Always (23 page)

Emily raised a hand to her heart in a vain effort to calm its thundering beat. Her voice quavered regardless. “It’s no business of yours. You don’t work here anymore.”

“And you’ll never forgive me for that, will you?” His suit coat was rumpled, he wore no tie. His hair was mussed, and his jaw was shadowed. He could use a shave. Very out of character for Ross, who was always so fastidious about his personal appearance. He still hadn’t moved from his much-too-relaxed stance in the open archway.

“What do you want?” Emily demanded.

“I want to talk. I want to get this thing straightened out between us. It’s gone on for long enough.”

It was then that Emily caught a whiff of alcohol and realized what was wrong. He’d been drinking. When he pushed off from the doorjamb and moved toward her, she almost retreated in sudden confusion.

“So, what are you all prettied up for? Your beau, Karl?” He stopped only inches away to stand over her. His gaze dropped and lingered on the low-cut neckline of her evening dress before climbing to meet her own, and Emily felt a matching flush of heat rise to her cheeks. He’d never looked at her like that before.

“What do you care?” she asked.

“Did he stand you up? Karl does that sometimes, you know. When he gets tired of a girl. He conveniently forgets to show for an engagement, then she never hears from him again.”

Emily didn’t bother to tell him that she hadn’t planned to see Karl tonight. In fact, she rarely saw Karl unless he was between paramours, which was just fine with her.

“You’re drunk,” she said.

Ross merely offered a crooked half smile. “You gonna hold that against me, too?”

“Why are you here?”

His smile faded. “I told you. I want to set things straight.”

“They are straight. You chose to go work for the
Herald
.”

“You make it sound so simple, so cut and dried. I told you months ago why I quit. There were two men ahead of me in seniority. I could be bouncing grandchildren on my knee before I’d be up for assistant editor.”

“I heard you then, and I hear you now,” she said, averting her gaze to stare at his chest. It seemed safer than looking into his eyes, and she sure wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of backing away.

“You hear,” he said, “but you don’t try to understand.”

“I understand just fine. You could have found a way to further your career without working for Malcolm Davenport.”

“Davenport owns the biggest paper in town. It would be stupid to ignore that. What do you expect from me?”

“I don’t expect anything from you. Not anymore.”

“Reasoning with you is like trying to get a toehold in a brick wall.”

Indignant, Emily dared to look up at him. “Why? Because I don’t see things the way you do?”

“No, because you won’t even try.”

“Then go about your business and leave me alone.”

“All this is pointless. I quit my job at the
Herald
this morning.”

As the meaning of his words sank in, Emily felt a dazzling shot of hope. She opened her mouth to ask why, then cut off. She knew why. The same reason he reeked of alcohol. One way or another, everything Ross did boiled down to his obsession with Johanna. Emily had heard about her engagement to John Butler. Now, Ross was on a bender and feeling sorry for himself.

She reformed her original question to lash out and bait him. “Why? Because Johanna finally decided to throw you over?”

Emily had said things she regretted in the past— too many to count—but she’d never intentionally set out to wound him before. The flash of pain in Ross’s eyes was immediate and appalling.

“I’m sorry,” she said before he could reply, then pride compelled her to turn away. She clasped her hands together to stop their sudden trembling. “But I never liked her. You know that. You were bound to get hurt.”
Like me
, she added silently. He’d been hurting her for a long time now, though he didn’t know it. How could he? She’d been in love with him for years, but he’d never seemed able to see her as a grown woman.

“Johanna didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said.

Even if she didn’t know better, the repressed anger in his denial would have been enough to convince her that it was a sham.

“I enlisted,” he said when she didn’t answer. “I leave for Camp Curtin in the morning.”

Enlisted?
Emily could only pray that she’d heard wrong. “What?” she whispered.

“I’ll be leaving in the morning.”

She swung around to stare at him. “No.”

“They need volunteers.”

“You’re a fool!” she blurted. “You’re going to run away and get yourself killed because of Johanna!”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Johanna. It has to do with what’s right and what’s wrong and whether I have the guts to fight for my beliefs.”

