Dara Rose spoke in a normal tone, but it was a struggle. “Shall we decorate the tree after all, then?” she asked.
But Edrina and Harriet shook their heads.
Slowly, carefully, they put all the exquisite ornaments Clay had purchased back into the box from the mercantile.
“We’ll wait,” Edrina said.
And that was that.
The girls went off to get ready for bed, without being told.
Dara Rose, not quite sure what she was feeling exactly, put on her cloak and went outside to make sure the chickens were safe in their coop, with their feed and water pans full.
When that was done, she tarried, looking up at the silvery stars popping out all over the black-velvet sky, hoping Clay would step through the backyard gate.
He didn’t, of course.
So Dara Rose went back into the house, to her children, to oversee the washing of faces and the brushing of teeth and the saying of prayers.
Edrina, hands clenched together and one eye slightly open, asked God to make sure Mr. McKettrick and Chester found their way back home, please, and soon.
Harriet said she hoped whatever little girl had Florence would take good care of her and not lose the doll’s shoes or break her head.
Dara Rose offered no comment on either prayer.
She simply kissed her precocious children good-night, tucked them in and left the room.
In the kitchen, she brewed tea, and sat savoring it at the table, with the kerosene lantern burning low on the narrow counter.
After Luke, and again after Parnell, Dara Rose had solemnly promised herself she would never wait up for another man as long as she lived.
And here she was, waiting for Clay McKettrick.
HAVING MADE HIS DECISION, Clay locked up the street door and banked the dwindling fire, and he collapsed onto the bed in the back room of the jailhouse, not expecting to sleep.
He must have been more tired than he thought, because he awakened with sunlight streaming into his face through the one grimy window, and Chester snoring away in the nearby cell.
Clay got up, made his way into the office, made a fire in the stove and put on a pot of coffee. He let Chester out the rear door and stood on what passed for a porch, studying the sky.
It was bluer than blue, that sky, and the day promised to be unseasonably warm.
Even with half his mind down the road, following Dara Rose around that little house of hers, there was room in Clay’s brain for all the things that needed to be done before the kit-house arrived.
He heated water on the stove top, once the coffee had come to a good boil, and washed up as best he could, but his shaving gear and his spare clothes were stashed behind the settee at Dara Rose’s.
In the near distance, church bells rang, and Clay realized it was Sunday.
The good folks of the town would be settling them selves in pews right about now, waiting for the sermon to start—and then waiting for it to end.
The ones who wouldn’t mind working on the Sabbath Day, on the other hand, were probably gathered down at the Bitter Gulch Saloon, defiant in their state of sin.
Since he needed a well dug, and a foundation, too, Clay figured he’d better get to the latter bunch before they got a real good start on the day’s drinking.
An hour later, Chester stuck to his heels the whole time, he’d hired seven men, roused a blinking and grimacing Philo Bickham to open the mercantile and sell him picks and shovels, a pair of trousers and a plain shirt, and rented two mules and a wagon from the livery to haul the workers and the tools out to the ranch.
For a pack of habitual drunks, those men got a lot of digging done.
Clay worked right alongside them, while Chester roamed the range, probably hunting for rabbits. He’d make a fine cattle-dog when there was a herd to tend.
At noon, Clay drove the team and wagon back to town, Chester along for the ride, bought food enough for an army at the hotel dining room and returned to the work site and his hungry crew.
He’d felt a pang passing the turn to Dara Rose’s place, having finally remembered that he’d promised Edrina and Harriet that they’d decorate the Christmas tree the night before, but he’d make that up to them later.
Somehow.
Just about supper time, Clay called a halt to the work, satisfied that the foundation was dug and they’d made good progress on the well. The crew climbed into the back of the wagon, as did Chester, and the marshal of Blue River, Texas, turned the mules townward.
He paid the men generously, turned the team and wagon in at the livery and took his time tending to Outlaw, lest the horse feel neglected after being left to stand idle in his stall all day.
