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February 13, 1874
The sun was dipping toward the horizon on a Saturday afternoon, nearly two weeks later, when the non-stop barking of my sheepdogs alerted me to the fact that someone was coming down the road to the homestead. Removing my rifle from its rack, I checked to make sure that it was loaded then set it just inside the door within easy reach before walking out onto the porch. With the light at his back it was impossible to see the man's face, but even at a distance I easily recognized the tall blond in the saddle. My heart beginning to beat wildly, I gave the dogs the signal for "quiet." The calico dress that I had worn to do chores was faded and threadbare from repeated washings, and the apron around my waist was covered with a fine dusting of flour from my dinner preparations, but there was nothing that I could do to improve my unkempt appearance before my guest arrived. I hastily removed the soiled apron--tossing it onto a rocker--then smoothed my hair back with both hands. Reining in, he doffed his hat, then smiled at me. "Afternoon, Caitlyn." "Hank." I glanced nervously down the road that he had just traveled. "What in the world are you doing here?" "I come callin'." He grimaced as he swung himself down off of his horse, the wound in his back still causing him obvious pain. "But...the two of us can't be alone like this," I objected, feeling flustered. "Not without a chaperone. It's simply not--proper." "Never was big on rules." He shrugged, the reins still caught in his hand. "I don't think... I mean, it's only that--" "Where's that famous Southern hospitality?" he teased. "At war with the fear that you're going to totally destroy my good name," I retorted. "Ya expectin' company?" "No," I admitted, patting my huge male sheepdog on the head as he positioned his body between me and this stranger. "Then chances are nobody will ever know I was here, 'less we tell 'em," he suggested mildly. "Could put Hurricane in the barn, if ya think somebody'll pass by and recognize my horse." Torn between the desire to keep this visit of his a secret and the fact that if we were discovered it would look anything but innocent if his horse had been hidden away, I hesitated over my answer. There was no question that propriety demanded that I should ask Hank to leave, since we were alone, but my heart was strongly arguing its own case that this man who had rarely been out of my thoughts during the past 12 days was now standing right here at my door. "Ya got no need to be afraid of me," he reassured me gently. "It's not you that I'm afraid of. It's the town gossips." "Sully was at Michaela's plenty o' times before they ever got married--alone with her all hours of the day and night. Nobody ran her outta town on a rail." "Michaela didn't answer directly to the Town Council. I do. And you all made it very clear when I was offered this job that I'm not allowed to have gentlemen callers." "Lotta folks around who'd swear up and down I'm no gentleman." Hank grinned. "Without a doubt," I agreed drily. "Could probably get away with breakin' half of them rules on yer contract, and we'd still keep you on," he admitted quietly. "Not too many teachers been to college are willin' to up and move to Colorado Springs for what we can afford to pay. Least not good ones. Everybody around here knows how lucky we got the day we found you." "Including you?" "Especially me." He tied his horse to the hitching post then stepped up onto the porch. "Even though you've let no opportunity pass since I first arrived to publicly chastise me for my shortcomings?" I asked sharply, still stinging from old battle wounds. "All of them things had to do with you tryin' to do a man's work around the school when yer no bigger than a minute. Things we oughta been helpin' ya with in the first place, that had nothin' to do with teachin'. Like the time ya tried to replace that windowpane and broke the new glass--or wasted mosta that 50 pound bag of lime tryin' to lift it to pour down the privy." Blushing at his mention of the "necessary," I decided to change the subject. "I had expected you to be at the clinic for at least a few more days." "Man could lose his mind, starin' at four walls. I finally told Michaela I was leavin'." "You can't possibly have your strength back yet." I let my eyes travel quickly over his muscular frame as I searched for signs of ill health. Even though he seemed much paler than usual, the neatly trimmed beard that he had grown during his stay at the clinic and sunlight shining on the freshly washed mane of blond hair streaming down over his shoulders made Hank appear more handsome than I had ever seen him. "Wasn't gonna get it back, layin' around bein' mollycoddled." "Hank--it's much