The Fall of Shane MacKade (6 page)

“That sounds fascinating, but I'm going to be busy. My equipment came in.” She twirled her fork and neatly nipped pasta from the tines. “But later on, when I set up at your place, I'm sure I can find the time now and then to help you out. In fact, I'm looking forward to observing you in your natural milieu.”

“Is that right?” He shifted, turning to face her. The hand he rested on the back of her chair brushed her shoulder on the way. And her quick, involuntary jolt did a great deal to smooth out his ego, which was still raw from their earlier encounter.

Deliberately he leaned closer, just a little closer. “If
that's what you want, Rebecca, why don't you come on home with me tonight? We'll—”

“Shane, stop flirting with Rebecca.” Regan shook her head as she looked down the table. “You're embarrassing her.”

“I wasn't flirting. We were having a conversation.” His lips curved, his dimple winked. “Weren't we, Rebecca?”

“Of sorts.”

“Shane can't keep his eyes, or his hands, off the ladies.” Too logy and sluggish to do justice to the meal, Savannah pushed back her half-finished plate. “The smart ones don't take him seriously.”

“Good thing Rebecca's one of the smart ones,” Devin put in. “I tell you, it's a sad thing to watch the way some women come sniffing around him.”

“Yeah, I get real depressed about it.” Shane grinned wickedly. “I can hardly hold my head up. Just last week, Louisa Tully brought me out a peach pie. It was demoralizing.”

Rafe snorted. “The trouble is, too many of them haven't figured out the way to your heart isn't through your stomach. It's through your— Ow!” He winced, laughing, when Regan kicked him hard under the table. “
Mind.
I was going to say
mind.
”

“I'm sure you were,” Regan said primly.

“Shane's always kissing somebody.” Bryan shoveled in the last bite of his third helping, and used his napkin rather than the back of his hand to wipe his mouth only because he caught his mother's eye.

Enjoying herself now, Rebecca leaned forward to smile at the boy. “Is he really?”

“Oh, yeah. At the farm, at the ballpark, right in town, too. Some of them giggle.” He rolled his eyes. “Con and I think it's disgusting.”

Shane had always thought that fire was best met with
fire, and he turned to his nephew. “I hear Jenny Metz is stuck on you.”

Bryan flushed from his sauce-smeared chin to the roots of his hair. “She is not.” But the humiliation of that, and the primal fear of girls, was enough to shut his mouth firmly.

Jared sent his stepson a sympathetic look and steered the conversation onto safer ground.

From her vantage point, Rebecca saw Shane lean over, murmur something to the hunched-shouldered Bryan that made the boy grin.

The sound of fretful crying sounded through one of the baby monitors almost as soon as the meal was over. After a heated debate, Rebecca started on the dishes. Babies needed to be tended to, as she'd pointed out. Children put to bed. She was better suited to washing dishes than to fulfilling either of those responsibilities. And—and that clinched it—was she a friend or a guest?

While she worked, she could hear voices from the living room and more sounds through the other monitor that stood in the kitchen. Some soft, some deep. Soothing, she mused. A kind of routine that dug roots, honed traditions. She could hear Rafe talking to Nate as he readied him for bed, Regan murmuring to the baby as she nursed him.

Someone—she thought it was Devin's voice—was calmly directing children to pick up the scattered toys. Jared poked his head in once, apologizing for skipping out on kitchen duty, explaining that Savannah was exhausted.

She waved him away.

She was sure that if anyone else had to face a mess like this, the piles of pots, pans, dishes, glasses would be daunting at best, tedious at worst. But for her it was a novel chore, and therefore entertaining.

Shane strolled in, thumbs hooked in his pockets. “Looks like I'd better roll up my sleeves.”

“You don't need to pitch in.” Rebecca was working the
problem of fitting everything into the racks of the dishwasher into a geometric equation. “I've got it.”

“Everybody else is tied up with kids or pregnant wives. I'm all you've got.” So he did roll up his sleeves. “Are you going to put the dishes in there, or study it all night?”

“I'm working on a system.” Fairly satisfied with it, Rebecca began to load. “What are you doing?”

“I'm going to wash the pans.”

She paused, her eyes narrowing a bit as she recalculated. “That would be simpler.” She caught a whiff of lemon from the soap he squirted into the hot running water. But when she bent over, her bottom bumped his thigh and had her straightening again.

