Tempted

by Molly O'Keefe

  Chapter 10

  Steven had Dr. Madison pushed against the wall again. A bottle lay smashed at their feet.

  “I was locking it away,” Dr. Madison was saying, though it was hard to hear him with Steven’s hand pressed around his throat.

  “I don’t believe you,” Steven said.

  “I don’t give a—”

  “Steven,” Annie said. “Let him go.”

  Steven glanced over his shoulder at her, and after a long moment, after he tightened his grip a few times, he stepped away and Dr. Madison slumped against the wall. Gasping.

  “I’m getting tired of that,” the doctor said, staring sideways at Steven, who didn’t say anything.

  “You’re still here,” she said to Dr. Madison.

  He pushed his hair off his face and turned to her. “I am. If you still want me to be here.”

  She glanced down at the broken bottle. Chloroform. Of course. She couldn't lie for him anymore. She couldn't allow him to keep drugging himself to death simply because she liked stitching up knife wounds. They were both at fault. “You can’t stay here and use that anymore."

  “I was locking what I had in my room in the cabinet in the surgery. I'm going to stop. You’ll be the only person who has the key.”

  He handed her a small gold key. The lock on the cabinet was mostly ornamental, and if he wanted into it, he could get in.

  “I won’t,” he said, as if reading her mind. His hands were shaking.

  “Are we supposed to just believe you?” Steven asked.

  “I’m not asking you to do anything,” Dr. Madison snapped. “I’m asking Anne...” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m asking. But it will be a rather difficult few days as my body gets used to not having the drug.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked. Unsure of how one doctored a person in that situation.

  “Nothing,” he said with a tired and rather sad smile. “I’ll be doing it at Delilah’s. She's had some experience with this.”

  Anne’s eyebrows hit her hairline and she tried to pull them back in line, but it was useless and Dr. Madison laughed. “I’ll be fine. Better actually, if I’m there. I’m deeply ashamed, Anne. And it’s uncomfortable to look at you and see the damage my cowardice has wrought.”

  He looked away from the pity she could not hide, and caught Steven’s eye. “You’ll be here, I imagine.”

  Steven nodded.

  “I don't get a say?” she asked. “It is my house.”

  Both men glanced at her as if they knew the truth. And both of them did. She wanted Steven here. She always wanted Steven here.

  “Good,” Dr. Madison said. “I’ll come see you in a few weeks. We can discuss the future of our working arrangement at that point.”

  There was a leather satchel at the door, the doctor’s coat tossed over it. He picked it up and then he was gone.

  And the silence left behind was strange. The hallway was strange. The house she’d grown so used to was different. She glanced back over her shoulder at Steven. Familiar, steady Steven.

  Though not so familiar right now. Not so steady.

  If she had the power, she would turn back the clock. A day ago. Two. Years ago.

  If she had the power in the moment, she'd go back to those days before the war, to some night with her sister in bed, with all her talk of inconsequential things. Before Anne was even aware of her own unrest. When all the dissatisfaction in her heart could be made better by the familiarity of family and routine and tradition.

  It wasn't happy, but it was...safe.

  Yes, if she could go back to that, she would.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, his hands in his pockets.

  “No.”

  “Anne, you should eat something.”

  Anne ignored him and went back to her room.

  Steven found Elizabeth in the kitchen, which was warm and full of the smell of fresh bread.

  He thought for a moment of going to get Anne, forcing her somehow down into this kitchen with its good homey smells.

  That would help her, he thought. With a sort of low-level desperation, he was making a list of things he thought might help her so that he didn't spend too much time contemplating his fear that he would not be able to help her.

  “Afternoon,” Elizabeth said, glancing his way as she kneaded more dough.

  “Thank you,” he said, watching the thin woman work, the muscles in her arms standing out against her dark skin. “For your help.”

  “I didn't help you,” she said. “I helped Annie.”

  “Well, thank you for that.”

  She put the dough in a bowl and covered it with a towel before turning on him with her floury hands on her hips. “I realize I might be outta line, but the way I see it Anne's all alone in this city. And so am I, and she's been looking out for me for a while, so I'm gonna do the same.”

  “You're not out of line,” he said. “I'm glad she has a friend.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Anne, me and the whores, we all get on.”

  “The whores?” he asked. She waved him off.

  “I can get scarce around here and I can keep my mouth shut,” she said, ignoring his question. “I know how things are. But if you ain't gonna do right by her, I'm gonna have to raise a fuss.” She lifted an eyebrow, giving him an impressively superior look. She paused, waiting for an answer. But he didn't have one. “Do I need to raise a fuss?”

  “No,” he said. “I'll...take care of Anne. If she'll let me.”

  “Yeah, well, I figure that's your problem. Fresh bread is made. Side meat is ready to be fried. She likes the raspberry jam and lots of it.”

  After one more hard look, Elizabeth went back into her room. Steven stared at her door for a while and wondered if he shouldn't ask Elizabeth to take care of Anne.

  Don't be such a coward.

