Betina Krahn

by The Soft Touch

  He stared at her, completely taken aback by her reaction.

  “Everyone?” he countered. “Even you?”

  She drew her chin back, searching herself, testing her assertion against her own experience, her own heart. And she found it appallingly true.

  “Even me,” she said, her voice softening in spite of her. Then some perversely needy part of her added in a choked whisper: “Especially me.”

  He came even more alert, examining that half-strangled admission of need. She groaned inwardly. What on earth had she said that for? Her heart began to pound as she noticed him moving closer.

  “What could you possibly need, Diamond McQuaid?” he said, every muscle taut and poised … for what she could scarcely bear to think.

  “Whatever money can’t buy.” She backed up a step then forced herself to stand fast. “Things like friendship and loyalty and caring and joy and love.” She lifted her head, struggling to get her thoughts back on track. “No one can have those things by himself. A person needs others to help him claim and experience them.”

  “And who helps you claim them?” He moved still closer.

  “This isn’t about me,” she declared.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s all about your damnable independence.” She jabbed a finger at him. “Your stubbornness … your ingratitude … your—”

  “Stupidity?” he supplied.

  “Your stupidity.”

  “My pride?”

  “Your blasted male pride!”

  With the naming of each fault he had stepped closer and was suddenly towering over her, radiating heat and tension, demanding her attention and filling her every sense.

  “And what about your pride?” he demanded.

  That brought her up short. “My pride?”

  “You can’t bear to think I only wanted you for your money. That’s what all that fuss was about back in Baltimore.”

  “That’s not true.” Her face began to flame.

  “The hell it’s not. Otherwise, you’d have come out and listened to me like a reasonable person instead of hiding in the privy and crying your eyes out.”

  She gasped, staring at him in disbelief. “That is the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard anyone—” She started past him for the sleeping compartment.

  “Oh, no.” He grabbed her arm and held her. “You’re not leaving here until we reach some understanding.”

  “I believe I’ve had all the ‘understanding’ I can stomach for one night,” she said, fighting back tears, refusing to break down in front of him.

  He saw her struggling with her emotions and realized that the shell she had drawn around her since their wedding night was thinner than he expected.

  “No, Diamond, you don’t understand at all,” he said, his voice and grip both desperate. “I knew that if I asked you about the loan before we were married, you’d end up thinking … just what you ended up thinking.” He could see that his words made little impact and realized he was doing it again, refusing to confess the truth, failing to say what he really felt. If he had been honest with her before, he wouldn’t be on the verge of losing her now. Tell her.

  “I … I wanted you. Not your money or your companies. Not your name or position. I didn’t want to marry some rich heiress … or the progressive owner of the Wingate Companies … or Baltimore’s famous soft touch. I wanted you.”

  “Then you really don’t understand. Because I am a rich heiress … and a progress-minded business owner … and Baltimore’s soft touch. That’s who I am. If you didn’t marry any of them, who did you marry?”

  She held her breath. It was the question that had haunted her for years. Her secret despair. Her constant battle. What could he—could anyone—see in her that wasn’t some manifestation of her massive fortune?

  She really didn’t know, he thought, seeing the anxiety in her face. She honestly didn’t know what anyone would see in her besides dollar signs. In that moment, he glimpsed the magnitude of the pain and loneliness she had lived with as a child and the depths of the defenses guarding her heart. He began to grope for words and memories to explain, to build a bridge across that sizable gulf.

  “I married that little girl who stored her dreams in a toy train car,” he said, praying that would make some kind of sense to her. “And who grew up to love railroads. I married the little girl who tried to give away a fortune and grew up to change a whole city for the better with her generosity. I married a smart, stubborn, independent woman who refused to cave in under a mountain of riches and an even bigger mountain of pressures.”

  She raised her chin to meet his gaze and in it he glimpsed the first flickers of hope. It was painful to witness, but it was the first hopeful sign he’d had from her in days, weeks. And as that small flame struggled and threatened to disappear, he understood that his explanation wasn’t quite enough.

  “Hell, Diamond, can’t you see? This isn’t about pride or stubbornness or money or who’s going to be in control. It’s about this need for you that uncoils out of my gut every time I see you, every time I hear your voice, every time I think about the way you looked that day at Gracemont … out by the orchards … the day after we were married. It’s about the way my blood boils whenever I see you smile. It’s about the way I can’t wait to see you each morning and talk to you each night. It’s about this constant urge I have to touch your skin.”

  He brought his hand up to trace the curve of her cheek.

  She found herself being engulfed in his special kind of sensory heat. Her throat constricted. Her mouth dried. Her insides began sliding toward her knees.

  “This … this is why I married you … why I brought you out here,” he murmured, lowering his mouth toward hers. “I’m crazy about you, Diamond Wingate McQuaid. When I said ‘I do,’ I meant I do.”

  Her resistance was melting. Her much-denied hunger for him and for the closeness they once had shared was rising to the surface to meet his confessed desire for her. Then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her with all the need he’d suppressed and redirected for two long weeks.

  This—she thought dizzily as drafts of pleasure tore her senses from their surroundings—this was real. Bear wanted her. Halt was right. He wanted her—he really wanted her!

