by Linda Hilton
*
Though Morgan’s parlor was small, it easily accommodated the few guests. Simon and Ada McCrory, Ted Phillips and Winnie Upshaw, and best man Thaddeus Burton. Judge Booth had already taken his place in front of the whitewashed beehive fireplace when Katharine and Willy knocked at the front door. Julie, waiting at the top of the stairs, nodded her consent to Burton or he probably would not have admitted the latecomers.
The ceremony was brief, lasting something under ten minutes, yet even that seemed a small eternity to Morgan. He didn’t feel the nagging throb in his arm, only the exquisite pain of impatience. As he slipped the simple gold band on Julie’s finger, he couldn’t hold in the sigh of monumental relief.
Winnie had brought a cake, and Ted Phillips contributed a bottle of champagne with which to toast the newlyweds. Willy whined because Katharine wouldn’t allow him even a taste of the bubbly wine, but her stern rebuke, the first she had ever given him, shocked him into sullen silence. Tipsy more from an over-abundance of emotion than from a single glass of champagne, Julie couldn’t stifle a little giggle at her brother’s discomfiture and had to promise Del a complete explanation later. Perhaps much later.
He could not take his eyes from her, and though he had dutifully followed her instructions to put his arm back in a sling after the ceremony, his other hand kept straying to touch her: her cheek, her hand where the ring from McCrory’s store shone brightly, her hair that had served as a bridal veil, all shimmery and silky down her back. She wore no satin and white lace, just the blue blouse and black skirt she had made with her own hands. Yet she was so beautiful. And she was his.
It was Thaddeus Burton who finally shooed the guests home. He complained that if his leg, injured a month ago, still hurt, then Morgan’s arm must be that much worse and he ought to get his rest. It was a good excuse, though far from accurate. The McCrorys left first, followed almost immediately by Ted Phillips. Winnie stayed just long enough to clean the dishes and then she, too, departed.
“I’d like to talk to Julie alone for a few minutes,” Katharine told Thaddeus when he gave her a look that hinted she was overstaying her welcome. “I won’t be long.”
Again Julie had to assure him it was all right, and then she led her mother into the empty dining room. Willy, still pouting, remained in the parlor to drown his pique with another piece of cake.
“Oh, Julie, you look so lovely!” Katharine breathed happily. “And so happy. It’s all going to work out the way it should, I just know it now. And to start it out right, I have something to return to you.”
She held out her hand closed in a loose fist and dropped its contents onto Julie’s upturned palm. She didn’t have to see to know that it was a certain gold double eagle.
“Wilhelm had it hidden, along with some other money, in a box he kept in the privy, of all places,” Katharine explained. “When I asked him just how he was planning to finance a journey to Mexico, he finally confessed he had been saving all along. He said it was for Clara, but I told him that Clara had already got more than her share and I was taking charge of the rest.”
“And he let you?”
Katharine laughed.
“For once he’s right. He really doesn’t have any other choice this time. He either does what I tell him to or I will tell everyone the whole truth about him.”
“But wouldn’t that ruin your reputation as well?”
“Mine? Oh, no, dear, because I would be the ‘wronged woman’, married under false pretenses, and so on. I’ve thought it all out very carefully, and frankly, I think I’m too clever for him.” She curled both hands around Julie’s and leaned forward to kiss her daughter’s cheek. “Do come and visit me now and then, dear. I would like a chance to really make up for the past nine years, if it’s at all possible.”
“Oh, Mama, I don’t know what to say. Yes, I’ll visit, though you know I’ll be busy helping Del with his practice, just like before.”
“Of course. But maybe a cup of tea on Tuesday morning?”
Julie smiled and wrapped her arms around her mother.
“I promise.”
Katharine sighed deeply and said, “I was so afraid you wouldn’t. I was so afraid that after all this you would hate me as you hate Wilhelm, and with good reason.”
