Intimate Strangers (Eclipse Heat Book 2) (11 page)

Challenged by Ambrose’s boycott of her breakfast, she remained in the kitchen all day, cooking and examining the early morning greeting.
Was I a loose woman?
She didn’t think so, but then again, what did she really know about her previous life?

The only thing that seemed certain was her conviction that marriage to Ambrose Quince had never been easy. His eagerness to think she was up to no good stiffened her resolve to stay clear of his so-called affections.

As she spread dark, rich icing over a chocolate cake—Brody having revealed it was her father’s favorite—Lucy imagined the joy of crowning him with the double dose of his delight at supper. She assured herself her reason for making it was a wish to torture him, not reward his blockheaded ways.

He came in that evening, trying to look righteous but looking only hungry. Mellowing as he smelled the cornbread, collard greens and roasted ham, he had the nerve to give Lucy an approving look as though the morning’s insult hadn’t happened.

She waited until his mouth was full of food to say her piece. “Ambrose Quince, I am not a harlot and never was. Don’t insult my honor again. I expect an apology.”

She set the succulent confection in the middle of the table, bringing it straight from the oven where she’d warmed the icing into a dark, rich sauce. Holding a serving wedge in her hand, Lucy waited expectantly, ready to cut the first slice or deliver a slap to his knuckles, whichever his reply deserved.

The rest of the Quince family leaned toward him, concerned that Lucy might remove the cake if he didn’t pony up an “I’m sorry”. He set down his fork. She laid down the spatula and folded her arms. They glared at each other.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Ambrose, apologize. You know good and well you were in the wrong, and I want dessert.” Hamilton only put to words the thoughts clearly written on the children’s faces.

Ambrose smiled at Lucy sheepishly and said, “I was out of line this morning. I’m sorry.” His eyes were as dark as the melted icing as he watched her cut a piece and scoop the chocolate temptation onto one of the fancy dessert plates she’d started using.

“Apology accepted,” Lucy replied crisply, cutting the slices and handing each Quince a piece of dessert before retreating in victory to the kitchen.

She should have known he’d follow. Facing the window, she watched his image enter the room carrying two plates of cake. He set them on the table before joining her at the sink.

“Got any more coffee?” he asked. But his body caged hers and his reflection assured her it wasn’t coffee and cake on his mind.

He brushed her hair from her face, the unfortunate gesture revealing the scar tracing its way down her neck and beyond. She stiffened and pushed back, ready to dodge under his arm. But there was no give in him and he stepped closer, preventing her escape.

“I am sorry, sweetheart. Come have your cake. I’ll pour us some coffee. We’ll talk.” But still he didn’t move. Both sets of eyes fixed on the picture of the big man touching his lips to the scar on the slender neck of the woman.

All of Lucy’s boldness evaporated and she shivered under the light caress. When Ambrose led her to the table and seated her, bringing the coffee and setting it down beside them, she automatically lifted the pot and slid a trivet between wood and hot metal before it could scorch the oak beneath.

Ambrose consumed the cake, licking the extra icing off the fork before cutting another bite. She had to pull her gaze away from his satisfied enjoyment to heed what he said.

“You won’t have to suffer my attentions for a while. Hamilton and I will be rounding up steers for the next week, getting ready for the cattle drive to Wichita.”

She blinked away the thrall he always cast over her to ask, “Who will be left at the ranch once you’re gone?” She had an uneasy feeling about being left alone, no matter how independent she wanted to seem.

Her slice of cake went untouched and Ambrose fussed at her instead of answering her question. “You don’t eat enough, Lucy. You once loved chocolate. Has that changed?”

“From the look of my dresses upstairs, I maybe loved it a bit too much.” He didn’t answer her question and she didn’t ask again. She thought it was typical of him, not sharing information with his wife, and chalked it up to one more reason to keep distance between them.

