by Jillian Hart
"Tessa." Jonah's hand reached out. Big fingers engulfed hers.
"Y-yes?" Fire from his touch streaked along her skin.
"I ought to thank you for the tea." Grief-darkened eyes that searched hers. "And for your help. 'Tis good to be home again. In a place where neighbors help one another."
She did not want him seeing her with tears in her eyes. She took a step back, and anger speared through her. He was such a stupid man. What did he think? She was here because they were neighbors? "I am not here to help you, Hunter. You are not the reason I am up for the second straight night without sleep."
"Of course not. My father-"
"That is right I am here for your father. For a man who is old and sick and who needs care."
"And I thank you for it."
So, even a man who thought himself heroic was as daft as the rest of them. "Don't you understand?"
"I know nothing of herbs."
"Herbs have naught to do with it." She fisted both hands and vowed not to give him a good smack that might knock some sense into him. "Mayhap you should have stayed home these last years to help your father, and he would not be in bed right now fighting for his life."
"Wait one minute." Danger glinted in his eyes. He strode forward, close enough for her to feel the heat of his breath and the bunched tension in his powerful body. "Are you accusing me-"
"I am saying that some people do not have a father. And they would have gladly stayed and worked a farm alongside him. Just to have him in her life." She blinked hard, biting her lip to keep from saying more. Did she have to let him see her heart?
Jonah only stared at her, his mouth open. A muscle jumped along his jaw. "You dare to judge me?"
"Why not? Some of us stayed." And at a greater cost. "Of course it is more difficult to impress hero-worshipping boys with homey little tales. No one calls a son who stays home a hero. Nor one who makes his ill father's life more comfortable."
"I did not leave home to make myself into a hero. No such animal exists." His hands fisted. Fury gleamed in eyes as dark as night. "I despise the word. Why do you keep saying I am one? Mayhap that is the way you see me?"
"Nay." But it was. Bigger than a man had a right to be, so handsome he could stop the moon from shining. Look at the way her hand still tingled where his fingers had touched her. Her heart thudded fast and hard at his nearness.
"You are the outsider here," he pointed out, "you and your unwanted opinions."
His anger glowed like an ember, changing his face, tangible like radiating heat.
An outsider. She felt as if he'd pared her with a knife and lay open her heart. Pain turned into anger, but she could only stare at him. What could she say? She'd lost the argument to this big, arrogant man who made her feel small and inadequate. Too short Too thin. Too plain. Too disagreeable.
That was the true reason no man had married her, despite her age, despite her circumstance. All those years fighting to keep a roof over her ill mother's head and enduring heartless relatives' scorn had forced a wall so thick around her heart even a marauding Indian could not breach it.
She never once truly resented caring for her mother, or missed too terribly the lost chances for fun other girls her age had enjoyed. But no, her life had not been easy. Maybe if she'd had more patience, or more faith, or more beauty…
But the truth was she'd become an outsider. The kind of woman only Horace Walling would marry.
Tessa ducked her chin and strode from the room.
"You were harsh with her."
Jonah rubbed his brow. His head throbbed with exhaustion; his heart ached with worry. "I know. She just made me angry. Probably because she was right."
"All I know is that she has been tending Father as if he were her own." Thomas paused to study the old man lying so still and the surgeon bleeding him with studious caution. "I don't see anyone else volunteering to stoke fires and change bedding and haul snow up a flight of stairs, then clean up the mess. Do you?"
"Not one of those young females hoping to marry me," Jonah added wryly.
Thomas' eyes crinkled, unable to manage a smile. "Mistress Tessa may be a man's worst nightmare, but I tell you, there is no one else I would rather have with Father right now. She's skilled, and she's got a gentle hand with the infirm."
"Too bad she doesn't have a gentle tongue to match." Jonah studied the tray Tessa had brought. Fresh biscuits and untouched corn pudding. She'd tended them, although no one had asked it of her. "I suppose I just like a woman who's biddable and pleasing."
