by Twilight
Yes, he did...like baked leather and warm male skin. Her arms went suddenly weak. The ladle banged against the bottom of the pot. “No...I mean, he...” All words left her.
Christian frowned up at her through his bangs. “So why does he have to sleep in the barn?”
The ladle stirred and stirred. Jessica sought her words from the swirling soup and found nothing but a heightened thumping of her pulse.
“He could sleep on the floor in your room, Mama. He’s too big for the bed.”
“Stop it, Christian,” she snapped suddenly. Too suddenly, her voice brimming with an odd agitation. Regret flooded through her even before she could reach out a hand to caress that blond head. But Christian seemed to shrug off her mood in his typical fashion. In another instant, his finger inched toward the blackberries. This time, perhaps because of her regret, she didn’t stop him, and directed all her thoughts to ladling the steaming soup. She watched the characteristic scrunching of Christian’s nose as he glowered at the soup and then his gaze darted to the stove, seeking. Would this ritual never cease?
“Mama—”
“You’re eating the soup, Christian.”
“But, Mama—”
“Sit.”
“Can I eat with Mr. Stark in the barn?”
“Mama wants you to eat with her. Here. Now sit.”
He thrust out his lower lip and slid half on, half off the chair. One bare foot kicked belligerently at the table leg. He scowled into his bowl and pushed his spoon around with his thumb. “It’s too hot. I can’t eat it.”
“Blow on it.” Jessica eased into the chair next to his and felt the blood drain from her legs. She hadn’t been off her feet since sunup. Her dress hung heavy with dust and a day’s perspiration. Even muscles she’d had no idea she possessed cried out for a long soak in a warm tub of water. If only she wouldn’t have to haul it from the well, and heat it, and haul it again to her wooden tub.
“Aren’t you going to take Mr. Stark his dinner?”
“Oh.”
Christian sprang from his chair before she could move. “I’ll do it!”
“Sit.” Jessica curled her son’s fingers around his spoon and glared at him over her pointed index finger. “Eat. I’ll tend to Mr. Stark.”
“I wanted to,” Christian grumbled into his soup.
“I don’t believe Mr. Stark is the sort a young boy like you should be tending to, Christian.” Carefully she arranged the soup and utensils on a wooden platter. “We know very little about him, after all.”
“He’s a stranger, isn’t he, Mama?”
Her gaze slid to the window and beyond, where the barn crouched in dusky shadows. Somewhere within, Stark lurked in the shadows, as well, with his horse, his knife, perhaps a gun.
“Strangers are mean.”
“Not all strangers,” Jessica replied.
“Mr. Stark’s not.”
“No, I don’t suppose he is.”
“He’s gonna stay because you shot him, right, Mama? And you shouldn’t have shot him, right?”
A frown quivered along her brows as she sought the best possible explanation.
“I think you just wanted to make Reverend Halsey mad. Because he won’t help us fix our barn and our wagon, right, Mama? That’s why, right?”
Jessica glared at her son, then snatched up the bowl of blackberries and several cloth napkins, wondering at the unease stirring within her. “Mr. Stark is seeking work, Christian. I’ve hired him on. He’s going to fix our barn and the house, and then he’s going to leave.”
Twin blue saucers blinked at her. “So he’s not a stranger.”
“I still don’t want you bothering the man, Christian.”
“You like him, don’t you, Mama?”
A disturbing heat spread through Jessica’s cheeks. “I don’t know him well enough to like or dislike him, Christian, or to trust him. And neither do you. Now eat.”
Christian gave a shrug, plunged his spoon into his soup and gobbled it down. “Good dinner, Mama.”
She gave her son a last glower that couldn’t help but dissolve into a weary smile. And then she turned and headed for the barn.
