by Cindy Gerard
He was so handsome it made her chest hurt. And his blue eyes were so distant and closed off it made her stomach knot.
“You go ahead and shower,” he’d insisted when they pulled into the drive. “I’ll do chores.”
So she had. She’d showered and thought and then she’d waited in the kitchen, set out their dinner that had turned into supper and rehearsed what she was going to say the minute he came downstairs.
Now here he stood, and all she could do was ache at the look of him. And feel the chill.
They’d shared something special in that barn with May Belle and her baby. Ellie couldn’t name it, but she recognized the subtle difference just the same. She’d thought they had turned a corner—only now it looked as if they’d lost their way again in the lonesome silence on the drive home.
He’d been fighting mad when he’d found her in the kitchen earlier. For that matter, so had she been. She’d been ready to tell him a thing or two about frogs and princes and how she wasn’t so sure she hadn’t ended up with the green one of the two.
She understood now where her anger had come from. She’d been conditioned to always be on the defensive. Past experience had taught her it was the best protection from curious stares and taunting remarks. But Lee wasn’t like that. He’d never been like that. He didn’t see her as an oddity, and she was ashamed that she’d sold him short—even if she’d had provocation.
But now she was dealing with something else again. Something that made her want to shout, “Talk to me. Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
Instead she watched him snag a drumstick as he headed for the fridge, where he searched inside until he found the milk.
“You must be starving.”
Great. All those words she’d rehearsed and that’s what came out. She’d lost her courage now that she was face-to-face with him again. Her insecurities took over just like that, much stronger than she was.
What if he simply didn’t want to be with her? What if there had been another woman in his life in Texas? A woman he had left because he’d promised her daddy he’d take care of her.
A woman. Not a girl with a problem.
Suddenly she didn’t want to know.
So instead of facing her demons, she followed his lead and walked to the cupboard and got him a glass.
He made a humming sound around the chicken leg, which passed for appreciation that he was finally getting something in his stomach.
“Good,” he managed after swallowing a healthy mouthful and washing it down with milk she’d poured for him. “Nothing better than cold fried chicken. You’re a good cook, Ellie,” he added after helping himself to the potato salad and a homemade bun.
“I had a good teacher.”
The wave of sorrow that swamped her was as powerful as it was unexpected. So were the sudden tears she tried like crazy to blink back. She quickly turned her back to him and stared out the kitchen window.
I miss you, Momma. I miss you, Daddy. I need you. Both of you, to tell me how to be a wife. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to reach him—or if he even wants me to. If he even wants me.
“Ellie.”
She felt him at her back, his heat, his strength, and because it was what she needed most, she turned into the arms that opened to her.
Then she held on. Just held on as his heart beat strong and sure beneath her cheek. “I miss them,” she confessed against his shirt.
“I know, baby.” His arms banded tighter around her. “I miss them, too.”
She pressed her face into the warmth of his throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this.” She clutched at the soft cotton shirt that smelled of him and of soap. “Sometimes…sometimes it just sneaks up on me. And I feel so alone.”
He rocked her gently back and forth. “You’re not alone anymore,” he whispered, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“Come on.” He set her gently away. “You’re tired. And you need to eat as much as I do.”
So they ate. In a fractured silence filled with carefully guarded smiles and little else.
He helped her do the dishes.
Then they went to bed.
At least she did.
With her heart in her throat, she waited for him to join her. But he never did.
Not that night. Or any night in the week that followed.
Each morning he would greet her with a smile, a careful distant peck on her cheek and a “How are you?” that was quickly followed by “I’ll see you later, then, if you’re sure you’re okay.” Then he’d take off fixing this and fixing that as if there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow—or as if he didn’t want to spend any time alone with her.
Ellie would feed her birds. She would water her seedlings and plan her garden, cook his meals, wash his clothes and wonder what to do.
Each night in the dark, in her bed, she would close her eyes and wish that it was Lee who was with her—instead of just his words that played like an echo in her mind.
You’re not alone anymore.
But she was.
She was alone and she wished with all her heart that she were woman enough to make him understand.
Every day, along with the mail, Leon Wilks brought the daily edition of the Wall Street Journal and the Denver Post.
Every night after supper Lee snagged them like they were lifelines and went out to the porch to read each one from cover to cover.
They’d developed a pattern. It was working, he told himself.
Yeah, right. That’s why he averaged two hours of sleep a night on the couch because he didn’t dare use one of the bedrooms upstairs that was so close to hers.
And it was why Ellie looked so lost.
He’d hurt her.
When he left her alone in her room each night, he hurt her. He knew it. He just couldn’t get past it.
He told himself it was because he was giving her time. In truth, he was the one who needed the time. He really didn’t know how to handle this. Any of it. Not his physical desire for her that had become a matter of pride that he control. Not his inability to figure out how to approach the subject of her epilepsy.
In that moment last Sunday when he’d held her and she’d cried for her parents, it had hit home again just how young she was. How fragile. And he’d known he had to back off until he could get a grip.
For all the good that idea had done him. He was as owly as a bear with beestings. And he was restless. As restless as she was.
