Lucy's Liberation [Elk Creek 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (12 page)

There was something to be said for the intimacy of fencing, the satisfaction of facing one’s opponent across the length of a shiny blade, close enough to feel his breath, sweat, and body heat against one’s skin when one attacked and lunged.

“We didn’t hear you come in,” the young man said.

“I would imagine you were a bit preoccupied.” If they had been about something improper, Ki was sure they would have locked the door, but then he hadn’t locked the door when he’d been with Lucy earlier. He hadn’t anticipated doing anything improper either, but one couldn’t always plan for something like that. Sometimes lust just got the better of a man.

Lucy was an alluring beautiful temptress alone in a room with a stripling, someone with whom, from what Ki understood, she had grown up and gone to school, which meant the mystery man was almost a decade younger than Ki.

If he didn’t already have enough reason to be jealous of the young buck—starting with his good looks, shared history with Lucy, and his recently coming back from the dead—then his youth was the final straw.

Ki slowly crossed the floor to the couple, warily watching them as they put more space between themselves.

A little too late for that, don’t you think?
“So, what exactly is it you can’t tell me?”

“Allow me to introduce myself…” The young man closed the space between himself and Ki, proffering a hand. “I’m Ethan Crawford. Lucy and I grew up together.”

“So I’ve heard.” Ki accepted the offered hand, taking Ethan’s full measure as he tightened his fingers around the younger man’s. Ethan’s shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and Ki appreciated the way the muscles in his forearms flexed when he returned Ki’s strong grip. He also admired the way Ethan met his gaze, the long-lashed brandy eyes unflinching. Ki cleared his throat. “You’ve given the town quite a lot to talk about in the last week. You still, however, haven’t answered my question.”

Ethan glanced at Lucy before returning his gaze to Ki. “As you can imagine, I just needed a friendly ear to talk to and I thought of Lucy.”

Ki released Ethan’s hand to drape his arm over Lucy’s shoulders and drew her close to his side. “Lucy can be quite amiable when she puts her mind to it.”

“She’s always been nice to me.”

“What is it, exactly, that you and Lucy can’t tell me?”

“Ethan thought it would be better if I didn’t mention his visit to you. But I assured him that we don’t keep any secrets from each other and of course I would tell you he visited, but here you are, so I don’t have to tell you because as you can see, Ethan visited me.”

Ki smiled at Lucy’s verbosity. He didn’t think she had said so much to him in one visit before and knew from her breathy response and the color in her cheeks that she was lying.

The questions were, why and who was this Ethan Crawford to her, really?

Ki looked from Ethan to Lucy and back again.

There was something about the young man that didn’t fit. He didn’t sound like anyone else Ki had met in Elk Creek, and he most assuredly did not sound like a twenty-three-year-old. He was, in fact, anomalous, sounding more like he was from Ki’s hometown than an Elk Creek native. He didn’t seem suited to this town any more than Ki did.

Not suspicious by nature, Ki knew there was something between Ethan and Lucy about which he needed to be concerned. He was going to enjoy finding out what that something was.

* * * *

Lucy felt Ki staring at her as if he was waiting for something to happen, like maybe he expected her to have a fit of hysterics or start speaking in tongues right at the dinner table.

If she hadn’t had a fit of hysterics earlier when she’d been cornered in the storeroom by her past-lover-in-another-man’s-body and her future husband, then she probably never would.

“More peas and carrots, Ki?” Sabrina asked.

“I’d love some.”

Lucy watched Ki accept the large bowl of vegetables from Sabrina and scoop a heaping spoonful of peas and carrots on top of his mashed potatoes and gravy. She caught herself staring at his long elegant fingers, remembering how they’d felt against her back when he’d kissed her and imagining how they’d feel when he’d slip them inside her.

“Are you all right, Lucy?” Ki asked.

“Huh? Oh sure. Right as a trivet! Why do you ask?”

“Because I could have sworn I heard you moaning.”

Almost simultaneously, Sabrina, Luke, and Joshua all coughed and quickly covered their mouths with their napkins.

Lucy rolled her eyes and took the warm woven basket that Sabrina offered her. She pulled back the linen napkin that covered the buttered biscuits, plucked two out of the basket, and put them on her plate. She didn’t know why she was so ravenous, but her appetite seemed to be back with a vengeance. Of course, who could resist Sabrina’s meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas and carrots? She knew she couldn’t and evidently, Ki couldn’t either.

Lucy watched from under her lowered lashes as he dug into his meal with relish, praising Sabrina between bites and causing the woman to uncharacteristically titter and blush like a shy school girl. It was amazing how a smile and a kind word from Ki could bring usually strong-willed and independent women to their knees.

The campaign of charming the bloomers off of all of Lucy’s female friends—not that she had all that many—seemed to be in full swing and continuing.

Why couldn’t Lucy find it in
her
to completely succumb to Ki as easily as everyone else did? Was she being unfair not giving him a chance?

She was as a rule more tolerant of people, tended to give others the benefit of the doubt.

Everyone made mistakes, after all, and Ki’s only one, for which he had readily owned up to and apologized for was in not coming to Elk Creek quicker.

How much longer should she punish him for that now that he was here and trying to make amends?

“More tea?” Sabrina asked.

Lucy nodded and Sabrina poured more iced tea into her cup.

The men all accepted more Arbuckle’s, all swearing that Sabrina made the best coffee in the territory.

“Oh hush, now, you ol’ silver-tongued devils.”

Lucy smiled at the glimpse of Sabrina’s usual breezy self.

She had noticed that the dinner conversation was strangely stilted, at least for dinner at Sabrina’s table, less rambunctious. She wondered if the sedate atmosphere was for Ki’s benefit and whether or not Sabrina was bottling up her customary personality on purpose. Did she think Ki was too cultured to handle her wild sense of humor? True, he had witnessed hints of it at the shop, but once home, away from the business of the day, Sabrina was outrageous enough to make the usually stony-faced and taciturn Joshua and Luke laugh out loud and sometimes blush.

