“That’s it. Throw the past in my face.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
He snarled. “Can’t you fight like a regular person?”
“When there’s something to fight about. Your friends are your business. And as I have no idea how many of those…friends I might run into every time I go into town, it would be remarkably unproductive of me to worry about it.”
His brain was screaming out for him to let it go, but his mouth just refused to obey. “Look, Rebecca, if I’d slept with as many women as some people think, I’d never have gotten out of bed. And I haven’t had sex with every woman I’ve
gone out with, either. I don’t— Why the hell am I telling you this?”
“That was going to be my next question. And, in my opinion, what you’re doing is projecting—your feelings, your anticipated reaction to a situation, onto me. Added to that is a sense of guilt, and annoyance resulting from that guilt. In transferring the annoyance from yourself to me, you—”
“Shut up.” His eyes as volatile as a storm at sea, he grabbed her face in his hands. “She came by to see if I wanted to go out later. I told her no. She asked if I was involved with you. I told her yes, very involved. We talked for another minute, she said she’d see me around. That’s it. Satisfied?”
Her heart was tripping lightly, quickly, in her chest. But her voice was cool, and faintly curious. “Did I give you the impression that I was dissatisfied?”
His eyes narrowed, flashed. Rebecca found it very satisfying. Almost as satisfying as his frustrated oath as he turned on his heel and stalked away.
Nice job, Dr. Knight, she told herself. She didn’t think Shane was going to be kissing anyone else for a while. Humming to herself, she strolled into the house.
She really did have work to do, she thought, and patted one of her video monitors as she passed. But she could take just a moment to savor the sense of smugness.
The poor guy had been so predictable. Classic reactions. Alarm at the thought that something, however innocent, could be interpreted badly. The added weight of his infamous career as a ladies’ man. Not a womanizer, she mused. One day she might explain to him the difference between a man who loved and appreciated woman and one who used them.
And then, she thought, snickering on her way to the kitchen, his sense of unease, then irritation at her reasonable reaction. Direct hit on the ego.
It was so much more interesting to study the games men and women played with each other when you were in the middle of the field than when you were observing from the stands.
She might just do a paper on it, she mused, going to the window. Once she’d carved out enough emotional distance. By then she would know not only what it was like to fall in love, to be in love, but what it felt like to lose at love.
One day she might find the courage to ask him what she had meant to him, what the time they had spent together had meant to him in the scheme of things. Yeah, she thought, amused at herself. She might find the courage for that in a decade or two.
Telling herself it was now that mattered, and wondering if the little incident would garner her more flowers, she decided to try her hand at cooking dinner solo.
It was really all just formulas, after all. And she had Regan’s formula—no, recipe, she reminded herself—for fried chicken in her bag. Digging it out, she read it through once and committed it to memory. Since Shane’s kitchen didn’t run to aprons, she tucked a dishcloth in the waistband of her slacks, and got down to some serious experimenting.
It was actually soothing, she discovered as she coated chicken with herbed flour. At least on a casual level. She imagined that if anyone had to plan and cook and deal with the time and mess every day, day after day, meal after meal, it would be tedious.
But, as a hobby, it had its points. If she could just keep this particular hobby from becoming a vocation, as so many of her others had, she’d be just fine.
When she had chicken frying in hot oil in a cast-iron skillet, she stepped back and congratulated herself. It smelled good, it sounded good, it looked good. Therefore, according to basic laws, it should taste good.
Wouldn’t Shane be surprised, and perhaps even more baffled, when he came in and found dinner cooking?
It was milking time, she thought, poking at the crisping chicken with a kitchen fork. And night was coming earlier, as the days shortened toward the still-distant winter….
Would she see the camp fires burning if she looked out the window? The soldiers were so close, close and waiting for dawn and the battle.
She wished John would come in. Once he was in and the animals were settled, they could shut up the house. They would be safe here. They had to be safe here. She couldn’t lose another child. Couldn’t live through it. Nor could John. She pressed a hand over the one covering her womb, as if to protect it from any threat, any harm. She desperately hoped it would be a son. Not to replace the one they’d lost. Johnnie could never be replaced, never be forgotten. But if the babe she carried was a son, it would somewhat ease the worst of John’s grief.
He suffered. He suffered so, and there was no comfort for it. She could love him, tend him, share the grief, but she couldn’t end it. The girls tried, and God knew they were a joy. But Johnnie was gone. Every day the war went on was another painful reminder of that loss.
Maybe it would end here. She turned the chicken in the pan, as she’d done so often in her life. Would that be some sort of justice, for this horrible war to end here, where her son had been born?
Was the man who had killed her son out there, right now, sitting, waiting, in the Union camp? Who would he kill tomorrow? Or would it be his blood that would seep into the land she had walked over for so many years?
Why wouldn’t they go away? Just go away and leave the living in peace with their sorrows…