"Remember when we planted this tree, Zoe?"
"Yes I do, Mama."
Thea touched the rough bark and remembered the faraway day like it was yesterday.
"I remember Daddy sticking this tree in the same spot where we'd buried the acorn, too."
Thea's gaze flew to Zoe's wide blue eyes. "Zoe! You knew?"
Zoe laughed, a sound that always brought a responding smile to Thea's lips. "I knew."
Around the corner of the house, Ben and Alex came flying.
"Boys! You're supposed to be cleaned up when your daddy comes home from the train station with Lucas," Thea scolded.
"Ah, Ma, we'll just get dirty again." Ben, at fourteen, was an uncontrollable ball of mischief. With hair and eyes as black as his father's, his good-natured, relentless teasing was difficult to find fault with.
Alex, two years Ben's junior, but already as tall, had been dubbed "Little Jim" because of his striking resemblance to his grandfather. "If we clean up can we eat?" Alex asked.
Their cousin, David, shot around the house and slammed into Ben's back. The three of them tumbled to the ground and convulsed with laughter.
"David, your mother will skin me alive if you ruin another pair of pants at my house," Thea called to her nephew. David, the spitting image of Denzel with his fair hair and green eyes, jumped up and brushed off his dusty knees.
A springboard approached the house.
"Go in and clean up," Thea said, with a wave at the boys. "I think this is Claudia, now."
Claudia and her husband, Selby Hill, pulled up near the barn. Selby unhitched the team, and Claudia herded her two children toward the house.
Maggie threw herself against Thea's skirts. Thea knelt and hugged the five-year-old.
"Got new kittens, Nana?"
"There's a litter under the porch, Maggie."
The child squealed and darted away.
Nine-year-old Jesse approached the table. "When do we eat?"
"When Grandpa gets here with Lucas," Claudia told him and hugged Thea.
Zoe touched Thea's arm. "I hear them! I hear the buggy!"
Thea ran out from beneath the oak tree's shade, smoothing the skirt of her bright green dress, and waited expectantly, the sun warming her hair and back. Booker's team drew the black buggy into the dooryard.
Booker, his black hat shading his eyes, climbed down, and Thea's heart tripped at the sight of him as it always did. Behind him, Lucas stepped down from the back seat and turned to assist a young woman.
Thea let her gaze roam over Lucas. Tall and solidly built, wide-shouldered and lean-hipped, he'd grown to manhood under her loving gaze. He turned and wrapped her in a warm hug. Her heart, filled to bursting, couldn't believe it had been an entire year since she'd last seen him. He kissed her cheek and pulled away.
"I have someone I want you to meet."
Thea focused on the young woman. "Claire, this is my mother," he said, pride lacing his man's voice.
"Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Hayes." Thea took in the young woman's wide blue eyes and the blond ringlets escaping her bonnet, and liked her immediately.
"Thea," she corrected her. "Where are you from?"
"Indiana, originally. My family moved east. I went to school, and now I've been teaching at the same academy where Lucas instructs his art classes."
"I was born in Indiana, too," Thea told her.
"Claire speaks four languages, Mama," Lucas bragged.
"Goodness!" Thea turned a warm smile on the young woman.
Lucas's eyes lit up and his attention was drawn away. "Zoe! Claudia!"
Zoe slipped into his embrace for a long, tearful hug. She pulled back and let Claudia step into his embrace. The two stepped apart and took Zoe's hands. The three of them formed a circle and stood that way for a long moment in the warm sun. They reminded one another of another time, another life. And remembering gave them a deeper appreciation for today.
The screen door banged and the air was filled with the commotion of youth as Ben, Alex and David tromped down the wooden stairs and ran toward the gathering.
"Now you get to meet my brothers and cousin," Lucas said around a half grin. He pulled away from his adopted sisters and took Claire's hand. "Hold on to your bonnet."
Thea slid her arm around Booker's waist and peered up into obsidian eyes shaded by his hat brim. He removed the hat and plopped it on her head. "You're going to freckle," he warned in a low tone for her ears only.
"Oh, my." She placed a hand over her heart. "We can't have that."
Their family moved toward the food spread on the tables beneath the oak tree.
Booker hugged her, and she glanced up beneath his hat brim to admire the sprinkling of silver enhancing the ebony hair at his temples. Arm in arm they studied the family they had raised in this frontier land. A love so enormous her heart couldn't hold it all, pushed tears into Thea's eyes. They spilled over and Booker caught one on his finger.
"I wonder what their children will look like," she said aloud, studying Lucas with his head bent near Claire.
Booker chuckled, a rumble that started in his chest and carried across the Nebraska prairie. Thea drank in his laughter, the sunlight and the dappled shade of the oak tree. Her deepest longings, her most impossible fantasies, her every wish and yearning, had been fulfilled in an astonishing manner—in a manner that even her wildest dreams couldn't have predicted.
