My Darling Melissa

by Linda Lael Miller

  She went to the man who had loved her so long and so well and stepped between him and the woman he had been watching all day. “There’s still time for a—private farewell,” she said, gripping one end of his string tie in each hand.

  His brazen brown eyes flashed with such reproach that she let her hands drop to her sides. “We said goodbye years ago, Gillian,” he told her.

  She had to lower her gaze to protect herself from the searing contempt in his. “Years?” She choked out the word. “We were engaged until a few weeks back, Quinn, when you met Melissa. You loved me, you wanted to marry me.”

  “No,” he answered. “I was only playing out a part—and so were you. If we’d really wanted to be married, we wouldn’t have found so many excuses to put off the ceremony.”

  Gillian swallowed. She couldn’t deny what Quinn was saying because she knew it was true. She had delighted in his companionship and his lovemaking, but she’d never wanted to be his wife, because that would have made her a Rafferty, and the name was a taint to her. Quinn’s father was a dreadful man, and his mother had been a timid, snuffling little creature who took in other people’s wash.

  She looked up at Quinn and saw that he was smiling. “You’ll be happy in England,” he said. “You were born to be the mistress of some manor.”

  Gillian felt a little better. While her affection for Quinn was not and had never been strong enough to sustain a lifelong partnership, it was a very real emotion, and she could not bear his fury. “What about her?” she asked, turning slightly and gesturing toward Melissa. “What was she born to be?”

  Quinn laughed. “The bane of my existence. The walking, breathing punishment for every sin I’ve ever committed or even considered committing. And I’ve got no idea how I ever lived without her.”

  Rising to her tiptoes, Gillian gave Quinn a light kiss, then turned and walked away. She was looking ahead now, to meeting Ajax in New York and sailing on to a new life. She had a lot of packing to do.

  Jeff cornered Melissa in the relatively barren area that would soon be a lush garden. “All right,” he demanded, “I want to know what’s going on here.”

  Melissa pretended puzzlement even though she knew Jeff was wondering why she was spending the day with Mitch Williams instead of the man he believed to be her husband. While she was trying to think of a reply that would satisfy her brother two strong arms closed around her from behind.

  She jumped, startled, and turned her head to look up at Quinn. He gave her a very forward kiss, and she was blushing when he finally released her, but when she glanced at Jeff she saw that her problem had been solved. At least temporarily.

  “I was beginning to think the two of you were here with other people,” Jeff boomed, pleased, as he rarely was, to find himself in the wrong.

  Quinn was still standing behind Melissa and still holding her close. He gave her a husbandly swat on the bottom. “I like to give the little woman space to breathe,” he said, smiling magnanimously.

  Melissa wanted to kick him. He was deliberately baiting her, knowing that she didn’t dare tell Jeff the truth about their situation, and there was nothing she could do. She blushed, frightfully embarrassed, and averted her eyes.

  That made Jeff laugh. He walked away to find Fancy, probably thinking that he’d done Melissa a favor by leaving her alone with her “husband.” She whirled, meaning to slap Quinn soundly in payment for that smack on the backside, and found herself swept up into a kiss that threatened to consume her.

  Lively fiddle music was struck up inside the ballroom, and Quinn and Melissa were forced to draw apart. Couples were starting to wander in from the lawn, hand in hand, to dance.

  In the distance lightning severed the sky and dark clouds were gathering. Melissa gave a little shiver that had nothing to do with rain coming to spoil a picnic and allowed Quinn to lead her inside for a dance.

  One dance followed another until Melissa was breathless. Such close contact with Quinn made her want him, and she was embarrassed at having such feelings with so many people around.

  When she could, she made an excuse and disappeared, thinking that a walk in the cool and windy outdoors would restore her sense of balance.

  The hot springs exerted a mysterious pull. She got the key from a hook just inside the kitchen door and made her way to the gazebolike building that housed the natural pool. She unlocked the enclosure and went inside, dropping the keys on one of the benches that faced the water and kicking off her slippers.

