by Diana Palmer
She colored at the memory of how exquisitely he’d lost control. “No.”
“Thank God! I hated your mother because of what she did to my father,” he said, and his lean hand brushed back her hair. “But that was never your fault. I’m sorry I made you pay for something you didn’t do, Barrie,” he added bitterly.
“Why didn’t you ever talk to me about my mother and George?”
“At first because you were so naive about sex. Then, later, I’d built too many walls between us. It was hard to get past them.” He drew her hand to his chest and held it there. “I’ve lived inside myself for most of my adult life. I keep secrets. I share with no one. I’ve wanted it that way, or I thought I did.” His eyes searched hers. “We’ll both have to stop running now,” he said abruptly. “You can’t run from a baby.”
She gaped at him. “Well, I like that!”
“Yes, you do, don’t you?” he asked with a gentle smile. “I like it, too. What were you going to do, go away and invent a fictional husband?”
She colored. “Stop reading my mind.”
“I wish I could have read it years ago,” he returned. “It would have saved us a lot of grief. I still don’t know why it never occurred to me that you could become pregnant after that night on the Riviera.”
“Maybe I wasn’t the only one trying to run,” she remarked.
His face closed up. Yes, he had tried to run, tried not to think about a baby at all. Was she rubbing it in? Gloating? Surely she didn’t know about his mother, did she? He started to move away, but her hands clung to him, because she knew immediately why he’d withdrawn from her.
“There’s a very big difference between teasing and sarcasm,” she reminded him bluntly. “Sarcasm is always meant to hurt. Teasing isn’t. I’m not going to live with you if you take offense at everything I say to you.”
His eyebrows went up. “Aren’t you assuming a lot?”
“Not at all. You thought I was making fun of you. I’m not my mother, and you’re not your father,” she continued firmly. She felt belligerent. “I can’t even kill a snake, and you think I could enjoy humiliating you!”
Put that way, he couldn’t, either. Barrie didn’t have the killer instinct. She was as gentle as her mother had been cruel. He hadn’t given that much thought. Now he had to.
He sat back down again, his eyes solemn as they searched over her face. “I don’t know you at all,” he said after a minute. “We’ve avoided each other for years. As you reminded me once, we’ve never really talked until the past few weeks.”
“I know that.”
He laughed shortly. “I suppose I’m carrying as many emotional scars as you are.”
“And you don’t look as if you have a single one,” she replied. Her eyes fixed on him. “Did you give her the silver mouse?”
He knew at once what she was referring to. He shook his head. “I keep it in the drawer by my bed.”
That was surprising, and it pleased her. She smiled shyly. “I’m glad.”
He didn’t return the smile. “I’ve done a lot of things I regret. Making you look foolish over giving me a birthday present is right at the top of the list. It shamed me, that you cared enough to get something for me, after the way I’d treated you.”
“Coals of fire?”
“Something like that. Maybe it embarrassed me, too. I never gave you presents, birthday or Christmas.”
“I never expected them.”
He touched her disheveled hair absently. “They’re in my closet.”
She frowned. “What’s in your closet?”
“All the presents I bought you and never gave to you.”
Her heart skipped. “What sort of presents?”
His shoulder lifted and fell. “The emerald necklace you wanted when you were nineteen. The little painting of the ranch the visiting artist did in oils one summer. The Book of Kells reproduction you couldn’t afford the year when the traveling European exhibition came through Sheridan. And a few other things.”
She couldn’t believe he’d done that for her. “But you never gave them to me!”
“How could I, after the things I’d said and done?” he asked. “Buying them eased the ache a little. Nothing healed it.” He picked up her hand and his thumb smoothed over the emerald ring she was wearing on her engagement finger. “I bought you this set when you left France.”
That was a statement that left her totally breathless. “Why?”
“Shame. Guilt. I was going to offer you marriage.”
“You never did,” she whispered in anguish.
“Of course I didn’t,” he said through his teeth. “When I came by your apartment a week after you’d left France, a man answered the door and told me you were in the shower. He was wearing jeans—nothing else, just jeans, and he was sweating.”
She wouldn’t have understood that reference once. Now, remembering the dampness of her own body after Dawson’s fierce lovemaking, she understood it too well.
“That was Harvey,” she said miserably. “He was my landlord’s son at the apartment house where I lived back then. He and his brother were building cabinets in the kitchen. They took a break and while they were doing that, I had a quick shower. I’d been helping them…” She paused. “Harvey never said I’d had a visitor!”
He winced.
“You thought he was my lover,” she guessed.
He nodded. “It seemed fairly obvious at the time. I went away eaten up with jealousy, believing that I’d set you off on a path to moral destruction. I was so disheartened that I flew all the way back to France.”
She could have cried. If Harvey hadn’t been there, if she hadn’t been in the shower, if, if, if. Her face told its own story.
“You see what I meant, the morning I came to take you to Sheridan with me?” he asked quietly. “All it takes is a missed message, a lost letter, a phone call that doesn’t get answered. And lives are destroyed.”
He was still holding her hand, looking at the ring on her finger.
