Harper's Bride (8 page)

As he climbed the stairs, he heard the
muffled sound of the baby squalling and it shook him from his
thoughts. None of his past mattered now, he knew, and looking back
to review regrets was one of the biggest mistakes a man could
make.

When he opened the door, he saw steaming food
on the stove, and Melissa pacing back and forth with the baby in
her arms. Hearing him, she whirled and her expression made him
think of a doe he'd once startled in the woods. Their eyes had
locked for just a moment, and he had seen her terror before she
bolted off through the brush.

"Oh! I'll have your dinner for you in just a
minute." She put the baby in her crate, and the child began howling
again. In a rush she slapped the potatoes, ham, and some biscuits
on the table, all the while shifting her gaze between him and
Jenny. Then she hurried to the crate and picked up the baby
again.

Baffled, Dylan threw his hat on the bed and
sat down at the place she'd set for him. "Aren't you going to
eat?".

Melissa paced the small floor, jogging Jenny
in her arms. "No, not now. Not until—" The baby's wails climbed to
ear-piercing shrieks. "Oh, please, button, please don't cry," she
begged. With her cheek pressed to Jenny's head, plainly she was
beside herself with worry.

Dylan took a bite of the ham. It tasted good,
but he couldn't really enjoy it while the agitated woman paced with
her screaming child in this little room. Her pale hair had come
loose from its knot again and hung beside her face in damp
tendrils. He pushed the other chair out with his foot. "Maybe if
you stop pacing and sit down?" he suggested. He didn't know much
about kids but he thought that Melissa was making things worse.

She eyed him warily.

"Come on," he urged.

Melissa edged closer, feeling as if she were
approaching a wild dog, and perched on the edge of the chair.

"What's the matter with her? Is she sick?"
Dylan asked over the bawling.

"No, I don't think so," she said, hearing the
overwrought edge in her own voice. "She usually isn't like this—I
just don't know what it is." She continued to jog Jenny frantically
in her arms, all to no avail. The baby turned the color of a ripe
plum with her screeching. "Jenny, Jenny, don't carry on so,
sweetheart, please."

Melissa glanced up at Dylan's stem face, and
her heart thundered inside her rib cage. She was familiar with that
kind of expression—he looked angry and impatient, while he fixed
her and the baby with that hard glare. On top of that, his dinner
was growing cold in front of him, and she knew how men hated that.
Oh, God, please make Jenny be quiet, please, please, please—

Suddenly, Dylan reached out to touch the
baby's forehead. Melissa pulled back and clutched Jenny to her
chest, unable to completely bite back a scream of her own.

He withdrew his hand and stared at her. "Does
she have a fever?" he asked in that quiet, deadly serious voice
she'd heard him use on the miner.

She shook her head and kept her eyes down,
resenting him in that moment because she feared him, and hating the
way it crippled her.

Melissa heard the legs of his chair scrape
across the floor, and she held her breath. Now she would hear his
boot heels on the plank flooring as he came around to her side of
the table. She waited for the sharp, heavy impact of his fist, or
the fiery burn of a slap. Either, she knew from experience, would
make her head feel as if it were going to come off with the blow.
Lights would flash behind her eyes, like a thousand candle flames
bursting into stars. She bent farther over Jenny, shielding her as
best she could, and drew in a deep, sobbing breath.

But instead of coming toward her, she heard
the boot heels walk away, and then the door opened and closed. His
footsteps rumbled down the stairs and glancing up, she found she
was alone with Jenny. Dylan's plate still held most of his dinner,
and his coffee was untouched.

She and the baby had driven him out of his
own place. No man would tolerate that, and it wouldn't surprise her
if he went to the saloon. Now she had to worry about when he would
come back, and in what condition. For a wild moment Melissa
considered piling everything in the room against the door to keep
him out. Or maybe she could pack up Jenny and leave before he got
back.

And go where? she asked herself, trying to
hear her own thoughts over the baby's crying. Could she find some
kind of work? She wished she could dissolve into tears like Jenny,
but she had to keep her wits about her or she would be utterly and
irretrievably lost.

But before she could formulate any other
ideas, she heard Dylan coming up the stairs again. He'd been gone
only a moment—strange that she had already learned the sound of his
steps.

