“Don’t wonder. Believe me on this.”
“But — ” “Shhh.” He took one beautiful rose-colored peak into his mouth.
Silence fell between them.
Always, he thought, I will remember the taste of her, sweet and feminine.
Always, she thought, I will remember the way he smells, elemental and masculine.
His hand went to her other breast, caressing.
Never again, he thought, will I know the thrilling feeling of anticipation of being inside her.
Never again, she thought, will I know the exquisite longing to have him fill me.
His lips slid down to her stomach and whispered back and forth across the velvet texture of her skin.
For tonight, he thought, I will have her, and this possession will have to last me my whole life long.
For tonight, she thought, I will not fight him or myself. I will give myself up to the pleasure and forget the guilt and the anger.
There would be no more nights of having him hold her and feel him move inside her. Sorrow threatened to overwhelm her, but she pushed it back determined that their last lovemaking would not be marred.
His gentleness was more pronounced.
Her surrender was more complete.
His mouth was lower on her now, kissing places of extraordinary sensitivity. Ecstasy bloomed wherever his lips moved. Flames were rising up inside her.
She grasped his shoulders, and with one word broke the silence. “Please.”
He’d never known feelings so deep or profound. He held her tightly to him and entered her.
She let the fire take her, joined to him in an alchemy of glittering closeness that bewildered her with its many facets.
His head was beside her, their cheeks pressed together.
He felt the tears on his face and thought they were his.
She felt the tears on her face and thought they were hers.
Each was so absorbed in their own pain of goodbye that neither was aware of the other’s tears mingling with their own.
Chapter 9
Lars Nilsen gave a sigh of satisfaction. “You make apple cake as good as your mama did, my daughter.”
“Thank you, Papa.”
“And the meat pie — it vas vonderful.”
Anna picked up her plate and glass from the kitchen table and took them to the sink. She leaned against the counter and bent her head. Lord, she dreaded the next few minutes. From somewhere she was going to have to find the courage to tell her father that she was leaving town. Telling him might be more painful than actually leaving him, because once she was on the stage and heading out of town, she wouldn’t be able to see the distress and bewilderment in his eyes. But this evening she was going to have to look him squarely in the eye.
He was going to be hurt and confused. He wouldn’t understand, because, of course, she wouldn’t be able to explain about the baby. That knowledge might kill him. She was comforted in what she was about to do only by the belief that in the long run it would be better for him this way.
Behind her she heard her father push away from the table and stand up. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m going away, Papa.”
“What?”
Like a knife through her back, she felt his shock. “I — I’ll be taking the stage in two days time. And I won’t be coming back. I plan to — ”
“But vhat about the baby?”
For an instant she froze. Then she whirled and saw the expression on her father’s face — as if he couldn’t believe that those particular words had slipped out of his mouth. “You know,” she whispered.
He averted his eyes and turned toward the door.
“Wait a minute!” She rushed to him and grabbed his arm to stop him. “You know.” Her brain didn’t seem to want to take in that fact.
For a moment he was stiff, then he slumped and without looking at her he nodded.
A thought darted through her brain, a thought so unbearable that she suddenly felt as if something sharp and jagged had sliced through the middle of her heart. “What else do you know?”
“Daughter … I … ”
Nervelessly her hand fell away from his arm. “Oh, my God.” Her quietly spoken words were weighted down with horror. “You know everything.”
He half raised his hand toward her. “Anna — ”
“How long, Papa? How long have you known that Wesley McCord was blackmailing me with your notes of debt?”
“Almost from the beginning,” he admitted miserably.
She was cold. So cold. She wrapped her arms around her body, trying to warm herself. “You knew what I was doing to protect you and you didn’t put a stop to it?”
“How could I?” he asked, pleading for her to understand. “I vould have lost everything.”
She couldn’t take her eyes from her father, but his image was blurring. Tears were crowding her eyes and overflowing down her cheeks.
“But didn’t you think about what I was losing, Papa? My self-respect. Pieces of my soul. For God’s sake, Papa, I'm your flesh and blood. I’m your daughter. One word from you would have protected me.”
“Anna, try to understand,” he said pleadingly. “You are young. I am not. I left my home in Sveden and made a new life here. I could not start over again.”
Slowly her head shook back and forth. Without being aware of it, she began backing away from him. “It was all for nothing,” she said. “For nothing.”
“Please … ”
A sob tore from her throat. “It wasn’t Wesley who made me a whore. It was you, Papa. You … ” Dimly she saw her father make a gesture as if he were reaching out to her. She took another step away from him. She couldn’t bear for him to touch her right then. She wheeled and ran from the room.
Down the stairs, out of the emporium, along the path she ran, not knowing where she was going, not caring. She ran. Her hairpins loosened and fell to the ground. She ran. Brambles snagged and tore at her dress. She ran. She stumbled and righted herself. She ran. A pain stitched into her side. She ran and ran and ran.