“Close quarters around the sink,” he said with an easy grin.

To offset it, she merely walked to the other side of the dishwasher and worked from there. “So, is flirting with women a vocation or an avocation?”

“It's a pleasure.”

“Mmm… Isn't it awkward, in a small town, to juggle women?”

“I guess it would be, if you thought of them as rubber balls instead of people.”

She nodded as she meticulously arranged dishes. It would be, she mused, interesting and educational to delve into the mind of a ladies' man. “I'll rephrase that. Isn't it awkward to begin or end a relationship in a small town where people appear to know a great deal about other people's business?”

“Not if you do it right. Is this another study, Rebecca?”

She straightened again, battling a flush because it had been just that. “I'm sorry. Really. That's a terrible habit of mine—picking things apart. Just say, ‘Butt out, Rebecca.'”

“Butt out, Rebecca.”

Because there had been no sting in the order, she laughed and got back to work. “What if I just say I think you have a wonderful and interesting family, and I enjoyed meeting all of them?”

“That would be fine. I'm fond of them myself.”

“It shows.” She looked up, lips curved. “And it almost makes me think there's more to you than a woman-chasing farm boy. I enjoyed watching all of you together, the interaction, the shorthand conversations, the little signals.”

He set a pan into the drainer. “Is that what you were doing when I caught you at dinner? Making observations on the MacKades in their natural milieu?”

Her smile faded a little. “No, actually, I was thinking of something else entirely.” Suddenly restless, she picked up a damp cloth and walked away to wipe off the stove. “I do need to talk to you about making arrangements to work at the farm. I realize you have a routine, and a private life. I don't intend to get in your way.”

But you will, he thought. He'd suspected it before, but that quick glimpse of sadness in her eyes moments ago had confirmed it. He was a sucker for a woman with secrets and sad stories.

“I told Regan you could come and work there, so I'm stuck with it.”

She shrugged her shoulder. “It's important enough to me that I can't worry overmuch about it making you uncomfortable.” When she glanced back at him, her eyes were cool again, faintly mocking. “You'll be out in the field most of the time, won't you? Baling hay, or whatever?”

“Or whatever.” Damned if she wasn't pulling his strings, he thought. Both of her. For he was certain there were two women in there, and he had a growing fascination with each one.

Though he hadn't quite finished the pans, he picked up
a towel, dried his hands. Maybe it was that slim white neck, he mused. It was just begging to be touched, tasted. Or it could be those odd golden eyes that hinted at all sorts of elusive emotions, even when they shone with confidence. Or maybe it was just his own ego, still ruffled from her mocking response to him that morning.

Whatever it was, he was compelled to test her, and perhaps himself, again.

He moved behind her, quietly. Following impulse, he lowered his head and closed his teeth gently on the sensitive nape of her neck. She jerked, came up hard against him with a shudder that seemed to rack her from head to toe. As surprised as he was pleased, he took her shoulders firmly in his hands and turned her to face him.

“Not so cool this time,” he murmured, and crushed her mouth with a kiss of practiced skill and devastating intensity.

She hadn't had time to brace, to think, to defend. His mouth quite simply destroyed her. Her head spun, her knees jellied, her blood went on fast boil. Never in her life had so many sensations battered her at once. The smooth, warm demand of his mouth taking from hers, the hard, confident hands moving over her, the smell of lemon and soap and…man.

Her mind simply couldn't compute it, so her body took over. Some weak, accepting sound purred out of her throat. She couldn't stop it, couldn't stop the trembling or the heat or the sudden and baffling need to let everything she was melt into him. One shock of pleasure sparked another, then another, until there was nothing else.

His first reaction was of arrogant delight. Indifferent to him? Like hell she was. She was hot. She was trembling. She was moaning. The woman he kissed that morning had been cool and amused and mocking. Not this one. This one was…

Deliciously warm. He could have tasted that mouth endlessly, so smooth, so soft, so silky. He eased deeper, aroused by each throaty moan and murmur. His mind went blissfully blank with pleasure when he slid his hands under her sweater and found only Rebecca beneath it.

