Harper's Bride (12 page)

"No! I can do it." Melissa recoiled, but kept
her hands clamped on the handle. He saw naked fear in her dove gray
eyes. He supposed he couldn't expect her to instantly overcome what
might have been years of intimidation, although whenever he'd
looked outside this afternoon, she seemed to be getting along just
fine with her customers.

He dropped his hand. "Why are you so damned
jumpy? And why do you think you have to do everything yourself?" He
couldn't keep the impatience out of his voice.

"I don't think that," she said. "It's just
that . . ."

"Just what?"

She glanced up at him through a veil of dark
lashes. "I'm afraid you'll think I'm not doing my best for you and
make me give up my laundry business."

"Why? I told you I didn't care how you spent
your free time."

"You also said that I'd better keep up my end
of our agreement. That's what I'm doing." She looked him full in
the face then, and her low voice held both anguish and
determination. "I need to make money for Jenny and me, money that
no one can take away. I don't want her to have the kind of life
that I've had. I don't want to see her sold by a drunken husband to
a stranger in a barroom. She's a brand-new life—she has a chance
for something better, and I have a chance to give it to her. I mean
to do it." Her breathing was labored, and her eyes glittered with
unshed tears. It was the longest speech he'd ever heard her make in
one breath, and Dylan felt his face flush all the way to the roots
of his hair.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the
other. All this time he'd supposed that Melissa was just glad to
get away from Logan. He'd never thought about how humiliating that
day must have been for her.

"Look, if you want to work, go ahead. There
isn't that much to do up here anyway."

She looked relieved, then cautioned, "I'll
try hard to have dinner ready on time, but sometimes it might be
late."

He shrugged. "Well, I guess that's the way
it'll have to be. I'll tell you what," he said, "you make the
biscuits and I'll finish this." He looked around at what she'd
assembled on the table, a piece of boiled canned beef and a few
fresh vegetables. "Stew, right?"

"You want to help?" She gaped at him as if
he'd suggested putting on one of Jenny's diapers and dancing down
Front Street. Apparently she'd never had such an offer before. "But
I can do it, really—"

"You look as stiff as an old gunnysack left
out in the rain. I'll give you a hand. But just until you're
limbered up."

"All right," she conceded, and he reached for
the pot handle again.

This time his hand brushed hers, and their
eyes met. She gazed up at him, not so frightened now, he thought,
but more curious. Standing this close, he caught a whiff of the
soap and starch she'd used all day. The scent wasn't perfume, but
in a way it suited her, clean and unadorned, and it went to his
head like the most expensive of fragrances.

Stunned, Dylan stared down at her, recalling
the first time he'd seen her. She had seemed plain then, a pale
ghost of a female with a downcast gaze and a carefully blank
expression on her face. He'd felt resentment, and maybe even a bit
of distaste, when she'd been foisted upon him. When had his
feelings begun to change? At what point had she ceased to be
unattractive? Dylan didn't know. He only knew she no longer seemed
homely to him. Just the opposite.

Although her hair was the color of
frost-covered daffodils, her eyelashes were dark, he noticed,
framing her eyes with thick, silken spikes. And her bronze brows
were as fine and delicate as butterfly feelers. His gaze dropped to
her mouth, pink and tender-looking. Would that mouth be soft under
his if he were to kiss her? Would it?

Just then, the baby let out a loud squawk,
the kind of noise that babies make when they exercise their lungs
and voices, and the spell was broken.

"Oh," Melissa said, as if she too had been
entranced, then pulled away.

Dylan followed her lead, widening the floor
space between them. Jesus, what had he been thinking of? He took
the pot and put it on the stove. "Okay, let's get this going," he
mumbled.

"Yes, of course," she said, and ran her hands
over her sleeves. She went to the table to roll out biscuit
dough.

He felt as awkward as a schoolboy. Why, he
couldn't guess. He'd known his share of women and bedded more than
a few. Kissing one wouldn't be the end of the world.

This was not an ordinary woman, though—people
in Dawson believed that she was his wife. These circumstances
weren't ordinary either, and by God, he didn't want to make them
any more complicated than they already were.

