by Lisa Plumley
She sure as hell hadn’t been getting any of that love or caring from Conrad Parish. All she’d seemed to have gotten from Parish were heartache and confusion and criticism—and a baby. So before Owen delivered Daisy back to that man, he meant to love her completely and well. He meant to make sure Daisy was as all-fired happy as she could be, for as long as possible.
And that’s how Owen knew he was still a scoundrel at heart. Worse, that’s how he knew he’d never be redeemed. Not now. Because he’d done his utmost to please Daisy—even with no right to do so—and now, days later, he still wasn’t a bit sorry.
In fact, he was glad. Lying there next to her, snug and warm and replete, Owen felt fiercely glad—and overwhelmingly protective, too. When—if—Conrad Parish turned up in Morrow Creek to claim Daisy, Owen told himself as he trailed his fingertips along Daisy’s arm, savoring the sleepy blush in her cheeks and the delightful pink pout of her mouth, he’d better treat her kindly and fairly. He’d better be perfect at being with Daisy. Otherwise, Owen would…
Well, he would die inside. He knew that.
But he wouldn’t be able to stop it. Because Conrad Parish was the father of Daisy’s baby, and she seemed to care for him. Against all reason, Daisy seemed to want to make excuses for that sorry knuck—to believe the twaddle he’d spewed at her and to blame herself for the problems they’d had…problems which, as she’d enumerated them, had included a dearth of kissing, a deficit of cuddling and a sorry lack of mutual regard.
Over the past few days—and nights—Owen had done his best to make up for those awful shortfalls. He’d done all he could to provide Daisy with a lifetime’s worth of feeling beloved…even though he’d had to cram those feelings into just a few days.
He didn’t know if he’d succeeded. After all, even a scoundrel could not rightly decipher all women, all the time. Owen felt reasonably certain he’d done a good job. All the same, one thing still nagged at him. One thing still echoed in his mind, voiced in Daisy’s most melancholic tone and possessed of the power to make Owen stop where he stood.
That Élodie is right, Daisy had said, before kissing him senseless, and you’ll never love anyone, ever again.
Owen didn’t know where Daisy—and Élodie—had gotten that idea. He couldn’t remember telling Élodie that. He couldn’t imagine under what circumstances his daughter would have shared such a notion with Daisy, either. It bothered Owen mightily. It bothered him in ways he couldn’t describe. He’d been stricken when he’d first heard Daisy say those words, in the midst of her rambling chatter in his stable days ago, and Owen was still struck now.
Would he love anyone again? Was he capable of it?
Or had his scoundrelly ways doomed him to be alone forever?
Uncomfortable with those questions, Owen shoved them from his mind. Right now, all that mattered was the moment at hand and the woman by his side. Right now, he could pretend Daisy was his and always would be. Right now, he could lose himself in her—in the two of them, together—and take them both to a place where questions didn’t matter. All that mattered was closeness.
With new thoughtfulness, Owen went on stroking Daisy’s arm. But this time, he broadened his reach. This time, he added soft kisses to his touching, and whispered words of caring to his nearness. And by the time Daisy’s eyes fluttered open—by the time she gave him a drowsy, besotted “Good morning”—Owen knew that everything good was already within his grasp. All he had to do was hold on…and try not to think about tomorrow.
Could he love again? He already had, Owen decided. He was now. The tenderness he felt for Daisy filled his heart nearly to overflowing. If that wasn’t love, he didn’t know what was. And if Daisy couldn’t feel that—if she couldn’t decipher it and believe it—then mere words wouldn’t help that. But everything he did might. So, with new passion and devotion, Owen committed himself to making certain Daisy understood where they stood.
“Good morning,” he whispered back with a devilish smile. He levered himself over her, dedicated with all his heart and mind and soul to making sure she was happy, right now. “I hope you’re feeling well rested,” Owen said, “because I’m hoping for a number of lessons from you before you get started with Élodie.”
“Lessons?” Adorably, Daisy blinked. “What lessons?”