When she lay in her bed that night again unable to sleep, she made her own plans. During the next week while the Quince riders gathered the cattle for the drive, she’d step up her cleaning, cooking, clothes washing and mending to ready the men for their journey.

I’ll also get Brody’s things ready and put them in a valise. Just some night gear and essentials will do and I’ll pack my personal items as well.
Trepidation about being left alone on the Double-Q changed to anticipation as she planned a trip back to Buffalo Creek to visit Roberta. She went to sleep smiling at the thought of escaping Quince rule while Ambrose traveled to Wichita.

* * * * *

In the room Brody insisted they call the Blue Room, there were two paintings hanging over the mantel, which had formerly been obscured by the overall clutter. One framed a younger Lucy who looked pampered, willful and imperious. The other portrait was of an Ambrose whom the artist had drawn as a hawk-eyed predator, stern and fierce.

Lucy stood in front of the paintings, puzzling as she had many times. There seemed a great discrepancy between the ages of the two. Had she been a child bride? The young woman in the portrait seemed so innocent in that rendering and Ambrose so brutal in his.

Why would that girl ever have married that man?
Evidently Lucy spoke aloud.

Ambrose stood listening in the doorway and growled, “She said she loved me.” The growled answer made her shiver.

Lucy shrugged. “She looks like a schoolgirl.” She turned to leave the room in time to see his face redden and realized she’d made him uncomfortable for a change. She stopped and continued her inquiry.

“How old was she in that picture?” Lucy carefully spoke of the girl as someone other than the woman who stood next to him. They both knew the Lucy Quince in the portrait no longer existed.

“You were eighteen, and old enough.” His answer as usual left no room for dissent. Nevertheless, he crushed the brim of his hat between tense fingers as though bothered by her question.

“How old was she when Alex was born?”

“Eighteen.” He shifted his weight, evidently uneasy when it was
his
past behaviors being questioned.

“How old is Alex now?”

He gave her a surprised look, perhaps beginning to understand the depth of her memory loss. He answered, “Going on eleven.”

The sorry truth was, until that moment, Lucy hadn’t had a clue about her age. She would have guessed older than twenty-nine. In fact, her mirror told her daily that whatever age difference had once existed between the married couple, time and tragedy had erased it.

Ambrose jerked his hat on, edging toward the door. She followed, peppering him with requests for information.

“How old were you in that picture?” Lucy wasn’t about to let Mister
What-were-you-doing-in-the-barn
Quince run out on this discussion. His accusation earlier in the week still rankled.

He stopped evading her questions and faced her belligerently. “Twenty-eight—and the moment I laid eyes on you, I decided you were mine. And you still are.”

“How much say-so do I have in that decision?” she asked tartly.

Ambrose shrugged. “Plenty if we agree.”

Lucy ground her teeth, looking forward to the time he and Hamilton would be away on the cattle drive.

From conversations overheard at the breakfast table between the brothers, it was clear they had to get the beef to market. Lucy was a godsend, because they’d been planning to take Brody along. Now she’d stay with her mother on the ranch.

Lucy remained silent about her plans ’til supper two days before the cattle drive was slated to begin. “While you men are gone, Brody and I will be visiting Buffalo Creek. Brody can enjoy the company of my friend Roberta Harris and I’ll check on my business there.”

Her announcement was greeted with squeals from Brody and consternation from Hamilton. Looking at her suspiciously, her brother-in-law held forth about women running wild while men were out working. Alex wore a perplexed expression, but Ambrose remained silent, calmly cleaning his plate without even glancing her way.

“We’ll be back before you—in time to keep the weeds from the garden and have pickles canned.” She despised the defensive note in her voice and deliberately lingered over her plate longer than usual, preparing to argue. Ambrose finished the last roll, shoved back from the table and left for the barn.

Letting out the breath she’d been holding, she glanced at Brody. Her daughter grinned at her happily and Lucy retreated to the kitchen, stifling her own laughter now that she’d won the battle. Ambrose’s easy capitulation did seem odd, though.

