She could tell by the stunned look on his face that there were a hundred questions he wanted to ask, but he just sat there waiting for her to go one.
"His name was Richard and he grew up here in Stuart's Junction. We… we used to play hopscotch together. I'm actually surprised that nobody has mentioned his name to you because people around here have long memories."
"No, nobody has," he said, red around the collar.
"I just thought that you should know, David, before we got married. We've never spoken much about our pasts. We've had such a mutual interest in our future, with the store to plan and everything, that it has rather superseded other topics, hasn't it?"
"Perhaps it has—you're right. But if you don't want to tell me about Richard you don't have to. It doesn't matter, Abigail."
"I want to," she said gazing at him directly, "so that perhaps you'll understand my sudden jitters." Then she looked at her lap again as she went on. "There had never been anyone except Richard, and we more or less grew up suspecting that one day we'd marry. My mother died when I was nineteen, and within a short time Richard and I became engaged. I was very young and naive and believed in such things as destiny then." She paused, creating the effect of the passage of time in her narrative. Then she sighed.
"Richard apparently believed differently, though, for when my father fell ill and became a total invalid within a year of my mother's death, it seems Richard found me less desirable as a future wife. I guess you might say he considered my father excess baggage. At any rate, my… my fiancé disappeared scarcely a week before the wedding. His family moved too, shortly afterward, and I have never seen them or him since."
David's face wore a caring expression. He reached for her hand. "I'm sorry, Abigail. I truly am."
She looked up at his gentle, unassuming face, knowing at that instant just what a good, moral man he was and knowing also that she was very lucky to have found someone like him so late in her life.
"I understand your jitters now," he said into her eyes, "but I would never leave you like he did. Surely you know that."
"Yes, I do," she assured him. But she felt small and guilty, for she knew he was too good to read into her story the possibility that she and Richard had been intimate. "David," she said, really meaning what she was about to say, "I do so want everything to be perfect in our lives together, that's all."
"It will be," he promised. But he promised it holding nothing more than her hand, and she could not help thinking that this was the kind of thing which two people in love should be sharing wrapped up tightly in each other's arms. "I'm glad you told me, Abigail. I could see that something had you upset tonight, and now that the story is out, consider it forgotten."
At last he kissed her, and she clung to him with a sudden desperation very much unlike her Taking his lips away, he said, "I think it's best if I go now, Abigail."
But she clung harder, willing him to stay a little longer, to keep the threat of Jesse DuFrayne at bay. "Do you have to go so soon?"
He put her firmly away from him. "You can use a good night's rest, you said so yourself a while ago. I'll see you tomorrow evening, like we agreed."
He kissed her at the door before leaving, but he had put on his overcoat first, so all of the warm contact of hugging was lost in the bulk of woolen coat and muslin skirt.
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Immediately after David left, Abbie dressed for bed and retired, wanting to get the lanterns blown out as quickly as possible. The wind buffeted the house, rattling shingles, tapping barren branches against eaves, promising a full night of its wrath. The storm sounds only multiplied her trepidation. Resolutely she closed her eyes and recounted the needs David effectively fulfilled in her life: security, companionship, admiration, love. She spent time analyzing each. He was paving the way to the most secure life she had ever known. Companionship was unquestionable—they had recognized it between themselves from the first. And when it came to admiration—out of all the people she'd known in her entire life none had been more complimentary, appreciative, or admiring. And love—
Her thoughts were hammered to an abrupt halt by the loudest beating her back door had ever suffered.
Nobody ever came to her back door. She knew before her feet hit the icy floor who it would be and realized she'd been lying there riddling herself with thoughts of David to keep them off of Jesse DuFrayne.
For a moment she considered letting him bang away until he gave up, but then he shouted at the top of his lungs, and even above the howling storm, she was afraid someone next door would hear.
She found her wrapper and hurried to the back door, listening, her toes curled against the drafty floorboards. He banged and hollered again so she lit a lantern but left the wick low, almost guttering, still afraid of anyone seeing him through the windows.
