His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) (7 page)

He made an attempt to gentle his voice. "You know I prefer you not to pry into my private affairs."

"For heaven's sake, Michael, I wasn't pry—" She stopped herself. Pressing her lips together, she shook her head. "Fine. Whatever you say. Dinner's almost ready. I baked some cornpone and—"

"Thanks, but I'm not hungry."

"You're always hungry."

She sounded suspicious again, and he cursed himself for his mistake. It was too blasted hard to think when his head felt like an anvil.

"I ate some biscuits and gravy at Aunt Claudia's," he lied a second time.

"I didn't think Aunt Claudia and that long-lost niece of hers had come home yet."

"Look." The pounding in his head accelerated to near ramming speed at the mention of their neighbor's house guest. "I'll eat the cornpone later."

"Well, excuse me for caring. I thought you looked a little peaked, but obviously, you're just in another one of your black moods."

"My clothes are wet, Sera. I want to dry off."

"Well, you don't have to bite my head off." Her chin jutted, and she planted her hands on her hips. "If this is the way you're going to act all night long, I'm going next door for some friendly conversation."

Michael's foot froze on the bottom stair.
Next door?
Eden might be next door by now.

A new worry seized him, one that had nothing to do with the secret of his illness. No, his longing for Eden Mallory was a secret of an entirely different nature.

"Sera," he blustered, "there's lightning outside."

"You
didn't seem to mind it when you drove home."

"That's different. Besides, I don't want you catching your death of cold."

She tossed her blue-black curls, which were slightly damp and more than a little wayward after her afternoon of baking. "I declare, Michael, you see catarrh in every drop of rain. I'm hardly the invalid Mama was, or that Gabriel was, for that matter. I've been cooped up in that kitchen all day long, plucking feathers, grinding cornmeal, and baking pies. It's high time I had a little fun. I'm not
married
to you, you know."

He winced. The child had a point. On the other hand, she had to learn how to run a household if he was to find her a decent husband.

"It was never my intention to make you a prisoner in our kitchen, Sera. As for being married—"

"Never mind," she interrupted. Her indifference to her most respectable suitor, Preacher Prescott, was another bone of contention between them. "I'm sorry I brought it up. Tell me what happened back in town. With the rain and all, Bonnie didn't stop by this afternoon. I feel like I'm the last person on earth to hear the news."

Michael sighed. If his head weren't doing its level best to split, he wouldn't have let Sera weasel out of the marriage topic so easily.

"What news are you referring to?"

"Honestly, Michael. What has everyone in this town been talking about for the last three weeks?
Eden Mallory.
Bonnie can't bear the fact that Claudia might add Eden to her will, especially at this late date."

A wave of heat rolled up his neck. Claudia's refusal to heed his medical advice was a constant needle in his side. Even though he knew that reversing her age was an impossibility, some part of him still couldn't come to terms with the inevitable. It meant facing an old demon named Failure.

"You know I don't approve of gossip, Sera."

"That's the trouble with you, Michael. You don't approve of anything." She tugged her apron over her head, letting a cloud of flour sift onto the puddle that was creeping across the floor. "If you weren't so blessedly good-looking, I don't know that any woman would want you to come a-courting."

"Is that the kind of 'friendly conversation' you anticipate at Aunt Claudia's?"

She gave a guilty start.

"Well, no. Not exactly." She pursed her lips. "If you really must know, I spend most of my time trying
not
to talk about you to the unmarried girls. One can only stand to hear so much sappy sighing over one's brother. Bonnie's the worst, although Aunt Claudia doesn't help matters any, the way she always brags about you taking care of her like a son. Honestly, if she weren't more than twice your age, I think she'd try to marry you herself."

Michael grimaced. He supposed he should be flattered that half the female population in this town hoped he'd set his cap for them, but he didn't think of himself as any great prize. The simple truth was, Blue Thunder was short on bachelors, and that meant the wedding-bell chasers had time to make mischief.

