Harper's Bride (14 page)

She didn't know why—after all, it wasn't
really a compliment, exactly—but it sounded like the nicest thing
anyone had said to her in years.

*~*~*

Two days later, Melissa was up to her elbows
in hot sudsy water, scrambling to finish an order of boiled shirts
for Big Alex McDonald. Called the King of the Klondike, his wealth
and business interests were so vast that when asked by the Bank of
Commerce to list them, it had taken several hours and the entire
bank staff to sort them out. He'd promised Melissa an extra two
hundred dollars if she had the shirts ready by morning, and she
intended to do it.

While Jenny reached for the rawhide string of
beads that a customer had hung above her little niche, Melissa sang
"Sweet Marie," and scrubbed.

"You sing mighty nice, Lissy. I didn't know
you could sing so nice."

Melissa froze, her hands wound in the fabric
of Big Alex's shirt. Even without hearing that familiar, hated
diminutive, she knew the voice of the speaker behind her. Her heart
took off at a gallop, like a runaway horse inside her chest.

Coy Logan sidled up to the washtub and stood
across from her. She stared at him, speechless. She had foolishly
lulled herself into believing that she had seen the last of
him.

If possible, he looked even more dissipated
and threadbare than he had the day he'd sold her. He had a
gurgling, wet cough that sounded like he'd spent too much time in a
damp place. His clothes hung on his skinny frame and looked as if
he'd slept in the gutter with them. One grubby shirttail hung out,
and his fly was partially unbuttoned.

"I been hearing all about the pretty laundry
lady who sings to pass her time." He glared up at her sign with
narrowed eyes. " 'Cept I heard her name was Mrs. Harper, so I
didn't figure right off that it was you they meant."

Desperately, Melissa glanced around, hoping
someone, anyone would come by. Dylan had gone to meet a steamship
at the river, and she had no idea when he'd be back. The Mounties
had already dropped by here earlier, and she didn't expect to see
them again until much later. Men and animals and wagons traveled up
and down busy Front Street, but none turned down here. Never had
this side street seemed so deserted and isolated.

"What do you want, Coy?" she asked, trying to
keep her voice steady. Over the past few weeks she had been
shedding her fear, a layer at a time, the way a person would peel
an onion. But seeing Coy brought it all back, and she was wrapped
tightly within it again. Habits and attitudes were even harder to
let go of than they were to learn, she realized.

He eyed her up and down with assessing,
bloodshot eyes, taking full measure of her. "You're looking damn
fine, Lissy. I like that braid in your hair and those new clothes."
His tone was ingratiating and jovial. "Just like I figured, you
clean up pretty good." He smiled, revealing scummy-looking teeth,
and he licked his lips in a way that made Melissa's stomach turn
over. There was nothing left of the man she remembered sitting at
the kitchen table with her father and brother. He hadn't been a
prize catch then—now, though, he seemed to have slid to the bottom
of life.

"You still haven't told me what you want,"
she said, and gripped the edge of the washtub with her nerveless
fingers.

"You been making money too, by the looks of
it," he went on, fingering a shirt on her clothesline. "Seems like
I did you a big favor by letting Harper take care of you for a
while."

Automatically, Melissa started to reach for
the apron pocket where she kept her gold pouch, but stopped herself
in time. If Coy knew she had that gold dust, he'd take it from her
without a moment's hesitation.

"You're not supposed to come around here,
Coy. That paper you signed in the saloon said so."

"Shee-it, I don't give that"—he snapped his
grimy fingers—"for any paper. Anyways, I got me a hankering to have
my wife back. So pack up your stuff and let's go on."

She stared at him, horrified. "I'm not going
with you. You deserted me,
sold me
, and I don't belong to
you anymore!"

"Got a little gumption, too, dontcha," he
said, pushing his greasy hair back with one hand. He appraised her
again with a vaguely leering look that made her heart thump even
harder. "I kinda like that—so long as you don't overdo it." She saw
the meanness flash through his eyes. He coughed again, wet and
phlegmy, then dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.

Once more Melissa looked toward Front Street,
searching for someone to interrupt, even if it was just one of her
laundry customers. But there was no one. She felt like a drowning
swimmer who could see the shore, but was too far away to reach
it.

