Promises Linger (Promise Series)

by Sarah McCarty

“Please. Just let me say this before I lose my—”

  He leaned back in the saddle. “Never let it be said I’d interrupt a lady.”

  Her “You just did” was a muttered aside. For once, he didn’t feel like smiling when the real Elizabeth snuck past her prim disguise.

  “I’m not used to being touched. My father wasn’t very…demonstrative that way.” She cut him a quick glance from under her lashes. “You touch me a lot.”

  He shrugged. “You feel good.”

  “I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m just not comfortable with it.”

  “You seemed damned comfortable a few minutes ago.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.” She took an audible breath. “The truth is, I’m afraid of how much I like it when you touch me!” she confessed in a breathless rush.

  The blurted-out truth hung between them. The knot in his stomach that had been there since she’d mentioned McKinnely and her dissatisfaction with their marriage started to loosen. “Why?”

  “You’ll stop and I’ll be used to it.”

  And she didn’t want to be hurt. That he understood. “Why would I stop?”

  “When I disappoint you, you’ll stop.”

  “You know, I’m getting darned tired of everyone telling me what I’m going to do and not do.”

  “I wouldn’t presume!”

  “Like hell!” He reached for the buttons of the coat holding them together. Who did she think she was kidding? “First, you decided I’d sell my soul for a ranch. Then you decided I needed to be tricked into finishing a marriage. Then you decided I was a cheating sort.” His anger built as each button of the coat popped open. “Next, you assumed I had no control over my needs and you had to bargain against cheating, and now, you’ve come up with the fact that I’m tricking you every time I act less than a monster?” He swung out of the saddle. “Well, I’m tired of being insulted.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  He placed her on the ground and pointed her to the house. “You never do, but every time you get thinking, I get insulted, and I’m damned tired of it.”

  She ignored his push and turned around. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to settle Shameless and Willoughby for the night.”

  She bit her lip. Her expression was barely discernible through the light. “Are you coming up to the house?”

  “Where else would I go?” He pulled the horses around. “We have a deal remember?”

  “Would you let me explain?”

  “I don’t think my sensibilities can take another of your explanations.”

  He turned and headed for the barn, seething inside. He’d done nothing but treat the woman with respect, and she persisted in seeing him as vermin. It wasn’t going to change, and he’d best get it through his thick skull, because, dammit, it was beginning to hurt. He could feel her eyes watching him as he entered the barn. Without turning around, he closed the door.

  Elizabeth stared at the closed door until a voice from the shadowed end of the porch spun her around.

  “He’s right, girl.” There was the creak of the swing, and then two disjointed steps before Old Sam stepped into the light. “You’ve been trying to slip that man into a crevice since he got here.”

  “I don’t understand him,” she burst out.

  “You probably would if you’d just see he isn’t your Pa.”

  “I don’t think he is.”

  “If that’s the case, why are you expecting him to change into something else?”

  “I’m not.”

  Old Sam spat over the side rail. “And I was born yesterday. Ever since your Dad changed after your Mama died, you’ve had this fear of men. Like everything good inside one is just fool’s gold.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “If it’s not, then you’d better start thinking before you open your mouth.” He came up bedside her, and, for the first time in sixteen years, there wasn’t any sympathy in his faded blue eyes. “‘Cause that’s the picture you’re painting.”

  “I’m not…” But she couldn’t finish the denial.

  Old Sam laid his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “It’s time to grow up, Elizabeth.”

  “I’m scared,” she confessed on a whisper.

  He snorted impatience as his hand dropped away. “Who isn’t?”

  “What if I tell him and he doesn’t care?”

  “What if ya don’t and he does?”

  She had no response for that.

  “You can make a choice by not opening your mouth as easily as you can by speaking your mind, girl.”

  “I know.”

  “Then prove it.” He pointed to the barn. “Talk to that man.”

  “I will.”

