Nick's Long-Awaited Honeymoon

“Promise?”

His throat convulsed and all but closed. How many promises had he failed to keep these past seven years? “I promise, Savannah.”

Her smile finished the job to his throat, her arms winding shyly around his neck. “Good night, Daddy.”

He must have answered, because Savannah allowed her mother to lead her from the room without a struggle. Nick hovered in the doorway until they were out of sight. Then, testing the shakiness of his legs, he strode into the next room and the next. There was an old-fashioned kitchen with a monstrous antique stove and a round oak table, a bathroom with a claw-footed tub and green tile floor. A door led to the backyard via a laundry room. Another door led to the side yard off the kitchen. In fact, as far as he could tell, there were three exterior doors on the main floor. And enough low windows with faulty, or no, locks to make him shudder. The house had all the security of a chicken coop.

The floor creaked slightly, alerting him to Brittany’s presence behind him. “What are you doing, Nick?”

Trying for nonchalance, he crossed his arms and slowly turned around. “Is Savannah asleep?”

At her nod, he realized he’d been lost in thought longer than he’d realized. Shrugging, he said, “I guess I was snooping. This is quite a house.”

“It has seven bedrooms,” she answered. “That’s a lot of rooms to heat, believe me.”

Nick thought they were a lot of rooms for someone to hide in.

“Isn’t it incredible?” she asked, spreading her arms wide to encompass the entire house.

The light was on in the kitchen behind him and in the living room behind her, but not in the tiny alcove where they were both standing. As if she didn’t think it was wise to stay too long in a darkened room with him, she took a backward step, then deftly led the way through another door.

Nick followed as far as the doorway. Leaning one hip against the oak trim, he watched her switch on a low lamp.

“At one time this was used as a study,” she said. “It’s my favorite room. This house was one of the first to be built in Jasper Gulch and belonged to the first doctor to settle in this part of the territory.”

She strode to a low table where she turned on another lamp. The soft bulb cast shadows into the corners, delineating the curve of her hip through the thin fabric of her dress. She was talking about the history of the house, but Nick couldn’t stop thinking about the history between them. He took a step toward her, propelled by the need to be closer and something else he’d never fully understood.

Her hair looked even darker in the soft lamplight. Tendrils curled over the collar of her green dress and clung to her cheeks, accenting the delicate hollows below her cheekbones and the darkness of her eyes. She slanted him a look, then immediately started to speak, as if she thought talking would break the pull that had always been between them. He could have told her there was nothing she could do to accomplish that, but he didn’t want her to stop talking. Lord, he’d missed the clear, sultry sound of her voice.

“See those books?” she asked, gesturing to a tall bookcase. “Some of them are the very texts Doctor Avery used to treat patients. I think he used this room as an examination room when he first started his practice.” She moved again, this time to sweep a thick curtain aside. “Look at this. Fur traders and Indians and later gold seekers and cowboys could come right in without traipsing through the rest of the house.”

Nick stared at the narrow oak panels behind the curtain. Make that four doors leading directly to the outside.

“Nick, what is it?”

Nick heard the hesitation in her voice, saw it in her eyes. He didn’t know what to tell her, how much to tell her, if he should tell her at all. He waited a moment too long to come up with an answer, because she straightened, bristling.

“I was hoping you would try to keep an open mind.”

Ignoring the stiffness he’d acquired during his twelve-hour drive from Chicago, he tried to decide whether to be relieved or angry that she’d automatically jumped to the wrong conclusion. “Don’t I always keep an open mind?”

“Pu-lease.”

“What?”

She was staring at him, mouth gaping. “Since when have you been open-minded about anything?”

He started to speak, closed his mouth and tried again, only to repeat the process. By the time he’d thought of an answer, she was trying not to smile. He almost couldn’t speak all over again. “Well,” he finally said, “I didn’t punch Forrest in the nose when he kissed you tonight.”

“It was very big of you to refrain from hitting a man who was making an innocent pass at me in a crowded room, Nick.”

He stared at her silently, then took a step closer.

“What?” she asked.

“Oh. I was just thinking about the first time I saw you. It seems to me you were with another man that night, too.”

