Summer Breeze (16 page)

She fixed him with a wide, bewildered gaze. After a long moment, she whispered, "I don't know."

Why, Joseph wondered, was this card game called patience? Frustration would be a better name.

On his third fresh hand, he was already losing again. The cards just wouldn't suit up. Maybe it was his shuffling. Too much, too little. Hell, he didn't know. But he was bored to tears, and that was a fact.

For at least the tenth time in as many minutes, he stretched, rubbed the back of his neck, and thought about hitting the sack. Rachel had retired at least two hours ago. Only he wasn't sleepy. Accustomed to long hours of hard, exhausting work, his body hadn't been taxed enough today. All he'd done was take a ride with David and flap his jaw a little.

He needed to do physical work and lots of it in order to sleep well at night.

He had just finished dealing a new row of cards when a bloodcurdling scream rent the air. He shot up from the chair like a jack from its box and reached the barricade in two long strides.

There
was.no
sign of any disturbance in the still brightly lighted kitchen.

"Rachel?" he called.

Buddy let loose with a volley of shrill barks and leaped through the hole in the barricade.

"Oh, my
God!"
Joseph heard Rachel cry brokenly. "Oh, my
God!"
And then she screamed again.

Joseph couldn't think how anyone might have gotten inside the water closet. He'd been in the dining room ever since Ace and Caitlin left. But something was horribly wrong.

Reacting instinctively, he backed up and gave the already damaged boards of the barricade several jabs with the heel of his boot. Then he started tearing at the wood with his hands. Within seconds, he was inside the kitchen. Buddy was clawing at the water closet door. Joseph ran over to try the knob.
Damn.
It was locked.

"Rachel?"

Between the dog's frantic barks, Joseph could still hear her sobbing.

"Answer me, honey. Are you all right?"

No response. Trapped in indecision, Joseph stood

there for a moment. But then she whimpered again. He put his shoulder to the door.
Shit.
Tried again.

"Stop it!
Stop
it,
please!"
she cried.

Somebody was in there, Joseph thought. He took a step back and threw himself at the door, putting every ounce of his strength behind his weight.

With one more thrust of his shoulder, Joseph heard the door casing split. He threw himself at the panel of wood one more time, and the door burst open.

Swathed in another white gown, her thick night braid falling forward over one breast, Rachel huddled in the bathtub, back to the spigots, her eyes huge as she stared up at him. In so small an enclosure, the single candle, set on a small parlor table in the corner, made the room as bright as day. Joseph scanned the area, saw no one, and relaxed his fists. Buddy leaped into the tub and began sniffing Rachel, as though to check for injuries.

"What?" Joseph asked. "You were screaming. What's wrong?"

Another whimper erupted from her. "N-night— m-mare," she choked out.

All that ruckus over a
dream?
Joseph could scarcely believe his ears. "I thought someone was in here."

She shook her head wildly and pushed the dog's nose away from her face. "Only a n-nightmare."

Joseph turned to assess the damage. He'd flat torn the hell out of the water closet door. The entire casing had come loose, the top rail dangling. He didn't want to think what her barricade must look like. Easing his head out the doorway, he scanned the debris and said, "Well, shit."

"I'm s-sorry. I h-have bad d-dreams."

He raked a hand through his hair. "They must be all-fired awful." He glanced back at her. "What the hell did you dream about?"

She wrapped her arms around Buddy and pressed her face into his fur. "I'm not sure," she confessed raggedly.

If that didn't cap the climax. How could anyone scream that loud when she wasn't even sure what she was screaming about? Joseph felt his temper rising and tried to calm down. She'd scared the bejesus out of him, and after a bad fright, he always got fighting mad for a bit. That didn't give him license to take it out on her.

He left the water closet to assess the damage to her barricade. "Well, that's catawamptiously broken all to pieces."

He heard movement behind him. Then a faint, "Oh, dear
heavens,
what have you
done?"

