by Carol Arens
While she spoke, Matt reached over and took her hand. He folded it inside both of his big, rough fists and rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.
“I’m sure sorry about that,” he murmured.
“I got along. I’d go to a family and do what work I could in exchange for what shelter and affection they were able to give. I grew and changed families a few times before I was old enough to be on my own and get paid for the work I did.
“Now I’ve finally got a place of my own. With what I make on Orange Lilly I can sink in my roots and never have to move on again.” As long as Dr. Coonley continued producing patent medicine and the railroads continued delivering to Dodge, she ought to have a dependable income.
“Darlin’, I’m going to build you the finest house around. Those wandering days of yours are gone for good.” Matt stood. He kept hold of her hand and drew her up with him. Lands, if his touch wasn’t the most tender thing she’d ever felt. “I think it’s about time for us to head on up to bed.”
Lordy! There was only one bed in his room.
All the way up the steps to the second floor he kept hold of her hand. A lucky thing, too, since visions of what could happen on that one bed drained the strength right out of her legs. Blamed if she didn’t feel heat twisting in her secret places.
Once inside the room with the door closed, Emma shook herself. Not a thing was going to happen on the bed with Lucy curled in the middle of it.
Matt leaned into the circle of moonlight surrounding his daughter and kissed the top of her head. He straightened, then shot Emma a smile slanted in mischief.
“I’ll step into Red’s room if you need a moment to slip into your sleeping gown.” The hint of a dimple creasing his cheek told her that this was a challenge more than a genuine offer.
“I believe that dressing screen in the corner should provide all the modesty a married lady needs,” she said, and wondered if it would.
She stepped behind it and took off her dress and underclothes. In spite of her casual words, she didn’t feel at all modest. The shifting and twisting in her belly made her hope that he could see through the screen.
Mercy, with the way he was staring at it, maybe he could! Moonlight whispering through the window glanced off her naked skin. What stood in the way of making this marriage real, besides the child in the bed? Just her desire to live alone? She lifted her arms and let down her hair. She drew her fingers through it to make it loose and fluffy.
She thought she heard Matt gasp and peeked over the top of the screen. He’d plopped down on the edge of the bed.
“You sure you can’t see through this screen?” Hopefully she sounded more chaste than she felt.
“If I were you I’d finish up quick.”
Emma turned and lifted the lid of her trunk. She drew out her nightgown and ever so slowly let it slide down her body. How wanton of her was it to imagine that the fabric gliding over her breasts was Matt’s calloused hand?
After one more toss of her hair, she stepped from behind the screen.
“Your turn,” she said lightly to cover her true yearnings.
Matt stood up from the bed when Emma crawled between the wall and Lucy to snuggle down onto the mattress.
“Every time I think I’ve got you figured out, you surprise the hell out of me,” he whispered.
She’d certainly surprised the hell out of herself. If it weren’t for Lucy lying smack in the center of the bed, Emma might have ripped this gown right off.
The strange urge didn’t ease any when Matt didn’t go behind the screen to get undressed. He faced her with a lock of hair brushing the deepening crease in his cheek, unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off. He hung it over the screen, then untied the scarf from around his neck and draped it over the shirt.
She’d seen men remove their shirts for farm work or field chores, but she’d never wanted to reach out and touch any of them. Maybe it was the moonlight painting Matt’s muscles in strokes of bronze and silver that made her fingers itch.
Maybe it was the fact that she was his legally wedded wife and could reach out with a nearly clear conscience that made her breath quicken under the sheets.
When her husband dropped his jeans and crawled under the covers wearing only red drawers, she felt the need to hold her breath to keep from groaning.
Mercy, how was she going to make it through the rest of the summer like this? Surely Lucy wouldn’t be sleeping between them every night.
Fantasies of Matt’s hard bronzed body settling over hers, with his sun-kissed hair swooping down to tickle her neck and his lips tasting places that had never been tasted, had Emma floating on a cloud of pure delight.
As if sensing her feelings, Matt reached over Lucy’s head and grasped Emma’s hand where it lay on the pillow near her head. He twined his fingers through hers and let them lie bound together, silk and leather.
