Gazing into his eyes, Brianna wouldn’t allow herself to believe in what she saw there. He didn’t love her. He loved Daphne because he thought she was his own flesh and blood. How would he feel when he learned she wasn’t?
Immediately following his talk with Brianna, David went to sit in front of his office and wait for Hazel Wright to leave the school and walk the length of Main to her little house, provided for her by the town. He could face her now. Brianna had agreed to the story he and Ace felt should be told. He’d relate it to Hazel and try to assuage her hurt feelings, and hopefully they’d part as friends.
It wasn’t long before David saw her trudging along the dirt thoroughfare. She wore a pretty green dress and a lacy shawl the color of whipped cream. When David stepped out into her path, she jerked to a halt and pierced him with a wounded gaze that made him feel like shit. He’d never meant to hurt her.
“Hazel, can we talk?”
“Yes.” She swept past him. “At my place. I will not be humiliated out here on the street.”
David felt like a dog trained to heel as he followed her home. Once inside her sitting room, he swept off his hat. Meeting her gaze dead on, he said, “I know I’ve got some explaining to do. Just please know I never meant to mislead you.”
She stepped over to a round table at the end of her settee and opened a carved box. The next instant, David felt the sting of something hit him in the face. He looked down and saw the gold pendant he’d given her lying at his feet.
“You are a lying, faithless scoundrel!” she shrieked.
“Hazel, please. Just hear me out.”
She disappeared into the kitchen. A second later, she reappeared with a broom. David realized she meant to hit him with it, and he had the option of ducking, but he’d hurt this woman and figured he had a hard lick coming. He braced as she swung. The broom handle caught him alongside the head, and for a second he saw stars.
“Get out!” she cried. “And take your lies with you!”
David nodded. “All right. I understand your anger. You’re entitled to it. I just wish you’d listen and—”
She swung with the broom again. Until that moment, David hadn’t realized that Sam had followed him into the house. The dog yelped as the broom handle connected with his back. He scrambled behind David, whining. David stared hard at this woman he’d once tried to tell himself he loved. Had he taken leave of his senses? He couldn’t stand people who abused animals, and Sam had done nothing to deserve a wallop.
Head still smarting, David turned, flung open the front door, and nudged his dog out on the porch. To hell with giving her an explanation. As far as he was concerned, she no longer deserved one. Before he could close the portal behind him, Hazel took two more swings, nailing David on the knee and Sam on the head. That cinched it.
David rounded on her. “Take your anger out on me, but leave Sam alone.”
She struck David on the arm. “A pox on you and your stinking dog!”
When she tried to hit Sam again, David flung up his arm to block the blow. The broom handle snapped clean in two. Hazel stared at the broken wood. Before she could decide to stab Sam with a sharp end, David cleared the porch, ordering his dog to follow him.
So much for trying to do the right thing. From here on out, Hazel Wright could pickle in her own bitterness.
Over the next many days, Brianna’s life with David fell into a pattern. He stayed above the shop a few nights a week and went back to the ranch the other nights. On town nights, they circled each other. Brianna felt like a splash of kerosene exposed to an open flame. To her the tension between them seemed so electrical that a mere touch of their fingers set off sparks, and she truly felt as if her very flesh might ignite. As she had out on the prairie, she often found herself watching him, admiring his physique. The play of muscle under his clothes fascinated her. From the corner of her eye, she enjoyed observing the way his thighs flexed as he moved. The rich sound of his voice made all her nerve endings thrill. She even liked how he looked in what she had come to think of as his “desperado” garb. In Boston, no one would ever mistake him for a gentleman, but she had come to appreciate his rough edges and strength, finding those traits far more appealing than tailored suits and manicured nails.
