Fool for Love (Montana Romance) (7 page)

Eric dropped his shoulders and muttered, “Hell.”  He’d waited all day for the right time to puzzle through those dang dancing words and they didn’t even tell him anything good.

He crushed the paper into a ball and launched it out over the deck.  A breeze picked it up and brought it sailing back onto the second-class decks below him.  Someone shouted, “Hey!  We’re not your garbage heap!” as the wad of paper hit them.

“Hellfire,” Eric muttered and pushed away from the railing.  He should have switched the tickets to second-class after all.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and stomped back along the deck and the hallway to the first-class dining room, frightening a few society ladies in the process.  The situation infuriated Eric beyond reason.  A man should be able to make his way in the world with hard work and determination.  He’d done nothing but work until his body was tired his whole life and he had nothing to show for it but sweat and failure.  It just didn’t seem right, almost as if something had been working against him the whole time.

Two steps into the dining room he pushed his bitter thoughts aside and forced himself to smile again.  That smile became as easy as June when his eyes rested on Amelia.  She sat next to Mr. Benton Chase, talking to him as though they were old friends.  The blue of her dress was the perfect frame for her creamy skin.  Broke as he was, he didn’t regret helping Amelia for a hot second.  The barbed wire of Curtis’s telegram untangled, leaving his heart tender.

“Mr. Chase.”  Eric nodded and lifted his hand to touch the brim of the hat he wasn’t wearing as he approached the table.  “Good to see you’ve kept my lovely wife entertained.”  How he liked the sound of that!  A man with a wife wasn’t a complete failure.

“She’s a charming woman, Mr. Quinlan.  And I insist you call me Ben.”

“All right then Ben, only if you call me Eri
c.”

He pulled out the seat beside Amelia and tucked into the fine table.  A menu with fancy writing sat on the plate in front of him.

“The waiter came while you were gone,” Amelia whispered, leaning close.  “I asked him to come back when you returned.  Oh, here he comes now.”

Eric swiped open the menu and stared at it.  His gut clenched at the curling, laughing words in front of him.  Regular print was bad enough.  This was impossible.

“Hell,” he muttered, hoping Amelia hadn’t heard him.  He snuck a peek at her.  She had turned to listen to something Ben was saying.  Eric stole the opportunity to plunk his index finger on one of the chunks of text on the menu.  He squinted as he worked it out.

“Is there a problem?”  Amelia's soft voice beside him nearly had Eric jumping out of his skin.

“No, none at all,” Eric replied, unconvincing.

“It all looks so good, doesn’t it,” she continued, smiling at him.

“Yeah, it does.”  His temperature soared.  For several reasons.

“I think I’ll have the crab though,” she added.  Something about her look was as sly as fox.  “Although the chicken in white wine sauce must be delicious as well.  Though knowing you, you’ll probably want to order the roast beef.”

His heart wasn’t sure if it should sink or float.  Instead it sat heavy in his chest like the useless lump he was.  She knew.

“What could I get for you this evening, sir?” the waiter asked with first-class grace as he arrived at the side of their table.

Eric straightened in his seat.  “I’ll have the roast beef and my wife would like the crab.”

“Very good, sir.”

He took the blasted menus away without the slightest suspicion.  Eric swept a quick look around the table.  Ben was talking to the old lady on his other side.  Her husband was listening to what they had to say.  Another young couple who had joined the table after he went outside smiled to him as though they might introduce themselves any second.  Only Amelia kept her eyes lowered, a light smile on her lips.  She picked up her napkin to spread across her lap.  As she did she patted his thigh.

Hell.

“Mr. Chase was just telling me about his business,” Amelia said as though Eric hadn’t just proved he was an ignorant fool.

“Is that so?”  He covered his shame with volume, wincing as every set of eyes at the table turned to him.

“Mrs. Quinlan,” Ben laughed, “how many times must I insist you call me by my Christian name?”

