“You were a virgin,” he said quietly.
She frowned. “Didn’t you think I would be?”
“Hell, I knew you were the minute I laid eyes on you.”
“So?”
“So your brother really will kill me now.”
Annika laughed and shook her head. “I don’t think so. We’ll explain everything to him when we move down the mountain.”
Buck pulled his hands away. “What do you mean when we move down the mountain?”
She shrugged. “Well, I just thought...” Her expression mirrored her confusion and disappointment.
“You were thinking what?”
“I thought that after last night, that naturally... you... and I...” Humiliated and embarrassed, she walked away from him. He followed her to the knoll that overlooked the stream.
Buck laid his hands on Annika’s shoulders and turned her around until she was forced to face him. “Listen, what happened last night was just something that got out of control. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, but it should never have happened, Annika. You and I are from two different worlds. Hell, you might as well be from China for all I know about a life like the one you’ve led.”
“I love you, Buck.” It was hard to see through the tears that swam in her eyes.
“Enough to marry me and live here for the rest of your life?”
His question left her speechless. Of course she would marry him, but to live here for the rest of her life—
“That’s what I thought,” he said abruptly. He let her go and headed off toward the outhouse.
“Buck, wait!” She ran after him, slipped, nearly fell, then kept going. When she caught up to him she grabbed his sleeve and forced him to stop. Breathing hard, she tried to catch her breath.
He spoke before she could. “Listen, I don’t know why you did what you did last night. Maybe it was just something you always wanted to find out about but until now all you had at your disposal was well-bred city boys too afraid to take the chance.”
“Stop it!” she cried out, afraid to admit that he was too close to the truth.
“I know you can’t take living here forever, I know it as sure as I know pigs don’t fly. And I know you’ll be hightailing it down the mountain as soon as the thaw comes.”
“Buck, listen to me—”
“Why don’t we just be honest with each other and look at last night for what it was? I needed it. You wanted it. Just let it go, all right?”
“You bastard.” She slapped him. It was a stinging blow that left the imprint of her hand neatly across his cheek.
“I’ve been called worse.”
She couldn’t stop the anger that shook her, nor the tears that began to flow. “Do you think I’m that shallow? That I would have done what I did last night with anyone?”
“Then why me?”
Furious at herself for giving in to tears, she wiped her face on her sleeve. “What?”
“Why would you give your virginity to a man like me when you could have anyone you wanted?”
“Because I love you!” She was as shocked as he was by her own admission. She began to reason aloud. “Last night before... well, before anything happened, all I wanted was to kiss you, to see if I felt anything at all, any passion—”
“So it was an experiment. What is it like to kiss a buffalo man? Did you need something to tell your society friends about when you get home?”
Good lord but things were in a muddle. She twisted her hands together and tried to put everything she had been thinking, everything that led up to last night’s climactic conclusion into words that would make him understand. “I was engaged when I left Boston—”
At that Buck threw his hands in the air and shouted, “Oh, great! Now not only your brother but your fiancé is going to be after my hide.”
Annika smiled at the absurd image of Richard Thexton confronting Buck Scott. “I said I was engaged. I called off the wedding because I didn’t feel I loved Richard passionately enough—and now I know that what I did was right. Never, not in all the time I’ve known Richard, did I ever feel the way I did when you finally kissed me last night. It was so overwhelming that I guess I just got carried away.”
He thought of the way she had nearly ripped his clothes off, remembered her lying across the table bathed in firelight, and shook his head. “You got carried away all right.”
Instantly she became indignant. “Well, I didn’t do it alone!”
He still didn’t have any hope. He knew in his heart she was bound to leave him no matter what he said, so he tried to explain again. “Look, Annika, I’m a hunter and a trapper. It’s not what I set out to be, but it’s what I am. You, you’re a lady, a rich lady from Boston who doesn’t belong here, just the way I’ll never belong there.”
“But, Buck, you could be so much more.”
He stiffened. “What’s wrong with what I am?”
“You have so much to offer—”
He scratched his head. “Like what? This palace of mine, a kid to raise, possibly insanity?”
“Stop saying that. You’re not insane.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” he mumbled.
“Damn it, Buck.”
“There’s a hell of a lot you still don’t know about me or my past, Annika. A hell of a lot, but I don’t intend to stand out here in my drawers freezing my ass off while we argue about it. I’m going to use the privy and then I’m going to have a cup of coffee.”
“But nothing’s settled.”
“Oh, I think it is.” He headed for the lopsided outhouse behind the shed.
She followed him. “Well, I think it isn’t.”
Buck pulled the outhouse door open and turned to Annika. “Want to follow me in here and nag me or can I have a minute’s peace?”
“Damn you, Buck Scott!”
Turning his back on her, he stepped inside and banged the door shut in her face.
16
BENT on ignoring him, Annika went about her day much as she always did. She wrote in her journal but could not bring herself to describe any part of what had happened between them last night. He made breakfast. She washed the dishes and waited for him to go hunting. He hung around the cabin instead, drinking coffee, watching Annika closely, playing with Baby.
