* * *
MERRIE WENT TO her room. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t! That Wyoming bad man wasn’t going to upset her.
She pulled out her drawing pad and her pencils and went to work on a study of Hurricane. He was so beautiful. Black as night. Soft as silk. She was drawn to him, because he was like her. He’d been through the wars, too.
It took a long time to finish the drawing. She colored it with pastel pencils, delicately. When she finished, she had an awesome portrait of Hurricane. She smiled as she put it in the case with her other drawings. She’d have to do one of Ren, she decided. But she’d have to make a decision about whether to put just horns or horns and a forked tail on the subject of the picture.
* * *
WHEN SHE GOT DOWNSTAIRS, she was late again for supper. But this time Ren was there and he wouldn’t let Delsey put anything on the table.
“You know the rules,” Ren said harshly. “If you don’t get to the table on time, you don’t eat!”
She didn’t want to tell him that she’d been drawing his horse and had gotten lost in her work. She didn’t want to fight. She’d had so many years of fighting. It was easier to just conform.
“All right,” she said in her soft, quiet voice.
He glared at her. He hated her beauty. He hated the way she knuckled under. He wanted a fight, and he couldn’t start one.
He turned away from the table and pulled off his belt. It was a new one and he’d cinched it too tight. He doubled it, pulled it together and snapped it.
Merrie gasped and ran into the kitchen, hiding behind Delsey and shaking all over.
“What the hell...?” Ren exclaimed.
He walked into the kitchen with the belt still in his hand, and Merrie screamed.
“Put that thing down!” Delsey said quickly. She pulled Merrie into her arms and held her close, rocking her while she sobbed.
Belatedly, Ren realized that the belt had upset her when he snapped it. Frowning, he took it back into the living room and tossed it into his chair. He went back into the kitchen.
“She thought you were going to hit her with it,” Delsey said.
Merrie was still shaking, sobbing. It brought back horrible memories of her father and his uncontrollable temper. He’d hit her and hit her...
“I’ve never hit a woman in my life,” he said in the softest tone she’d heard from him. “Not even under provocation. I would never raise my hand to you. Never.”
She bit her lower lip. She couldn’t quite look at him. “O-okay,” she stammered.
He looked torn. Her reaction to the belt was unsettling. Someone had used one on her. He began to understand why the damaged horse had responded to her. She was damaged, too.
“Get her something to eat,” he told Delsey gently. “Anything she wants.”
“Yes, Mr. Ren,” she replied. She smiled at him.
Merrie didn’t speak. She was still shaking.
He left the two women alone and went into his study. It had been years since he’d had even a drink of the scotch whiskey he kept in the cabinet. But he poured a small measure and downed it. It troubled him, seeing Merrie’s reaction to the belt. Despite his unwelcoming attitude, he didn’t like seeing her frightened. He liked even less knowing that he’d frightened her.
* * *
“HE’D NEVER STRIKE YOU,” Delsey assured Merrie as she put ham and bread and mayonnaise on the table. “Here. Let me make you a sandwich. You’ll feel better.”
“My father...always snapped the belt like that, just before he used it on us.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “He’s gone, now. My sister and I should feel sorrow, but all we can feel is relief. It was like being freed from prison.” She looked at Delsey. “He wouldn’t even buy us clothes unless he picked them out. We couldn’t date, we couldn’t have friends over, we couldn’t go to anyone else’s home...” She lowered her eyes. “He was so paranoid that he had us followed everywhere we went.”
“You poor child,” Delsey said, touching her hair. “You’re safe here. Mr. Ren may sound like a lion, but he would never hurt you.”
She swallowed. “Okay.”
“Now sit down here. Would you like some milk?”
“Oh, yes. Please.”
Delsey made her a sandwich and a glass of milk, and busied herself with the dinner dishes while she ate.
“Thanks,” she said when she finished. She took her plate and glass to the sink.
Delsey hugged her. “Don’t worry. Things work out, even when you don’t think they will.”
She smiled and hugged the older woman back. “I’ll try. Thanks.”
“No problem. You go to bed and sleep. You’ll be fine in the morning.”
“Good night.”
“You, too.”
* * *
BUT IT WASN’T a good night, and she wasn’t fine. She woke up screaming in the middle of the night. Her father was standing over her with his belt. It had blood all over it. He was yelling as he brought it down on her back with all his strength behind it...
“Wake up, damn it!”
She felt hard hands on her arms, pulling her up, felt whiskey-scented breath on her face. But the hands weren’t hurting her. They were warm and they felt good on the bare skin. She opened her eyes.
Ren was sitting on the bed, wearing flannel pajama bottoms and nothing else. His broad chest, hair-roughened, was beautiful. She thought how she’d love to paint him like that. He was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen. But she didn’t dare let it show, how she felt. She lifted her eyes to his and winced.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I had a nightmare.”
His big hands smoothed down her arms. “About what?”
“Something in the past,” she said evasively. “Long ago,” she lied.
He drew in a long breath. “It was the belt, wasn’t it?”
She hesitated, but finally she nodded. “I can’t stand to hear a belt snapped like that. Daddy always...” She stopped.
“Your father hit you with a belt?”
She nodded.
“So did mine, when I was a kid. I used to have welts on the backs of my legs. I was a reckless boy, always into something I shouldn’t be. Dad got impatient.”
She didn’t want to tell him the truth, about the scars on her poor back. She didn’t want him to see them. She always wore nightgowns with a high neckline, so that no part of her back showed.
He touched her cheek, pushed back the disheveled platinum hair that had come loose from the braid she wore it in. “Don’t you take it down at night?” he asked curiously.
The feel of his hand on her face made her feel odd things. She felt trembly all over when he brushed her cheek like that. Her heart kicked into gear, unsettling her.
“No, I have to put it up when I sleep,” she said. “It gets in my face. I really should cut it. But it’s been long all my life.”
“It would be a crime to cut hair this beautiful,” he said quietly.
She looked up into his eyes and couldn’t look away. Neither could he. His breath came quickly. He brushed his fingers along her cheek, down to the bow shape of