by Rosalyn West
Now the Yankee banker was here, requesting a moment of her time.
Patrice announced him the way she would a favored courting beau. That in itself was enough to goad Starla into anxious irritation. But knowing what he knew cast a different slant on his purpose. Whom had he told? What would it take to keep him silent? These questions defied the calm manner she tried to project. Patrice claimed the shrewd banker to be a good man. Starla knew only the contradiction of the words “good” and “man.”
As she checked her color and the neckline of her gown for modesty, she scowled at her reflection in the glass. He’d seen her at her absolute worst. What was the point in preening? Unless a flirtatious smile could dissuade him from ruining her.
How much more would he demand than that?
True, the Yankee hadn’t fallen easy prey to her charms, not like the majority of men she led by their libidos. He seemed singularly immune to her coquetry. That very difference made him dangerous, to her and to her secrets. If he couldn’t be manipulated by a few simpering sighs, how could she bend him to her will?
She was searching frantically for that answer when she followed the scent of good cigar out onto the front veranda. In the late afternoon, the smell didn’t have the same disastrous effect that it had that morning.
He was seated on one of the inviting wicker chaises cozied up into the shadow of the Glade’s cool white brick, feet propped up on a low bench before him. His gaze jumped to her immediately but he made no attempt to rise.
But she felt averse to displaying her manners.
“What do you want?”
He blinked at her bluntness but refused to look put off.
“I came to make sure you were all right.”
“How kind. I’m fine. Was there anything else?”
He gave a lopsided grin and an admiring “Damned if you’re not the most aggravating female. Come sit with me for a minute. I don’t like looking up at the people I’m talking to.”
She didn’t move. “I don’t want to sit with you, Lieutenant Dodge. I don’t want to talk to you. I want to know what you plan to do about this morning.
“It’s not me that has to do anything, ma’am. Guess I was kinda curious about your plans.”
His calm hedging undercut her patience. “You don’t figure into them, sir. What’s it going to cost me to see it stays that way?”
Dodge stared up with a comical blankness for a long minute. She could almost believe he had no idea what she was talking about. She hated that mock innocence almost as much as she hated the fact that she was at his mercy.
“Don’t just sit there like a dolt. Tell me what you want to keep your mouth shut.”
If she’d thought him amiable and harmless before, the sudden flash of his eyes gave her warning. The volume of his voice didn’t alter, but its tone took on a fierce intensity.
“Sit down.”
She glared. “I don’t think—”
“Sit down now.”
That order vibrated with the power of command. She wouldn’t have thought him capable of packing such an authoritative punch with simple intonation. She felt intimidated enough to drop down on the bench beside his booted feet but retained the mulish dignity to sit stiff and straight in rebellion.
He drew a slow breath. It fired the spark in his eyes like the pull of the bellows fueled a flame. Still, he didn’t raise his voice, continuing to speak with that level chill.
“I don’t know what I might have done to make you think I’d come here to blackmail you, but you’re wrong, lady. Dead wrong. You don’t know me, so I guess I’ll have to forgive you.”
“How generous.”
“You’re damn right it is. You don’t know me, so I’ll tell you this once. I don’t lie, I’m not dishonest, and I don’t play games. Now, I’m sorry if that makes me—what did you call me? A dolt? That makes me a dolt in your opinion, but I can live with that a lot better than I can you thinking I’m the kind of man who’d bank on your misfortune. I don’t want anything from you, Miss Fairfax. I was trying to be nice because you’re a friend of the only friends I have down here. Maybe you just don’t understand ‘nice.’ Forgive me all to hell for having bothered.”
He made a grab for his crutches, but they slid away from his grasp to bounce on the stone of the veranda floor. When he twisted to retrieve them, his feet slipped off the bench. The abrupt drop bent his back at a sudden angle, wringing a sharp hiss from him. He continued to flail for the crutches, breathing hard and furiously at the effort until Starla pressed a hand to his shoulder. He glanced up, clearly angry now, only to lose all momentum at her quiet claim of, “I’m sorry.”
He jerked back, wincing from the pain of that prideful move. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me.”
“I’m not—I don’t. I’m sorry I mistook your motives. You’re right, I don’t understand nice. It makes me uncomfortable when someone does something and expects nothing. That’s why I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” He settled back, slightly chagrined by his temper.
Rattled by her admission, she demanded, “Well, are you going to accept my apology or not?”
He studied her until she shifted nervously. It shouldn’t matter if he did or did not. But he had been kind to her and she repaid him with slanderous suggestion and hurt him in the bargain. She almost wished he had some hidden agenda. At least she’d know how to respond to that.
“Well?”
He smiled at the testiness in her voice. “Apology accepted.”
She bent to reposition his crutches within his reach, but he made no move toward them. He watched her instead, his dark eyes brimming with unspoken questions. Inexplicably she found herself needing to answer them, for him and for herself.
“I behaved badly this morning,” she began. “I didn’t know—I mean, I wasn’t sure until you said—”
Restlessly she stood and began to pace under his silent attentiveness, unable to meet his gaze while speaking of the embarrassing particulars.
