Harper's Bride (15 page)

"But I have to worry about it. I promised Big
Alex, and two hundred dollars is a lot of money. It would feed a
family for a year back home." She stood on the landing, her face
paper white except for the fading red imprint of Logan's hand. Pale
blond strands had worked themselves loose from her braid and hung
on either side of her slender face. Looking closer, he saw a bit of
swelling just below her eye.

He sighed. The sight of it, added to
everything else that had happened in the last few minutes, shook
him to the core. He had just come back from meeting the steamboat
Athenian
down at the waterfront when he'd seen Melissa
struggling with Logan. Not only had the bastard pushed Melissa
around, but he'd held a blanketed bundle that Dylan knew could only
be Jenny. And for an instant when his anger had made time seem to
stop, he'd gripped Logan's hair and felt a driving desire to
dispatch him to hell. Rafe's thundering voice, warning him about
loss and deportation, had finally penetrated the red mist of
Dylan's rage.

"Melissa, I want you to give up this laundry
business," he said after he waved her inside.

She was putting Jenny down in her crate, but
sprang back up again, the baby still in her arms. "Give it up! No,
no, I can't do that."

He sank into a chair at the table and crossed
his ankle over his knee. He could smell Logan's stink on him, and
it made him want to pull off his clothes and burn them. "I think I
gave Coy Logan a good scare, but I can't guarantee that he won't be
back. He's mean and stupid, and that's a bad combination. He could
hurt you—he could even steal Jenny to get even with you, or to
punish you. He could—" He threw his hat on the table in weary
disgust and plowed both hands through his hair. "Oh, hell, who
knows how the pea brain works in a man like that?"

"But I'll be safe. The Mounties come by every
day," she offered hastily, and put the baby down.

"They didn't today, did they?"

"Yes, earlier—"

He shook his head. "Nope. I think you ought
to quit. I don't want to have to worry about you every time I leave
you alone."

She stood there for a moment, silent, and
still quivering from the horror of her experience with Logan. Or so
he thought.

"No. I won't quit. I refuse to quit, and I
told you why." She kept her eyes down, and her voice was almost a
murmur, but there was no mistaking her resolve.

Dylan's eyebrows rose. He was so astounded
that she'd spoken up, he stared at her, his mouth partially open.
"Melissa, there's more to life than just money."

"That's true if you've never been without it.
I have, and don't intend to be again. Do you know why I married
Coy?" she asked, gripping her apron pocket, the one with the button
on it "Can you guess?"

He shifted in his chair. The question had
certainly crossed his mind. "I thought maybe Jenny had something to
do with it," he mumbled.

She frowned, then blushed back to her ears.
"You mean I was desperate and in trouble and had to marry him?"

He shifted again, beginning to feel damned
awkward. "Well, yeah, something like that. It happens all the
time." He wanted to add, why else would a woman like her, smart and
pretty, have shackled herself to a man like Logan?

"Well, it didn't happen to me. I was
desperate and in trouble, but not the kind you think. In the house
where I grew up, I lived my whole life tiptoeing around my drunken
father, hoping not to be noticed. If I was noticed, I got hit, or
yelled at. There were nights when he came home drunk, with a mean
drunk's temper. It happened a lot, but on the days when he set out
supposedly to find work, it was guaranteed. He never failed to run
into a pal, some old friend he wanted to catch up with, and he'd
spend his days and what little money we had—finding the bottom of a
whiskey bottle instead of a job. We wouldn't have had anything to
eat if my mother hadn't worked for the Pettigreaves. She kept the
roof over our heads and food on the table."

She twisted the hem of her apron into a wad
in her hands as she paced in front of the stove. Her braid, looking
like a frayed rope, swung back and forth behind her. "I remember
one night when I was five or six years old—my father was arguing
with my mother. He was horrible—drunk and calling her names, filthy
names. I crept into the parlor, scared for her. I was carrying a
little sailboat that she'd just given me for my birthday. My father
saw me, and, oh, he was so mad. He slapped me, and then he jerked
the boat out of my hands and smashed it under his heel. He said
that would teach me not to spy on people.

