by Unknown
“Okay, Jayla, if you want my help, you can’t be having these…er…female moments. You have to tell me the truth about this trouble you’re in. And no matter how obnoxious you think it is, tell me everything.”
Not everything! Her mind snapped shut like the jaws of a steel trap. How nice. His inquisition shut the water works right down. Jayla shrugged. She refused to tell him everything, because everything was uglier than ugly. Brutal to the very end, she couldn’t bear to haul it all out, parade it in front of him, only to watch him look at her with eyes filled with more contempt and condemnation. He already despised her, but the truth, the reality of all the ugliness she’d been a part of, once confessed might strangle any chance she had left of ever winning his love.
She wasn’t ready to give that up yet. When the moment came, she’d know, and when it did, she’d leave without argument. Jayla swallowed the lump that threatened to escape. If she could look deep into a mirror, she’d see her soul, black and stained, and beyond redemption. She figured she was past salvation, but she couldn’t bear to see his face if she told him the things she’d done and the things she could have prevented, but didn’t.
Jayla took a moment to dry her face and gain some semblance of control. “All right, I’ll tell you everything,” she said. A lie. Another lie on a long list of lies. She opened her eyes and found he’d cut his hard gaze at her. Disbelief flickered in the dark look he settled on her. She didn’t fool him for a minute, but then, she never had. “I’ll tell you everything. I swear.”
A sigh. “Ma’am, I wouldn’t believe you if you swore on a stack of Bibles. In fact, I know for certain you lied swearing on the Bible.”
Ma’am again. He reverted to using that when he was pissed or aggravated with her. The way he said it reflected every ounce of disgust he felt for her, that and distrust.
“I’ve already paid for that untruth, many times over.”
“Not as much as I paid for your lies”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” she mumbled.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. I’ll tell you what you want to know.” And not tell you what I don’t want you to know so ma’am away!
He lifted a dark brow. “Why do I get the feeling you’re spoon feeding me what you think I wanna hear?”
“I don’t know, perhaps you have trust issues?” she suggested sweetly.
“Only with you.”
“I don’t think so.” She refused to back down. “If you didn’t have problems trusting people, you wouldn’t be living back here in these mountains like a damn hermit.”
“You’re the reason I’m living back here like a…damn hermit, as you put it. So leave it alone, if you don’t wanna hear some other ugly truths”
“You think I don’t live with ugly truths every day?”
“I like my life just the way it is now.” He leaned close, threatening. “And I’m warning you, I won’t tolerate lies from you. No more lies. If I discover you hold anything back from me, or that you’re playing me, or something comes back to bite me on the ass, I’ll send you packing. I mean it.”
Jayla turned a deaf ear to his warning. She figured if it came down to it, she’d work her way around the truth. She’d settle for telling him mini-truths, and pray he wouldn’t get too upset when he discovered the many lies she covered up with those mini-truths, but she’d rather face a firing squad than to confess to him the awful things she’d done.
“How much farther?” she tried asking, but the icy wind snatched her words.
He leaned in, his mouth practically against hers. “Did you say something? Is the pain worse?”
“Yes!” She clenched her fists against his shoulder to keep from crying out from the dull spasms that had returned with a vengeance and refused to go away. Dear lord, she knew she deserved punishment, but not this, not by taking her baby. “Yes,” she repeated in a tone that clearly said she’d given up hope on keeping the baby alive inside her. “The pain’s worse.”
Understanding flared in his fierce blue eyes. His lips turned down with worry. “We’ll be at the cabin in a minute. Hang in there.” Wild gently squeezed her, his voice calm and reassuring.
Jayla edged closer against him. He wouldn’t let her get by with that for long, but for now, he was willing to let her get close to him. “Do you know anything about caring for a woman having a miscarriage?”
A muscle twitched in his cheek. She ached to trace her fingers along the firm line of his jaw, to know the feel of the dark stubble shadowing his face. The man was as rugged, untamed, and as feral as his name suggested.
