"Whatever are you doing, Hallie?"
She wilted back against the richly padded seat. "I thought I saw someone I knew," she said.
The carriage pulled up before their house and the driver opened the door, lowered the steps and assisted them to the ground.
Hallie passed the afternoon working on her second novel. Her father and brothers spoke of the war in Mexico during supper and she picked at her meal, listening halfheartedly.
Later, unable to sleep, she padded to the study for a book. Her father still sat in his leather chair, cigar smoke curling around the desk lamp. Hallie stared at the lamp and recalled the one Cooper had ordered and proudly showed her.
"Can't sleep, Precious?" her father asked.
Sitting in the chair before his desk, she pulled her bare toes up under her nightgown. "No."
Samuel leaned back and the chair creaked. "You're different, Hallie," he said.
She shrugged. She knew she was different, but to her it was all on the inside. To her family she had never changed, never grown up.
"I never would have thought I'd say this," he said. "For so long, I've discouraged you from the paper. I've tried to interest you in other things, introduced you to young men and hoped you'd find an interest."
She looked at him over her updrawn knees.
"Somehow, you going along with all of it now doesn't sit right with me. You're discouraged, aren't you?"
"I guess so. Tired of fighting windmills, anyway."
"Hallie, your articles about the brides were front-page quality. The New York News picked them up, for heaven's sake. You can be very proud of them."
"I can be proud of Harold Winthrop," she replied sarcastically.
"You know why we had to use the pen name," her father chided. "Your mother couldn't have gone out in public again if people found out where you'd been."
"Nothing changed while I was gone," she said, getting up abruptly. "So in order to keep my sanity, I'm changing. I've never been what you wanted me to be, Father. Since I had the audacity to be born a female, you would think I could have liked the things girls like, wouldn't you? Instead of picking up grease from the presses, I should have been cutting paper dolls from the previous days' issues. Rather than coming home with ink staining my skirts, I should have batted my lashes and convinced you to buy me Paris fashions."
Moving behind the chair she'd vacated, she gripped the back. "All I ever wanted was to be a part of the paper. I wanted you to be as proud of me as you were of Charles and Turner. I wanted to get in there in the thick of things and feel the camaraderie and the pride. The same love for the smell of the ink and the clack of the presses that burns in your heart burns in here." She pressed a fist to her chest.
"But I'm a square peg," she finished. "Not like Charles and Turner and Evan. They're nice round pegs, and The Daily is nice round business, so they fit quite neatly."
"Hallie," her father whispered, and she recognized his incognizance. He didn't know what to say, what to think. He'd never known that this side of her existed—hadn't known she was capable of these feelings and desires and wishes.
"You don't have to say anything," she said. "Just don't expect me to leap for joy at the thought of every lame get-together or to fall at the feet of some swain with hands as soft as Mother's." She heard her pain beginning to surface and refused to take it out on her father. "Good night."
She turned and fled to her room.
Hallie perked herself up the following day, determined to enjoy the evening, in spite of the Mitchells' nephew. She loved music, and the presentations at the opera house were always enjoyable.
She begged off when her mother tried to get her to go along for some late-afternoon shopping. Her father was still at the paper and Hallie preferred the time to work on her story.
The shadows grew long. Hallie lit the lamp and stretched, heading to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea.
A rap sounded at the door as she reached the foyer. Hallie glanced around, noting the servants were otherwise occupied, and opened the door.
Her breath stopped in her throat and her heart skipped several much-needed beats.
A wild, primitive man stood on the stoop, his stance like that of one about to encounter an enraged animal. An enormous fur coat enhanced his size, and the rifle slung over his shoulder lent fierceness to his already rigid expression.
Elation washed away Hallie's surprise. "Cooper!"
Chapter Eighteen
His sky blue eyes swept her hair and clothing, returning to her face.
"What are you doing here?" she asked in amazement. Never in a lifetime had she expected to see Cooper DeWitt on her doorstep.
