by Jill Barnett
Lee followed him across the street. “I can make you feel better. I remember thinking that you should have been there later when I ran into Taber, swilling tankards of rum in a San Cabos cantina. Your Presbyterian brother-in-law was wrapped in strands of Juanna’s rosary beads and babbling into his mug about cursed she-demons from the depths of Hell. It would have done your heart good.”
“So there is some justice in the world,” Kit said.
“Now that I’ve relieved your troubled mind, my friend, how about coming with me to Sausalito for a few days? I’ve got to get the Wanderer’s mizzen repaired. It should be a week before Taber docks, and that perpetual frown you’ve been sporting tells me you could use a break.”
Kit did need a break. Time spent with Lee usually cleared his head, and they always had one hell of a good time.
Lee’s stomach grumbled again, and he eyed his flat belly.
Kit grinned. “Come on, let’s get something in that groaning belly of yours before some hog hears all that racket and mistakes you for its mate.”
The crash of a tin plate captured Hallie’s attention. She looked up from the pan she was stirring and gave Liv a stern look. Liv quickly turned and picked up the plate with white thickly-bandaged thumb, and she fumbled greatly with a wobbly stack of dishes. It was quite the act, and typical of Liv.
“It won’t work, you know,” Hallie said casually.
Liv thunked the plates on the wooden table and assumed an air of innocence, her thickly dressed thumbs turned upward. “What?” she said innocently.
Hallie tasted the stew and then nodded at Liv’s hands. “Those thumb wrappings of yours.”
“My hands will never be the same. I’m so wounded, Hallie! All that mending . . . The sharp sewing needle—”
“Could not have,” Hallie interrupted, “possibly caused enough damage for you to need those cucumber-sized bandages. You’ll get no sympathy from me. You shouldn’t have been trespassing, and you know it. Now unwrap those silly things before you have half the table setting on the floor.”
Liv plopped down on a thatched chair and began to gnaw the bandage knot loose with her teeth. The twins were in a corner, playing with their most prized and fought-over possessions—a set of whalebone animals and an Ark, hand-carved by their father.
Hallie turned back to the stove. She closed her eyes and sighed. It was quiet for a brief moment, just the sizzling sound of the meat cooking on the stove. But instead of peaceful darkness, her eyelids seemed to be etched with the image of Kit Howland’s face.
His kiss haunted her. She could not forget the feel of his lips, the scent of him, the way she had felt, as if she were floating.
What did he feel? She wondered. She felt sure that he wasn’t indifferent to her. He certainly didn’t push her away, at least not until Captain Prescott arrived, and then, for a moment he looked terribly uncomfortable, even embarrassed.
He’d called her a kid. But if he’d really been trying to intimidate her, and hadn’t been affected, would he have been embarrassed? Hallie didn’t think so. Mama always said a man’s feelings were usually right out in the open for any woman to see. A smart woman would know the signs. She only has to think illogically. She’d know that a man would instinctively cover up any slip of emotion that might make him look weak. Men didn’t like to be thought of as emotional; it wasn’t manly. Of course, men thought anger was a man’s emotion, so they’d use it as a cover. Mama said a perceptive woman looks past a man’s anger to the feelings he’s trying to hide. She also said it was a woman’s duty to train a man in the art of emotion, especially in matters of the heart.
If she could get Kit to see her as a woman, surely she could win his heart . . . or at least start his training. He’d been when he thought she was upset. Hadn’t he said something about the responsibility of raising the children? Men thought that child-rearing was woman’s work. If he saw her with the children and saw how well she handled them, maybe he would realize that she was a woman.
Hallie knew from Da that when Captain Prescott came into port he would get his friend and head for Millie’s Grotto. When Da was in port, he’d always eat with them instead of the family.
She looked down at the sizzling meat, then at the barrel of salted beef sitting against the wall. It was almost full. A half-guilty, half-calculating glance told Hallie that the children were still busy, a good distance from the hot stove. Using her apron as a pot holder, she tilted the iron skillet to its side, so the hot grease to spilt into the stove fire.
