Jane Bonander (11 page)

He studied her for a long, quiet moment. “Maybe it’s easier to deal with that way.”

Julia stirred the oatmeal, hearing the unspoken emotion in his voice. She was beginning to understand this man. She didn’t know him very well, but she knew without being told that there was much, much more to her husband than met the eye. That thought sent a fresh batch of feelings scampering over her flesh.

“How are you coming on your cabin?” She was beginning to wish he wouldn’t finish it. She could get used to having him in the house.

“The shell should be done in a few weeks.” His gaze was still on her. “Once I get the roof on, I can sleep out there.”

She wasn’t expecting the disappointment that washed over her. “That soon?”

He grinned at her over the rim of his coffee cup. “I’m a fast worker.”

She had no doubt about that as she raised a cynical eyebrow in his direction. “You’re also incorrigible.”

“What did I say?” he asked, giving her a look of innocence.

“It’s never
what
you say, McCloud, it’s how you
say
it.”

He chuckled. “I believe you’re actually accusing me of innuendo.”

She couldn’t stop her own smile. “Sometimes I think you invented it.”

His smile turned warm. “You bring out the best in me, Miss Julia.”

They studied each other, Julia’s heart filling with unspoken tenderness and confusion. Unable to cope with her feelings, she turned and continued feeding Marymae her cereal.

After breakfast, when he was gone, Julia felt a foolish sense of loss, even though she knew he’d be back before supper.

Wolf pulled Baptiste to a stop on the rise overlooking the Henley spread. An unexpected wash of fear spread through him. He cursed his weakness, but decided that the anxiety would keep him sharp.

As he made his way to the house, he studied the ranch. Exceptionally well maintained. No lack of money here, he thought, remembering Julia’s unfortunate circumstances.

A mob of barking dogs assaulted him, coming at him from all directions. Baptiste reared, whinnying.

Someone stepped outside from the barn and shouted a command. The dogs backed off but continued to bark.

Wolf walked Baptiste to the barn, where the man stood studying him. Wolf returned the perusal. The man was blond and cruelly muscled, with a permanent snarl smeared across his face. Wolf disliked him on sight.

“You want somethin’, breed?”

Wolf hid a caustic smile. Some men used the term ‘breed’ matter-of-factly, having grown up with it. Others, like this one, used it as one would use an insult. “I’d like to see Meredith Henley.”

His snarl turned to a hateful grin. His teeth were white and strong, the front two chipped. He had an arrogance about him that Wolf found humorous, but he kept it to himself.

He gave Wolf a suggestive leer. “I’ll just bet you would. You got an appointment?”

“She’ll see me.” Ass
wipe.

He snickered. “She don’t look kindly on breeds. She ain’t apt to waste her time with you.”

“Mr. McCloud!” Serge stood on the wide, closed-in porch.

Wolf gave the hired man a final smirk of his own, then met Serge at the steps. He dismounted, tying Baptiste’s reins around the post.

“Mr. McCloud,” Serge repeated. “What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to see your mother.” Wolf’s heart pounded like a callow youth’s.

Serge appeared surprised. “Mother? Why?”

At that moment a handsome woman stepped out behind Serge. The harshness of her black dress in no way diminished her beauty. Her jet-black hair was pulled back from her face, and her skin was white and youthful. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. His senses came alive with such force, he was surprised they didn’t leap onto his skin, like gooseflesh.

She looked at Wolf, color draining from her face. He was surprised she could get any paler. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, clinging to Serge’s arm.

He turned, grabbing his mother at the waist. “Mother? What is it? What’s wrong?”

So, Wolf thought, his heart hammering, she felt it, too.

She straightened, moving away from her son, appearing to pull herself together. “Show the man into the study, Serge.”

“Yes, Mother,” Serge said with a puzzled frown.

She gazed past Wolf, her eyes narrowing. “And tell Mr. Barnes to quit gawking like a mindless idiot and get back to work.” She disappeared into the house.