Brittany took careful note of Nick’s features and calmly crossed her arms. “I was not with another man tonight. And the night we met I was with a boy.”

“Your hair was long then,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken. “It hung straight and shimmery halfway down your back. Every time I looked at it I knew I had to wrap my hands in it. Never mind that you were too young, too innocent and way too good for a boy like me.”

Brittany knew she should put a stop to all this reminiscing. Just as she knew she had to put the past in perspective. And she would, as soon as she got her bearings and reminded herself of her resolve. That had always been hard to do with Nick. If he had walked directly to her, she could have put her hand up to ward off his advance. But he only took one slow, easy step at a time, and he kept talking in that same easy way he had, melting her resolve one degree at a time.

“Never mind that I had a bear of an exam to take at the police academy at 8:00 a.m. the next morning and my brother would have had my butt in a sling if I was late,” he said, his blue eyes now as soft and mellow as lamplight.

Brittany tried to swallow the hoarseness in her throat “We went out for burgers, Nick, and talked until midnight. But you never touched my hair that night.”

“I was imagining it the whole time, savoring the moment, enjoying the anticipation.” He reached up and threaded his fingers through the hair at her ear.

“It isn’t long anymore,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes. And she knew he was savoring again. A muscle convulsed in his throat and his lips parted. And then, as if he’d had all the savoring he could stand, he pulled her to him and covered her mouth with his.

His kiss was as familiar as the sound of her own name, his scent one that could never be bottled. She breathed it all the way to the bottom of her lungs, the scent of man and soap and cold winter air. Her own eyes drifted closed, her lips parting beneath his.

His mouth moved over hers like a man a long time denied. He’d always kissed her like this, even the first time. He’d swept her off her feet that night. And she’d let him. She didn’t blame him. And she didn’t blame herself. She’d been a lonely girl in another new town, and he’d been a dark, brooding nineteen-year-old with a bad-boy smile and an amazingly kind heart. She’d been hopelessly in love with him. Also hopelessly naive. She’d latched on to him for stability, when she should have been nurturing her own fledgling strength.

She was older now and wiser and, God help her, stronger. Strong enough to put an end to what was happening between them before it burned out of control.

He groaned what sounded like her name. Deepening the kiss, he wrapped his arms around her back, molding her to every hard inch of him. Even as she sighed his name she knew what she had to do. She shuddered, turning her face an inch and then two. Sucking in a ragged breath of air, she straightened her spine and let her arms fall away from his waist.

He kissed her cheek, her temple, the delicate ridge of her ear, moaning in protest when she shook her head.

“Nick. We can’t do this. Not anymore.”

Chapter Two

“Please, Nick. We have to stop.”

Nick heard Brittany’s hoarse whisper. He felt her stiffen, her arms going limp at her sides. His breathing was ragged, his body so taut with need he couldn’t see straight.

Stop?

He never wanted to stop. But Brittany was drawing away, pulling out of his embrace. And he had no choice but to let her go. Just as he’d had no choice six months ago when she’d told him she wanted to move to Jasper Gulch, South Dakota.

“That shouldn’t have happened, Nick.”

He could have argued. Heaven knew he was good at it. But the dull and troubled edge in her voice kept him silent.

“I don’t know how it happened,” she said quietly.

There was no controlling the sound he made deep in his throat. He knew exactly how it had happened. The same way it had always happened between them. They could be talking one minute, arguing, even, and the next thing either of them knew they were tangled up in sheets.

Tonight Brittany hadn’t let it get to that point. She was standing across from him in the narrow room, glancing from him to her watch and back again. “It’s late.”

Too late? he wanted to ask.

Her eyes pleaded with him not to, so he took a deep breath and made a feeble stab at idle conversation, instead. They exhausted the topic of the weather in about ten seconds. After that they talked about Savannah. Brittany seemed relieved, and latched on to the subject, rattling off the name of Savannah’s teacher and her new best friend. He’d spoken to Savannah on the telephone often, so he already knew her favorite subject was math, but he let Brittany tell him, anyway. Since they both loved their daughter to distraction, talking about her was safe. Or at least as safe as any subject was for them.

