He took the coffee mug in his strong-looking hands. “So tell me about the feud. Why did it start, and when? And why are the fences Aaron’s responsibility? They’re shared between the two families, aren’t they?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You want me to squeeze a hundred and forty years of history into a five-minute recap?”
“Something like that.”
She sipped her coffee, feeling the jolt of heat as it hit her stomach. Suddenly she was starving. “Explaining about the fence is a whole lot easier. The Darbys and Fitzgeralds have nearly twenty miles of shared fence. About sixty or seventy years ago the families were in court about one thing or another. They did that a lot back then. Anyway, the judge was so tired of always seeing them in his court that he broke the fence up into five-mile sections. Each family is responsible for ten miles. If they don’t keep it repaired, they’re fined ten percent of the previous years’ income.”
Stephen had been drinking his coffee and nearly choked when he heard the amount of the fine. “Ten percent?”
She grinned. “We have a long history of not getting along. During the 1920s there were several fights about water rights. Things got so bad that a couple of cowboys were killed. The Texas legislature enacted a law saying that if either a Fitzgerald or a Darby interfered with water rights again, both families would lose their ranches.” She made an X over her heart. “I swear it’s true. You can look it up.”
“I believe you. I just didn’t realize there was so much bad blood between the two families. How did it start?”
“About a hundred and forty years ago two friends came to Texas and settled in Lone Star Canyon. Joshua Fitzgerald and Michael Darby were young, fearless and interested in making their fortune. They had neighboring cattle ranches, sharing everything from winter feed to bulls.”
Nora paused. She knew the history of the two families because she’d heard stories about them all her life. What would it have been like to live back then? she wondered.
“Joshua Fitzgerald decided it was time for him to settle down so he sent back east for a wife. A mail-order bride.”
Stephen raised his eyebrows. “A woman, huh? I can see where this is going. I’ll bet she made trouble.”
Nora leaned forward. “Don’t even think about going there, Dr. Remington. This feud wasn’t started by the women of the family, but by the men.”
Trixie arrived with their food and set the large plates in front of them. “You two seem to be getting along real nice,” she said speculatively. “Any chance you’re reconsidering your opinion on men, Miss Nora?”
“Not really, Trixie, but thanks for asking.” She smiled at the waitress, wished she were anywhere but here, then cut into her meat loaf. When she took a mouthful and started chewing, she noticed that Stephen was looking at her. Instantly, heat flared on her cheeks. No doubt he was learning a whole lot more about her than he’d wanted.
“You could eat,” she said after she’d swallowed. She pointed at his plate. “Your chicken is getting cold.”
He picked up his knife and fork. “Please continue with your story. I’m all ears.”
Unfortunately he was more than that. He was good-looking, in a nerdy way, and kind. He didn’t seem frightened of her, which was something she hadn’t experienced in a while. Most men she knew thought of her as a fire-breathing, man-hating dragon.
“Joshua’s mail-order bride wasn’t impressed with her groom. Unfortunately Joshua fell for her hard and fast. He tried everything he could to win her heart, but after a year she left him. They were divorced shortly after that.”
“Let me guess,” he said. “She married Michael Darby.”
“About three days after her divorce was finalized. It seems that she and Michael had fallen in love at first sight and the feelings had never faded. Joshua didn’t take kindly to being cuckolded by his best friend. From that time forward, the Darbys and the Fitzgeralds became bitter enemies.”
Stephen nodded when she was finished. “I can see how something like that would upset former friends, but not enough for a feud to last over a hundred years.”
“This is Texas,” she reminded him. “We don’t do things by halves out here.”
“But you don’t support the feud, do you?” He gave her an engaging smile. “After all, you’re intelligent and very much a part of the present. I can’t imagine someone like you caring about a silly family quarrel.”
Nora had been busy thinking that Stephen wasn’t such a bad guy after all and that maybe she’d misjudged him. But in one hot second, her opinion changed.
“It’s very easy to judge a situation from the outside,” she said calmly, which she didn’t feel at all. “You’ve been here a few months. I’ve lived in Lone Star Canyon my entire life. I can trace my family tree for over six generations. We have traditions that mean something to us.”
He finished chewing a bite of chicken and swallowed. “One of those traditions is the feud?” he asked.
“It’s not that simple,” she told him. She wasn’t about to go into detail. There were personal reasons why she wasn’t a huge fan of the Fitzgerald family.
“What about Katie?” he asked. “Do you hate her?”
Katie Fitzgerald was the oldest daughter and someone Nora had known since she started school. Katie was currently involved with Jack, Nora’s oldest brother, and showing signs of being in love with him.
At one time Nora would have said yes, that she didn’t like Katie very much, but now she wasn’t so sure. For one thing, Katie had a son, Shane, who was the most amazing boy ever born. He and Nora had become friends. Some of Shane’s charm and intelligence just might have come from his mother. For another thing, while they’d been growing up the Fitzgerald kids had seemed to have everything the Darby kids didn’t. Reason enough for a young child to dislike someone. But things were different now. The Darbys finally had enough money. There weren’t anymore worries about feeding and clothing seven kids. Besides, Nora had gotten to know Katie and had found out she wasn’t such a horrible person. And she did seem to make Jack happy. Nevertheless she was a Fitzgerald. Which made the situation confusing.
