by Craig, Emma
“No, I expect you’d relish a chance to hold any anguish you were suffering against me,” she said, her tone jolly.
Good God. She was capable not merely of mischievousness, but of jollity. Elijah could scarcely fathom these new revelations. He also had a hard time tearing his gaze away from hers.
Damn, she had pretty eyes. And they were—saints be praised!—sparkling this morning. Jesus H. Christ, had she been visited by some divine manifestation in the middle of the night or something? He figured he’d better not ask. She’d probably accuse him of blasphemy.
He cleared his throat. “Where’s Killer this morning?”
“Apricot is in the kitchen eating his breakfast. I expect he’ll come bounding in here any minute.”
She turned away from him, but Elijah caught her hand. Her cheeks held heightened color when she turned around again. “Yes, Mr. Perry?”
“Don’t leave me. Please?” He hoped he sounded pathetic.
She grinned, evidently not fooled by his show of pathos. “I’m only going to the kitchen to fetch your breakfast.”
“Oh.” He reluctantly released her hand. It had felt good in his, a circumstance that astonished him almost as much as the change in Joy from grim-and-determined do-gooder to humorous-and-lovely friend. The word took him by surprise, and he said it aloud, softly. “Friend.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Her big, luminous eyes held all the innocence in the world. Elijah shook his head, baffled about this latest understanding that had weaseled its way into his head. “I do believe we’re becoming friends, Miss Hardesty.”
Those eyes of hers opened wide. “Friends?” She blinked down at him, obviously as startled as he. “My goodness.”
“I haven’t had very many friends in my life.” He hadn’t known he was going to say that. It sounded pitiful, no matter how true it was.
She blinked a few more times. He expected her to say something sarcastic. Instead, she said, “I don’t believe I have, either, actually.”
Her smile came out of nowhere. So did his. “Well, then, what do you know? Amazing things happen sometimes, don’t they?”
She turned around again, all efficiency. “Indeed they do. And now, since you were so kind, albeit foolish, to run after me—run being a euphemistic term under the circumstances—last night, I have prepared you a delicious meal this morning.” She turned around and shot him a smile that was at least as delicious as anything she might have cooked up in the kitchen. “After expending all that energy chasing after me, I expect you need a sustaining meal.”
“My mouth’s watering already, Miss Hardesty.”
She left the room laughing, and Elijah felt better than he had in years.
# # #
Apricot batted at the wad of paper Joy had tossed at him, then chased after it, tumbling ears over tail as he leaped into the air and pounced on his toy. Joy was having a hard time catching her breath, she was laughing so hard. Elijah was eyeing her as if he’d never seen her before.
She tossed her head, a saucy gesture she hardly recognized as belonging in her own personal repertoire. “Stop staring at me that way, Mr. Perry. I will not assist you in pulling on your trousers.”
His grin was a work of art. “Please? I promise I won’t kiss you again.”
Her cheeks must be bright red, because they burned like fire. “Stop it this instant, Mr. Perry, or I shan’t walk to the river with you.” She snatched up The Moonstone. “Or, better yet, I’ll give you a lesson in proper manners the way my mother used to do to me. With a hard swat where it will do the most good.”
She thought she had him with that one, but learned her mistake in a second when his eyebrows waggled suggestively.
“Promise?”
“Oh, you’re impossible!”
“I know it. Impossibility is one of my many charms.”
“Charms? Ha!” She sniffed. Somehow, this sniff didn’t sound as obnoxious as had all the other sniffs she’d sniffed in her life. “I shall leave you to your own devices now, Mr. Perry. When you’ve managed to dress yourself, I shall accompany you to the river. There I shall read to you if you like, or we can fish silently and enjoy the beauties of this lovely spring day.” She inhaled deeply until she realized Elijah was staring at her swelling bosom. Then she uttered a short, sharp, “Oh!” and fled, Apricot trailing in her wake.
She heard Elijah call after her, “You’re both deserting me!” and smiled to herself. Offhand, she couldn’t recall a single other time in her life when she’d felt this chipper.