  Joy erupted in her and she slid her arms around him, covering, caressing, claiming every inch of him she could reach. His back, his shoulders, his waist, his neck. He was hers; every muscle and sinew, every strained and aching nerve, every proud and stubborn impulse. Just as she was his.

  She drew back, her lips throbbing and her eyes dark and glistening. She was his. The fear that had shrouded that fact in her mind and heart was fading. It was an admission, a surrender that both of them were making, and the fact that they were in this growing spiral of desire and acceptance together made all the difference in the world. Surrender, she realized with a soaring sense of freedom, could be a release, an unburdening. And it could be oh, so sweet.

  He had braced and lifted her against him, lowering hot, ravenous kisses down the side of her neck and nuzzling open the first button of her blouse. She bent her head back, offering him more, abandoning herself to the pleasure surging hot and viscous through her veins.

  She felt herself moving and realized he was half walking her, half carrying her back to the desk at the far end of the car. Then she felt the edge of the desk against her bottom and he settled her on a pile of papers to free his hands. She was trembling as she tried to unfasten buttons, first hers, then his, then hers again. His hands were trembling, too, and he was panting, groaning softly with frustration as he struggled to open her blouse, then loosen her skirt, and then find the ties of her corset.

  She laughed softly and licked and nipped at his taut nipple, pushing his shirt back, teasing him with the fact that the task of getting through his clothes had been much easier than his in getting through hers. With a sharp, in-drawn breath he renewed his attack on her knotted corset strings and she felt his victory before he knew it had occu
rred. The garment’s grip loosened, releasing her like a reluctant lover, and she sighed as she pulled the boned satin away.

  A moment later his kisses and hungry nibbles were setting the tips of her breasts on fire. The erotic well deep inside her tightened, growing hot and moist and ready. She wriggled against the papers beneath her, her body seeking and hungry for sensations only he could provide. Then he thrust a hand beneath her bottom, pulling her up and against him, and she writhed luxuriantly against his palm and questing fingers.

  “Well, Jesus H.—”

  That appallingly familiar voice and even more recognizable profanity caused them both to freeze. Her heart was pounding, her loins and her lips and breasts were throbbing. She could hear Bear’s heart pounding, too, beneath the heavy rasp of his breathing. His whole body had tensed defensively. Shielded by his big frame, she managed to swallow her horror enough to peer around him.

  “Oh, Lord,” she uttered on a moan.

  There stood Robbie in his nightshirt, his eyes as big as saucers.

  “Robbie,” she said in a hoarse whisper, gripping Bear’s arms to keep him from turning. They had forgotten all about Robbie. Clearing the passion from her throat, she managed to sound marginally parental.

  “What are you doing out of bed? Get back in bed this instant!”

  His lascivious grin faded as he was shoved back into the morass of boyhood.

  “Well, I jus’ wanted a drink. An’ I heard voices and groanin’—”

  “Robbie!” Bear thundered, without turning.

  “All right, all right—I’m goin’.” He turned away with a scowl, muttering: “It ain’t like I never seen it done before.”

  The sound of the door to the sleeping compartment slamming seemed to send a wave of chilled night air over them. They looked at each other, both somewhat embarrassed by the reckless urgency of their desire. But as they gazed into each others faces, neither showed the slightest regret that their long-banked passions had finally exploded into flame. She straightened and slid her hands down his shoulders. He drew back reluctantly, sliding his hands from her bottom and waist.

  “I think this is where it has to end,” she said quietly, giving his chest a final caressing stroke.

  He nodded, cradling then releasing her chin. “For now.”

  She collected her garments together and slid from the desk. He watched her sway toward the sleeping compartment and pause at the door to shoot him one last sultry look. When the door latch clicked behind her, his legs felt as if they had turned to rubber.

  He reached for the decanter on the shelf and poured himself a large brandy.

  “Damned kid.”

  But by the time he finished the brandy, stretched out on one of the banquettes, and closed his eyes, he was smiling.

  The next two days gave Diamond no time to explore or test the understanding begun in the heat of renewed passion between her and Bear. He spent every spare moment leading work crews and solving problems that kept cropping up … from a strange spoilage of flour in the kitchen to frequent brawls among the men. By the afternoon of the second day, a general tension gripped the camp and tempers flared like the gusty winds that came barreling out of the west, blowing storms across the plains.

  Diamond stood on the platform of their private car, watching a line of forbidding clouds approaching and marveling that there could be enough of them to fill up that enormous expanse of sky. In the distance jagged, luminous flashes of white warned of lightning fast approaching. She went looking for Robbie, whom Bear had put to work carrying water and messages and fetching tools. She found him with a crew of men being spelled by a sister crew. Just as she approached, a scuffle broke out between two men over a missing twist of “chew.”

  “I saw you with it, Sikes—ye thievin’ bastard!” A smaller man was using a finger to drill that challenge into the chest of a larger, beefier fellow.

  “Yeah? Prove it weren’t mine,” Sikes said with a sneer. Then he returned that finger jab to the chest … only with considerably more force.

