Rocky Mountain Oasis

by Lynnette Bonner

  Still, the closer it got to the time to turn in for the night the more nervous she became. She was attracted to this man like she’d been to Hank at first, and the thought that he might turn out to be like Hank scared her more than she would admit, even to herself.

  As she washed dishes at the sideboard, Sky read an old paper in the cane chair by the door. But when she dropped the second dish with a metallic clatter, she heard him get up, his stealthy footsteps coming nearer. He spoke from directly behind her. “Brooke?”

  She stilled, not daring to look at him.

  “Brooke, look at me please.”

  Slowly she turned and fixed her eyes on his intense face, her wet, soapy hands held over the wash basin.

  He stood casually with his hands behind his back. “Do I look like a liar to you?”

  She was caught off guard by the question and could only shake her head.

  “I made you a promise. Last night and again this morning. I always keep my promises, Brooke. You have nothing to fear from me.” He slid one hand over his head, his eyes intent on hers. “I have made myself a bed in the barn. I hope you will be comfortable in here. Feel free to look around if you need anything. If it’s here, you are welcome to use it.”

  With that he bade her good night and, picking up his bag by the door, went out into the night.

  Brooke finished the dishes and crossed to the bed, tears of thankfulness coursing down her cheeks. I don’t deserve a man like this. Are there really men in the world who are the same in the privacy of their homes as they appear to be in public? Maybe it has something to do with his religion?

  She quickly dismissed this idea. Uncle Jackson had been faithful to attend church every Sunday. Wasn’t it at a church social that she had met Hank? And once her inebriated father had beaten her when he found out she’d forgotten to say her prayers before bed. With a sigh, she blew out the lamp and dressed for bed. Sleep didn’t come for quite some time as she pondered the mysterious man she had married.

  5

  At dawn the next morning the crowing of the rooster penetrated her consciousness. Brooke rolled over with a groan, not yet ready to wake up. But the memory of how late she had slept the day before propelled her out of bed.

  She had the bed made and was in the middle of making coffee when she heard men’s voices outside. She recognized Sky’s voice, but the other was unfamiliar. She went to the front window and peered out into the yard. Sky stood talking with a huge burly man. Greasy blond curls hung limply about the man’s head and a sweat-stained red shirt stretched across his broad chest.

  She saw Sky turn, heading for the house, and went back to preparing the coffee pot. When the door opened, she turned with a questioning smile. “Good morning.”

  “Morning,” he returned, a strange light in his eye. “We have company.”

  “Yes, I saw. Should I set an extra place at the table?”

  He ignored her question. “He is my cousin. His name is Jason.” Giving the name time to sink in, he finished, “Jason Jordan.”

  Her hands stilled, and she turned to him. “Jason Jordan? The Jason Jordan? The one I was to marry?”

  He nodded, his eyes intense.

  “So? What? Is he angry? If we have him in for breakfast, is he going to pull a gun and shoot us both?” She tried to inject a light tone, but nervousness tinged her words.

  He stared at the wall for a moment before he addressed her. “He isn’t angry now, but he may be when he sees you.”

  “Why?” she voiced incredulously. “What do you mean by that?”

  He shrugged. “You’re very beautiful. It won’t prove to be a very pleasant meal, I’m afraid.”

  She gave an unladylike snort, but a tingle of pleasure traversed her spine. He thinks I’m beautiful? Without a word she crossed to the table and set three plates on it. But as he headed for the door, she stopped him. “Sky?”

  He turned.

  “How is it that I came to marry you instead of him?”

  His eyes softened. “God’s intervention.”

  Brooke decided that if Sky could eat as much as she had seen him eat yesterday, his beefy cousin could probably eat twice as much. She warmed up the biscuits, left over from the night before, and set them out with some strawberry preserves from the cellar. A plate heaped with scrambled eggs steamed in the middle of the table, and cool milk sat at each place. Sky and Jason entered minutes later, as she was giving the last stir to a large pot of oatmeal.

