Bicycle Built for Two (30 page)

Alex’s gaze was intense. “You can stay with
her, Kate.”

Shocked, Kate stared at Alex, her open mouth
spewing no words.

“I know you need to earn a living. I can pay
whatever you earn at your two jobs at the fair.”

“But—but that’s not possible.”

“It is, too, possible. Listen, I want to
help you. Neither of us knows how much longer your mother can last,
Kate. You must know that.”

“No! I don’t know that.” She was lying
through her teeth.

Plainly exasperated, Alex barked, “For God’s
sake, Kate, you claim to want the best for your mother, but you
reject offers of help at every turning of the road.”

“Darn it, Alex, I don’t need your
charity!”

“The hell you don’t!”

Kate was so shocked by this slip into
profanity that she could only stare at him for several seconds. She
noticed that he appeared rather shocked himself.

He cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon. I
didn’t mean to swear.”

She waved her hand. She heard worse than
that tiny little “hell” every day of her life.

“And I know you don’t need my charity. I
like your mother, Kate, and I know she’s had a hard and sometimes
brutal life. I’d like to make her last days on earth a little
easier on her and on you, too. The doctor only lives about a mile
down the road, and I can see that he checks on her every day.”

“She’ll miss her family,” Kate muttered,
wondering even as she spoke if Walter, Bill, and Kate herself were
worth dying in Chicago for. Kate didn’t think so. She’d rather
breathe her last out here in the open, with fresh air and flowers
blooming. On the other hand, she knew Ma would want her children
around her at the end. And Alex had offered to pay her her regular
salary and let her stay here with her mother.

“Oh, God!” Unable to control her emotions,
she buried her face in her cupped hands.

“Kate!” In an instant, Alex had her in his
arms. “Don’t cry, darling. I know how hard all this is for you. And
I don’t want to take your mother away from you. But she’s so ill.
And she seems to enjoy the country so much.”

“I know she does.” Kate tried and failed to
control her tears. Her heart was breaking, and she couldn’t help
it. “Oh, Alex, she’s dying.” There. She’d spoken the truth out
loud. It made her cry harder.

“There, Kate, I know, I know.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t know anything.”
Her words were so thick, she could scarcely understand herself.
“She’s had such a hard life, and she’s such a saint. It’s not
fair.”

“I know it’s not,” Alex soothed, not
bothering to contradict her statement about his not knowing
anything.

Kate knew it was because that, by this time,
he knew better than argue with her when she was being irrational.
She even admitted—to herself—that she was being irrational. How
she’d changed since she’d first met Alex English!

His big hand stroking her from her head to
her waist felt good. Kate had developed a lot of respect for Alex’s
hands. They were capable hands, and Alex used them for good. He was
about as unlike her father as a human male could get, and she loved
him.

“I don’t want to go back to Chicago and leave
her here,” she said when she could push the words past the ache in
her throat.

“You wouldn’t have to,” he told her
patiently. “You can stay here with her.”

“I can’t let you support me. That would make
me a . . .” She couldn’t say the word.

“For the love of—” She felt
him take a deep breath. “You will
not
be my mistress, Kate. For
heaven’s sake, this is my mother’s home. And your mother will be
here, too. Do you suppose I’d take advantage of you under these
circumstances? Or any other circumstances,” he added, sounding
cranky.

Kate feared his unwillingness to take
advantage of her spoke more of her own unpleasant personality than
his nobility of character. “I can’t let you do that. It’s too much.
But if she stays here, I might never see her alive again. And what
about my brothers? They deserve to see their mother again.”

She felt his chest heave with another sigh.
“I’ll make sure your brothers get to see your mother, Kate. I’ll
drive them out here every day if you want me to.”

Lifting her face, she actually managed a
crooked smile. “How can they come out here every day? We all have
to work.”

“I know that, damn it. I’ll fix everything.
Trust me for once, will you?”

She stared at him through tear-filled eyes.
His face came in and out of focus as she blinked. It was a strong
face; a good face. She loved his face. Without her conscious
consent, her hands lifted to frame his face. “You’re so good to us,
Alex.”