“Let’s talk about you for a change,” Nora said, glaring at him. “Tell me the deep, dark secrets from your past.”
He laughed. “You mean what’s a good-looking, unmarried doctor like me doing in a place like this?”
“I’ll accept the last part of the question.”
“Fair enough.” He set down his fork. “I was born and raised in New Jersey—the part that’s not close to New York City. I wanted to be a doctor from the time I was little and I made it into medical school. I had a vision of being a simple country doctor. I wanted to take my patients from birth to death.”
“Only if you’re not planning on them living very long,” she murmured.
“I’m talking,” he complained. “You’re supposed to listen attentively and then act suitably impressed. You’re not supposed to interrupt.”
For a second she thought he might be flirting with her, but that wasn’t possible. Men didn’t flirt with her—they ran in fear of their lives. “You don’t know me very well if you expect that,” she said.
“I know you well enough, Nora. I know you’re compassionate, brave, determined and beautiful.”
She blinked. He was kidding, right? Did he really think she was stupid enough to fall for a line like that?
“On what planet?” she asked, but her voice didn’t sound as strong or contemptuous as she’d hoped, and instead of looking embarrassed, Stephen only looked knowing. As if he sensed her secrets and made allowances for them.
“As I was saying,” he continued, “I wanted to be a country doctor. The old-fashioned kind of physician who takes care of every emergency, delivers babies and eases the suffering of the dying, along with everything in between. I got sidetracked with emergency room medicine for a few years, but now I’m here.”
He finished the last of his chicken and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Now you
know my life history, why don’t you tell me yours? For starters, why does everyone assume you’re so unapproachable?”
Because she was, she thought, slightly confused by his curiosity. Most men found out about her reputation and went running in the opposite direction.
“I am unapproachable. I don’t suffer fools gladly, I don’t cater to male egos and I’m not interested in playing games.”
Stephen looked at the woman sitting across from him. She’d gone from looking like a confident companion to glancing around like a trapped animal. She wasn’t comfortable talking about herself and she wasn’t comfortable with him. He half expected her to bolt from her seat and race to the door. Except he guessed that Nora would rather die than let him see that she was rattled by their dinner conversation.
He studied her smooth skin, the glossy dark hair spilling over her shoulders, the way her mouth gave away every emotion. Her mother was his patient and adored talking about her children, so he knew that Nora was twenty-eight. What had happened in her young life to make her so wary of men? And why did everyone in town know her secret but him?
Nora wasn’t cold, he thought, remembering the waitress’s comment that she could freeze a man to death. His nurse had implied that no one got to Nora. What he wanted to know was, why?
His interest surprised him. In the past two years he’d managed to avoid feeling anything for anyone except his patients. Emotionally he’d been numb inside. While he wasn’t ready to care again—in fact he’d promised himself he would never fall in love with anyone else—he felt a stirring of interest that had little to do with the heart and much more to do with the mind…and the glands.
Nora engaged his brain and heated his blood. It was a tempting combination.
“You’re not married,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
She set down her fork and pushed away her plate. “I don’t actually think that’s any of your business. Nor am I comfortable talking about my personal life with you.”
“But you asked me all kinds of personal questions.”
“I asked why you’d chosen to open your practice here.”
He leaned forward and grinned. “Actually you asked about deep, dark secrets in my past. Sounds pretty personal to me.”
“Fine. You chose to answer and I didn’t.”
She was prickly, all right, he thought. A challenge. Maybe he needed a good challenge in his life. Imagining Nora yielding to him, hissing even as she purred, stirred more than his blood.
“I’d like to see you again,” he said. “How about dinner tomorrow night?”
She looked at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted purple horns and a tail. “You’re insane. I don’t date.” The word was laced with both incredulity and contempt.
“Why not?”
It was a simple-enough question. She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. Sound emerged, but it was more of a splutter than a reply. Finally she simply tossed her napkin on the table, slid out of the booth and hurried toward the door.
Stephen watched her go. He wasn’t looking for the love of his life. He’d had that once and lost her. But he was willing to admit that he was lonely. Maybe it was time to change that. As the ever-prickly Miss Nora Darby didn’t seem to be looking for anything permanent, either, maybe they could find a way to help each other.
Because he was willing to bet that if she didn’t date much, she didn’t get a chance to do other things. And just watching her move had told him she would probably do those other things very, very well.
Nora felt too crabby to sleep. She wanted to pretty up her emotions with words like angry or keyed up, but the truth was she was just plain crabby. Who was that man and what made him think that he had the right to…to…
She collapsed onto a sofa in her living room and sighed. Okay, all he’d done was ask her out. Was that so terrible? Didn’t men ask women out all the time?
Maybe, she thought, trying to hang on to crabby in favor of feeling wistful. But men didn’t ask her out. Not anymore. Not when she could verbally eviscerate them and frequently did. Not when she had a reputation of being difficult, stubborn and the kind of woman a man left at the altar.