“You knew that I loved emeralds,” she said softly.
“Of course I knew.” He wasn’t admitting how he knew, or why he’d gone to so much trouble to find a wedding set exactly like that one.
Suddenly she remembered. “I saw a ring like this in a magazine, one of those glossy ones,” she recalled. “I left it open on the sofa, to show Corlie, because I loved it so much. That was about the time I left for college.”
“You had on a pink tank top and cutoffs,” he recalled. “You were barefoot, your hair was halfway down your back. I stood in the doorway and watched you sprawled on the carpet with that magazine, and I had to get out of the house.”
She searched his eyes. “Why?”
He gave a short laugh. “Can’t you guess? Because the same thing happened that always happened when I get close to you. I got aroused.”
“But you acted as if you couldn’t bear the sight of me!” she blurted.
“Of course I did! I’d have given you the perfect weapon to use against me if I’d let you know how I felt!” he replied without thinking.
He really believed that. She could see it in his pale eyes as they searched her face. He’d spent all those long years protecting himself, avoiding intimacy or even affection because he thought of it as a weakness that any woman would exploit. It was no wonder that they called him the “ice man.” In so many ways, he was. She wondered if anything would thaw him out. Perhaps the baby would be a start. The baby! With wonder, her hands went absently to her flat stomach.
The involuntary action brought Dawson out of his unpleasant memories. He followed the motion of her hands and the bitterness left his face.
He reached out and placed one of his big hands over both of hers. “I’ll take care of you this time,” he said quietly, “even if it means hiring a hospital staff and keeping you in bed for the full nine months.”
Her hands slid over his and rested there. “I won’t lose this one,” she said with certainty.
“Neither can I. Well, so much for that promotion,” she murmured dryly. “I’m not living in Tucson alone.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You can teach in Sheridan.”
“When he starts school,” she agreed.
He searched her eyes. “He?”
“I hate dolls,” she murmured shyly. “But I love football and baseball and soccer and wrestling.”
He chuckled with genuine amusement. “Chauvinist.”
“I am not. I wouldn’t mind a daughter, really. I think Antonia’s stepdaughter, Maggie, is precious. I’m sure they’re as crazy about her as they are about their new son, Nelson.” She shrugged. “Besides, Maggie hates dolls, too. But she loves to read and she knows almost as much about cattle as her dad.”
“I like Antonia,” he replied.
“You can get used to Powell. Can’t you?” she coaxed.
He pursed his lips. “I don’t know. Will you make it worth my while?” he murmured with a slow, steady appraisal of her relaxed body.
She couldn’t believe she was hearing that. It was the first time in memory that he’d actually teased her. He even looked rakish, with his disheveled wavy gold hair on his forehead and his pale green eyes affectionate. He was so handsome that he took her breath away, but she’d have loved him if he’d been the ugliest man on earth.
“I’ve shocked you,” he mused.
“Continually, ever since you walked in the door,” she agreed. She smiled up at him. “But to answer the question, yes, when I feel better, I’ll do my best to make it worth your while.”
“No more fear?” he asked, and was solemn.
“I don’t think so,” she replied. “If it’s going to be like last time from now on. And if you won’t get furious afterward again.”
He took her hand in his and held it tightly. “I’ll make sure it’s like the last time. As for getting upset…” He grimaced. “It’s difficult for me.”
“Because you don’t trust me yet,” she said perceptively. “I know. You’ll just have to learn how, I suppose. But I don’t think making fun of people is any way to carry on a relationship, if it helps. And I don’t think less of you for enjoying what we do together.” She blushed. “In bed, I mean.”
“We didn’t do it in bed. We did it on the carpet.” His face hardened. “Like animals…”
She sat up and put her hand over his lips. “Not like animals,” she said. “Like two people so hungry for each other that they couldn’t wait. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in that.”
He took a deliberate breath, but his eyes were still full of storms and bitterness.
She traced his long, sensuous mouth with her forefinger. “I’m sorry that my mother made you hate what you feel when we’re together, Dawson,” she said quietly. “But I’m not like her, you know. I couldn’t hurt you. I couldn’t even tell you about the baby we lost, because I knew it would devastate you.”
He reached for her roughly and enveloped her bruisingly close against him. There was a fine tremor in his arms as he buried his face in the thick hair at her throat.
She smoothed his hair with gentle hands, nestling closer. “But we won’t lose this one, my darling,” she whispered. “I promise you, we won’t.”
There was a stillness in him all at once. He didn’t lift his head, but his breathing was suddenly audible.
“What did you call me?” he whispered gruffly.
She hesitated.
“What?” he persisted.
“I said…my darling,” she faltered self-consciously. He drew back enough to let him see her flushed face. “No!” he said quickly. “Don’t be embarrassed! I like it.”
“You do?”
He began to smile. “Yes.”
She sighed with pure delight as she looked at him.
He studied her flushed face in its frame of disheveled dark, wavy hair. His hands gathered it up and tested its silkiness with pleasure that was visible. “Feeling better?”