“You heard her, Frank,” Serge shouted, his voice filled with false bravado.

Wolf followed his half brother into the house, drawing in a quiet breath at the opulent furnishings. A sick feeling, textured with layers of apprehension, spread through him. He finally began to react. All these years, he’d wondered how any woman could do to a child what she’d done to him. He understood why she hadn’t wanted him. That happened often enough to half-blood babies. But to be tossed away like worthless trash. That he didn’t understand.

“What’s this about, Mr. McCloud?” Serge opened a heavy, oak door and stepped into the room, motioning for Wolf to enter. “Ranch business? If it’s ranch business, maybe you should talk to me. I’m more aware of what’s going on than Mother—”

“It’s not ranch business, Serge.”

Serge puffed out his chest—a gesture Wolf was beginning to learn Serge used when he felt threatened. “Well, if—”

“Leave us, Serge.” Meredith Henley entered and waited for her son to leave.

“Mother,” he said, putting up hopeless resistance.

She sighed, as if accustomed to his bouts with attempted domination. “I’ll call you if I need you, dear.”

Serge eyed Wolf suspiciously, but obeyed. He slammed the door as he left, as if establishing his pique.

She turned to Wolf, appearing calm, but Wolf noted the pulse that vibrated at her throat. He wondered if she noticed his. She was a handsome woman. She lived up to every fanciful daydream he’d ever had about her. Until she opened her mouth.

“So. My past has caught up with me.”

Wolf lowered his gaze, examining the expensive carpet. Christ. What had he expected? That she’d weep and wail, begging his forgiveness for what she’d done to him? Draw him to her bosom and smother him with sweet, motherly kisses? God, but he was such an ass.

He found it difficult to look at her, but he forced himself to do so. “You know who I am.” It was a statement. Flat. Void of childish hopes and dreams.

Her smile was anything but warm. “I can’t deny it.” She studied him as one studies a bull, examining him for flaws, and if finding them, anxious to have him destroyed. “You’ve inherited the curse as well.”

Curse it was, but he feigned ignorance. “Curse?”

Another smile, equally as cold. “Don’t play ignorant with me, breed. I’ve left no tracks. It’s that damned extra sense that brought you here.” She went to the sideboard and poured herself a brandy. “It’s unfortunate that I didn’t have it the night I was raped by—” She threw Wolf a look of fury that would have bubbled paint.

“Serge doesn’t have it,” Wolf offered.

She uttered a sharp laugh. “Serge doesn’t have a lot of things.”

He wanted the upper hand. “So I’ve noticed.”

She turned on him. “Whatever he is, he’s my son and my heir. If you’ve come to extort money—”

“I don’t want your money,” Wolf said, angry that she’d suggest it, but not surprised.

“Then what
do
you want?”

Wolf marveled at her complete sense of disinterest in him as a person. He also was surprised that it didn’t hurt more. “I wanted to see the woman who could bury a child alive.”

Her reaction wasn’t what he’d expected. “Oh. You’re
that
one.”

Wolf felt a frisson of excitement. “Which one is that?”

Her trenchant smile returned. “My my. That extra sense of yours doesn’t tell you everything, does it?”

“Explain it to me.” Wolf felt mounting alarm.

“You’re a twin, breed. Can you believe it?” She spat a mild curse, washing it down with brandy. “I didn’t want
one
of you, and God saw fit to give me two.”

W
olf finally understood the unfinished feeling he’d had for so many years. A cautious eagerness crept up inside him.

“What happened to the other child?”

She turned from him and crossed to the window, her black skirt swishing on the carpet. “I don’t know and I don’t care. For all I know, he—”

“I don’t believe you,” he interrupted, trying to hold his temper in check.

She snorted a caustic laugh. “I don’t give a damn what you believe.”

“Did you bury him, too, hoping he’d suffocate? Hoping maybe he’d be dragged from the grave and eaten by coyotes?” His sudden burst of emotion angered him and he turned away, cursing his weakness.