They spoke to each other in monosyllables.
Baby, who demanded they call her Buttons, insisted she wear her new satin dress.
Buck improvised and called her Baby Buttons. Then, while Annika pretended not to listen, he told his niece that a big girl with a new name deserved her own bed. He went outside and proceeded to build her one. While he was out fitting old pieces of lumber together, Annika took a bath and then bathed Buttons. They were both freshly dressed, drying their hair before the fire when Buck carried in Baby Buttons’s new bed.
“Where do you want it?”
Annika looked up, startled to think he was asking her opinion as if she were the lady of the house. Then she realized that he wasn’t asking her—he was asking Buttons.
The child marched to the back wall where her toy box stood and pointed.
Buck set the bed down.
Annika watched and wondered if he had moved Baby out of his bed because he thought she would be sleeping with him from now on.
“Think again, Buck Scott,” she said aloud.
“What?”
Embarrassed, she turned away, bent over to hang her long hair down, and began brushing it vigorously. “Nothing. I was just thinking aloud.”
“About what?”
She continued brushing but didn’t look up when she felt him standing behind her. “About how I don’t plan to sleep with you now that you have so conveniently moved that child out of your bed.”
“Weeks ago, you were the one that suggested she should have her own bed.”
“Then why now?” She stood up and flipped her hair back. He was closer than she had expected.
“Why not?”
“Just don’t get any ideas, that�
��s all.”
“Don’t worry, you’re the one with the ideas—like me living down with the flatlanders, taking on some job I don’t want. You probably already envisioned dressing me up proper, too, didn’t you?”
Silent, she couldn’t deny it.
“Ha! I knew it.” He stalked to the other side of the room and poured himself some coffee. Without another word, he took it to the table, sat down, and continued pinning her with a hard stare.
She tried to ignore him for as long as possible, but she could feel his gaze on her as she put her brush away and then looked for something to use to make up Baby Buttons’s bed. By the time she had accomplished the task she couldn’t take his silent stare anymore.
“Are you just going to sit and stare at me forever like you hate me?” she wanted to know.
“Is that what I’m doing? I thought I was just sitting here having a cup of coffee. Or is this just one more thing about me you want to change?”
She marched to the table, yanked out a chair, and then sat down across from him. Leaning forward on her elbows she looked him square in the eye and said, “I’m sorry, Buck. I mean it. Forget everything I said about your moving down the mountain, all right? I was wrong to even suggest it.”
“Does that mean you’re willing to stay here?”
Her eyes flooded with tears. How had it all happened so fast? She wanted to say yes, but what would life be like without the hustle and bustle of the city, without her family nearby? How could she face this endless isolation?
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
He finished the coffee and slammed the cup down. “At least you’re honest. I knew you’d leave the minute the pass cleared.”
“But I don’t want to go without you.” She searched his face for any sign of hope.
“And I don’t want to leave, so where does that put us?”
She saw no regret when he said the words, only the stubborn set of his jaw and the way his hands clinched the cup so hard she was certain he would bend the enamel into a shapeless mass.
“I guess that puts us right back where we started the day you took me off the train.” Even as she spoke the words, she knew they weren’t true. They could never change what had happened between them last night, and she would never forget the way she had felt in his arms. It had all seemed so right at the time, so good between them, that she couldn’t bear to think of spending the rest of her life without him.
Buck couldn’t take his eyes off her as he watched Annika mull over all he’d said. He knew she was fighting a battle she would never win, for he didn’t intend to change his mind, even for her, although it twisted up his insides not to. There would never be another woman in his life like Annika Storm, even a blind man could see that, but not even for her would he suffer going back down the mountain and being ridiculed as ignorant trash and a buffalo hunter. He’d lived with that all the years his father had hauled them from place to place, and he’d be damned if he was going to do it now that he had a choice.
There was one thing he did know—if Annika loved him enough, she’d stay and take him the way he was. It was a woman’s place to be with her man, the way it had been since time immemorial. She could damn well be happy with him and a trip into town once or twice a year, but he’d never go back to stay.
Never.
Buck stood up. Her gaze followed him to the door. The disappointment in her sky blue eyes was too much for him to take. “I guess that does put us right back where we were, at least until one of us changes our mind, and I can tell you right now, it won’t be me.”
He grabbed his coat and without putting it on, left.
Annika put her head down on her arms and sobbed.
“I’M freezin’ my balls off.” Denton Matthews stomped through the snow until he reached the fire that burned day and night in the camp just below the tree line. “This is the stupidest plan any man ever came up with.”
“It’s a hell of a sight easier way to make money than any of the harebrained ideas you could dream up even if you had the rest of your life to do it.” Virge Clemmens spat a stream of tobacco-colored spit that joined the huge brown patch in the snow a few feet from him.
“Shut up, you two. I’m about to go plumb crazy sittin’ up here on the side of this mountain listening to you chip away at each other.” Cliff Wiley hated them both, the snow, the cold, and the wind-beaten tent they had slept in every night for the past three weeks.
