Annie Muldoon was a woman to avoid at all costs. He would even bet the contents of his strongbox that she was as green as meadow grass about men and sex. She’d need a great deal of seducing and he had no time for it.
But the moment he had himself convinced as he crossed the lobby, Annie stopped in the open doorway of the parlor and faced him. With a saucy toss of her head, her eyes issuing a challenge no man in his right mind would acknowledge, she crushed every warning he had just given himself.
The dare aroused him. Annie disappeared inside the room. Kell followed, but slowly, as if he suddenly had all the time he needed or wanted.
Annie left the parlor seething with resentment. Not only had her aunt called her to account for her behavior, she had reprimanded Annie in front of Kellian York. The humiliation was not to be borne in silence. But silence was all she had, since she refused to create another scene. It was enough that she had verbally protested her aunt’s invitation for Mr. York to stay and visit with her.
How could Aunt Hortense have been taken in by that snake charmer’s ingratiating manner? Annie had no answer, and as the long afternoon wore on, and the dinner hour approached, she found that the day could grow worse. Could and did. By the time she retired to her room with a blinding headache, hunger pangs, and a walloping dose of self-pity, she knew what a state of abject misery truly was.
Since she had forgotten to bring up hot water, she had to be satisfied with a cold cat’s wash from the water in the pitcher. It added another black mark against Kellian York, and at this rate, Annie knew she couldn’t find a card big enough to hold all the marks against the man.
Sinking into her bed with a weary sigh did not bring relief that the day was finally over and she could rest. Annie tossed. She turned. She closed her eyes, attempting to block out the sight of her dining room crowded again with those who had come to gawk and whisper.
The only blessing was that, once more, Mr. York and his birds failed to come down and provide the show everyone seemed to expect. But it was no thanks to any consideration on Kellian’s part. Annie knew it was Li who had taken supper trays upstairs to keep those women away. Li, she decided, was a decent man, one of great sensibility, the complete opposite of Mr. York. Why they were together was a question she would like answered, but asking anything of Kellian York was not possible. Not after what he had done to her.
Annie sat up, bunching her pillows behind her. With an angry kick she rid herself of the twisted sheet and wrapped her arms around her raised knees.
The matter of her cap being found near the fire preyed on her mind. Bronc had allowed her to examine it, and Annie found the small red X she marked all her clothing with on the bottom edge of the cap. Someone had stolen it. But why?
Resting her chin on one knee, she worried her lower lip with the edge of her teeth. Why would someone want her to look guilty of starting that fire? It made no sense. But the fact remained that her cap had been stolen from this room.
A chilling shiver ran up her spine. Now that she was alone, Annie had no need to pretend she was brave, resourceful, and didn’t need anyone. It violated her to think that her room had been entered. And there was no one she could turn to and confide her fear.
One of her fears, she reminded herself. The other was a fear on a different, but no less frightening level. She couldn’t dismiss Kellian York from her mind. Like a thief, he slipped into her thoughts, boldly and brazenly making his presence felt.
And she had no one to confide in about him. She had wanted him to kiss her. There! She admitted it. But far from making her feel better, her admission let Annie know she was in trouble.
Rarely did she allow herself to think about her almost marriage, but she was restless, though exhausted, and the long-ago day’s disaster came rushing forward from where she kept it buried.
Adam March was everything she dreamed of wanting in a man. He had been tender, gently courting her, winning her trust and her love. She had been so sure that marrying him was the right thing to do. He had a steady job as a cattle buyer for several ranch owners in California. The lush land of the Loving ranch and its fatted cows had drawn him to this far north corner of Texas. Annie rented him a room, found herself spending time with him whenever he was in town, and lost her heart to the black-haired scoundrel he turned out to be.
She adored the bounder, fool that she was. He wanted a quiet wedding, claimed he had no family and intended to stay right there in Loving with her when he wasn’t traveling. Annie agreed to every one of his plans. She hadn’t the sense of a goose being fattened when Adam looked at her with those dark eyes of his and sighed her name so that it sounded like music, need, and desire all rolled together.
But the night before their wedding, screams erupted from the back porch. Annie shivered now, recalling how she had run downstairs through the kitchen to investigate what was going on. The shock of seeing a woman on her knees, pleading with Adam to come home, had nearly caused her to swoon.
Even now, so many years later, her stomach churned with nausea. No matter how she tried to block the sight of that woman looking up at her, claiming to be Adam’s wife, Annie knew it was a memory burned in time that would never be wiped away. Annie didn’t believe her, she couldn’t. The woman was scrawny, wild-eyed, and dressed like the meanest farmer’s wife.
Rubbing her arms, she increased her pacing as the hours that had followed slammed back full force as if it had happened yesterday.
Adam’s denials. Annie’s own acquiescence to his request that she leave him to handle everything. She had been so in love with Adam, and she had never dealt with a hysterical woman. It was the excuse she offered herself then, and now, for meekly allowing Adam to usher her out of the way that night.
Then came morning. What was to have been the happiest day of her life. Her wedding day.
