It was a little like when she’d served him the frogs’ legs. He could appreciate a good prank, couldn’t he?
She combed his hair back from his face with her fingers, and her touch sent the same jolt through him that he’d felt when he’d kissed her the night before.
He needed to distract himself from that. Dwelling on that connection could only bring trouble.
“You’re not going to scalp me as punishment for kissing you last night, are you?” he blurted.
Then winced. Way to bring their kiss back to the forefront by throwing it out there in conversation.
“No.” She smiled again, a little ornery this time. Both a niggle of worry and a tingle of attraction shivered through him. Or maybe it was the cold bead of water that slid down the back of his collar.
She reached and pulled a bar of soap from the towel. She worked up a lather and then slid her fingers into his hair, massaging the lather into his scalp.
It felt amazing.
He normally didn’t give so much attention to his hair during his twice-weekly baths, and even if he did, he doubted his own hands could make his head feel this good. Why was she doing this to him?
“You done this before?” he asked grumpily. He closed his eyes so at least he couldn’t see her.
“No. Well, a few times bathing Emma when she was a tot.”
He grunted.
“You haven’t told me much about yourself,” she said as she moved closer and reached around to scrub the back of his scalp.
He squinted one eye at her. At that moment, a few soapsuds slid down over his brow and he squeezed his eye shut, but not before it stung with the soap.
“What do you mean?”
“Well...I know you came to be with your family after being on an orphan train. But how did you come to meet Jonas?”
Her massaging fingers must’ve scraped away some of his inhibitions, because he found himself telling her, “Bear Creek was the last stop. And there I was, standing on the platform at the front of the schoolhouse with no one to take me in. By that time, Jonas had taken in Oscar and Seb, and then Matty after the homestead had been settled. Someone said my pa might take on another orphan and they fetched him to town.”
He didn’t like remembering the pain—kind of the same sting as that soap that had gotten into his eye—of standing there alone.
Of not being chosen.
He’d been humiliated and desperate, but Jonas had simply clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, “Let’s go home.” And they’d gone.
“Jonas came and got me.” That was all he could tell her. The rest was too painful to share.
She pushed him forward until he was worried he might fall into the creek, and then she poured another icy bucketful over his head.
She rinsed him twice more, running her fingers through his hair as she did so, removing all the soap.
Then she pushed him back on his haunches again, combing his hair away from his face.
She smiled at him again. Gently.
She took a comb from her pocket and began sliding it through his heavy, wet locks. Unknotting. Untangling.
Settling him, like he’d seen his brother Oscar do with a horse and brush before.
She walked around behind him and used both hands to set him facing straight forward. He felt her pick up a hank of hair.
She snipped and the hank fell onto his shirt.
Snip. Snip.
Thankfully, it didn’t look like she was giving him a lopsided cut.
“And what about before that?”
She’d lulled him into such a relaxed state with her hands and her manner that it took him a moment to track back to their conversation.
“Hmm?”
“What about before you got on the orphan train?”
His head jerked to one side, and she gasped as the shears snipped again.
“Don’t!” She dropped the shears to the ground and came to his side, gripping his chin with one firm hand and the back of his head with the other. She brushed his hair away and touched his ear.
His ear. It was a part of him that he barely ever thought about—except to remember to wash behind—but somehow it was entirely too intimate.
“I thought I’d cut you,” she murmured.
He couldn’t remember anyone else ever touching him there. And it seemed so close that he jerked away. Stood all the way up. Realized he was shaking.
“Is that why you brought me out here?” he demanded. “Did you think you could trade a haircut for my past?”
* * *
Fran looked up at Edgar. All the way up.
He’d risen to his full height, and she knew she’d hit on something tender.
Not his ear, because blessedly, she’d somehow managed not to cut him when he’d jerked his head to the side.
Something inside him.
“Sit down.” Somehow she managed to keep her voice even, when she was slightly frightened, trembling at his intensity.
“I don’t talk about my childhood,” he said. His firmness offered no option.
But she wasn’t one to give up easily.
“Sit down,” she repeated.
He did. Stiffly this time. Before, his shoulders had lost their tension.
It was all back now.
She massaged the top of his scalp for a moment before she went back to trimming his hair. It didn’t help.
“You can trust me,” she said, because she couldn’t give up, not when she’d seen the potential they might have together.
He didn’t respond. A glance at his face showed that stubborn jaw locked in place and his lips thinned with displeasure.
“I told you something very painful for me—about my parents, about why Emma and I had to run.”
She didn’t know what she thought, perhaps that he would understand that she’d trusted him with her past, but all he said was “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
She finished his haircut with jerky movements. Part of her wanted to ruin it, give him a lopsided cut that would make him look ridiculous.
