Harper's Bride

by Alexis Harrington

  She wanted to ask why he'd left, what had led to his split with his family. But the last time she'd asked about it, he'd gotten angry.

  Once he'd started, though, he continued as if in answer to the question she didn't dare ask. His eyes had taken on a distant look, his expression conveying that he was no longer in this small room above the store, but far away and trapped in the past. Melissa had an almost overpowering urge to lean across the table to touch his hand, to let him know that his feelings mattered to her, to tell him she understood how it felt to be plagued by memories.

  "I knew I didn't fit in with the rest of the family," he said huskily. "I was always different. I grew up in a big house with a cook and a maid, but I didn't care about that stuff."

  Melissa lowered the dress to her lap and stared at him. This man with his long hair, with the knife on his thigh, and an Indian amulet around his neck—he'd grown up in a house with someone like her own mother to wait on him?

  A huff of laughter rumbled out of him, as if he'd read her mind. "Yeah, you wouldn't know it to look at me, huh?" He toyed with a tiny pearl dress button on the table. His hands were nicely shaped, she thought, long-fingered and strong-looking.

  "Well, I didn't think you looked like a banker's son." To her, he more closely resembled a mountain man.

  "Nope, I never did. I moved out of the house when I was fifteen and went to live in a room over the stables. I hunted game in the hills and dressed like this and made friends with a few Deschutes Indians. The old man hated it. Money didn't mean anything to me, especially when I saw how the rest of them lived." He let his chair drop back to the floor. "Back in the house, he and Scott dressed for dinner every night like they were going to the damned opera or something. They invited the mayor for dinner, or other politicians they wanted to influence. They sat in the drawing room, smoking cigars and drinking brandy. I tried to stay out of the old man's way because if I didn't, we were sure to tangle."

  The dress in her lap forgotten, Melissa leaned forward slightly, waiting for him to volunteer the reason that he'd finally left. And what his brother's wife had to do with it all.

  "It sounds like such a lonely life," she said.

  "Yeah, I guess it was sometimes, especially when I was young. Other kids talked about their families and the things they did together. I always wondered what that would be like."

  "I guess you didn't have much reason to stay there," she put in.

  He shrugged. "I did, and I didn't. I'd planned to make enough money to move the operation to my own land, but things starting falling apart before I could do that. And there was Eliz—" Then he stopped himself and glanced up at her before returning his attention to the dress button in his fingers. "My father meddled in my business. He didn't know a goddamned thing about horses, but that didn't stop him from telling me how to run things. His way wasn't my way. If you aren't honest in business dealings, people figure it out soon enough. I never lied or cheated anyone. I didn't need to. The last argument I got into with him was because he wanted me to sell one of the mares to a business acquaintance he wanted to impress. I refused."

  "Why?"

  "Because I'd seen the man's other horses. He rode them hard, put them away wet, let them develop saddle galls. God, it gave me nightmares to think about it. I stood in the dining room and told him to keep looking—my horses weren't for sale to him. And that night, hell rained down on The Dalles."

  "What happened?" she asked quietly.

  He considered her for a moment, as if trying to decide whether he wanted to open an old wound, one that might be only half healed as it was. Then he inhaled a deep breath and propped his elbows on the table.

  "It was-an ugly scene. I went back out to the stables, and my father followed me, ranting on and on. He covered a lot of familiar ground about expecting me to fail in life, and what an embarrassment I was to him. Then he threw in something new—that he'd been a fool to pretend that my mother's bastard was his own son."

  Melissa stared at him. "Was it true?"

  Dylan leaned back in his chair again and tossed the button on the table. "It seems my mother was two months gone with a cowboy's baby when Griff Harper married her. My grandfather asked him to make an honest woman of her. He said he agreed because he felt sorry for her. But it didn't hurt that she was sole heir to very valuable ranchland over in Pendleton. He got that after my mother died." He looked up at her. "I guess I should have realized it sooner. I didn't look like anyone else in the house. I never felt like I fit in."

  "But you didn't know any of this before? Not for sure?"

