Just as despair nearly swamped her again, the strains of the same music she and Dylan had waltzed to floated from the balcony overhead. It was the same group of men from last week’s Spring Social. Dylan’s doing, she was sure.
She saw him then, stepping in front of Father Santiago up by the altar. He held his hand out. But, standing there with no support, she couldn’t seem to take that first step. Clutching her flowers, her connection to her parents, she took one step toward Dylan and their uncertain future.
Maybe he realized how hard it was for her to be alone right then because he walked up the aisle toward her.
They met halfway.
* * *
It was late afternoon when she and Dylan rolled to a stop at the top of the hill overlooking the heart of Adara. The
Wheatons had hosted a late-morning breakfast at their house for everyone who’d attended the ceremony. Mr. Reiman over at the hotel had even sent over a fancy cake as a gift. They’d put what was left of it and their other gifts in the back of the fancy rig Josh and Abby insisted they use. Because Scout and cake were a bad combination, she’d left him behind for a day or two with the Wheatons. Dylan would get Scout when he returned the rig.
“Close your eyes, Mrs. Varga,” Dylan purred into her ear, making her shiver. Making her want.
Then apprehension spread through her. It was time to return to reality. Rhia closed her eyes with a silent sigh. This was near where she’d waited while Dylan investigated the silence that had shrouded Adara. She didn’t really want to look at the house anyway. She knew destruction lay below.
As he started the rig downhill, Rhia found herself dreading the first sight of her mother’s house. Though her memory of that night was foggy, she’d seen the debris in the shadows. Her father had been so proud of the sweet little house he’d built for his beloved wife.
Trying to brace for destruction, she imagined the windows boarded-up, maybe the door fixed but scarred. Dylan was only one man after all. That he’d tried was all that mattered.
“Hoah!” Dylan called and the horse stopped. The seat shifted, telling her he’d scrambled down. Then he took her hand from below. “Keep ’em closed and stand up so I can get you down.”
She stood, wobbling a bit. “Dylan Varga, I feel like I’m six years old again and you’re torturing me with blindman’s bluff.”
He took her by her waist and, laughing, lifted her down as if she were still that tiny girl. “Oh, querida, you are no longer a mere girl.” His voice, so close and deep, made her open her eyelids in the next instant. Then as his lips moved toward hers, she let her suddenly heavy eyelids drift closed. This kiss, unlike that first chaste one he’d given her in church, had her stomach flipping and her toes curling. Like the other kiss, this one ended too quickly. Dylan jumped back so suddenly it left her teetering. “Open your eyes!” he said abruptly.
Startled, reeling with confusion, bereft of him, she opened them and stared at him. She didn’t understand him at all. Especially not his strained grin when he gestured toward the house.
She looked then, and blinked in shock. It didn’t look like her mother’s house. Not anymore. But it gleamed.
“I hope you like it. All the paint is Patience and Alex’s wedding gift.”
The previously dull, whitewashed clapboards were painted the color of buttermilk. All the trim, the shutters, and front door—the new front door—were bright white.
“I know it looks different,” he said, “but—”
“It’s beautiful,” she interrupted sure by his tone he was worried. “How on earth did you do all this?”
“I had some help. Josh and Alex pitched in a couple of days. Then Abby’s brother Brendan Kane came out and it turns out a Texas Ranger can be an able carpenter. A few cowboys from the Rocking R spent some hours here, too. Everyone felt awful about the raid and the gossips in town.”
He paused then, as if nervous. It was the first time she’d considered him unsure of anything. Then he said, “Oh, and I hired Juan away from my father. Juan was sick of being screamed at and belittled, so we have a shepherd who’s also good with horses. He cleaned up the Hernandezes’ cabin and moved in. He took care of the livestock and the dogs leaving me free to work on your house. Our house now.”
“Still, this was a lot of work. I could have helped. It wasn’t necessary for you to work so hard on your own.”
