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As usual in Wyoming, the wind was blowing. Desiree hurried to catch up to Nicole so she could pull her daughter’s parka hood up over her head. Before she reached Nicole, Carter did it for her.
Desiree found his behavior with Nicole confusing, to say the least. He clearly didn’t want anything to do with the little girl, but he stopped short of ignoring her. What had him so leery of children?
Desiree heard Nicole chattering and hurried to catch up. Carter had been doing fine tolerating the five-year-old, but she saw no reason to test his patience.
Thanks to the body heat of the animals inside, the barn felt almost warm in comparison with the frigid outdoors. Nicole let go of Carter’s hand and raced to a stall halfway down the barn. She unlatched it and stepped inside. The tiny Black Angus calf made a bleating sound of welcome and hurried up to her.
“Matilda is hungry, Mommy,” Nicole said.
“I’ll fix her something right now.” Desiree went to the refrigerator, where she kept the milk for the calf. She poured some out into a nursing bottle and set it in a pot of water on a hot plate nearby to warm. When she returned to the stall she found Carter down on one knee beside the calf.
“Matilda’s mommy is dead,” Nicole explained. “So Mommy and I have to take care of her.”
“It looks like you’re doing a fine job,” Carter conceded gruffly.
The calf bawled piteously, and Nicole circled the calf’s neck with her arms to calm it. “Mommy’s getting your bottle, Matilda. Moooommy!” she yelled. “Matilda’s starving!”
Desiree hustled back to the hot plate, unplugged it and retrieved the bottle. A moment later she dropped onto her knees beside the calf. Nicole took the heavy bottle from her mother and held it while the calf sucked loudly and hungrily.
Desiree met Carter’s eyes over the calf’s head. There was a smile on his face that had made its way to his eyes.
“This is turning out to be a great honeymoon,” he said with a chuckle.
Desiree laughed. “I suppose it is a little unconventional.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
There was a warmth in his eyes that said he would be happy to put the train back on the rails. Desiree was amazed to find herself relaxed in his presence. However, her feelings for Carter were anything but comfortable. Her fear of men hadn’t disappeared. Yet she was forced to admit that Carter evoked more than fear in her breast. She hadn’t expected to be physically attracted to him. She hadn’t expected to want to touch him and to want him to touch her. She hadn’t expected to regret her inability to respond to him—or any man—as a woman.
Her expression sobered.
“What’s wrong?” Carter asked.
She wondered how he could be so perceptive. “What makes you think anything’s wrong?”
He reached out a hand and smoothed the furrows on her brow. His callused fingertips slid across her unmarked cheek and along the line of her jaw.
Desiree edged away from his touch. Her heart had slipped up to lodge in her throat, making speech impossible.
“Matilda is done, Mommy,” Nicole said as she extended the empty bottle toward her mother.
Desiree lurched to her feet. “That’s—” She cleared her throat and tried again. “That’s good, darling.” She took the bottle and Nicole’s hand and hurried out of the stall. She headed for the sink in the barn and rinsed out the bottle.
Carter had started after her, but when she turned around she realized he had stopped at the stall and was examining the hinges.
“This is hanging lopsided. Do you have a pair of pliers?”
Desiree would rather have headed right back to the house, but forced herself to respond naturally. “Sure. Let me get them.”
Desiree watched as Carter made a few adjustments to the stall door, tightening the bolts that held the frame in place.
“That ought to do it.”
Desiree thought of the months the door had been hanging like that, when neither she nor her hired hand, Sandy, had taken the time to fix it. In a matter of minutes Carter had resolved the problem.
“Thanks,” she said.
“No need to thank me. It was my pleasure.”
Desiree searched his face and saw the look of satisfaction there. He was telling the truth. He had enjoyed himself. “Fortunately for you there are lots of things that need fixing around here,” she said sardonically.
He headed down the aisle of the barn to return the pliers to the tool box. “I think that’s enough for today, though. After all, I am still on my honeymoon.”
“What’s a honeymoon?” Nicole asked.
Desiree saw the smirk that came and went on Carter’s face. She found the question embarrassing, especially with Carter listening to everything she was about to say. But she had made it a habit to answer any question Nicole asked as honestly as possible.
“It’s the time a husband and wife spend together getting to know each other when they’re first married,” Desiree explained.
“Like you and Mr. Prescott,” Nicole said.
