This Side of Heaven (20 page)

She threw open the door. Her eyes widened as she stared aghast at the sight that greeted her. The outside door was open; dawn’s graying light provided just enough illumination to reveal Raleigh’s huge form in the middle of the truckle bed she’d set up for herself in one corner. He was in a semicrouch, front paws flat against the mattress, rear end and madly waving tail in the air as he worried one of her best boots!

“Out! Out! Out!” she screamed, snatching a broom
from a corner of the kitchen and rushing into the room. Her boot, of fine black leather with a delicate high heel, already bore signs of being badly chewed. “Out, you benighted beast! Who left the door open so this animal could get in?”

Raleigh, pleased at this new game, leaped from the bed as she flailed at him and ran, madly barking, around the room. Millicent, who’d been curled up before the fire in the kitchen, took one look at her nemesis and streaked for the stairs. Spying her, Raleigh gave chase with a bound and a volley of earsplitting woofs.

“Get that animal out of this house!” Broom held threateningly aloft, Caroline ran after the enormous animal as he bounded up the stairs in vocal pursuit of the fleeing Millicent. “Blasted dog! Get out, get out,
get out!”

Millicent gained the top of the stairs and darted for Matt’s room, as his was the only open door. Behind her, nails scrabbling on the plank floor, came Raleigh in full cry. Like Millicent, he tore through the open door.

“What in the name of …!” Matt’s muffled protest ended in a yell.

“Out! Out! Out!” Waving the broom, Caroline burst through the door just as Raleigh, all hundred and some odd pounds of him, jumped onto Matt’s bed. A hissing black streak leaped from the mattress and disappeared under the bed; Caroline, incensed, swung the broom at the bouncing dog. He bounded from the bed in pursuit of the cat just before the broom would have connected with his furry backside. Caroline ended up
whacking the mattress instead. Fortunately, she just missed Matt, who cowered in the face of so much avenging fury, his arms lifted to protect his head.

“Stop it, now! Caroline, that’s enough! Raleigh, sit! Blasted troublesome cat!”

“Don’t you dare blame this—this debacle on Millicent!” Caroline screeched, using the broom to rout the dog from beneath the bed, where he had wedged himself in pursuit of the cat. Unfortunately, she routed Millicent as well. The cat tore around the room with Raleigh, barking deafeningly after her. Caroline, wielding the broom with grand disregard for what it hit, pounded floor and furniture as she chased the galloping dog. One particularly wild swing hit the washstand, causing bowl and pitcher to teeter; before she could so much as grab at them, they crashed to the floor, shattering. Shrieking with fury, Caroline at last succeeded in making contact with the dog—and got knocked to the bed for her trouble when the huge animal, with a shocked yelp, leaped by her in a lunge for the door.

“I’ll kill that bloody dog!” Caroline gasped into Matt’s chest. Broom and all, she had fallen across him, and he was holding her by the arms to prevent her from getting up. His chest was heaving. Had she hurt him? She looked up, frowning with concern, to discover that the maddening devil was laughing at her!

“She hit Raleigh!”

“Here, Raleigh! Here, boy! Aunt Caroline didn’t mean it!”

“He won’t hurt that cat!”

“If you hadn’t gone off half-cocked …!”

“ ’Tis time and past you stopped acting like Raleigh was some kind of wild beast!”

Like a Greek chorus, the five Mathieson males crowded through the doorway, voicing their opinions and giving Caroline condemning looks without restraint. Caroline stiffened even as Matt’s grip tightened on her arms.

“I hate you, Aunt Caroline! I hate you!”

That was the final straw. The entire morning had been a disaster, and it wasn’t even full daylight yet! She’d worked herself to the bone waiting on the ungrateful crew, cleaning and cooking and mending and nursing, and what did she get for it? A chewed-up shoe, and Davey telling her he hated her! Caroline felt the hot rush of tears. Blinking frantically, she tried to force them back, but she was terribly afraid she was going to make a fool of herself before them all.

“Hold, now,” Matt whispered in her ear. “Davey, you may apologize to your aunt later. For now, ’tis time and past that you and your brother left for school. You know your aunt didn’t hurt Raleigh. Why, he outweighs her by a good half stone! Daniel, see them off to school, would you? And take yourself, and Rob, and Thorn, off as well.”