"I came to see you. To talk."
"Miss Wainwright?" The maid spoke from the doorway.
"It's okay." Hallie turned and waved her away. "Well…" She glanced over his shoulder at the brick-paved street and then behind her. "Come in."
He took a step forward. "Can we talk alone?"
"It's highly improper," she said automatically. What other choice had been available to him? He had no idea of how to send a message or arrange a meeting in an appropriate location. The supercilious intricacies of society were foreign to him.
On the street a carriage pulled up before the house. "Mother!" she gasped. "My mother's home!" He started to back away, but Hallie grabbed his sleeve and pulled him in, closing the door. "Come with me. Hurry!"
She dragged him up the staircase and down the hall, ushering him into her room and closing the door. "I'm sorry, Cooper, but my mother would never understand."
He stood in the center of her room and regarded his surroundings. Hallie saw the cabbage-rose wallpaper and fringe-tasseled draperies through his eyes. Next to her silver dresser set lay handmade baskets and beaded jewelry. The quill-decorated dress Chumani had helped her make had been draped over a silk-painted dressing screen in the corner.
The four-poster bed with the white ruffled canopy had always seemed huge to Hallie, but the furniture diminished in size next to Cooper's immense form.
"Take off your coat."
Leaning his rifle against the wall, he shrugged out of the coat and Hallie held it, relishing its weight and the warmth from his body. She had to resist burying her nose in the rich fur. Cooper's familiar fringed tunic and pants outlined his muscular frame. She hadn't thought she'd see him again. Hadn't dared dream he'd be close enough to talk to…to touch.
Her knees grew shaky and she perched on the edge of her bed, his coat on her lap. She didn't care if he ever spoke. Just looking at him filled her heart with pleasure.
"I got home safe," she said finally.
"I know."
He knew? "How are Chumani and Yellow Eagle?"
"I'm not sure."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I haven't been back yet."
"You haven't—! Where have you been?"
He tried to hide a sheepish expression. "I went to Quebec for a time. Made arrangements with some of the French traders."
"Quebec! What were you doing in Quebec?"
"I told you…I had some business dealings…"
"You followed us!"
He met her gaze levelly.
The surprise wore off and the meaning sank in. "Why did you follow us?"
"I felt responsible for you."
Idly, she smoothed the fur beneath her hands. "Why did you come here?"
He glanced around. "I had this crazy idea…"
"What?"
"That maybe we could find somewhere halfway…somewhere in between where we could…"
"What?"
"It was a crazy idea. Duluth wasn't so terrible, but Massachusetts is…"
"What!" she said, too loud this time.
"I could never stand it here."
She tried to reason out his words, his thinking. Her heart lifted. "You were thinking that maybe there was somewhere between your world and my world where we could find a compromise?"
; He nodded. "But I'm not foolish enough to think love is the answer to everything. I could love you as much and as hard as there was strength in me, but I'd still hate it here. I wouldn't fit and you would be ashamed of me."
"I could never be ashamed of you, Cooper, but I wouldn't want you to fit. There are any number of gentlemen in Boston who 'fit,' and I don't want any of them."
He studied her, and his stoic mask seemed to have slipped a little.
"Hell of it is, I don't fit, either," she said with a wry twist of her mouth, and refocused her attention. "What was that you said about how you could love me?"
"I said that, didn't I?"
She nodded. "Do you? Love me?"
"I do."
Elation rose in her chest. "Why didn't you tell me?"
He moved to sit on the bed beside her. "I didn't want to tie you there…where you'd be miserable."
"I wouldn't be miserable."
"Hallie, my father brought my mother to the Dakotas and she pined her time away being miserable and missing her city life. She couldn't stand it, and my father moved her farther and farther east until finally she left him. Then he followed her. I never even heard from them again. I don't know if he found her, if either of them lived. She hated it so much she ran off and left us."
