by Merry Farmer
“Oh no. We can’t have that,” Max replied like a bad actor.
Within seconds, he and Skipper dashed off, blending into the crowd. Rupert half wished his eyes could shoot bullets as he stared after them. He hated being set up.
“You have good friends,” Bonnie laughed softly.
Rupert crossed his arms and glanced sideways at her. “I’m not so sure about that.” But already his ire was fading at the sight of Bonnie’s wistful expression.
She had changed somehow since their confrontation that morning. The same inner strength and stubbornness pervaded her, but there were faint lines around her eyes and mouth, as if her exhaustion reached bone deep. Rupert found himself wanting to pull her into his arms to tell her everything would be all right, no matter what everything was.
He forced himself to resist the feeling and stared at the dancers kicking up their heels on the Carpenters’ lawn. The people of Everland had become his people in so many ways. He knew everyone, from wiry Yacob Spratt to matronly Meri Carpenter, and even newer folks, like the awe-inspiring, blind violinist, Vincenzo Bellini. And yet, a tiny part of him had stayed with Bonnie, even when he didn’t know where she was.
Heck, a huge part of him had stayed with Bonnie. He should say something. He should tell her that he never stopped thinking of her, never stopped hoping. Maybe then she’d give up this foolish idea of divorcing him and marrying Rex Bonneville. Maybe then she’d leave her sinful life behind and come live in Everland with him.
Maybe he was a fool and a donkey’s behind.
The silence between them stretched on. Bonnie sipped her drink, but didn’t look at him. They both had their eyes glued to the revelers dancing and laughing and having a good time. To Rupert, it was almost as though he was standing on the other side of a glass window, looking at a party he could never be a part of.
Several more silent seconds passed, and an older woman—one he didn’t recognize—rushed past them. She was small with spectacles and a pencil thrust through the grey bun of her hair. And she stopped suddenly just in front of Rupert and Bonnie and gasped. Rupert stood a little straighter as the woman scrutinized the two of them. He felt Bonnie stiffen as well.
At last, the woman tsked. “There isn’t time, there isn’t time. Heaven knows the two of them need it, but there simply isn’t time.” She marched on, muttering to herself. “If only Sneezy didn’t have her hands full right now.”
The sheer oddness of the situation cracked through whatever barrier had sprung up between Rupert and Bonnie. Bonnie began to chuckle. She held her free hand to her mouth as her laughter grew. That sound and her smile loosened the tight muscles in Rupert’s back, and he gave himself permission to smile with her.
“Who was that?” Bonnie laughed.
“I have no idea.” Rupert chuckled with her.
“Sneezy?”
Rupert shrugged, and the two of them broke down into shared laughter. It felt good, far, far too good.
“I’m glad to see these two getting married.” He tried his hand at a real conversation, nodding toward where Dmitri and Zelle stood, surrounded by friends. “Jack and Meri Carpenter have been a little too protective of Zelle all these years, but Dmitri is a good, deserving man.”
“I’m sure he values your good opinion.”
Rupert stole a peek at Bonnie to see if she was ribbing him somehow, but no, the look in her eyes was completely genuine. Still, he couldn’t help but mutter, “It’s a shame I don’t have other people’s good opinion.”
Bonnie’s expression pinched. She was silent, eyes downcast, for a little too long before saying, “You did quite well for yourself in the end.”
Was that a compliment? Was she saying she did think well of him after all?
He cleared his throat. “I owe a lot of that to Skipper.” He nodded at his friend—who now stood with his head together with Max and Gordon—across the yard. “He came along at just the right time.”
“Oh?” Bonnie half turned to him. Her brow lifted, and her eyes held a light of genuine curiosity. More than that, it was like she was willing him to tell her good news, to tell her everything had worked out well for him.