“I want to learn to memorize the look on your face when I do this.” Gently, Owen kissed her. He slid his body over hers, enjoying the sensuous pleasures of nakedness, warmth and closeness. He stroked her again, more boldly. “I want to learn how to make you sigh and smile and wriggle… Yes, just like that.” He smiled, loving the way Daisy wrapped her arms around him. “I want to learn all about you, Miss Walsh. Every part.”
She blushed even more prettily, if that were possible.
“I can’t imagine you’ve missed any parts of me!” she declared, seeming simultaneously bashful and thrilled. “You’ve been more than thorough, Mr. Cooper, I promise you.”
“Then does that mean—” he gave her another, more lingering kiss “—that I get an A in my lessons already?”
“Hmm. I can’t rightly say yet.” Her smile touched him, blessing him with its openheartedness and beauty. “Perhaps you should…” Another sigh. “Keep on doing what you’re doing,” Daisy managed to say in a breathy voice, “and we’ll see.”
“Yes, ma’am.” With a new attention to the task at hand, Owen pulled back the sheets—the inexplicably scratchy sheets, which Miss O’Neill had taken to delivering as though they were covered in prickly pear spines, and Daisy had taken to rewashing on her own to properly soften them. Then Owen slid lower, scandalously lower, all the better—he hoped—to make Daisy sigh with pleasure. He kissed her, intimately and enjoyably. “I just decided,” Owen told her. “I might need all day at this task.”
“All day?” With a smile in her voice, Daisy wriggled again, getting closer to him. “Are you sure? Perhaps you’re not doing this properly, Mr. Cooper, and that’s why you need all day.”
“Perhaps,” Owen agreed with a companionable nod. He gave her a leisurely kiss. “Or perhaps I’m hoping that, with enough practice, you’ll finally be pleased enough to never leave me.”
For a moment, Daisy stilled. Her gaze met his, full of seriousness and hope. “You don’t need…to do that for that.”
In that instant, Owen would have sworn he glimpsed love in her eyes. Love for him. He felt shaken to the core—happily so.
“But if you’d like to continue,” Daisy went on in a shy, impish tone, “then I certainly won’t stop you!”
“Whatever you want,” Owen said. It was his oft-repeated promise to her…one he’d done his utmost to fulfill.
He lowered his head again, lovingly giving Daisy everything he had—everything he could—and wishing only that it could be more. That he could be more. Because if Owen were honest, his own shortcomings were all that came between him and the future he wanted with Daisy. Well, that—and the damnable feelings she seemed to have for that ruinous scalawag Conrad Parish. If Owen could have swept away those things, if he could have changed them somehow… But he couldn’t, and that was that.
So for now, Owen loved Daisy with his entire heart and his able, willing body. For now, he hoped against hope that she could discern the love he gave to her…and welcome it, besides. No matter that her love was more than he deserved in return. It was all that he wanted, and Owen prayed that would be enough.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dreamily, Daisy strolled along the raised wooden sidewalk bordering Morrow Creek’s Main Street, hand in hand with Élodie. In her opposite hand, Daisy carried a wicker basket filled partway—so far—with sewing supplies and a few dry goods. She and her little helper, Élodie, were on their way to the millinery shop to purchase a new bonnet for Élodie to wear to the town’s gala Independence Day town picnic next month.
Everywhere she looked, though, Daisy glimpsed Owen. In every face, every smile, every gesture, she pictured the man she loved, the man she’d spent the
past eventful days with, lolling in bed like hedonists and laughing over the smallest things.
When she’d gone to Owen that night, Daisy had wanted to experience love. She’d wanted to know caring—real caring.
Now, thanks to Owen, she did.
She knew a great many other things, too, Daisy reckoned, feeling a silly smile burst onto her face. She knew that Owen was ticklish, but only if playfully and properly touched. She knew that he loved to be with her…that she loved to be with him. She knew that her capacity for pleasure had never before been tested in the ways it had been tested of late—scandalously so. And she knew, beyond a doubt, that she’d done the right thing by being with Owen—by deepening their attraction the way she’d done with that one fateful late-night visit to him.