Too tired to bother with supper, and too dirty to stand himself for much longer, Clay returned to the lonely jailhouse, lit a lantern, fed Chester some leftovers from the midday meal and commenced carrying and heating water to fill the round washtub he’d found hanging from a nail just outside the back door.
The new clothes he’d bought that morning were stiff with newness and smelled of starch.
Once there was enough hot water in the washtub to suit him, Clay stripped off his filthy clothes, climbed in and sat down, cross-legged like an Apache at a campfire, sighing as the strain eased out of his muscles. He was no stranger to hard physical work, coming from a family of ranchers, but it had been a while since he’d swung a pick or wielded a shovel.
He was sore.
As the water cooled, Clay scoured off a couple of layers of grime and sweat and planned what he’d say to Dara Rose, later tonight, when he intended to knock at her kitchen door and ask if he and Chester could bunk in her front room again. In the morning, they could talk things through.
Only it didn’t happen that way.
Clay was just coming to grips with the fact that he didn’t have a towel handy when the jailhouse door flew open and Dara Rose stormed in, wearing her cloak but no bonnet and, temper-wise, loaded for bear.
Seeing Clay sitting there in the washtub in the altogether, she stopped in her tracks and gasped.
“You’re just in time, Mrs. McKettrick,” he said. “It seems I’m in something of a predicament here.”
Dara Rose blinked and looked quickly away, keeping her head turned and not asking what the predicament might happen to be.
“My children,” she said, “refuse to decorate the Christmas tree unless you’re there.”
“If you’ll fetch me a towel, Mrs. McKettrick,” Clay drawled, enjoying her discomfort more than he’d enjoyed much of anything since yesterday’s kiss at her kitchen table, “I’ll make myself decent, and we’ll attend to that Christmas tree.”
Dara Rose kept her face averted. “Where…?”
“The towel? It’s hanging from a hook next to my shaving mirror, in the back room.”
“I meant to say,” Dara Rose sputtered, still not looking in his direction, “where have you been since last night?” She gave him a wide berth as she went in search of the towel.
“I’m glad you asked,” Clay said, smiling to himself as he waited for her to come back, so he could dry off and get dressed in his new duds. “It shows you care.”
She returned, flung the towel at him and turned her back. “Nonsense,” she said. “Edrina and Harriet were very disappointed when you left—that’s the only reason I’m here.”
Clay rose out of the tub, the towel around his middle, and sloshed his way into the spare room, where he hastily wiped himself dry and put on the other set of clothes.
Dara Rose had her eyes covered with both hands when he came back. “Are you dressed?” she asked pettishly.
“Yes, Mrs. McKettrick,” he said easily. “I am properly attired.”
She lowered her hands, looked at him with enough female fury to sear off some of his hide and repeated her original question, dead set on an answer.
“Where were you, Clay McKettrick?”
Chapter 10
Where were you, Clay McKettrick?
Clay crossed to Dara Rose, laid his hands gently on her shoulders and felt a tremor go through her slight but sumptuous body. “First,” he began, his voice low, “I’ll tell you where I wasn’t, Mrs. McKettrick. I wasn’t with a secret wife, and I wasn’t upstairs at the Bitter Gulch Saloon, enjoying the favors of a dance-hall girl. I’m not Luke, and I’m not Parnell. I’m Clay McKettrick, and it would behoove you to get that straight in your mind. As for where I was, I slept right here last night, and this morning I hired a crew and went out to the ranch to start digging a foundation and a well. The makings of our house will be here right after the first of the year, as I told Philo Bickham yesterday, in your presence and hearing. And as long as the weather cooperates, I plan to spend as much time as I can out there, making the necessary preparations, because the sooner we can move into a place of our own, the better.”
She looked up at him, confused and probably startled by the uncommon length of the speech he’d just given. He could see that she was still afraid to hope, afraid to trust, when it came to any personal dealings with a man. She bit down on her lower lip but didn’t speak.