“But, Pa …!”

Caroline could feel all their eyes on her, but she refused to look at them. Instead she ducked her head to hide the incipient tears and found her face pressed against the warm, hair-roughened muscles of Matt’s chest. It was all she could do to hold back a sniffle. Matt’s hands were hard around her upper arms, but his grip didn’t hurt her.

“Go on, now. All of you. Daniel. Close the door.”

Daniel must have sensed something amiss—indeed, with her sprawled facedown and unmoving across Matt and Matt telling him to leave them alone and close the door, it would be hard to think otherwise. Daniel ushered his nephews and brothers from the room without comment. When she heard the click of the door closing behind them, Caroline’s shoulders sagged. Matt’s grip on her arms gentled, becoming more comforting than confining.

“Go ahead and cry, if you want to. Your guilty secret’s safe with me.” His words, soft and only faintly teasing, were addressed to the top of her head, as her face was still buried in his chest.

“I never cry.” The protest was muffled and then entirely spoiled by a watery gulp.

“So you’ve told me.”

“I broke the pitcher and bowl.”

“They can be replaced.”

“And the bread burned.”

“We’ve all eaten burned bread before. If you cut off the worst parts, ’tisn’t bad.”

“And I didn’t make enough porridge.”

“Now that,” he said, and she could hear the humor lacing the words, “you should be ashamed of.”

He was teasing her, she knew he was, but she couldn’t help it: despite her best efforts, she burst into noisy tears.

21

“H
ere, now. I was but teasing you! I thought to make you laugh, not cry!”

Despite Matt’s protest and her own mortification, Caroline could not seem to dam the flow of tears. She gulped and gasped and sobbed, weeping until it seemed there must be no more moisture left anywhere in her body. After a few futile attempts, Matt gave up trying to cajole her out of her blubbering. Instead his arms came around her, and he settled her more comfortably against him while she wept away all the pent-up sorrows of the past two years. That he was a man, and naked beneath the bedcoverings, never even occurred to her. In the explosion of her grief, he was simply Matt.

“ ’Tis all right then, poppet. Go ahead and cry.” Matt’s murmur made Caroline burrow closer. Her hands found his shoulders and curled over them, and she held on to him as though for dear life. What she had told him was true: she never cried. There had never seemed much point in it. Her father, dearly beloved as he had been, had had no patience with feminine emotionalism, and even as a child Caroline had learned not to cry in front of him. With her mother dead when Caroline was twelve, there had been nobody
left in the world for her to run weeping to. Consequently, she had learned to keep her tears to herself. But something, perhaps the cessation of fear, or the new security she had found, or the Lord alone knew what, had ripped the lid off years of accumulated sorrows. For the life of her, she could not stop crying.

It was probably healthy. But if Caroline had had her wish, she would have wept her woes away anywhere but on Matt’s chest.

But if wishes were horses, why, then, beggars would ride. Caroline did not get her wish. She cried in Matt’s arms until she was sure no more tears would come. Then she cried some more.

“There, poppet. There, now.” Clearly he had had some experience in dealing with tears. He patted her back, his hand warm even through the layers of her blue silk dress and underlying shift. He smoothed the tangles of inky hair from her hot and soggy face, murmured to her soothingly, and let her cry. Hazily Caroline wondered at his expertise, then realized with a gulp and a hiccup that he was probably treating her exactly as he would treat five-year-old Davey in a similar case.

“I’m not Davey!” Her indignant protest was rendered considerably less potent by the strangled sob that punctuated it.

“Believe me, I’m well aware of that.”

There was a measure of dryness to his voice that filtered through to her after an incomprehending moment. Hiccuping again, she at last managed to bring her tears under control. For a while longer she lay unmoving, limp and exhausted from the expenditure
of so much emotion. Gradually awareness began to return. To her horror, she discovered that she lay almost full length against him, with luck to thank far more than good judgment for keeping her off his splinted leg. One hand clung to his neck while the other splayed across his chest. Her ear rested squarely over his heart. She could hear its steady beat beneath her cheek.

