by Jill Barnett
She sucked in a breath. Her burn ached from the pressure of kneeling, but its throbbing was nothing compared to the crushing hurt inside her heart. She crossed her arms, hiding her breasts, and twisted in his grip. “Don’t touch me! Don’t you ever touch me!”
“What the hell is the matter with you?”
She was angry, she hurt, and she was ashamed because she’d given the gift of her body to a man who didn’t love her. And worst of all, she hadn’t done one thing to stop it. She stared at the clothes, her clothes, scattered nearby, and then looked down at the white, bloodstained drawers and stockings that still covered her.
“I just let it happen.” she whispered aloud.
Kit let go of her and shrugged into his shirt. He watched her and then ran an impatient hand through his hair. “We’re married.”
“No. You don’t understand.” Hallie kept shaking her head, as if by doing so she could erase what had happened.
“Look, Hallie, this is part of marriage. A man and a woman can’t live as closely as we will,” he gestured to the room, “without some sort of physical bond. We’re married and there is nothing either of us can do about it. As husband and wife, we sleep together.”
“I don’t want you.” She lifted her head and looked at him. “I don’t want you to touch me.” She began to cry. “This is your fault!”
“What?”
“I didn’t crawl into your bed drunk. I didn’t want you there then, or now!”
Kit crammed his shirttails into his pants and buttoned them. In two long, angry strides he reached the dresser where only hours earlier he had returned his personal belongings. He jerked a drawer out of the dresser and dumped its contents into his valise.
Numb and teary, Hallie watched him. “What are you doing?”
He shoved the last drawer closed, grabbed the valise, and turned around. “Giving you your wish. I promise I won’t crawl into bed with you again, Mrs. Howland.”
Without another word, Kit grabbed his coat and walked out the door, leaving Hallie alone, just as she had asked.
Chapter Eighteen
At first Kit thought it was the tight pain in his neck that woke him up. He was wrong. Something was stroking his chest. Still half asleep, he stirred under the covers. The stroking stopped. He sighed and was almost back to sleep when the petting began again, very lightly, first one long brushing stroke and then another. He willed his heavy lids open and stared at Liv’s cat.
Kit groaned and flung an arm over his eyes. “Damn cat,” he muttered before he forgot himself and began to scratch the cat’s ears distractedly. The cat settled her hefty self onto his chest and began to purr.
He lifted his arm and squinted at the cat. “What day is this?”
She turned her furry black head to the side so he could get the right spot.
“Right. It’s Thursday,” Kit answered. “Ten days . . . I should say nights. For ten nights I’ve been contorting myself to sleep on this”—he looked at his bare feet, propped on the carved arm of the sofa—”bed of torture, while everybody else sleeps in a bed—in my own house,” he muttered.
The cat opened one eye.
“Now I ask you, is that fair?”
Kit’s fingers rubbed her ear, and she shook her head, nudging slightly at his hand.
“Good. I’m glad someone is on my side.” He moved, and then winced at the sharp pain racing up his neck. “Damn women . . .”
The cat meowed, as if in protest.
“Sorry. Cat. At least you want me touching you.”
The clock in the hall chimed six times, and Kit knew he’d better get up if he wanted to shave and wash up in peace. Soon Maddie and Hallie would be in the kitchen, making breakfast and doing their best to ignore or irritate him.
“You know, cat, I don’t think those two have, together, spoken ten words to me since the wedding. Hell, Maddie still hasn’t stopped glaring at me, and Hallie—” Kit stopped. Conflicting emotions shot through him like those old marbles.
He felt guilt when he wanted to feel anger. He wanted to blame her for everything that had happened, but he couldn’t. He could only blame himself. He didn’t want a wife, but he’d married her and then made her his wife, physically, painfully. What a mess he’d made of it. He was a living, breathing, dichotomous fool who had better damn well decide what he wanted. He got up and placed the cat in the heap of warm covers. Naked, and rubbing his sore neck, he walked to the gun cupboard in the corner and opened the door, eyeing the stack of underwear and trousers that sat on his Colt case. He pulled out a clean pair of drawers and striped trousers and stepped into them. He took a towel off a rifle hook, slung it over a shoulder and opened the ammunition drawer to gather his shaving paraphernalia and toothbrush, then padded barefooted into the kitchen.