Lucy knew
she
was on edge and had been ever since Ki had shown up earlier bearing a bouquet of beautiful red roses for her and asking Sabrina if he could join her and her boarders for dinner.

Of course how could Sabrina refuse when Ki’s fiancée was one of her boarders and when Ki’s request had been so sincere and reasonable? Besides which, Sabrina had pointed out, she always made enough food for an army regiment, so the more the merrier.

Lucy actually couldn’t wait for the right moment to excuse herself and get away from the table without seeming impolite. When Ki had told her at the shop earlier that he would see her later, she hadn’t thought he’d meant he was coming to the boarding house for dinner.

She wondered now what his plans for the rest of the night were.

“I meant to tell you about a purchase I made today at the shop. With all the excitement of Ethan’s visit, it completely slipped my mind,” Ki said.

“Purchase?” Lucy asked, heart thudding with the thought of her sketch in Ki’s possession and wondering what he really thought of it.

“Yes, an exquisite sketch by an unknown artist Maia described as an up-and-comer.”

He thought her work was exquisite? Lucy’s heart swelled before she wondered if he was referring to the artist’s work or the subject. Knowing Ki, he was probably referring to the latter. “You don’t say.”

“I do say.” Ki raised his coffee cup to his lips and took a sip, staring at her over the rim as if gauging her reaction.

Lucy lifted her napkin from her lap to wipe her mouth, trying not to fidget. She was intensely aware of his gaze on her behind the aromatic steam rising from his coffee, his sky-blue eyes looking as if they were lit from a fire within.

“I’d like the chance to show it to you after dinner, perhaps see what you think.”

“What
I
think? Maia’s the art expert around these parts, not me.”

“Hmm, something tells me that’s not exactly accurate.”

Did he know? Was he toying with her?

Lucy felt the other boarding house residents’ gazes on her. She was right glad that business had been a little slow lately and that she, Joshua, and Luke were the only residents at the boarding house. What with the new hotel in town now providing travelers with another option for lodging, Lucy didn’t see the house filling up with boarders any time soon.

She wondered vaguely how Ki was finding the accommodations at Rance’s without her.

“If you’ve finished your meal, perhaps we could withdraw to the parlor to talk.”

She wanted to tell him not to rush her, but she didn’t want to shame her momma and be rude. Some things her momma had taught her had gotten through her tomboy skull after all.

Tears suddenly stung her eyes at the thought of her momma.

She used to tell Lucy all the time she would meet her prince charming and live happily ever after one day, and Lucy used to believe her, until her daddy sold her to Rance. She wondered now if Ki was the prince charming her mother had been talking about. He fit the bill in every way possible. Why was Lucy
still
stalling their marriage?

“Shall we, darling?”

Lucy blinked and tilted her head back to look at Ki standing beside her chair, holding out his hand.

She glanced at the table’s other occupants and saw the expectant looks on their faces. The smile on Sabrina’s face was so big she looked like she was positively ready to burst.

Dog gone it!
“Of course.” Lucy pasted a pleasant smile on her lips, put her hand in his and left her napkin on the table beside her spotless plate. Well, tarnation, she had actually finished her dinner and she was too stuffed to swallow another bite. She really had no excuse to linger, did she?

Ki smiled and gently squeezed her hand as he led her from the kitchen out into the hall.

He stopped to grab a bag off of the occasional table then paused suddenly and looked at Lucy as if for help. “Hmm, I seem to be at a bit of a quandary.”

“I’ll say.” She laughed and pulled him in the direction of Sabrina’s library, the closest thing to a parlor or sitting room she had in the house besides the great room.

Besides, it was Lucy’s favorite part of the house and since most of the boarders didn’t venture into it, she spent a lot of her free time—which hadn’t been a lot in the last several months—just exploring the shelves and reading some of the books in peace and quiet.

Rance would have sneered at seeing her in this room. He used to tell her a library was a waste of time for someone as stupid as her. She supposed this was why she was so drawn to Sabrina’s library, because Rance had refused to allow her any books in their house. He gave her the run of the place where the decorating was concerned, but drew the line at putting any fancy books in his house.

“A Comtoise! How superb!”

“A com-what?” Lucy frowned at his French pronunciation at the same time that she admired it. The way his sensuous lips caressed the beginning of the word before releasing the second precise syllable
t-wah
sent a tingle straight to her pussy as if his voice had a direct link between her legs.

When Lucy grasped that she was standing there gawking at him, the crotch of her bloomers quickly becoming wet, she shook herself. “You mean the grandfather clock?”

“Oh, this is more than just any old grandfather clock. This is a work of art. See the greater use of curves here and the elongated, highly ornamental pendulum.”

Lucy watched as he glided his hand down the polished wood of the clock’s potbellied case. She suddenly wished that she was the clock and he was stroking her body like he stroked the body of that highfalutin clock! “Yeah, I guess it is a fancy do-dad. I know Sabrina gets right cagey when you ask her about it. Just says it was a gift. She won’t say from who or anything.”

“It must have been someone who cared about her a great deal. These clocks are made in Franche-Comte and found in France, Spain, Germany, and other parts of Europe, but less in America.”

Tarnation, just listening to him rattling off the names of other countries like school kids here knew the states made Lucy realize just how far apart their social experiences were, how different and far away his world was from hers.

What had she been thinking accepting this man’s marriage proposal? Even if it hadn’t been a real proposal and was just a business transaction, even if it wasn’t going to be a real marriage, she still wanted to connect with him on some level. What, really, did she have to bring to their relationship? “Have you traveled to all those countries?”