  The water looked so inviting. Melissa slipped out of her Spanish off-the-shoulder blouse and brightly colored skirt, laying them carefully on a bench along with her petticoat, drawers, and stockings.

  She was in the pool, swimming in slow circles and delighting in the release of tension the steamy water brought her, when she heard the door open and close. She smiled, expecting Quinn, but it was Eustice Rafferty who stood on the pond’s edge watching her.

  Melissa opened her mouth to scream and knew in the same instant that it would be useless to cry out. Everyone was dancing in the ballroom, and they would hear nothing but the laughter and the music.

  “You’re intruding,” she said, trying to hide her nakedness by hunkering down in the churning water and keeping her arms crossed over her breasts. “Please go away immediately.”

  The old man laughed at that and stood his ground. “He’ll grieve for you,” he mused. “Yes, indeed, he will.”

  A shiver passed over Melissa despite the warm water, leaving goosebumps in its wake. She watched in round-eyed horror as he took a knife from his battered leather scabbard.

  Melissa began easing backward toward the opposite side of the pool, but Eustice only rounded the edge, smiling at her with gruesome relish. “Step out of there,” he said after a few moments, “and let me get a look at you.”

  Melissa shook her head. She wanted to scream now, but she couldn’t. Her throat was closed so tightly that it would have been impossible to make any sound. Papa, she thought wildly, help me. You owe me that.

  The hulking man made a grumbling sound and lunged into the water feet first, making a horrendous splash that freed Melissa’s vocal cords. A scream tore itself from her throat, so primal and powerful that it left rawness in its wake, and she scrambled frantically to escape.

  Eustice caught her before she reached the other side of the pool and pressed the blade of his knife to her throat. Standing behind her, he grasped her waist and dragged her back against him. Melissa was afraid to struggle or scream with the blade at her jugular, and her mind was running wildly through a very limited list of possibilities.

  When she felt one of his great, groping hands close over her breast she was so repulsed that she turned her head slightly and sank her teeth into his wrist.

  Eustice bellowed in rage and pain, and the knife toppled from his hand into the water. Melissa lunged for it, found the weapon, and grasped it in both hands.

  “Don’t touch me,” she warned as Eustice approached, his grizzled hair and beard streaming, his clothes sodden. His movements were slow and laborious in the water, but he was coming closer and closer, and he didn’t look afraid.

  He kept coming, and he reached out for her, and Melissa shrieked in mingled fear and horror as she raised the knife and plunged it into his chest. Eustice fell forward, blood staining the water that bubbled and gurgled around him, and Melissa was still screaming when Quinn came and gathered her into his arms.

  The next few hours passed in a haze for Melissa. She was wrapped in a blanket and taken to her room in the hotel, and Banner gave her a bath and a shot that made her sleep. When she awakened night had fallen, and she was not alone on her narrow bed.

  The terror returned, and she stiffened violently, a scream rising in her throat. But the scent and substance of the man holding her were Quinn’s, and she settled against him and wept with relief.

  Quinn’s lips moved gently at her temple. “It’s all over now, Calico—there’s no reason to be afraid.”

&nb
sp; “I k-killed him,” she whispered.

  His hand rose to smooth her damp, tangled hair. “You did what you had to do,” he said. “I’ve already talked to the sheriff, and he agrees that it was obviously self-defense.”

  “Why? Why did he want to hurt me?” Melissa fretted, shuddering as she remembered the look in Eustice’s eyes.

  “It was me he hated,” Quinn answered, and there was pain as well as resignation in his voice. “He was so full of venom that it eventually ate away his soul.”

  Melissa shivered. If she had learned one thing from the incident, it was that life could be snatched away without warning, at any moment. She might have been parted from Quinn forever.

  “I love you,” she said, her lips moving against the hairy flesh of his chest.

  Quinn poised himself above her, studying her face in the moonlight. “Do you mean that, Mrs. Rafferty?”

