Liz Ireland

by Trouble in Paradise

  Parker’s brows arched. “Why so upset? You were the one who first called her that.”

  “That was before I’d even seen her, and I only said she might be.” Roy felt anger rising within him. “I haven’t seen any evidence of her being a schemer.”

  Parker crossed his arms. “What about the baby?”

  “The what?”

  “The baby she’s carrying that she failed to inform either of us about. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice last night when you saw her in her nightgown.”

  He’d noticed no such thing! Roy sputtered. “I—I noticed she was a little plump. Surely you’re mistaken.”

  Parker shook his head. “When I caught her—while you were tumbling to the floor—her nightgown outlined her figure. I’ve never seen a woman who was plump only in her belly. She’s carrying a child, Roy.”

  Roy could only stare speechlessly at his brother for a long moment. Ellie. Pregnant. Of course he hadn’t noticed—he’d only noticed her beauty. But now that he thought of it, she had been wearing rather bulky clothing, and the pinafore pinned over her dress today might have had a purpose besides protecting her clothes from all that coffee and tea she’d been serving him.

  No wonder she’d been so touchy. She was a woman carrying a deceased man’s child—and Roy had insulted the memory of her child’s father!

  He sighed. “Poor Ellie.”

  Parker’s eyes narrowed. “Roy, are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

  His brother obviously expected him to be indignant that Ellie hadn’t told them of her condition. Which just goes to show Parker didn’t know him as well as he thought he did. “Think of it, Parker. She’s all alone in the world with a baby to raise. And she just told me that her husband had been hornswoggled in a mining scam. What is she going to do?”

  “Hasn’t it occurred to you that that might be the reason why she came here?”

  “What might be?”

  “Marriage. To one of us.”

  Roy went still.

  Parker shrugged. “Even Ike wondered this morning whether Ellie might have travelled this way to find a father for her baby.”

  Roy barked out a laugh. “That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard. For your information, Ellie just ran out of here distraught because I brought up the subject of her late husband. She’s obviously too devoted to his memory to marry again any time soon. Besides, she didn’t tell me she was destitute…not completely. And if she did choose to marry for money, why in tarnation would she pick you to hitch up with when she could probably have a Vanderbilt?”

  Parker looked perplexed. “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re just not using your potato if you think that woman has designs on one of us!”

  “You’re being generous giving Eleanor the benefit of a doubt, Roy.”

  Roy bristled. “Naturally I’d be pretty riled up if I thought the woman had come here with an ulterior motive, but I’m just not so sure that’s the case. Why, there are all sorts of reasons she might have chosen not to tell us about this baby. Maybe she needed to get out of town and she was afraid we wouldn’t want her if we knew she was near motherhood.”

  Parker pursed his lips skeptically. “Why would she have to flee town?”

  “Maybe the surroundings there reminded her of her husband and she couldn’t go on living there. There could be all sorts of reasons! Besides, even an oaf like me knows that fine society ladies don’t talk about intimate subjects like pregnancy, probably not even among themselves. So why should she feel the need to sound off about it to us?”

  Parker nodded slowly. “I wondered if that was the situation.”

  “Well of course it is.”

  His brother’s blue eyes focused on him intently. “You surprise me, Roy.”

  Roy tried to shrug off his brother’s piercing gaze. Forget Ellie’s ulterior motives. He was afraid Parker thought there was a reason he was defending her…aside from his understandable desire to be a good host. Which of course was all there was to it.

  “Well for that matter, I’m not sure I’d want some woman bursting into song about some other man’s baby growing in her belly,” he grumbled. “Would you? Not that I’m squeamish, mind you, only it just doesn’t seem…seemly.”

  Parker laughed. “Why, Roy—I never knew you had such delicate sensibilities!”

  His cheeks heated and he sent his brother a thin-lipped glare. “Fine—go ask the woman if she’s got something in the oven, Parker. Mortify the supposed friend who travelled halfway across the country to visit you.”

  “You’re right,” Parker said. “Shocked as I am to admit it.”

  “I guess I know about as much about good manners as the next person. We shouldn’t be inhospitable to a guest.”

  “All right then,” Parker said. “I’ll tell Ike that we should just ignore the whole subject…as long as it can be ignored.”

  “Of course. Now that she’s here, the least we can do is make her feel welcome.”

  When Parker left, Roy lay back against the pillows. The questions swirling around in his head exhausted him. Ellie was going to have a child? When? Why would she choose to visit a place as far removed from her world as Nebraska when it was so close to her time?

  Oh, he had more doubts than he’d let on to Parker. For one thing, contrary to what he’d told his brother, he truly wondered whether Ellie hadn’t come here hoping to find a new father for her baby—a possibility that upset him far more than he would have ever admitted to his brother. And not just because he thought it would be underhanded of her, either. Not at all.

  He was more disturbed by the thought that for a prospective daddy Ellie might have already decided on Parker.

  The doctor came again later in the day, but as far as Ellie could tell, he didn’t even intend to look in on Roy; instead, he and Parker and Ike sat on the front stoop for a while, braving the still-blustery wind for some privacy.

