Occasionally, she would send him a heated glance from the corner of those large, velvet brown eyes. The movement drew his gaze there, and to the rosy blush of her cheeks. She had a square face, with a short, pert nose that belied the hard set of her jaw. Her forehead was wide, but softened by the whisper chestnut curls that dared escape the thick, silky plait draping a broad shoulder.
With a ragged sigh, Drake threw the cheroot to the dirt and crushed it out with this heel. Pushing himself away from the door frame, he entered the cabin.
A fire crackled in the hearth, adding to the late afternoon heat. The air was thick with the scent of tobacco and laced with the odor of melted tallow, strong coffee, and freshly baked bread. Of them all, he found the last two aromas most welcoming.
Hope strove for an appearance of unruffled calm. Inside, she was trembling like a leaf. Her every move was followed by those daunting eyes, ever every breath scrutinized by his piercing glance. She felt trapped in a cage, studied and examined like some rare breed of bird.
“Is there something I can do for you?” she asked in sudden annoyance. Drake had helped himself to the bench across from her, and the sound of wood scraping against the floor as he casually settled himself down did nothing to ease her tension.
“I think you already know the answer to that.” He found a certain sense of satisfaction in the way her cheeks abruptly drained of color.
The candle she was taking from one of the branches slipped from her fingers and fell to the cloth. The fragile stick of half-hardened tallow broke like a twig snapped in two.
Hope picked up the broken candle and set it aside, reaching for the next. She tried hard to ignore the way her fingers were trembling, but it wasn’t easy. It was even harder to meet his penetrating gaze, but she did that, too. “Do I?” she asked as she again dipped the thickening wick.
Drake looked at her long and hard, even after she had torn her gaze away. His intentions in coming here had, oddly enough, been honorable. He’d been drunk when they’d first made the deal, and he’d regretted his harsh words in the morning. Putting aside the way she’d rankled him before the fight, he’d come to tell Hope that, and to give her the chance to renege on a deal he had belatedly realized was unfair.
Doubt pierced his soul as he noted the girl’s rigid stance. A suspicion nagged at the back of his mind, refusing to be denied.
She wasn’t going to pay him, he realized suddenly. Worse, she had never had any intention of paying him. The bitch!
White hot anger churned through his blood. The intensity of the reaction surprised even Drake. It wasn’t that she would have the audacity to go back on their deal that bothered him. Hadn’t he come here to give her just that opportunity? No, it was the thought that she had been willing to let him think she’d go through with it that galled him no end.
He wouldn’t let her get away with it, he decided abruptly, not stopping to question his decision. Two minutes ago he would have let her back out without a fight. But now that he’d discovered her deception, he decided he’d rather die first. Paying up was no more than the spoiled brat deserved! She’d regret playing him for a fool.
“What time can I expect you tonight?” Drake asked, his voice as deceptively smooth as a glass of carefully aged brandy.
She gasped, her trembling fingers hesitating as she pretended to let the melted liquid drip off a thickened wick and back into the kettle. It was nothing short of a miracle that the candles didn’t slip from her suddenly cold, sweat-dampened fingers. Her teeth nibbled a full lower lip as she carefully draped the wick over a branch.
“I—I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.” She didn’t look at Drake. She didn’t dare. He would see the lie mirrored in her eyes, Hope was sure of it.
“Think about it. I want to know what time to expect you.”
“I—I don’t know,” she shrugged helplessly. “Sometime after supper, I guess.”
She almost knocked over the candle tree as she reached out for another wick. Frazier’s lightning-quick reflexes saved the labor of half a day’s work.
“Make it before,” he said, righting the wooden contraption and rising to his feet. With a fist still leaning against the tabletop to support his weight, he leaned forward and ran a fingertip suggestively down the smooth line of her jaw. The edge of his fingernail stroking her flesh sent a shiver curling up Hope’s spine. “And don’t be late. I don’t like to be kept waiting.”
Every instinct she possessed screamed for her to pull away from the confusion of his touch, but the sea-green gaze was daring her to do just that. Swallowing hard, she gritted her teeth and endured the caress, putting her indignation into a haughty glare. Drake’s lips curled into a lazy smile as his hand dropped away.
She watched as he lifted one sinewy leg, then the other, over the dented oak bench. His arrogant stride carried him to the door, and Hope was sorely tempted to throw the kettle of scalding hot tallow at his retreating back. She couldn’t do that, of course. She couldn’t purposely put someone through the torturous healing of burned flesh—even someone like Drake Frazier—no matter how badly she wanted to. Still, the temptation was undeniably there.
Drake stopped when he reached the open door, gazing up into the clear, cloudless blue sky. To Hope’s mounting frustration, he didn’t bother to turn around when he curtly informed her, “Tell your father to find someone else to cook his breakfast in the morning. You won’t be home until after dawn. Maybe later.”
Pulling another cheroot from his pocket, he stuck it between his teeth, unlit, and rounded the corner. He was safely out of sight by the time a cast iron skillet crashed into the door frame.
It’s suppertime, Hope’s mind teased her as she toted the cleaned kettle, now filled with aromatic stew, to the table. Had Frazier realized she wasn’t coming? she wondered.
The men eyed the kettle greedily, their hunger enhanced by a hard day’s work and the tantalizing aroma of freshly baked bread. She had no more than set her burden down in the center of the table when all five men rose and reached for the ladle. Two hands reached the metal spoon first. Old Joe met Kyle’s angry glare over the pot.
“Will you two please stop?” Hope muttered in exasperation, as she took her seat beside her father. “I could have sworn I fed you this afternoon, yet here you’re acting like a pack of starved wolves. There’s enough for everyone, but no one’s getting a drop if one of you doesn’t put down the ladle.”
Kyle, grudgingly bowing to age, sat down with a grunt and plucked up a slab of bread to slake his hunger. Smearing it with a glob of freshly churned butter, he chewed on it as he watched Old Joe heap his plate with the coveted stew.
Suppressing a smile, Hope reached for a slice of bread and cast a glance to the end of the table, at Kyle’s twin. “Where were you two this morning? I would’ve thought a stampede of wild horses couldn’t keep you away from a fight.”
“We w