“Forgive me, Ben.”  Amelia turned to him.  “Ben owns a wholesale grocery distribution.  He supplies markets and general stores throughout eastern Canada.”  Her eyes were so bright that Eric swore someone had turned the sun back on.

“It’s hardly Sears and Roebuck,” Ben laughed, “but I’m hoping to expand into the western provinces before the end of the century.”

“As I was saying, my husband owns a ranch in Montana,” Amelia stated with perfect ease.

“Co-own,” Eric fumbled to add.  “My cousin Curtis owns part of it.  At least for now.”

“Oh?” Ben asked.

“We’ve had a bit of a bad spell lately.”  Eric writhed in his dinner jacket.  “Nothing to worry about though.  Curtis keeps telling me that I’m just not cut out….”

He stopped and cleared his throat.  He could feel patches of color working their way up his neck to his face.  This was exactly what Curtis was talking about.  His mouth was
a quicker draw than his brain.

“To be honest, Ben,” he steered himself right, “I’m the kind of man who’s more comfortable riding the open range than haggling across a desk.”

Ben grinned from ear to ear.  “Me too.  I used to spend weeks at a time driving my father’s cattle from our ranch to the rail head in Alberta.”

“Is that so?”  Eric’s spirits soared.

“It is.  It’s almost a shame that the days of the open range are gone.”

“I’ll agree with you there.”  Eric’s shoulders relaxed.  It’d been six months since he’d talked to someone who spoke his language.  “Although it’s a hell of a lot easier to keep an eye on hundreds of heads of cattle when they’re safe and sound in a pasture.”

“That it is.”  Ben nodded.  “Almost makes me regret moving to the city.”

Eric settled into his chair, feeling much less like a freak show on display than when he’d sat down.  “What on earth would convince you to do a fool thing like that?” he grinned at his new friend.

“Money!” Ben laughed.  “Well, money and a woman.”

As Ben started into a story about his days of driving cattle and the woman who took him away from it all, Eric’s gaze drifted to Amelia.  She took a cool sip of water from her glass, hiding a pleased grin.  Hellfire.  She was a damn sight smarter than she let on.  His heart skipped a beat at the thought.

Chapter Five

Amelia had expected morning on a ship at sea to be quiet, but as she opened her eyes to the sun peeking into the tiny room she shared with Eric, it was already buzzing with life.  Sounds of crew members shouting orders and of sea birds answering back crept through the porthole window with the dawn light.  She lay on her back, listening, absorbing it all.  The foreign hum of sailors intent on their tasks was underscored by the low rumble of the ship’s engine.  It was strange and exciting and ominous.

With a sigh, Amelia rolled to her side and scooted to the edge of the bed.  Eric lay on the floor, the bed’s quilted spread his mattress, a spare blanket covering him, a spare pillow at his head.  She smiled and relaxed at the thought of him.  Eric was unlike any man she had ever known.  No other man in her life would have afforded her the courtesy of sleeping fully-dressed on the floor when a bed was handy.  None of them would have paid her way to a new life.  What kind of man would do that?

Puzzling over the oddity, she drew in a breath and sat up to swing her legs over the side of the bed as silently as she could.  A man who would rush to her aid was one in a million, a man with a big heart.  He wa
s a man who deserved her help.

She stood and tip-toed around him on her way to the washroom.  The sight of Eric’s handsome face slack in sleep, his hair tousled on the pillow, was captivating.  The top buttons of his shirt were undone, revealing warm skin and taut muscle.  What would it feel like to lie down beside him?  To press her body against his and wrap her arms around him?  Would he feel like Nick?  Eric was certainly larger than Nick.  Perhaps he was larger all over.

Her smile dropped and she jumped into the washroom, shutting the door on temptation.

“Stop it!” she scolded herself in a whisper, spreading her hands over her round belly.  Giving in to the wicked instincts she shared with her mother and sisters had destroyed her life once.  She couldn’t let it destroy her second chance.

She needed fresh air and solitude to clear away her sinful inclinations.