"Got any apple pie, Mama?" Lucas called.
"All the apple pie you can hold, Lucas," she called back.
The End
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SAINT OR SINNER
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Saint or Sinner
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He'd finished the front and side of the fence, and was working his way across the back to the point where he'd started that morning. Addie surprised him by walking across the yard toward him with a glass of lemonade. He'd hung the clean shirt on a nail near the back porch and put the dirty one on again. Her gaze flicked across his chest and down to his hip, where the gun rode once again.
"Thank you."
"For the fence?"
"For taking off your gun, for leaving your shirt on today."
"You prefer me with my shirt on?"
She flustered. "I don't prefer you one way or the other, Mr. McBride. I simply appreciate your adhering to propriety."
"Is that what I did? Hmm... You're welcome."
"You'll stay for supper tonight, since you don't have to go back for Yancey."
"Was that an invitation or an order?"
She held his gaze. "An invitation you can't refuse."
If he didn't know better, he'd think that was humor he'd heard in her tone. "All right."
He drank the lemonade and handed her the glass. Their fingers brushed unintentionally. Quickly she turned and hurried back to the house.
Having finished the posts, he started on the horizontal boards between them, working until daylight waned. Finally he packed his tools, washed, and knocked on the back door.
Addie ushered him in, and busied herself making him a plate.
"What about Yancey?" he asked when he saw the table set for the two of them.
"He ate earlier, when we realized you weren't stopping."
"You didn't have to keep everything hot for me."
"It was no trouble." She sat across from him.
No trouble? He couldn't remember anyone going out of their way for him before, and her thoughtfulness touched him. "Where is he now?" he asked.
"We read while it was light enough outside, and—"
"Yancey can't read."
"I read to him."
Joshua wished he could have heard t
hat. He pictured her sitting on the swing, Yancey beside her. "That was nice of you. He loves books."
"So I discovered. I found a tin of beads, and he's stringing them now." She sat across the table from him.
Joshua dug into the plate of ham, potatoes and green beans. It was nice of her to wait and join him, but he thought it wise not to mention that. He had the distinct impression she didn't want to be nice to him.
Maybe she was just lonely. Once again he wondered why she lived out here alone. She was young, but attractive enough to have married by now. His thoughts skipped over the single men of Van Caster, Ruben and Ricky Dean among them. There wasn't a big choice, was there? But there were activities that united the entire county. Surely she'd have met someone.
Maybe she'd been burned. He took the second helping she offered. Maybe someone—someone like he used to be—had taken advantage of her and hurt her. That would give her cause to dislike, even mistrust, him.
She cut him a wedge of apple pie and filled his cup with steaming black coffee. She did know how to soften a man up—not that he needed any softening. And he, the hell-raisin'est son ever born in Van Caster, hadn't the first idea of how to soften her up. He couldn't draw from his past experiences with women. Sure, he knew the things they liked to hear. He knew the way to seduce a female into compliance. But that wasn't his intention.
He wanted her respect. Along with the rest of the town's. And that placed him at a definite disadvantage.
Heart pounding, Addie cleared away the dishes. "Let's take our coffee on the porch," she suggested. McBride followed her through the tiny parlor, where Yancey had fallen asleep on her worn settee. She'd seen how tired he'd grown while she read to him, and she'd suggested he lie down if he got too sleepy.
Addie sat on the swing and left room for McBride, but he politely sat on the wicker chair. Drat! How did one initiate a kiss? She'd been kissed before, several times by disgusting men who hoped to take advantage of a young girl, but only once by someone she hadn't hit or run from. That kiss had been from a boy her own age, in some town she couldn't even recall now.
She had liked it, had liked him. But her father had pulled one of his schemes and immediately moved them to a new town. And she'd never even had a chance to tell the young man goodbye.
Addie had learned etiquette from books. She'd learned about the nature of men from life. But she'd never learned about relationships. Not that she wanted a relationship with this ruffian. She just wished she knew a little more about men and women... together, so she'd know what to do.
Obviously she couldn't just get up and go kiss him. Could she? No, of course not. She'd have to work around to it. Tempt him. "Do you read, Mr. McBride?"
He sipped his coffee. "A soldier gave me his Bible before he died. I read that quite a bit."
The thought of him reading the Bible fascinated her. "Did you learn anything?"
He seemed to think for a long moment. "I think I learned to be satisfied."
"With yourself?"
"With what I have."
"What about with yourself?"
"Well, I—I learned I wasn't satisfied with who I was."
"So why did you come back here?"
It took a minute for him to reply. "I had a lot of wrongs to right."
