Slow Fever (7 page)

“Girls, Sherlock. Dating costs.”

“So did Tanner’s track shoes—the ones
you
bought and hung on Mom’s back porch. So did the ribbons and the other things, like Mom’s little leather manicure set. You knew she never would have treated herself to that and that
there was no money for Tanner’s sports supplies or those little gold studs I wanted when I was fifteen. You bought Mom a good set of leather gloves when her hands were torn picking blackberries in the bramble. I still have the earrings and the gold locket you gave me when I turned sixteen by the way. Karolina picked up most of it—she was always good at details, even when we were kids—and I saw you from my bedroom window the night you left Tanner’s track shoes. You were lucky I didn’t shoot you with my slingshot. I was pretty good then. Karolina has apparently forgotten all her early sleuth work. I haven’t.”

Michael studied Kylie and knew she was out to terrorize him. “Are you done?”

“No. I’ll tell you when I am.” She glared at him for a moment and then said, “I’m done.”

Michael considered the woman who had just turned her back to him, sealing him away from her. Helpless wasn’t an emotion he’d had since he was a child and now it circled him. He badly wanted to pick her up and hold her and cuddle her. Kylie flipped back over, catching his tender expression before he could wipe it away. To protect himself and her, Michael stated darkly, “Don’t pull the do-gooder act with me. Don’t try to push me into something I’m not. It won’t work.”

“You’re afraid,” she cooed, unafraid and taunting him. Then she shifted that luscious mobile mouth into a smirk and murmured, “Gotcha.”

Michael found himself grinning. “Exactly what would the Women’s Council say if they knew we were spending the night together—again?”

Kylie’s smirk died. “You know good and well that the traditions of Freedom Valley are that if a couple spends the night together, the man is expected to go before the Council and present himself as a proper bridegroom candidate. It
isn’t necessary, but it’s a custom that every woman really wants, no matter how modern she is. Our mothers and grandmothers have wanted the same, and were courted according to custom. I can’t see you doing that. You’ve been a Cull too long. You have all those women. You’re a legend in your own time, a heartthrob of every girl when we were younger. You wouldn’t do that just to embarrass me, like that kiss on the dance floor, would you?”

“Wouldn’t I?” Michael watched her digest exactly what he could do, and slid into his sleeping bag.

“You know that if you speak for me, it will stop other men from asking me for casual dates. You’re just contrary enough to— I really need a date, Michael, so don’t do that. I’m determined to—” Kylie lifted up on one elbow and scowled at him. “Never mind. Just don’t interfere with my life.”

“Mmm,” he returned blandly, not giving Kylie the reassurance that she wanted. He looked up at the stars through the pine branches and savored Kylie’s silent frustration, the rustling of her sleeping bag as she flip-flopped in it and the punching of her pillow. After a time, he heard her sigh; her light breathing changed into a slow, steady rhythm. Kylie, sleeping nearby, settled the dark shadows prowling around Michael’s heart and he gave himself to the gentle sound.

Used to living in dangerous places, Michael awoke instantly, aware that in the predawn, something approached him—his first thought was for the safety of Kylie and of the cougars and wolves known to hunt upon the mountains. Then he caught Kylie’s earthy scent, mingled with sweet violets and he looked up into her face. He answered the unspoken question hovering on her lips—“No, they weren’t my children. To father a child is a serious respon
sibility, a life to cherish. I haven’t considered children, but I know I’d want to be there for them. Go back to sleep.”

“Tough guy,” Kylie mocked gently in the darkness. Then she bent to kiss his forehead. “Good night.”

That light kiss, like a mother to a child, would burn Michael’s skin for hours later. She’d be giving kisses like that to her children one day and then she’d be going to bed with her husband. “Kylie?” he asked as she settled into her sleeping bag.

“Umm?”

“Don’t ever go to a man in the middle of the night.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t,” he managed finally as his body ached with the need to hold her close.

Early the next afternoon, too filled with restless images of her night with Michael and her plans for Soft Touches, Kylie began to wash and starch—one of her mother’s recommended “problem-solvers.” She’d washed blankets and hung them on her mother’s wire clothesline to dry in the bright Montana autumn. While the blankets were drying, she’d hauled the old tin washtubs out of the garage and filled them for the hand-stitched quilts that needed more tender care. The two huge tubs sat in her mother’s backyard, exactly as Kylie had remembered, the autumn sunlight filtering through the fiery leaves of the old oak tree. “A good soak in soap and soda, a few swishes, and sunshine, that’s all good quilts need,” her mother had said.

Dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, Kylie gently eased Magda Claas’s hand-stitched quilt into the warm water. One of the Founding Mothers and Kylie’s ancestor, Magda was a butter maker, a midwife and a healer, just as Anna had been.

Kylie surveyed her mother’s yard, autumn leaves drifting
across the sleeping beds of peonies, lavender, tulips and irises. In the summer, Anna’s yard was a multicolored fiesta of flowers, the herbs’ scents fragrantly blending with the magnolia blooms. Kylie had needed this healing place, with good loving memories in which to rest, before moving on with her life. She’d ordered catalogs for aromatherapy, massage benches and electric devices to relax overly taut muscles.

When an image of Michael from this morning sliced into her brain, his rugged jaw covered with morning stubble, and his black eyes searing her, Kylie plunged her elbows into the soapy water, swishing the treasured quilts. At the campsite, he’d cooked breakfast, a delicious skillet of bacon and eggs and hash browns and then had slathered a biscuit with butter, placing it against her lips. “Eat,” he’d ordered grimly. “The sooner we’re off the mountain, the better. And if you know what’s good for you, don’t do any more of those yoga exercises.”

Kylie washed the quilt gently, remembering Michael’s gaze as it drifted to the butter on her lips. His stormy expression had darkened as she licked her bottom lip. “What’s it to you?” she’d asked, just to set him off, just to pry him from his grim mood.

“This,” he’d answered darkly and bent to place his lips against hers. The kiss was light and easy, as if he were cherishing her, but the electric current leaped, snagged and locked onto her immediately. The jolt shot down her body, skittered up her back and she’d placed the plate aside, her heart pounding as Michael studied her. He shook his head. “You’re too sweet, Kylie. Everything you’re thinking is written on your face.”

“And? What am I thinking?”
She’d wanted to grab him and have him, and treasure him.

When he was silent, his hand wrapped around hers, Kylie closed her eyes. She’d held his hand tightly, until he drew
away. “I’m thinking,” she’d said, lying to herself and to him, to cover the need to rest against him, “that I came up here to think and that if you hadn’t been such a rat last night, I would have given myself a fantastic pedicure. I would have felt much better this morning with beautiful feet. If I could teach someone in this town reflexology, I would. Karolina’s hands are too small and weak. It’s her brain that’s big and strong.”

Michael had been too quiet, waves of his personal vibrant energy washing over her. He’d looked at her sock-covered feet and had grimly pushed her boots over them. He tied the lashes briskly. “Not me. Not your feet,” he stated roughly.

“Was I asking you, in particular?” she’d shot at him, because her feet were perfectly fine.

“I could make you ask, and we both know it,” he had replied slowly, and the clear air scented of pines and earth swirled mysteriously around Kylie. That curious prickling ran up her spine and danced on her skin.

Now, in her mother’s backyard, with the quilt wet, bulky and heavy in her hands, Kylie wrung it gently. She eased it into the rinse water. Years ago, she used to hold one end as her mother twisted the quilts, wringing them before rinsing.

Kylie closed her eyes as a van and cars pulled into her mother’s driveway. There was no mistaking Fidelity Moore, Dahlia Greer, Jasmine Thatcher and Sadie McGinnis as they emerged, sighting her instantly and making their way for her.

“You didn’t wring out the soap water enough before putting it into the rinse tub,” ninety-year-old Fidelity Moore stated crisply. “That will never do. Put the quilt back into the soapy water and change the rinse water.”

The metallic flash on the road in front of Anna’s blinded Kylie momentarily, then she recognized Michael’s service truck. It had passed the driveway and was backing up. It
pulled up slowly beside the van and cars. Michael got out, shot her a pinning, assessing look that set her pulse racing, and she prayed he’d leave. Instead he opened the side panels to retrieve his tool belt and strapped it on as if she were a customer. He walked toward the women, a tall man with shaggy black hair, broad shoulders and long powerful legs, enough male confection to suck the breath from any woman. “Good afternoon, ladies,” he said, nodding to them.

“Fuse box,” Kylie explained hurriedly. “Old wiring. Dad did a good job, but the wire covering is crumbling and Michael is just—”

“Hold there, young man,” Fidelity’s aged but firm voice called out as Michael began up the back steps.

