brief struggle, he slid it from the loops and dropped it to the floor beside the bed. Without pause, he lay beside her again. Linnea had expected him to remove his clothing, and her body had flushed with nervous heat. Instead, he had removed the offending belt and resumed his place and the sweet caresses.
In wonder and appreciation, she framed his face with her palms and kissed his lips. Moving her hands into his hair, she reveled in the contrast between this man and the one to whom she'd been married. Pratt had acted nice and sweet at first, but after she'd married him, he'd been mean and controlling.
Will, on the other hand, had appeared loud and angry, when in reality he was gentle and considerate. If he knew of her life before, of her marriage, would he still treat her so kindly? Would he still desire her this same electrifying way? She didn't think so.
But he didn't know, and his touches grew more inflaming, his kisses hotter, deeper. He rolled her sensitive nipple between his finger and thumb and an unfamiliar thro
bbing began at the juncture of her thighs. His hands stroked her breasts, her belly, his lips traveled a path along her jaw to beneath her ear.
A shudder of exquisite sensation rippled through her body.
Linnea was caught up in the euphoria of the feelings and sensations. She clasped him firmly against her with one arm around his wide shoulders.
"Linnea," he said beneath her ear, his breath hot and moist. "I love you."
His words rang in her head. Her hands stilled on his back. "What did you say?"
He raised his head and spoke with his face inches from hers. "I said I love you. Marry me." And then he added with a grin she could see in the darkness, "Please."
The weight dropped inside her again, a spiraling downward sensation this time, followed by a chilling fear. He didn't know of her background or her experiences, or he would never have suggested such a thing.
She could never be a lady like Corinne. She bore stains that time wouldn't erase, and the fact that Will didn't know about them didn't mean they weren't there.
Studying her as though her stillness puzzled him, he raised himself on one elbow. "You don't have to answer right away," he said. "Take time to think about it."
Withdrawing from his embrace, Linnea scooted to a sitting position, drew her knees up and tucked her nightdress primly over her legs and feet.
Clearly puzzled, Will moved to a sitting position in the center of the bed. "I know I didn't make a very good impression when you arrived," he told her. "But I'm trying to make up for that. I'm ornery and quick to lose my temper. But I have a fine spread here, Linnea. Prime Texas beeves, horseflesh from good stock. The house isn't fancy, but it's solid. You can change anything you like. Buy nicer furniture. I'll be a good father to Rebecca, she'll be my own. If you'd like, I'd be proud for her to have my name—"
She shook her head and raised a hand to make him stop. Her chest ached with the impossibility of it and his determination to convince her. He didn't understand.
He reached for her hand and drew it to his lips, where his warm breath skimmed her ringers. "Just say you'll think about it. For a week. How about a week?"
Leaning toward her, he pushed her upraised knees aside and kissed her swollen lips. A sob rose in her chest and she swallowed it down. He stared into her eyes. "Say you'll think about it."
She would do nothing else—for the rest of her life. "I'll think about it."
He kissed her then. Touched her hair and reluctantly got to his feet. "Good night, Linnea."
After bending to pick up his belt, he left and pulled the door shut behind him with a soft click.
She didn't bother to get up and drop the lock into place. Danger hadn't come barging through the door like an intruder; she had welcomed it in. She'd offered him everything she'd once been afraid he would take from her, but he'd wanted to give her something instead. A home. His name. A father for her baby.
Linnea pressed the heels of her palms against her burning eyes. She wasn't the woman he deserved, and it wasn't going to take her a week to figure that out. She was a poor uneducated girl that nobody had ever wanted. Coming here hadn't turned her into someone different.
As much as she had wanted to stay, she now knew she had to leave. It would be her decision this time. A decision she had to make.
Her heart was heavy the next morning. Nursing Rebecca hadn't raised her spirits, neither had Zach and Margaret's charming observations over breakfast. Though Will smiled and Corinne included her in the conversation, Linnea was an outsider, and pretending different wouldn't change anything.
Every hour Linnea mentally listed another reason, another difference, another way she didn't measure up. Corinne spoke in a cultured manner, dressed in expensively made clothing and dressed her hair in an elegant fashion. She was nothing but kind and friendly toward Linnea, and often asked to hold or change the baby.
But Corinne had a background and a life far from Linnea's. Linnea learned that Corinne's husband had been a banker from a well-to-do Saint Louis family. From Aggie, however, she'd learned that the bulk of her money had come as an inheritance from her father.
Aggie had resented Corinne for a good many years, but Corinne treated her as kindly as she did everyone else, and Aggie seemed to eventually warm to her and the children.