After stabling his horse, Wes was returning from his barn and heading toward his house when he caught sight of her. “Anna?” he called. She didn’t stop. He stood gazing after her worriedly. She was running as if the devil were chasing her. What the hell was wrong?
He started after her, his long, powerful strides rapidly overtaking the flying figure ahead of him. He caught up with Anna just as she reached the bank of the pond and pulled her to a halt.
“Anna, for God’s sake — ”
Anna felt arms go around her, trying to restrain her, trying to make her stop and remember something too painful to endure. She fought against the memory like someone demented.
“Anna!” She was twisting and pushing against him, hitting out at him with her fists. But one look at her bloodless face and blank eyes told him she wasn't seeing him. She'd obviously had some sort of violent emotional upset, and her anguish slashed at him. “Stop it, Anna. It’s Wes. What happened? Who did this to you?”
Deep racking sobs answered him. He swung her up into his arms and headed back the way he’d come.
She kicked and clawed, but he held her tightly. Someone would definitely pay for this, he thought grimly, trying to imagine what could have happened.
By the time they reached the house, she had quieted in his arms and her cries had become whimpers. He carried her upstairs to the bedroom and laid her gently on the bed. He sat down beside her and brushed her hair away from her face. “Can you tell me what happened, Anna?”
She looked up at him. “I’m so cold,” she whispered.
He stripped off her dress and wrapped her in a blanket. Then he joined her on the bed and took her into his arms. For a long time he cradled her against his body, trying to warm her. He stroked her hair and kissed her face and willed her to be all right.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he heard her murmur in a choked voice. “He knew.”
�
�Who knew, Anna?”
“My father. He knew all along. He knew … everything … all along.”
She was speaking softly, without intonation, and at first he wasn’t sure he had heard her right. “What? You mean he knew about you and me?”
“And he knows about the baby.”
“But why didn’t he say something? To me? Or you? My God, that son of a bitch.” How could her father have done such a thing to her, he wondered with a growing anger.
“He was the one person in the world I thought I could trust,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “But in the end he used me just like you did.”
Wes’s head jerked back as if someone had hit him with a closed fist. He’d just been wondering how Nilsen could have allowed Anna to be put in such an unthinkable position. Yet he was the one who had set the scheme in motion.
She’d been caught in a trap between her father and him, and he could offer her no defense for either of them.
“I’m … I’m sorry,” he said haltingly. “I’m so damned sorry. Try not to think about it for now. Try to get some rest.”
“I can’t get what he’s done out of my mind.”
Wes searched for what he could say to her, and what came to him surprised him. “Remember I told you about the mining camp where I grew up? Well, there was this old drunk who used to tell me stories about his days as a trapper in the mountains and his fights with the Indians. The more he had to drink, the better the story would be. So sometimes when the cold, or the hunger, or the loneliness got so bad I couldn’t stand it, I’d sneak into the bar and steal a bottle of whiskey for him. He’d drink and talk, and I’d listen and forget … for a little while.” He chuckled. “The deeper he’d get into the story and the bottle, the more Indians there’d be in the battle. Or the more ferocious the animals would be that he trapped. I remember one story … ”
As he talked, Anna curled against him with her head resting in the curve of his shoulder and her hand splayed over his chest. Listening to the softness of his voice, and feeling the gentleness of his fingers as they combed through her hair, she tried to imagine him as a hungry, neglected little boy whose life was so miserable his only escape was the stories of an old drunk.
She knew how hard it must be for him to dredge up memories of his youth and open himself to the pain of the past. But she’d never in her life been in such need of tenderness and caring, and he seemed to know it.
He had wrapped her in a cocoon of security to keep out the ugliness that had touched her. She felt safe with him — in fact, she realized, she had felt safe with him for a long time.
And it was at that moment she understood. He had never lied to her or deceived her. Nor had he offered false promises. He had always been honest with her.
She dozed off and on through the night, and whenever she woke, he was always there for her, protective and concerned.
Sometime in the pale gray light of predawn, she woke and stirred against him. He had fallen asleep at last, she noticed. She shifted the position of her head and gazed on his hard features with a realization that came to her with stark, piercing clarity.
She loved him.
He was not a good man. He was not a safe man. But he was her man.
And she knew her love for him would last her whole life long.
Ribbons of sunlight flowed through the window and touched Anna’s face. She awoke again and had the immediate sensation of being surrounded by warmth. Then she heard a strong, steady heart beating beneath her ear, and knew that for the first time she’d spent an entire night with Wesley.
It had been a night of upheaval and shock for her. First the revelation of her father’s betrayal, and then the staggering knowledge that she loved Wesley.
Would it change her decision to leave town? The answer was no, it couldn’t.
He’d held her through the night. He held her still.
He’d given her child his name for reasons that she was sure were too complicated for even him to understand.
But one thing was certain: he didn’t love her.
She slipped from his arms and sat up on the side of the bed. She was wearing only her shift, and she remembered that Wesley had taken off her dress and wrapped her in a blanket.
“Tell me what you need, and I’ll get it for you,” he said behind her.