He flung open the door, then maneuvered an
oak rocking chair through the narrow doorway. His sun-streaked hair
fell forward, obscuring his face as he wrestled it into the room.
"I had this downstairs," he said, straightening. He carried it to
the window and angled it so that it faced the street. A mild breeze
drifted in. "Rafe will probably miss it, but I thought it might
help."

Melissa gaped at him, taken by complete
surprise. She sat motionless, still perched where he'd left her,
and stared at Dylan's handsome face. She saw no anger there, no
threat.

He came closer, slowly and carefully. Then he
held out his hand. "Come and sit by the window for a few minutes.
It might make both of you feel better." He didn't raise his voice
over Jenny's squalling, but Melissa heard him perfectly.

"I'm sorry your dinner got cold," she
babbled. "I can put it back in the—"

"It doesn't matter, Melissa. I'll take care
of it." He pushed his open hand closer to her. She hesitated, then
shifting Jenny to one arm, put her own hand in his palm. His
fingers closed around hers, and he helped her to her feet.

"Thank you," she murmured as she settled in
the rocker. Giving a push with the heel of her shoe, she set the
chair in motion. It felt welcoming and soothing, and even Jenny
began to quiet.

He turned to walk to the table, then stopped
and fixed her with a direct look "I've never hit a woman in my
life. I sure as hell don't plan to start now."

Dylan sat down at the table and poked a fork
into his cold dinner. It tasted good, but he wasn't very hungry.
The sight of Melissa huddling over her child, obviously trying to
protect them both, had stolen his appetite. And the naked gratitude
and relief he'd seen in her eyes when he brought in the rocker had
startled him. Did she really believe that all men were like Logan?
Was that the only way of life she had known?

His gaze fell on her again. She sat in a
shaft of sunlight that slanted through the open window. It cast a
bright halo over her blond hair as she looked down at the baby and
rocked her, stroking her silken head with her hand. For just an
instant, he wondered what it would feel like if her hand stroked
his hair. Would it heal? Would it bring forgetfulness?

Presently, he heard Melissa humming softly in
a voice so sweet that he put down his fork to listen. The picture
of mother and child was perfect in that moment, and Dylan felt a
stirring in his soul. Once, a long time ago it now seemed, he'd
envisioned his own wife holding their baby like this. He dragged
his gaze back to his food. Once, a long time ago, Dylan had let his
love for a woman drive him to distraction.

It was a mistake he swore he would not
repeat.

That night Melissa lay in Dylan's bed, made
with the clean new sheets she'd bought. The quiet, semi-dusk of
midnight gave the room a mellow pink glow. Jenny slept. She had at
last exhausted herself when Melissa had calmed down too.

The sack of rice still separated her from the
fierce, sun-blond man on the other side of the mattress. But he
didn't seem quite as frightening now, and she didn't cling so
tightly to the edge of the bed. She heard his slow, even breathing
and knew he slept, too.

There were no guarantees in life, but tonight
the agreement into which they'd entered at the Yukon Girl Saloon
had been sealed.

And it had been accomplished with the gift of
a rocking chair.

Over the next few days, with decent food and
a little peace, Melissa began to regain her strength. She still
jumped at loud voices and noises, but not every time, and the
bruise on her face had finally faded.

The rocking chair had proved to be a godsend.
After that one horrible night, Jenny had settled down again into
her sweet-tempered disposition, but Melissa loved to rock the baby
while she fed her or put her to sleep. Sometimes they just sat by
the window and rocked while Melissa sang to her. Jenny would stare
up at her with wide eyes and a half smile, captivated. Although the
noise from the street below was nearly continuous, it was the
quietest, most tranquil time that Melissa had known as a mother—in
fact, in her whole life.

No loud voice assaulted her ears, no drunken
man demanded intimate access to her body, slobbering kisses on her
and using her until he passed out.

Though she viewed Dylan as an intimidating
man, now she didn't always flinch when she heard his footsteps on
the stairs. And, true to his word, he had not made one attempt to
touch her in any way beyond the night he offered her his hand.
Except for meals, though, she hardly saw him. They settled into a
routine he spent most of his time downstairs in his store, and
Melissa kept to this room, cleaning and cooking and taking care of
Jenny.

