Wendy Lindstrom

by Kissing in the Dark

  “He’s my only paid deputy. My other deputies are men who volunteer to act in a legal capacity for their towns. They handle small issues but wire when they need me. Otherwise, I visit them every couple of months.”

  “Sounds like you spend a lot of time out of town.”

  “Not really” He filled his mouth with tea and studied her as he swallowed. “Did it bother you that your husband spent so much time away?”

  “No.” Her lashes twitched, but amazingly she didn’t hide her eyes. “I stayed with my mother and my aunts.”

  “Where was your father?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked down and fiddled with the linens beside her. “Mama said he ran off after I was born, and only came back long enough to sire Adam. After that, he disappeared and broke my mother’s heart.”

  “Is this one of those stories like your aunts invent?” he asked, feeling as skeptical of this story as he’d been of Dahlia’s outlandish tale.

  “Adam and I share the same father, although we’ve never met the man. I suspect he’s in prison, but my mother never talked about him. That’s the truth.”

  He finished his tea, and set the cup on the stand. “What was your mother like?”

  She sighed and shifted her gaze to the stone wall behind his head. “In a word, she was sad. My aunts could make her laugh, but her eyes were always filled with heartache. The only time she seemed at peace was when she tended her roses. She loved them and planted them all around our house. You could smell roses in the air all summer.” Her gaze dropped to his. “In the winter, she wore rose perfume and planted rosebush clippings in our greenhouse.”

  “Was Rose a name she gave herself?” he asked, wanting to know more about the woman.

  “Her name was Celia Rose, and she was as beautiful as the roses she grew.”

  “I wish she were still here for you,” he said quietly, knowing Faith’s pain would ebb but never leave completely.

  She acknowledged his comment with a small nod, but the sadness in her face made him want to hold her against his chest and comfort her. Not that he’d be able to restrict himself to that noble impulse for more than a minute, but he’d try.

  “I lost my father thirteen years ago to a disease that sucked the life out of him.” Duke could usually talk about his father, but not about his death, which was why it surprised him that he was confessing to Faith. “When I was a boy, my dad was strong and had a laugh that filled the house. By the time I turned seventeen, he couldn’t even feed himself. He died before I turned eighteen.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “How awful for you and your family”

  They fell silent, and he searched her eyes for whatever she was hiding from him. Maybe it was only heartache.

  “It’s growing late.” She stood and shook open a large towel. “We should treat your shoulder now.”

  Did she know it was too painful for him to converse during his treatment? Is that why she was standing beside the tub with a towel in her arms? He wanted to linger in the bath and talk to her, but her drawn face and dark eyes suggested she needed sleep.

  He stood and took the towel she handed to him, but purposely caught her hands in the folds of soft cotton. Standing in the tub made him several inches taller than her. “Why don’t we skip my treatment tonight? I’ll leave so you can enjoy the bath before going to bed.”

  She gazed up at him, her eyes startled and uncertain. “You need your treatment.”

  “I’ll stretch when I get home,” he argued.

  “It won’t be enough.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  She smiled. “Get out of the tub, Sheriff. I promise I’ll be gentle.”

  “I thought you were going to call me Duke.”

  Her lips parted, and all he could think about was kissing her. He had to taste her.

  Her lashes swooped down, then up, her gaze clashing with his. “Get out of the tub, Duke.”

  The tremble in her voice undid him. He tugged her toward his mouth and leaned down to kiss her, knowing his need for her would consume him. He just didn’t give a damn.

  o0o

  Instantly Faith’s good intentions to take care of Duke’s shoulder and protect her heart were splintered to finders. She should shoo him out the door for taking such liberty with her, for standing in her tub like a king, stark naked but for a skimpy towel around his hips, kissing her like she was one of his harem. But her heart skipped a beat and her eyes fell closed and she forgot everything but the feel of his hard chest, the taste of his mouth, the low moan she knew meant pleasure . . . for him . . . for her . . . . His touch was soft, as was his tongue that pressed to part her lips; not pushing, not assaulting or demanding, just there, asking, wanting . . . her.

