Chapter 6
As heartwarming and cozy as their Christmas tree make-believe was, two more days of being trapped in the saloon as the blizzard continued to blow had Randall’s patience shrinking like a fuse about to ignite dynamite.
He and Miranda finished cleaning the second floor, but his thoughts kept turning to all the ways the two of them could put those bedrooms and their contents to good use.
He’d even pocketed some unused French letters, then discarded them, then gone back to retrieve them and hide them with his things.
Part of him was certain he’d be able to control himself where Miranda was concerned…
but not all of him. Better safe than sorry.
It was even worse when they moved on to clean out the attic in their fourth day of confinement.
“What do you suppose this is for?” Miranda straightened from where she had been sorting through trunks of discarded clothing and held up a contraption consisting of leather straps and studs with a ring-shaped pocket on one side. “It sort of looks like horse tackle, but not quite.”
Randall’s face burned hot with awkwardness…and, he hated to admit it, arousal. He knew a harness when he saw one. The carved phalluses he kept finding and hiding suddenly made sense. He leapt across a pile of broken furniture pieces to snatch the harness from her hands.
“I wonder how that got up here,” he mumbled, whisking it away to the other side of the room and the sack of things to burn he’d been filling.
Four days trapped alone with a woman he was growing to admire, care for, and, yes, desire more and more, and his mind was betraying him.
It was too easy to mentally picture her wearing that harness, the two of them in bed together, with Miranda?—
“You know what that really is, don’t you?”
He regretted his thoughts so much that her insistent question made him jump and twist to face her, like a schoolboy caught stealing a pie off a windowsill. “Hmm? What?” It was impossible to play innocent when his face was hot enough to be a beacon in the storm.
Miranda planted her fists on her hips in that delightful, tempting way she had, and began to march across the attic toward him. “That thing is too small for a horse. You know what it is, don’t you?”
“Um…”
“Why are you all flushed and squirmy, Randy?” She wore a mock scolding look, humor in her eyes, the corners of her mouth twitching.
Heavens above, she must be crawling with impatience and cabin fever too if she was pressing him about items found in the saloon’s attic.
When they’d first started cleaning the bedrooms, she practically fainted at the sight of a dirty sheet.
Randall wasn’t sure which Miranda got under his skin more, the proper one with delicate sensibilities or the bold one brimming with energy and curiosity.
Her pretend scolding dissolved into giggles. “Really, what is it?”
Randall swallowed. “Ah…” Above them, the wind still howled against the roof.
Last he’d checked, the snow continued to drift against the front and back doors to a degree that would keep them inside for a few days to come.
“Well…” If he was right, they had plenty more time to spend wrapped up in each other’s company, no one there to see the mischief they got up to, no one to judge or be scandalized.
No one in town really knew who they were anyhow.
They could get away with things that folks in regular society could never dream of.
Miranda crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “Randy? I’m waiting.”
He cleared his throat. “You don’t want to know.”
“Yes I do,” she answered immediately.
“Really, you don’t.”
“Do you know my mind better than I do now?” Her burst of impatience and genuine irritation was just another sign of all the barriers that had been shattered between them in the last few days…and the effects of being trapped.
“I know you well enough to know that you would regret pressing for the answer,” he countered.
Her eyes flared with anger as fast as a grease fire flaring up. “Is that so? You know me that well?”
“Four days in tight quarters can bring people close in a hurry.” A rush of warmth filled him at that thought.
“Undeniably,” she huffed. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I have a right to know the contents of my own saloon.”
“It has to do with whores.” Maybe bluntness was the way to get her to turn a blind eye.
In fact, all it did was chase color into Miranda’s cheeks and put a coy look in her eyes. “I…I suppose I should know about those things, being the saloon owner and all.”
Randall’s brow shot up. She must be bristling with restlessness if she was thinking that way. Judging by the set of her shoulders and jaw, he was going to have to answer, one way or another. He let out a breath and spread his hands. “You really want to know.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I do.”
