by Janet Dailey
“You collapsed,” Reese explained. Kit didn’t think she had ever seen his broodingly male features look so gentle. “The doctor said it was a combination of exhaustion and severe strain. A couple of days of rest and quiet and you’ll be fine.”
Exhaustion, Kit thought. Yes, she had been working very hard and sleeping very little. But severe strain? A tidal wave of memory swamped her and Kit went white. Her grandfather had walked in and found them together in the living room. His harsh, angry voice came back with piercing clarity: “Get out of this house or I’ll kill you.”
“What are you doing here?” She breathed in alarm.
“I’ve been holding your hand for the last twelve hours.” His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, something she hadn’t seen happen before.
The rest of her mind was registering the time he had been sitting there. His hand, arm and back had to be cramped, but he didn’t show any discomfort, although there was the shadow of a day’s beard growth on his hollowed cheeks and jaw.
“But Nate —” Kit started to protest.
“— didn’t have any choice in the matter,” he interrupted smoothly and reached for the water pitcher and glass on her bed stand. “How about a drink?”
She bobbed her head numbly, stunned by his previous statement. Her grandfather had been adamant. She knew him very well and Nate never said anything he didn’t mean.
The puzzled, doubting look was in her brown eyes when Reese moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Supporting her head with one hand, he lifted the water glass to her lips with the other.
“You became delirious,” Reese explained. “The doctor gave you a sedative to calm you down, but you kept fighting it. Nate finally had to call me in so you would quiet down.” He set the glass on the bed stand but remained seated on the bed, his hand braced next to her head on the pillow. “In the end I don’t think Nate believed I was so depraved that I would molest an unconscious victim.”
Kit flinched at his words and turned her head away, burying her cheek in the pillow. At the caressing much of his hand on her hair she closed her eyes tightly.
His voice came softly. “That was meant to be a joke, Kit.”
“Go away, Reese,” she said stiffly. “I’m all right now. There’s no reason for you to sit there anymore.”
“Yes, I can tell you’re feeling better.” He sounded impatient and grim. “You’re beginning to sound like your old self again.”
“Leave me alone. I don’t need you anymore.” Kit denied him and the emotion pulsing through her.
All right,” Reese agreed curtly. “But before I go, there’s one thing I want you to know. I’m not going to let you crawl back inside your shell and hide, even if it means I have to go in there with you and drag you out. Do you understand me?”
“Go away, Reese. Just go away,” she cried angrily, because it would be so easy for him to do what he said. He straightened from the bed and walked to the door. “And don’t bother to come back!” Kit hurled at him as he opened it.
His only response was a twisted smile. Kit wasn’t sure what that meant.
Reese had barely left when Mrs. Kent appeared, bringing some nourishing hot broth and a speculatively curious expression. The housekeeper repeated the doctor’s admonition that Kit needed at least two days of complete rest and explained away her presence in the house by saying that Reese had asked her to lend a hand.
Two days of rest seemed an impossible order. However, with the aid of a sleeping pill left by the doctor, Kit practically slept around the clock the first twenty-four hours. Around noon of the following day she had been awake for a couple of hours and had eaten a light breakfast. Naturally her grandfather had been in to sit with her, but they had remarkably little to say to each other, both of them feeling the constraint of the situation.
Kit was lying in bed, trying not to think about anything, but it wasn’t easy to keep her mind blank. She heard the back screen door open and close and her grandfather speak to someone. It was Reese’s voice that responded. Kit tensed when she heard footsteps approaching her room, then recognized the placidly even tread as her grandfather’s. It didn’t occur to her to feign sleep when he opened the door.
There was no expression whatsoever on his age-lined face. “Reese is here to see you again.” His choice of words indicated it wasn’t the first time in the past twenty-four hours that Reese had stopped in to check on her progress. “Shall I send him in?”
