Always You Page 17

  It was a lovely dress, as simple and charming as the larkspur growing in profusion on the hillsides.

  “You bought this for me, Cal?” she asked. The room suddenly felt hot and close.

  “Reckon I didn’t steal it.” His sardonic grin flashed when she threw him an exasperated look. “See here, Melora, we can’t have you staying home while everyone else goes to the barbecue. It wouldn’t be right.”

  For a moment she didn’t hear the excited babble and laughter of the children and was oblivious of Jesse’s ear-to-ear grin. All she saw was Cal standing across the table from her, his green eyes no longer cold as creek water. They gleamed into hers with a warm, quiet intentness that made her skin grow hot, and her pulse flutter.

  “I accept—with thanks,” she murmured, and he nodded.

  “You ladies had best start getting ready for this shindig,” Cal said gravely. “Or we’ll be late, and all the pies will be gone.”

  “They will not,” Louisa retorted tartly, but she skipped off, clutching her ribbons and her top, followed by Cassie with the bag of peppermints, while Melora carried her lovely dress toward the second bedroom.

  She glanced back once, suddenly feeling that she hadn’t thanked Cal properly for this extravagant and very thoughtful gift, but he was gone, he and Jesse and Will, probably to wash up at the pump and change their clothes in the barn, and she was left to ponder why he’d gone to the expense and trouble of buying her this dress.

  Because he wanted her to go to the barbecue.

  So that he could dance with her?

  A shiver of hope tingled through her. Perhaps Cal wasn’t quite as impervious to her charms as he would have her believe.

  The idea of dancing with him stirred something deep and delicious inside her, something a woman who’d been on the verge of marrying another man shouldn’t feel.

  We’ll see, she muttered to herself as she closed the bedroom door and tenderly laid the dress across the bed, studying its pretty lines and fancy trim. It appears to me we’ll just see about everything, Mr. Wyatt Calvin Holden.

  Chapter 16

  The night was abloom with stars. Festive music and merriment rocked through the lantern-festooned yard behind the rambling O’Malley farmhouse, where a half dozen families in their Sunday best laughed and mingled and danced to the tune of three fiddlers beneath a velvet sky and a burnished yellow moon.

  The O’Malleys were warm, welcoming people. Quinn O’Malley was the red-haired, stern-eyed father of seven whose great height and girth were a direct contrast with his dainty, tinkly voiced wife. When Jesse introduced him to Cal, he pumped Cal’s hand, took his measure with a shrewd, flashing glance, and invited him and his “missus” to make themselves at home.

  “My Fiona hasn’t stopped baking in three days,” he declared, shaking his head. “So each one of you had better eat at least four slices of pie. Especially you, ma’am, since I hear you’re eating for two,” he told Melora with a slight bow.

  “Ah, there she goes blushing. My Fiona stopped blushing after the third one came down the pike. Now let me introduce you folks to some of our neighbors. If you don’t meet ‘em now, you most likely won’t get the chance for quite a spell. Once winter sets in up here, we won’t none of us be seeing much of each other till the spring thaw.”

  If any of the neighbors to whom he introduced them thought it strange that Cal, the oldest brother and the one responsible for his siblings, had been away for some time and was just settling down in the area, having left Jesse alone to run the farm and look after the younger brothers and sisters, they gave no sign of it. The O’Malleys drew Cal and Melora easily into the friendly group, made up mostly of other farmers from the vicinity.

  Dr. Wright was also in attendance at the party, and upon meeting up with the Holden family, he stared hard at Melora and stroked his white whiskers. “You’re looking mighty fit, ma’am. Feeling a bit calmer than you were t’other day, are you?”

  “Why, yes,” Melora responded smoothly, not meeting Cal’s eyes. “I am feeling ever so much better. We were all so concerned about Louisa that I quite lost my head and forgot to worry about my own condition. But fortunately my husband thought clearly enough for both of us.”

