Cooking Up Trouble Page 20

  Geraldine tutted, and then giggled. “Perhaps Mrs. Halloran can brush the dust out.”

  The gentleman in question looked as if he had once been a fairly natty specimen—perhaps a drummer or some other sort of businessman. He looked a little shaky as he heaved himself out of the stage. And, Philippe noticed, Heather was right. His suit was probably black under its coating of red-brown dust, but it would take a miracle to get it to look black again. The newcomer nodded to the milling crowd and smiled, and Philippe shook his head in wonder. Human beings were an amazing lot. Imagine being jostled for hundreds of miles, practically smothered in dust, and being able to smile upon arrival at one’s destination. Especially when one’s destination was the small and unlovely town of Fort Summers, New Mexico Territory.

  The next passenger, a plump woman of forty or so, uttered a shriek that at first alarmed Philippe. Then, when he saw her fall into the arms of a younger woman, and heard the younger woman cry, “Mother!” he realized there was no need to worry. Mother was here either to visit or to stay, and Daughter was happy about it. Good for them. Chalk up another point on the side of families.

  Perhaps, Philippe thought, all of these familial observations were good for him. They might make him less cynical about the world and the people inhabiting it. And—mon dieu, he could hardly believe he was thinking about it again—marriage.

  On the other hand, they might not. Philippe was enjoying his education, whatever result or lack thereof eventuated.

  The next people to step out of the stage were a young woman holding a small child by the hand. She glanced around uncertainly for a moment. Then a huge smile lit her rather plain face, the child—Philippe couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy—shrieked, “Papa!” And the two were enveloped in a king-sized hug by Sandy, the blacksmith.

  Philippe entertained two emotions at the sight. He was touched by the reunion between Sandy and his wife and child. He was also pleased to learn that Sandy was already taken and, therefore, wouldn’t be wooing Heather Mahaffey. He frowned, wishing he’d stop thinking these irrelevant things.

  He stopped thinking altogether when the next passenger descended. He heard Heather gasp.

  “Oh, my goodness, Geraldine, have you ever seen such a beautiful woman in your life?”

  Geraldine shook her head. Philippe barely saw the motion out of the corner of his eye.

  “No,” said Geraldine, obviously in awe. “My word, where do you suppose she’s come from?”

  “I don’t know.” Heather gaped at the woman. “And I wonder who she’s here to see.”

  “So do I.”

  As if she suspected something—but didn’t quite know what—Heather turned to glance at Philippe.

  He knew she was looking at him, but he was unable to say or do anything for a moment. He could only stare, frozen in place as if he’d been touched by an angel and turned into a pillar of salt, like Lot’s wife.

  The woman was beautiful; perhaps the most beautiful woman Philippe had ever seen in his life—and he’d seen thousands of women. She had a complexion that was as smooth and clear and soft as a baby’s. It was a little lighter than Philippe’s, but he knew that was only because he spent most of his life outside, in the sun. That woman wouldn’t be caught dead in the sun—not without a hat and veil, she wouldn’t. Her eyes were dark and rich and luminous, and they were framed by lashes that needed no help from art to be thick and luxurious. Her figure was spectacular, her hair thick, black, shiny, and coarse—but not curly. Her hair and it’s lack of curliness, Philippe remembered, had been a point of pride with her. It was dressed in a way that complemented the woman’s other charms, which were considerable.

  For she was his mother. God save them all, that was his mother.

  He stood stock still for only a moment, although it seemed like hours. Then, without thinking, he grabbed Heather’s arm and jerked her harder than he’d meant to. He didn’t apologize. “Come along, Miss Mahaffey. We need to get back to the ranch.”

  She stumbled before she realized he meant for her to follow him, and regained her footing. She stared up at him, startled, but still moving. “But—”

  “Now.” He remembered Geraldine, which afterwards surprised him a good deal. Turning to her, he said in clipped accents, “Good day to you, Miss Swift.”

  Geraldine, as shocked as Heather by Philippe’s behavior, said, “But—”

  Philippe didn’t pause to explain. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. “Hop in, Miss Mahaffey.”

