“Like sleeping in a bed recently occupied by a beautiful and desirable woman? Like the scent of your hair and how good you feel in my arms? Are those the dishonorable things you mean?” When her head snapped up, he was staring at her with his good eye. “Don’t give me too much credit, Angie,” he said softly. His gaze dropped to her throat and the soft beat of her pulse.
She froze with her hands deep in soapy water and her breath hot in her chest. If he had taken a single step in her direction, she would have disgraced herself by flying into his arms.
“I accept your invitation to sleep in a bed tonight,” he said instead, turning away from her and walking toward the bedroom. At the door, he looked back and his expression suggested he wanted to say more, but he wouldn’t. “Goodnight.”
After the door closed, Angie gazed at her blurred reflection in the window panes above the sink. Confusion tossed her thoughts like bits of paper before a spring gust. In the span of two hours, she had raced from a debilitating fear that something terrible had befallen Sam, to the secret thrill of touching his skin, then to feelings of pleasure and unworthiness that he trusted her, and on to fury at the Govenors, followed by the comfort of Sam’s arms around her, and finally to longing for his kiss.
The emotional tide left her exhausted and bewildered.
After she tidied the kitchen, she entered the girls’ bedroom and took down her hair. Sitting before the mirror, she used Lucy’s brush for the requisite one hundred strokes before she braided her hair for sleeping.
Today’s events offered much to think about and ponder. But her mind stuck on what was surely the least important item of all. Her growing cognizance of Sam as a virile, exciting man.
In a few short weeks Angie had changed from an adult woman who never thought of sexuality at all into an adolescent whose mind and body were awakening into an intense awareness of deep restless longings and previously unknown desires.
Not a day passed that she didn’t recall every sensation of Sam’s kiss, reliving that moment until her face burned and her heart pounded.
Everything he did fascinated her. From the shaving ritual in the morning to the way he held his knife and fork. She found it intensely interesting that he flipped his hammer before he dropped it through the loop on his denims. And that he was right-handed but drank beer and coffee with his left hand. He always sat closest to the aisle in their Sunday pew.
The deep baritone of his voice could send shivers down her spine. Sometimes he looked at her in a certain way and her mouth went dry. The night before last, she’d seen him standing in the back yard smoking a cigar, hip-shot, preoccupied, his face bronzed by a setting sun, and her hands had trembled.
Ten years ago Angie had been too young, too innocent of the world to understand why she went weak and shaky inside when Sam stood close. And then came the lonely years during which she had shut a door between herself and any hint of sexual awareness. Now that door was edging open.
Disturbed, she threw down the hairbrush and covered her face with her hands. She absolutely did not want to respond to Sam as a man. She wanted a divorce.
Desperate to push the memory of his naked chest out of her mind, she tried to think about Peter De Groot. Peter, whom she admired and respected. Her friend, Peter. Peter, her future. Peter was the man who would unveil for her the mysterious acts between men and women. It was Peter who would eventually satisfy her strange new longings.
But it was Sam Holland who slept in the bed she had vacated this morning. Sam, who would not leave her thoughts no matter how hard she tried to shove him away. Sam, whose mouth and hands inflamed her dreams.
Near dawn Sam awoke and couldn’t fall back asleep. Mounding the pillows behind him, he sat in the darkness, surrounded by Angie’s scent. Eventually he closed his mind to arousing thoughts and concentrated on the fight with Herb Govenor.
He’d gone to the Miners’ Bar intending to pound Govenor into pulp and he’d done his damnedest to carry through. There was satisfaction in that.
But whatever damage he’d inflicted wouldn’t change anything. Anyone who hired Sam was in danger of watching his new house go up in flames.
Frowning, he edged toward the only conclusion possible. No man with a conscience would expose his clients to the possibility, maybe the probability, of financial loss.
Next week, after he handed Reverend Dryfus the key to his new home, Sam Holland would be out of business.
Which meant that Govenor had accomplished what he set out to do: deprive Sam of his livelihood.
Brooding, he got out of bed and stood before the window, watching the lights wink out along Bennet Street as the sky turned pale and opalescent. And he asked himself if Herb Govenor would burn down a schoolhouse. Despite his opinion of the Govenors, he didn’t think Herb was the kind of man who would punish children to get what he wanted. But then, he would have said that Herb wasn’t the kind of man to burn down a preacher’s house either.