Because he not only got to take the easy way, he chose it. Time and time again. He chose not to take responsibility. Of course, that exact failure in him was what allowed her such freedom, so she couldn’t get too angry with him.
When she turned to face him, she was surprised to see him standing. And close.
“What if I’m not willing to take the risk anymore?” He murmured. She could see that the drug was leaving him, and he was filled with the remorse and guilt that always came after. Such a cycle, she thought. Such a terrible, life-ruining cycle.
“It’s not your risk to worry about, but if you are to be eaten up with guilt, you can pay me a wage.”
“I was thinking something… more indelible. Something that would protect you in some capacity.”
The issue of protection was a sore spot with her. She’d had her fill of men wanting to put her in a box to be protected. She’d had enough of that in her home before the war. Now, out here in the West, she could be what she wanted. Who she wanted. Protection was the least of her desires.
“I’ve told you before, I have no desire to be protected.”
“Do you wish to be married?”
The word dropped like a stone in her stomach. The silence in the room was thin and tight. She sucked in a careful breath.
“Are you… are you speaking of marriage?” Nervous, she laughed. She sounded like a hen.
“I am not joking, Anne. You walk around this city, doing the work of a man, thinking your role as a widow and your position as my ‘assistant’ will keep you safe.”
“You forget my wealth,” she said.
“No,” he told her, his eyes direct. Honest. “I don’t.”
Ah, she thought with a painful tightening of belly. This wasn’t just about her “protection” but also her money. Because the good doctor had none.
“But all your wealth will not keep you safe,” he said. “Not forever. You treat the whores at Delilah’s, men alone in their rooms, the opium addicts.”
“I’m not interested in protection. I am happy as the eccentric, wealthy widow.”
“Surely there is something you want,” he said. He stepped closer to her, far too close. She would have stepped back, but Sam and the table were there.
Finally, so close she could touch the gold chain of his watch if she wanted, he stopped. “Children?”
“No. I don’t want children.” That had been a dream for other girls. She’d been raised not to get her hopes up, to settle into her life as the spinster aunt. The caretaker of her brother’s and sister’s children. Perhaps she’d garden or raise prize goats. But now, she was out from under that life. And she had worth far beyond what she’d ever dreamed.
And she liked it.
He stepped closer again, and when she took a breath her unbound breasts touched his chest and she nearly cracked down the middle with the sensation. She nearly stopped breathing.
This. This was a thought she shooed away like stray cats at her kitchen door, because letting this feeling, this mad twitch under her skin, this ache in her bones, into her life would only leave her empty. Sad.
And she was not empty or sad.
“There are other benefits to marriage,” he said.
His lips pressed hers and… it was a kiss. Her very first.
Well, she thought, here it is.
His lips against hers were dry and disconcerting. Never, never had a man stood so close. A conscious man, anyway. She’d never felt a man’s breath against her cheek. A wide chasm opened in her belly. A strange and sudden awareness of her skin. Of the blood that beat in her veins.
Despite its uncomfortable intimacy, it was quite... interesting. Not quite the thrill her sister would have had her believe when they’d gossiped in bed after dances and parties in those years before the war.
But yes, she thought as she smelled his aftershave and his linen shirt, it was interesting.
He stepped back and she looked at her shoes, hastily put on a few hours ago. “You forget yourself, Doctor,” she whispered. A weak chastisement over the pounding of her heart.
“I do,” he agreed. His fingers brushed back the wild cloud of her hair, and she wanted to groan and jerk herself away—she did not like that. “But I find… I want to help you. As you have helped me.”
“You delude yourself if you think I have helped you. If anything, I have made it far too easy for you to fail yourself.”
His smile… his smile was painful in its masculine prettiness, and she did not fool herself that if his life had gone the way it was supposed to, he would ever direct that kind of smile in her direction. “Before you reject my proposal, I urge you to think about it.” He touched her neck, a searing, startling touch right where her heart pounded.
He walked out of the room. And she stood there, her hand at her neck, unsure of what to think. How to feel.
And then she gave herself a shake and began to clean up the mess.
Chapter 2
The next morning Dr. Madison was awake, checking on the patient, when she came downstairs.
“You did a good job,” he said without turning around. He wore one of his impeccable suits, the fine cloth making the most of his height. “Your stitches have gotten better.”
The flush of pleasure she felt over this compliment was stronger than the flush of pleasure she’d felt over his proposal.
She had no intention of accepting that proposal, but the kiss had kept her up late, watching the clouds travel across the moon outside her window. That kiss would not go to bed. And that it was from him, given to her because she was wealthy and he felt guilty and beholden, made it all the more sour.
“Thank you,” she said, shifting the lamp on the table over a few inches for no good reason.
“I'll wake him up in a few minutes," he said. “Send him on his way.”
“Let him sleep.”
“If we do that, every exhausted drunk will be on our doorstep, manufacturing a cough,” he said.