With David in the apartment, she felt protected against all outside dangers. Perversely, it was only David himself who presented a threat to her peace of mind. Sometimes when she caught him studying her, she saw a glint of desire in his eyes and knew he wanted to bed her and make their pretend marriage a real one. Brianna held firm, not because she still harbored any fear of him, but because consummating the marriage would be unfair to him. When the day came that he realized Daphne wasn’t his, Brianna wanted him to be free to leave her and make a life with someone else. He was far too honorable a man to ever make that choice if he believed she might be pregnant or if they’d had a child together.
No. She would be strong for both of them. If he ever wanted out, there would be nothing to hold him back. She just hoped he didn’t choose to be with that snotty Hazel Wright.
Hazel came into the dress shop nearly every day after school, and without fail, she was spitefully unpleasant. Though Brianna could understand Hazel’s feelings of resentment toward her, she began to dread the visits.
“This satin is less fine than what Clarissa kept in stock,” she said one afternoon. “You’ll soon find yourself out of business if you try to sell gowns of lesser quality to optimize your profits.”
Brianna, standing behind the display case, met Hazel’s glittery blue gaze. “Actually, that particular satin was here when I bought the shop. Dorothy Chandler is delighted with the gown I fashioned for her from that bolt. It’s so popular I’ll need to order more soon.”
Another time, Hazel bypassed the snide remarks and went right for Brianna’s throat. “I’ve heard the story of your marriage to David, and I’m convinced it’s a bunch of poppycock. He isn’t the kind of man who would court me when he was married to another woman.”
Brianna put down the child’s frock she was hemming and stood to face Hazel. “You’re free to think what you like, I suppose. The story you heard is the truth.”
“So David is a conscienceless philanderer?”
“I didn’t say that,” Brianna replied. “David is a fine man. I don’t believe he has it in him to do anything dishonest or unkind.”
“Really?” Hazel studied a brooch displayed on velvet inside the glass case. “Well, he certainly had no problem being unfaithful to you. He courted me. He bought me gifts. He was about to propose marriage. If he’s such a fine man, why was he contemplating bigamy?”
Brianna moistened her lips. “At the time, David and I were discussing divorce in our correspondence. David believed he would soon be free to marry. As it happened, though, we began sorting out our differences in our letters, and we changed our minds about ending the marriage.”
Hazel brought the flat of her hand down on the glass with such force that the report was deafening. “You’re lying! And mark my words, Mrs. Paxton, one of these days I will take great pleasure in exposing you for the trollop that you really are.”
Brianna clenched her teeth to keep from saying anything in response. When Hazel left the shop, she hugged her waist, bent her head, and tried to stop shaking. David entered the shop just then. Brianna jerked and looked up.
“What the hell did she want?” he asked.
“She knows, David. She knows it’s all a lie.”
He strode over to grasp Brianna’s shoulders. “She knows nothing for certain, Shamrock. Don’t let her upset you this way.”
“It’s difficult to remain calm when someone is being so nasty.”
David cupped her cheek in his hand. His touch sent a tingle all the way to her toes. She’d come to love the light caress of his thumb over her cheek, and it took all her strength of will not to lean into him right then and beg him to hold her close.
“You want me to tell her to stay away from the shop?” h
e asked.
Brianna collected herself and stepped away from him. “No. It’s a place of business, open to the public. If we did that, we’d only be adding fuel to the fire.”
David sighed and put his hands at his hips. “You’re probably right. Maybe you should just ignore her. You’re not obligated to talk with her about anything personal. If she makes snide remarks or asks questions she has no business asking, try pretending that you don’t hear.”
“I’ll do that.”
For David, his nights in town were a mixture of pleasure and torture. He greatly enjoyed the evenings above the dress shop, with Daphne chattering while they fixed supper and then entertaining them with stories of her day during the meal. With school out of session in less than a month, he was pleased to hear that the child was making friends. She particularly liked Kaylee Thompson, Brad and Bess’s blond, green-eyed daughter, a bright little four-year-old who’d entered first grade a year early. Then there was Ralph Banks, Eva and Charley’s son, a stocky boy, soon to turn twelve, who’d taken Daphne under his wing; and Donnie Christian, a jet-haired little pistol with mischief gleaming in his blue eyes, who would celebrate his eighth birthday in June. Daphne regaled them with tales of Donnie’s latest pranks in class.