She was in a peculiar position. She knew that
she and Jenny were invading his privacy, and that he felt stuck
with them, as if they were a pair of charity cases. Which, she
supposed, they were. She wasn't really Mrs. Harper; she worked for
him, he said. And he had given her money last Saturday, telling her
it was a week's wages. But her job was not like a shop girl's, or a
factory worker's, or even a domestic's, at least not like her
mother's had been at the Pettigreaves's. In order to earn her keep
and pay back Coy's debt, she would have to do more than just sweep
this room and cook. At any rate, it wasn't enough to keep her
busy.

Dawson was like a giant carnival, and Melissa
knew that a lot of gold dust changed hands in this town, more money
than she had ever seen in her life. A lot of people were growing
wealthy just by catering to miners and free-spending Klondike
kings. Dylan himself was making his money that way. There had to be
some way she could do that, too. Having cash would give her
independence and security, and the ability to safeguard Jenny's
future. Nothing seemed more important to her—not nice clothes, not
a husband, not even love.

Her budding desire to improve her lot was
reinforced early one morning shortly after the incident with the
rocker, when she and Dylan were standing under the side stairs.
There Melissa had set up a washtub and scrub board to do their
laundry, and Dylan had carried down some of the wash for her.

From the milling crowd, a petite,
well-dressed woman with a plain face hailed them. "Dylan Harper! I
haven't seen you in weeks."

Melissa recognized Belinda Mulrooney, one of
the most successful entrepreneurs, man or woman, to come to the
Yukon. She was highly respected and admired for her business savvy;
Melissa wished that she possessed one quarter of her
shrewdness.

"I'm here at the store every day, Belinda.
You keep yourself pretty busy," Dylan replied, chuckling.

Everything about the woman, even her bearing,
seemed energetic, Melissa thought.

"That I do. There are too many opportunities
in this town to let one get past me. You should've taken advantage
of that lay I told you about. The first one I took out measured
five hundred feet square, and I got a thousand dollars a day for
the month that I had it."

A lay, Melissa knew, was a short-term,
temporary arrangement, whereby a claim owner allowed another person
to mine the property in exchange for a percentage of the gold found
there. A few people had suggested this kind of enterprise to Coy.
He'd rejected the idea outright, saying he was no sharecropper. The
truth, of course, was that such an arrangement would have required
him to work.

Dylan shifted his weight to one hip and
rubbed the back of his neck, giving the impression of mock regret.
"Well, I know about horses, not mining. Besides, I didn't have any
interest in digging around in the dirt."

Belinda grinned archly. "When that kind of
money is involved, I'd dig in a hog wallow." She looked Melissa up
and down, although not unkindly. "Are you going to introduce me to
this lady, Dylan?"

Melissa shifted Jenny in her arms, feeling
awkward, and waited to see what he would say.

He straightened. "Oh, uh, this is Melissa
Lo—Harper. Melissa, this is Belinda Mulrooney. She's got her finger
in just about every successful business venture in Dawson."

"Flatterer," Belinda said, then echoed, "Did
you say Melissa Harper?" She glanced at Jenny.

"Well, it's a long—" Melissa began.

"Melissa is my . . . wife."

Belinda considered them both with a
perceptive look, then glanced at Melissa's left hand. She didn't
have a wedding ring—Coy had sold it long ago, and Dylan hadn't
given her one. Surprised by Dylan's comment, Melissa waited for her
to say something about the baby, or their obviously hasty marriage,
but she only smiled.

"Congratulations, Dylan, I hadn't heard. How
very nice to meet you Mrs. Harper. I've known Dylan, here, for a
couple of years. He was one of the first people I met when I came
up."

"Oh," Melissa replied faintly.

"You two must come by when I open my hotel.
It should be ready in another couple of weeks. I'm calling it the
Fairview, and it'll be the grandest place in Dawson." She began
listing the hotel's attributes, ticking them off on her fingers.
"I'll have twenty-two rooms with electric lights and steam heat.
There'll be an orchestra in the lobby, and bone china and sterling
in the dining room." She reached up to readjust her black straw hat
in the stiff breeze that blew under the cloudy sky. "I've got brass
beds and crystal chandeliers coming in over White Pass, so I'm
leaving for Skagway tomorrow to oversee the whole thing."