Tempted (3 page)

Largely because she couldn’t stand being so close to this man.

Steven had woken up after being gut shot and knocked unconscious, and in the weeks that followed she’d checked his temperature, checked his stitches a hundred times a day. She’d gotten so used to touching him she didn’t even think about it, until one morning he caught her hand and said he was fine.

Please
, he’d said, pushing her hand away.
Please, don’t touch me again. I cannot bear it.

But her fingers ached every time she saw him. Right now she would sweep his long blond hair off his face, stroke the hard line of his jaw. Perhaps she’d press her thumb against his dimple, just to see how it fit.

“Is there… something?” He brushed at his face. Steven was meticulously clean, his clothing pressed and tidy. He was always clean-shaven. In the filthy West, he stood out.

“No. No, I’m just… thrilled to see you.”

His smiles were brief. If she blinked she’d miss them, but when she managed to catch one it was like seeing a rainbow after a hard rain—proof that the blue sky could do so much. That this man, stoic and serious, deep as the ocean, could feel something happy.

Anne did not like to think that at some point she’d fallen in love with Steven during that time in the cabin, because that would be foolish. Unwise. Like putting her hand right into the fire.

But what she felt for him was a different animal than friendship, and it did not come to heel when called. It ran wild through her.

If this man had kissed her and asked her to marry him… She turned away, embarrassed by her thoughts. Tired of feeling this way about him. Tired of seeing things in him that she wanted to see, creating a hypothesis about him that had no proof.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. After clearing the haze that seeing him always created in her, she realized his being here out of the blue might mean trouble. “Melody? Cole?”

“Fine. They’re fine.” He glanced sideways toward the small garden she had in front of the house. There was one rose left because their summer had been a long warm one. “Happy.”

He reached into his coat and pulled from an inside pocket a cloth-wrapped bundle. He handed it to her with a smile. “From your sister.”

She unwrapped the cloth to find a handful of beautiful red raspberries, undoubtedly the last of the season, like gems against the cream cloth. Squished gems, their color bleeding into the cloth. “She knows there are raspberries here, doesn’t she?”

“I think she just wanted to give you something.”

When he said it that way, she saw the raspberries were a love note. Bittersweet longing to see her sister filled her. She blinked away the sudden tears, knowing that he saw them. That he saw everything.

He saw and he watched, and yet he was so removed. So very distant.

She wrapped them back up in the cloth. “You didn’t come all this way because my sister misses me.”

“No. I’m meeting with the railroad folks, but they’re not in town yet.” He glanced up at her, the blue of his eyes so bright under his hat. They did something to her heart, those eyes, the direct stare of them. “I thought you might have breakfast with me at the hotel.”

“I would love to. Let me just let the doctor know. Can…” She turned toward the door and then back to him. Unsure of what to do with the raspberries. Or herself.

“Here.” He smiled and took the raspberries from her.

Inside, she grabbed her coat and hat from the hooks beside the door, then stepped into the exam room, where Dr. Madison was checking the lump and bruising on Sam's head.

“If I had a leech, we could get the blood out of the way,” he said when she walked in.

“I'm...going out. Breakfast,” she said. “At the hotel.”

He stood up, wiping his hands on a towel. “I’ll join you.”

“No.” She shook her head, smiled to soften the impression her quick denial might give him. “I…I already have company.”

He sighed. “I can tell by your face that Mr. Baywood is here.”

“My face?”

She had never before felt the sensation of having two men waiting for her. Two men unrelated by marriage wanting to take her to breakfast. Hidden from sight in the folds of her serge skirt, she pinched her leg, just to be sure she wasn’t dreaming.

If Mama could see me now.

“What you see in that odd man, I'll never know.”

“He's not odd,” she whispered at him.

Doc lifted his eyebrows. “He's odd. You just don't see it because you're half in love with him.”

It was as if she were suddenly standing there with no clothes. Frazzled, she turned and left the room, tying her favorite green bonnet with the dancing cherries under her chin and stepping toward the door.

Doc followed. “Good morning, Mr. Baywood,” he said, as if nothing at all were amiss.