“God knows, I try to be.”

It sounded to Kate as if he were attempting
to maintain his firmness in the face of her tears. She didn’t want
him to be firm. She needed more than firmness from him tonight. She
needed his love. And if she couldn’t get that, maybe she could get
a little temporary affection.

That being the case, Kate lifted her face to
his and kissed him.

Chapter Fourteen

Alex knew he shouldn’t be kissing Kate. This
was a dangerous thing to do, it being that they were in her
bedroom, everyone else in the family had gone to bed, and her own
bed was only a couple of feet away. “Kate . . .” But he couldn’t
tell her to stop. He wanted her too much. He loved her too much,
heaven save him.

“I know, Alex,” she whispered. “I know this
is wrong. I guess I’m bad clear through, because I don’t want to
stop.”

“Don’t say that. For God’s sake, Kate.”

“Then why am I doing this?” Her voice broke
on a sob.

Alex couldn’t stand it. He wanted to make
everything better for her. He wanted to stop her mother from dying
and give her brothers money and make sure Kate herself never wanted
for anything again. And the only thing he could do was to offer her
some sort of solace in her time of distress. He lifted her in his
arms and carried her to the bed. “You’re doing it because you need
comfort. And I want to give it to you.”

She’d buried her face against his shoulder.
Alex didn’t want to let her go, but he was an honorable man, in
spite of all obstacles. “You need rest, Kate.”

“Don’t go,” she pleaded.

Alex thought he detected torment in her
voice. “I won’t go. Lie down and try to get some rest, Kate. You’re
totally exhausted. You work too hard, you know.”

“I have to.”

“I know it.” And he hated it. He laid her
tenderly on the bed. “Here, Kate, let me take off your shoes.”

To his surprise, she didn’t argue. Rather,
she lay back against the fluffed-up pillow with a deep, shuddering
sigh. “I’m scared, Alex. I don’t know what I’ll do when Ma
dies.”

“I know, sweetheart, but we’ll think of
something.”

“We will?”

“We will.” It was a promise he aimed to
keep. He dragged over one of the chairs and sat on it, thought
about taking her hand, but didn’t trust himself.

She heaved another ragged sigh. “Thank
you.”

“I hope you’ll consider my proposition
carefully, Kate. I’m not trying to take advantage of you.”

“I know that. But if I took you up on it,
I’d be taking advantage of you.”

“Nonsense.” Because he had to touch her or
die, he placed his hand on her forehead and brushed a few stray
strands of hair back. “Would you like to take your hair down, Kate?
Would you be more comfortable?” He’d been wanting to see her hair
down for a long time now.

Her head moved back and forth slowly, and
Alex sighed with disappointment. “Just close your eyes, then. I’ll
get a quilt for you if you need more covers.”

“No, thanks. I’ll get up in a bit and put on
my nightgown. Right now, I’m just so tired. So tired.”

“I know, sweetheart. Go to sleep. You need
rest.”

“Sweetheart?” She didn’t open her eyes, but
she smiled. Alex’s heart lurched and stumbled.

“Yes.”
I love you, Kate
. He couldn’t say
that—wasn’t even sure he meant it—but he did deposit a kiss on her
forehead. “Go to sleep now.”

Her eyelids fluttered, as if she wanted to
protest or acknowledge the kiss, but they didn’t open. She only
nodded slightly. “I’m so tired.”

“Sleep now.”

It didn’t take long for her to fall asleep.
Alex watched her, longing to hold her, to pet her, to make love to
her, but unable to do anything about it. He couldn’t. He was a
gentleman.

He could if he married her.

The notion had sneaked up behind his back
and attacked him so suddenly he jerked in his chair. Marry Kate
Finney? Alex English? Impossible.

He watched her sleeping and wondered about
impossibility or the lack thereof. Perhaps his judgmental instincts
were still operating on notions no longer valid. He’d learned a
lot, about himself and Kate, in the last few weeks. It was still
true that she wasn’t from his social class, but did it matter? He
gave himself a mental whack. Of course, it mattered. It mattered
almost more than anything else, and it mattered to Kate even more
than it did to him; he’d learned that much long since.