She nodded. “I’m a little queasy, but it’s natural.”
“My doctor can probably give you something for it.”
She shook her head. “No. I won’t even take an aspirin tablet while I’m carrying him. I won’t put him at the slightest risk.”
He dropped his eyelids so that she couldn’t see the expression in his eyes. “Do you want the baby because of that maternal instinct, or do you want him because he’s my child?”
“Are you going to pretend that you don’t know?” she mused. “You used to taunt me about how I felt—”
“Yes, I knew.” He interrupted curtly and met her eyes. “It hurt, damn it. I was cruel to you and even that didn’t make any difference. You can’t imagine what torment it was to know that all I had to do was touch you and I could have you, anytime I wanted to. But I had too much honor to do it.” His eyes narrowed with pain. “All the same, I hope I haven’t killed that feeling in you. I don’t know much about love, Barrie. But I want you to love me, if you can.”
Tears burned in her eyes as she felt his lips touch her forehead, her eyebrows, her wet eyelids. The tears fell and she couldn’t seem to stop them. “I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you,” she whispered unsteadily. “So much, Dawson. So much, so much…!”
He kissed her. His mouth was hungry at first, insistent, almost cruel in its devouring need. But he felt her weakness and his arms loosened their tight grip. His mouth became caressing, tender.
When he lifted his head, he looked dazed. This was his woman. She loved him. She had his child under her heart. She was going to be his wife. He felt as stunned as he looked.
“We can…if you want to,” she murmured sheepishly. “I mean, I’m not that sick.”
He smoothed back her damp hair. “I wouldn’t be much of a man if sex was all I had in mind right now,” he replied quietly. “You’re carrying my child. I could burst with pride.”
It was an odd way to put it, but it touched her. She smiled shyly. “One time and I’m pregnant,” she said pensively. “If we don’t want twenty kids, I suppose one of us is going to have to do something after the baby comes.”
“I’ll do something,” he said. “I don’t want you taking anything that might put you at risk.”
“I don’t have to take something. I can use something.”
“We’ll see.”
She touched his face, his shoulder, his chest. “I could get drunk on this.”
“On what?”
“On being able to touch you whenever I want to,” she said absently, unaware of the effect the words had on the man holding her. “I used to dream about it.”
“Even after France?” he asked with sudden bitterness.
“Even after France,” she confessed. She looked up. “Oh, Dawson, love is the most stubborn emotion on earth.”
“It must be,” he said.
She leaned forward and kissed his eyelids closed. “When do you want to leave for Sheridan?”
“Now.”
“Now? But…!”
“I want to get married,” he said firmly. “I want to do it quickly, before you change your mind.”
“But, I wouldn’t!”
He wasn’t sure of that. He’d made so many stupid mistakes already that he couldn’t risk another one. “And we won’t sleep together again until the ring is on your finger,” he added.
“Why, you blackmailer,” she said.
He cocked an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“Withholding your body to make me marry you. Well, I never!”
“Yes, you did,” he murmured.
She liked the way his eyes twinkled when he was amused. She smiled. He might not love her, but he liked her, and he wanted her.
“Yes, I did,” she agreed. “Okay, if you’re in such a hurry to give up your freedom, who am I to stand in your way? I’ll pack right now!”
Ten
CORLIE wasn’t at all surprised to see Dawson walk in with a radiant Barrie. She hugged them both and went away with a smug expression to make them a pot of coffee.
“Coffee,” Barrie began. “I really should have milk…”
Dawson put his finger over her lips and looked sheepish. “Don’t. I’ll go and tell her we both want milk.”
“She’ll be even more suspicious of that,” she whispered.
He shrugged. “Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe you are, too,” he continued. “We don’t even know for sure yet.”
She leaned into his body with her eyes closed, feeling secure and at peace for the first time in years. “Yes, we do,” she said.
He rocked her in his arms. “Yes, we do,” he agreed after a minute. He closed his own eyes and refused to give in to the fear. It would be wonderful to have a child with her. Surely nothing would go wrong, as it had with his mother. And she wasn’t going to make him jump through hoops. His eyes opened and he stared past her. He felt troubled and turbulent. Trust came hard to a man with his history. He didn’t know how he was going to cope with what lay ahead.
* * *
They were married quietly in the local Methodist church with Corlie and Rodge for witnesses. Antonia Long and her husband sent flowers and congratulations, but the baby had a cold and they wouldn’t leave him, even for such a momentous occasion as to see Barrie and the “ice man” get married.
Dawson kissed her with a tenderness she’d never expected from him and Barrie felt on top of the world. Since their return to Sheridan, he hadn’t touched her except to hold her hand or brush a light kiss across her mouth.
But tonight was their wedding night. She marveled at her excited anticipation, remembering the pleasure his body had taught hers to feel. It wasn’t fear she was feeling now when she thought of lying in Dawson’s arms in the darkness. And surely, after the honesty he’d shown her about his past, they could cope with his emotional scars. If he wanted to make love with the lights out, to conceal his vulnerability, she wouldn’t even mind that. She only wanted to lie in his arms and love him.