The morning the cattle drive started, Brody and Lucy were up early and ready for their own adventure. Lucy was eager to see the Quince men off with a good breakfast so she and Brody could drive the buggy into Eclipse and catch the stage to Buffalo Creek.

Instead, with no preamble and little explanation, the women were joined to the cattle drive, leaving behind a garden full of baby cucumbers that would be rotten cucumbers by the time they returned.

Alex drove the covered chuck wagon into the yard with a story that reeked like week-old fish. “Cookie had a dispute over a card game with the wrong cowboy in Eclipse, and the cowboy settled it his way.”

“Is he dead?” Brody was of an age to be downright ghoulish sometimes.

According to Ambrose, Cookie wasn’t dead, just laid up with a wrenched shoulder. Lucy didn’t put much stock in that tale but didn’t dispute it openly. She knew with a sinking heart that, without being asked or even told, her plans had been changed.

She could see how a woman might get tired of being so used, and wondered for the first time if she really might have run away from this life. As her son loaded her satchel on board and Brody danced around the wagon, tickled to be going to Wichita with the rest of the Quince family, Lucy knew it wasn’t so. Ambrose Quince she might have fled, but she would have taken her children with her.

She kept silent, working to secure the chuck wagon. It wasn’t the impending work of the trail drive that bothered her, it was the contempt for her time and her own plans that Ambrose Quince displayed.

The wagon was loaded and ready to roll before Ambrose even made it to the house. But when he would have spoken to her, she brushed his attempt aside, too disgusted by his high-handed maneuvering to speak.

“You mad?” he asked her, clearly expecting her to lambaste his chicanery.

She turned up her nose at him, deciding to take the high road. “Would it make a difference?”

His eyes drooped into a half-squint as he stared at her and answered, “No.”

Alex sat in the chuck wagon, looking pained and rebellious until she climbed aboard and took over the reins, freeing her son to clamber onto his own horse.

Lucy shook out the leathers and drove the cumbersome wagon past Ambrose. Brody clutched the bench, grinning wildly as they began. Alex rode beside them, clearly waiting for Ambrose to give him permission to join the men.

Unfortunately, for all of her bravado, Lucy had no idea where she was going or what her schedule for the day entailed. She was forced to listen to Ambrose when he instructed her on how she should do her job. “It’s custom for the cook to drive ahead of the herd. You’ll need to look for a good spot to stop and get a noon meal ready for the incoming drovers.”

“Point the way,” Lucy said, admitting she didn’t know which way was ahead.

Ambrose laughed, gesturing west, where red clouds of dust were already roiling the air. She shook out the reins, giving the two Belgians, Big Ben and Juniper, the order to start. They set a steady pace, soon passing the bunched and bawling herd.

Alex found a spot to stop and helped Lucy and Brody set up a cold camp for a middle-of-the-day meal. The drovers came in when they could and grabbed the hardtack and jerky while others kept the milling herd moving.

Lucy busied herself clearing away the last of the paltry meal even as she figured ways to improve it for the coming supper. Ambrose came in last, checking out the chuck wagon team before he ate.

Afterward he said, “Up ahead, drive until you come to the river. We’ll catch up to you about dusk. The cattle will fill up with water and we’ll rest over and start early next day. Alex will ride with you. If you have any trouble, send him back.”

Ambrose backed his horse up and started to pivot away, then edged back and said to Brody, “Help your mama with the supper tonight, Sugar Plum. Today, stay in the wagon and if you get too hot, crawl under the tarp in the back.

He pulled the brim of his hat at Lucy and said, “Keep your rifle handy.” Wheeling away, he stopped to tell Alex to remain with the chuck wagon. Her son’s displeasure came as no surprise.

Lucy had to give Ambrose credit in one area. In front of the children, he always kept his tone respectful, acknowledging her as the kids’ mother regardless of what they believed. She appreciated his support with the children in spite of his doubts in other areas.

