by Harvest Moon
“No.” David walked to his desk. “I did not.” He removed his heavy coat and hunted for a place to hang it. He decided he wouldn’t satisfy her curiosity easily this time.
The main room of his office was a garden of white. It looked the way David imagined a cotton field down south might look, provided the cotton was processed into fabric and sewn into ladies’ undergarments. Stockings, petticoats, pantalets, chemise, corset cover, and corset decorated nearly every piece of furniture in the office, including his desk; a wet petticoat lay draped across its polished surface.
He smiled ruefully. His office looked as exotic as the Satin Slipper.
“What the hell?” David muttered beneath his breath. On the floor nearby were his stacks of papers. He picked up a brief, checking it for watermarks and damage. A tiny drop of water dampened one of its corners. “Tessa!” He looked around for her.
“Well, what happened? What did you do?” In his absence, she’d turned his office—his sanctuary and place of business—into a laundry. She’d even gone so far as to hang sheets on a line of kitchen twine in a square around the stove, assuming they’d dry faster that way. Her voice drifted to him from inside the square of sheets.
“I paid my account in full and informed Mrs. Jeffers we won’t be doing business with her in the future. Oh, and I told her I thought you were right about the Satin Slipper.”
Tessa laughed. “What about the look on her face?”
“You were right about that, too.” David chuckled. “It was worth it.”
He heard a splash of water. She was obviously doing more laundry. “You did get the supplies first?”
“No.” David leaned against the edge of his desk.
“Oh, David…” Tessa nearly wailed her dismay.
“What’s the matter?”
“You canceled your account without getting our supplies? That wasn’t very smart. I thought you knew better.”
“Did you want me to ignore what happened and forgo the pleasure of seeing Margaret’s face?” David asked.
Tessa shrugged her shoulders. “To be honest, I’d thought you’d go back and demand the supplies,” she told him.
“It was a matter of principle.”
“But at least we’d have food on the table and tea to drink and soap for bathing. This is the last of it.”
David heard another splash of water and saw, for the first time, the shadowy outline of Tessa’s body behind the sheets as she stepped out of the tub. “You’re bathing?” He dropped the brief. The pages fluttered to the floor, adding to the general disarray.
She sounded a little breathless. “What did you think I was doing?”
David swallowed hard, watching the shadows as Tessa patted herself dry. “I thought you were doing your laundry.” David said the first thing that popped into his mind.
“I finished it. Just the uh…unmentionables. Besides, it’s Saturday,” she concluded as if that explained everything.
“What does Saturday have to do with anything?” Her logic bewildered him.
“I always take a bath on Saturday night. What’s the point of putting clean clothes on a dirty body?”
He watched through the translucent screen in fascination as she bent at the waist to wrap a length of toweling around her hair. She probably thought she was in complete privacy, but he couldn’t look away. He hunted for an excuse to stay in the room. “Have you mentioned your theory to Coalie?” David’s voice was low, thick with emotion. He edged aside one corner of her petticoat and rested more of his weight against the desk. “He doesn’t seem to subscribe to your view of cleanliness.”
“He’s a little boy,” Tessa answered. “I’ve never known one who did.” She straightened, lifting her arms to balance the makeshift turban.
David sucked in his breath, then shifted his weight from one leg to the other to accommodate the sudden swelling in his groin. The outline of her perfectly shaped breasts was silhouetted on the sheet. He shifted again, stood up, and began to pace the small space left to him.
“Is Coalie with you?” she asked.
“No, I sent him on an errand.” He didn’t elaborate, distracted as he was by her veiled movements.
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “I thought I might talk him into using the tub while the water’s warm.” Tessa pushed at a sheet and stepped out. She wore her flannel nightgown. It was damp in places where it clung to her skin. David noticed immediately.
The air seemed to thicken around them. Modestly covered, she should have been completely at ease, but she wasn’t. And neither, Tessa saw, was David. The unmentionables scattered about the room advertised in dainty white letters that she was naked underneath the night rail.
