by Merry Farmer
“What was that for?” she challenged him.
“It’s a seasoning, a ghrá, to make your food taste better.”
She pursed her lips. “Stop talking nonsense, and stop calling me that.”
“What does it mean?” Barnes asked, his mouth half full of roast.
Katie’s cheeks flushed with color. “Don’t you tell him,” she warned.
“The man asked me a legitimate question about the Irish language,” he replied as if she’d wounded him. “I’m simply trying to bring a better understanding of our homeland to these fine hosts of ours.”
Katie humphed, sat back, and stabbed her potatoes with a fork.
Aiden leaned closer to Barnes and quietly said, “It’s Irish for ‘my love.’ And that she is, though she doesn’t know it yet.”
Barnes laughed. “Poor Pike.”
The others at the table may not have heard his explanation, but they certainly heard Barnes and saw him shake his head. The man next to Pike thumped him on the shoulder.
“What? What did I do?” Pike asked, perplexed.
“Nothing,” Katie answered. She may have meant it as a retort for Aiden, but Pike flinched by her side.
All throughout the meal, poor Pike inched farther and farther down the bench from Katie. The more he inched, the less she noticed. She had a reply for every word that passed through Aiden’s lips and a retort for every jab he tossed at her, but before they had made it to the dessert course of hot apple pie, Pike had turned away from her and gotten involved in a debate with the men farther down the table. When he finished his pie, he took his plate and got up from the table entirely. Aiden sent him a knowing nod as he went.
“And another thing, Aiden Murphy.” Katie was so involved in setting him down that she didn’t notice Pike skipping out. “Next time you decide to go giving away private secrets, I hope you stop to think about who might overhear you.”
“I’ve said nothing tonight that I wouldn’t say in front of a stone-sober judge.” He turned to Barnes as the lieutenant stood. Most of the men at the table were finished and eager to get on to the dance. “My endless thanks for a hale and hearty meal, sir,” he said, standing himself. “If you’re ever in… wherever I end up, I’ll be sure to treat you to the same.”
Barnes leaned over to shake his hand, chuckling. “Deal. Though you may be short one head at that point.” His eyes darted over to Katie, who had gotten to her feet and was watching the two of them like a hawk, no doubt to dissuade him from saying anything he shouldn’t. “Or perhaps two heads,” Barnes added, laughing harder.
The dinner was over, and everyone headed toward the doors that led out to the north side of the fort where the dance was soon to begin. Katie darted around the end of the table to intercept Aiden before he could follow his brothers out.
“What was that all about?” she asked. “As far as I know, you’ve only got one head, and you don’t use it nearly enough.”
He grinned. “If I explained it to you, your mam would cut off one of my heads or the other.”
“You’re not making any—”
He could see the instant she put the pieces together. Her mouth dropped open and her cheeks splotched with red. The fire in her eyes was equal parts fury and mischief.
“How dare you.” She smacked his arm hard enough to sting through his shirt.
“I wasn’t the one to make the joke,” he reminded her, fending her off.
“But you laughed at it. You men and your dirty minds. Mam always said your minds are elsewhere half the time, and now I know where. In the gutter. Why, I should wash the lot of your ears out with lye soap in the hopes that it will penetrate into your—”
Before she could finish, he swept her into his arms and planted a hard kiss on her open mouth. He couldn’t help himself. She was irresistible when she had a full head of steam, and after their first kiss the other day, he’d counted the seconds until he could have another. His lips caressed hers and his tongue explored. She tasted like apple pie. The sweetness of it went straight to his groin. He pulled her tighter against him so that she could feel how strongly she affected him.
For her part, Katie was either too stunned to protest, or liked his kisses far more than she wanted to admit. She was soft and pliable in his arms, warm and smelling like fresh air and savory supper. Her mouth accepted him, letting him tease and probe, letting him nip and suck. She lifted her arms to embrace him in return, a low moan pulling from the heart of her.