too soon for you to go back to work. And if you're there at the Gold Nugget you'll be carrying boxes of whiskey and breaking up fights. You could easily reopen that wound, and you've lost all of the blood that you can afford to lose for awhile." "I'll take it easy." "Do you really expect me to believe that, when you've just ridden this far less than two weeks after you came within an inch of dying?" I frowned. "You could have hemorrhaged somewhere on the trail, passed out, and been dead before anyone found you." "Buzzards woulda told 'em where to look." He grinned. "A pack of stinking coyotes would have finished you off long before the buzzards even spotted you." "Six of one. Half a dozen of the other." Hank leaned against one of the columns, gazing down at me in amusement. "Guess I'd be pretty well past carin' which one claimed my sorry hide if I was dead." "The only thing that I hate worse than a coyote is a rattlesnake." "And maybe saloon owners?" He chuckled, offering his hand for my dog to sniff, then scratching him behind the ears when the canine relaxed and started to wag his tail. "Who's this fellow?" "Zeke--and the female is Maggie." I stroked the bitch's thick fur as she pressed against me, eager for her share of attention. "Seems to me yer dog's decided I'm harmless." Hank met my gaze. "Think I might be able to convince you?" "Not in a million years." I smiled slightly, then sighed. "But I can't in good conscience turn you around and send you back to town without giving you enough time to rest either. Not when you're still recovering from surgery." "Wouldn't be such a good idea," he agreed solemnly. "I should certainly make you sit out here on the porch--if I allow you to stay for a few minutes--but this close to nightfall, it's getting awfully chilly." "Been noticin' the cold more'n usual since I got shot." His lips twitched with restrained mirth as he watched me struggle over the decision of whether or not to set aside a societal code for unmarried men and women that had been ingrained in me from birth. "Must be 'cause my blood's low." "You're enjoying this, aren't you?" I asked suspiciously. "Much obliged for the hospitality." He pretended to misunderstand my accusation. "If I invite you in, I stand to ruin my reputation, but if I don't you'll probably fall off of your horse and die on the way back into town just to spite me," I grumbled, opening the front door. "So come on in." Hank's eyes swept the large main room, widening slightly in surprise, and I smiled with pleasure at his reaction. Although the number of windows and cozy front porch suggested that the original owner of my home had been someone who was interested in more than just a roof over his or her head, the exterior gave no hint of what was to be found inside. When I had bought my house, rather than spend money that I could ill-afford on teacher's pay for new furnishings, I had wired my parents and asked them to send me some of the castoff pieces that had found their way up into our attic over the years. The huge space under the eaves of the Greek Revival mansion that had housed my family for four generations was overflowing with discarded household goods, and as young children my sisters and I had spent countless rainy days creating our own separate "parlors" from unused furniture and parading around in long-forgotten ballgowns paired with oversized, ostrich-plumed hats. Three weeks after the telegram was sent Horace had come to the school late one afternoon with the news that the contents of an entire railroad boxcar had arrived invoiced to me. I had hurried to the station and discovered that the rail car held many of the items that I had claimed as "mine" during our sessions of make-believe--slightly shabby treasures that my sisters had remembered and made certain to include. Rather than the more formal living room pieces, my choices had been things that had once graced my father's study--two burgundy leather wing chairs and an ottoman, a sofa and matching chair in polished-cotton fabric striped with navy, burgundy and forest green, and worn oriental rugs in softly faded colors. Now each of these items, along with several small tables, paintings, and bookcases to hold the many well-loved tomes that my mother had packed into shipping crates, filled my new home. A dining table and six chairs occupied one end of the area, serving as my desk as well as a place for friends to join me for dinner, and a corner cabinet displayed a set of violet-sprigged English bone china that had belonged to my grandmother. With plain muslin curtains that I had sewn myself tied back at the windows, a crocheted throw draped over one chair, hanging oil lamps with a brass base that Mr. Bray had ordered for me from a catalogue, and logs burning brightly in the