  Fists began to flail. Tools hit the ground as both crews flew to separate the two. There was snarling and shoving, and insults were flung from both sides. Bear appeared out of nowhere and lunged into the fray to do some shoving and shouting of his own. Confronted by his formidable frame and fists, the men halted, then slowly backed down. When things were sufficiently calm, Bear drew a deep breath, looked up at the sky, and growled orders to pack it in and stow the tools until after the storm passed. As the men complied, relieved to have an unexpected break, he turned toward the rear of the train and spotted her there, watching.

  “It’s always something with that lot—they can’t go a day without coming to blows over some damned thing or other.”

  “Maybe it’s in the air … the storm coming,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder, into the wind.

  “Maybe,” Bear said grimly. Then he struck off down the track to make sure everything was secured before the storm hit. She stared after his snugly molded trousers with rueful longing. At this rate, she would probably see Billings before she saw him alone again.

  The storm struck hard and fast, with winds that rocked the substantial Pullman car and made it feel as though the wooden body might be torn from its carriage. Claps of thunder rattled the walls, windows, and floor violently, sending Robbie diving for Diamond’s arms. Then the rain came … in fierce, driving sheets that lashed the train and camp and soaked the ground at an astonishing speed. A small river formed along the track and flowed swiftly along the barrier of the raised track bed. Then, almost as quickly as it had come, the worst was past. The soft, lingering patter of raindrops against the window and on the metal-covered roof washed away the strain and tension the storm’s approach had produced. Suddenly the air was cooler and sweeter.

  Diamond opened the door just as one of the men came lurching up the steps. He was wet to the skin and dripping water.

  “The boss—” he panted out, wiping his face. “Where’s Mr. McQuaid?”

  “He went forward to secure the crane … must have gotten caught there when the storm broke. What’s wrong?”

  “Cook!” the fellow called over his shoulder, already headed for the front of the train. “He’s hurt!”

  Ordering Robbie to stay put, she grabbed the tablecloth she used as a shawl and dashed out into the gentle rain, headed for the kitchen car. A knot of men was gathered on the ground below the open kitchen storage door. Pushing her way through the men, she found their German cook lying on the ground. One of his legs was bent at an odd angle and he was gritting his teeth in pain.

  “Schultz!” She spread her makeshift shawl over him, to keep the rain off, and ordered two of the men to hold it while she knelt beside him. “What happened?”

  “Danged if I know, mizzus.” He sucked air and groaned when she gently probed his injury. “I hear somezing bang an’ bang in de storeroom. I tho’t das door hass blown open in de vind. I go to shut … an’ somezing vall and knock me out. Den a barrel come crashin’—aghhh!”

  “We’ve got to get him inside.” She rose and looked up and down the cars trying to decide where would be the best place for him. “Bring him into our car.” She looked around. “And somebody go to town for a doctor.”

  Bear arrived just as the men were fashioning a makeshift litter to carry Schultz to their private car. Everything stopped dead as the men told him what had happened and what Diamond had told them to do. They watched uneasily between their boss and his wife. Diamond also watched, remembering the last time she had taken it upon herself to make decisions and take action.

  After a long, prickly moment, he turned to the men carrying the litter.

  “What are you waiting for? Get him inside.” He glanced at the rest of those wet, slightly sullen faces. “Who’s going for the sawbones?”

  Poor Schultz did have a broken leg. And the poor men had a miserable cold supper. Canned beef was cut and served between slabs of day-old bread and stale biscuits left from th
e morning’s baking. The coffee was abysmal, but everyone drank it anyway … especially when word got out that Diamond had pitched in and made it herself. Only Robbie was crass enough to complain aloud.

  “This grub stinks.”

  Diamond looked over at Bear and winced. “He’s right. It’s awful.”

  Later, after they had cleared the trays and cups and set the kitchen into some semblance of order, Diamond went to look for Bear. He was in the equipment car, preparing the handcar for assembly and trying to locate some spare wheels that might fit it.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she told him, knowing she was treading on unsettled ground but heartened by his restrained response to her earlier action. “You have to do something about food. The men won’t stay if they don’t get better meals than they had this evening.” She caught his gaze with hers and held it. “I want to go into Great Falls tomorrow and find another cook.”

  It was his territory, his railroad, his decision to make. But if he didn’t allow her to do this, there was probably little hope that he would ever allow her to be a part of his railroad. And if she couldn’t be a part of his railroad, what chance did she have of becoming a part of his life? When he spoke, after a small eternity, it sounded like every word was being strained through a sieve.

  “I suppose … we have to have a cook.”

  She released the breath she had been holding. “Then it’s settled. I’ll go into town at first light.” He glowered and inflated his chest as if preparing to object. She folded her arms with determined force. “Or I can be a good little wife and twiddle my thumbs, and let you and your men choke down jerky and dry biscuits for the next two months.” She raised her chin. “What’s it to be?”

  Bear found once more that he couldn’t say no.

  That same evening just at dusk, Halt came riding hell-for-leather into camp. He had been spending his time in the forward camp, helping Nigel Ellsworth with the roadbed construction. Both he and his horse were spattered and caked with mud and he collected a following of men as he pounced to the ground and roared through the camp looking for Bear.