What he said was true. They were going to war, and it was impossible to conceive that Ross’s conscience would allow him to ignore President Lincoln’s call for volunteers. Sooner or later he would enlist, Johanna or no Johanna, but Emily had hoped it would be later. She wouldn’t permit herself to think about it until the time came, but here it was; the time was now.

She turned away again, balling her hands into fists. Even after the Union fiasco at Bull Run, there were many who said the war would be over quickly. Emily wasn’t so sure. She might be young, but she was smart enough to know that no war could end soon enough, never before spilling a frightening amount of blood on both sides.

Ross gripped her shoulders from behind. His voice was low. “Emily, I don’t want to leave without setting things right between us.”

“No,” she said again, not really hearing him. She was overcome with a smothering sense of panic. Her mind filled with terrifying images of him lying bloody and dead on some faraway, body-riddled battlefield.

“I don’t care what anyone thinks of me, Em. I don’t care about Johanna or her father or anyone else in this town, only you. I can’t leave with you hating me.”

She turned to face him. “What do you want me to do? Send you off with a smile and a soul-stirring rendition of ‘Yankee Doodle’? If that’s the case, then you’d do better to look elsewhere. If you get yourself killed—”

“I won’t.”

There were tears in her eyes, something Ross couldn’t remember ever seeing before. His frustration with her fled, and he reached to take her in his arms.

She came much too easily and naturally, resting her cheek against his shoulder as if she’d been made to fit there. A feminine floral scent rose from her hair, and he suddenly knew the real reason he’d set out to find the dubious comfort of a warm and willing female during his last hours in town. The resentment he felt over Johanna’s rejection was only part of it.

He believed in the Union cause and he was primed for the fight, but there was also a part of him that was fearful and uncertain. He’d pushed a plow and he’d wielded a pen, but he’d never shouldered a musket meant to kill another human being. When it came right down to it, would he be able to pull the trigger? Would he have the courage to stand and fight when the bullets were flying and he came face to face with the deadly end of bayonet? And, of course, there was the very real possibility that Emily’s fears were well founded. He might not come back. At nineteen, this wasn’t an easy concept to grapple with.

Emily pulled away just enough to look up at him, and the shimmering, vibrant blue of her eyes reminded him of a little boy’s idea of natural beauty in its purest form. He remembered a summer afternoon when the sea breezes caressed his cheeks and the sun’s warmth kissed the crown of his head. He’d held his mother’s gloved hand as they looked out over the awe-inspiring expanse of the New York harbor, and he’d felt assured and content. It was one of the few happy memories he still clung to from his early childhood.

“Don’t go,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

“I have to go.”

“But not so soon.”

“Yes.”

“Then make love to me.”

He should have been shocked or surprised by what she’d said, but he wasn’t. It occurred to him that it must have been the alcohol that numbed his brain. The trouble was, he didn’t feel numb; he was acutely aware of his surroundings. He was aware of the fickle, muted lamplight that could play such mesmerizing tricks with the color of a young woman’s eyes, of the unnatural stillness of Nathaniel’s office, and of Emily, especially Emily. She looked very different to him tonight, with her raven hair pulled back in a loose chignon and her pale skin glowing like gold against the yellow silk of her evening dress. All grown up and pretty enough to make any fellow proud to escort her on his arm.

“Six years ago, we made a promise to each other, Ross. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“I meant it.”

“So did I.”

“We sealed it with our blood.”

“We were kids then,” he reminded her.

“But we’re not kids now.”

Emily didn’t care that she could be laying her heart out for the slaughter. The possibility that she might never see him again made her reckless. She tilted her face up, and he bent his head, and their lips met for the first time. It was just a whisper of a kiss, feather light and utterly exquisite; then they drew apart.

“Did you ever wonder what it would be like?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said.

