Christy

by Linda Lael Miller

  Now, watching her running toward him through the rain, he was thoroughly bemused. He was also fairly certain she was going to run right into Jack Findley’s hay wagon and do herself serious injury.

  He stepped into her path and caught her upper arms firmly in both hands, lest she fall. Rain danced all around them, falling hard enough to raise a crackling sound from the roofs of Primrose Creek’s few buildings.

  She looked up at him in disbelief. “Zachary?”

  He smiled. “Yup,” he said. “Somebody chasing you?”

  She must have known he was teasing, but the expression in her eyes was bruised, wary. She shook her head. “I love you,” she said.

  He felt as though he’d fallen out of a hayloft and landed stomach-first on an anvil. “What?”

  “I love you!” she yelled over the rain.

  He laughed, mostly because he could not contain the swell of joy that rose up inside him as her words hit home. Just as quickly, he summoned up a stern expression. “What about Jake?”

  “I can’t marry him. You were right. It would be wrong, even cruel.” Her hair was soaked, and if he bided his time, he figured he might see her dress turn transparent.

  He took her arm and pulled her swiftly out of the street, along the board sidewalk of which the town council was justifiably proud, and into his office. Fortunately, the deputy was nowhere around.

  He took a blanket from one of the cots in the jail cell and wrapped her in it. There was coffee on the stove; he poured her a cup and added a generous dollop of bourbon. “Drink that,” he ordered.

  To his eternal surprise, she obeyed without question, her hands shivering as she closed both of them around the mug and lifted it to her lips. She looked like a drowned kitten, standing there sipping the worst coffee west of the Missouri, but he didn’t dare soften his heart. Not yet. She, and she alone, possessed the power to rip it right out of his chest.

  “Now, tell me what you were doing running down the middle of the street in the rain, wearing that fancy dress?”

  She was trembling. “Today was supposed—supposed to be my wedding day.”

  “But you called it off.”

  She flushed, nodded guiltily. “Yes. In the end, I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t marry anybody for money.”

  He took off his sodden canvas coat and hung it from a peg on the wall. He’d been on the trail awhile, and he needed clean clothes, a shave, and a haircut. Not to mention a good meal and about twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep. “I see,” he said.

  She set the cup aside, came toward him, laid both hands on his chest, and looked up into his face. “I’ve hurt Jake, and you, too. I’m sorry, Zachary.”

  It took all his restraint to keep from hauling her against him and kissing her with all the accumulated passion of weeks on the road, when he’d hoped against hope that he’d get back to Primrose Creek before she went through with that fool scheme of hers.

  “Now what?” he asked, mentally holding his breath.

  “That’s up to you,” she answered, and he thought he saw her heart shining in those wondrous, stormysky eyes of hers. “If you can forgive me, then I’d like for us to start over. I don’t care if we have to scrape for a living for the rest of our lives, as long as we can be together.”

  She didn’t know about the money. Probably assumed he’d been unsuccessful, tracking stage robbers, murderers, and cattle rustlers. He felt lightheaded with happiness and new hope.

  “I love you, Christy,” he said. “And whatever I have, whether it’s a little or a lot, I want to share it with you. Will you marry me?”

  A beatific smile spread from her eyes to the rest of her face and finally seemed to glow from the very center of her being. She blinked away rainwater—or maybe tears—and reached up to touch his face. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’ll marry you. When?”

  “How about now?” he heard himself ask. “The reverend was all set for a hitching anyhow. Might as well be us.”

  She nodded her agreement, but that sad look had slipped into her eyes again.

  “I don’t feel right, being so happy, when Jake is so—so—”

  “Listen to me,” he said, holding her shoulders now. Oh, to peel away that wet dress and the equally wet underthings beneath it, but he would wait. If it killed him—and he thought it might—he would wait. “Jake will be hurting for a while, that’s true. But you did the right thing, Christy, for both of you. Marrying him wouldn’t have been any favor, when you claim it’s me you love.”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed his chin. “I do love you,” she said.

  He kissed her in earnest then.

  They were married that evening, in the front room at Bridget and Trace’s place on Primrose Creek, with Megan, Skye, and Caney all in attendance and all beaming with approval. They would spend their wedding night in Skye’s room, while she and Megan and Caney “camped” in the lodge across the stream.

  It pleased Christy that Bridget was there, looking on with a happy smile. They still had their differences, and probably always would, but Granddaddy’s entry in the family Bible had changed things, at least on Christy’s part. Tomorrow, or the next day, she would broach the subject with her cousin, but for now, all that mattered was Zachary and the vows that would bind them forever.

  * * *

  The bed was wide, with a feather mattress, and the sheets were fresh and crisp. Rain whispered at the window and sputtered on the small hearth as Zachary closed the door on the rest of the world, loosening his tie as he turned toward Christy.

  He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it aside, then crossed to where she stood, took her into his arms, and kissed her softly at first, then with an intensity that grew by degrees until it was blazing within them both, fusing into a single flame.