He followed Brittany into the kitchen where she brewed tea for herself. She didn’t have any beer, but she offered him a soda. They took their drinks to the living room and sat in the comfortable old furniture, he on the sofa, she with her feet curled underneath her on a matching overstuffed chair, her high-heeled shoes sitting crookedly on the carpet below. They could have been two friends talking late on a Saturday night. Except they’d always been more than friends.

When they ran out of things to say about their daughter, Brittany told him about some of the history she’d learned about Jasper Gulch. Every now and then the wind rattled a windowpane or a shutter. Nick was aware of every sound, but little by little the smooth cadence of Brittany’s voice worked over him. His soda grew warm as she spun tales of the man who’d founded this town and others who had come to help him. Few people had Brittany’s gift for bringing the past to life, describing the people of another time as if she’d lived there with them. She would have made a marvelous teacher. No doubt every little boy in her class would have had a crush on her.

Her eyes were so dark he couldn’t see the pupils from here, but there was no disguising the interest in their depths. “Jasper Carson arrived here from the Black Hills more than a hundred years ago with a widow he’d won in a poker game at his side and a little gold in his pocket,” she explained. “He married the woman and founded the town, but it was Abigail Carson who gave the town its name.”

Intrigued by the story, Nick settled himself more comfortably into the cushions, listening to her tale.

“Local legend paints Jasper as a rugged, handsome, exasperating man. If you ask any of the Carsons alive today they’ll claim they’ve inherited each and every one of those traits. According to Jasper’s journals, Abigail was none too happy with her fate. It seemed she wouldn’t give her new husband the time of day, if you know what I mean.”

Nick almost blurted out that only a woman could make such a statement so soon after being kissed so thoroughly, so completely by a man who knew every inch of her body, every nuance of her personality, the meaning behind every one of her sighs. Clearing his throat that had suddenly gone dry, he said, “Did she? Finally give him the time of day, I mean.”

Brittany smiled, warming to the tale. “Evidently he won on that point, but lost on the one about the town’s name. Abigail grew to love him, but she insisted they name the town after his first name, instead of his last. Thus, Jasper Gulch was born, followed in close succession by three Carson sons.”

“Then their marriage was built on give and take and survived in the midst of incredible odds.”

Her smile faded. “Nick.”

He sat forward, elbows resting on his thighs, his hands folded as if in prayer. “I know what you’re going to say, Brittany. I know we’ve been over this a thousand times. Believe me, I know. But I also know that what we shared in the doctor’s study twenty minutes ago was pretty damned incredible. I can’t just forget it. Can you?”

She jumped to her feet and paced to the other side of the room. “You’re right. We have been over this a thousand times. We’ve said it all a thousand different ways, with caution and confusion, in anger, in defiance, in disbelief and in tears.

You and I both know the attraction has always been explosive between us. But we also know our problems have a way of returning with the dawn.”

She came to a stop near the kitchen, her vehemence fading to a kind of acceptance Nick liked a lot less. He didn’t remember standing up, but as long as he was on his feet, he strode closer. As she watched him, her eyes grew round and wary. It hurt more than any insult she could have uttered, and stopped him in his tracks.

“I’ve missed you, you know.”

Her shoulders sagged. “I know. I’ve missed you, too. And so has Savannah.”

Nick ran a hand through his hair. He wanted to shout in frustration. And then he wanted to carry Brittany to the nearest bed and make love to her all night long. He wanted them to give their marriage another chance. He already knew what she would say if he whispered his wish out loud: “We’ve given our marriage another chance a hundred times.”

And they had.

The marriage counselor they’d seen had been quick to attribute their problems to their childhoods. Nick had already known who was to blame, and it wasn’t his mother. He was twenty-nine years old, and he’d spent most of the ten years he’d known Brittany trying to make things right.

“We’re hopeless, aren’t we?” she said quietly.

Nick shook his head. “I’m hopeless. You’re beautiful.”

He was vaguely aware of a sound in the foyer, but he couldn’t seem to pull his gaze away from Brittany’s sad smile. The door opened before he came to his senses.

“Yoo-hoo, we’re home.”

Nick swung around and swore under his breath. He’d seen corpses with a better reaction time than his had been.

Home? he thought, recovering slightly. Exactly how many people lived here?

