Rocky Mountain Man (Historical) (12 page)

The storm hit the kitchen wall with the force of a hungry tornado and the speed of a runaway train. The windows rattled. The house rocked. The floor beneath her rumbled. The daylight faded as utterly as if it had been a lamp's flame to extinguish. Darkness made brooding shadows of the furniture and stove and the man seated at the table.

Ice pellets scoured the thick logs and struck like bullets against the windows. What kind of blizzard was this? She'd lived on the high Montana plains her entire life. She knew what a blizzard was—what other kind
of snowstorm was there on the desolate prairie where winds swept down from the northern mountains with enough force to blow over shanties?

But this. This was like an apocalypse. Like the storms at the end of the world. No horse could outrun it. No human or animal stood a chance exposed to it. The crack of ancient trees breaking echoed like cannon fire above the howling rage of the killing winds. How was she going to get home now?

The acrid scent of sulfur scorched the air and the single candle flame danced and struggled against the encroaching darkness. The timid light caressed the planes and lines of Duncan's hard-set features. There was no missing the harsh frown drawing deep lines around his mouth.

He wasn't pleased with the turn of events? He was, at least, home. She had dinner at her mother's, as was the custom every Sunday afternoon, and she was to bring the baked beans and strawberry cobbler.

Which were sitting wrapped and waiting on her kitchen counter. What was Mama going to say about this? “You could have told me when you said I'd better start heading home while I could, that you meant racing as fast as Morris could go. And still being caught in it.”

“I haven't seen one move in that fast in a long while.” He lit a battered tin lamp and the reflector cast the steady light into a bright glow that only better illuminated the cruel slash of his mouth. “What are we going to do now?”

“I obviously can't drive home.”

“Yep.” Smoke puffed out the seam in the stove door,
driven down by the wind. The damper must be wide open, and that was a problem. Pain wedged through his ribs as he leaned forward.

But she was already there, Miss Spring Garden, as she knelt and pushed in the knob. Whispering to herself, “It's hot. O-oh, good one, Bets,” she sprang up to plunge her fingertips into the bucket beneath the hand pump.

Why can't I stop wanting her? Duncan wanted to curse the fates that had brought the storm down the mountain. The interfering Great Spirits that seemed to have offered him the chance to an untold dream.

And that dream dabbed her dainty fingers on her flowery skirt and went about pulling open drawers in search of what, he didn't know. He only knew that he seemed entranced by the soft curves of her breasts. They were full and ripe enough to fill his hands with plenty to spare. The soft curves jostled ever so slightly as she withdrew a dish towel, saw how it wasn't clean and pulled out more until one met her exacting standards.

“Do you want some?”

Her question made his jaw drop before he realized she was unaware of where his gaze seemed to be glued. Embarrassment seared his face as he looked hard at the edge of the table where the pool of the lamplight could not touch. He traced his forefinger along the carved edging he'd etched.

She was still waiting with an empty cup in one hand and the steaming ironstone pot in the other. “Well?”

He didn't trust his voice, so he nodded. All he knew was that he hungered to lay his head between the val
ley of her breasts, to breathe in their woman's fragrance of salty skin and sweet, scented lotion and heat.

He longed to know the feel of her fingers cradling his head, and wondered if she would hold him to her plump rosy nipple and let him suckle until she moaned and arched against him. Or was her passion the quiet kind, of big glowing eyes and soft sighs and laying back to surrender her body to her man's lustful will.

No, he couldn't imagine Betsy surrendering, quiet or otherwise. She poured his cup with a flourish. She apparently never did anything the way any normal person would. She withdrew a small covered bowl from the second basket and nudged it toward him.

“Sugar,” was her explanation before she went in search of a second clean cup.

He was loath to lift the lid because he knew he'd find the fancy white sugar, expensive as could be. Had she dipped into her special sugar kept for company and special occasions? Or was this the way she lived, used to white sugar for her coffee? Fringe on the roof of her buggy. Tassels on her fine leather shoes.

Beneath her pretty flowery dress, he'd wager his year's consignment income that she wore fancy lace undergarments. And her skin would feel like warmed satin when he touched her. When he laid her out on his bed and stripped off her lace and silk and kissed his way from lips to her generous breasts spilling into his hands, to her softly curved stomach. He bet that she would moan for him and enjoy the sensation just as she made a low hmm in her throat, as she tasted her cup of sweetened coffee.

Yep. He had just as much of a chance making love
to Miss Betsy as he did being named honorary son to her family.

She took the chair across the table from him and wrapped her hands around the cup's warmth. “How long do you think the snow is going to be like this?”

“Hard to say.”

“Okay, then give me a good guess. It blew in fast, so it should blow out fast, right?”

“Who knows? I've seen storms like this last two hours.”

