“Do you mind driving my car and leaving the truck with me? There are a few errands I have to run,” she said.
He barely spared her a glance and expressed not a word of curiosity about where she was going or why, simply tossed her his keys and took hers. “See you at the farm later on then,” he said.
It was close to two o’clock when she returned. Joe was working in the stable. Poking her head in the door, she called, “Thought you might be ready for lunch, so I picked up sandwiches and something cold to drink.”
“Leave them in the truck and I’ll take a break when I’m done with this,” he said, not bothering to lift his head from the task at hand.
She shrugged. After unloading all the various supplies she’d bought, she ate a sandwich as she wandered from room to room in the house and decided which job she’d tackle first.
The sun hung low in the western sky when he finally put in an appearance. She was perched on a stepladder propped somewhat precariously against the banister, painting the stairwell walls and ceiling a soft oyster white. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Imogen?” he demanded, stopping just inside the front door.
“What does it look like?” she asked, swiping the back of her hand over her forehead. “I’m brightening up the house.”
He came to the foot of the stairs and stared at her. She wished he wouldn’t. She’d changed into a pair of bibbed shorts and a T-shirt and was very aware that, from his vantage point, all he could see were her legs.
“Get down from that ladder right now,” he said.
“In a minute. I’m not quite finished.”
He swore rather colorfully. “What’s your hurry, for Pete’s sake? Mona and Cassie aren’t moving in for another five weeks, and you’re comfortable enough at the inn. You don’t have to put everything in apple-pie order in one day.”
“I moved out of the inn,” she said, stretching on tiptoe to reach the last corner.
“What the hell for?”
“Because it’s an expense we can do without. And we are married now, Joe, so there’s no great sin attached to my living with my husband, is there? Furthermore,” she continued, when all he did was grunt, “I like to keep busy, and since this is going to be my home as well as yours, I intend to do my share in making it livable.”
“Not like this,” he said. “It’s not your sort of work.”
“Oh, really?” She paused to concentrate on one last touch to the wall. “And exactly what is my sort of work?”
“I don’t know. Making lists, I suppose. Isn’t that what women like you do best?”
“Among other things,” she said, and leaned back to admire her handiwork, a movement that caused the stepladder to tilt alarmingly.
“Jeez!” He surged up the stairs to steady it, then grabbed her around the hips and hauled her down to the landing. “You aren’t going to be much use at all in a body cast, you know!”
His eyes shot fire, and his breathing was rapid and furious. She didn’t care. They were standing hip to hip, knee to knee, and she could feel his heart racing under her hand, feel the warmth of his skin. With only the smallest of movements she could have reached up and tasted his mouth. She had not been so close to him since the night they’d walked by the river and he’d almost forgotten himself so far as to make love to her.
“Do you realize,” she said softly, tracking his features one by one and wishing she could find them merely ordinary instead of unforgettably beautiful, “that this is the first time you’ve held me since I became your wife?”
A faint flush ran over his cheekbones, and he slid his gaze away so that all she could see were the twin fans of his lashes shielding the deep cobalt irises. “Don’t do this, Imogen. We’ve got enough to deal with over the next few weeks without any added complications.”
“Is that all I am to you, Joe?” she whispered, cupping his jaw tenderly. “A complication? A necessary evil?”
He thrust her away from him. “Stop it, I said! You’re all ready to take this marriage by storm and damn the consequences, but let’s see how eager you are a month from now, when the novelty of waving a paintbrush around has worn off and the man you married is gone from dawn to dusk every day, seven days a week, trying to whip this farm into shape before winter. There won’t be any posh soirees to relieve the tedium, princess. No elegant parties, no dinner dances at the club.”
“I came into this marriage with my eyes wide-open,” she said, stung by his certainty that she’d fold under pressure. “The very least you can do is give me the chance to show you what I’m made of before you decide I’m not up to the job I’ve taken on.”
A spark of humor lightened his eyes. “I already know what you’re made of, Imogen. That’s half the trouble.”
“Well, learn to live with it,” she snapped, pulling away. “Because you’re just as stuck with me as I am with you. And while I’m speaking my mind, here’s something else you can chew on. You’ve done nothing but lay down the law from the minute you learned Cassie was alive. Well, I was just as much deceived as you were, and I’m not about to let you make me pay for my mother’s sins. If it’s a whipping boy you’re looking for, find one somewhere else.”
“I never—”
She cut him off in mid-splutter. “I’m not the sheltered, submissive little girl you rescued nine years ago, Joe Donnelly. Somewhere along the line, I grew up and came to grips with the real world. I can paint. I can hang wallpaper. I can sew curtains and do any of a hundred other things to turn a house into a home. I have a list of satisfied clients willing to attest to that So I’ll make you a deal. You do what you have to to bring the farming end of this partnership up to scratch, and leave me to take care of what I have to do. I won’t tell you how to do your job as long as you don’t tell me how to do mine.” She fixed him with a determined stare. “Well? What’s it to be?”
He didn’t like it, not one bit, but he had to live with it Because she was right. The house left a lot to be desired, and the last thing he wanted was for Cassie to be unhappy there.
