Only My Love (14 page)

"All the lessons were wasted. I'm tone deaf."

"Wonderful. Don't you do any normal female things?"

"You can't possibly know how offensive your question is. I take it to mean that you think only men can or should be reporters."

Ethan wanted to avoid an argument. "Forget I said anything. It doesn't really matter if you can't play, sing, or dance—"

"I didn't say I couldn't dance," she said quietly.

Ethan shot her a quelling glance. "Can you?"

"You said it doesn't really matter."

"Can you dance?" he asked again, grinding out the question between clenched teeth.

"Yes. Very well in fact."

"All right then. That's why Dee hired you. I hope to God you're good."

"You'll never know. I'm not dancing in this saloon."

Ethan ignored her objection. He wasn't all that sure he wanted her dancing for the others, but she would if she had to. It was as simple as that. "You were hired by Detra to entertain her patrons. You answered an advertisement in the
Chronicle."

"The
Chronicle.
How clever you must think you are. The irony's not lost on me."

He cut her off with an impatient slash of his hand. The soap slipped out of his palm and he had to search under water for it again. "Dee paid your fare from New York. The snow storm stranded you at the depot in Stillwater. We came across you during our search for Happy."

"If I'm the entertainment, then what am I doing with you?"

He was tempted to say, "Because you're the entertainment," but good sense prevailed. "Do I need to kiss you again?"

"Oh," she said, the memory making her flush. "That reason."

"As long as everyone believes you're well and truly mine, you won't be bothered much."

"Much."

"This isn't New York," he reminded her. "First and foremost it's a mining camp. There are only about seventy women in Madison and the unmarried ones are younger than sixteen or work in one of the saloons. The men will respect that you're my mistress but that won't stop them from hoping they can change it. You'll have to put up with a little teasing and pinching. An occasional pat on the bottom."

Michael grimaced. "I'd be safer married to you."

Ethan had thought of it. He would have never asked her if she hadn't broached the subject. "Is that what you want?"

"No!" She set down her mug and hugged her knees close to her chest. "Absolutely not. As long as Houston and the others think I'm married to you they'll leave me alone. I know they're the ones I have to fear. I'll try to tolerate the pinching."

"You'll have to tolerate it. I'm not going to draw my gun on someone for nuzzlin' you." Before she could reply to that, he held up the soap. "Do my back, will you?"

"Go to hell."

He shrugged and turned his head away so she couldn't see his smile. Whistling tunelessly under his breath, Ethan finished his bath. He grabbed the towel Kitty had left for him and wrapped it around his waist as he rose from the water. Michael turned her head away. "You can look now. I'm decent."

They had different definitions of that word, she thought, facing him again. He had used the towel to cover, not to dry. As a result, fat droplets of water fell from the curling ends of his dark hair to his shoulders. Water glistened on his arms and chest and the towel clung wetly to his narrow hips. He turned, going toward the bureau and Michael traced the length of his spine with her eyes. The towel contoured the shape of his buttocks and the hardness of his upper thighs. She thought of Kitty's parting words. Ethan Stone
was
a beautiful man.

In the mirror above the bureau Ethan watched Michael watching him. Seeing the brilliance of her dark green eyes, fascination warring with a reluctance to look, Ethan had difficulty bringing to mind the woman in the
Chronicle
newsroom, the woman who looked as starched as the blouse she wore, as severe as the lines of her skirt, and as forbidding as the set of her mouth. In fact, watching Michael now brought a response to Ethan's flesh that the towel couldn't hide.

He opened the top drawer of the bureau roughly, intent on taking his mind from a condition he could not relieve with Mary Michael Dennehy. "You can take your bath now. I'm getting dressed and going downstairs for a drink." Several of them, he thought. He found a pair of cotton drawers and stepped into them, pulling them up hastily under the towel. He tossed the towel at Michael on the bed. "If you lay it by the stove while you're in the tub it should be dry enough to use." Still keeping his back to Michael he rifled the rest of the bureau and came up with a clean pair of jeans, a navy blue flannel shirt, and some thick woolen socks. He didn't sit down until he needed to pull on his boots and even then it was quickly accomplished. He ran a comb through his hair twice, did the rest with his fingers, and left the room as if the entire Sioux nation were on his tail.

Michael wasted little time taking advantage of his absence. Locking the door with the flimsy hook and latch, she eagerly shed Ethan's nightshirt and sank into the water. It was merely lukewarm but Michael had no complaint. It felt entirely refreshing.

She washed her hair, using the half-filled bucket that Kitty left behind to rinse. When the water became too cold to soak she stepped out and wrapped herself in the warm towel. The comb Ethan had used was lying on top of his bureau. She sat on the edge of the bed, her heels hooked on the frame, and worked out the tangles in her hair an inch at a time. When she was satisfied with the result she knelt on the carpet near the stove and began drying her hair as best she could. She was still kneeling, wrapped in the towel and running the comb through her hair in an absent motion as she thought of other things, when the door to her room flew open, smashed by Ethan's booted foot.

"Don't you ever lock me out again!"

Chapter 4

Michael almost burned herself on the hot door of the stove as she moved back and out of the way of Ethan's fury. "You could have knocked. I would have opened it." Ethan spared a glance at the window. His cold eyes wandered so briefly that Michael could have believed it was imagined on her part. She understood the nature of the glance, the thought that guided it toward the window. "I didn't lock the door to mislead you and escape by the window," she told him. She tightened her clasp on the knot in the towel above her breast. "I told you I wouldn't leave in your nightshirt. I surely wouldn't leave dressed like this."