The panic in her voice gave Joseph a really bad feeling, and when he turned to her, he forgot all about being pissed off. Her face had lost all color. Her eyes glowed like huge, wet ink splotches on a stark white sheet. Lantern light ignited the recalcitrant curls that had escaped her braid, the golden tendrils creating a nimbus around her head. Buddy paced in nervous circles around her, as if he sensed something was very wrong.

Even as Joseph watched, Rachel's chest started to catch. Her gaze still fixed on the mess he'd made of her barricade, she pressed a hand to the base of her throat.

"With a little bit of fixing, it'll be good as new. I promise."

Her lips were turning blue.

"You're not outside," he cajoled as he moved toward her. Waving a hand, he said, "Rachel?

Honey, look at me." But her gaze remained fixed on the scattered boards behind him. "It's still only a hole, just a slightly bigger one than you had a few minutes ago. That's nothing to panic over. I'm here. No one can hurt you."

A horrible rasping whine came up from deep inside her, and her eyes went buggy, like someone choking on a chunk of meat. She extended one slender hand, her fingers curled like claws. Joseph could see that she honestly couldn't breathe. This was bad. This was really,
really
bad. And he had no idea in hell what to do.

For want of anything else, he hollered at the dog to shut up. A lot of good that did. Buddy just barked more insistently, as if imploring Joseph to fix things. Joseph wished he knew how.

When he got within arm's reach of her, Rachel latched on to the front of his shirt, her fingernails scoring his skin through the cloth. Then her knees buckled.

"Christ." It was more a prayer than a curse.

"Sweet Christ," he said for good measure as he barely managed to catch her from falling. Feeling panicked himself, he scooped her up in his arms and hurried into the water closet. "You're safe, Rachel. See? Walls all around."

He sat on the commode seat, putting her back to the doorway so she couldn't see the damaged framework. To his surprise, she hooked both arms around his neck, buried her face against his shoulder, and pressed rigidly against him, still struggling to breathe. Acutely aware of her feminine softness and warmth, Joseph hesitated to slip his arms around her. But then she shivered, and he instinctively embraced her, determined to ignore the reaction of his body and stay focused on her need to be soothed and comforted. Buddy whined and came to rest his chin on her knees.

"No worries," he whispered fiercely. "You've got me, and I'm a whole lot better than a wall. Trust me when I say no one will get through me, not with a shotgun or any other damned thing."

Joseph felt her lungs expand and took heart. He had never been one to blow his own trumpet, but sometimes necessity dictated. She desperately needed to feel safe.

Holding her tightly, he rubbed her back and kept talking. "Remember asking me last night if I'm fast with a gun?" All he got as a response was a labored whistle. "I was afraid to tell you the truth for fear you'd go into hysterics and swoon from sheer fright, but the truth is, I'm very fast." She took another breath. Joseph searched his brain for something more
to say. "From the time I was about twelve, Ace insisted that I had to be good with a gun and
made me practice every day. Practice makes perfect, as the old saying goes. After nineteen
years of practicing, I'm so fast now that you can barely see my hand move when I go for my
weapon, and I'm deadly accurate, to boot."

He listened to her breathing and gave himself a mental pat on the back. The whistles were
coming less often, and he could feel the rise of her chest occasionally, which told him that
her lungs were starting to work properly again.

Warming to his subject, Joseph went on to say, "I can go up against five men who are
pretty damned fast and be the only one still standing when the smoke clears."

That was no lie. He had actually done it once. It was one of those memories that still
haunted his dreams, a moment in time that he couldn't erase, a regret that he would have to
live with for the rest of his life. He closed his eyes and buried his face in her hair. It was
every bit as soft as it looked. The scent of roses clouded his senses.

"No one is going to hurt you," he whispered gruffly. "I'll kill any man who tries, Rachel."

As Joseph made that promise, he realized he meant it with all his heart. In a very short
time, this lady had gotten under his skin. Not a good situation. But that was a worry he
would chew on later. "You've got my word on it. If anyone comes into this house, he'll be
one sorry son of a bitch."

