Longing for Julia, page 3
“No,” he answered. “I never married.”
She didn’t care, she told herself. She didn’t give a hoot.
“Hmm,” replied David. “Look at all those scars.” He stepped backward and pointed his camera at Ryan. “It would be very helpful to the story if you’d describe how it came to be that you lost part of your ear. Did it happen in a bloody siege? That would make the most marvelous—”
Ryan growled.
David persisted. “This photograph would look splendid put next to the one I took earlier with your dirty hair and long beard.”
“What photograph?” Ryan demanded.
“I took some pictures of the wagon trains. That’s where I first saw you—riding on the back of a wagon.”
“I don’t want any pictures printed. This interview is over.” Ryan strode to the door and opened it wide.
“But, sir,” David pleaded. “Miss O’Shea, tell him.”
Ryan turned his attention to her.
She felt a small artery pulsing at her collarbone. Her temples had somehow become drenched with moisture. “We would need more details to make this article exciting. Perhaps something adventurous from your travels.”
Ryan slid the towel from behind his neck and dropped it to his thigh. His guns, strapped to his hips, swayed. “I’m a private man. If you’d like me to answer any more questions, only one of you can stay. The less irritating one. The one without the camera.” He looked directly at her. “Miss O’Shea.”
Her pulse bounded.
David stammered in protest. “A single woman shouldn’t be left alone with a—a man in his hotel room.”
When Julia didn’t answer, David stepped backward through the door and into the hallway. “I really think, Julia, you should return with me.”
She couldn’t budge, reeling with thoughts of what she’d dare say to Ryan if they were trapped alone.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “To get a story, I’ve been caged in the jailhouse with worse criminals.”
She meant it as an insult, and Ryan flinched as though he’d taken it as such.
David’s further protests ceased when Ryan closed the door in his face.
Julia jumped at the loud click of the door. Ryan sauntered toward her. Overwhelmed by his size, she craned her neck to look up, and willed herself to remain steady.
Inhaling deeply, she filled her lungs with dusty air and the scent of him.
Surprising her, he reached out with a rough hand and untied the satin ribbon from beneath her chin. His fingers grazed her flesh and she shuddered at the warm contact. How dare he lay his hands on her.
Slowly, he slid the hat from her head, then tossed it to the mattress. Her braid shifted along her spine and the fresh breeze stirred her loosened hair. Her lace-trimmed blouse rose up and down with her breathing and caught his eye.
Once again, she felt exposed beneath his stare.
“Julia…” When he whispered her name in that same craving tone he had once used while kissing her temple and throat and breasts, she knew she should run.
CHAPTER 3
Breathless, Julia turned and reached for the closed door. “The rest of this interview won’t take long.” She rattled on, aware that her words were garbled. “I suspect only ten minutes or—or so, and I would prefer to keep this door—this door open.”
Ryan beat her to it. Their shoulders bumped, setting her body aflame. She faced him. Sunshine washed through the room and reflected in his eyes. The scars on his torso glistened.
Julia squared her shoulders and again, grabbed the metal door-knob, yanking hard. The pine door collided with his boot. He wouldn’t let it open more than a crack.
“Do you mind?” she huffed, keeping her eyes on the knob, where they wouldn’t get her into trouble. Her notebook pressed against her bosom. “It’s not entirely appropriate, as David said, that a woman remain alone with a man in his hotel room.”
“David’s an idiot.”
“He’s a smart man who writes wonderful prose.”
“Leave the door closed.”
The blood rushed to her head but she forced herself to take a calming breath. She was a writer, a competent businesswoman who usually had no trouble expressing herself. “I prefer some circulating air.”
Ryan took three steps back, into the room, thus unblocking the door. “All right, I’ll leave it up to you. You can open it if you like, but I’m going to say exactly what’s on my mind, and you may not want the whole world to hear.”
Ugh. She snapped the door closed.
“Say my name,” he murmured.
She whirled around to face him, her skirt brushing the tops of her high-heeled boots. “Pardon me?”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“I’ll do no such thing.”
“Then you’re not leaving this room. Even if it takes us a week. I’ll call for the Scottish maid to bring us food and change our sheets.”
Julia gasped. “How dare you.”
“Say it,” he commanded.
“Mr. Reid.”
“Not that one.”
“Inspector Reid.”
“Keep going.”
“Dr. Reid.”
“That’s not the right one, either.”
Julia swallowed, thinking how stupid it was to argue. She was prolonging the agony instead of ending it. “Ryan,” she finally said, staring down at her notepad.
“Look at me when you say it.”
Hesitantly, she lifted her head. “Ryan.”
The light caught his good cheek, newly shaved and paler than the dark planes that had been touched by the sun. His lips curled upward into a grin she half remembered. Then he exhaled one of the sighs she wished she could forget.
She was not the girl he’d left behind, nor did she want to be. He had accomplished a lot. He’d become a doctor. But she wasn’t here to do his bidding.
She glared at his smug expression. Because he’d left her all those years ago, she had learned to cope on her own. She was quite good at coping now. Maybe she should thank him.