“He said he wanted to marry me.” She laughed softly. “How many foolish females fall prey to that lie, I wonder? I believed him and now I shall pay for that foolishness.”
He spoke with practicality, not condemnation. “If you told him about the baby, wouldn’t he change his mind?”
“I doubt it. And even if he did, I wouldn’t have him.” Her chin lifted with a pride dredged up from shame. “I wouldn’t want a man I’d have to trap through my mistake—a mistake my child would have to pay for. Marriage isn’t the answer for everything.” She canted a look his way to see if he believed her careful fiction only to be surprised by the naked emotion his expression betrayed.
“What kind of man would see his own child as a mistake?” He said that more to himself than to her, but Starla answered with a bitter smile of truth.
“Not a ‘nice’ man, Lieutenant Dodge. I discovered that a bit too late. If I tell my father, he’d likely insist I marry the man for honor’s sake.”
“And if you refused?”
“If I refused, he’d most likely commit me.”
Dodge had the oddest look on his face, as if he couldn’t believe a man would turn against his own daughter. She laughed at his naïveté. “We don’t like to live with our mistakes out in the open down here. At least, the women don’t. I can hear my father now, ranting about how I’ve proved him right, that I’m as immoral as my—” She pressed her hand to her lips to stop the words in time. “Forgive me, Lieutenant. I hadn’t meant to bore you with quite so many details.”
“What will you do?”
His basic question cut to the quick. Her shoulders slumped with the weight of her sigh.
“I don’t know. I could go abroad. I could ask around in some of the more unsavory quarters. I’m sure I could find someone who could … eliminate the problem altogether.” Her voice shook at even considering that heinous possibility.
“Don’t do that.”
His vehemence surprised her. Then it made her angry to think he�
��d condemn her. How easy for him, a man, to sit in judgment. “I haven’t that many options, sir.”
“You could marry me.”
Starla turned. She’d misunderstood him.
“What?”
“I said you could marry me.”
A smile quivered on her lips. “That would be carrying ‘nice’ a bit far, don’t you think?”
“I’m serious.”
He looked it, his dark eyes steady in their hold on hers, his features composed in somber lines. She wasn’t sure if the sight relieved or alarmed her. A bitter laugh escaped.
“You said you weren’t one for games, sir, yet you play them quite cruelly.”
“It’s no game.”
“You’d marry me?”
“Yes.”
For a moment she was too stunned to speak, then the words poured out in a quavering rush. “Why? Why would you do such a thing? Because you feel sorry for me? Well, I won’t tolerate your pity, either.”
“My reasons aren’t quite that unselfish.”
She waited to hear them, thinking herself mad for even listening, for even considering….
“I don’t know anyone here. I’m going crazy with just my own company. I didn’t know how bad things were until the wedding. Now I know what I want. I want what Reeve and Patrice have.”
“But I don’t love you. I don’t even know you.”
He shrugged off her protest. “But you could like me, couldn’t you? Or at least put up with me?”
She went rigid by slow increments. Her tone was frosty. “Just because I made a mistake with one man doesn’t mean I’m willing to jump into bed with another.”
He actually blushed and she found that so surprisingly honest, she began to entertain seriously the preposterous notion.
“I’m not asking you to jump into anything, ma’am.” His face was red but the uncomfortable cant of his eyes said he didn’t find the idea totally abhorrent. “I’m a banker, not a poet. I’m thinking more a business merger than a … a—”
“An intimate arrangement?”
He nodded, gratefully. “Exactly. We’re strangers, that’s true, but we each want things the other can supply. I’m suggesting a trade-off. I’ll save your reputation. I’ll give you my name and raise your baby as my own.”
“And what do you get?” She couldn’t help the suspicion edging into that question.
“I get someone waiting for me when I finish at work. I get a meal on the table, someone to ask how my day was, clean clothes. I’m so sick of washing out my own socks.”
“You want me to take care of you?”
A fierce defensiveness gripped his features. “I’m not an invalid. I can take care of myself. I don’t need a nursemaid.”
“I didn’t mean—what I meant was, do you want me to be your servant?”
He relaxed and waved off her flat assumption. “No. No, that’s not what I want. I want—ah, hell, I want someone to keep me from being so lonely I want to scream. I want a family. I want that baby.”
His fervor alarmed her. He was so sure, so enthusiastic, it scared her. But she was thinking about it. Thinking hard and fast, and seeing her susceptibility, Dodge hurried on.
“You need security and I need companionship. Most marriages aren’t made on more than that, are they?”
It was starting to sound so good when the whole meaning of the word “marriage” sank in. As she’d told him, she knew marriage wasn’t the solution to every problem. It sometimes created more problems than it solved. Starla would allow him no illusions.
“I won’t sleep with you.”
He was too startled by her candor to respond at first, then he answered gruffly. “I wouldn’t expect you to. I enjoy my privacy, too. Separate beds, separate rooms. I have no problem with that. Once we get to know each other a whole helluva lot better, we can discuss the arrangements again, but for now, you can trust me—like a brother. I’ve had plenty of practice there.”