  She wondered if they were discussing her. After all, her arrival at the home of three bachelors was bound to have caused talk in town. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Staying under the same roof with three men probably wasn’t going to endear her to Paradise society when she finally decided to settle in on her own. She’d noticed a nice-looking hotel in town; then again, she couldn’t afford to stay in it.

  Which was too bad, because it would be a relief to get away from the tension she felt here. She’d thought today might be easier, but the problem of living a lie was harder. She could have sworn Parker and Ike were eyeing her curiously this morning—but that was probably just because they’d been discussing the scene in Roy’s bedroom last night. Maybe there was even doubt in their minds about what she and Roy had been doing.

  And then there was Roy himself. Roy, who she felt oddly compelled to help, since she had been the cause of his accident. The trouble was, every time she went near him, she felt quivery and nervous under his gaze. It was as if he could see right through her.

  All those questions he’d asked about her fictitious husband! She’d thought she’d die of mortification. Why hadn’t she anticipated someone would ask her about how her husband died? Having invented her status as a widow, she should have been ready for those questions. Unfortunately, when the inevitable inquiry had come, all she’d been able to do was stutter out a story. How was she going to keep track of all the falsehoods she’d built around herself?

  When Ike came in, she followed him into the kitchen. “What is it, Ike? Has there been talk in town?”

  Ike’s wide-eyed expression indicated the affirmative. “Boy-howdy, has there! That town is abuzz with gossip.”

  “About me?” she asked, afraid of the answer.

  Ike laughed. “Good lord, no. What would they say about you?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing, I guess…except that I’m a stranger.”

  “Well the lady that’s the talk of the town right now ain’t no stranger, that’s for dang sure. She’s Roy and Parker’s ma!”

  Ellie
stared at him as he took a drink of cold coffee from the pot left on the stove this morning. “I don’t understand.”

  “Mrs. McMillan—Mrs. Dotrice, she is now—left Paradise when Roy and Parker were just boys. Seems she didn’t take a shine to our Nebraska winters or something like that. Plus there wasn’t much here back then but buffalos and Indians. Not to mention all the white settlers lived in dugouts underground, like prairie dogs. This wasn’t such a bustling place back then as it is now.”

  Ellie wondered what Ike would make of Mulberry Street in Manhattan, where new immigrants were packed into tenements like pickles in a barrel. “And their mother’s been gone all this time?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Hasn’t seen her sons in upwards of twenty years. And not only that, she’s been remarried and widowed again to a man in Philadelphia, Doc says. Parker’s going back to town this evening to see her.”

  “What about Roy?”

  Ike’s face was an unreadable mask. “Parker doesn’t think Roy’s in any condition to see his ma.”

  It’s true the trip would probably be painful for him, but didn’t he deserve to visit with his only living parent as much as Parker? She frowned. “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “I wouldn’t worry my head about it none, Ellie. The McMillan boys have their own ways, and I’ve decided it’s best just to say ‘to each his own.”’

  She crossed her arms, vaguely dissatisfied with that answer. “Still, it seems strange. Poor Roy.”

  Ike laughed. “He sure doesn’t like to be sick. That’s a fact.”

  Guilt swallowed her. “I feel so terrible about the accident. I’ve been trying all day to make amends, but…”

  The farmhand shook his head. “Don’t you worry. Nobody’s blaming you for what happened.”

  She let out a sigh.

  “You’re just gettin’ restless here, I’ll bet. Tell you what. Tomorrow I’ve got to go into town. So if’n you want to come along and take in the sights, it would be pure pleasure for me to have you along.”

  Ellie was grateful for the invitation. She needed to find out what kind of opportunity there would be in town for a widow with a baby. “Yes, I think I will go with you. Thank you for offering.”

  Ike blushed with satisfaction that she’d accepted his offer, which made her think perhaps she was just being overly suspicious when she’d feared Parker and Ike had been eyeing her strangely. If they had been looking at her in a way that was peculiar, perhaps it was because they weren’t accustomed to having a woman in the house. That was a logical explanation, wasn’t it?

  Feeling better, she decided she needed to make herself useful. She wasn’t used to being idle.

  But of course, she didn’t want to make herself too useful. That’s how things had gone so impossibly awry the night before—her inability not to bustle about like a maid. But surely she could manage a few chores without raising any eyebrows.

  She looked at the fresh-scrubbed kitchen cleaned by Parker just that morning and sighed. No work to be done here. When she went out into the parlor, she was further disturbed by the lack of untidiness there, too. She sighed, wondering what to do next, and decided it had been too long since she had checked on Roy—a prospect that made her heart skip irregularly.

  Fear. That’s what caused that odd racing sensation in her pulse at the thought of seeing Roy. Parker had warned her that Roy was suspicious of women, and the man had certainly proved himself to be more meddlesome than his younger brother. His appearance in her room last night was indication enough of his distrust of her.

  Then again, there was something else in the way that he looked at her, especially when he didn’t think she was watching him, that also made her wary. It was that look of masculine curiosity she’d been on the receiving end of on more than one occasion. Foremost in her mind among those times was the moment she’d first caught slick, handsome Percy Sternhagen’s eye.