I do . Randall’s throat went try at those two words, at the way they made his heart beat faster, filled his head with images of her in white at the front of a church.
No, four days alone might have created a sense of intimacy, but it was hardly long enough to be entertaining ideas of marriage… was it?
“I’m waiting.” Miranda went back to tapping her foot.
“It’s a harness.”
When she merely blinked at him, Randall burst into a wave of uncontrollable chuckles.
“It’s a device worn by a whore for a very particular kind of…practice.”
Still, she blinked. “You aren’t very good at explaining things, Randy.”
No, but if she continued to use his nickname and to stare at him with such frankness, he was going to have to demonstrate instead of just telling her.
He wiped a hand over his face, unsure whether he would laugh or groan at the rate she was going. He repeated the gesture, discovering it was much easier to blurt the whole truth with his hand covering his eyes.
“It’s used with an imitation phallus and worn by a woman so that she can take the man’s role in…” He couldn’t go on. It was bad enough that he knew about that sort of thing, but explaining it filled him with ridiculous levels of mortifying titillation.
“What?” This time, Miranda’s outburst wasn’t a question so much as an exclamation.
Randall peeked through his fingers to find her staring into nothing, eyes wide, mouth open.
“Oh!” Understanding dawned on her. “Oh!” The syllable took on a scandalized tone, and she paled.
“Oh!” Her eyes went wide in horror as her gaze finally focused. On him.
She slapped a hand to her mouth. Moments later, she burst into a fit of giggles that shook her slender form. Her borderline hysterical amusement was contagious. Randall let his hand drop from his face and let go, laughing at the wild silliness of the whole thing.
“Maybe we should leave the rest of this for another time and go have lunch,” he managed to say through his laughter.
“I think that would be a wise idea,” she agreed, voice hoarse with a combination of mirth and horror.
She turned and bolted for the stairs leading to the second floor.
Randall followed. His face still burned with shame while the rest of him burned with something far trickier.
He tried to tell himself it was cabin fever, he was a gentleman, that the only reason he knew things respectable people didn’t was because of all that time on merchant ships.
But as they ventured back to Miranda’s apartment and the late morning light that peeked through snow-banked windows, he was certain of one thing.
Miranda deserved better than the awkward fate that was handed to her.
“I don’t think we’ll run out of food,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at him as she pored through the remaining contents of her cupboard. “I’m not sure what to make out of all this, though.”
“Please let me fix lunch for the two of us,” Randall begged.
There was another sign of his waning patience.
After eating Miranda’s cooking for four days, he didn’t think he could take it anymore.
“I swear to you that I’m a good cook, that I enjoy it, and that I don’t think you’re not a good hostess if you let me cook something. ”
She straightened and pursed her lips. “Well, I suppose since you are a font of knowledge today, I might as well let you teach me something that I might actually be able to share in civilized company.” She attempted to say her piece with the same mock scolding she had used in the attic, but she dissolved into giddy laughter before she could finish.
“You’re a naughty one, Randi,” he teased her with his own mock scolding and nudged her aside so that he could assess the contents of the cupboard. As he studied the shelves, he murmured, “And if I’m not careful, you’ll be the undoing of me.”
Miranda wasn’t sure what name to put to the pulsing restlessness that had consumed her for the past day or so.
She couldn’t keep her legs from bouncing as she sat at the table, watching Randall cooking in his shirtsleeves.
She hadn’t been able to sleep well for the past few nights as thoughts of him—his laughter, his ready wit, his curly hair, his strength as he attempted to clear snow from the saloon’s front doorway, only to give up when it proved too packed against them, the fleeting glimpse of him with his shirt off that she’d caught while he was bathing—kept her tossing and turning.
And what had just happened upstairs in the attic?
With that—what had he called it—that harness ?
Her skin had prickled and strange heat had pooled in parts of her that she knew she shouldn’t be focusing on.
Except now she couldn’t focus on anything but the sensations she felt there.
Good grief, was cabin fever an actual illness? Were these the signs and symptoms?