Carter

by Joan Johnston

  He scooted over to the middle of the bed, reached for Desiree and dragged her back against him.

  “Carter—”

  “I need you close to me, Desiree.”

  She lay stiff in his arms a moment longer, then pressed herself close to him. “Happy New Year, Carter.”

  “Happy New Year, Desiree.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DESIREE KNEW CARTER meant the promise he had made to protect her. But it was depressing to think that the care he took of her over the next weeks and months was motivated by guilt, rather than feelings of love. She wanted more. She wanted him to love her. Because, God help her, she had fallen in love with him. However, she wasn’t about to tell him how she felt, because that wasn’t part of their bargain. A marriage of convenience shouldn’t have emotional strings attached.

  Their call to the police on the morning after Burley’s rampage through her bedroom had yielded exactly the result Desiree had expected. There were no fingerprints, no solid evidence to connect Burley to the crime. The officers were sorry, they would keep a lookout, but unless they had some proof that Burley was the culprit, there was nothing they could do.

  Carter hadn’t been satisfied with that. “I’m going to hire a couple of extra hands to help out around here,” he said.

  “I—we—can’t afford it.”

  “I’ve seen the books,” Carter said. “We can afford it if we cut costs somewhere else. I want some people here, so I’ll know you’re safe if I’m not around.”

  “But—”

  “No buts.”

  She had given in. Not graciously. She had argued for a day and a half. But she had seen he was determined, so she had agreed.

  Gradually winter had loosened its grip on the land. The buffalo grass and wheatgrass and grama grass had put up sprouts of green. Desiree spent more and more time outside with Nicole, working in her vegetable garden behind the house. She always had one eye on the rolling prairie, waiting for Burley to show up. But he seemed to have disappeared.

  Ordinarily she stayed close to the house. But on one unusually warm and beautiful March day, when Nicole was with Carter in the barn, her eyes strayed to the horizon. She caught sight of a patch of colorful wildflowers on the hillside that begged to be picked.

  Even though the flowers were within easy calling distance of the house and barn, she debated the wisdom of leaving the area of the house to go pick them. As she dug with her trowel, weeding the carrots and squash and watermelon, she got angrier and angrier over the fact that Burley had made her so much a prisoner that she couldn’t even walk a couple of hundred yards to pick wildflowers.

  She dropped her trowel, yanked off her gloves and started marching up the hill. She picked wildflowers almost defiantly, breaking the stems and dropping them into her shirt, which she held out like a basket. Once she had picked the patch she had seen from the garden, she whirled to return to the house, which was when she spied another, even more beautiful, patch.

  She looked around her, and there was nothing visible in any direction. She wasn’t far from the house, still within easy shouting distance.

  “He’s not going to make me a prisoner,” she said aloud. She started marching toward the next hill. She did that twice more, and was startled, when she glanced up, to realize she could no longer see the house.

  He appeared out of nowhere.

  Desiree realized she had been lured into a false sense of security by the extra men Carter had hired, and by the fact Burley hadn’t shown his face in the twelve weeks since he had ransacked her bedroom.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded when he rose up to block her way.

  “I was just taking a little look around the place. You’ve made some improvements while I’ve been away, Ice.”

  Desiree shuddered at the name he called her. It had hurt when he used it before, because she had believed it was true. Thanks to Carter, the word had lost its power to wound her. If she had ever been like ice in bed, that was no longer true. She lifted her chin and stared into Burley’s dark brown eyes.

  She wondered what she had found so attractive about him once upon a time. He wore his long hair combed back in front, in an old-fashioned bouffant that reminded her of Elvis. He had gained a bit of weight in prison, so now he was not only tall, but heavyset. A grizzled black stubble coated his cheeks and chin. The twinkling brown eyes that had courted her, that had flirted with lazy winks, were puffy, the color of dull brown mud.

  His clothes were dirty and wrinkled, as though he had been sleeping in them. She realized it was entirely possible that he was camped somewhere on the Rimrock.

  “You’d better leave,” she said. “Or I’ll call the police and have you arrested for trespassing.”

  “Oooh, I’m scared,” he said in a singsong voice. “Where did you find the man?”

  “What man?”

  He grabbed her arms in a grip so tight she knew there would be bruises there tomorrow.

  “Don’t play games,” he snarled.

  “His name is Carter Prescott. He’s my husband.”

  “I heard something like that,” Burley said. “You can kiss him goodbye. Better yet, kiss me hello.”

  Desiree kept her teeth clenched as Burley forced a kiss on her. His breath was fetid, and she gagged.

  “You’ve gotten awful high and mighty since I’ve been gone,” he said, angrily shoving her an arm’s distance away.

  “Carter will kill you,” she retorted.

  “Not if I kill him first.”

  Desiree gasped at his threat. “I don’t love you anymore, Burley. I don’t want to be with you. I want you to leave me alone. And I want you to leave Carter alone.”

  “What about the kid?”

  Desiree’s heart missed a beat. “What about her?”

  “Who’s her father, Desiree?”

  “Carter Prescott.”

  He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Prescott didn’t show his face around here till this past Christmas. The kid is what? Five? Six? She’s mine, isn’t she?”

