Indiscreet Page 3

  She couldn't afford her own anything, so riding clothes were entirely out of the question, not that she was about to say that to him.

  "Yes, but it would prove a huge waste of both of our time."

  Doyle looked puzzled at that. "How so?"

  "Well, I know you want me to get out from under foot as soon as possible, and I've greatly expanded my search for employment, such that I might well end up in a good-sized city where I won't even need to know how to ride."

  He should have greeted that information with a loud hallelujah, but somehow, it just made him feel surprisingly sad that she was leaving and just as alarmed that he was having those feelings, as well as a tingling of something he recognized as shame that he had made her feel that way. He did want her out of his house. He did. But he also wanted to teach her to ride, for some unknown reason that he should damned well have been able to resist.

  "Surely, even if you end up aways away, you'll come back here to visit your sister occasionally."

  Suddenly, her food was of great interest to her. "Truthfully, Mr. Caldwell, I don't think so. If she wants to see me, then Winnie'll have to come to me."

  His lips pursed into a thin line at that soft statement—not that he was angry at her. No, his ire was directly exactly where it belonged—at himself.

  She looked terribly forlorn at the prospect of not seeing her sister as often as she might have if she'd felt welcomed in this home. In his home. He should have apologized to her for being high handed enough to spank her, he supposed, although it went against his grain to do so.

  Instead, he asked a question he knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't stop himself from doing it. "Is your bottom still sore?"

  Rissa dropped her fork to her plate with a discordant clang as her eyes flew to exactly where she didn't want them to be—his deep, dark black ones. "Mr. Caldwell!"

  He was smiling unrepentantly, glad to have startled her out of the doldrums, even if he knew he was just digging himself deeper with her. He adored seeing her blush—at either end. "If I'm going to give you riding lessons, then you're going to have to be very well behaved and careful to avoid being spanked again—riding while your bottom is sore is truly excruciating. And I can't imagine that that's going to be easy for a self-confessed nosey body such as yourself."

  "Mr. Caldwell!" She knew she was repeating herself, but she didn't know what else to say! No one had ever been quite so completely, aggravatingly inappropriate around her before. Rissa stood abruptly, threw her napkin on the table—again onto a relatively untouched meal—turning to storm upstairs.

  She should have noticed the scraping of his chair on the floor as he adjusted its position, but she didn't take that as the warning it was and he easily caught her arm when she hadn't gotten more than a step or two away from the table and she found herself swung around and deposited neatly onto his lap.

  "Let me up immediately!" she fumed, struggling to get away from him while doing her best not to touch him at the same time, which made things very difficult indeed.

  Doyle looked at her, not saying a word, but meeting her eyes directly before asking in a frighteningly calm tone, "Do you want to stay on my lap or would you prefer to go over it again, Miss Dayton?"

  "You wouldn't!" She gasped indignantly, but it still came out sounding like a question.

  Because she already knew the answer.

  He chuckled softly. "That's your considered opinion, based on what you already know about me?"

  Rissa closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Wrestling was getting her nowhere, and, what was worse, she suspected that he liked it, although she had no real proof to back up that suspicion. If he didn't want to let her go, she was going to remain here until he did, and with very little effort on his part. She had no doubts about that. He was much too strong—she would never win a physical battle with him, and the thought that he would probably love to see her try had her quieting herself immediately. So, she remained perched quietly—if tensely—on his thigh.

  For a moment, they were both silent, Rissa looking at some nebulous spot on the wall across the room, and Doyle looking boldly at her, his hand sprawled at her back, as if in support.

  "Am I hurting you, Miss Dayton?" he murmured quietly.

  His question surprised her into looking at him, and she found his eyes to be clear and open, no trace of rancor or sarcasm anywhere on his face. At first, she refused to answer him, but she was close enough to him that she could see when his eyebrow rose and knew he was just stubborn enough to outwait her, too.

  She made no attempt to conceal that her, "No," was being dragged out of her.