Actually, that wasn’t quite the last thing he wanted. He wanted Imogen. His wife. The woman who, over the next two weeks, got up at dawn and made him breakfast and had dinner waiting for him when he dragged himself to the house after sunset. And who, every night until the decorating was done, came to sleep on the floor next to him, smelling of flowers from her bath and wearing a modest cotton nightdress that hung to her ankles.
She never once complained at roughing it. He wished she would. Then he could have suggested they buy a bed big enough to hold both of them. But apart from that night when he’d been certain she was going to fall off the stepladder and topple headfirst down the stairs, she’d not so much as hinted at any sort of intimacy between them.
Instead, she painted and hung wallpaper, polished floors and windows. And he discovered that when she was absorbed in a task, she tended to run the tip of her tongue slowly over her upper lip. He wondered what she’d say if he told her how erotic he found the habit.
To keep cool while she was working, she wore paintspattered shorts. To keep cool, he tried not to stare at her legs. Her nails, which had been long and painted pink the day she married him, were trimmed short, and he berated himself in mindless fury because he couldn’t keep her in the fashion to which she’d been accustomed all her life.
Then, one day when the heat had been particularly unbearable, he came home to find she’d cut her hair. Instead of lying nearly to her shoulders, it just cleared her jaw. It made her look eighteen again and set him to wishing for impossible things, like turning the clock back and starting over with her from scratch, with orange blossom and lace and all those other things young women hoped for when they got married.
Gradually, her ideas and efforts began to transform what he’d seen as a barren shell of a house into a place of charm and warmth. Yet despite the hours she put in, she somehow found time to visit Cassie and Mona or invite them to drop by the farm and see how things were progressing.
He’d come in for lunch and find a picnic set up on the covered porch, the three of them waiting for him to join them. Cassie would be full of questions about how he trained a horse and when he was going to teach her to ride and what sort of puppy they’d be getting. The shyness that had kept them at a distance from each other slowly melted away until the day came when she leaped off the porch and came running to meet him, and he caught her in his arms in a hug, and she clung to him like a limpet.
He thought he’d never forget the feel of her skinny little arms wrapped so tight around his neck that she almost choked him. He had to pretend he had dust in his eye to hide the fact that he could hardly see for the tears that blinded him.
Toward the end of the third week, he came home to find a load of furniture had been delivered, along with half a dozen packing crates. When he accused her of dipping into her own funds, Imogen assured him she’d stayed within his budget and used only the money he’d left for her.
“Haunting estate sales, flea markets and antique fairs was part of my job in Vancouver,” she said offhandedly when he asked her how that was possible. “If a person knows what to look for, there are some excellent bargains to be had.”
“Well, don’t try moving any of this heavy stuff yourself,” he told her. “I’ll knock off an hour or two early and lend a hand before dinner.”
So while she filled the built-in cabinets in the dining room with some turn-of the-century bride’s wedding china, he arranged eight matching chairs around a long oak table and rewired an old brass chandelier she’d unearthed from the cellar.
After she’d laid a thick white rug on the living room floor, he hauled in a dark green velvet couch and set it in front of the fireplace. She took an old kitchen dresser the previous owners had left behind, and which he’d have thrown on a bonfire, and stripped it down to bare wood, then waxed it to a soft shine and filled the shelves with blue and white pottery she’d brought from the west coast. Meanwhile, he built new shelves for every closet in the house.
But there were empty spots in every room, too, “for Mona to put her things,” she told him, “because we don’t want her to feel she’s lost her home. And, of course, I haven’t furnished Cassie’s bedroom. I’ll let her choose how she’d like it to be.”
“I have to go away for a few days,” he told her at the end of the first week in August. “There’s a horse auction I want to attend in New Jersey.”
He’d thought of asking her to come with him, even gone so far as to wonder if they couldn’t turn the trip into a sort of honeymoon. But she scotched that idea before it had even hatched.
“Then go, and don’t worry about me. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy here.”
Enough that she wouldn’t notice he was gone? he wondered.
He came home a week later, driving from first light until nearly midnight because, damn it, he missed her so much he could practically taste it By the time he’d settled his four new horses in the stable, it was almost one o’clock, one of those perfect August nights where the moon hung like a great silver ball and a million stars dotted the sky.
He stood on the porch outside the front door and looked over the land, at the fences he’d repaired gleaming pale in the moonlight and the still black shape of the butternut trees for which the farm was named and the newly painted stables and barns.
It was more than he’d ever thought to own, and all because of a child who still did not know he was her father. And a wife he never kissed.
The house was dark and silent behind him, and he did not want to waken her, but he was dusty from his journey and smelled of horses and needed a bath. The best he could do was fill a pail from the rain barrel at the back door, scrub down there, then rinse himself off. The water was warm from the sun and rolled off him like silk, sluicing over his shoulders and through his hair.
Dripping, he let himself inside the house. The moon shone through the high window on the landing, casting his shadow ahead of him, long and ungainly. He found a towel in the bathroom, mopped himself dry, brushed his teeth. And like a child saving the best part of the cake for last, finally made his way to the bedroom.