“So how do you like your teacher?” Brianna asked one night at supper.
Daphne wrinkled her nose. “She’s all right, I guess. She’s not mean to me or anything. I just don’t think she likes me very well.”
Brianna shot David a worried look. Later, as he helped her with the dishes, he tried to reassure her in a hushed voice. “Surely Hazel won’t take out her anger on a child.” He remembered Hazel’s attacks on Sam and prayed he was right. Anyone who’d hit a dog without cause might mistreat a little girl. “I mean—well, I know she’s doing a burn, but none of it is Daphne’s fault.”
“Let us hope.” Brianna plunged her hands into the sudsy dishwater. “So far, I’ve detected nothing in that woman’s character that I deem commendable.”
Clutching the towel in both fists, David yearned to toss it down and encircle Brianna’s waist from behind so he could nibble on the nape of her neck. Tiny dark curls had escaped her chignon to rest against her pale skin. He imagined nosing them aside, tasting her, breathing in the scent of her until he felt intoxicated. She had apparently purchased bath salts and was using them, for even at three feet away, David caught the light, heady fragrance of roses.
The yearning to hold her plagued him every night when he stayed in town. Small as the apartment was, he brushed against her in the kitchen as they worked, and each time, his body reacted. Later tonight, he knew he would lie awake on the cot, listening to the sounds of her breathing and turning over only a few feet away. And he would wish as he had a dozen times before that he could make those springs sing a different tune. She was his wife, damn it, and he suspected that she was as attracted to him as he was to her, yet she held him at arm’s length.
When the kitchen was tidy, David sat at the table with Daphne to help with her homework while Brianna sat in a corner rocker, hand stitching the hem of a gown for Tory Thompson, Tobias’s wife. Though she’d placed a lighted lantern at her elbow, she squinted to see. It was time, David thought, to get the upstairs wired for electricity. There was a social scheduled for the first part of June, and a lot of ladies were ordering new dresses for the occasion. Brianna was even working on a gown for herself in her spare time, the cloth the color of burgundy wine. David couldn’t wait to see her in it even though he had no idea what it would look like finished. Burgundy. Normally Brianna gravitated toward dark, drab colors. Her decision to wear something brighter and more striking gave David hope that she was beginning to relax a little in their marriage.
He didn’t believe in making Daphne’s study hours at night boring, so instead he tried to turn everything into a game. Tonight she was studying the presidents of the United States. Tomorrow for her test, she would have to recite their names in the order of their terms of office. To David it seemed a hard assignment for first grade, and he was thankful she wasn’t required to spell them.
“So who is our president right now?” he asked.
“Benjamin Harrison,” Daphne replied.
“No, sir!” David protested. “What happened to Grover Cleverhand?”
Daphne giggled. “Cleveland, Papa, not Cleverhand.”
“I know his name was Cleverhand. I voted for him. He came into office right after Arthur Chester.”
“No, you have it backward. His name was Chester A. Arthur!”
David turned to Brianna. “Tell her I’ve got it right.”
Brianna smiled slightly. “You know very well you have it wrong. Why must every study session be a bunch of tomfoolery?”
David wanted to reply that she never engaged in tomfoolery, which was even worse. Brianna always held herself apart, watching and seeming to take pleasure in her daughter’s laughter, but never departing from her ladylike behavior to join in. Why? The question bothered David continuously. He sensed in Brianna a great capacity for laughter and silliness, so why did she keep herself stifled and under strict control?
By evening’s end, Daphne knew all the presidents’ names and years in office. David tucked her in with a tale he made up about a big old tomcat that was terrified of mice. Toward the end of the story, Daphne fell asleep, clutching their lucky penny in her small hand.