Sucking in another deep whiff of the crystal, clear air of southeastern New Mexico Territory, she told herself it was the atmosphere that had invigorated her so. She had a feeling she was fibbing.
Chapter Twelve
Joy matched her steps to Elijah’s so she wouldn’t race ahead of him to the river. She carried her fishing pole and a bundle of things wrapped in a faded old quilt. She aimed to make a day of it, complete with a picnic.
And, by heaven, she’d even take a nap if she felt like it. In the middle of the day. Like a complete and absolute lazy bones—her mother and her mother’s voice be hanged. Apricot danced beside her, galloping off every now and then to investigate interesting things along the way.
Joy wanted to run with the kitten. She wanted to leap and skip and whirl around and dance in the spring sunshine. She’d never done any of those things a girl. Now that she was five-and-twenty—an old maid by anyone’s reckoning—she wanted to do them. Here. Now. In Rio Hondo, New Mexico Territory, of all unlikely places. She laughed at herself.
“What? What’s so funny?”
She glanced up to find Elijah grinning down at her, his eyes twinkling in a manner her mother would have stigmatized as brazen and unseemly. Joy found the effect of his twinkle charming. “Oh, nothing.”
“You’re laughing because I’m crippled, aren’t you? You think it’s divine justice that I should be laid up after being shot during a poker game, don’t you?”
“I? Why, I’d never be so petty, Mr. Perry.”
“Ha. A likely story.”
His show of mock annoyance made her giggle again.
“You can’t mean to tell me you’re just laughing for the hell of it?”
“I never do anything for the hell of it, Mr. Perry. I thought you knew that by this time.” She gave him an arch look, and was pleased as punch when he smiled back at her. He had a lovely smile, Mr. Elijah Perry, even if he was a sinful gambling man.
The notion of Elijah being a sinful gambler and of her, Joy Eloise Hardesty, having been alone in a small house with him for nearly four entire weeks tickled her. Why, back home in Auburn, Massachusetts, she’d be ruined beyond redemption after the first night. She’d be the talk of the town—if anyone believed it. She was such a sour old stick, they probably wouldn’t. That thought tickled her, too. Everything tickled her today.
“Yeah, I know you’d never do anything for the hell of it. Silly of me to say such a thing.”
His grin was almost as perfect as the day. Joy sighed happily.
“You’re full of beans today, aren’t you?”
She threw a stick for Apricot, who bounded after it and attacked it as if it were his mortal enemy. Joy laughed. “No one’s told me I was full of beans since I was six years old, Mr. Perry.”
“Oh? Who did it then?’
She sighed again, remembering. “My father. We’d gone to the pond, because my mother was sick.”
“Sounds like the two of you had a good time together.”
“We did.” She realized the warmth in her chest had melted the lump of pain usually residing there. How strange. It was also strange to recall the great pleasure she’d taken on that day, almost twenty years ago, when her father had tended her and they’d gone to the pond. He hadn’t criticized and belittled her; rather, he’d laughed with her. Joy had listened for hours, enraptured, as her father had spun yarns for her amusement. She wondered if she’d be a different person today if her fat
her had had the tending of her more often. But he hadn’t, and she was now whatever it was she’d become.
“Your father sounds like a nice fellow, Joy. I wish I’d known him. The preachers I used to know were more like your mother than your father.”
She glanced up at him. The twinkle in his eyes made her look away again quickly. “They were? What do you mean?”
“Oh, they were judgmental and harsh and cruel for the most part.”
“Cruel? You think my mother was cruel?”
“Think it? I know it.”
She pondered that one, frowning. Her pleasure in the day faded slightly.
Elijah must have noticed the change in her mood. “But I don’t want to talk about the old bat today.”
“No, indeed,” she agreed readily, finding that relegating her mother to the back of her mind cheered her considerably. Even thinking of her as an old bat felt right.
When they got to the marshy area surrounding the river, Joy took Elijah by the hand and guided him along firm ground to the place where she’d caught their supper a few days earlier. She wouldn’t let him sit on her fallen log until she’d spread the old quilt on it. “We don’t want the dampness to creep into your old bones and give you rheumatism, now do we?”