  “I—”

  Again, he didn’t wait for her to say anything. Or for her to hop in. He lifted her and all but threw her onto the wagon seat. More quickly than he believed possible, he tied his horse to the back of the wagon, jumped into the driver’s seat, snapped the reins, and took off. He felt as if he were being pursued by demons.

  Which, in truth, he was.

  * * *

  Completely baffled by Philippe’s strange behavior, Heather slapped a hand to her hat to keep it from flying away on the wind. She turned on the wagon seat, waved to her best friend, and called out, “I’ll see you soon, Geraldine!”

  Geraldine, plainly as puzzled as Heather, waved back. “‘Bye, Heather. I hope so!”

  Heather saw the beautiful woman standing in the dirt road beside the stagecoach, a hand on her hat, a large wicker suitcase beside her, staring after Philippe’s wagon. All at once, Heather understood—and her heart cracked in two.

  Which was ridiculous. What did it matter to her if Philippe had a relationship with that woman? What did it matter to her if that woman and Philippe were married, if it came to that?

  It’s not as if she, Heather Mahaffey, bumpkin, had any claim on him. Besides, she couldn’t blame him if that was his wife. That woman was the most spectacularly beautiful creature Heather had ever seen. Granted, she’d lived all her life in Fort Summers, in the remote and uncivilized New Mexico Territory; she still didn’t think women could get much more lovely than that one.

  But if they were married or affianced or had some other close and loving relationship, why had Philippe come here alone? And why was he now fairly running away from her?

  With her heart in her throat, clogging it painfully, Heather turned to Philippe. “Who is she?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, although she was pretty sure her heart couldn’t hurt any more than it already did, no matter what Philippe’s answer turned out to be.

  “Who is who?” he responded curtly. Much more curtly than the occasion called for, in Heather’s opinion.

  She pushed words past the lump in her throat once more. “That woman. Who is she?”

  “What woman?”

  Exasperated and in emotional chaos, Heather snapped, “For heaven’s sake, don’t be coy! Who was that beautiful woman? The one who got off the stage? I know you know her, or you wouldn’t have taken off like a bat out of hell as soon as you saw her.”

  Oh, dear. She wished she hadn’t said hell. It was so unladylike. She’d bet that woman who’d just gotten off the stagecoach never uttered words like that. Heather felt a prickle of tears behind her eyes, but she’d die before she’d cry in front of Philippe—and for so stupid a reason as a beautiful woman coming to town.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Torn between anger and despair, Heather’s temper cracked right in half. “I do too! You’re just trying to avoid answering my question! Why? Is it because you’re married to her or something?” He wouldn’t have been the first man to run out on a bad marriage, although if he had, he was not the man Heather had believed him to be.

  “Married?” Philippe let out a bark of laughter that almost froze Heather’s blood. She could tell he was mad as a hornet, but that laugh was horrible. Cold. Almost inhuman. His voice held deliberate scorn when he went on. “I’m not married to anyone, Miss Mahaffey. Marriage is for weaklings and fools.”

  Hmmm. She guessed that told her something she hadn’t known before, although it didn’t warm her heart any. She couldn
’t seem to let the subject drop, though. As if propelled by some evil spirit, she declared, “Is that so? Is that why you’re so afraid of her, then? Because you seduced and abandoned her? Because you promised you’d marry her and then took off and left her stranded?”

  “For the love of God . . . No! That woman and I have absolutely nothing to do with each other.”

  “You’re lying.” Under normal circumstances, Heather would never have uttered such a blatantly uncivil thing to her employer. Or to anyone else, for that matter. She might be a hoyden at times, but she was at least polite. Usually.

  “Damn it! I’m not lying!”

  “You are too. As soon as you saw that woman get off the stage, you grabbed me and dragged me off. We haven’t even done the shopping! We have no supplies! How am I supposed to cook if there’s nothing to cook?” Stupid question. She couldn’t cook anyway. And D.A. Bologh always seemed to come up with something to prepare, no matter what supplies resided in the pantry. She tried to banish D.A. Bologh from her mind.