He grimaced. “Yeah. It was. There was a lot of damage, Rhia, and I didn’t want those memories to linger. We have to look forward. It doesn’t matter what put us here. We need to do our best with the lot we’ve been dealt.”
She hated that she was the lot he’d been dealt while she’d gotten her fondest wish. Some men would have been in a vindictive frame of mind, put her to work on the mess and brooded. But, though Dylan hadn’t wanted this marriage, he wanted to make the best of it. She still felt guilty that Dylan had given up his job, his freedom and further infuriated his father. All for a life he’d never have chosen freely.
Dylan led her to the front porch where he’d even added some of the pretty fretwork Abby had on her house. “Ready?” he asked, turning back to her after opening the door.
She nodded bracing herself for all the damage he hadn’t had time to fix inside. She took a deep fortifying breath then it came out in a long squeal when he swept her off her feet. “What are you doing?”
He laughed and she felt the sound rumble through his chest. His golden-honey eyes danced with mischievous delight when he smiled down at her. “Have to do this. Mama made me promise not to let evil spirits pester you.”
“I never knew your mother was so superstitious. First that ‘old, new, borrowed and blue’ rhyme. Now this. That coin they made me put in my shoe has given me a blister. You’d better not drop me, Dylan Varga.”
He laughed as they cleared the doorway, then he bent to set her on her feet in the front room. She looked around. The board and batten interior walls were freshly painted in the same buttery color as the outside. The seat cushions
of the sofa had new cotton duck covers. The curtains had been replaced with the same color gingham and there were matching seat cushions on two new rockers positioned across from the sofa.
“Where did the chairs come from?”
“Brendan Kane made them. They’re a wedding gift.”
She blinked against tears stinging the back of her eyes. “I hardly know him. Everyone’s been so kind. Well, not everyone, but this goes a long way toward making up for what those townsfolk said, doesn’t it?”
“To my way of thinking, it does,” Dylan said. “Brendan promised to help me build new tables for the parlor when this raiding calms down.”
The little front room looked wonderful but over the smell of fresh paint she noticed the faint odor of kerosene. “I guess the lamps broke,” she said and looked down. The rag rug her mother had made just before she’d died was missing.
“I soaped up and rinsed the rug but it’s still airing out on the corral fence.”
She bit her lip, nodded and looked toward the kitchen. It, too, was clean as a whistle but there used to be six chairs and now there were only two. She walked to the kitchen and braced her hands on the backrest of one of the ladder-back chairs. The shelves were mostly empty of dishes and bowls. But in the center of the table sat her mother’s sunny-yellow teapot with a little bouquet of daisies and bluebonnets in it. The teapot had been lovingly glued back together. She sighed and ran her fingertip across a flower petal.
Dylan had tried so hard. She forced a smile. “Thank you,” she whispered but her voice broke.
He was there in a heartbeat, his arm around her shoulder. “I glued it and put a tin can inside so at least it could be a vase. The flowers…it was the strangest thing. Yesterday there wasn’t a bloom to be picked and this morning the whole meadow was wild with color.”
“I
guess Adara wanted me to have a pretty wedding bouquet and flowers at the church. Thank you for listening to her.”
“Her?”
“Mum teased Daddy that Adara was her rival for his affection. But it was just a tease. After she was gone, I used to hear him cry in his room at night. At least now they’re together.”
“I put a bunch of their things that were torn up and broken in the barn. I thought you should get to decide what to keep and what to say goodbye to. There are enough unbroken pieces for me to put two more chairs together.”
Rhia nodded, looked up at him and smiled. “I’ll look over all of it soon but it’s okay. You’re right, it’s time to build new memories—a new life.”
He blinked and let go of her, stepping back in the same moment. “Uh…right.” His eyes widened. “Oh, the bedrooms. I forgot them.” He raked a hand though his thick black hair. “I took the smaller one. I’ll put your things in the bigger room. That reminds me, I should unhitch the wagon and check with Juan. And bring everything in, too.” Then in a blink he was gone.
