CHAPTER THREE
BLAIR WAS BARELY able to get out of bed the next day. His head hammered, and he was wobbly on his feet.
“Serves me right, I guess,” he said when Niki brought him hash browns and bacon in bed.
“Don’t say that,” she chided softly. “You were entitled. I’m sorry life is so hard for you right now. But it will get better. Really, it will.”
He looked up at her quietly. “You’re an optimist, Niki. I’m not. I see things from a different perspective. So will you, when you’re older,” he added in a faintly bitter tone.
“For heaven’s sake, I’m going on twenty-two,” she burst out. “I just graduated from college!”
“And there’s a big world out there, just waiting for you,” he said. “New people, new places. New men,” he added deliberately.
She wrapped her arms around her chest. “No.”
He scowled, pausing with hash browns on his fork. “What do you mean, no?” he asked.
She bit her lower lip. “How do I know what men are going to be like when I’m alone with them? I know I haven’t dated much, but that was one heck of a wake-up call, you know. If you hadn’t been there...” Her eyes were tormented, and she shook her head.
“Come here.”
She sat down beside him on the bed.
He took her hand in his and held it. “You have to know, very few men ever resort to force. He’d been drinking pretty heavily.”
“I know. I tried to get him to stop. He said I was backward.” She sighed. “I guess I am. I don’t keep step with people in the modern world. I live in the country, I like wildflowers and little children, I don’t drink or smoke or do drugs...” She made a face. “It’s just a pity I wasn’t born a hundred years ago. I’d have been right at home.”
“There are other people like you in the world,” he said softly. “You’ll find them. You have to take chances, Niki. You have to get out in the world to cope with it. You’re hiding here, honey. You’re running away from life. It’s cowardly. That’s not like you.”
Her face flamed. She got up and moved away from him, like a child burned by contact with fire. How could she tell him that she was in love with him, that she wasn’t hiding from life? She was waiting, hoping, praying that one day...
His heart sank when he saw her face. He’d been too harsh. “Niki, I’m sorry.”
She swallowed, hard. He was like an adult with a small child, and it hurt to be thought of that way. She stood up from the bed. “I have to help Edna clear up in the kitchen.”
She was out the door before he could curse himself for bringing that look into her soft face. He felt guilty for the rest of the day, more so when she didn’t come near his room again.
She kept to herself for the rest of the day. She was polite to Blair at dinner, but he saw right through her.
“You’re very quiet tonight, Niki,” her father said, frowning. “Everything all right?”
She toyed with her food. “Of course. I’m just not very hungry, that’s all.” She added a smile so that her father wouldn’t get suspicious.
Blair sipped black coffee. “I thought I might drive over to Yellowstone tomorrow and see the sights. Want to come, Niki?” he added without looking at her.
She felt her heart trying to climb out of her throat. The invitation was unexpected.
“Go with him,” her father said firmly. “You need to get out of the house for a while. It will do you good. Just be sure to take your inhaler with you,” he added wryly. “Everything’s just starting to bloom. You don’t want another chest infection.”
“Worrywart,” she chided.
“I’ll take care of her,” Blair said quietly.
“I know that.” Her father finished his coffee. “Got a minute?” he asked Blair. “I want to talk to you about that new drilling site I’m going to lease.”
“Sure.” Blair got up and followed him into the study.
Niki helped Edna clear away the dishes.
“You can hide it from your father, but not from me, young lady,” Edna chided when they were putting dishes into the dishwasher. “What’s wrong?”
She moved one shoulder a little. “Blair says I’m hiding from life. From men.” She was, but she couldn’t tell Edna why.
“He’s right,” was the unexpected reply. “You’re letting that one bad date tie you up like a knot. Honey, not all men are going to try to force you. It was an unfortunate thing, what happened.”
“I couldn’t have stopped him,” Niki recalled with disgust. “If Blair hadn’t been here...”
“I know.” Edna stopped and hugged her, smoothing her long, soft hair. “But he was. You can’t go through life looking behind you. The future is bright and sweet, my darling. You have to look ahead.”
Niki sighed and smiled against the older woman’s shoulder. “Dad and I are so lucky to have you,” she said. “I don’t know how either of us would have coped. Especially Dad. He loved my mother so much.”