She quivered, her breath catching in her throat as he skimmed those rough palms over small, firm breasts. His thumbs scraped lightly over her rigid nipples, and he swallowed her gasps, absorbed her shudders.

The arms she'd lifted to twine around his neck went limp, dropped slowly to her sides in a kind of helpless surrender that excited unbearably, even as it warned him.

He eased back, clamping his hands on the stove at either side of her as he studied her face. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were closed, her breath was coming fast and harsh through lips erotically swollen from his.

He thought she would look just like that on the floor, with him mounting her. The image of that had him gripping the stove until his fingers ached.

Then she opened her eyes, and he saw that they were blind, drugged, and a little bit afraid.

“Well, well, well…” He said it lightly, mockingly, as much in defense as in triumph, as his stomach lurched with need. “I'd say we had a different result this time around.”

She couldn't catch her breath, much less form a word. She only shook her head as her body continued to suffer from quick, lethal explosions.

“No theories this time, Doc?” He didn't know why he was angry, but he could feel his temper building. Building, then spiking, as she stood there looking helpless, stunned, and more and more terrified. “Maybe we should try it again.”

“No.” She got that out. She thought her life might depend on the uttering of that single syllable. “No,” she said again. “I think you proved your point.”

He didn't know what his point had been—something about amusing himself, a test—but it certainly didn't apply now. Now he wanted her with a ferocity that was totally unprecedented. He believed desire was as natural as breathing, and should cause no more discomfort than the easy exhaling of air.

And yet he ached, fiercely ached.

“You… Let me by,” she managed.

“When I'm ready. I'm waiting for your hypothesis—or would it be a conclusion now? I'm curious, Rebecca. How are you going to react the next time I kiss you? And which one of you am I going to find when I take you to bed?”

She didn't know—and wasn't sure she could tell him if she did. She was saved from what she was sure would have been abject humiliation when Rafe swung through the kitchen door.

He stopped, summed up the situation in a glance and scowled at his brother. “For God's sake, Shane.”

“Get out.”

“It's my damn house,” Rafe shot back.

“Then we'll get out.” He snagged Rebecca's arm and took two strides before panic gave her the strength to yank away.

“No.” It was all she said as she walked past both men and out of the kitchen.

“What the hell's wrong with you?” Rafe demanded. “You had her pinned up against the damn stove. She was white as a sheet. Since when have you gotten off on scaring women?”

“I didn't scare her.”

But he realized abruptly that he had, and that for a few moments he hadn't cared that he had. In fact, he'd been hotly thrilled that he could. That was new for him, and shaming.

“I didn't mean to. It got out of hand.” Frustrated, he
dragged his unsteady fingers through his hair. “Hell, I got out of hand.”

“Maybe you'd better keep your distance until you can handle yourself.”

“Yeah, maybe I'd better.”

Because he'd been expecting an argument, Rafe's brows drew together. He noted now that Shane was just about as pale as Rebecca had been. “You okay?”

“I don't know.” Baffled, Shane shook his head. “She's the damnedest woman,” he muttered. “The damnedest woman.”

A
s she was a meticulous woman, it took Rebecca hours to set her equipment to her specifications. There were sensors, cameras, recorders, computers, monitors. Cassie had been able to give her one of the larger suites for a couple of days, and she tried to be grateful for it. Yet it was confining not to be able to set up a camera or two on the first floor.

She doubted any of the other guests would welcome one in the rooms they slept in.

Still, she had space, and the thrill of occupying what had been Charles Barlow's room. The windows afforded a lovely view of the sloping front lawn, the late-summer flowers, the wild tiger lilies lining the edge of the road, and the town itself. She imagined the master of the house would have enjoyed looking out, studying the rooftops and chimneys of the houses and shops, the quiet stream of traffic.

Everything she'd read about Charles Barlow indicated that he had been the kind of man who would consider it his right, even his duty, to look down on lesser men.

She wished she could feel him here, his power, even his cruelty. But there was nothing but a charming set of rooms, crowded now with the technology she'd brought with her.

It was frustrating. She was positive every one of the MacKades had experienced something in this house, had been touched by what lingered there. Why couldn't she?

Her hope was that science would aid her, as it always had. She'd purchased the very best equipment suited to a one-person operation, and shrugged off the expense. Some women, she mused, bought shoes or jewelry. She bought machines.