Clay smiled, kissed the top of her head. She wasn’t wearing her bonnet, and her hair was coming loose from the knot at her nape, tendrils falling around her cheeks and across her forehead.
I love you, he thought. He was ready to say it right out loud, but he wasn’t sure Dara Rose was ready to hear it, so he put the declaration by for later.
“I think we’d better get over to the house and decorate the Christmas tree,” Clay drawled, enjoying the soft, pliant warmth of her, standing there in his arms, innately uncertain and, at the same time, one of the strongest women he’d ever encountered. “You see, Mrs. McKettrick, if we stay here much longer, I’m liable to seduce you, and I surely do not want our first time together to happen in a jailhouse.”
She pinkened in that delightful way that only made him ache to see the rest of her, bare of all that calico, and mischief danced in her upturned eyes. Every signal she was sending out, however subtle, said she was a woman who enjoyed the intimate attentions of a man, who wasn’t afraid or ashamed to uncover herself, body, mind and spirit, and then lose herself in the pleasures of making love.
Glory be.
“You seem to have a great deal of confidence in your powers of seduction, Mr. McKettrick,” she remarked, after twinkling up at him for a few spicy moments. “What makes you think you could persuade me to give in?”
He cupped her chin in his hand, bent to nibble briefly at her mouth. Another shiver went through her at his touch. “Trust me,” he said gruffly, after drawing back. “I am a persuasive man.”
She sighed. “Yes,” she admitted. “I believe you are.”
He steered her in the direction of the door, whistled for Chester, took his hat and coat from their pegs. “For instance,” he teased, as they stepped out onto the blustery sidewalk, the dog following, “I talked you into marrying me, when we’d only known each other for a few days. And I didn’t even ask you to work as my housekeeper for a year before I decided whether to keep you or throw you back.”
Dara Rose elbowed him, walked a little faster. “I agreed to your proposal,” she whispered, though there was no one on the street to overhear, “only because I was desperate to keep my family together, with a roof over our heads.”
“Speaking of your children,” Clay drawled, “did you leave them home alone to come over here to the jail and hector me?”
She stopped, right there on the sidewalk, with Clay between her and the empty street. “Of course not,” she said, as indignant as a little hen with her feathers ruffled. “Alvira Krenshaw is with them.”
“The schoolmarm?”
Dara Rose nodded pertly. “The woman you probably considered courting before you turned your charms on me,” she said.
Clay slipped an arm around Dara Rose’s small waist and got her moving again, in the direction of the house where he’d be spending another night on the front room floor, with his dog. “Miss Krenshaw,” he said, “was never in the running. And how did you manage to wrangle a woman who herds kids for a living into looking after those two little Apaches of yours?”
“Alvira dropped by with a book she wanted to lend to Edrina. A thick one, with lots of pictures, likely to keep that child busy until school takes up again, after New Year’s. Anyhow, I made tea.” Dara Rose continued to walk, but she’d turned thoughtful. “Alvira sat down to talk and, well, there’s something about tea, it seems, that causes a person to drop her guard, at least a little. The whole story—most of it, anyway—just poured out of me.”
Clay suppressed a chuckle, knowing it would not be well-received. Remind me to dose you up with tea first chance I get, he thought. But, “Go on,” was what he said, as they started across the street, his hand resting lightly at the small of her back now, barely touching, but still protective.
“I didn’t tell Alvira about Luke, or even how it really was between Parnell and me,” Dara Rose confided. “But I did say that you and I had had a disagreement and I couldn’t stop thinking about where you might be or what you might be doing.”
Even in the near darkness, Clay saw her blush. It had cost her, pride-wise, to make that admission, even to a good friend, and it was costing her still.
“I see,” he said.
They’d rounded the corner now, and Dara Rose’s house was just ahead, so she hastened to finish. “Alvira said I’d better come and find you, then, to settle my mind, while she looked after Edrina and Harriet.”
“Is it?” Clay asked.
