Conor's Way (12 page)

She was stunned, but she didn't show it.
"What about your sisters?"

She could almost see a wall close in around
him, shutting her out. Conor looked over at her, and it was as if
their brief moment of companionship had never been. "They died," he
answered in a voice that chilled her. "They starved to death."

***

The sun was just peeking over the horizon the
following morning when Olivia went down to the orchard. Although
the sky to the east was tinged with the delicate pink and gold of
a gorgeous sunrise, she didn't notice its beauty. Olivia walked
amid the peach trees, still preoccupied with the troubled thoughts
that had kept her awake much of the night.

Lord, he was a hard man. Hard and bitter,
with a wall around him a hundred feet high. But once, he'd been a
boy who had pillow fights with his brother and sisters, who had
gotten into mischief. He'd been a boy who had watched his brother
beaten and his sisters starved, a boy who'd grown up only to be
tortured in prison. No wonder he was bitter.

In her mind, she relived again that moment
when he'd told her about his family, his voice so calm, his eyes so
cold. He still carried the scars, and her heart ached for him.

Olivia leaned against a tree, staring with
unseeing eyes at the trees along the next row. Caught up in her
thoughts, she didn't notice anything odd at first, but when she
did, she straightened abruptly, and thoughts of Conor Branigan's
past fled from her mind.

The leaves of one tree were wilted. She
walked over to the tree to examine it more closely, but she
couldn't find anything wrong. She saw no sign of insects or disease
that could be responsible. But the tree was ailing. She couldn't
figure it out, until she glanced down and saw a gash in the bark.
Frowning, she bent down for a closer look.

Olivia ran her hand along the cut that
circled the entire trunk, dismayed. This tree had been girded with
a knife, to prevent water and nutrients from reaching the leaves.
It was dying.

She turned away and began looking for other
trees that might have been damaged in the same way. Within minutes,
she found half a dozen more.

Who would do such a thing?
Even as she asked herself the question, Olivia knew the answer.
Vernon was behind this. She recalled their conversation after
church the day before, and his words of warning.
I can make things easy for you, Olivia. Or I can
make them a whole lot harder
.

She stared down at the fatal wound at the
base of one of her trees, and she noticed the cigarette butts that
were scattered around it. She bent down and pinched one between her
thumb and forefinger, holding it up with a thoughtful frown. The
two Harlan boys and their father all smoked cigarettes. And all of
them worked for Vernon over at the sawmill. Maybe Vernon had given
them another job on the side. She dropped the cigarette back in the
dirt.

She'd known Vernon all her life, she knew he
was full of big talk. After returning from up North two years after
the war, he'd bought up just about every piece of land round these
parts, and most of the businesses in town as well. Now he wanted
Peachtree.

So far, she'd been able to hold her own
against him. She had refused his offers to buy her out, she had
ignored his threats to force her out. She knew how he'd always felt
about her and how deeply her refusal to defy her father so long ago
had wounded him, but she'd never dreamed he would do anything like
this.

She felt certain Vernon was behind the damage
to her trees, but there was no way she could prove it. Vernon was
powerful and he had powerful Yankee friends. She left the orchard
and walked back toward the house, firmly banishing her worry.
Slashing her trees was a warning, meant to shake her up, intimidate
her into selling. It wasn't going to work.

***

When Conor awoke, he found a pitcher of fresh
water and two neatly folded shirts outside his door. He bent down,
one arm around his sore ribs for support, and scooped up one of
the shirts. Olivia had promised to piece together some shirts that
would fit him, and she had. He discarded the torn shirt from the
day before and donned one of the new ones. It fit perfectly.

He used the water in the basin, then left his
room, following the scent of something sweet and luscious to the
kitchen. Olivia was there, standing at the kitchen table, using a
spatula to scoop what looked like sweet biscuits off a tin sheet
and onto a plate. "Whatever it is you're making," he said from the
doorway, "I want a taste of it."

Olivia glanced up at him and smiled. "You're
as bad as the girls," she said, "always wanting the cookies right
out of the oven."

