by Jill Gregory
Shivery heat sizzled through her. Even her kneecaps tingled. She buried her fingers in the thick softness of his damp hair. So gentle was he as he cradled the nape of her neck in one hand and encircled her waist with the other that she never once thought about Neely Stoner, never felt the icy stab of panic, knew only that Wolf was holding her close and kissing her, breathing life into her, doing mysterious, wonderful things to her body and her heart, and she knew that she felt safe, warm, desired, loved.
“Wolf,” she whispered shakily at last, clinging to his shoulders as they both came up for air.
“Rebeccah,” he murmured. “Such a pretty name.”
The sound of her name on his lips filled her with a potent joy she couldn’t contain. But suddenly, as his head came down toward hers again, a memory struck at her, and her joy exploded, shattering into a thousand shards.
“My God!” she gasped, and pushed him away.
“What’s wrong?” he asked sharply.
She shook her head, too stunned and sick to speak. She touched shaking fingers to her lips as if to blot the burning imprint of his kiss.
“Rebeccah, what is it?”
“How could you ...” she choked out.
Puzzled, he regarded her for a moment in silence. “Easy, Rebeccah. I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’ll try to make it right,” he offered, reaching for her again.
She jumped back as if he’d lunged at her with a branding iron. “Don’t you dare touch me!”
Wolf’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell is the matter with you, woman? I’m beginning to think you’re just plain loco. Am I wrong, or were you just kissing me and damn well enjoying it?”
Rebeccah felt as low and dirty as a common lightskirt. He must certainly think her no better than one. Her cheeks burned with shame. “It’s obvious just what kind of a woman you think I am. Easy pickings. One so disreputable and so desperate for a man’s affections that I don’t give a damn if he’s married!”
A stunned look entered his eyes.
Rebeccah lost all control of her temper and slapped him. “How dare you look so surprised. You think I have no scruples, that I’m the commonest, loosest, most despicable kind of female—”
“Hold on a minute and listen to me—”
“A minute? No,” she flashed, her face ablaze with mortification and fury. “I’ve wasted too many minutes on you. You and your son, Sheriff Bodine, had best be on your way immediately. I’m certain Billy’s mother is waiting for word of him! Poor woman,” she added, her voice trembling with scorn and fury. “I feel only pity for her!”
“That’s enough!”
Wolf gripped her wrist so tightly, she cried out. “For your information, Miss Rawlings—” he began, but Billy’s voice, sounding very small and sad, interrupted him from the doorway.
“My ma is dead.”
Wolf released her and spun to face the boy.
Rebeccah gasped, and rubbed instinctively at her tender wrist. For a moment she was speechless. Billy’s young eyes were filled with sorrow. He looked very small, very thin, and very alone. And Wolf had suddenly become a wall of solid granite—hard, cold, and impenetrable.
“Oh, Billy, I’m sorry,” she whispered, knowing even as she said them that the words were woefully inadequate. “I didn’t know. Billy, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It’s all right.” He was trying hard to sound matter-of-fact. But he bit his lip and looked down at the floor. Rebeccah felt as if a rusty knife were twisting inside of her.
What have I done? What have I said?
She wanted to beg Wolf to forgive her stupidity, to look into his eyes and let him see how dreadful she felt, but before she could say or do anything else, he had a hand on Billy’s shoulder and was leading him out of the kitchen.
“Billy, let’s go.”
She wanted to call after them, to explain, to make everything better, but the words choked in her throat.
Then they were outside, riding off together into the inky, vile night, disappearing almost immediately into the streaming darkness.
His wife was dead. Dead.
And she had accused him of such terrible things.
Rebeccah stood in the open doorway, staring off in the direction they had gone, letting the chill rain slash against her hot cheeks and her trembling, burning body, still on fire from Wolf’s touch.
Oh, God. He truly hates me now. I’ve hurt him and hurt his son.
She closed her eyes and struggled against the bitter tears. But they came anyway. They mingled with the rain pelting her face, ran down her cheeks, and watered the ache deep in her soul.
