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  Doyle smiled absently up at her, but his eyes were on Rissa, and that brought Winnie's to her, too.

  "Sister, you are terribly red! Do you think you're having a recurrence of whatever you had this morning? Should I take you up to bed?"

  As much as she wanted to hide there, Rissa had a feeling that someone wasn't going to let her, and she didn't want to even contemplate the idea that he might actually knock at her bedroom door to talk to about what had transpired between them. No, it was going to be awful and humiliating and degrading, she knew, but it would be better if she just sat through whatever it was that he wanted to say about it and got it over with, then she wouldn't have live in fear of a confrontation any more.

  Well, she'd probably always dread seeing him because of what they'd done together, but it would probably start to fade…eventually. When she was old and senile and had forgotten all about it, perhaps.

  "I'm fine, thank you, really," she said, although her quiet, subdued tone left acres of room for doubt.

  The both of them continued to look at her as if she was a specimen in a jar, so she attempted to leave, but he caught her arm, asking quietly, "Are you quite sure you're all right, Rissa?" She did look a bit peaked and was obviously still a bit green around the gills from last night.

  She nodded and gave a tug, surprised when he actually let her go, gathering her skirts and heading for the living room without once having looked at or spoken to him, he noticed, his eyes following her hungrily.

  Winnie excused herself to him and headed upstairs to make herself ready, while Doyle hung up his good hat and coat and sauntered after her sister, whom he found curled up in a chair with a book in her lap while she stared out the window but seemed to see nothing there that wasn't highly depressing.

  But Isaac was in the room, too—although not for long if what Winnie had said was right—so he got himself a glass of whiskey, a considerably smaller one than he had been downing last night, and immersed himself in the paper to bide his time until he could finally speak to Miss Clarissa alone.

  Winnie made a dramatic entrance in a new frock, one of the ones her husband had bought her for her trousseau, and proceeded to twirl and preen as both Isaac and Rissa threw extravagant compliments at her. She really was a cute little thing, Doyle had to admit, if that was what one went for in a woman, but, although she was very sweet and nice, she was almost too much so for him. He liked his women with a bit of spice and spark.

  His attention turned naturally to Rissa, who was looking at Winnie and was unlikely, for the moment, to notice that he was out and out staring at her. He preferred women with more passion and more backbone, even if neither were evident at first blush, although neither of those traits was evident in her current demeanor. She was nervous; he could see by the way she was twisting her fingers in her lap—probably about being left alone with him after last night.

  He was surprised to realize that he had his own case of nerves, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd been truly anxious about much of anything, but this feeling was caused by something very specific, and its resolution was far from a foregone conclusion, although he intended to do his best to make sure that things went the way he intended they would.

  Very early this morning, he had come awake with a start and sat up in bed, internally cursing his fondness for whiskey, in which he only ever indulged when he was missing Laura. Rissa reminded him much too much of her, enough, apparently, that he had used her as a replacement for his dead wife in the most intimate manner possible. He had taken her virginity when he had absolutely no right to do so.

  The fact that she had enjoyed it—several times over, if he could trust his soused mind not to just be wishful thinking—was not a mitigating factor as far as he was concerned. Doyle placed the blame firmly where it belonged—with him. He had defiled an innocent woman, the sister of his sister-in-law, for crying out loud! They were practically related! He'd never considered himself much of a gentleman—oh, he'd donned the right clothes, and if he was in the right mood he could usually be counted on to say the right thing—but deep down. he was just a cowboy in disguise. But even cowboys had their scruples, and having deflowered Rissa in a drunken haze didn't set well with him at all.

  No, he thought, rubbing his hand over his chin as his eyes drank in the pallor he saw surrounding her shame heightened color, her dampened spirits, as well as a fragility he hadn't seen in her before—all of which he knew he was single handedly responsible for, not at all.

  Before he knew it, the happy couple were saying their goodbyes—Isaac reminding them that they were probably going to be gone tonight and not to wait up for them. As soon as his brother shut the door behind him, Doyle stood, intending to claim a seat next to Rissa on the couch, but Lucille—damn her timing—came through the door, seconds after they left, to announce dinner, sounding almost gleeful at having interrupted his plans, he thought irrationally, although there was no way she could have known what she was doing.

  He offered her his arm to escort her into the dining room, but she declined, still not having really clapped eyes on him since last night, as far as he could tell. She was keeping her head down the majority of the time, which was a dampening of her previous spiritedness that he thoroughly regretted. He let her go on ahead of him—happy that Lucille hadn't seen his embarrassment when she had refused his small courtesy—but followed close behind, entering the dining room to find her sitting at her usual chair, entirely too far away from him, as far as he was concerned. So, as he had done once before, he pointedly held out what was usually Winnie's chair and stood behind it, and when she didn't move, he cleared his throat loudly.

  Determinedly ignoring him, Rissa reached for her glass and took a sip of her sweet tea.

  Doyle sighed, realizing she wasn't about to make this easy on either of them and leaned over a bit, catching a whiff of her light, floral perfume, and said very distinctly, "If I have to lift you into the chair, you're going to go over my knee first and then be sitting on a very sore bottom throughout dinner."