“Old bones? Hell, I’m not that old.”
She laughed at him. “And I’ll settle myself here, beside you.”
Apricot made a flying leap for the quilt and started digging at it with his sharp little claws.
“Looks like Killer’s trying to murder it.”
“Apricot is merely fluffing your blanket for you, Mr. Perry.”
“Fluffing it, my eye. He’s trying to rip it to shreds. And my name’s Elijah, Joy.”
The notion of calling this man by his Christian name gave Joy a warm, gooey feeling in her middle. Because she didn’t want him to know it, she said, “All right, Elijah,” and flounced off to the river’s edge where she picked up a stick and poked around in the mud.
She heard his soft laugh at her back. “What are you doing now?”
“Looking for worms. Ah, here’s a nice fat one!” She picked it up and dangled it for him to see. She even made a smacking sound with her lips, as if she aimed to pop the juicy wiggler into her mouth and eat it.
His laugh got louder. Joy was pleased with herself as she baited her hook and tossed the line into the river. Then she returned to the log, held the fishing pole with one hand, flipped The Moonstone open with the other, picked it up, and began to read. She heard Apricot purring like an engine, and thought the day couldn’t get any finer.
She cooked fish for lunch, and couldn’t recall ever having eaten a tastier meal, even if she and Elijah did have to fight Apricot over their plates. Feeling extravagant and happy, Joy finally gave up and let the cat have an entire fish for himself. Elijah laughed at her. She was neither surprised nor dismayed. In fact, she stuck her tongue out at him. She could hardly believe it of herself.
After lunch she read The Moonstone until she caught sight of Elijah shifting his position on the log and trying not to appear uncomfortable.
“All right,” she said in the voice her mother used to use to intimidate her into obeying her commands. “It’s time for your nap, Mr. Elijah Perry. You’re going to have to stand up now, and I’m going to find a flat, dry place and spread the quilt on it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He saluted her sharply. Joy was delighted.
It didn’t take long for her to find a suitable spot in a patch of dappled shade near a young cottonwood tree. Then she had to hold the kitten, who seem to feel it his privilege to curl up in the center of the blanket, thereby rendering the napping place unsuitable for human occupation. It took Elijah a few grunts of pain and a minute or two, but he eventually managed to lie down and arrange himself in a nappable position. Joy frowned down at him, petting Apricot distractedly.
“Are you comfortable? I have a cushion for your head.”
“That would be nice.”
He smiled up at her, and Joy’s heart flipped and flopped like one of the fish she’d recently caught. She wished Elijah Perry weren’t such a devilishly attractive man, and that her heart would behave itself.
After she’d positioned the pillow under his head and watched Apricot maneuver himself into a ball on Elijah’s stomach, Joy sat on the quilt, too. She propped a second cushion against the fallen cottonwood log, leaned back, closed her eyes, and let the fresh spring sunshine wash her cheeks with its warmth.
Right before she dropped off to sleep, she realized the knot of pain she’d carried around in her chest since she was born hadn’t yet returned to bother her, and it must be well past noon.
# # #
A whole battalion of Yankee blue-coats, mounted on fresh horses, surged toward the ragged band of Confederate soldiers trying to hide themselves behind a sparse stand of elms and firs. Elijah’s heart banged against his breastbone like the entire Confederate drum corps. It seemed strange to him that he should feel such exhilaration in what might well be the last few seconds remaining to him in life. The ground rumbled like thunder, and he braced himself for the barrage of gunfire sure to come.
It didn’t. Nor did the horses get any closer. Elijah squinted into the line of mounted soldiers and wondered what was holding them back. By rights they should have run him down by this time. The ground rattled his very bones, yet the line of Yankees stayed as far away as ever. What the hell was going on?
His eyes opened and he gazed up, disoriented, into a canopy of cottonwood leaves. Where the devil was he?