At a loss for words, Tessa struggled to find something to ease the tension. “Would you like it?”
“What?” David was engrossed in the damp white patch marking the valley between her breasts.
“The bathwater,” she explained, releasing her wet hair from the towel. “It’s still warm.”
So was he. And the thought of washing himself in her bathwater did nothing to cool him down. As he spoke, visions of the two of them sharing a bath clouded his brain. “I assumed you’d bathe in your room.” He cleared his throat. “Or even the storeroom.”
“Those rooms are too cold.” Tessa looked up at him and found his handsome face lined in concentration, his dark gaze studying her closely. “And I would’ve had to carry the water all the way back there. This way, all I had to do was drag the tub in here.” Her blue eyes sparkled with pleasure. “More heat. Less work. Simple.”
“I never thought of it that way—carrying water back and forth from room to room.” When he’d lived in Washington, there were hotel maids to carry water and draw his bath. He wondered, suddenly, who had provided that service for him at home. At the ranch there were no servants, just his mother; his sister, Mary; and Reese’s wife, Faith. He’d never given a brimming tub of hot water much thought; it was simply there when he wanted it, waiting. The thought of Mary or Faith carrying water for his bath dismayed David, but the thought of his mother performing the task for her grown, able-bodied son shamed him.
Tessa witnessed the sudden flush of color that stained David’s high cheekbones and thought she’d embarrassed him. Yesterday she’d have been delighted at the idea, but today, after all that had happened, it didn’t seem right somehow. She set out to put him at ease. “My family always bathed in a tub in the kitchen.”
“Your family?” He seemed surprised.
“Not together,” Tessa hurried to explain. “We took turns. My mother bathed first, then we girls. After we finished, my father would bathe, followed by the boys.” She smiled at the memory. “It was that way every Saturday night.”
“In one tub of water?” The concept of sharing the bath with the entire family intrigued him. It seemed like such an intimate thing to do. Such a cozy family activity, to wash in water that had touched so many other bodies. With the exception of a few female companions through the years, David had spent his entire life taking solitary baths.
“Well, we did add more hot water once in a while.” Tessa began to work the tangles from her long red hair. David noticed that she’d taken the liberty of borrowing the comb from his dresser set. That somehow heightened the air of intimacy between them. “Even after the others passed away and I left Ireland to come to America, we carried on the Saturday night tradition.”
“You and Coalie?”
“No, my brother, Eamon. I lived with him after I arrived in America.”
“The one who died?” David remembered her mentioning Eamon earlier.
Tessa’s dreamy blue eyes suddenly became sad. But her gaze hardened just as quickly. “Yes. He was killed in an accident,” she said quietly, her voice almost a whisper.
“Here?” David didn’t remember reading about it in the Peaceable Chronicle.
“In Chicago.” She tugged the comb through her hair. It caught in the snarls, but she pulled it through anyway.
David winced when he saw the red strands yanked by the teeth of the comb. “Let me.” He took the comb from her hand. “Sit down.” He grabbed the arm of the chair behind his desk and guided it in front of him. He tapped the back of the chair with the comb.
Tessa seated herself in front of him.
David pulled her wet hair away from her neck and draped it over the back of the chair, then began to work the comb gently through the heavy, wet tresses.
She closed her eyes and let him minister to her.
“Tell me about it,” David urged. “Tell me about your past.”
Tessa began to talk about Ireland, her brother, and the horrible morning the Chicago policemen came to the door. She ended her story with Eamon’s wake. Yet she made no mention of Coalie or the journey to Peaceable.
He finished combing her hair and offered her the comb. “Tessa?”
She looked up at him.
“How did you get to Peaceable?”
“My brother had a return train ticket in his pocket. I used it,” she answered truthfully.
“Do you have any idea who killed Arnie Mason?” He asked the question almost as an afterthought. The news that her brother had been to Peaceable bothered him.
