WAGERED WOMAN Read online

  "You know where it is."

  She went and got it and stalked off for her walk with the gun strapped around her waist.

  Their every encounter was like that, Sam came to realize quickly enough: pure hell. She wore a sour expression at all times; her attitude varied between impatient and downright nasty.

  Sam tried to bear with her, to wait her out. He set up a vise on the table in the cabin, and created his own miniature wood carving shop, which he dismantled for meals. Monday, he began carving a coyote sitting on its haunches, howling at the moon.

  As she continued to torment him, he found himself immeasurably grateful for his hobby. When he was working with wood, he could almost forget Delilah's spitefulness. Whenever the slightest opportunity arose, she made sure he suffered endless indignities for daring to want her and then having the absolute gall to go after what he wanted.

  She would alternate long spells of silent seething with periods when she would argue about anything. Sam would hardly have believed, until those two days of her crusade to make his life miserable, how many subjects in the world there were to be argued about. Things he would swear made no difference at all, she could make an issue of.

  And she didn't seem to care which side of an argument she took—as long as it was the opposite side from the one he was on.

  Monday at dinner, he mentioned that he'd seen Chloe Swan out with a stranger Saturday night, and she snapped that that was preposterous, everyone knew Chloe Swan would never look at any man but Patrick, even if Patrick refused for the rest of his life to give her so much as the time of day.

  "Well, Lilah, I'm just telling you what I saw."

  "You're either lying or mistaken, Sam Fletcher—either way, you're wrong."

  "I'm not lying, Lilah. And I know what I saw."

  "You know nothing."

  "Fine, Lilah. Have it your way."

  "You admit you know nothing?"

  "I admit this is a ridiculous argument, and I can't wait to find out what you'll accuse me of next."

  "Take me home," she suggested. "The ridiculous arguments will stop."

  "Not on your life."

  She gave him a look meant to freeze his blood in his veins and fell seethingly silent once more.

  After they'd cleaned up the meal, he picked up the latest issue of the North Magdalene News, which he'd brought along on the trip. He made himself comfortable in one of the chairs before the fire. She sat at the table with that same mystery novel she'd been reading the day before.

  He read the front page of the paper and then turned to the Over a Hundred Years Ago section on page three.

  There, he discovered a piece by Mark Twain. He began reading it with relish, found it as full of humorous irony as he'd expected, and was soon chuckling aloud.

  "What is so funny?" she demanded, as if there were something inherently distasteful about people who indulged in a good laugh now and then.

  "Mark Twain."

  "What about Mark Twain?" She took off her reading glasses in order to be able to glare at him more effectively.

  He read her a little of the article, wherein the author had visited a San Francisco prison and been appalled to find a sweet-looking sixteen-year-old girl doing time there—until he heard her talking to the other inmates and learned she'd done worse than murder in her day.

  When he'd finished Delilah demanded, "What's so funny about that?"

  He glanced at her, then turned back to the paper. It was obvious she was on the warpath again, and he decided the best response was no response at all. "Never mind."

  "I asked what is so funny about a sixteen-year-old girl who's been used and abused all her life by men?"

  Sam lowered the paper and, against his own better judgment, decided to hold his own. "I think the point was that the girl had done a little using and abusing of her own."

  "She was sixteen. She was only a child."

  "She may have been sixteen. But she was far from being a child."

  "And whose fault was that, do you think?"

  "All right, Delilah. It was all the fault of men. Horrible, wicked men."

  "Don't you patronize me."

  "I'm not patronizing you. I'm being ironic, just like Twain."

  "Ironic." She gave him a sour frown. "What do you know about irony?"

  He considered the question. "What do I know about irony? Hmm." He stood up. Her eyes widened; she sat bolt upright in her chair. He couldn't help enjoying her obvious apprehensiveness just a little. He pressed on, though he was careful to keep his voice light. "I know plenty about irony, since I've been spending so much time with you." He took the few steps to her side and stood looking down into her flushed face. "And I find a sense of irony very comforting. Especially since you've gotten so far out of hand with this project of yours to drive me right up the wall."