“I don’t expect you to understand.” Her voice was surprisingly soft.

Her sudden vulnerability had no impact on him. “I think you know what happened to him.”

She turned from the window and gave him a glacial stare. “He could be dead. Just as I’d hoped you were.”

“Ah, a mother’s instinct is such a tender thing,” he said, lacing his voice with sarcasm.

“My instinct was to survive.”

“At the expense of not one child, but two,” he chided, almost under his breath.

“Yes.” Her answer sounded like an angry hiss. “At the expense of two savages. Two little black-haired, dark-skinned heathens who howled like spawns of the devil.”

He studied her angry stance, measuring his own feelings against hers. “You know,” he began conversationally, “it’s not the abandonment that has bothered me. I can understand that. It’s how you did it that will puzzle me until the day I die.” He waited a beat. “If I’m fool enough to allow it to eat at me that long.”

She gave him a crisp smile. “Something tells me you won’t.”

Wolf vowed to make sure she was right. “He’s not dead. If he were, I wouldn’t feel the way I do.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, giving him an odd smirk. “That damned curse again.”

“Well?”

She turned away. “To be honest, I don’t want to know where he is. I don’t need the two of you coming at me, exposing my shame to the world.” She gave him her profile. “And trying to blackmail me because of it.”

Wolf wasn’t surprised by her attitude, but he was surprised that he’d expected it. “I said I didn’t want anything from you, and I meant it.”

Rounding on him, she spat, “Then why did you come here? Why didn’t you just leave it be? If I’d wanted anything to do with you, I wouldn’t have—”

“Buried me alive?” he finished.

She composed herself quickly. “How did you survive, anyway?”

“I was found by a trapper.”

She expelled a dry, humorless laugh. “Wouldn’t you know. I asked my own mother to get rid of you, and she couldn’t even do that right.” Even though it was not yet noon, she poured herself a second brandy. “Why have you come?”

“As I said, I wanted to see the woman who could do it. Who had so little respect for human life that she could want her own flesh and blood dead.” He laughed, but it sounded harsh even to his ears. “As I grew up, a part of me wanted to believe that I’d been taken from you. That you had nothing to do with what happened to me. That you mourned my loss. That you continued to look for me.” He muttered a curse. “Childish musings from the mind of a lonely young boy.

“Instead,” he added, his voice laced with irony, “I find it was
you
who ordered my demise. Left me to die, no more important to you than a pile of maggot- infested garbage.”

She raised her perfectly shaped black eyebrows. “It surprises me when one of your kind makes anything of himself. Of course, in your case, you married into it. It’s not as though you’ve worked for it.”

Ignoring the insult, he asked, “And just who are my kind?”

Her face clouded and her eyes became expressionless, closing down from the inside. “One tribe of savages is the same as another. We were in Dakota Territory when it happened.” She stared into space, her thoughts miles away and years in the past. She took a deep breath, as if erasing that past from her mind.

“Now, I want you to leave before I have someone drag you away. If I hear that you’ve mentioned this visit to anyone, I’ll have you hung by your thumbs.”

Wolf walked to the door, turning toward her before opening it. “No need for threats. Now that we’ve met, I don’t think I’d care to admit to anyone that we’re related.”

Her look of surprise was the response he’d hoped for. Giving her a brief nod, he left, feeling a strange sense of release. And relief.

Meredith returned to the window and watched him go. A nightmare. This was a nightmare! There hadn’t been a hint of either of them surviving all these years. She’d often thought about the other one, the one her mother had sold. That’s the one she’d feared, for the possibility of him tracking her down might have been remote, but it was real. But
this
one. He wasn’t supposed to live. She’d wanted them both dead. They hadn’t meant anything to her because she hadn’t wanted them to. She remembered how she howled in pain at their birth. The memory of their robust, squalling screams as they erupted from her body often woke her at night as well. Lusty little savages, they were.