  He watched her shiver at his words, then her back straightened, and he knew she was remembering a time—not very long ago—when she'd had to do that. He had thought that memory might prove a bit of a deterrent to her stubbornness.

  Seconds later, she rose, with an exasperated sigh of her own, and moved to the chair he preferred for her.

  "Thank you," he said gravely, but with a bit of a mocking edge.

  Lucille soon arrived with the food, setting the beautiful bone china serving dishes down before the master of the house. As he had before, Doyle made up a plate for her, with the smallest pork chop, falling off the bone as it was and drowning in onion gravy, and set it next to a small pool of applesauce, a small spoonful of corn, and the smallest of the hot cornmeal and honey biscuits, putting the plate down in front of her and passing her the honey—fresh from their own hives—as well as butter, salt and pepper.

  And she still hadn't so much as glanced in his direction, nor said a word to him.

  Stubborn little redhead!

  "I met the mayor while I was in town today," he threw out as he made his own obscenely enormous plate.

  Nothing but the sounds of clanking silverware greeted his conversational foray, but at least she was eating.

  He glanced at her plate and saw that she was really just pretending to, pushing the food around to make it sound as if she was eating.

  Well, he thought to himself, one battle at a time.

  He continued as if she had enthusiastically encouraged him to do so. "He said he thought they might be needing a teacher at the school in town within the next year or so—he thinks old Mrs. Carey is finally going to retire."

  Silence.

  "Did you hear me, Rissa? You might well be able to get a job around here, eventually."

  She surprised him by answering pointedly, "I already have a job, not just the possibility of one if someone should decide to leave, perhaps at some nebulous point in the future."


  This earned her a sigh from him that was entirely too long suffering, since he hadn't known her for very long. But she wasn't willing to explore it any further with him and already regretted having said anything at all to him. Her only goal for this evening was to get through dinner then escape to her room with a book, and then she'd spent the rest of what would—hopefully—be the very short amount of time she had left here avoiding him as much as was humanly possible.

  But he, apparently, had other plans.

  Completely ignoring the fact that she didn't respond to him from that point on, he kept up a steady stream of conversation—talking about the ranch and how he wanted to expand it as if he thought she should care, and about some renovations he'd like to do to the house, as well as recounting some more amusing stories from his childhood that he could see she was having a hard time not laughing at, but she still wouldn't look at him, and besides correcting him about her employment status, she hadn't said anything through the entire meal.

  Lucille came in and removed the leftovers and their plates, throwing over her shoulder on the way out that dessert would be in shortly—apple pie with ice cream.

  At that, Rissa rose and turned towards the door.

  But he couldn't let her get away from him that easily.

  He caught her wrist, strong fingers looping about it so that she very quickly lost any ability to extricate herself, if indeed that possibility had ever existed for her.

  "Wait—" he began.

  "I don't want any dessert," she interrupted through clenched teeth.

  "Neither do I, but we must talk."

  Her back ramrod straight, she said, "I don't have anything to say to you."

  "Well, I have plenty to say to you, and unless you'd like Lucille to come back in with pie and ice cream to find you bent over the table getting your lovely bottom tanned, then I suggest you sit back down—and don't try to leave again without having been excused from the table."

  That got her to look at him, if only long enough to roll her eyes at him.

  But she had absolutely no doubt that he would make good on this threat, so she grudgingly took her seat again, just as the older woman reentered the dining room, filling it with the scent of apples and cinnamon.

  But it might as well have been slop as far as they were concerned.

  She put the piping hot pie down on the table on a beautiful silver trivet and began to cut into it, but Doyle put his hand over hers. "Would you mind terribly putting that on the sideboard? We'll serve ourselves tonight." He paused a moment as she complied, having had a bit of a stroke of genius. "In fact, why don't you take the evening off, Lucille? I know you've been wanting to go over to see your sister's new baby—why don't you get Smarty to take you in the wagon? Tell him I said he should if he gives you any guff."

  Lucille looked as if he'd just told her she'd won a thousand dollars. "Thank you very much, Mr. Doyle! I won't be too late—"

  Doyle smiled. "Stay as long as you'd like."

  "Thank you again. I'm going to go get that lazybones out of his cups and tell him what you said!"

  Rissa almost smiled at Lucille's unabashed happiness, but as soon as she was gone, that hint of her beautiful smile fled her face as if it had never been.

  Now she was well and truly alone with him—right where she didn't want to be!

  For his part, Doyle was surprised to find that his nerves had returned, although he tamped them back down successfully. He knew what he needed to do, and he knew deep down that it was the right thing, and that bolstered his resolve.

  So as soon as Lucille had left, he didn't beat around the bush. "The first thing I want to do is apologize to you unreservedly. I'm very sorry about what happened between us last night. You are a lady and a guest in this house, but more than that, you are family, and I will never forgive myself for having treated you that way."

  Rissa knew she should have been glad for his apology and the fact that he had offered it with no prompting from her whatsoever, but it just made her feel worse, for some reason she couldn't fathom. She didn't want to talk about what happened at all—heartfelt apologies included.

