She was rewarded when Tempest's ears swiveled in her direction. She liked to think that her voice had a calming effect on the horse.
But Michael, of course, would burst a blood vessel if he learned that she had defied his orders and sneaked Tempest out of the corral for some much-needed exercise.
Jesse Quaid, where are you?!
Sera hoped that Jesse hadn't changed his mind about working for Michael. She knew that Michael's bark was worse than his bite, but Jesse might have found an employer with a much friendlier disposition after the Jones brothers had boarded their respective trains to leave Stanford.
Sera didn't want to believe that Jesse was the kind of man who broke promises. She'd had enough of that heartache when she'd fallen in love with Kit McCoy. Never before had she dared to take a man into her confidence about her visions. Then Kit had come along, and she'd turned into a perfect idiot.
Considering her track record with her male kin, she should have known better than to blurt the truth about her "condition" to a beau. Especially a beau who'd liked to grab her breasts and buttocks. But she'd been so desperate to be accepted by the man, that she'd told him how she could see the past and the future. Kit had scoffed, of course. When he'd demanded that she prove her claim, she'd tugged off her gloves, closed her fist over his matchsafe, and recounted how his father had died, getting thrown from a rustled horse.
Well, that had scared the stuffing out of him.
She'd seen other things about Kit's life, too—disturbing things, like how he'd been lying about being the long-lost cousin of her friend, Collie MacAffee. And how Kit had been trying to find some stolen strongbox full of loot that Collie's Pa had supposedly hidden. But she hadn't confessed to Kit that her visions had revealed those things. By that time in their relationship, she'd stopped trusting him. No one had been happier than she when Kit had mysteriously disappeared from Blue Thunder's jail.
Recalling Kit's derisive skepticism now, Sera struggled with the old pain. Sometimes, she thought she would never be accepted by a man, much less loved by one. Her male kinfolk had certainly never been encouraging. Before his death two years ago, her papa, the town's preacher, used to worry that her Episodes were a sign of demon possession. And her physician brother, Michael, continued to observe her like a lab rat, fearing that she could go stark, raving mad at any moment!
The only male who had ever not been alarmed by her visions had died of consumption at the age of 12. Gabriel, her youngest brother, had found her Touching Curse fascinating.
She remembered the day that Gabriel had dragged her around the tool shed, trying to figure out why some objects triggered her visions and others didn't.
"I think it's bully, Sera, that you can see angels and ghosts and such," her seven-year-old brother had told her wistfully. "I wish I could. What happens when you touch my hand?"
"Nothing."
"How about this rock with the hole in it?"
"Nothing."
"How about this old fishing pole?"
She giggled. "Turtles," she whispered, seeing their blinking, liquid eyes and the red stripes on their necks.
"Turtles?" Gabriel wrinkled his nose. "You're supposed to see trout! Maybe even worms and water skeeters. But not turtles."
"I can't help it if I see turtles."
He considered her argument. "Well... I reckon that's true. What happens when you touch this ax handle?"
She recoiled, feeling the burning, red sores on the hands of the young man who'd flashed before her eyes.
"It hurts!"
"What hurts?"
"Michael's blisters!"
Gabriel caught his breath. "You feel Michael's blisters?"
She nodded tearfully.
Gabriel looked worried, then. "The pictures in your head make you hurt sometimes?"
She nodded again.
"We're going to fix that," Gabriel declared firmly, the set of his jaw reminiscent of their stubborn, eldest brother's. Tugging his shirttails from his overalls, Gabriel wrapped the gingham around her chubby, baby fingers. "Now try," he urged gently.
Sniffling, she blinked up into her brother's great blue eyes. They were shining as bright as a thousand candles.
She'd learned later, much later, that Gabriel's eyes were the gateway to a pristinely pure soul. But in that moment, at five-years-old, she hadn't understood such things. She'd known only that Gabriel would never hurt her. She'd put her faith utterly in that gingham shirt.
And on that day in the tool shed, with no adults to frighten or reprimand her, Sera had learned from Gabriel that a fabric barrier between her fingers and manmade objects could dispel her visions.
Sera drew a sobering breath at the memory. Flexing her fist, she gazed down at the dark, brown stitching that marched across the back of her tan riding gauntlets.