  She mustn’t have been too convincing, because Old Sam stared for a long silent moment, his expression as murky as the twilight gloom. His mouth worked. She couldn’t tell if he was chewing or working up to a lecture, but then he sighed, slapped his thigh and said, “If it’ll help, I’ll tell ya I didn’t ever think your Pa had it in him to shoot your Ma. He loved her too much for that.”

  She wished she could be so sure. “Thank you.”

  He shuffled his feet before settling his weight into his boots and meeting her gaze square on. “I always thought that, if the two of them hadn’t been so dead miserly on protecting their hearts, they might have made a happy marriage.”

  That was something she’d never heard before. “I don’t understand.”

  “Your Pa ever talk to you after your Mama died?”

  “About her?”

  “About anything beyond ranching?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he wasn’t any more chatty before, and assuming your mother knew how he felt, didn’t do much to get ‘em across misunderstandings.”

  Elizabeth stared at Old Sam as the truth sunk in. She remembered her mother with her smiles and laughter. She remembered her father with his stern face and total control. “Oh God!”

  “You got a choice to make, girl.”

  “I don’t want to be my father,” she whispered.

  Old Sam slapped his thigh and started to walk away. Three steps into his departure, he stopped and turned around. “Then I guess you’d best be making a new choice.”

  * * * * *

  From the way the door slammed, Elizabeth was pretty sure that Asa hadn’t calmed down. She sat in her bedroom and fiddled with the lace-edged collar on her nightdress. She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. She’d been trying to tell him she’d wanted him to do more than just lie beside her in bed, but how was she going to approach the subject now? The man was convinced everything she did was a scheme to trick him.

  Which was really unfair. He was the one always hiding behind words and silence, making her work to understand him. Teasing her when she did, laughing when she didn’t.

  His booted footsteps on the stairs cut off her budding anger. With each creak, her breath grew shorter until she stopped breathing entirely when the steps paused outside their door. Air rushed into her lungs on a furious gasp when he moved down the hall without even calling a good night. She heard the door on her father’s bedroom open and close. There was the sound of water being poured in the wash basin, a fire being built, the creak of bedsprings, and then nothing. The quiet progressed for ten minutes before she admitted he wasn’t coming to bed in their room. Which meant any moves were up to her.

  She pulled the covers over her bent legs, rested her chin on the plateau of her knees and slowly let the anger build. How dare he cut her off, accuse her of unladylike behavior, and then proceed to break his word by sleeping in another room. So maybe she wasn’t the best at getting out what she wanted to say, at least she was trying. The least he could do was shut up and listen.

  She threw the goose down comforter off. She reached for her robe and then left it hanging. The distance to the door had never been spanned so quickly. She made it to the guest bedroom before she understood the reality of her plan.
When his door hit the wall under the force of her shove and she was face-to-face with his bare-chested specter in the big four-poster, she started thinking. Unfortunately, it was too late for prudence. Taking her courage in hand, she proceeded.

  “I’ll allow that I’ve been a bit hasty in some of my assumptions.” She kept her gaze on his forehead because the sight of all that lightly-furred muscle was unsettling. “But you have no right to berate me for it when you’re part of the cause.”

  His arms folded across his chest. “You saying all this is my fault?”

  A log crackled in the fireplace. She took a breath to keep her focus and picked up the challenge he’d thrown down. “Yes.”

  “You’ve got nerve, darlin’. I’ll give you that.”

  “Yes, I do, and I’m probably using the last of it right now.” His right eyebrow shot up, but he didn’t offer any further sarcasm, so she plunged on. “I wasn’t accusing you of tricking me. I was trying to explain that…that…” God, this was so humiliating to admit. She finally managed in a cold rush of honesty. “I’m not used to anyone being nice to me. I don’t know how to react.”

  “Surely that school taught you the value of a ‘thank you’.”