* * *
Rance watched her from the moment she stepped foot from the house. Concealed by the lengthening shadows, he sat propped against a bale of hay in one corner of the barn. The air hung thick and heavy with a day’s worth of dust and the smell of his horse and his own sun-baked flesh. Through a four-inch gap in the barn’s wall planks, he’d watched the sun set over a bleak and barren horizon and listened to the sounds of dusk as would one who’d grown accustomed to the peculiar comfort the trill of a cricket provided. Comforts were few, after all, for a man on the run, a man alone. It had been that way for him for so long now, eighteen years long. His past had become one long, dusty tableau. Crickets had come to be enough on most nights, when light proved insufficient for reading.
But now, watching Jessica Wynne moving toward him, a reed-slender, womanly shadow, he knew a stirring so deep his fists balled, sending a stab of pain through his left shoulder and a reminder that he was crushing Frank Wynne’s gold locket in his other fist. Some sound must have escaped him, for she paused just as she entered the barn. It was an indecisive pause, as if she feared something here.
No, he didn’t want that. Never that.
He stuffed the locket into his watch pocket. “Ma’am—” He lurched to his feet, out of the shadows and into the arc of soft light emitted by the kerosene lantern she held.
She didn’t retreat a step, though she looked like she wanted to when her gaze widened and drifted over his bare chest. He imagined her back drew up as rigid and brittle as a dried-up twig. Thin fingers clutched at the platter she carried, and her breath seemed trapped in her chest. Her breasts pushed full and high against worn gray muslin.
He swallowed, his throat thick and bone-dry. Damn him for coming here, for every twisted fool’s reason he’d given himself to stay. Beneath it all, and not too far beneath it, he was a man, and as any man’s would, his body responded to hers, to the heat and the darkness and intimacy of this desolate farm, before conscience could tell him otherwise.
“I brought you supper,” she said, her fingers still gripping the platter as though she dared not let it go.
“Soup,” he said. He watched the steam rise from the bowl. Hot soup on a hot, dry Kansas evening. He knew he’d eat it all and sweat the night away on his thick bedroll. All that was left in his saddlebags was stale bacon wrapped in cheesecloth, and coffee. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Her eyes flickered to his bandaged shoulder. “I should see to that.”
“Can I eat first?”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course.” She glanced about, apparently unsure which bale of hay was best to serve as a table, until he reached for the platter. His fingers brushed over hers and curled securely around the wood. Their gazes locked.
He arched a brow. “Care to join me?”
She released the platter into his hands as if it were suddenly aflame. Color bloomed in her cheeks, and he wondered how many men she’d known in her lifetime. Not many, judging by her discomfort. Her fists suddenly took a death grip on her skirts.
“I...” She waved a hand in a vague direction and seemed incapable of looking him in the eye.
“Ah. You don’t regularly dine in the barn with men you shoot.”
That prompted a glare. “I’ve never shot anyone.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Have you?”
He set the platter upon two stacked bales and straddled another. He glanced at her, aware that her heavy-soled shoes shuffled nervously upon the hay-strewn floor. “An odd question, ma’am, given that you’ve hired me on and fixed me a fine dinner. What is it you’re curious about? My ability to defend you and your son, or my evil intentions here? I thought we were beyond that.”
She jutted her chin at him. “A woman can’t be too careful when she lives alone. Indeed, one can’t help but cringe at the tales of h
orror and pillaging common to the taming of the frontier. I’m still not quite used to it, even after twenty-two years.”
“You should have asked if I owned a gun, then.”
“Do you?”
“Why, yes, ma’am, I do.” He watched those sapphire eyes skitter about the shadowed barn before they settled upon his saddle and gear, heaped upon the floor at his booted feet. He could see it all, the blossoming realization that he could, at any moment, snatch his pistol from his saddlebags, level it between those beautiful blue eyes...
Ignoring all those unspoken accusations, he plunged his spoon into his soup and took a heaping swallow. He couldn’t remember the last time anything had ever tasted so good, even without his characteristic whiskey to accompany it. Two, three more spoonfuls and the bowl was nearly empty. He glanced again at her, suddenly aware that she was staring at him now, not at his gear. He shoved the napkin across his mouth, tossed it aside, then half rose from his seat, one hand reaching for his gear. “I keep my gun in my saddlebag. I don’t suppose you’d care to see it?”