“Dr. Madison.” Steven nodded his head, his hands in the pockets of his coat. Dr. Madison stepped forward again, almost stepping out onto the porch with him, and Steven took one step backward.

Dr. Madison glanced back at her as if he'd proven a point.

“I won't be gone long,” she said in the primmest voice she had. She swept past the doctor, and she and Steven took steps toward the dirt street.

“Your cane?” Doc called out, standing in the doorway, holding the birchwood cane she used when she went into town. The streets were often muddy, the boardwalk weak in places, and getting around with her leg was difficult enough.

Steven would offer her his arm. Wouldn't he? For a moment she was tempted to force the issue. Perhaps he no longer touched people because no one ever touched him. She was so aware of that terrible wall around him, built brick by brick with his own hand, that she gave him a wide berth. But he would not deny her his arm. And the thought of his strong arm, the warmth of him seeping through his coat, through her glove and into her palm, made her blink. And blink again.

But foreseeing his discomfort, how he would flinch away from her hand and try to hide it, made her walk back to the door and reach for her cane.

“Thank you,” she said, but Doc Madison did not let go of the cane.

“You don’t pity him, do you?” Doc whispered. Her face flooded with prickly heat. “If he had asked you the same question as me, would he have gotten the same answer?”

She tugged her cane free, stepped out of the house and closed the door behind her.

“You’re ready?” Steven asked, and she lifted her face to the sunlight. The mountains, snow-capped and fierce, stood behind him. The creek was a brown-green ribbon through the far meadows, and the air smelled only slightly of manure. Winter was in the air, the edge of the breeze sharp with cold.

Where she was from in Georgia, it never got cold like it did here. She’d never dreamed such snow and ice and wind was possible. And she’d never dreamed that she'd like it. This part of it, anyway—the exhilarating bite and tingle of snow on the wind.

“It’s a fine morning, isn’t it?” she said as they started off down the dirt road toward town.

“Snowing in the pass.”

“If it’s snowing, you won’t get back.”

“No. I don’t imagine I will.”

His jaw was tight, the muscles tense all along his neck and face. “Does that mean you’re not going back?”

“Not until the passes clear.”

She rolled her eyes. “You are as forthcoming as a turtle.”

Again, that lightning strike of a smile, and she nearly tripped over a slat in the boardwalk. On this, the north side of town, it was opium dens and the taverns that hadn’t been totally rebuilt after the fire. A few drunks were sleeping off the worst of it in the shade between buildings. Blue columbine grew in scrappy, determined clumps amongst the broken glass and drunks.

That was her. She was blue columbine, growing where she was planted. Her unnaturalness in Georgia before the war was now… well, it was lovely.

“Are you unhappy there?” she asked, not expecting him to answer, already thinking past his expected silence to questions about her sister’s horse, Lilly, who was pregnant.

“It's uncomfortable,” he said. Stunned, she stopped, now in front of the newer brick buildings of downtown.

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s a very small meadow, shared with two people who are so in love.” He ducked his head, his cheeks full of color. He was embarrassed. Honestly, she’d never thought she’d see the day. “There’s a lot of kissing. A lot.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth, but not before the laughter had already squeaked out.

“I thought I would give them some privacy,” Steven said.

“All winter?”

“The first storm, anyway.”

His eyes met hers, and for a brief moment—the briefest, because she wanted it to last—she saw him. The warmth and the humor he so rarely showed. Time just stopped, the wind, the birds, her heart.

“You’re lovely when you smile,” he told her. “You should not hide it.”

There was nothing she could say—there wasn’t a thought in her head. She could only stand there and shake. And…want.

Her first kiss had not inspired a drop of the desire this man's smile did. His attention and gaze upon her face made her hot and breathless.

That the doctor could not make her feel at all like this, for all his charm and good looks, made her fear that this...feeling was tied only to Steven. Only he could make her ache like this.

And there was no chance that she inspired the same in him.

Aunt Julia had died a spinster, and Mama always said she'd pined away for a man who didn't love her back.

Perhaps it is a family trait
, she thought with a giddy and sad heart.
Like an overbite or big ears
.