  She shifted her gaze to the window. Her own reflection stared back at her, a ghostly shadow of white whose only distinguishing feature was the shadowed impression of her eyes. At this moment, she felt as substantial as that reflection. She bit her lip and pressed on. She’d say her piece and put this behind her. However it played out, she’d build her marriage on the remnants. “It’s not easy to forget the way I was raised.”

  He looked impossibly big and stubborn propped up in the bed. He didn’t sound the least patient or understanding when he said, “No one’s asking you to.”

  But he was. With every act of kindness, he was. She couldn’t put that into words, though. His gaze, when he looked at her, had a measure of respect. It wouldn’t, though, if she told him everything. It wouldn’t, but she couldn’t live this lie anymore. She licked her dry lips and continued, “My father was very strict.”

  “I gathered that.”

  She licked her lips again, but she didn’t have enough spit left to moisten them. “He had very rigid rules.” Nausea churned with the memory.

  “Seems like everyone around here had rules from what I can see. Leastwise, they felt like they had a right to boss you around.”

  “Yes, well, my father was the strictest.”

  “Most fathers are.”

  An involuntary shiver shook her. “Mine more than most. I failed him quite regularly.” The cold from the floor seeped into her feet. She shivered again. She closed her eyes against the impatience in Asa’s gaze. “I know it sounds like I’m making excuses. I’m not.” She put the lamp on the table. He was never going to look at her with respect again. “He wanted a son.”

  “A lot of men do. They make do with daughters.”

  “When I turned out to be his only child, my father decided to teach me what was necessary to keep the ranch. I wasn’t very good at it.”

  His “of course not” struck her in the heart. She’d been hoping he’d see her as more than she was. Sheer force of will kept her head up. She unbuttoned the top two buttons of her night rail. “I failed him repeatedly. I tried, but I just couldn’t be as good as he needed.” She swallowed, wishing she dared to look at him. Another two buttons came undone. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life failing you.”

  “Darlin’, I’m sure you weren’t a disappointment to your Pa. Little girls are special to their fathers.”

  Tears stung her eyes. She turned around and let the night rail drop to her waist.

  His curses were harsh. Angry. She kept her head up and her back straight. She knew what he was seeing. The three white scars crossing her back. Marks of failure. Marks no father would put on a child he was proud of. Marks she’d earned with her impulsive nature. The swearing behind her stopped. The silence was oppressive. The bed ropes creaked. A log popped and hissed in the fire. She couldn’t stand the tension anymore.

  “I didn’t do my father proud.” She took a breath, counted to three and then explained, “I don’t want to fail you, too. I just don’t know what you want, how I’m supposed to act. You seem happy when I’m arguing, but I don’t think I can argue with you all the time…”

  The feel of cotton rising up her back silenced her words. She hadn’t heard him move, but he was behind her. His hands on her shoulders turned her around.

  “Why?”

  One grated word and she had to bare all, exposing her weakness, her foolishness, maybe forever ruining his opinion of her. Her gaze was level with the center of his chest. She held onto her dignity by counting the hairs as she explained, “I told you I knew Cougar.”

  “Yeah.”

  Was that suspicion she heard in his voice? “I got kicked by a calf in the face during branding. It was hard to eat. Cougar brought me soup.”

  His silence was deafening. She finished the bottom row of hair. Twenty-five.

  “He was very nice. Kind.” She kept her gaze on his chest, almost desperately counting. Her fingers clenched to fists. At fifty, she had to resume speech. Oh God. “I let him kiss me.” She held her breath and waited for the outrage, the disbelief.

  “And?”

  Seventy-five. Seventy-six. Seventy-seven.

  “My Father saw. He was furious.”

  “Over a kiss?”

  Oh, yes. Over a kiss. She remembered her father’s face. His rage. Her terror when he’d turned into someone else. Turned on her.

  “He called Cougar a dirty Indian. Called me a fool for throwing myself away on him.”

  No response. Not by a twitch of a muscle did Asa give his thoughts away.