fireplaces at each end of the room, the effect was warm and cozy. "Feels like I'm back East." Hank's awed, disbelieving gaze moved around the room. "These are hand-me-downs that were stored in our attic at home-- things that no one wanted any more." Walking over to the cabinet clock hanging on the wall, he ran his palm lightly over the wood. "This same model Seth Thomas used to be in my grandma's house in North Carolina." "Is that where you're from?" "Used to be." "I've often wondered about your accent," I admitted. "Do you have family still in North Carolina?" "Did, last I heard." He shrugged. "It sounds as if you haven't been back for awhile." "Come fall, it'll be 22 years." "In all of that time, you haven't gone home for a visit?" I studied him in amazement. "Nothin' to go back for." "You don't get homesick?" I asked wistfully. "This is home." "Being surrounded by things that remind me of family makes it easier to live here, but I'm not sure that Colorado could ever feel like 'home' to me." "That day in the clinic ya said you was gonna be leavin' soon," he reminded me quietly. "Ya mean that?" "Magnolias don't seem to thrive very well in this climate." "Most things'll bloom, if ya tend to 'em right." "If it takes that much work, perhaps it's not worth the effort." "Some things're worth more effort than others." My cheeks growing warm, I turned away so that he wouldn't see. "Can I offer you some coffee? Or tea? I don't keep spirits." "Coffee, if it ain't too much trouble." "It's no trouble at all." I went into the kitchen, Hank following close behind me, and put the coffee pot on the stove for the water to come to a boil. Spotting the cupboard, he took two cups and saucers from one of the shelves and set the china on the worktable in the middle of the room, then added napkins from the basket on top of the icebox. I was grinding the beans and pouring the fragrant powder into the metal basket when I felt him run his fingers lightly through the thick, nearly-black mane of hair that fell unbound over my hips. "First time I ever seen yer hair loose," he said softly. "It's real pretty...all them curls and waves." "I look a mess." I fit the basket in and put the lid on the pot before returning it to the stove. "If I had known that I was going to have company, I would have changed into clean clothes and put my hair up." "You're beautiful." He turned me around so that I was facing him. "Even with flour on yer nose." "Hank, please..." I swallowed hard. "Please what?" Using his forefinger, he gently rubbed away the offending smudge of white. "Please, don't make this any harder than it already is." "Been tryin' all my life to figure out a way around it, but nothin' worth havin' comes easy." His eyes held mine for a moment too long. "You should never have come here," I whispered, becoming achingly aware that if he folded me into his arms the difference in our heights would bring my head to rest against his heart. "Looked like I was gonna have to, if I wanted to finish that conversation we started at the clinic. Ya never came back to see me." "There was nothing more for us to talk about. What you were suggesting is impossible." "We'll see about that." He reached out and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. "All them days and nights when I was layin' there with nothin' to do but think, I kept wonderin' if what went on in that bank happened to us for a reason." "Don't," I breathed, unable to make myself turn away from him and at the same time wanting to run out into the night, away from the intense pressure that was squeezing my heart. "If what yer askin' is for me not to fall in love with you, truth is, it's too late." His voice was thick with emotion. "It was too late a long time ago." "No..." I felt the tears begin. "I know I ain't what yer used to. Not even close... Even a fool would know a woman like you's got no use for somebody like me. But knowin' don't stop a man from wantin'." "Hank...you don't understand." "Just say it was the fever makin' me think you had feelin's for me right after I was shot, and I'll go." He gently tilted my face up so that my gaze met his. "Tell me I got it all wrong, and I'll walk outta here and never come near ya again." "I can't," I cried miserably. "Not without lyin'." He cupped my nape, bringing his mouth down against mine. Hank's kiss become more possessive, hungrily demanding that my will surrender to his own, as he pulled me up hard against his chest. Clutching a fistful of blond curls, I melted into him, the liquid fire that suddenly raced through my veins causing me to shiver as my long-repressed desire for this man bloomed beneath his touch. Scattering hot, butterfly kisses over my face and down the arch of my throat, his moustache a delicious tickle that made me