Steven reached past her, leaning closer to her than he’d been since he lay unconscious and gut shot at her feet. Her eyelids nearly fluttered shut so she could savor his smell. The heated pine, the sweat and spice of him.

“Mrs. Denoe.” A man stumbled up behind them and would have collided with her if Steven, quick as a blink, hadn’t moved his solid body between her and the man.

“Careful, soldier,” Steven said. His low voice a masculine warning.

“Mrs. Denoe.” It was Sam Garrity, peering up and over Steven’s much taller shoulder, but Steven put his hand up, keeping the man away.

“Sam,” she said, not used to seeing him clean and conscious. His face was worse in the daylight, purple and blue around his eye and nose.

“You know him?” Steven asked, looking back at her.

“I do,” she said, but didn’t elaborate. Steven was not pleased with the level of work she did with Dr. Madison. “Did Dr. Madison wake you up?”

“No, I woke up on my own.” He was shielding his eyes from the sunlight with his good hand. “Got shut of there before he could come around with a bill.” He laughed, but then he must have realized that the money he owed Madison he also owed to her.

“I'll pay,” he stammered. “I swear—”

“It's all right, Sam. You feeling all right?” Annie asked. Steven stepped sideways, still between them but no longer quite such a barrier.

“I’ve felt better,” Sam said with lurching, pained smile. “I, ah… wanted to thank you, Mrs. Denoe.”

Sam was so young. Still a boy, really. If the war hadn’t happened, he’d still be in school.

“How are your stitches?” she asked, and he lifted his hand. The gauze was already dirty and there was blood seeping through it.

“I told you to keep that clean,” she scolded, acutely aware of Steven watching her. “How'd you get that dirty so fast?”

“It ain't dirty.” He glanced down at the bandage. “It’s real clean.”

She sighed. They had a difference of opinion on what “clean” meant.

“Please, Sam,” she said. “Be careful with it, or you could reopen the wound.”

“I will. I’ll be real careful. Thank you, again. You… you always take good care of me. You're... you're the nicest person around here. And I just want to thank you.” There was something in the tone of his voice that caught her in the throat. What she provided for him could hardly be considered care, but it was all the kindness he had in the world.

“You're welcome,” she said. “Though you could thank me by keeping that bandage clean.”

Sam smiled and shuffled off, his threadbare coat catching a breeze and flaring out behind him.

“You all right?” Steven asked, and Anne jerked away, her weight tilting backward. She tried to catch herself with her bad foot, which was sure to make her fall on her face, but Steven caught her. His hands at her elbows, pulling her back into balance, onto her center.

Steven.

But as soon as she was sturdy on her feet, he let go of her so fast it was as if he hadn’t touched her at all. But her body knew. Her body burned, there at her elbows where his hand had been.

Her body would not forget.

“Thank you,” she breathed, unable to look at him in fear that he would see it all in her face, everything she felt. Every secret dream she’d had about him and tried to ignore or hide away. “I’m fine. Let’s go in.” He opened the door to the hotel and she swept past him, making sure no part of her touched any part of him.

Yes.

Dr. Madison was right. Steven would get a very different answer.

S
teven watched her walk past him, her small shoulders, her stiff back. So straight. That was Annie…. Anne. She preferred to be called Anne now. Annie was a little girl’s name. She’d left the name behind when she left his clearing.

She was not a little girl. Anne was an arrow. He shook out his hands, as if to rid himself of the sensation of having touched her. Of having been touched. His arm still ached like he’d stuck the whole thing in icy spring runoff.

As Anne walked, the silly cherries on her bonnet bobbed, a strange bit of frivolity that only highlighted the lurch of her gait. He wished he could take her arm the whole time they walked—it would help. But he had no chivalry left, and he felt no pity for her, and hated the idea that she would think he did.

So he was paralyzed into not touching her. And that was easier.

It was easier to live as if he were half dead.

“Are you coming?” Anne asked, looking over her shoulder at him. The cherries, the glasses, the brown curls behind her ears. If she weren’t made of steel, if she hadn’t saved his life and probably dozens of others, if he didn’t know better, he might think she was silly. A bit of forgettable fluff.