Chapter Three
There was a storm coming. Erin could feel it brewing inside her, just as she could see it brewing in the clouds that buried the sun and hung gloomily over the hills. She worked quickly, routinely, pulling the pins off the line and dropping the dry, billowing clothes in the basket at her feet.
She didn’t mind this kind of monotonous, mindless work.
It left her brain free to think and remember and plan.
Just now, with the wind tossing sheets away from her and the sky boiling, she liked the simple outside chore.
She wanted to see the storm break, to be a part of it when the wind and rain raised hell.
When it was over, things would settle back into the quiet routine she knew was slowly driving her mad.
What was wrong with her? Erin yanked one of her brother’s work shirts from the line and, out of ingrained habit, folded it to ward off wrinkles.
She loved her family, had friends and work to keep the wolf from the door.
So why was she so restless, so edgy? She couldn’t blame it all on her cousin’s visit or on the unexpected appearance of one Burke Logan.
She’d been feeling restless before they’d come, but for some reason their presence—his presence—intensified it.
She couldn’t talk to her mother about it.
Erin stripped down one of her mother’s aprons and buried her face in the cool, fresh scent of the material.
Her mother simply couldn’t understand discontent or yearnings for more, not when there was a sturdy roof over the head and food enough for everyone.
Time and again Erin had wished herself as serene a heart as her mother’s. But it wasn’t meant to be.
She couldn’t go to her father, though Erin knew he would understand the storm inside her.
He wasn’t a calm, easy man. From the stories she’d heard he’d been a hellion in his youth, and it had taken marriage to his Mary and a couple of babies before he’d begun to take hold.
But while her father would understand, Erin knew he would also be distressed.
If she wanted more, needed more, he would take it to mean he hadn’t given her enough.
There was Cullen. She’d always been able to talk to Cullen. But he was so busy just now, and her feelings were so mixed, the longings so indistinct, that she wasn’t sure she could articulate them in any case.
So she would wait, let the storm come and the wind blow.
He’d been watching her for some time. Burke never considered that it was rude to stand and observe people without their knowledge. You learned more about people when they thought they were alone.
She moved well. Even doing something so simple, there was an innate sensuality in her movements.
She had more fire than showed in her hair.
Inside her there was a flame smoldering.
He recognized it because he’d been born with one himself.
That kind of heat, of passion, could and would break free.
It only took the right elements falling into place. Time, place, circumstance.
She didn’t hum as she worked now, but occasionally looked up at the sky as if daring it to open and pour its fury on her.
Her hair blew back from her face, fighting against the band that held it.
Just as she fought whatever held her. He’d wondered what the results would be when she finally broke free.
He’d already decided he wanted to be around to see for himself.
“I haven’t seen a woman do that for a long time.”
Erin spun around, her heels digging into the soft ground, a pillowcase clutched in her hand.
He looked so at home, she thought, with the collar of his jacket up against the wind, the buttons undone in contradiction.
He had his thumbs hooked in his pockets and that damned devil smile on his face.
She’d never known a man to look better or more suited to the raw air and the warring skies.
She turned away to snatch another clothespin because she knew her reaction to him would bring her nothing but trouble.
“Don’t women take down the wash where you come from?”
“Progress often stamps out tradition.” He moved to her with the easy stride of a man used to walking toward what he wanted.
He unhooked a cotton slip—her cotton slip—folded it and dropped it in the basket.
Erin clamped her teeth together and told herself only a foolish chucklehead would be embarrassed.
“There’s no need for you to be putting your hands on the wash.”
“Don’t worry, they’re clean enough.” As if to prove it, he held them out. For the first time she noticed a thin, jagged scar across his knuckles.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.”
She said nothing for a moment. He didn’t make it easy when he didn’t invent comfortable excuses. “Why?”
“Because I wanted to.” He took down a pair of serviceable white panties, folded those, too, without a blush, then laid them on top of the slip.
Erin felt a slow, uncomfortable curling in her stomach. “Shouldn’t you be with Travis and Dee?”
