by Warner, Kaki
“Whoa,” he said, jerking to a halt. “What’re you doing out here?”
“Rocking.” When he just stood there, she said, “Would you care to join me?”
“Sure.” His gaze flicked from her to the other usable chair and back. He didn’t move.
“Let me guess,” she said with a sigh. “This is your chair.”
“Well. Yeah. I’d break the other one.”
“So you want me to get up, even though I shouldn’t be on my feet more than necessary, and move to the chair with that nasty saddle pad, even though I’m wearing my best—”
With an economy of motion, Brady kicked off the saddle pad, lifted her out of the rocker, and gently deposited her in the straight chair. “There. Now we’re both happy.” Then with a long sigh, he settled into the rocker beside her. “You like my porch?”
Still disoriented and somewhat shocked that he would—or was even able to—hoist her about like a sack of feed, she glanced over at him.
He was looking up at the oversized logs that served as rafters, his profile a dark silhouette against the starlit sky. She noted the angles of his jaw, the way his Adam’s apple stood out in sharp relief, the cords of muscle in his neck as it dipped down to form a hollow at the base of his throat.
She had a theory about a man’s neck. If it was too thin, he looked weak. Too long, and he might be indecisive. If it was too thick or too closely attached to his shoulders, he lacked imagination and possibly good sense. But if it were the perfect blend of strength and masculine grace, it would look exactly like Brady Wilkins’s.
“It is very nice,” she finally answered. “And big.”
He looked over at her. “Too big? Jack thinks it’s too big.”
Jessica studied the uprights that were almost too stout to reach around, the floor made of slabs of wood rather than planks, the railing that would stand long after the house collapsed. It was a reflection of the man who built it—big, sturdy, beautiful in its simplicity. “It’s perfect,” she said.
He studied her for a moment, then said, “Yeah. Perfect.”
But it didn’t sound like he meant the porch. Ignoring a flutter in her chest, she looked away.
For a long while they sat without speaking, facing the valley and the stars hovering on the fingertips of the mountains. For Jessica, it wasn’t a comfortable silence, sitting in the dark with a man she scarcely knew. But she sensed her discomfort stemmed more from the lack of propriety than the presence of the man beside her.
“I’ll have Buck build you a rocker,” he said, ending the long silence. “You’ll need one for when the baby—babies—come.”
She was touched. “That’s not necessary, but thank you.” She would have to remember to add “generous” to her list for the archbishop.
“I’m not giving up mine.”
Or perhaps not. “I’m not asking you to.”
“Yeah, but you’re thinking about it.”
“You have no idea what I’m thinking.”
His head turned toward her, and even though his expression was lost in the shadows, she sensed his grin. “Don’t I?”
The audacity. For one shocked and irrational moment, she wondered if he had read her thoughts then realized that was impossible.
“If you truly knew what I was thinking, you would be begging my forgiveness.”
“For what?”
“The list is endless.”
He grunted and faced the railing again. “I’ll have Buck make you a rocker anyway.”
How deflating to try to trade barbs with someone who wouldn’t play. Silence again. This time it was she who ended it. “I wanted to thank you for—”
“You already did.” He sounded almost irritated.
“Yes, well. It was a lovely party and I—”
“You already said that, too.”
“Nonetheless, you and Elena outdid—”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it. It was all her and the other women.”
“Are you trying to be disagreeable?”
“Am I being disagreeable?” He looked over. “I thought it was you.” The man was an unrepentant tease. “I don’t know how Elena can bear it,” she muttered.
“Bear what?”
“You.”
“Me?”
She waggled a finger at him. “You don’t deserve her and that’s the truth of it.”
“Elena is like a sister. Why is that so hard for everybody to understand?”
Jessica blinked at him. “You mean . . . you’re not . . . she’s not . . . ?”
“I mean there is no me and Elena. Christ! Do I have to carve a sign?”
Startled by his outburst, Jessica pressed back against the slats of the chair.
He saw it and gave a mocking laugh. “So now you’re afraid of me again?” In the dim light she could see white teeth beneath the black shadow of his mustache. A smile or a sneer? “Did you think you were safer with Elena between us? Did you think that would protect you?”
Protect her? From what? Was he threatening her?
He stopped rocking. He leaned closer. “I have news for you, Your Ladyship. If a man wants something bad enough, he won’t let anything stand in his way.”
Alarmed by his sudden change of mood, she started to rise. “Yes. Well—”
“Your brother’s not in Socorro.” He started rocking again.
She plopped back into the chair. “He’s not?”
“Left last year, headed up the northwest coast. Probably in Alaska chasing gold.”
Alaska? How would she ever find him in Alaska? She wasn’t even sure where Alaska was.
He must have sensed her agitation. “It’s not as bad as you think. You’ve got three months to find him, right? Meanwhile you can stay here, where the ladies can take care of you, then you’ll have your babies and everything will—”
“Oh, be quiet!” she snapped. “You have no idea. None. And don’t you dare patronize me!” She felt him staring at her but was too distraught to care. She had to think, come up with a solution to this latest catastrophe. A plan. She needed a plan.
