And now this gorgeous prince of a man wanted to kiss her, and God help her, she could not resist him.
“Kiss me,” she released on a whisper, accepting his soft, intimate offer as she turned her face upward.
She shut her eyes tight as Cal leaned forward to touch her lips with his; his full moist mouth stroking hers in a gentle but quite passionate advance.
Cal swallowed her startled breath as he angled his head over hers; intensifying their kiss as he soon plied her lips with the sweetest kisses.
Even as his soft lips lulled her senses and she relaxed to pass into a dreamy otherworld quite foreign to her practical mind, her eyes opened wide to once again grace her vision with the whole of his masculine beauty.
This move proved a serious mistake, as her wandering gaze soon came to rest on the portrait mounted just above their table.
Soon her eyes collided with those of the radiant Elsa Hopkins, and the usually iron-willed Abigail found herself withering like a flower in the scope of soft almond eyes; eyes that seemed kind if wary and all knowing.
“I’m sorry. We have to cease this nonsense. This is just wrong,” she mumbled suddenly, breaking their kiss as she sprang from the table and grasped her plain denim skirts in two resolute hands; headed for the small corner bedroom that served as her sole refuge in a home that seemed suddenly too familiar—and a man that, in all his infernal beauty, seemed suddenly too tempting to resist.
“Abigail!” Cal bellowed, jumping to his feet as he raced across the room. “Did I do something to offend you?”
Abigail shook her head.
“We were both doin’ wrong,” she insisted, adding as she turned with a flourish to face her tempter in full, “We were kissin’ like lovers in your wife’s house—tarnishin’ Elsa’s rose!”
These words echoed strong in Cal’s mind the next morning; as he rode hard through the downtown area where he presided as deputy sheriff.
As Cal straddled the back of Midnight Lightning, the sleek ebony stallion that came as part and parcel of his job, he knew full well that he looked the part of the powerful, authoritative deputy sheriff; sitting tall and proud in the saddle as he shifted his regal head to scan the scope of the downtown area—a place punctuated by an endless line of general stores, mills, seamstress shops, and saloons.
“The saloons tend to bring us more trouble than all of the other businesses combined,” he mused, adding with a slight smile, “Now we did face a bit of a ruckus at the general store last week when an overzealous 12-year-old tried in vain to snatch a bottle of sarsaparilla. And at the seamstress shop the week before last, we encountered the unfortunate case of two surly ladies at war over the same wedding dress. We had to pry the inordinately sharp knitting needles from their clutches, just to avoid what surely would have amounted to a woodshed of bloodshed.”
Although he chuckled lightly at his own, admittedly weak attempt at humor, Cal knew in his heart that his strong, dignified presence lent a certain air of security to the area he served as deputy sheriff.
“Funny,” he scoffed now, dipping his head low beneath the brim of his trusty white hat, “Considerin’ the fact that I feel like the foulest, most despicable scoundrel in town.”
After presenting himself as a perfect gentleman to his mail order bride, a woman who he’d come to like, trust and befriend, Cal apparently had violated her trust and thrown up a tall emotional barrier between them; stealing a kiss that had caused her to flee from him, thus ruining what had been a perfect evening of sweet memories and kind conversation.
“I wanted only to please her, to perhaps change a mind that seems to be hard set against the concepts of dating and courtship,” he told himself, heaving a sigh as he added, “And although she sure seemed to be welcoming of and enjoying the gesture, it seems like all of a sudden she changed her mind—and her heart. She bolted away from me like I had the plague—racing into her room and locking the door behind her.”
Although Cal had stood outside her door for nearly an hour, begging her to at least give him a chance to apologize for and explain his actions, a steadfast Abigail had refused to take leave of her own private refuge; finally insisting that he let her alone and go to his own bedroom.
Finally, the cowboy relented and retired to the modest, wood planked room that formed his own private haven at Elsa’s Rose; a room occupied only by a camp bed and an unpainted bureau, and adorned only with yet another portrait of his beautiful late wife.
Here he could escape the cold condemnation of his mail order bride. He could not, however, avoid the all knowing almond gaze that followed him throughout the room; seeming to condemn him even as her smile remained kind and gentle.