Give My All to Jessie (Third in Outlaw Series)

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

"I've got to get out of this bed or else I'm gonna have a permanent sore on my ass," Jeremiah announced three days later.

"On your what?" Delilah asked over her shoulder from the kitchen. "I didn't hear you."

Jeremiah gave her a smile so sickly sweet it made his teeth ache before hurling his pillow across the room. "My backside, dear."

Delilah nodded and wiped her hand on her apron. "That's what I thought you said." She walked to him and put her hands on her ample hips. "Let's get you out of this bed then. Lord knows you need to start pulling your weight around here. I have fences that need mending, animals to feed and a few holes in the roof that need patched."

Jeremiah's eyes widened. "Well then I guess you better get to mending, feeding and patching then because that sounds a bit too much like work to me."

"Idle hands are the devil's playground, Jeremiah. You need to stay busy."

"I'll tell you what I need to do," Jeremiah countered. "I need to be getting out of this bed and walking again so I can get to town and hit the saloon. I ain't been this sober in a long damn time."

"Jeremiah, how many times must I ask you not to curse in my home?" Delilah demanded with exasperation as she bent beside the bed and allowed him to put his arm around her shoulders.

Jeremiah hissed in pain as he stood up for the first time in a good two weeks. "You never really asked me the first time, you just started hitting me. And you better be glad I'm wounded or else I would have knocked your teeth down your pretty throat."

"Pretty throat?" Delilah asked, raising her free hand to her neck.

A flush colored Jeremiah's cheeks. "I never said that."

"Yes you did," Delilah assured him. "And if I'm not mistaken, that makes two separate occasions when you've called me, or various parts of me rather, attractive. You're going to have to stop that or else I'm afraid you'll turn me vain."

"And you gotta stop treating me like I'm some damn friend of yours," Jeremiah warned. He began to limp slowly across the cabin, leaning heavily on Delilah. "I ain't nobody's friend."

"I don't think you're so bad," Delilah replied trustingly.

Jeremiah scowled. He hated the comfort he felt with her arm around him this way. He hated that he had begun to enjoy getting her torn up and angry over his cursing just so he could hear her accent get a little thicker. He hated that he had actually begun to enjoy hearing her read from that bible every night because her voice was so soothing. Jeremiah was desperate to say or do anything to put some distance between them.

"I've forced women, Delilah. I've taken them against their will. I've even killed a woman. What does that make you think?"

He looked down into her silver eyes and forced himself to be as cold as possible. Delilah tensed against him and Jeremiah saw fear flash across her face. Oddly enough it didn't give him the satisfaction he had thought it would. Instead it made him feel a bit empty and sick inside.

Then Delilah merely shrugged and offered a tiny smile. "That makes me think that the past is the past and you are simply trying to scare me away because you are afraid of a better future and you no longer want to see my pretty nose and throat."

Jeremiah found that he could do nothing other than stutter and stare at the woman. What the hell was he supposed to say in response to that?

Maybe he should simply choke her a bit or smack her around to prove he was dangerous.... That thought made his stomach sour. But he wanted her to see that he wasn't one of her charity cases. The woman had droned on and on in that lilting voice for hours about her fondness of helping those in need and Jeremiah had listened.