My Darling Melissa (5 page)

Melissa thought back to the time her brother Keith’s first wife was killed. He’d disappeared in a fit of grief, and Adam and Jeff had established a reward and gotten posters printed
within the space of a few days. She looked imploringly at Quinn as he escorted her into the dining room and smoothly seated her near a window.

When he joined her at the table he smiled warmly. “I’ve been thinking,” he announced, “about your offer to marry me.”

Melissa’s cheeks flamed, and she was glad Quinn couldn’t know how rapidly her heart was beating. “I wasn’t serious,” she said. She couldn’t help remembering the kiss they’d shared on Quinn’s bed, nor could she stop the rush of sensations the memory unleashed. If she were Quinn’s wife, she would have a legal and moral right to explore the strange delights his body had promised to hers.

“I think you were,” Quinn argued affably.

A waitress came, bringing coffee and taking Melissa’s order, and then they were alone again.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Melissa spat, as though there had been no break in the ridiculous conversation. “I’d sooner marry a woolly African ape than you, Quinn Rafferty!”

He had the brazen effrontery to take one of her hands in his. The way he chafed the inside of Melissa’s wrist with his callused thumb caused a tender blossoming sensation deep within her. “Marry me,” he said in an audacious undertone.

Melissa nearly upset her coffee, so swiftly did she pull her hand free of his grasp. “How fickle you are!” she whispered furiously. “What about Gillian?”

“I told you. That was just business.”

“Whereas you harbor a deep and undying affection for me, I suppose,” Melissa taunted.

“I sure as hell feel something,” Quinn responded blithely. “Might as well find out what it is.”

If they hadn’t been in a public place, and if people hadn’t already started to look, Melissa would have slapped Quinn again. She lowered her eyes to the plate of ham, eggs, and biscuits the waitress brought to her and concentrated as best she could on her meal.

As hungry as she was, Melissa could barely eat, her
emotions were in such a tangle. She’d truly loved Ajax, or thought she had, but he’d never made her feel such anger, such tenderness, such frustration.

“I won’t marry you,” she said firmly when she’d eaten what she could. “I couldn’t think of tying myself down to a man who merely liked me.”

“Who says I like you?” Quinn countered.

Melissa slammed down her fork and made to stand up, but Quinn stopped her by taking a hard but painless grip on her wrist.

“Finish your breakfast,” he ordered.

Although she longed to defy him, Melissa found herself obeying.

Three

The hotel dining room was filled with conversation and the cheery clatter of good china. Melissa gazed at Quinn over the rim of her coffee cup, having made short work of her breakfast.

Quinn wasn’t sure why he wanted to argue for marriage, when all his life he’d been firmly opposed to the institution. Even his engagement to Gillian Aires had been entered into with an eye to bailing out again if the waters got too rough, but here he was, ready to do his damnedest to persuade a total stranger to become his wife.

“Look at it this way,” he said smoothly. “You won’t get a chance to prove anything to anybody if your brothers come to Port Riley and drag you back home.”

Those fantastically blue eyes of hers widened, then dodged away. “That’s true enough,” she admitted in a small voice.

Quinn ventured to reach across the tabletop and take her hand in his. In that instant of their touching, innocent as it was, he knew why he was willing to marry Melissa Corbin.

He wanted her. Desperately.

He spoke huskily when he went on. “If you married me, you would become my—ward, so to speak.”

“I would become your wife,” Melissa said flatly, pulling her hand from his. “And you would have rights that I don’t wish to grant you, Mr. Rafferty.”

Quinn knew that having this delectable little chit for a wife and not being able to bed her would be an early consignment to hell, but he was confident of his ability to win her over. No woman had ever found him wanting when it came to the art of lovemaking.

He spread his hands, the personification of nonchalance. “I haven’t thrown you down and had my way with you so far, have I?”

A rich blush glowed in her cheeks; she lowered her eyes and bit her lip.