“No, I don’t hate you, and I don’t think I even hate him. I won’t dismiss his actions by saying that the end justifies the means, but I can admit that I wouldn’t have Del if it hadn’t been for all the trouble Papa caused. I won’t thank him for it, but I won’t hate him, either.”
Katharine embraced her daughter once more, then collected her son and left. Willy began a tantrum on the porch and received a sound whack on his unsuspecting bottom.
*
“Would you really have left Plato the other night?” Del asked, carefully shrugging out of his coat. Julie took it from him and hung it in the wardrobe.
“Does it matter now?”
The green eyes with their broad streaks of black and fine dusting of gold shimmered in the lamplight as she turned to him. Julie remembered them as the first thing she had noticed about the man that afternoon last June. They would be with her always.
“Hell, yes,” he whispered. “It matters.”
She walked to him and pushed his hand away from the buttons he was struggling to undo one-handed.
“If you had sent me home, if you hadn’t B if we hadn’t done what we did, then yes, I would have left. I could not have stayed here knowing you didn’t want me.”
Her fingers brushed his skin, sending little shocks along each nerve.
“Even though Hans had threatened to kill me if I touched you?”
A shudder went through her and she lay one hand flat on his chest, on the hard, untouched muscle beneath the curling dark hair. He quivered slightly at her touch and covered the hand with his, then gently pushed it down toward his waist, then lower still.
“I didn’t mean to risk your life,” she whispered as tears came to her eyes. “I wasn’t even thinking about that. All I knew was that I loved you and I had to know if you loved me, too.”
“Oh, Julie, don’t cry. Do you think I didn’t know all that? I never once forgot his damned threat.”
She looked up at him, her hand still resting on the throbbing warmth, and he smiled.
“You didn’t? And you went ahead anyway? But why?”
“You mean it isn’t obvious? Because I loved you, Firefly. More than anything.”
He could use both hands to unbutton her blouse and he did. Even through the soft blue fabric his touch aroused her and made her breath rasp in her throat.
“I had known love, Julie,” he explained. “I had parents who loved me and never hesitated to show it. My sister took in laundry to put me through school and almost lost her fiancé because of it. And Amy followed me joyfully from the comfort of a wealthy home in Cincinnati to this dusty furnace and never once complained, all because she loved me.” He couldn’t wipe away the tears that squeezed from his own eyes at the memory. “You had never known love like that, and I think it frightened you. I know it scared me to death.”
“You?”
“Hell, yes, me. Especially when it hit me the first time.”
“With Amy?”
“No, I mean the first time I realized I loved you.”
“Don’t go giving me any love at first sight nonsense.”
He laughed, then finished unbuttoning her blouse and pulled it free from her waistband.
“The first time I saw you, on the porch in front of McCrory’s, you were a scrawny, dusty stick in clothes too big for you, with spectacles sliding off the end of your nose. All that hair was tied up on top of your head and you almost looked bald. And I was a pickled mackerel, too drunk to see straight anyway.” He paused only long enough to help her pull her arms from the sleeves of the blouse and then she took it to hang it in the wardrobe, too.
“But a few weeks later, when you’d got me sobered up a little and I was coming back to lif
e, I woke up one night from a dream about you, and I was in a state I hadn’t been able to achieve in years. I had thought I was beyond that forever, emasculated by my grief, yes, and my guilt in Amy’s death. But it had all made me think it was for the best, that you were safe from me, and I from you, even though I had already started feeling things for you I knew I shouldn’t.”
She took his shirt from him and tossed it negligently onto the chair. Then her hands went to his belt, drawing a groan from him that closed her eyes for a moment.
“Oh, God, Julie, don’t do that.” But when she tried to pull her hand away, he clasped it to him once more. “No, don’t stop, either.”
Long, deep breaths of enjoyment settled him so he could continue, but his voice was more ragged, his words slower.
“And then one night I went to Leif’s for supper and Lorraine waited on my table.”
“Lorraine? The redhead?”
She made a descriptive gesture with one hand in front of her own chest.