“Oh, what a relief.” Her lush mouth parted as she sipped.

Duncan envied the cup. What would it be like to have her agile, sensual mouth softly opening around his bottom lip? Would she let her eyelids drift shut and savor him? Could he make her sigh deep in her throat, the way she did after she swallowed the rich, sweet coffee?

Shameful desire roared through him like the blizzard through the mountainside. Obliterating everything until there was only the wild need of a man so lonely, so in need of human touch and physical and emotional bonding, that he would throw away his life and risk more, just to hold Betsy in his arms. To take her to his bed for one night.

Just one.

But he'd learned his past lessons well. He knew exactly how Betsy's family would respond to his seduction of their precious girl. He had no interest in bedding a virgin. Worse, a woman from town with her tassels and satin ribbons and lace. Those women were nothing but trouble.
Nothing.

So why did his blood remain hot and pulsing through his veins? Why, when he was injured and in a weakened condition, did his groin ache with need and his trousers grow tighter?

“I may as well get busy while I'm here.” She set her half-empty cup on the table and glanced around with purpose. “I think I can get quite a bit done.”

“You're going to do my laundry here?”

“Oh, no.” She could have been an Irish fairy for the way her sapphire gaze shimmered with mischief. “You saved my life, Duncan Hennessey, and for that you will have my eternal gratitude.”

“Hell, give me anything but that. Gratitude.” As if he hated her, he grimaced harshly and stared into the gray mass of the cruel storm. “You're here for the duration of the storm. We both know it. There's no way to change it.”

“My, you sound pleased.”

“Just stating the facts. I don't like 'em. If I had my way, you'd be home where you belong. Bothering some other undeserving man.” He snarled out the words so there would be no mistake. She couldn't think it was fine to just drive up and invite herself in as if they were friends.

He didn't want her friendship. He didn't want anything to do with her. He had to hate her, because if he didn't, then the consequences would be too grave to endure.

He'd had enough devastation in his life. Lost too many people he'd loved. Seen too much ugliness and evil in the hearts of both women and men to begin to trust another human being. Another woman. Another chance for happiness.

No, all he had to do was to look at Betsy Hunter. She wasn't a spinster yet, she may be unmarried but she was heart-stoppingly beautiful. And charming. And funny. And alluring. And
everything.

Everything he could not have. Everything he could not trust.

He
would
hate her, and he would invent reasons if he had to, until the sight of her stopped the heat in his blood. Until the thought of her had him snarling so fierce and mean that she'd run out of his cabin the instant the blizzard stopped.

He would hate her. Even if it destroyed what remained of his soul.

H
e's been horribly hurt, Betsy reminded herself as she tapped the excess soapy water from the bucket. But even her sympathy was wearing thin. He wanted to push her away. He wanted to hurt her.

And now he appeared even more miserable staring at the fire writhing in the stone-crafted fireplace. A frown pulled his hard mouth into an unforgiving line that said,
Don't tempt me.

His words carved at her like a whittler's knife while she scrubbed the brush along the beautiful polish of the wooden floors. She'd never seen puncheon flooring, although she'd heard of it, and how Duncan had managed to perfectly split an ancient pine in two and sand it to perfection was a mystery.

The trees must have been enormous, judging by the widths of the halves that each stretched a good eight to twelve feet, and had been laid in such a way to emphasize the marbled beauty of the grain. The tough varnish protected the soft wood and gave it a honeyed gleam.

“You don't have to scrub the floor just because you're unhappy about being trapped here with me.”

“I didn't say I was unhappy.”

“What else could you be?”

That was a very good question. Anyone could see he was expending a lot of effort to make her miserable. Betsy's chest tightened with too many emotions to name. Sympathy, yes. Concern, yes. Affection? She sighed, returning her attention to the floor. Scrubbing hard, she felt the blaze of his attention. Did that kind of emotional power come naturally?

Or did he have to work at it? His fury felt larger than the winds battering the cabin. He might fool everyone else into thinking he was a fierce bear of a man by this concentrated effort of disagreeable behavior.

But she wasn't fooled. “I'm very grateful to be here.”

“You're not impressing me by scrubbing my floor.”

“Good. I wouldn't want to do that.” She couldn't imagine what it would take to wipe that grimace off his face.

He must not have liked her answer because he kept staring at her, like a cougar watching its prey. And she had the distinct impression that he was trying to figure out the next step in his attack.

That was probably what he was going to try to do. When Mariah had told her about what happened to Duncan's family, it only proved her assumptions about him had been right all along. He'd survived a terrible tragedy, the kind of heartbreak that cut a man to the soul.