  She didn’t need any more attention of that nature from men in this lifetime!

  And yet there was something about Roy that seemed very different from Percy. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Certainly his probing blue eyes made her jittery in the same way—noodle-kneed and breathless.

  But it was a small house and she couldn’t avoid him forever. She went back to the kitchen, heated some coffee, and fixed a tray. When she rapped on his door, which had of course been Parker’s door before she had arrived and sent the whole house topsy-turvy, her knock was met by his gruff voice.

  As she entered the room, Roy, standing by his bed, met her with an expression that didn’t ooze happiness at seeing her again. In fact, after a quick glance, he seemed to try to be avoiding looking at her at all.

  “I’m not an invalid, you know,” he grumbled.

  She smiled in spite of his grumpy attitude. Better by far to be around a cranky man than a randy one. “The doctor said you’re to stay in bed for a bit. I don’t want you to dehydrate.”

  “Slim chance that could happen with you infusing me with liquids every hour.”

  She set the tray down and frowned. “You’re welcome.”

  His pout made him look almost like a little boy. “I mean, thank you.”

  She laughed, and it seemed to her that when she did, a glimmer of attraction flared in his blue eyes. Something fluttered deep inside her, giving her the urge to giggle or prance like a foolish schoolgirl.

  She fisted her hands and asked, “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

  He grinned, and immediately she felt her mistake. Would she ever stop acting like a domestic? For years she had dreamed of escaping servitude, and now she couldn’t seem to stop speaking like an upstairs maid.

  “I’m the one who should be bringing you coffee. You’re a guest, remember?”

  “Oh.” She shrugged. “So much has happened…I’m afraid I’ve been more of an irritant than a visitor.”

  He stared at her a long while, until she felt her cheeks blushing under his scrutiny. She should never have come into this room….

  “Do you know what surprises me most about you, Ellie?”

  Her gaze couldn’t seem to pull away from his blue eyes. Funny, that eyes so like Parker’s could affect her in a completely different way. “No.” Her voice came out weak, breathy.

  “You’re so much the opposite of the grand lady I expected.”

  Her blush deepened still, and belatedly she did try to draw herself up as if she were that grand lady he’d expected. If only she weren’t so small!

  He laughed and picked up the coffee cup she’d brought him. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m not disappointed. In fact, I was sort of dreading having a snooty old dame around the house. You aren’t like that at all.”

  “Thank you.” She attempted to walk past him, but he caught her arm and she spun, ending up closer to him than ever. Close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from his chest, see his afternoon growth of beard along his strong jaw. Close enough that she could imagine how it would feel if he bent down and touched his lips to hers.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, steeling herself against such terrible thoughts. Hadn’t her experience in the linen closet with Percy taught her anything?

  “I should go.” But when she backed up, her knees hit the back of Roy’s bed.

  He steadied her from tripping with his one hand, and she realized suddenly how strong he was. Though he was just slightly taller than Percy, hard work—something Percy had never become acquainted with—had made his body strong, almost formidable.

  “Why?”

  She swallowed past the sandy dryness in her throat. “I shouldn’t be in your…” Somehow, the word bedroom died in her throat, and so she just skipped over it. “Because, look, you’re on your feet, when you should be lying in…”

  He grinned. “Bed.”

  She nodded; perspiration beaded around her face. Her brow felt fiery hot, despite the fact that it was quite chilly in the house. He lifted a hand to touch a tendril of her hair—a gesture she remember
ed Percy making.

  At that startling thought, she jumped back, accidentally hitting his arm with her hand. Coffee flew from his cup across his bedcovers. “Oh!” she cried, watching the liquid radiate a stain across the worn linens. “I’m so sorry!”

  Roy frowned. “Never mind.”

  She backed quickly away, toward the door, toward escape. What had he been doing, touching her like that? Putting his hand to her hair wasn’t just a friendly gesture! Had he been sincerely moved to do so, or was this just a more elaborate attempt to unmask her? Was there something about her that invited men to behave forwardly with her—or was he merely trying to see if she was the kind of woman who could be toyed with?

  In other words, not a lady.

  She redoubled her efforts to be a lady—the kind he was so surprised she didn’t resemble—and drew herself up proudly, bugging her eyes much in the manner of her old employer, Louisa Sternhagen. No one would have ever caressed her hair!

  “I’ll get fresh linens for you,” she said.

  He looked annoyed. With himself, or with her?

  Before she could discover the answer, she fled the room, returning minutes later with fresh bedcovers. “I hope these will do,” she said, suddenly remembering that she was being maidish again. Louisa Sternhagen had probably never made a bed in her life. At that thought, she blinked innocently at Roy. “Do you know what to do with these?”

  He was still scowling. “You mean you don’t?”

  She almost laughed. How wonderful it would be if she didn’t! “Well…not exactly.”

  His lips twisted into a wry grin. “I guess you wouldn’t. Well don’t worry. I’ll do it.”

  She smiled back at him as if there couldn’t be too much starch in her drawers. “I’m sooo sorry, Roy. I seem always to be making a nuisance of myself.”

  “That’s all right.” But he didn’t look like it was. His thwarted caress didn’t appear to sit well with him.