He’d all but run from her at the mere mention of the bedrooms. She’d told herself she could handle his subtle rejection. They were still only friends. Not even partners. Maybe she shouldn’t have told him she would make all the business decisions. Maybe she should have shared some of the burden of the place.
Maybe when she trusted his methods with the sheep more and when he trusted her heart more, they’d be more to each other. Then they’d share burdens and their love. She had to be patient.
But with his indifference standing right there where he had a moment before, the loneliness she’d been battling for such a long time seemed to swallow her whole.
She’d been stuck miles away from town, working day and night, hardly seeing anyone except the silent Hernandezes and occasionally Farrah. Now, when she finally had someone to share her life with, he’d jumped away like she was a rattler about to strike.
Drained after so many ups and then one last, huge, downhill slide into despair, she stumbled into the place that had always brought her solace. Her parents’ room. She’d hoped that through some miracle it had gone untouched. But the bed was all that remained. Not even her mother’s quilt had survived. She’d watched her mother piece it together back in Philadelphia while they’d waited to travel to Texas.
Tears came in a torrent then and she threw herself across the bed. She wept for all that was gone. For the years alone. For all the lonely, loveless years that seemed to lie ahead.
Oh, God, what have I done?
A hand pressed on her back and rubbed. “Shh,” she heard over the sound of her own anguish. “Rowdy, stop. They were just things. We’ll get new ones as soon as we can afford to.”
She rolled over, going from anguish to anger in half a heartbeat. “Things? You think I’d cry over things?” She screamed out her pain. “It’s not their things but what they represented. My parents. People who loved me. Now even those are gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
She couldn’t stop. She had to tell someone, tell him what was buried in her heart. What she’d never let herself admit even to herself. “Do you have any idea how alone I’ve been? Angus growled at me or ignored me. Raul just took orders. Consuela said it would be too hard to move on if we became friends. I’d come in from the field and she would tell me what she’d made for dinner and had done in the house, then she’d rush off to their cottage. This last week was the first meal I ate with anyone except Scout in two years. We’re going to have to teach him to eat off the floor again because I took to putting his bowl on the table. At least that way there was a pair of eyes looking at me.”
Rhia sat up. Dylan’s eyes, his lips were mere inches away. “It’s like the center of me is empty. I feel so…so hollow.”
“Oh, Rowdy,” he whispered and cupped her cheek, then spanned those terribly lonely inches in a blink and covered her lips with his. His firm, roving mouth on hers started to fill some of those empty places inside her.
But not all. “Fill me,” she whispered against his lips when she felt him start to pull away. “Fill me up so I know I’m not alone anymore.”
Chapter Ten
Dylan did the only thing he could think of in response to her pain. He kissed her. Gently. As innocently as his raging need for her would allow.
But those tortured words in her hoarse, anguished voice echoed in his head, threatening his tentative control. He lifted his head and stared into her tear-filled eyes. Those tears shimmered, reflecting luminescent blue in the sunlight that flooded the room.
Then she said, “Fill me. Fill me up so I know I’m not alone anymore.”
And all his good intentions about taking it slow and waiting for the physical part of their marriage flew right out that brand-new window next to the bed. He reached for her. Tunneling his fingers into her fancy wedding hairdo, he dropped his head again, unable to resist taking her sweet lips now that those words had fallen from them. He should say something but didn’t trust himself to utter even a word. He hoped she understood what it was she’d asked for. A man couldn’t resist starting the rest of his life in the face of this much temptation.
And so he took her mouth with his, more forcefully this time, parting her lips, swirling his tongue past them, reveling in her sweet taste. He dragged one hand out of her hair, fingers of the other still tangled in her curls. He caressed her cheek and neck with his knuckles using a featherlight touch. His hand shook as he fought for control. Or was that her quaking?