Edna drew in a long breath. “Yes. He was crazy about her.” She smiled sadly. “I loved my husband that way. When he died, I thought my life was over. Then Mr. Ashton offered me a job, and you were in grammar school...” She swallowed, hard. “You see, I was never able to have a child of my own. It was such a privilege, a blessing, to take care of you.”
Niki drew back, her eyes soft and misty as she met those of the older woman. “You’ve been like a mother to me,” she said. “God knows how I’d have turned out if it had just been me and Dad,” she added with a laugh, lightening the atmosphere. “I guess I’d have learned to play poker and drink whiskey and get in fights with the cowboys.”
Edna chuckled as she let Niki go. “He did a lot of that. Got stinking drunk and stayed that way for a whole month after the funeral. Most of the cowboys learned to hide in the barn until he had enough and passed out. To give them credit, none of them resigned.”
“He’s calmed down a bit,” Niki said.
“Not a lot. He and your friend Blair are cut from the same cloth.” She winced. “Hurts me, to see poor Mr. Coleman like that. His wife was a piece of work.”
“He really loved her,” Niki said. “I remember when they were just engaged. When he talked about her, his face almost glowed, like his eyes.” She glowered as she finished rinsing a plate to go in the dishwasher and handed it to Edna. “Imagine a woman who thought going to some stupid party was more important than taking care of her sick husband.”
“She had her priorities,” Edna said curtly. “Money and other men. What a shame. She’s ruined him for marriage. He’ll never take the chance again.”
“He waited a long time to get married,” Niki said thoughtfully.
“Yes. Your father said he took the loss of his mother particularly hard. He was vulnerable. That’s probably how that she-cat got her claws into him. Playing up to him, pretending to be concerned, vamping him.”
“What’s vamping?” Niki asked curiously.
“Tempting him,” Edna explained. “Most men are weak when a woman uses her body blatantly to tempt them. An experienced woman can make a plaything of a man, if he’s vulnerable.”
“It’s hard to think of Blair Coleman being susceptible like that.”
“He’s a man, honey,” Edna chuckled. “They’re all susceptible.”
“I don’t know much about that.”
“You’ll never learn, staying in this house all the time,” Edna continued. “You have to get out into the world and meet people. Meet men. Honey, you were made for a home and children.”
Niki made a face. She couldn’t tell Edna about her hopeless passion for Blair, so she improvised. “I’m sick all the time. What sort of man wants a woman like that?”
“Your mother was sickly, too,” Edna said. “But your father loved her madly. It made no difference to him, except that he spent a lot of time taking care of her.” She smiled gently. “You love people for what’s inside them. You live with the problems they have. That’s what a good marriage is all about.”
“I’m not sure I’ll ever get married,” Niki said. “I don’t mix well with other people. Especially men.”
“You get along fine with Mr. Coleman,” Edna pointed out.
“Yes, but I’m not—what was that word you used, vamping? I’m not trying to vamp him.”
“Just as well,” Edna chuckled. “He’d put you down pretty quick if you tried. He thinks you’re way too young for him.”
“I know,” Niki said, averting her eyes so that Edna didn’t see the flicker of pain in them. “I guess I could get a job. There’s an opening at the company Blair owns in Catelow, that mining office. They were advertising for a clerk.”
“You have a degree in geology,” Edna began. “I heard Mr. Coleman say they had an opening for a field geologist, too.”
“Yes, they do,” she replied. “Can you really see me going out into the field and working? I’d have to wear masks and carry all sorts of inhalers and medications, and I’d probably still get sick.”
Edna grimaced. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad you don’t think of me as disabled. But in that sense, I am. My lungs won’t let me do a lot of things. I even have trouble sitting in church next to women who think wearing a bottle of perfume is the way to attract attention.”
“Never have understood that,” Edna agreed. “I have a friend who has migraine headaches constantly. She never sees a connection between the thick perfume she wears and the headaches. She wears a layer of bath powder that’s as bad as the perfume. Even started me sneezing in church last week,” she laughed.
“I suppose we’re all blind to our own faults,” Niki had to agree.
“You going to Yellowstone with Mr. Coleman, then?”
Niki shrugged. “I guess I am.” She didn’t add that she was nervous of being alone with him. Not because she didn’t want to be. But he was experienced, and she had no way to hide the effect he was starting to have on her. She’d have to try, though. It would just be too humiliating to have him know that he was the star in her sky.