But she refrained.
When she stepped back, brushing a few stray hanks of hair from his shoulders, she froze as she got her first good look at him.
Before, even with his unkempt appearance, he’d been striking.
Now he was handsome. With his hair trimmed short and curling about his collar and ears, and with his beard washed clean and shining blond, she could clearly see the strong cheekbones and defined brow. His blue eyes were clear and steady.
Her husband was one of the handsomest men she’d had the pleasure of seeing.
Of course he ruined all her hard work when he smashed his hat on top of his head.
And he didn’t acknowledge her when he stomped back toward the wagon.
But she still wasn’t going to give up.
She had a day left to figure this man out, to find a way to make him realize they could have something together.
She was going to take that day.
* * *
Edgar spent the morning agitated and as far away from his nosy little wife as he could.
Matty and Seb had both admired his haircut and tried to tease him. But they seemed to have sensed his foul mood, so they circled around the herd in the other direction. Ricky had stayed away in the first place.
The worst part was, he sort of felt she was right.
She had opened up to him. Told him everything he’d asked, about her past and her parents.
And he hadn’t reciprocated.
It bothered him, probably more than it should’ve, that there was an unequal trade between them.
But he didn’t want to talk about his early childhood. Didn’t even like thinking about it. Made a
practice of just living his life. He didn’t need to dwell on it.
It was over and done.
But the fact that he couldn’t quit thinking about Fran and her pushiness and the chasm between them made him wonder if maybe it wasn’t over and done with.
He took his hat off and fanned his face with it, the early-morning sun getting to him. Running a hand through his shorn hair made him think of Fran again, too.
He didn’t really think she’d offered to cut his hair to pump him for information. And he appreciated that she wanted to help him look nice for when he met with his pa’s buyer.
He was almost relieved when a steer in his vicinity decided to take a meandering side trip. It gave him something to focus on as he galloped his cow pony out and ushered it back to the herd.
Their trip was almost up. And then he and Fran would go their separate ways. She would be in Calvin, and he would be in Bear Creek.
She didn’t need to know about his childhood, his insides argued.
John, the cowpoke who’d noticed the riders on their tail before, rode up to him just before noon.
“See any sign of them?” Edgar asked the other man.
John shook his head. “It’s strange. Their tracks say they followed us all the way up until last night. I found a small fire where they must’ve camped. Then nothing.”
“No tracks today?”
The man shook his head again. “It’s like they decided to give up. You think?”
Edgar pushed back his Stetson, idly scanning the horizon. “Don’t know. If you spent two and a half days tracking someone, would you just give up?”
John shrugged. “Probably depend on why I was tracking them in the first place. Or if I got myself a better plan.”
“Exactly.”
Edgar didn’t like it.
If the men were after the cattle, their chances were getting smaller and smaller to make a move, as the cowboys pushed them closer and closer to Tuck’s Station.
If they were after Emma, they could beat the crew to the town. The cattle moved slowly. Two men alone on horseback could easily circle around to town and make it there first.
With Fran’s tendency to overprotect the girl, he sort of felt like Emma was his own little sister, too. She was Breanna’s age. Emotional, like Breanna could be at times.
And she didn’t deserve to have someone after her.
He remembered how jumpy Penny had been for months after the man who’d become obsessed with her had tried to abduct her. Edgar had startled her once by rushing into the kitchen and she’d burst into tears, then quickly apologized.
Emma didn’t need to be haunted by that kind of fear. She was—sort of—his sister, and he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
“What do you want to do?” John asked, his horse shifting to one side.
“I don’t know yet. I’ll check in with my brothers and we’ll get a plan together for moving into town.”
John nodded and rode off.
Edgar stood in his stirrups and surveyed the herd and cowboys.
They’d purposely gone light on manpower when they’d left Bear Creek. Most of the ranches didn’t hire cowboys the way they used to, not since fences and the railroad had changed the landscape.
With the extra cattle they’d taken on, they’d make a nice profit.
Rustlers were less of a concern—or had been less of a concern in the past.
Did he have enough cowboys to put up a good fight? He didn’t know.
His brothers, especially Ricky, were handy with their rifles. But if this was about Emma, would they be willing to stand and fight? It was his fight, not theirs.
So he would ask.
He spotted Seb dismounting near the wagon. Looked as if Fran had stopped for a stretch. He’d go intercept his brother.
Chapter Eleven
They were back where they’d started.
Emma wouldn’t leave the wagon. She’d gotten out once, walked next to the conveyance for only a few minutes, then returned. Now she was huddled inside, that little dog with her.
“If we do find work with a seamstress, at least we won’t be stuck in these horrible rags for much longer,” Fran said over her shoulder, trying to engage Emma in conversation.
