My Darling Melissa (40 page)

Keith nodded. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, sweetheart. After all, you thought you were married. The question is, what are you going to do now?”

Melissa had a headache. She swallowed and made a fitful gesture with one hand. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Keith asked, with big-brother sternness in his voice. “Any fool can see that you love the man, and you’re carrying his child. What else can you do but marry him?”

“If you knew what I should do,” Melissa challenged with a lofty sniffle, “then why the devil did you ask, Keith Corbin?”

He heaved a sigh and shook his head. “You’re as impossible as ever, brat. Now, are you going to let me perform a new ceremony before I leave, or do I have to go home and tell our brothers what’s going on with their baby sister?”

Melissa winced at the thought of their reaction, but, love Quinn Rafferty though she did, she’d had more time to think, and she had her reservations. “Are you aware that Quinn could legally take my inheritance from me, if I were his wife, and throw me out in the street?”

Keith’s eyes snapped. “If I thought he was that sort of man, Melissa, I wouldn’t be sitting here trying to talk you into marrying him. Besides, Adam and Jeff and I would never let that happen.”

Melissa was suddenly and poignantly aware that over the last month or so she’d grown from a spoiled child into a woman. She sat up a little straighter in her chair. “You’ve all got your own families and your own lives to live,” she pointed out. “It wouldn’t be fair to expect you to keep on looking after me until the end of my days. As for my marrying Quinn, I’m not going to do that until he proposes properly.”

Keith stood up, shoving one hand through his hair in agitation. In the distance a train whistle sounded. “What do
you want, Melissa? Does the man have to get down on one knee, spout poetry, and pluck daisy petals?”

“I’ll know when he gets it right,” Melissa said, folding her arms. “And that’s going to take a while, so if I were you, Keith Corbin, I’d hurry up and catch that train home.”

Distractedly, her brother took a gold watch from a pocket of his vest and checked the time. He closed the case with a click and reflected for a few moments, then said, “Today’s the fifteenth of April. I’ll be back in Port Riley in exactly one week.” He waved a finger under Melissa’s nose. “You, young lady, will either be ready to marry Quinn or come home to the bosom of your family. Is that clear?”

Melissa’s temper flared. She shot out of her chair and caught hold of Keith’s arm as he would have started toward the door. “Wait a minute!” she cried. “You can’t deliver an ultimatum like that and then just walk out of here!”

Keith touched her nose with an index finger. “One week, brat,” he repeated, and then he was gone.

Melissa stomped one foot and gave a cry of frustrated fury when she heard the front door slam in the distance. She started after her brother only to run headlong into Quinn at the base of the stairs.

He barred her passing as effectively as a brick wall.

“Feeling better?” he asked solicitously.

Melissa tried in vain to get around him. “No,” she answered. And then she sputtered, “Men! Do you realize that that arrogant brother of mine just
ordered
me to be married?”

The set of Quinn’s face was solemn, though his dark eyes danced with laughter. “The nerve,” he said. “And just because you’re having my baby and the whole town knows we’re lovers.”

Melissa gave another strangled cry of frustration and tried again to pass Quinn. Again he stopped her, this time by taking a hard though painless hold on her arm.

“For once, woman,” he said, “I’m laying down the law. I’ve got to go back up the mountain for a couple of days, and by God, you’re going with me.”

Mouth open, Melissa simply stared at him. Quinn had
been impossible before, but never to this degree, and she didn’t know how to respond.

“Get your things together,” he said, cupping her face in one hand and sending sweet chills through her by his touch, “and meet me at the depot in an hour. We’re taking the railroad car.”

Of course, Melissa decided, she would defy him. She would pretend that she was going to fetch her nightgown and her toothbrush and her pens and paper, but then she simply would not come back. If Quinn wanted to drag her up that mountain, then he’d have to find her first.

All these ideas were firm in Melissa’s mind, and yet when Quinn stepped into the car some sixty minutes later she was sitting primly on the velvet upholstered bench, her necessities stuffed into the bulging valise beside her.

Quinn smiled at her obedience. “You know, Calico,” he said, “I half expected to have to search the county for you.”