* * *
THEY LEFT EARLY the next morning in the luxury car Blair had rented at the airport. He glanced at Niki to make sure she had her seat belt on. He smiled to himself at the picture she made in that soft yellow sundress with its spaghetti straps and long full skirt. She was wearing her beautiful blond hair down. It reached to her waist in back. She was very pretty. Very fragile. He frowned.
“Got your meds?” he asked suddenly.
She grimaced. “Yes.”
“Sorry. I don’t mean to sound like an overprotective parent.”
“It’s okay.” She didn’t mind if he treated her like a child. Of course she didn’t. She worried her shoulder bag in her lap and looked out the window.
“I’m sorry that I said what I did yesterday, too,” he added curtly. “But I meant it, Niki. You can’t spend your life hiding from the world because of one stupid drunken date.”
She drew in a long breath. “I guess not.”
“A man who cares about you won’t be rough,” he added. “He won’t try to force you.”
“I know.”
She didn’t know. He wondered just how much experience with men she really had. She’d told him that she was still a virgin the night he saved her from the overbearing date. But that had been before she graduated, two years ago. He shouldn’t be curious. It wasn’t his business, but...
“Have you ever been intimate with a man?”
Her faint gasp told him everything. His teeth ground together. “Maybe that brooch I gave you was more accurate than I realized. You really are a little hothouse orchid, aren’t you?” he asked through his teeth.
She bit her lower lip. She couldn’t look at him. “I go to church,” she began.
“A lot of people do. It doesn’t mean that you have to live a life of total chastity,” he said curtly.
She frowned. “I don’t...feel things. With men, I mean.”
His heart jumped. “What do you mean?”
She kept her eyes on the passing scenery. Far in the distance were the blue outlines of the Rockies. Closer, lodgepole pines grew in clumps across open pasture. She saw a deer leaping through the underbrush, then disappear into the forest.
“Niki?”
“I haven’t ever dated much,” she confessed. “Boys in my high school teased me just because I went to church at all,” she said. “One boy propositioned me right in the hallway, and he didn’t lower his voice. When I got flustered and blushed, everybody laughed.”
His heavy brows drew together. “That must have been awful.”
“It got worse. He thought it was so funny that he posted it on his Facebook page.” Her eyes closed. She didn’t see the expression on Blair’s face. “My dad found out. He called our attorneys. The post got removed. In fact, the boy had to close down his account. Dad has a really mean temper.”
His hand tightened on the steering wheel. “Good for him.”
“Anyway, that was the only really bad thing that happened. Until I went out with the football player in college.”
“You dated other guys before him, didn’t you?”
“Well, I went to the senior prom with my best friend and her boyfriend, in high school. I danced a lot, but I didn’t have an actual date.” She grimaced. “Word got around school, about the Facebook thing.”
“Damn.”
She leaned back against the seat. “Dad was very protective of me,” she said. “There was an inspector for the cattleman’s association who used to come out to the ranch, and a vet who did vaccinations for us. They both asked me out, but Dad got to them.” She laughed. “He said the inspector was married, and the vet had a reputation that made him blush.”
Blair didn’t comment. Todd had always been protective of her. He would have felt the same way. She was fragile. Beautiful. Sweet. A world away from that vicious, cold woman he’d been married to for two years.
“It’s funny,” she said suddenly.
“What is?”
“How I can talk to you about things like this. I can’t even talk to Edna about them.”
“I’m not judgmental. And I’m old. Compared to you, at least, Tidbit,” he added with a tender smile.
She sighed. “You’re too gorgeous to be old, Blair, even if you think you are. Look, isn’t that a buffalo?” she exclaimed, too occupied to notice the sudden flush on his high cheekbones at what she’d said. No woman in his life had ever talked to him like that.
He glanced out the window and smiled. “That’s a buffalo, all right.”
“I went with Dad to a buffalo ranch one time. There were warning signs everywhere,” she added. “And the area they were kept in was double-fenced. The owner said that they were a lot more dangerous than people thought they were. He was always cautioning guests not to get too close to the fence.”
“They can be dangerous,” he agreed. “But any wild animal can be.”
“And some people, too,” she added.
“Yes. And some people.”
It was a long drive to Old Faithful once they were inside the park. Periodically, cars stopped in the middle of the road and parked while their owners got out and ran to look at one of the park’s residents. Once it was a moose, another time a small herd of bighorn sheep. Another time, it was an antelope.
Niki was laughing, the sun shining out of her, at the antics of a couple of small deer following their mother.
