Slow Fever

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Men may scorn a tender heart and a soothing hand but they need them just the same. I wish Kylie would stop stuffing socks in her underwear to give her curves. Her father used to say that he pitied Kylie’s true love, for the man would have to be steady as a rock and fast to move, to keep firm hold of her.

—Anna Bennett’s Journal

Four weeks later, at midnight in mid-October, Michael slowed his four-wheeler as he passed Anna’s darkened house. Kylie’s small economy truck wasn’t sitting in its usual place beneath the big tree near Anna’s driveway. Since Kylie had been back and Mary Ann had been staying with him, Kylie had been stirring up all the males in Freedom Valley. Michael didn’t like wondering about Kylie’s whereabouts or companions.

He knew she had seen him with Mary Ann, buying groceries for the undernourished woman. Kylie’s blue eyes had focused immediately on Mary Ann’s slightly bulging tummy and her accusing glare had burned Michael. She’d stiffened, turned up her nose and had hurried down the grocery aisle away from him. He’d heard that she was fast and agile at touch football, and when she danced, she sizzled with so much sensuality that men stepped back to admire the flowing fit of her jeans and her sweater. With a sense of humor and a ready laugh and compassion, Kylie was on the dating block, and the unmarried men were circling her. Noah Douglas, John Lachlan, York Meadows and the rest were salivating, getting worked up to ask Kylie for a real date. They’d take their time, making certain they wouldn’t have to handle a woman on a divorcée’s crying jag, and then they’d move in.

Michael didn’t like the tense lock of his body when he thought about another man holding Kylie as they danced. He didn’t trust his need to hold her close and safe against him. Just returned to Freedom Valley, Michael had helped transfer Mary Ann’s few possessions into Thomas White’s large home three hundred miles away. With a background in nursing, Mary Ann would assume duties in Thomas’s doctor’s offices, located in the house, and Thomas could easily look after her tenuous pregnancy.

Tanner and Gwyneth had returned from their honeymoon. Just a field away from Anna’s, their remodeled home was also dark, but Tanner’s and Gwyneth’s trucks were parked side by side, just as they would lead their lives.

Michael’s hands clenched on his steering wheel as a deer leaped across the country road in front of him. After a month of dealing with Mary Ann’s health and helping her forge a new life, Michael’s nights were sleepless and haunted by the vision of Kylie’s plastic wrapped, curved body. He could still taste her kiss—could still remember her scent, like violets, the rich earthy scent of meadows in sultry sunshine, and a disturbing, more sensual, feminine scent.

Kylie was an irritant in the life he wanted to move smoothly, without ties. He couldn’t forget her and he wanted her, an unfamiliar emotion for a man who had trained himself to desire little else but money.

His vehicle’s tires slid smoothly over the gleaming cobblestones of Freedom’s town square, the 1880s two-story buildings lining it. Long ago, drovers passed through this town, celebrating after delivering their Texas cattle to Montana ranchers. Whatever woman-hunting ideas they’d brewed with their liquor were soon doused by Freedom’s Women’s Council. Men behaved like proper suitors in Freedom and some remained as good husbands. Others, who might have shared Michael’s distaste for boundaries and rules and ties of the heart, were told to move on.

Store windows gleamed in the streetlights as he passed. The worn-smooth cobblestone road that led to the church was one he would never travel in the customary way of a bridegroom, nor was he likely to take his love before the Women’s Council in an old-fashioned surrey. To court a woman of Freedom Valley by custom meant explaining why he wanted her in his life—as his bride and his wife—in front of a tough Women’s Council. Michael couldn’t see himself performing to their demands.

Kylie’s small pickup was parked in front of the Silver Dollar Tavern. The thought that she’d be wrapped in another man’s arms hit Michael like a Mack truck. The dark sweep of anger nettled. He parked directly behind her and damned himself for wanting to see her. The slamming of his door marked an intense emotion that startled him. Michael stopped on the sidewalk, listened to the jukebox music throbbing from the Silver Dollar and sucked in the crisp, calming night air. He didn’t need excuses to go inside—he told himself he needed a break after a hard day. Stopping for a beer had nothing to do with his need to see Kylie. Inside the tavern, the slow music was loud and the floor was packed with dancers, bodies laminated together as they swayed.

One quick scan of the room and Michael found Kylie massaging Brody Thor’s back as he sat leaning over the table, head resting on it, his arms dangling loosely at his sides. Dressed in a red sweatshirt and grass-stained jeans, Kylie was standing behind Brody, the owner and only employee of a concrete business. York Meadows, Koby Austin, his brothers—Adam and Laird—sat sprawled at a cluttered table. Their stares led to Fletcher Rowley, Gabriel Deerhorn, and Dylan Spotted Horse and Karolina’s table. From the noticeable grass and mud stains on their clothing, they’d been playing touch football again.