  "I'm sorry for overstepping my bounds in securing you here, but I find myself loathe to let you go when you've had so little to eat, and I seem to recall that I have been the direct cause of that at least twice. I apologize. My comments were entirely inappropriate. Please forgive me."

  His apology sounded sincere, and good manners had been a cornerstone of the house that she and Winnie grew up in. It would be churlish of her not to accept his apology.

  "You are forgiven," she whispered, looking down at her hands where they lay in her lap.

  "Thank you. You are more gracious than I deserve."

  Again, she couldn't find any evidence in his voice that he was mocking her or being insincere, not that she didn't try. Instead, she found that his low, raspy tone was much more pleasant to hear than she wanted it to be.

  "I will do my best—as somewhat of a gentleman, anyway—not to be quite such a bore. Will you do me the favor of having what remains of our lunch with me? I would be most appreciative of the good company."

  His self-deprecating remark earned him a small smile from her.

  Doyle surprised himself at his own sincerity. He did want to have lunch with her, suddenly, he wanted it very much, although he knew that she would be more than within her rights to complete her attempt at stalking out of the room and up to her bedroom.

  But she hadn't said no immediately, and he took that as a good sign. Leaning down to her ear, he whispered, "I'll even let you get off my lap and eat at your chair, if you like, although you're more than welcome to stay here. I would love to have a chance to feed you from my own hand and thus assure myself that you were getting proper nutrition."

  What he was saying to her already sounded like it boarded on the obscene—because of the way he said it—although she had the impression that he wasn't trying to make it sound that way—and she knew that she should just leave, as she had originally intended.

  But she found herself intrigued by him—completely against her will and her intellect. Considering what he'd already done to her, a proper lady would already have done everything she could to have moved out from under his roof, even if she had to starve to do so.

  She guessed she wasn't quite the proper lady she liked to think of herself as, because she wasn't willing to go quite that far in order to maintain propriety.

  Before she answered him, he waved a buttery forkful of mashed potatoes in front of her, commanding in a coaxing tone, "Open."

  And she did—she shouldn't have, but she did. They melted in her mouth and the first few notes of a soft moan escaped her before she could suppress them, and he adjusted her suddenly, jerkily, which brought her a bit back towards reality.

  "All right, Mr. Caldwell, I'll stay for lunch, but I believe I'll reclaim my chair."

  He brought a napkin to her lips before letting her go with obvious reluctance. "Pity. But thank you very much for staying."

  He was as good as his word—not one more ribald comment passed his lips. Instead, he regaled her with tales of what it was like growing up in such a wild, primitive place, and she got a feel for what his childhood had really been like—hard scrabble, living by his wits to a certain extent, taught by his father to be self-sufficient, which was the only way to survive, only coming into money when oil was discovered on their land, and by that time, he was in his early teens. No wonder he was a bit of a rough diamond.
r />   More often than not, he made her laugh by making himself the butt of his own stories, which only succeeded in raising him in her estimation. Where she might have previously thought of him as an autocratic egomaniac, she felt she was getting to know the real man much better. And before she knew it, the clock in the living room chimed two o'clock.

  "Oh my word, we've been talking for that long?" she asked in amazement.

  And Doyle's hand covered hers where it lay on the table. "Ready to try your hand at riding?" he asked.

  "Mr. Caldwell, I—"

  "Please call me Doyle, because I've been dying to use your beautiful name rather than the stiff and proper 'Miss Dayton'."

  Blushing, she agreed. "But the riding—"

  He squeezed her fingers gently. "You'll love it. Trust me."

  She still looked a little doubtful, biting her lip in hesitation.

  "Are you afraid of horses, is that it?"

  "No, not at all," she reassured him. "I think they're beautiful. I just really don't have any experience with them at all, and they're so big."

  Doyle's eyes narrowed a bit. "So it's being in my company that's causing your reluctance?"