  Anne said she wasn't hungry, but her body needed fuel and he’d found after Andersonville the habit of eating, the industry of meal time, to be useful in his pretending to be all right.

  So he fried up the side meat and found some bread. The smell of the pork and the coffee made his stomach growl. The smell of bacon cooking would make anyone hungry. He added that to the list of things that would help.

  The sun was lost behind the mountains to the west, and there was a cold breeze blowing down Market Street. Change was in the air. Snow.

  He put the food on a plate and put a little sugar in Anne's coffee, a treat he knew she liked, and took it all upstairs to her room.

  He rapped on the door and it opened slightly.

  “Anne?”

  He could see her on the bed. A tiny lump under the blankets.

  “Anne—”

  “I'm sleeping.”

  “Clearly not.”

  He walked into the room, as he had all night and the better part of the day.

  “I don't need to be bullied,” she snapped at him. The tears in her voice clawed at him.

  “I wouldn't dream of bullying you.”

  He set the coffee on the table beside her bed, and then sat in the rocking chair as if he intended to eat all the bacon and all the toast himself.

  His Anne liked food. His Anne would not be able to resist this feast of smells.

  But she was silent while he ate. He knew she was crying, could hear her sniffling, the muffled hiccup of her breath.

  I'm here, he thought. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere.

  “I don't—” she sobbed, and stopped.

  He set down the bacon and looked at her.

  “Why do I feel this way?” she asked. “I've seen men die. I've watched their blood drain out of their bodies. I've held their hands while they cried for their mothers. Why can't I stop crying?” she wailed.

  He set down the tray and crossed to her bed. It seemed utterly natural to fall to his knees at her bedside, to root for her hand under the covers. It was small and clammy and he held it between both of his.

  “I don't know,” he said.r />
  “That's a terrible answer.”

  He smiled briefly. Her glasses were crooked on her nose and he reached up to settle them on straight. She blinked at him, her watery eyes wide and lovely. From her glasses, his hand found her hair and he pushed it off her forehead. It was sweaty, and he knew it wasn't from the heat of the room, it was the reaction in her.

  “I thought I was going to die,” she said, and his instinct was to shush her, because these things were so hard to hear and he didn't want to know how scared she'd been. It was uncomfortable and he would feel better not knowing it. It was awful but it was the truth.

  It was his truth, too. So he stroked back her sweaty hair and looked her right in the eye and let her talk.

  I'm here, he thought. I'm not going anywhere.

  “I thought when he lifted that gun that he was going to shoot Stella. And then me. And I'm so relieved—” Her face crumpled and she curled up into herself, his hands holding hers caught against her body.

  “I am too,” he breathed against the fuzz of her hair, the heat of her scalp. He kissed her forehead just above the rim of her glasses, and her head jerked back. They were face to face, and again he didn't think. Couldn't think. He leaned down and kissed her.

  Her lips tasted of tears.

  She was holding her breath, and perhaps he was holding his, too. He waited for panic, but it never came and he let himself breathe. Let himself feel her. Taste her.

  And slowly, carefully she did the same. Her lips softened. Her breath eased out and then in again. He felt the current of it against his face.

  The urge was there to open his mouth. To taste her more deeply. But he pulled away from the kiss.

  “You kissed me,” she whispered.

  “You kissed me back,” he whispered.

  Both things felt like minor miracles. And both things felt like enough in and of themselves. They did not need more or to be examined or pressed.

  He got up off his knees beside her bed and slowly pulled his hand from hers.

  “Would you like me to open the window a little?” he asked, because it was warm in here and because it smelled so crisp outside.

  “Yes,” she said, and she slowly sat up, pulling her wrapper around her body, the blankets up higher on her legs.

  He cracked the window, letting in a curl of winter, and she reached for her coffee with fingers that only shook a little.

  “Did you eat all the bacon?” she asked.

  “No, would you like some?”

  She nodded.

  As if it were nothing of consequence, he gave her bacon and bread slathered with at least an inch of the jam she loved.

  She licked a drip of the jam off the crust of the bread.

  His gut tightened, awareness and affection creating something new in his body.

  “Messy,” she said, slipping her jammy thumb in her mouth.

  Yes, he thought. We are.

  The next day she came downstairs at dawn and found a pot full of coffee and Steven outside her kitchen window, shoveling hay onto her rose beds.

  I am lonely, she thought, watching him. I am lonely for Steven and he’s still here.

  It was specific and it was like a needle to her heart. Sharp and precise.

  Her life for all of its pleasures, would be darker when he left.

  Tears burned in her eyes.

  That man, she thought, and quickly bundled up and headed out to help him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his cheeks pink from the cold. “You should be resting.”

  “I'm plenty rested, Steven. I'm bored. What are you doing?”

  “Well, the snow is coming so I thought I'd get these gardens put to bed.”

  “You've done so much, Steven,” she said, bitten by guilt and something else. Something deep and strange.

  That kiss still rattled through her.

  In so many ways she was grateful that Steven's kiss had not been her first, so she had something to compare it to. So she could not take for granted the way it had made her feel. That vague interest, that slight desire inspired by Dr. Madison's kiss had been obliterated.

