Her anger surprised Kyle and he held up a hand to calm her. “I’m just repeating what I’d heard that evening. Richard had been drinking, but his comment was sincere and it made me wonder if your father was railroading me. He’d been acting strange and I wasn’t sure what to think anymore. He’d even been undercutting prices to take business away from the smaller mills.”
“Given his financial situation I would think Papa was probably trying to save his business from going under.”
“At the time I thought it was his way of keeping me from expanding my own mill.”
“Oh, Kyle. You didn’t accuse him of that?” When Kyle didn’t answer, her shoulders drooped. “Papa would have never held you back or cheated you out of money. He thought the world of you. How could you even think such a thing about him?”
“He’d been acting strange, Amelia. I didn’t know what to think anymore.” Kyle flexed his fingers, wishing for the hundredth time that he’d never gone to see Tom Drake that night. “I didn’t realize how my words were coming across, but believe me, I regret ever saying them and upsetting your father. When he collapsed it was the worst moment of my life.”
The blood drained from her face. “Are you saying my father collapsed over an unpaid bill?”
There was no need to respond.
“You made cruel accusations and upset Papa because you thought he was standing in the way of your ambition?” she asked, her voice high-pitched and shaking.
Kyle suffered her condemning stare knowing he deserved it. “I admired your father, Amelia. I would never have intentionally hurt him.”
She stared at him. “You caused this whole fiasco. You caused Papa’s collapse. You even came to my apartment and got me fired. All because of your damned ambition!” She struck her fists against the top of the chair back. “My father never would have betrayed you. You knew that. You were just too concerned about your own interests to consider it.”
Knowing he couldn’t dispute her claim, Kyle sighed. “Maybe I was. I don’t know.”
Her glare left no doubt what she thought.
“Amelia, I’m sorry.” He sighed again, but it still felt as if he were carrying two hundred pounds on his shoulders. “There’s nothing I can do to change what happened, but I’m deeply and sincerely sorry for everything I’ve done that’s brought pain to you and your family. I made a terrible mistake with your father, and I know it.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me this before I married you?”
Kyle’s heart jolted, and he wondered if she was suggesting she wouldn’t have married him if she had known what happened. “I couldn’t tell you because it would have only deepened your pain.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.” Tears pearled on her lower lids as she scooped up her laundry crate and walked into the kitchen.
Kyle let her go, not because he wanted to but because there was nothing left he could say. He’d wanted to confess everything, to tell Amelia about her father and Catherine, to apologize for both situations, but after seeing the pain in Amelia’s eyes, he knew he could never tell her about Catherine.
Chapter Twenty-eight
As the month of July crawled by, the temperature soared and Amelia and Kyle sweated through their days at the lumberyard. Though Kyle still wanted Amelia to stay home where it was safe, he had allowed her to do some light physical labor because she seemed to need an outlet for her heartache. In addition to doing office work, she shoveled sawdust, pulled slabs of scrap wood from the cut-off table, and helped her mother in the mess hall. Shorty had finally relinquished his cooking duties to her mother, who was slowly learning to laugh again, but Amelia’s own laughter was painfully absent.
Though she hadn’t put her back to him at night, Kyle knew she needed time to work through her resentment and heartache so he hadn’t pushed her to make love with him. There was a vast emptiness in their relationship that Kyle didn’t know how to fill. He longed to resurrect the adventurous, spirited side of his wife that inspired him to laughter, but Amelia had shut that part of herself away. She was quiet and serious, so far removed from the sassy woman he’d married that Kyle hated it.
Even now after a rewarding, productive day at the lumberyard, she sat in the rocking chair in the parlor, sipping cold tea with him without speaking a word. Her hair was still wet from her bath and it reminded Kyle of the day they sank her little rowboat and how they’d played afterward.
Tonight he’d considered slipping into the kitchen to tease Amelia while she was bathing, but he knew she would have resented the intrusion, that she wouldn’t have laughed no matter what he did. So he had sat on the sofa waiting his turn, wondering how they were ever going to bridge her heartache and his inability to express himself.