"And you think fixing boardwalks and building churches makes up for your past?"
He tipped his head in uncertainty. In the light from the doorway, a frown crossed his features. She was forgetting herself and being too abrasive. She had to set aside her resentment and make him think she liked him.
Remembering his peace offering, she asked, "Why did you think to bring flower seeds back with you?"
He shrugged. "I discovered those flowers one day, and they seemed so out of place, with all the killing and burning and ugliness going on. I thought they should be growing somewhere peaceful. Somewhere far from all that. Silly, probably."
"No," she said. "Not at all." She understood. She was like those flowers herself. She'd run from all the ugliness in her past, and planted herself here in this quiet place. "Do you like lilacs?" She stood and moved to the corner of the porch. "Come smell them."
He placed his cup on the floor and stepped beside her.
She ran a finger over a broad, pointed leaf and pulled a branch toward her face. She inhaled and closed her eyes to enjoy the heady fragrance. When she opened her eyes, he was watching her in the darkness. She offered him the blooming branch.
He bent toward her to place his nose against the tiny, delicate clusters. She remained where she stood, and his face came within inches of hers. "We had lilacs when I was a boy," he said.
"Sometimes smells give you a memory," she said. "Do you have any of those?"
"Not pleasant ones."
She'd said the wrong thing again. "I'm sorry."
"Do you?" he asked.
Addie tried hard to remember. "Toasted bread makes me remember a woman who was kind to me when I was sick once."
He straightened but didn't move back. "Burnt bacon reminds me of my sister," he said with a half smile. "She was a terrible cook when we were kids, but she kept trying. One rainy night down south, that smell drifted to me in my sleeping bag, and I thought of Chessy cooking for me when she was only about nine or ten, and... and... I missed her."
His voice had grown thick.
Addie smiled. "Did her cooking get any better?"
"Much, thank goodness." His dark gaze moved to the blossoms in her hand and back. "What does the smell of lilacs remind you of?"
She inhaled. "Just here. Home."
He leaned forward again. "Well, I'll never be able to smell them again without thinking of you."
That was the suave line she'd expected. He didn't mean it. Addie's heart knocked against her breast like a woodpecker on a clear morning. He had to hear it! Her survival instincts screamed at her to back away. Something else—she told herself it was her logical mind that had planned for this—kept her rooted to the spot, her every nerve aiding alert, anticipating what would happen next.
Did she really move forward, or was that just the feeling of vertigo she'd developed at his nearness? His head lowered. Hesitantly, she raised her face and met his lips with her own.
Her blood surged through her veins and pounded in her ears, at her throat, in her fingertips. The amazing feel of his soft lips overwhelmed her. She couldn't think, couldn't rationalize the situation. The details of how they'd arrived at this heart-stopping moment escaped her, and she registered only the warmth and tenderness with which he met her.
She must have taken a step forward, must have released the lilac branch, must have lost all self-respect and reason, because the first thing she knew, she had placed her hands on his shoulders and stepped into his embrace.
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Saint or Sinner
by
Cheryl St.John
~
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Heaven Can Wait
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That night Jakob came to bed in the darkness. "I haven't courted you properly," he said in that deep, mellow voice for her ears alone.
"Nein?"
"No."
"How does one court 'properly'?"
"Well—" he paused, as if considering "—a couple does a lot of hand holding and moonin'—"
"What is moonin'?"
"Staring into each other's eyes and sighin'."
That brought a giggle.
"And then they move on to kissin' and huggin'—"
"That we've done."
"Are you going to let me fini
sh a sentence?"
Lydia giggled again.
"Are you being coy?"
"I think not."
He laughed. "I think not, either—too. Which is it?" On top of the down tick, he found her hand, and threaded their fingers together. "By the time they get married, the couple knows each other. As well as they can without actually... being married. They get a chance to share likes and dreams."
"Jakob?"
"Hmm?"
"Did you not share dreams with me tonight?"
They lay side by side, hands clasped, talking into the darkness. "I guess I did. What about you? What've you dreamed about?"
Lydia took a relaxing breath. A Harmonist was not encouraged to dream. Thoughts other than the educational or vocational were unnecessary. Her father did the thinking and planning for the colony.
"Come on, didn't you ever want a handsome prince on his trusty steed to carry you off?" he teased. "Or did you imagine finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?"
"That is ludicrous. A rainbow has no beginning or end. It is not physical, but a reflection."
Silence.
"Jakob?"
"You've got me there."
"Where?" His laughter was a deep baritone rumble that brought a smile to her lips. "What is so funny?"
"You." His hand tightened on hers, and the mattress dipped dangerously, rolling her toward him. He wrapped her shoulder in his arm and pulled her against his softly matted chest.
Land of Dreams Page 28