“I don’t know for sure who killed him.” Her voice had taken on that hard quality again, each word carefully enunciated. “But I have an idea who might have.”
Something in her expression alerted David, gave him the germ of an idea. “You don’t think Coalie had anything to do with it, do you? You’re not trying to protect him, are you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Tessa got up from the chair and began to rip the sheets off the lines and wrap them into tight balls. “Coalie’s a little boy. He couldn’t kill anyone. I know he couldn’t.”
“Not even to protect you?”
Tessa avoided his question. “What should I do with the water?”
“Forget the bathwater.”
“Do you want it or not?”
I want you.
The thought popped into David’s head unbidden. But it was true. He wanted her. He wanted the Tessa he’d glimpsed when she talked about her family and her brother. When he took a bath in her water, he wanted it to be because she shared the tub with him. David studied her movements, the way the flannel gown clung to her body, swayed around her legs unencumbered by undergarments. The thick wave of desire struck him like a blow. It took all his concentration just to form a coherent sentence. “I don’t want it. I’ll go to the bathhouse later. Tessa,” David added softly, “what brought you to Peaceable?”
“I told you. My brother had a train ticket. I used it to come to Peaceable.” She looked at David. “He had a train ticket and a paid rent receipt in his pocket. For a room at the Satin Slipper.”
“How did you know what it was if you couldn’t read it?” David asked.
“The nurse at the hospital told me when she gave me Eamon’s things,” Tessa answered, studying the bathtub. “I think I’ll save the water for Coalie. Just in case…”
“Don’t.” David didn’t want Coalie sharing Tessa’s bathwater. That was an intimacy he’d reserved for himself. “I’ll take him to the bathhouse with me.” He left his desk, walked over to her, took the sheets out of her hands, and started folding them. “Tessa?”
She bent at the waist once again and began to drag the copper tub away from the stove across the wooden floor.
“Leave it,” David ordered. “What is it you aren’t telling me?”
“I left Chicago and all its memories,” Tessa admitted. She straightened and faced him, looking for some sign of what he was thinking.
“Where does Coalie fit into all of this?” He asked the question that had been bothering him. “He loves you, and you obviously love him. What is he to you?”
“He’s mine,” she replied fiercely, but something about the way she refused to meet his eyes made him wonder.
“Your son?”
Tessa avoided David’s direct gaze. She looked around, anywhere except at David’s face. “I do love him. That’s what matters.” She took a deep breath, aware once again that she’d said more than she intended. “When will Coalie be back?”
David pulled out his watch and looked at it. “Anytime now.”
“You didn’t send him to the Satin Slipper?” Panic edged her words.
“No,” he replied. Tessa was still afraid of someone at the Satin Slipper. Was it Lee? Myra? Charlotte?
Tessa relaxed. All her concern focused on Coalie. “He’ll be hungry.” She spoke her thoughts aloud. Coalie was always hungry. “What am I going to do about supper?” She turned to David, her blue eyes worried. “You didn’t get any food. It isn’t for me,” she assured him. “I can go without. It’s for Coalie. I promised he’d never go hungry again.”
“You don’t have to worry, Tessa. I sent a telegram out today; the supplies are coming Monday morning. And I’ve arranged for our meals to be provided for us until then.” He smiled. “Trust me.”
Tessa gazed at him, at his warm brown eyes, his smiling mouth, and the dark shadow on his firm jaw. His face had become very dear to her in the last two days, as dear as Coalie’s. David Alexander had stood up for her in front of the whole town, supported her. He wanted to help. He had helped. He’d taken her and Coalie in, given them shelter and clothing. Maybe she should try to trust him, if only for Coalie’s sake. He had earned a certain amount of loyalty, at least. If only she knew the nature of his relationship with Liam Kincaid.
She smiled at David. “I hope you remembered to order cat food for Greeley.”
