Tallchief for Keeps (16 page)

“I’m waiting for a herd of them to turn up now.”

She opened the cupboards to see the old dishes he’d bought at an auction. Talia had teased him ruthlessly; she had relented when she saw how he treasured them despite the chips. “These are lovely. They’re from the Winscotts, one of the first pioneers in the valley. They had eleven children and loved each other deeply. The table was theirs, too. Mr. Winscott had to make more leaves and supports as their family grew. He wanted the entire family to sit down at once, every meal, and so they did.”

Alek had felt that, the love in the chipped dishes and the handcrafted table, scarred by years of use. He sensed the children eating greedily and then bouncing up from the table, filled and ready to play. It pleased him to eat from the same dishes, to imagine that his children would be settling on his knee to be rocked and cuddled and burped. Lost in that dream, he could forget that the meals he ate were prepackaged and frozen.

“The rocking chair in your living
room is the Mulveneys’. Mrs. Mulveney was six feet five inches and of ample proportions. She loved rocking children, sometimes three at a time. All of their children were rocked there, and most of the Tallchief clan, too,” Elspeth added, jarring him. He sensed that she had dipped into his thoughts.

The seed packets on the table embarrassed him. He wanted to grow herbs, to wallow in the scent of them in his house as he had in hers. Comfortable in the shadows, Elspeth touched and smoothed and explored—he wanted her touching him in the same way. Elspeth probed into the desperate, lonely heart of him and exposed his raw edges. “Why are you here?”

She touched his cheek, then stood on tiptoe to nibble on his lip. “Questions. Ever the journalist, aren’t you? You’ve been over here, hoarding a collection of things that no one wants anymore. Why?”

“My lifestyle hasn’t exactly
allowed me to have a houseful of furniture or dishes.” That was true enough, but he wanted bits of happiness of other homes. Because he wanted a family and a home and was too proud to admit his need.

Alek gripped her upper arms, then her wrists as her arms slid up to his neck, around it, drawing him close to her curved body. Elspeth, on the prowl, could frighten any man who thought he could control what lay within him. “We’d better go somewhere else.”

He’d hurt her now if they made love. He wanted to make this time tender and last until the dawn came and then start all over again. Elspeth moved against him, and Alek hardened instantly. The sound of his voice came raw and uneven as the shawl whispered between them. “Elspeth…”

For an answer, she held him tighter. Alek eased aside the folds of the shawl to lock his hands on her waist. “Elspeth!”

She held him tightly, refusing to be eased away. Her thumb ran along the scar on his shoulder. Then she looked up at him and grinned for the first time. “I’ve shocked you, Petrovna. Admit it.”

He blinked, uncertain if Elspeth had really sent him an impish, five-thousand-watt grin that sent him reeling. Tonight he wasn’t certain of anything. The shawl’s fringes clung to his fingers as he forced her away gently. “You’re inexperienced, Elspeth-mine. You have no idea of what you’re doing.”

“Not up to it?” Her tease was followed by a quick smile that enchanted him. Her hand lay flat on his chest, toyed with the hair there and slowly, slowly moved downward.

“You wouldn’t—” When her fingers skimmed down his stomach, he jerked back against the counter and gripped it with both hands. “Elspeth!”

“Yes, Elspeth. Remember my name, Alek. It’s Elspeth.” Elspeth slowly unbraided her hair, combing it around her. The shawl slid from her shoulders to rest over the back of a chair.

Alek latched his fist in the soft material,
warm from her body, and found that he couldn’t think as Elspeth began to undress. She unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it to a chair. Alek’s mouth went dry when she reached behind her to unfasten her bra.

She tossed the white cotton scrap at him, and he crushed it in his fist. She kicked aside her flats and, veiled by the heavy swath of hair, she stripped away her slacks. Her practical white panties slid down her slender thighs, revealing the dark triangle between her thighs. Alek shuddered, every muscle in his body tightening into a knot.

The moonlight coming through the window slid to caress her body, to outline it in silver as she took the shawl from him. Then she draped it around her and began slowly ascending the stairs. Alek, taut and shaking, traced the flowing movements of her body beneath the shawl, the fringes swaying along the slender, strong backs of her thighs, the cloth caressing the sway of her bottom.

Alek realized that he was alternately cold with
fear that he would hurt her and hot with need that rose with stubborn pain within his body.

Then Elspeth paused, looked down at him over her shoulder and lifted an elegant, expressive eyebrow.

Elspeth listened to the movements downstairs as Alek locked the doors. The cats howled near her house, the sound grating on her nerves…not exactly romantic music for her adventure into tasting Alek.

“Untitled” hung on Alek’s wall, mocking her. It was very sexual, a woman’s translation of intimacy, colors locking together, exploding—Elspeth groaned silently. She should have known he’d buy the wall hanging, outlined in the moonlight, a monument to what she was about to do.