Two babies. No brother. No place to go. How could she plan for that?
“Maybe there’s someone else I could try to reach?”
She pressed her fingertips hard against her temple. She felt herself sinking, her mind sliding back into that dark place where fear and anger reigned. She could scarcely breathe, could scarcely think. How could she take care of Victoria with no home, no money? They would starve.
“Maybe someone in England?”
His voice sliced through her terror like a blade, severing the last frayed thread of her control. The next instant all her pent-up fear spewed out in a rush of angry words. “Who? My sister? She doesn’t even know where I am. My husband? I don’t have one. Or a lover. Or anyone who could help me.” Fury churned in her chest, rose in her throat like bile. “There is no one who would even care except the filthy beast who drove me from my home, my family—God.”
Tears she’d held back for too long spilled down her cheeks in a hot rush. That wounded part of her wanted to rise up and scream at the outrage, the unfairness of having her life, her soul, so violated. “It wasn’t my fault. I did nothing wrong.” Unable to stop herself, she pressed her clenched fists over her eyes and gave in to wracking sobs.
Brady sat stunned, not only by what she had revealed but also by the suddenness and rawness of her pain. Had he triggered this? Said something? He stared at her, this woman who was suddenly a stranger to him. Her anguish was a tangible thing, so powerful it held him pinned to the chair. If he knew what was wrong, he’d fix it. But what could he do? Reasoning wouldn’t work, and he was afraid if he touched her or said the wrong thing again, she might shatter into a thousand jagged pieces.
As if in great pain, she bent forward in the chair, shoulders shaking, hands over her face. Other than great gasping breaths, she made no sound.
Jesus. He had to stop this. Now. “Come here.” A calm touch soothed frac
tious horses. Maybe it would work on her.
She began to keen.
“Okay. I’ll come to you.” He scooted the rocker over until it butted up against her chair. “Give me your hand.”
She didn’t, so he gently pried it from her face. It was wet from her tears. Twining his fingers through hers, he bound them together from palm to elbow along the arm of the rocker.
Then he sat back and waited.
Christ. He hated this. Crying women made his stomach knot. His mother had cried a lot that summer Sam died, and Brady had been helpless to cope with his own misery much less hers. So he had blocked it, armoring himself against her grief and his own guilt and despair, until eventually when she slowly drifted away, he had felt nothing but a distant and regretful relief. It was a cowardly and unworthy act and it shamed him still.
He wouldn’t make the same mistake now.
Steeling himself to patience, he let her cry herself out, wondering if she would permit him to comfort her and, if she did, would he even know how. He didn’t have much practice in such things, but for her sake, he was willing to try.
It took a while, but in inches and degrees she gave in to him, first allowing herself to lean against him, then resting her forehead against his shoulder, and finally pressing her face into his arm as she wept. A small thing, but a victory nonetheless.
It scared the hell out of him. Not only because in breaking through her barriers he had formed a deeper connection to a woman he didn’t understand, but also because it revealed to him how deeply it mattered to have gained even a small measure of her trust.
You stupid bastard.
“Tell me,” he said once the crying slowed and she got herself in hand. He knew the cost of silence, and how unspoken words could grow into an unswallowable mass lodged in your throat.
“No.” With the back of her hand she blotted tears from her cheeks, a purely feminine gesture that made something clench deep inside his chest. “I just want to forget.”
“You’ll never forget. Tell me.”
At first he thought she wouldn’t. Then in a voice devoid of the firestorm of emotion that had burned through her earlier, she spoke. “His name is John Crawford. He’s my sister’s husband. She doesn’t know and I—I couldn’t tell her. She thinks he’s perfect, you see. A diamond of the first water. Perhaps he is and it’s only around me that—”
“It’s not your fault,” he cut in, furious that she would think it was.
With two fingers she plucked at a pleat in her skirt. She cleared her throat. “Thank you for saying that. But there’s no denying I brought it on myself. I chose wrong, you see.”
He waited.
“As the firstborn daughter, I inherited Bickersham Hall. He wanted to mortgage it to pay his creditors. I could either sign over the deed or suffer the consequences. I wouldn’t sign.”
He said nothing, just listened, chewing silently on his rage while she told him in short, faltering sentences absent of detail or emotion, how John Crawford, her brother-in-law, a man she had trusted, a man who was part of her family and who should have been her protector, had become her rapist instead.
Brady didn’t know what to say. What any man could say. It shamed them all.
“After—after it was over, he righted his clothing and asked if I had enjoyed ‘our little interlude.’ That’s what he called it. An interlude.” She made a strangled sound that could have been a laugh or a sob, he wasn’t sure which.
“I told him I would never give him the deed. He became very angry and he—he put his hands on me again—and hurt me. When that didn’t work, he used his fists, but only where it wouldn’t show.”
Brady worked to keep his breathing even.
“He said he would come back the next day . . . and the next . . . and the next until I signed over the deed. Instead, I ran.” By the time she had finished, she was shaking again.