She was immediately sorry for drawing attention to her covering, or lack of it. Ethan's coldly furious eyes grazed over her. She felt them on her wildly curling damp hair, her naked shoulders, the curve of her hip that was turned toward him. His glance did not rest on any particular feature longer than any other; equal attention was given to the length of her legs, the water droplet in the hollow of her throat, the outline of her breasts.

"Don't lock me out." His voice was sharp and cold and clear.

Michael felt gooseflesh rise on her arms and legs. He commanded her complete attention. In spite of her wish to do otherwise, she couldn't look away.

"Ever," he said lowly. He waited for some reply and when he saw her brief, reluctant nod, he freed her from the force of his gaze. "You may want to get dressed. We have company."

Houston chose that moment to step into the room from the hallway. "From where I was looking," he said, "Michael seems most suitably clothed." His black eyes traced the curve of her body from head to toe and he was more than a little intrigued by the soft flush that followed in the wake of his gaze. His small polite smile did not quite match the interest in his eyes.

"Give her a minute," Ethan said, stepping to one side to block Houston's view.

From the hallway a feminine voice drawled sweetly. "Oh, Ethan, you act as if she's modest beyond words." Detra Kelly took one look at Michael huddled near the stove, protectively guarding herself with arms folded across her chest, and revised her opinion. "Well, perhaps she is."

Michael wondered if she looked even a tenth as mortified as she felt. Gathering the shreds of her composure, she said quietly, "I have all my teeth."

Ethan and Houston grinned simultaneously. Detra was unamused. "You're going to have to get used to men looking at you a lot more closely than these two."

Michael thought it best to remain silent. She merely stared at Detra, knowing now there would never be any help from that quarter.

Dee Kelly was a bit more than two inches shorter than Michael, coming just below Ethan's shoulder. Both her slenderness and her bearing gave the impression of height. She carried herself with confidence; her small chin raised just the slightest degree necessary to keep others at a comfortable distance. Her hair, smoothly knotted in a chignon, seemed darker and more lustrous than ebony in comparison to the pale alabaster quality of her skin. Her eyes were deep blue, remarkable in their ability to rivet attention to her features. The mouth was generous, pouting in a sly way even when she was smiling. Her jaw gently rounded out the classic oval of her face. Gold and ebony earrings dangled from her lobes and brushed the slender line of her neck.

Houston put one arm around Dee's shoulders. His hand curved around her upper arm and gave her a gentle squeeze. "I don't think it's possible for any men to look more closely then we are, Dee."

Dee's smile did not reach her eyes; she was plainly unamused. She felt Houston's squeeze become a warning. Reining in temper and jealousy she said, "Perhaps you're right. But it's still no reason for her to act the simpering virgin. She's Ethan's wife, for God's sake."
There,
she thought, that's
my
warning. "You did tell me she's supposed to work for me, didn't you? Ethan says she can dance."

"I haven't decided if I'm going to allow her," Ethan said. He remembered Michael's earlier refusal to dance in the saloon, but he insisted on her realizing it was his decision.

For once Michael didn't mind people talking about her as if she weren't in the same room. As Ethan, Houston, and Dee engaged in conversation their attention wandered away. Michael reached for the nightshirt she had placed over the back of a ladder-back chair, pulled it down, and slipped it on over her head and over the towel. When she poked her head through the open collar she was unhappily aware of recapturing their notice. "Please, don't stop on my account," she said briskly, holding up her hands innocently. "You just go on deciding my fate. Since I met Ethan on the train I haven't had a say in—"

"You say too damn much," Ethan said.

"You haven't changed in four years," she said sweetly, offering him a quick, insincere smile. "I could have managed the rest of my life quite nicely believing you were dead." Michael got to her feet and padded softly over to the bed. She sat on the edge, pulling the comforter over her lap to hide her bare ankles and feet. With a little maneuvering she was able to rid herself of the damp towel. "In fact, I'd rather come to enjoy the thought of you being dead."

Dee's soft drawl filled the room after the long tense silence. "My God," she said. "What were you thinking when you married her, Ethan?"

It was Houston who replied. "I should have thought that'd be obvious to even you, Dee."

Ethan grinned. His mouth curved in a intimate insult guaranteed to set Michael on edge with the memory of his earlier kiss. "Exactly."

Michael's chin came up, and her eyes narrowed briefly with the depth of her hatred. With effort, she bit back her anger.

Detra slipped out from under Houston's arm. "I don't know if I have anything in my wardrobe that will fit her," she said slyly. "Kitty might have a few things we can alter."

"She's more your size, than Kitty's," Houston said. "You might have to let out a hem."

"I won't have to let out anything," Dee said, barely holding onto her temper. "If
she
wants something more to wear, then
she
can alter it."

"Sheath those claws, Dee," Houston ordered. "I don't know exactly what's got your back up, but you'll just have to work it out. Ethan didn't want his wife here. His wife doesn't want to be here. No one's happy about it, but it's the way things are."

Dee's sharp murmur protested the way she was being talked to in front of others. With a last icy glance at Michael, she turned on her heel and left the room. Her skirts swayed, taffeta and silk rustled, and then, except for the faint pinging of the piano below stairs, everything was quiet.