"My brothers weren't much better, but I think
that's because my father beat them with his belt until they
couldn't sit down. He thought it would make them behave. All he did
was turn them into men just like himself."

Her voice began to quiver, and Dylan saw that
her eyes were filled with tears that didn't quite spill over. He
stood up and caught her upper arms, fighting the urge to take her
into his embrace. "Melissa, you don't have to do this."

She pulled away from him. "Yes, I do! I want
you to know why I married Coy Logan. I was a fool, but not the kind
you think. I wasn't . . ." Impatiently, she scrubbed at her wet
eyes with the hem of her apron, and her brow furrowed as she
searched for the right word. "I wasn't dazzled by Coy, or swept off
my feet like a heroine in some romantic story. He was a friend of
my brothers, and he dawdled in our kitchen and made jokes with me
sometimes. He made me laugh He was kinder to me than my own father
or brothers." She laughed now, a funny little chuckle that sounded
as if her heart were breaking. "It's hard to believe, isn't
it?"

Dylan wanted to kick himself for starting
this. Though Melissa hadn't discussed it in much detail until now,
he'd guessed that her life hadn't been an easy one. Listening to
her talk about it was painfully hard—her words twisted his heart.
But he thought he owed it to her to let her finish the story. He
leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest.

She stood by the sink and gazed at the floor,
as if watching the events of her life roll by on the planking.
"When he said he wanted to marry me, I knew I didn't love him and
that I never would. But I liked him. Sort of. My mother urged me to
accept him—I guess she thought the same thing I did. That marrying
Coy would get me away from the arguing and yelling . . . the
hopelessness." She raised her eyes and looked up at Dylan. "But he
was just like my father, after all."

"Does your mother know that?" Dylan
asked.

Melissa swallowed hard, and her voice
quivered again. "No. She died right after Coy and I got married.
It—it was as if she wanted to see me on my way, and then was too
tired to go on. She went to sleep one night and didn't wake up. The
doctor said her heart just gave up. I think it was broken, from
hard work and all those years of disappointment."

Dylan pushed himself away from the wall and
sat down opposite her. He wanted to keep his distance from her, to
hold her at arm's length from his soul and his body, but the armor
around his own heart wasn't as impenetrable as he'd believed. How
could he envision the lurid scenes her words painted and remain
completely detached? An instinct to protect her made him wish he
could sweep her out of her chair and onto his lap. Instead, he
reached tentatively across the table and covered her trembling hand
with his own. Despite the punishment it took every day in wash
water, her skin was remarkably soft.

"Melissa, I'm sorry."

Melissa felt as if a low jolt of electricity
had shot through her arm. Dylan's hand on hers was warm and vital
and comforting. Though she kept her gaze fixed on the oilcloth
covering the table, she sensed him watching her. Without wanting
to, once more she thought about the inevitable time when they would
go their separate ways. Despite her desire for independence, in her
heart she had begun to anticipate that day with dread.

"Feeling a little better?" he asked.

She nodded and took a deep breath. "Thank
you. Now maybe you understand why I want to make as much money as I
can. I want to take care of myself and Jenny, and not have to
depend on anyone. I'm learning that cash is the best friend a
person can have."

Dylan's brows drew together slightly, and he
let go of her hand. "I wonder why I've known women who were only
interested in money," he muttered, more to himself.

Melissa remembered the day he'd found her
with his trunk open, and the dark-haired woman whose picture he
kept buried inside. Whoever she was, Melissa guessed he shared a
history with her that now gave him no happiness. "That woman in the
photograph—Dylan, who is she?" she blurted.

His expression turned as dark as
thunderheads, and he said nothing. In the gulf of awkward silence
that opened between them, the sound of a jangling saloon piano from
the street below floated through the open window. Melissa wished
she had the. question to take back again.

"I'm sorry, it's none of my bus—"

"Her name is Elizabeth Petitt Harper," he
answered, surprising her. "She's my brother's wife."