If he could just hold her, it would help. Even if it didn’t soothe her discomfort, it would ease his emptiness. Intending to pull her out of the rocking chair and bring her to the sofa with him, Kyle stood, but the knock on the door turned him back with a sigh of frustration.
When he opened the door, Lucinda Clark’s brilliant smile greeted him, and after assuring her that Amelia was home and that it was perfectly fine for her to visit, Kyle escaped and headed for Radford’s house.
He came back three hours later wondering if he’d lost his damned mind. It was bad enough having a rocking chair in his parlor that continually attacked his toes, and prissy pillows on his sofa he didn’t dare to touch, but now he was about to add two banshee kittens to the mix. Someone should shoot him.
“Stay put, for God’s sake.” Kyle tucked one kitten back into his shirt pocket, but a tiny paw took a swipe at his finger for the umpteenth time. “Ouch! You little . . .” He glanced at the wound and cursed. He’d stopped counting the pricks and scratches halfway home. “If it wasn’t for my wife, you two would be going right back to Evelyn and Rebecca.” Missy’s litter of six kittens had been born three days after Kyle’s wedding and Evelyn was thrilled to send the two most misbehaved female terrors home with Kyle. Rebecca had given Kyle the evil eye all the way out of the yard. Just remembering her scowl and those tiny fists propped on her hips made Kyle snort. God help Radford when that girl got old enough to speak her mind.
Kyle breathed a sigh of relief to see that Lucinda’s buggy was gone. He wanted to give Amelia the kittens in private. If she hated the little devils, Kyle would gladly take them right back to the livery. But if she liked them, if they brought even a spark of joy to her eyes, he wanted to try in that moment to reach through her resentment.
He stepped into the parlor and nodded to Amelia, who was still sitting in that cursed rocking chair.
“You didn’t have to leave just because Lucinda was here,” she said, but Kyle only shrugged, his mind too busy planning how to present the kittens.
Several tiny needles sank into his chest and Kyle yelped, grabbing for his pocket as the kittens announced themselves. Amelia’s eyes widened, but he was occupied with the squirming tyrants that were attacking him through his thin shirt. “Ouch!” He reached for his pocket and felt another set of needle marks pierce his skin. “You damned demons!” He grabbed each side of his open collar and yanked. Buttons flew in all directions.
“What are you doing?” Amelia asked, her shocked gaze jumping between Kyle and the buttons rolling across the oak floor.
“Saving what’s left of my skin.” Gripping his shirt above the pocket, Kyle worked his arms out of the short sleeves, then shoved it toward Amelia as if it were a soiled diaper. “Here,” he said, scrapping his plan of trying to romance his wife. The little hellions would flay him alive before he could get one of them out of the pocket.
The instant Amelia took the shirt, her eyes registered the squirming mass in the pocket and she shrieked. She would have dropped it if Kyle hadn’t cupped his hands and saved the kittens’ miserable lives.
“It moved!” She glanced at Kyle with a horrified expression and he knew he’d totally destroyed any romantic effect he’d hoped for. “What in God’s name is in there?�
��
“Demons.” He lowered the shirt to the floor and stepped back, not trusting the miniature maniacs. “Don’t ask me what the hell I was thinking to bring them home.”
One fuzzy plum-sized head poked from beneath the shirt, and eyed Kyle as if deciding whether or not to attack. “Don’t even think about it,” he warned.
Amelia gaped at the kitten, but it ducked back under the shirt. “You brought home a kitten?” she asked. Before Kyle could answer, two furry heads peeped out at them. “Oh, look! There’s two of them.” Amelia glanced at Kyle with warm surprise in her eyes. “Are they Missy’s?”
“Yes, but stay back. They’re miniature female warriors.”
Amelia laughed and knelt beside the shirt. “They’re precious.” She tapped her finger on the floor and the kittens barreled out from their hiding place to follow the winding trail she drew across the floor. Kyle watched with a mixture of surprise and gladness. He hadn’t heard Amelia laugh in weeks.
The sound of her laughter made it worth having his chest shredded. So what if his fingers were filled with more holes than a sieve? It was a small price to pay for the joyful expression on Amelia’s face.