“I think they’ll survive the afternoon without me.
I liked your farm when we were here yesterday.
” He glanced around now at the neat buildings.
The cottage was nearly half again as large as the one where Adelia Grant had grown up, but the roof had the same bleached yellow thatching and sturdy stone walls.
There were flowers here as well. The Irish seemed happy to let them grow as they chose—gay, untamed and sturdy.
A hedge of wild fuchsia was already blooming.
It made him think of home and the snow covering the fields.
The roof of the barn showed fresh patching.
The paint on the silo was peeling and no longer white, but the chickens in the coop were fat and clucking.
He imagined the McKinnons worked seven days a week to maintain the place.
Such was the life of a farmer. “This is a fine piece of land. Apparently your father knows what to do with it.”
“It’s his life,” Erin said simply as she took down the last of the wash.
“What about yours?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He lifted the basket before she could. “It’s a good farm, a good life for some. You weren’t meant for it.”
“You don’t know me well enough to say what I’m meant for.
” She took the basket from him and walked toward the kitchen door.
“But I’ve already told you I’m going north to an office job in a year or so.
” Taking a deep breath, she swung the door open.
Her mother would be horrified if she didn’t ask the man in and at least offer him a cup of tea.
She turned to him, but before she could issue the invitation he was taking the first step.
“Let’s take a walk. I have a proposition for you.”
Erin leaned back against the door and studied him coolly. “Oh, I’ll just bet you do.”
He took the basket from her again, set it inside the door and gave it a little shove. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, Irish. Let’s just say when I want you in bed I won’t ask.”
And he wouldn’t, she thought as they watched each other.
He wasn’t the type to court a woman with flowers and pretty words, any more than he was the type to coax a woman gently into his arms. Well, she wasn’t the type who wanted to be coaxed, but neither would she be steamrollered.
“Just what is it you’re wanting, Burke?”
“Let’s take a walk,” he repeated, but this time he closed his hand over hers.
She could have refused, but then she wouldn’t know what it was he had to say. Erin decided that if she shook free and shut the door in his face, he’d tuck his hands in his pockets and stroll off, leaving her the one who was fuming.
There was no harm in walking with him, she told herself as she stepped down beside him. Her mother was in the house, and her father, along with a couple of her brothers, was somewhere on the farm. Added to that was the fact that she had every confidence she could take care of herself.
“I don’t have much time,” she said briskly. “There’s a lot more to be done today.”
“This won’t take long.” But he said nothing more as they walked away from the house.
He didn’t seem to look, but he saw everything—the care, the sweat that went into the farm, the long hours and the hope.
He counted thirty cows. A man could make a living off less, he imagined.
It hadn’t been so many years since he’d worked backbreaking hours.
He hadn’t forgotten, just as he never forgot that fate could take what he had just as easily as it had given it to him.
“If it was a tour of the farm you were wanting—” Erin began.
“I had one yesterday, remember?” He paused a moment to look out over a field. He knew what it was to haul rocks from them, to ride sweating over them at baling time and to curse the land as much as you worshiped it. “You grow grain here for the stock?”
“Aye. It’ll be plowing time soon.”
“You work the fields?”
“I’ve been known to.”
Burke turned her hand palm-up and studied it. It wasn’t raw and cracked, but toughened with a ridge of callus. The nails were trimmed short and left unpainted. “You haven’t pampered them.”
“What good would that do me? I’m not ashamed of the work they’ve done.”
“No. You’re too practical for that.” He turned her hand over again and looked at her face. “You’re not the kind of woman who daydreams about white knights.”
She could smile at that, though the intensity of his eyes made her uneasy. “I’ve always thought white knights would be painfully dull, and the last thing I want is to be a lady in distress. I’d rather be slaying my own dragons.”
“Good. I don’t have much use for a woman who wants to be taken care of.” He still had her hand, as he watched the wind whip furiously through her hair. “Why don’t you come back to America with me, Erin?”