Saturday's Child Read online

  She picked up a cloth and set one foot on the edge of the tub, running the cloth over it in a desultory fashion. The warmth of the water was soaking into her bones, making her feel pleasantly lethargic. She tilted her head back, squeezing the cloth out so that water ran down her neck.

  And that was how Quentin saw her when he stepped into the kitchen. He froze, feeling the breath stop in his throat. The water lapped around her breasts, half revealing, half concealing, hinting at so much more. Her face was flushed from the heat. She looked warm and languorous, wholly desirable. And wholly out of reach, he reminded himself as she caught sight of him.

  She seemed as frozen by shock as he was. She stared at him without speaking for the space of several slow heartbeats, her wide eyes fixed on his face in an expression he couldn't read.

  Without a word, he turned on his heel and left, the door banging shut behind him. It was a good thing that he knew the path to the barn like the back of his hand because all he could see was Katie, her skin sweetly flushed from her bath, her hair slipping loose to caress her neck with damp tendrils.

  "Damn!" He muttered the curse between gritted teeth. This marriage that wasn't a marriage couldn't go on forever. Something had to give. What worried him was the possibility that what gave might be his sanity.

  The clouds that had looked so innocent the day before had built and darkened until they filled the whole sky to the north in one great gray bank. Katie watched them with a mixture of anticipation and concern. If only the rain wasn't too heavy.

  Not that the rain was the main thing on her mind. But it was safer than wondering what Quentin had thought of their encounter the night before.

  When she'd looked up and seen him standing there, her heart had seemed to stop. She'd felt no fear as his eyes had slashed over her. The odd quivering sensation in the pit of her stomach hadn't been fear. He'd been so still. She'd waited—for what she wasn't quite sure. For him to stride over and lift her from her bath? And when he'd turned without a word and walked away, she'd felt—what? Disappointment?

  She flushed just thinking about it. It wasn't ladylike to think like that. Surely, the lovely Alice would never have had such a thought. She scowled at the gray sky, which seemed to scowl right back.

  Alice. The woman had been hovering in the back of her mind ever since she'd found that dratted picture. It wasn't as if she hadn't known that there must have been other women in Quentin's life. And it wasn't that she'd been such a fool as to think that he'd ever give his heart to her.

  But it was one thing to know that her marriage was based on practicality and not love, and another thing altogether to find out that he'd once loved deeply, so deeply that he hadn't wanted to continue living without his Alice.

  Turning away from the window, she moved to the kitchen table and poked an experimental finger into the bread she'd set to rise earlier. The loaves were ready and she transferred them to the oven, once she'd tested the heat by thrusting her forearm inside. It had taken her much trial and error and more singed arms than she cared to remember before she learned to judge the temperature. She'd buried any number of ruined loaves behind the woodshed, concealing the evidence of her failures before anyone could see them.

  But she'd learned. Her bread was as good as any she'd tasted. She wondered if Alice had ever baked a loaf of bread. Katie pushed the oven door shut, exasperated by the way her thoughts kept turning to the other woman. She felt as if she were in competition with the dead girl. But that was foolish.

  Alice was dead. Quentin was married to her now. No matter how much he'd loved the other woman, his life had gone on. He was building something good and fine here and he'd asked her to be a part of it.

  But he'd thought he was asking a woman with some expertise in all the myriad tasks that went with running a home, she reminded herself.

  "Well, I've learned, haven't I?" She asked the question of the bowl she was washing, a note of defiance in her tone.

  She'd learned but it hadn't been without cost. The singed arms, the burned bread, the garden she hadn't known enough to plant. If it hadn't been for Joe's somewhat bemused help, she'd have revealed her ignorance half a hundred times.

  He'd been a help and a companion during her first few weeks on the ranch. While his leg was healing, he'd been limited to tasks near the house and he'd taught her more than he realized. It was Joe who'd shown her how to milk a cow and churn butter, Joe who'd explained how to go about finding the eggs the hens loved to hide.