  Against all doubts, and filled with a hope she’d never known, she parted her lips and allowed the kiss to deepen. Her stomach lifted and her legs trembled, and she thought of his tender tone when she’d told him he could be her suitor. She’d have been a fool to turn this man down, to forfeit a chance to win his affection that promised to be stalwart, true and . . . physically pleasurable.

  He moved his hands to her waist, caressing her, drawing her toward him, making every nerve in her body grow taut with desire. She fought her need to lean into his embrace. It was wild and abandoned to kiss like this. What would he, a man used to courting respectable women, think of her wanton response?

  God help her, was she more her mother’s daughter than she’d thought? With a gasp of denial, she pushed away from him. She wouldn’t be like that. Not ever.

  He stared in surprise, then snapped to attention as if he realized how inappropriate their kiss had been. But she was the one at fault. Water soaked through the front of her dress and she trembled as she backed away.

  He finger-combed his dripping hair with his right hand, the act so natural and male it captivated her. “Guess we’d better get my shoulder stretched,” he said.

  Faith nodded and turned away, fearing he would see her unbridled lust and figure out where she’d come from. She’d made a mistake with Jarvis, and she wasn’t going to repeat it with the sheriff no matter how wanton his kisses made her.

  Her hands shook as she spread towels on the table. Duke sprawled his big body on top of them, acting as if nothing had happened, but Faith wasn’t that good of an actress. She avoided his eyes and hurried him through his treatment. When she finished, he caught her hand to keep her from moving away

  “Will the water ruin your dress?” he asked, sitting up to face her.

  She nearly laughed at the absurdity. Here he was worried about ruining her dress when she was worried about ruining her reputation. “It’ll be fine.”

  “Will you?”

  She ducked her face, embarrassed. “I hadn’t meant to . . . you caught me off guard.”

  He hooked his warm finger beneath her chin and lifted until she was looking at him. “I know. I hadn’t meant to kiss you either, but I couldn’t resist. It was the best moment of my day” His lips quirked. “What was yours?”

  The kiss for sure, but it was also her worst moment. How could she have let herself go like that?

  He tilted his head, looking askance at her, his eyes encouraging her to answer.

  “Hearing the organ in church was the best—” She couldn’t lie and say moment, because that belonged to Duke and the thrilling kiss he’d just given her, so she said instead, “It was beautiful.”

  “So is your smile, Faith.” And then he silenced all her protestations with a tender, lingering, almost chaste kiss.

  Chapter 12

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

  Adam kicked a round stone the size of a plum ahead of him as he walked down Liberty Street toward the small school in Laona. He didn’t know why he had to go school. There were only two weeks left. At breakfast, Faith had said the sheriff would be out of town this week, so the man wouldn’t even be around to check up on him.

  He batted the
stone with the side of his foot. It was stupid to go for the last two weeks. If he wouldn’t fit in at the beginning of the year, how was he supposed to fit in now? The children would stare at him, and whisper about him like they had when he’d tried to go to school in Syracuse.

  He kicked the rock so hard it ricocheted off the stone fence guarding somebody’s front yard.

  “Adam?”

  He jerked his head up to see Rebecca Grayson sitting on the fence.

  “Good morning,” she said, sliding off the pile of stones and walking toward him. “Are you heading to school?”

  He nodded, not trusting his changing voice to stay steady while his heart banged around in his chest. Did she live in that huge house? Did those horses in the paddock behind the barn belong to her family?

  “Can we walk with you?” she asked.

  He had no idea who “we” were, but he nodded and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

  Rebecca turned toward the house. “Hurry up, William, or I’m leaving without you!” she yelled.

  A boy about half Adam’s age pounded down the porch steps, then raced across the yard. “Beat you there!” he said, and raced down the rutted road ahead of them.

  “William, you better watch you don’t get run over by Mr. Carlson’s horse,” Rebecca shouted at his back, but the boy didn’t appear to hear.