  “No. There was another man—”

  “I want to see her,” Burley interrupted.

  Desiree felt panic clawing at her insides, but she kept her voice calm and firm. “No.”

  “I’ll bet one of those newfangled blood tests would prove she’s mine,” Burley said in a silky voice. “Then I could get a court to let me see her, don’t you think?”

  “Don’t do this, Burley. You never wanted children. You told me so every time we—” Desiree cut herself off. She couldn’t bring herself to identify intercourse with Burley as making love, not after she had experienced what lovemaking really was.

  “I’d be willing to forget about the kid if you paid a little attention to me.”

  Desiree gritted her teeth to keep the disgust she felt from showing on her face. She should have known Burley was only using Nicole to blackmail her. She was determined not to be a victim again. She decided to promise him anything now. And make sure she was never anywhere he could catch her alone again.

  At the sound of approaching hoofbeats, Burley jerked his head around and searched the hillside. “You’re expecting company?”

  “Carter was planning to join me,” Desiree lied.

  Burley pulled out a switchblade and snapped it open. “Don’t go doing anything stupid,” he said. “I’ll be back to see you another time. So long, Ice.”

  Once he was gone, Desiree whirled and ran toward the man approaching on horseback. To her relief, it was Carter. He dismounted on the run, and she met him halfway, sobbing with relief by the time she threw herself into his arms.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, clutching her tightly against him.

  “I’m fine. I wanted to pick some wildflowers, and I guess I wandered too far and got frightened.”

  She saw him eyeing the wildflowers strewn carelessly across the ground, flowers she hadn’t been holding when they had first spied each other.

  “What happened here, Desiree?”


  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t tell me that!” Carter said in a harsh voice. “He was here, wasn’t he?”

  Desiree nodded jerkily. She clung to Carter to keep him from going after Burley. “He has a knife! Let him go.”

  “How did he get here?”

  They heard the roar of a motorcycle, which answered his question.

  “I was so scared,” Desiree said as she clutched Carter around the waist. “I’m so glad you came. How did you know he was here?”

  “I didn’t,” Carter admitted. “I stepped out of the barn for a minute and looked for you in the garden. When I didn’t see you, I thought…I thought maybe something had happened to you.” His grip tightened so she could barely breathe. “I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to you.”

  Desiree knew it wasn’t love that made him say such things. It was guilt. Carter wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he lost another wife to a stalker. Whatever the source, she was grateful for the concern that had sent him hunting for her.

  She looked up into Carter’s eyes, trusting him enough to let him see her desperation and her fear. “Burley said he wants to see Nicole. He knows she’s his.”

  “Nicky isn’t going anywhere with that man,” Carter said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “He is her father.”

  “Only biologically. I’m Nicky’s father now.”

  Desiree stared up at Carter in surprise. Even though Nicky had been referring to Carter as her daddy for the past three months, it was the first time he had acknowledged himself in that role.

  “You want to adopt her?” Desiree asked.

  Now it was Carter who looked surprised. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I suppose so. Yes.”

  Desiree laid her head on his shoulder. “Thank you, Carter.”

  “This time we’ve got that bastard cold,” he said. “He was trespassing on Rimrock land.”

  “Did you actually see him?”

  “No. But I know he was here.”

  She shook her head, her brown hair whipping her cheeks. “It wouldn’t do any good. It’s his word against mine.”

  “Dammit, Desiree! That man should be put away in a cage where he can’t hurt you or Nicky.”

  “I won’t go beyond sight of the house again unless someone is with me,” she promised. “He won’t come near the house as long as there are people around.” Her lips twisted ruefully. “He’s too smart—and too much of a coward—for that.”

  “I hate living like this,” Carter said.

  “And you think I don’t?” Desiree responded tartly. “But there’s nothing either of us can do about it.”

  “There’s something I can do,” Carter said.

  Desiree framed his beard-roughened cheeks with her palms and forced him to look at her. “You aren’t going to confront him, are you? Because all that would accomplish would be to get one or the other of you killed. I don’t want to lose you, Carter. Promise me you’ll stay away from him.”

  His lids dropped to conceal the feral look in his blue eyes. His lashes fanned out like coal crescents across his weathered face. When he opened his eyes again, he had hidden his feelings behind a wall of inscrutability. “I’ll stay away from him. But I’m not making any guarantees if he comes back to the Rimrock.”

  “All right.” She let her hands drop to her sides, but kept her eyes on Carter. Now that her fear had dissipated, there was another kind of tension building. She couldn’t be around Carter without feeling it. The need. The desire. This time she was the one who let her lids drop to hide her avid expression.

  “Desiree?”

  Her body trembled at the sound of her name in that husky voice he used when he wanted her. His body almost quivered with animal excitement. The blunt ridge in his jeans was proof of his need. The wind carried with it the musky scent of aroused male. Desiree lifted her lids and stared up into blue eyes lambent with passion.

  It was a sign of how far they had come over the past three months that there was no longer any question whether she was ready for him. She was always as ready for him as he was for her. What was more, she trusted him not to hurt her—no matter how uninhibited their lovemaking became.