His mother had come from a
poor family. Granted, it had been a poor farming family, thereby
enabling her to understand his father’s way of life a whole lot
better than Kate and Alex understood each other, but that might not
be an insurmountable obstacle to a happy union. For that matter,
what constituted a happy union? Was happiness in marriage largely a
matter of chance, as Jane Austen had written in
Pride and Prejudice
? Might be,
although he’d always been taught that if two people were
compatible, they’d be happy in marriage.

Very well, then, what constituted
compatibility? He supposed people coming from similar backgrounds
might have some grounds for compatibility. He supposed that, if a
child were exposed to a happy union between his parents, he’d be
better equipped to create and maintain a happy union in his own
life, provided he received help in the endeavor from his spouse. He
and Kate had no similar experiences in that regard. As he stared
hard at her, he contemplated the notion of Kate’s family as opposed
to his own.

There would surely be problems there. How
could there not be? His father had been a loving and supportive
gentleman. Her father had been and was a son of a bitch. Therefore,
Kate was accustomed to men being a hindrance to her happiness
rather than an aid thereto. Could a person unlearn life’s lessons
and accept another set of values? Sounded like a hard road to him,
and he wasn’t sure he was up to it, since it would be up to him to
teach her that he could be trusted. She was as prickly as a cactus
in some ways; ways that occasionally drove him almost to violence,
which would make him no better than her father.

Alex spared a moment to be resentful that
Kate might possibly, if she tried hard enough, turn him into a son
of a bitch, too, then told himself not to be ridiculous. Still, her
experience with her father would indubitably create problems of
trust in so close a union as marriage.

That being the case, marriage probably
wasn’t such a good idea. Alex didn’t want to lose touch with her;
he felt as if his heart were being ripped in two when he considered
such a parting of the ways, actually. So perhaps he could make Kate
his mistress? That way they could enjoy each other, but remain free
at the same time.

His entire being clamped
down and rebelled when he considered
that
possibility. No. No mistress.
Not Kate. Not anyone, for that matter. Alex English wasn’t the
mistress-gathering type, and Kate would certainly shoot him dead if
he so much as hinted at such an alliance.

Anyhow, Alex despised men who neglected
their families for the sake of their own pleasures. If he made Kate
his mistress, assuming she’d even consider such a thing, which she
wouldn’t, he would be dishonoring his own family, his personal code
of ethics, and her, too. He couldn’t abide that.

As he watched Kate sleep, he saw the lines
of care and worry on her face smooth out. He ached to help her, to
ease her burdens, to make her life easier. And she didn’t want him
to, because she didn’t trust his motives, not because of him, but
because of her short life’s teachings. That hurt. What more could
he do to prove to her that he wasn’t like the other men in her
life? What else could he do to prove to her that he only wanted to
help her?

Maybe that was it. She didn’t want what she
called charity. Could he help her without making her feel as if she
was accepting too much from him?

His head began to ache, and he decided that,
Kate and her prickly personality aside, all this thinking was too
much for him. Propping his elbows on his knees, he sank his chin
into his hands and stared out at the night sky from across Kate’s
sleeping form. He had a feeling his life would be much easier if
he’d never met her, but it would also have been a life flawed and
barren.

If he’d never met Kate, he’d have ended up
like Gil MacIntosh’s brother Henry, sure as check, and probably
pretty soon if what Gil had said was true. Alex feared it was.

Not that Henry MacIntosh was a bad man. On
the contrary, Henry was known for doing his duty. Doing one’s duty
was an admirable quality. The trouble was that Henry did his duty
out of a feeling of obligation; he didn’t do it out of love.

That sounded like a sappy sentiment, so Alex
mulled it over for several seconds before coming to a
conclusion.

Dash it, it wasn’t sappy. It was the truth.
Alex didn’t want to turn into a stuffy stump of a man who didn’t
understand anything except his own narrow life. He didn’t want to
be a man who threw money at charities while despising the people he
was helping thereby. He didn’t want to consider himself superior to
his fellow beings, when the truth was that he was only more lucky
and, perhaps, a trifle more provident, than most.