Unconsciously, she raised a hand to her mouth in abject panic, realized what she’d revealed only when it was too late. When he’d seen, of course, and understood. The expression in his eyes said he understood only too well.
She managed a smile as she stood, on unsteady legs, the room seeming, for the merest fraction of a moment, to sway and dip around her. It was ridiculous to react in such a fashion. Downright silly. She was not a schoolgirl, for heaven’s sake, not some witless virgin, far from home, but an accomplished business woman, a person of substance and common sense. She should know better, be able to control her responses, even to quell them entirely, when that would be suitable.
“Good night,” she said, to the general assembly, and turned, very nearly stumbling over her own feet, to make a beeline for the door.
Outside, on the step, she drew in great, gulping draughts of fresh evening air, hugging herself with both arms against the chill. Across the road, the men were still working, their shirts soaked through with sweat. The framework of Trey and Rachel’s house was already outlined against the dusky sky, where the first stars were just beginning to pop out.
“Are you all right?”
She should have been prepared for him to follow her, should have expected it, but she hadn’t. “No,” she said, without turning to look at him. “No,” she repeated.
He came to stand beside her, his upper arm brushing, just barely, against her shoulder, sending a shock of sensation bolting through her. “Perhaps you should go in and lie down.” He looked and sounded genuinely concerned.
She shook her head, “I’ll be fine in a minute or two.” She pressed the fingertips of her right hand to her temple. “They spoke to me. They’re planning a quilt, to present to the next bride. They don’t even know who it will be—” She was rambling, prattling, could not seem to stop herself, or even slow her tongue.
Suddenly, he took hold of her, turned her to face him, and lowered his mouth to hers. The kiss was fiery, consuming, and desperate, and might have led to all manner of troubles, had it not raised a rousing cheer from the other side of the road.
CHAPTER
6
THOUGH THERE WAS still a lot of finishing work to do on the Hargreaves house, outside as well as in, the place was habitable after only a week of concentrated community effort. There was a working wood furnace to provide heat when the fierce Montana winters came, and glass in the windows. The fancy plumbing and other luxuries would take longer to install, and the pre-cut wooden floors were bare of varnish, let alone rugs. The fireplace in the front parlor consisted of a pile of rocks gathered from the countryside and a few bags of dry mortar, but the small family did not seem to mind the prospect of rough accommodations. With appropriate ceremony, Trey, Rachel, and the child Emma took up residence, hurrahed by their friends and presented with gifts—food, mostly, every sort of preserved vegetable, fruit, and meat, but firewood, too, and what spare linens could be ferreted from trunks and bureaus. Jacob McCaffrey was already building a cradle out in the barn behind the station; Pres was the only one who knew, that being unavoidable since he was still sleeping in the hayloft then.
It made an ache in him, the sight of that cradle; for the first time in years, he wanted children of his own. And he wanted them by Savannah. Exasperating as she was, even impossible at times, she’d taken up residence in all his senses at once, infused his mind and his spirit with her own, until he couldn’t tell one from the other. Was this love?
God in heaven, he hoped not.
In the meantime, the promised house/surgery was well under way, utilizing the modest surplus of supplies remaining after the Hargreaves place had been pieced together, like the parts of a giant puzzle, though most of the work was being done by Trey, Jacob, and Pres himself, with an occasional helping hand from Landry. The others had had to leave for home, since all of them had farms and ranches to run; most left reluctantly in the charge of son, brother, or hired hand.
Savannah had not yet moved in above the saloon—June-bug was vociferously opposed to that, bless her—and besides, she didn’t appear to own a stick of furniture, so she remained at the station, in the little room behind the kitchen stove.
As the days began to grow shorter, ever so slowly, and colder as well, Pres wished he could share it with her. Thoughts of Savannah and babies and patchwork quilts disturbed his sleep and distracted him during his waking hours.