“Sure. I’ve taken care of a few cows having spontaneous abortions.”
“I’m not a cow, Wild Remington,” she declared, ire in her voice.
“I’ve taken care of pretty young heifers too.” His lips twitched.
“You are so not funny. Can you get me to a doctor?” For a moment, he looked utterly defeated, or very uncertain, she wasn’t sure which. “Wild? What’s wrong?”
“I’m it, honey. There’s no way to get a doctor here, not with the storms that are brewing, and I don’t think you need to make a long journey on horseback, which is the only way out of here for now.”
“Then I guess we’ll make do.”
He nodded and looked away.
Jayla frowned. Did he realize he wounded her every time he refused to make eye contact or look at her for more than a second? Tears clogged the back of her throat. “Damn hormones.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” She sniffed. “I just don’t understand why women are ruled by the blasted chemicals secreted in their body. They make us murderously crazy during PMS, they make us hot, we get pregnant because we were hot, then all we wanna do is bawl once we’re knocked up. Ooo, but not men. They don’t get pregnant. They don’t have bitchy weeks or hot flashes. Oh no, all they have to worry about is whether their damn penis gets hard so they can pump up the insane woman who’s in heat.” She paused, drew a long breath and slowly released it.
“Finished now?” Wild’s eyes danced with amusement. “You’re a bit long-winded when you get going, aren’t you?” he drawled.
“Long-winded?” She blinked, wondering if he’d just compared her to a horse or something. Great. Just great. The only ability she possessed when she was near this man was proving what an idiot she was.
“Yup, thought for a minute there you weren’t coming up for air.”
Straight teeth flashed, as pure white as a strand of the finest pearls, and his mouth—Lord those beautifully shaped carnal lips stole the breath right out of her lungs. Her heart tripped every time he leaned near her. Lord Almighty had the cold and distant cowboy actually teased her? No. No way. The coolness resettled in his eyes and he glanced quickly away—again. She’d always known he was handsome, but that wicked smile on his face, fleeting though it might have been, changed everything about him. Oh yeah, he was hot.
Finished, he’d asked her. Yep. She was so done, she felt like an overcooked slab of meat on a grill. She’d never want another man the way she wanted this one. Hell, that wasn’t exactly news.
Despite the fact she was knocked up, the cowboy had a way of unsettling her hormones. He made her horny as hell with little effort on his part. Jayla bit her lower lip. Was this normal?
Should she want sex in her condition?
What was wrong with her?
Shouldn’t her crazy, man-hungry chemicals be asleep, resting somewhere on a nine month vacation on a tropical island? It was insane to have these wild cravings for this man. Might as well face it—she was one sick puppy. The thought made her want to cry again, but she knew there was no point. No brainer there.
Jayla glanced at Wild, but he wasn’t looking back. Another twist of pain crimped its ugly way across her belly. Fresh tears hovered, ready to burst free. She’d never felt this emotionally bruised in her life, and there had been times when she wasn’t sure she wanted to see another tomorrow. The ache in her heart was much worse
than the one in her womb all because she was in love with a man who didn’t love her back and never would.
And no doctor. This was one of those times when it all seemed so impossible to come out a winner. Don’t cry. Crying never solved anything. But still the wretched tears stung her eyes. She didn’t care for herself. She had nothing left to lose, but her baby—she wanted her child to have a fighting chance. Right. Who was she kidding? This wasn’t her first rodeo. She knew the signs, the symptoms—her baby was fighting to live inside her.
At this point, that sweet little life was on its own. She was helpless to help it. So was Wild. She’d come all this way to have this cowboy protect her and her child—all for nothing. On the other hand, the man who hated her had called her pretty in a backhanded sort of way, if one considered the term pretty young heifer, a compliment. With Wild, it’d always been difficult to tell where she stood with him. He wasn’t forthcoming—a man who played his cards close to his chest.