  He shook his head. "Naw. I'll tell you, though, when I was a kid, sometimes I thought I might be a foundling. Scott was the one who got all the attention. In the end, he got everything. Even my horses. Scott wouldn't even know which end of the animal to put a bridle on. But that's okay—at least I can sleep nights. I don't have to think about the people I cheated or put out of their homes or threw off their land." A moment of silence fell between them. Finally, he pushed himself away from the table. "I guess I'll go check on the store." He did that every night to give Melissa a little privacy to wash and get ready for bed.

  Melissa had always supposed that the reason her life had been hard was because she'd grown up in poverty. But Dylan's life, in a way, had been no better, and he'd grown up with wealth.

  "I guess there's misery everywhere," she said, more to herself.

  He stopped with his hand on the doorknob and gazed at her over his shoulder. "That there is, Melissa. That there is."

  Chapter Ten

  After kissing Melissa in the store and telling her about his past—most of it, anyway—Dylan sensed a subtle change in their relationship.

  As much as he didn't want to, he found himself following her softly rounded shape with his eyes, and his trips to the side store window became even more frequent. When he saw her customers hanging around her, chatting, he wanted to go out there and tell them to stop bothering her, that she had work to do. But deep down, he knew the miners didn't bother her nearly as much as they did him.

  Her beauty was not glamorous or queenly, as Elizabeth's was. Melissa had an uncluttered, quiet grace that made him think of clear, cold streams and wildflowers. He could not begin to imagine Elizabeth changing a baby's diapers or tending to the other messy aspects of motherhood. Melissa did it all and yet retained her prettiness and much-improved spirits.

  Whether or not she could admit it to herself, her mood had brightened considerably since Logan's death. Dylan noticed that she had finally begun to stop flinching at loud voices and no longer looked over her shoulder whenever she went outside.

  He told himself again and again that a woman and a child played no part in his foreseeable future. It was all very well to imagine his fairy tale scene with Melissa and Jenny in the kitchen when he came home at night, but it was just that—a pretty daydream. He figured the first five years of his horse-ranching operation would be nothing but hard work, and he'd have to live in a cabin while the house and all the outbuildings were constructed. He would have no trouble doing that—fancy trappings didn't matter to him. But it would be too hard for a woman. Even if it wasn't, Dylan was not willing to risk his heart again.

  And that was the crux of the matter.

  A wife deserved a whole husband, and he knew he wouldn't be able to give completely of himself. He would always hold something back, the part of his soul that would let him love her fully.

  But still he watched Melissa with a yearning that continued to grow every day. Just being around her was a sweet kind of torture he felt better than when he'd lived alone, but to have to only look and not be able to touch—it was hell.

  The afternoon after Logan died, Rafe dropped by the store. To avoid climbing stairs, which stole his already feeble wind, he'd made arrangements to move from his rooming house to a first-floor room at the now completed Fairview Hotel. Although there were no guest rooms on the first floor, Belinda Mulrooney had fixed up one for him—for a price, of co
urse. A nice place, he observed drolly, but all the walls were nothing more than canvas with wallpaper pasted on them. "Anytime a guest so much as farts, it can be heard by the entire establishment."

  Rafe looked far worse than Dylan had ever seen. His face was more ashen, and his deep-set eyes had taken on a slightly sunken look. The skin on his face stretched tightly over the bones. Dylan felt a chill of foreboding rush down his spine. But Rafe's clothes were as dapper as ever, and his biting wit suffered no debility.

  From the street outside Dylan heard strains of "Nearer My God to Thee," honked out of a Salvation Army band that had staked out a spot on Front.

  "I see you now have the luxury of musical accompaniment," Rafe remarked, gesturing with his cane at the brass and tambourine ensemble.

  Like an old man, he lowered himself into the chair where he'd spent so many hours pitching cards and observing Dylan's corner of what he called man's last folly of the century. "Except for the war with Spain," he would add with his rich drawl. "That truly is supreme idiocy."