Desiree brushed Nicole’s bangs out of her eyes. “Yes.” Desiree looked up and found Carter watching her, his eyes hooded with desire. A glance downward showed her he was hard and ready. A frisson of alarm skittered down her spine. She rose abruptly and took her daughter’s hand. “I’m going to start supper,” she said.
“I’ll be in shortly,” Carter replied in a raspy voice. “I see a few more things I can do out here, after all.”
The atmosphere at supper was strained. Not that she and Carter conversed much more or less than at lunchtime, but Nicole never stopped chattering. Carter never initiated contact with Nicole, but he didn’t rebuff her when she climbed into his lap after supper. If the threat of danger hadn’t been hanging over her, she might actually have let herself feel optimistic about the future.
She and Carter did the dishes together, while Nicole colored with crayons at the kitchen table. It was so much a picture of a natural, normal family that Desiree wanted to cry. Her feelings of guilt for marrying Carter without telling him the whole truth forced her to excuse herself and take Nicole up to bed early the night of her wedding.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said to Carter.
She didn’t know what to make of the look on his face—part desire, part regret, part something else she couldn’t identify—but fled upstairs as quickly as she could.
Once in bed, she couldn’t sleep. She heard Carter come upstairs, heard the shower, heard him brush his teeth, heard the toilet flush. His footsteps were soft in the hall, so she supposed he must be barefoot. She knew how cold the floor was, even with the worn runner, and wondered if his feet would end up as icy as Nicole’s always did. She hoped she wouldn’t be finding out too soon. As far as she was concerned, the longer it took Carter to end up in her bed, the better. Because he wasn’t going to be happy with what he discovered when he got there.
Then there was silence. Desiree heard the house creak as it settled. The wind howled and whistled and rattled her windowpanes. The furnace kicked on. She closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep.
Two sleepless hours later Desiree sat bolt upright, shoved the covers off and lowered her feet over the side of the bed, searching for her slippers in the glow from the tiny night-light that burned beside her bed.
“Damn!” she muttered. “Damn!”
She had spent two hours lying there pretending to sleep. Maybe a cup of hot chocolate would help. She opened the door to her bedroom and swore again. Apparently Carter had turned off the light she always left burning in the living room. It was her own fault, because she hadn’t told him to leave it on. But that meant she either had to brave the dark or turn on a light upstairs in order to see and take the risk of waking Carter.
Frankly, the darkness was less terrifying than the thought of facing a rudely awakened Carter when she was wearing a frayed silk nightgown, a chenille robe and tufted terry-cloth slippers. Desiree knew her naturally curly hair was a tumble of gnarled tresses worthy of a Medusa, and since she had washed off her makeup, her scar would be even more vivid.
She knew the spots on the stairs that would groan when stepped on. She had learned them as a child so she wouldn’t awaken her parents when she snuck down to shake her Christmas presents and try to determine what they were. She slid her hand down the smooth banister, walking quietly, carefully. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she turned on the tiny light that was usually always lit.
With the light, it was easy to make her way to the kitchen. The old refrigerator hummed as she opened it, and there was a slight clink as the bottles of ketchup and pickles on the door shifted. Even though she was careful, the copper-bottomed pot she planned to use to heat the milk clanked as she freed it from the stack in the cabinet beside the sink.
She was standing at the stove with her back to the kitchen door, when she heard footsteps in the hallway.
Someone was in the house!
Her heart galloped as she searched frantically for somewhere to hide, a place to escape. Then she realized Nicole was trapped upstairs. In order to get to her daughter she would have to confront whoever was in the house. She was halfway to the kitchen threshold, when she halted. Her hand gripped her robe and pulled it closed at the neck. She stared, wild-eyed, at the man in the doorway.
When she realized it was only Carter, bare-chested, barefoot, wearing a half-buttoned pair of frayed jeans that hung low on his hips, she almost sobbed with relief.
“Desiree? It’s the middle of the night. What are you doing down here? Are you all right?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I—”
He didn’t wait for her explanation, just crossed the distance between them and enfolded her in his arms.
Desiree stood rigid. She was aware of the heat of him, the male scent of him. She was appalled by the way her nipples peaked when they came in contact with his naked chest. She became certain that he must be able to feel her arousal, even through the layers of cloth that covered her, when she felt the hard ridge growing in his low-slung jeans.
“Desiree,” he murmured.
As his arms tightened around her, memories of the past rose up to choke her. And she panicked.
