Page 5 of Something Has To Give

Why did Rydecker have to come back now, just when things were starting to get easier? Why couldn’t he have stayed away, or better yet, died in the war?

No sooner did that thought darken her soul than did she regret giving birth to it. What had he done wrong, really, apart fromcoming home to find her living here? Yes, he’d gotten angry and yes, he’d spanked her, humiliated her, was humiliating her still—but what would she have done if their shoes had been reversed?

Elsie hugged herself tighter, digging her fingernails into her soft palms, punishing herself until it hurt. It didn’t matter what she would have done. Their situations weren’t reversed. This was her place now. She’d found it. She’d built it up, fixed it up, started a business and was just now making enough money and food to perhaps avoid starving as winter drew ever closer. She didn’t have a car. She didn’t have any way to get to town. She was totally dependent upon the things her customers brought her for barter or purchase, but this was the place she had settled herself and she wasn’t leaving. Not now, not ever.

“How do you know my name?” the soldier on the couch asked, sounding more curious than upset now.

She wasn’t an idiot. “I can read. Captain Q. Rydecker. It’s stenciled all over your luggage.”

The big, army-green duffel was lying where it had fallen in the doorway just before she’d slammed his fingers in it.

Great. Now she was starting to feel guilty about that too.

Rydecker snorted again, and she tensed when she heard him get off the couch. He walked out the front door without a word, and for one indescribable minute, Elsie was caught in electrified indecision. She had the most intense urge to run for the door, and slam and lock it before he got back, but that urge slammed almost instantly up against the invisible wall that was her reluctance to find out how much worse Rydecker’s punishments could get. In the next few seconds, however, her chance to act dissipated when he came stalking back into the house carrying bags of groceries—oh no, he was moving in!—into the kitchen. On his way back through the living room, he paused to shut and lock the door, glared at her once, then retrieved his duffel and headed for the stairs.

“Where are you going?” she asked, suspicion yielding to the beginning rise of panic. He couldn’t go upstairs. Her bedroom was upstairs!

“To bed,” he said shortly. His footsteps heavy on the stairs, he cast her another dark look before the first floor ceiling blocked him from view. “I’ve had a long and aggravating day.”

“Wait! You—you can’t go up there!” With her underwear and pants tangled around her feet, she chased after him. She almost fell on the stairs, but got them yanked up over her hips and was zipping and buttoning herself back into her shield of clothing when she reached the second floor. “Wait! Wait right there!”

He headed straight for her bedroom, nudging open the door with his duffel before tossing it onto the floor in one corner.

“Hey!” she shouted.

He caught the edge of the door and would have swung it shut on her, except that she quickened her pace to catch it and barreled into the bedroom after him.

“Hey!” she shouted, even louder.

He sat down on the end of the bed, putting his back to her while he took off his boots and dropped each with a heavy thunk on the floor. “Do you mind? I’d like to go to bed now.”

“You can’t do that here! This is my room now!”

“The hell it is.” He stood up to take off his belt. She couldn’t quite stop herself from jumping when he whipped it from his belt loops. She hated the involuntary backwards step her trembling legs made her take before anger—he’d done that just to get this reaction out of her—helped to bolster her courage. He glared at her, obviously tempted, before dropping the belt on top of his boots. “This is my room and has been since my parents died. This is my bed, too. I bought it two weeks before I married my ex-wife.”

“Go somewhere else,” she said through gritted teeth, her chest heaving with the frustration and the sheer helplessness of this situation.

Still glaring, he pulled his t-shirt off over his dark head, revealing muscle after muscle, after ripped core-muscle. God, he was built like a brick wall. Her face flushed, burning hotter the more she tried not to look—or at the very least—to notlooklike she was looking at him. Dark hair, dark eyes, a tribal tattoo that wrapped the bicep of one arm in stark black half curves and sharp points. She had never met a man so…so chiseled that he could just as well have been cut from stone. But that’s what Rydecker looked like, standing in front of her in nothing but a worn pair of jeans and with nothing but a bed between them. She hadn’t meant to stare, but his hard mouth twisted into a knowing smirk, and Elsie knew she’d been caught doing just that: staring.

“Good night,” he said and dropped his shirt on top of his shoes.

“You can’t sleep here.” Her voice might be trembling, but Elsie wasn’t about to back down. She squared off against him. “You might have bought this bed, but it’s been mine for the last eight months! I’ve been the one washing the sheets. I beat the dust out of the pillow and mended the holes in the blankets.”

“Oh yeah?” His brown eyes turned steely; his muscles flexed, making that tribal tattoo dance. “I was born in this house.”

“Then you never should have left!”

“You never should have arrived,” he replied and began to unbutton his pants.

Her face flushed even hotter. Don’t look, she told herself, but her eyes developed a wayward life of their own. She looked. “Stop that,” she said, sounding strangely breathless.

His smirk broadened. “Stop what?”

He unzipped his jeans.

“Stop that!” She pointed, but quickly snatched her hand back when she realized how badly it was shaking.

He shucked his jeans all the way down his muscular legs and stepped out of them. Standing nonchalantly before her in nothing but a well-fitting pair of tightie-whities, he folded and dropped his pants on top of his boots without ever taking his dark eyes off her. “Good night, Elsie.”

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