"I could not agree with you more." Thomas reached for the teapot. "If you make her angry, she will leave. The surgeon says he can stay, but only as long as he can help."
"Aye." Wearily, Jonah sighed, so damn tired he couldn't focus his blurring eyes. "Mayhap I can repair the damage."
Hell, there was so much he couldn't repair. Like his father's illness. It killed him to think the old man was suffering so.
He left the room, his burden greater for having left the bedside. What if his father died while he was away? Jonah hesitated in the dark hallway, blending with the shadows.
A small sound, hardly more than a breath, but he heard it coming from the room farthest away. He strode through the dark, counting the doorways. The last stood ajar and inside he heard a delicate sniff, then silence.
"Tessa?" He gave the door a push.
"Go away." Anger edged her words.
He knew how easy it was to use anger to cover up deeper emotions, how easy to drive others away. "Nay, I have something to say and you have no choice but to listen."
" 'Tis a pity that you haven't changed in nearly twenty-five years, Hunter." A shadow shifted on the edge of the bed, a mere ribbon of shape. "You're still unbearably bossy. 'Tisn't as adorable on a thirty-year-old man."
"I never said I wanted to be adorable." He stepped into the room, blocking the threshold.
"Good thing. You'd fail miserably."
A smile stretched the corner of his mouth, despite the turmoil inside him. "I am sorry for how I treated you. For what I said."
"You are not." A tremble she couldn't hide in her voice. "You're just afraid if you make me too angry I'll refuse to stay and help with your father."
"That was Thomas' concern. He is a shallow, self-serving man. He was too cowardly to come himself."
A little choke. Ah, he'd nearly made her chuckle. "Shallow, self-serving traits run strong in the Hunter family, especially in the eldest son."
"Will you stay?" He had no time for humoring her, even if he genuinely regretted his words. Thoughtless, they were. Hell, he was so damn tired and scared that being angry with her had been easiest. He wasn't proud of himself, but at least he could admit it. And not make the mistake again.
"I would not walk away from anyone in so much need. Is that what you think of me?"
Not anger. Hurt. So, he was not the only one battling a reputation that did not fit. As he was no hero, she was no shrew. Not Tessa with her gentle hands. How many families had she helped over the years? How many had she nursed back from illness and injury? Or sat at a bedside easing the dying one's pain? And many of the good people of Baybrooke could only treat her with distance and shakes of the head?
"Nay. That is not what I think of you. Hell, you have done more for my own father than I have."
"True." He sensed a smile in that whisper-soft voice.
"Then you will accept my apology?" He reached for a match from the bureau. Struck it.
Light brushed over her face as he lit the taper.
"Nay. I would never accept your apology, Hunter. I would never know if it was sincere or not." She lifted her chin. Tears sheened her cheeks.
Jonah felt gut-punched. He had made her cry. He felt lower than dirt. What a clodpated dolt. "Tessa, I-"
"No pretenses." She stood, straightening her rumpled skirts. Candlelight brushed her body, highlighting the curves of her breasts. "You don't care about me. We both know that. Just walk away. Leave me alone. I wil
l wash my face and have some tea and be in to change your father's bedding."
She dismissed him with a wave of her work-rough hand. Dismissed him. As if he were a mere private and she a general.
"I am not pretending, Tessa," he ground out. And then his gaze fell on the soft bow of her mouth.
Heat trembled through him along with the memory of her experienced kiss. Aye, it was enough to drown out the suffocating sadness in his heart.
"Well, neither am I, Hunter. My dislike of you is real."
But there was no venom in her words. A hint of softness, an invitation. "Do you dislike all men, or do you save that passion just for me?"
"I have no passion for you." She dipped her chin, and he could not see her face.
She sounded sad. Tiny tingles of want danced and tempted. He fought the urge to take her in his arms and hold her. Aye, how he remembered the feel of her against him. Heated softness. Willing woman. Even now his eyes appreciated the ample curves of her breasts, soft looking but firm. Heat licked through his blood.