Flames shot up, and she jumped back, arms out to keep the children away. The flames charred the meat black and spewed smoke into the air. After a moment, Hallie dug a scoop into a nearby salt bag and used it to quickly smother the blaze.
Acrid smoke filled the kitchen, Hallie wedged the back door open. “Guess I ruined supper,” she said blythely. “I’ll get cleaned up and we’ll eat at Millie’s.”
The twins immediately whooped up and down, and Liv wasted no time returning the dishes to the cupboard. Millie always gave them huge helpings of dessert.
Hallie sped from the room. Her long legs took the narrow stairs two at a time and she burst into the bedroom she shared with Dagny, racing to the oak wardrobe. She grabbed her pink dress and flung it on the bed. Scurrying to the washstand, she began to vigorously scour her face. As she glanced up in the mirror, Dagny walked in the room and looked at the pink dress on the bed, then at Hallie with questioning stare.
“I burned supper,” Hallie explained. “So we’re going to Millie’s.” Hallie ducked back down, hiding her face over the china washbowl. She splashed the cool water over her flushed skin and hoped Dagny would leave the room—and soon, before she had a chance to read the excitement Hallie knew was all over her face.
Kit and Lee stopped in front of a narrow wooden building that stood a few blocks up from the wharf. A rusty tin sign was nailed to the eave at a cockeyed angle and the air, thick with fog, condensed into henna-colored rivulets that trickled over the painted letters:
THE GROTTO
P. Millicent Dockery, Proprietor
Kit opened the door, and they entered the dining house. The succulent scent of steak and onions seeped through Kit’s senses. There was a reason there were often lines outside Millie’s.
“Well, God love ya, Kit Howland. And so what storm finally blew this friend of yours into port?” An older woman, barely five feet tall but almost that wide, greeted the two men, looking from Kit to Lee.
“I tell you, Millie, it wasn’t a storm. I found him under a rock during last night’s full moon. He’s been howling that he’s half starved.” Kit found an empty nail and hooked his hat onto the crowded wall.
Lee enveloped Millie in a huge hug and lifted her up off her feet. “Now what kind of a welcome is that, woman? The only thing that’s kept me going all these months was the thought of your sweet cooking.”
Millie waved a long, wooden spoon in Lee’s face. “Put me down, ya handsome oaf! Before ya break your back and have half the women in San Francisco after me for ruining their sport!”
“Millie, my love, those women don’t hold a candle to you.” Lee heaved her higher, ignoring her command. “When are you going to marry me?” He looked at her as if he were pleading. “I liked to starve to death when I was at sea.”
Unfazed, Millie looked at Kit, who was lounging against the edge of a homespun curtain while he watched the bantering. “I sure hope ya brought a shovel with ya, Kit, ‘cause this rascal’s full of more muck than Cookson’s Livery Stable.”
She bopped Lee on the head with her spoon, and he set her down. Then she turned to Kit. “Get your backside off them there curtains.” She emphasized each word by poking her wooden spoon into a metal button on Kit’s chest. “Didn’t yer mama teach ya nothin’?”
Kit laughed, rubbing his hand across his prodded chest. “Yea
h, she taught me that women whose names begin with M are harpies. Mama . . . Millie—”
Kit dodged the spoon.
“Madeline,” Lee added with a devious grin.
“You two boys need some harping to keep ya in line. Now enough of this horseplay!” Millie turned and yelled, “Hey, Maria! Come out here and clear off a table for these two peacocks before this red-bearded rascal dwindles away to nothing but a dung pile.”
From the back room came a sudden clang of pots and pans mixed with a string of Spanish curses. The cacophony ended with the shout of Spanish-accented words “ . . . her slave!”
A buxom dark hair Spanish girl stormed through the kitchen door. She glowered at Millie, but her look changed to one of delight when she saw the two men across the room. She rushed to clear off the dirty dishes.