Finally, the last week in August, when a series of heavy rains came, turning the fields to a dense mud the locals called “gumbo”—Jacob allowed as how it wasn’t uncommon for the weather to turn suddenlike and counted them all blessed of the Lord—Pres was able to move into his own humble dwelling. He soon found that the place was only a little warmer than the McCaffrey barn had been, but at least there was a rusty old stove, scavenged from an abandoned homestead a few miles from town. He had a bed, hastily nailed together by Jacob, with rope to support the mattress June-bug and Miranda stitched together from flour sacks and last year’s corn husks, and a table, fashioned from one of the crates in which the Hargreaves’ mail-order mansion had arrived. His chairs were of similar construction, and the floor was so poorly planed that he didn’t dare set his feet down in the morning without pulling on his boots first. Come winter, there would probably be a layer of frost to greet him as well.
In spite of all these shortcomings, Pres was happier than he had been in a long time. There was no lack of patients from the first day, and every passing stagecoach brought more of the supplies and medicines he’d sent to Choteau for. He took his meals at the station, having no pots, dishes, or skill for cooking, though of course his reasons had more to do with Savannah than with June-bug McCaffrey’s victuals. Now that he was practicing medicine again, he simply didn’t have the leisure to pass long hours at the Brimstone, pretending not to watch her.
It was ill advised, he knew, this fascination with a woman who obviously mistrusted him. Ever since that night when she’d taken her rightful place among the ladies of Springwater, and he’d been brash enough to kiss her in front of half the population on the front step shortly afterward, she’d been keeping a careful distance. Not that he’d apologize or anything, given that he’d meant to do it, all right, and wouldn’t do differently even if he could go back to that night and take another run at the whole encounter.
He was considering the matter of Savannah Rigbey, between advising June-bug McCaffrey on her arthritis and an aging cowboy on his dyspepsia, when all of the sudden the surgery door blew open and Savannah herself swept in with a rainy wind, wrapped in a brown velvet cloak with a graceful hood. Great droplets of water clung to her lashes and her clothes, but her eyes were fiery enough to dry up a lake.
“Shut the door,” Pres said reasonably.
“Dr. Parrish—”
“Prescott,” he corrected her, lifting his donated coffeepot from the top of the little stove and giving it a shake to see if anything remained of the batch he’d made at breakfast. “Pres, if you want to be friendly. Tell me, where does it hurt?”
She slammed the door. “I don’t want to be friendly, as it happens,” she snapped, “and nothing hurts.”
He enjoyed watching her temper flare almost as much as kissing her. “Then to what do I owe the honor of this visit?”
“I think it would be better for everyone if you just left town,” she announced. She’d folded her arms, and under the hem of her dress he saw that one small foot was tapping soundlessly against the splintery floor, though whether from nerves or temper, he couldn’t tell. “Move on, I mean. From Springwater.”
The surgery, like the sleeping quarters to the rear, was scantly furnished. “Sit down,” he said, indicating one of the packing-crate chairs with a cordial nod. Then he lifted the dented pot. “Coffee?”
She sat, but not graciously. Nor did she take off her cloak. Under the table, he suspected, that same foot was still tapping. She was acting as though she were angry, but her eyes conveyed something else—a sort of despairing
confusion. “Did you hear what I said?”
He grinned, pouring a dose of what could only be described as axle grease for himself. “Oh, yes,” he said. “My hearing is fairly good, actually, despite three and a half years of almost constant canon fire. Why do you want me to leave?”
She looked very uncomfortable and a little peevish. Barely eleven A.M., by his father’s pocket watch, and already the day was shaping up to be a memorable one. “Because—” she hesitated, visibly searching for words. She had not thought this visit through beforehand, it would seem, but instead come on impulse. “Because you kissed me. Twice.”
He kept his distance, lest he scare her away. “Is there an ordinance against that?” he asked, very cheerfully. He was rewarded by the apricot blush that rose in her cheeks. God in heaven, but she was breathtaking. Body, mind, spirit, he loved—yes, loved—everything about her.
