Promises Reveal (19 page)

“Will have to wait.”

The knock at the door came again. Pearl called, “Are you all right?”

Oh God, she didn’t know. She couldn’t do anything but sprawl passively on the smooth table while Brad rode her hard and fast, forced to accept her pleasure as he chose to give it, able to do nothing, each entry a jolt to her senses, every withdrawal a mournful loss. The table flicked her clit like a hard finger, the burgeoning ache building to unbearable heights. His hand left her hair. She collapsed forward. His forearm cushioned her fall.

Brad’s next thrust was so hard she bit down on his arm and screamed—so close, so close.

“Son of a bitch.”

The curse was little more than a hiss of breath. His weight left her back. His hand fumbled between them and then something thick tested the point of their joining. His thumb?

“Tell your mother ‘just a minute.’ ”

She shook her head. There was no way she could manage speech.

“You don’t tell me no, Evie.” For once she didn’t want to argue. All she wanted—needed—was for Brad to give her just a little more.

“Just a minute, Ma.”

“Are you all right?”

Brad’s thrusts grew shallower, faster.

“Yes. Just give me a—” His thumb swirled, slid higher, pressed. Another scream built as a dark pleasure swirled through her. She held it back and choked out, “A minute.”

Above her, Brad commanded, “Now, Evie.”

Her world ruptured. Brad swore and pulled out. The door rattled. Hot liquid splashed on her buttocks, spilled between.

His seed, she realized with an erotic shock. She rubbed her hips in counterpoint to his shallow thrusts. His mouth brushed her ear. His thumb pierced her that first tiny bit. “Next time, I’ll take you here.”

She couldn’t help herself, she pushed back into the sensual tease. “Yes.”

Brad swore. Stepping back, he pulled her up. Her skirts fell about her legs. Catching her face between his hands, he kissed her hard, before growling, “Let your mother in.”

She could only blink uncomprehendingly as he turned on his heel and strode away.

SHE WAS GOING to kill him. She was going to learn to shoot a gun, and she was going to kill him. One bullet at a time until the darn thing was empty, Evie decided as she watched her husband stride, with his usual arrogance, down the narrow aisle to the back of the church. The door vibrated against her foot as her mother pounded with more urgency. Brad skirted the shadowed altar, his black clothes rendering him all but invisible as he moved from light to shadow. There was an ease to the blending that fed her irritation. He was entirely too good at disappearing.

The door swung inward. Evie braced her feet, using her weight to push it back, understanding why Brad had placed her here, but if he thought giving her the opportunity to control when her mother gained entrance was going to make up for anything, he had another think coming. She still had to face her mother with the last remnants of her orgasm pulsing through her. And somehow she had to look normal.
Damn him.

This time the door hit her back hard enough to bruise. “Evie, open this door right now.”

Evie had grown up with that tone. There was an end to Pearl’s patience and she’d just reached it. One touch was all it took to verify that her hair was past repairing. Before stepping back, she checked her skirts. At least they seemed to be in place, likely wrinkled in the back, but at least the front was not too horrible. She took one breath, two, reached for her hair and jumped back.

“Come in, Ma.”

The door swung open hard enough to hit the wall. Bright sunlight streamed into the dark interior. Her mother’s silhouette—tall, plump, still curvaceous—stood framed by the doorway. “Are you all right?”

“Of course.” Flipping the disaster of her hair over her shoulder, she brushed her hands down her skirt. Sometimes a brave front carried a woman past the embarrassment of the obvious. From the back of the church there came the sound of a door closing. Brad had left, the coward.

Pearl took one look at her and clucked her tongue. “I told you, you can’t go aggravating a husband like you aggravate everyone else.”

“I wanted to see for myself.”

“And now look at you. You’re a mess.” With a motion of her hand, Pearl indicated Evie should turn around. “And did you get what you wanted or did you simply lose your temper?”

“The latter.”

Her mother sniffed and gathered up Evie’s hair. “That’s what I thought.”

“Are you sick or was that disapproval?”

“Just fighting off a cold. I got caught in that downpour last week.”

Finalizing plans for her wedding. Evie sighed. Sometimes it felt like guilt was going to be her constant companion. She glanced back. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Pearl started braiding with familiar efficiency. “I’m going to give it to Millicent, and after that I’ll be fine.”

Evie glanced over her shoulder, struggling with a smile. “What did Millicent do this time?”

Pearl snorted with disgust. “She’s been practicing her recipes.”

Practicing recipes meant interest in a man. Millicent and her mother might be friends but when it came to men, they were also rivals. “The new blacksmith?”

“Don’t you get smart with me, young woman.”

“What? He’s a fine-looking man. Those white streaks at his temples make him look very distinguished.”

Pearl grunted and slapped a ribbon into Evie’s hand. “He can’t be that distinguished if he’s blinded by a fancy dessert.”

“You’re a beautiful woman, Ma. If you want him, go after him.”

“Don’t underestimate the value of good food to a man.”

Evie turned as best she could, struggling to see her mother’s face. “I also wouldn’t be overestimating it.”

Pearl gave Evie’s braid a tug. “Hold still or everyone is going to be thinking you’ve been cavorting in church, and that you won’t live down.”

Evie was suddenly, vividly aware of all the evidence that said she had done just that. Her thighs touching through the tear in her pantaloons, her swollen lips, the stinging spot on her neck where Brad had nipped her as he’d ordered her to hold still for the thrust of his cock, the faint scent of lovemaking permeating the warm interior . . . Thank goodness for her mother’s cold. Clearing her throat, she agreed, “We wouldn’t want that.”