“I can take them back if you don’t want them,” he said, fighting the urge to beg her to exile the rat-sized terrors.
“You got them for me?” she asked, warmth radiating from her eyes.
“I thought you might miss Missy. Evelyn said she used to belong to you.”
“She was a stray that made the schoolhouse her home, but that was my fault for feeding her.”
“If you’d rather have Missy back, I’ll see if Rebecca will trade her for these two...kittens,” Kyle said, his hopes soaring that he might yet find a way out of his own bad decision.
“Of course not. Rebecca loves Missy. I would never ask her to give her back. Besides, these babies are adorable.” Amelia swept her fingers across the back of the darker colored kitten and it rolled onto its back, paddling her fingers with its paws. “What are we going to name you two?”
“How about Demon and Hellion?”
Amelia laughed and tickled the kitten’s belly. “Did you give my husband a hard time on the walk home?” The kitten squirmed and nipped at her fingers. “Well, I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to be stuffed in a pocket, either.”
“I would have wrung their scrawny necks otherwise.”
Amelia sat back on her heels, her smile slowly fading as she met his eyes. “No you wouldn’t.”
Because he didn’t know how to respond to the soft assurance in her voice, Kyle just shrugged.
“Thank you for the kittens.” Her gaze shifted to his bare chest that was lined with scratches, then back to his face. “I love them.”
That’s all that mattered. The demon twins could have the damned house, just as long as they continued to light Amelia’s eyes with happiness.
“I’ll call you Cinnamon,” she said, finger-wrestling the dark brown kitten. She swept out her free hand and chucked the other kitten under the chin. “You’re Ginger.”
The kittens were the color of the spices she’d named them after, but Kyle still thought the names Demon and Hellion were more appropriate.
After playing with the kittens all evening, Amelia turned on the mattress to face her husband, her heart aching with emotions that were still raw. She loved Kyle. She knew he regretted pushing her father into a collapse, but the fact remained that he had. No matter how she turned it, the situation made her ache. She wanted to forgive and forget, to love Kyle and enjoy their marriage, but every time she turned toward him, she felt she was turning away from her father.
“If those scrawny rats don’t stop their damned crying, I’m going to haul them right back to the livery.”
Amelia knew Kyle wouldn’t do any such thing. “The kittens don’t like it out in the woodshed.”
“Well, they’re not sleeping in the house.”
“It would stop them from crying.”
“No.”
“They can’t climb out of my laundry crate.”
“I don’t care.”
“It’s their first night away from their mother.” Kyle sighed and Amelia pressed forward, knowing his resistance was weakening. “If they aren’t quiet in here, I’ll take them back to the livery myself.”
Kyle tossed back the sheet and climbed out of bed. Amelia smiled as the sound of his feet thudded across the floor. She heard the door open into the woodshed and the sound of angry mewling increase. Please God, make the little rascals sleep.
“Where do you want them?” Kyle asked, returning to the bedroom.
The moonlight coming through their huge window washed across his naked body and Amelia stared in admiration. He stood before her, godlike, all sinew and muscle, broad shoulders and narrow waist, with long, hard legs planted two feet apart. He was so handsome, so incredible, so oblivious to his own perfection.
“I can take them back to the livery now if you like.”
She smiled. “Bring them over here by the bed.”
“Are you insane?”
“If they don’t quiet down in a few minutes, I’ll take them back to the woodshed.”
Kyle plopped the crate on Amelia’s side of the bed. “If I ever do something this stupid again, shoot me.”
She laughed and reached over the side of the bed to stroke the kittens. They curled together and purred and after less than three minutes of having their soft fur stroked, they had fallen asleep.
They were so precious Amelia had to resist the urge to bring them into bed with her. Instead, she turned toward Kyle, who lay on his back with his arms folded behind his head. That he’d been trying to please her, that he was willing to do anything to make her happy, melted Amelia’s resentment. The sadness and pain lingered, but the anger had finally dissolved.
“Thank you for bringing the girls inside,” she said, trying to do her part to heal their marriage.