Within minutes he had filled a pitcher from the range reservoir. He recapped the reservoir spigot and walked over to the dry sink, thinking about how nice it was to have warm water every morning. He should have uncrated that range ages ago. He washed, and humming away, faced the mirror while lathering his face. He was just brushing the soap on his chin when he saw Hallie’s reflection in the mirror. She wore her nightclothes, but that sight wasn’t what stopped his breathing. It was her hair. He’d never seen it unbound. Pale and silvery, it hung in tangles clear down to her hips.
His shaving brush stilled.
Her startled expression turned icy, and she purposely ignored him, walking over to the range with a pottery pitcher in her hand. Kit dropped the brush into his shaving mug and picked up his straight razor, trying to ignore her. His effort failed; he couldn’t keep his eyes off all that hair. When she bent over the reservoir to open the spigot, her hair pooled like a waterfall to the dark wooden floor. He shook his head, trying to forget the sensuous image that had flashed through his mind. Pulling his razor strop away from the wall, he slapped his blade across it. When she tossed some more hair over her shoulder, his eyes locked on her mirrored image and the room reverberated with the sound of his razor flapping rapidly over the strop. Finally, in a last ditch effort to distract the dangerous path of his thinking, Kit drew the razor across his cheek.
“What is wrong with this thing?” Hallie eyed the spigot, and Kit leaned closer to the mirror so he could see her better, blindly shaving his face. She set the pitcher on the floor and straightened so she could open the reservoir lid. “It’s empty.”
“There was hot water there a few minutes ago.” Kit drew the blade across his other cheek.
“You hogged all the water.”
Kit raised his chin to shave the heavy stubble along his jaw. He completed the stroke and dipped the razor into the water basin. “First come, first serve. The early bird gets the worm, . . .”
“Oh, hush! You didn’t have to use it all, Kit.”
“Well, then, I guess you shouldn’t lounge around all morning . . .”
Hallie slammed down the iron lid. Pitcher in hand, she marched over and filled it from the water pump. She vigorously pumped the handle, using two hands in a choking grip.
He knew exactly what she was thinking.
She lugged the filled pitcher to the range.
“ . . . in bed,” he added to irritate her, watching in the mirror as she repeated her angry motions.
She muttered as she dumped the water into the reservoir, so he couldn’t make out what she said, which was just as well, considering her expression. She returned to the water pump and pumped away.
He poised the razor below his nose and let loose with his final dig. “ . . . in my bed.”
“Maddie gave me that room, after you demanded we move here!”
“I realize that, Hallie-girl”
“Then why did you bring it up?”
He looked at her in the mirror’s reflection. “Because I’m getting damned tired of sleeping on
that crooked sofa.”
She slammed her filled pitcher on the dry sink and turned to face him. “Why do you have to sleep here? Just go out, get drunk, and crawl into someone else’s bed.”
“Damn!” Kit dropped the razor and pressed the towel to the cut on his upper lip. It hurt like the devil. Turning toward her, he pulled the towel away and eyed the blood spot. He looked up and froze.
She stared at his naked chest, her look curious, yet for all its innocence, cloaked with sensuality. Then her stunned gaze roamed downward and his body responded. Her eyes widened, and she grabbed the pitcher, holding it in front of her, like a shield.
She looked like she wanted to run, and any other time he might have tried to stop her, but now he saw the fear in her eyes—real honest-to-goodness fear. Her anger or her sarcasm he could have dealt with, but realizing that she was truly afraid of him—and his body’s response—well, that bothered him. So he turned back to the mirror, masking his concern with a bored look of dismissal.
A moment later she fled the room. Kit watched the door close, and then he dumped the basin and refilled it with fresh water from his pitcher. He bent over the bowl and splashed water on his soapy face.
