"Five years."
She said it so matter-of-factly that he had to keep repeating it to put it in perspective. Five years! Mountain girls married young, he knew, but she simply didn't act or look or . . . Lord, he couldn't imagine her having been with another man for so long. Especially a man she hadn't cared for.
He grabbed at a barstool as if he were about to collapse. He sat, his mind whirling with bits and pieces of information until nothing made sense to him.
When he'd touched her, when they'd kissed, he could have sworn she was an innocent, that she wasn't used to being touched by a man, the way a married woman would be. Could he have mistaken shyness for inexperience? Possibly. But he'd kissed a few women in his time, and a man could tell . . . couldn't he?
He watched Ellis carry a tray of beer bottles to a table across the room and tried to imagine her with some man that she didn't like, with any man that . . . well, that wasn't Bryce LaSalle, and nausea churned in his abdomen.
The rage Bryce felt was overpowering and all consuming. Raw and animallike. He wanted her. And in that instant he knew as well as he knew his own name that he'd kill if another man touched her. He went berserk for a minute, picturing himself grabbing a fistful of her thick yellow hair and dragging her back to his cave to protect her and to keep her all to himself. For a man who was generally easygoing and gentle, it was quite a revelation.
He shuddered and blinked his eyes to clear his head. When he could see straight and think logically again, his gaze sought Ellis—as it did whenever she was around.
She was still across the room, setting the beers on the table one at a time. Perhaps it was the stiff manner to which she moved or the way her head was bent, or maybe it was just that instinct he'd been feeling moments earlier that alerted him to the fact that something was amiss with her. He stood and craned his neck to see who was sitting at the table she was waiting on and what, if anything, was happening.
In the time it took a firefly to light up the night, he was battle ready when he saw Reuben Evans with a sneer on his lips and a taunting glint in his eye, his face turned in Ellis's direction.
"I asked ya a question, girl," Reuben said. Ellis refused to raise her eyes to his and answer. “You dumb or just too stupid to talk?"
"She already told ya she didn't wanna dance with ya, Evans," one of the other men at the table said. "Leave her be. I seen Bryce LaSalle come in a while back. Leave her be."
"I don't care if she's sleepin' with the king of I-ran," Reuben said, grabbing up the beer she'd set before him. "I asked her a question, and I want her answer. These damn hillbillies come driftin' into town lookin' for food and handouts and think the world owes it to 'em. They're livin' off my tax money, so when I ask one a question, I want an answer." He turned his narrow stare on Ellis. "Why won't ya dance with me? Too stupid to dance? Or are ya thinkin' you're too good to dance with the likes of me?"
"Maybe she just don't like your face, man," one of the other men said, laughing, slapping Reuben on the back in a friendly, inoffensive manner.
This wasn't the first time Reuben Evans had come into the Steel Wheel, gotten drunk, and spent the rest of the night taunting Ellis. Three nights earlier she'd been carrying a tray full of beers to a table near his and he'd tripped her, and though she couldn't prove that it had been intentional, he'd laughed harder than anyone else.
"Don't keep me waitin', hillbilly," he said with a snarl. "You think 'cuz you're sleepin' with a high 'n' mighty LaSalle now that you're more'n just a hillbilly, too good to speak to me?"
"I ain't," she said, looking at him briefly then quickly looking away, afraid of the hatred and anger she saw in his expression. Sleeping with men was something she'd been accused of before. It seemed to go along with being baseborn. But hearing the act coupled with Bryce's name on the lips of Reuben Evans made her ill inside. She set the last bottle on the table and announced the amount of the tab.
"You ain't what? Sleepin’ with LaSalle? Or too good for me?"
She stood stiffly, silently, stoically, waiting for him to pay the bill. It was best to say nothing, she told herself, biting her lower lip to keep it from flapping out words she knew she'd regret. It was best to say nothing, to try and be invisible. He'd tire of his game, she reminded herself. Drunks always got tired.
"Leave her be," the first man said again, nervously. 'You're only baitin' her to get to Bryce, and I don't want nothin' to do with it."