Savannah laid both hands on the tabletop, palms down, with a little slapping sound. She took several slow, deep breaths, and closed her eyes for a moment, in an admirable bid for control. “I would leave myself,” she said moderately, and at some length, “but I’ve tied up every penny I have in that dratted saloon.”
“Maybe Trey Hargreaves would be willing to buy you out. If you really want to move on, I mean.” It was a bluff; the last thing he wanted was for her to go anywhere. She was, of course, the reason he’d stayed on at Springwater in the first place, though he’d be a pure fool to say as much, under the circumstances.
She leaned forward a little way, providing a tantalizing glimpse of cleavage despite her heavy cloak, and gave him that look he’d seen her use to intimidate obnoxious cowboys. It wasn’t going to work with him.
“It would be much easier,” she said reasonably, “if you were the one to leave.”
“Why is that?”
“Because there’s nothing holding you here, really. Except for this—this shack.”
“And my patients,” he added. He was doing his best not to smile, since he figured that might prompt her to get up and walk out, but it wasn’t easy. Even—maybe especially—in a state of agitation, she was a pleasure to watch and a balm to his jaded spirit. “Mustn’t forget them. And you still haven’t answered my question, Miss Rigbey. Not really.”
She looked at him in stubborn silence, though she knew damn well what he meant.
All right, he’d give in. “Why do you want me to leave? Besides as a punishment for daring to kiss you, I mean?”
She bit down hard on that luscious lower lip of hers. He wanted to nibble at it, along with a few other sensitive parts of her anatomy. Her eyes got very wide and darkened a little, and that delectable peachy color pulsed beneath her cheekbones again. “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said bluntly. He allowed himself just the suggestion of a grin and waited, arms folded again, coffee mug forgotten on the nearby windowsill.
“I can’t think. I can’t sleep.” Her color heightened still further, and she seemed to have trouble meeting his eyes. There was a note of desperation in her voice. “I can’t afford to fall—to feel—”
He crossed to her then, dragged up the other chair to sit facing her, and leaned in a little, his nose an inch from hers. “To fall where, Miss Rigbey? And feel what?”
To his utter surprise, and his chagrin, sudden tears welled in her eyes. She raised her chin a notch, just the same. “I was in love once, or I thought so, anyway,” she said, and if she’d refused to look at him before, now she wouldn’t look away. “His name was Burke—I knew him, growing up. He was already wild, even as a boy, but after we ran off, well, he—he—”
He tightened his grip on her hands, spoke quietly. “What, Savannah?”
“We were about to get married.” Her smile was wobbly and fragile. “The fact is, we were standing before the justice of the peace. A U.S. Marshal interrupted the ceremony to arrest Burke. Turned out, he’d been involved in some robberies. They took him away, then and there, and later on, he was convicted and sent to prison.”
Pres ached for her, for the woman before him, and for the young girl she had been. “What did you do?”
She looked at him with round, fearful eyes, as though expecting judgment. “I went home,” she said. “Papa called me a whore and told me never to come back.” He ached to pull her into his arms, hold her close, but it wasn’t time for offering comfort, not yet. She wasn’t finished. “I didn’t know any other way to earn a living than singing in a saloon. Nobody was going to take me on to watch their children or clean their house, not with the scandal I’d raised. Why, it was even in the newspapers, how I’d eloped with a thief—how Burke was arrested right in the middle of our wedding.”
Pres opened his mouth, closed it again. He rasped an exclamation.
Her gaze remained direct, though her pain was as intense as any he’d seen on the battlefields of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee, and too many other places. He wanted to take her by the shoulders, but she still seemed delicate as glass, ready to shatter at the gentlest touch. “I was only sixteen. I couldn’t go to Burke, and there was no one else. So I went to work to support myself.”
“There’s no shame in that, Savannah. You made a mistake. Welcome to the human race.”
She looked at him with mild surprise. Nevertheless, I’ve had to live with the consequences. My life was changed forever. And my grandmother died because of what happened.”