  Although she didn’t understand the whole situation, Jason was, after all, Sky’s cousin and therefore family. She didn’t want him to feel that he was not welcome in their home, so she smiled what she hoped would be a warm welcome, extending her hand. “Hello. Sky tells me you are his cousin, Jason. I am pleased to meet you.”

  A light of approval gleamed in Sky’s brown eyes before he seated himself at the table.

  Jason nodded, his gaze raking over her form. He shook her hand and leered. “So, did Sky also tell you how he swindled me? Convinced me to sell you to him so he could have a pretty little wife around the place seeing to his needs?”

  She blanched, cleared her throat, and had to forcefully pull her hand from his grasp. She didn’t know what to do now. Jason’s expression was scathing. Brooke knew in an instant that this was the type of man she understood.

  Sky saved her. “Jason, have a seat.” His tone held an edge of steel. Jason reluctantly sat down at the table.

  Then Jason’s words registered in Brooke’s mind. Sky bought me? Disappointment coursed through her. Sky had been so kind to her that she had not considered the fact that he had purchased her. Of course he had. She was a mail-order bride—someone a man bought because he needed a woman around the place to help with the work, and because they wanted a physical companion by their side. She had been so hopeful at Sky’s kind treatment, so surprised, that she had neglected to remember the circumstances that led her to this situation.

  A spark had begun to burn in her heart. A spark of hope that one day Sky might become attracted to her, maybe even fall in love with her.

  But with Jason’s cruel words, reality crashed in like a flood, extinguishing the spark before it could grow to a flame. Sky would never love her! She was a mail-order bride. Purchased for convenience…not for love. Brooke walked rigidly to the stove, picking up the coffee pot with the pot holder. She poured first Sky’s cup, then Jason’s, then sat in the cane chair Sky had pulled over to the table. It’s not going to kill you, Brooke. No one but Mama and Sis have ever loved you before. Why should things change now?

  She was surprised beyond words when Jason bowed his head for the prayer without so much as a thought. When grace had been said, she looked up to find Jason’s angry eyes fastened on Sky. With a measured look, Sky returned the stare, only his face showed no emotion.

  Brooke rubbed her palms together in front of her, hoping they were not going to break out into a fist fight over the breakfast table. “Do you want some cream for your coffee, Mr. Jordan?” she addressed Jason.

  Instead of answering her, Jason sneered at Sky. “Got yourself a real polite one, didn’t you? Does she do everything as well as she welcomes guests to your home?” He gave a meaningful look to the bed in the corner.

  Brooke looked down into her lap, mortified.

  “Brooke.” Sky spoke to her quietly, but his snapping eyes never left Jason’s face. “Did you gather the eggs yet this morning?”

  She took the hint. He knew she hadn’t even been outside yet today. “No, I’ll go and do that right now.” She rose and fled the house to the relative safety of the barnyard.

  As soon as Brooke left the house, Sky stood. Walking deliberately around the table, he grabbed Jason by the collar of his dirty shirt and jerked him to his feet, propelling him toward the door. His tone deadly calm, he said, “Get out of my house and don’t come back until you can show some respect for my wife.”

  Jason was already sorry, but he didn’t let it show. Reaching up, he knocked Sky’s hands
from the front of his shirt with a slap. He had always been the bigger of the two, but Sky was invariably quicker. He debated taking a swing at Sky but decided against it. He knew he’d acted childishly; still, it galled him that Sky always seemed to make the right decisions when he chose to make the wrong ones.

  He wanted to fight in the worst way; wanted to be right. But he knew he was wrong. He had been rude to a woman he didn’t even know because he was jealous of his cousin and didn’t have enough self-control to check his emotions.

  As he glared into Sky’s eyes, his thoughts turned to his grandmother Jordan, but he carefully kept any emotion hidden.

  Gram had loved him like her own son as he grew.