Honestly, it had. He shrugged. “Things were bad after you left. I did everything I could think of to get my claim back from the McGovern boys, but…” He let his words trail off with a frown. Now, nearly a decade later, he felt so foolish thinking about how badly he’d bungled things that it made his gut burn with shame. Plenty of men went through a phase of being young and stupid, but he’d been far stupider than most and had paid the price.
“What you said back then, before you left,” he went on, staring at the grass in front of him instead of facing Bonnie. “About me being too stubborn to feed and take care of myself unless I had to.” Now he dragged his eyes up to meet hers. “You were right.”
She didn’t reply—not to tell him she told him so, not to say she’d been too harsh, not even to agree with him. She just looked at him, deep, deep sorrow in her eyes. She probably knew as well as he did that he’d had to go through hell to find his way back to life.
He cleared his throat and stared out at the crowd again. “I hadn’t eaten in three days when I stumbled across a guy who needed laborers to construct a mill on his claim. I didn’t know one end of a hammer from the other, but I didn’t really have to. The work was backbreaking, but I could do it, and there was a hot meal at the end of the day and a few coins. When the mill was finished, I tagged along with some of the other men from the crew to the next job, then the next one.” He kicked his toe in the grass. “I got pretty good at hammering those nails.”
“Good for you,” Bonnie said softly.
Rupert raised his head and sniffed. “I worked in construction for a little more than a year before I came across Skipper near Colorado Springs. It was pure luck that we sat at the same table in the saloon one day. I was talking to a buddy about a job we were doing, and Skip started talking about his designs for houses and other buildings. The two of us got to talking, I saw ways he could build his designs, make them a reality.” He shrugged. “The rest is history. We went into partnership, and eventually we moved here, to Everland.”
“I’m so glad things worked out for you.” She reached out to squeeze his arm. Never had a simple touch hit him so hard. But more than her touch, the genuine kindness and…and pride in her eyes grabbed him by the heart and wouldn’t let him go.
“I’ve made a name for myself here,” he went on, not sure how much he should say or how much of it would be bragging. “With Skipper’s help, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and built more than houses. I built a life. A respectable life. The kind of life…” He hesitated, wanting to say something to win her back while not wanting to push so hard he’d lose her. “The kind of life that I’d like to share with someone.”
He waited, watching her. He knew nothing about women, never really had, but even though Bonnie smiled at his statement, he could have sworn she was about to cry. Her eyes were a little too bright, the flush that came to her cheeks was a little too pink. More than anything, he wanted to kiss her to see if the old magic between them was still there, in spite of the years.
He inched closer to her, heart pounding against his ribs. She didn’t back away. Instead, the light in her eyes took on a fierier hue. The air between them felt charged, hotter. A voice inside him screamed caution, but he was so close now, so close to getting what he’d wanted all these long, lonely years. His hand nudged up against hers, and he brushed his fingers over the back of her knuckles. He met her eyes. Her lips softened, ready to be kissed.
“Isn’t this delightful.”
The moment was shattered as Meri Carpenter swept up to them, all smiles. Rupert took a step away from Bonnie.
“I’m so glad you could make it,” Meri told Bonnie.
“And I’m so grateful you invited me,” Bonnie answered. The sensuous woman she’d been moments before was gone. Her smile for Meri was nothing but neighborly.
“You two know each other?” Rupert asked, his voice a little gruffer than it should be.
“We met this morning,” Meri said. “I patched up Bonnie’s foot for her.” Something in the way Meri looked at him—with a new light in her eyes and a mysterious smile on her lips—gave Rupert a wriggling feeling of dread. Meri Carpenter knew something, maybe everything.
“You did a fine job healing me too,” Bonnie answered her. “I just know I’ll be back to normal in no time.”
“Just be careful to stay off that foot as much as possible until the pain subsides,” Meri went on. “Although…” She snuck a peek at Rupert. “A little dancing wouldn’t hurt.” Yes, the woman definitely knew too much.
“Yeah, maybe old Max over there would be willing to take Miss Bonnie on a spin around the dance floor,” Rupert drawled.