ache inside, he pressed my body closer to his, even as he pulled back to look at me. "You love me, Cait," he whispered huskily, his eyes grown soft with longing. "I know damned well that you do. Why won't you just say it?" "Oh, Hank..." I buried my face against the front of his shirt, clinging to him tightly. "Hank." Wrapped in the strong circle of his arms, trembling from emotions that were new to me, I found myself wanting to trust him. Despite the risk--despite the fact that it would give him the power to destroy my life—I knew instinctively that my secrets would remain a part of Hank Lawson, unshared with anyone else. Leaning into his strength, I felt warm and safe...and a sensation that was akin to coming home. "Somethin's burnin'." He suddenly sniffed the air. "My bread!" I ran to the stove, using a towel to keep from injuring my hand as I jerked the two blackened loaves of yeast bread from the oven. The bread that I had started making that morning--that I had allowed to rise, beaten down, then repeated the same process with again and again--was now a smoking, hardened lump that even the coyotes wouldn't eat. "Been takin' cookin' lessons from Michaela?" Hank teased, making me laugh when I had been torn between the desire to hurl the pans as far as I could fling them into the yard and bursting into tears of frustration at the hours of wasted labor. "I had planned to ask you to stay for supper, but after that crack you're looking more and more capable of getting back on that horse of yours with every minute that passes." I gave him a mock frown as I pulled the coffee off of the heat before it suffered from being boiled for too long. Lifting the lids of the pots on the stove one by one, Hank looked morose as he discovered smothered steak, rice, and green peas and carrots. "Could I still talk ya inta an invitation if I offered to wash up the dishes after we're done?" he bargained. "I might even consider pulling out that apple pie that I baked, since you would have to do without bread." "Sounds fair." He began setting the table. I dished up the food from the stove into bowls, then brought the pie and a pitcher of sweetened tea to the table. Surprising me with his manners, Hank pulled out my chair and seated me before taking the place opposite mine. I offered him each bowl in turn, and he filled his plate with generous servings of the meat and side dishes, then put his napkin into his lap. "Mmmm." He flashed me a smile of approval after taking his first bite of steak. "Tastes even better than the food at Grace's." "Keep giving me compliments like that, and you might just get out of doing those dishes." "A deal's a deal." He winked. "Where'd ya learn to cook like this?" "During and after the war I learned to do a lot of things that I had never tried before." I shrugged. "Fortunately. If I hadn't, I would never have survived even a week out here." "Ever wonder what kinda life you'd be livin' now, if the war had never happened?" he asked quietly, savoring the gravy that he had ladled over his rice. "I would be a planter's wife, managing a household and raising half a dozen children." "That what you wanted?" "In a family like mine, if you're female, the possibility of doing anything else never crosses your mind. But things changed. I changed. Even if the South had won, my life would have been markedly different after the war was over. No one could possibly go through that and remain the same person." "Far away as Colorado, we heard 'bout Sherman's march through Georgia." "Whatever you read, the reality was ten times worse. There wasn't a bridge, gristmill, cornfield or fence--and very few houses—left standing in a path 50 miles wide all the way from Atlanta to the coast. They burned almost everything that we had. Hood had moved the Army of Tennessee north after the fall of Atlanta, so there was no military resistance at all until Sherman's troops were just outside of Savannah... and that battle went on for days." In my mind's eye I could still see the smoke and the fire in the distance, could still hear the incessant roar of howitzers as hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition were fired. "There were times when I thought that it was never going to end." "Yer pa didn't move you and the other womenfolk somewhere safer, with the Yankees that close?" "There was nowhere to go...not that my mother and sisters and I would have gone willingly, if there had been." I met his gaze. "The Confederate Army asked for the use of our house as a makeshift hospital, and every pair of hands to be found were desperately needed." "Wouldn't have figured yer Ma'd let ya tend to strange men." "At first she wouldn't hear of it--but they kept bringing in more and more wounded. Most of the rooms and every hallway had men