Could she? Could she trust him? It all came down to that. Trust was something she guarded as zealously as love. Neither had ever applied to more than a few people. She loved her brother but didn’t trust him. She’d trusted the man who’d left her with his illegitimate legacy, but she hadn’t loved him. She trusted Patrice, and Patrice said she could trust this man who was offering her a much needed salvation.
Or was she making another huge mistake?
Sensing her lingering hesitation, Dodge made a final petition, his words simple, his tone level, his manner completely open.
“It’s like this, Miss Fairfax, I come from a big family. I’m not used to taking a step without falling over someone. I don’t want to be alone anymore, especially not here, where I couldn’t drag a smile out of someone with a team of horses.”
“Then why stay?”
It was a simple question, but he approached it like it held the complexity of the universe.
“I can do good here. What started out as a favor to a friend has become personal. I love a good challenge and I don’t accept failure, Miss Fairfax. Not in anything I put my mind to. I’ll be a good husband to you and a good father to that baby. I’ll respect you, I won’t hurt you, and I’ll never lie to you. If you can do the same, I think we’ll have a pretty good shot. What do you say?”
He put out his hand. She ignored it to ask one more thing.
“Why would you want me for a wife? Because of the challenge?”
He grinned at her brittle tone and summed it up briefly. “You make me feel alive.”
He kept his hand suspended, the smile lingering on his face with a confidence she couldn’t quite share.
But she couldn’t argue with his logic, nor could she deny that what he offered was far better than any of the alternatives.
She took his hand gingerly. His fingers closed about hers in a careful press, but even so, she was quick to pull away.
“I think you should start calling me Starla rather than Miss Fairfax. What do I call you?”
“Call me Dodge. Tomorrow you can call me husband.”
“You’re what?”
Patrice had none of Reeve’s trouble accepting the incredible news. With a squeal of “That’s wonderful!” she threw her arms around first Starla then Dodge while beaming in self-congratulation.
“Are you both insane?” Reeve demanded. “You don’t even know each other! When did this happen?”
“Just now.” Dodge’s hand curled protectively over Starla’s, containing it for a show of support, and also to hide how his own were shaking.
“Tell me it’s going to be a long, long engagement.”
To his friend’s dismay, Dodge said, “Tomorrow.”
Reeve threw up his hands and stalked across the room, muttering, “Are you sure you weren’t shot in the head instead of the back?”
Patrice scowled at her husband, then went on to take full credit for the match. “I knew you two would be right for one another. Didn’t I tell you, Dodge? Didn’t I tell you she’d be worth holding on for?”
He smiled. “Yes, you did.”
Obviously she had no trouble accepting their announcement as fated, but Dodge could see Reeve wasn’t going to be as easy to convince. Starla stood at his side, her hand still and cold within his, her face void of expression. No help there in convincing his friend that she’d fallen blindly in love.
“We’d like to do it here,” he went on hopefully, “with the two of you as our witnesses.”
Reeve narrowed a stare at him. “What’s the hurry?”
“She’s pregnant.”
He heard Starla’s gasp and tightened his grip on her hand. Both Reeve and Patrice were looking between them in unabashed shock.
“Who’s—” was all Patrice could manage.
“Mine.” He spoke the word so firmly and forcefully that to question further would be calling him a liar. Neither challenged him, though both knew he wasn’t the father. Starla’s fingers squeezed through his as she held up her head and stared at the other couple b
oldly. It didn’t take any more explaining for them to understand what was behind the Sudden decision.
“Dodge, have you thought this out?” Reeve asked at last.
“If you don’t want us to get married here, just say so,” he growled, bristling up with unexpected belligerence.
“That’s not what I said.”
“Then just what the hell are you saying?”
Reeve glanced at Starla in awkward apology. “Excuse us a minute, Starla. The best man needs a word with the groom.”
When he gripped Dodge’s arm, the banker balked, but when Reeve wouldn’t relent, Dodge finally went with him, following him down the hall to Squire Glendower’s study, where Reeve poured them both glasses of whiskey. Reeve gulped his down before speaking.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting married.”
“To a woman you don’t know? Who doesn’t even like you?”
Dodge gave a wry smile. “I’ll grow on her.”
“I’m glad you think this is so damned amusing.
“I don’t.” He faced his friend with a deadly seriousness. “I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m doing her a favor and she’s doing one for me.”
“Taking marriage vows isn’t the same as trading favors, Dodge.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“I don’t think you’re thinking at all. Starla Fairfax isn’t the kind of woman—”
Dodge glared at him. “Starla isn’t what? The kind you marry? Is that what you were going to say?”
Reeve sighed in exasperation. “I’ve known her all my life. There isn’t a man alive she hasn’t made eyes at. She’s always had a reputation as a tease, and now she shows up pregnant after being gone for four years—do you know whose baby it is?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he gritted out.
Reeve stared at him. “You’re going to toss away the chance of finding the right woman just to give a name to a baby a woman you don’t know made with a man she won’t name?”