She took a deep breath and tried to sound
brave. "I don't want anything to do with you anymore, Coy. I want
you to go away."

"You're starting to try my patience, girl,"
he warned, sounding more like the man she remembered. "I'm giving
you five minutes to get your gear, or I'll take you with me now, as
you are. I don't think you'll like that since I don't have your old
clothes anymore."

He gripped her forearm, and Melissa tried to
wrench free, but he was stronger than he looked. "Why should I go
with you?" she demanded, trying to hear over the pulse pounding in
her ears. "You left me here, and that's the way I want it. We're
divorced."

His anger was in full sway now, but he was
cunning enough to keep his voice down to avoid drawing attention
from some passerby on Front. "I ain't stupid, Lissy, and I got my
rights. I don't care what that lawyer friend of Harper's said. We
ain't in the United States, we're in Canada, and that Louisiana
dandy ain't got no say here. I know there wasn't nothing about that
divorce that was legal. You're still my wife, and that girl is
still my baby." He pointed at Jenny, and Melissa felt the wild
horse in her chest climb to her throat. Jenny— "And I don't give a
damn what Dylan Harper says. You been practicing adultery with that
son of a bitch. Unlawful carnal knowledge, they call it. I call it
whoring. The law is on my side. Your daddy gave you to me, and you
belong to me. Even if you are a whore!'

"No, Coy, please—you don't know what you're
talking about," she cried, aghast at his filthy accusations.

He tightened his grip on her arm, making her
fingers tingle, and yanked her around to his side of the washtub.
He slapped her once, sharply, making her ears buzz and tears spring
to her eyes. "You come along, or I'll teach you a good lesson for
talking back to me."

Then, with a truly evil glint in his beady
eyes, he snatched up the baby in one arm. Jenny started crying.
"Now, let's have a little of what you been giving away to Harper,"
he said, and with his free arm pulled her up against his
sour-smelling body. She struggled to turn away as she saw his mouth
coming toward hers, but he held her head fast. Oh, God, please,
send someone—

Suddenly, as if God had taken pity upon her,
she was free. Dylan was there. He grabbed Coy by the hair and
yanked him away from Melissa. Taking advantage of the instant, she
plucked Jenny out of Coy's arm and clutched her as tightly as she
dared, trying to quiet the baby's shrieking.

Standing behind him, Dylan gripped Coy's
forelock and dragged his head backward to his shoulder in a
chilling embrace. His knife, its long blade gleaming in the sun
like a mirror, he touched to Coy's throat. "Didn't I tell you not
to come around here, you sniveling dog's pizzle?" he growled.

Melissa watched the struggle, and thought
Dylan looked a hundred times more frightening than Coy did. His
face flushed blotchy red, and a vein throbbed in his temple.

Dylan tightened his grip on Coy's hair, his
green eyes blazing like burning emeralds. "Didn't I tell you to
stay away from her?" he repeated. "Answer me!"

Coy made a strangled noise in his throat that
sounded like an affirmative.

"That's right, Logan," he said next to Coy's
ear. "But I didn't tell you what I'd do to you if I caught you
here." Dylan put a little pressure on the blade against his neck,
cutting a nick that dripped blood.

Melissa let out a little squeal. "Dylan, no!"
She had suspected that in his darkest moments, Dylan Harper was
very capable of killing a man. If he killed Coy, the Mounties would
hang him for certain.

"Dylan!"

Looking up, Melissa saw Rafe making his way
toward them, walking as fast as he could. He looked weaker every
time she saw him, but his voice carried thunder, as it had that day
in the saloon. Dressed as impeccably as ever, he held his
gold-headed cane like a scepter, and the frown on his thin face
gave him the look of a scowling skull.

Dylan kept his grip on Coy, the fury still
pouring out of him, his jaw locked. He didn't lift his gaze or
acknowledge his friend's approach. Melissa believed he was aware of
nothing around him except the debate in his own mind either to kill
Coy or to spare him.

Coy's eyes were as wide as stove lids, and
the color had drained from his sallow face. Acrid, fear-scented
sweat leaked from him in sheets, adding to the already foul odor
that he exuded.