Michael felt like touching something and it wasn’t a football; it was Kylie. He recognized the men’s contemplative, closed expressions, as they studied Kylie’s curved body, flowing with the kneading movements. A sensual symphony of curls, Kylie’s hair was propped upon her head. The drift of the tendrils along her delicate nape begged for a man’s hand to ease them aside for a kiss on the soft curve.

After the first surprising wave of tenderness, desire slammed into Michael, stunning him, as he worked his path through the dancers. Lora Simmons pressed against him, running her hand over his chest. “Dance, handsome?”

“No, thanks.” Michael moved away from Lora’s perfumed curves and low-cut, tight sweater. He moved toward Kylie’s grass-stained sweatshirt and jeans. He had the unshakable sense that the image of Kylie’s plastic wrapped body had ruined him for other women. He tensed as he heard Brody groan in relief, Kylie’s slender fingers digging into the areas along his spine. Brody’s groans were too close to another sound that Michael didn’t want men making under Kylie’s touch.

She’d been honest in her need for sex that night at Anna’s. Michael inhaled slowly and considered Kylie’s expression, one of concentration on her task, her spiraling curls bobbing gently as she worked. She was healthy and strong and earthy. It wasn’t his business if Kylie wanted to make love—or was it?

He stood beside Kylie as she worked on Brody, finding his scalp through his hair and massaging it. Michael looked slowly to the other men, one at a time, and knew that every one wanted to be the body beneath Kylie’s strong, knowledgeable fingers. He knew his friends well enough to know that they’d deliberately strain a few muscles just to replace Brody’s aching ones under Kylie’s hands. “No,” he murmured quietly and recognized the momentary challenging flash in the men’s eyes.

Just noticing Michael, Kylie straightened and her expression immediately changed from one of concentration to one of frost. “Did she let you loose tonight?” she asked in a tone that could have frozen a forest fire.

“Dance?” he countered, dismissing her question and challenging her at the same time. Michael realized then that he’d wrapped his hand around her slender wrist, holding her.

He’d promised himself long ago that he wouldn’t need anyone. And now he needed Kylie. He studied his scarred and darkly tanned fingers against her fairer skin, shocked by the knowledge that he’d wanted to claim her for his own. He slowly released her wrist and removed his black leather jacket, tossing it to Gabriel Deerhorn.

The night he’d seen her in another tavern, a nineteen-year-old girl on a dare, determined to ride that mechanical bucking bull, he’d burned with the same dark anger. It was the only mechanical bucking bull in the countryside—miles from Freedom Valley—and Kylie and her friends had dressed older, just to get into the tavern. She’d rocked upon the bull, testing herself, swaying with the movements too slow to be dangerous. She’d concentrated on her task, her body flowing sensually as she moved around and stood and sat and tested her skill. The rhythmic symphony of curves had men drooling and had sucked away Michael’s breath when he’d first seen her. When he’d managed to pull his tongue off the floor, he told would-be takers that she was his wife and the baby needed her at home. Then he’d hauled her off that bull and she’d sulked at the lecture as he delivered her and her underage girlfriends each to their doorstep. The last one to reach her home, Kylie had simmered and then lunged at him. “Little girl,” he’d said, trying to distance his need to give her a taste of what she’d been asking from him. “Take it inside and don’t worry your mother.”

It was just the same now; Michael couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Kylie had always been his.

The thought zinged through Michael, shocking him as Kylie’s blue eyes darkened. His gaze slid to her lips and then slowly down her body, marking the sudden rise and fall of her breasts. “I asked you to dance. Yes or no?”

Kylie’s chin lifted and she spoke quietly, only to him. The color of her blue eyes had changed to steel flashing up at him. “Tell me first—do you have that woman living with you now or not? And is it your baby?”

“Interested in me?” he asked, challenging her as he took her hand, laced her fingers with his and led her the few steps to the dance floor.

“I’m older and I’m wiser. I don’t want to sit on the back of your motorcycle now. And you weren’t invited here, and just how much of my life did you tell your girlfriend?”

“Put your hands on me like you did on Brody and you’ll find out more than you want to know,” he murmured. His hand sought the curved indentation of her waist and hip to draw her close. For just an instant, his fingers dug in slightly to the soft curve, claiming her.

Michael breathed unevenly, stunned by his first experience to make certain this woman was his.

“Brody’s back injury needs a good stroking treatment to relax—I’m not explaining anything to you.”

“‘Stroking?”’ Michael repeated her term darkly, unfamiliar with the emotions storming him. The word brought the image of lovemaking slapping at him.

“Soothing him. It’s a technique in Swedish massage.” Her breath caught as his arm slid around her, holding her close against him.

She recognized that whipcord strength, moving too quickly for her to resist. He’d acted like that at the infamous bucking bull incident. His thigh pressed between hers, leading into a dance step, and Kylie tensed, moving stiffly to his direction. “The Women’s Council should have changed the rules that men always lead in dancing, too.”