When David returned to the kitchen, Brianna was still hunched over her sewing. He wanted so badly to jerk the gown from her hands, draw her into his arms, and kiss her senseless. Instead he bade her good night and went to bed on his lonely cot. Sleep evaded him. Being around Brianna so much had his manly urges in a constant stir.
An hour later when she entered the room, she closed the door and drew down the blind, plunging the room into total darkness, apparently thinking it would give her privacy as she undressed. Soon moonlight penetrated the shade, though, enabling David to see far more clearly than she realized. The pale glow of a slender arm, the roundness of a hip, the plumpness of her bottom. He squeezed his eyes closed, unable to watch for fear he’d leap from the cot and take her into his arms.
After she drew on a nightdress and got into bed, he waited to hear her breathing change. He waited—and waited. Finally he realized that she had the wide-awakes, too. Was she feeling the same deep yearnings for a physical relationship between them? Yeah, right. Sometimes when they bumped against each other in the kitchen, she gasped softly and jerked away as if his touched burned her.
On weekends, Daphne loved staying at the ranch with her father, and Brianna didn’t have the heart to say the child couldn’t go. They usually returned home early enough Sunday evening for Daphne to do her homework, bathe, and get to bed for a good night’s sleep, but occasionally David packed Daphne a fresh change of clothes, toiletries, and her schoolbooks so they could come back Monday morning, just in time for the child’s first class of the day.
Either way, the time alone seemed like an eternity to Brianna. She’d never been apart from her daughter, and the child’s absences left her feeling empty and cast adrift. David always invited Brianna to go, of course, but she normally declined. David’s family was almost as easy to love as he was, and Brianna saw no point in condemning herself or them to heartbreak. The truth was bound to rear its ugly head, and then Brianna and Daphne would no longer be considered a part of the Paxton clan.
Brianna worried about the outcome for Daphne. She had adored David from the start, and now she was becoming deeply fond of everyone else. Sadly, Brianna was powerless to prevent her child from opening herself up to future pain. Daphne returned from each visit with countless tales of Ace, Joseph, Esa, Grandma Dory, Rachel, Caitlin, and her little cousins. There were family suppers, cookie bakes, games in the yard, and horseback rides. She’d fallen so madly in love with David’s dog, Sam, that David spoke of getting himself a new puppy.
On town nights, Brianna remained tense with David in the house. The most innocent of touches made her he
art race. Was it longing she felt? Sometimes she caught him watching her with a speculative expression. More and more often, she found herself wishing that he would make the first move and put her out of her misery. Maybe, she reasoned, she’d find pleasure in his arms. Was she foolish to resist what was surely the only practical outcome?
No. David still believed Daphne was his daughter, but one day, he would realize she wasn’t and might want out. As much as Brianna appreciated the life he had given her and Daphne—and as much as she might wish that it could go on this way forever—going to bed with David would be underhanded of her. She’d come to care too deeply about the man to entrap him.
Even so, when she lay awake at night, filled with yearnings both new and frightening to her, she knew they couldn’t possibly go on like this. No man and woman could live under the same roof for any period of time, pretending to be married, without one or both of them developing physical yearnings.
Each night when she dressed for bed under cloak of darkness, she leaped if a floorboard creaked, thinking David had risen from his cot and was crossing the room. When she was finally able to sleep, she jerked awake if David so much as rolled over. Was he awake, too? Did he ache deep inside like she did? Sometimes she could have sworn she smelled his cologne and the musky, male scent of his skin. If he came to her, what would she do? Brianna greatly feared that one gentle touch of his hand would obliterate her good sense.
Some mornings David got up feeling as if he hadn’t slept a wink. But not even exhaustion could dampen his mounting desire for Brianna. Nights became a torture for him, with his manhood as erect as a flagpole, the throbbing in his loins so pronounced that he ached in his lower abdomen. This is madness! He’d been crazy to think he could live this way. He wanted Brianna more than he’d ever wanted another woman. But how would he ever manage to convince her of that? She believed that his every show of affection toward her was born out of obligation. Horseshit.