  “Want me to get him for you?” Adam asked, knowing he could run the boy down.

  “No, my brother will just pester us to death if he walks with us. Besides, he knows I can catch him if I want to.” She flashed a sweet smile that made Adam’s stomach grow tight. She angled the toe of her shoe behind the stone he’d been kicking and rolled it ahead of them. “Come on. We can’t be late or Mr. MacEnroy will switch us.”

  No man would switch Rebecca while Adam was around, but he wasn’t daring enough to tell her that. He followed her down the street and gave the stone a solid kick.

  Rebecca skipped ahead and kicked it several feet. “My mother says you live with your sister.” she said.

  He nodded, wishing his voice wasn’t so wobbly that it terrified him to talk.

  She waited for him to catch up. “Don’t you have a mother and father?” she asked.

  He shook his head, surprised that her question didn’t offend him. It didn’t feel like she was being nosy or judging him. “I didn’t know my father. My mother died six weeks ago.” The lass he said, the less it hurt, and the less chance that his voice would squawk.

  “I’m sorry, Adam. My dad says I’m too curious and I ask too many questions sometimes.”

  The unexpected kindness in her eyes made his throat ache. He hadn’t talked to anyone about his mother. Faith had always been the one to take care of him. His mother had been more like a grandmother to him, like she was with Cora. He lowered his chin and kicked the stone. “It’s all right. My sister is more like my mother anyhow.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m glad you’re going to my school,” Rebecca said, scampering along beside him to bat at the stone. “We can walk together if you want.”

  “Sure.” He wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers, and took his turn kicking the stone ahead of them. Maybe going to school wouldn’t be all bad.

  While he and Rebecca took turns flicking the stone with their feet, he stole quick looks at her. Her shiny black hair bounced against her back in long, loose spirals that hung to her waist. Her eyebrows were black as coal, and her dimples flashed when she smiled at him, which was nearly every time he looked up. He liked her dimples and her smile, but he liked the friendliness in her eyes even better.

  “Oh, no,” she said, slowing to a standstill in the road. He looked up and followed her gaze to where several children gathered in front of a white schoolhouse. “Melissa Archer just waved to us.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “She’s a worse gossip than her mother, and she’s mean to William and the younger children.

  “Why?”

  “Because she can get away with it.” With a sigh, Rebecca kicked the stone to the side of the road. “Let’s leave it here so we can kick it on the way home. Come on. We’ll try to sneak past her,” she said, then caught his elbow and tugged him into the school yard.

  Adam would rather wait for the bell to ring and dash inside to the first empty chair he could find. But he would walk through fire before letting Rebecca know he was afraid.

  “Rebecca!” Melissa Archer caught Rebecca’s arm and stopped them. “You nearly walked right past me.”

  “Sorry, Melissa. I was talking with my new friend Adam Dearborn,” she said, making Adam sound as important as President Hayes. Rebecca introduced him to the girl and her brother Nicholas, both husky children about his own age with wheat blond hair.

  He nodded to them, but when Melissa extended her hand like the Queen of England, he didn’t know whether to kiss it, shake it, or laugh in her haughty little face.

  Rebecca whacked Melissa’s hand down. “For Pete’s sake, just say hello.”

  Melissa’s face turned as pink as the ribbon in her blond hair, and she jutted out her chin. “I was just going to welcome you to school and tell you that there’s an empty seat at my desk if you want to sit with me.”

  Adam’s heart plummeted. He wanted to sit with Rebecca.

  “He’s going to sit with me,” Rebecca said, causing Melissa to glare at her, and Nicholas to scowl at him.

  Nicholas Archer outweighed Adam by at least thirty pounds, and Adam had no desire to test the strength of Nicholas’s hefty arms. The boys in his old neighborhood had given him a healthy respect for big muscles and hard knuckles.

  Melissa lifted her nose and turned away as if Rebecca didn’t exist. “I’m the best student in my grade,” she said to Adam. “Mr. MacEnroy will favor you if you sit with me.”