“Is what?” Dara Rose retorted, sounding a mite testy.
“Is your mind settled, where I’m concerned?”
They stood in front of her gate by then, light spilling out of the windows into the darkened yard. The apple tree was a spare shadow, etched into the night.
“Where you are concerned, Mr. McKettrick,” Dara Rose finally replied, “nothing is settled. I don’t know what to think, what to believe—”
He kissed her then, deeply, the way he would have done if they’d had the whole world to themselves. Adam and Eve, in Texas instead of the Garden.
“Believe that,” he said, when he’d caught his breath. “And the rest will take care of itself.”
Dara Rose just stood there, looking dazed. Even in the poor light, he could see that her lips were swollen, still moist from his kiss.
Calmly, Clay opened the gate, held it for her and shut it after they’d gone through, Dara Rose and Chester and, finally, himself.
At the base of the porch steps, Dara Rose stopped and sort of bristled, about to make some delayed response to being kissed, Clay supposed, but she didn’t get the chance, because the front door sprang open and Edrina and Harriet burst out, barely able to contain their glee.
“Now can we decorate the Christmas tree?” Harriet demanded.
Miss Krenshaw stood, smiling, on the threshold behind them, already buttoning her practical woolen coat, ready to leave.
“Yes,” Dara Rose confirmed, fondly weary in her tone. “We can decorate the Christmas tree.” Her gaze shifted to Miss Krenshaw. “You’re not leaving, are you?”
“I have a few letters to write, back at the teacherage,” Miss Krenshaw replied, sparing a polite nod of greeting for Clay. And with that, she was past them, down the steps, striding along the walk toward the gate. There, she turned back. “Don’t forget about the party at the schoolhouse,” she called, most likely addressing Dara Rose.
“WHAT PARTY AT THE schoolhouse?” Clay asked, as Edrina and Harriet beset him with hugs, in their joy at his return. Without missing a beat, he scooped them up, one in each arm, and the sight struck a deep and resonant chord inside Dara Rose.
She led the way into the kitchen, where she’d stowed a plate of supper in the warming oven, in hopes that Clay would be around to eat it.
“After the blizzard,” Dara Rose explained, wadding up a dish towel to use as a pot holder and taking Clay’s meal from the heat, �
�Miss Krenshaw decided to call off the Christmas program at school. Now, with all this spring-like weather and Pastor Jacobs called away because of an illness in his family, so there won’t be a church service, she’s had second thoughts. There’s no time for the children to memorize recitations and the like, but we can still have some sort of informal gathering on Christmas Day, for the community—sing a few hymns and carols….”
She paused, glanced back at him, felt a thrill as he set the girls down, then removed and hung up his hat and coat. His movements were easy and deliberate, and he looked from her face to the plate in her hands and back again.
“You must be hungry, after a hard day’s work at the ranch,” she said, suddenly and desperately shy.
“I am indeed hungry, Mrs. McKettrick,” he said, in a throaty voice, letting his eyes move over her once before heading to the sink to wash his hands. Everything about him was so masculine—his stance, the movement of his powerful shoulders, the back of his head where his dark hair curled against the neck band of his collarless shirt. He turned, damp and handsome, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, water spiking his eyelashes. “I am indeed.”
“Eat fast!” Edrina urged Clay, as he sat down at the table. “We’ve been waiting forever to decorate the Christmas tree!”
“Forever,” Harriet testified.
“For that,” he said, “I do apologize.” Clay looked down at the simple but plentiful meal Dara Rose had prepared—boiled potatoes, the last of the preserved venison and green beans she had grown in her own garden the summer before and subsequently put up in jars for the winter. He favored her with a slight, appreciative smile, and then spoke again to the children, who were fairly electrified with energy. “Settle down now,” he said quietly. “We’ll get to that tree, I promise.”
They subsided, dragged themselves melodramatically out of the kitchen, portraying despondency, Chester tagging along, his ears perked up in anticipation of some new and wonderful game the three of them might play.
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