"I'm sorry about that," Hallie said sincerely. "But I'm not her. I'm not like her. I didn't miss the city for one minute while I was at Stone Creek." She laid her hand on his arm. "My problem was that I still had an unrealistic pipe dream that I had a future as a big-time reporter waiting for me."
"You don't still want that?"
"It's not going to happen." Tears filled her throat and threatened to spill from her eyes. Rapidly she blinked them back. "Instead, I'm going to be just like my mother."
Her worst fear. "Maybe there's a way," he said, hoping to give her what she needed.
"Oh, there's a way," she said. "I could renounce my family and be scorned by society and make a fool of myself. Not an option I'm willing to take."
Cooper's chest ached with inadequacy and hesitation. "You're not happy here?" he dared to ask.
She shook her head. "I'm not happy here."
"What about your friends? The things you like to do? The shops?"
She raised her lovely eyes. "What are you asking?"
"Could you be happy in Stone Creek?" he asked.
"I was happy in Stone Creek. I just didn't know it."
"Could you love me?" he asked. Something glorious and sparkling rose in her eyes, and Cooper wanted to wrap himself in that moment. He wanted to keep this wondrous new discovery fresh and alive and never let it tarnish.
"I do love you, Cooper," she said on a shaky sigh, and a tear escaped her lashes, followed by another…and another.
He framed her velvet-soft face with his hands and knew an all-consuming, breathtaking emotion of wonder and joy he'd never dared hope for. A sob escaped her throat and she closed her eyes against the rush of tears.
Hallie. Hallie, who'd taken on stage robbers, faced Indians and shot a grizzly without a tear. Hallie, who'd survived a kidnapping, brutal treatment and fever without breaking down, now cried. Great rolling tears and sobs that shook her slender frame and punctured his soul; tears because a rough, unpolished frontier man loved her.
"Hallie, I need you," he admitted in an unsteady voice. "Marry me and come home with me."
Shoving the coat to the bed behind her, she flung herself into his arms and met his kiss. "What about an Indian wife?" she asked against his lips.
"I don't want anyone but you."
"She would be easy to get along with and know how to cook and cure hides and ride horses."
"But she wouldn't do this," he said, pressing her hand against his heart. "Or this." He led her hand lower and Hallie caught her breath. "Or make me laugh."
Elated, she pressed herself against him and they fell back on the bed. Hallie kissed him long and hard and pulled back to study his sun-darkened face against her pristine white coverlet. She kissed his high, angled cheekbone, the fair crest of his brow, the dip in his strong chin, and covered his lips in an all-encompassing, tempestuous kiss of love and desire, knowing she wanted him, needed him, had to make him hers.
Breathing hard, she drew back and untied his hair, running her fingers through the silken length. He did the same, and hers spilled over her shoulder and draped across the side of his face. He threaded his fingers in the tresses and pulled her down for another protracted clash of lips and tongues.
"Take your shirt off," she said impatiently, sliding to his side.
He glanced from her face to the rest of the room. "Here?"
She nodded and unlaced the ties.
He yanked the leather garment over his head. "What if…?"
Hallie forced her attention from his sleek, muscled chest long enough to jump up and fumble in her jewelry box for a key. She found it and reached the door at the same time Cooper did. She inserted the key and twisted it. He stepped to her nearly ceiling-high armoire and shoved it in front of the door with a look of unbridled determination on his flushed face.
Hallie laughed.
He smiled and met her beside the bed.
She unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it from the waistband of her skirt while he removed his boots. He slid the blouse from her arms and tossed it on the floor. Together they unfastened her skirt and pushed it down. Cooper knelt and pulled her boots and stockings off, taking time to unroll them and run his palms over each inch of skin he uncovered. Hallie's body tingled with delight and anticipation.
She unfastened her corset, tossing it aside, and Cooper kneaded her breasts through the wrinkled fabric of her chemise. He kissed her tenderly, touched the tip of his tongue to her earlobes and the base of her throat, tasting her, testing her, teasing her.