All right, perhaps she was buying more in the shoes-and-jewelry line these days. Money had never been a problem, and didn't look to be one in the foreseeable future. In any case, she was entitled to her hobby, Rebecca told herself as she dipped her hands in her pockets. She was entitled to the new life, the new persona she was carving out.

A great many of her colleagues thought she had gone mad when word got out on what she planned to spend her free time studying. Her parents would be deeply annoyed—if she ever drew up the courage to face them with her new interest. But she wasn't going to let that matter.

She wanted to explore. Needed to. If she had to go back to being the boring, predictable, utterly tedious Dr. Knight, she
would
go mad.

Yet she'd learned a valuable lesson the night before. She wasn't quite ready to handle certain aspects of her new life. She'd been cocky, entirely too self-assured, and Shane MacKade had knocked the chip from her shoulder and crushed it to splinters. Lord knew why she'd thought she could deal with sex.

All he'd had to do was catch her off guard once, and she'd turned into a trembling, mindless mess. She'd spent
some time being furious with him for causing it—after she got over being terrified. But she was too analytical to blame him for long. She had put on the mask of confidence, had even tried her hand at flirtation. It was hardly his fault that he'd believed the image and responded to it.

She would simply have to be more careful in the future, and rethink her plan to stay at the farm. The man was entirely too physical, too attractive. Too everything. Especially for a woman who had barely begun to explore her own sexuality.

Yes, she would be very careful, and she wouldn't dwell on those sharp and intense needs he'd stirred up in her—the way his mouth had felt on hers, the way his hands had moved over her bare skin. What it had felt like to be touched that way, by that man. So intimately. So naturally.

She let out a long, shaky breath and closed her eyes.

No, she wouldn't dwell on that. She was going to enjoy herself, start her paper on Antietam, make plans for the book she intended to write. And, if perseverance counted for anything, find her ghosts.

Moving to her computer, she sat and booted up.

“The lady doesn't come in here.”

Fingers still poised on the keyboard, Rebecca glanced up and saw Emma in the doorway. “Hello. Is school out?”

“Uh-huh. Mama said to come tell you she has coffee and cookies if you want.” Very much at home, Emma wandered in, gazing wide-eyed at the machines. “You have a lot of stuff.”

“I know. I guess you could say they're my toys. Who's the lady?”

“She's the one who used to live here. She cries, like Mama used to. Didn't you hear her?”

“No. When?”

With calm and friendly eyes, Emma smiled. “Just now. She was crying while you were typing. But she never comes in here.”

A quick, cold shiver spurted down Rebecca's spine. “You heard her, just now?”

“She cries a lot.” Emma walked over to the computer and solemnly read the words on the monitor. “Sometimes I go to her room, and she stops crying. Mama says she likes company.”

“I see.” Rebecca was careful to keep her tone light. “And when you hear her crying, how does it make you feel?”

“It used to make me sad. But now I know sometimes crying can make you feel better when you're finished.”

In spite of herself, Rebecca smiled. “That's very true.”

“Are you going to take pictures of the lady?”

“I hope so. Have you ever seen her?”

“No, but I think she's pretty, because she smells pretty.”
Emma offered another quick, elfin smile. “You smell pretty, too.”

“Thanks. Do you like living in the house, Emma, with the lady and everything?”

“It's nice. But we're going to build our own house, near the farm, because we're a big family now. Mama will still work here, so I can come whenever I want. Are you writing a story? Connor writes stories.”

“No, not exactly. It's like a diary, really. Just things I want to remember, or read over sometime. But I'm going to write a story about Antietam.”

“Can I be in it?”

“Oh, I think you have to be.” She ran a hand over Emma's springy golden curls. It was lovely to discover that, yes, she did seem to appeal to children. And they appealed, very much, to her. “I hope you'll tell me all about the lady.”

“My name's Emma MacKade now. The judge said it could be. So I'll be Emma MacKade in the story.”

“You certainly will be.” Rebecca shut down her machine. “Let's go get some cookies.”

 

She hadn't intended to walk over to the farm. She'd set out to take a stroll in the woods—or so she'd told herself. To take some air, clear her mind, stretch her legs.

But she was out of the trees and crossing the fields before she knew it.