  "Are you doing all right, Rafe?" Given his gray-faced, appearance and shuffling gait, it seemed like a foolish question, but Dylan had to ask.

  Rafe sent him an arch expression. "Why? Don't I look all right?"

  Dylan chuckled. Even as ill as he was, Rafe could still make him laugh. He realized that he would miss his friend very much when he was gone.

  "Have you yet realized what good fortune befell you with Logan's death, Dylan?" he asked, his breath shorter than ever.

  Dylan was wary—he suspected this had something more to do with Rafe's transparent effort to secure a protector for Melissa and Jenny. Pretending indifference, he poured a bag of coffee beans into a canister. "And what might that be?"

  "She is a widow now."

  Dylan's head came up. A widow. Of all the realities that had occurred to him since Logan's death, the most obvious of them all had not: Melissa was now a marriageable woman. He'd only considered that Logan wouldn't bother her again, and that Jenny wouldn't suffer the same abuse her mother had. But the imaginary wall that had stood between them, and which he'd used as a flimsy shield against the hunger that she aroused in him, suddenly had crumbled. She was no longer another man's wife.

  Dylan shrugged. "Yeah, she's a widow. I'm not going to be the one who changes that."

  Rafe sighed, and it sounded like a cross between a wheeze and a rattle. "Don't let an incident with one woman turn you into a bitter, cantankerous man."

  "Hmm, from the voice of experience," Dylan said with a laugh, refusing to be pulled into the conversation.

  "Good. If you learned nothing else from me, at least I set an example of what not to do with your life. You know, I was like you once, certain that I'd never let any woman get close—I told you about that. But I never told you about Priscilla Beaumont." His voice dropped and his tone became introspective. He stared at a coffee can on the shelf as if a memory unfolded before his eyes. "She was a beautiful young lady, graceful, charming, kind, and from an old, well-respected New Orleans family. Suitors lined up with their calling cards every day of the week to pay their respects and to propose. Gently, but firmly, she turned all of them down. There was another gentleman who had already captured her affection, she told them, although she would not reveal his name to them. That was because the gentleman in question—a cad, really—did not want to be bothered with such foolishness as love." He smiled faintly. "She was lovely, as fair as a spring flower. He did everything he could to push her away, even though in his heart he truly cared about her." He looked up at Dylan. "Obviously, I was the cad."

  Dylan had already guessed as much. "What happened?"

  Rafe took another deep breath, and the rattling wheeze sounded again in his chest. "Eventually, her father forced her into a marriage that he arranged with a shipowner's son. A year after the wedding, she died from an overdose of laudanum."

  "Well, Jesus, Rafe, I'm sorry."

  Returning from his reverie, he sat up a bit straighter, and his voice took on a brisker tone. "Don't be. I'm sorry enough for both of us. Just don't make the same mistake. True love, an affaire de coeur, comes along only once or twice in a lifetime, my friend. Some people never find it at all. Forget about what happened with Elizabeth and put it behind you. I have seen the way you look at Melissa and the way she looks at you." He hoisted himself to his feet again. "A body would have to be blind to miss the sparks that fly between you two."

  Dylan felt his face grow hot all the way to his scalp.

  Just then, a delivery driver walked in. A big hulking giant, he looked like the epitome of a teamster. "Mr. Harper, I got your goods outside that came up on the St. Paul."

  Grateful for the chance to escape, Dylan pulled his shirt off over his head. "Okay, let's get them unloaded."

  Rafe caught his arm as he passed him. He looked especially haggard suddenly, as if talking had used up his small reserve of strength. "Don't throw away this chance, Dylan," he said in his low voice. It seemed to have grown huskier over the past few weeks. "Trouble comes by the barrelful in life; good things are doled out to us on a teaspoon."

  Rafe walked out then, his progress slow and measured, and Dylan watched his retreating back.

  On the other side of the street, the Salvation Army band took up "In the Sweet By and By."