"Mama!" Margaret said, bursting into the house one afternoon. "Uncle Will says I must wear my boots around the horses! Roy is going to let me help with the saddle and we're going riding!"
With a flurry of skirts and the flounce of dark hair, the child ran to the other room and up the stairs. Moments later, she returned with stockings, boots and buttonhook in hand.
Corinne urged her daughter onto a bench and knelt before her. "Mind your uncle and Mr. Jonjack, Margaret May," she said. "Their lessons are to be taken seriously."
"Yes'm."
Corinne stood and watched her daughter run out the back door. Moving to the open doorway, she said, "Once or twice a year is not enough for them to receive fatherly attention and instruction," she said, her voice wistful. "Especially for Zach. He needs a man in his life." .
"What about you?'' Aggie asked from her chair at the other side of the room. "Do you need a man in your life?''
Linnea glanced up to see Corinne's reaction to the question.
"I'm beginning to think I do," Corinne replied. She slipped the buttonhook into her pocket. "I'm going outdoors to watch the children for a while."
Linnea hadn't missed the looks between Roy and Corinne at meal times, and apparently even old Aggie had observed.
By the middle of the week, Linnea knew she couldn't let Will go on thinking she might agree to marry him. If he truly had feelings for her, drawing out his hope wasn't fair. She waited until the men were gathered around their fire and Corinne had taken the children upstairs to find Will alone.
He was working in an open stall in the barn, wrapping the forelegs on one of his mares. "I knew it was you," he said, looking up.
She'd never come to him out here before. "How did you know?"
"The sound of your steps." He finished wrapping the leg and stood. The mare butted his chest with its nose, and he rubbed it distractedly. "I probably smell like a horse, I haven't washed up yet."
"I just wanted to say something to you," Linnea said.
"Okay."
"It's about what you asked me…"
"You said you'd think about it, Linnea," he said and drew his brows together in a frown. "A week, you said."
"I don't need a week." She gripped a wooden rail nervously. "No amount of time will change what I have to say."
His face changed to the unreadable mask she knew so well. "Say it then."
"I can't marry you, Will."
His disturbed gaze bore into her. "Can't or won't?"
She couldn't tell him all the reasons she couldn't stay. She never wanted him to know the truth about her marriage. Nothing would spare his feelings—or hers—anyway. "I can't. I'll be prepared to leave when it's time for Corinne to go, whenever that will be. That way you won't have to spare a hand twice."
The telltale muscle in his jaw twitched, and his lips were drawn into a firm straight line. "I can't change your mind, can I? You've made it up."
"I have to go."
"Then I won't try to convince you. You obviously know what you want and don't want."
"It's not like that, you don't understand."
"I understand well enough. What's not to understand?" He bent to pick up a pile of rags and a bucket, and she backed up to let him pass out of the stall. He pushed the gate shut and slid a lock into place.
Linnea followed him to the tack room, where he put supplies away as though she wasn't there.
"Will?" she said.
His hand stilled. He stood without moving for several seconds. Finally, he looked at her. His expression remained shuttered. "Say whatever it is you want to say, Linnea."
She could never say what she wanted to say. He'd told her he'd loved her, and that had made everything rea
l. She didn't know what she'd been thinking before, playing with the fire of their kisses and touches, not imagining anything more than each moment of awakening passion.
I want to stay here with you more than anything I've ever wanted in my whole life. I wish I was worthy of your love. I wish my life could start over, and that I could be somebody like Corinne. I will wonder my whole life if you've found someone to marry and what she is like. If you danced with her and kissed her— gave her children of your own.
"I'm sorry," was all she said. Then she turned and fled the barn.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Will stared at the empty doorway until his eyes burned. He had to respect her decision to leave. If he couldn't, he didn't respect her. He would not try to change her mind. She didn't want him in her life and that was the end of it.
Maybe he'd bullied her into those passionate encounters. Maybe he'd been the only one who felt the emotion and the desire, and she'd been appeasing a demanding employer. He hadn't thought so at the time, but everything was confusing now.
He'd thought from the first that this was no place for her. Maybe he'd been right all along. And the baby? Will's chest ached at the thought of Linnea taking her away and him never seeing either of them again. Would a city be a better place to raise a daughter? Granted, there would be schools. But there would also be saloons and gambling halls and unsavory characters on the streets.
He couldn't think about that. He couldn't protect them if they weren't here.
A crash of thunder startled him. He put away his supplies and hurried out to look at the sky.
Jagged lightning split the night sky. "Damn!" Where had this storm come from? The day had been clear. Will turned and ran to where the men had been sitting around their fire, and were now picking up their belongings.
"Two riders head east and bunch the cattle on higher ground—Nash and Ben."
The Tenderfoot Bride Page 20
