Slow Fever

by Cait London

  She flicked the flour from the hair on his chest and thought how lovely he looked. She couldn’t resist teasing him and tucked a strip of bacon into his mouth. He chewed it as though it were leather. He glared at her, a man with flour clinging to the peaks of his hair.

  “Would you just go back to bed and let me handle this?” he asked in the wary, frustrated tone that could delight her.

  “Yum,” she purred, taking in all that long, lean body, those powerful legs and rippled stomach and beautiful muscled chest. Then because she was feeling sensually powerful and feminine and wanted to distract Michael from his frustration, she tore open the borrowed shirt and flashed him.

  He gaped quite beautifully, as if his mind had gone blank, and she loved him more. Then as if it took all his control, Michael closed his eyes, trembled and the dark flush upon his cheeks dimmed. When his eyes opened again, they were slitted and shielded and brooding. “We have to talk…. That day we rode into town, I went before the Women’s Council and spoke my piece for you.”

  Now, I’ve done it, Michael thought as he watched Kylie draw together the edges of his shirt, covering her body, her face paling with shock.

  “What?” She shook her head as if she hadn’t heard, hadn’t understood him. “What?” she asked again, her hand closing around the cup of chamomile tea.

  Perhaps her chamomile bath hadn’t worked, hadn’t calmed her enough. A quick glance at the oven said it would be minutes before he could serve her pie. He recognized that taut stance, those blue, angry eyes burning him. He had only a few minutes before she exploded. For a woman with a loving heart, Kylie left nothing to question when she was angered. “Drink your tea, Kylie. Sweetheart. Dear heart. Now, Kylie. I meant to tell you. I meant to do things the right way, and then I just decided to do it.”

  “Without telling me.” Her voice was too quiet now, deadly.

  Michael ran his hands through his hair, realized that the burning smell was coming from the pie he’d hoped to serve her. He jerked on the oven mittens and bent to take the pie from the stove. Latticed on top and simmering in butter, sugar and cinnamon, it had not burned, but merely bubbled over onto the bottom of the oven. “Treacherous, damned things,” he muttered, thinking more of his heart than the pie.

  “Michael?” Kylie asked too quietly. “What did you say to them—the Women’s Council?”

  “Nothing is going right,” he said to himself, as his morning after making love to Kylie went sliding into the flour at his bare feet. “I said the usual things. Welcomed the Committee for the Welfare of Brides to make their inspection.”

  He’d been embarrassed then by the depth of love he could feel, by the future he’d dreamed of with Kylie. Even now, with her, the words were stuck tightly in his throat. But then, with Fidelity nodding encouragement, the words had begun to flow and when he was finished, he wondered why the women were teary. They were odd phrases, unfamiliar and tumbling over his tongue, much like he’d heard other men speak of their loves. He’d called her his “Sunshine” and his “morning dew,” his “buttercup” and his “rose.” There was something about holding her hand and watching the sunset when they were both gray and rocking on their front steps. He wished he could snag something of what he’d said now, as Kylie seemed to shimmer in the kitchen’s morning light, her hair frothing around her like a silky storm.

  “All this time everyone knew, but me?”

  Clearly, the discussion wasn’t going well as noted by the rising hitch in Kylie’s tone. “I wanted to give you more time,” Michael stated quite logically, he thought. He folded his arms and leaned back against the counter, watching her. He wasn’t taking back anything he’d said. “But I couldn’t wait. I’m usually pretty methodical about getting what I want, but with you, nothing is expected. There was Leon, using you, and the gossip, and it seemed the right thing to do. I haven’t done many right things in my life, but I knew that morning, that speaking for you was what your father would have done in the same situation. I respected him and my decision was logical.”

  “Oh, it was, was it?” she asked before hurling the cup at him. Michael dodged as it went hissing by him, only to clatter against the kitchen counter and fall to the floor.

  The saucer followed and Michael caught it, carefully placing it aside. “It’s done,” he stated, wanting his love to know he cared enough for her to make a fool of himself.