  Her body was still not quite sure what to make of itself after Steven's kiss.

  She'd stared up at her ceiling for a very long time last night, cataloging all the ways her body felt. Extrapolating those feelings along some kind of imaginary line to a conclusion she'd only heard the girls at Delilah's talk about.

  But a conclusion she was suddenly vibrantly interested in.

  “Snow's coming,” Steven said. “I'm just doing what needs to be done.”

  He buried the pitchfork—where had that come from?—into the hay bale in the center of her garden and heaped more hay over her roses and bulbs. Her vegetable garden on the other side had been picked clean and looked naked in the sunlight.

  Naked in the sunlight.

  Good lord, her mind was not her own.

  “Have you gotten any sleep?” she asked, tugging on her work gloves. He had circles under his eyes.

  “Enough,” he said with a brief glance in her direction.

  Elizabeth, had told her earlier that Steven had been refilling all the kerosene lamps. And had refit the smokestack on the stove.

  He hadn't slept at all.

  The back door rattled in the wind. “You need that door fixed,” he said.

  “It always does that when the wind comes out of the west.”

  “I'll take a look at it,” he said.

  “I was thinking about building a porch back here,” she said. “Like the one on your cabin.” She held that out between them like an olive branch. A reminder of all that they knew about each other.

  “I can do that,” he said, not responding at all to her overture.

  “You don't have to. There is plenty of—”

  “I want to,” he said.

  “Then I guess I'll let you,” she said.

  He shoveled more hay onto her garden, and she watched him feeling useless and on edge. “Why are we arguing?” she asked.

  He sighed. “I don't know.”

  I do, she thought. Or she had her suspicions.

  Last night she’d realized what was wrong with his experiment at Delilah's. Or at least she hoped she'd figured it out. It would be a relief to have it be so simple.

  But simplicity was deceiving, she knew that. And she also had to get him to agree.

  Which wasn't at all simple.

  “I'm sorry,” he said at the same time she said, “Did you mean what you said?”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “What were you saying?”

  “No, you—”

  “Anne!” He was exasperated by their politeness.

  “Do...you really have th..those kinds of feelings for me?” she stammered.

  He nodded.

  “Sexual...feelings.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then ...I think you performed the wrong experiment!” she cried, her breath a plume of smoke in the air in front of her. “If the hypothesis is that you can’t bear to be touched by me, you won’t get the proper results from your experiment by letting another woman touch you.”

  “Anne, this is not scientific.”

  “Of course it is. Everything is, at its core. The proper experiment is letting me touch you. That will give you the right results.”

  Finally, he turned to her. Her calm and quiet caregiver of the last few days was gone. Returned was the stone-faced man who held himself so distant.

  “Fine,” he said. “Here.”

  He held out his hand between them.

  “Oh, stop,” she said. “We’re not three years old.”

  He stood there rather mutinously, like the three-year-old she accused him of being.

  “I propose a different experiment,” she whispered, tucking her hands in fists so she wouldn't grab him. “I won’t touch you. But you can touch me.”

  He blinked at her, silent.

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked. “You break a lamp?”
>
  “Anne—” His breath shuddered, and she could see his interest. The widening of his eyes, the flush on his cheeks that had nothing to do with cold.

  “I want to try,” she said.

  He looked down at the garden, those hibernating roots, for a very long time.

  “Say something,” she whispered. “Steven, please.”

  “It may not go the way you expect,” he told her.

  “I have no expectations.”

  That was lie. That was a terrible lie. She had all kinds of expectations, but she couldn't scare him away.

  He was in the process of doing that all on his own.

  “Go upstairs,” he said.

  “What? No! I’m not tired. I want—”

  “Go upstairs,” he murmured, smiling at her. “Wait for me.”

  “Wait…?” she breathed, her eyebrows slowly lifting.

  “For me.”

  Chapter 11

  Okay, she thought, pacing the small room. Okay. I’m waiting. She shifted the chair back to its spot in front of the fire. She snapped the sheets back into place over her bed, running her hands over the pillows. Should I be lying down while I wait?

  She stood up, her hand at her chest. Should she take off her clothes? That…that wasn’t what he meant? Was it?

  Laughter, incredulous and strained, sputtered out of her and she clapped a hand over her mouth. What, she wondered, am I doing?

  “Anne?”

  She squealed and jumped, bumping sideways into the bed. Nearly falling over.

  He’d cleaned up; his face was pink and freshly shaved. His hair was damp, the blond a darker brown at the wet tips.

  “Hello,” she said with a too-wide, too-bright smile. As if they were discussing goats again.

  This is what happens when you never flirt at parties. When you linger on the edges, staring at the fringe of the rug. You get stupid when you see a man’s damp neck. His forearms revealed by the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt.

  “Hello.” He closed the door behind them, and the room was suddenly so much smaller. And the air… where did all the air go? “You seem nervous.”

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  “I’m nervous, too. Do you want to laugh at me?”

  There wasn’t anything funny about him right now. Nothing funny about this room. Or her. The way her heart was pounding against her ribs.