“How much longer do you think we’ll have to be here, Cliff? I can’t take it anymore,” hefty Denton whined. “Hell, I’m starvin’ for a decent meal.”
“You wouldn’t starve if we tied you to a tree and left you out all winter,” Virge mumbled.
“I said cut it out,” Cliff warned them.
“Shit.” Denton looked despondent. He took a piece of jerky out of his coat pocket and tried to console himself with it.
“Couple more warm days like we just had and the snow’ll be down low enough so we can work our way through the pass.”
“Maybe we could dig our way through now,” Virge suggested.
Denton looked scared. With a mouth full of jerky he mumbled something that sounded like “Avalanche.”
Cliff stared up at the mountainside. “Snow’s too hard by now. Wind’s packed it down like rock.”
“What day is it? I lost track,” Denton said, taking another chaw of the jerky.
“End of March,” Cliff said.
Virge stood up and stared at the pass with his usual anticipation and enthusiasm. “Lookit that rock showin’ there on the side of the cliff. You remember seein’ that yesterday? I don’t. I swear, we’re gonna wake up one mornin’ soon and just like Moses wadin’ through the Red Sea, we’re gonna ride through that pass, find us that little gal, and be set for life.”
“IT’S going to be a wonderful picnic, Buttons. Just wait and see.”
Wrapping the last of their provisions in a dish towel, Annika tied the bundle at the corners and then made sure she had everything. “Can you think of anything else we need?” she asked the child, not really expecting an answer. She had taken to talking to Buttons rather than Buck, since he wasn’t likely to be around anyway. During the long week since their argument, he had taken to disappearing again, distancing himself from both of them.
“I wish I knew how to make some koekjes like my mama. Have you ever had a cookie?” Annika paused at her task and looked down at Buttons who stood listening intently beside the table, all bundled up in her coat and ready to go.
“Cookies?” Buttons parroted.
Annika sighed. She was no closer to an answer to her dilemma than she had been before, and nothing took her mind off her problem for long. She wanted Buck, she wanted to see Baby Buttons have all the things a child was entitled to—love, a good home, the advantages she grew up with. But she could not come to terms with living so far from civilization, nor did she feel right about taking Buttons away from Buck to find her a home. Baby belonged with him. He loved her, and he was her family. But as Annika watched the child run across the room to collect her sad wooden doll to take along on their outing, she couldn’t help but think of all the things her own family could give the child.
She could just imagine her parents’ reaction when she arrived in Boston and announced that she was going to adopt the child of her abductor; Caleb, always the lawyer, would ask questions until he felt comfortable with her decision or had convinced her to give it up. Her mother would think things through silently, keeping her own counsel until she talked it over privately with Caleb, then give Annika her decision. Auntie Ruth would want whatever Annika did, but still she would sequester herself with her star charts and then advise her when and how she felt she should proceed.
“We go now?” Baby tugged on Annika’s coat until she bent down and lifted her into her arms.
“Right now. It’s too beautiful a day to waste.”
She picked up the bundle of food with her free hand. The door opened before she could reach ar
ound Baby to grasp the handle.
With his gun over his shoulder and his knife belted to his thigh, Buck stood on the threshold, staring down at them. A brief glance took in their coats and the bundle in Annika’s hand. He felt his stomach knot as his hands went clammy.
“Going someplace?”
Annika saw the dark suspicion in his eyes. “On a picnic. It’s a beautiful day.”
“A picnic, huh?”
She could see he didn’t believe her. Did he actually think she would leave him and take the child without so much as a good-bye? Did he think she would steal away like a thief in the night?
“Want to go with us?” She shifted the child on her hip.
Buck reached out and took Baby from her with a quick “She’s getting heavy.” He looked down at the bundle in Annika’s other hand. “Did you ever stop to think you might be in danger having this little picnic alone?”
“It’s a beautiful day,” she began, then the dark warning in his eyes called to mind Baby’s near drowning. “I wasn’t going anywhere near the creek,” she assured him.
“I wasn’t thinking of that. I’ve seen signs of cat around.”
Annika laughed. “Cat?”
“Mountain lion.”
She immediately sobered. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
Suddenly she saw the excuse she needed to have him join them. “Then I guess you really do need to come along. I have plenty of provisions packed. Actually, I’m waging a one-woman campaign to finish all that elk so that you’ll bring home something else to eat.”
He ignored her use of the word home. She didn’t mean it, after all. “What else is in there?”
“Cornbread.”
He stepped aside to let her pass. Before he closed the door, he went in the cabin and called out over his shoulder, “I’ve got some wine.”
“Wine? Where have you been hiding it?” Annika laughed and stuck her head inside as he moved barrels and sacks on the floor. She watched him pull out a tall, amber glass bottle with a cork sticking half out of the top. “If I had known you’d been hiding wine, I would have finished it by now.”
“Maybe that’s why I kept it hidden. Even I’ve heard all about how well-bred city ladies like a glass of wine now and again.”
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