  “Yes, it is,” Kylie agreed with a hard jolt of finality, his shirt fluttering around her thighs as she stalked back to his bedroom.

  “Look, princess. You’re not going anywhere until we get this ironed out,” Michael said as he watched her furiously tug on her clothing.

  “Try and stop me,” she returned, punching him in the stomach as she passed.

  Michael snagged the back of her sweatshirt and hauled her back to his scowl. “I made you a pie. I got emotional that morning, okay? I woke up at Anna’s and thought how you should have a home just like that and I wanted— My first pie…you’re my first and it’s damned hard to be reasonable with you in a snit. You’ll stay and eat it and we’ll talk this out.”

  “Oh, will we?” she asked and delivered another punch that took his breath away. “Let me go. I’ll need time to think of all the ways I’m going to murder you.”

  When she tromped out of his house, Kylie scooped up his pie in a dish towel and left with it and his heart.

  Kylie sat on the floor, cross-legged, cuddling the warm pie that Michael had baked for her. She dug her spoon into the flaky crust, the juicy cinnamony apples and ignored the ringing telephone as she ate. “Pick up this call, dear heart,” Michael growled into the message machine.

  “When I’m ready.” He could be so lovely one minute and unbelievable the next. Kylie sighed and allowed the brimming tears to drop into her pie. She stirred them into the sweet mixture, not hungry for anything but Michael’s arms. She’s asked him for a date, but then in Freedom Valley, any woman could ask for dates, a custom usually reserved for men. She’d planned to work up to more dates and asking him for the last dance, another custom to define the man a woman chose as a husband. He’d just swept right ahead into asking for her—without her knowledge. He’d acted like an old-fashioned drover that day, riding into town with her on the back of his horse. He’d made her choose him there in the frost and the steam from the prancing horses, in front of men she’d known all her life. And she hadn’t known he was asking for her!

  The next call, she heard the rasp of his morning stubble against the telephone as the machine took his message. “We just need some fine-tuning. I’m not going to apologize for speaking for you. Look, maybe it is a little quick. You’re making a new life. I want to be part of it. It seems to me that we’ve wasted enough time. Answer this call, Kylie. I’ve got to go and I want this settled.”

  His temper and frustration were brewing and so were hers.

  The morning after making love with Michael, she should have been still in his arms, locked away from the world. But she wasn’t. She was dealing with the wasted past and the future and tumbling emotions she hadn’t expected. She’d wanted to be feminine for Michael and he hadn’t seen her in anything but sweat clothes and jeans. She’d given little to the customs of Freedom Valley and Michael had taken steps that she knew had cost him. He wasn’t a man to explain his feelings and that’s what the Women’s Council would have demanded of him. She should have been supportive, encouraging him, and he hadn’t let her. Kylie ignored another call from him, noting the desperation. “I’ve got to go away, Kylie. We’ve got to talk.”

  She jerked up the telephone. “Hey, buddy. You’re a little late with that offer. I trusted you. You missed a step or two. Like a discussion with me.”

  “I haven’t had that much experience, dear heart. Give me a break.” His impatience rasped over the line. “I need to see you.”

  There was a long thoughtful pause and then Michael noted slowly, “It’s because you aren’t directing the relationship, because you like to be in control and
you weren’t, isn’t it?”

  She’d always had to take charge of decisions, be responsible for both herself and Leon. But the word “control” snagged.

  “Now, get this, princess. I’m not your ex-husband. I know this happened fast, but— If you need time to transfer—”

  “Transfer? Transfer? Like in ownership papers?” she demanded sharply. She’d never experienced the heights of ecstasy that Michael had given her, and he had just used business language to define what ran hot between them. “I could have worn a dress that day, Michael. It’s a big day in a girl’s life when a man goes before the Women’s Council.”

  “A dress? What’s that got to do with anything?” His frustration rasped through the line.

  She wanted to be romantic, to be feminine and to please him. She’d been known as a tomboy most of her life, and now she wanted all of Freedom Valley to know that Michael had chosen a feminine woman. She knew that wasn’t the important part of a relationship, that her logic had to do with Leon’s insults. Yet silly and frivolous, it was important to her. “Some things are important, Michael. You’ve never seen me in a dress.”

