Dancing With the Devil (3 page)

“devil?” Deacon grinned back at her, fueling her anger.

Not with standing the horrendous black rag she wore, Rhea was prettier than any woman he’d ever seen, especially when she was angry or flustered. Her eyes were the color of creamed coffee, she curved in all the most important places, and while she looked every bit the lady, her tongue could curse him out like nobody’s business, even while her soft full lips begged to be kissed.

Her brown hair was pulled back in its usual unimaginative loose braid, but even so, she couldn’t hide the streaks of caramel and gold the sun shot through it, hinting at its rich and silky soft strands.

If she’d only let it down so he could…

Deacon gave himself a hard mental shake. She’d gotten a whole lot faster with that Winchester, and if this afternoon was any indication, she’d be happy to take aim at him again. No point in making her a widow twice.

She returned his gaze, taking in the length of him, as he’d done to her. If she was pleased with what she saw, she kept it well hidden. A heartbeat later, she backed away and returned to her washing. Deacon lowered himself to the bottom step, watching as her arms swooshed around the wash bucket. She moved with a fluid grace, even as she dropped another shirt into the water and began the monotonous task of scrubbing it clean.

Still, her hands trembled.

“I’m waiting, Rhea.”

She completely ignored him, focusing instead on that blasted shirt. She wrung it out, gave it a quick flick and hung it next to his on the line. “Colin won’t be terribly eager to put you up to night, but given the circumstances, I’m sure he will. I’ll go stay at the store.”

“You can’t leave—you shot me!”

“And I’m sorry about that.” She did sound a little bit sorry, but not so much that she wouldn’t shoot him again if the need arose. “But I gave you enough warning.”

He pulled himself up to stand, wincing more than was necessary. Her gaze barely flickered his way. Damn.

“I haven’t two cents to my name,” he said slowly. “And considering what you’ve done to me, the least you can do is stay until I’ve recovered.”

“The least I can do?” Rhea turned from the wash and advanced on him.

“Rhea—”

“Don’t ‘Rhea’ me.” She stretched onto the tips of her toes, bringing her eye-level with him. “It’s not my fault you don’t know when to stay away. Everything would have been just fine if you hadn’t come back.”

Deacon frowned. He’d forgotten how good Rhea smelled. She had a soft, clean scent that always caught him unaware.

“Yet here I am.” He reached to tuck a strand of hair back from her face, but she slapped his hand away.

“Don’t touch me.”

Perhaps it was the way her bottom lip trembled slightly when she said it, or maybe it was the rip of pain that flashed across her eyes, but something belied her tightly spoken words.

He leaned closer and breathed his words against her cheek. “That’s not what you said the last time I was here.”

She shoved away from him. “A weak moment on my part, one that won’t be repeated.”

He made to follow her, but one step away from the railing, his knees threatened to buckle, so he eased back to its safety as casually as possible. Out where she stood, there was no railing for support, and while his body could withstand a great deal of abuse, his pride had had enough for one day.

Instead, he flashed the most charming smile he could muster, given the constant throbbing in his shoulder. “But you made me your husband, and while you still haven’t explained how that happened, I believe it’s common practice with you humans for husbands to touch their wives.” He opened his eyes wide in feigned shock. “In fact, if I understand it correctly, some wives actually enjoy it.”

She gave a sad little laugh and shook her head as she bent to empty the washtub. “Yes, well, this wife is warning
you—touch me again, and the next bullet’ll go right between your eyes.” She might have been more threatening if her voice hadn’t wavered so much.

“But I’ve changed.”

“What’s changed, Deacon? Are you no longer the son of the devil? Are you capable of even the slightest human emotion?”

“You know—”

“Yes,” she interrupted. “I do know. Try, just for a moment, to imagine what it’s like to have your heart—” She stopped abruptly, swallowed and shook her head. “How could you imagine it? You don’t have a heart.”

The strained expression on her face and the hitch in her voice froze Deacon’s retort before it could slip off his tongue.

He’d hurt her. It couldn’t have been helped at the time, but that didn’t mean a whole lot now.