"If you're scared of him, go set someplace else," Evans snapped, glaring at the man, who stared back for several seconds before he snatched up his beer and left the table.
Ellis took her opportunity to grab up the money from the table and turn to leave, walking straight into Bryce's arms.
She tilted her head back to look up into his face, but his gaze was fixed on Reuben Evans—and was as hard and cold as frozen emeralds.
“You got a problem here?" he asked her without looking at her or releasing his hold on her upper arms.
"No," she said automatically, recognizing two men ready to cloud up and rain all over each other. "No problem. Let's go."
She had every confidence that Bryce could hold his own in a fair fight with Reuben Evans, and she felt no guilt in admitting that she'd like to see Bryce clean his plow. But every instinct in her body told her that Bryce wouldn't get a fair fight out of him. He was as mean as a junkyard dog and twice as foul. He was spoiling to harm Bryce in a bad way, and she'd tolerate any abuse rather than see it happen.
"Come on," she said, pushing fruitlessly on his chest. "Let's go."
He continued to stare at Reuben for a long tense moment. He'd drawn a line and was daring the man to spit over it. When he did nothing but stare back, words became necessary.
"If anybody even looks cross-eyed at ya, I wanna hear about it," he said.
The words and the way he spoke them triggered something in Ellis. Her own temper flared up. Who did they think she was? One using her as bait, the other making sounds as if he owned her. She was sick of being used, and she'd die before she let another man own her.
She tore loose of Bryce's hold and left him to glower himself silly at Evans. If they wanted to raise dust, let them, she thought, stalking back to the bar with her tray.
Bryce followed her a few minutes later and tried to talk to her, but she didn't want to have anything to do with him. She'd made another mistake, thinking him a friend.
"What the hell is the matter with you?" he asked, after several attempts to get her attention had failed. She kept looking through him as if he didn't exist, and it irritated him.
She watched Tug set four beers on her tray and didn't respond. When she left the bar to deliver the beers, Bryce was right behind her, saying, “You never had any trouble speaking your mind to me before. Don't tell me you've gone shy on me."
She stopped at a table in the middle of the room and set the bottles down, unaware that they'd left a trail of turned heads in their wake.
"Dammit, Ellis, I thought we agreed to be friends," he said in a voice that was loud enough to be heard two tables away, above the Patsy Cline record playing in the jukebox. "Friends talk. There can't be any of this cold shoulder stuff. Friends fight fair."
"Well, I told ya I didn't know much about bein' friends," she said, brushing past him, walking toward the bar again. "I sure didn't know they owned ya."
"Owned ya?" He was lost. A woman could get a man lost faster than walking in the woods with a potato sack on his head. It was a fact he knew well.
"Yeah. Owned ya," she said, sending him a querulous glance. "Like ya was a dog or a cow or somethin'."
"What are ya talkin' about?"
Men could be as thick as bricks. It was a fact she knew well. Her mouth was full of informative words when she happened to notice that half the people in the bar were watching them. She marched over to the backroom door and passed through, then turned to face him and lay it all out for him.
"I'm talkin' about what ya did out there with Reuben Evans. Makin' l
ike I was a piece of your property," she said, her hands moving to her hips. "I don't need ya to be fightin’ my fights for me or struttin' 'round actin' like some rooster defendin' his hen. Folks are already startin' to think we're beddin' down together, and then ya come 'round actin' like I belong to ya. . . . Next thing I know, you'll be smackin' me around just to show 'em that I do."
Bryce was stunned . . . floored . . . out cold, actually. She'd tossed him a few mild punches, then decked him in the final second. He could defend himself against the first few blows, but the last one was a whopper! How could she possibly think . . . ?
"Smack you?" he asked, appalled, hoping he'd misunderstood her. "Smack you? Me?" His voice grew high pitched. "I've never hit a woman in all my life. Not even my sister. Ever. I couldn't. I can't ..."
He stopped, slugged in the gut by a sudden streak of insight. He searched her face for testimony to the horror he was feeling, and found it in the depths of her eyes.
He took the pain, fear, and rage he found in her soul and locked it in his heart. Grief and regret stung his eyes, and his hand reached out to her. He palmed her cheek, wishing he could remove the misery delivered by the palm of the last man who had touched her.