From the porch he could hear her in the house, setting the kitchen right after supper, tidying up the dining room.
They couldn’t go on like this. Something had to change. He just wished that he knew how or where to go from here. Folding the papers, he pulled off his reading glasses and set them both aside. Rocking forward in the ancient and creaking wicker chair, he tried to think things through—then frowned at the lane leading to Shiloh.
“What the hell?”
He stood up, walked to the end of the new porch floor just as Ellie came outside, her brows furrowed, a dish towel forgotten in her hand. She’d seen it, too—or heard it.
A long line of what—with a little fanciful imagination—looked like a ribbon of fireflies, trailed down the road. In reality it was a string of headlights cutting through the darkening dusk.
There must have been close to twenty cars and pickups, and they were all blowing their horns non-stop.
“Something’s wrong,” he said as he headed for the bottom step with Ellie right behind him.
They stood there, prepared for the worst, when one by one the vehicles pulled up in front of the house and killed the horns. The loudest cacophony of clanging and banging and hoots and hollers and laughter erupted then as dozens of people spilled out into the night beating on pots and pans that they carried like drums.
Lee shot Ellie a baffled look.
She just lifted her shoulders, as befuddled as he was, until the wrinkled old face of Buzz Sheppard grinned up at them from the bottom of the ste
ps.
“Shivaree!” Buzz shouted gleefully and, pounding a wooden spoon on the bottom of a blackened old stew pot, led the laughing throng around the house in a shuffling dance that only they knew the steps to. “Shivaree! Shivaree!”
“Shiva-what?” Lee shouted above the noise, bending his head close to hers.
Ellie smiled then, and a laugh bubbled out as the howling, pan-banging parade passed by.
“Shivaree,” she shouted, then clasped her hands together as warmth filled her chest. “They’re giving us a shivaree.”
“What the hell is a shivaree?” He placed an arm over her shoulders and drew her against his side.
“It’s a noisy mock serenade to newlyweds,” she explained, tipping her head up to his so he could hear her. “It’s an old Sundown custom.”
A mock serenade to a mock marriage. The irony hit him where it hurt—and where he knew it must hurt Ellie.
But she was smiling, and for her sake he put on his game face.
“An old custom and a loud one,” he said with a forced laugh, then waved when he recognized Pastor Good and his wife, Martha. “Does this mean I have to share your leftover pot roast with them?”
Her eyes were shining. “Something tells me they’re going to be sharing a lot more with us than we are with them.”
The noisy bunch rounded the house about that time and headed back for their vehicles. When they trooped back up the walk, the only noise was their laughing chatter. Buzz had traded his stew pot and spoon for a fiddle. Someone brought out a guitar. Everyone else carried covered casseroles, bowls of salad and armloads of prettily wrapped packages. There was even a wedding cake—compliments of Doc Lundstrum’s wife.
Lee wanted to be annoyed. He was frustrated. He was concerned about Ellie. But when he looked down and saw her smiling face, he couldn’t be anything but happy for her.
He simply stepped aside as their unexpected guests trooped inside and took over.
Six
“He watches you.” Peg Lathrop lifted a forkful of wedding cake and grinned at Ellie.
Ellie blinked, then looked at the young woman who had sought her out where she’d sat in the corner of the living room surrounded by wrapping paper and the wedding gifts she and Lee had recently opened.
When Peg laughed at Ellie’s look of disbelief, Ellie searched for Lee. She found him standing in the arched doorway that separated the living room from the dining room. He was watching her, but he quickly looked away and returned his attention to Dorothy Ferguson, who had arrived with a slow-moving Don in tow.
“Can’t keep his eyes off you,” Peg added knowingly when Ellie met her gaze again.
“Um,” was all Ellie could manage as she looked from Peg to Lee again.
He looked so tall and lean, so confident and strong as he laughed at something Dorothy said, his white teeth flashing, the creases around his eyes and mouth deepening.
She thought about that mouth, about the way it had felt on hers the day of their wedding, the morning after in her bed and later in the tub. She thought about it when she washed dishes or when she was gathering eggs. She thought about it each night, as she lay alone in her bed.
Peg touched her arm, smiling softly. “So I take it the feeling’s mutual?”
The pair of embroidered pillowcases Martha Good had given them as a wedding gift suddenly became the focus of her attention. She wanted desperately to confide in Peg. She had always been one of Ellie’s most special alliances. Peg was twenty-six and a single mom. In Sundown, Montana, population 473, that alone was a pretty big cross to bear. Ellie hadn’t cared about any of that. She liked Peg, who had always made it a point to talk to Ellie when they’d run into each other at church, or at Lathrop Feed Store where Peg kept books for her dad.
Unlike most people close to her age, the epilepsy didn’t bother Peg. For the most part those same people ignored her or stared with either a warped sort of fascination or a guilt-ridden pity. Peg was different. Peg accepted her for who she was. And for that alone, Peg, with her flashing brown eyes and long slim body, would always be special to Ellie.
“Well,” Peg prompted with a gentle elbow in Ellie’s ribs, “How’s it goin’?”
Ellie felt the blush all the way to her toes.