At the time, Daisy had feared Owen would find her too forward. She’d worried that he would reject her; that he’d consider her hoydenish and lacking. Instead, Owen seemed to find her more fascinating by the day, Daisy thought—at least if their ongoing togetherness was anything to go by. In fact, she reckoned, as she strolled down the street past Mr. Hofer’s mercantile and the dressmaker’s shop, she wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find Owen offering a more lasting commitment. He must love her, Daisy thought. Even if he hadn’t yet said the words. Why else would Owen lavish such attention on her? Such caring? Doubtless, he had many tender feelings for her.
And she, in her turn, had very tender feelings for him.
Of course, she hadn’t yet told him that, Daisy realized. She hadn’t told him that she loved him…not even when she’d realized it herself, a few nights ago, when Owen had first held his ear to her swelling belly, delivered her a broad smile, then introduced himself to her baby in the most charming and gallant manner possible. He’d spent several minutes on the task too. He’d carried on a downright endearing talk with her unborn child, making funny faces and gesturing broadly to explain his finer points, and Daisy had gone smitten all over.
In all the years she had to live, she didn’t think she would soon forget the sight of big, burly Owen Cooper speaking to her belly that way. He’d made sure her new baby understood what things were like in the Arizona Territory. He’d stressed how wonderful a mama was waiting there for him (since Owen was convinced, like Élodie, that her baby was a boy). He’d even told a few stories about Élodie and him, and all the wonderful times they were having with Daisy teaching them homemaking expertise.
Those moments had been magical for Daisy. She knew she’d fallen in love with Owen completely then—so much so that she began to regret her telegraph message to Conrad. At the time she’d sent it, she’d been concerned about her position with Barker & Bowles. She’d been desperate to make sure that she could resume her speaking tour—that she could go on with her life, unchanged as before, when she left Morrow Creek.
But now Daisy knew better. Her life would never be the same…and it would be all the richer for it. She was still fearful about the future. But with Owen’s help, and Thomas’s help—and the help of the other good people of Morrow Creek, several more of whom she’d met over the past days—Daisy knew she would manage somehow. She had to.
There would be difficult times ahead, of course. But Daisy didn’t need Conrad to help her steer through them. Not anymore.
Now, she had the strength of a woman who’d found her place—and that place lay squarely within a ramshackle Western town, where she’d arrived to an unexpected hero’s welcome and would—if heaven granted her most secret wishes—never have cause to leave.
Thinking that she should send Conrad another message, one simply asking him to forward her trunks and possessions, and to provide her with the names of his superiors at Barker & Bowles, so she could properly resign her speaking-engagements tour, Daisy tugged Élodie toward the opposite side of the street.
“Look!” Daisy said. “Isn’t that the telegraph office over yonder? I should go send a wire to my friend in San Diego.”
“All right.” Happily, Élodie skipped along by her side. She smiled up at Daisy. “Hey! You said ‘over yonder’! Did you hear that? I think you’re becoming a real Western woman, Miss Walsh!”
“Your papa would be proud.” Daisy hesitated to allow a wagon to pass by. Its occupants waved in a friendly fashion.
“Yes, he would!” Élodie allowed. “Of course, it’s likely because of him that you’re becoming so westernized. You know, on account of your both sleeping in the same bed now. I suppose a little bit of Papa’s westernness is rubbing off on you!”
“Maybe. If so, I reckon that’s a good thing.”
“I reckon it is. Mrs. Archer will be pleased for certain!”
At that, Daisy quirked a smile. On the morning after the first night she’d spent with Owen, Élodie had tromped into the bedroom to have Daisy fashion her braids for the day—and had been positively unfazed to find her papa in bed with Daisy.
The little girl seemed to have accepted her father’s coming together with her tutor without a single qualm. If anything, Élodie was a downright booster for the notion. Élodie seemed captivated by the possibility of Daisy and Owen being in love.
“Just to be on the safe side,” Daisy said in an undertone to Élodie, still holding her hand, “let’s not share that bit of news with Mrs. Archer. All right? When your papa is ready—”
“He’ll tell everyone. I know. But that probably won’t take long,” Élodie assured her. “Not only does Papa smile more and laugh more these days, he talks at double the rate, too!”
