She bowed her head, a small smile of satisfaction lighting her features. “Thank you. I do my best.”
He pushed away from the table and carried his plate to the sink. It was wiped clean, the last of the gravy having been soaked up by his biscuit, and he placed it in the empty dishpan. “I’ll wash these if you like,” he offered.
“No,” she said quickly, nudging him aside. “I’ll wash and you can dry.”
“All right,” he agreed, and took up a towel from the stack in the pantry to do as she bade him. It was a job quickly accomplished and she took the towel from him when they were finished, carrying it to the porch and pinning it to the line.
The sun was below the horizon, and the clouds hovering there were rosy, the sky above them darkening with twilight. A stray star or two glittered overhead, and Max stood beside her, enjoying the silence and the rare beauty of the night.
His gaze swept over her, touching upon her profile and the uplifted thrust of her breasts as she inhaled the scent of summer blossoms newly opened. This moment, this instant of time, was one he intended to cherish, as long as his life should last.
And hoping against hope that she would accept his touch, he placed his hand on her waist. She glanced up quickly, her eyes questioning his motives, he thought, and he offered a smile.
“I’ve enjoyed today,” he told her. “Thank you.”
“No, I think I’m the one who owes you those words,” she countered. “You’re a generous man, Max. I doubt you’re going to use my inheritance to pay for the things you bought me, right?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure generosity has anything to do with our shopping trip,” he said. “I’d say that word applies more to you. In fact, I think it’s how I described you a little earlier this evening,” he murmured, and watched as she recalled the moment he referred to.
“No, don’t draw away,” he said, his fingers curving to hold her next to him. “I want you to know that I don’t expect any more from you than you’re willing to give me.”
She bowed her head again, and her whisper was almost too low to be discerned. He bent his head and his heart beat more rapidly as she spoke his name. Simply his name, and then sighed, leaning for an instant against him, her head resting on his shoulder.
Chapter Five
The mare moved more slowly over the next several days, and Faith kept a close eye on her, grooming her daily, feeding her well and standing at the corral fence to watch as the four horses stood in the grass and grazed in the summer sun. The animal was sleek and golden, a sight for sore eyes, Max had said, admiring her beauty.
Although his gaze had turned to Faith herself as he whispered the words. She smiled, remembering his admiring glances, his small gestures that were aimed at cementing their relationship. Even the word painted a picture of marriage, she thought. And they were far from being committed to that grand and glorious estate.
She’d gone that route once, had given herself fully to the sort of marriage expected of her, and what had it gotten her? A sigh escaped as her thoughts traveled back through time, recalling the years she’d spent in Boston as Max’s wife. As daughter-in-law to the elder Mrs. McDowell. Bending her head, Faith touched her forehead to the top rail of the corral fence, where it adjoined the pasture.
“You looked happier a few minutes ago,” Max said from beside her. “Now, the life has leached out of you, as if someone blew out your candle and left you in the dark.”
She looked up at him, pasting a smile on her face. “You have a silver tongue, Max. Good morning.”
“I don’t know about the silver tongue bit,” he said, “but I know you’re thinking dark thoughts right now, and when I walked out of the barn you were glowing. Something changed your mood.”
“I just felt a goose walk over my grave,” she said quietly. And then laughed. “We can’t all be bright and chipper in the morning.”
“I was, until I got out to the kitchen and found you gone,” he told her. “I smelled the coffee and thought I’d snatch a cup and then help you with breakfast.” He looked up at the clear sky, where the sun had already burned off the haze and was well on its way to working on the dew.
“Another nice day,” he said, inhaling and grinning widely, for no obvious reason that she could see. And then he looked at her and she found a tenderness in his gaze that surprised her. Max was not given to a soft touch, not in the years of their marriage, at least. For some reason, he’d assumed a different set of rules for his life during the past week or so, and she felt the old familiar wariness take hold.
“I don’t know you sometimes,” she told him. “You’re not the man I left behind three years ago. And…” she gathered herself for the words she would say, knowing he might take offense “…I wonder if I can trust the man you’ve presented to me as the real Max McDowell.”
“Well, that’s what I’d call laying it on the line,” he said quietly, once he’d caught his breath and considered her comment. Faith had never been cruel, had seldom disputed his word or asked for anything he didn’t offer. She’d been docile and easy to please during their marriage.
Or else she’d been a fake. Perhaps this was the real woman, and he’d never known her at all for those three years they’d shared a house with his mother, and the privacy of their own quarters.
“You think I’m playing games with you?” he asked. “You doubt my sincerity?”
She shook her head and then he caught the hesitation as she rethought the gesture. “No, I don’t doubt that you want me back,” she said finally. “But I don’t think I know you, Max.”
And wasn’t that ironic. That she should think of him in the same light he’d considered her only a moment since.
“Perhaps we don’t know each other, Faith.” He turned his back to the fence and looked at the corral and the barn, and beyond them, the house. “This…” He waved his hand at the buildings and fields he faced. “This is what you’ve become, and I’m trying hard to fit you in place here. And I’ve about decided it’s easier to do that than try to recall whether or not you were what you seemed to be, back in Boston.”