I miss you, Gabe.
A yellow butterfly alighted on the stitching.
Sera blinked back tears to see Gabriel's favorite insect fanning its wings on her glove. She considered it proof, once again, that Gabriel watched over her.
Mustering a watery smile at the thought, Sera continued to walk Tempest along the sun-dappled valley trails, watching the mammoth hemlocks and shrubby rhododendrons give way to silver maples and hickories as her filly clopped up Blue Thunder Mountain.
But this outing wasn't just a pleasure ride. Sera's destination was a secret. She had taken great pains to elude the child-sized spies of Betsy Frothingale, Mary Blackburn, and every other jelly-making snitch that might be seeking a fresh crop of fruit for the baking and canning competitions that the Ladies Aid Society was sponsoring for Founder's Day.
Not that Sera actually had a chance of winning a blue ribbon. Or any ribbon, for that matter.
Honestly. Why do I even bother?
Sera had never been schooled in the finer points of cooking, since she'd been raised by her male kin. Aunt Claudia had been no help. The 76-year-old, shotgun-toting, pipe-smoking curmudgeon swore that she was allergic to kitchens—and pointed proudly to the bullet holes in her kettles to prove it.
Sera's bone-weary, doctor-brother (and guinea pig) usually returned home only after her meals had cooled or spoiled—deliberately, she suspected, now that he had a wife who actually knew what she was doing in the kitchen. Heaven forbid that word should leak among the Ladies Aid Society that Seraphina Jones still needed cooking instruction from her sister-in-law at her advanced age!
"If cooking is the way to a man's heart," Sera confided to her horse, "then I am doomed to be a spinster! Not that a certain growly guardian, whom we both know and love, is making the whole husband-finding chore any easier!"
Michael had a talent for Thunder Scowls. Her over-protective, eldest brother could make a bachelor stammer simply by hiking one of his ebony eyebrows. If Sera was careless enough to indulge in a flirty smile or a wistful sigh whenever Michael was present, she was faced with a full-scale interrogation not unlike the Spanish Inquisition.
Then there was matter of Blue Thunder itself. Appalachia was the dregs of the universe as far as marriage prospects were concerned. Considering that Michael had earned a small fortune by patenting his wife's heart tonic, Sera didn't understand why Michael couldn't simply move her, Eden, and his medical practice to Louisville, where hale and hearty young men outnumbered wedding-bell chasers by a sporting two to one. In the bachelor-starved town of Blue Thunder, a belle who wanted to be married before she reached Methuselah's age might have to settle for a recycled man—like one of those grizzled, toothless fur trappers who'd squirreled away God-only-knew how many wives on different sides of the mountain!
Sera shuddered.
"And now you can understand," she confided to Tempest, "why it is so vitally important that nobody ever find out about those jelly jars that blew up in dry storage. We are hunting for blueberries today, not gooseberries. Blueberries, do you hear?"
Sighing, she tilted back her head to admire the dazzling beams of sunlight that poured through the cathedral of trees.
The tops of the forest's giants soared 140 feet above her: hickories, tulip poplars, and white oaks. Between them was a shrubby patch of understory, where one of the royal giants had been felled by lightning.
It was in that gap that she first spied smoke.
Her gut clenched.
After a moment, however, she realized that the spiraling gray plume wasn't billowing wider, as it surely would have been if a wildfire was devouring the trees.
A campfire?
She cocked her head, considering. The Red River was only about a mile away, although she couldn't see it, since its frothy, white-watered rush was shrouded by hemlock needles. She wondered if she'd found the ever-elusive Collie MacAffee.
The boy had disappeared like a shadow in the sun the minute Sheriff Truitt had wanted to question him about his fugitive "cousin," Kit McCoy—again. A wild manchild of 16 years, Collie cannily eluded sheriff's deputies, officers of the orphanage, and Preacher Prescott's "Sammertuns" (as Collie referred to Good Samaritans with such disgust). These authorities of civilization didn't want to arrest the boy; they wanted to scrub him down and teach him a trade. But Collie, of course, considered a schoolhouse worse than a jail.