  “God damn it!” Philippe looked darker and more dangerous than Heather had ever seen him.

  “Swearing won’t help,” she said self-righteously, reminding herself of Geraldine.

  They’d exited the town limits, and were barreling along the beaten-down stretch of desert that passed as the road to Philippe’s ranch. Because she was angry and hurting inside, Heather grumbled, “And you’re going to kill the horses if you don’t slow down.”

  “Damn you!”

  Suddenly, Philippe pulled up on the reins—not, Heather noticed, quickly enough to hurt the horses’ mouths—and drew the wagon to a stop in a swirl of dust. The dust got blown away on a gust of wind before it could choke them to death, thank goodness.

  Then he grabbed her by the arms. “Stop talking about that woman! I won’t talk about her with you or anyone else. You know nothing about her or me or anything else having to do with me, and you never will. Do you understand me?” He shook her.

  Indignant and frightened, Heather cried, “Stop it! Stop it this instant! It’s not my fault if you have a black past!”

  “A black past?”

  Heather, aware that Philippe was incensed in his own right, wished she hadn’t said that. At least he stopped shaking her in favor of staring at her as if she were a madwoman. “Well, maybe not a black past—but you and that woman have met before, and I know it. And you ran away from her.”

  “I didn’t run away from anything!”

  “You did, too, and there’s no use denying it. I saw you. It was that woman. What is she to you?” Not that she had any business asking.

  “Damn it, I don’t want to think about that woman.”

  And he drew her into his arms, his lips descended on hers, and Heather’s brain turned off.

  In spite of Philippe’s anger, his lips were soft and sweet, and the feel of them lit fires inside her in all sorts of places unrelated to her mouth. His embrace almost crushed her at first, then loosened a little into a more tender clasp. She’d never felt anything like the sensation of being in Philippe St. Pierre’s arms. She liked it. A lot.

  Heather had been kissed by boys before; this was the first time she’d been kissed by a man—and Philippe’s kiss thrilled her. She heard a sound, realized it had come from her throat, and didn’t even care.

  His lips left hers and skimmed her cheek and chin. “Damn it, Heather,” he muttered, his voice rough, like crumpled velvet. “I don’t want to talk about that woman.”

  Heather was in no fit condition to talk about anything. She felt as if she’d been fed some sort of drug that fogged her mind, turned her limbs to rubber, made her body tingle, and created perfectly shocking sensations in places too delicate to mention. Nevertheless, she was too stubborn to give up entirely. “I do.”

  That was a lie. At the moment, she didn’t want to talk about anything at all, much less another woman and what that other woman might or might not be to Philippe. What she wanted was for Philippe to keep kissing her and to progress from there into the dark and mysterious world of love-making, about which Heather knew nothing.

  His wonderful mouth had nibbled its way to the sensitive spot under her ear, and she sighed. This was heavenly.

  Well, except for the surroundings. Not only was the wagon bench hard as a rock, but the wind was still trying to blow them both off of it.

  “That woman is nothing to me,” Philippe growled. “She’s nothing at all.”

  He’d left her ear and had made his way to her throat, where he was now nuzzling. She’d never realized how sensitive a person’s throat was until right this minute. Actually, it seemed as if Philippe had turned some sort of switch in her, and her entire body had become sensitive. Exquisitely so.

  However, she still wouldn’t let the matter die, sensing somehow it was important to her life—and Philippe’s. “She’s not nothing. She’s something.”

  It wasn’t much, but Heather’s brain wasn’t working too well just then. Merciful saints in heaven, if he stopped, she thought she might die. She’d simply melt into a puddle of bubbling sensation right here in the middle of the desert. Or catch fire and burn to a crisp, and then the wind would pick up her ashes and scatter her over hundreds of miles of territorial soil.

  His hand covered her breast—which was well protected beneath layers of fabric and well bolstered by whalebone—but Heather almost fainted anyway. His touch was like nothing she’d ever felt before. She thrust herself at him, and knew she should be embarrassed, but wasn’t.