When she went downstairs, the woman was gone. But so was Adam. Annie’s anxiety turned to fear. It wasn’t until Aunt Hortense had gone looking for the strongbox to gift Annie with her mother’s pearl earbobs, that Adam’s other perfidy came to light. He had disappeared with the strongbox, which held money, jewelry and some worthless stocks. The sheriff still had a wanted poster for Adam, and Annie wished he would rot someplace hotter than Texas in the summer.
No one saw the scars he had left on her. Annie knew her pride was a sin, but it was all she had to wrap around herself when she had to face everyone and announce there would be no wedding. Pride was the shield she had hid behind whenever a word of pity came her way.
In the years that had passed, few dared to mention that Annie had been abandoned at the altar, and her pride was all that allowed her to scoff at any mention of marriage for her.
She was an independent woman. She did not need a man to clutter up her life. She had no wish to find herself forced to ask some man’s permission before she wanted to do something.
Her pacing gradually slowed, then Annie stopped near the window. Her life was full. She was content. But even as she thought this, there was a restlessness rising to plague her.
She knew she was plain. She certainly did not follow the dictates of Godey’s that claimed a woman’s waist should measure one inch for each of her life. She was twenty-eight years old but her waist still measured the same eighteen inches that it had on the day planned for her wedding.
Perhaps she had been foolish over the years to turn aside the least hint that a man was interested in courting her. But Adam March had betrayed her trust. He had made her believe that she was not a woman a man could love. No one had ever understood how he had shaken her belief in herself, until she had retreated from any man who attempted to court her.
Annie knew she was set in her ways, having been called a prude more than once. That, too, had become her shield to hide behind. She had come to think of her desires and passions as a weapon to be used against her. Curbing them with the firm standard of behavior she adhered to made her less vulnerable. Her only regret was that there would be no f
amily. She would never have the children she longed for, the ones to carry on with her dream. Yet, she was determined to leave a mark on Loving by seeing to the building of a church, and then, having a real minister preach on Sunday.
Nothing was going to get in the way of that dream. Too restless to sleep, Annie picked up her wrapper and draped it over her shoulders. Dragging up the past about Adam only reminded her that Kellian York was likely cut from the same cloth. Mr. York had no scruples.
But Annie, a little voice corrected, at least Kellian York is honest about it.
“True,” she muttered. “But his constant insults sting. I didn’t need to hear from him that no man would want me. I know what I am and what I look like. Facts that won’t change. Who cares a nickel what his opinion is? And I certainly don’t like the way he looks at me.”
Ah, but Annie, you can admit the truth. No one will know. It’s a little frightening, but deep down you get excited about the way he looks at you. Remember today? This morning, and later. Remember haw he almost kissed you twice? You felt shivery and tense, and warm at the same time.
“Well, that’s a crockful!” she whispered. “I do not like the way he looks at me. I do not like Kellian York. He’s a necessary evil means to a good end. That’s all.”
But she stared at the door, where she could barely make out the shadow of the straight chair she used to prop against the door. “I’ll be on my guard,” she warned herself. “He won’t force his way into my life the way he came bursting into my room.”
He won’t, she repeated, before finding sleep.
She was still trying to convince herself when all hell broke loose in the morning.
Chapter 7
Annie didn’t have her corset strings tied when the first crash alerted her to trouble. The sun was still a small eye on the far horizon when a wild yell echoed from somewhere downstairs. Barefoot, Annie left her laces undone and tugged on her shirtwaist, trying to do up the buttons and make sense of the loud noises. Footsteps pounded in the hallway, warning her that the boarders were aroused too.
She didn’t bother with shoes or stockings, leaving her room at a run. Annie never knew what made her look up just as she reached the stairway, but she was sorry she did. A woman was standing in the doorway of Kellian’s room. There was not enough light to see who she was, but the sheet barely draped around her told its own story of why she was there.
Blushing like a rose in full bloom, Annie stared a hole through the sheet and rushed down the stairs.
“What happened?” Annie demanded as she reached the bottom step. She had not fully understood what it would mean to have the women from the Silken Aces in her boardinghouse. Now she did. In various states of undress, four of them clustered around the counter. Two had on wrappers, but Annie could have sworn they didn’t have a stitch beneath them. The third wore a chemise and petticoat, and the last, like the women upstairs, was draped in a sheet.
Good Lord! Annie silently muttered. York had had two of them in his bed!
Clearing her throat, she again asked what had happened. This time her demand was loud enough for the women to separate.
Annie clung to the newel post. Pockets leaned against the counter, pressing a cloth to his jaw. Kellian York stood beside him, barefoot, bare-chested, and turned toward her with those sage-green eyes promising hell to the next one who crossed his path. Unfortunately, that was Annie.
“I’m trying to find out what the hell happened here, Muldoon.”
With her breath lodged in her throat, Annie didn’t answer him, didn’t say a word or make a sound to protest his use of profanity in her boardinghouse. Annie was positive that the position of his hands on his hips was all that kept the threadbare denim pants covering what they were meant to. She amended her thought. The glove-soft fabric clung to his body in a way that struck sparks in her fertile imagination.
Annie!
For just a few moments she ignored her own silent warning.