That carnal sound broke the spell. She gasped and went tense in his arms. A heartbeat later, she wrestled back. With one swift motion, she slapped him across the face.
“How dare you,” she bit out, seething. Her chest rose and fell temptingly with her passion.
“You didn’t exactly fight me, a ghrá,” Aiden answered as gently as he could with his blood pumping so hard.
She stared at him, incredulous. “I fight you every day, Aiden. I tell you over and over that I don’t want you, that I want an exciting, new hero, that you should stop crowding my brain, and still you don’t hear me.”
She’d said the same over and over, but this time the words felt like a knife in his already aching heart. Worse still, he had no reply for her, no way to defend himself that would convince her besides another kiss. But if he tried that with her looking the way she did, he was likely to lose an eye.
“You never should have left Ireland to come with me,” she said, upset to the point of tears.
“I wouldn’t have survived without you,” he replied, quiet and honest.
“And I don’t see how I’m supposed to survive with you. You swallow me up, Aiden. You swallow me whole, and then there’s nothing left of me. Just let me be for a change.”
She stood there after her words were spoken, appealing to him with her eyes. Aiden’s heart throbbed in his chest. He would have threatened any man who hurt her with bodily harm, but a sinking part of him suspected that this time he was that man. His mind raced to pick out what he’d done and how he could make up for it.
Katie didn’t give him the time to figure it out. She huffed out a disappointed breath and shook her head, then turned and fled the hall, leaving him standing there.
Chapter Five
The sun was only just showing its last rays on the horizon as Katie rushed out of the fort’s walls and into the throng of people gathered for the dance. Her lips still burned from Aiden’s kiss. Her body was still warm from being in his arms. Dangerous, confusing excitement swirled through her at the remembered sensation of the stiffness of his arousal pressed against her. She wasn’t naïve in the ways of men and women, in spite of having missed the militiaman’s crude joke, but knowing things and experiencing things were entirely different. Everything about Aiden was overbearing and inappropriate.
So why did she want him so desperately?
“No,” she spoke her reaction aloud, pushing her way into the crush of dancers waiting for music. She didn’t want Aiden. She reacted to him, that was all. He provoked her. That’s what she was feeling. She had to push him out of her mind.
She put on a smile and searched the gathering for Emma. At times like these, the best thing to do was to find a friend. But in spite of the lanterns that had been set up and the campfires that burned around the edges of the wagon train, she couldn’t see her friend anywhere. A new thread of worry poked through her concerns. Emma had been upset the last time she’d talked to her. Things were as unresolved as ever between her and Dean. All the more reason to find her and circle the wagons, blocking out all men for the night.
The trill of a fiddle tuning and a concertina humming into song shot through her as though someone had dumped cold water down her back. Katie twisted toward the stage to find Aiden joining his brothers and her father and the other musicians. Aiden’s face was far too somber for such a cheerful gathering. For a moment, her heart went out to him. When he glanced up and met her eyes—as if he’d known exactly where she was in the crowd all along—she yanked her heart bac
k. If Aiden Murphy was going to tease her in public, he deserved what he got.
As soon as the band began to play, the people who had been waiting around the edges of the dance floor roared with approval. They started with a lively jig, and before a few bars had been played, young and old, men and women, travelers and militiamen, rushed onto the dance floor. Those who knew the steps of that particular jig danced them, while everyone else made up their own.
“What do you say, Katie Boyle?” one of her countrymen approached her where she stood. “Let’s open the dance in style.”
She didn’t want to dance with Keith Shanahan any more than she wanted to moon over Aiden, but she knew Keith to be an excellent dancer, and her feet were begging her to let him distract her from her troubles. Besides, dancing with as many other men as she could would show Aiden that they were better off as friends than anything more.
“I don’t mind if I do.” She took Keith’s hand when he offered it and let him lead her into the heart of the dance floor. “Let’s show these people how a jig is really done.”
