Tallchief for Keeps (27 page)

Elspeth washed her hands over her face and closed the door to lean against it. Life with Alek wouldn’t be calm or sensible. She should just take the heather and run Alek down and give it back to him.

She eased open the door to the tiny plants. They probably would flower best in the full sunlight next to her parents’ graves. She couldn’t wait to plant them and hurried to dress.

“Not much time for weaving anymore, huh?” Duncan asked as he held Delight and handed the bag with the heather seedlings up to Elspeth.

“I’m managing,” she returned, not ready to admit anything to Duncan. She’d been working on one design in which a man and a woman stood close together walking through the circle of natural colors. She’d woven an arrow straight through the piece, as if it carried them into the universe for all time. That was how she saw Una and Tallchief, loving for all time.

Duncan angled a wary look down at her. “Still mad at me?”

She didn’t answer, but held up her
scarred thumb and smiled. How could she stay mad at Duncan when he wanted the best for her?

She spent the day on the mountain, planting heather. When she returned after dark she was too exhausted to do anything but fall into bed.

The next morning, she heard Alek’s boots on her front porch. He looked tough, angry and worn. She wanted to hold him.

“That damn mountain is dangerous,” he shot at her, his tone shredding any tenderness instantly.

Hold him? She wanted
to throw something at him. “I go where I want.”

His smile was pure evil promise. “Things will have to change, Elspeth darlin’. Anything could happen to you, and I don’t like having my guts tied in knots. Next time you want to go, I’ll ride with you. We’ll make it a couple thing.”

“Says who?” she shot back, still pretty proud of the way she’d planted a Tallchief kiss on him in the street.

His hot, hungry kiss told her exactly who and what and why. When she was well into floating, Alek inhaled, gripped her arms to set her back a pace from him and plopped a large pink-wrapped box in her trembling hands. “I’d say we have plenty in common. You’re not a failure, Elspeth-mine, because of the baby. The failure was mine in not keeping and tending you. I won’t make that mistake again.”

She shivered and wondered how she kept from dragging him into her house and having him on the kitchen floor. No man had the right to look that edible in the morning or to understand one of her darkest secrets. Now she saw she’d hurt him, excluding him from sharing the planting of the heather, his gift to her.

I love you.
…

Elspeth didn’t wait to examine
her wavering emotions as she usually did. She simply reached out and grabbed his worn work shirt. She returned his hot, eager kiss and, gripping her present firmly, stepped back to slam the screen door between them.

Hot eyed, he stared at her through the mesh screen and looked as if he could tear it from its hinges. “Well, what’s it going to be? Will you come to my house for dinner tonight? Or are we going upstairs right now?”

“I don’t know if I can love you, Alek Petrovna, Jr.” Elspeth went in the direction of her thoughts and not his questions.

“It’s your call. It doesn’t stop how I feel, heart of my heart,” he answered, head at an arrogant angle, not bending an inch. “Dinner at six.”

How could he deliver such a sweet
sentiment and look hard as nails? When he had gone, Elspeth plopped into her kitchen chair and opened the package. The antique Celtic broach, a circle with a pin through it, was perfect for her tartan. Una’s shawl was neatly folded beneath it.

She wiped away the hot tears brimming to her lids and knew that if ever a man hunted for the soft spots in her heart, Alek was a deadly shot. The heather seedlings just might grow on the mountain that had reminded Una of Scotland; they were beautiful, perfect little flowers catching the sunlight.

Now Una’s shawl shimmered beneath
Elspeth’s trembling fingers; the legend whispered through the shadows, circling her.

When the Marrying Moon is high, a scarred warrior will rise from the mists to claim his lady huntress. He will wrap her in the shawl and carry her to the Bridal Tepee and his heart. Their love will last longer than the stars….

Vegetable lasagna was not as easy as the
Men Who Know They Can’t Cook Cookbook
boasted. Alek should have tried something easier for his first at-home, courting-Elspeth dinner. He ached from riding, digging new fencepost holes at the Kostyas’, from the butt of a playful young bull and from clearing out an overgrown garden perfect for Elspeth’s herbs. Meanwhile, he kept up the telephone war to get a hot tub at the Kostyas’.

Alek carefully picked away a crust of the burned lasagna. Being an impatient man playing a patient, thorough game for keeps wasn’t easy.