"Abbie, open up!"
She did, but only partway, refusing to step back and let him in.
He was standing in the wind and snow, hair, eyebrows, and moustache laced with the stuff, determination boring into her from eyes as black as the night.
"I told you to keep away from me. Do you realize what time of the night it is?"
"I don't give a damn."
"No, you never did."
"Are you going to let me in or not? Nobody saw me, but they sure as hell will hear me beat the door down if you slam it in my face again." The wind invaded the house while she clutched her wrapper together over her breastbone. Her feet were freezing and the wrapper did little to protect her against the shudders that overtook her.
Suddenly he ordered, "Get in there before you freeze to death along with me," and in he came, filling the kitchen with ten pounds of sheepskin jacket, three inches of wet moustache, and nearly two hundred pounds of stubbornness.
She lit into him before he even got the door shut. "How dare you come barging in here as if you owned the place! Get out!"
He just gave a large, exaggerated shiver, rubbed his palms together, and exclaimed, "God, but it's cold out there!" completely ignoring her order, shrugging out of his jacket without so much as a by-your-leave.
"We're going to need some wood on that fire to keep us from freezing solid." He jerked a chair from the kitchen table, clapped it down right in front of the stove, hung his jacket on the back of it, then opened a stove lid and reached for a log from the woodbox—all this time he hardly looked at her.
"This is my house and you are not welcome in it. Put that wood back in my woodbox!"
Again he paid no heed but stuffed the wood into the stove, replaced the lid, then turned and bent over at the waist, brushing snow curds from his hair. He spied her bare toes peeking from beneath the hem of her wrapper, pointed at them, and said, "You'd better get something on those tootsies, tootsie, because this is going to take a while."
By this time she was livid. "This will take no time at all because you are leaving. And don't call me tootsie!"
"I'm not leaving," he said matter-of-factly.
She knew he meant it. What was she supposed to do with a bull-headed fool like him? She clenched her fists and grunted in exasperation while he took another chair and clapped it down beside the first, then stood back with a thumb hooked in his waistband.
"We've got some talking to do, Abbie."
The frost was melting from his moustache now and a drop fell from it as he stood patiently waiting for her to give in and sit down. His nose was red from the cold, hair glistening and tousled from its recent whisking. He looked more like a gunslinger than ever in those boots and denims, dark shirt and rough leather vest. His skin was swarthy, the perfect foil for his black hair, moustache, and swooping sideburns.
He might have ridden in from the range just now after rounding up cattle in the blizzard or outrunning a posse. His appearance was totally masculine, from the clothing to the ruddy cheeks, the wind-reddened nose to the untidy hair. Her eyes fell to his hip—no gun.
"You don't have to be afraid of me, Abbie," he assured her, following the direction of her eyes. Then he drew a handkerchief from his hip pocket and blew his nose, all the while studying her above the hankie, his eyes refusing to let her go.
How could her feelings betray her like this? How could she stand here thinking that even the way he blew his nose was attractive? Yet it was. Oh, Lord, Lord, it was because Jesse DuFrayne was undeniably all man. Angry with herself for these thoughts, she lashed out at him.
"Why did you come here again? You know that if David finds out, he'll be terribly angry, but I suppose you're planning on that. You haven't done enough to me, have you?"
He bent forward at the waist, reaching behind to stuff the hankie away in his pocket, and said calmly,
"Come on, Abbie, sit down. I'm half-frozen from standing out there waiting for him to leave." Then he sat down himself and held his palms toward the heat.
"You've been standing out in the street watching my house? How dare you!"
He continued leaning toward the stove, not even bothering to turn around as he said, "You're forgetting that I'm financing this setup. I figure that gives me plenty of rights around here."
"Rights!" She came one angry step closer behind him. "You come in here spouting rights to me in my own house and put wood in my stove and… and sit on my chair and say you have rights? What about my rights!"