  “Well, hell,” he muttered, as if trying to place Venus in alignment with Mars and the New York Mets in the Pee Wee children’s leagues.

  “The pie is good,” she said, because in Freedom Valley, manners were important. Then she disconnected the line, which wasn’t exactly sweet.

  Kylie scanned the shadows of her mother’s home, always so safe and warm, and knew it was time to examine her own life, to give Michael the tenderest part of herself. Were the dreams of filling her own home still there? The ones she’d placed in her hope chest and ignored for years? Was this how her mother had felt long ago, courted by her father?

  She took his pie into the kitchen, placing it in her mother’s pie safe. Was it true that when a girl in Freedom Valley embroidered and dreamed of love and a home all her own, that dream would come true?

  Kylie rose up the steps to her bedroom, carefully removed her childhood dolls and the doily covering her hope chest. Neatly folded above her own work were three baby blankets her mother had made, the stitches tiny and placed with love. Kylie drew them out, hugged them close against her, then reached for the envelope marked “Kylie, my youngest.”

  The lovely paper shook in Kylie’s hands as she read. “Kylie. If you are reading this, you’ve come home. I hope to see your face when you see the blankets I’ve made for my grandchildren. Miranda and Tanner each have their own and I made three for each of you, as a reminder of how close all of you were, my dear children. Instincts move you and that is good because you sense what is right. Trust yourself, Kylie, and what is beautiful and giving in your heart. You live with laughter and, in you, I see a part of myself, the need to heal and give to others. Treasure most of all, who you are and what you bring to your love. Unless all the signs are wrong, one man has given his heart to you long ago and I venture to say, he’ll fill these blankets soon enough, once you agree. You were made to be cherished and loved and to fill a home with happiness and a family. When love really comes to you, it will sweep you off your feet and you’ll claim him for your own before he has a chance to escape. Kiss my grandchildren for me, Kylie, and know that I am with you always. I love you. Mom.”

  An hour later, Karolina threw pebbles against Kylie’s upstairs window. With a groan, Kylie knew her friend wouldn’t be ignored. Only a few years ago, Karolina had climbed up that big oak tree beside the house and crawled across a limb. Kylie scrubbed away her tears, her mother’s journals spread on the bed beside her, each one telling of Anna’s love of her family and the people in Freedom Valley. “Men are rogues,” her mother had written, as if she’d been thinking of Michael. “Boys and men and beasts in one mad frustrating package. Tenderness can be shielded, and sometimes it’s up to us to make sense of their maddening ways. It’s for women to sort out how men touch our hearts and what runs true within us.”

  Downstairs, Kylie jerked open the door for her friend. “I’m having a conversation with Mom. Go away.”

  Karolina, hunched against the cold wind, blinked. “Huh?”

  She recovered quickly, shoving past Kylie. “You’ve been crying. I knew it. I just knew that jerk would hurt you. He’s leaving now. Just slid out of town in that big black rig of his, like he does when he brings back one of his women.”

  “They are his friends,” Kylie managed through a throat clogged with tears.

  “You’re defending him? You don’t even want to know what he does when he’s away? Come on, let’s follow him.”

  Half an hour later, Kylie grumbled, “I don’t know why I let you talk me into things.”

  She huddled in the passenger seat of Karolina’s tiny car. If Michael were headed for another woman, that meant that she hadn’t satisfied him. She didn’t know if she could bear the blow to her pride. “Have you thought of getting another hobby, Karolina?”

  “Grump. That’s his taillights up there and his license plate. Now all we have to do is follow him.”

  Four hours later, the small town in Wyoming gleamed wet beneath the streetlights. In a shabby neighborhood, Michael’s four-wheeler pulled into a small, overgrown driveway, near a tiny house. Karolina turned off her headlamps and pulled onto the opposite side of the street. “Good view.”

  “I don’t like this.” What was Michael doing? Why had he driven here? What if he did have another woman, coming to her after making love to Kylie? She couldn’t bear to see him hold another woman, to kiss her.