“Of course I have a heart,” he finally replied. “It’s just never been as soft as yours, is all.”

Rhea’s shoulders sagged a little, and her voice quivered with resignation. “What do you want, Deacon?”

Seeing her this way shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did, and now all he wanted was to make her smile again, just once.

“I came back to make things right between us,” he said. “Of course, if I had any idea we’d been married in my absence, I would have been back a lot sooner.”

She clenched her jaw and exhaled loudly. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again…”

“Ah, sweetheart.” His grin came easier this time. “I just can’t seem to stay away from you.”

She didn’t smile. Her lips didn’t even twitch. Deacon returned to his spot on the bottom step, wincing against Colin’s shirt. His shoulder throbbed, and Rhea’s scent was making him dizzy.

“You should go lie down,” she muttered, “before I have to haul your sorry hide back up those stairs.”

Damn Deacon
.

Rhea pushed her braid back over her shoulder and slumped down on the short wooden stool beside the cow. With a calm brought from a lifetime of practice, she eased the milk from the animal’s full udder in an even rhythm.

Why did Deacon have to come back? She’d spent the last eight months trying to put him out of her mind, of trying to forget what he looked like, how he smelled, the way her bones melted when his fingers danced against her skin…

Damn him! And damn her own stupid self.

Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with a normal man? Or at least one who was human? But no, once she’d let Deacon into her heart, she was lost to anyone else, and no matter how hard she tried to reason it out, it stuck. She was in love with the devil’s own son, a man utterly infuriating yet altogether charming at the same time.

That crooked smile and those ridiculous fancy clothes…

With a sigh, Rhea surrendered to both the smile that tugged at her lips and the tear that quivered, then slid down her cheek. Such was the way with Deacon.

He provoked her, pushed her and made her mad enough to spit. Then he’d look at her with so much tenderness, confusion and raw desire, she didn’t know if she was coming or going most of the time.

No other man made her feel that way. And no other man smelled of warm sandalwood mixed with sunshine.

Deacon did.

The constant zinging of milk against the side of the
bucket echoed through the barn. Rhea slowed her rhythm a little before she sent the flow right over the edge.

“Don’t do this.” She swiped a hot tear away and blinked back another. “Don’t.”

Instead of crying, she should be figuring a way out of the mess she was now in. How on earth was she going to explain the miraculous return of her dead husband—especially when he wasn’t legally her husband?

For a little while, last summer, she’d thought he wanted to be her husband, but she’d been horribly, horribly wrong.

She licked her suddenly dry lips and tried to swallow. Even after all this time, she could still taste his kiss; more than just a flash of passion, it melded them together in a way Rhea found impossible to explain because, like so many other things about Deacon, it made absolutely no sense.

Rhea sighed. It didn’t matter how charming he was or how he tempted her in ways no other man could—the truth could no longer be ignored.

He would never love her the way she wanted him to, the way she needed him to. It just wasn’t in him. And even though she’d forged his name on the marriage certificate, making him her husband, he could never give her what she wanted most: his love, a home and children.

Rhea pressed her fist against the deep ache in her chest. God help her, she wanted children. She could have had them, too, if she hadn’t been so hasty in her decision to “marry” last year. But she’d done what she’d done, and there was nothing to do now but move forward.

At least it had secured the store for her, and that was something no one could take away. Maybe in time, once Deacon was out of her life again, she’d be able to push him completely out of her heart and find another man
to love; one who would share her life, her store and her desire for children.

“Rhea?” Colin’s voiced bounced through the open barn door.

“In here!”

She released the cow, lifted the pail of milk into her arms and went to face her brother.

“What the hell’s going on?”

“Deacon’s back,” she said.

“I heard.” Troubled brown eyes stared back at her. “Heard you tried to kill him, too.”

Two days of stubble covered Colin’s chin, his too-long hair lay in dark chaos around his ears, and by the lingering odor, it was anyone’s guess if he’d swallowed any of the whiskey or simply bathed in it. Even the star pinned to his chest had lost its shine.

“Hardly.” She shrugged past him and the horse he’d left tied to the rail and climbed the stairs to the porch. “He got in the way of my warning shots.”