  Dr. Wright appeared quite interested in her tiny waistline, accented by the cut of the blue dress. He was trying hard, without it appearing so, to discern any sign of pregnancy in the fair, slender creature before him, but Cal distracted him from his professional scrutiny by clapping a hand on the doctor’s shoulder and turning the older man to face him instead.

  “I’m fairly certain that the baby is going to be a girl, Doctor, the spitting image of her lovely mother here. Heard it told that when a woman scarcely shows there’s a bun in the oven, it means for sure the baby’s going to be a girl. What do you say, Dr. Wright?”

  “There’s no telling, young man. That’s just an old wives’ tale,” the doctor retorted with some scorn, but before he could continue his examination of Melora or ponder the issue further, Cal swept her up around the waist and whisked her off to dance, leaving the doctor scratching his head as he gazed after them.

  “You’re quite skilled at telling bald-faced lies,” Melora noted as he spun her into the crowd of brightly clad dancers.

  “Had to learn a lot about lies lately—just to survive.” Cal’s expression was harsh. The bitterness she saw in his eyes made her regret the teasing remark. “I’ll be glad when this whole damn thing is over, Melora. When my family doesn’t have to hide out on a farm in Dakota Territory, because the folks they knew back home in Arizona came to look down on them and think their brothers had turned into no-good outlaws. And I’ll be especially glad when justice catches up to Rafe Campbell and he’s paid the price for what he’s done.”

  “You still haven’t explained exactly how you’re going to make him pay—what you’ll do to get his confession when he finally gets to Deadwood.”

  “That’s right, I haven’t.”

  “Well, it’s time you did. You’re not the only one who has a stake in this now.” Melora leaned back in his arms and gave him a long, level look. Between the moon and the lantern light her eyes were the color of tea. “I have a few choice words to speak to Mr. Rafe Campbell myself.”

  “You’ll have to get in line, Melora. This is my plan, and I get the first shot at Campbell when he shows up.”

  Her eyes sparked fire. “A tempting choice of words.”

  “They’re only words. I can’t afford to shoot him—at least not right away.”

  “Just so long as I get my turn.” She stuck her chin up, and her hand tightened on his as they danced. “Promise me that much.”

  “I can’t promise you anything, Melora.” Cal whirled and dipped her with ease, his eyes fixed coolly on her face. If he didn’t care much for dancing, that didn’t stop him from being good at it she noted with reluctant admiration. “Life isn’t always easy, and it doesn’t always go according to plan.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.” She flung the words back at him irritably.

  Who was he to tell her that things didn’t go according to plan? All her own plans for the future had gone up in smoke, and she was left with nothing, nothing but worry for Jinx and the ranch, a dull sense of humiliation at her own gullibility, and a burning need to fire buckshot into Rafe Campbell’s backside.

  And there was something else that hadn’t gone according to plan. Tonight she’d planned to stun Cal Holden when she came out of her room to take his arm for the barbecue, to dazzle him dizzy when he saw her in this dress.

  But it hadn’t happened.

  After coaxing Louisa’s and Cassie’s tresses into pretty topknots and helping them wind their new ribbons through the strands, she’d worked carefully for the better part of an hour on her own hair, brushing it until it shone like wildfire and dressing it in tight, perfectly coiled curls to frame her face. She’d taken a few tucks and nips in the gown, studying it assessingly until she was convinced it fitted her figure to
perfection, and she’d donned the silk stockings and satin shoes she’d packed for her honeymoon. She’d set creamy pearl earbobs on her earlobes. And stroked flower-laced French perfume at her throat and between her breasts. She’d thought she looked rather beautiful in all that finery, at least beautiful enough to attract Cal’s notice. And perhaps even to draw a compliment from him.

  But Cal had scarcely batted an eye when she’d walked out of the bedroom, well aware of everyone watching her.

  “We’re late,” he’d said in that brusque way of his, and had taken Cassie’s arm instead of hers, leaving Melora trembling with angry disappointment as she headed out to the buggy alongside Jesse.

  Now I know why he’s never had a girl, she told herself irately as the dance came to an end. He no more knows how to treat a woman than a dog knows how to climb a tree.