She danced. Jigs and reels and steps that had nothing to do with anything. There was something magic in the music. The more she let herself forget her troubles and wrap up in the music, the easier she felt. After a couple of dances, her smile was even genuine. Keith let her go to the next man and the next. The militiamen who had shied away from her at supper—which she was convinced was Aiden’s fault and not her own—found their courage again and asked to dance with her. By the time the band had hit its stride, Katie had her confidence and her happiness back. Let Aiden be as bold as tacks and as devilish as a rogue if it pleased him. She had better things to do.
Still, every chance she got, she peeked to the dais where the band played. Every time, Aiden had his eyes on her as he played. When she checked on him as she was dancing lively steps with Pike, he winked, somber mood gone. And, Lord help her, she laughed. Somehow he always made her laugh.
Almost as soon as she came to the realization, the music and her laughter stopped. Her father squeezed his concertina into a new tune, a slow, wistful solo. Aiden’s brothers joined in one by one, on the flute, the bouzouki, and the bodhrán, but Aiden set his fiddle down in the safety of its case. He stepped off of the dais and cut right through the couples who had drifted into each other’s arms for the slow dance. He was heading straight for her.
Katie’s heart sped up, thumping in her chest. Her breath came in shallow puffs. She searched to the right, to the left, even behind her, looking for a militiaman, for Keith, for anyone who could come along and rescue her from what was sure to be a disaster. Her heart throbbed for Aiden, along with other, deeper parts of her being, but no. No, he wasn’t what she wanted. She couldn’t let him steal her heart away, she couldn’t let him—
“You’re looking a mite lonely, a ghrá.” He reached her before she could find an escape. “Might I have this dance?”
Panic shot straight through her. “I told you not to hold your hopes out for me,” she said.
Aiden shrugged. In the light of the lamps strung around the dance floor, catching the shadows in his face, with his shirt sleeves rolled up past his elbows, he looked every bit the dangerous rogue. “I promise not to swallow you up,” he said with a sincerity that broke Katie’s heart. “I just want to dance with you.”
She narrowed her eyes, trying to put on a stubborn mask. She could feel her blood rushing through her head and chest and core. Her lips tingled with longing to meet his again.
“Just a dance,” she said.
A gentle smile lit his eyes. “Why, thank you, fair maiden.”
He lifted his arms to dance position. Chest squeezing tight with feelings Katie didn’t want to name, she took his extended hand and slipped in closer to him. She rested her hand on his shoulder, and he settled his firmly but politely at her waist. And then they were dancing.
The steps were simple, close to a waltz but not so grand. Katie clenched her jaw and let Aiden lead as they swayed in a tight circle. She waited for him to say something, to tease her for dancing with so many men, to poke her about her dreams of a true hero to love. She expected him to say something, anything. Instead he was silent. All he did was dance and watch her with eyes that shone in the lamplight. The bright full moon above caught silvery highlights in his hair. Holding her so close, she could feel the strength in his arms, the warmth radiating from him. She could smell the rich, familiar scent of him. It was all too much to bear.
“Say something,” she demanded.
“What would you have me say?” he asked. His voice was like a gentle caress against her cheek.
She puffed out a breath. “Why must you always be such a trial?”
“Am I a trial?”
“Of course you are,” she replied. “You’re a rogue when you should be a saint and a—” Words failed her.
“A saint when I should be a rogue?” he finished for her.
It had been what she was about to say, but she hadn’t wanted to say it. Aiden Murphy was no saint. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to be. But she most certainly did not want him to be so gentle and tantalizing and… and everything he wasn’t supposed to be.
When she didn’t go on, he said, “I know what’s put that twitchy expression on your face, a ghrá.”
“Do you?” she snapped. Yes, let him be contrary. It was far easier for her to be irritated with him than to be… to be…. She didn’t know what she was.
“You’re upset with me for the way I vex you,” he said.