  He'd plowed the garden for her but he hadn't known much more than she did about actually planting it. He had vague memories of his mother planting corn when the oak leaves were as big as a squirrel's ear. But Katie didn't have much idea of the size of a squirrel's ears. Besides, there wasn't an oak in sight. Cot-tonwoods didn't seem a likely substitute.

  Luckily, she'd found a garden manual on Quentin's bookshelf. The title had promised much and it had lived up to its promises: Growing Food: Being a Manual for the Education and Illumination of Those Who Wish to Provide Healthy Produce for Themselves and their Families. Covering all Aspects of Fruit and Vegetable Culture.

  She'd followed its instruction faithfully and now had a healthy patch of young plants to show for her efforts. It was the one place where she felt she'd been a complete success.

  Her cooking was only adequate. The milk cow seemed to despise her, if the fact that she kicked over the bucket every morning was any indication. The chickens showed a certain amount of tolerance but that was because she hadn't yet tried to introduce any of them to the joys of the chopping block. It was still Joe's task to prepare Sunday's chicken dinner for cooking. And Katie found her appetite disappearing every Sunday as she wondered which of the chickens she was cooking.

  Quentin left early and worked late. They rarely talked, they still didn't share a bed, so she could hardly say that her marriage was a total success. She couldn't say that she and Quentin knew each other much better now than they had when they got married.

  Katie sighed, picking up a linen towel to dry the bowl she'd just washed. Quentin was probably sorry he'd married her and who could blame him? He hadn't looked sorry when he'd seen her in the tub last night. But then he hadn't seemed to have any difficulty turning away, either. Perhaps he had it in mind that, as long as they didn't share a bed, an annulment was possible.

  She sighed again, trying to shake the feeling of failure that was creeping over her. Maybe it was just the feeling that a storm was about to break that was making her so tense. If it would just rain, some of the electricity that seemed to crackle in the air would be dissipated.

  As if in answer to the thought, thunder cracked, loud enough to rattle the windows. Katie jumped, running to the window as the skies opened with a roar.

  In all her life, she'd never seen a storm such as the one she was witnessing now. Rain fell in sheets, a nearly solid wall of water. There'd been no preliminary sprinkles to politely announce the coming deluge. One moment it was not raining and the next it was pouring.

  She ran to the back door, throwing it open to step out on the little porch. She was oblivious of the wind that blew her skirts back against her legs as she peered out toward her garden. Would the dry ground be able to absorb the rain or were her small plants going to be washed away? Perhaps if she covered them with some of the bushel baskets she'd seen in the shed...

  Her fingers fumbled with the buttons on her shoes. She dropped them onto the porch and stripped her socks off before lifting her skirts up to her knees. Drawing in a deep breath, she ran into the storm, her bare feet splashing through the puddles already forming in the path.

  She was drenched by the time she reached the shed: Stumbling into the dark interior, she found the baskets more by feel than by sight. Lifting a stack of them, she hurried out, pushing the door shut with her foot.

  She'd taken only a few steps when she realized that the rain had changed. Where it struck her arms, it stung, like tiny pebbles flung by a careless child. And the ground beneath her fee
t was rough and cold. Hail. The driving rain had turned to hail. The realization speeded her footsteps. If the rain had posed a threat to her precious garden, the hail surely spelled its doom.

  By the time she'd covered the few yards to the garden, the ground was covered by a thin layer of hailstones. The size of the stones had increased to that of small rocks, striking with force enough to raise welts. But Katie hardly noticed.

  She knelt beside the rows, setting baskets over small plants already showing signs of damage. In her mind, it wasn't just a few plants she was trying to save, it was her marriage, maybe her whole life. Since she was a small child, she'd dreamed of sinking roots deep into the soil, building a life. These tiny plants represented that life. They were the newly sprouted seeds of a lifelong dream.

  The hail pelted her unprotected head, bruising in their force, but she didn't pause in her efforts.

  "What do you think you're doing?" Quentin's bellow startled her into looking up. He loomed over her, seeming tall as a building from where she knelt.