"I meant what I said in there." She rubbed her hands together, red from manual labor so that they looked chapped even in this thin light. "You were lucky enough to have a kind man for a father. Yet you wasted the years you were given with him. What I would give-"
She stopped. He could not argue, could not deny her charge. No matter how angry he wanted to get, she was right. He sighed, fisting his hands. "I cannot change the past, Tessa. Is this what you want me to do?"
"No, I just-" She sniffed.
Hell, she was crying. Big tears that glimmered in the light, even though she bowed her face to hide them. He looked at his hands, so helpless. What did he do? He sensed her tears were genuine, a rare experience for him.
"You have a f-family," she whispered, her slender shoulders shaking within her too-large garment. "What I would give-"
Horace Walling. Jonah hadn't remembered her troubles. The world did not stop because his life was changing. He thought of Horace's rotten teeth and dirty hands. Jonah's stomach soured. "Hasn't your grandfather given you a different choice in a husband?"
"What other choice?" she whispered. "Grandfather has hated the burden I've been to his family. Where would I go? There are no other relatives left alive to take me."
She drew him in like a spell wrapped around his heart. Her voice, did it have to feel as if it touched his skin? The sweetness of it shifted over him like spun sugar. His groin tightened. Hell, what was his lusty body thinking? This was Tessa Bradford. And yet he could not stop wanting to lay her across the bed and bury his aching shaft inside her warm, willing body.
"Grandfather has forbidden me to work for hire." Her eyes shimmered, so wide and inviting. "I know 'tis hard to believe of me, but I have dreams, too. And they do not include sharing a bed with Horace Walling."
Jonah took a step closer, breathless. Her eyes dazzled. Her mouth twisted into a vulnerable frown. An inviting frown that lured him.
Blood throbbed in his groin at the thought of Tessa Bradford naked in his bed.
"Will you tell anyone what I just said?" she asked now, avoiding his gaze as she looked to the stairway.
"Nay."
So, he affected her. Jonah liked the way she ducked her chin, keeping her face from his gaze. She wanted him, he guessed, with the same heated need as he felt for her. Honest and straightforward, the way it should be between a man and a woman. No emotions attached.
He thought of her midnight journey when he'd saved her from the wolves. Only a woman coming from a man's bed would be unescorted in the woods that time of night.
So, she was experienced. Perhaps that was what he needed. Guilt and remorse for the son he'd been threatened to drown him. And watching Father so close to death had been the hardest thing he'd done.
"I should get back to your father's side," she said with that sweet voice that could lure the devil.
"First, you must attend to me." He caught her chin in his hand, his groin heavy in anticipation. If he could bury this pain, it would go away. He felt certain of it. Jonah covered his mouth with hers.
He felt her surprise. At first her mouth was set against him, almost unresponsive. Almost. He closed his eyes, lost in the sweet, consuming fire. So greedy it pulsed through his veins like a storm of wind and flame, fast and intoxicating.
He curled a hand around her neck and tipped her head back to deepen the kiss. On a sigh, she melted into his arms. His blood kicked at the feel of her against him. The soft heat of her breasts seared his chest. The curve of her belly nudged his arousal. Want ripped through his veins. Damn, she was pure temptation, and she was beckoning him beyond all control.
"Your father," she gasped, breaking from his arms.
His breath came hard. Aroused and wanting, he simply stared at her and trembled from deep inside.
"Come quick!" Andy burst into the room.
In a heartbeat, Jonah spun away from Tessa, his need for comfort forgotten. "What is it?"
"Father is conscious," Andy choked.
"Thanks be, he is alive."
"Nay." Andy swallowed, tears spilling down his face. "The doctor says that often before a man dies he has a moment of clarity. Mayhap this is his. Father is asking for you, Jonah."
Nay. Every muscle in his body drew taut, and he could not move. I cannot lose Father so soon. And not this way, not before I keep even this one vow.