“Dammit!” Kit gasped. He opened his eyes and stared at the water—the icy, cold pump water. She’d taken his pitcher.
“At Sacramento City a Reverend Mr. Hummer has been arrested for an attempt to murder his wife, by suffocation, under the pretense of driving the devil out of her. She was rescued from his hands by neighbors. A strong desire was shown to lynch the reverend gentleman . . . Humph. Looks like things aren’t any better there than they are here.” Hallie closed the newspaper and folded it in her lap. “Well, Duggie, that’s all the news for now.”
Hallie followed her sister’s dull gaze and sighed. Dagny stared at a blank wall. Hallie placed the paper on a night table and bent over the bed. She turned her sister’s face toward her and looked into her dazed eyes. “Please hear me, Duggie . . . I’m sorry, so, so sorry—”
Liv burst into the room with her cat flung like a cape over her shoulder. “Aunt Maddie wants you to find the boys and get them washed up to eat.”
“Oh?” Hallie asked, not liking Liv’s bossy tone. “And what, pray tell, are you going to do?”
“Brush Mrs. Skunk.” Liv pulled a silver hairbrush from her skirts and began to brush the pregnant cat.
Hallie walked over to Liv. “Where did you get that brush?”
“I found it.”
“Where, Liv?”
“In the kitchen. It was wedged behind the dry sink.”
“Did you ask Maddie about it?”
“Yes. She said it wasn’t hers and I could have it if it didn’t belong to you or Duggie.”
Hallie eyed the brush. “It’s not mine.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“I looked in your room.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of my things.”
“I wasn’t in your things.”
“You just said you looked in my room.”
“I did.” Liv drew the brush along the cat’s furry back, and the animal melted her girth farther into the feather bed cover. “But I wasn’t in your things. Your brush was sitting on the night table, in plain sight. So . . .” Liv looked up, the word “there” half formed on her sassy lips.
Hallie waited, but Liv wasn’t stupid. She clamped her lips shut and turned back to brush her cat. Hallie started to leave, but remembered Dagny. “I need to feed Duggie.”
“I’ve got her supper right here.” Maddie shouldered the bedroom door open, her hands filled with a tray of steamy food.
“Here, I’ll get the door.” Hallie grabbed the doorknob.
“Thanks. How is she?” Maddie asked, with a nod in Dagny’s direction.
“The same.”
“Give her time, Hallie,” Maddie advised, carrying the tray to the table and sat down. She glanced at Liv. “Well, Livvy, I see you’ve made good use of that brush.”
“Yup.” Liv kept brushing the cat, but she looked at Hallie long enough to give her an “I told you so” look.
“When you finish up there, Livvy, you can go wash your hands and set the table for me, please.”
Hallie paused, awaiting Liv’s usual argument. She wanted to see how Maddie would handle another one of Liv’s inventive excuses.
“Sure,” Liv agreed.
Hallie shook her head as she left the room. Liv never obeyed her without an argument. Belligerent little Liv was obviously different with Maddie. Apparently, for the younger Fredriksens, moving here was best. But Hallie was miserable. She hid it well enough, but at night, she would lay crying on the bed—the same bed where she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. She’d fought so hard, thinking in her silly mind that she could make Kit love her, never knowing that was impossible. His heart was locked in an old grave, cold and dead.
On her wedding day, when she had listened to him through the door, her hopes had died. His words cut deeply. So she’d hid in the kitchen while her pain swelled into such anger that she couldn’t cover it, even for the sake of salvaging her own wedding.
Oh God, that wedding—it was just awful. Hallie grabbed the newel post at the base of the stairs. She needed something to hang onto when she thought of the ceremony—and what transpired afterward. She sat down on the bottom step, her knees suddenly as weak as her will had been that evening. She had always thought she was a strong, willful person, but she had no strength when Kit held her or kissed her. Even her anger, hot and true as it had been, drowned in the sea of his arms.