Her breasts, belly, and thighs were pressed tight against the warm strength of his body, which was bare to the waist as his movements during all the commotion had twisted the quilt about his hips and legs. The smell of man was in her nostrils, the salty taste of his skin—flavored perhaps by her tears?—was on her tongue. His arms were around her waist and shoulders, holding her close while his hands wandered freely over her hair and exposed cheek and down her spine. And yet—there was no feeling of revulsion. Her skin did not crawl, her stomach did not heave, her body did not shudder.

In fact, except for a certain mild embarrassment, she was glad to be held so. She felt so wonderfully—safe.

“I suppose now you’ll consider me a watering pot too.” The chest hairs into which her right cheek nestled tickled her lips as she spoke. Above her head she sensed rather than saw him smile.

“You were provoked,” he said.

That handsome admission caused her to lift her head to look at him. As she had thought, he was smiling, an amused smile tinged with kindness that lent a devastating warmth to his eyes.

Caroline blinked, dazzled. Then she stiffened. The realization of what was beginning to happen to her frightened her. Dear Lord, what she was feeling was a jumble of attraction, liking, and—and wanting. For Matt—for a man!

“Wait a minute. There’s no need to poker up.” His arms tightened around her, one hand coming up to rub along the smooth softness of her cheek. “I’m not going to hurt you, you know. There’s no need to look at me like I suddenly turned into Oliver Cromwell.”

“I’m not afraid of Oliver Cromwell,” Caroline responded, feeling her instinctive resistance start to melt. It had been so long since someone had held her in a comforting, nonthreatening way—how long? Since her mother had died? “Or, for that matter, of you.”

“Then perhaps you’ll tell me why you suddenly looked at me just so. Did horns pop out on either side of my head?”

“No.” Caroline had to smile a little at that.

“Then what?”

“I wish you would let me go.”

“I will, presently. In fact, if you tell me you truly wish it, you may get up now.”

“I truly wish it.”

“Liar.”

It was a soft word, and she could hear his smile through it. She didn’t see the smile because, out of fear that he would be able to read in her eyes how very accurate his assessment of her was, she ducked her head. ’Twould be for the best that she pull away from him, right that very instant. She knew perfectly well that he would let her go. Matt Mathieson, she knew as
surely as she knew her name, was not the man to hold a woman against her will.

But then, if she were very honest with herself, she would admit that she was not being held against her will at all.

“I must go and see the boys off to school.”

Although she made no move to do so. Lying against him, she absorbed the smell of him, the taste of him, the feel of him. His chest was bronzed and darkened with hair, his pectoral muscles rising and falling, rising and falling. She lay quiescent against his chest and watched, fascinated, the interplay of work-hardened muscles that rippled with every breath.

“Daniel will see to them. They managed to get to school quite adequately before you came, you know.”

“Yes.”

Her answer was abstracted, her attention caught by the sheer rugged beauty of the naked masculine torso upon which she rested. Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined that she would find a man’s nudity intoxicating.

“Caroline.”

Some few minutes had passed since they had last spoken. Matt was taking deeper, more deliberate breaths.

“Mmm?”

His stomach was flat as a board and ridged with muscle. Like his chest, it was roughened with dark hair, and it undulated when he breathed.

“Perhaps you should get up, after all.”

When the sense of that registered, her eyes slid up to his, surprised. The smile was still there for her, but
there was something else in the blue depths, something that glittered with bright fire. It hit Caroline then that what she had been feeling, that sudden, intense pull of attraction, had not happened to her alone. He felt it too. It was there in his eyes, this time without mistake. She’d seen a similar hard masculine gleam enough times in her life to know what it portended.

Only this time, because the man looking at her
so
was Matt, she felt no disgust, nor even fear.

Because he was the man he was, he was making no move to do anything save look at her. In fact, his arms had deliberately loosened about her. He wanted her, the expression in his eyes made that abundantly clear. Yet he was prepared to let her go, had even urged her to leave him.

Perversely, this had the effect of keeping her right where she was. If anything, she lay more fully against his chest and adjusted herself so that she could easily look up at him, luxuriating in his masculinity and the wonderful effect it was having on her body. After Simon Denker, she had not thought to feel anything like this ever again. She had supposed that the the part of her that had been designed to enjoy and respond to a man had been killed forever.