It was his turn to gasp and sputter. But he quickly recovered. “Aha!”
He grabbed her glass and dashed for the kitchen. Brianna realized he meant to fill it and get even. She glanced
frantically around, considered hiding under the bed, discarded that idea as too obvious, and instead climbed into the armoire. No easy fit. She had to fold herself double. Her gowns and his clothing hung around her face, and one of his spare boots poked her in the rump.
She heard him prowling around the apartment, looking for her in the broom closet, the living room, and Daphne’s bedroom. Laughter bubbled up her throat. Sure enough, she caught the thump of his bony knees hitting their bedroom floor and knew he was looking under the bed.
“Shamrock,” he called in an evil, lecherous voice. “Where
are
you? Come to Papa.”
Brianna held her breath and ducked her head between her knees. He wouldn’t
dare
douse her when she was in the armoire. The water would totally ruin her silk gowns. Not even David would be that rash.
Her nerves stretched tight, singing with alarm, when the armoire door creaked open. Before she could lift her head, a strong hand seized her by the arm. The next thing she knew, David was plucking her from her hiding place as if she weighed nothing. He pressed her against the wall. Looking up into his laughing blue eyes, she knew she was in for it. With a wicked grin, he held up the water glass, grabbed hold of the prim collar of her nightdress, and poured cold water down the entire front of her. She shouted at the shock. He ran back toward the kitchen. She needed another water glass. This was insane, totally absurd. Dumb, dumb,
dumb
. But she was already wet, so she ran after him.
When she reached the kitchen, she grabbed a glass and lunged for the sink. Before she had ammunition, he blasted her again, this time drenching her face and hair. Sputtering, she fought to gain control of the kitchen spigot. He managed to fill his weapon before she could fill hers. He got her again before she could fire back. And then he fled.
Brianna scooped her wet hair from her face, plucked her sopping nightdress from her breasts, and dripped a trail across the floor as she went searching for him. She found him in the water closet. He held up his hands.
“I’m unarmed. You wouldn’t shoot a defenseless man, would you?”
Brianna let fly, nailing him right in the face again. He choked and laughed, catching her around the waist as she turned to flee. Their glasses thumped to the floor. They ended up in the aluminum tub, which wasn’t large enough to accommodate both of them. Somehow David made love to her there anyway. And afterward, when she lay limp, happy, and utterly exhausted, he left the tub, collected his vessel, filled it, and slowly dribbled the contents over her already soaked nightdress.
“Grab the bull by the horn, Shamrock, and you’re liable to get gored.”
“Oh, really?”
Brianna stood up and slowly, ever so slowly, drew her dripping nightdress off over her head. David almost lost his grip on the glass, his gaze traveling over her naked body. Brianna took advantage, threw her gown over his head, and tried her best to knot it around his neck.
They ended up on the bed again, going after each other as if they’d spent forty days in the desert. Afterward, as Brianna surfaced to awareness, she punched him in the ribs with her elbow.
“You
will
help me wash and hang the sheets on the line. Correct? And you’ll also help me mop up all this water.”
“For a price,” he informed her. “You have to do that again.”
“Do what again?”
“Slowly strip off that stupid nightdress for me. My God, my heart almost stopped.”
Brianna felt a grin coming on. She tried to stifle it, but it was no use. “I’ll agree to those terms. But if you have a water glass in your hands, prepare to be drowned.”
Later, they sat at the kitchen table, watching passersby on the street below. David sipped coffee; Brianna enjoyed tea. She felt oddly limp, and yet she also felt happier than she had in years. A water fight. She couldn’t quite believe that she’d engaged in such foolishness. And if not for the fabulous intimacy between her and David that had followed, she would have wished Daphne could have been there.
David was right, she realized sadly. She’d worked so
hard to be like Moira that somewhere along the way she’d lost touch with herself. Tumbling back through the years to childhood, Brianna could remember the first time Moira had told her, very simplistically, that without each other, they weren’t complete. “You are me, and I am you,” she’d whispered. “Without each other, we aren’t right.” Brianna had understood. Separated, they’d drifted all one way. Together they’d found balance.
