Harper's Bride by Alexis Harrington

Author:Alexis Harrington [Harrington, Alexis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical, General
ISBN: 9780451407375
Google: XSyXPAAACAAJ
Amazon: B0036B958S
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Published: 1997-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

After kissing Melissa in the store and telling her about his past—most of it, anyway—Dylan sensed a subtle change in their relationship. As much as he didn't want to, he found himself following her softly rounded shape with his eyes, and his trips to the side store window became even more frequent. When he saw her customers hanging around her, chatting, he wanted to go out there and tell them to stop bothering her, that she had work to do. But deep down, he knew the miners didn't bother her nearly as much as they did him.

Her beauty was not glamorous or queenly, as Elizabeth's was. Melissa had an uncluttered, quiet grace that made him think of clear, cold streams and wildflowers. He could not begin to imagine Elizabeth changing a baby's diapers or tending to the other messy aspects of motherhood. Melissa did it all and yet retained her prettiness and much-improved spirits.

Whether or not she could admit it to herself, her mood had brightened considerably since Logan's death. Dylan noticed that she had finally begun to stop flinching at loud voices and no longer looked over her shoulder whenever she went outside.

He told himself again and again that a woman and a child played no part in his foreseeable future. It was all very well to imagine his fairy tale scene with Melissa and Jenny in the kitchen when he came home at night, but it was just that—a pretty daydream. He figured the first five years of his horse-ranching operation would be nothing but hard work, and he'd have to live in a cabin while the house and all the outbuildings were constructed. He would have no trouble doing that—fancy trappings didn't matter to him. But it would be too hard for a woman. Even if it wasn't, Dylan was not willing to risk his heart again.

And that was the crux of the matter.

A wife deserved a whole husband, and he knew he wouldn't be able to give completely of himself. He would always hold something back, the part of his soul that would let him love her fully.

But still he watched Melissa with a yearning that continued to grow every day. Just being around her was a sweet kind of torture he felt better than when he'd lived alone, but to have to only look and not be able to touch—it was hell.

The afternoon after Logan died, Rafe dropped by the store. To avoid climbing stairs, which stole his already feeble wind, he'd made arrangements to move from his rooming house to a first-floor room at the now completed Fairview Hotel. Although there were no guest rooms on the first floor, Belinda Mulrooney had fixed up one for him—for a price, of course. A nice place, he observed drolly, but all the walls were nothing more than canvas with wallpaper pasted on them. "Anytime a guest so much as farts, it can be heard by the entire establishment."

Rafe looked far worse than Dylan had ever seen.

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