How could anyone overcome losing his entire fam
ily? With the taste of loss she'd had, she couldn't truly imagine. Charlie had been her world, but she hadn't been alone. Her family was overprotective and bossy, it was hard to deny, but they were also loving and caring to a fault.

But Duncan clearly had no one. Or if he had, he'd pushed them away.

So, Duncan, do your worst.
He could snarl, hiss, swear and insult her all he wanted. Fine. She was grateful he was alive to do so. And until he was fully recovered, she intended to do all she could for him. If he didn't like it and if he would rather be alone with his growly self and even if he didn't want her in his presence, that was simply his burden to endure. He was stuck with her and not only because of the storm.

Because when she stopped to dunk the brush into the soapy water, she could feel a flutter in her deepest being.

Maybe Duncan Hennessey had saved her in a more important way. And he didn't even know it.

“I don't care if my floor is filthy. I don't care if rats think my floor is filthy. Stop doing that.”

“No.” She was nearly done anyway. She attacked the last section of the kitchen floor—of course, there was the rest of the cabin. But she had a plan to clean room by room and to get everything in perfect order for Duncan. So it was simple to say no.

His baritone boomed like a dynamite explosion and made the deafening blizzard's howl seem tranquil. “Did you tell me no? In my own house?”

“Boy, you are honestly giving extra effort to your beastly manners, aren't you?” She crawled back
through the threshold, dragging the bucket with her. “I know that usually terrifies most people, but I've been around you enough not to be perturbed by it.”

“Perturbed?”

“Yes. You know what it means, don't you?”

Duncan saw red and he let his teeth clench together with a loud clack and hissed out the steam of his rage. “That's it. Stop your infernal cleaning right this moment. I told you, I don't care. This isn't impressing me.”

“I heard you the first time. Besides, I doubt very much if anyone ever could impress you. You seem to have very low expectations.”

His dark brows pulled together as he rose up from the chair where he'd collapsed near the fireplace. And for an instant he resembled the great black bear that had nearly taken his life. The darkness in the room seemed to grab at him and she could see only the piercing hatred of his unfeeling black eyes.

“What have you seen in the world, little miss? What do you know about men? You live safe and protected with your family doting on you. The worst thing that ever happened to you was eating strawberries in a forest in September. You don't know what cruelty a man is capable of. Or a woman. Especially a woman.”

“Your insults are not going to work. Just so you are aware. I'm headstrong enough to resist words.”

She doesn't understand,
Duncan thought. She was everything he'd ever wanted and never thought he could find. She was beautiful and smart.

In a different world, if he was a different man, the Duncan Hennessey who had his own furniture shop, then maybe. Maybe, when he'd been a man who'd
spent his days quietly at the lathe and the blade, gluing and pressing and patiently sanding. The man who went to his mother's for supper on Sundays when his shop was closed,
that
innocent young man would have fallen irrevocably in love with Miss Betsy Hunter.

He was no longer that man. And he could not pretend he was. Could not dare admit that the reverberation of emotion sitting dead-center in his chest was love.

No, because a woman like her could never love him. And no amount of her scrubbing his floor was going to change that. He figured her family was going to find out she'd been alone with him, and they would assume the worst. That's what folks tended to do.

He doubted her family would demand a shotgun wedding to salvage her reputation. Thinking about everything that could happen…that made the old panic overtake him. He fought it until he was as unfeeling as the granite stones that broke from the great faces of the mountains and rolled downward, fracturing apart as they tumbled.

Breaking and breaking again, and there was no outcry, no roar or cursing. After the pieces had finally stopped, there was merely silence. A rock could feel nothing.

Nor could he.

“There. That room is done.”

She plopped the brush into the bucket with a splash. When she stood, her dress shivered around her slender curves, full and soft in all the right places and she moved like a metaphor in a poem, like snow on a calm morning, and his pulse beat with desire. To pull her into
his arms, fold her snug against his chest and breathe in the warm scent of her.

Why was he doing this? He was only hurting himself. He tried to will the longing from his blood, but his soul kept throbbing.
I want you. I want you so much.

And I cannot have you.
He gritted his teeth, ground his jaw and closed his eyes, but he could still see her. The last image of her twisted at the waist, stretching out her back. The extension from side to side emphasizing the curves of her breasts, soft and full and made to fill his hand.

And if that wasn't enough to drive him out the door and into the blizzard to cool down the tightening thrum of his noticeable erection, her skirt clung to her hips and backside. She had a sassy little fanny to match the rest of her and there was nothing he wanted more than to keep her.

You have to stop thinking like this.
It was killing him. He twisted away so she could not see the agony on his face. He could hear her sigh of relief. She must have stopped stretching out her tight muscles, and the clink of the bucket as she hiked it up and, finally the swish and tap of her was a thoroughly feminine sound that made him want to turn and follow her.