Sera brightened at the prospect of reuniting with Collie. Unlike Preacher Henry Prescott, her most tedious and tireless beau, Collie didn't expect her to act like the Seraphim she was named after. Collie would help her gather blueberries, and he would vouch for her if Michael started asking questions about Tempest—as long as she baked Collie a reward, of course.
Buoyed by the thought, Sera turned Tempest's head toward a deer path that lead to the riverbank. She knew the area well. She and Gabriel used to raid blackberry bushes, fish for trout, and hide in friendly hickory trees whenever Michael would stomp through the underbrush, intent on flushing out his siblings and dragging them home for chores.
Unlike most females, Sera wasn't afraid to wander alone through the woods. She didn't fear spiders or snakes—Michael made sure all his womenfolk packed medical kits, complete with anti-venom, in their saddlebags—and she considered the caves near Ywahoo Falls her private retreat. In a house as small as Michael's, there weren't many places that a body could go if it wanted to be entirely alone.
The undergrowth thinned, giving way to a hungry horse's banquet: a short carpet of sedges and wildflowers that abruptly ended in a steep, boulder-strewn bank. Remnants of some ancient avalanche formed intriguing tunnels and limestone lean-tos, the perfect playscape for energetic youngsters to stage make-believe Indian battles and ambush imaginary lawmen. Sera smiled to remember Gabriel whooping like a maniac as he'd chased her with his pretend tomahawk under the lichen-speckled tors.
"Collie?" she called. "It's Sera Jones. Just Sera," she emphasized. "I came alone."
She wasn't surprised when the boy didn't answer. Collie didn't trust anybody. He'd probably circled back along her trail to assure himself that she hadn't led a posse of "Sammertuns" to his hideout.
She wrinkled her nose, recognizing the smell of boiling dandelion root, mixed with chicory. The herbs were a poor-man's substitute for the Arbuckle's coffee that fetched such a handsome price at Aunt Claudia's general store.
Next she noticed an expert pile of twigs and the campfire that was licking an open, iron pot.
"Your coffee's bubbling over," she called, tethering Tempest to a low-hanging branch and hurrying to tend the fire. Only then did she remember that she was wearing her new riding gauntlets—a birthday gift, hand-crafted by Eden—and she didn't want to sully them with charcoal smears. Casting about for something with which to grasp the pot, she spied an abandoned red bandanna on the ground.
"Collie?" she called again, sloshing coffee into the fire as she shifted the pot to the limestone. Steam hissed and spewed; she recoiled, waving away the worst of the cloud.
Only after the white billows had disappeared did she notice the saddled sorrel, standing as stiff as any veteran soldier beneath a limestone lean-to.
Beside this pony stood a half-naked, dripping-wet Jesse Quaid.
Sera leaped to her feet, gaping at the unabashed display of male virility. He stood close to his mare, his right arm thrown over her neck so that his hand disappeared from Sera's vision. His left hand reached across his rippling chest to stroke his pony's nose.
Sera licked her suddenly dry lips. That she'd surprised Jesse while he'd been skinnydipping was obvious. From his dark, finger-groomed hair to his lightly furred toes, he glistened with water trails. She had never seen an adult male's naked chest, and she found herself gawking, transfixed by the beauty of rock-belted ribs, pebble-hard nipples, and rosettes that were far darker than her own.
It occurred to her—dimly—that the only reason she wasn't seeing a great deal more of his coppery skin was because she'd rescued his coffee. And that task had distracted her from noticing him as he'd stabbed his legs into thigh-hugging dungarees. Otherwise, she would have known exactly where his abdomen's trail of ebony fur ended on its march beneath the buttons of his fly.
Her face burning, she dragged her eyes to less scandalous vistas. Despite his prominent cheekbones, Jesse wasn't classically handsome like Michael or Rafe. His jaw was too square; his nose was too broad. But what he lacked in symmetrical good looks, he more than made up for in animal magnetism. Lithe and lean, he reminded her of a caged cougar that she'd seen once in Louisville. His pine-green eyes had slitted in the sunshine; his petting motions possessed an unconscious, feral grace.
The predatory illusion dissolved the instant his lips curved in his shy smile.
"Disappointed?" he drawled, dragging out each syllable two times longer than any Kentucky native did.