  He didn’t care about pleasing the dumb teacher, and he didn’t want to be anywhere near Melissa Archer or her scowling brother. “I already promised ReBECca,” he said, cringing at the squawk of his voice.

  Nicholas laughed, and Adam curled his fingers into his palms, wanting to cram his knuckles into the boy’s mouth.

  “Go ahead then,” Melissa spat. “Sit with Rebecca. I don’t want to sit with a boy who can’t even talk.” She tried to shove past him, but Adam didn’t step aside quickly enough, and she tripped over his foot. He caught her elbows to save her a fall, but she kicked her hard shoe into his shin. “Let go of me!”

  Nicholas shoved Melissa away from Adam. “Quit acting like an idiot, Melissa.”

  “Don’t touch me.” She raked her fingernails across her brother’s neck, leaving a trail of red scratches. Nicholas bared his teeth and lunged at her.

  Adam stepped between the pair and batted Nicholas’s hands down. “Don’t hit her,” he said, his voice far calmer than he felt inside. It wasn’t right to hit a girl, and it was worse to stand aside and allow someone else to do so.

  Nicholas shot him a look of surprise just as Melissa kicked Adam in the shin again. “Don’t you dare hit my brother!” she hissed.

  Rebecca shoved Melissa and knocked her to the ground on her backside. “Don’t you dare kick my friend!”

  “What in blazes is going on here?” a thunderous voice demanded.

  When Adam saw the stocky, balding teacher bearing down on them, he knew what was coming. He would get blamed for causing trouble. He always did.

  Melissa burst into tears and struggled to her feet. “This boy hit my brother, and Rebecca shoved me.”

  Rebecca gasped in outrage. “Adam didn’t hit anybody, Mr. MacEnroy.”

  “Silence!” He turned to the boys and girls who’d gathered to watch. “Get inside, all of you.” As they beat a path for the door, MacEnroy turned his steely gaze on Adam. “Who are you, young man, and what are you doing in my school yard?”

  “This is Adam Dearborn,” Rebecca said, “and he’s new to town.”

  MacEnroy leveled a fierce scowl at Rebecca, which made Adam want to s
lug the man. “I was not addressing you, young lady.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sheriff Grayson ordered me to come to school today,” Adam said, hoping the sheriff’s name would put the fear of God into the man.

  But MacEnroy’s lips pinched. “Ah, you’re one of those boys I’ll need to keep my eye on.”

  One of those boys. Adam had heard that comment so many times, he should be able to ignore it by now. But the insult cut through him like a dull hunting knife, ripping and tearing at his gut, making him want to slam his fists into every stinking person who’d ever insulted him.

  “That’s right,” Adam said, knowing there would be consequences for being disrespectful, but he was too angry to care. “The sheriff wanted to teach me a lesson so he sentenced me to two weeks in your classroom.”

  A laugh burst from Rebecca, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. Melissa gasped, and Nicholas bit his lip.

  MacEnroy’s face turned beet red. He stabbed his finger toward the school. “Rebecca Grayson, get to your desk this instant. Melissa and Nicholas, go with her.” Rebecca cast a rebellious look of admiration at Adam, then dashed into the school behind the Archers.

  Adam stood in the yard alone, facing MacEnroy, expecting at any minute to feel the man’s hard backhand. MacEnroy straightened his shoulders and unclamped his jaw. “So you like being a wiseacre, do you, Adam?”

  Adam knew not to answer that question.

  “If you’re such a wise young man, who invented the steamboat?”

  “Robert Fulton, sir.”

  MacEnroy’s eyebrow quirked as if Adam’s knowledge surprised him. “And the year of the invention?”

  “1807.”

  “I’m impressed,” he said, but he didn’t look impressed at all. He looked furious. “How many feet are in a mile, Adam?”

  “Five thousand two hundred eighty”

  “What city is our state capital?”

  “Albany, sir.”

  “And what mountain ranges can be found in New York State?”

  “The Appalachian Highlands, the Catskill Mountains, and the Adirondack Mountains.”