by Carole Howey
"Guess that means we ain't goin' fishin' today."
"Guess you're right."
"But you will take me, though."
Flynn sent Gideon a glare that Missy could not comprehend. "Git."
"Three times this week, like you promised?"
"Gideon!" Flynn bellowed a resonant warning that shook the pots hanging over the stove.
Gideon got, grabbing the hamper and the coffeepot as he did. The kitchen door swung shut behind him with a bang. Missy couldn't hold her laughter back any longer.
"Was that his price for coming on that drive with Bill and me yesterday?" Lord, was it only yesterday? It seemed a lifetime had passed since then.
Flynn eyed her sideways, acidly. "Get your leg up here so I can take these boots off you."
"I see. He wrangle anything else from you?"
"Got me to agree to do his chores for a week, too," Flynn grumbled, looking only a little embarrassed as he yanked a boot from her foot.
"Remind me never to let you negotiate with the shopkeepers in Rapid City," she teased him. "Heck, if you'd agreed to do my chores, I'd have just told Bill 'No, thank you very much!"
Taking her other boot in hand, Flynn made a face at her. "Now you tell me!'"
Missy grinned until she noticed the garments Flynn had set on the table nearby consisted merely of a pair of drawers and her nightgown. A quick, titillating vivid image assailed her; that of Flynn tying the little satin ribbon at her throat. Heat fanned her face and she looked away.
"I’m feeling much better now," she stammered as he tossed the other boot aside. "You can just leave everything here and I'll take care of myself."
To her surprise, Flynn said nothing. His silence made her increasingly uneasy. After what seemed an eternity, he crouched before her, his long, jean-covered legs folding elegantly beneath him.
"Look at me, Missy."
She had no choice but to obey. She searched his shining, sapphire eyes and found only a tenderness in them that made her glad she had.
"I've watched you take care of everyone man, woman, child, and animal on this place," he told her with quiet seriousness. "I would consider it a very great honor if you would let me take care of you now, for a change."
He made no mention, she noticed, that he could be trusted to remain a gentleman. As weary and aching and altogether miserable as she was, Missy was surprised to find that her heart was still capable of turning a few somersaults. He did not wait for an answer before straightening and helping her to her feet.
Missy stood barefoot and watched as Flynn bolted the door and closed the shutters to the kitchen. It made the room darker, but there was sufficient sunlight through the louvered slats to conduct a bath. She tried to undo the buttons of her shirt, but her hands were stiffened from their night's work, and the blood and other fluids had partially dried, causing the garment to harden like set mortar. She let out a small cry of frustration.
"Here, let me."
Flynn, she was surprised to notice, had no easy time of solving her buttons either, and he uttered more than one sound of annoyance as he performed the task.
"Damned small things," he muttered.
"Have you undressed many women?"
She found she could not resist the question, as flirtatious as she knew it sounded. Flynn had teased her with very similar words once long ago when she'd undressed Gideon. She'd never forgotten it, and it felt good to pay him back in kind, even at the expense of her own deeper embarrassment.
He glanced up at her. Were his stubbled cheeks actually reddening in chagrin? The notion was surprisingly gratifying.
"Can you lift up your arms?" he asked, after completing only four buttons, down to her bosom. "It'd be much easier to just lift this thing over your head."
Missy tried, but her shoulders protested and her sides ached as if she'd been poled in the ribs. She stifled a whimper and shook her head.
"No, I'm afraid I can't," she breathed as the pain receded again.
"It's all right. . . . Damn it." He yanked the lapel of her shirt with enough force to send the remaining buttons pinging all over the kitchen floor, but not enough to cause her any hurt.
"I'm sorry about the shirt, but I guess it was ruined anyway," he said with gruff matter-of-factness. "I'll buy you a new one when we get into town."
He peeled it gently from her arms and cast it aside. Missy hugged her bared arms to her breast. She hadn't worn a corset, a fact she'd forgotten until just that moment. The results of her night's work had soaked through to her shift, and that, she realized, suddenly weak with apprehension, would have to come off, too.
Flynn was sure he'd lost his mind, but there he was with his hand on the belt that cinched Missy's waist in those absurdly baggy men's trousers. Her shift was soiled, but not too badly. He'd known Missy wasn't wearing a corset; he could tell the moment he'd put his arms around her in the stable the night before. But there was a world of difference between heavy flannel and thin batiste, and it would have taken a far greater manor a lesser one than he to ignore the bounty God had seen fit to grant Missy Cannon.
God had been neither stingy nor unimaginative.
Flynn's tastes in women had altered from youth to manhood. Where he'd once favored petite nymphs, he now found himself intrigued by a robust, alabaster Diana. He recalled the lessons of mythology learned in his youth about the young hunter who had happened upon the goddess at her toilette, and how she had, in her fury, turned him into a stag and set her hounds upon him. He was glad that Missy was merely a flesh-and-blood woman incapable of exacting such a chilling retribution, for he knew he was staring at her like a spellbound buck.