  Beaded by rain, another late model car was parked beside a battered pickup. The house lights were all on, outlining the woman who ran to meet him. In the dim light her face was hauntingly beautiful, framed by long glossy hair. He hugged her briefly and a fist clenched around Kylie’s heart as Michael’s head bent intimately to the woman’s. From the concealing shadows of brush, Kylie watched Michael and the woman walk up the steps. A man jerked open the door and from the raging set of his powerful body, he was angry. He rammed a punch at Michael and somehow Michael dragged him from the steps as the woman entered the house.

  Kylie had never seen pure rage, pure anger, a bully tearing after Michael. She couldn’t move, her heart bloodless. Michael easily sidestepped the beefier man’s blows, and with one cutting motion of his hand took the bully to the wet ground. The man lunged to his feet, pounding at Michael, who moved agilely aside. Even in the dim light, and inexperienced in viewing brawls, Kylie noted the back alley standards of the man. She shivered, unable to move, realizing suddenly how Michael had lived, how he’d survived. An experienced fighter, Michael easily stepped aside to down the man again. In the dim light, Michael’s face was harsh as he crouched beside the man, speaking to him. The violence in his expression terrified her.

  Then the woman came out, sheltering another heavily pregnant woman within her arms, easing her into Michael’s vehicle. While Michael continued to talk to the man, the woman ran back into the house, carrying out two suitcases. Michael rose and took them from her, easily hefting them into the rear of his vehicle. The beautiful woman stood near and protective as he made another trip into the house, returning with two small boxes. Then he turned to the man struggling to his feet. The look on Michael’s face was cold and deadly as he placed his boot on the man’s throat. The man nodded when Michael stopped speaking.

  Kylie swiped at the tears in her eyes. The scene explained itself: a woman needed protecting and Michael was there for her. He’d told her of his sister, Lily—how she’d died unprotected. This was what Michael did in remembrance of Lily. Michael’s fierce expression, the efficient movements of his body, told her that he was well trained in brawling. Yet he’d handled her so carefully, the effort costing him, the tension running through his expression and his body. She hadn’t fully realized how powerful and lethal he could be, yet with her—

  As if they’d run through the same savage scenario many times before, the beautiful, stately woman nodded and slid into her car, driving away. Michae
l backed away from the house and Karolina’s excited speculations ran throughout the four hours to Freedom Valley. Finally, Kylie had enough. It had taken her a full hour to recover from the violence at that small house. This was the man he didn’t want her to see, the violent man ready to protect an endangered woman. He didn’t want her to see what lurked in his past, and Kylie bit her lip, remembering the wounds on his body. He’d held her reverently in the night, his body trembling, holding that full primitive violence away from her, because he was afraid he would be like his father, a brute.

  “Oh, Michael, you could never be that,” she whispered as the windshield wipers click-clacked through the memories of his lovemaking. He’d feared hurting her, not trusting himself. “When we get to Michael’s, you are to let me off and you are to go home and say nothing.”

  Michael had known he was being followed and he suspected Karolina was the culprit. He didn’t have time to stop and challenge her; he had to take care of the woman he’d retrieved. Michael’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. Jeanne’s contractions had started and Dr. Thomas White was on his way. At Michael’s house, he eased Jeanne from the car and carried her into the house. He glanced at the lights veering off the road, outlining the woman running to him.

  “This is Jeanne,” he said quietly as Kylie hurried after him into the guest room. Her eyes were wide and he recognized the quivering edge of shock. He had no time to explain. How could he? How could he tell her that he was best suited to destroy? “She needs help. Her baby is coming now, too fast, and it’s her first. Her water broke earlier, the contractions close together. She’s probably already dilated. She didn’t want to stop at a hospital. Rosa told her she would be safe with me.”

  Once she’d heard the woman cry out, Kylie hadn’t asked questions. She’d simply acted just as Anna had, moving to give comfort. She squeezed Michael’s arm and searched his hard face, finding the fear in it that he would fail. “Michael, I saw everything at the house. That man— She needs a doctor.”