Meri chuckled and patted his cheek. “That’s not what I meant.” She glanced back to Bonnie, winked, and said, “Let me take that from you.” She slipped the cup out of Bonnie’s hand, then swept off to join her celebrating guests.
Rupert crossed his arms and turned to Bonnie. He didn’t need to utter a word before Bonnie said, “I was frustrated this morning and I told her everything.”
“Everything?” Rupert arched a brow.
“Everything,” Bonnie confirmed. She paused, tilted her head to the side, eyes unfocused, then added, “Well, not everything.”
“What didn’t you tell her?” The air between them was back to crackling once more, but this time with an almost playful zip.
Bonnie’s lips twitched, and her expression turned coy and teasing. “I didn’t tell her how much fun we had in those early days.” She swayed closer to him. She ran her fingers along the top edge of his vest.
The kindling that had lain dormant in Rupert’s gut for so long flared to life. “We did have fun,” he answered, voice low and husky.
“I didn’t tell her how good we were together.”
“I don’t think that’s the kind of thing Meri Carpenter would want to hear.” He angled his body toward hers, hands itching to reach for her.
“No. She strikes me as a sweet, wholesome sort.”
“Everyone has their brushes with passion now and then.”
Her eyes lifted to meet his. She’d always had a way of making her cool, blue eyes seem to burn like the hottest sun. “Passion was never the problem between us.”
“No, ma’am, it was not.” He dared to rest a hand lightly on her waist.
“In fact,” she lowered her voice and her gaze, staring at his lips, “we were always very good at the passion part.”
“Yes.” He couldn’t manage anything else. Blood was pumping through him like it hadn’t for more than nine years. Parts of him were coming to life that hadn’t been so excited in all that time. He could hardly think for wanting her.
Across the yard, Vincenzo began to play his violin. The partygoers quieted to listen to him. His plaintive tune seemed to echo in Rupert’s chest, spiraling through him and fanning the flames of his desire.
“Do you want to dance?” he asked Bonnie, his eyes locked with hers conveying a whole different question.
She brushed her fingers across his chest and lower, boldly seeking out the evidence of his real question. Her expression exploded with heat when she found him hard. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Without another word, Rupert took her hand and pulled her away from the party.
Whether it was the high spirits of the night, the romance of a wedding about to take place, or just the wave after wave of memory that had washed over Bonnie since she stepped off the train in Everland, when Rupert asked, she gave in.
His house was only a short distance away from the Carpenters’—close enough to reach in a hurry, but not so far away that they had time to see sense before they reached it. A niggling voice at the back of Bonnie’s mind told her to step back and take a good, hard look at what she was about to do, but every other part of her cried out for Rupert, cried out for her husband.
“It’s not much,” he started to apologize as they crossed the threshold into the simple, quaint cabin that Rupert called home. He shut the door behind them, turning the lock. “I built it as soon as King Cole Construction started to turn a profit. It’s—”
Bonnie didn’t give him a chance to explain what it was. She threw herself at him with so much force that his back thumped against the door as she pinned him. That didn’t give her much room to embrace him, so she raked her fingers through his hair instead as she brought her mouth down over his. The last sensible thought she had before desire overwhelmed her was that he needed a haircut.
Rupert responded with as much enthusiasm as she showed. He sighed loudly as their tongues met. His hands sought out every curve of her body that he could, never holding still. She wanted to feel his touch against her bare skin, not the layers of fabric that separated them, but with their lips entwined, mouth hungrily seeing out what she had craved for so long, she couldn’t bring herself to pull away to undress. She just wanted to be in Rupert’s arms.
“I’ve missed you so much,” she whispered when Rupert finally breathed. He seared a trail of kisses along her jaw to the top of her neck and down along the line of her gown. His only vocal response was a low groan, but his hand came up to caress her side.
She mewled in approval, arching into him, but it wasn’t enough. To get what she truly wanted, she would have to step back.