“Thank you for putting them to sleep.”
“I love them, Kyle.” She slid her palm over the muscles and mounds of his chest, letting her fingers slip through the coarse hair. “They’re a wonderful gift.”
His chest shuddered and he gripped her hand to stop her from moving it farther down his abdomen. “I don’t need to be rewarded, Amelia. I just wanted to make you happy.” He lowered his arms and slipped one around her shoulders, her head pillowed by his thick muscle. “Get some sleep while you can. The demon twins will be raising hell before you know it.”
o0o
The kittens lived up to Kyle’s prediction, and he’d spent two grueling weeks thinking he was going to pull his hair out. While one kitten was mewling and swiping at him with her sharp little claws, the other was darting from beneath furniture and giving him heart seizures thinking he was going to accidentally step on the damned thing.
But Amelia loved them and she was always playing with them. Her laughter filled the house and her eyes sparkled again. She took the kittens, or the “girls” as she called them, everywhere, including the lumberyard, and to Kyle’s disgust, everyone ended up fawning over the little rats.
Even now she cradled them in her lap, petting them as they pulled into Radford’s driveway to attend a picnic Evelyn was having.
Rebecca tore across the lawn, running toward their carriage. “Did you bring the kitties?” she yelled, and when Amelia smiled and nodded, Rebecca whooped. “I’ll get Missy!”
While dodging the swipe of kitty paws, Kyle helped Amelia from the carriage. Evelyn immediately took one of the kittens and nuzzled its soft fur as they stood on the front lawn. “They’ve grown so much already.”
“That’s because Amelia feeds them all the time.”
Amelia wrinkled her nose at him and Kyle grinned, glad to see her spirited personality returning.
Rebecca skidded to a halt beside them with Missy clutched in her arms. “Are they hungry?” she asked. “Their mama can feed them now.”
“Let’s see if they still know each other.” Amelia knelt an
d put Cinnamon in the grass.
Rebecca lowered Missy. “Do mamas forget their babies?” she asked, and Kyle’s heart jolted as Evelyn and Amelia exchanged a heartbroken glance. Although Evelyn treated Rebecca like her own daughter, another woman had borne Rebecca, but she’d abandoned her at infancy. With the help of nannies, Radford had raised Rebecca alone until he’d brought her home a year ago. For the first time since Evelyn had broken their engagement, Kyle could honestly admit that he was grateful Evelyn had chosen to love Radford and his daughter who desperately needed her love.
Missy sniffed at Cinnamon, but the little rascal was too busy swatting at a piece of grass to pay her mother any attention. Evelyn laughed and put Ginger in the grass beside her curious sibling. Rebecca flopped down beside them, giggling as the kittens hunched their little backs and pounced on old dandelion stalks. They played with Rebecca’s fingers, and crawled over her stomach as she lay in the grass beside Missy.
Watching Rebecca made Kyle’s chest ache. She was so innocent, her child’s laughter so beautiful to the ear. He would have his own daughter someday. She would be silly and playful like Rebecca. She would have her own personality and a laugh unique to her, but she would share the natural, carefree spirit that Rebecca possessed.
Amelia possessed that natural playfulness, too, he thought, looking down to see Amelia and Evelyn sitting in the grass with Rebecca. Though Amelia’s pain had suppressed that part of her nature, it was beginning to rise to the surface again, and hopefully soon, Kyle would have back the woman he’d married.
“Kyle!” He lifted his head and saw Boyd waving him out to the backyard. “Help us get this horseshoe pit set up.”
Kyle’s spirits lifted for the first time in a month, and he gladly headed toward the backyard where Radford and Duke were working with Boyd.
“You can thank me later for rescuing you,” Boyd said, then shoved a mug of ale into Kyle’s hand.
As they finished digging out the pits, Kyle drank and talked with his brothers. Soon the yard would be filled with the crews from the depot and lumberyard. Their neighbors, Tom and Martha Fisk would come. Victoria and his mother would come, too, and maybe even some close friends like Agatha Brown and Richard and Lucinda.
The Longing Page 21