“You’re an ass,” she said. “That’s the name I’d give you.”
He raised an eyebrow in mock response but seemed more amused than indignant. “How’ve you been, Julia?”
So he did remember her. She stepped back, dismayed by his gall. “You unreliable, untrustworthy, no-good—"
“You still have a colorful way with words.”
“Yes, but now I’m paid for them.” It was sorrow, this time, that caused a lump in her throat. “A man with any amount of honor wouldn’t have pretended he didn’t know me. You haven’t changed one bit.”
She wasn’t sure whether it was her words or the sincerity with which she’d said them that caused Ryan to pale.
He retreated to the window, poured himself another shot of bourbon and drank. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want me to acknowledge that I knew you, with Todd and your reporter listening. I wasn’t sure how much they already knew about us, or how to protect you from gossip.”
His reasoning surprised her.
“Don’t worry,” she scoffed. “I didn’t brag about knowing you to anyone.”
When he turned around again, the fire was back in his eyes.
“Still drinking? As a surgeon, yet?”
“I’m not expected in surgery at the moment.”
She disliked this conversation. He wasn’t being straightforward about his feelings, or about acknowledging her.
“Aren’t you going to tell me how you’ve been?” he asked.
“This interview is about you,” she reminded him, “not me.” She raised her notebook and walked to the window. A puff of wind blew the muslin curtains aside. Sounds from the street below echoed upward—the thump of horses, the calls of children. “Now please tell me, for the article, exactly where you went after you left Calgary ten years ago. What happened in the months before you joined the British Army?”
She heard him move closer, then felt his bare elbow brush against her sleeve. He positioned himself to look out at the boardwalk below. “Why do you want this interview?”
“Because if I don’t do this story, another paper will.”
“This is such a minor story. Would it be so bad if a rival paper ran it?”
“We’ve had nothing but bad news to write about for two months straight, and folks are getting tired of reading about the drought. We need something social, more cheerful, to sell papers.”
“You look far from cheerful, Julia.”
“I’m good with words. On paper, I can turn my resentment of you into joy.”
If he thought that statement was ludicrous, he didn’t respond. “Then we’ll compromise. A question for a question.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll answer one of your questions for each one of mine you answer.”
“I can’t agree to that. I’m the reporter.”
Ryan persisted. “How long ago did Brandon pass away?”
“Stop it.” She struggled for composure. “There’ll be a lot written about you in other papers, rumors about why you left. Maybe you’d like to explain your version so that we’ll know the truth. What is it you’d like folks in town to know?”
He stared at her. “I imagine that soft approach works well on most people.”
“It always works.”
He yanked the pencil from her fingers. “A question for a question. How long ago did he pass?”
She snatched the pencil back. “Five years.”
“Five years is a long time. I’m sorry.” Ryan hesitated. “What did he die from?”
She steeled herself. “No, you don’t. That’s two in a row. It’s my turn. I’ll ask again. Why did you leave town the way you did?”
He ignored her question. Again. “Brandon was in the prime of his life. It must have been traumatic, something accidental, something sudden.”
The curtain beside them lifted, in a swirl of hot wind, which ruffled the pages of her notebook and stirred the hairs on his muscled forearms. “We don’t have anything to discuss about our past. I’ve got nothing to say to you, do you understand?”
This time he snatched her notebook. “Then you’ll listen.”
She clicked her tongue in agitation. “When it comes to my private life, I don’t listen to liars.”
“An ass and a liar? That’s a powerful combination,” he said, his eyes lighting with laughter. “Is that how you’ll describe me in your article?”
She took her notebook from his fingers. “I have a mind to. I should expose you as you really are.”
His humor faded. Regret flitted across his features. “I suspect…I suspect most folks here know the hard truths about me already.”
The sadness in his voice tugged at a corner of her heart.
“Once upon a time,” he said softly, “you would have been impressed that I’d come back a Mountie.”
“Once upon a time…you never would have left.”
Ryan stiffened.
“I answered your question about Brandon. Now tell me why you left Calgary.”
“To seek my great fortune.”
“Oh, come now, that’s so feeble.”
“You don’t think anyone will believe it?”
“Most folks in town will remember that you killed a man. Am I supposed to overlook that in my article? None of the other papers will, I assure you.”
“Yes, you’re supposed to overlook it. Time for another one of my questions. What did Brandon die of?”
“Cancer of the stomach.”
Ryan winced.
Julia looked away, toying with her pencil, trying not to succumb to the hot sting of tears. At least it had gotten to the point where she could say it aloud without weeping.
She volleyed another question. “Did you miss Calgary while you were gone?”
“Yes,” he answered, then tossed out a question of his own. “When did you marry Brandon?”
Persistent talk of Brandon made her edgy. She wanted to let him rest in peace. What had happened between the three of them was over. She blurted the truth and didn’t care if it hurt Ryan. “Almost nine years ago.”
Ryan swayed. Then he struck back with his own cutting remark. “Didn’t wait long, did you?”
Her muscles tightened and she spoke before she thought. “Brandon loved me. There was no one else worth waiting for.”