  His parents had been some of the first settlers when gold was discovered in Pierce City back in the 1860s. His father’s luck had come to the fore, and he hit it rich. But he had a consuming gambling addiction. He had gotten into a fight in a saloon one night when Jason was only five. He was beaten to death.

  Jason’s mother had kept only sporadic contact with her late husband’s family, but he could remember that a letter arrived faithfully every week from Grandma Jordan.

  His earliest memories were anything but happy. His mother, in her grief, had begun to smoke opium to “calm her nerves,” she had said. Lee Chang had been happy to supply her with the vile drug, but he required cash. So she had turned to a life of prostitution to support her growing habit. Jason could remember more than one occasion when he and his sister, Marquis, had been forced to hide under the bed while his mother entertained a customer.

  Two weeks before his eighth birthday his mother had overdosed, and Jason had been the one to find her. He and Marquis had been sent to live with Grandma Jordan, and she had raised them as her own.

  Sky and his family lived near her, and every Sunday after church everyone gathered at Gram’s house for lunch. Gram invested every minute she had teaching her grandchildren about Jesus and His love, often making them sit at her kitchen table to memorize Scriptures. She had shed many tears over Jason in his lifetime, and he knew she’d have shed more today if she had seen how he’d treated Brooke.

  He was ashamed of himself but refused to admit it.

  He and Sky were still glaring at one another. Jason dropped his gaze and turned on his heel without saying a word. He stalked across the yard to his horse waiting at the hitching post by the barn, mounted, and spurred the animal away from the house, trying to run from his conscience.

  Once out of sight of the house he slowed his horse to a walk. What did I hope to gain by going there today? He had wanted to thank Sky for letting him read Gram’s letters. He had wanted to ask Sky to pray for him. He wanted to change. However, when he had walked into the house and seen the beautiful woman who might have been his, jealousy had overcome him. Why was it that no matter what Sky did, he always seemed to come out on top? His jealousy had turned to bitterness. Bitterness came easily these days.

  He reined his horse to a stop. Sliding to the ground, he rubbed the back of his neck, staring up at the covering canopy of evergreen needles above him. He was chagrined to feel tears pricking the back of his eyes. He blinked hard. “How did I come to be here, Lord?” The words surprised him—he couldn’t remember the last time he had prayed.

  As soon as Jason galloped out of the yard, Sky went looking for Brooke. He found her standing on an overturned bucket gathering eggs from the chicken coop. “Here, let me do that.” He tried to take the bowl in her hands from her. “I didn’t really mean for you to come gather the eggs. I was just giving you a reason to leave the house.”

  She did not relinquish the bucket but kept on gathering eggs, her face set in stone.

  Thinking her silence was due to Jason’s earlier behavior, he said, “Jason is gone. I told him not to come back until he could be polite.”

  “You think that’s what this is about?” she snapped, turning blazing eyes on him.

  He couldn’t have been more surprised if she had thrown the bowl of eggs at him. She’s mad at me? He was bewildered. “What is it about?”

  “You bought me, didn’t you? And for what? So you could have someone around the place to do your cooking and the chores and—” She rolled her hand through the air, her cheeks flaming in embarrassment at the next thought that apparently swept through her mind. She stuttered for a moment before she finally said, “Well, cooking and chores I can do! So here I am!” She turned back to searching for eggs.

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Oh really? What was it like, then?”

  He stared at the barn wall, unwilling to malign Jason’s name even with the truth. “It was just something I felt I should do.”

  “Oh, I see!” Her tone held more than a little sarcasm. “Do you get these urges often? To go out and buy women, I mean? Here I have been thinking that you were the kindest man I’d ever met, but now I see the truth. You’re just like all the rest of the men I’ve ever known.”

  “Brooke!” This woman was maddening. One minute she was so nervous she could hardly function and the next minute she was hotter than a mother bear protecting her cubs. His anger sparked. “You were a mail-order bride, in case you have forgotten! That’s what mail-order brides are, women purchased by men!” He regretted the words the minute they left his mouth. All his anger drained away.