As a girl, her mother had called Anne unnatural. And she’d known it wasn’t just her leg, or her eyesight. It wasn’t even her hair, or her mousy plain looks. It was that she’d wanted to be more than a dutiful daughter. A loving wife. A doting mother. And those were the only things her mother—or even her beloved sister, who’d suffered so much to get those goals—cared about.
When he turned, the milky sunlight coming through the window did the doctor no favors. He was too pale, the circles under his eyes too dark. His eyes too red. But when he smiled, all of those things vanished in the light of that smile.
Oh, James, she thought, you are too good for this.
“About yesterday,” he said. “I—”
“I would rather we forgot all about it,” she said, having come to that decision early this morning. She did not want to be married—not to anyone, but least of all to this man and his addiction. But that kiss… She didn’t know what to do with that kiss. “You were under the influence of chloroform.”
His shrewd dark eyes watched her. Her father always used to say a liar knows a lie.
“If that's what you prefer,” he whispered, and she nodded, her tongue in knots.
Another heavy knock on the door made her jump in the doorway. “I’ll… I’ll go get that.”
She walked out of the exam room slowly, her back and neck sore from the surgery yesterday, making the limp worse.
There was another knock. Not a pounding. No yelling, so she didn’t think it was medical emergency behind that door.
“I’m coming,” she muttered, and threw open the door.
A tall man stood there, a black coat over his wide shoulders. A brown hat low over his eyes. Blond hair hung down past his ears. He gave the impression of being braced against a cold wind only he felt. He tilted his hat back, revealing blue eyes that matched the sky.
Steven Baywood.
She could not hide the happy leap of her heart, the smile that jumped across her face. To her great chagrin, she actually clapped.
; “Steven!” she cried. “You’re here.”
“Annie.” He smiled as much as he ever did, which meant he really only gave the impression of smiling. “Sorry.” He caught himself. “I forget you prefer Anne now.”
You can call me anything you want, she thought like the silly debutante she’d never been. Had no interest in ever being… except around him. Around him she lost all decorum. Any other person who made her feel this way, who filled her with surprised delight—she would hug. But he had a solid fence around his big body.
She hadn’t touched him since saving his life seven months ago in a clearing a hundred miles from here.
He’d been gut shot and left to die by her sister’s husband. Anne and her sister Melody saved Steven’s life, at terrible risk to their own. But then Steven’s brother, Cole, showed up and handed Melody the gun she ultimately used to kill her abusive evil husband. An act that tore their lives wide open. Anne had feared her sister would condemn herself for her actions—despite the fact that her husband, quite frankly, needed killing.
Melody’s guilt had been assuaged by Cole, a man with his own demons from the war.
In the spring they had all spent the better part of a month living in Steven’s cabin. Melody and Cole fell in love, and Melody chose to stay there. Anne chose to come to Denver.
Largely because she couldn’t stand being so close to this man.
Steven had woken up after being gut shot and knocked unconscious, and in the weeks that followed she’d checked his temperature, checked his stitches a hundred times a day. She’d gotten so used to touching him she didn’t even think about it, until one morning he caught her hand and said he was fine.
Please, he’d said, pushing her hand away. Please, don’t touch me again. I cannot bear it.
But her fingers ached every time she saw him. Right now she would sweep his long blond hair off his face, stroke the hard line of his jaw. Perhaps she’d press her thumb against his dimple, just to see how it fit.
“Is there… something?” He brushed at his face. Steven was meticulously clean, his clothing pressed and tidy. He was always clean-shaven. In the filthy West, he stood out.
“No. No, I’m just… thrilled to see you.”
His smiles were brief. If she blinked she’d miss them, but when she managed to catch one it was like seeing a rainbow after a hard rain—proof that the blue sky could do so much. That this man, stoic and serious, deep as the ocean, could feel something happy.
Anne did not like to think that at some point she’d fallen in love with Steven during that time in the cabin, because that would be foolish. Unwise. Like putting her hand right into the fire.
But what she felt for him was a different animal than friendship, and it did not come to heel when called. It ran wild through her.
If this man had kissed her and asked her to marry him… She turned away, embarrassed by her thoughts. Tired of feeling this way about him. Tired of seeing things in him that she wanted to see, creating a hypothesis about him that had no proof.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. After clearing the haze that seeing him always created in her, she realized his being here out of the blue might mean trouble. “Melody? Cole?”
“Fine. They’re fine.” He glanced sideways toward the small garden she had in front of the house. There was one rose left because their summer had been a long warm one. “Happy.”
He reached into his coat and pulled from an inside pocket a cloth-wrapped bundle. He handed it to her with a smile. “From your sister.”
She unwrapped the cloth to find a handful of beautiful red raspberries, undoubtedly the last of the season, like gems against the cream cloth. Squished gems, their color bleeding into the cloth. “She knows there are raspberries here, doesn’t she?”
“I think she just wanted to give you something.”
When he said it that way, she saw the raspberries were a love note. Bittersweet longing to see her sister filled her. She blinked away the sudden tears, knowing that he saw them. That he saw everything.