His body did fascinate her. His subtle move caused all sorts of stirrings inside her. She knew it was wrong, but all she saw, all she could think about, was Kellian’s body. A body so lovingly created that it confirmed, by all she held dear, that he was formed to be a woman’s temptation.
It was not her imagination but Kell himself who shifted his stance so that he stood with his legs spread, radiating an aggressive, arrogant, and taunting attitude.
Annie tried to swallow, but the lump in her throat remained.
He raked a hand through his sleep-tousled hair. The movement drew Annie’s gaze upward to his stubbled cheeks, and from there it seemed a natural progression to look at his eyes. Annie was drawn to their deep green color, but at the same time she wished she had never looked. There was an immediate sense that Kell was aware of her reaction to the worn pants that hid nothing of his muscular legs and left nothing for her to speculate about—not when only two buttons were closed.
She rubbed her damp palms against her skirt.
When Kell’s heavy-lidded gaze raked her from head to toe, then lingered on her bare feet until she curled her toes, Annie longed for another two inches on her skirt hem to hide them.
Heart pounding, mouth dry, flushed from the heat spreading inside her, Annie was fascinated and a little frightened of the total awareness they had of only each other. He looked up and her gaze locked with his. The breathlessness she experienced was due to his look—which promised excitement—and to his cocky stance that seemed to whisper, Come an’ get me, darlin’, an’ I’ll make sure you have one helluva ride.
Helluva? Well, that was right. He was hell, and … Annie came to with a start, suddenly conscious of the others, murmuring all around them. Quickly offering up a prayer for strength and salvation, she asked again what had happened.
“Went out to the shithouse—” Pockets began.
“The what!” Annie slammed one hand over her pounding heart.
“Help me out here, Kell. What do ladies call—”
“Ain’t that the berries,” Cammy said, coming forward to stare at the red flags of color on Annie’s cheeks. “Pockets was sayin’ that he went out to the honey-house—”
“She’s a lady, Cammy,” Ruby cut in, eyes twinkling with laughter as she tugged her sheet tighter. “Try the chapel.”
“No, no,” Daisy said, resting her hand on Pockets’ shoulder. “Ladies call them privies.”
“Enough.” Kell didn’t raise his voice, but his look at each of the doves silenced them. Blossom never said a word, but she moved closer to Cammy and whispered something. The two then stared at Annie. With his uncanny sense, he knew that Li was there without turning around. “What did you find outside?”
“What I expected. No one,” Li answered. His gaze took in the sight of Kell’s aggressive stance and the obviously aroused state of Annie Muldoon. To watch Kell with Annie was to see a master with a novice. An innocent novice who cried out for protection without being aware of it.
Kell glanced again at Pockets’ swollen jaw. “You’re sure you didn’t see who hit you?”
“Didn’t see a damned thing,” Pocket mumbled, working his swollen jaw with one hand. “Ain’t broke. Just hurts like hell. Reckon you can get a few more chips of ice?” he asked Daisy, then glanced at Annie. “That all right with you?”
“Yes. Of course it is.” Distracted, Annie backed up the steps. How could those women remain so uncaring of their undressed state in front of three men? No sooner had the question formed than Annie realized what she was thinking. These women made their living being undressed in front of men!
“Running again, Muldoon?” Kell taunted.
“My shoes … there’s chores and…” Annie stopped herself. The slow, curling grin on his lips was enough to send her up the stairs at the same run she had come down them. It promised to be another day of unrelenting headaches.
Kell left Pockets to the care of the doves and followed Li into the kitchen. He accepted the mug of coffee t
hat Li handed to him. Leaning against the edge of the table while Li picked up the chair he had knocked over in his rush to get outside, Kell continued the conversation that had been interrupted by Pockets’ shout.
“Since Muldoon is careless enough to leave the front and back doors unlocked, we know anyone could have stolen that cap from her bedroom. And it made perfect sense that I would suspect her and her group of starting that fire.”
“Why do you keep calling her Muldoon?” Li asked, filling his own cup with coffee. “Is that the way you distance yourself from her? You know she does not realize what you are doing to her, Kell.”
“I’m not doing a damned thing. She’s a burr and I want to focus on the fire, not on that prissed-up excuse for a woman.”
Li’s speculative gaze rested on Kell. He grinned, then sipped his coffee.
“Don’t be getting any ideas about Muldoon,” Kell warned him. “If you can’t say anything more about the fire, don’t say another word.”
“Right, Kell, the fire. You were saying that if you were to blame Annie, you would look no further for the real culprit.” Li met his friend’s gaze. “What about Laine?”
“She’s got the most reason to hate me. She expected Kyle to leave the Silken Aces to her. If Kyle hadn’t been thinking with what was between his legs instead of the good sense he had, she wouldn’t be badgering me to cut her in for half a share when I rebuild.”
“You’re set on doing that? We could leave, Kell. I have wanted to travel east again.” Li moved to the dry sink and tossed out the last of his coffee. Working the pump handle to rinse his cup, he thought of the many years he had been with Kell. Nearly eight, he recalled, remembering how Kell had won him in a poker game. In all that time, Kell had never lied to him. Li wondered if Kell realized that he was lying now not only to him but to himself about Annie Muldoon.
Darling Annie Page 7