She didn’t need to see Ryan’s face to know her words had shaken him. His fist grew taut on the sill. “I was different then. More boy than man.”
“If you suspect that time has stood still while you’ve been gone, you’re mistaken.”
“So I see.”
“My next question. Why did you come back?”
He paused for a long time. “Because someone gave me an old violin.”
She turned and looked past his shoulder to the marred violin case nestled in the bedsheets. Its buckles were weathered and scratched from years of use. “What does that mean? Who gave it to you?”
He shrugged.
When he didn’t explain further, she continued to pry. “I didn’t know you played.”
“I don’t. At least, not very well.”
She blinked. “Maybe you came back to make amends.”
“You think so?”
“To your family. To those who cherished you.” She swallowed and turned to glance out the window again, at the busy street below, so he couldn’t see her face.
“They didn’t all cherish me.”
“You have the poorest vision of any man I know.”
“What do you care about my family? I don’t recall you admiring anyone in it.”
“What do you expect? What did the police ever do for mine, except lock the prison cell when they had us in it?”
“What happened in Ireland in debtors’ prison never mattered to me,” Ryan said with a strained voice.
“It didn’t matter that my father was broke and had no way to pay his debts? That your father was our jailer? While you’ve been gone, the mighty Joseph Reid has never forgotten it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Never mind. I…” Hiking her skirts, she stepped toward the door. “For the sake of my business, I’d like to continue this interview, but we can do it tomorrow.” She needed time to recover.
The Reids had always turned up their noses at her and hers, even back in Dublin. Even on the ship crossing to Canada. There was one ship that sailed every September, filled with immigrants to Canada, and one year when Canada had widely advertised for homesteaders to settle their West, her family and Ryan’s had been on it.
“Do I have your word you won’t tell your story to a rival paper?”
“My word,” he agreed after a moment. “However much that’s worth to you.”
“Then tomorrow—”
“I’ll drop by your shop later today.”
She recoiled. No. She didn’t want him there. “My shop?”
Ryan parted the shabby curtains and nodded toward the building. “It looks prosperous. You’ve done well.”
Yes, she had, thanks to the fury he’d roused in her—a deep, rich burn that had spurred her to fight against the low standards people had set for her because of who she was and where she’d come from. It was the same fire that fueled her determination to make her newspaper the best in town, that made her refuse to fall into debt as her father had. She’d never feel that shame again.
Like most debtors in the days before the new Irish laws had come into effect—laws that banned the practice of jailing people who were unable to repay their debts—her father had had to shelter his family in the cold brick building of the debtors’ prison. No one else would take them in. He and Grandpa had owed money to the bank in trying to make their general store survive, so they’d all gone to jail. Her father, mother, herself and Grandpa. Julia would never forget the damp scent of spring coming through the bricks, the humiliation of attending a makeshift school in the prison yard with two other ragged children, or the clang of keys on Officer Joseph Reid’s belt as he patrolled the building.
“I’m busy later,” she said to Ryan now. “I’ve got papers to deliver. Accounts to call upon.”
“I’ll try anyway. If you’re there, you’re there.” Peering out the window, he frowned. “Is that your grandfather?”
Swiveling to look, Julia gasped when she saw Pete holding the door for Grandpa. Her folks had long since passed away—her father shortly after he’d served his jail term, her mother from being heartsick. These were the two men in Julia’s life now. An awkward seven-and-a-half-year-old boy who was a legacy of his proud father, Brandon, a mirror image with sandy brown hair and dimpled cheeks. And a scrappy old man who would beat the world to a pulp on her behalf. But they were not for Ryan’s eyes.
“Who’s that with him?” asked Ryan.
“Someone passing by on the boardwalk.”
“No, I mean the young fellow holding the door open.”
“I don’t see—” she swallowed firmly “—who you mean.”
“They’ve gone inside.”
Thank goodness. Maybe it was silly to try to shield her son from Ryan, but everything and everyone she’d ever loved in this life had sooner or later been hurt by a Reid. It was instinct to protect those she loved from those she distrusted.
Ryan let the curtain fall back into place. “As soon as I get a shirt pressed and make a short business detour, I’ll be joining you in your shop.”
The terror of his words caused her to trip toward the door. As well as protecting her son from Ryan’s eyes, she wanted Ryan to keep from discovering that her newspaper was close to bankruptcy, and that she was blatantly seeking a husband. She knew it was wrong to be conscious of outward appearances, but she wanted him to think she’d done so much better.
Ryan reached out to steady her.
With his hands on her shoulders, the air between them softened for a moment.
He took advantage of that moment, removing her notebook and pencil from her hands to lay them on the bed, then reaching out to touch her neck. She wavered at his strength. Gently, with his thumb, he lifted her chin so they were eye to eye. Then he moved his thumb down the center of her jaw, her throat, over her velvet choker to the base of her neck.
Her sense of touch deepened, her body heated, the rush of sounds from the open window doubled. He had always made her more aware of life around her. At one time, she had felt thrilled to face the future standing at his side. But there had been no future with Ryan.