Mumbling something about that gal needin’ mouth slappin’, Millie aimed her wooden weaponry toward the table. “Plant yore setters over there, boys, if ya want to eat. I gotta get back in that there kitchen.”
A few moments later, the blood-warming aroma of potent black coffee wafted up from their just-filled cups. Kit sipped the hot brew, watching Lee, who was busy flirting with Maria. He envied his friend’s finesse with women—his ability to keep his affairs casual. Women didn’t cling to Lee, although he drew them like flies to a grub mule.
Kit didn’t have that skill. After his soured marriage, he’d vowed never to let a woman get so close again. His experience taught him that when you loved a woman and placed your heart in her feminine hands, you gave her power. Too much power. Jo’s powerful little hands had changed to claws that shredded any illusions he had about love and marriage.
But Lee was untouched. A virgin heart. Kit had seen him breeze into port and literally charm the clothes off a woman—make that women—and to Kit’s amazement, when Lee left, those women were happy and smiling instead of clinging.
Kit raised the thick-bowled cup in his hands and stared into it as if there were answer there. The few encounters he’d had since he moved to San Francisco had not been worth the trouble. His brief affair with a widow was physically satisfying, until she began to cling to him like a burr. He’d made it clear from the start that he would never remarry, but she’d sought to change his mind, and failed. After that, well, it was easier to hire a woman for the night. No illusions and no chains, just physical release. Only lately, women left him cold, until today.
He hadn’t been cold this afternoon. He’d been singed by a passion he’d thought was lost. His run-in with Hallie Fredriksen had certainly reignited his blood. For those few moments, he had been alive again. In his mind, he would still remember her warm mouth.
And he didn’t like it.
A commotion in the doorway caught his attention. Standing inside, surrounded by smaller, cloaked figures, was Hallie Fredriksen . . . and her warm mouth.
She removed her cloak and bonnet and reached upward toward the high peg that sat empty. Kit sucked in a deep breath. The dress clung to her torso, and when she turned, her magnificent chest was draped with lace, a sheer, fine lace that let the soft pink fabric of her dress whisper through. For a brief moment, Kit thought the fabric was her skin.
She stooped to untie the cap strings on the fidgeting boys, and the bending action caused the lace to angle to the floor, unveiling the outline of her breasts as they swelled with her downward movement.
Kit’s blood burned.
Grasping after the water pitcher, he dumped the cool water into a mug and gulped it down, thinking that he should have dumped it on his head. “Two years,” Kit grumbled to himself. “For two years she’s invisible, and now I get two doses in one day.”
“Doses?” Lee looked at him from around Maria, who was sprawled like a napkin in his lap. “Sounds vile, like cod-liver oil.” Lee looked at Kit’s scowl and then toward the group near the door. “My, my, if it isn’t just what the doctor ordered.”
Kit’s gaze met Hallie’s.
Lee lifted Maria off his lap. “You had better get back to the kitchen, querida, before Millie flays my skin for keeping you too busy.” He gave her an affectionate swat and a wink. “I want to watch my friend here while he tries to swallow his medicine.”
Chapter Four
Hallie was scared. She could feel the pounding of her heart all the way up to her ears. As Dagny helped her herd the children through the dining-house door, Hallie wondered if maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
When she’d stood in the homey security of her kitchen, aching to think of some way to spur Kit Howland’s interest, her plan had made sense. The walk down to The Grotto gave her creative imagination a chance to unfurl, and soon, her beguiled heart’s dream limned itself to life inside her furtive head. In vivid color, she envisioned the whole scene. They would arrive early enough so she could get the children fed and calm before the place overflowed with hungry diners. Since Da always met the men after six, her plan gave her plenty of time to set the stage. Kit would walk in, see the children—they were always well-behaved after their stomachs were full—and then he would turn those deep emerald eyes toward Hallie, and he would see . . . the woman.
It was the perfect plan.
But now, when she stood in the foyer of the dining house, something didn’t feel right. She removed her bonnet and the boys’ caps and coats and hung them on the wall, then looked around the room for the perfect table and saw Kit.