She had a goal? Well, so did he, and he had
to keep his mind on it.

He resolved that he would stop noticing how
nice Melissa was beginning to look, and how good she smelled. He
swore he wouldn't wonder again what

it would feel like to kiss her, or imagine
his fingers twined in her long pale hair.

But as he watched her working at the table,
slender and utterly feminine, he knew that ignoring her would be as
difficult a feat as getting rich by digging in the gold fields with
a teaspoon.

*~*~*

Late that night Dylan lay on his side of the
bed, caught between sleep and wakefulness, when the baby started to
fuss.

He saw Melissa get up to tend her. Her thin
nightgown looked like a pale moonbeam as she crossed the room in
the semidark of the Yukon summer night. She carried the child back
to bed, murmuring the softest of endearments to her.

"What's the matter, button?" she whispered in
a voice mothers saved for their children. "Are you hungry? Is that
what's wrong with my button? Well, we can fix that, can't we."

He felt the mattress sag as she lay down
again. Her voice, soft and lulling, had nearly made him feel drowsy
when he made the mistake of glancing at her.

The bodice of her gown was open, and Jenny
lay at her full white breast, suckling contentedly.

Stifling a groan, Dylan swallowed hard and
turned his back to her. Watching her with the baby, he'd never
expected to see anything so intimate, or worse, so arousing. Hot
blood suffused his groin, and his heart began pumping hard in his
chest. He'd never known such exquisite torture.

As he lay there, trying to ignore the woman
on the other side of the rice sack and wishing for the oblivion of
sleep, he almost wished he were digging for gold with a
teaspoon.

That would be a hell of a lot easier.

"Have you heard that singin' washerwoman? I
swear she's got a voice like one of God's own choir," a bearded man
remarked to his companion.

"That she does, but she's right here on earth
and she don't seem to be married. I was thinkin' I might call on
the young gal personal-like and ask to her to some festivities,"
his companion replied, and washed down a doughnut with a mug of
beer.

"You? Why, she's too much of a lady to be
seen with the likes of you. Besides, she's got that baby there with
her. I bet her man is workin' in the gold fields and she's makin'
ends meet with her laundry."

"Well, I won't know till I ask, will I?"

Eavesdropping on this conversation between
two rough miners standing behind him at the bar, Dylan scowled.
After what he'd seen lying next to Melissa the night before, he had
no little difficulty in checking his impulse to deck them both.
After all, he told himself, in some circles it was considered a
dueling offense to even mention a lady's name in a saloon.

He turned and gave them a sour look, but they
didn't notice.

Rafe, who stood next to him, obviously did
notice, and he laughed so hard he started coughing.

"Come on, Dylan," he said, recovering his
wind, "let's find a table to sit at." Lately it had seemed that the
lawyer grew tired as quickly as an old man, and he'd taken to
carrying a walking stick. It was an impressive thing, with a big
gold filigree head and black lacquered ferrule, and it certainly
looked correct on a spiffy dresser like Rafe. But Dylan noticed
that he leaned on the stick more than carried it.

Grabbing the whiskey bottle, Dylan led them
through the crowded saloon to a table, and Rafe eased himself into
a chair, chuckling at Dylan again.

"I'm surprised you think this is funny,"
Dylan commented, flopping into the opposite chair. He downed his
own shot "Wasn't that what you were worried about when Melissa
decided to start that laundry business? That she'd be exposed to
'unsavory opportunities'?"

"I'm not laughing about that. I'm laughing at
you. You might not admit it, but you're the one who doesn't like
their interest." Rafe had a wicked gleam in his deep-set eyes. He
flicked a speck of lint from his crisply tailored coat.

"I just don't want her to be pestered by
people like Ned Tanner." Dylan inclined his head toward the two
miners. "Or men like that."

"Maybe she wouldn't see it as pestering,"
Rafe suggested, keeping a keen eye on him.

"If you think she's looking for another man's
attentions, I can guarantee you that you're wrong. It's the last
thing she wants." Dylan put his feet on the chair next to him.