Hallie slid from his loose embrace and pulled back the covers. Behind her, Cooper removed his trousers. She turned. He wore only the soft flap of leather that barely contained him. He knelt on her bed, burnished skin against crisp white linen, and she smiled.
"What's that for?" he asked.
"Last night I told my father I wouldn't marry a man with soft white hands."
His head tilted ever so slightly.
"Nothing soft or white about you," she said. Without any fear or hesitation, she untied her chemise and pulled it off, then sat back and removed her pantaloons.
His feverish eyes surveyed her body and returned to her face. "Does this mean you'll marry me?"
"Cooper!" she said in a stricken voice. "Of course. I thought we had that settled."
"You never said yes."
A long, expectant moment passed between them. "Yes," she said.
He reached for her and they fell back against the soft feather mattress. Cooper covered her breasts with his hands, kissed them, teased her nipples with his tongue. Passion washed through Hallie like a flash flood, pounding in her veins, setting every nerve ending alive and on end.
She stroked his supple skin, kneaded his flesh and wrapped her arms around his shoulders in an attempt to pull herself inside him. The skin of his back and hips was a delight to her sensitive fingertips. In her exploration, she fumbled over the leather thong and he showed her where it untied.
"Wait," she said unexpectedly.
"What?"
She disentangled herself and reached to the foot of the bed, spreading his coat between them. "Now," she said, and moved to lie on the fur. She pulled the thong that released his last scrap of clothing.
One side of his mouth lifted. "What's this? A fondness for fur?"
"I want the feel of it beneath my back and you against the front." She pulled him down and felt his matching excitement humming through his muscles. "It reminds me of home."
He settled in the apex of her thighs and she gripped his biceps. He reached between their bodies and guided himself to her. Hallie almost panicked at the first sensation of his hot, hard sex against her tender, untried flesh, but he soothed her with a kiss a
nd the erotic stroking of his knuckle.
A shiver of delight spread through her body, and a tremulous exultation made her feel as though she were swelling around him, absorbing him. He removed his hand and thrust into her hard, his own body trembling, and brushed the tears that slid from the corners of her eyes with his thumbs.
Miraculously, her body stretched to accommodate him and he moved against her, drawing a groan of pleasure from each of them. His body was hard and powerful, tension and excitement transmitted to her with each stroke. He needed her. He needed her, and she gave herself to him completely, fulfilling her purpose, at last understanding her femininity. For the first time, she rejoiced in her womanhood, filled with its power and headiness.
He rocked their bodies with tormenting ecstasy, and she clung to him, arched against him, made frantic sounds of pleasure and frustration against his lips and his neck. A sublime madness overcame her and she begged him to stop it, to prolong it, to take her with him on his shimmering ride to bliss.
And he did.
Hallie held him tight and quaked with the force and beauty of their shared love. With a last convulsive shudder, he collapsed and rolled them to their sides, their bodies heated and slick. She brushed his hair from his face and kissed his eyes, his nose, his chin. "I love you, Cooper."
"I love—"
"Hallie!" Behind the armoire, the doorknob rattled and her mother's voice called. "Hallie, what are you doing?"
Hallie sprang from Cooper's embrace and gaped about the room in horror.
"Hallie?" Clarisse called.
Leaping from the bed, she tore through the heap of sheets and discarded clothing. "Here," she said, shoving Cooper's pants at him and jumping on one foot to get into her pantaloons. "Get dressed, hurry!"
A frantic pounding sounded on the door this time. "Hallie, answer me!"
"I'm fine, Mother!"
Her sense of urgency infected Cooper and he pulled on his trousers and shirt. Hallie stuffed her corset under the mattress and stepped into her skirt. Cooper tried to sit on the bed to pull on his boots, but she shooed him away to haphazardly arrange the sheets and coverlet. He hopped on one foot at a time.
Badlands Bride Page 26