lying on blankets on the floor, and we all knew that unless she allowed Mairead and me to assist with the nursing, some of the ones who stood a chance to go back home again would never make it. God knows how many times during those endless days and nights of wiping up blood and vomit, cleaning maggot-infested wounds, and comforting the dying that I would have given almost anything to have remained confined to the kitchen, preparing soup and rolling bandages." Reading the pain in my face as the raw memories resurfaced, Hank reached across the table, and I touched my palm to his, allowing his fingers to close protectively around mine. "But those men might as easily have been my own brother. Bleeding and starving and filthy with lice...with rags wrapped around their feet because they had no shoes. Half of them out of their mind with pain and begging to die...calling out for their mothers. "Back in '61, when those boys in their gold-braided uniforms rode by, waving regimental flags, we were all out there to watch, cheering and clapping. Feeling so proud of them and their eagerness to go to war and 'prove' their worth as men. Fighting was considered a matter of honor. But when you get a close look at the horror that men do to each other with bayonets and bullets, you begin to question how much 'honor' is truly worth. When you listen to a man scream in agony while a surgeon amputates an arm or a leg with nothing to give him to deaden the pain...smell his flesh burning when they cauterize the stump with a hot iron...you start to wonder if the cost of pride can sometimes be too high. There were times when I would lock myself in the linen closet, sit down on the floor with my fingers in my ears, and pray that I wouldn't start screaming, too. I was terrified that if I ever started, I would never be able to stop." Suddenly where I was and what I was saying came sharply back into focus, and I flushed with embarrassment. "This is totally inappropriate. An absolutely appalling topic of conversation for the dinner table. Please, forgive me. I don't know how I could have been so gauche. There's absolutely no..." "Stop apologizin'," he requested softly. "But I--" "I got no interest in chitchattin' about the weather." His gaze held mine. "Plain talk don't bother me." Proving himself unaffected by my lapse of manners, he reached for the bowl of steak and gravy and refilled his plate. I toyed with my own meal, rattled by the fact that I had temporarily lost all awareness of my surroundings--that something in Hank's eyes had made me forget every rule of etiquette that I had ever been taught. "All five of my brothers joined up soon as the war started. Even the old man enlisted before it was all over. I'd been gone since I was 15, and I had my reasons, but he'll never forgive me for not comin' back to fight. None of 'em will." "A lot of families were torn apart when one brother chose to wear blue and the others gray." "Wasn't about that." He shook his head. "I got a son of my own. January of '61--month before he turned five--his ma died. Without me, Zach woulda had nobody. No way of payin' for his keep. I couldn't figure out how to enlist and still do right by my boy." "If it was so important to your family that you put on a uniform, why didn't they offer to take care of him?" "Woulda been ashamed enough to find out I own a saloon. Hate to think how they woulda took to the news his ma and me never married—that my kid's mother was a whore." "Your relatives didn't know that you had a child?" I stared at Hank in disbelief. "Still don't." "But...Zach must be--what?--eighteen this month?" "North Carolina was a long time ago. An' I got no intention of ever goin' back." Hank pushed his plate away, smiling with satisfaction, and I automatically got up to pour coffee into our cups and put a wedge of pie onto each of two dessert plates, thinking of my oldest sister, Anna, and her brood of children. Anna's first son had been born eighteen months after she and Blake Ravenel were married, but if Drew had been born out of wedlock Daddy would have been ready to kill Blake, and Mother would have been terribly embarrassed, but I could not imagine either one of them rejecting their own grandchild, no matter what the circumstances of his birth. "Best apple pie I ever tasted." Hank quickly finished the first slice, then pulled the pan over and cut himself a second piece. "Being wounded doesn't seem to have had a negative effect on your appetite," I teased. "Not too often I get a home-cooked meal." "I baked that pie in case Katie Sully came to visit--so you can take the rest of it with you when you go, if you would like," I offered. "What if she comes to see you tomorrow?" He grinned. "And I have her apple pie?" "I'll put my apron on and bake her another