Redeeming Love (21 page)

It was near dusk when she dumped the last sack in the barn. Her back was a mass of pain. “I sniffed all through the leaves and couldn’t find anymore,” she told him. She longed for a long, hot soak, but the thought of toting one bucket of water made her give up that idea.

He smiled. “We’ve got enough there to share with neighbors.”

Share? “I didn’t know we had any neighbors,” she said angrily, pulling a wayward strand of blonde hair out of her mouth. She hadn’t done all this 147

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work for a bunch of strangers. Let them pick their own nuts.

What do you care, Angel? You’re not going to be here.

“I’m going to wash up and fix supper,” she said and headed for the creek.

“Do that,” Michael said. He grinned and jabbed the pitchfork into the hay again. He started to whistle.

Half an hour later, Mara stormed back. “Look at this!” She held her hands for him to see her blackened palms and fingers. “I’ve used soap. I’ve used grease. I’ve even rubbed with sand. How do you get this stuff off?”

“It’s the dye from the hulls.”

“You mean they’re going to
stay
like this?”

“For a couple of weeks.”

Her blue eyes narrowed. “Did you know this would happen?”

He smiled slightly and pitched hay into a stall.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Michael leaned on the pitchfork. “You didn’t ask.” Her stained hands balled into fists and her face filled with angry color. She didn’t look indifferent or aloof anymore. He added fuel to the fire already blazing. “The nuts still have to be peeled and dried before we can sack them again. Then you and I’ll have all winter long to crack ’em.”

He saw the heat coming into her face; she was ready to explode. “You did it on purpose!”

His own temper was just beneath the surface, so he held his silence.

“How am I supposed to go back now with my hands looking like this?”

She could just hear the Duchess laughing at her dung-colored hands. She could just imagine the remarks.

Michael’s mouth curved wryly. “You know, Mara, if you were really that set on going back to Pair-a-Dice, you’d have been on your way weeks ago.”

She blushed, which only added to her fury. She hadn’t blushed in years.

“Why this?” she demanded hotly. “You got your money’s worth out of me!”

He heaved the pitchfork into the haystack. “I haven’t gotten anything from you yet, lady. Nothing
worth
anything.”

Fury made a red haze before her eyes. “Maybe you’re just not man 148

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enough to take it the usual way!” She swung around and started out of the barn, calling him a foul name under her breath.

Michael’s own temper erupted. He caught up with her and swung her around. “Don’t mutter it under your breath, Mara. Come on! Say it to my face. Let’s get your real feelings for me out in the open.”

She yanked free of him. She screamed names up at him. She knew plenty.

She saw his anger and jerked her chin up, daring him. “Go ahead and hit me. Maybe it’ll make you a man!”

“Not likely, but that’s what you want, isn’t it? Another beating. More hard knocks.” He was afraid of his own rising emotions, the hot surging blood that made him almost call her challenge. He was shaking with the power of it. “It’s the only thing you know, and you’re too full of your own stubborn pride to find out if there’s anything else in the world!”

“Don’t make me laugh! You think you’re any different from the rest? I’m quit of this place. I’ve matched you hour for hour. You’ve had your gold’s worth of work out of me.”

“Hogwash. You’re just running because you’re scared, because you’re beginning to
like
it here.” She swung at him, but he blocked her hand. She swung again, and he caught her wrist. “Finally I have your full attention!”

He let her twist free. “At least you’re looking
at
me instead of
through
me.”

Angel spun away and marched across the yard. She went into the cabin and slammed the door. Michael expected to see something come crashing through the window, but nothing did.

His heart was pounding like a locomotive. He let out his breath and pushed his fingers back through his hair. It was going to be open warfare from here on out. Well, so be it. Anything was better than her apathy. He went back to his work.

When he came in, Mara seemed calm enough. She glanced at him and gave him a sweet smile as she ladled stew into a bowl and set it on the table for him. One cautious taste and he knew there was enough salt in it to pickle him. The biscuits had sand in them, and when he looked into his mug of coffee, he saw half a dozen flies floating on the steaming surface. He laughed and pitched the coffee out the door. What else had she cooked up for him?

“Why don’t we discuss what’s really bothering you?”

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Angel folded her hands on the table. “I’ve only got one thing to say. I am not going to stay here with you forever.” He just looked at her with that faint, enigmatic smile on his face that made her want to use a club on him.

“I’m not,” she said again.

“We’ll take one day at a time, beloved.” He took a can of beans from the shelf and opened them. Her eyes were hot enough to fry a steak. He leaned his hip against the counter and ate his cold meal.

She glared up at him. “I don’t belong here, and you know it.”

“Where do you think you belong? Back in that bordello?”

“That’s my choice, isn’t it?”

“You don’t even know you’ve got a choice yet. You think there’s only one way to go, and that’s straight downhill to hell.”

“I
know
what I
want
.
”

“Then would you mind telling me?”

“I want to get out of here!” She got up and went outside, too angry and frustrated to look at him.

Michael set the can down and came to lean in the doorway. “I don’t believe you.”

“I
know,
but I don’t see that what I want is any of your business.” He laughed, but it wasn’t in amusement. She glared back at him, her eyes glittering in the moonlight. “What
everything
did you have in mind when you brought me here?”

Michael didn’t answer for a long moment. He wondered if he could make her understand. He wondered if he could even put it into words. “I want you to love me,” he said and saw the derision in her face. “I want you to trust me enough to let me love you, and I want you to stay here with me so we can build a life together. That’s what I want.”