“It should be obvious to you,” Quinn proceeded to say when she remained silent, “that I’m a man of honor.”

She met his gaze squarely. “I’ll grant you that,” she said.

“And it’s true that I won’t be able to accomplish anything at all if my brothers find out where I am—even though they’d be outside the law if they forced me to go back home, no one would think of stopping them. Marriage would be my only real protection. But what do you stand to gain from this union, Mr. Rafferty? Money?”

Quinn sighed. “Not exactly. I’m a wealthy man in my own right. What I need is—collateral.”

“Collateral?”

“I’m planning to—er—expand my holdings. Frankly, a connection with your family would give me unlimited borrowing power. I could accomplish my purposes without ever touching a cent of your money.”

She was tapping her chin thoughtfully with one finger. “Unless, of course, your ventures were to fail.”

Quinn set his jaw. “That is out of the question,” he said. It was damned fortunate, in his view, that he wasn’t some unscrupulous rounder. Melissa Corbin would be all too easy to dupe.

In the next moment she searched his face in a way that made Quinn wonder if he’d made a mistake in adding her
up. Although Melissa was naïve, she was also formidably intelligent. “I will never love anyone but Ajax as long as I live,” she announced, “but we both know that I can’t have him for a husband. Therefore, it doesn’t make much difference whom I marry, does it?”

Quinn was unaccountably wounded by this reasoning. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” he began, but Melissa immediately cut him off.

“Provided you’re willing to agree to a few basic terms, Mr. Rafferty, I see no reason why you and I shouldn’t make an—arrangement.”

Rafferty’s sense of injury had turned to pure, patent irritation. “What terms?” he practically snarled, snatching the check from the waitress’s hand when she dared approach the table.

Melissa waited primly until they were alone again. “I will not share your bed until such time as I’m ready to have a child,” she said, “and I certainly won’t be the conventional wife, waiting by your chair to stuff a pipe in your teeth at night and all that rubbish. I still want to make my own way in the world.”

Quinn arched an eyebrow. “If it’s not too much to ask,” he said dryly, “will you at least live under my roof?”

“Of course I will,” she replied. “If I didn’t, my brothers would never believe that we were really married.”

Quinn swallowed, thinking of how Gillian was going to react to this news. Worse, he’d be the laughingstock of Port Riley if his wife was out trying to make something of herself every damned day of the week. Suppose, for example, she wrote another one of those outlandish books?

“H-How long do you think it will be before you decide you’d like to be a mother?” he dared to inquire.

Melissa shrugged. “Who knows?”

Quinn glared at her as he tossed a bill down on top of the check the waitress had brought and pushed back his chair. Melissa waited, primly ladylike, until he drew hers back. “Thank you, Mr. Rafferty,” she said sweetly.

Quinn rolled his eyes.

* * *

Evidently Quinn Rafferty was a man of no small influence. Before the train pulled out of Seattle, bound for the peninsula, he’d not only secured a special license, he’d followed through and married Melissa.

The whole thing had happened with dizzying swiftness, and Melissa Corbin Rafferty sat in that fancy train caboose when it was all over, staring down at the shiny golden band on her finger and wondering what had possessed her to sell herself into veritable slavery. Tears of awe and fear brimmed in her eyes when she realized the full scope of what she’d done.

She was alone, blessedly, since Quinn had gone to the club car the second they’d returned. No doubt he was drinking, gambling, and carousing at that very moment.

Melissa paced the car, still wearing her oversized shoes and ugly calico dress, a wail of desperation gathering in her throat. If things had gone as they were supposed to, she would have been safely married to Ajax by now, happily honeymooning.

She dashed away her tears with the back of one hand and sniffled. There was no point in pining away for Ajax, for nothing could ever come of her love for him. The only thing to do now was make the best of the situation.

She would go ahead with her plans, just as though there had been no hasty wedding in a judge’s chambers, and make a life for herself. Even being a wife in name only would be better than having the whole family fussing over her for the rest of her days.