"And how would you know?"

Dylan thought back to Melissa's impassioned
speech about giving Jenny a chance in life. "I don't need to be a
genius to figure that out. Besides, your mumbo jumbo at McGinty's
back table didn't do away with Coy Logan. She's still legally
married to him, if you'll recall."

Rafe shrugged and took another deep swallow
from his whiskey glass. "He deserted her. I'm sure any judge would
grant a divorce decree given the circumstances."

Dylan didn't want to think about that. As
long as she was technically some other's man's wife, he felt a
measure of safety from the thoughts that kept creeping up on him.
"It makes no difference to me—that's her business. All she wants is
to make money, and from what I can tell, that's just what she's
doing."

*~*~*

The day was overcast, although the sun peeked
through the clouds from time to time. A cool, stiff breeze
threatened to carry away the wash drying on Melissa's clotheslines.
She had erected a little tent over Jenny's cubbyhole to keep the
wind from blowing in the baby's face.

Melissa stood over her iron kettle, stirring
a batch of starch with a broken oar. She paused for a moment to
roll up her sleeves and then leaned on the oar.

Despite the breeze, this was hot, hard work.
In fact, everything about the laundry business was grueling. She
had given up on perfection; most of the clothes that were brought
to her were so grimy with embedded earth and sweat, they would
never be truly clean again no matter how hard she scrubbed. She had
to settle for mostly clean, but her customers were very
satisfied.

Now and then they would linger to make small
talk, lonely miners with their mostly clean wash wrapped in brown
paper and tucked under their arms. Her experience with men was
limited, but she sensed their interest by the questions they asked.
How had she gotten started with this laundry business? Wasn't this
a hot summer? Did she like to dance? Melissa was polite, but she
reminded them that she was Mrs. Harper, and suggested that they
might want to do business with her husband at his trading store.
Some of them actually did.

She'd also had a couple of unpleasant
experiences. The gold rush had drawn men from all walks of life,
most of whom, she was surprised to learn, had come seeking escape
more than gold. They sought refuge from nagging wives or
mothers-in-law, bill collectors, punishing jobs, and the law. A few
of them reminded her of Coy; they eyed her speculatively, as if
assessing her ability to be dominated, and possibly because she was
making more money than they were.

One man offered her money to sing to him—in
private. Another erupted into a rage when she couldn't remove a
wine stain from his shirt front. But the Mounties also made their
presence known, and they patrolled her side street just often
enough to keep any situation from getting out of hand.

Yes, the work was hard, but oh, it paid so
well. She hoarded every single grain of gold dust she received, and
she weighed it every night. For good measure she'd sewn a button
closure on her apron pocket where she kept her poke, and once in a
while, especially when her back ached the most, she'd heft that
pocket to feel the weight of it. While she'd had every intention of
paying Dylan for Coy's debt, in her heart of hearts, the plan had
been more like a child's solemn promise than a certainty. How on
earth would she do it? Now, though, she was beginning to believe
that she would achieve that goal.

She had seen and heard nothing of Coy since
the afternoon at the Yukon Girl Saloon, and for that she was
grateful. He had taken her fragile hopes for a better life and
crushed them before he deserted her. At first she had been as wary
and watchful for his return as she'd been with Dylan. People like
Coy rarely went away, but turned up again like the famous bad
penny. And she knew Coy well enough to have trouble believing she'd
seen the last of him. But as the days passed with no sign of him,
she began to relax her guard. She wished that she weren't still his
wife, but eventually perhaps that could be remedied.

Occasionally, she would glance up from the
bubbling cauldron of starch to look at the side window of Harper's
Trading. Dylan wasn't standing there. She wasn't sure if she hoped
to see him or not. He was still a mystery to her. She sensed that
something drove him, and that an old grievance—a disappointment,
maybe—that lurked in his past had colored his viewpoint.

However her original fear of him was turning
into curiosity, and lately she'd caught herself watching him in the
morning while he shaved. It was always the same—he stood at the
mirror barefoot with no shirt, his jeans hanging low, his sun-blond
hair brushing his wide shoulders—