She moved so that she could see him. He’d lain in the same position all night, holding her. Just as she was thinking that he had to be stiff, he raised his arms above his head and stretched. “I don’t need anything … except my dress. I’ve got to go home.”
He dropped his arms. “You’re going back to your father after what he did to you?”
She nodded.
“I don’t want you to be hurt, Anna.”
How ironic, she thought, when the fact that he didn’t love her hurt her so deeply. “I have to get my things together,” she said simply. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
He slid off the bed and came around to stand in front of her. “Don't go.”
Her smooth brow wrinkled with puzzlement. “I told you, I have to get my — ”
“I mean, don't leave town. Stay with me.”
“I don't understand.”
He made an impatient gesture. “Move in with me. Be my wife. Why not? We're married.”
“Are we?” she asked softly, her hand going to the chain that still hung around her neck and the ring between her breasts. If it wasn’t for his ring, she would almost swear that their marriage ceremony had never happened.
“There's no need for you to leave town, Anna.” He drove his fingers through his hair. “You can’t hope to support yourself and the baby. And even if you did manage to find some way, how could you take care of the baby? You’d have to leave him … ” He shrugged and looked away. “I don't like the idea of my child being left alone.”
She stood and gently touched his arm. “This baby won’t be neglected.” She walked around him, picked up her dress that had been thrown over a chair, and stepped into it. “I'm just tired of it all, Wesley. After what I’ve learned, I can’t live with my father anymore. And I don’t think I could live with you either. I want to raise my baby with every bit of love I can. Here there’s no love.”
“Dammit, you don’t have any money. How are you — ”
“Now that you’ve burned the notes, I can use a little of the money I’ve saved to keep me until I can set up a small business as a seamstress. In that way I can sew when the baby’s asleep or those times when he doesn't need me.” She presented her back for him to fasten the buttons she hadn’t been able to reach on her dress.
“Babies always need, ” he rapped out so fast, Anna knew that his mind was on his own childhood.
He tugged and jerked at the buttons until he had finished, then took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “You're my wife, Anna. I have the marriage certificate to prove it. That’s my baby in your body. I could make you stay here with me.”
Her blue eyes showed quiet determination and incredible sadness. “No, Wesley. The days when you could force me to do anything are over. I'm going to make a new life for myself and my baby, and there’ll be no shadows or lies in that life.” She moved toward the door. “Good-bye.”
“Wait,” he called, but she was already halfway down the stairs.
Her father was sitting at the kitchen table when she walked in. He was hunched over a cup of coffee, looking as if he hadn’t slept, and he had on the same clothes as he had been wearing the night before.
“It will soon be time to open the store,” she commented, going to the stove to pour herself a cup of coffee. “Hadn’t you better get dressed? By the way, I won’t be working today. I have to pack. You’ll be wanting to hire a helper as soon as you can.”
He didn’t look at her. “Vill you ever be able to forgive me?”
“I don’t know, Papa. Certainly not anytime soon.” She took a sip of coffee and immediately felt the bracing effect of it.
He got to his
feet with jerky motions and held out his hands beseechingly. “I did not vant you to be hurt, my daughter. I was hoping — ”
“You were hoping that somehow things would work out for the better, just like in those fairy tales Mama used to tell me when I was a little girl. You chose not to face what was happening to me. You chose to live in some sort of hazy dream world. Well, it’s time to wake up, Papa.”
“Mr. McCord is a powerful, important man to this town. If you had married him, you could have been like a first lady. Everyone in town would have looked up to you.”
“And maybe the business in the emporium would have benefited. How could you be such a hypocrite, Papa? Remember all the times you told me what a ‘bad man’ you thought Wesley was?”
Tears gathered in his eyes. “Anna, I do love you. I do. Since your mama died, you’ve been so strong. I thought … ”
Anna slumped back against the stove. Over the years all of her instincts had been right. He did need someone to look after him and protect him. First her mother had taken care of him, and then she had stepped into the breach created by her mother’s death. When she left town, he would find someone else to take care of him, perhaps Mrs. Harcourt.
Bittersweet feelings flooded through her. He couldn't help what he was, and some part of her was even aware that she couldn't stop loving him. He was her father But she knew nothing would ever be the same between them again.
She went to him and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s time to open the store, Papa. I'm going to pack.”
He was crying openly now. “Anna, don’t — ”
She forestalled him.“I can’t stay here, Papa. I can’t.”
In the sheriff's office, Cummings angrily pulled against the ropes that were binding his wrists and glared at Wes. The sheriff had left the two men alone, giving Wes permission to deal with the situation as he saw fit. Even the sheriff was afraid of him, Wes thought, but without satisfaction now.
“I didn’t expect to have to spend all this time in jail,” Cummings growled. “Didn't you get the note I sent you by way of that stupid deputy?”
“1 got it.” Wes propped his hip against a corner of the sheriff's desk, Cummings bit back the nasty retort on the tip of his tongue. Not yet, he thought. “But you're gonna get me out today, right?”
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