  So when he grabbed the front of her blouse and jerked, sending buttons flying, she responded by pulling the snaps free on his shirt and forcing it down off his shoulders. His mouth clamped onto her breast and sucked through the lace bra she was wearing. She followed him down onto the soft shoots of new grass, their tangled bodies rolling once or twice until they came to rest with her beneath him.

  While he unsnapped her jeans and pulled down the zipper, she did the same to him. He shoved her jeans down, while she released him from his. With a single thrust he was inside her. Carter claimed her as she claimed him, their bodies moving urgently, seeking satisfaction.

  “You’re mine,” Carter said as he climaxed within her.

  “Yours,” Desiree confirmed. “Only yours.”

  When it was over, they lay beside each other in the cool grass, staring up into a sky as wide and blue as any on earth.

  “Do you ever wonder where you would be now if I hadn’t proposed to you in the church parking lot?” Desiree asked.

  Carter pulled up some clover and twirled it between his fingers. He leaned over to hold it under Desiree’s nose so she could smell the sweet scent. “I’d still be looking, I guess.”

  “For a wife?”

  “For a place to settle down.”

  “Are you happy, Carter?”

  “Are you?” he countered.

  Desiree thought about it a moment. “Most of the time.”

  “And the rest of the time?”

  She hedged against admitting that what would make her really happy was to know that he loved her. Instead she said, “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Burley.”

  “If he comes back, I’ll be ready for him.”

  As the days turned to weeks, and the weeks to a month, Desiree began wishing that Burley would just return so they could get the confrontation over with. The waiting was driving her crazy. Especially since there were signs—ominous things, but nothing she ever dared mention to Carter—that he hadn’t gone away.

  She found the laundry she had hung on the line in the backyard pulled down into the dirt. The heads of her marigolds were all cut off. A birdhouse was destroyed. And Nicole’s Black Angus calf, which had never been sick, not even when it was first born, mysteriously died.

  Desiree had been with Nicole when they found the calf. Nicole had let herself into the stall and dropped to her knees beside the calf, which was lying on its side with its tongue hanging out.

  “Mommy, what’s wrong with Matilda? She isn’t moving.”

  Desiree entered the stall and lowered herself to the hay beside Nicole. “Let’s see what the problem is.”

  She knew the instant she touched the stiff, cold body that the calf was dead. One of the basic laws of farm life was not to make pets of the animals. It was likely they would have to be sold, or killed and eaten. She had broken that rule when she had allowed Nicole to name the calf. Nicole would have to suffer now for her folly.

  “Matilda’s dead, Nicky,” Desiree said.

  Her daughter looked up at her in shock, then looked back at the motionless calf. She put a finger on its nose, seeking for breath that wasn’t there, and felt the unnatural texture of its skin. Her face scrunched up and tears flowed freely down her cheeks.

  Desiree enfolded her daughter in her arms and did her best to console the inconsolable child.

  “What happened to her, Mommy? Why did she die?”

  Until Nicole mentioned it, Desiree hadn’t focused on what might have killed the calf. She looked around her suspiciously. “I don’t know. Let’s check and see if we can find out what happened.”

  Having something to do helped both of them. Desiree examined the calf, but there was no obvious wound. Nor was there anything in the feedbox that appeared different or unusual.
Desiree did find a white dusting of powder that had sifted through the feed box onto the stall floor.

  Poison. Strychnine or arsenic, most likely, she realized.

  Which meant that Burley had been there. Desiree was furious that Burley had chosen to kill the calf. She was terrified at the thought that he had been so close, that if Nicole had come in here alone, her innocent daughter might have been confronted by a man fully capable of brutalizing her, perhaps even killing her. Suddenly Desiree no longer felt safe in the barn.

  “Come on,” she said to Nicole, “let’s go tell your daddy what happened.”

  Grim-lipped, Carter listened to Nicole’s tale of woe. He lifted her into his arms and carried her upstairs, where he sat with her until she fell asleep for her afternoon nap.

  Desiree waited downstairs for the showdown she knew was coming. Carter didn’t keep her waiting long.

  “Burley did this.” He said it as a fact, or rather, snarled it through his teeth.

  “I found some white powder on the floor of the stall that I think might have been poison.”

  “You don’t expect me to keep this from the police, do you?” he asked through tight jaws.

  She sighed and lay back in the chair where she was ensconced. “No. I think this should be reported. But I don’t think you’ll get any satisfaction.”

  “I want it on the record that someone’s been making mischief around here.”

  “All right.”

  “You aren’t arguing with me.”

  She sighed again. “It isn’t the first time Burley’s come onto the Rimrock over the past month.”

  “What?” He crossed to her and stood with his legs spread and his hands fisted on his hips.

  “I didn’t want to worry you, but he’s done a few things to let me know he’s still around.”

  “Like what?”

  “Pulling down the laundry, trampling my flowers, wrecking the birdhouse. Stuff like that.”

  “And you never said anything to me?”

  Desiree could see that Carter was hurt, by the fact that she hadn’t shared her problems with him. She shoved herself up out of the chair until she was sitting on the back with her feet on the seat. “There was nothing you could do.”