She couldn't say why it made her smile to see the house. She hoped it was late enough in the day that Shane was settled in somewhere, or off with one of his lady friends. She knew that farm work started early in the day, so it seemed safe to assume it would be done by now.

She could see that part of a hayfield had been mowed, but there was no tractor, or whatever was used to cut it, in sight now. She was sorry she'd missed the action. Undoubt
edly Shane MacKade riding through the fields on a large, powerful machine would make quite an interesting picture.

But it was really solitude she wanted, before she went back to her rooms and hunkered down with her equipment and notes for the rest of the night.

That was why she veered away from the house, rather than toward it.

She liked the smells here, found them oddly familiar. Some deeply buried memory, she supposed. Perhaps a former life. She was really going to start exploring the theory of reincarnation sometime soon. Fascinating subject.

Because she knew the story of the two corporals well, she wandered toward the outbuildings. She didn't know precisely what a smokehouse might look like, but Regan had told her it was stone, and that it still stood.

There were wildflowers in the grass, little blue stars, yellow cups, tall, lacy spears of white. Charmed, she forgot her mission and began to gather a few. Beyond where she stood was a meadow, lushly green, starred with color from more wild blooms and the flutter of butterflies.

Had she ever taken time to walk in a meadow? she wondered. No, never. Her botany studies had been brief, and crowded with Latin names rather than with enjoyment.

So, she would enjoy it now. Light of heart, she walked toward the wide field of high grass, noting the way the sun slanted, the way the flowers swayed—danced, really—in the light breeze.

Then her throat began to ache, and her heartbeat thickened. For a moment there was such a terrible sadness, such a depth of loneliness, she nearly staggered. Her fingers clutched tightly at the flowers she'd picked.

She moved through the high grass, among the thistles shooting up purple puffs on thick stalks, and the sorrow clutched in her stomach like a fist. She stopped, watched
butterflies flicker, listened to birds chirping. The strong sun warmed her skin, but inside she was so very cold.

What else could we have done?
she asked herself, shivering with a grief that wasn't her own, yet was stunningly real.
What else was there to do?

Opening her hand, she let the flowers fall in the meadow grass at her feet. The tears stinging her eyes left her shaken, baffled. As carefully as a soldier in a minefield, she backed away from where her flowers lay in the grass.

Done about what? she wondered, a little frantic now. Where had the question come from, and what could it possibly mean? Then she turned, taking slow, deliberate breaths, and left the meadow behind.

All those strong, confusing emotions faded so that she began to doubt she'd ever felt them. Perhaps it was just that she was a little lonely, or that it was lowering to realize she wasn't a woman to gather wildflowers or walk in meadows.

She was a creature of books and classrooms, of facts and theory. She'd been born that way. Certainly she'd been raised that way, uncompromisingly. The brilliant child of brilliant parents who had outlined and dictated her world so well, and for so long, that she was fully adult before she thought to question and rebel. Even in such a small way.

And the life she wanted to create for herself was still so foreign. Even now, she was thinking of going back, of keeping to her timetable, of sitting down with her equipment. No matter that it was something out of the ordinary that she intended to study, it was still studying.

Damn it.

Jamming her hands in her pockets, she deliberately turned away from the direction that would take her back to the inn. She would have her walk first, she ordered herself. She'd pick more wildflowers if she wanted to.
Next time, she'd take off her shoes and walk in the meadow.

She was muttering to herself when she saw the cows, bumping together under a three-sided shed that was attached to the milk barn. Didn't cows belong in the fields? she wondered. There were so many of them crowded together there, munching on what she supposed was hay or alfalfa.

Curious, she walked closer, keeping some distance only because she wasn't entirely sure cows were as friendly as they looked. But when they didn't seem the least concerned with her, she moved closer.

And heard him singing.

“One for the morning glory, two for the early dew, three for the man who stands his ground and four for the love of you…”

Delighted with the sound, Rebecca moved to the doorway and had her first glimpse of a milking parlor.

Whatever she'd imagined, it wasn't this organized, oddly technical environment. There were big, shiny pipes and large chutes, the mechanical hum of a compressor or some other type of machine. A dozen cows stood in stanchions, eating contentedly from individual troughs. Some of them munched on grain as devices that looked like clever octopuses relieved them of their milk.