Crystal Galloway closed the door for a frail, little old lady. “We would have been here sooner,” she said, slipping an arm around the old lady’s shoulders, “but Mertyl wanted to do the chicken dance one more time.” Pointing to the back of Mertyl’s head, Crystal mouthed, “She’s sloshed.”

“Mertyl,” Brittany said, reacting to Crystal’s head gesture, “you must be exhausted.”

A cat meowed its way down the open stairway, landing in Mertyl’s arms with a thud that nearly toppled her. The old lady mumbled something Nick couldn’t make out. She listened for a moment before mumbling something else. He didn’t know who was keeping up the other end of the conversation, but even her overweight yellow cat looked at her strangely.

Mertyl couldn’t have weighed more than ninety-five pounds. Obviously she couldn’t hold her liquor. Her eyes were a little too bright, her smile crooked, her head nodding like those toy dogs people put in the back windows of their cars. She was a head shorter than Crystal and was getting shorter by the second. Nick made it to her side and had her back on her feet before her knees gave out.

“Beautiful bride, just beautiful,” Mertyl declared out of the blue. “Cake was a mite dry, but the punch was the best I ever tasted.”

“Come on, dear,” Crystal said from Mertyl’s other side. “Let’s get Daisy settled upstairs. Want me to show Nick to a room, too?” she asked Brittany.

Brittany felt Nick’s eyes on her, but her gaze was trained on Crystal. There was something exotic about the shape of Crystal’s green eyes and the way they peered out at the world beneath all that wavy blond hair. The two of them had become fast friends soon after Crystal had moved to Jasper Gulch three months ago. Soul sisters, Crystal called them. The woman could speak her mind one minute, bare her soul the next and put a person in his or her place without batting an eye. Right now, in her own straightforward way, she was offering Brittany a reprieve. That would allow Brittany to put a little distance between her and Nick, and she could put things back into perspective.

Feeling less shaky, Brittany looked at Nick. He stared back at her, a muscle working in one lean cheek. She’d missed him these past six months, but she hadn’t missed the upheaval he brought back into her life. It wasn’t anything he did. It was the way she felt when he was near. His kiss had left its mark on her senses, and on his. She knew what he wanted. It was there in the way he looked at her, in the way he held his shoulders and drew in a sharp breath. One word from her could make all the difference in the world. And no difference whatsoever.

They’d been down this road before, giving in to the physical aspect of their marriage time and time again. Six months apart had sharpened that need, but she didn’t see how it could have changed all the reasons they had for separating. And it certainly hadn’t changed the biggest reason of all.

Taking great care to tear her gaze away, she said, “Crystal, are you sure you don’t mind showing Nick and Mertyl to their rooms?”

Crystal smiled down at Mertyl. “If Nick would be kind enough to help Mertyl and me up those tricky old stairs, we can handle the rest, can’t we Mertyl?”

Mertyl continued to nod, but Nick ground his teeth so hard his jaw ached. The only room he wanted to be shown to, dammit, was Brittany’s. There happened to be two very good reasons. One had to do with desire, the other with her safety. She would scoff at his mention of those two things in the same breath. When had one ever had anything to do with the other?

From his position he could see two of the four doors on this floor. He glanced over his shoulder where the open stairway stretched toward a dark upper level. He wondered if he would hear an intruder from that far away. And if he did, could he get down here and into Brittany’s and Savannah’s rooms in time?

“Come on, Nick,” Crystal said shrewdly. “You’re starting to look as green around the gills as poor Mertyl. Up we go.”

Nick gave Brittany one last look, leaving her to make what she wanted of his dark expression. No matter what she thought, things weren’t over between them. They would talk again. Morning, noon and night if necessary. Maybe they had already tried to make their marriage work a hundred times. Somehow he had to convince her to try once more.

For now, he helped Crystal get the elderly lady into one of the bedrooms upstairs. The cat hissed at him for his trouble. Coming out of her stupor, Mertyl did the same, squinting up at him with distrust. “Who’s he?” she asked Crystal.

“This is Nick Colter,” Crystal said, turning back the blankets.