Blair looked down at her radiant face, and every part of his body clenched. She was unspeakably beautiful. That dress fit in all the right places. It was discreet, but the top of her breasts showed. Her skin was creamy. Her shoulders were lightly tanned, her arms softly rounded. He imagined how they might feel climbing around his neck.
“Aren’t they cute?” a man about Niki’s age enthused, joining her. His eyes were eating her up. “I used to work in a wildlife park, taking care of the abandoned babies. I love animals.”
“So do I,” Niki agreed, but she wasn’t responsive. In fact, she moved back against Blair for security, tucking herself against one broad shoulder.
He melted inside. His big hand slid around her waist and pulled her back against him, closer than he meant to.
Niki fought to keep her heartbeat steady. It was sheer heaven to be so close to him.
“We’re on a day trip to see the geyser,” Blair told the young man. He was pleasant enough, but his eyes made threats.
“Are you? I’m here with my brother and his wife. We’re camping for a few days. Well, have fun,” he said, with one last longing glance and smile at Niki as he left.
Blair’s hand rode up her side, to rest just under her breast. He could feel her heart pounding. Her breath was wispy and quick.
“Be careful,” he said in a strange, deep tone.
“Careful?” she asked, fighting the urge to lean back against him, to coax that big hand to move up just a little, just an inch, just a breath higher...
He felt her body arching helplessly. He felt her reacting to him. He was reacting to her, too, but he didn’t dare let her feel how much.
“The cars are moving again. We have to go.”
He let her go at once and guided her back to the car. He put her in, got in himself, and drove slowly behind the line of cars.
She was still trying to catch her breath. She was flushed and nervous.
“Sorry,” she said in a thick tone. “He made me nervous.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said through his teeth. “You can’t expect men not to notice.”
“I didn’t flirt with him!”
“That isn’t what I meant.” He took a deep breath. “This is why you stay at home all the time, isn’t it, Niki?” he added. “Men react to you. You don’t like it.”
She grimaced. “I feel...hunted.” By every man except the one she wanted, she could have added, but she didn’t dare.
It was an odd way to put it, but he understood. He glanced at her. She was fidgeting, uncomfortable.
“I wouldn’t have let him near you,” he said.
“I know that.” She swallowed. “Thanks.”
He was overly possessive of her. He’d wanted to punch the boy just for trying to flirt with her. She was years too young, but he wanted her. God, how he wanted her! “Hell,” he burst out.
Her head turned. His face was rigid. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing. Not a damned thing. There’s the turnoff, if we ever get to it,” he added, noting a sign in the distance that pointed to Old Faithful. “Now all we have to do is hope that we’re in time for the next eruption. They’re spaced hours apart. We won’t be able to wait for it.”
She knew that. It was a very long drive. As it was, it would be dark before they got back home to the ranch.
He pulled into the parking lot and drove around to find a spot near the enormous hotel and gift shop.
“I’d still be driving around half an hour from now looking for a parking spot,” she said with an attempt at humor. “You always hit a great spot.”
“Luck,” he said.
He got out, helped her out and locked the car. They walked to the spot where the geyser was located and read the sign. It gave approximate eruption times. The next one was in a half hour.
Niki looked up at him with a question in her soft eyes.
He got lost in them. His hand smoothed down her windblown hair. His face was impassive. “We can get coffee and look through the gift shop while we wait,” he said.
She smiled. “Sounds great. Thanks.”
“Why haven’t you ever been here before?” he asked on the way inside.
“I have, actually. I took a course in anthropology in college. Our class came here. But we didn’t get to see the eruption.”
“I minored in anthropology, back in the Dark Ages,” he said with cold humor.
She stopped just inside the gift shop and looked up at him. Niki’s slight figure was dwarfed by his height. The top of her head barely came to his nose. He was broad, like a wrestler. He moved with sensuous grace, and she remembered with some embarrassment how he looked without his shirt. She’d wanted so badly to touch him there, when he’d been sick and she’d nursed him.
He reached out and drew his thumb softly over her lips, parting them. Her reaction was arousing. He knew without asking that she was attracted to him. No woman could fake these signs, and they were blatant. His face hardened. He couldn’t afford to indulge her hunger. She was very young, just feeling her power as a woman, and she was innocent. He couldn’t take advantage of something she couldn’t even help. Worse, those years between them were like a stone wall.
He dropped his hand as if her mouth had burned it and turned away. “Let’s have coffee.”