  She glared defiantly up at him. "You deserve to be driven up the wall."

  "So you've explained to me."

  "And I'm not out of hand."

  "Oh, no?"

  "Absolutely not. Every rotten thing I do to you, I do on purpose."

  "How reassuring." He loomed a little nearer, suppressing a smile as he watched her breasts rise and fall in growing agitation.

  She was trying her damnedest to pretend that his nearness didn't bother her in the least. Her mouth quivered; she pressed it into a grim line to make the quivering stop.

  "Ah, Lilah," he murmured.

  "Don't you 'ah, Lilah,' me."

  He longed to reach out and touch her. But he knew better. Instead, he dropped to a crouch by her chair. She gasped at the suddenness of the move, and then contained herself.

  "What are you up to?" Sitting as far back in the chair as it was possible to sit, she peered down at him.

  He faked an ardent sincerity. "I'm begging you, Lilah…"

  "For what?" she asked, then realized the question could only bring her trouble. "On second thought, don't tell me."

  He chuckled. "Too late. You already asked."

  "Get up off the floor. I mean it. I'm warning you…"

  "Give me a chance, sweetheart—"

  "I told you not to call me that."

  "Give us a chance."

  "Not on your life. Now get up from there."

  "You're a hard-hearted woman, Delilah Jones."

  "Right. So take me home tomorrow."

  "Uh-uh. We had a deal."

  "A rotten deal. One you forced on me."

  "A deal's a deal."

  "Fine. Have it your way."

  "I plan to."

  "Just don't ever delude yourself that you'll get anything from me but the misery you deserve."

  "Oh, no?"

  "No."

  He moved then, so swiftly she had no hint of what he intended. He grabbed her hand. She gasped, her whole body tensed. And then she sighed.

  Sam relished that sigh. He turned her hand, swiftly, and placed a kiss in the heart of her palm. He barely accomplished his goal, before she tried to jerk away.

  He didn't let her. Instead, he rose to his full height, and pulled her along with him.

  She came up against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and held her there. He looked down at her stunned face and saw the hunger there, a hunger he recognized, since it was a mirror of his own.

  He smelled the woodsy, sweet scent of her, saw the softening of her lips that meant they waited for his kiss. Her breasts were pressed against him, ripe and ready for his caress. He cupped her face, holding her still.

  And then she managed to whisper, "Please don't…"

  He almost hated her for that. Because if she'd said anything else, if she hadn't looked so crushed and vulnerable, he would have gone ahead and kissed her, and who could say where things might have gone from there?

  Instead, with a muttered curse, he dropped his arms and stepped back. His whole body protested at the loss of her softness. He silently called himself ten kinds of fool. Then he turned and grabbed his coat and got the hell out of there. />
  When he returned a half hour later, she was already in bed with her face to the wall.

  After that, things grew worse. She must have decided that arguing with him wasn't a good idea, because she refused to be drawn into any disagreements with him from then on. She seethed and glared and spoke only when spoken to.

  Sam spent every spare minute on his carving. He worked on the coyote till afternoon. Then he put it aside for a while and glued three pieces of poplar together, thinking that Wednesday he would begin the fine, strong head of a mountain lion, its sharp teeth bared in a warning snarl.

  But by Tuesday night at bedtime, Sam had begun to wonder what the point of this was. If he was going to spend all his time carving away at hunks of wood to keep from fighting with Delilah, he might as well go on home where he could carve in his own shop—and not have to look up from his work and find her glaring at him as if she longed to shoot him dead with his own gun.