“No! Don’t touch me! Let me go!” Desiree struggled to be free of Carter’s constraining hold. She slapped at his face, beat at him with her fists, shoved and writhed to be free. But his hold, although gentle, was inexorable.
Desiree didn’t scream. She had learned not to scream. There was no one who would come to her rescue; she would have to save herself. She continued fighting until she finally realized through her panic that although he refused to release her, Carter wasn’t hurting her. At last, exhausted, she stood quivering in his arms, like a wild animal caught in a trap it realizes it cannot escape.
“There, now. That’s better,” Carter crooned. “Easy now. Everything’s gonna be all right now. You’re fine. You’re just fine.”
As Desiree recovered from her dazed state, she became aware that Carter was speaking in a low, husky voice. She was being held loosely in his arms, and his hands were rubbing her back as though she were a small child. She looked up and saw the beginning of a bruise on his chin and the bloody scratches on his face and froze.
“I hurt you,” she said.
“You’ve got a wicked right,” he agreed with a smile. He winced as the smile teased a small cut in his lip.
“I’m so sorry.”
He looked at her warily. “Would you like to explain what that commotion was all about?”
“No.”
His blue eyes narrowed. “No?”
“No.” For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to let her evade his question.
Then he sniffed and said, “Something’s burning.”
“My hot chocolate!” When she pulled away, he let her go. Desiree hurried to the stove, where the milk had burned black in the bottom of the pan. “Oh, no. Look at this mess!” She retrieved a pot holder and lifted the pot off the stove and settled it in the sink.
“You can make some more.”
“I don’t think I could sleep now if I drank a dozen cups of hot chocolate,” Desiree said in disgust.
“I heard a noise, and I came down to check it out,” Carter said in a crisp voice. “You’re the one who went crazy.”
“I didn’t—” Desiree cut herself off. Although she didn’t like the description, it fit her irrational behavior. She shoved a hand through her long brown hair and crossed the room to slump into one of the kitchen chairs. “Good Lord! I can’t imagine what you must think of me.”
Carter joined her at the table, turning a chair around and straddling it so he was facing her. “Do you think it would help to talk about it?”
Desiree wondered how much she should tell him. And how little he would settle for knowing. “My first marriage was a disappointment,” she admitted.
“I guessed something of the sort. How long were you married?”
“Two years. Then we divorced.”
“I was married for five years.”
“You were married?” Desiree didn’t know why she was so surprised. But she was. Suddenly she had a thought. Perhaps there was a good reason, after all, for Carter’s strange, distant behavior toward Nicole.
“Do you have children?”
“I have…had a five-year-old daughter. She died along with my wife in a car accident six years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.” No wonder he didn’t want to be around Nicole! Her daughter must be an awful reminder of his loss. Desiree knew there really was no comfort she could offer, except to share with him her own grievous loss. “My parents died the same way.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
A tense silence fell between them. Both wanted to ask more questions. But to ask questions was to suggest a willingness to answer them in return. And neither was ready to share with the other the secrets of their past.
It was Carter who finally broke the silence between them, his voice quiet, his tone as gentle as Desiree had ever heard it.
“If I’m going to get anything accomplished tomorrow I ought to get some sleep. But I don’t feel comfortable leaving you down here alone. Is there any chance you could sleep now?”
Quite honestly, Desiree thought she would spend the rest of the night staring at the ceiling. But she could see that Carter wasn’t going to go back to bed until she was settled. “I guess I am a little tired.”
“I’ll follow you upstairs,” he said.
Desiree rose and headed for the kitchen door. Before she had taken two steps, Carter blocked her way.
“I don’t know what to do to make you believe that I’d never hurt you,” he said.
“I…I believe you.”
Nevertheless, she flinched as he raised a hand to brush the hair away from her face.
His lips flattened. “Yeah. Sure.”
Desiree cringed at the sarcasm in his voice and fled up the stairs as fast as she could. Behind her she heard the steady barefoot tread of her husband. She hurried into her bedroom and shut the door behind her. She leaned back against the door and covered her face with her hands.
I hate you, Burley. I hate what you did to me. I hate the way you made me feel. And I hate the fact that I can never be a woman to the man I married today.
Hating didn’t help. Desiree had learned that lesson over the six long years since she had divorced Burley and gone on with her life. But she hadn’t been able to let go of the hate—or the fear.