Kit’s answer was a sharp, negative shake of her head. When he left and closed the door, she rolled onto her side, curling up into a tight ball of pain. Nate’s stoic attitude hurt worse than his anger could have.
Not once had he questioned her about Reese, never asking how involved she had become with him. Kit was too ashamed of the feelings she couldn’t control to talk to Nate about them. She felt she had let him down.
Reese stopped by several times in the next two days and every time Kit refused to see him. With Nate standing guard as her protector, there was little objection he could make. And Kit lingered in bed the third day just to avail herself of her grandfather’s protection.
The fourth day she had little recourse except to resume her duties. But she was still weak and forced to limit the amount of work she did, depending on how strenuous it was.
It was inevitable that she would encounter Reese. He was by the barn talking to Frank when she rode in on her first afternoon out. Kit was too tired to try to avoid meeting him. She made no objection when he stepped forward to hold her horse’s head while she dismounted.
“How are you, Kit?” he asked, leveling those hazel eyes at her.
“Fine,” she lied.
“I stopped by to see how you were getting along, but Nate said you didn’t want to see me.”
“That’s right.” She hooked the stirrup onto the saddlehorn and began loosening the cinch.
“Did you need time to get firmly entrenched in your shell again?” Reese taunted. “Were you afraid if you kept seeing me while you recovered you might find you couldn’t get back in?”
“Look Reese,” Kit began impatiently. “I’m tired. I’m really not up to one of your stupid discussions.”
“I can see that.” His sharp gaze skimmed over the faint pallor beneath her tan, brought there by weariness. “I should take advantage of it, since you wouldn’t have the strength to put up too much of an argument. But I won’t. Not this time, anyway,” he declared and walked away to leave Kit trembling inwardly at his implied threat.
During the course of the following week she saw him many times. He always spoke, sometimes only a courteous greeting, other times inquiring about some facet of the ranch work. But his indifferent words didn’t fool Kit. The look in his eyes told her that he hadn’t forgotten a word he’d said and was simply biding his time.
It was a hot Sunday afternoon that found Kit prowling restlessly about the house. It was too hot to be doing any work. She could hear Lew and Frank out tinkering in the shed. Kyle had gone home for the day to visit his family and Mrs. Kent had the day off. Her grandfather was sitting by the window facing the ranch yard with a book in his lap. Kit saw him looking out and did the same through the panes of another window. Reese was riding the buckskin, leaving the yard, heading west. Some of the tension left Kit when he disappeared from sight.
“I think I’ll go for a walk, Nate,” she said, “down by the river. It should be cooler there.”
“Okay.”
They both knew the river was in the opposite direction from the one Reese took, but neither mentioned it. Before leaving the house Kit changed into a pair of cutoff jeans and sandals. They would be cooler than the heavy Levi’s and she could easily slip her sandals off to wade in the shallow rapids at the bend in the river.
In the shade of the towering cottonwoods it was cooler. The ground had a thin coating of fluffy white seeds from which the trees had gotten their name. A slight breeze rustled the leaves, the sound nearly drowned by the laughing water of the rapids.
Kit waded for a while, leaving her sandals on the bank. When she got tired of that she sat on a water-smoothed boulder near the center of the river and dangled her feet in the water, letting the gentle rush cool her.
It was with reluctance, a sense of passing time and supper to be fixed, that she finally left her perch and waded back to the riverbank where she had left her shoes. There was no way to dry her feet so it took some doing to wedge them into the sandals. Eventually succeeding, Kit started back to the house. Her attention was on the ground, intent on not tripping over any of the many twigs and branches scattered about.
A horse snorted and Kit looked up, stopping abruptly at the sight of Reese astride the buckskin at the edge of the trees. He had seen her and was waiting. Somehow she knew he had stopped waiting. This was the moment. To try to escape or avoid him would be useless because he would simply follow. Kit could only hope that she would be able to brazen her way through him.
“It’s a crime against nature to cover up a pair of legs like yours in men’s Levi’s.” Reese observed the length of her shapely legs as Kit walked closer.