She took a swig of brandy, relishing the sting. If only she’d been able to convince her mother that both of them had been better off dead. For their sake as well as hers. She remembered the man whose seed had been planted in her womb. He’d been tall and strong and wild. He’d come with his men to trade with the wagon train. They’d come in peace, yet she had seen the dangerous look in his eyes, and she’d wanted some danger. Some excitement in her dull, monotonous life. God almighty, what a rebel she’d been. Then he’d raped her….

Rape? A cynical smile curved her mouth. No, she’d been a willing partner. And in spite of her attempts to forget what happened those years ago, she couldn’t. Maybe it was because she didn’t want to. After all, it was the only excitement she’d ever had. In her entire dreary life.

But now, at least one handsome half-blood from the scurrilous union had found her. He could ruin her. If word got out, her credibility in the community would be blown away like silt in the wind. Something had to be done.

The door opened behind her.

“Mother?”

She didn’t turn. “What is it, Serge?”

“Grandmama is asking for you.”

Meredith felt a swell of impatience. It had been one thing to talk about bringing her mother back to live with them. Having her here was quite another. The old woman was too keen for her own good. It was all Meredith could do to convince everyone else that her mother was getting senile, for her memory about the day she had given birth was sharper in the old woman’s mind than what she’d had for breakfast that very morning.

“She was at the window when the breed left,” he stated.

Meredith’s impatience turned to alarm. Keeping it hidden, she asked, “So, she got out of bed.”

“She said she knew who he was.”

Meredith turned, hoping her expression was guarded. “That’s ridiculous. She’s not in her right mind most of the time, Serge, and you know it.”

He strolled over to the cupboard and poured himself a brandy. “Yes, I know. But don’t you find it odd?” He took a sip of his drink, then asked, “What was Julia’s husband doing here, Mother? Why did he want to talk to you?”

She turned away again, unable to hide her alarm. Surely Serge didn’t know anything. It was her imagination and her conscience, dredging up images that weren’t there. “He just came by to introduce himself. Nothing more.”

“Ummm. I see. Quite civilized for a breed, wouldn’t you say?”

Meredith didn’t answer, but something deep inside her told her that this half-blood son that she’d tried to abandon was, indeed, very, very civilized. She also knew without a doubt that he was very, very dangerous—to her and to everything she’d worked for.

“Do you want me to … arrange for an accident, Mother?”

She jerked her gaze to Serge’s, noting his devious smirk. “I will not be a party to any serious wrongdoing, Serge.”

He gave her a lazy smile. “Wrongdoing is all right, then, as long as it’s not serious?”

“You know what I mean. Don’t … do anything rash.” Her heart pumped hard and she felt a bite of excitement.

“Not even if it means getting rid of him?”

She had difficulty breathing. “We are not murderers, son.”

He laughed, sounding almost sinister. This was a side to her son that she’d never seen before.

“Murder? Heavens no, Mother. It’ll just be a small accident. A warning, if you will.”

Meredith felt a nibble of shame at even contemplating what Serge suggested. “You know who he is, don’t you?”

He merely smiled at her. “I’ve watched him since the day we returned with Grandmama. At that time, I only knew that he’d taken what you wanted me to have. Nothing else, Mother. But I know his routine.”

He hadn’t answered her question outright, and she was glad. If the words were not spoken, Serge could not be blamed for his actions. “I do not want him killed, Serge.” But in the secret recesses of her heart, she knew that wasn’t true.

On a whim, Julia wrapped Marymae in a heavy bunting, hooked up Sally to the buggy, and drove out to see how McCloud was doing on the cabin. She’d taken special pains to wear dresses ever since her wedding day, not only because it was appropriate, but because she wanted to look nice for McCloud. It was foolish, really, because she didn’t think he would notice no matter what she wore.

But she was anxious to see the cabin. Out of curiosity, she told herself as her leg touched the basket filled with lunch. But deep down she wanted to see him, for something else had been on her mind, and she didn’t know how to handle it. His words about her role as his wife just wouldn’t leave her in peace.