She used the washroom then snuck back into the room and over to its tiny bureau.  Eric slept on.  She sorted through the clothes he’d bought for her, adding them to the pile of things she would have to repay him for.

Fortunately, the means of repaying Eric for his remarkable generosity had fallen in her lap.  Or rather opened a door into her.  She slipped her nightgown off over her head and reached for her underclothes.  Benton Chase could be the perfect business partner for a rancher in need of a distributor.  He’d hinted around the edges of his business dealings all through dinner the night before.  It was a perfect fit.

Amelia wriggled into her morning dress, careful of the bulge of her stomach, and contorted to do up the fastenings.  If only she could devise a way for Eric and Ben to broach the topic of a partnership.  But how did you prompt two men to start talking?

She let out an impatient huff as she fumbled with the buttons at her back.

“Do you need a hand with that?”

Amelia gasped and twisted to face Eric.  His eyes were still half closed.  He muscled himself to sit, a sleepy wince on his face.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she rushed to apologize.  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

He took his time standing and brushed away her concern with a vague gesture.  It was followed by a yawn.  “What time is it anyhow?”

“Early,” she replied.  The only clock in the room was Eric’s pocket-watch which, if she wasn’t mistaken, was still in the pocket of his suit coat from dinner.

Eric stepped out of his makeshift bed, stretching his back.  Amelia’s eyebrows rose.  He was rumpled and his shirt was untucked.  His stretch gave her a fine glimpse of the plain of his abdomen, the enticing trail of dark hair leading down to pleasures she knew all too well.  He relaxed with a sigh, his shirt shifting back into place.

Her reaction to the tantalizing glimpse was ten times more powerful than it should have been, leaving her short of breath and light-headed.  The urge to touch him, to slide her hands over what was sure to be warm, masculine skin, had her burning hot and cold.  It was the same urge that had kept her running back to Nick to taste the forbidden f
ruit, magnified a hundredfold.

She swallowed to force the shameful impulse down.

“What’re you doing up so early anyhow?” Eric mumbled, stepping toward her and motioning for her to turn around.  If he’d seen the warm flush that came to her cheeks at the sight of his body he didn’t let on.

She turned her back to him.  Her relief was short-lived.  He lifted the mass of her hair and settled it over her shoulder so that he could do up her buttons.  The brush of his fingertips against her neck quivered down to her core.

“I haven’t been feeling well in the mornings,” she twisted the truth.  He was a man, he wouldn’t know that was past.  “I thought I’d take a walk in the fresh air to settle my stomach.”

“Oh.  Right,” he answered.  “Want me to come with you?”  He finished with her buttons and lifted her hair back into place.  His fingers seemed to linger longer than necessary.

Amelia recognized the shivery, aching feeling that swirled through her at his touch.  Surely it would do no harm to give in to temptation just a little.  Her gaze fluttered down to the mound of her belly.  The damage had already been done.  She could just … taste.

“You sure you’re awake?” Eric’s teasing voice shook her out of her thoughts.

“Hmm?”  She spun to face him, taking a healthy step backwards.  No.  The last thing she needed was to give in to those terrible instincts again.  She owed it to Eric not to let him waste his kindness on a strumpet.

Eric met her straight-backed determination to be good with a grin that fanned her flames instead of quelling them.  “You sure a walk is what you need right now?”

“Yes,” she rushed her answer.  “It’ll settle my stomach.”  What had come over her?

“I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling poorly.”  Eric switched from amusement to concern.  “It won’t take but a minute for me to get cleaned up and come with you.”

“No,” she blurted.  “I think I need to be alone.”  As soon as the words were out she wished she could retract them.  “That is, I regret waking you up.  You could use the bed for a few hours while I walk the deck.”

Eric rubbed his chin and considered the bed.  He grabbed his back and stretched.
  Amelia looked the other way.

“Yeah, I could,” he drawled.  “But I’ve got a responsibility to look out for you.”