The Invitation (Montgomery/Taggert 19)

“Of course,” she said calmly, her eyes clear, showing no emotion at all.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day.”

At that her eyes widened just enough that he knew what she was thinking.

Not knowing exactly why he was so angry, he grabbed two carpetbags from where they were set against one wall and plopped them down in the center of the bed, creating a wall between the two sides. Maybe his anger was caused by the fact that all his life he’d had to fight women off and now suddenly this mousy little thing was acting as though he’d turned into a satyr, something vile and repulsive. She disliked him so much that she was reluctant even to give him her hand across the dinner table.

“There,” he said nastily, nodding toward the divided bed. “Does that suit your sense of propriety? I don’t know why you persist in thinking I’m a deflowerer of reluctant virgins, but I can assure you that I’m not.”

“I didn’t mean—” she began, but he cut her off.

“Just go to bed. I won’t bother you, so you can stop looking so worried.”

“I wasn’t worried,” she said quietly, then moved behind the pretty little screen that stood in the corner beside the bed and began to undress. Rowena had talked to Dorie alone after Cole announced that he and Dorie were getting married. Rowena had said a lot of nonsense about not being frightened and had told Dorie to do her best to make Mr. Hunter feel as though he were the smart one. “This is important to a man,” Rowena had said. “It is necessary to a man.” Dorie had no idea what her sister was talking about.

“Damnation!” she heard Cole say, then the little tinkling sound of a button hitting what sounded like the porcelain washbasin.

Peeping around the screen, she saw Cole frowning in concentration as he tried to undress himself, his incapacitated arm making the task very difficult. A hero, she thought, a man who wouldn’t ask for help.

Wearing an enormous white nightgown that covered her from neck to toes, she walked around the screen and went to him. Immediately she saw that he meant to tell her he could certainly undress himself, but here at last Dorie felt competent. For the last year of his life her father had been an invalid, and she had been the only one he would allow to take care of him. She was used to dressing and undressing a full-grown man.

“Here, let me,” she said in an efficient voice, and within a few moments she had divested Cole of his clothing down to his long cotton underwear. She was unaware that he was smiling down at her in amusement and some disbelief.

She was also unaware of the way he was looking at her thick hair tucked into an innocent braid. During the day she kept her hair pulled tightly and astonishingly neatly against her head, not a strand out of place. But now it looked soft and there were little curls about her face. And oddly enough, her prim nightgown was almost provocative. He was used to seeing women in black or red lace, not pure, clean, virginal white. Seeing her completely hidden the way she was made him wonder what was under her clothes far more than see-through silk did.

When he was in his underwear, she pulled back the covers of the bed and half pushed him down onto the bed. Then, as though she’d done it a thousand times—which she had—she tucked the covers around him, gave him a quick, perfunctory kiss on the forehead, turned away, blew out the lamp by the bed, and started toward the door.

She had her hand on the doorknob when she realized where she was and what she had just done. With astonishment on her face, she turned back to look at him. Cole had his good arm folded behind his head and was grinning broadly at her.

Spontaneously they burst into laughter.

“Don’t I get a bedtime story?” Cole asked, making Dorie turn red.

“My father—” she began to explain, but then she laughed and said, “What kind of bedtime story do you want? One about bank robbers and showdowns at noon?”

“Would my friends be in it?”

That made her laugh more. “If it’s about criminals, it would have to be about your friends, wouldn’t it?”

He gave a half frown, half smile. “You make it sound as though if I were sent to prison it would be a family reunion.”

“I suspect the closest you’d ever get to church would be the cemetery,” she said. She meant to make a joke, but it fell flat as there was too much truth in what she’d said. Neither she nor Cole wanted to think how near he lived to death.

A lamp was burning by her side of the bed, and now that she had come to her senses and realized she wasn’t in her father’s house and this man wasn’t her invalided father, she went to her side of the bed. Refusing to even glance at the heavy bags he had placed down the middle of the bed, she pulled back the cover, blew out the lamp, and slipped into bed, her back to him. It was a while before she spoke. “Were your parents nice?”

“No.” He hesitated. “What about yours? Did you like that tyrant of a father of yours?”

“I never thought about it. I guess I did. He was the only parent I ever knew.”

“So now the only family you have is your sister?”

“Yes. And she lives across a continent and an ocean.” She paused. “And she has a husband and two children.”

“Which means that you’re alone.” She didn’t answer, and he didn’t expect her to. The train was moving, and it was loud, but it was a noise that seemed to envelop the two of them. Cole thought the scene was almost intimate, with the two of them in bed together but not touching each other. He had never spent an entire night in bed with a woman before; he had always made it a rule to finish his business with her then get out. He’d found that after sex with a woman a man’s senses were dulled and he was easy prey for any culprit who wanted to prove himself by killing Cole Hunter. This was a new experience for him, being with a woman for something other than sex. He turned over, bent his arm, and put his head on his hand. “Are you sleepy? I mean, if you are, I’ll…”

She rolled over to look at him. Even in the little bit of moonlight coming in through the curtains, her eyes were bright and alive. “I’m not sleepy at all. Do you want to talk?”

This was ridiculous of course. He was a man of action, not words. Oh, he could talk all right, when it was necessary. He often used words to settle a dispute rather than resorting to guns, though he wasn’t one for idle conversation. But right now he was too keyed up to sleep. Maybe it was the fact that a woman who was forbidden to him was lying next to him. Maybe it was that he had done an incredible thing today—he’d gotten married. Or maybe it was that he was beginning to like this woman. Heaven only knew why. She wasn’t anything like his idea of what a woman should be, but so far he didn’t feel like jumping into bed with her as fast as possible, then leaving immediately afterward.