It was no casual thing coming to Alek, following the needs of her heart and body. She studied the room, bits of other people’s lives mingling with Alek’s family, his friends. The braided rag rug on the floor, well washed and familiar, probably had once belonged to Mrs. Potts, who was fond of cutting off buttons from ruined shirts and braiding them into rugs. The buttons were likely in the antique blue glass jar. The lovely old quilts neatly folded on a chair ached for a proper bed.

She’d passed a small room, cluttered with tools and lumber and a crib folded against a wall. There was a tiny rocking horse.

Alek wanted a family. While he could afford better, Alek preferred to retrieve old pieces, to lug bits of lives back to his house.

Elspeth pressed the heels of her hands
to her eyes. He wanted a home, deserved one.

He’d gone to hell and back when he’d discovered there was no child. He knew more than her family knew about her—

Oh, fine. She’d gotten herself worked up, raging and pacing in her house and mourning her lost powers given to her by her seer and shaman ancestors. She’d meant to set Alek on his ear, to define the rules of his life interrupting hers, and then she’d seen into the very heart of his need to have a home and family.

Oh, fine. She should have walked away. She should have placed their night in Scotland into a drawer—wove it into her wool or buried it. Some secret part of her, uncontrolled by her will, wanted to tuck that night close to her—Elspeth forced down the panic streaking through her.

Alek had been pushing her and she didn’t like it. While her mind didn’t quite trust his motives, on another level she needed Alek to prove that she had emotions, that she was a woman and not a shadow. Alek definitely made her feel feminine, exciting.

Was she using him? Definitely. She needed him to complete a restlessness within her. To be cherished and held and yes, loved.

Was she wary of him? Yes. Alek wanted her to have the shawl, giving the prize to her too easily.

Elspeth had never liked easy, or trusted it. She preferred to claim the shawl herself, as a matter of pride. Was he yielding the field to her? Not likely. Alek Petrovna had definite fighting tendencies that excited her own.

Why was she here, in Alek’s bed, waiting for him? The answer came back, true and strong. Locked deeply inside her was the need to hold Alek close…to have him so close that nothing could separate them…not the past, or the future he kept pushing at her…. She wanted…no, she needed to be complete once more, as a woman felt with a special man. And for whatever happened in the future, tonight Alek was very special.

She wouldn’t be pushed; she would make up her own mind about Alek and what he was to her.

He’d wooed her with his love of family treasures, the simple things harvested into his home. He’d touched her with his children, obviously cherished.

Deep inside Elspeth lurked the fear of Alek leaving her again…devastating her with words. She acknowledged that fear and tended it, even as she knew that Alek moved gently through her heart. She would keep that part of her locked safely away.

Yet here she was, waiting—naked—in his tiny cot for him. Elspeth drew the shawl against her as she thought back to Una’s legend, which she had reconstructed with the aid of Sybil’s photography trick.

When the Marrying Moon is
high, a scarred warrior will rise from the mists to claim his lady huntress. He will wrap her in the shawl and carry her to the Bridal Tepee and his heart. Their song will last longer than the stars….

Tallchief had wanted Una to add the Bridal Tepee to the legend so that the legend became a blend of their bloods. Sybil had cried and held Elspeth’s hand as the legend was revealed before their eyes. Una had cried as she wrote, the teardrops blurring the ink. A hand stronger than hers and untutored with a pen had drawn Tallchief Mountain and a man and a woman by the tepee.

In the end, Una had captured her captor, and the shawl had been her weapon.

A tiny shiver skimmed along Elspeth’s bare skin. The legend didn’t—couldn’t—apply to Alek Petrovna and herself.

Elspeth surveyed the spartan room, littered with Alek’s battered suitcases and clothing. She recognized the huge bureau of the Samuelsons and framed pictures of Alek and Talia with their family. Propped against a picture of Talia and her sister was a picture of the Tallchiefs at the wedding. A circle had been drawn around Elspeth’s face, the enlargement resting next to it.

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He’d come through years and crossed continents to find her.

Elspeth lifted her head as his footsteps rose surely to the door of the room. He paused, then, moved into the bathroom, and the shower ran. The water stopped, then silence.

Alek loomed in the doorway, framed by moonlight skimming his shoulders and down his spread legs. He hadn’t given her the concession of a towel around his hips.

She wasn’t making concessions, either. “You will not come to this bed with thoughts of your wife, Alek Petrovna. Not with my weaving on your wall.”

“I wouldn’t think of it.” His tone bore arrogance and a taunt and just enough uncertainty to curl around her heart.

He moved to her, filling the room. He’d hurried, droplets gleaming on his shoulders. A deep scar crossed his ribs, another rode his hip and the moon-light caught the smooth expanse of healed burns. Alek appeared battered and toughened by years, his cheek-bones rugged and darkened by stubble, his jaw tense. The dim light angled off his broken nose, LaBelle’s earring gleamed in his ear and Elspeth ached to feel the soft flow of his curls against her breasts.

She gripped the shawl tightly and forced herself to continue, ‘That is my price, Alek Petrovna. I will not have you take me with a sense of guilt. I’ll know it if you do and I will not forgive you. Pretty apologies won’t work.”