He didn’t say another word until he was halfway through with his coffee.
“You’re brooding again,” she accused.
He looked up, both eyebrows arching.
She made a face. “We can go back now, if you want to. I don’t want to make you wait for the eruption of Old Faithful. I imagine you’ve got things to do.”
“I don’t mind waiting,” he replied. His narrowed eyes were on her face. “I’ve never seen it go off, either.”
Something in the hardness of his face made her curious. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you, Blair?” she asked softly.
His jaw hardened. “I spent my wedding night here.”
She caught her breath and looked guilty. “Oh, darn, I’m sorry!”
“You didn’t know.” He looked away. “It was my idea to come, anyway, not yours.”
That made it worse, somehow. He was reliving a failed marriage. Niki hadn’t known about the connection to Yellowstone. Impulsively, she slid her small hand over his.
“You’re always saying that I’ve let a bad experience lock me up in the past. Aren’t you doing that, too, Blair?” she asked quietly.
His eyes were troubled. He felt the coldness of her hand. He turned it, locking it with his own. “I had great expectations.”
“Did you?”
“She was beautiful, cultured, experienced,” he said, smiling wryly. “She said she loved me. I married her and brought her here—” he looked around them “—to let her prove it.”
She waited, just watching him, curious.
He laughed coldly. “She smiled. All the way through it. The whole time.”
Her lips turned up. “She enjoyed it. Why should that make you unhappy?”
He stared at her. Gaped at her. She had no clue what he was talking about. He swallowed, and averted his eyes. “Drink your coffee. We can look around the gift shop until it’s time to go.”
He’d let go of her hand. She didn’t understand why he was so disturbed. Perhaps it was one of those male things, a broodiness that women didn’t understand. She finished her coffee, waited while he paid the check then followed him out into the huge gift shop.
* * *
SHE FOUND A bracelet she loved, rawhide with a small round piece of deer’s horn attached.
“They have silver and turquoise,” he reminded her, puzzled by her delight with the simple, very inexpensive trinket.
“I like this. It’s elemental, isn’t it?” she added. “A piece of life itself.”
She was a constant puzzle to him. Her father was well-to-do, but nowhere near as wealthy as Blair was. She could have picked the most expensive thing in the store, and he’d have bought it for her. She had to know that. But she was like a child in her desires; she liked the simple things. He remembered his wife and her greed, the way she searched out the most expensive diamonds she could find in a jewelry shop and begged for them when he was dating her. She’d found a very expensive set of turquoise jewelry here, in fact, and demanded that Blair buy it for her. He’d been so smitten that day, just after they were married, that he’d have bought her the entire inventory. Then he’d taken her to bed, and all his dreams had died...
“You’re doing it again,” she said when they were walking out toward Old Faithful.
“Doing what?” he asked abruptly.
“Brooding.”
He stopped and turned toward her. “You don’t really like expensive things, do you?” he asked bluntly.
She blinked. “Well, I’m partial to emeralds and pearls,” she said. “But my jewelry box is full of them. And I really love this bracelet.” She was puzzled.
“My wife picked up a squash blossom necklace, earrings and bracelet set here,” he said, referring to the highly expensive pieces of Native American jewelry, silver and turquoise, that had been in the display case, probably from a Navajo artist even though it was a Wyoming shop. “And had me buy it for her.”
She searched his black eyes quietly. “You loved her very much, didn’t you?” she asked softly.
His face hardened. “Yes. At first.”
“I’m so sorry that it didn’t work out for you.”
He was scowling. His hands, in his pockets, were clenched. He hated the memories, especially how it had been here, in this hotel, with his wife that first night. He hated the humiliation, the crushing blow to his pride, his manhood. He hated how it had locked him up inside himself.
“You have no idea, do you? About life?” he wondered aloud. His face hardened as he looked down at her. “You’re still in patent leather shoes and frilly little dresses, gathering Easter eggs in the park.”
Her eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
He turned away. “It’s going off.”
She followed him to the geyser, adrift. She didn’t understand what he was saying, what it meant. He was sad. She wondered why.
Then she remembered what he’d said about his wife. Why did it make him angry that she’d smiled at him? For heaven’s sake, didn’t he want her to enjoy what happened between them on their wedding night? Men were so odd.
She put it to the back of her mind as the wind blew the spray from the geyser into her face, and she laughed like a delighted child.