  As the music stopped, they glared at each other. “I believe I’ll sit down,” Melora announced airily, and Cal touched two fingers to his hat.

  “Suit yourself.”

  After he watched her walk away, he drank down a cool glass of elderberry wine and then stalked to the edge of the O’Malley yard. Plunging off into the darkness beyond the farm buildings, he sought the open solitude of the night.

  Behind him the music drifted, faint and rousing on the breeze. He felt removed from the gaiety of the barbecue, locked inexorably in the tangle of his own dark thoughts.

  It was damn near impossible to be near Melora and not want to touch her, to wind his hands through her hair and pull her into his arms. And though Cal had learned patience the hard way, sitting in a bug-infested five-foot jail cell day after day, waiting to hang for a crime he hadn’t committed, framed by an enemy he’d thought was a friend, tonight he had no patience for anything. Both his calm, and his facade of detached control were fraying ragged. He was beset with a driving ache that couldn’t be soothed or calmed or pushed aside.

  When Melora had glided out of the bedroom tonight wearing that amazing blue dress, he’d had to fight like hell not to go to her, pick her up in his arms, and carry her right back in there, to lay her down on the bed and make love to her until dawn. She’d looked enchanting. And he’d wanted her, every silken inch of her. The delicate beauty of her face had beckoned to him, the curve of her lips had mesmerized him. Hell, he’d started to sweat just noticing the way her pearls gleamed at the base of her pretty little earlobes.

  And the lushness of her body had been apparent in that splendid dress; it had cried out to a primal part of him. Begging to be touched. To be kissed. To be claimed.

  She’d looked like a floating blue vision, alluring as the sea, and every bit as unpredictable and seductive.

  What’s stopping you? he asked himself angrily. If you want her, why don’t you just go after her, claim her, see what lies behind that smile she gives you sometimes, if she feels as much as she seems to the times you have kissed her or held her in your arms?

  But something kept him back. Two things, really. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself. Many were the men who had probably made fools of themselves over Melora Deane, and his pride argued against letting himself be added to that list.

  And there was something else.

  The woman was grieving, whether she realized it or not. She’d lost the man she loved. She’d found out her fiancé was a fraud, that his name wasn’t even Wyatt Holden after all. And now, Cal told himself, staring out at the great gleaming burnishment of the moon, at the sky that stretched above him to infinity, it would be a low-down thing to pursue her when she was confused and hurting. And vulnerable.

  When she might not know exactly what she wanted, or what she was doing, or even care with whom.

  It wouldn’t be right, and it wouldn’t be fair. And after everything he’d put her through already, he couldn’t stomach the notion of taking advantage of her.

  But damn it all to hell. Cal closed his eyes for a moment, letting the cooling wind fan his hot face. It was sheer hell to resist her.

  It didn’t help that he’d noticed every man at this barbecue eyeing her. He couldn’t blame them. If things were different...

  Hell, he told himself, opening his eyes and turning back to stare hard in the direction of the festivities. For tonight, just for tonight, things are different. You’re playing a role. She’s supposed to be your wife. Your pregnant wife. If you don’t get back there and start paying some attention to her—just for show—it might attract notice. And talk.

  He couldn’t afford that, not now when he was so close to bringing his plan to a successful conclusion.

  Go back and dance with her. Talk, laugh. Try to behave normally and keep the gossipmongers at bay. It was the sensible thing to do.

  He stuck his hands in the pockets of his neatly pressed gray trousers and started back toward the house.

  * * *

  “Shh. Here he comes,” Louisa warned, tugging on Will’s arm as he capered beside her in the O’Malley parlor, chattering nonstop.

  “Hush up, Will!” Swallowing hard, Cassie fixed him with her sternest glance. “Hush up this instant or he’ll hear you!”

  The other guests were swarming toward the feast-laden long tables lined up in the dining room, and no one was paying the least heed to the three young Holden children.

  “Cal! Cal!” Louisa darted toward him as he skirted around a buxom young brunette who flashed him an encouraging smile. Trying hard to school their faces, Cassie and Will ran after her.