Melissa gave him a haughty, sidelong glance and squared her shoulders. “Aren’t you going to ask what changed my mind?” she queried.

He came and moved her valise so that he could sit beside her on the bench. “Why should I?” he countered. “I already know.”

“You do?” Melissa asked, her eyes round. She wished he’d go ahead and tell her, since she’d only been bluffing a few moments before and had no earthly idea.

There was a loud
clang
outside, and the car gave a jarring lurch as the engine hooked up to it. Quinn put an arm around Melissa, ostensibly to steady her. “It’s instinct,” he said sagely.

“Instinct?”

“Yes.” He stroked her cheek ever so lightly with the fingertips of his right hand. “You want to chase down newspaper stories and write books in the daytime, but you need me in your bed at night.”

Melissa had never wanted to slap anyone more in her life, and the knowledge that Quinn was absolutely right only made her more furious. “Any man would do, I’m sure,” she
said, to repay him. And then she got up and dashed toward the door, meaning to make her escape.

The train was already moving, and when Melissa stood on the platform and saw the ground flashing by in a blur she wasn’t foolish enough to jump. She reentered the car to find Quinn leaning against his desk, his arms folded across his broad chest, a cocky grin on his face.

“Any man would do, would he?” he asked.

Melissa tried to ignore Quinn, giving him a wide berth as she went around him to reclaim her valise and carry it to the opposite end of the car. She opened it and took out a small box containing pen and ink, along with a fresh pad of paper.

She was once again in an embarrassing position. She could not settle at the desk to write, for Quinn was still standing there, and if she sat cross-legged on the bed he might draw unwarranted conclusions. In the end she went to the bench and sat down, although writing there would be an awkward, if not hopeless, proposition.

Quinn laughed at her quandary and drew back the chair at the desk in a motion so graceful that it was worthy of a maître d’ in the finest restaurant.

Melissa didn’t trust him for a moment, but she had no idea what she would do if she couldn’t take refuge in her novel, so she allowed Quinn to seat her at the desk. Out of the corner of one eye she watched him as he picked up the array of books she’d thrown at him the day before.

After he’d restored the volumes to their shelf he selected one to read and went around the partition to stretch out on the bed. At least that was what Melissa imagined him doing.

Cheeks burning, she kept her eyes on her paper and continued to write. After a while the task absorbed her, as she had hoped it would, and she forgot all her own problems as she created new ones for her characters.

Presently, however, writing became impossible. The train was climbing, and the incline grew so steep that Melissa had to seal her ink bottle and put it away. Once she was sure her pages were dry, she tucked them into the back of her notebook and made her awkward way to the window.

Looking out, she saw a sheer drop and a collection of tiny rooftops. She staggered backward with a little cry and then lost her balance.

Quinn laughed as she tumbled ingloriously over his prone body to lie beside him on the bed. “Don’t fight it,” he said, rolling onto his side and looking down into her face with delight. “It’s fate.”

If Melissa knew anything in that moment, it was that God was surely a man. No female deity would subject a woman to so many indignities. She doubled up one fist and slugged Quinn in the chest.

He only laughed again and kissed her, and Melissa knew she was lost then. An hour later, when the engine came to a noisy stop on the edge of Quinn’s lumber camp, she had to scramble into her clothes.

“You can help Wong in the cook shack,” he said generously as he handed her down from the little platform at the back of the railroad car.

Melissa gave him a scorching look and walked away on her own to explore. In the distance she could hear the bawls of oxen and the rhythmic rasp of crosscut saws, but the camp itself was quiet.

She sought out the new cabins and the schoolhouse first and was pleased to see that several families had already moved in. She stopped to chat with a plain, friendly-looking woman working at a washboard. The housewife’s name was Elsa, and her man was a bull whacker; it was his job to drive the oxen that dragged the big timber down out of the woods.

Melissa was at a loss to explain who she was or what she was doing in the lumber camp. There was really no point in being secretive, however—heaven knew, word would get around camp soon enough when it was learned that she was sharing Mr. Rafferty’s fancy railroad car.

She excused herself and, kicking at the dirt, started off for the schoolhouse, which sat on the edge of a little clearing. A creek ran past the front door, and wildflowers bloomed orange and yellow and purple and pink in the deep, sweet-scented grass.

