Her itching fingers twisted more securely into her skirts.
“Mr. Stark.”
No reply. She had the distinct feeling his mind was miles from here, where she’d found him, deep in some fevered, tortured pit of darkness. His silence, even the manner in which his hair hung in those riotous loose curls, seemed to mock her curiosity. But why the devil should she care if some memory or nightmare tormented him? He was probably most deserving of such torture, though a most disturbing one it must have been to rouse such raw and primitive emotion in him. She could still feel the solid, heated wall of him pushing against her, the unchecked tensile strength in his hands.
She ground her teeth and swung her gaze away from him, anywhere, and found herself wondering how the devil the man would sleep comfortably upon all this hay with only a thin bedroll.
“Don’t look at me, if you wish, though I would like to know what grievance you could possibly have with me. I simply came to check your bandage. And I brought you a sheet and a blanket, but I see you have—”
Her voice trapped in her throat when he suddenly turned about and moved slowly toward her. Perhaps it was then that Jessica experienced her first serious twinges of doubt about keeping this man anywhere near her farm. It was in the subtle swagger of his lean hips, the simple manner in which his faded denims hugged his thighs, the sinewed length of his muscled arms, and those hands. And the look in his eyes. A tiger’s golden eyes. An outlaw’s eyes, full of wicked, sinful promise.
He paused not a hand’s breadth from her, and Jessica battled an overwhelming desire to flee. Her breath had found her voice, somewhere...only she could find neither.
“Am I feverish?” His voice, smooth and rich and so very mellow, hinted that perhaps he did indeed read Keats and Byron before retiring each night. No outlaw could ever have been blessed with such a voice.
Jessica felt her mouth open and...nothing. His fingers encircled her wrist and drew her palm to his cheek. A day’s growth of beard, and heat burned into her palm, or perhaps it was simply that her hand had gone ice-cold. His covered hers, entrapping her fingers in gentle warmth, then retreated.
“I—” She licked parched lips and wished to God the man would stop looking at her so intensely. “I should really feel your forehead, if I am to properly...Mr....”
“Logan,” he replied softly. Again, gentle fingers found hers and moved her palm to his forehead. Crisply curling hair seemed to stroke her fingertips. He stared at her mouth. “Well?”
So very faintly that she might have missed it, the corner of his mouth lifted. Yes, this must amuse him greatly, a woman barely capable of simple breathing and speaking. And suddenly it was all too much, the sheer immensity of him, his scent, that voice, that look in his eyes...and the seductive shadows encircling them.
She snatched her hand away from his skin and found her fingers fidgeting at the buttons high at her throat. “Yes...I mean, no...you’re not feverish. Quite well, I’m sure, I—”
Before she could spin about and flee, yes, flee, while she still retained some thread of sense, he again trapped her hand.
“And my wound?” he said. “You did just punch me in the shoulder, remember?”
She swallowed and gave the bandaged shoulder a glance. “I’m sure it’s fine until morning.”
A dark brow lifted, a hint of devilish mockery there. “Are you quite sure? You wouldn’t want me expiring from infection some time during the night, would you?”
This gave her sufficient pause, and she sensed that he had known it would. Confounded arrogant man. As if he knew her so very well after one day. As if she were so very simple to know.
And yet...she had never been one to neglect anything, had forever endeavored to do the proper thing at the proper time, to whatever degree was required, and then some. A perfectionist, her father had proclaimed her with more than a hint of pride. Avram appreciated that quality in her as much as Frank had seemed needled by it...when he had taken the time to notice her, that is.
Indeed, why bother with anything if you weren’t going to do it right...whether it be tending a farm, raising a child, or healing a rifle wound you had inflicted through your own panic and bothersome lack of control?
She cocked her head with renewed self-assurance and sniffed, “If worrying about it shall keep you from rest, then indeed I shall tend to your wound now.”
“Ah, I need my rest.” He leaned slightly down and forward. She needed barely to reach out to touch him.
“Indeed you do.” Her voice had again taken on that uncharacteristic breathy quality, one common to women like Sadie McGlue and her society sisters, who cinched their corsets a few notches too tight on Sundays for church. They all seemed mere seconds from crumpling in colorful heaps of starched New England taffeta and satin ruffles...as though their lungs weren’t getting sufficient air. Those women had an overindulgence in pastry to blame. She...she hadn’t had pastry in years. And she hadn’t the money for a corset. So what the devil was her problem?
She forced her attention to peeling away the bandage, to the raw wound she probed beneath, away from the feel of his chin brushing against her hair, his warmth encircling her like invisible arms, his voice rumbling in his chest.
“Will I survive the night?” he asked. It was a simple question, yet emitted in that deep, soft baritone, as potently male as any Jessica could imagine. She could endure this torture no more.
She did a miserably inept job of securing the bandage in place again, her fingers fumbling like a five-year-old’s. She spun about and nearly tripped over her skirts in her haste to put a healthy distance between them.
She jerked her arm toward a nearby hay bale. “There—I—I’ve brought you sheets. Perhaps they will make it easier for you to achieve all that rest. You will need it for the walk to town early tomorrow for supplies and the like.” She barely glanced over her shoulder at him. “G-good night, Mr. Stark.”
“Logan” was the last she heard before she sought haven in the darkness.
* * *
Oh, but what the dawning of a new day could do for a girl, particularly one of Jessica’s nature. Indeed, accomplishment before sunrise could wipe away the last traces of pesky memories from last eve, could provide ample reassurance that she was in complete control of herself, her life, her response to Logan Stark. Little matter that she’d tossed fitfully upon her mattress for most of the night. And when sleep finally, mercifully, ensnared her, she’d dreamed only of those awful moments in the barn with Stark. A shirtless, sun-baked Stark.
A crisply made bed, a loaf of bread baking in the oven, coffee roasting, a fresh muslin gown and neatly combed hair—yes, this was all that was necessary to get her day off to a smooth and even start. None of that awful pell-mell from yesterday, as though the ground were in constant shift beneath her feet. The idea! That one man, after a single day, possessed the ability to render her an insomniac! Ridiculous. Preposterous. She was in complete control of her life, her farm, her son, her emotions. A woman had to be, after all, if she was to succeed. And she would succeed with this farm, with her son, regardless of the difficulties. These she would overcome. After all, obstacles merely served to sift out the weak and the timid, of which she was decidedly neither.
It was with a certain deeply felt smugness, though she knew not why, that she peered from her brightly curtained kitchen window into the eerie gray of predawn. A curve softened her mouth. No sign of life from the barn. No doubt the beast still