Peg laughed. “That good, huh?” But her smile faded as she took a second look at Ellie’s face and didn’t like what she saw. “Uh-oh. What’s wrong?”
Even though Ellie was a private person, with Peg she didn’t feel so guarded. The words were out before she knew it. “I wish I knew.”
Wisely Peg didn’t say anything. She simply waited.
“I’m not so sure he’s all that happy about…about being saddled with me,” Ellie finally admitted.
She ran a thumbnail along the intricately embroidered stitches that made a purple iris and a yellow crocus on the pillowslip and dodged Peg’s probing gaze.
“Oh, honey.” Peg grasped her hands, glared over at Lee, then relaxed when she saw he was watching Ellie with a quietly predatory look, and with a hunger that even Peg—who had been in dry dock for longer than she cared to admit—recognized for what it was. “I don’t think for a minute that’s the problem. When he looks at you, there’s enough heat in that man’s eyes to fire a furnace.”
“Then why am I still a virgin almost a week after my wedding?” Ellie blurted out in a whisper.
Peg blinked. Ellie watched her blink again before she added a quiet, “Oh.”
Ellie spilled it all then. She’d needed someone to talk to for so long. Peg listened with quiet encouragement while Ellie told her about the seizure on her wedding day, about Lee holding her all night that night, about what had happened in the bathtub, and about every night she’d slept alone in her bed since.
“Come on,” Peg said, after a moment. She stood and tugged Ellie out onto the porch. “I think I know what’s going on here but, just to make sure, tell me everything again. And don’t leave one thing out.”
Later that night Lee sat alone in the big wicker rocker on the shadowed porch. Storm clouds had ruled the morning but had given way by midday to full sun. Now, close to 1:00 a.m.—an hour since the shivaree had ended and the last old dog had packed up his pots and pans and tottered home—thunder-heads were stacking up again. An egg-shaped moon winked in and out of the clouds that scudded across the sky like a troop of slowly patrolling night watch-men.
He leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees and stared at his loosely clasped hands as a night breeze picked up and sent Ellie’s wind chimes dancing.
She had been exhausted by the time the crowd had left. Exhausted and happier than he’d been able to make her since he’d come back to Shiloh and married her.
In spite of himself he had to smile when he thought of the gathered throng. Old Doc, Buzz and a couple of dozen others. His smile faded to a frown. One person. There had been only one person in on the shivaree who was even close to Ellie’s age.
It told him too much about Ellie’s life that Peg Lathrop was the only young person from Sundown in the group. Where were the friends her own age?
Even as he formed the thought, he knew the answer. There weren’t any. These were her parents’ friends. These were the people of Sundown who cared about her. These were the ones she trusted to accept her as she was.
He leaned back again, listened to the muffled creak of the rocker and the chirp of spring’s first crickets in the grass around the lattice-wrapped porch. In the far distance a low roll of thunder rumbled across the mountain ridge. In the not-so-far distance rumbled the grim reminder of how cruel kids could be.
He’d had his own mechanisms in place back then for dealing with the taunts that had labeled him everything from “outsider” to “loser” to “welfare case.” He’d knocked the snot out of anyone who’d even looked at him sideways. He raised a hand, rubbed a finger over the small crescent-shaped scar at the corner of his mouth. That scar, along with the slight bend in his nose that hadn’t set quite right after it had been br
oken by a fist in the face were reminders of those angry, defensive fights he’d been quick to start and slow to walk away from. While his anger hadn’t changed anyone’s view of him, or for that matter, his view of himself, his choice of expressing it had shut them up. And, right or wrong, it had given him an outlet for his rage and humiliation.
You didn’t have that option, did you, Ellie?
At a level that he’d hadn’t let himself fully acknowledge since returning to Shiloh, he understood that he didn’t hold the only advanced degree from the school of hard knocks. He’d grown up on the streets, been kicked around, left to twist in the wind and fend for himself until Will and Clare had found him.
Ellie was a graduate of that school, too, except she’d had a different set of classes to deal with. With her illness came so many limitations, so much disappointment. So many reasons not to trust and so much time alone. And so many reasons to be bitter and disillusioned and swayed to the side of defeat.
Yet look at her. She was none of those things.
He drew in a deep breath. Let it out. And wished he’d been around to slay her dragons for her.
Well, he was here to take care of her now. And he’d been right to leave her alone each night. It was for her good, not his.
Walking away from her bed each night had nothing to do with wanting her so badly it consumed him. Walking away had nothing to do with a creeping, seeping suspicion that if there was a need here, it was the one he felt to be surrounded by her goodness, to draw from her strength, to open himself up to feelings that he’d spent his entire life convincing himself didn’t exist—or that he, at least, had control over.
That control went on red alert when he heard the front door open, then close.
He stiffened when she walked past him on bare feet. With her back to him, she leaned against the porch rail to watch the shifting shades of gray cloud creep across the moon and douse the light.
“You couldn’t sleep, either?” Her voice was as soft as the night breeze that tugged at her hair that hung nearly to her waist. The tumble of curls looked as soft as she looked bewitching.