Her stomach dove like a sounding whale.
Hallie closed her eyes briefly, hoping that when she reopened them the table would be empty, that Kit was only the same apparition she’d been seeing ever since he’s kissed her. But he was still sitting there when she opened her eyes.
She felt a tug on her hands and realized that Knut and Gunnar had pulled her into the room and they were heading straight for the large, empty table next to Kit.
A woman, prove you’re a woman in control! She pulled them back, knowing that she could not allow them to drag her across the room. She had to show how well she could control them. Her grip tightened on their fingers and she bent down to whisper a bribe. “Behave yourselves and I’ll let you have my dessert too.”
With a twin gripped in each hand, Hallie strolled toward the empty table, every inch the poised lady, while Liv and Dagny trailed demurely behind. The men stood, Lee smiling a greeting and Kit looking as if he’d been sucking a lemon.
“Evening, ladies.” Lee pulled a chair away from the neighboring table and, with his usual charm, indicated that one of the girls should be seated. Hallie nudged Dagny toward the chair, and with an expectant air she turned toward Kit, determined not to let his sour expression deter her. When he pulled out an empty chair, Hallie sneaked a peek over her shoulder. His vinegary expression had changed. In its place was an intense look, and it wasn’t aimed at her face. His gaze rested somewhere below her chin, and she had a good idea exactly where he was looking, for she felt a tightening at the crests of her bosom. Her regal composure slipped a notch, until it dawned on her that a man didn’t leer at a child’s chest.
It’s working. She took a deep breath and sat, reworking her course of action and trying to figure out what he was thinking. When no new plan came to mind, Hallie, raised a good Christian, turned to a higher source. Please let him see the real me, not the foolish girl he has known. She was so busy trying to ensure her plea by mentally reciting the Apostles’ Creed that she ignored the twins.
Gunnar, always the quicker of the twins, raced to an empty chair near Liv and mimicked the grown-ups. Not to be outdone, Knut also grabbed the chair—the same chair, just as an unsuspecting Liv began to sit.
Hallie looked up and her expression turned to horror when, as if in slow motion, Gunnar and Knut both tugged the chair back at the same time. Like an anchor dropped at sea, Liv’s blond head disappeared from sight. The blue oilcloth that covered the table slid with her, sending the
dishware clattering to the floor. Hallie and Dagny bolted out of their chairs, each grabbing a twin before Liv, sitting on the floor with murder in her eyes and a plate in each hand, could retaliate.
Holding Gunnar by his braces, Hallie hauled him into an empty chair. “Sit!” She pointed at Knut. “You too!”
Liv stood up, sending a lapful of silverware clinking to the floor.
“Apologize to your sister!”
“But it was a accident,” Gunner said.
“Apologize now!” Hallie hissed.
The boys mumbled an apology with shaky voices. Their huge brown eyes welled with a four-year-old’s tears of humiliation. Each pale little face was mottled with pink splotches, and they hung their heads in a child’s dramatic gesture of shame.
Although Hallie knew she had no reason to feel guilty, she did. When Dagny gave her a sweet smile of understanding, Hallie couldn’t take any more, and she stooped down to pick up the scattered place settings. If she looked at those two imps any longer, she’d be the one apologizing, and that wouldn’t teach them a thing.
So much for showing off your motherly control.
Here she was, crouched under the table where it was safe, picking up scattered dishes. And hiding.
What was Kit thinking?
She ducked under the cloth, shoved her petticoats and the braid-stiffened crinoline from underneath her knees, and crawled on all fours, her skirts billowing around her like the sails of a pink armada. Her hand grasped a fork and she caught a flash of movement on the other side of Liv’s empty chair. She looked up, table level, and spied a headless chest, encased in white linen and an all-too-familiar dark vest.
Oh no . . .
Kit squatted, barely two feet away, with a pile of dishes on his bent knees. The tight fabric of his trousers stretched taut over the muscles of his flexed thighs. Mesmerized, Hallie watched the dishes teeter a bit on those strong, bulging ridges.