Yet he found his feet moving. Tessa forgotten, and Andy at his side. Then he was in Father's room and Thomas laid a hand on his shoulder. Well, he was not alone in his sorrow or his loss.
Together, they would face this. As brothers.
"Jonah." Father held out his hand at the first sound of a step inside the threshold.
If only he could hold back time, change the past, make himself into the man Father wanted. Jonah approached the bed, each step the hardest he'd ever taken.
"Father. I am here." He wrapped his hands tightly around the old man's, powerless to change fate, helpless against the consequences of his own long-ago decisions. "I never should have left you."
"You left home to make me proud," Father whispered, tears bright in his eyes. "And you do me proud now that you are home. Whatever happens, do not forget how very much I love my boys."
Chapter Six
" 'Tis morning, and still you haven't slept." Thomas strode into the room.
Jonah turned from the fire, the stick of wood in his hand, the fire popping and crackling. "And I will not sleep until the doctor says 'tis over, either way."
Together, their gazes landed on the frail old man on the bed, washed and dry and swaddled with blankets, sleeping while Tessa stacked clean towels on the night table.
"There is naught we can do but wait," Thomas said. He meant to be comforting.
Jonah shrugged. Weariness rolled over him like an ocean wave. "I'm not so good at waiting."
"That makes two of us. Come and sample the cooking."
"Who's cooking?"
"Oh, the dozen or so marriageable females who all miraculously brought by breads and puddings and even cakes to help you in this time of difficulty." Thomas' eyes flashed with small humor. "A smart maiden never misses an opportunity to display her cooking talents to a prospective bridegroom."
"Don't remind me of my duty," Jonah growled, more tired than irritated. He took one long last look at Father, so lifeless, struggling so hard to hold on. "I should not leave him."
"Maybe he's expiring from the sight of that ugly face of yours, brother." Thomas' hand cupped his shoulder. "Come, have some coffee and eat. No doubt we'll all need our energy, either way it goes."
"I'll stay with him whilst you break your fast." Tessa looked up from her work changing the poultice on Father's chest. So dark those eyes, steady and deep. "I will call you if there is any change."
Thomas nodded, careful to keep his distance from her. "We're much obliged for all you've done, Mistress Tessa."
"You need not thank me." She turned, jaw set.
"You h
ave run out of excuses, brother." Thomas' hand on the back of his shoulder guided him toward the door. "We will not be gone long, and 'twill give Father a respite from your dreadful presence."
"And yours, brother." Guilt and regret slowed Jonah's step as he followed his brother from the room. Aye, how his conscience troubled him. "I swore to marry before he died."
"What should you do?" Thomas answered ahead on the stairs. "Pick any girl and marry her the very day you return to town?"
"There lies my problem. I can't simply pick a girl. They look like children to me." His voice echoed in the empty and cold parlor as he followed his brother to the kitchen beyond. "I cannot marry a woman half my age."
"That's one of the difficulties of being thirty." Thomas grabbed a taper and lit it from the single candle burning in the table's center. "By that age, all the women are married or so ugly no one will have them."
"You're speaking of Tessa Bradford," he guessed. "Hell, what happened to this kitchen?"
"Women," Thomas muttered, shaking his head.
Women? The devil's teeth! It looked like a pack of bakers had descended on the house. "Father is dying. He doesn't need a final buffet."
"Final buffet. Last supper." Thomas shrugged. "Look, Andy has already helped himself. He's devoured half the cinnamon cake."
"I'm in deep trouble, brother, and you worry over missing pastry?" Jonah grabbed a cup and crossed the room. "I am to wed. I have little faith in marriage."
"Pray, don't say that too loudly. You are like to offend all the young ladies who made these treats and they will have you thrown in the stocks for a day." Thomas, even weary and grief-stricken, managed another joke.
"I cannot marry a mere girl." He gestured to the plate-laden table. Crocks, platters, rows of cakes and delicious treats crammed nearly every available inch. "They do not even know me. These efforts of theirs are far from sincere."