“Are you telling me how to take care of my cat?” David teased.
Tessa began gathering barely dry unmentionables off the furniture. “I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do.” Her eyes sparkled like sapphires as she leaned over to pick up a pair of lacy drawers.
David sat stunned.
Tessa Roarke was teasing him.
Chapter Ten
Tessa stepped out of her room on Sunday morning and crossed the hall to stand in front of David Alexander’s door. She knocked, but there was no answer. She waited a moment, then knocked again, harder and louder.
“What?” His voice was rough, sleepy.
“It’s time to get up.” Tessa’s voice reached him through the door.
“What time is it?” David sat up and groped at the nightstand for his watch. He found it, flipped the cover open, and stared at the face until the numbers came into focus. “It’s not even seven o’clock yet!” he announced before he snuggled back into the warmth of the bed, pulling the covers over his head.
Tessa listened at the door for a moment. “Are you up?”
“Go away,” David grumbled. “Come back at a decent hour.”
Taking a deep breath, Tessa tried the doorknob. It turned. She pushed open the door. “It is a decent hour. You should have been up ages ago.” She advanced toward the bed.
David pushed the covers away from his face and sat up.
Tessa’s breath came out in a rush when she realized he was not wearing a nightshirt. She stared at his naked chest, fascinated by the ripple of muscles beneath his bronzed skin.
“It’s Sunday,” David told her, unaware of the effect his nakedness was having on Tessa. “My day off. You know, day of rest and all that.”
“What about church?” Embarrassed yet curious, she let her gaze wander to the planes of his handsome face. Noting the shadow of his beard darkening the strong lines of his jaw, Tessa quickly glanced at the floor.
“What about it?” Church services weren’t high on David’s list of priorities. Not since he’d moved to Peaceable. He preferred to sleep late on Sunday mornings and enjoy the relative quiet of the town when everyone else was at the Sunday services. He didn’t like to be reminded that his family was a short train ride away at church in Cheyenne.
“Aren’t you going?” Tessa asked. She had gone to Sunday mass all her life. The idea of anyone not going shocked her. Even the girls a
t the Satin Slipper attended Sunday services. They all dressed up and marched to the Methodist church and sat in the last pew, near the door. They were the last to enter and the first to leave every Sunday. Tessa, Coalie, and two other girls from the saloon walked to the tiny building on the edge of town at eight o’clock in the morning two Sundays a month when Father Joseph stopped and said mass in Peaceable before boarding the train for other churches along the way west.
“No,” David said. “I’m not going to church. I’m going back to sleep.” He slid down in the bed and pulled the quilts over his chest, but he let his gaze roam over her. From his position in the bed, he had a unique view of the underside of her calico-covered breasts. They were magnificent. “You’re a little overdressed,” David teased. “But you’re welcome to join me under the covers.”
David’s naughty invitation sent color rushing up to Tessa’s face. “I’m going to church.”
“Fine,” David said agreeably. “Close the door on your way out.” He pulled the quilt up over his face, covering his eyes.
“Oh, no, you’re not!” Tessa marched out the door into the office.
David heard the creak of the pump minutes before Tessa returned to his room.
“Are you going to get up?” she asked as she approached the bed again.
He slowly pushed back the quilt, opened his eyes, and looked up at her. She stood next to his bed, holding a pitcher of water over him at a threatening angle.
“You wouldn’t.”
Tessa tilted the pitcher slightly. A drop of ice-cold water landed on David’s top lip. He licked it off.
She leaned forward to watch as his tongue captured the moisture.
Bending over was a mistake. David moved with the swiftness of a cat. He reached out from beneath the covers and grabbed Tessa’s arm. Water splashed against his chest as he jerked her toward him. She let go of the pitcher. David batted it away with his free hand. It bounced off the bed and landed on the floor with a crash. Shards of glazed pottery scattered across the woven rug and the wooden floor.
Tessa landed on top of David’s hard body.