10
Four days later on a cool, cloudy September afternoon, Rebeccah perched in a wing chair in the modest Brady parlor and faced questions from Mayor Ernest Duke, Culley Pritchard, Caitlin Bodine, Emily Brady, and Myrtle Lee Anderson, who comprised the school-board committee of Powder Creek.
The formal invitation for the interview had come from Mayor Duke himself, who had explained that Caitlin Bodine had recommended her for the schoolteacher’s position at a town meeting and the citizens had approved the suggestion that she be interviewed. That in itself had astounded Rebeccah —how had Caitlin managed to convince them?
The interview lasted more than an hour, and during the course of it she realized that she was being judged not only on how knowledgeably and eloquently she answered their questions relating to her education and training but also on how she conducted herself, how she spoke, moved, whether or not she smacked her lips over her lemonade or ate strawberry pie with her fingers.
She didn’t. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted the teacher’s position, but she knew she needed it. So she was careful to smile politely when she answered the questions, to sip her lemonade delicately, to nibble at her pie with exactly the right degree of well-bred enjoyment. The way she had been taught at Miss Elizabeth Wright’s Academy for Young Ladies. The way Analee Caruthers would have eaten her strawberry pie.
And it worked. Whether it was the demure chignon into which she’d pinioned her heavy hair or the quiet gray serge gown left over from her teaching days, serviceable and plain, with only a wisp of white lace at the throat, she impressed them enough and overcame their trepidations enough so that they glanced at each other, reached an agreement through some silent signal, and offered her the position.
“The salary is small, but you will be compensated in other ways as well,” Ernest Duke informed her with his usual pomposity. “If you take sick, Doc Wilson will treat you at no charge. The town will furnish you with a buckboard and team. Koppel’s General Store will provide you with all the eggs, canned milk, and vegetable seed you need at no cost, and the blacksmith will shoe your horses and fix your wagon wheels with nothing asked in return.”
“And twice a week,” Culley Pritchard told her, “I’ll send one of my ranch hands around to help out with chores and wood chopping and repairs—whatever you need. We look after our own, young lady.”
Our own. Rebeccah found herself smiling tentatively at him. Besides Caitlin and the Bradys, both of whom had treated her with great kindness since the night of the storm, Culley Pritchard seemed the most friendly member of the board, the one regarding her with real interest and, well, almost approval. He was a broad, powerfully built man who spoke bluntly and with a shrewd, brisk intelligence. And she sensed that unlike Myrtle Lee Anderson and Mayor Duke, he didn’t hold her father’s misdeeds against her.
“Well,” Myrtle Lee said with a sniff, leaning forward in her straight-backed chair to peer crossly at Rebeccah. “Speak up, Miss Rawlings. We don’t have all day. Do you accept the position or not?”
“I accept.” Rebeccah kept her tone as calm as Culley Pritchard’s had been. “When would you like me to start?”
Emily Brady and Caitlin Bodine burst into wide smiles.
“Next Monday will be just fine,” Caitlin assured her, and glanced around the sunlit parlor for confirmation. “We’ll have time to get the schoolhouse in o
rder by then and pass the word around that Powder Creek has itself a brand-new teacher.”
Rebeccah, who considered herself far above sentimentality or excessive emotion, suddenly found herself feeling almost overwhelmed as she realized the responsibility and the trust being placed in her. This was very different from being offered the teaching position at Miss Wright’s Academy. Because she was a graduate of the academy, the school had been almost duty-bound to hire her, for she was one of their own, and not to do so would have suggested a lack of confidence in the training they had provided her. But this school-board, needy as they were for a teacher, was overcoming strong prejudice against her to give her the job. It demonstrated great faith, she realized, and she couldn’t help but be moved.
She rose and glanced around the room, gaining confidence from Emily Brady’s reassuring nod and Caitlin’s smile. “I appreciate the board’s confidence in me, and I will try to do my best for the children,” she said crisply, and forced herself to meet the gaze of each member of the school-board, even Myrtle Lee Anderson’s doubtful frown and Mayor Duke’s worried pucker.