Rupert helped as he straightened, drinking in the sight of her with fiery, hungry eyes. “I’ve missed you with every breath I’ve taken, every beat of my heart. And heaven help me, I want you more right now than I ever have.”
He surged into her, bringing his mouth crashing over hers with the force of passion behind his words. His momentum carried them deeper into the room. Bonnie backpedaled as she grasped at his shirt, pulling it from his trousers. She tried to fumble her way through the buttons on his vest but gave up after two and yanked desperately at it. To her surprise, the remaining two buttons popped off.
She laughed, but it didn’t stop her from pursuing what she wanted. “I…I love you, Rupert.”
He paused, sucking in a breath as he studied her. It was almost as if he couldn't believe what he’d just heard. “I love you too, Bonnie.”
She surged into him, circling her arms around him. “I don’t want to stop. We might not have seen each other for years, but you’re still my husband, and I still…I still want to be your wife.” She raised her eyes to meet his.
He stared back at her with hunger, but with something else, something heartbreaking. “That’s what I want too.”
It was wrong. On some level, she knew it was wrong. But her heart was too far gone to give up now and do the respectable thing. Rupert was there, he wanted her, and after so many years being alone, she couldn’t stand to hold herself back anymore.
“We’re going to regret this,” she sighed, leaning into him and bringing her lips to his.
“Never,” he managed to say before giving in to passion.
But Bonnie knew that as beautiful as his promises were, she was the one who was right this time, not him. That didn’t stop her from turning herself over to him completely, heart, mind, and body.
Chapter 6
Bonnie awoke to the faintest hint of dawn light breaking through Rupert’s curtains the next morning. After the adventure of the night before, she’d slept soundly against his side. A smile danced across her lips as those memories filtered into her slowly-waking mind. Rupert was right—passion had never been a problem with them.
She stretched and rolled to her back, ready to dream about all the directions they could go from there. Everland was a lovely little town…
Her smile stiffened. She couldn’t move to Everland. She had people depending on her back in Haskell. None of her girls were ready to take over her Place, even if such a thing was possible. Her own, foolish mistakes aside, she felt a huge amount of pride in being able to help the women who no one else wanted to help.
Bonnie’s Place was more than just her business, it was her life’s work.
She rolled to her other side, facing away from Rupert and gathering the bedsheets close to her chest. Rupert likely wouldn’t move to Haskell. She couldn’t possibly demand that he did. When his life had hit rock-bottom, it was Skipper King and their construction business that had pulled him back up. Rupert’s business was his life, his identity. No one could miss the spark in his eyes when he talked about it. And King Cole Construction was firmly a part of Everland.
Bonnie’s smile disappeared completely. She swallowed the hard lump that had formed in her throat. This wouldn’t work. There was no possible way she and Rupert could be together. Their lives had grown so much and in completely opposite directions since the last time she walked out on him. It had hurt her to leave then. She’d known that he wouldn’t be able to survive unless she left. The same was true now. If she didn’t leave, they would fight. They would argue over whether she should leave her whole world or he should leave his. He would demand she cut her girls loose, and if she did, who knew where they would end up?
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave her girls high-and-dry just because she was in love. And she was in love. Always had been. Always would be. There would never be anyone else for her but Rupert. The great tragedy of her existence was that the one man she’d given her whole heart to years ago was the one man she could never be with.
Careful not to wake him, Bonnie slipped out of bed. The dawn light barely illuminated the room, but it was enough for her to find her clothes and silently slip them on. Her foot still ached every time she put weight on it, but not nearly as much as her heart. As she tied her petticoat at her back then slipped her dress over her head, tears stung at her eyes. It would be ten times harder to leave Rupert now than it had been all those years ago, but this time, even more than last time, it was something she had to do. There were people depending on her, women who looked to her as their last chance to redeem themselves. And that required her to go unredeemed.