"Let him go," Rafe ordered. His commanding
tone almost disguised his winded panting. He stood a scant two feet
from Dylan with Coy sandwiched between them. "Dylan, goddamn it . .
. let him go! If you kill him . . . you'll lose every . . . thing .
. . think, man . . . he's not worth it!"

Rafe backed off then as a coughing fit
overtook him, the worst Melissa had heard yet. Gray-faced, he
stumbled to an overturned lard barrel next to the clotheslines and
sat down, pressing a fist to his heart. Melissa hurried over and
put a hand on his bony shoulder. His lips were tinged a faint blue,
and his eyes bulged alarmingly with each round of coughing, but he
kept his gaze fixed on his friend.

After what seemed like an eternity, Dylan
released Coy's hair and gave him a hard shove that pushed him into
the dirt. Dylan's own breath was coming fast, and the muscles along
both of his jaws rippled with tension. Coy skittered sideways along
the ground, his legs working as if he pedaled an imaginary
bicycle.

"This is the last time, Logan," Dylan said
between gritted teeth. "If you ever show your face around here
again, no one will be able to save you.
No one
."

Incredibly, Coy made one last protest after
he gained his feet. "Lissy's my woman, and that's my kid. They
belong to me, and I know my rights," he harped with watery bravado,
waving a shaking finger at them as he backed away. "I got rights,
by God!"

Still gripping his knife, Dylan took two
menacing steps toward him and spit at his feet. Coy danced
backward. "You've got shit. You gave away everything—your wife,
your child, and the right to call yourself a man—the day you sold
them to me for twelve hundred dollars. Melissa belongs to herself
now. The next time I see you around here, you won't be walking
away. I'll have to call Father William to take you off to his
hospital."

Gawping like a landed fish, apparently Coy
could think of no reply. His small eyes full of fear and impotent
hate, he turned and hurried back toward Front Street as fast as his
skinny legs could carry him. To return, Melissa hoped, to the rock
from beneath which he'd crawled.

No one spoke for a moment, and the ensuing
silence was broken only by Rafe's ratchety breathing and Jenny's
diminished wails. Dylan put his knife back in its sheath, then
strode to Melissa. "Are you all right?"

Putting her finger under her chin, he tipped
her face up to his, and she saw the fury rush back into his green
eyes. Flinching, she tried to pull back.

"Jesus—Jesus Christ! Did he hit you?"

She supposed that Coy must have left a red
imprint of his open hand on her cheek. She nodded, trying to find
her voice, but her throat was too tight. Her insides quivered like
Fannie Farmer's aspic, and her outsides didn't feel much
better.

Dropping his hand, he paced in front of her,
his rage back in full force. "I should have killed the son of a
bitch! Damn it, I should have! I'll find him—"

Melissa found her voice and pulled on his
arm. "No, Dylan, no!" she begged. "Rafe is right. The police would
banish you from Dawson. He won't come back now. Just let him go."
Beneath the fabric of his sleeve she felt tightly drawn muscle.

After pacing a moment longer, he nodded
grudgingly, then slipped an arm around her shoulders. She yearned
to lean against him, to give into the infinite comfort of his
strength. Was it possible that such comfort and safety might be
found in a man's embrace? Melissa had thought so once and had been
fooled by the very man who had just left. She wouldn't take the
chance again. She straightened and pulled away from Dylan's
arm.

"What about the baby?" he asked, and reached
down to draw Jenny's blanket away from her face. The baby's
whimpers ceased.

"Oh, she's fine now." She pressed a kiss to
Jenny's forehead. "Thank you," she whispered from her tight
throat.

"And you?" Dylan asked Rafe.

"By God," the other man wheezed, "no one can
call this a dull town. I was on my way to the saloon when I glanced
down here and saw you in an altercation with Logan. It's a good
thing I happened along before the Mounties did."

Melissa thought it was a good thing that
Dylan had happened along before Coy could do anything worse.

Dylan led Melissa up the stairs. "I have to
finish Big Alex's shirts," she fretted. "He promised me two hundred
dollars extra if I have them ready by morning."

"Don't worry about that now," he said, and
opened the door for her. He didn't begrudge her the money, but
privately, he thought that Alex McDonald was a fool, wealthy or
not.