  Hurt flashed across her face. “Yes, I’ve remembered that now, thank you. You don’t need to worry about the chores and things; they will get done. It just came as a surprising reminder, that’s all. You’re very good at deception, making me think you were the perfect gentleman. I would expect that from a man as uncivil as your cousin, but not from—” Heat washed her features. Jumping down off the bucket, she brushed past him.

  Wondering what she had been about to say, he wanted very badly to reach out and stop her. But he remembered his promise not to touch her in any way. Instead he calmly kept pace with her as she stormed toward the house. She took three steps for every one of his. It was not hard to keep up with her.

  She slammed into the house, marched over to the counter, and set the bucket of eggs down with a loud thump.

  Sky pulled the cane chair from where it sat by the table over in front of the door. Pouring himself a cup of coffee, he sat down and leaned coolly back against the door, the front two legs of his chair not touching the ground.

  He watched, amused, as she violently scrubbed the eggs in a pan of water, wondering how many she would break.

  Brooke finished the job and turned with the pan of dirty water to cross the room, but stopped, noting for the first time that he sat directly in front of the door. Her eyes took in each of the room’s three windows. None of them opened. There was no other way out of the house.

  He looked at her over the rim of his cup, amusement dancing in his dark eyes as he sipped the brew casually.

  “Don’t you have chores to do?” she asked, chin in the air.

  He nodded but did not move.

  She stepped back and set the pan of water heavily on the counter. Turning toward the table to clear it of the breakfast dishes, she stilled. Sky had come soundlessly to stand behind her and her face was only inches from his chest. She took a step back but felt the counter pressing into her lower back. She brought her palms together in front of her, fear coursing through her veins. Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut?

  All amusement now gone from his face, he stepped toward her.

  She slid down the counter toward the wall until she could go no farther. Advancing steadily, he kept his eyes on her face. She wanted to look away but found she couldn’t pull her eyes away from his dark, serious gaze. She held her breath as he placed one hand on the back wall of the house and one on the side wall. He had her effectively cornered.

  He leaned down so his face was directly on her level. “Would you rather be married to Jason?” he asked, his voice deep and resonant.

  Her eyes widened as she let out her breath. This thought had not occurred to her. She shook her head.

&n
bsp; He sighed, leaning heavily on his imprisoning arms. “Jason is…wild. He knows the way he is living is wrong, but he doesn’t seem to want to change. When I heard Jason was getting married, I didn’t want to get involved. But I believe God led me to the decision I made, so here we are. The only reason I bought you, as you put it, was because I could see no other way to convince Jason to relinquish his rights to you.” Standing upright, he folded his arms across his broad chest, looking down at her. “I’m sorry I made that remark about you being a mail-order bride. I didn’t mean to make you feel…”

  “Purchased?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. I only wanted to save you from Jason. You don’t have to do any chores you don’t want to do. And I don’t expect anything else from you either. I’ve told you that.”

  She looked down. “I just—” She fluttered her hands helplessly. “It’s been a crazy year. I don’t expect you to understand. I’m sorry for saying those things. It came as quite a shock when I realized what he had said and…” Tears misted her eyes. “I don’t know what to believe. You have been so kind to me. I keep telling myself this can’t be real, that things are going to crash down around me any minute.” She stared at the wood stove, willing herself to remain in control.

  Her voice choked with emotion when she finally spoke again. “I just feel like I have been living in the desert all my life and suddenly I’ve come upon this oasis. I don’t know whether it’s going to turn out to be a mirage or not.” She looked at him to see if he understood. The tender comprehension she saw in his eyes made her heart do an erratic flip.

  Her mind groped for a change of subject. “I’ve got to wash the dishes.”

  She moved toward the table, obviously not remembering that no one had eaten. She was brushing past him for the second time that morning, but this time he let her go, knowing she needed some time alone. He grabbed four biscuits and headed outside to do his own chores. As he walked, he said a prayer that one day she would come to know Jesus and understand what made him different than the other men she had known.