  "I'm saving the garden," she told him, without pausing in her efforts.

  "Are you crazy?" he asked incredulously. "Katie, it's hailing. You haven't a coat. Or a hat. You don't even have shoes. Come in the house."

  He bent to take hold of her arm but she jerked away from him.

  "No! Not until I've done what I can." She had to raise her voice to be heard over the storm. As she looked up at him, she saw a hailstone the size of a silver dollar strike the ground between them, while more pelted her head and shoulders,

  "Dammit, woman, you'll be hurt. Let the plants be and come inside."

  "Not until I've covered as much as I can," she said stubbornly.

  "Now." She tried to pull back as he took her arm but this time, he didn't release her. He drew her to her feet, glaring at her from under the brim of his hat.

  "Let me go," she demanded, trying to twist her arm away.

  "Let the damn plants take care of themselves," he all but shouted.

  "I won't."

  A bolt of lightning speared down, striking the earth so near them that the air seemed electrified by the power it held. Thunder crashed in a deafening crescendo. Katie glared at Quentin, no sign of give in her pose.

  "You will," Quentin said calmly. He stepped forward, bending to catch her under the knees and shoulders. There was time for only a gasp as he scooped her up against his chest and strode toward the house. Katie made one convulsive attempt to escape and then held still, knowing he wasn't going to let her go.

  There was another slash of lightning and Quentin's strides lengthened, his boot hitting the bottom step as the thunder roared. The door slammed shut behind them, shutting the storm out.

  The kitchen was warm, filled with the rich scent of baking bread. He set her on her feet in the middle of the floor. Her hair hung down her back in a thick, wet braid. Her dress was soaking wet, the light wool clinging to her in a way that might have struck her as immodest at another time. But modesty wasn't on her mind at the moment.

  "Are you crazy?" Quentin demanded, glaring at her, his eyes dark and stormy under the shadow of his hat. "That's hail. We can get hailstones the size of a man's fist in one of these storms. You were out there without a coat, without a hat, without shoes."

  "I had to cover the plants," she said stubbornly, raising her chin a notch. For the first time since they'd met, she wasn't conscious of the fact that he came from a level of society she couldn't normally approach, or of the fact that he could have married any number of girls from bis own class, or of the fact that he'd brought so much more to this marriage than she had.

  "Look at your arm," he said angrily, grabbing her hand and pushing the sleeve up to show her the reddened skin. "And you're soaking wet. You could catch pneumonia. And the nearest doctor is nearly a day's ride away."

  "Don't worry. If I catch pneumonia, I'll try to die peacefully without disturbing you by asking you to send for the doctor." She hardly knew what she was saying. Tears blurred his tall figure. All the tension of trying to learn a lifetime of things in a few short weeks, of pretending to be something she wasn't, had worn away her control.

  "I didn't say it would disturb me to send for the doctor," Quentin protested, trying to understand how the subject had changed. "Katie, they're just plants."

  "It was the one thing I'd done right," she lashed out, wiping angrily at the tears "on her cheeks. "The cow hates me and I can't kill a chicken and my cooking is hardly worth mentioning, but those plants were growing."

  "Katie." Quentin's voice softened when he saw her distress. He reached for her shoulders but she twitched them away.

  "I don't need your pity," she snapped, her chin coming up. "You married me out of pity. I knew that. You went to San Francisco to look for a wife and you felt sorry for me. You brought me here and found that pity wasn't enough to build a marriage on. Well, it's not enough for me, either. I may not come from a Nob Hill family but the McBrides have as much to be proud of as the Sterlings any day. I don't need your pity."

  "Katie." He reached out, ignoring her attempt to pull away from him. She was rigid in his grasp as he drew her close. She stared at one of the buttons on his coat, willing back the tears that threatened to become a deluge to rival the one outside.

  "I didn't marry you out of pity." His hand slipped under her chin, tilting her face up to his. Katie kept her eyes lowered, refusing to meet his eyes. "I married you because I thought we could make a good marriage together. Only a fool would marry for pity."