“Yeah, the one with the big tits.” He laughed at her blush. “I stared at her, Julie, and I tried to conjure up the same reaction, but I couldn’t. And there was another time when I wanted you so badly I couldn’t stand it and I even thought of going over to Nellie’s, but I knew that wouldn’t work either. I didn’t just want a woman; I wanted you.”
There were no more words for a while. Julie fumbled with the trouser buttons while Del untied the strings of her camisole, but then they reached an impasse. He had to sit down on the bed to let her pull off his boots, and then he stepped out of the trousers. When he tried to draw the almost sheer undergarment over Julie’s head, a sharp pain shot through his arm, too sharp and too sudden to ignore.
“Damn it,” he swore. “A man should undress his wife properly on their wedding night.”
“There will be other nights,” Julie comforted as she pulled back the sheets and silently ordered him to lie down. He crooked his good arm behind his head and watched her.
If he couldn’t undress her, he could at least enjoy watching her do it herself.
Perched on the edge of the bed beside him, Julie pulled the camisole up and over her head. With her arms raised, her breasts lifted and the tight nipples caught the lamplight in sharp relief. Del reached to touch one, but she evaded him and stood to remove the rest of her clothes. The black skirt fell to the floor, and she did not pick it up. Soon the muslin petticoat and underdrawers, too, lay where they fell.
“Is there a graceful way to take off shoes and stockings?” she asked uncertainly.
“I don’t care if you pull them off with your teeth.”
He watched every movement, not just of her fingers with the shoelaces, but the play of muscles in her shoulders revealed between strands of hair that would not stay where she tossed them down her back. And the way her head twisted on the smooth column of her neck so that the lamplight cast changing shadows on her face. He felt his desire grow just watching her bend her knee and stretch her ankle to remove a black cotton stocking.
She stood, her feet still warm and the floor cool.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Julie didn’t answer. She walked to the lamp by the door and blew it out, leaving only the one by the bed lit. Then, knowing Del’s gaze followed her naked body with loving adoration, she returned to the bedside and snuffed the other flame.
It would be a minute or two before his eyes fully adjusted to the dark, but he didn’t need to see to know that she walked to the dresser where she picked up a brush and began to pull it through the long strands of her hair.
“Come here,” he whispered. “I need you.”
“Oh, Del, what about your arm?”
“Damn my arm. Tonight is our wedding night, even if it isn’t much of a honeymoon.”
“But how can you—”
“I can’t. So you’ll have to make love to me.”
He couldn’t quite reach her until she turned to face him and then, by stretching his good right arm as far as it would go, he caught her hand and dragged her closer. She stumbled and almost fell onto the bed, her hands landing on his chest. Laughter and desire rumbled from him, and he pushed one of those hands down under the sheet. When her fingers found him, he couldn’t control the surge of need that arched his back and made him clasp her whole body to his.
He could see now, though only through the bridal veil of spun-platinum that cascaded over both of them.
“Ah, Firefly, light of my nights,” he sighed, combing his fingers through the shimmering strands. “Make love to me, Julie. Now.”
He threw back the sheet, revealing the strength of his ardor, and wordlessly he guided his bride atop his hungry body. Then that instinct which he had earlier aroused in her took over. She found him, covered him, took him inside her with a long sigh of delicious pleasure.
Author’s afterword
Thank you for reading Firefly, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. This was truly a “book of my heart,” a story that came to me whole, in a single bright moment of inspiration, and almost wrote itself.
For those readers who aren’t familiar with Arizona, allow me to explain a little bit about the setting.
Author’s Afterword
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about Del and Julie. Firefly was a fun book to write, especially because it was the first story I wrote set in my adopted state of Arizona. Yes, for those who are wondering, that is the Mammoth Saloon at Goldfield Ghost Town on the cover. Goldfield is about six miles from where I live in Apache Junction.
When I wrote Firefly in the 1980s there was no Internet to do quick and easy research and so I got a few details a little bit wrong, not because I was lazy or didn’t care but because I simply didn’t have access to the research resources. Most of those errors have been corrected in this new edition.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one