  But she knew she had to respond to it.

  "I forgive you," she said, thinking that was it and standing.

  "Sit."

  His crisp command had her eyes flitting to his for a second, nervously, as she sat down again with a put-upon sigh.

  "I realize that you don't want to talk about our transgression—"

  So there it was, she thought, staring down at her plate as the tears she'd been holding back since this morning began to flow. That's what he thought about it. She wouldn't allow herself to see that he was very right in characterizing it that way. All she could see was his regret and loathing about what they'd done.

  Never mind that it reflected her own feelings about it—well, some of them, anyway—too. It was surprisingly—irrationally—hurtful to realize that that was how he felt.

  "—but we have to. We made a mistake. I take full responsibility for it. But we need to rectify that mistake as soon as possible."

  Nothing could have prepared her for the sight of what appeared on her dessert plate.

  It was open ring box, with a very large diamond ring in it.

  And then he continued, and she realized just how serious he was about it. "I got the license. There's a three-day waiting period, but we can be married. I thought Saturday might be a good day."

  Finally, she looked at him in utter amazement, then sitting back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest.

  He recognized that posture from another life and realized he was going to be in for a fight. But that was okay, because he well knew how to deal with stubborn redheads.

  "I am not marrying you, Doyle Caldwell." Rissa dropping the ring box on his plate as if it might infect her with something.

  He tilted his head a bit, which was a sign she didn't, unfortunately recognize, although she did notice that, when he spoke, his tone was much too soft. "And I am not going to argue with you about this. We had sex. I deflowered you, not fifty feet away from here. We could have conceived a child last night. And after that, the only honorable thing to do is to get married."

  She hadn't considered that she might be pregnant, and she didn't want to consider it now. If that happened, she'd deal with it on her own, somehow, although she had no idea how.

  "Wrong, as usual," she nearly yelled back at him through the tears. "You've done the honorable thing and offered me marriage. I thank you for the offer. But in doing so, you have discharged your gentlemanly duty. I am, however, in no way obligated to accept it!" Rissa stood, knocking her chair over in her haste, intending to make an exit in full dudgeon.

  But that wasn't at all what she was allowed to do.

  Quite the contrary.

  Instead, he used her forward—angry—momentum against her, grabbing her arm just above the elbow and swinging her around, kicking his chair out of the way just in time and stepping aside so that, when he yanked a little, he'd neatly guided her to right where he wanted her—over the edge of his dining room table, to be trapped there for as long as was necessary to get her to see the wisdom of his plan.

  And, for her part, she knew immediately where this was going.

  "No!" Rissa screamed, wiggling and twisting and trying to heave herself out from under his hold, but she got exactly nowhere, horrified to realize—yet again—just how helpless he could make her with very little effort on his part as the edge of the table folded her in half just the way she'd bet he'd envisioned it would. And now, all he was doing was standing there with his hand on her back, and she was neatly pinned in place.

  When he reached down to pull her skirts up, his hand gliding knowingly up the back of her calf and then thigh, then over her bottom—which he pinched, making her scream in outrage and indignation—brushing all of that material aside and even further up her back—and loosening her drawers and stockings with smooth, practiced movements so that they pooled at her ankles b
efore putting his hand right back where it had been.

  Only this time, it rested on bare flesh, from just beneath the edge of her corset to just above the spot where her bottom cleft began.

  Heaving from her useless efforts, and still crying—this time from pure anger—she screamed again, "Doyle Caldwell, I demand that you let me go!" Rissa was so furious that she banged her fists on the table in front of her three or four times.

  And received four correspondingly hard swats from him that had her thoroughly regretting her actions, if not her outburst.

  And she knew the spanking hadn't even begun.

  "This table was my grandmother's, on my mother's side. She brought it all the way from England with her. You would not like what would happen to you, if I found that you had damaged it in any way."

  Rissa continued to pant, but didn't bother to answer him until his palm descended on her behind again.

  "If you keep this up, you're going to get two spankings in a row."

  "Fine," she spat. "You bastard," she added, not quite under her breath enough, since that got her another five smacks, all in the same place, administered very slowly and deliberately.

  "I do not appreciate vulgarities, especially those aimed at me, by my fiancée. You would do well to remember that in the future."

  Rissa growled, really growled, for the first time in her adult life. This man was insufferable!! How could he possibly think that she would tie herself to him for the rest of her life? "I. Am. NOT. Your. Fiancée."

  And that was the exact moment when the real spanking began.

  While he peppered her backside—including down her thighs—with swats that had her grunting uncontrollably each time he made contact, no matter how hard she tried to stifle the impulse—he opined, "Well, not perhaps at this very moment, but I think that you'll be more than willing to comply with my generous offer for you to share my name and my life—and my bed—before I'm through with you—probably long before this spanking will end."

  That last bit scared her more than a little, but she could tell that he was enjoying this enormously, and that made her set her teeth and become just that much more stubborn, even though she knew she was just making it harder on herself. And she was right.