expect from Derek once he satisfied his curiosity. When he discovered the truth—or what so many people thought they knew and were so very eager to tell—she would have one chance to convince him to let her stay.
She didn’t doubt what form of persuasion would be expected of her.
An odd sensation, like that of being watched, crawled up her spine, and she shivered. She meant to ignore it, but it persisted until finally she glanced up. Derek stood in the doorway.
“Oh!” She reared back and lost her balance, tumbling awkwardly onto the half-made bed. Cheeks flaming, she scrambled to her feet and gaped at him. He looked back with impressive detachment.
“I’m going into Twigg today. Do you need anything?”
“You startled me!” she snapped. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, and she was beginning to feel a little…hunted.
“Sorry,” he said instantly, but he didn’t look the least bit apologetic. Instead he looked bold, untamed and roguish, leaning against the door frame with lazy grace, his arms crossed over his chest as though he had nothing better to do. He wore dark trousers and a blue cotton shirt that turned his eyes to a dazzling shade of blue.
“I was making up your bed.”
He raked her with a sizzling gaze that trapped her words and made them suddenly conspicuous, as if he’d seen her clean unmentionables hanging on the clothesline.
Making up your bed? Dear Lord, what did she think she was doing, talking to this man in his bedroom, next to his unmade bed? Hadn’t she learned how very easily—willfully—a man could misunderstand a woman’s intentions? Certainly, if anything could be misinterpreted, it would be a woman floundering wildly on a man’s mattress.
Derek remained still, however, simply watching her. He seemed bigger and taller, his shoulders broad, and a harnessed power filled the room. Amber’s cheeks remained flushed, and she clenched her fingers into tight fists. Her breath came out as a sketchy wheeze.
“Making the bed,” he murmured softly, breaking the silence. He shook his head and dropped his arms to his sides. “I almost remember when things like that mattered.”
Standing across the bed from him, looking into his fallen-angel features and barren eyes, she felt his proximity as keenly as if he touched her. The possibility seemed imminently dangerous.
“I beg your pardon?” She stepped back, some ancient feminine instinct insisting she put more space between them. “Don’t you want me to do such chores?”
He shrugged and straightened, his movements a study in carelessness. “Go ahead. I don’t care. When you’ve spent as many nights as I have under the stars with just a blanket, any bed at all seems like a luxury.”
Amber swallowed. Was he referring to his trip here? Traveling from South Carolina to Texas on horseback would be a long, arduous journey in these days of reconstruction. Vaguely, she recalled the trip she and her father had made from St. Louis, twelve years ago now. She had been eight years old, and life then had seemed more like high adventure than grueling travel.
Or could Derek mean something else? Something like the war? A deep coldness settled heavily in her chest. To Amber’s way of thinking, most able-bodied men in Texas—in all the South—had blindly enlisted to fight for the Confederate cause. They’d rushed off to fight the damn Yankees, intending to teach those sorry boys in blue a lesson they’d never forget, and be home in a month.
Four years later they’d all been dead or whipped, she thought severely, and they’d left the South in a mess from which it would likely not recover in her lifetime. They had paid dearly for their foolish Rebel bravado and forced a heavy price from their mothers and sisters and wives and sweethearts. A price no one ever seemed to consider.
Surely Derek had played his own part in the debacle. She didn’t know a man who, at least in some small way, hadn’t. And yet how could she blame him, any more than a thousand other men?
“Well, around here I do things like make up the beds,” she announced briskly. “Just as I clean and do laundry. And you don’t have to eat your meals in the bunkhouse. I cooked for Richard, and I can do the same for you.”
Derek stared at her, his eyes narrowing to slivers of blue. “Are you a good cook?”
What choice do you have? Amber swallowed the question, reminding herself that sarcasm would do little to improve her chances of retaining her position at the Double F. Instead she shrugged. “I’m better than Six. I’ve eaten the rocks he calls biscuits and his son of a gun stew. Personally, I think it tastes like paste.”
“Son of a…gun stew?”
“Hasn’t he fixed it for you yet?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know what I mean.”
He nodded.
“Oh, don’t worry. I know what it’s really called. But Micah and Six have gone to such trouble to rename it so I wouldn’t hear them say ‘son of a bitch,’ even about stew, I pretend for their sakes.”
Derek angled his head, as though seeing her from a new perspective. “They’re protective of you.”
Her breathing faltered again. He made her feel as though he could see straight through her, all the way to that secret place where she kept her most treasured memories and dearest hopes. She turned from the intensity of his gaze, moving automatically as she fluffed a pillow into place.
“Yes, I suppose so,” she answered finally. “But Micah should know better. My father may not have approved of my saying it, but he never kept me from knowing the truth.”
“Micah must know your father, then. Does he live nearby?”
Derek sounded as though the answer meant little to him, but Amber knew better. It was another of his endless questions and, like the ones she hated most, it was personal.
She looked at him and said flatly, “My father is dead. Did you say you were going to Twigg today?”
He blinked, then slowly nodded, as though telling himself to accept her change of topic. “Gideon will be riding with me. Can we get anything for you?”
“No.” Her insides froze at the idea. “There is nothing in Twigg I could possibly want.”
“All right.” He hesitated, but finally shrugged and turned toward the door. “I’ll see you later.”
Amber stood motionless, waiting long, breathless minutes as his footsteps receded. When she heard the jingle of harness and the crunch of rock and shell under horses’ hooves, she hurried to the window, watching as they set out at a brisk pace.
Twigg. She had left the town behind her two years ago, along with everything it represented. Now she shuddered at the mere thought of going back, of seeing the derisive faces and hearing the cruel whispers. She wrapped her arms around her midsection, as though to ward off blows.
What would happen when Derek saw the faces and heard the whispers? When he discovered the stories people told with such gloating? It wouldn’t matter how much truth there was to them. He’d meet Frank Edwards, Eliza Bates—and how