  *~*~*

  Melissa automatically clutched her apron pocket, feeling for her gold pouch. Then she picked up Jenny and left her pot of boiling water, intending to buy a box of starch from Dylan's stock. He might resist taking money for Coy's debt, but she would tolerate no argument about paying him for her laundry supplies. If she was making money from her venture, so should he. But when she rounded the corner of the building, she stopped in her tracks, captivated by what she saw.

  Standing in the back of wagon and silhouetted by a blue summer sky, Dylan hoisted a keg to his shoulder. Obviously, the work was hot, and his torso gleamed with sweat that also dampened his belt. His muscles, thrown into bright relief by shadow and sun, contracted as he shifted the keg and handed it down to a burly man on the duckboard. His jeans hung low and snug, and Melissa's eyes were drawn to the hollow of his spine, to his arms where tendon and sinew flexed and lengthened.

  "Is that the last of it?" the burly man asked. They'd stacked merchandise on either side of the front door.

  "Yeah, that's it." Not seeing her, Dylan dragged the back of one gloved hand over his forehead, then jumped down off the tailgate of the wagon right into her path.

  "Oh—hi," he said. He looked down at his bare chest and then gestured at the wagon. "Um, I just had some stuff delivered from the waterfront."

  Melissa tried not to gape, but this was a different Dylan from the man who stood at his shaving mirror in the mornings. He was more vital and earthy and powerful. And he called to something just as vital and deep within her. She watched, fascinated as a rivulet of perspiration ran down the center of his flat belly to be absorbed by the low waistband on his jeans. Seeing him this way only fanned the low, hot flame he had lighted when he kissed her. "I—well, I just wanted to get a box of starch."

  He nodded, and scribbled his signature on a manifest that the wagon driver handed him. "Go ahead and help yourself. I'm going to wash off in the back." He kept an enamel washbasin and a bar of soap behind the building near her stove.

  Watching him round the corner, she felt like a silly young schoolgirl gaping at the object of her crush. But the truth was that her feelings went deeper than a crush, and her daydreams about him didn't end with a simple kiss. She was tempted to follow him back to the washbasin . . . she could imagine sheets of water flowing through his hair and down his back, sparkling in the sun, catching on his long lashes and the tip of his nose. Picturing it made her insides jumpy and tight.

  Stop it right now, she told herself sternly. Turning to walk into the store, she gave herself a sharp talking-to. She would have to stop thinking about Dylan the way she'd . . . well, that way, and as if he were really her husband. Even if
she wanted to marry again, he'd made it plain that he had no interest in acquiring a wife.

  She shifted Jenny to her other arm to reach for a box of starch from the shelf, and as she did, she caught sight of his blond head passing the window. Just looking at him made her catch her breath. Melissa knew that a treacherous emotion had begun to creep into her heart.

  She was falling in love with Dylan Harper.

  *~*~*

  . . . your experience with one woman . . .

  . . . put it behind you . . .

  . . . don't throw away this chance . . .

  Rafe's story, and his warning, kept repeating themselves in Dylan's mind as he walked toward the stairs that evening. Was his friend right? He knew that Rafe was dying, and for a moment he stopped to consider his own mortality. Rafe was just five years older than he was, and it sounded as if he'd collected regrets for the whole of his short life. If he himself were hit in the street by a runaway wagon tomorrow, or contracted some fatal disease, would he take regrets with him to his grave? he wondered. And even if he lived to be an old man, did he plan to do it alone, with no one to share his triumphs and setbacks?

  The prospect was depressing as hell.

  On Melissa's clotheslines, shirts and underwear flapped in the breeze along with diapers and dresses. No one could say she was lazy or purely ornamental. She did two jobs, really, the laundry and the housekeeping. He'd never thought her weak—after all, a woman who'd crossed the Chilkoot Pass while pregnant and survived Coy Logan wasn't weak. But she'd revealed herself to be even stronger than he would have guessed. Her strength didn't lie only in her physical resilience. She possessed a vitality of spirit that amazed him.

  He knew she worked hard, though. Maybe, he thought—just maybe she would like to get away from the stove and have someone wait on her for a change.