She shook her head and took a step back. Wariness again invaded her eyes. “N-no. Thank you, I’d rather not. I trust you know how to use it.” At the moment, she didn’t look like she trusted him one damn bit. So much for honest faces.
“I wouldn’t carry one if I didn’t.” He settled his bare back against the barn wall and felt the sagging boards give a good three inches. “Wouldn’t make much sense.”
“No.” She clasped and unclasped her hands and seemed to take a peculiar interest in the unfathomable darkness overhead. Looking at him was obviously beyond her capabilities at the moment. No, Jessica Wynne wasn’t the sort to linger in shadowy barns with half-naked men, at least not comfortably. She must want something, then. Perhaps reassurance that she had indeed chosen her farmhand well.
He scooped up a handful of blackberries and tossed one into his mouth, taking full advantage of her distraction to regard her through hooded eyes. She looked like something sent from heaven, or in his case, hell—all golden and soft and too damned innocent, with her unbound hair and that oversize dress that suddenly seemed to beg to be ripped off her. He forced the blackberries down a throat gone dry and reined in all these carnal thoughts. When the hell had he ever allowed them to get the better of him? His tone was purposely gruff. “Perhaps I could teach you to shoot.”
“Good heavens, no. Why would I want you to do that?”
“Because the next time a stranger walks onto your property, you might have good reason to kill him.”
“You’re the first such fellow to do so in twenty-one years. Perhaps in the next twenty or so, until the next outlaw wanders through Twilight, I shall teach myself to shoot properly.”
“In the meantime, you could aim and miss.”
“I’ll have you know I’ve never aimed and missed—” She caught herself, her eyes flickering over his bandaged shoulder. “I mean, when it would have mattered.”
To aim and miss... Memory, dark and dusty, whispered through his mind and was gone. “You don’t want to aim and miss when it matters, ma’am,” he said softly.
“Perhaps. But in the meantime, I’ve Avram.”
He couldn’t squelch a snort before he popped three berries into his mouth. He half slouched against the bowed excuse for a barn wall, chewed innocently enough, and gave her his best vague look when she planted her hands on her hips and advanced toward him.
She stood there, bathed in lamplight and dancing shadows, entirely unaware of herself as a woman and looking far too young and ripe for a man such as he, a man used to taking what he wanted from a woman. Particularly when he’d been so long without one. There, the chin jutted and the nose poked skyward, her lips compressing as though she sought just the perfect combination of words to skewer him with. He could almost hear the toe of her shoe tapping on the floor, could feel her righteous indignation in the heat of her.
“Whatever are you snickering about, Mr. Stark? If you intend to make humor at my fiancé’s expense—”
“I’ve never snickered in my life, ma’am.”
“Oh, but you’ve snickered, all right.” She waved a hand over him, directly at his bare chest. “A man who can calmly eat a meal without his shirt in front of a woman is capable of snickering. I wouldn’t doubt that you can spit, as well.”
“A nasty habit. I avoid it if I can.”
“And ill-mannered sorts are notoriously short on book learning—”
“I read Keats and Byron every night before retiring.”
“Why, you probably haven’t bathed in over a month—”
“I make it a daily habit. Bathed just this morning, ma’am. The stream was cold and deep. Perfect for bathing...” He flashed a rare smile, one that seemed to crack his skin. “Naked, of course.”
This stopped her cold, as he’d known it would. All her puffed-up defending of her beloved Avram fled, swallowed in one noisy gulp. She flushed scarlet. She stared at his bare chest, and lower, at his stomach. The blush reached clear to her hairline. He could almost read her innocent mind, the images taking full, real shape...a man, bathing naked in a cold stream.
It was hard to imagine that this woman had ever known intimacy with a man.
For whatever unfathomable reason, he was suddenly overcome with the need to apologize to her for stoking all those defenses, no matter how deserving Halsey might be, no matter how eagerly she had leapt to his defense.
Rance stood, and she took three steps back, one slender arm outstretched, as though to keep him at a proper distance.