The full roundness of her generous bosom gave intriguing shape to a garment whose only purpose, as far as Flynn could see, was to drive him mad. Even in the dim light he was able to discern the darker outline of her nipples well enough to see that they were temptingly erect. . . .
He was ogling well past the point of rudeness. He forced his gaze to another spot and found a perfect round, white shoulder unmarred by the stain of dried blood. He found himself wanting to worship the pure, unblemished spot with a kiss. It was only inches away; it would take nothing at all to accomplish. Then he would tear away that veil of batiste. . . .
''I'd best do this myself." Missy's wobbly voice yanked him from his dangerous reverie. "Turn around."
He remembered she was talking about the trousers. To his own surprise, he obeyed. He was going to see her naked in that tub: he knew it. He was sure she did, too. Yet she'd asked him to look away while she took off her trousers, and he had. And he didn't even feel foolish about doing so. Just relieved.
He blew out a breath. He hooked his thumbs in his belt, then yanked them out and let his arms dangle by his sides instead. He stole a backward look, and saw Missy Cannon's shapely bare foot step out of the collapsed shift on the floor.
Sweet heaven!
"I'm getting in the tub." Several splashing sounds confirmed her diffident statement. Flynn couldn't move. He guessed that was because half of him wanted to tear from the room and the other half wanted to turn around and join Missy in that absurdly small tub.
He heard her draw a shuddering breath.
"Too hot?"
"No. It's just right."
Lord help him.
"It feels wonderful," she went on, sounding a little more relaxed. "I didn't realize how much I hurt until just this minute."
Neither did I, he thought, clenching his hands.
"Flynn?"
"What?" It came out like a bark.
"Do you have my soap?"
Soap, Muldaur, he reminded himself. You wash with it. Remember?
"Where is it?"
"In the cupboard." It was a cake of fancy French milled stuff, the like of which he hadn't expected of a sturdy, no-nonsense woman like Missy. But it smelled of roses, just as her skin usually did. And it was soft. . . .
"Flynn?"
He jumped. "What?"
"Did you find it
?"
"Right here." He blinked hard once and clenched his teeth before he turned around.
Missy was bunched up in the small tub so all he could see of her was her smooth, white back and shoulders. You can't help her if you're only thinking about yourself, Flynn scolded himself. She trusts you now, by some miracle. Don't betray that trust you've worked so hard for.
He willed his feet to move forward even as he arranged an aloof, businesslike expression on his face. He placed the soap on her shoulder and she jerked at his touch. She was obviously as tense as he.
"It's all right, Missy." His voice felt odd. Grating. "I've already said I wouldn't . . . do anything."
Not that you don't want to, his conscience jibed.
"I know," she replied, gathering her arms still closer about herself. "But II just can't. . . . It isn't that I don't believe you, Flynn. Or that I don't trust you. It's just that"
"I understand."
He did. He squeezed his eyes shut. He'd tried to force himself into her life in a weak moment, and she wasn't ready for him. Maybe she never would be. It was a rejection. A tender one, to be sure, but a rejection nonetheless. And maybe that was for the best. Feeling as if he'd just been kicked by a mule, he turned away from her.
"I'll set myself in a chair back here, facing the door. That way we can talk, and I'll still be here if you need me."
"Thank you, Flynn." Her sigh was rich with relief, and he could almost see her shoulders relax as she uttered it. "You're a dear, good friend."
Flynn couldn't think of much to say to her after that. He felt as if he'd failed her, and himself, somehow. He counted himself lucky to be numbered among Missy's friends, but at the same time he knew he would not be satisfied with that forever. Probably not even for the next nine months.
Missy soaked in the tub for nearly half an hour, thoroughly disgusted with herself. Flynn had tried valiantly to be helpful, to be a friend to her when she most needed one, and she'd politely told him No, thank you, when every part of her had wanted instead to say yes. She was glad, as she bathed herself, that she ached so fiercely in her back, arms, shoulders, and places far more intimate than those: it seemed a fitting punishment for having rejected the kindness God had placed in her path in the unexpected form of Flynn Muldaur.
And she had hurt Flynn by her rejection, too. She felt it. She heard it in his sorrowful reply, and in the condemning silence that followed. And she bitterly regretted it.
There was only one answer for it.
"Flynn, I'm going to need some help with my hair, after all." It was no effort on Missy's part to sound apologetic, but it was a struggle to keep her heart from pounding, and a losing one at that.
Missy feared that he'd fallen asleep, for he did not reply.
"Flynn?"
"I heard you." The words were gruff, as if he were losing his voice.
She heard the sound of the chair scraping a short distance along the floor as he stood up, then the steady, solid thud of his boots as he negotiated the soft pine floor. She overcame an urge to hide herself from his gaze and instead sat upright in the tub with her hands knotted and pressed modestly over the vee of her legs. It would have been futile to try to cover her breasts; there was simply too much of them, and she had no wish to look even more foolish in his eyes than she felt. She had to show him she trusted him. Completely.
She wished she trusted herself as much.