Leaning on a stack of wood, he watched her approach. When the buggy stopped beside him, he reached into it and lifted out the lunch basket. “Slumming?” he asked with a slight smile.

“Don’t be silly. I wanted to see how you were coming along.”

He stood back and surveyed the cabin, which actually had begun to look like one. “Like I said, it should be finished in a few weeks. If it doesn’t rain.”

She was beside him, sharing his pride in his meticulous handiwork. “There could be more rain,” she reminded him. “It’s only February.”

Small talk. Uncomfortable small talk. She pulled her arms inside her cape and hugged herself to get warm. The wind was cold. He noticed her discomfort.

“You should have worn something warmer. Here,” he added, pulling her toward the cabin. “Let’s eat inside. It won’t be warm, but it will keep the wind out.”

“Wait. Let me get the baby.” She hurried to the buggy, lifted Marymae out and joined him inside. He’d spread a blanket on the wood plank floor and had begun to unpack their lunch.

Keeping the dish towel around the coffeepot, he poured her a cup. She wrapped her hands around it, watching the steam waft into the cold air as he unpacked the rest of their lunch.

He made a sound of approval. “Fried chicken. To what do I owe this honor?”

She shrugged. “It’s not that special.” Since the day before, when he’d kissed her with such passion in the kitchen, and when she’d sat beside him on his bed, she knew that she wanted more from this marriage. No one could have been more surprised, for she’d been so certain she despised him. But she didn’t know how to tell him what she wanted. His words haunted her, making tattletale promises of a marriage with all its trappings, but she was afraid of being rejected, just as she’d been when she invited him to sleep in her bed. Of course, maybe he didn’t expect to stay around that long. That thought made her stomach sink.

“McCloud?”

Leaning casually against a column, devouring a chicken leg, he appeared content. A feeling of hope blossomed in her chest.

“Yeah?”

“McCloud,” she began, “I have to know your intentions.” She held her breath.

A wily smile curled his lips. “A breed’s intentions are never honorable, didn’t you know that?”

She expelled an exasperated sigh. “Why do you do this? Can’t you be serious for just once?”

“What makes you think I’m not serious?” He wiped his mouth on a napkin.

“Because you don’t even know what I’m talking about.” She burrowed through the basket for the bread she’d packed.

“All right, I’ll be serious, but first I have to know what you’re trying to say.”

The moment of needing to know the truth had passed. “Never mind. It’s no longer important.”

He reached down and gave her braid a playful tug. “Come on, Miss Julia, tell me what’s whirling around in that pretty head.”

Pretty head? Her pulse raced at the words, but she swatted at him anyway, pretending they didn’t matter. “Don’t try to honeyfuggle me, Wolf McCloud. I’m not pretty, and we both know it.”

His eyes softened, but he said nothing.

She waited for him to contradict her. He didn’t, and she felt a rush of disappointment. “It’s too late anyway. I don’t care anymore. What you do with your life is of no concern to me.”

She dug deeper into the basket, and he ran his forefinger under her arm, along her rib cage. She yelped, clamping her arm to her side.

“You’re ticklish,” he said with an evil grin.

“I am not,” she countered. “You just startled me, that’s all.”

His fingers touched her again, and she sucked in a breath, unable to keep from releasing a nervous laugh. She swatted at him, this time hitting his chest. “You just stop that, McCloud.”

“Is it just there? Or are you ticklish here, too.” He sat down beside her and grabbed her calf, running his fingers over her stocking at the back of her knee.

She whooped and convulsed on the blanket, automatically writhing away from the tickling motion. “Stop it! Oh,” she moaned between bouts of sharp laughter,
“please
stop it, you … you worm!”

His hand stopped, but he didn’t pull it away. It cupped her knee, then slid to the upper part of her calf. His eyes never left her.

They stared at one another, Julia’s heart hammering, her pulse trembling, her heart almost exploding with emotion. She tried to speak, but her mouth was dry. Swallowing hard, she warned, “You should take your hand off my leg.”