He saw and he watched, and yet he was so removed. So very distant.
She wrapped them back up in the cloth. “You didn’t come all this way because my sister misses me.”
“No. I’m meeting with the railroad folks, but they’re not in town yet.” He glanced up at her, the blue of his eyes so bright under his hat. They did something to her heart, those eyes, the direct stare of them. “I thought you might have breakfast with me at the hotel.”
“I would love to. Let me just let the doctor know. Can…” She turned toward the door and then back to him. Unsure of what to do with the raspberries. Or herself.
“Here.” He smiled and took the raspberries from her.
Inside, she grabbed her coat and hat from the hooks beside the door, then stepped into the exam room, where Dr. Madison was checking the lump and bruising on Sam's head.
“If I had a leech, we could get the blood out of the way,” he said when she walked in.
“I'm...going out. Breakfast,” she said. “At the hotel.”
He stood up, wiping his hands on a towel. “I’ll join you.”
“No.” She shook her head, smiled to soften the impression her quick denial might give him. “I…I already have company.”
He sighed. “I can tell by your face that Mr. Baywood is here.”
“My face?”
She had never before felt the sensation of having two men waiting for her. Two men unrelated by marriage wanting to take her to breakfast. Hidden from sight in the folds of her serge skirt, she pinched her leg, just to be sure she wasn’t dreaming.
If Mama could see me now.
“What you see in that odd man, I'll never know.”
“He's not odd,” she whispered at him.
Doc lifted his eyebrows. “He's odd. You just don't see it because you're half in love with him.”
It was as if she were suddenly standing there with no clothes. Frazzled, she turned and left the room, tying her favorite green bonnet with the dancing cherries under her chin and stepping toward the door.
Doc followed. “Good morning, Mr. Baywood,” he said, as if nothing at all were amiss.
“Dr. Madison.” Steven nodded his head, his hands in the pockets of his coat. Dr. Madison stepped forward again, almost stepping out onto the porch with him, and Steven took one step backward.
Dr. Madison glanced back at her as if he'd proven a point.
“I won't be gone long,” she said in the primmest voice she had. She swept past the doctor, and she and Steven took steps toward the dirt street.
“Your cane?” Doc called out, standing in the doorway, holding the birchwood cane she used when she went into town. The streets were often muddy, the boardwalk weak in places, and getting around with her leg was difficult enough.
Steven would offer her his arm. Wouldn't he? For a moment she was tempted to force the issue. Perhaps he no longer touched people because no one ever touched him. She was so aware of that terrible wall around him, built brick by brick with his own hand, that she gave him a wide berth. But he would not deny her his arm. And the thought of his strong arm, the warmth of him seeping through his coat, through her glove and into her palm, made her blink. And blink again.
But foreseeing his discomfort, how he would flinch away from her hand and try to hide it, made her walk back to the door and reach for her cane.
“Thank you,” she said, but Doc Madison did not let go of the cane.
“You don’t pity him, do you?” Doc whispered. Her face flooded with prickly heat. “If he had asked you the same question as me, would he have gotten the same answer?”
She tugged her cane free, stepped out of the house and closed the door behind her.
“You’re ready?” Steven asked, and she lifted her face to the sunlight. The mountains, snow-capped and fierce, stood behind him. The creek was a brown-green ribbon through the far meadows, and the air smelled only slightly of manure. Winter was in the air, the edge of the br
eeze sharp with cold.
Where she was from in Georgia, it never got cold like it did here. She’d never dreamed such snow and ice and wind was possible. And she’d never dreamed that she'd like it. This part of it, anyway—the exhilarating bite and tingle of snow on the wind.
“It’s a fine morning, isn’t it?” she said as they started off down the dirt road toward town.
“Snowing in the pass.”
“If it’s snowing, you won’t get back.”
“No. I don’t imagine I will.”
His jaw was tight, the muscles tense all along his neck and face. “Does that mean you’re not going back?”
“Not until the passes clear.”
She rolled her eyes. “You are as forthcoming as a turtle.”
Again, that lightning strike of a smile, and she nearly tripped over a slat in the boardwalk. On this, the north side of town, it was opium dens and the taverns that hadn’t been totally rebuilt after the fire. A few drunks were sleeping off the worst of it in the shade between buildings. Blue columbine grew in scrappy, determined clumps amongst the broken glass and drunks.
That was her. She was blue columbine, growing where she was planted. Her unnaturalness in Georgia before the war was now… well, it was lovely.
“Are you unhappy there?” she asked, not expecting him to answer, already thinking past his expected silence to questions about her sister’s horse, Lilly, who was pregnant.
“It's uncomfortable,” he said. Stunned, she stopped, now in front of the newer brick buildings of downtown.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s a very small meadow, shared with two people who are so in love.” He ducked his head, his cheeks full of color. He was embarrassed. Honestly, she’d never thought she’d see the day. “There’s a lot of kissing. A lot.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth, but not before the laughter had already squeaked out.
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