He hadn’t a clue how to settle down, how to make a relationship work.

He’d realized during the day that he’d never had to try—Elspeth was a trying woman. He’d never had to work to make Melissa trust him, believe in him when he told her he loved her. He did love her, but in a tender way that a man loves a woman he’s grown used to, an easy, uncomplicated loving.

When Melissa died, Alek knew that
he’d never love again. That there wasn’t enough of him left to give another woman. Yet he had loved Elspeth from the moment he met her, eyes flashing, hair gleaming in the bonfire, balancing a village child on her hip.

She wasn’t an easy woman. Elspeth had been hurt early in life. He’d hurt her again. He wasn’t geared to slow paces and wary women, but he’d learn for Elspeth.

Alek braced himself against the counter and muttered in Russian, venting his dark mood. The light touch on his shoulder caused him to jerk around to face Elspeth. “Alek?”

“Elspeth, I love you. I always
have.” He looked over his shoulder to where she stood, elegant in a short, dark red dress. He admired the lean, soft line of her, the length of her legs down into the strappy little sandals, then back up to the tiny gold beads in her ears. There. That was that. “You can chew on that, spit it out if you want, but it doesn’t change things. I love you. Unless you tell me to stop, I’m going to keep on telling you, until you believe and trust in me.”

He’d expected her withdrawal, the shifting of her expression, drawing it in, hiding her emotions from him. Tallchiefs held their emotions to themselves, plowing slowly through them to reach an ultimate decision about exactly how they felt. They’d learned how to do that early in life, to protect the family that could have been torn apart at any time. Pride kept him from asking how she felt about him, about a relationship—hell, a life with him. He plunged on recklessly, letting his bottled thoughts fly at her. ‘This is serious, Elspeth. For keeps. We’ve come full circle. How I feel about you isn’t going to change. I intend to bring you flowers and heather and broaches and anything else I want.”

He tugged her into his arms and held her; she wasn’t going anywhere, not just yet. He counted every heart-beat she did not move from his arms.

“You jump,” she finally whispered against his throat.

“Jump?”

“Pounce. Sometimes I feel as though I’m in the walking wheel—a huge spinning wheel—rather than walking to and from it. I’m in the walking wheel, spinning around with no idea of what hit me.”

The wisp of a smile lurking on
her lips sent his hopes soaring. Alek picked her up, kissed her hard because he had to and, when she nodded, he carried her up the stairs to the grand old four-poster bed he’d purchased from the Wheelers. It was a lovely old thing, sitting under a blanket in the barn, and Alek had lost his heart immediately.

Then Elspeth’s lips burned,
igniting him. Her body feverishly answered his, in tune to his needs and her own.

By the middle of July, Elspeth gave up weaving and began her first vacation, much to Mark’s distress. “What? You’re quilting? What’s quilts have to do with anything? A vacation? Honey, we’ve got clients screaming for your work…. Remember that tiny piece, the one you made on an old pitchfork? It sold to a millionaire. And the breastplate design with feathers? There’s a rich buyer circling it. Come on. Now’s the time to jump into the fire and run with sales.”

Elspeth thought about the fire in her lately and how she’d changed. She swung a Navajo drop spindle from a length of thread, watching it go around. “It’s my first vacation, Mark.”

He hesitated, clearly balancing income against her needs. “0kay. Give me a call when you’re ready. If I’ve learned one thing about working with artists, it’s that they have to have time to focus.”

The problem was that Elspeth’s focus had changed, and the work flowing beneath her hands was traditional, what her mother had taught her, and her thoughts were filled with Alek. In the quiet moments, she began piecing together designs for a quilt she’d always wanted to make, one her mother had begun and hadn’t finished.

Alek had moved to the farm, renovating it. He kept himself there, holed up and away from her, until she had to come after him. Or until he drove his Chevy up her driveway. He stood outside her house, leaning against the car and looking tough and unreasonable.

Alek wanted a home. He wanted her.

Because she enjoyed him, liked working
with him on the ranch, Elspeth found herself in his arms at night, not wanting to leave him. She needed the comfortable loving, the feeling of freedom with Alek, to push back, testing herself.