  Her blush was very telling. "Well, I—"

  "I can assure you that I will be completely focused on the task at hand, Clarissa. I take my responsibilities very seriously, and I think that riding is a skill that everyone—especially everyone who lives in the West—should know."

  Rissa bit her lip, not at all sure what to say.

  "Come out with me, once, to the corral and we'll find you a suitable mount. We'll take it slowly, I promise, and if you're dissatisfied by the end of it, then we'll get my brother to teach you, instead."

  He watched her mind change, loving the sight of it, and knowing he could get her to enjoy riding if she would let him.

  He stood, towering over her. "Go rummage through your sister's things and meet me at the door."

  Clarissa stood and took a step, then looked back at him, as if she was going to change her mind.

  But he wouldn't allow that. "Go on, now. Don't keep me waiting, little girl."

  With a bit of a mischievous smile, she did as he asked. And was, in the end, despite the sore muscles it caused, very happy that she did.

  Chapter 3

  He was at least as good as Isaac had said he would be, much more patient and kind than she would have given him credit for, even an hour beforehand, with her and the horse. Sometimes, during the lesson, she had to wonder which one of them he was speaking to.

  The horse he selected for her was late middle aged, very docile and gorgeously well cared for, as was the immaculate stable she came from. Although Rissa hung back a bit because she didn't want to get in his way as he was saddling her, once he was done and began leading the mare towards her, she walked slowly up to her, her hand out, speaking in a calm soft voice, completely unaware of the approving look Doyle was giving her.

  "Miss Clarissa, this is Sheba. She was born here, and she was Isaac's horse for a while as he was learning as a child. She's very slow and steady, which is exactly what you need as a novice." He let her get acquainted with the horse, watching her carefully, mostly to see how she reacted to the big animal, but also because he could barely tear his eyes away from her in those cut down jeans she was wearing, tightly cinched around a waist that, even unfettered as hers had to be, was still quite tiny. Not to mention that luscious behind of hers, with which he was more intimately acquainted.

  He could tell it was going to take all of his powers of concentration to keep his mind on the lesson and not various portions of her anatomy.

  She was a fast learner, though, and seemed to have an affinity for horses. Sheba took to her as if she'd always known her, and Rissa's seat and hands on the reins—once he finally actually allowed her to mount the horse and remain there after forcing her to mount and dismount multiple times—were naturally exactly what he wanted from her, without his having to tell her. She needed to remember to keep her heels down and her elbows closer, but those habits would come with time.

  When he had her bring the horse to a stop and helped her down, she looked up at him with a smile that was so blindingly bright and happy that he nearly felt himself get lost in it, and that made him angrier than he'd been in a long time.

  She was still leaning on him when he stiffened noticeably, suddenly shrugging off her arm and going to the horse's head to lead her back into the barn.

  "I don't have time for any more of this; I'm a busy man. Go back into the house before you get sunburned."

  And just like that, she was out of favor again, for no known reason. His tone and demeanor, which seemed to change in a split second, was exactly the same as it had been when she'd met him—and when he'd spanked her. She needed no further encouragement to leave his presence.

  Isaac and Winnie arrived home late in the day, both pinkened by the sun and looking gloriously, unapologetically in love. Rissa tried not to feel jealous of their happiness and failed miserably from her perch in the bay window of the sumptuously decorated living room, where she was reading a novel that wasn't holding her attention very well at all.

  Lucille stalked into the living room, saying, "Jed brought the mail from town. I'll put the ones for Mr. Doyle on his desk," and handed Isaac a wad of envelopes.

  Already despairing of receiving an answer, Rissa resolutely went back to her book.

  "That reminds me, I wanted to remember to ask you, Rissa, what possessed you to go into Doyle's office?" Winnie piped up. "I have a feeling that I should have warned you that he's a very private man and wouldn't appreciate you poking around in there."

  That was the understatement of the year, she thought to herself.