  His words brought her eyes to his and she could see nothing but honesty in them. "Then why haven't you..."

  She broke off, feeling her cheeks flush as she looked away from him. But Quentin understood her meaning.

  "I said I'd give you time." He let his hand slip from her chin to rest along the side of her neck, his thumb brushing her ear. "I didn't want to rush you, Katie."

  "You're not rushing me," she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper, her cheeks burning at her own boldness.

  He pulled her a step closer so that there was hardly a whisper between them. Katie closed her eyes, afraid of what he might see, afraid her eyes might tell him things she wasn't ready to admit, even to herself.

  "Look at me, Katie." His breath brushed across her forehead and her lashes lifted slowly. She could only guess at what he saw in her eyes, but the look in his sent a shiver down her spine. Quentin felt the small movement. "Are you afraid of me, Katie?"

  Afraid of him? No, she couldn't in truth say that she feared him. It was more that she feared what he made her feel. This shivery awareness was new to her. But that wasn't what he was asking. She shook her head slowly.

  "I know you'd not willingly hurt me," she answered at last.

  "Willingly?" He questioned the qualifying word. "Do you think I'd hurt you unwillingly?"

  The fingers at her neck moved back to comb through the damp braid of her hair, separating it, spreading it across her shoulders.

  "I can't say. I'm no gypsy to be looking into the future."

  His hands moved again until he cupped her face between his palms. Katie felt the roughness of callused skin against the softness of her cheeks. She felt his touch deep inside, reaching to the very core of her and stirring new feelings.

  "Katie Aileen Sterling, I promise I'll never knowingly cause you pain. Do you believe that?"

  "Yes." The word breathed out, her eyes on his.

  "We've a marriage that isn't a marriage. It seems to me it's time we did something about it. Do you trust me?"

  The hands she set against his chest trembled and her voice was little more than a whisper, but her eyes were steady on his as she answered.

  "With my life."

  This kiss was different from the other they'd shared. It held more demand, more hunger, more need. It was the need she responded to, opening her lips to him, her tongue entwining with his as she sank against his chest.

  After a moment, Quentin lifted his head. He looked down into h
er eyes, feeling his stomach tighten at the innocent sensuality of her gaze. He wanted her. He couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted something so badly. It wasn't just a sexual need, it was a deep visceral hunger that only she could satisfy.

  She gasped as he bent, scooping her up in his arms as if she weighed no more than a feather.

  "I'm wet."

  "I'll help you get dry," he said huskily, his mouth coming down on hers as he carried her into the bedroom.

  Outside, the hail had turned to rain. The worst of the storm had passed overhead, leaving an occasional rumble of thunder to growl in the distance. The clouds blocked out the sunlight, leaving the bedroom dim.

  Quentin set Katie down next to the bed. He undressed her slowly, his eyes never leaving hers. In the back of her mind was the thought that this was a sinful thing to be doing in the middle of the day. But it didn't feel sinful. It felt right. For the first time, she didn't feel like an unwelcome visitor in this room.

  She stood before him at last, clad in nothing but thin cotton knickers and lace-trimmed chemise. Her bare toes curled against the floor uncertainly. Was he disappointed in her? She wasn't tall, nor was her figure overly rounded. Had he hoped for more?

  But there was no disappointment in Quentin's eyes, none in his touch as he tugged loose the ribbon bow at the top of her chemise. The tiny pearl buttons fell open beneath his touch and Katie gasped as his hand slid inside to cup her breast. She'd never dreamed a simple touch could start such a fire raging inside her.

  She felt a deep sense of loss when his hand left her, but it was only so he could strip off his coat, dropping it to the floor. His shirt soon followed. Her vision was filled with the width of his chest. A thick mat of golden-brown hair covered the taut muscles, tapering to a thin line that disappeared into the waistband of his jeans.

  She jerked her eyes up, her cheeks flushing at the glimpse she'd had of his arousal. The flush deepened when Quentin's hands went to the buttons of his pants. She stood there, rigid, looking anywhere but at him as he unbuttoned the jeans.