  Melissa nodded, loving the sound of the name even though it wasn’t rightfully hers yet. “Yes,” she answered solemnly, “but I still want to write articles for the newspaper and help run this hotel, and I’ll make your life miserable, Quinn Rafferty, if you try to make me sit home and knit!”

  He gave a raucous burst of laughter. “Loving you is going to take all the energy I can spare, Calico,” he told her, his lips only a breath away from hers. “But you’d better be prepared for one hell of a lot of that.”

  Every instinct Melissa possessed cried out for union with Quinn; survival demanded celebration. She wriggled beneath him, delighting in his groan of need and immediate physical response.

  She was wearing a nightgown, but he removed that with the deftness of an ardent lover, and they were soon resting on their sides, face to face on the slim mattress, the heat of their skin bonding them one to the other. Melissa, raising herself on one elbow, began by kissing Quinn’s shoulder and soon progressed to his neck.

  He trembled and uttered a low moan as she caressed his hip and thigh with her hand. Her fingers brushed his manhood, her touch as soft as velvet, and she laughed with joy when he grew even harder and hotter. When she caught him in her strong fingers and trained him to the rhythm she wanted, he threw his head back in a primitive gesture of surrender and submitted.

  Melissa trailed her lips slowly down over his torso, stopping to pay proper homage to his nipples before kissing the hard muscles of his stomach. When she took him he cried out and turned onto his back. She parted his legs so that they hung down over the sides of the bed, and she freely enjoyed his vulnerability.

  He tossed his head from side to side as she pleasured him, a man in delirium, but when he would have given up what she sought to draw from him he suddenly thrust her away. Quinn was gasping as he fought for control of his body and his mind. When he had achieved that, long minutes later, he placed Melissa beneath him and told her, in gruff, gentle tones, exactly what he meant to do.

  She was pliant and responsive under his hands and his lips, letting every sweet sensation have free rein, and when he took her she was exalted. Her release was immediate, piercing, and seemingly endless, and Quinn’s ran parallel to it. She gloried in the way his powerful body buckled over hers, and in his low cries of desolate satisfaction.

  When he collapsed beside her she touched his face and felt tears there. “Don’t ever leave me, Melissa,” he said when he could speak. “I can handle anything but that.”

  She kissed him and snuggled close, and they slept.

  When Keith arrived on the Wednesday morning train, looking stern and determined, Melissa was there to meet him. She smiled and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.

  He embraced her, his eyes filled with tenderness. “Are you all right?” he asked, referring to the incident at the picnic the previous Saturday.

  Eustice was nothing but a bad memory to Melissa; with characteristic resilience, she’d put the vicious old man out of her mind and concentrated on being happy with his son. “I’m fine,” she answered, linking her arm with her brother’s. “You didn’t tell the family that Quinn and I aren’t married yet, did you?”

  Keith shook his head. “No. None of us is in any position to lecture on the proprieties,” he said, and Melissa wondered what he meant by such a statement.

  There was a buggy waiting in front of the depot, and Melissa climbed in and took the reins. In a few minutes they reached the house she and Quinn meant to fill with children.

  The parlor had been decorated by an excited Helga. Becky, a widow since Jake Sever’s body had been found behind a saloon on Saturday, had taken her small daughter and gone back to her cabin on the mountain. She would earn her living by raising vegetables and helping Mr. Wong with the cooking at the lumber camp.

  Keith took in the streamers and paper bells decorating the parlor, and he was relieved. It was plain enough that he’d been expecting Melissa to stage some kind of rebellion.

  Quinn appeared in the doorway, dressed formally and already pulling at his stiff collar, and Mitch Williams was at his side, looking almost as uncomfortable.

  Melissa excused herself to go upstairs and change clothes, kissing Quinn on his freshly shaven cheek as she passed him and making a scandalous promise with her eyes.

  In the master bedroom Dana, Mary, and Quinn’s Aunt Alice were waiting. Alice and Mary had returned on Monday for Eustice’s burial, out of propriety rather than grief, and stayed for the ceremony. Melissa had confessed to them that the first wedding was not legal, and they’d taken the news with equanimity.