“What I seemed to be?” Her query was quiet, and he turned his head to meet her gaze. She looked puzzled, as if she were truly unaware of the difference. “I was exactly what you wanted me to be, Max,” she said firmly. “I was the nice, obedient wife who directed the cook and housekeeper, when your mother allowed it—”
His hand rose, halting her words. “Hold on for just a minute, Faith. You’ve said several things about my mother that make her sound harsh and cruel. I don’t recall that she ever treated you so badly.”
“In front of you?” She shook her head, then looked directly at him from angry eyes. “Of course not. She’s no fool. But behind your back, or when you told her to give me pointers, to help me…” Her lips pressed together in a grim imitation of a smile. “Max, your mother has cruelty down to a science.”
He felt a jolt of anger at her cutting statement, and his words were defensive. “I’m not sure you’re being fair.” He tried to recall the dignified, immaculately attired woman who had dwelled in another wing of their home, and had difficulty placing her in the role Faith described.
“My mother has always been rather…” His pause was longer than he’d have liked, but he was having a problem coming up with a word that was all-encompassing. “…aloof,” he said finally. “She’s not easy to get close to, I suppose. But I assure you, Faith, she really means well.”
“Well, I’ll try to remember that, Max. Not that I’ll ever have direct contact with her again. Trust me, that isn’t going to happen.”
He digested her words and felt bile rise in his throat. “You mean, when you come back to Boston and we’re together again, my mother will have to live somewhere else?” His hesitation was brief as Faith remained silent, and then shrugged, accepting that circumstance as being inevitable. “I’m sure that can be arranged.”
“No, I wouldn’t want to put her to the trouble,” Faith
said flatly. “I’ll just stay here and you can go back home and live with her.”
He felt a sudden urge to stamp his foot, a stunt he’d pulled once as a child, before his mother had convinced him that gentlemen don’t have temper tantrums. Since that outlet wasn’t an option, he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back again on the corral fence. It was time to take a definite stand, since Faith seemed to be ignoring his every concession.
“You’ll have to face it, Faith. No matter what you say, I’m not planning to go back to Boston alone,” he said, aware that his words sounded more like that same little boy of almost thirty years ago than a man of thirty-three. And yet he continued. “I want you in my home and in my life, Faith, and that’s all there is to it.”
He heard his words as if someone else had spoken them, recognized his stilted, dogmatic message and groaned inwardly. All he needed to do now was stick out his chin and pout a bit to make the picture complete.
And unless he missed his guess, Faith was imagining him in just that pose, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide as she fought to curtail the laughter that bubbled in her throat. “Oh, Max,” she said, gurgling with delight. “You sound like my little brother, Timmy, when he wasn’t getting his way and gathered up his marbles. I can still see him dropping them into the leather bag and tugging at the strings, his face like a thundercloud and his mouth all pooched out.”
“Your brother, Timmy.” Max repeated her words and glared at her, his anger taking a back seat to the desire that skittered through his veins as he watched her eyes light up and her face turn rosy, her laughter setting loose a noisy case of the hiccups.
She touched his arm lightly with her fingertips. “I’m sorry,” she said between the soft hics that shook her. “I just never once saw you lose your temper so quickly, and with such little reason.”
He dropped his arms and swung around, then changed his mind and turned again to face her, his long fingers clasping her shoulders and drawing her into his embrace. “Such little reason,” he repeated, feeling like a parrot with no vocabulary of his own. “You don’t think that you announcing your intention to remain here while you pack me off to Boston is reason enough for me to be angry?”
“Well, so far I haven’t seen you running down the lane toward town, Max,” she said, “so apparently my intentions don’t have much influence on your behavior.” She tilted her head, managing to look totally in control of the situation—a difficult task, given the fact that she was clutched against his body and his arousal felt like a fence post in his trousers against her belly.
And then she frowned and attempted to draw away from him, apparently recognizing that his state of mind had done a switch from anger to awareness of her as a woman. Moving her feet a bit, but failing to make any headway due to his iron grip and the fact that he was enjoying her soft curves right where they were, she shot him an accusing look that was aimed to insure her release.
“I don’t think you’re playing fair.”
“It’s my game,” he retorted. “And if you think I’m going to run away so easily, you’re wrong, lady. I’ve got a proposal to make, and I want you to listen to me.”
“All right.” She stood still before him, her hands splayed wide on his shoulders, as if she might push hard, given the opportunity. Her mouth was open a bit, and as he watched, her tongue touched her upper lip, then retreated. “I’m listening,” she said.
Her eyes were shiny, and a blush was staining her cheeks, but she’d ceased wiggling against him, and he could only be thankful for that small miracle. It was hard enough to concentrate on his words when his attention was almost totally wrapped up in the distraction of his male member making itself known on such a grand scale.
“Look,” he said, snatching at a straw. “Can we go sit down somewhere and discuss this?” So long as he had her plastered against him, he couldn’t think straight. Especially when his body was begging for an hour alone with her, preferably on a bed.