one." Noticing that he seemed to have had his fill of dessert, I stood up. "Why don't we have our coffee in the parlor?" We moved to the opposite end of the long room, and I sank down into one of the leather wing chairs, watching while Hank laid more logs on the fire. He winced as he retrieved his cup from the mantle, then sat down in the chair next to mine, stretching his long legs out toward the blaze on the hearth. "You're still hurting rather badly." "Close as Walker was standin' to me when he fired, the bullet went deep." Hank shrugged. "Stands to reason I'll stay sore for awhile." "According to yesterday's Gazette, the Walkers are wanted all over the territory, not just for armed robbery but for murder and sexual assault. After I read their story, I realized just how lucky we all were that no one was killed." "Can't say I'm sorry to see them two behind bars, even if it means watchin' Jake and Preston strut around town like big-time heroes for the next six months," he admitted drily. "The only person in that bank who deserves to be called a 'hero' is you." "I ain't no hero." "I've been told more than once that they would have gotten away if you hadn't stopped Doyle Walker from taking me along--that no one would have dared to fire a shot." I studied his handsome face in the lamplight. "No way was I gonna let him outta there with you--not without him havin' to kill me first." "He almost did." "Almost don't count." Tiny laugh lines crinkled the corners of his eyes as he smiled. "Would you like more coffee?" I offered, noticing that he had set his empty cup aside. "Maybe later." He moved to sit on the ottoman that was positioned in front of my chair. A masculine brew of tobacco, soap, coffee, and leather teased my nostrils, and my breath caught in my throat as Hank reached out and tangled his fingers in my hair. "Feels right--bein' here with you." His slow drawl flowed through me like warm honey. "It's...time for you to leave," I whispered. "That ain't what you want, any more'n I do." His eyes searched mine. "Believe me--I wish that things could be different." I bit my lip. "That I was somebody different." The pain in his voice shattered the last of my resistance, and trembling with emotion, I touched his mouth with the tips of my fingers. "The problem is with me. Not you." I shook my head slightly. "Not who you are or even what you do. You're the first and only man who I've wanted to spend time with in more than nine years." "Whoever hurt you--he ain't here now." "I only wish it was that easy." I choked back bitter tears. "Please...believe me, Hank--we have to let this go." "Already tried. Probably five hundred times," he admitted softly. "Only good thing 'bout me bein' who I am, I seen and done 'most everything there is, one time or another. Whatever's standin' in the way, it won't change how I feel." "This might." "Gimme one chance to prove ya wrong." "I caught a man raping my 11-year-old sister." I drew in a shaky breath. "Back in Georgia. I shot and killed him." "God-damned son of a bitch," he swore harshly, pulling me up and taking my place in the chair. For a moment I tensed, as I found myself sitting on his lap, my head cradled against the solid cushion of his chest--then I relaxed, a feeling of peace stealing over me. Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, I closed my eyes. "Tell me," he urged gently, his arms tightening around me. "It was Christmas Eve in '64--and I had thought that the year couldn't possibly get any worse. My only brother had been killed at Kennesaw Mountain...the war was clearly lost...and we were short of almost everything that we needed. No one had the heart to celebrate the holidays--and with the Yankees using the sanctuary to stable their horses, we wouldn't even be going into Savannah for church services. But late that afternoon I decided that I would go out and cut fresh greenery to decorate some of the mantles--that the least I could do was try to make the house smell more like Christmas... "When I heard a whimper the first thing that I thought about was India, one of our hounds. She was due to whelp any day, and I was afraid that a pup might be coming wrong--that she needed help." Wanting to block the flood of memories as they came rushing back and at the same time filled with the need for Hank to understand why I could never give myself to him, I struggled for the right words. "I pushed open the gate to the rose garden at the side of the house, and I saw Beth lying on her back... her skirts pushed up...a man's hand clamped down hard over her mouth so that she couldn't scream. His pants were down around his ankles--and he was pounding himself into my little sister...had torn her so badly that her thighs were covered with blood. "His coat was laying on the ground--a