His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) (21 page)

He whickered sheepishly at the wet human looming over him.

"Oh, no you don't," Michael growled as the baby bolted for the nearest tree. Michael swooped, and Vandy squirmed, protesting vociferously as he was thrust into the ignominy of his cage. His black eyes blazed with indignation as he wrapped his forepaws around the bars. He looked every inch like an outlaw in a jail cell.

Eden grinned as Michael squatted, offering her his handkerchief. "It's going to be curtains for you, Doc," she quipped, "the next time Vandy the Varmint gets loose from his cage."

"Much obliged for the warning." The dazzle of perfect teeth and masculine dimples made Eden's heart take a giddy skip. "But that rascal won't be seeing daylight for... at least a coon's age."

She was delighted. He treated her so rarely to his sense of humor that she'd begun to think she brought out the worst in the man. "Admit it. Vandy's your favorite."

"Vandy, eh?"

"Sure. Vandy, Rocky, Morgie, and... Harry."

His brow arched. "You mean Harriet."

She winked. "Only when Jamie's not around."

He chuckled. She was captivated. The dark, brooding facade he favored had magically melted, and she knelt beside a charming, urbane man. A man who, less than twelve hours ago, had kissed her until her head had spun and sparks had showered her nerves like shooting stars.
Oh Michael,
she pleaded,
please don't retreat inside your armor again.

She wondered if he'd heard her thought. As they laughed together, he rocked forward, his head nearly touching hers. He stilled. Her heart tripped. A breathless moment lay suspended between them. She watched his eyes, indigo now with a touch of silver, as they traveled over her hair, which was damp and no doubt wind-tossed; her nose, which was probably freckling in the sun, and her cheeks, which were growing warmer by the second. His expression softened, growing so tender, that when he raised his hand, she hardly dared to breathe.

"A souvenir from Vandy, I suspect," he murmured, his thumb brushing a dab of mud off her chin.

"Thank you," she whispered.

His inky fringe of lashes lowered. Her pulse skyrocketed. It pounded so hard, she could hear nothing of the birds, the wind, the boys. There was only Michael and the singing in her blood as his head moved closer and his breath grazed her lips.

"Eden." His voice throbbed around her, as deep and rich as the fertile earth. "I—"

A bucket clanged beside them.

"Are you two gonna start smacking lips again?" Jamie demanded.

Michael reared back, his face crimson. Eden blinked, slightly dazed. She hadn't heard the boys' approach. Jamie, his coonskin cap draping his left ear, looked as repulsed by the kissing idea as he had when Michael had tried to explain what worms could do to a dog's heart.

Collie, his muscles quivering like a wildcat ready to defend its young, halted beside her. Eden wasn't sure whether it was Collie's narrowed stare or sheer embarrassment that made Michael climb so hastily to his feet. All she knew was a crushing disappointment, because whatever he had meant to say, whatever he had meant to
do,
were lost to her now.

"Did you finish watering the animals, Jamie?" Michael demanded, sweeping up his instruments with an economy that made Eden wince.

The boy nodded, growing contrite before that blazing blue glare.

"Good." Michael checked his pocket watch and muttered something that wasn't meant for children's ears. "Jamie, you'd better ride to the town marker with me before your mother hires a posse to bring you home." He jerked his head in the direction of the trees. "Fetch Brutus."

Eden's brow furrowed.
Brutus?

A half-formed memory niggled at her mind. As Jamie scurried off, she started to rise, her thoughts chasing dim, elusive specters. Unfortunately, her inattention made her catch her heel in her petticoat.

Even more unfortunately, Collie was the one who grabbed her arm before she pitched headfirst over the stump.

Michael, as distant as Mars, closed his bag with a sharp
snick.
"Collie, I trust you can see Miss Eden home?"

"I brought her here, didn't I?" the boy growled.

"My point exactly."

Michael gave her a curt nod. She felt like Alice must have felt when she'd shrunk to six inches in size.

"Michael, wait—"

She bit her lip. The gaze that met her own proved as dispassionate as... well, a physician's. She struggled with the frustration that welled inside her.

"You were going to say something," she reminded him.

Those placid, blue pools never wavered.

"Right before Jamie interrupted," she prompted huskily.

An alpine spring couldn't have been any cooler. "I don't recall."

She choked. She wished he'd slapped her. A slap wouldn't have stung half as much as his words.

"Please, Michael. Don't go back to being—"

"It's better this way."

Why, damn you?

Tears threatened faster than she could blink them back. He was walking away. He was leaving her, his message unmistakable. What more could she say? What
dared
she say, with Collie standing like a guard dog at her side?

She stomped her foot. She hated the tear that slipped past her lashes, but she couldn't stop it any more than she could stop the maelstrom of yearning, the girlish hopes and fantasies that churned through her chest, unleashed after these eight long years. Finally, she'd put two and two together. Finally, she'd remembered the importance of Brutus. The man who'd saved her life that night in Whiskey Bend—the unarmed hero who'd bluffed his way past Black Bart—had ridden a black gelding named Brutus.

Collie scowled like a gargoyle after Michael. The boy must have noticed her damp cheek, because his expression grew even more dire. He shook his head.

"I told you he ain't worth it," he muttered.

But Collie was wrong. Just as Sera had been. Just as
she
had been, Eden realized, recalling her romantic dreams of a mighty champion, a dashing gallant who'd return some moon-dappled midnight to love her and cherish her and carry her off on his black charger.