  When he lowered his face to allow his mouth to play where his hand had been, she gasped. This was too incredible for words. Her determination to get to the bottom of Philippe’s relationship with the woman on the stage blurred around the edges.

  “This is what I want,” Philippe whispered.

  At least Heather thought that’s what he whispered. Her brain had turned to mush, and her thought processes had ceased operating. She said, “Hmmm?”

  He said, “This. I left all that behind. This is what I need.”

  Merciful heavens, was it really? Heather writhed on the wagon seat, knowing she’d never find whatever it was she needed that way, but understanding she needed something. Desperately. And whatever it was, Philippe was the only one who had it. She said, “Ahhh.”

  Because she had an academic knowledge of such things and was a woman of great curiosity, Heather allowed her hand to drift to Philippe’s thigh. His was a grand thigh, heavily muscled, corded with Herculean sinew. That’s not what she was interested in, however. She let her hand travel up his leg, toward his crotch. Ah, yes. There it was.

  Philippe groaned audibly, and unbuttoned the top button of her shirtwaist. Heather barely noticed.

  Good heavens! The man was gigantic. Was this right? Was it proper?

  No, forget the part about proper.

  But, were men’s things really that large? How did they fit? She was in no condition to ask, but she did experiment by rubbing her palm over the bulge in his trousers to see what would happen. He groaned again, and then he growled.

  Interesting. She wondered if that would keep happening, so she did it again.

  He let go of her so abruptly, Heather nearly fell backwards out of the wagon. She caught the back of the seat in time to prevent that particular catastrophe, but she was too fuddled to speak. Her hand lifted of its own accord to her lips, which felt swollen and hot. She noticed that Philippe seemed to be in some kind of distress. He’d flung himself back against the bolster, and was frenziedly passing his fingers through his black, black hair. His hands were trembling as if he had a palsy.

  “Merde.” He sounded as if he had the croup. His voice was as hoarse as a bullfrog’s.

  Heather didn’t know what that word meant, but she didn’t think it was a polite one. She was breathing heavily herself, and in a state the likes of which she’d never been in before. Her whole body was primed for procreation, and her nerves were drawn as taut as a fiddle string. Her blood raced, her body
sang and buzzed, and the pressure in her lower belly and between her legs was close to unbelievable. She squirmed again, but couldn’t find her voice.

  Why had he quit? Damn and blast, she wished he hadn’t.

  Blinking furiously in an attempt to reestablish some sort of hold with the mundane world in which she usually lived, she darted a wild glance around, and a semblance of normality began to pervade her fuddled senses.

  Very well, perhaps this wasn’t the best time and place to perpetrate a seduction. She was sure a bed would be more comfortable.

  Good heavens, what was she thinking? Had she really sunk as low as that? Just because she’d started telling a little lie about cooking?

  Little lie be damned, a voice sang in her head. It was a great, big whopper of a lie, and you know it.

  The truth did a good deal to dampen her ardor. She sat up straight and, with trembling fingers, groped around for the ribbons to her bonnet, which Philippe had pushed aside in pursuit of sensitive body parts. She cleared her throat.

  Philippe had covered his face with one hand. Hearing her, he parted his fingers and peered through them at her. Heather didn’t know what to do or say, so she only watched him. He sucked in about three bushels of air and let them out slowly. He did it again.

  Then he said, “I beg your pardon, Miss Mahaffey.”

  She had to clear her throat once more before she could get her voice to work. “I, ah, think we’re past the Miss-Mahaffey stage, don’t you?” She smiled, trying to make it a down-home, friendly smile. In truth, she felt rather like a lioness about to snag a mate. Except she had a feeling that, in this case, she had the metaphor backwards. If there was any mating going on here, it was Philippe doing the snagging.

  Still, she had a good deal of pride, and she’d be hanged if she’d let him know how he’d gotten to her. “You may call me Heather, if you like.” Because she wasn’t sure how her offer would be received, she hurried on to say, “As friends. No strings attached.” She knew good and well that many women would consider such a kiss as they’d just experienced in the light of a marriage proposal, but Heather wasn’t one of their ilk.