Tears filled Brianna’s eyes as she sipped her tea. David noticed. He searched her gaze. His mouth thinned to a grim line. “What is it, Shamrock? Talk to me.”
She set down her cup and stared at the window glass. There were streaks. She needed to polish them away. “I was just thinking. You’re right, you know. Moira and I—oh, David, you would have loved her so much. She was all that is good in me. Truly, she was an incredibly precious soul. And I was all that was bad in her. We were only about four when she reasoned that out and understood we needed to blend, that neither of us could ever be okay without the other.”
“Shamrock, you weren’t all that was bad in Moira. You gave her the freedom to be fanciful, and she gave you the structure to follow rules.” He reached across the table to fold his hand around hers. Brianna reveled in the warmth of his grip. “You are
not
bad, and Moira was
not
an angel.” He paused to stare out the window. “I don’t understand the bond between twins. I met some twins once, and they were as close as skin is to an onion. They seemed to think together, bouncing ideas back and forth without saying a word. I was selling them cattle, and I never went up against better bargainers. They sort of leaned into each other somehow, in a way me and my brothers don’t. As close as I am to Ace, Joseph, and Esa, and as hooked onto them as I am, what I saw in those twins was different. It was almost as if one of them couldn’t breathe without the other one drawing in air, too.”
Pain lanced through Brianna’s chest, for David had finally put her feelings about Moira into words. She gulped to steady her voice. “She was the other half of me. Without her—when she died—well, I can’t describe how it felt. It wasn’t like losing an arm or a leg. It was—” Brianna stopped,
searching for words, but there were none to describe her relationship with her identical twin. “One time she got pneumonia. I wasn’t sick, but she was burning up with fever. The sisters were gathered around her, building frames over her head and making a tent over her face with towels dipped in boiling water. I suddenly couldn’t breathe.” She looked at him, long and hard, knowing what she’d just told him was crazy. “I couldn’t
breathe
. Moira grabbed for breath, and I grabbed for breath. Her chest rattled, and
my
chest rattled. I could feel her slipping away, and I felt myself slipping away with her.” She folded her hands over the top of her cup, needing to feel the heat seep into her bones. “She nearly died, and I almost died with her. The nuns finally realized that we were somehow connected in a way they couldn’t understand, in a way I still, to this day, don’t understand, so they treated me as if I had pneumonia, too. And together, Moira and I got well.”
David’s eyes went suspiciously bright. His throat worked. “I am so sorry you lost her. I would have loved to know her.”
Brianna inclined her head. “You would have adored her, maybe even more than you do me. She was so special, David.” She forced her gaze to his. “Moira truly was an angel who walked the earth for a time. She was as close to perfect as anyone could be.”
“Look at me,” he said huskily. When Brianna lifted her lashes, he grasped her wrist. “I am sure I would have adored Moira, but I could never love anyone more than I love you. I’m too flawed to live with an angel. If she was as sweet and dear as you say, then fine, but Shamrock, you are sweet and dear, too. I like the spice and vinegar in you, and I’d never settle for anything less.”
“You almost did. You almost settled for Hazel.”
David threw back his head and laughed. His hair drifted over his shoulders, the strands only a shade darker than Daphne’s. His eyes were like hers, too. “Thank God I didn’t settle,” he said, giving Brianna’s hand a squeeze. “As for Moira, she’s gone, up there in heaven somewhere looking down, and we have the job of raising her daughter. My big concern right now is what we tell Daphne. I think she needs
to know the truth at some point, Shamrock. It isn’t right to let a child grow to adulthood believing a lie.”
Brianna bowed her head again. “I agree. If Moira had died differently, I would have told Daphne the truth from her cradle. But rape is a terrible thing, David. People often blame the victim instead of the perpetrator. I have always intended to tell Daphne the truth, but when I do, I need to know she’s old enough to understand what really happened. Her mama did nothing wrong. It was
me
. I committed the wrong.”