"He beat you?" he asked softly, not wanting to believe it, unable to comprehend it. How could anyone, even the world's worst monster, hit a face that looked so like an angel's? “Your husband? He beat you?"
"No," she said, bewildered, rattled by his overwhelming gentleness. "No. He . . . he didn't beat me. He just smacked me around sometimes." As an afterthought she added, "But never when he wasn't drinkin'."
"I'm sorry, Ellis," he said. It was all he could think of to say. He was feeling a multitude of emotions, but his sorrow was the only one he could verbalize. He knew such brutality existed all around him, but he never could abide it.
"No need to be sorry," she said, feeling like a short dog in tall grass about his remorse. Why was he sorry? "You ain't laid a finger to me yet, though I been expectin' ya to any number of times."
"Me? I wouldn't. I won't. Ever," he said, a bit disjointed, astonished that she'd think such a thing of him. "Why would I?"
“Well, ya know by now that I have a bit of a temper," she said, seriously lamenting her greatest flaw. "And ya musta seen that ya have a real gift for irritatin' it."
He thought she had a real gift for understatement.
"I don't set out to," he said.
She doubted this, but decided to forego comment.
"Well, what it comes to is that I haven't always been able to hold my tongue with you. Mr. Johnson wouldn't stand for my back-talkin'. Not the way you have."
"You thought I'd hit ya for speakin' your mind?"
She shrugged. From the moment she'd met him, she hadn't known how he'd react in any given situation. He was as unpredictable as lightning in a thunderstorm. He laughed when he should have shouted; he was gentle when he should have been angry.
True to form, he surprised her when his other hand mimicked the action of the first, cupping her face. Her breath caught in her throat. He lowered his head and pressed a soft kiss to each cheek before he sipped gently on her lower lip. Her pulse hammered and her body quickened. He nibbled at her upper lip, touched the comers with the tip of his tongue and finally covered her mouth with his.
Her eyes closed slowly but firmly on her old world as a genesis took place within her.
With painstaking care he breathed life into something new and wonderful deep in her soul. An artiste, he created sensations in her body that she'd never dreamed possible. His arms lowered to hold her close in an easy, undemanding embrace. Intuitively she knew she was free to break away. Or to stay if she so chose. She chose to stay.
He awakened a tingling energy that surged through her veins, sensitizing her nerve endings, intensifying his every touch. He delivered her into a state of arousal, alert to the exquisite sensation of pressing her breasts to his chest, aware of the excitement in her midsection, attuned to the pulsating force below that. He was the origin of a new power inside of her and witness to the debut of her sexuality as her hands began to explore the mass and magnitude of his tall, taut body. Her lips grew bold and daring; her body began to tense, impetuously offering him his finest fantasies.
His mouth traveled over her skin, his hands pressed and caressed her body. He pleasured her, giving, demanding nothing in return. Her senses overloaded. She was weak and wobbly. She staggered. Her head reeled when he turned her, placing her back against a solid wall.
His hands returned to her face as if they'd never been elsewhere. His kisses, sweet and tender, tried to wean her back to reality, but she was having none of it. Clinging tightly, she wanted to stay in the wonderworld he'd introduced her to. He pulled his lips away and chuckled knowingly when she whimpered in dismay.
"Do you trust me, Ellis?" he asked, beyond gratified to see passion in her eyes when she opened them.
Trust? He had her in the palm of his hand, defenseless. He could hurt her in any number of ways at that moment, and yet she knew he wouldn't. She knew he'd keep her safe, protect her, treasure her. Did she trust him?
“Yes," she murmured, her voice husky with emotion.
"Then believe that I wouldn't hurt you," he said, wanting her to believe with all his heart . . . wanting her with all his being. He took in the details of her face and suddenly knew, as if he'd been hit in the head with an anvil, that he was falling in love with her. Not because she needed him, but because she didn't and was more the twin of his soul.