With her wedding a mockery, and all her youthful dreams of love destroyed, still she had dissolved into him like sugar into hot coffee—all because her body craved the sweetness of his touch.
It had been easy at first to shun him. Since she felt nothing, her icy role had come naturally. But as each day went by, she found it harder and harder to ignore him, and this morning it had been nigh on impossible. The memories triggered by the sight of his bare chest were downright consuming. They ate right through her will and her common sense. Suddenly her skin was tingly and her body had started to rule her thoughts. If Kit had touched her then, she’d have been lost.
“You’re supposed to be helping Maddie,” Liv accused, standing right above Hallie with her hands on her hips and her bossy mouth puckered.
“You know what, Liv?” Hallie said, standing up and starting to walk down the hall.
“What?”
Hallie pushed the kitchen door open. “Just shut up.”
Kit grabbed the back of his neck for the third time in as many minutes.
“Hurt your neck?” Lee asked.
“It’s just stiff.” He stretched his neck, grimacing at the soreness before muttering, “I need a bed.”
Lee slowed his mount so he could stay even with Kit’s plodding pace. “How long are you going to keep this up?”
“What?”
“Blaming Hallie for every mistake you ever made.”
Kit scowled at Lee. “Since when are you her champion? I thought you were only interested in her . . . petals.”
“Ah-ha!” Lee grinned. “The old Howland counterattack. You really do that rather well, you know it?”
“What?”
“Avoid the question by launching your own verbal assault.”
“God, I hate it when you start that sarcastic sh—”
“Attack evade, attack evade . . .” Lee interrupted.
“You harp like a woman.”
“If I were one, we wouldn’t be friends. You’d find some reason to hold me responsible for Jo’s actions.”
Kit turned in his saddle. “Just what the hell are you trying to say?”
“You want it in plai
n language? I’m saying that you’re making Hallie suffer because your first wife was an unfaithful bitch. Is that plain enough?” Lee looked Kit right in the eye.
Oh, that was plain enough. The truth of Lee’s words clawed at Kit, and he didn’t like it, because Lee reminded him of what an ass he was being.
“So what am I supposed to do about it? Forget my past experiences and magically turn into the loving husband?” Sarcasm dripped from his words.
“You could apologize and try to make the best of the situation. Hell, Kit, how many marriages are based on love, or at least remain love matches?”
“Not many,” Kit answered.
“Right. So you’re making it difficult for yourself. If I were in your shoes, I’d accept the situation. Look at what you have.”
“No bed. That’s what I have,” Kit said.
“You have a bed and a pretty, young wife to share it with. For Godsake, this town is filled with men who would give up a gold claim to have what you’re hell-bent on throwing away.”
With each word Lee spoke, Kit’s guilt became stronger. Rigid in his saddle, he stared straight ahead as they rode on.
They turned the corner and Lee reined his horse in. “Stop for a moment, will you? I want to see when this place is opening.”
Kit had hardly noticed the building, yet it took up half the block. The building was red brick with only a few narrow windows, which were covered with decorative iron shutters. Workmen stood on a scaffold while they attempted to hang an oversized sign announcing the opening of the new Jenny Lind Theater.
Lee dismounted, and after a quick glance at Kit, decided to roll out the cannons. “I won’t be long, but while I’m gone, you might think about how Jan would feel. You professed to owe him so much, and then you repay him by making his daughter miserable.”
Kit frowned at Lee’s back. But he mulled over his friend’s words, and it didn’t take him long to admit Lee was right. He was treating Hallie poorly, and she didn’t deserve it. She wasn’t Jo.
He crossed his arms and relaxed in the saddle. A fly buzzed around the head of his horse and landed. Distractedly, Kit watched the bay’s ear twitch as he thought about his recent actions with a less jaundiced frame of mind. It was true. He hadn’t repaid Jan. Sure, he’d done his guardian duties. He’d given the Fredriksen children shelter and provided for them, but he hadn’t given much of himself, at least not since they’d moved into his home. Since then, he’d pawned off the responsibility for them on Maddie and Hallie.