He frowned. “How do you figure that? Grandmothers die, Savannah.”
“She was heartbroken after Papa sent me away. She went into a decline. Papa made sure I heard about it, and when I tried to go to her funeral, he had me barred from the church.”
Pres wanted to overturn tables and fling things in every direction, a feeling he’d had many times during the war, though he had never indulged himself and didn’t intend to begin now. “Your father was wrong, Savannah. And you’re wrong, too, if you blame yourself. What you did wasn’t evil, or malicious. It was natural for a young girl, believing herself to be in love. Does it make sense to spend the rest of your life under your father’s wrongheaded judgment?”
She blinked, obviously jarred by the question, and said nothing.
“Savannah,” he persisted, but gently. If she fled him now, he knew, she would never come back.
She ran her tongue over her lips; it was merely a nervous reaction, nothing more, and yet it set his groin to aching. “I was an ordinary girl,” she said, “with a good singing voice, a head for numbers, and a whole passel of dreams I was sure would come true. I had a grandmother and a father who loved me—once—and friends. Lots and lots of friends. I wanted to have children, six of them, and head up the church choir. I wanted to cook and go to quilting bees, like Gran did—”
He waited, even when her voice fell away.
“Two months after my grandmother died, Papa passed away, too. Up until then, I could pretend that things might be all right again, that he might forgive me. Once he was gone, though, I had to accept the fact that I was probably going to spend the rest of my life in saloons. In some ways, that was the worst moment of all.”
“It must have been a lot like my first shift in a field hospital. Nothing I learned in medical college prepared me for what I found in that place.”
A long silence fell between them, oddly comfortable, given the situation and the topic of conversation.
“Was it very terrible?” She barely breathed the words.
“Beyond that,” he answered, and sighed, letting her hands go, resting his palms on his knees. They were still facing each other, still very close. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever completely leave it behind. But I’m trying, Savannah. That’s the point. You’ve got to do the same. We need to shake off these demons of ours, both of us.”
He saw a protest forming on her mouth, in her eyes, but in the end she did not offer it. “I’m not sure I can do it,” she whispered. It was a momentous admission for her; he could see that.
He had never wanted to k
iss her as much as he did in that moment, and that was saying something, considering how much time he’d spent lying in Jacob McCaffrey’s hayloft, staring up at the log beams and aching to do just that and a whole lot more. He restrained himself, and what he said astonished him as much as it did Savannah. “Marry me.”
She stared at him, and her mouth dropped open—he put one hand under her chin and lifted, closing her jaw. “You’re not serious,” she said, in the next moment.
“I think I am,” he said. He’d given the idea a lot of consideration, all the while trying to fool himself into believing that it was only idle speculation. Now, it seemed as if he’d glanced inside himself one day, while passing by, and found another person there, someone better than he’d been until he came to Springwater, someone capable of loving and believing and hoping that the future could be better than the past.
“But why?”
He wasn’t ready to tell her how he felt. He was still explaining it to himself. “Because you need a husband and I need a wife. Plenty of people have gotten married for less practical reasons.”
“You’re insane!” She flushed yet again, and her hands rose to her hips, though she looked more broken than angry. “We’re not in love—”
“Be sensible, Savannah,” he counseled, as if he was being sensible himself. “You’re not happy running the Brimstone Saloon and wearing those silly dresses—admit that to yourself, if not to me. You were a great help when Miranda’s baby came—calm and competent. You’d make a fine nurse and a very good doctor’s wife.”
“You’d marry someone who’s spent most of her life singing to drunken cowboys?”
“Yes,” he answered. Savannah was levelheaded, for the most part, and she had an unruffled, caring way about her. He’d liked the way she’d spoken soothingly to Miranda, during the height of the girl’s labor, the way she’d held the baby almost reverently, not caring that the squirming, squalling little creature hadn’t been washed or wrapped. She could be firm, too, obviously, when the situation called for it.
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