For some reason, Wild had always kept her at a distance, as if she was poison or something. She supposed for him, she’d been pure strychnine.
But she’d always been in love with him. Long before that summer she turned fifteen, and stumbled upon him swimming in a creek. She’d adored him from a distance, always from afar, except that day. A day that had been ruined before it hardly began.
She hadn’t had the chance to go home and daydream about him the way young teenage girls do. That summer day would always be branded in her memory. It was the one and only time she’d ever seen Wild naked—and the day she lost her virginity.
Chapter Five
Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
~Cole Porter
Montana
West side of Dancing Star
February 20, Friday
3:20 p.m.
“We’re here.”
Wild’s words snapped Jayla out of her brief reverie of the past and the even briefer pleasure she recalled of seeing him naked seven years ago. Feeling a bit disoriented, she raised her head and looked around. “Oh, the cabin.”
“Yeah, the cabin,” he said flatly and climbed off the mare. He hauled her into his arms, his cool breath brushing the side of her face.
“I can walk,” she said, but whimpered from the sudden jostle as he adjusted her in his arms.
“No. You aren’t heavy.” His lips flattened, as tight as his voice sounded. “You feel like a little bird in my arms.”
“I can still walk.”
“Sure you can, right before you smack the ground face-first. I said no. I’m not taking a chance on you injuring yourself even more, so stop wiggling.”
“I’m sorry to be such a burden.”
“Shut up,” he growled, impatient. “When you become a burden, I’ll let you know.”
Jayla buried her face against his chest and gasped.
“Easy.” His voice softened, concern etched his brow. “I’ll have you out of this weather in a sec.”
She wrapped her good arm around his neck. “Okay.”
He carried her across the snow-covered ground, his steps hurried but easy.
“I’m not cold,” she whispered, “just in a lot of pain.”
“I know.” He paused long enough to kick open the door. The wind howled around them, icy as skeletal fingers dancing over them. Snowflakes, light and feathery, flurried around them, in a hurry to swoop inside the cabin. He bumped the door shut against the obscene invaders with his hip and hurried to a double-wide, iron-rail bed against the north wall. Wild flipped back the layer of thick quilts and started to lower her to the bed.
“No,” she squeaked. “I’ll get blood on the sheets.”
Gingerly, he placed her on the side of the bed, his jaw tight. “Screw the sheets! You think I give a damn about them? If they get ruined, I’ll put on fresh ones. You need to lie down, all that bouncing around on the mare couldn’t have helped matters any.”
“But…I’ll ruin the mattress.”
“Honey, it’s just an old mattress. I can flip it over if…” he coughed and looked away. “You know.”
“I need to clean up before I lie down. Ouch!” She patted the covers. Closing her fingers around something solid, she pulled out an old revolver buried beneath them. “You sleep with a gun?”
A shadow crossed his face. “It’s for varmints.” He took the pistol from her and shoved it inside the top drawer of an ancient nightstand beside the bed.
“You were expecting one to crawl in bed with you?”
“You’re here in it, aren’t you?”
“Oh.” Well, that barb struck hard, and it certainly let her know he hadn’t forgiven her yet. She’d gone from pretty young heifer to an unwanted varmint the moment her butt hit the mattress. Jayla lowered her head. She’d walked teeth first into that one. “I’ll stay out of your way.”
“Gonna be hard to do in a cabin this size.” He stepped back from her and released a long breath. Obviously he was glad to put some distance between them.
She hated it.
Raising her head, Jayla didn’t like what she’d seen on his face when he took the revolver from her. He might detest her, but he’d never been deliberately cruel. She had a sick feeling he’d said those words to distract her, and an even sicker feeling she knew what the gun was for. If she was right—God, please let me be wrong.
“You wouldn’t do anything foolish with that revolver…would you?”
A startled expression flashed across his face. “Nah. I told you, it’s for varmints.”
“Swear to me, Wild, please. I couldn’t bear to know I caused another death.”