Having decided all this, Melissa flung herself down on the chinchilla-covered bed and sobbed with despair.

Quinn sat in the club car, enshrouded in the smoke of cigars and cheroots, and threw back a double shot of rye whiskey. He was married, by God, and he had no rights. No rights at all.

What the hell had gotten into him?

He snapped his fingers, and a fresh glass of whiskey appeared in them almost magically. He was seated beside one of the windows, having no desire to join in the rousing
poker game going on a few feet away. He’d lost his limit the night before.

Someone dropped heavily into the seat facing his. “You look like a man with a problem,” a familiar voice observed.

Quinn looked up to see Mitch Williams, his lawyer and best friend. Blond and blue-eyed, Mitch was a favorite with the women and a fair hand in a fight. Quinn was so surprised to see him that he nearly choked on his whiskey. “What the devil are you doing here?”

“Got on in Seattle, like you.”

Quinn let out a long breath. “So you saw her?”

Mitch grinned and held out one hand, palm down. “Little smidgin of a thing, about this big, with blue eyes the size of saucers?”

Quinn nodded.

“Haven’t seen her,” Mitch said, and then he laughed at the expression on his friend’s face. After several moments had passed he asked patiently, “Who is she?”

Quinn swallowed. “My wife.”

“Your
what?!”
Mitch choked out the words.

Gazing miserably at his friend, Quinn answered, “You heard me, damn it. Don’t make me say it again.”

“You actually married that woman?”

Again Quinn nodded.

“Why?” Mitch snapped, rapid-fire.

“I don’t rightly know.”

Mitch let out a long, low whistle. “Gillian will have your teeth made into piano keys,” he said.

Quinn gave him an acid look and held up his empty shot glass. It was replaced in a moment, and he swallowed the contents in a desolate gulp.

The lawyer was leaning forward in his seat, squinting, his voice low. “What happened, Rafferty? Did you have a few too many and marry a dance hall girl, or what?”

For the first time since he’d known him, which was some twenty years, Quinn wanted to knock Mitch Williams on his ass. “She isn’t a dance hall girl,” he hissed, too loudly. All over the car heads were turning.

“Have you consummated this marriage?” Mitch demanded in an undertone.

“Don’t you think that’s kind of a personal question?” Quinn shot back. He could feel his neck heating up and swelling to make his collar too tight.

Mitch shrugged. “It all depends on your answer, my friend,” he said coolly. “If you’re having regrets, and if you haven’t taken any real liberties, the marriage can be annulled.”

“Annulled?” Quinn echoed stupidly. For all his second thoughts, that avenue hadn’t occurred to him.

Mitch nodded.

Quinn spat out an abrupt “No!”

A smug grin crossed Mitch’s face. “This has all the earmarks of a real yarn. What the Sam Hill’s going on here?”

Quinn drew in a deep breath and sighed it out again. “It all started in Port Hastings,” he began. Mitch’s eyes got wider as the story went on, and when it was over he swore in exclamation.

“So you carried the Corbins’ baby sister off on a train and married her for her money, did you?” Mitch paused, shook his head in awe, and then chuckled. “You’re either bone-stupid or the bravest man I ever knew.”

A drunk in the next booth voted for stupid.

Glaring, Quinn leaned forward in his seat and demanded of his friend, “Do you know her brothers?”

“I do for a fact,” Mitch confessed. “I grew up in Port Hastings, remember?”

Quinn rubbed his stubbled jaw. He needed a shave, a hot bath, and a good meal.

And Melissa.

Before he could respond to Mitch’s remark, however, there was a stir at the back of the club car, followed by a spate of delicate coughing. Quinn whirled, full of dread, and sure enough, there was Melissa in that infernal calico dress of hers, waving away the smoke with one hand.

Quinn cursed roundly while Mitch laughed.

“Oh, Mr. Rafferty!” Melissa called out sweetly, standing
on tiptoe to peer over the heads of half a dozen shocked poker players. “Mr. Rafferty!”