Most bachelors in Blue Thunder considered the two-to-one ratio a dream come true. But for Michael, who knew his illness would prevent him from doing right by a wife, the surplus of love-starved women was nothing short of a nightmare.

"You know, Michael," Sera said, locking her sky-blue stare with his. It was a sure sign she was about to brave forbidden territory. "It wouldn't hurt you to start courting again—and it sure would make my life easier," she muttered under her breath. "Did you get to meet Eden? Is she the hootenanny Bonnie says she is?"

Michael nearly choked to have his kid sister stumble across his most shameful, secret fantasy about Eden.

"'Course, I wouldn't want your heart stepped on by a hootenanny," Sera said quickly, misinterpreting his distress. "Bonnie says the only reason Eden left Colorado is 'cause the Injuns, Chinamen, and beggar-trash wouldn't have her."

Michael flinched. He didn't want to believe that the seventeen-year-old he still remembered so vividly had fallen into the desperate straits of prostitution.

"You have no right to spread such rumors, Sera."

"I'm
not spreading rumors," she corrected him primly. "Bonnie is. I'm just trying to find out more about Eden. Is she pretty?"

Michael tore his gaze free as the heat started building again in his face... and his loins.

The devil take him. How was he supposed to answer Sera? That Eden Mallory transcended "pretty"? That she was an angel, a vision of the divine? That he was an unholy bastard for taking an innocent's memory to bed with him every night, year after year, until the fantasies had eroded the reality completely?

Crouching under that wagon today, thigh to thigh with the flesh-and-blood woman, he might not have recognized her at all, if it hadn't been for her cascade of auburn hair. And then to learn from Aunt Claudia that her niece, his fantasy, was named
Eden,
of all things...

"Michael Elijah, I declare." The unabashed amusement in Sera's voice brought him crashing back to the present. "You're blushing."

He snapped erect, towering over her in dire warning. She merely grinned.

"So, you liked her, eh?"

"Seraphina, I will not have you matchmaking for me."

"Of course not, Michael." She flashed impish dimples and turned on her heel, tossing the apron over the banister.

"Sera! Where are you going?"

"To take a gander at this Eden Mallory you like so much."

Michael groaned to himself. The last thing he wanted was Sera growing friendly with a woman whose father had been a doctor. If any of Mallory's medical wisdom had rubbed off on Eden, she was the one person he could count on to see past his pretenses and warn Sera he was sick.

"Sera," he said sternly, "ogling strangers and carrying tales are not pastimes for proper young girls—"

"I know," she countered cheerfully. "That's why I do them." Waving, she darted for the kitchen's outside door.

"Sera—"

"Bye, Michael," she called, her words floating above a receding rumble of thunder. "Have a nice sulk."

He muttered an oath. For a moment, he chased after her. But when the lower half of the back door slammed and he glimpsed her dashing rabbitlike through the puddles of their backyard, he stopped to reconsider. Short of raising Sera's suspicions, and acting like a horse's rear end in the process, what possible excuse could he provide to prevent his sister from visiting their landlord and her guest?

Giving in to the torment, Michael finally raised a hand to his head.
Hellfire.
Eden Mallory was bunking next door.

It was going to be a long summer.

Rubbing his temples, Michael turned once more for the hallway. The ceiling needed paint, and the primrose-dotted paper on the walls was starting to peel along the seam. He hadn't had time to see to the repairs, though, not between his patients and the various odd jobs he did for Aunt Claudia to repay her loan for his medical schooling.

His jaw hardened to think of the futility of that education.

Even after all these years, the thought of Gabriel's death hurt so much, he couldn't bear to look at his brother's daguerreotype. Sera had handled the loss better, but then, at ten years old, Sera hadn't lost her faith in God yet. During Gabriel's burial, she'd sworn she'd seen Mama taking his hand and leading him through the Pearly Gates. Papa, of course, had been livid to think that the wife who had cuckolded him was in heaven. He'd punished Sera for her sin of vanity—lying to seek attention—and he'd forbidden her to speak of her supernatural visions.