Her sister only hummed in response. Was that a negative or a positive hum?
“Edgar said there’s a nice boardinghouse in town, not far from the church and the town square—”
“What if Underhill finds us there?”
Emma’s question was spoken so softly that Fran barely heard her over the horses’ plodding steps and the creaking of the wagon.
“Edgar won’t just leave us unprotected,” Fran said. And hoped it was true. He hadn’t actually said, but his ire on Emma’s behalf seemed to indicate that.
“What if we get settled and Underhill comes back?”
Obviously, Emma’s thoughts centered on one thing only. And Fran couldn’t blame her. Emma had been attacked. Although Fran had intervened before her sister had been irreparably hurt, the emotional scars remained, especially for one as sensitive as Emma. It would take time, and lots of reassurances, to heal.
And if Fran’s plans to stay close to Edgar panned out, the worry would be unnecessary. But she didn’t want to get Emma’s hopes up if the stubborn man refused to see reason.
“Once we’re established in the community, we’ll have friends who will help protect us. And I’m sure there’s a lawman, and maybe a town marshal or a sheriff, to watch over the citizens.”
“A lot of good that did us in Memphis.”
Emma was right. Underhill had been a man of such good standing that no one had dared speak up against him for two orphans—at least that was what the headmistress thought as she bundled them away.
But if they were the ones established in the community, surely it would make a difference.
“What about his accusations against you?” Emma queried.
Fran had nearly forgotten his threats. That was all they were. She’d never even been to the man’s home, but he’d claimed she’d stolen from him. It was impossible. If she’d never stepped foot in the place, he couldn’t have a witness against her.
And there was nothing he could do to her here, was there?
It didn’t bear worrying over.
She needed to figure out a way to win over her husband. And she became more concerned as Edgar spent the morning avoiding her.
How could she figure out a way to get close to him if she couldn’t speak to him?
When Seb rode close at about lunchtime, she waved him over.
She pulled the wagon to a stop and secured the brake, then climbed down. Emma remained inside.
“What do you need?” her youngest brother-in-law asked, hopping off his horse.
“Information.”
He looked perplexed, so she rushed on. “I botched things with Edgar earlier, asking about his childhood before he came to be with your family.”
Seb’s face closed. He didn’t actually take a step back, but he looked like he wanted to. Uncomfortable.
“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” Seb hedged.
She knew. “I gathered that. I don’t want to use it against him. I am his wife....”
She could see Seb softening. She’d grown to like Edgar’s brothers, even though she’d really only interacted with them in the evenings around the campfire.
“I want to make a go of it,” she said softly, for the first time voicing her intentions. “I won’t hurt him.”
Her words seemed to loosen him. Just enough.
“What do you want to know?” he asked reluctantly.
“How did he come to be on the orphan train? At what age—”
Movement from behind her arrested her
words and she turned in time to see Edgar sidestep his horse around the wagon.
His face was dark, a thundercloud of deeply drawn brows, and she knew he’d overheard her pressing his brother for information. “What’s going on?”
“Just talkin’,” Seb said before she could make her frozen vocal cords work.
“About me.” Edgar’s voice was low and dangerous—even more so than when they’d been at the creek earlier.
“I asked,” she inserted.
His eyes flicked over her and back to Seb, almost as if she hadn’t spoken. As if she was being dismissed.
Edgar opened his mouth, but she couldn’t let Seb take the blame for something that was her fault.
“I want to know you,” she burst out. “You wouldn’t tell me, so I asked your brother. That’s all.”
“You want to know me? Know all about me?” Edgar wheeled his horse, obviously agitated, but didn’t bolt like she expected.
Behind her, she heard Seb mount up and gallop off. She didn’t blame him; she could face her husband’s ire.
“You want to know that my own mother abandoned me to a Chicago orphanage when I was four years old? That she promised she’d come back but she never did? Is that what you want to know?”
Her heart ached for him. Both for the little boy he’d been, all alone, and for the man whose closely held pain now clenched his jaw.
“Edgar—” She stepped toward him, but he wasn’t finished.
“Or maybe that the director claimed to love me but put me on that orphan train anyway, when all I wanted was stay with her? She promised that I would find a family, but no one wanted me! Is that what you want to know?”
Her breath caught in her chest. “Of course I wouldn’t have wanted those things for you—”
“Well, now you know.”
The finality in his voice as he wheeled his horse, this time bolting away, shook her to her core.
He was gone.
And now she knew.
But she’d hurt him, too, with her insistent pushing.
She couldn’t keep Emma safe. She couldn’t talk to her own husband. Her failures were mounting higher and higher.
* * *
Edgar rode in the opposite direction of the herd. He couldn’t face his brothers right now. He couldn’t face anyone.
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