Breathless, she shook her head—until she realized that she'd been thinking about his physique, not Collie's absence.
Hastily, she cleared her throat. "I... uh... should apologize. I think." She rubbed embarrassingly moist palms against her thighs.
"Not a'tall, Miss Sera. Kavi and I don't often run across ladies brave enough to rescue our lunch, do we, Kavi?" he crooned, pressing his cheek to the mare's.
Those feral, feline eyes fastened on her gauntlets as she rubbed them up and down her thighs. A tiny thrill fluttered in Sera's belly.
She hurriedly clasped her fingers at her waist.
"I... uh... was looking for Collie."
"So I heard," he drawled in that rumbly, Texas baritone that made her ears sigh and her skin flush.
"Collie's my friend. Well, not really my friend. More of a neighbor. Sort of."
She wanted to kick herself. She was babbling like a mooncalf. Strangers were practically extinct in Blue Thunder, and she realized suddenly that she didn't have the vaguest idea how to talk to Jesse now that the rules of propriety had been flung to the wind.
"You're two days early—not that I'm complaining," she added hastily. "It just seems like I've been waiting for you all my life! Er... I mean, Tempest has been waiting for you. To train her. She's afraid of squirrels."
Amusement flickered over Jesse's lean face, which was at least three shades tanner than his mouth-watering chest.
Babbling, Sera scolded herself.
"Did you get lost, Jesse?"
"Why would you think that?"
"Well... no one ever rides this way on purpose. The lumber mill is 12 miles north of town, so the railroad never built a depot at Blue Thunder. That's the main reason we don't get many visitors.
"Of course, we don't have a library, museum, or dance hall, either," she lamented. "There's really not much reason for anyone except lost folks to visit Blue Thunder."
"I wouldn't say that." He flashed a pair of dimples that made her heart turn over.
Sera was hard-pressed to hide her pleasure at his compliment. Henry didn't know how to flirt. In fact, Henry was too busy correcting her understanding of the New Testament to offer her many compliments.
Little did Henry realize that she prided herself on thinking differently than her fire-and-brimstone-preaching father. How could
she not? If she were to believe everything the Bible said, her beloved Rafe was going to hell for being conceived during her mother's adulterous affair. And Sera absolutely refused to accept that notion.
Clearing her throat once more, she searched for some topic of conversation. She knew she was being sinful. She knew her reputation would be ruined if anyone found out that she hadn't immediately fled from a half-naked man in the woods—even if Jesse Quaid was her brother's hired hand. If Michael ever learned about her chance meeting with Jesse, he would hammer wooden planks across her window and chain her to her bedpost—right after dismissing Jesse, of course.
But Sera didn't want to end her adventure so soon. Surprising her family's half-naked hired hand in the woods was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her since Kit McCoy had stolen his first kiss. Besides, she had made a pact with Gabriel. If something dangerous should ever come across her path (like a man with evil on his mind), Gabriel's ghost was supposed to pinch her arm and make the goose bumps rise.
Sera furtively checked her forearm, just to make certain. 'See? No goose bumps,' she told the imaginary mob of finger-waggers in her head. 'I'm safe out here, alone with Jesse.'
"Michael said you were sick," she told him. "That's why you didn't travel with us on the train. Are you feeling better now?"
"Yes, ma'am. I hope you didn't worry about me."
"Well, of course I worried! You're our hired hand, which makes you practically like family!"
He fidgeted. "That's a real nice thing to say."
She beamed at him. "I knew from the beginning that you and I would be friends. I figured any friend of Tempest is a friend of mine."
He chuckled, averting his gaze. She interpreted his discomfort as shyness, and she thought it was endearing.
"Michael would pitch a fit if he found out I risked 'life and limb to ride that horse,'" she mimicked her brother, deepening her voice. "But the corral was so small, and Tempest kept trying to jump the fence! She so desperately loves to run. Michael made me lock her up in a stall so she wouldn't hurt herself." Sera's eyes pleaded with Jesse to understand. "I didn't think it was fair to keep her in prison, when she hadn't done anything wrong."
Seduced by an Angel (Velvet Lies, Book 3) Page 4