Lucy pushed the two draft horses faster than they wanted to travel and the chuck wagon reached the river by midafternoon. Brody and Alex helped her get the shepherd’s stove out of the wagon and she set up camp and started cooking.

Lucy had the meal ready and coffee brewing when she heard the first bawl of a steer.

“Stew’s hot and the bread’s plentiful,” Alex called out to the drovers who took turns on watch and came to eat when they could.

Whenever a man eased in on break, he got a cup of hot coffee and a handful of cookies doled out by Brody ’til, still holding her bounty, she fell asleep leaning against the chuck wagon. Lucy eased the basket of cookies from Brody’s clasp and, chuckling at the child’s exhausted sigh, Ambrose swung her into his arms, carrying her to the covered end of the wagon.

Once both children had turned in and the embers were burned low, Lucy grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders before she crawled into the back of the wagon and curled up next to Brody.

She was filthy, still wearing clothes covered in the day’s dirt. She could feel her skin crawling under the grit and intended to bathe once the drovers had settled down for the night, but she still unlaced her boots and peeled socks and shoes off, wiggling her toes in the cooling night air. Dirt was forgotten as exhaustion won and she slept.

She was startled awake when a hand palmed her foot and jiggled her big toe. Jerking her foot away from Ambrose defensively, she pulled her knees up to her chin. He pointed toward the sleeping Brody and motioned for Lucy to follow him.

She pulled boots on over bare feet and climbed out of the wagon, following him to the river, which she hadn’t realized was so far from camp. The dark was barely cut by the moon, and she was grateful to be accompanied by the big man leading the way. When they were next to the river, he turned and handed her a drying cloth and a bar of soap.

“I know how you like to bathe. This might be your last chance to do more than wipe off for a while. I’ll stand guard while you’re in the water.”

Lucy didn’t even wait for him to turn his back to stumble gratefully to the water’s edge, disrobing along the way. The devil take modesty, she couldn’t stand the sand and dust that had been kicked up on this dry day. It brought back feelings—although not memories—of desert and thirst and death.

In a rush, Lucy was in the water scrubbing off the grit. Ambrose could have sold tickets and it wouldn’t have slowed her down. She could see no more than his outline as he guarded her privacy but she felt protected and secure. He stood, half-turned away, glancing up and down the river’s edge and not at her.

Angling in front of where she’d dropped the cloth, Lucy tried to be as quiet as possible emerging from the river. He still heard her and strode toward her carrying an extra blanket as she fumbled the towel to cover her body.

He crossed to where she shivered and wrapped the rough material around her shoulders. Then he reached under the blanket and pulled the damp drying cloth loose, brushing his hand across the underside of her breast—accidentally?

Lucy stiffened against his touch. Instead of withdrawing it, perverse man that he was, he stepped closer to her and cupped the flesh in his hand. “Stop that,” she whispered, suddenly too aware that she was alone with a dangerous predator.

He didn’t say a word but, defying her order, slid his thumb upward and stroked gently across her nipple, leaving the hot imprint of his palm against her naked breast.

Clouds drifted over the dim quarter moon and the night went so dark that Lucy couldn’t even see his face, but she knew his touch. She should have felt fear and revulsion, but the opposite was true.

She wanted to step closer to him and lay her head on his chest. Instead, she pulled the blanket tighter, attempting to shrug his hand away at the same time.

“You’re still wet,” he said. Before she knew what he intended, he took off his hat, dropped to his knees and began drying her legs, rubbing the cloth slowly up and down from ankle to knee of one limb before tending the other.

“Where did I leave my gun?” she mumbled, looking everywhere but at the shadow kneeling in front of her. Instead of answering, he slid the towel from the back of her knee up her thigh, brushing it across her rump before descending with slow strokes down the other side.

Briskly, he applied the drying cloth to foot top and heel. “Lift up,” he ordered, and she did. He brushed off the bottom and slid her boot on.