Smiling, hand in hand, Daisy and Élodie continued to the telegraph office. Along the way, they met several of Élodie’s neighbors, some of Daisy’s newfound friends and a few residents who’d read about Daisy in the Pioneer Press and wanted to chat with her, or to extract her promise to autograph their copies of the New Book of Cookery and General Home Keeping: with Recipes and Formulas for All Occasions, Both Informal and Grand.
Cheerfully, Daisy agreed. She wasn’t sure what her future held, but she was sure that she enjoyed the life she had in Morrow Creek. Here, the townspeople gazed upon her approvingly. They seemed to believe she was capably fit to care for Élodie. Both of those things, combined with Owen’s caring, gave Daisy hope. They encouraged her to believe that she could manage everything on her own—even without Conrad’s constant guidance.
Filled with overall chirpiness, Daisy filed a second wire to Conrad. She inquired about any replies to her first message, but there’d been nothing received that was addressed to her. Maybe, she realized, Conrad truly had washed his hands of her.
With that task complete, Daisy again took Élodie’s hand. They headed for the millinery shop. “All right. A bonnet next!”
Finding that bonnet was a treat. Delighting in the experience, Daisy watched Élodie try on one hat after another.
“You’re really very good with her, you know,” said Mrs. Fowler, the milliner. “It’s been a long while since little Élodie had a mama to look up to and to shop for bonnets with.”
“Oh, thank you,” Daisy demurred, “but I’m not her mother.”
“Pshaw. I know that.” Mrs. Fowler crossed her arms, all but cooing at the sight of Élodie in a ruffled gingham sunbonnet. “All I mean is, you seem the mothering type to me, Miss Walsh, beyond a single doubt.” The milliner winked. “And the marrying type, too. I reckon Mr. Cooper is one lucky man. I won’t be a bit surprised to hear wedding bells ring, before long.”
Despite her private vow not to lose her head, Daisy couldn’t help feeling delighted. If even a local woman—someone who knew Élodie and Owen—believed that Daisy had a future with them in Morrow Creek, then it must be true! Aside which, it was heartening to realize that, here in the West, the social strictures seemed not to be fixed quite so tightly against the kind of informal arrangement she and Owen shared. “Well…maybe,” Daisy hedged. “I certainly hope so.”
Mrs. Fowler smiled kindly. “Perhaps Mr. Cooper is waiting for the Independence Day town picnic to propose. You are planning to
attend, aren’t you? It’s the must-do event of the year.”
“Only the annual Halloween gala comes close,” put in another woman, who’d been shopping nearby. “We all enjoy it so.”
“I’m sure I’d love to attend,” Daisy assured them.
“Papa doesn’t like parties,” Élodie informed them dourly. “Not most parties, you mean.” Daisy cast a self-conscious glance at the two grown women nearby. “Right, Élodie? But surely, when it comes to something like the Independence Day festivities, your papa will change his mind and come along.”
“He won’t. Leastwise, I doubt it. Independence Day is always busy at the stable, so Papa usually stays there. He can’t pass up a chance to add to his petit chou’s nest egg, he says.” Pursing her lips in the looking glass, Élodie tried on another bonnet. She discarded it. She tried another. “I always attend the Independence Day town picnic with Mrs. Archer.”
All the women lapsed into silence. Daisy could read their expressions like a book. Poor child, they seemed to be thinking. Poor Miss Walsh for pinning her hopes on curmudgeonly Owen Cooper, who doesn’t enjoy sociable get-togethers of any kind.
“Miss Reardon told me about your father’s…reluctance to socialize,” Daisy admitted to Élodie. “I thought he’d changed.”
I thought I’d cured him of that unsociability, Daisy couldn’t help thinking, with loving-kindness and good cheer.
Now, looking at Élodie’s doubtful little face, Daisy realized she hadn’t done any such thing. In fact, she might well have reinforced Owen’s reclusive tendencies by allowing him to sequester them both at home…in his lovely bed, together.
“Well, I guess I can change that easily enough, can’t I?” Daisy announced to the millinery shop at large—and to Élodie, in particular. “Most likely, all your father needs is for me to ask him properly to accompany me someplace. Then, after that—”