Stroking his fingertips over the hand that held his in a stranglehold, Brady tried to focus on her pain rather than his rage. “You’re safe now. I won’t let him get at you here.” He thought about that poster outside the sheriff’s office in El Paso, and wondered if it would be wrong to lure the bastard to the ranch. A word here or there, just enough to bring the sonofabitch—
“Rescuing me again, are you?” She gave him a wobbly smile.
He forced himself to smile back. “If you’ll lend me your umbrella.” It was a good thing she wasn’t a crier because she didn’t do a pretty job of it. Her eyes were swollen, her hair was a mess of tangles, and her nose was running. Yet unaccountably, he had an almost overwhelming urge to wrap her in his arms.
When he felt her start to rise, he tightened his grip on her hand, not ready to relinquish it before he made some response to all that she’d told him. But what could he say? Words wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t make her pain or his rage go away.
So he gave her what he could. “You want me to kill him for you?” He wasn’t altogether sure how sincere the offer was, especially if he had to go all the way to England to carry it out, but it sounded good when he said it, and if a little bloodletting was what was needed to make her feel better, he would surely consider it.
She either laughed or hiccupped, Brady couldn’t tell which. Then she patted his arm with her free hand, a friendly gesture that told him she would be all right now. He wondered if he would.
“You’re daft. But you do say the sweetest things.”
“Just tell me where he is.” Now that she’d refused the offer, he felt it wouldn’t matter if he embellished it a bit.
This time she did laugh, and a welcome sound it was. “You. In England. I think not.”
“I could send Jack. He wants to go to Australia and that’s almost the same.”
She reared back. “It most assuredly is not. Australia is full of convicts.”
“And kookaburras.”
“Kooka-whats?”
Taking advantage of her distraction, he reached across with his free hand to tuck a drooping curl behind her ear. It pleased him she didn’t flinch from his touch. “Jessica,” he chided softly, using her name for the first time. “How could you ever think it was your fault?”
She looked down at the fist she clenched in her lap. “I should have stopped him. Fought harder. Done something.”
“You did exactly what you were supposed to do. You survived.” He pressed the tips of his fingers under her forceful little chin. “Look at me.”
When she lifted her head, he could see the hint of shame in her eyes and it awakened his fury all over again. “Someday you’ll face him.”
She stiffened. “No.”
“Yes. And you’ll take back all he stole from you. And you’ll never be afraid again.”
“No. I couldn’t.” It was a whisper, almost a plea.
“You could and you will. Because you’re Jessica Rebecca Thornton and you’re a woman to reckon with.”
Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. He could almost see her mind searching through memories and he knew the exact moment she found the right one.
“You heard,” she accused. “That day by the water trough when I found you dipping your nasty feet into the water.”
Brady lowered his hand to the armrest. “They weren’t nasty. They were hurt. There’s a difference.”
“At any rate, you have it wrong. It’s Jessica Abigail Rebecca Thornton.”
Brady knew that, but pretended he didn’t. He remembered everything about that day, and her most of all. “It’s late,” he said, making a dismissive motion with one big, suddenly clumsy hand. “If you’re through trying to guilt me out of my rocker . . .” He let the sentence hang.
“You’re dismissing me?”
“I’m sending you to bed before you goad me into doing something foolish. So yeah, I’m dismissing you.”
She bounded to her feet.
He let her get to the door before he spoke again. “And by the way . . .”
She froze, her back straight and stiff.
<
br /> “You looked real pretty tonight.”
She hesitated in the doorway as if trying to find something objectionable in his words. Then finally she replied, “Thank you.”
He let her take another step. “No. Thank you.”
This time she turned to glance back at him over her shoulder.
Light from the sinking moon angled under the porch eaves to highlight her high cheekbones and make her eyes glitter like living stars. She looked so beautiful standing there, her hair in silvery disarray, her body round and ripe with life, for a moment he could hardly breathe.
“I like it,” he finally said in a strained voice. He waved a shaky index finger at that impressive, ever-growing chest barely hidden by a green scarf-thing. “It’s a wonderment.” He listened for her gasp, then added, “And one helluva fine-looking dress.”
A worthwhile sacrifice, he thought, listening to her angry footsteps stomp down the hall. She might be peeved, but at least she’d go to sleep thinking of him rather than that sonofabitch, John Crawford.
Nine
“WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?” ELENA AMBUSHED HIM IN THE kitchen before Brady could even pour his first cup of coffee.
He yawned, still groggy from the worst night’s sleep he could remember. Bad enough that with all these people in the house he had to share a room with Hank, who worked sums in his sleep, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what Jessica had told him, and all the fun things he wanted to do to that sonofabitch, Crawford. “To who?”
“Jessica. I saw you on the porch. She was crying. What did you do?”
“Sí. ¿Qué pasa?” Consuelo joined the attack, positioning herself at Elena’s elbow and armed with a wooden spoon.
A formidable duo. “Nothing.” He rubbed a palm over his bristly jaw, trying to wake himself up enough to figure out what they were talking about.