Alek liked to hold hands, slow dance and push her into dark corners. He’d look at her, and she’d feel his leaping hunger, that lazy, warm slide of nerves and cords locking in her body. Alek delighted in teasing her and kissing her senseless. Tormented to the fullest, Elspeth had sailed a kitchen plate at him. She’d actually dumped a salad over his head, when she’d just dumped a bucket of milk over it the day before.

He liked homemade bread, devoured it and then turned to consume her, the flash fire running so fast it took her breath away.

The tender moments left her
reeling, when Alek took her in his arms, slowly, purposefully as though nothing could deter him from loving her. He contained his urge to push her, to commit to him, though it simmered beneath the surface.

The Tallchiefs accepted Alek in Elspeth’s life, and she met the Petrovnas. “This is her, Mom,” he’d said at the farm, holding Elspeth’s hand securely.

“Tall,” Serene Petrovna had said, walking around Elspeth to inspect her.

“A match,” Alek Petrovna, Sr., had stated, reaching out to snag Elspeth and to kiss her cheeks thoroughly. He guffawed at her surprise and thrust her back to Alek’s arms. “We’ll be your neighbors until Talia has her baby. Mom wouldn’t be anyplace else, and we’re camping at Alek’s house. Sort of fun, just having the basics. Serene and me still fit into the same sleeping—”

He rubbed the spot where Serene’s elbow had caught him and winked at Alek. “You’re not getting any younger, Junior. And you’re getting a hell of a lot slower than what I remember—Ah!” he exclaimed as Serene’s elbow connected again with his ribs.

“I’m home, Dad,” Alek
had said in a quiet, old-fashioned way that brought tears to his mother’s eyes. He wrapped Elspeth’s hand in his and brought it to his lips.

“You always get what you go after, son. Just like all those war stories.”

“I’m playing for keeps, and sometimes the story takes a bit more patience to get the right finish,” Alek had returned, looking at Elspeth.

Patience. The minute Alek and Elspeth were alone, he forgot patience and had her behind the bales of hay. Then, when she could think again, Elspeth pushed him down and reminded him that she wasn’t an easy taking. She ripped a button from his shirt, which Mrs. Petrovna noticed immediately. Elspeth wished she could rip off Alek’s silly grin and her blush as easily when Mr. Petrovna laughed and eyed Mrs. Petrovna. After a cruise to the ice-cream
parlor in Alek’s Chevy, the retired Texas sheriff began doing rope tricks for his bride.

“Did you grow up like this?” Elspeth asked Alek as Mrs. Petrovna strolled into the house with Mr. Petrovna right behind her.

“I was lucky. You were lucky, too,
having a family who loved you.” His eyes told her that he knew she’d been damaged and that he’d try to make it up to her.

“I was afraid, Alek. Horribly afraid I’d fail to do something and that it would separate the entire family. Fiona was only ten, and my brothers were taking more responsibility than they should have. I never wanted to do anything but weave. I’ve always loved it. I liked being able to sell what I’d made and people enjoying what Mom had taught me.” She leaned against him, his arm around her. Alek was comfortable, when he wanted, holding her hand.

“They handled it. You all did.” Alek leaned down to give her a friendly, understanding kiss.

Elspeth let him hold her against him, rocking her, right in daylight, right on the sidewalk. “Don’t you dare ask me anything about the Marrying Moon. I get the feeling I’m a story and not—”

His kiss was not tender, but demanding and hungry. Alek left her in no doubt about his intentions.

There were moments when Alek
waited for her to say something, for something to pass between them, but she couldn’t release her heart, not yet. She’d loved her parents deeply and lost them; then that Scottish night had lingered in her thoughts. Alek would sense her turning from him immediately, and his expression would cloud.

By September, Talia seemed ready to burst. While she took her condition with a grin, Calum the cool was the typical nervous papa-to-be. The Petrovnas treated Elspeth as if she were their daughter; Alek’s and her relationship settled into an easy simmer, punctuated by long, passionate nights when they could manage to be alone.

“Me, a Petrovna?” became familiar to Elspeth, as did the sight of Mr. Petrovna caught in a passionate argument with his son. In the end, after all the yelling, there were the hugs. Alek Sr. kissed his son and laughed at the arm wrestling and shoulder-butting between them. There were moments when both men watched Elspeth with the same intent, black-eyed, closed-in look as though waiting for her…. “You love her, Alek,” Mr. Petrovna said when he thought she wasn’t listening.