She sighed and grabbed one of her floral-print pillows. She tucked the square against her chest and hugged it close. The worst of it was she’d been tempted to accept Stephen’s invitation. For one brief second she’d thought about saying yes. Which was crazy.
Except…Nora shifted until she was curled up on the sofa. A part of her had sort of enjoyed her dinner with Stephen. He didn’t seem intimidated by her. She didn’t get out all that much anymore. Not just because she didn’t date but because all her girlfriends had married and were starting families. They didn’t have time for dinners out and she was usually too busy to break for lunch.
“I’ll make new friends,” she told herself softly. “Friends who are single like me.” She vowed to start searching these mythical folks out the following day, despite the fact that most single females in Lone Star Canyon were either under twenty or over sixty-five.
“We’ll do things together. I won’t be reduced to accepting invitations from a man who spells his name with a ‘ph’ instead of a ‘v,’ like normal people. A man from Boston, or worse, New Jersey.”
That decided, Nora thought about standing up and getting ready for bed. Between the tornado and her unexpected stint of nursing, she’d had a busy day. She was tired, she thought as her eyes drifted closed. But right now she felt too comfortable to move. Instead she would just…
The man’s hands were warm and smooth and strong. Not sissy hands, but powerful and lean, with long fingers that knew exactly where to touch her. Despite being curled up on the sofa, Nora found herself arching toward those questing fingers that explored first her arm, then her shoulder. She trembled at the feel of his heat against her bare skin. She—
Bare skin? Nora opened her eyes and realized she was lying naked on her sofa. And she was no longer alone. Stephen Remington crouched next to her. Instead of his slacks, dress shirt and white coat, he wore jeans and a cable-knit sweater. Far too dressed, she thought hazily.
“Tell me about your past,” he murmured, then kissed the sensitive skin just below her ear.
“Don’t want to,” she managed to say, between a gasp of erotic excitement and a soft cry of pleasure.
His strong hands urged her to shift onto her back. She did so, tossing the pillow away. He kissed her cheek, her chin, but when she tried to press her lips to his, he turned away. Before she could protest, he cupped her breasts. Thumb and forefinger teased her nipples, making her cry out and arch into his caress. She was on fire. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had touched her, but it had been far too long. Celibacy was the downside of not getting involved, she thought, her mind thick with long-denied passion.
He continued to stroke her curves. He pressed kisses to her belly, then moved lower. She shifted so that he could kiss her most intimate place of all. For a second there was nothing, then the perfect wonder of his tongue tasting her, teasing her, making her tilt her hips toward him and desperately call his name. Her body tensed and spiraled closer and closer to her point of release. She’d never been so ready so fast.
But before she could climax, he stopped. She opened her eyes and stared at him in disbelief. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She reached to touch his head, his face, his hair. She was on fire and she would die if he didn’t continue, didn’t finish.
“Please,” she breathed, holding him tightly. “Don’t stop. Don’t.”
Nora woke with a start. She was still curled up on the sofa, clutching the pillow to her belly. Confusion filled her, then cleared as she realized it had been nothing more than a dream. A stupid dream that didn’t mean anything.
She sat up and realized that while her mind might have figured out it was just a dream, her body was less aware of what was going on. She was aroused and ready to make love. To Stephen Remington of al
l people. How dare he get into her mind and mess with her that way? How dare he—
She moaned as she remembered the feel of his mouth against her body, then she shivered. She’d spent a couple of hours with the guy and he’d invaded her sleep? What was going on?
Nora vowed that whatever it was she would figure out the problem, then fix it. She wasn’t interested in having a man in her life. Not now, not ever. They were annoying and difficult and not for her. Not even Dr. Stephen Remington.
Chapter Three
“I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Nora froze at the sound of the too-familiar voice. The voice of the man who had haunted her sleep for the past two nights, invading her time of rest and assaulting her with hot kisses and erotic touches that left her aroused and frustrated when she awoke.
She ignored him by focusing on her client—an elderly lady stretched out on a chair, with her neck propped on the edge of the shampoo bowl in a back room of the Lone Star Retirement Village.
“Don’t distract her,” Mrs. Bailey said in her wavering voice. The white-haired, birdlike woman was nearly ninety. “Nora is busy making me beautiful. It takes longer these days than it used to.”
“I would never dream of getting in the way of a lovely woman and her appointment with beauty,” he said. “I just wanted to say hello to my favorite hairdresser.”
Nora was wrist-deep in shampoo and hair, but she couldn’t help glancing at Stephen as he leaned against the door frame of the small room. He wore a white coat over a dust-colored shirt and brown slacks and there was a knowing look in his dark eyes. As if he suspected she’d spent the past couple of nights dreaming about him.
“Not likely,” she muttered, referring more to him guessing her secret than to her being his favorite hairdresser.
“It’s true,” he protested. “You’re the only hairdresser I know.”
She nearly snorted at the adolescent comment. “Aren’t you the clever one? How very humorous. It’s amazing that I can keep upright, what with the laughter coursing through my body at that one. Gee, Doc, if medicine doesn’t work out, you have a career in stand-up comedy at the ready.”
Unexpectedly Expecting! Page 3