She made a mewling sound and pressed closer, as if trying to melt into him. "My walls," she
said tautly. "I

need
my w-walls, Joseph. I know it's c-crazy, but
I
c-can't live without
th-them."

Though he doubted that he would ever really understand it, Joseph was slowly coming to realize that she truly did need her walls. He guessed some things just had to be accepted whether you understood them or not. There was a sickness inside her head, pure and simple. Not insanity, like he'd thought at first, just a strange, obsessive need to have barricades all around her. He likened it to his obsession about never settling down to sleep along the trail without first checking his bedding for snakes. Even when he'd only just shaken out his blankets, he still had to look.

Rationally he knew no snake could possibly be there, but reason held no sway. On some level, Rachel knew that her terror of open spaces was irrational as well, but knowing didn't lessen her fear.

When she was breathing evenly again, Joseph loosened his hold on her, but she clung to him like a baby opossum to its mother. "I thought I might see about fixing your barricade," he whispered.

"Where do you keep your hammer and nails?"

"No,
no.
Please don't leave me."

Joseph heard her breath hitch again. He hurried to say, "I won't leave you, honey. A team of wild horses couldn't drag me away.
I just need
to fix your barricade, is all."

"No boards," she squeaked. "We have no boards."

When a woman
couldn't breathe
for panic, Joseph could get very creative.
He would find
something to cover that damned archway even if it meant ripping up floorboards in another room of the house.

Only Rachel wouldn't turn loose of his neck. At the mere thought of his leaving her, she was starting to grab for breath again. In all his days, he'd never seen the like. All of this over a hole in wall? What was it like when she stepped outside? Joseph decided he didn't want to know.

"I won't leave you," he assured her softly. "I'm here, I'm staying. Just calm down, Rachel."

It occurred to Joseph that he might be asking more of her than she could give. Buddy chose that moment to whine and nudge her leg.

"You've got Buddy worried about you," he observed. "He can't figure out what the problem is.

Why do you feel afraid when you've got a sterling watchdog like him on duty?"

"Is he a g-good watchdog?" she asked.

Joseph considered the dog's worried face. He guessed Buddy was shaping up to be a fairly good watchdog. He just needed another year of maturity to make him more dependable. As it was, he sometimes grew too interested in food or playing to keep a really sharp eye on his surroundings, and when he fell asleep, he went completely off duty.

"He's the best," Joseph replied.

Hell, if he could brag on himself, he could brag on his dog. In Joseph's opinion, Buddy was the best at just about everything, watching out for danger included. He was just a little young yet. In a few more months, his talents would really start to shine.

"He has hearing like you wouldn't believe." That much was absolutely true. If Joseph touched the corn-bread pan to grab a quick snack, the dog came running

from any room in the house. "And, boy, howdy, does he raise sand when strangers come around."

Sometimes Joseph still had to alert the silly mutt that strangers were approaching, but that was beside the point. "And he's loyal to a fault." Except around golden-haired ladies with big, frightened blue eyes who made stew that smelled too wonderful to resist. Then the dog was a turncoat.

Joseph's spine was starting to ache. He wondered how long she might cling to his neck. Surely not all night. Then again, maybe so. That's what a man got for bragging, he guessed: a woman who counted on him to protect her.

Evidently her muscles were getting cricks in them, too. She squirmed on his lap to get more comfortable.
Uh-oh.
Joseph stared at a curl poking up in front of his nose. Now that she was breathing okay again, a certain part of him, which he'd named Old Glory in puberty, was starting to notice all that warm softness.
This won't do,
Joseph thought. But he couldn't think of a way to rectify the situation. Her butt felt powerful good, and Old Glory had never heeded a single thought in Joseph's head. Nope, Old Glory just did his own thing, and sometimes, like now, that could be pretty damned embarrassing.

He felt Rachel stiffen and knew she felt the hardness. Given the way she'd lived the last five years, Joseph fleetingly hoped that she wouldn't realize the significance. Fat chance. There were some things a female instinctively understood, and a flagstaff poking her in the butt was one of them.

Her head came up, and Joseph found himself being