To reach for what he wanted more than anything.

She clanged and clattered around in the kitchen, humming a tune he didn't know, but the alto of her voice lilted above the roaring storm. His skin prickled into little bumps, as if cold, but he wasn't. His blood had heated up hot enough to melt steel, and he could feel his will buckling, like a horseshoe laid to the smithy's fires.

You should have never allowed her to step foot in this door.
He cursed himself for his own stupidity, raking his hand through his hair and breathing with the effort. He hauled his uncooperative body up from the chair and limped to the door.

She was still humming and making noise in the kitchen. It sounded as if she were pumping water. Good luck, he wanted to tell her, since the temperature was rapidly dropping. If the water froze, what difference would it make to him?

He wanted her to stop cleaning. Stop this effort to show him how well she could clean. No woman had enough integrity to do so much free work without wanting something in return.

Yeah, he knew women, he thought bitterly as he laid a hand on his fur coat. The question was, What did Miss Betsy Hunter want? She emerged from the kitchen, her apron at her waist. She'd apparently found his broom and started sweeping up the month or so's accumulation of dust, dirt and anything else that had hit the floorboards with the determination of an army general close to victory.

“I cleaned the chamber pot, so you don't need to go outside.”

“Lady, I wouldn't piss in a pot that you'd scrubbed. Damn this hell-blasted storm!” He retreated into rage again, stuffed his injured arm into the sleeve and then his good one, moving as fast as he could, working the buttons, remembering she'd taken his boots off.

“Shit!” He did his best to storm across the wide room, but the pain was mounting. He'd been up too much, done too much, and he couldn't boom through
the house like he wanted to. Every time he stomped on his bad leg, agony shot in white-hot streaks along his leg and up through his abdomen all the way to his pounding head.

But he didn't let that stop him, not when he had a point to make. He didn't want her. And since his steel will was bending, he was going to make damn sure the pretty little miss wouldn't want to be in the same room with him. That was the best way to ensure, if his good sense failed, that they wouldn't end up in his bed together.

Because he wanted her with a force that was blinding him. So it was up to her to hate him so much there was no possible way she'd look at him with those big doe eyes and smile with her lush beautiful mouth he wanted to kiss. He had to make sure she'd recoil in disgust because all he wanted to do was to feel her luscious mouth on every inch of him—

Damn it! Stop thinking like that.
He had no control, it was completely gone, and it enraged him even more.

In a full temper he bent to grab hold of a boot; he didn't give a crap about his wounds or the fact that when he bent over to yank on his shoes, pain flashed black across his vision. He dragged in a moan and fought to keep it silent.

“What is the matter with you?”

She was there, all softness and light, her skirt swirling around her lean hips, curved just right, touched by the firelight as she knelt before him, uncurled his fingers from the boot's heel. It was concern on her face, and he knew she was only worried about her last chance for marriage.

At least, that's what he told himself as he tried to steal the boot back, but the damnable woman held it out of his reach. “It's my boot. Give it.”

“What are you going to do, go out in this storm?” She wasn't in a bad mood at all, she was so hellfire cheerful. The mahogany curls framed her lovely oval face, and the bright sapphire of her eyes made her seem the dearest woman he'd ever come across.

All he had to do was to lean forward two feet—twenty-four inches, that was all—and he could capture her lush mouth with his. Find out if she tasted like dew on a morning's garden and if her kiss was as luxurious as a rose's velvety petal.

What was he doing? Stop it, you cannot have her.
He reined in his desire, stopped his thoughts and launched forward, bullying the boot from her surprisingly strong grip. The not-so-delicate Betsy Hunter snatched the boot right back and flung it across the room.

“You're not going out. I'll go bring in more wood.”

As if he were completely as crazy as a loon and she was the sane one, she shook her head at him in a scolding way, bouncing up, pure fire and charm, and he felt his will liquefy as she swished away.

Leaving him breathless and weak, pulling away every thought from his head. He couldn't even think to stop her and by the time his mind started working she'd wrapped up and was unlatching the door.

That damnable woman! He was on his feet as the wind caught the door and ripped it from her hands, the blizzard punching in, stealing Betsy from his sight. That woman was going to be the death of him one way or another, that was for damn sure.

Swearing with every step, he raced headlong into the whiteout that blew out the lamp and brought down darkness and ice. There was nothing but wind pushing him back and he fought it, reaching out, finding only darkness and stinging snow, and suddenly there she was, a soft shelter against his chest.

He held her there with his injured arm and caught the edge of the door with his good one and growled, bucking the wild storm that felt strong enough to topple them both.

With every drop of his strength, he wrestled the door closed. Snow fell to the ground. The winds disappeared and there was silence and darkness and only the impotent flare of the fire in the frigid room.