To this day, Michael still wasn't sure that Sera had been lying. But Papa had won: Sera stopped claiming she played with her dead brother's ghost. Gabriel had disappeared entirely from household conversations—until Papa's death. At that point, Sera had ventured her opinion that Gabriel acted as a sort of guardian spirit over his siblings. She'd even dared to confess that she saw Gabriel in her bedroom most nights.

Michael had been horrified to think that his sister had been suffering these grief-induced delusions for so long—and practically under his nose. He'd promptly prescribed a regimen of medicines and rest. Nowadays, she didn't talk much about Gabriel, and Michael liked to think that he'd finally found the right combination of medicines to put her plague of hallucinations in remission—if not to cure her outright.

And speaking of visions...

Michael's mind drifted, conjuring forbidden thoughts of Eden. Now there was a vision a man could believe in: autumn-colored hair, luminous green eyes, luscious breasts and hips. He'd known, of course, that Claudia was expecting kinfolk, but he'd never dreamed that visitor might be the object of his fantasies. For weeks after that night in Whiskey Bend, his dreams had raged like a fever out of control, filling his nights with visions of a tempestuous, red-haired siren who'd dried his tears with one hand and massaged his straining crotch with the other.

The very idea made him burn with lust and shame.

Of course, Eden had appeared closer to his own age in the dreams, which had finally dwindled over the years, but not to the point of stopping. In truth, some lonely corner of his soul welcomed their return. But then, he'd never expected to see the real, flesh-and-blood Eden again. He'd never thought he'd have to
face
her.

But that's not what's really troubling you, is it, Jones?
he jeered in self-disgust.
The real trouble is you took a gander at the live woman and came to realize what a poor substitute your imagination has been. She's beautiful.

A poignant yearning stirred inside him. To the memory of the Tennessee woman-child who'd touched his soul, he could now add the vision of Eden Mallory running across the street, casting her life to the fates, wrestling a wild-eyed horse to save a child. Today he'd seen the strength, the courage, the magnificent spirit of the woman his fantasies had maligned.

He supposed he should be grateful Eden hadn't recognized him. No doubt his clean-shaven mug looked quite different from the cut and swollen face she'd washed in the livery. With eight years of aging to add to the change, he doubted whether Eden would ever recognize him. He hoped his luck held out. He wasn't proud of his behavior that night in Whiskey Bend.

If only Eden weren't so... special, he mused wistfully.

Don't be a fool, Jones. Even if you were in the prime of your health, a woman like Eden Mallory wouldn't look twice at a failure like you.

The thought lanced his chest, cutting so deeply he actually clutched his heart. Suddenly his knees buckled. He stumbled forward, his hip upsetting the hall table. A flower vase crashed, and lamp fixtures tinkled; something wet and smelling of decay struck his cheek. An indescribable panic seized him as he lost all control of the muscles in his legs. He flung out his hands, groping blindly for the coat tree opposite the table.

Instead, he fell like an avalanche, striking his temple, helpless to claw his way out of the darkness that flooded his mind.

* * *

Collie's head shot up and his hand froze, hovering above the knob to the kitchen's backdoor. Thunder sounded like crumpling tin around him, but the crashing that he'd heard hadn't been thunder.

His heart lodged in his throat; he nearly strangled on the air that tried to squeeze by. Straining every sense, every instinct, he tried to isolate that noise again. Mountain sounds he knew, but city sounds confused him. They came from every which way, and they always meant trouble—like hounds on a scent. Or a shotgun blast. Was that crotchety old taxidermist still chasing him?

He crouched the way his cur dog used to, tasting the wind, sniffing the rain. He could run fast, if he had to—not faster than buckshot, but faster than people. And he could outsmart any lazy old city hound, too.