His remark suddenly made her self-conscious of her skimpy — for her — attire. “How did you know I was down here?” she demanded.
“I was up on the ridge and caught a glimpse of a woman wading in the river.” A wicked light danced in his eyes. “I knew it wasn’t Mrs. Kent because her hair isn’t that ripely golden brown color. By a process of elimination, it had to be you.”
When Kit would have walked past him, Reese nudged the buckskin forward to block her path. “Come on.” He extended a hand to her. “It’s a long way up the hill to the house. I’ll give you a ride.”
But Kit didn’t trust him to take her to the house and ducked under the horse’s head. “No, thank you. I’d rather walk than accept a ride from you.”
“Kit.” There was a wealth of exasperation and impatience in the sighing way he said her name and the shake of his head. He reined the horse around to walk beside her. “It’s hot and there’s no sense wearing yourself out climbing that hill when you can ride.”
The house was out of sight, just beyond that slight rise. Kit stared fixedly in its direction, ignoring the bobbing head of the buckskin beside her. She walked briskly, feeling the pull on the muscles in the back of her legs at the steadily angling slope.
“I told you I’d rather walk,” she repeated forcefully.
“You are going to ride.” Reese leaned partially out of the saddle to hook an arm around her middle and scoop her off the ground, hauling her across the front of his saddle almost before Kit knew what was happening.
“Put me down!” She struggled and kicked and tried to slide out of his hold.
“What’s the matter?” he taunted. “Don’t you see us riding off into the sunset together?”
“Let me go!” Kit struck at him, but he easily pinned her arms to his sides.
“Have you noticed?” Reese emitted a throaty laugh. “You always are hissing and clawing before you start to purr, kitten.”
“No,” she gulped.
“Yes,” he insisted.
Twisting her chin around, he captured her lips with forceful mastery. The crush of his arms locked Kit to his chest as the crazy, wild magic of his enchanting spell trapped her just as securely. His fingers slid through the brown silk of her hair, shaping the back of her head with his hand. It was a soul-destroying kiss, setting free her inhibitions.
“You want me,” Reese muttered thickly against her skin, “as much as I want you. Admit it, Kit. Put us both out of our misery and admit that you want me.”
He was asking too much of her. She surfaced from an emotional tidal pool with a rush, realizing how quickly and easily her feelings could betray her pride.
“No. No! History isn’t going to repeat itself. I am not going to be seduced by you!” Kit protested. Her arms strained against his chest, fighting for a single inch of space between them. “Put me down!”
Still holding her, Reese swung out of the saddle, stepping to the ground before setting her feet down. She would have run instantly, but his hands retained their hold on her shoulders, fingers cutting deeply into her soft flesh.
“Is that what you think you are running from? A simple seduction?” he accused cynically.
“What else do yon call it?” Kit hurled. “You only want to amuse yourself with me. I’m just a plaything, a sexthing to you.”
“I have more reasons for wanting you than solely for physical gratification, but we are getting off the subject,” Reese snapped. “I’m talking about you and your reasons for running. You aren’t running from me.”
“No, I’m escaping!”
“From a fate worse than death?” he jeered.
“Yes. I’ll never give in to you.”
“Not because you are afraid of me. You are afraid of yourself.” He took his hands from her as if his violence was so great he might do her bodily harm if he continued to hold her.
But his statement kept Kit from running to the safety of the house. “That is ridiculous,” she denied it vigorously.
“A moment ago you spoke of history repeating itself.”
She tossed her head back. “Have you forgotten? It way my mother who was seduced by the last baron. He wanted her, too, for the same, cheap, degrading reasons as you have.”
“What’s your opinion of your mother?” Reese demanded. “Do you think she was weak? Naive? Lacking in moral character? A coward?”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? I mean, she did let herself get taken in by all his fancy talk. She let him make love to her, didn’t she?” It hurt to make those admissions about her mother, but they were the truth as Kit saw it. “She didn’t stand up to him and say it was wrong.”