“Warning shots?”
He clomped up the stairs behind her, his voice a rumbling growl. “You just tried to kill a walking, talking dead man.”

Rhea rested her hands flat against the door, wishing she didn’t have to inhale when he stood so close. “How can anyone try to kill someone who’s already dead?”

“I ain’t got time for bullshit, Rhea. You knew he wasn’t dead, didn’t ya?”

“Yes.” She could sure use another swig of that whiskey, but of course she’d used the last of it on Deacon’s wound. Drat, drat, drat.

Teeth ground tight, she set the milk pail on the small kitchen table and waited while Colin struck a match to the lamp, sending pale light flickering through the dim room.

Deacon struggled to sit up on the bed, obviously hampered
by his weakened arm, but Rhea made no move to help him. If he needed assistance, he’d have to get it from Colin. She needed to avoid physical contact with him as much as possible.

His eyes squinted tight, then blinked open against the light. “Colin, is that you?”

Her brother clicked his tongue. “Wish I could say it’s good to see you, but we both know I’d be lying. You all right?”

Deacon laughed, groaned, then laughed again. “Despite your sister’s best efforts, I think I’ll live.”

“It was
not
my best effort,” Rhea snapped. “And he’s fine.”

Colin didn’t so much as acknowledge she’d spoken, keeping his hard angry stare focused on Deacon instead. “Do you want to press charges?”

Rhea and Deacon both choked at the same time. “What?”

“She tried to kill you,” he said. His voice held absolutely no emotion, but his left eye twitched, his jaw muscles clenched and his back tightened.

“I did not! I simply tried to warn him off.” Rhea could hardly breathe. Colin wouldn’t…oh, no. Colin wouldn’t want to, but Deacon…He had every right to send her to jail, and there would be no defense if he did. She was guilty as sin.

“Relax, Sheriff.” Deacon’s shocked expression gave way to something Rhea could only attribute to irritation. “It was an accident.”

Colin’s shoulders relaxed, and his jaw unclenched. He dragged one of the crooked chairs closer, indicated for Rhea to sit, then straddled the other chair himself.

“Miller can mind the store for a while longer.” As usual, he spoke Ernest’s name as though spitting poison off his tongue.

Rhea dug through the pile of rags on the table until she found one to cover the milk. “I don’t think—”

“That much is obvious.” Colin’s anger hung between them. “I’m not expectin’ you to think right now; just answer a few questions. Surely you can manage that.”

She should have known this moment would come, should have prepared for it. But she hadn’t, and now here it was. Her life depended on what these two men would do next.

“Fine.” She flopped down in the chair and folded her hands in her lap. “What do you want to know?”

“How I became your husband, to start with,” Deacon answered.

Rhea cringed as Colin’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

“
What?
” For a second, she thought he might fall right off his chair. “He didn’t know?”

She pursed her lips, blinked, then slowly shook her head.

“How the hell does a man not know he’s married?”

“Colin, please.” She squeezed her knuckles tight enough to turn them white. “Calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down, Rhea,” he growled. “What the hell have you done? And what’s his part in all of it?”

“He had nothing to do with any of it,” she answered grudgingly. Oh, how she’d love to blame Deacon for this mess; one more thing to hate him for. Unfortunately, there was no one to blame but herself. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. Just listen.”

“Oh, I’m listenin’ all right,” Colin muttered. “You just haven’t said anything.”

Rhea drew in a long slow breath. “Our store meant everything to Ma and Pa. They worked their whole
lives to earn the reputation for being honest and fair. It meant everything to them.”

Colin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know exactly how
important
it was to them. Get to the point, Rhea.”

She lifted her chin slightly and shrugged. “You didn’t want it.”

“So what?”

“I did. More than anything else, I wanted that store and you knew it.” She glanced at Deacon, who’d pulled himself up to sit a little straighter.

“I knew, all right. I also knew because of him”—Colin jerked his thumb toward Deacon—“you were driving your reputation into the ground and taking the store with you. I saw the ledgers, Rhea. Business was down to almost nothing, and our only hope was to sell the damned thing.”