“Yes,” she burst out.
“You’re frustrated because I’m there every time you turn around.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t catch your breath when I’m with you.”
“I most certainly cannot.”
“And you can hardly hear your own thoughts with me invading them.”
“I’m glad you understand,” she declared as if she’d won a victory.
Instead of showing the sheepishness that he should, Aiden’s grin widened. His eyes danced like the stars, in time to the music around them.
Katie frowned. “What’s that look for?”
He didn’t answer. He merely continued to dance, holding her closer with a steady pressure that was neither demanding nor conceding. Heavens above, how he drove her to distraction. The one time she wanted him to talk, he wouldn’t say a thing. And why did that make her heart thunder against her ribs?
At last he said, “Forgive me for not having respect for your dreams.”
Katie blinked. Her pulse refused to slow. “If you would just let me have them,” she said.
“Fair enough.” He took her through a few more turns in the dance. “I have dreams too,” he said when they were face to face and in each other’s arms again.
The statement tickled Katie’s curiosity. “Oh? Do you now?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “I have dreams as big and wide as this land we find ourselves in. I’ll catch and keep those dreams too.”
Again he said nothing when all she wanted was to hear more.
“What dreams?” she broke down and asked.
He let go of her back for a moment to brush a strand of her curly hair away from her cheek. His fingertips lingered across her heated skin before he lowered his hand to her waist once more.
“I want to help people,” he said. “The way Dean Meyers does.”
Katie blinked. “You want to be a doctor?”
“No,” he laughed, “but a man doesn’t need to be a doctor to heal. Music heals just as well as medicine.”
A voice at the back of her head told her he was right.
“I want to build a home, a safe place for my children to laugh and play,” he went on.
“Your children?” Her words came out rough. She cleared her throat.
“Aye, a ghrá. A whole mess of children. Smiling, red-haired, rosy cheeked girls and boys.”
Her heart went hot and cold at the same time. “And… and I suppose you’ll want those chil
dren to have a mam who’s steady and dependable, someone who will keep a clean house and do as you say.”
“No.” His smile widened. “I dream of those young ones having a mam who’s as wild as the wind and as lively as a song—a woman who wears her heart on her sleeve for all the world to see and admire.”
The simple dance suddenly seemed too complicated. Breathing seemed too complicated. All Katie could do was sway closer to Aiden and wonder. He’d been there, under her feet and behind her back, through every step of her life. He was the man she was expected to love. Those expectations had always seemed so dull, so lifeless, but the man who held her in his arms and whispered his dreams to her as though they were alone and not in the thick of a crowd was not the man she had imagined him to be. Had she been so determined to rebel against her mam’s machinations that she had missed the truth of Aiden?
Before she could bring herself to wonder just how wrong she had been for so many years, the song ended. Applause rose from the couples on the dance floor and from those who stood to the side watching. Aiden held her right where she was, a breath away from him. Katie ached from her head to her toes with something she didn’t want to name. She dared herself to meet his eyes. They were filled with every bit as much fire as they’d held both times when he kissed her.
The band launched into a lively dance tune. The dancers cried out their approval and hopped into the steps of the next reel. Out of the corner of her eye, Katie thought she saw Emma being dragged onto the dance floor by Russ Sandifer, but she couldn’t be sure. Aiden’s eyes held hers, refusing to let her go. What if she’d been wrong? But if he wasn’t the ordinary, familiar man she knew, who was he?
“Don’t you have a fiddle to play?” she asked at last, feeling as lame as a leper.
“I do,” he answered with a nod, “but you are the song.”
Her heart flipped in her chest. Unexpected tears stung the back of her eyes. All around them, the dancers laughed and cavorted. Someone stomped on the dirt of the dance floor, and moments later, everyone around them was stomping. Katie hardly felt it. She felt as though she was flying. Drawing in a breath and her courage, she leaned closer to Aiden, her eyes dropping to his lips.