Michael stopped and stiffened. Kylie’s body turned cold. Fidelity’s “Hold there” command had been known to freeze charging bulls. Then Michael turned to smile that devastatingly beautiful, charming, woman-catching smile, and came down the steps. “I don’t think Michael has time to spare,” Kylie said, uncertain about how he would react to the pounding questions certain to come. “He has another job, but the fire hazard to Mom’s house—”

“I’ve plenty of time,” Michael said, watching her as Kylie began to twist the old quilt. As if he were used to the task, Michael pulled up his sweatshirt sleeves, stripped off his workman’s belt and put it on the old picnic table. He took the wet quilt from her hands and twisted it gently, plopping it onto the backyard picnic table. He frowned at the soapy rinse water and noted, “You didn’t get enough of the wash water out. Anna was very careful about that.”

“I know, I know, I know,” Kylie muttered. In another moment, the Women’s Council would be reminding her of Michael’s Cull status.

“Take very good care of her doilies, Kylie,” Fidelity ordered. “If you need your mother’s sugar-starch recipe
and help on how to form the ruffles, call me. Your mother taught me. Some of the doilies and designs came down from Magda Claas, your ancestor and excellent with a crochet hook. So was your mother. You’ve always been so much on the move that I doubt Anna could keep you still long enough to embroider pillowcases for your hope chest….”

Fidelity’s aged blue gaze burned through the mid-October air to pin Kylie. “You do have a hope chest, don’t you? It’s one of the requirements for a bride hereabouts.”

“It’s upstairs,” Kylie answered, feeling as if she were in the third grade instead of a woman who had run a business and had managed a household with a husband not carrying his share. “I didn’t take it with me when I married.”

“You should have abided by the customs of Freedom Valley and your first marriage would have been solid. But then, the young and foolish make mistakes, don’t we all?”

“Could be.” Kylie had already acknowledged her marital mistakes—she’d given too much to Leon. He hadn’t given enough—or wanted to.

Fidelity wasn’t backing off. “Do you want to marry again?”

“I’ll just dump this,” Michael said, attaching a hose to the tin rinse tub and draining the water from it into Anna’s old peony bed. “Be right back with clean rinse water.”

Fidelity’s alert gaze considered Michael. “You’re a Cull, aren’t you, boy?”

Michael grinned at her. “Have been. I’d change if the right woman came along.”

“We can’t have you run amok, contaminating all the good work we’ve done with the men here in Freedom Valley,” Fidelity stated firmly. “You’ll have to change your ways.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m considering it.” Michael’s grin blazed in the dappled shadows of Anna’s backyard, and Kylie
stared at him blankly, trying to align the woman-hunting boy with the man who stood beside her, as solid and true as any man in Freedom Valley. He had the same stance as her father did, boots planted firmly upon the fallen leaves, a man giving his word and intending to keep it.

“Hmm. Just here to do the wiring, you say,” Dahlia purred. A woman who enjoyed men, Dahlia noted Michael’s taut jean-covered backside as he took two buckets and went into Anna’s house for hot water.

Fidelity settled upon the picnic table and studied Kylie. “He used to do that for Anna,” she said. “Rogue that he is, Michael Cusack can be a gentleman. Anna used to go to his house, especially when his women were visiting. I want to hear what the boy has to say for himself,” Fidelity stated in her President of the Women’s Council tone. When Michael returned, she asked, “You know the girl is skitterish around you and you know why, don’t you?”

Michael met Fidelity’s gaze. “Yes, ma’am. I do.”

“She’s a fine girl. A little headstrong and sometimes acts without caution. You can go along now and get more rinse water. I like to see a man washing quilts.”

Kylie crossed her arms. “If you’re talking about me, I have a thing or two to say. First of all, I’m not skitterish. Not in the least.”

Michael’s teasing finger at her nape startled her and Fidelity smiled fondly at him. He made two more trips for hot water, then plopped the end of the quilt into Kylie’s hands. He twisted the other end of quilt gently and eased it into the fresh rinse water. Picking up another quilt from the basket, he eased it into the wash water. “There,” he said, drying his hands on his sweatshirt and smiling charmingly at the women. “I’d be happy to help any of you with your electrical work, or with quilt washing.”