He walked to her side and grabbed a "cookie,"
as she called it, off the plate. She gave him a warning look, and
began to drop spoonfuls of dough onto the sheet.

"Where are the girls?" he asked, taking a
bite of the cookie.

"They went over to the Johnson place for the
day to visit."

He finished the cookie and reached for
another, but she snatched the plate away. "Cookies are no breakfast
for a grown man," she told him sternly. "Give me a second and I'll
fix you a real breakfast."

"Thank you." Conor sat down at the table and
watched as she moved about the kitchen, vaguely remembering the
last time a woman had offered to make him breakfast. Somewhere in
Maryland, he thought it had been, or maybe Virginia, and she'd come
to one of his fights. Afterward, she had approached him with a
whispered offer of herself for supper and eggs for breakfast. He'd
taken her up on the first part of her offer, but not the second.
After it was over, she'd fallen asleep and he'd left town. She had
smelled of cologne and tobacco, and she'd had red hair and a pink
silk dressing gown. Funny how he could remember details like that,
but he couldn't remember her name.

He watched Olivia, and it
struck him how different she was from the redhead in pink silk.
Olivia Maitland was a woman who wore dresses buttoned up to her
chin. A woman who smelled of cloves and vanilla and had eyes like
chocolate.
Good enough to
eat
, he thought, and wondered what the
hell was wrong with him.

Women like her were not for men like him. He
vastly preferred easy redheads who took his money and left him his
freedom, women who didn't give a damn if he swore and whose names
he didn't have to remember, women who didn't need what he couldn't
give and who didn't have daughters who wanted a daddy.

Olivia walked over to the table and set a
plate of food in front of him. He stared down at it for a moment,
then looked up at her. "What's this?" he asked curiously, pointing
to one side of his plate.

"Grits," she answered. That did not enlighten
him, and she seemed to realize it. "I don't suppose you've ever had
them, but here in Louisiana, we eat grits all the time. They're
delicious."

He continued to eye her with some skepticism.
"I'm not sure I trust the opinion of a woman who makes me green
tay," he said, and picked up his fork.

"Well, if you don't like my cooking, you can
do it from now on."

He grinned at the challenging lift of her
chin. "I'd be happy to. But I'm afraid we'd all starve."

She laughed and walked away, leaving him to
his breakfast. But Conor noticed her watching him as he lifted a
forkful of grits to his mouth and he knew she was waiting to see
what he thought of them. He took a bite, and he wondered why
anybody, in Louisiana or anywhere else for that matter, would eat
them. A person might just as well eat buttered wallpaper paste.
But food was something Conor never took for granted. "Delicious,"
he said.

Pleased, she gave him that astonishing smile,
a smile well worth a few mouthfuls of wallpaper paste.

"You wouldn't say that if you'd come round
here about eight years ago," she said, pouring him a cup of coffee.
"Old Sally—she was our cook—had died, and I started doing all the
cooking. I'd never cooked a meal before in my life. My mama never
thought it was an appropriate skill for a young lady of quality,"
she added with a wry smile.

"My first meal was a disaster," she
confessed, as she brought the cup of coffee to him. "Thank goodness
my grandmother collected recipes and wrote them down in a journal.
If I hadn't found that journal, I would never have learned how to
cook."

While Conor ate his breakfast, Olivia
finished baking cookies. When he pushed back his plate and rose
from the table, she did not miss his grimace of pain.

"Ribs still pretty sore, I imagine?"

He didn't reply, but he didn't have to. She
walked over to the pantry to get her medicine box. "I've got a
camphor liniment that'll do wonders."

"Don't bother. I'm fine."

"It's no bother," she replied, and emerged
from the pantry with a fresh roll of binding and her medicine box.
"I want to have a look at your ribs anyway to make sure they're
healing properly," she said, crossing the kitchen to stand in front
of him, "and I ought to put a fresh binding on them."

She set the box and the roll of linen on the
table beside her. When she turned toward him, Conor shook his head.
"There's no need to make a fuss. I told you, I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You're a man with cracked
ribs, and I know they're causing you pain. So kindly remove your
shirt, and don't argue with me."