Her anger dissolved at his sincerity. “Mister, can’t you understand that’s impossible?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“You don’t have any idea who and what I am other than what you’ve created in your own mind.”

“Then tell me.”

Go ahead, Angel. Tell him.
He could never even guess at the things that 150

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had been done to her or that she had done. Oh, she could tell him. Level the gun. Both barrels. Point-blank. Straight for his heart. Annihilation. That would put a quick end to everything. Why was she holding back?

Michael came outside. “Mara,” he said. His gentle voice was like salt on her wounds.

“My name
isn’t
Mara. It’s Angel.
Angel.”

“No, it isn’t. And I’ll call you by what I see. Mara, embittered by life; Tirzah, my beloved who stirs a fire in me until I feel like I’m melting.” He moved toward her. “You can’t keep running away. Don’t you see that?” He stopped right in front of her. “Stay here. Stay with me. We’ll work things through together.” He touched her. “I love you.”

“Do you know how many times I’ve heard those words before? I love you, Angel. You’re such a pretty little thing. I love you, sweetheart. Oh, baby, I love you when you do that. Say you love me, Angel. Say it so I believe you.

As long as you do what I tell you, I’m going to love you, Angel. I love you, love you, love you. I’m sick to
death
of hearing it!”

She stared at him angrily, but the look on his face defeated her. She hugged herself tightly.
Don’t think. Don’t feel anything. He’ll destroy you if you
do.
She tried to focus on something else.

The night sky was so clear, stars everywhere and a moon so big it seemed to be a single silver eye staring down. Her mind and emotions still boiled.

She tried to call up her defenses, but they had dispersed. She wanted to be up on that hilltop, seeing the sunrise again. She remembered his words:

“Mara, that’s the life I want to give you.”
Who was he kidding? She knew it could never happen, even if he still didn’t.

Her eyes burned. “I want to go back to Pair-a-Dice as soon as possible.”

“Am I getting too close?”

She swung around. “I am not staying here with you!” She tried to calm down and reason with him. “Look, mister, if you knew even half of what I’ve done, you’d have me headed back for Pair-a-Dice so fast—”

“Try me. Go ahead and see if it makes a difference.”

Angel withered at the thought. She had opened Pandora’s box and couldn’t get it closed again. The horrible, grotesque memories rose from the dead. Her father. Mama dead, clutching her rosary. Rab with the cord 151

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around his neck because he knew Duke was not the moral, upstanding citizen the public thought he was. Duke raping her over and over again. The dozens of men in the years that followed. And the hunger, the endless, aching hunger inside herself.

Michael could see her face white in the moonlight. He didn’t know what she was thinking, but he knew she was tormented by her past. He reached out to touch her cheek. “I wish I could open your mind and climb inside with you.” Maybe the two of them could fight off the darkness that was trying to swallow her whole. He wanted to hold her, but she had withdrawn from him already.
God, how do I save her?

Angel looked up at him and saw the sheen of moisture in his eyes. Shock ran through her. “Are you crying? For me?” she said weakly.

“Don’t you think you’re worth it?”

Something inside her cracked. She writhed inside to escape the feeling, but it was there nonetheless, growing with the light touch of his hand on her shoulder, with every soft word he spoke. She was sure if she put her hands against her heart, her palms would come away covered with her own blood.

Was that what this man wanted? For her to bleed for him?

“Talk to me, Amanda,” he whispered, “Talk to me.”

“Amanda? What’s this name supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, but it sounds like a gentle, loving name.” He smiled slightly.

“I thought you might prefer it to Mara.”

He was a strange man given to strange ways. What had become of her defenses? Where was her defiance and anger? her resolve? “What do you want to hear, mister?” she said, meaning to sound amused and failing. What could she tell a man like him that he would even understand?

“Anything. Everything.”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Ever.”

Michael cupped her face tenderly. “Then just tell me what you’re feeling right now.”

“Pain,” she said before she thought better of it. She pushed his hands away and went back into the cabin.

She was cold, and desperate to get warm. She knelt down before the fire, but even its warmth couldn’t permeate. She could lie in the coals and still 152

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not melt the chill attacking her.

Run away from him, Angel. Run away now—

Stay, beloved.

Voices warred in her head, pulling at her very soul.

Michael came inside and sat down beside her on the floor, watching quietly as she drew up her knees and hugged them against her chest. He knew she was trying to shut him out again. He wasn’t going to help her succeed this time. “Give your pain to me,” he said.

Surprised, Angel looked at him. She was in a wilderness with this man.

She was desperate to find a familiar road, some known landmark to guide her away. She couldn’t remember the last time she had even felt close to tears. And she had no tears, not anymore. Hosea perplexed her.

“I’ve done everything for you but the one thing I know best.” She searched his eyes. “Why not?” His expression changed, and she felt a softening toward him. He was vulnerable, and oddly she felt no desire to attack his defenses. “Are you afraid? Is that what holds you back? Do you think I’d make fun of you because you’ve never been with a woman before?”

Michael took a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers.

Where were all his rational answers now? “I suppose it’s entered my mind.

But more than that, I need to know why.”

“Why what?” she asked, not understanding.

“Why you would make love with me.”

“Why?” She would never understand this man. All the men she had ever known would expect her to “thank” them if they had given her so much as a box of candy or a bouquet of flowers. This man had kept her alive and nursed her back to health. He had taught her things that would help her live on her own. And now he wanted to know why she offered her body to him.