“You flirted with a young man,” David corrected. “That was not wrong. You were young, innocent, and oblivious to his nature. If Moira hadn’t gone into the garden that day, pretending to be you, it might have been
you
, Shamrock. Being a young girl, making eyes at a young man, and dancing away from him aren’t sins. They’re natural. A girl needs to learn how to be a woman. It wasn’t your fault that the farmer’s son was a bastard who beat your sister half to death, choked her, and raped her so roughly that he tore her up inside.” He leaned over the table, demanding without words that Brianna look into his eyes. “What happened wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t Moira’s fault. It was
his
fault, and I’ve got a good mind to pay the cruel-hearted son of a bitch a visit.”
Brianna could barely see David through her tears. In the last twelve hours, he had brought her pain, joy, ecstasy, and now pain again. “I am finished with all the anger and the yearning for revenge. Now I just want to do what’s right for Daphne. She needs to know about Moira. But when? When will she be old enough to grasp what happened? I’m thinking she should be about twelve.”
David shook his head. “No way. She needs to be a lot older. We can go on as we have, Shamrock. Now we can be a
real
family. There’s no need to fill Daphne’s head with things that ugly, not until she’s experienced an overzealous boy’s advances and come to understand what happened to her mother.” He grimaced. His eyes fell closed. When he looked at Brianna again, a glint of determination shone there. “No way is my little girl going to know about anything
that horrible. Not yet. We’ll know when it’s time to tell her, when she can understand. Do you agree?”
Brianna had felt that way since she’d first taken the baby from Moira’s stiffening arms. Daphne needed to grow up believing in goodness, not evil. “I definitely do. We’ll know when she’s ready, and then we’ll tell her together.”
David offered her his hand. “Shake on it?”
Brianna shook on it.
David convinced Brianna to leave the shop closed that morning and paid the off-duty Billy Joe to ride to Ace’s ranch with a message that he had business to take care of in town that would prevent him from attending Little Joe’s party and coming for Daphne until Sunday afternoon.
“She’ll have fun,” he assured Brianna. “Today they’re having the party and a cookie bake. Little Joe is still too young to care if I’m there. Tonight they’ll probably have a big family supper. She’s got Sam, her cousins, and the kittens to play with, and my mother will undoubtedly keep her occupied the rest of the time.”
Brianna smiled. “And what is the pressing business you have to take care of here in town?” she asked.
“Making love to my wife all day and all night.”
“Is that a threat?”
He drew her up from the kitchen chair and into his arms. “It’s a promise.”
David Paxton was a man of his word. He did indeed make love to Brianna all that day and throughout the night. During brief rest periods, they ate, sipped wine he got from the Golden Slipper a few doors away, and then lay in each other’s arms. Brianna felt as if they were the only two people on earth. In his embrace, she absorbed his warmth, sleeping, awakening, smiling when she felt his hard, hairy arms tighten around her.
David, her desperado.
God truly had sent her a miracle.
O
“It’s good to see you again so soon!” Caitlin cried. Rachel beamed a smile and hooked her arm through Brianna’s. “We missed both of you at the party yesterday. Come inside. We have some surprises for you.”
The surprises were two lovely housedresses, one pink and one yellow, which Caitlin and Rachel had made for her. Before Brianna knew it, she was in the front bedroom standing on a stool, surrounded by female relatives who checked the gowns for proper fit and length.
“I don’t know what to say,” Brianna told them, and she truly didn’t. “They fit almost perfectly, and oh, they are so pretty!”
Dory laughed. “You should have heard them, fretting aloud about having the audacity to make dresses for a fashion designer!”
“Why?” Brianna cried. “You do fabulous work! If you want a job at my shop, you’ve got it.”
Rachel stood back. “I have to admit, you do look gorgeous
in both colors, and now you can save your silk gowns for the shop. These are far more practical for out at David’s ranch.”
Brianna felt as if her insides were made of melting butter. For the first time, she was certain of the future. She
would
be at David’s ranch often, and in these women, she’d found a mother and sisters. Both Rachel and Caitlin went straight to work doing minor alterations on the housedresses while Dory and Brianna adjourned to the kitchen to prepare a huge evening meal.