  If Quinn had told Mary the truth about her identity, he hadn’t confided as much to Melissa, but there was an air of relief about the girl that made Melissa wonder if she knew, or whether it was simply due to Eustice Rafferty’s no longer being a threat.

  With Dana to stand up for her and Mitch to give her away, Melissa was legally and rightfully wed to Quinn Rafferty that afternoon of April 22, 1891, with her brother saying the holy words.

  When the ceremony was over she flung herself at Quinn with a cry of joy, kissing him before he had an opportunity to exercise his groomly rights and kiss her. After that she embraced Keith.

  “Be happy,” he said, kissing her forehead.

  Melissa turned to her husband and looked up into his dancing brown eyes. “I love you, Quinn Rafferty,” she said clearly, and he put his hands on her waist and responded with a declaration of his own. They were to leave on their honeymoon, a journey to Victoria by steamboat, in a little more than an hour, and Melissa could hardly wait to be alone in their stateroom.

  They ate cake and had their pictures taken, and all of that was a happy blur to Melissa. When they were aboard the steamer, however, Quinn refused to take her to their stateroom right away.

  “Be patient, Mrs. Rafferty,” he chided, tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow and patting it solicitously. “We have the rest of our lives to do that. Let’s take a walk on deck and enjoy the fresh air.”

  Melissa flushed, feeling chagrined. There were several things she wanted to enjoy, and fresh air wasn’t one of them, but she walked the deck with Quinn until they were well on their way out onto the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Victoria, a lovely city with an English flavor, would be a marvelous place to honeymoon.

  Finally, when Melissa was beginning to think that Quinn had already tired of her—had indeed married her for her money and not because he loved her—he squired her to their private chamber.

  In that spacious room, with its round bed covered in velvet, champagne awaited them, cooling in a silver bucket. But it was the small, beautifully wrapped package on the pillow that caught Melissa’s attention.

  She went to it and was already ripping it open when she demanded, “It is for me, isn’t it?”

  Quinn laughed. “Oh, yes, Calico. It’s all yours.”

  Inside the fancy paper and ribbon was a framed pen-and-ink drawing of a railroad car. Melissa didn’t understand at first, and she looked up at Quinn with questions in her eyes.

  He smiled. “I’m having it built because I want you w
ith me as much of the time as possible,” he said. “That is, whenever you can leave the hotel and the story-writing and all that.” An uncertain look crossed his face. “You will come with me, won’t you?”

  Melissa’s eyes were filled with happy tears. She set the photograph gently aside and went to Quinn, wrapping her arms around his middle and looking up at him. “You just try keeping me away, Mr. Rafferty,” she said.

  He gave her a thorough kiss and then casually removed the broad-brimmed picture hat she’d put on after the wedding. When he’d tossed it aside he unbuttoned the many fastenings of her blue traveling coat. Melissa was trembling by the time he’d removed her dress.

  Quinn undid the ribbons that held her camisole closed and bared her breasts, drawing in his breath as he admired and then caressed them. When he bent his lips to them Melissa was utterly content, though wilder needs were starting to gather like a storm inside her.

  She stopped Quinn and undressed him. He bore her kisses, caresses, and teasing nips in stoic silence until she’d driven him far beyond the line where a man’s patience would normally end. Then, kneeling on the floor, he made Melissa kneel, too, astraddle his thighs. He took her in a slow, tantalizing glide, supporting her with his hands as she leaned back in proud submission.

  His mouth teased and tempted one breast and then the other as he exerted his rhythmic possession, taking her, giving her up, taking her again. Melissa began to plead with him, but he withheld satisfaction, making its price dearer and dearer with every leisurely motion of his hips.

  Finally Melissa was forced to battle him for what she needed. In a wild flight to fulfillment she moved with fierce, furious speed, rising and falling upon his manhood. The friction caused him such excruciating pleasure that he had no way of escaping.

  When it was over he laughed breathlessly and gave her a swat. “I’ll have my vengeance for that,” he promised, easing her back so that she lay on the soft rug, still connected to him.