“Of course you will,” Emily Brady said warmly and came forward to grasp Rebeccah’s hand. “I know Joey will be very happy. He might not even balk each morning about going to school. Matter of fact I know he won’t.”
“My younger boy won’t either,” Culley Pritchard added, looming before her, rugged in his rancher’s shirt, vest, and trousers, his spurs jingling as he walked. “But if he ever gives you any trouble, Miss Rawlings—any trouble at all—you be sure to let me know about it right off.”
They were kind, Rebeccah thought wonderingly a short time later as she drove herself home in her rented wagon. Genuinely kind. At least the Bradys were, and Culley Pritchard, and Caitlin. After what Bear had done in this town, it was a miracle that anyone would even speak to her, much less give her a job and make her feel welcome.
Maybe Caitlin was too kind, she thought, guiding the horses along the rutted trail with a frown creasing her brow. Confident of the interview’s outcome, Caitlin had earlier invited her to have supper with the Bodines afterward, in celebration of Rebeccah’s new position, and not knowing what excuse to give, Rebeccah had accepted. But now that the hurdle of the interview was over and she had the job, she was uncertain if Caitlin’s kindness was a blessing or a curse. Because of it, in a few short hours Rebeccah would have to face Wolf Bodine again.
She hadn’t seen him once since that awful night of the storm, when she’d said such terrible things to him and behaved so ... ridiculously. That was the only word for it, Rebeccah admitted in shame. Ridiculous.
He’d sent his deputy, a laconic man named Ace Johnson, out to the ranch to deliver her reward money for shooting Scoop Parmalee. The man had handed over the money without any message, not even one businesslike word, from Wolf Bodine.
Why, oh why, had she let him kiss her? And why had she let it go on for as long as she had?
No man had ever kissed her like that. She hadn’t even had time to panic, to feel the familiar cold sweat or the nausea, for Wolf Bodine had taken her completely by surprise, and by the time she realized what was happening, she’d been swept away by inexplicable feelings she’d been powerless to fight.
It had been wonderful. Even more wonderful than her dreams, her fruitless imaginings all those years—because it had been real. Wolf Bodine the man was even more dangerously compelling and irresistible than Wolf Bodine the memory. His knowing touches, his urgent kisses, the rugged, sensuous whole of him, was far more powerful than dream images of such things.
Yet Rebeccah felt dismayed with her own weakness in succumbing to them.
True, Wolf was not married, as she had first thought. His wife was dead—but what difference did that make? He would never care about her. He would never take her seriously or regard her as anything other than an amusing diversion. After all, what more could there be with Bear Rawlings’ daughter?
The late-afternoon wind blew autumn leaves across the trail and cooled her burning skin. The memories of that night stung. Considering the contempt in which he held her, a contempt he’d made all too clear from the moment he discovered who she was, Wolf’s advances were insulting, painful. She couldn’t bear to think about them, and yet she could think about little else.
What was worse, she’d hurt Billy when he’d overheard her comment about his mother. Now he probably despised her as well.
For a fleeting moment as she guided the horses over the rise toward the trail that led to her own yard, she wondered about the woman who had been Wolf’s wife. No doubt he still loved her and mourned her. He would probably never get over her and only assuaged his physical needs with loose women and whores who meant nothing to him, while still holding onto his love for ... what’s her name.
Don’t think about him, she instructed herself when she reached home and began unhitching the wagon. Think about Caitlin and Billy. Reach out to them, let them be your friends (if Billy still will). Forget about Wolf Bodine.
Yet as she sponged herself clean in the icy river, sudsed and rinsed her hair, and then later in the bedroom brushed it until it shone, and slipped on a fresh gown—a, sprightly cherry-and-white calico with tight sleeves—she studied herself in her hand mirror and wondered if Wolf Bodine thought her the tiniest bit attractive—or if he had only kissed her because she was an outlaw’s daughter and therefore an easy woman, someone unworthy of his respect.