She was certain he was going to refuse, but
in the end, he didn't. "Too bad they don't allow women in the
military," he muttered as he unbuttoned his shirt. "With you on
their side, the Confederacy might have won the war."

She shot him a wry glance as he tossed the
shirt aside. She opened her box and removed a bottle of liniment,
then she turned to him and laid one hand against his ribs, pushing
gently with her fingers.

"Ouch!" he cried, leaning away from her.
"Jaysus, stop poking me!"

"Don't swear at me, if you please." She moved
her hand and pressed again, feeling him wince. "They seem to be
coming along well enough, although I think it'll be several more
weeks before they're completely healed."

She unfastened the pins and began rolling the
long swath of linen that supported his injured ribs away from his
body. The task forced her to slip her arms around his waist, and
the intimate contact made her acutely aware of him, aware of sinew
and muscle and solid masculinity. It was an unexpected feeling that
robbed her of the ability to breathe, and brought back the memory
of him standing naked by the bed. Something warm and aching spread
through her limbs, making her want to lean into him. Her hands
fumbled and she dropped the binding. It unrolled as it fell to the
floor.

"Oh, dear." She retrieved the swath of fabric
from the floor and set it on the table, then reached for the bottle
of liniment. She pulled out the cork, poured some of the liniment
into the palm of her hand, and began rubbing the pungent oil gently
into the bare skin of his torso.

She heard his sharp intake of breath, and she
paused to glance up at him. "Did I hurt you?"

"No," he answered, but his voice sounded
strained, his breathing slightly uneven. A tiny muscle worked at
the corner of his jaw. "No. You didn't... hurt me."

She tried to finish her task quickly. Though
she kept her gaze fixed on her hands, they refused to work
properly, and her movements were hopelessly awkward. She finally
managed to pin the fresh binding in place.

"All done," she said, but instead of stepping
back as she knew she ought, she remained where she was. Her hand
flattened against his side, and she could feel the heat of his skin
through the linen. "Does that feel all right?"

He didn't answer, and she looked up into his
face.

His eyes were smoky blue, almost tender
against the harsh planes of his face. His lips curved slightly, the
corners touched with amusement. She lowered her hand, flustered,
and stepped back.

He caught her wrist. "Don't stop now, love,"
he murmured, his thumb brushing back and forth across her palm in a
slow caress. "Sure, I was beginning to enjoy it."

He smiled at her, a heated, knowing smile.
She jerked her hand away and ducked her head, her gaze skimming his
body as she looked down, catching at the buttoned flap of his
trousers. She stared, realization washing over her in a hot flood,
and she felt herself blushing with mortification. She backed away
from him, then turned and fled.

Conor watched with both amusement and chagrin
as Olivia retreated out the back door, his body still tingling
with arousal. Christ, what did she expect when she touched him like
that? He might not be in the best of shape, but he wasn't dead.

He recognized innocence when he saw it, but
he also recognized desire. And curiosity. It was rather a
revelation to discover that underneath Olivia Maitland's prim and
starchy exterior, there was a real woman. "I'll be damned," he
murmured.

He donned his shirt, took a pull from his cup
of cold coffee, and left the house. He didn't know where he was
going, but it didn't matter. There really wasn't anywhere to
go.

Olivia was on her knees in the garden. She
did not look at him as he passed, but kept her eyes on the
cucumbers she was picking as if it were a fascinating task. Her
cheeks were still burning.

One more second, and he would have taken her
up on what she hadn't even known she'd been offering. One more
second of her hands on him with her face lifted unknowingly for a
kiss, and his cracked ribs and her fluttering innocence be damned.
It was obvious that she had no idea of the game she was playing, no
knowledge of the stakes.

Conor remembered Carrie's words, and he
reminded himself that the stakes were bloody well too high. But he
could still feel the touch of Olivia's hands, a touch that soothed
and aroused at once, a touch that was both innocent and
provocative. He knew that if she touched him like that again, he
was going to make it clear what kind of fire she was playing with,
and he'd enjoy every minute of it.