He couldn’t know how very long she had wondered, how many times she had dreamed of what his kiss would be like, of what it would be like for him to look at her the way he was looking at her now. But even her dreams hadn’t begun to match reality. Her heart pounded in her throat, her knees felt as if they might buckle beneath her.

Cupping the back of her head with one hand, Ross kissed her again, harder and longer, so that when she felt the first invasion of his hot, whiskey-sweet tongue in her mouth, her fingers clutched at the rough material of his suit coat to keep her upright and steady on her feet. The sneaking, tingling heat, however, the heat that seemed to coalesce in her middle before slowly uncurling and radiating to the very tips of her extremities didn’t come as a surprise at all; she had felt it before, many times, at night when she was alone and thought of what it might be like to make love with Ross.

For Ross, that second kiss turned from sweet to hot with stunning swiftness. There was still a part of him, a lingering shade of rationality, that clung to the knowledge that what they were doing was somehow not right, but it was dim and unconvincing and too easily ignored. When Emily pressed up against him, pliable and eager, with her sweet lips parted and questing beneath his own, she didn’t feel like a best friend, nor anything remotely related to a sister.

He pulled back and mumbled, “This isn’t the time or place.”

“Ross, after tomorrow, there may never be time. I want you to be my first.”

“Your husband should be your first.”

“No, Ross, you. It’s always been you. Don’t you know that?” She tilted her lips up, and they kissed again. Ross forgot all about trying to reason with her. Or himself. She felt good and she tasted sweet, which was exactly what he needed now.

She pulled away and grasped his hand to move toward a closed door in the back of the office. He knew it was the room where Nathaniel kept a cot.

When they stepped over the threshold, the wavering yellow light from the outer office dimmed, leaving them bathed in shadows. She faced him and let go of his hand, and, without saying a word, reached up to undo the loose knot of hair at the base of her neck. The movement caused the silk fabric of her bodice to tighten, accentuating the appeal of corseted young breasts, and Ross knew that making love to her was going to be much too easy.

He took off his suit coat and threw it over a chair. As she reached back to undo the fastenings on her dress, he moved toward her. “I’ll do it.”

His voice had come out sounding much calmer and surer than he felt. Taking her by one arm, he gently turned her around so her back was to him. Likewise, his hands proved surprisingly steady as he undid first one hook, then another and another, until the back of her dress gaped open.
This isn’t just any girl
, he reminded himself as he loosened the ties of her corset and unbuttoned her petticoat. This was Emily.

This was crazy.

But he pushed aside a silken curtain of raven hair and pressed his lips to the soft skin at the base of her neck. He inhaled her scent. He felt her trembling by the time he made his way up to her ear. “Do you know what you’re asking for, Em?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not pretty or gentle or delicate. It’s not like in poetry and sonnets.”

“I... I know.”

But he was afraid that she didn’t know. Pushing the short sleeves of her evening dress down her arms, he let the garment drop away to the floor. Her corset was next, collapsing onto the pile of silk at her feet. Clad in only a camisole and drawers, she moved to step out of her clothes, but he caught her up short about the waist from behind and pulled her hard back up against him so there could be no mistaking what he meant. No matter how naive she might be, she couldn’t mistake a full erection pressing up against the soft curve of her buttocks.

Emily was seventeen and, up until a few moments before, kissed only once by Karl Becker that night behind the Brenners’ springhouse. But she’d deduced enough concerning what went on between the sexes to comprehend the source of that daunting pressure behind her. It was not that she wasn’t scared; she was—and literally shaking with it right down to her toes—but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t follow through with what they’d started. And Ross was wrong to think she held false expectations of what was to come. In fact, she didn’t want to be treated delicately at all.

One of Ross’s hands slid down over the slight curve of her abdomen, urging her still more firmly back against him, and his other hand slid up to cup her breast through the flimsy material of her camisole. Emily emitted a small sound that could have only been a cross between surprise and delight.

His mouth moved against her ear, his fingers spread to span her belly, and his thumb brushed over the peak of her breast. “You tell me to stop, Em,” he whispered, “just tell me to stop, and I will.”