She examined her features in the mirror, each one of them, then made a face. Her mouth was too large, her nose too ordinary. And her hair never seemed to stay contained, no matter how many pins she thrust into it.
The bruise on her cheek had faded, but she brushed on a dusting of rice powder to conceal it further. And a tiny, daring fluff of rouge. If she was to be considered a loose woman, she may as well play the part!
I don’t care what he thinks, Rebeccah decided rebelliously as she picked up her good ivory lace shawl. It was time to hitch up the wagon again and start for the Double B.
But she turned and hurried back into the bedroom to dab on the fancy French perfume Bear had sent all the way from San Francisco for her last birthday. There, she thought. That’s for me, because I like to smell pretty, not for him. Not one little bit for him.
She arranged the shawl around her shoulders and hurried for the door. Worried that she was late, she opened it quickly and started to rush outside.
A man loomed on the threshold, one powerful arm raised.
Rebeccah screamed. She shrank back so abruptly, she nearly stumbled, but he caught her arm just in time.
“What are you screaming about, you clumsy woman? You scared the wits out of me,” Wolf Bodine growled at her.
“You! I scared you?”Rebeccah’s heart was racing triple its usual speed. She yanked her arm free of his grasp. “What are you doing here?”
He scowled. Even with the scowl he looked extremely handsome in his dark blue shirt, which hugged his finely molded shoulders and forearms. He wore a silk neckerchief knotted loosely around his neck, and snug-fitting, well-pressed black trousers that emphasized the solid, muscular thickness of his long legs. His boots gleamed as if they’d been freshly polished. In the amber glow of the lantern behind her, Rebeccah saw that his hat only partially concealed the springy locks of his chestnut hair and narrowly shadowed his eyes. But from what she could see below the brim, there was no glint of warmth or even civil friendliness in those eyes. Only a tight coolness.
“Came to drive you over for dinner. I was just about to knock when you yanked the door open. What’s the matter with you, anyway, Miss Rawlings? Why are you so jumpy?”
Miss Rawlings. So they were back to that again. Well, fine. “Nothing.” Rebeccah shrugged, matching his cool nonchalance. “I was in a hurry, that’s all. Do I look like something’s the matter with me?”
He stared hard at her as if determined to give her a brutally honest answer to her question. Rebeccah gritted her teeth under his piercing inspection.
“Are you finished?” she bit off at last, disappointed when she detected not the slightest softening in his eyes, not the least hint of admiration or—admit it, Rebeccah!—desire as his gaze raked her from head to toe and every place in between.
“You’ll do, I reckon.” He shrugged indifferently and turned on his heel. “Let’s go.”
She found herself taking two quick strides for every one of his long, loping ones, and by the time she reached the wagon, she would have bet her buttons he would not even help her in.
But here she was wrong. He turned, so suddenly she nearly ran into him, put two strong hands around her waist, and hoisted her up with no apparent effort and no excessive gentleness. Rebeccah found herself plopped unceremoniously onto the hard seat.
“I think I’d rather have driven myself,” she muttered under her breath as he came around and climbed up beside her, releasing the brake lever in a deft motion.
“Caitlin wouldn’t hear of it,” he said, staring straight ahead as he set the horses trotting forward. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
“How charming.” Rebeccah’s anger boiled within her, but at the same time her heart was heavy. He hated her now. That much was clear. He hated her even more than he had that first day in town when he’d learned who she was. He despised her. Well, good. Then he would never try to kiss her again or press his unwanted attentions on her just because he felt he could get away with it. She was safe.
Chill air whistled around them as the wagon crossed the sloping land, passed beneath the shadowy spruce, and encountered blowing tumbleweed and numerous ruts and boulders. A low moon sailed the satin sky, a sky studded with a thousand diamond stars. Stealing a quick glance at the man beside her, Rebeccah could make out the unflinching set of his features. She decided that he was the most infuriating and unpleasant man she’d ever encountered. How had she ever, even as a child, thought him kind? He said nothing to her during the entire drive, didn’t glance at her once, and made her feel about as welcome as a queen ant at a picnic.