He could have the urge to protect her and he could try to keep her from harm, to provide for her, to do all the things a man was supposed to do for a woman. But he hadn't a suspicion in his brain that there was anything weak about Ellis. Fatherless, motherless, married at fifteen to an abusive husband—Lord knew what else she'd endured in her short life that she hadn't told him about yet—and still she'd emerged spirited, strong, and determined. Ellis could take care of herself. Her life was her own. But just as sure as a cat's got climbing gear, he was going to find a way of convincing her to share it with him.
His hands moved to grip her shoulders.
"If you want to say somethin’ to me, say it. Wherever, whenever you got somethin' to say. I wanna know what ya think and what ya feel," he said, his fingers digging into her flesh.
She felt the pressure on her arms but it was miles from painful. Rather, it was a sign of his frank sincerity, and she put her faith in him. 'Course, like ice on a pond, it was always smart to test its strength before venturing too far from shore.
"I want ya to stay away from Reuben Evans," she stated, tensing in anticipation of an explosion.
Surprised, he pulled away from her.
"He's hurtin' you to get to me, Ellis," he said. "This time you're fightin' a fight that ain't yours."
"He ain't hurtin' me. And as long as he's bad-mouthin' me, it is my fight," she said. She hadn't wanted Bryce to come to blows with Evans earlier, fresh from the discovery of his friendship. She surely didn't want them coming together now that she'd uncovered the wondrous feelings a friend could incite in her. Even more selfishly, Reuben was a reminder.
"Ya want me to stand around and let him do that to ya?" He was emotionally, intellectually, and religiously opposed to the idea. Good ol' boys had their ethics, it was part of their charm.
"Yes," she said, but as a pacifier she added, "When he starts bad-mouthin' you, it can be your fight."
Well, there were ways to jump a fence and ways to jump a fence, he knew. Reuben Evans was the sort of fence he'd jumped before.
"Fair enough," he said, a slow grin coming to his lips. "On one condition."
She frowned. "Do friends do that? Put conditions on their word?"
"Sometimes."
In her dreams, friends were friends conclusively, without conditions. But then, she'd found most of her dreams to be silly and unreasonable, which was why she put so little stock in them. Besides, he was standing so close, his eyes were so intense
, his lips were so tempting . . . how could she refuse him?
"What condition?"
"Grant me the honor of a birthday dance."
It was an elegant request, and one that flattered her no end, but ...
"I can't dance." She lowered her eyes. She knew dancing was something a woman ought to know, like plowing and sewing. She'd stolen through the night to sneak a peek at the barn dances back in Stony Hollow more than once. She knew the way of things. Mamas taught their daughters things like dancing and flirting, the way they did cooking and cleaning. Part of Ellis's education had died at birth.
“You can dance," he said, lifting her face to his. "Ya told me yourself you were old enough to do everything but die of old age."
"I meant important stuff. Earnin' a livin', bein' on my own. . . ."
"Important stuff?" He was open mouthed, bug eyed, and looking truly shocked. "Hell, Ellis! There ain't nothin' in the world more important than holdin' a pretty girl in your arms—real close like this—and movin' together to soft music." With a singularly sexy sway of his torso against hers, he demonstrated his point.
Oh my, she thought.
“Ya think if I had me a friend, he could teach me?"
"I think it would pleasure him no end."
Eight
Once, years earlier, Effie Watson had received a box of fancy chocolates from her brother for Christmas. She'd left the box open on the kitchen table, kindly allowing each of the children to take one piece. For Ellis, friendship was just such a gift. For once she'd taken one piece, she was hard put not to take another.
A curious phenomenon, friendship. It seemed that acquiring one friend entailed the acquisition of several of his closest buddies, which entailed the acquisition of several of their closest companions, which entailed . . . well, Ellis was soon acquainted with half the town of Webster, much to her amazement.
Clear-eyed and cautious as ever, she fostered no delusions as to the cause of her sudden popularity in town. The LaSalles were favored sons in Webster, and it was their stamp of approval that caused the men and women she waited on at the Steel Wheel and at Looty's to lift a hand in greeting when they saw her on the street and to ask about her health in a fashion that made her believe they were genuinely interested.
Sweet Dreamin' Baby Page 10