Her Dearest Enemy. Elizabeth Lane

dressed shocks your modesty, you’re welcome to wait in the hall,” he said, scuffing off his slippers to reveal long, pale, elegant feet.

      Harriet felt the hot color rise in her face. She took a step backward, then hesitated. Brandon would welcome any chance to get away without her. She could not afford to leave him alone to slip out the back window as his daughter had done.

      She shook her head, praying the darkness would hide her furious blush. “Just hurry,” she said. “I raised my brother alone. Seeing a man dress is nothing new to me.”

      It was only a half lie. She and Will had been decorously modest in their years together. Harriet had not seen her brother unclothed below the waist since his early childhood. And this gruff, looming man was definitely not her brother.

      “Suit yourself.” Turning away from her, he tossed the trousers on the bed and seized a set of long johns that lay over the back of a wooden chair. In a series of quick motions he thrust his feet into the legs and jerked them up beneath his nightshirt. Harriet felt her chilled flesh growing warm beneath her clothes. So far he had not given her so much as an indecent glimpse of his body. But the air of intimacy lay thick and heavy in the shadowed room, dizzying in its power. She fought the urge to avert her eyes, unmasking the falsehood she had told him, leaving herself exposed and vulnerable.

      “Hurry,” she whispered, and was startled by the husky timbre of her own voice.

      The trousers came up next, then hastily donned wool stockings and a pair of heavy brogans before he stripped off the flannel nightshirt. For the space of a breath he stood bare above the waist, his skin glinting gold in the lamplight, his body spare and rock hard, as subtly powerful as a puma’s. A crisp dusting of chestnut hair formed a dark inverted triangle between the mauve-brown beads of his nipples. Harriet battled the urge to let her eyes trace the shadowed line downward over his flat belly, to where it disappeared beneath the bunched long johns at his waist. Her mouth, she realized, had gone dry.

      He moved swiftly, yanking the top portion of the long underwear onto his arms and over his shoulders. With scarcely a pause, he bunched the discarded flannel nightshirt in his hand and flung it toward Harriet.

      “Pull it on over your clothes,” he said. “You’ll need an extra layer of warmth, and there’s not much in this house that will fit you.” When she hesitated he added, “It was clean when I put it on tonight. This is no time to be fussy.”

      Ignoring the jibe, Harriet slipped out of Brandon’s robe, found the hem of the nightshirt and pulled it over her head. The velvety flannel smelled of lye soap and clean male flesh. Lingering warmth from Brandon’s body surrounded her as she pulled it downward over her frame. He was right about there being little to fit her in this house. Jenny was a fairy creature, as dainty as the dolls that decorated her room. And the length of Brandon’s trousers would dwarf even Harriet’s Amazonian height. As for their German housekeeper, whom Harriet had seen at church, she was as solid as an onion, no higher than Harriet’s shoulder and almost as round as she was tall.

      Brandon had flung on a thick woolen shirt and was tucking it into the waist of his pants. He glanced up from fastening his belt, his eyes troubled.

      “I’ve thought on it,” he said, “and I’m not taking you with me after all. It’s a miserable night, and I’ll make better time on my own.”

      Harriet slipped the robe on over his nightshirt, jerking the sash tight around her slim waist. “If you catch up with them, you’ll need me there. Things could get out of hand—”

      “Out of hand?” His black eyebrows slithered upward. “Don’t be a silly goose! I’m a civilized man.”

      Turning away, he reached into the depths of the wardrobe and pulled out a cartridge belt with a long leather holster attached. Harriet felt the color drain from her face as he buckled the belt around his hips.

      “No.” The word emerged as a hoarse whisper.

      “No?” He shot her a contemptuous look as he opened a hidden drawer in the nightstand and pulled out a hefty Colt revolver.

      “You’re not going after my brother with a gun!” she insisted, taking a step toward him. “I won’t have it!”

      “You think I’m going to shoot him?” Brandon swore under his breath. “After what he’s done, your fool brother isn’t worth the price of a bullet. All I want is to get my daughter back, safe and sound, so we can salvage the mess he’s made of her life.”

      “And if Will has a gun, too?” Fear rose like cold black sludge in Harriet’s throat. Her brother didn’t own a firearm, but he had friends who did. It would be easy enough to borrow a weapon for the night.

      Even now, the awful scenario took shape in her mind—the confrontation, the threats, one man drawing on the other, then a gunshot shattering the snowy night…

      “No!” Harriet flung herself at him with a desperate fury she had not known she possessed. Her momentum struck his arm, knocking the pistol out of his hand and sending the weapon spinning across the floor. Her fists pummeled his chest in impotent rage, doing no more damage than the fluttering wings of a bird. “No! You can’t—I won’t let you—”

      “Stop it!” He seized her wrists, his brute strength holding her at bay. His stormy cobalt eyes drilled into hers. “Damn it, Harriet, this isn’t helping anything!”

      His use of her given name startled and sobered her. She glared back at him, her face inches from his own. “Don’t you see? This is a tragedy in the making. You with a gun, angry and upset—anything could happen out there. You’ve got to take me with you!”

      “And if I refuse?”

      “Then I’ll rip my clothes and go to the sheriff.” Harriet could scarcely believe her own wild words. “I’ll tell him that I came here looking for my brother, and you dragged me up to your room and tried to have your way with me!”

      “Oh, good Lord!” Brandon’s hands released her wrists and dropped to his sides. A muscle twitched at the corner of his grimly drawn mouth. “You’d be a fool to try it. Nobody in his right mind would believe you.”

      The implication of his words was all too obvious. Only a depraved man would make indecent advances to a priggish old-maid schoolteacher like herself, and Brandon Calhoun was one of the town’s most respected citizens. His arrogance stung Harriet like lye in a cut, but she masked the hurt with defiance.

      “Wouldn’t they?” She hurled the words, wanting to shock him, to hurt him. “Maybe the story wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but I have your nightshirt, and I can describe your bedroom down to the last detail. That should be enough to smear your precious reputation with mud.”

      Silence quivered between them like the hanging blade of a guillotine. Harriet’s audacious threat, she sensed, had hit its mark. Brandon’s livelihood depended on the trust and good will of the townspeople. Lose that and he might as well pack his bags and move away.

      “You wouldn’t dare!” he snapped.

      “Wouldn’t I?” Harriet’s eyes narrowed in what she hoped was a menacing look. “You don’t know me well enough to predict what I might do, Mr. Calhoun. Can you afford to take that chance?”

      He groaned, looking as if he wanted to strangle her with his bare hands. “This is blackmail, Miss Harriet Smith. You know that, don’t you?”

      “Absolutely.”

      With a muttered curse, he snatched up the pistol from the floor and jammed it into the holster. “Let’s get moving, then,” he growled. “Come on, we’re wasting time.”

      * * *

      Brandon peered over the backs of the horses, into the stinging blizzard. The hood on the elegant black landau was fully raised, but the windblown snow peppered his face like buckshot. He could barely see the ears of the two sturdy