  Cal frowned down at Louisa when she tugged at the bottom of his black silk vest. “Quick, Cal! You have to help her!”

  “Help who? Louisa, what’s wrong?”

  Lou’s eyes were as huge and round as pennies. “Melora!” she cried. “She’s gone off crying. She won’t talk to anyone. ‘And we can’t get her to come out.”

  “Come out of where?”

  “The barn.” Cassie gazed up at him woefully. “She’s sad and upset. Jesse tried to get her to come out, and so did I—”

  “And so did I!” Will chimed in, his little cheeks red with excitement.

  Cal looked from one to the other of them. “Locked herself in the barn?” he repeated blankly. “Why would she do a fool thing like that?”

  “Because she’s upset.” Cassie stamped her foot. “I don’t know, Cal, but she was crying real hard—”

  “You’d better be telling me the truth.” His suspicious glance flicked over each of them, assessing Louisa’s openmouthed dismay, Cassie’s quiet distress, the restless shifting of Will’s small feet.

  “Show me where she is.” Tension twisted through his gut as he thought of Melora so distraught she was sobbing alone in the O’Malleys’ barn.

  Was it because of the way he’d treated her tonight? He’d hardly been sociable when they’d been dancing, and then he’d all but deserted her. But there could be something more to it than that. She might be upset over Rafe Campbell, he thought, stabbed by a sharp, incisive pain. Or maybe she was missing her little sister.

  Whatever was going on, he had to find her, help her.

  “Hurry up, you slowpokes,” he urged as he led the little group outside once again. Everyone else was trooping inside in search of supper, but Cal, Cassie, Lou, and Will made their way through the soughing wind toward the shadowy outline of the farm’s outbuildings.

  “It’s not this barn, the new one—it’s the next one—the old barn,” Will sputtered as he tried to keep up. “That one up ahead.”

  Jesse stepped out of the shadows as the group raced up to the weathered old structure, but he gave Cal no chance to ask him any questions.

  “Quick, you’ve got to do something. She’s in real bad shape,” he told Cal.

  Deirdre O’Malley materialized right beside him. In that instant Cal saw that she was a pretty, freckle-faced girl whose strawberry blond hair was coiled in one smooth braid, but before he could do more than nod a greeting to her and then turn toward the old dilapidated barn with its weathered shingles, Jesse suddenly slid the bolt back on
the barn door and promptly shoved Cal inside.

  “What the hell?” Even as he wheeled around, the door slammed shut, and he heard the bolt rattle into place.

  “Jesse! Jesse, what the hell did you do that for?” Cal stopped yelling and whipped around toward the barn’s interior when he heard a sound from the hay-scented blackness.

  “Melora?”

  “Who else?” she shouted. She sounded mad as a whole nest of hornets.

  “Where are you?” Cal moved toward her voice, but in the darkness he stubbed his toe on something hard and swore a string of curses.

  Melora ignored his tirade. She’d been making her way along the rough wall of the barn, toward what she thought was the door, and she began pounding on it with her fist.

  “Open up, Jesse! Cassie, Lou!” Frustration and fury throbbed through her voice. “Do you hear me? Will! Jesse! This has gone far enough. I said open the door right now!”

  “Are you telling me they’ve locked you in here?” Cal demanded.

  It sounded to Melora like he was moving closer to her.

  “That’s right,” she said bitterly, banging the wall again with her fist. “They told me that you were here, that you’d been hurt.”

  “They told me you were in here crying.”

  “I haven’t been crying. I’ve been yelling, pleading with them, ordering them, shouting at them to let me out.”

  For a moment there was silence. Melora stopped her pounding long enough to sigh, rubbing her sore hand.

  Cal leaned against the wall of the barn, groaning as he realized how blindly he’d walked into their childish trap.

  “Damn it,” he growled, raking a hand through his hair. “I’m going to turn every single one of them over my knee. They won’t sit down for a month. And Jesse, I’ll whup him good.”

  “Fine, if we ever get out of here,” Melora grumbled.