He was very good at massaging the soap into her scalp. His hands were strong and gentle, and he took his time, as if there were no task in the world he relished more than that. She very soon found herself easing back in the tub as the tension fled her neck and shoulders, giving way to a fluid tranquility. It seemed to take forever, yet when he was through it felt like but an instant. As he poured fresh, warm water over her head, she felt dizzy with a queer, nameless disappointment.
"There," Flynn pronounced, a notch above a gravelly whisper. "All finished."
"Will you help me out?"
He nodded, his lips parted as if to speak, his silent gaze fixed on hers.
Missy surprised herself by feeling not at all self-conscious as she stepped naked from the bath and into the towel Flynn held for her. It felt, in fact, like the most natural thing in the world, even when Flynn, under the guise of wrapping her in the big towel, allowed his arms to fall down around her like the soft folds of material.
His handsome features rapt with an emotion she dared not name, Flynn took a corner of the towel and blotted the beads of water from her cheeks, forehead, and chin with great care. Lastly he brushed it across her lips. His gaze lingered there and heated for half a heartbeat before he touched her mouth with his own. Overcome by his desire, Flynn did not hear the commotion in the house until it was too late. The door to the kitchen, the one from the rest of the house that he'd neglected to lock, exploded open like Armageddon and in strode Bill Boland, Micah Watts, and an older, matronly looking lady whom Flynn did not recognize. He immediately stepped in front of Missy to shield her from view, but the shock on Bill's and Micah's faces as well as the disapproval on the old lady's made him realize that he was too late. Behind him, Missy gasped.
"Mrs. Bonner! Bill! What are you"
"I should have guessed it!" Bill Boland trampled Missy's weak inquiry into the floor. He looked like a thunderbolt of rage. The rancher took three bold strides into the room, which brought him within two paces of Flynn. Flynn steeled himself for a blow and to retaliate, holding Missy behind him with a firm hand.
"You always come busting into people's kitchens without an invite, Boland?"
"I didn't think I needed an invite into Missy's kitchen, but I guess I was wrong," the older man snarled, his stare cold and sharp as a January blizzard wind.
Missy tried again. "Bill, this isn't what you"
"You be still!" He jabbed an ugly, accusing finger in her direction. "I know what I see. You played me for a fool, Missy Cannon, but the song is over. I believed it back in the spring when Mi told us Muldaur was just your business partner, but I have to believe my own eyes more. You ruined this woman, Muldaur, assuming there was aught there to ruin in the first place. Now you'd damned well better be marrying her, or I'll see to it you're drummed out of town like the snake you are!"
Flynn felt his own bile rise at the scathing insult to Missy's honor.
"Missy isn't at fault here, Boland, and I won't have you or anyone else thinking she is!"
"She's a whore, and you're a son of a whore!" A vein bulged in Boland's neck and his eyes were as bugged as a frog's. Muldaur brought his fists up before his face in the boxing stance he'd learned in Secret Service.
"'Scuse me, but this way ain't gonna lead to naught but trouble." Mi was diffident but firm as he placed a restraining hand on Flynn's balled fists. The foreman stepped between him and Boland with a resolution that Flynn could not help but admire. Nevertheless, he had an ax to grind with Boland.
"Get out of the way, Mi."
"I can't do that, Mr. Flynn, and you won't ask me to if you care for Missy."
He did care for her, damn it, and Mi knew it. Against his will and better judgment, Flynn lowered his fists.
"Now, I have a high regard for you, Mr. Boland," Mi intoned in his thoughtful drawl, turning to the rancher. "But I can't stand here and let you call Missy no names. Nor Mr. Flynn, neither. I went out to your place this mornin' to fetch us some help. You might've just sent Mrs. Bonner here. You didn't have to come yourself"
"But I did come, Mi, much to my regret!" Boland retorted, and for the first time Flynn heard a note of injury in Bill's voice.
"Yeah, you did, and you seen what you seen," Mi nodded, putting both hands up in front of him. "I ain't sayin' it's right, or wrong, or nothin'. I'm just sayin' it don't change the fact that I come to you on Missy's part 'cos you're a sight closer than town and I figgered you'd take it ill if I’d gone somewhere else first. Anyways, we need some help until we can get somebody more permanent and you offered your own housekeeper right enough
as a neighbor. You didn't need to come with
her, but you did, and ain't nobody can help that. Whatever's happened here, it don't make it right for a gentleman to come in and tear the place up. And I know you're a gentleman. Missy's had enough bloodshed on the place today."
Mi turned to Flynn, and for the first time Flynn saw something close to reproach in the foreman's eyes. It smarted, to his surprise, and he could not sustain the gaze.
"Mr. Flynn, you know how we feel about Missy here. And you know we'd take it ill if we thought anyone'd used her badly. Now, I ain't sayin' you done that, because I don't know it for a fact." He sent a long look Missy's way as if trying to determine for himself. "But I expect you're gentleman enough, from what I know, to make up whatever harm you done the best way you can. 'Cos if you ain't, you'll have to answer to me, Rich, and the others. But one thing's certain: Havin' it out here with Mr. Boland in the kitchen whilst Missy and Miz Bonner stand here and with Lucy and that new baby in the next room can't be the best anybody could expect of you. Either of you."