Setting the first down, he picked up the other, brushing the wet dust from the arch before wiping the cloth between her toes. It tickled and she jerked, losing her balance so that she had to grab his shoulder.

“My shoe,” she reminded him. Shoes meant ability to flee quickly if…

He slid the shoe in place, setting her foot down. Lucy sighed, relieved—until she realized he’d allowed room between her thighs to wipe his towel. He pressed closer, parting the blanket so it draped around him, hiding his head from her view.

Lucy tried to back away but he slid both hands up, cupping her bottom, holding her still.

“If you’ve finished looking at me,” she told him, “I’d appreciate being turned loose.”

“I can’t see a damn thing.” He growled his complaint. “But I sure as hell can feel. And I’m going to.” He slid one hand up, feathered it through her lower curls, and then moved higher to her flat belly. It seemed to fascinate him—his fingers crawled from hipbone to hipbone then came back to caress her stomach.

“I’m different than before. I can tell from my clothes.” Lucy tried to keep her voice calm and pretend indifference.

“Your scent hasn’t changed.” His words brought a flood of embarrassment prickling over her skin. She felt his nose brush through her curls before he inhaled, rumbling deep in his throat.

She gasped, trying to pull away, and her voice was hoarse when she spoke. “Whatever you think is going to happen—isn’t. I don’t want you or any other man crawling over me or inside of me.” Panic clawed at her throat and she stumbled backward.

He came from under the blanket, facing her, his hands still gripping her around the waist. “One time, the first year we were married, you inserted yourself into my business and I got plenty mad. As it turned out, you were right and I was wrong.”

“And you’re telling me this because?” Lucy’s heart resumed a normal beat and her panic receded.

“Because,” he said gruffly, “sometimes when a man and a woman are married, one gets in a bind and it takes the cooler head to know what’s to be done. I figure this is one of those times.”

Before Lucy could answer, he ducked his head back under the blanket, pulled her hips forward and centered his lips on her sex.

“Ambrose Quince,” she hissed, grabbing the blanket with one hand while she tried to push his head away with the other. “Stop it. Listen to me,” she said desperately, trying to wiggle free from his grip.

“I’m listening,” he assured her right before he swiped his tongue along the seam of her cleft.

She tried to close her legs tighter; he pushed his face closer, using his nose to part her nether lips.

“God, yes,” he groaned, burying his face in her soft folds. “Honey and heat,” he muttered against her flesh. “You’re wet for me, sweetheart.”

She pulled his hair, trying to shake him loose. He growled and resisted, settling his lips on her pearl, drawing it into his mouth to suckle before swiping lower, following the trail of wet heat flowing from her core.

Lucy’s grip on his head became a caress, her fingers tangling in his hair to keep from falling. His tongue flicked in and out of her channel, capturing her liquid heat and nipping and sucking on the oversensitized nub at the top of her folds.

He loved her with his mouth, touching her gently at first then more insistently, sliding his arms around to cup her buttocks as he leaned against her, enjoying her taste.

A cry escaped her as the orgasm began in her womb and pulsed outward. He drank her release and, as waves of pleasure coursed through her, he pulled her closer for more. Lucy swayed, knees buckling as he kissed his way upward, rising from his knees to catch her and cover her mouth, sharing her flavor on his tongue and lips.

“Again,” he growled through his kiss as he stroked her wet lower folds, penetrating her with his finger. “Come again, Lucy.”

Her back arched, she thrust her pelvis against his hand until another orgasm shuddered through her. This time, he caught her cry, muffling it with his kiss. She slumped limp and boneless in his arms, unable to form a coherent thought. Ambrose scooped her up in his arms and carried her, she hoped, toward camp.

She hid her face against his shirt, dizzy from spent passion and angry too. “So what happened when I made you mad?” she tried to regain distance, if only with her words.

“You saved the Double-Q from going belly-up,” he told her gruffly, hugging her tighter in his arms.