  “No second thoughts,” he said sleepily, his mouth still very close to hers, when the kiss was over, “about marrying a dirt-poor U.S. Marshal?”

  She shook her head, sure of her answer. “No second thoughts. Kiss me again, Zachary. Now.”

  He chuckled and did as he was bidden. At the same time, he began unbuttoning the front of her dress—an ivory and lace affair borrowed from Bridget—and smoothed it down over her shoulders and arms. It caught at her waist and then dropped in a pool at her feet.

  She trembled, standing there in her best underthings, so ready to give herself to this man and yet frightened because it was an utterly new experience, and she didn’t know exactly what to expect.

  “Don’t be scared,” he said in that same throaty voice. The firelight made an aura in his golden hair. “I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

  She inclined her head toward the closed door of the bedroom. “Do you think they—they know—?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, they know.”

  She felt herself go crimson, not just in her face but all over. Of course, they were all aware of what was happening. What a foolish question. “Oh,” she said.

  “Forget about everybody else,” Zachary said, and ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek, along her neck, over her collarbone, and onto the top of her breast. “Pretend there’s nobody in the world but you and me.”

  It seemed easy enough to do, standing there in her drawers and camisole, with her husband’s hand brushing and then claiming her breast in a delicate grasp that elicited a soft cry of pleasure. “You and me,” she repeated drunkenly.

  He blew out the lamp, so that the fire provided the only light, and began unbuttoning his shirt. Christy didn’t trust her knees to support her; she sat down on the edge of the bed and watched as her shadowy bridegroom kicked off his boots, shrugged out of his shirt, began to unfasten his trousers. He was naked as a savage when he came to her, raised her gently to her feet, and removed the last of her garments.

  For a long moment, he weighed her breasts in his hands, gazing reverently into her face. “God in heaven, Christy,” he rasped. “I love you. And I need you so much.”

  She was too moved to speak. Too anxious.
Too hungry.

  He kissed her again and thereby dispensed with the last of her equilibrium. If he hadn’t laid her gently down on the bed, she would have fallen, weak as a thin reed in a high wind.

  More kisses followed, each one deeper and longer than the last, and then Zachary brushed the tender place under her ear with his lips, tasted her neck and the ridge of her collarbone. Then—

  Christy cried out in ecstasy and clasped her hands behind his head, holding him close to her breast, delighting in every motion of his lips and tongue.

  In time, he attended her other breast in the same way, and he was in no hurry about it. Christy lay tossing and writhing beneath him, urging him on with desperate little pleas, but he would not be rushed.

  “Please,” she whimpered.

  He ran the tip of his tongue around her navel, and her hips sprang high off the bed, seemingly of their own accord. “Not yet,” he said. “You need—to be ready.”

  She had no idea what he meant by “ready.” If this state of frenzied wanting didn’t qualify, there was no telling what she should expect.

  She soon found out, and the pleasure was so fiery, so ferocious, that she turned her face into her pillow in order to muffle a moan that came from some heretofore uncharted region of her being. He drove her higher and higher, and on each plateau, just when she was sure she could not survive any more of this sweet tension, he added fuel to the fire.

  Finally, in a devastating inner explosion, he brought her to a new place, a new part of herself that she had never known existed. The descent was excruciatingly slow, and she caught on small branches of delight as she passed, her hands damp where she clasped the rails of the headboard.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Zachary poised himself over her, careful not to crush her with his weight. His eyes searched hers, asking a silent question, and she nodded, loving him as much for that question as she did for the answer.

  He entered her carefully but in a single, decisive stroke. She clenched her fingers on his back at the brief pain, then was caught off guard by a fresh storm of sensation. Gratification took a long time, but when it came, it shattered them both, left them collapsed and breathless in each other’s arms.

  As tired as they were, the moon was setting when they finally slept.

  Bridget was nursing little Gideon, her bosom covered by a baby blanket, while Rebecca, already fed, slept on her shoulder with an abandon only infants can manage. Summer sunshine glittered on the creek, and across the way, the sounds of hammers and saws punctuated the morning songs of birds and insects as work continued on the lodge, which was being turned into a real home, with rooms and floors and windows.

  They had brought the two rocking chairs outside, and Christy was holding the family Bible on her lap. Her mother’s cameo brooch, which Zachary had retrieved for her by paying her debt to Gus the storekeeper, was pinned to the bodice of her dress.

  “I don’t believe you,” Bridget said, unsmiling.

  “See for yourself,” Christy replied, folding back the book’s heavy cover.

  Bridget leaned over, and her blue eyes widened as she read. Read again. “Saints in suspenders,” she marveled in a stunned whisper. “We’re sisters? The four of us are sisters?”

  Christy sighed and closed the Bible. “Yes,” she said with a little sniff. “But we don’t have to tell anybody.” She paused. “Do we?”