“In the future,” she said, “I would appreciate you wearing your clothes, sir, particularly your shirt, in my presence.” She looked as though she itched to grow another seven inches taller as she lifted her gaze finally to his. “And that of my boy.”
Odd, that. Protecting her son from the sight of a man. He wondered if she’d done the same with her own husband.
He indicated the blood-soaked cloth lying on a nearby pile of hay. “My shirt, ma’am, has a bloody hole in it.”
She pursed her lips, then snatched his shirt up and stalked from the barn. Silhouetted against a sky ablaze with twilight fire, her shoulders squared, and all those blond curls bounced with each step she took. His gaze immediately narrowed upon the outline of her hips, slim, swaying and womanly. Instinct, that was it. Simply male instinct and habit—both a man like him could tame and manage, both he would feel with any woman, dammit. See, he could take his eyes off her. Easy enough.
He slouched against the barn wall, feeling weariness like lead weights in his limbs. His lids drooped, and twilight faded with the blossoming sounds of night above the lonely, slowing creak of the windmill. Yet, try as he might, he could not banish that image of Jessica Wynne from his mind, and then darkness encroached, and the creaking of the windmill grew louder, rousing age-old memories.
Mists parted on a lifetime ago.... The sleeping town of Lawrence, Kansas, all quiet save for the comforting squeak of a windmill outside his open bedroom window and then the gunshots, ripping through the predawn peace...the horrified shouts, cries for help, more gunfire, carnage, and his parents crumpling lifeless beside him as he struggled to take aim, to get off one good shot before the outlaw gang disappeared into the darkness.
Something touched him. He roared awake, the demon stirring to life within him for the first time in years. A shadow loomed close, yet he didn’t strike out. No, he would grapple with his ghosts, dammit. He lunged upward in the darkness, his fingers meeting flesh, yet he gripped those delicate limbs and with one flex of his arms lifted this insignificant weight entirely against him, flush from chest to hips.
“M-Mr. Stark.”
The fog cleared. That warm, lemony woman-scent spilled over him. No ghost. He stared into Jessica Wynne’s wide blue eyes.
Chapter Four
The heat of him penetrated muslin, cotton and bone, leaping into her blood like the first roar of a flame. He was all male, potent, savage, and as raw and unta
med as an untouched wilderness, his eyes full of frenzied, mysterious fire. A man so different from the few she’d known. It struck her that she felt no fear, even when his fingers squeezed into her upper arms. Something told her she should be afraid. Yet she felt nothing but this slow, deep burning.
Their breaths came matched, hers shallow, his tortured, a palpable stirring of the sliver of hot night air that dared to pass between them. His scent filled her lungs. Her belly curved into his. Her breasts pushed into his chest, the peaks swelling against fevered bands of muscle—
Too late she realized she’d shoved a fist into his wounded shoulder. Breath hissed from between his teeth, and he released her to sag once again against the barn wall.
“Good heavens, I’m sorry!” she blurted.
Dim lantern light threw his face into deep shadow, yet she recognized the subtle tightening of the lines around his mouth, the downward tilt of his brows over his nose. He shoved a big hand through that unruly mane of blue-black, smoothing the perspiration that dotted his forehead and bathed his torso from neck to waist in a filmy sheen. For one long, unconscionable moment, she allowed her eyes to drift over the breadth of that furred chest and along the ridges of his belly.
She watched his fingers threading through his hair, as if he were massaging some deep ache there. Perhaps it was some trick of the flickering lamplight, but she thought she could detect the faintest trembling in those fingers.
Instinctively, as would any mother, she reached a palm toward his forehead. His eyes angled abruptly at her. Her hand dropped to twist into her skirt.
“You could be feverish, Mr. Stark.”
His lip barely curled with his words. “More than likely it was all that damned hot soup.”
She sucked in a breath of indignation. What was it about this man that stirred her so swiftly to anger, despite his wounded state, despite the fact that she needed him? Despite the fact that she wanted to like him. With pursed lips, she watched him shove himself from his hay bale and move past her, deeper into the shadows. He paused to stare into the night from the open barn door, presenting his back to her.