“Another…Who—”
She shrugged. “Swear to me you have no intention of using the gun on yourself. Please? Make the lousy life I’ve had so far bearable.”
His eyes darkened with despair before he glanced away and slowly nodded. “I swear.” He rubbed his chin, as if unsure what he needed to do next to help her. “Water.” He snapped his fingers and looked around. “Do I need to boil water? Where’s a damn pot?”
She heard the desperation in his voice—saw the hope on his face that he’d solved a problem where she was concerned. He looked around the room, she supposed on a mission to locate a pan to boil water in, a man clearly out of his element. She hated to rain on his parade, but she really didn’t need a pot of hot water.
“What for?” she groaned. She hadn’t meant to sound ungrateful, but her patience hung by a tiny thread.
“I don’t know. Don’t doctors always request boiling water at times like this?”
She forced a smile. “In the movies, maybe, what I need is a bathroom.”
“Bathroom?” He made it sound like an alien word. “Uh. It’s over there.” Wild pointed to a door across the room, the obvious relief on his face comical. The man really didn’t want to boil water.
“And…pads?”
The relief vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by utter blankness. “Pads?” Color crept beneath his high cheekbones as it hit him what she meant. “Oh, you mean like…” He coughed, as if the entire notion stuck in his throat. “Well, hell, I don’t have any…you know? Don’t use ‘em.”
“You’ll have to make some,” she said bluntly. Jayla started to rise from the bed, but instead dropped back onto it as a wave of weakness washed over her. She fell back, gasping. “Damn.”
“Hey, whoa-whoa-whoa.” Wild leapt toward her. “You don’t need to try and move by yourself. I’ll help you to the bathroom. Hell, I’ll carry you there if you need me to.”
“Oh! Oh, shit,” she exclaimed in horror. Sitting up, she rubbed a hand down her face.
“What? God, what’s wrong?” His eyes flared with panic. “If you don’t want me to carry you—”
“No, it isn’t that,” she hurried to assure him. “Umm, you have to go back to my car.” She pushed her hair out of eyes. “I’m so sorry, but you have to go back to my car.”
“No. No way. Are you
insane? I can’t leave you here alone. And don’t freak me out like that.”
“I didn’t mean to freak you out, but you have to go back. I left something behind I need.”
“Forget it, Jayla. Unless it’s a life or death situation, I’m not going back out in this weather. That blizzard has taken its sweet time settling in, but it’s about to get very vicious in this valley.”
“How vicious?”
“How vicious? As bad as the Great Blizzard of ’49, the worst blizzard to ever strike the U.S.”
She felt her heart catch. She didn’t know anything about a blizzard from ’49, but she had to convince him to return to the car.
He frowned. “Look, darlin,’ I’d go. I would. But this blizzard is going to be a white wind.”
“White wind?” Jayla felt as clueless as a flea.
“Yeah. The Great Blizzard was sometimes called the Great White Death. It was a series of blizzards that lasted up to seven weeks. People died. Animals died. No doubt your car will be buried under six feet of snow or more in a few hours. So no, unless it’s a matter of life or death, I’m not leaving this cabin again.”
“It is a matter of life or death.”
“No.” He tilted her chin with thumb and forefinger, searching her eyes. “Needing a tube of lipstick or a comb is not a matter of life or death. You look fine without the lip paint and I have a comb you can borrow.”
“Puh-lease. I’m not that vain. I need my insulin. I’m diabetic.”
He looked pole-axed, his face draining of color. “Fuck…you’ve got to be kidding?” He stared at her with disbelief. “You’re not kidding?”
“No. I–I’m sorry. I…it totally slipped my mind.”
“Slipped your mind?” He jerked off his hat and jammed it on a peg over the bed. “You don’t forget something like insulin.” His voice boomed across the room like thunder.
She flinched. “Well I was kind of busy.”
“Yeah, taking potshots at me,” he yelled, anger in every movement of his body.
“I didn’t know it was you.”