He slowly brought his elbows off his knees, straightened his shoulders almost one muscle at a time, sighed deeply, then got up from the chair with exaggerated patience, and swaggered across the room to her with deliberate, slow clunking boot-steps. His eyes told her he'd put up with no more of her defiance.
And he took her upper arm in one hand, the back of her neck in the other, then steered her toward the pair of chairs. This time when he ordered, "Sit down," she did.
But stiffly, on the very edge of the chair, her arms crossed tightly over her chest while she poised like a ramrod. "If David finds out about this and I lose him I'll… I'll…" But she spluttered to a stop, unable to find harsh enough words, he infuriated her so.
Jesse just stretched his long legs out and leaned back, relaxed, fingers laced over his stomach. "So are you happy with him then?" he asked, studying her stiff profile.
"When you left here that was the last thing on your mind!"
"Don't make assumptions, Abbie. When I left here things were in a jumble and I don't like leaving things in a jumble, so I came back. When I didn't hear from you but I read that you were getting married, I had to know for sure if you might be in a family way."
She pierced him with a malevolent look. "Oh, that's big of you—really big!" she spit. "I suppose I should get all fluttery at your tardy concern."
"I hadn't thought you might, not after the iceberg treatment I got on my way out of here that morning." He grinned crookedly, and out of nowhere there came to Abbie the memory of Jesse in that stunning verdigris suit, bending to her on one knee.
"Well, you deserved it," she said petulantly, but with a little less venom.
"Yes, I guess I did," he admitted good-naturedly, an amiable expression about his eyes.
Behind them the low-burning lantern guttered, sending their shadows dancing on the wall behind the stove. Before them the fire grew, licking against the isinglass window in the cast-iron door of the stove.
Outside the wind keened, and for a moment they looked at each other, thinking back.
Then Jesse asked softly, "You're not, are you, Abbie?"
"Not what?"
"Pregnant."
Beleaguered once again by those conflicting emotions that this infernal man could always rouse in her, she turned to stare at the isinglass window. She was so confused. All he had to do was walk in here and start being nice and it started all over again. She pulled her feet up off the drafty floor, hooked her heels over the edge of the chairseat, and hugged her knees up tight, laying her forehead on her arms.
"Oh, Jesse, how could you?" she asked, the words coming muffled into the cocoon of her lap. "Out there in the street you practically accused me of… of consorting with David to confuse the issue of… of this nonexistent paternity."
"I didn't mean it to sound that way, Abbie." He touched her elbow, but she jerked it away, still keeping her head buried in her arms.
"Don't touch me, Jesse." Now she looked up, accusingly, "Not after that."
"All right… all right." He put his hands up as if a gun were pointed at him, then slowly lowered them as he saw the fierce, hurt expression on her face.
"Just why did you have to come back here? Didn't you do enough the first time without coming back to haunt me?"
Their eyes locked, held for a moment, while he asked softly, "Do I haunt you, Abbie?"
She looked away. "No, not in the way you mean."
He looked down at her bare toes curling over the edge of the chair, then sprawled back lazily, studying her while he slung a wrist over the back of her chain "Well, you haunt me," he admitted. "I guess that's why I came back, to settle all the misunderstandings between us that still haunt me." Without removing his wrist from the chair back, he took a lock of her hair between index and middle fingers, rubbing the silky skein back and forth a couple of times. At the fluttering touch she worked her shoulder muscles in an irritated gesture and pulled her head forward to free the hair.
"I thought we understood each other fully that last day," she said, hugging her knees tighter.
"Not hardly."
Memories of that last day came hurtling back as they sat side by side, warming by the stove, warming to each other again, anger dissipating with the cold. Something unwanted seemed to seep into their pores along with the radiating warmth from the stove. After some time her voice came again, small and injured.
"Why didn't you tell me you knew David was coming back before we…" But she was afraid to finish. He was too near to put that into words.