“Your mother may have been misguided in placing her trust in him, but she had a hell of a lot more guts than you do!” he flared. “You are the one who is a coward, Kit.”
“How can you say that? How can you accuse me of that?”
“Because you are afraid. Your mother cared enough about a man to make a commitment to him, to have his child. She risked the shame and the hurt because she cared about a man. I can’t believe your mother was stupid, weak or a coward. She knew what the consequences could be for her actions, but she did it anyway. I’m not saying it was right, but I’m betting that she did it with her eyes wide open, not blinded by a romantic dream.”
“She was a fool!”
“No, you are the fool, Kit!” Reese seemed to loom above her in avenging anger, his face darkened, his arrogant nostrils flared, his mouth thinning into a forbidding line. “You don’t have the guts to care. You’re scared, scared to the bottom of your shoes! You pretend to be hard and tough to hide how petrified you are. You’re a sniveling little coward.”
“No, no, it’s not true!” Kit covered her hands over her ears to shut out his hammering, hateful words.
Reese jerked them down. “Have you ever said ‘I love you’ to anything? To a dog, to a horse, to your grandfather? Have you said those words to anything or anybody? No,” he answered the question for her. “No, because that would mean you cared. And if you cared you might get hurt.”
“Let me go and leave me alone!” she cried.
“Gladly — on both counts!” He released her abruptly and Kit stumbled backward. “Run, Kit, run. That’s all you know how to do, but stop kidding yourself and grow up!”
She took a few, faltering steps toward the house and stopped to hurl the last spear. “Why don’t you go away? Why don’t you go away and never come back!”
He stood there glaring at her, his hands on his hips. Then he turned away and climbed into the saddle. With a flick of the reins, he spun the buckskin around and rode out toward the range. Kit ran a little farther up the hill, then collapsed in the tall grasses and started crying.
She pounded her fist into the ground, sobbing, “I hate him. I hate him.” Empty words without meaning and another way of running from the truth.
Kit was dry-eyed when she walked to the house much later. She didn’t say a word to her grandfather about her meeting with Reese.
Two days later Kit was stepping out of the barn after milking the cow when she saw Reese’s car parked in front of the Big House. Puzzled, she stared. That wasn’t where it belonged. Her frown deepened as Reese walked out, dressed in a suit and carrying two large pieces of luggage.
Her heart started pounding like a death drum. Slowly, drawn like a metal to magnet, Kit crossed the yard and approached the car. Reese was stowing the luggage in the rear compartment of the car. He didn’t even glance up when she stopped by the front fender, milk bucket in hand.
The housekeeper came bustling out of the house onto the porch. “You forgot your shaving kit, Mr. Talbot.” She started down the steps, holding out a small, brown leather case. She spied Kit standing by the car and stopped on the last step, glancing uncertainly toward Reese.
“Thank you, Mrs. Kent.” He took the shaving kit from her, still without so much as a glance to acknowledge Kit’s presence. “I appreciate your staying on another couple of days to close things up. Lew or Frank will take you into town whenever you’re ready to leave.”
Close things up! The phrase struck Kit like a slap across the face. That sounded much more permanent than a simple trip.
“I don’t mind.” The woman hesitated, then added, “I enjoyed working for you, Mr. Talbot, truly I did.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Kent.” Reese shook her hand and gave her a smile that had grim edges to it, as did his features.
“Goodbye, sir.” There was a slight catch in the woman’s voice. She cast one last, spurious glance at Kit and walked back up the steps into the house.
Still Reese ignored her, carrying the shaving kit to the rear of the car and tossing it in the trunk with the rest of his luggage.
“You’re leaving,” she finally blurted out the words.
“Yes.” Reese slammed the lid of the trunk down.
“For good?”
“Yes.” He walked to the passenger door, opened it, and started to slide behind the wheel.