Melissa was enchanted with the place, and she envied
Dana her job as mistress of this small kingdom. She loved children for their laughter and their noise and their lack of guile.

She was not surprised to see Dana sitting in the cool, shadowy interior of the building. The young teacher was perched on a child-sized chair at a tiny table, helping a solitary student with a problem of arithmetic.

At Melissa’s entrance she looked up and beamed, gesturing for her friend to come inside.

Melissa looked at the crisp, colorful maps and ran her hand along the spines of new books while she waited. Finally Dana sent the little girl home to her mother.

“What are you doing here?” Dana demanded of her friend, closing the arithmetic book and rising from her chair.

“Some greeting that is,” said Melissa, out of sorts. “I was practically shanghaied, in case you don’t know.”

Dana smiled and rolled up the world map behind her desk like a window shade. “I would imagine Mr. Rafferty is trying to keep you out of trouble,” she said airily. “Well, never mind. Tomorrow is the first day of school—you can help me with the children.”

Melissa forgot that she’d been dragged up the mountain against her will and reduced to thrashing about on Quinn’s bed like a strumpet along the way. She even forgot that she was hungry and needed a nap. “Really?” she cried, delighted. Then she frowned. “Schools all over the state are about to let out for the summer, and you’re just starting?”

Dana nodded, settling in the chair behind her impressive new desk. “Yes. Lots of the children I’ll be teaching have never been to school at all. It seems silly to wait until fall just so our school will be out at the same time as the others.”

“I suppose this place is a sort of law unto itself,” she reflected, going to the window to look out on the spectacle the wildflowers made over beyond the bubbling creek. “Oh, Dana, I’m so jealous I could spit.”

Dana came and put a friendly arm around Melissa’s shoulders. “Once you and Quinn get the knack of being married, you’ll be the happiest people on earth,” she
promised. “Now come on. I’ll show you my cabin and brew us up a cup of tea.”

Melissa followed Dana outside into the dazzling afternoon sunshine. The last in the fourth row of cabins, unpainted and still smelling of fresh sawdust, had been set aside for the teacher.

It was a one-room building, although Dana’s bed was hidden behind a thin wooden partition. There was a small stove to cook on, and someone had been building what looked to be a window box at the table.

“All right, who is he?” Melissa demanded good-naturedly, whirling on her friend with folded arms.

Dana, who was taking a shiny new teapot from the stove with a pot holder, smiled mysteriously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve met a man,” Melissa accused, beaming. “I can tell it by the sparkle in your eyes.”

“I have met someone,” Dana confessed shyly as she poured hot water into a crockery teapot that had probably come from her uncle’s mercantile. “His name is Paul Wiley, and he’s a sawyer. He only comes calling when his sister Constance is with him, of course. For us to be alone wouldn’t be proper.”

Melissa was the last one to give lectures on propriety. “Do you love him?” she asked, sitting down at the table and running one hand over the neatly planed window box.

Dana shrugged as she carried the teapot to the table and then went back to take two cups, a sugar bowl, and some spoons from a little cupboard near the stove. “I’m not sure. He’s very handsome, and he likes books.”

“Does he make you laugh?” Melissa asked, for she had her own opinions on what made a man and woman suitable for each other.

Dana gave a happy little giggle as she joined Melissa at the table but did not share the memory that had amused her so much. “Oh, yes,” she answered. “Does Quinn make you laugh, Melissa?”

She hadn’t been prepared for the tables to be turned that way. In the railroad car Quinn had tickled her until she’d
shrieked with laughter, but she wasn’t sure it was the same thing. “I guess,” she said, her cheeks throbbing.

Dana patted her hand. “I wish I knew what you’re remembering that would make you blush like that,” she teased, her eyes twinkling.

“No you don’t,” Melissa argued, pouring a cup of tea for her friend and for herself. “Believe me, you don’t.”

The two women talked and drank tea for an hour or so, and then Quinn loomed up in the doorway and rapped at the outside wall. Although he exchanged pleasant greetings with Dana, he turned down her offer of tea and cookies and was soon squiring his errant almost-wife out the door.