  Eighty. Eighty-one. Eighty-two.

  “He said I couldn’t be trusted.”

  Finally, he moved. His hands slid down her shoulders. In an agony of hope, she waited for him to catch her hands in his. To offer her one sign of comfort. Of trust. While their fingers brushed, he didn’t take her hand, didn’t tell her it didn’t matter, and he didn’t say the words she’d so pathetically hoped for. She had no option but to confess the last. “He sent me away.”

  God! How could that still hurt?

  “Damn!”

  Asa’s harshly spat word shattered her concentration. She was either at one-hundred-and-one or one-hundred-and-ten, but what did it matter? The anger in that one word told her what he was thinking. If it had been just a kiss, why would her father have sent her away? She knew because, for every day of the four years she’d spent at Miss Penelope’s, she’d been reminded of what crime she’d been making up for. It didn’t matter how many times she’d protested her innocence. Or to whom. The doubt was always there. There was no reason to expect Asa to react any differently.

  She wanted to whither into a defeated ball at the realization. Instead, she cleared her throat and locked her gaze on the bunched muscles in his cheek. She needed to finish this. She needed to tell him the truth. Whether he believed her or not, she had to try.

  “I swear it was only a kiss, and I never, ever let anyone kiss me again.”

  The declaration hung for a breathless moment in the silence.

  Asa was the one to bring an end to the standoff between them. But he didn’t use the words she hungered for. Instead, with a move too slow to be startling, he reached for her. So desperately attuned to his response, she swore she could feel the slight breeze ruffling her gown as he did. Her night rail rustled and shifted against her body as he did up the buttons at her waist. His knuckles brushed her breast impersonally as he fastened the buttons over her chest. Slow and deliberate, there was no way she could interpret his gesture as anything but disinterest. The realization was like a knife wound to her soul.

  “Now you don’t even want me anymore.” It was a simple statement of the inevitable.

  He stopped, the backs of his hands resting on her collarbones. “Why do you say that?”

 
It was a logical question. She made her response just as rational. “If any other woman was standing here half-naked, you wouldn’t be putting her back into her clothes.”

  No. Asa decided. He’d be riding out to kill the son of a bitch who’d put the marks on her back, but he couldn’t put her father in the ground twice. “I’m sorry. Seeing that my wife has been savagely beaten has a way of taking the starch out of me.” The skin beneath his hands was icy and riddled with goose bumps. “You’re cold.”

  “I didn’t wear my robe.”

  “You’d best come to bed, then, so we can warm you up.”

  He scooped her into his arms. She was still stiff as a board, but she wasn’t fighting. He looked at the four-poster. “Was this your father’s room?”

  “Yes.”

  He spun on his heel and headed out the door. Once in the hall, he kicked open the door to her room. He placed her on the bed. While she stared at him with those big green eyes, he pulled the comforter over her shoulders and struggled with his anger. Lord, he’d suspected her father had been mean, but he’d never suspected this. He scooted her over with a push of his hip.

  “You’re naked!” she exclaimed as he slid under the covers beside her.

  “Uh-huh.” He guessed that would be a bit of a shock since he’d always been careful to wear his long johns when they’d been ‘courting’. “I wasn’t planning on sleeping with you tonight, so I wasn’t worried about sparing your sensibilities.”

  “I didn’t know how to tell you I wanted you to touch me, but that I didn’t know if I could handle it.”

  “All this fighting because you wanted me to touch you?”

  “I thought it would make you happy,” she admitted.

  “And that’s why you decided to do it?” He slid his arm under her neck, preventing her from falling off the bed. With a curl of his forearm, he had her turned into his side.

  “No.”

  He waited, adjusting the covers over her shoulder. He flexed his toes to get some warmth back in them. If the floors were any indication, winter was coming early this year.

  “I thought things could be normal between us,” she said softly.

  “Can’t get more normal than two folks sleeping together.”