Something stirred at his side. He glanced over, saw Joy Hardesty sleeping sweetly, her head cradled in her open palm, Killer curled up at her waist, and everything came back to him in a rush. A flood of contentment filled him. Before he gave himself time to think about it, he reached over and smoothed Joy’s cheek with his fingers. Her skin was as soft as a baby’s.
Damn, he wished they were alone in Rio Hondo, and that Joy wasn’t quite who she was. He’d make slow, sweet love to her right here, right now. Then they could nap again, or make love again, or laugh together and tell tall tales and play with the kitten, and—
“Hell, you wouldn’t be able to make love with a woman, Elijah Perry, and you know it. Especially not Joy. She deserves better than you.”
He blinked, astounded about the truth he’d just told himself.
Then he realized the ground still shook. Hard. What in the name of holy hell was happening? Did New Mexico Territory get earthquakes? Did earthquakes last this long? He yanked his mind away from what he’d like to do with Joy and painfully pushed himself up until he was sitting, his wounded leg stretched out straight, his other knee bent. Killer opened one eye and peered at him malevolently, as if he didn’t appreciate having his nap interrupted.
“Get over it, cat,” Elijah advised the kitten. “You’re only an animal, and you’ll do as I say.” He didn’t believe it, but he figured Killer could use some discipline.
Joy slept on, her dreams undisturbed by Elijah’s erotic fantasies or the rumbling of the earth beneath her. She slept the sleep of the innocent, which was appropriate enough. She seemed happy today, resting on the quilt he’d been sharing with her. He wondered if she knew she’d stretched out beside him. Probably not. He reached over again to brush a stray lock of hair away from her eyes. She was a very pretty girl when she wasn’t attempting to be what her mother had tried to make of her.
Before he knew what he was doing, Elijah had leaned over and softly kissed her forehead, where the lock of hair had been. Joy stirred and smiled in her sleep. A charge of something primitive roared through Elijah, and he was hard-pressed to keep from drawing Joy into his arms and ravishing her. As if he were fit to ravish anyone at all, much less a corseted spinster lady with strong Christian principles and a solid right hook. He sighed, feeling old and useless, and not liking it.
And in the meantime, the distant thundering seemed to be growing louder, and the earth rattled as if God had dumped the plan
et into a sieve and was now attempting to separate the chaff from the wheat by shaking it to death. “What the hell is that?”
Neither Joy nor Killer had an answer for him, but the kitten evidently didn’t much like the way the earth was behaving. He looked around as if startled, and leaped onto his feet, arching his back and hissing at Elijah.
“Hell, it’s not my fault, Killer. I don’t know what’s happening, either.”
Joy yawned hugely. Elijah chuckled, sure she’d never have done such a thing if she knew he was watching. Her eyes fluttered open, and his heart gave a twinge of appreciation. Before he knew he was going to do it, he’d reached out and cupped her soft cheek in his big, rough hand.
“Good afternoon, sleepyhead.” His voice had gone low and seductive. Hallelujah, he never talked like that except when he was trying to get into a lady’s drawers. Those blasted bullets had apparently damaged more than his flesh. His mind was shot too.
“H’lo,” she said, her voice thick with sleep. She smiled lazily up at him, and Elijah spared a moment to be grateful he wasn’t a well man, or he’d have pounced on her. Joy Hardesty. Right here. By the banks of the Spring River. In broad daylight.
Her eyes thinned, and Elijah expected her to object to the hand he still held to her cheek. Her skin felt warm with spring sunshine and soft with her own peculiar femininity—especially peculiar because he hadn’t expected to find it in her.
“What’s that awful noise? Why is the ground rumbling?”
As if she didn’t even know his hand was there, she sat up, and Elijah’s hand fell away. He sighed. “I don’t know. I thought it was part of a dream, but it wasn’t.”
“No. It’s definitely not a dream.”
By this time the kitten had taken all it intended to take on the ground. With several bounds and a flying leap, it dug its claws into the trunk of the nearby cottonwood, yowling as it went. Joy giggled. Then she frowned. “Whatever it is, it’s frightened Apricot.”