Dylan hadn’t any idea. Lost in the feel and taste of her, he no longer knew where she ended and he began. He slid his fingers gently, lightly, over her neck and lower, over the soft slippery silk of her dress. It was wondrous yet torturous because he knew her skin would feel so much better. Then he cupped her breast and knew it was his hand shaking.
Her gasp when he fondled the lush globe nearly drove him mad with desire. He rolled her nipple between his index finger and his thumb, earning a sensual moan and himself a gnawing ache he had to wait to assuage.
She moaned again, fisting her hands in his hair, and threw her head back. “Fill me,” she begged again, breaking his heart with her need for a connection to another person. He’d never realized before today how alone she’d been. He was grateful she’d turned to him for the warmth and affection she needed.
Grateful he would be the one to teach her about passion.
His control on the thinnest of tethers now, he pulled back and looked into her eyes. The blue had darkened to the color of the paintbrush that bloomed all over Adara’s meadows.
“No,” she sobbed, “you can’t stop. I need more. I need you. I need to belong to you. I need you to belong to me.”
He groaned against her neck. And just like that, everything he’d sworn to keep in check bubbled up, spilled out.
Set him on fire.
For his little wildflower.
“I need you, too, Rowdy girl,” he gasped. “But we have to get you out of that pretty contraption you’re wearing.” Before he turned savage and tore her beautiful gown, he urged her off the bed to stand between his thighs. He started working at the satin buttons running down her back but his hands shook enough to make him fumble. He cursed roundly, earning him a muffled giggle.
He took a deep breath, trying to settle down before he sent tiny buttons flying everywhere. What kind of cruel person had designed this means of torturing bridegrooms? Ought to be staked to an anthill, that was for sure.
Finally, after a few tries, the first button gave up the battle and fell open. Then another. He got the knack after that. But he was on fire, his erection was so hard it was practically screaming for freedom. By the time he’d bared her to her waist, undid the hook of her crinoline and untied the damn tiny drawstring of her pantaloons, his whole body thrummed. His need was so strong it scared him. Thank G
od his tiny new wife didn’t have one of those corset contraptions on.
Maybe he should run for the hills but now that he’d gone this far there’d be no stopping. Running for the hills sure didn’t make any sense to the rest of him. He couldn’t remember why he’d said they should wait. Stupid idea. He needed her more than he needed to listen to reasons that no longer mattered.
Not with her shivering. Quaking. Calling his name.
And not with her whole beautiful back from neck to her cute round bottom bared. Not with her right there for his taking. Unable to resist the call of all that creamy skin, he nibbled his way from her nape all the way across the sharp planes of her shoulders and listened with pure satisfaction to the sweet music of her gasps and moans.
Nope. He wasn’t going anywhere but right there with her.
Needing to see her, all of her, he stood and ran his hands down her arm taking all that silk and lace along for the ride. In seconds the dress, crinolines and drawers were in a pool at her feet and all she wore was her shoes and stockings. She turned in the circle of his arms, and he looked his fill of her curvaceous, compact body. The best things—the very best things—really did come in small packages.
A blush stole everywhere his eyes roved. She tried to look him in the eyes but looked down then sucked a shocked little breath. He guessed she’d caught sight of his erection, straining for freedom. Then the little torturer of his youth—not about to play a passive part—reached out and ran her knuckles over him.
He cursed.
She giggled.
Then biting her lip, her expression a little uncertain, her breath coming out in little pants, she went to work on the buttons of his trousers. He stood there rooted to the floor, panting like a stallion scenting a mare. But when he sprang free into her hand, he spit out another curse, scooped her up and lowered her to the mattress in the space it took for his next breath.
He’d planned to take off her shoes and undress himself but then he caught sight of her hot gaze on him and followed her down instead. Kissing those swollen lips couldn’t wait. Neither could trailing his mouth down to her pert nipples.
Weddings Under a Western Sky: The Hand-Me-Down BrideThe Bride Wore BritchesSomething Borrowed, Something True Page 14