  That night, as the two previous nights, she got ready for bed early and then lay down with her face to the wall, leaving him to stare at the fire. It was then, as he leaned his head back in the old armchair and watched the flame shadows dance in the beams of the ceiling that he finally admitted to himself that this hadn't been such a hot idea after all. He'd told himself Saturday night, before he won Brendan's truck and got the brainstorm to take Delilah instead, that she was never going to give him a break. And he'd been right.

  It was driving him crazy having to be around her night and day, and keep hands off. He just couldn't take it anymore. Her never ending meanness had broken him down—and his own frustrated desire had done the rest. He was ready to give up.

  "Lilah?" he said quietly, thinking that if she would only turn, and say one reasonably pleasant word—a plain What? would do, as long as it was lacking in animosity—he would tell her she'd been right all along, this wasn't working. They were going back to North Magdalene at dawn.

  But she didn't turn over. She did nothing at all but continue to lie still as a stick facing the wall.

  Fine, he thought wearily. He'd tell her tomorrow. He'd had it with her as much as she had with him. They were going back.

  His mind made up, he prepared for bed himself, settled down in his own bag and waited for sleep.

  He woke at dawn to the sound of her stomping around the cabin.

  He groaned and opened his eyes, noticing first that four pans were steaming on the stove. He glanced around, looking for her. He found her standing by the sink, fully dressed, her arms folded beneath that pair of breasts which belonged on a much more amenable female than she'd ever be.

  "Good. You're awake." Her voice was colder than the frozen morning mists obscuring the butte that could be seen out the window behind her head.

  He sat up and raked his loose hair back from his face. He didn't miss the way she averted her eyes from the sight of his bare torso. He felt anger—and a hot flare of desire—and realized that maybe he wasn't as resigned to giving her up as he'd thought.

  She deigned to speak to him again. "I want to take a sponge bath. Get out, and give me twenty minutes before you come back."

  Beneath the sleeping bag, his desire increased as he glanced at the steaming pots again and realized she intended to use their contents to bathe. She would strip down, and wet her body with a cloth, then she'd work up a lather, over those beautiful breasts, that flat belly, the soft flare of those hips…

  He swallowed, then said gruffly, "It's freezing outside. It's barely dawn."

  "Wear your coat."

  He remembered he'd decided last night that they were leaving. He should tell her that, tell her to forget the bath, she could take it when she got home.

  But lust—and her endless orneriness—made him contrary. He wasn't telling her that she'd won, finally broken him down with pure nastiness, while he was sitting buck-naked in his sleeping bag, wondering how he was going to stand up without her knowing just exactly how he felt about her.

  She was glaring at him, waiting for him to agree to do her will—or to risk her viper's tongue by refusing. He considered standing up suddenly, as he'd done the other night, shocking her into an uncontrolled response.

  But then he knew she'd only act appalled. And he could do without that.

  He said, "Fine," and shifted enough in the sleeping bag that she saw he intended to rise.

  She turned around and faced the window. He got up and shoved his legs in his pants, then quickly pulled on a thermal shirt and heavy sweater.

  "It's safe now," he told her with some sarcasm, and then sat in one of the easy chairs to put on his socks and boots. He winced a little when he sat down. His lust was still not fully under control.

  Then he stood up and stalked to the sink. She slid swiftly out of his way. He rinsed his face and brushed his hair and anchored it back in a ponytail. Then he got his coat and wool hat and gloves. He put them on and opened the door, not saying a word.

  "Wait." She handed him his watch. "I mean it. Twenty minutes." She went back to the sink and yanked the curtains shut to keep out prying eyes—his eyes, he was perfectly aware.

  He left, barely restraining himself from slamming the door.

  Outside, the morning was cold and misty, as it had been yesterday and the day before. When the mist burned off, the day would be clear and gorgeous—as long as those clouds he could see to the west didn't thicken and move in.

  He stomped out into the trees and took care of nature's call. After that, there were a good fourteen minutes left before he could return to the warmth of the cabin. He spent them walking in circles around the clearing, watching his own breath come out as freezing mist, getting madder and madder as each second passed.

