Slow Fever. Cait London

Michael just like that. “Any woman with half a brain would know better.”

      “Huh?” Karolina removed her glasses to clean them with the edge of her cotton sweatshirt. “You got oil on my glasses, but my neck feels a lot better. You ought to set up shop here in Freedom. You can post an ad on the library bulletin board.”

      Kylie wanted to pit herself against something—someone—and forget about Michael’s tenderness with the woman, the way he handled her gently into the house. “What was that you said about dancing down at the Silver Dollar Tavern?”

      “My brother, Dakota, and the Bachelor Club usually show up there after a good-old-boy game of touch football. It’s a good place to catch up on gossip, see if anything is happening that I might need to follow up.”

      “I haven’t danced for a hundred years. Or played touch football. Let’s go.”

      Karolina shook her head and studied Kylie’s red sweater, jeans and boots. “I don’t know if I’m up to that much excitement. You get those guys stirred up and no telling what will happen. You’re not a stick anymore, you know.”

      “Don’t you dare say a word about the weight I’ve put on, Karo.” Kylie grinned at her lifelong friend. Thoughts of Michael and his women weren’t ruining her recovery-from-divorce. She gave herself to the joy of running through the night with Karolina huffing behind her.

      Three

      Men may scorn a tender heart and a soothing hand but they need them just the same. I wish Kylie would stop stuffing socks in her underwear to give her curves. Her father used to say that he pitied Kylie’s true love, for the man would have to be steady as a rock and fast to move, to keep firm hold of her.

      —Anna Bennett’s Journal

      Four weeks later, at midnight in mid-October, Michael slowed his four-wheeler as he passed Anna’s darkened house. Kylie’s small economy truck wasn’t sitting in its usual place beneath the big tree near Anna’s driveway. Since Kylie had been back and Mary Ann had been staying with him, Kylie had been stirring up all the males in Freedom Valley. Michael didn’t like wondering about Kylie’s whereabouts or companions.

      He knew she had seen him with Mary Ann, buying groceries for the undernourished woman. Kylie’s blue eyes had focused immediately on Mary Ann’s slightly bulging tummy and her accusing glare had burned Michael. She’d stiffened, turned up her nose and had hurried down the grocery aisle away from him. He’d heard that she was fast and agile at touch football, and when she danced, she sizzled with so much sensuality that men stepped back to admire the flowing fit of her jeans and her sweater. With a sense of humor and a ready laugh and compassion, Kylie was on the dating block, and the unmarried men were circling her. Noah Douglas, John Lachlan, York Meadows and the rest were salivating, getting worked up to ask Kylie for a real date. They’d take their time, making certain they wouldn’t have to handle a woman on a divorcée’s crying jag, and then they’d move in.

      Michael didn’t like the tense lock of his body when he thought about another man holding Kylie as they danced. He didn’t trust his need to hold her close and safe against him. Just returned to Freedom Valley, Michael had helped transfer Mary Ann’s few possessions into Thomas White’s large home three hundred miles away. With a background in nursing, Mary Ann would assume duties in Thomas’s doctor’s offices, located in the house, and Thomas could easily look after her tenuous pregnancy.

      Tanner and Gwyneth had returned from their honeymoon. Just a field away from Anna’s, their remodeled home was also dark, but Tanner’s and Gwyneth’s trucks were parked side by side, just as they would lead their lives.

      Michael’s hands clenched on his steering wheel as a deer leaped across the country road in front of him. After a month of dealing with Mary Ann’s health and helping her forge a new life, Michael’s nights were sleepless and haunted by the vision of Kylie’s plastic wrapped, curved body. He could still taste her kiss—could still remember her scent, like violets, the rich earthy scent of meadows in sultry sunshine, and a disturbing, more sensual, feminine scent.

      Kylie was an irritant in the life he wanted to move smoothly, without ties. He couldn’t forget her and he wanted her, an unfamiliar emotion for a man who had trained himself to desire little else but money.

      His vehicle’s tires slid smoothly over the gleaming cobblestones of Freedom’s town square, the 1880s two-story buildings lining it. Long ago, drovers passed through this town, celebrating after delivering their Texas cattle to Montana ranchers. Whatever woman-hunting ideas they’d brewed with their liquor were soon doused by Freedom’s Women’s Council. Men behaved like proper suitors in Freedom and some remained as good husbands. Others, who might have shared Michael’s distaste for boundaries and rules and ties of the heart, were told to move on.

      Store windows gleamed in the streetlights as he passed. The worn-smooth cobblestone road that led to the church was one he would never travel in the customary way of a bridegroom, nor was he likely to take his love before the Women’s Council in an old-fashioned surrey. To court a woman of Freedom Valley by custom meant explaining why he wanted her in his life—as his bride and his wife—in front of a tough Women’s Council. Michael couldn’t see himself performing to their demands.

      Kylie’s small pickup was parked in front of the Silver Dollar Tavern. The thought that she’d be wrapped in another man’s arms hit Michael like a Mack truck. The dark sweep of anger nettled. He parked directly behind her and damned himself for wanting to see her. The slamming of his door marked an intense emotion that startled him. Michael stopped on the sidewalk, listened to the jukebox music throbbing from the Silver Dollar and sucked in the crisp, calming night air. He didn’t need excuses to go inside—he told himself he needed a break after a hard day. Stopping for a beer had nothing to do with his need to see Kylie. Inside the tavern, the slow music was loud and the floor was packed with dancers, bodies laminated together as they swayed.

      One quick scan of the room and Michael found Kylie massaging Brody Thor’s back as he sat leaning over the table, head resting on it, his arms dangling loosely at his sides. Dressed in a red sweatshirt and grass-stained jeans, Kylie was standing behind Brody, the owner and only employee of a concrete business. York Meadows, Koby Austin, his brothers—Adam and Laird—sat sprawled at a cluttered table. Their stares led to Fletcher Rowley, Gabriel Deerhorn, and Dylan Spotted Horse and Karolina’s table. From the noticeable grass and mud stains on their clothing, they’d been playing touch football again.

      Michael felt like touching something and it wasn’t a football; it was Kylie. He recognized the men’s contemplative, closed expressions, as they studied Kylie’s curved body, flowing with the kneading movements. A sensual symphony of curls, Kylie’s hair was propped upon her head. The drift of the tendrils along her delicate nape begged for a man’s hand to ease them aside for a kiss on the soft curve.

      After the first surprising wave of tenderness, desire slammed into Michael, stunning him, as he worked his path through the dancers. Lora Simmons pressed against him, running her hand over his chest. “Dance, handsome?”

      “No, thanks.” Michael moved away from Lora’s perfumed curves and low-cut, tight sweater. He moved toward Kylie’s grass-stained sweatshirt and jeans. He had the unshakable sense that the image of Kylie’s plastic wrapped body had ruined him for other women. He tensed as he heard Brody groan in relief, Kylie’s slender fingers digging into the areas along his spine. Brody’s groans were too close to another sound that Michael didn’t want men making under Kylie’s touch.

      She’d been honest in her need for sex that night at Anna’s. Michael inhaled slowly and considered Kylie’s expression, one of concentration on her task, her spiraling curls bobbing gently as she worked. She was healthy and strong and earthy. It wasn’t his business if Kylie wanted to make love—or was it?

      He stood beside Kylie as she worked on Brody, finding his scalp through his hair and massaging it. Michael looked slowly to the other men, one at a time, and knew that every one wanted to be the body beneath Kylie’s strong, knowledgeable fingers. He knew his friends well enough to know that they’d