Clasping the lapels of her pink cardigan sweater tightly in one hand and holding her cat in the other, Mertyl still managed to point a shaking finger at Crystal. “I don’t entertain strange men in my room, Missy, and neither should you.”

Nick found himself backing from the room, Crystal right behind him. Laughing out loud, Crystal said, “Believe me, Mertyl, I’m with you.”

The old lady gave Crystal a feeble good-night, glared at Nick and closed the door with a firm click. Within seconds a lock ground into place.

“Why, Nicky, I don’t believe she trusts you.”

Nick scowled. Nobody had called him Nicky since the third grade.

“Which room do you want to sleep in tonight?” Crystal asked. “Perhaps I should rephrase the question. Which room upstairs? You can have your choice of the three that aren’t rented.”

Nick stopped at the first door he came to. “Rented?”

Dropping a stack of blankets and sheets she’d taken from a hall closet into his hands, Crystal said, “Yes, rented. By boarders.” At his blank expression, she said, “You might have noticed that motels aren’t exactly popping up all over town. In fact, this is the only boarding house in Jasper Gulch. Didn’t Brittany tell you she bought it?”

Now that Nick thought about it he remembered the old man at the wedding reception saying something about a boarding house on Custer Street. But no, Brittany hadn’t mentioned anything about the fact that she’d purchased it.

Suddenly the tedious twelve-hour drive from Chicago, the fear that came from looking over his shoulder and the seemingly impenetrable walls Brittany had erected converged into one huge knot between his shoulder blades. He really was exhausted, emotionally and physically. He needed a good night’s sleep. The bedroom next to Mertyl’s wasn’t his first choice of places to spend the night, not by a long shot, but at least it was near the top of the stairs and within hearing distance of the first floor. Dropping the sheets and blankets over the iron bed frame, he turned around. He expected to find Crystal hovering nearby, but a quick glance in the hall found it empty.

Kneading the knot at the back of his neck, he closed the door and looked at his surroundings. The room could have come straight out of an old Western movie. The walls and ceiling were covered with faded wallpaper. The floor was hardwood, a throw rug the only thing covering the marred and scuffed surface. A lamp was perched on a painted bedside table, the only other furniture in the room a mismatched dresser and the double bed. He’d slept in a lot worse places, and supposed that for now any bed would do.

He was in the process of stuffing a pillow into a case when a knock sounded on the door behind him. Hope that it might be Brittany sprang out of nowhere, only to die at his first glimpse of blond hair instead of brown. Crystal shouldered her way into the room and dropped his duffel bag and suitcase on the floor.

With one eyebrow raised, she said, “Sorry to disappoint you.”

The woman obviously read body language very well. Nick saw no sense in trying to explain, so he simply shrugged and said, “Thanks for bringing up my bags.”

She turned to go. “Nick?” she said over her shoulder.

He shook the sheet out. Holding it in midair, he waited for her to continue.

“Brittany says good night.”

His throat constricted and his eyes closed for a moment, the sheet falling to the bed. Crystal Galloway had a walk that could stop traffic, and probably had. She was unusual, to say the least. Instinct told him she would be a very loyal friend. He wasn’t surprised Brittany had chosen her. His wife had always had very good taste in friends. He couldn’t say the same for her taste in men.

“By the way,” Crystal added, “don’t be alarmed if you see a curtain flutter in the window across the street.”

Nick came to full attention. Crystal, however, didn’t appear to be the least bit concerned about being watched. Winking badly, she said, “Most of the old women in Jasper Gulch spend half the day on the phone and the other half spying on their neighbors. The eighty-one-year-old widow across the street is no exception. Mrs. Fergusson has a weak heart, so you’d better draw the shade. We wouldn’t want her to see more than she bargained for now, would we?”

His jaw dropped in mild amazement. “The old lady in the next room locks her door because she doesn’t trust me and the one across the street is a window peeper. It looks as if I’m going to have to be on my best behavior at every turn.”

Easing out the door an inch at a time, Crystal said, “Something tells me your best behavior could be very dangerous to a woman who isn’t immune. There’s a bathroom at the end of the hall. Don’t forget about your shade. Oh, and if it’ll make you feel any better to rattle Mertyl’s doorknob, be my guest.”