“If you’ll let me go, I’ll head for the kitchen and make breakfast,” she said agreeably. “I think you need to cool off a bit.”
He turned her loose and she backed away, stumbling, her legs seeming to wobble. His hands held her upright and he looked down into eyes that threatened to overflow. “What?” he asked, his voice rising. “What have I done to make you cry?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just wishing you hadn’t taken so long to finally step down off your pedestal and speak your mind to me. You’ve spouted off nicely, instead of coming across as a pompous, arrogant businessman. It’s too bad it’s just about four years too late.”
“I spouted off?”
“Not a delicate way of putting it, I suppose, but it fits. You always managed to be solemn and stern when you laid down rules for me in Boston, Max. You read the riot act like a champion, never raising your voice, never showing any emotion, just straightening me out and putting me in my place.”
“I did that?” he asked, searching his mind for one single instance that would match her description. And then he thought of the night of their last society event, a party given to entertain business associates, just a week before she’d left the big house.
“You need to wear something a bit more dignified, Faith.” He’d held out his mother’s diamond necklace and then retrieved it at Faith’s look of abject horror. “Put on your black taffeta dress and I’ll fasten this around your neck.”
“I thought this looked more like a party. I needed something to cheer me up.” And she’d stood before him in a flowered gown, a spring blossom ready to face a roomful of society’s finest crop of women, all of them garbed, no doubt, in dark, dignified black or navy.
“My mother asked that you look the part tonight.”
Faith had tilted her chin and nodded, then returned to the wardrobe where dresses his mother had chosen for her were arrayed. She’d changed into an ornate, ruffled black gown that had enveloped her like a shroud and made her look like a corpse without a coffin.
He closed his eyes now, remembering the starkly pale look of her, the stricken eyes that refused to meet his and felt again the shudder that had enveloped her as he’d placed the heavy diamond necklace around her throat and then bent to place a soft kiss against her temple.
“There’s a good girl.”
Max opened his eyes, guilt washing over him in a tide that threatened to drown him. “My God.” The words were a whisper, a prayer, he supposed. Perhaps even a plea for forgiveness as he recalled in stark detail the events of that last evening they’d spent in company.
“What is it?” she asked, anxious now, leaning toward him as he felt a chill take possession of his body. “Max? You look so strange.”
“No,” he said quickly. “I’m fine. Just thinking about something.”
“It must have been a very bad memory,” she said quietly. “You looked absolutely ill for a moment there.”
“It was,” he said tightly. And then he took her hand. “Can we drop this whole thing for a little while, Faith. Let’s go fix breakfast and sit together and talk about something we can agree on for a half hour or so.”
She looked up at him, her smile dubious as if she wondered at his sanity. “Are you sure you’re all right? I didn’t mean to make you sound so sour and dignified when I said that about…” Her words trailed off as he shook his head and attempted a grin.
“It’s all right. You rang a bell, sweetheart, and I didn’t like hearing it. But I need to think about it a bit, and then we’ll talk.”
“You don’t have to worry,” she said quickly as he set off for the house, pacing through the barn, towing her at his side. “I wasn’t going to throw you out.”
She was smiling at him. The woman he’d trampled into a shell of her former, glowing self that night three years ago was smiling up at him. She should be aiming her rifle in his direction and sending him out of her life, but for some unknown reason, he was being given a second chance.
“Thank you,” he said. “I rea
lly didn’t want to leave today. I have plans for helping you with the garden this afternoon. I thought you could show me the difference between the weeds and vegetables, and I’d help you sort things out.”
It was the best he could come up with at the moment, and from the puzzled look on her face, he guessed it was distracting her from the fuss they’d managed to create.
“You’re being too obliging, Max.” She trotted at his side now, and he slowed his pace. “I’m not sure I know you when you’re acting like this.”
“Well, you already said something along that line, didn’t you? Maybe we’d better begin at the beginning and make a fresh start, Faith.”
“A fresh start?” She climbed the steps to the porch, and whirled to face him. He’d managed to get to the second step, and they were almost at eye level.
He couldn’t resist. His body was still craving hers and with this vision of golden hair shining in the sunlight, blue eyes that glittered and a face that beamed a smile in his direction, he stood no chance of turning temptation aside.
His mouth sought hers, even as his hands touched her waist, not grasping, but holding her erect. The kiss was warm, damp and perfect, as were the full, wide lips that spoke his name with a gasp of surprise.
“Max! What was that for?”
He thought she was a bit stunned, certainly surprised at the sudden change in his demeanor. “I felt like it,” he said, lifting her to one side as he opened the screened door. He bowed his head, waving one hand to usher her inside.
Faith awoke well after midnight, sitting up in bed with a start. What had wakened her was not readily apparent, but she rose quickly, trusting her instincts. Outside her window Wolf was whining, the pleading sounds interspersed by sharp yaps. From beyond her bedroom door, she heard footsteps—boots if she was any judge—and then a quick, hard rapping on the wooden panel that announced Max’s presence.
Texas Gold (Mills & Boon Historical) Page 8