ragged blue Union coat...with his gun right there on top of it. I grabbed it up and pointed it at him. All I wanted was to make it stop. For him to quit hurting Beth. But he was coming toward me, his arm outstretched--smelling like stale sweat and whiskey--cursing and reaching for the barrel to jerk the pistol out of my hand. He must have believed that I wouldn't pull the trigger...that I had never fired a gun. But I had. And I shot him. From three feet away—in the face." I was sobbing helplessly, and Hank rocked me against him, murmuring unintelligible words of comfort. Until that day at the bank, when my fear of another man with a gun had unlocked my rigid control over my emotions, I had been unable to cry...unable to grieve what had happened to me and to my sister. Even when they had lowered Ethella's casket into the ground--a woman who I had loved as much as I did my own mother—my eyes had remained dry. Now I cried almost daily--the dam, once broken, releasing an endless river of tears. "Ethella heard the gunshot and came running. Beth hadn't moved-- not even to pull her dress down. And I was standing there, both hands frozen on the gun with a dead man at my feet. Blood everywhere. Pieces of bone and brain matter and red gore all over me. "She realized immediately what had happened...and shook me hard when I started to get hysterical. Swore that she would slap me silly if I didn't shut up and help her do what had to be done. We carried Beth inside the house and got Mairead--and the three of us drug the soldier's body down to the river. Rolled him over the bluff into the water and let him--and his pistol--wash out to sea. "Ethella took the turkey that we were planning to have for Christmas dinner out into the garden and slit its throat. Let it flap around as it died...so that the blood would splatter. Then she called Daddy's hunting dogs." I dug my nails into my palms, fighting for control. "Whatever was left of--the other mess--they found it, and they...cleaned it up." "Bastard needed killin'." Hank's voice was hard and angry. "Only thing I wish is ya hadn't been the one had to do it." "My little sister wasn't much more than a baby. Up until then, she still played with dolls." I pressed my wet face against his neck. "And she was just lying there--as if he had drained the life right out of her and left nothing behind but an empty shell. Even when Ethella couldn't stop the bleeding and had to put stitches in the places where she could, Beth acted as if she didn't see or hear or feel anything." We were silent for several minutes, then I sighed. "Daddy must have paraded every eligible male in six counties past me after the war ended, hoping to find one who I would consider taking for my husband, but I could barely tolerate sitting in the same room with a strange man, making polite conversation. The thought of actually letting one of those men touch me--of becoming his wife--literally made me sick at my stomach. I lost something that day in the garden that I'm not sure I can ever get back--a part of me died along with him. My scars go almost as deep as Beth's, and yet he never laid a hand on me." "What you saw happenin' to yer sister ain't even close to how it's s'posed to be," he reassured me gently, his gaze holding mine. "Nothin' like how it would be between me'n'you. Man loves a woman, he wants her willin'. Wants her comin' to him outta the same kinda need for him he's got for her." "What if I can't?" I whispered, unable to look away from the naked hunger in his expression. "What if I'm too badly damaged inside to ever love a man that way--to ever be able to give that part of myself?" "Ya want to?" "You make me want to try," I confessed, lightly stroking my fingertips along one high, chiseled cheekbone, then brushing them down over his bearded jawline. "As scared as I am of the way that I feel, I've never loved anyone even half as much as I love you." "Got that, I'm willin' to wait long as it takes for the rest..." Hank breathed, catching one of my tears and smearing it slowly over the curve of my lips as he parted them. His long locks fell forward like a heavy curtain as his mouth drank from mine, making me dizzy with a sweet languidness. Again and again, he kissed me, his mouth wandering down to the hollow at the base of my throat, his hands gently caressing my back. Moaning softly, I caught my hands in the silky strands of his hair, tugging his head up so that I could taste on his lips the promise of something that I both desperately wanted and feared. Drawing in a deep shuddering breath, he held me away from him and got to his feet. "I gotta get the hell outta here," he said thickly, his eyes filled with frustrated desire. "Otherwise, I'll be pickin' you up in my arms and lookin' for the bedroom." |