  But how could she explain to her sister something she didn't really understand herself? He was horribly brusque and annoying and autocratic and arrogant—and that was her opinion of him before he'd spanked her! Still, she found herself strangely attracted to him despite how much she sometimes hated him, and she had been unable to resist doing a little snooping about him.

  That room would forever be synonymous with him in her mind. It was like an architectural representation of him—with classical elements of maroon and gold, but with a lot of traditionally western touches of brown and leather, in the large couch as well as the wall of leather and gold bound books. His desk was austere and imposing—like the man himself, with a big comfortable chair behind it that screamed that he was the captain of all he surveyed.

  It smelled like him, too—not musty or stuffy, as rooms like this often could be but rather like the outdoors—fresh air, tinged with the scent of the occasional cigar or pipe and some kind of lightly lingering cologne. She hadn't been able to discern which one.

  And the gun, sitting in a worn holster on the edge of the desk—a six shooter, like the gunslingers wore—had drawn her attention immediately. She'd pulled it out and held it in her hand, knowing she shouldn't even be there, much less be handling a gun, but she liked the weight of it in her hand and could well imagine its owner using it when he felt it was necessary to defend his home and family.

  But then, she was probably just romanticizing things based on her surroundings, being fanciful and allowing her imagination to run away with her. In preparation for moving out there, she'd read too many western novels—hence the volume of Dickens currently in her lap.

  Perhaps she should have headed East rather than West, but then, her only living family was in the West, so there wasn't much of a choice to make.

  Rissa shook her head and remembered that she needed to answer her sister's question, which she did with as much honesty as she could. "It was the only room I hadn't explored, I thought it might tell me something about Mr. Caldwell—Doyle. He's hardly forthcoming about himself."

  Winnie tittered musically in agreement. "No, he's not. I don't think he said three words to me for the first six months I was here! Although I gather from Isaac that he's not always been like that—quite so…dour and off putt
ing and angry. It wasn't until after—"

  "Winnie, that is not our story to tell," Isaac interrupted to gently scold his wife as he sorted through the mail, sounding entirely too much like his older brother for Rissa's comfort.

  As much as she didn't want it to, Winnie's little gaffe piqued Rissa's interest, and she wondered what that story might be.

  But all thoughts of finding out what Doyle Caldwell might be hiding behind that curmudgeonly veneer fled as soon as Isaac presented her with not one, but three letters, all from various principals or head teachers, responding to her inquires.

  Two of them were to let her know that they had no current vacancies, but the last—the last was for a small town that was quite aways away, towards the border with Arizona, and they needed a teacher for the coming term, to replace a woman who had gotten married and was moving with her new husband to Colorado. They were asking how soon she could be available!

  "Oh my!" Rissa sat up, unable to believe what she was reading.

  Winnie frowned. "What is it?"

  "Good news—I think I've got a job!"

  Winnie wasn't anywhere near as enthusiastic about the idea of Rissa leaving, but she was a good sport and tried to be happy for her sister, although she would miss her fiercely, and Isaac seemed genuinely happy for her, too.

  Rissa disappeared upstairs to her room to write them back immediately and let them know that she would accept the position, and that she could be there any time they wanted her.

  That evening, when she made her way downstairs for dinner, the men rose when she entered the room, and Doyle moved to hold her chair out for her, a courtesy that surprised her, but for which she thanked him quietly, under her breath. Winnie was already seated.

  As he put his napkin into his lap and began to send the bowls of food around the table, as was their custom, Doyle commented, "I understand you have something to celebrate this evening, Clarissa."

  Rissa watched her sister's eyebrows go up at his use of her Christian name—especially when he'd made it such a point not to do so for so long. "Yes, Doyle. I've gotten a reply from the school board of the town of Brooksville, and they are in need of a teacher for the fall. I've written and told them that I'd accept the position. It doesn't pay too much, but then, they'll provide lodgings at the school house and I don't require much anyway. I'll leave as soon as I receive a letter back from him confirming that I have the post and providing more particulars, but I've got a job at last, and I'll be out of your hair as soon as I can arrange it."