There was a bed against the far wall. A huge brassrailed affair with her asleep in the middle of it On another wall was a tall chest of drawers and in the corner a mirror on a stand.
He edged his way around a cedar chest at the foot of the bed and waited until he’d shut himself in the walkin closet before he turned on the light. He blinked at the sight that met his eyes.
Some eager beaver had been at work. Half the space was filled with women’s things made of soft, feminine fabrics. And the other half... The jeans and work shirts he’d piled on the floor had been neatly arranged on hangers with his belts dangling next to them from some gadget screwed into the wall. But the undershorts and socks he’d shoved on one of the shoe shelves on the end wall—they were gone!
Well, hell! He supposed she’d moved them into the chest of drawers in the bedroom. Feeling ridiculous, he turned off the light, let himself out of the closet and retraced his steps across the bedroom, thankful that at least there was enough moonlight that he didn’t fall over his own feet.
Carefully, he inched open the top drawer of the dresser and felt around at the contents. They were definitely not undershorts—he wasn’t into satin. He drew a blank in the second drawer, too, and was bent over the third when she woke up to the realization there was an intruder going through her things.
Her scream split the night in two. And did he disabuse her of the fact that he wasn’t some kinky burglar bent on stealing her underthings and try to calm her fears? Not fearless Joe Donnelly! He clapped one hand over his private parts and tried to run out of the room before she saw all he had to offer.
She caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder with a book, hurled with more energy than accuracy, thank God, because it weighed about five pounds. “For Christ’s sake, princess!” he yelped, ducking as the alarm clock winged past “It’s only me. Hold your fire!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“JOE?” She uttered his name on a quaking breath of terror, and without thinking he turned to reassure her. As he did, she switched on the bedside lamp.
She sat in the middle of the bed like a china doll, her blue eyes wide as they roamed the length and breadth of him. He spun so that his back was to her and spoke over his shoulder. “Sorry if I woke you. I was just looking for some—”
“Underwear?” Her voice was laced with laughter, and he realized she was watching him in the mirror and could see everything he’d gone to such absurd lengths to hide. “You’ll find it over there, in the chifforobe.”
Chifforobe? Wildly, he looked around to identify what the hell she was talking about and discovered a handsome combination wardrobe and chest of drawers hidden behind the open bedroom door. He snatched a pair of shorts from the top drawer and hurriedly climbed into them. Then, and only then, did he look her in the face.
She’d moved to the right side of the mattress, leaving the other half empty. “I guess we should get some sleep,” he said, feeling like the biggest damned fool ever to walk the face of the earth. “The sun’ll be up in another four hours, and I’ve got horses to tend to.”
“You found what you were looking for?” Her smile put the stars to shame. “That’s wonderful!”
“If I’d had a bigger trailer, I’d have bought more,” he said, reaching over to switch off the lamp before sliding into bed next to her. “There was a stallion I wish I could have brought back for stud.”
The bed smelled of her, all flowery and fresh, and no sooner had he drawn the top sheet over his waist than she slithered across the space between them. “I’d really like to get started on a breeding program,” he said, lying very still.
She snuggled closer. “I’m so glad you’re home again, Joe.”
“For horses,” he said, his voice a croak.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered, her breath sweet against his neck.
The
defenses he’d struggled to maintain crumbled. “Oh, hell, Imogen,” he groaned, pulling her hard against him, “I’ve missed you, too. I sometimes think I’ve missed you all my life.”
“You have every right,” she said. “You’re my husband.”
He couldn’t help himself for what he did next, because it was something he’d wanted for longer than he cared to remember. He kissed her, knowing that, this time, he wouldn’t stop at that. She tasted of passion, dark and erotic, of desire simmering beneath the surface of her cream-smooth skin.
For a little while, he was content to hold her and to feel the cold uncertainty that had dogged him since he’d rushed out and bought the farm, just to show her he was able to give her and their daughter a home, began to melt. Too soon, though, holding her wasn’t enough. It never had been, not with her. He wanted all of her, everything she was willing to give.
Slowly he raised her nightgown until she lay naked and quivering beside him. She let him touch her, let him feast his eyes on her breasts and belly, all silvered in the moonlight. Let him kiss her in places she’d never been kissed before, not even by him. And when he heard her cry out his name and convulse against him, he thought he was the world’s biggest fool to have waited six weeks to make her his wife in every sense of the word.
He kicked off the underwear he’d been so anxious to put on and poised himself above her, not quite touching his flesh to hers. Teasing her and tormenting himself almost beyond human endurance. Then, when her frantic urgings became more than he could withstand and he thought he would burst from wanting her, he said hoarsely, “I love you, princess,” and buried himself in her warm, dark depths.
With embarrassing speed, the quiet night exploded, shattering them both. He melted within her, helpless to protect either of them from the raging wildfire. All he could do was hold her and murmur over and over, “I love you.” Because it was true.
She clung to him sobbing, her body racked by a soft and lovely keening of fulfilment that echoed the fading spasms that had gripped it moments before. And gradually, the heat cooled to a warm afterglow, and he found the strength to wrap them both in the sheet and wipe the tears from her face with fingers not designed for so delicate a task.
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