Pearl took the ribbon from her hand. “Even if it is true.”

The heavy weight of the braid struck her back. Evie spun around, appalled. “How did you know?”

That got her a pitying shake of the head. “Your lips are swollen, your hair is mussed, and you don’t have the look of a beaten woman.”

Evie could only gape.

Pearl shrugged and pulled another ribbon from the seemingly endless supply she always had in her pocket. “I wasn’t born forty-three, Evie. There were times your father and I kept someone cooling their heels while he stole a kiss.”

A kiss. Her mother thought Brad had only kissed her. Some of Evie’s mortification died back, but not much. “You’re not upset with me?”

“I could wish you didn’t enjoy provoking your husband so much, but I’m glad he’s the type to stake his claim with a kiss rather than a fist.”

They really didn’t know Brad at all. The man was too thorough to settle anything with just a kiss.

Flicking the pink ribbon, Pearl said, “Lift your chin.”

“Why?”

“To cover that love bruise your husband put on your neck.”

Brad hadn’t been joking. Evie covered the sting with her hand. “He marked me?”

With a quick flick of the ribbon that showed her many years as a seamstress, Pearl wrapped it around Evie’s neck. “Quite thoroughly.”

Holding up her chin, Evie asked, “How badly?”

“Bad enough men will be smiling smugly and women will be sighing with envy. You can check it when you get home. You won’t even need your spectacles.”

She’d be checking the spot that stung on the inside of her thigh, too. “He probably did it on purpose.”

Tilting her head to the side, Pearl chuckled as she finished tying the ribbon at Evie’s throat. “Probably. I wouldn’t have figured the Reverend for a possessive man, but still waters do run deep, and I guess the collar doesn’t make him less a man.”

She shivered. “No. It definitely doesn’t.”

Pearl rested her hands on Eve’s shoulders. “Are you happy, baby?”

Startled, Evie realized she had to look down to meet her mother’s gaze. When had that happened? It had to have happened years ago, but how could she not have realized? She licked her lips, tasting the remnant of Brad’s kiss, reliving in a flash of memory the torrent of emotion he brought to life. “I think I could be.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, the panic started. She wasn’t good at keeping a man’s love. And to think about making any part of her happiness dependent on a man, even one whose reasons for marrying her she understood, was terrifying. She licked her lips again, tasting nothing this time but her own fear. “If I asked my husband to let me go to Paris and paint, do you think he’d let me do that?”

To her credit, Pearl didn’t miss a beat at the sudden change of subject. “Probably not if you ask him out of the blue like that.”

“I would approach the subject more delicately.”

“Good, because the man is not the monster you seem to want him to be.”

He also wasn’t the saint her mother wanted him to be.

“I don’t want him to be a monster.”

“Funny, no one could tell that from your actions.”

“What actions?”

“It’s all over town that he left that house before dawn.”

“Am I the only subject anyone has to discuss around here?”

“Right now, you’re the most exciting.”

“Maybe the sheriff was a little hasty running that medicine show out of town,” she muttered.

Pearl didn’t bite. “So, what’d you do to make him leave you last night?”

Followed his lead, as Pearl had told her to do. “What makes you think I did anything?”

“Sweetheart, I’ve known you your whole life, and when told to push, you’re more likely to pull.”

“Maybe Brad doesn’t want me to conform.”

“He’s a minister. A certain level of conformity is required.”

He might be a man of the cloth, but Evie was beginning to think he wasn’t that proper. A proper man of God didn’t pleasure his wife on a table just inside the front door of the church. Especially when anyone could come in. A proper minister didn’t keep making love to his wife after her mother knocked on the door. A proper man of God wouldn’t recognize the wild side of her the way Brad did.

“I’ll work on it.”

Just maybe not that hard.

Pearl rolled her eyes, obviously hearing the total lack of conviction behind the declaration. Stepping back, she examined Evie’s appearance from heard to toe. “At least you’re presentable.”

“And no one’s going to notice that my hair, which was up, is now down?”

“The one good thing about your unconventional ways is that I can answer that—no.”

“And you thought those years of constantly losing my shoes and hair ties were all a waste.”

“I never thought it was a waste, baby. I just worried that your need to make your mark in a different way would get in the way of your life.”

That was her mother’s worry? “I never had any intention of allowing that to happen.”

Pearl brushed her hands down her skirt, checking her pockets to make sure the geegaws she carried as necessary to her profession of seamstress were properly tucked away. It was a familiar gesture, one Evie had seen many times. This was the first time she realized it was a nervous gesture.

“Good, then you might want to get on home and prepare your husband’s lunch. Word is he didn’t get a bit of that breakfast Millicent sent over.”

Did no one in this town have anything better to do than poke their noses into her life? “Who’s the gossip this time?”

Pearl shrugged. “Jackson has a weakness for sugar cookies, too, and according to him, Brad took one look around the house, saw you weren’t there, and stormed back out again before he could even say a word.”

“And you know all this because . . . ?”

“Jackson was concerned. He came looking for me when Brad stormed out.”

“He didn’t have faith in a man of God?”

“I think he had more faith in your ability to push a man past his limits.”

“A great opinion you have of me.”

“You do like to tweak people.”

“Not to that degree.”

“So what did happen?”

“I got annoyed and decided I wasn’t going to wait around like a fool for him to show up from wherever he’d disappeared to.”

“You went to the lawyer. That’s more like waving a red cape in front of a bull.”