Michael wasn't ever going to be that gallant.

He wasn't even going to love her.

The knowledge pounded her with the force of a battering ram. Shaken, she was certain she'd heard something crack.

No doubt that sound had been her breaking heart.

Chapter 7

As the Independence Day jamboree approached, Eden did her best to reconcile her fantasy Michael with the Michael who was her neighbor. She told herself she was older now, wiser. She shouldn't have to keep herself company in the wee hours before dawn with dreams of a heroic longrider and his toe-curling kisses. Michael was a man. A hard-working, intensely passionate man. And while she admired the way he championed orphans and young women in peril, she was angered by his arrogance and outraged by his callousness. She'd cried for two whole nights after he'd flung that, "It's better this way" barb at her defenseless heart.

She tried to tell herself he was right, that it
was
better for him to avoid her, building Aunt Claudia's shelves behind the closed doors of his toolshed, or riding to the animal orphanage during peak merchant's hours when Eden was needed at the store. After all, Michael's salad wisecrack that day at the animal orphanage proved he didn't approve of her healing craft any more than Papa had approved of Talking Raven's.

Eden wanted desperately to believe that her success at curing Collie's dysentery over the last week had been no accident; to face Michael's disapproval, even if unspoken, would have been crushing. She didn't need to be challenged to prove she was a Medicine Woman. In fact, she'd begun to hope secretly that some respected physician, preferably Michael, would take her under his wing and help her nurture her fragile confidence.

Sometimes, she wondered if she approached Michael meekly, confessing that she'd been the gawky seventeen-year-old who'd bathed his wounds and comforted him that night in Whiskey Bend, that he might see some potential in her. At other times, she'd recall her shame over the medicine show scandal, and she'd be cured of her foolish notion.

She just wished there was a cure for her youthful fantasies about him. Now that she knew Michael had been the magnificent, blue-eyed hero who'd saved her life in Whiskey Bend, the dream specters returned: visions of a mighty, virile champion, seen through a woman's desire. He would come to her on a thunderous night, his hair whipping rakishly on the wind, his shadow-cloaked frame as awesome as a mountain in the electrical sizzle of storm.

She would glimpse his smile: arrogant, seductive, daring her to surrender to him, her secret fantasy. Her knees would quake before his primal masculinity; his arms, like oaken boughs, would root her to the earth.

He would taste of rain and radiate fire; her senses would combust as they reveled in her danger. She'd hear the crashing of her heart; she'd mark his low, feral growl as his lips devoured hers. Then he'd lay her down beneath a flaming arc of heaven, and the night would shatter with her innocence, an explosion of ecstasy, light, and sound.

The dreams were almost unbearable, considering that the real kiss she'd shared with Michael apparently meant as little to him as... well, the offer of her friendship.

Fortunately, she had plenty of things to occupy her hands, if not always her mind. Customers swarmed into the trading post in preparation for the Independence Day Jamboree. The booth builders bought every box of nails, even the cobwebbed ones, while the Decorating Committee swarmed over the sewing shelves like locusts, devouring every scrap of red, white, and blue fabric—including Cooter's bandanna.

Then there'd been the flour frenzy. Blue-ribbon hopefuls had mobbed the poor miller's son as he tried to deliver the last "emergency ration" to the store. Apparently less concerned than Eden about coronary stress, Claudia had climbed on his wagon, leveled her shotgun at the crowd, and threatened to cancel all store credit before the two-legged alley cats meekly retreated to the line of humanity waiting to purchase butter, sugar, and eggs from Eden inside.

"Happens every danged year," Claudia muttered, wreathed in her habitual cloud of blue smoke as she stumped back across the threshold. Cradling her shotgun over her arm, she leveled a ferocious glance at the next customer then smirked furtively at Eden. "I charge 'em double, just to spite 'em."

Eden had never dreamed a little county jamboree could be rife with so much intrigue.

* * *

"Eden?
Eden!"

She cringed. That ear-ringing shout could have belonged to none other than Bonnie. No one else's lungs could outbellow shrieking children as they romped on rope swings, the clamor of booth vendors barking their wares, the report of a pistol starting the three-legged race, or the catcalls of rival firefighting companies as they competed in the jamboree's baseball tournament.

Pasting on a wary smile, Eden forced her eyes from the boys' tug-of-war, in which Jamie, Collie, Bobby Buchanan, and a ferociously growling Mr. Puppy were being dragged, inch by inch, toward the mud that had been slopped over the freshly mowed hayfield. She figured she was about to be blamed for Jamie's imminent mud bath.

But Bonnie wasn't immediately visible in the crowd. Eden shaded her eyes against the noonday sun, squinting at the rainbowed hues of muslin gowns and satin bows, the painted faces beneath fluttering parasols, the neatly coiffed and aproned legions that were manning the food booths that circled the hayfield's wooded perimeter. As for the men, most of them were either competing in one of the races or cheering the contestants from the sidelines. Eden suspected there'd been slim pickings at the Kissing Booth. Why else would Bonnie abandon her coveted post to hound her?

"Eden!
Good heavens, didn't you hear us calling you?"

A caramel apple cart rolled by, and Bonnie, her lips kiss-swollen and her eyes spitting fire, materialized in its place. A smirking Sera stood beside her.

"You have
got
to do something about your aunt!" Bonnie said, racing forward. "Claudia was supposed to be the chaperone. Now she's ruining everything! She thinks she can raise money better than us, and she won't listen to reason."