  Just who the hell did she think she was, anyway? All right, maybe it had been a fool's dream, for him to imagine he could win her by hijacking her off into the woods. But damn it, he hadn't done a thing but treat her with courtesy and respect this whole time. The one time he'd almost kissed her, she'd asked him to stop and he had—in spite of his raging desire to do otherwise.

  They'd had a deal: a week of her time for Brendan's rig. He'd turned over the rig before the week even began as a gesture of good faith. And now here he was, waiting out in the freezing cold for her to finish washing that gorgeous body of hers so he could take her back home halfway through the week she'd sworn to give him.

  He stopped in mid-pace in the middle of the clearing and stared at the mist-shrouded mountain across the lake. When he'd planned this ill-fated trip, in the wee hours of Sunday morning, he'd pictured them climbing that butte—Ladyslipper Peak, his father had always called it—together. It was a challenging hike, but not dangerous, with a clearly delineated trail around the south side most of the way to the top.

  Sam glanced at his watch. Five minutes to go. She'd be finishing up rinsing now, dribbling clear warm water over her shoulders, her neck, the tender valley between her breasts…

  Sam glared up at the mountain again—and decided he was not going to go meekly back inside and tell her she was getting what she wanted.

  No, by God. They weren't leaving today. They'd leave when he was damn good and ready.

  Yes. Absolutely. He could see now that the mistake he'd made was to meekly hang around the cabin, hoping and praying for a kind word or a soft look from a woman who wouldn't call an ambulance if she found him bleeding in the road.

  He'd been here to the lake ten times by himself in as many years. And he'd always, up until now, found his own company plenty to satisfy him.

  And it would be plenty now. He'd arranged this week for rest and recreation. And he wasn't leaving without getting what he'd come for, whether the mean little witch inside the cabin joined him or not.

  Sam glanced at his watch again. Time was up. He turned from the lake and headed for the cabin, noticing that she'd pulled the curtains open once again.

  She was completely dressed, her wet hair in a braid down her back, and making coffee when he entered. He could smell her shampoo in the stea
my air. He carried the wood he'd brought in over to the bin by the stove and dropped it in. Then he took off his coat, gloves and hat and put them away.

  Next, he went to the refrigerator, took out bacon, an egg and some milk, got the biscuit mix from a shelf and started whipping up a batch of pancakes. She saw what he was doing and fell into step with him, getting down the plates and fixing up the table, putting out the milk and sugar he liked for his coffee, as well as the margarine and syrup for the pancakes.

  It was almost spooky, really, the way they worked together. From the first day, when they cleaned the cabin from top to bottom without sharing more than ten words the whole time, it had been like that. They were like two parts of a well-oiled machine when they tackled a task. He'd mentioned it the first day, but she hadn't wanted to hear it. She'd known, of course, that he was thinking of the other things they might do well together.

  He was still thinking of those other things. All the time. It was driving him crazy, if the truth were told.

  As they sat down to the breakfast table and ate the crisp bacon and fragrant griddle cakes without speaking, he looked longingly out the window at Ladyslipper Peak. Yes, it would be good to get out and take that mountain, a long, hard hike. He would do it today.

  Maybe, if she decided to follow along, the view from the summit would soften her hard heart. In any case, the exercise would work off a little of the tension that kept coiling tighter and tighter, like a snake readying to spring, inside him.

  They finished the silent meal. Then they got up as one and cleaned the table.

  After that, it was near eight. He decided to work for an hour on the carving of the coyote, to give the mountain a chance to warm up a little before he tackled it. He got out his tools and set to work, feeling better than he had in two days.

  Though he did his best to pay no attention to her, he couldn't help but notice that she seemed restless. She went out and came in again, settled down with a book, then put it away.

  He wondered if she sensed a change in him, if she had a feeling that something between them had shifted, though he'd said not a word about anything at all.