Melissa digested this for a moment. At least
the woman wasn't his own wife. But it seemed a bit odd that he
would carry a photograph of his sister-in-law, especially since
there seemed to be no affection among the Harpers. Unless of
course, the real reason that Dylan had left the family had
something to do with her and him—

"Your brother's wife?"

He drummed his fingers once on the tabletop,
then pushed his chair back and stood up. "If you and Jenny are
going to be all right, I have to get back to the store."

She looked up at him, feeling foolish, as if
she'd asked him something far more personal. "Oh—well, of
course—we're fine."

He plucked his hat from the table and turned
it in his hands. "You go ahead with whatever work you feel you need
to do, Melissa. If you want to keep doing wash for people, I won't
say anything more about it." He put on the hat and walked toward
the door, then turned to consider her for a moment. "You're
right—it doesn't matter how a person plans, there's never any
telling what the future will bring."

*~*~*

After Dylan left, Melissa took Jenny
downstairs and finished Big Alex McDonald's shirts. She would
collect that bonus, despite what had happened today. Coy's surprise
visit had rattled her more than she wanted to admit, even to
herself. But with shaky resolve, she gathered the shreds of her
thin courage and determined to go on.

As she stoked the fire in the little stove
behind the building, she knew she couldn't live her life cowering
in the shadows. She had done that for too many years. In trading
Coy's debt for her, Dylan had done more than just rescue her from a
life of abuse. Though laconic and enigmatic, he had unwittingly
given her the chance to escape, to discover who she really was.

Anyway, she decided, even if Coy meant to
return and harass her again, she didn't believe he'd come back that
same day, especially after the furious warning that Dylan had given
him. Nevertheless, as she rung out the shirts, she cast so many
wary, searching looks at the entrance of the street she began to
get dizzy. Each time she found no one there.

But if there had been, she knew that Dylan
was in the store, close at hand.

Dylan.

She had tried to ignore the picture he
presented every morning as he stood at his shaving mirror, his bare
back sculpted with light and shadow, and the sun glinting on his
streaked hair. She tried, but her pulse told her that she failed.
She had done her best to stop wondering how Dylan's full mouth
would feel if he kissed her—would it be better than Coy's brutal,
sloppy attentions? Her imagination had her believing so. She had
struggled to convince herself that Dylan was only a man, better
than most she'd known, but nothing remarkable. That, she had begun
to suspect, wasn't true either.

The significance of Elizabeth Petitt Harper
remained a mystery to her, and Dylan seemed unlikely to reveal it.
But to her chagrin, Melissa realized she felt a niggling bit of
envy. Obviously, he cared enough about the woman to carry her
picture with him all the way to Dawson. And whatever she had been
to him, she'd burned a lasting memory into his heart.

She flung a dripping shirt on the clothesline
and jammed the wooden pins over the tails. Melissa might share
Dylan Harper's food and sit at his table; she could wash his
clothes and even sleep in his bed, with the sack of rice still in
place, of course. But despite all of that, he'd made it plain that
he didn't welcome personal questions.

Envisioning his bare back again, she thought
that perhaps it was just as well.

*~*~*

That night Dylan didn't go upstairs for
dinner. Instead, he sat at his counter in the store, eating stew
and cornbread from a tray he'd ordered at one of the chophouses on
Front Street. He'd eaten a lot of his meals this way before Melissa
had come to stay with hint, and he'd never given it much thought.
Now it seemed lonely. The coffee was cold and not as good as hers.
The biscuits weren't as flaky, and even the stew seemed greasy. And
he knew that she would be waiting for him—he felt a little guilty
about that. But he wanted some time to himself to think, without
her simple beauty to distract him.

He let his gaze drift to the tarp-covered
object sitting in the corner. He'd asked the captain of the
Athenian
to buy it for him in Seattle, and it was the reason
he hadn't been in the store when Logan had appeared.

When he thought of that dark slime of a man,
Coy Logan, touching Melissa, every jealous instinct inside him came
alive. At first he hadn't recognized any feelings beyond outrage,
but now he knew what they were, and he didn't like it.