A smile teased the corners of his mouth. Across the moonlit bed Emma yearned to kiss it. Married was married after all.
Suddenly Lawrence Pendragon’s voice shot out of a corner of her memory.
“What’s wrong, Emma?” He squeezed her hand. The smile vanished from his face. “We won’t do anything you don’t want to.”
“Who is Angus Hawker?”
The breath came out of Matt’s lungs in a long whoosh. He glanced at Lucy and touched her cheek, apparently testing the depth of her sleep.
Even though Lucy didn’t stir, he spoke in a whisper. “What did you hear about him?”
“That he is going to kill you.”
“That’s his plan, all right.”
“But why?”
“Do you recall what I told you about coming upon Red?”
“You did what needed to be done to save Red’s life.”
Matt hugged his fingers tighter about hers. “I killed a man. The fellow that Red was facing was hot for a fight, and not going to settle for less than a quick draw, so I obliged him. His name was Seth Hawker. Angus is his brother. Angus was in prison when the shooting happened, but he’ll be out by summer’s end. I figure he’ll make it to Dodge by early fall.”
Emma’s heart seemed to be tumbling in midair. The thought of her handsome husband, no matter how recently she had come by him, lying cold in a grave made tears strain at the back of her eyes.
He braced himself up on one elbow to peer down at her face.
“There’s something I need to explain to you.” He let go of her hand to feather the outline of her hair, but he clenched his fist instead of touching it. “I could pick up Lucy and carry her over to Red’s room. That’s what I want to do. I never meant to be married, but darlin’, in just one day you’ve got me rethinking that. If I was free to do it, I’d press you back on this bed and bind you to me.”
“I might not mind being bound, for now.”
Matt bent over Lucy and kissed Emma lightly on the lips.
“Hell’s fire, woman, you’d be sorry within the week. But the truth is, it can’t be that way for us. I’ve got to take Red and Lucy and ride for California before Hawker gets here.”
Of course he did. She only prayed that the tear breaking loose from her eye didn’t make him think that she felt otherwise.
“I won’t leave until I get your house built, that’s a promise.” Emma couldn’t help but reach up and brush the brown-sugar hair sweeping alongside his cheek back behind his ear. “You are some kind of woman, darlin’. Maybe even the kind who can make it out here.”
Matt eased down onto his side of the bed. He took her hand again and twined his fingers in hers. This time he laid them over the rise and fall of Lucy’s small rib cage.
“I wouldn’t go away if I didn’t think so.”
Mercy, wouldn’t a body who’d just been handed everything she wanted be bursting at the seams for joy? Just her and Pearl out on their land with no one to care for had been her wish for years on end.
Now all of a sudden the thought didn’t give her the thrill it once had. Surely in the morning after a go
od night’s sleep it would come back fresh, but for now all she wanted was to lie in the dark and feel like Matt’s wife.
Chapter Five
Keeping a dugout clean was work enough to make a woman scream. Since Emma didn’t want the men outside to figure her for a weakling, she hummed a tune that anyone would think was cheerful.
A beam of sunshine shot through the open dugout door and illuminated the bed that she shared with Lucy. She smoothed the covers flat, then flicked away a flea that fell from the dirt ceiling.
If it weren’t for the bugs living in her walls, the soddie would be pleasant enough. She’d lined the walls with fabrics and covered the floor with canvas. Cool during the day and warm at night, it was a snug retreat from the wind and sun. Even at midnight, the only wild creature she needed to worry about was of the insect variety.
The men preferred to sleep outside near the campfire that burned day and night. It was what they were used to, they claimed. It reminded them of being on the roundup.
Evidently Matt preferred outdoor life, as well. Lucy and Emma had slept alone for the full two weeks they had been here.
It was only midmorning and Emma had swept the dugout floor twice, but she snatched up the broom and did it again.
For the moment, her home was clean enough for her to do a job she had wanted to begin for ever so long. This morning she would plant trees. Matt had met the train yesterday and picked up her order of fruit trees along with her shipment of Orange Lilly.
It had pleased her no end that Matt had returned to the homestead with half the case of Orange Lilly sold and ten dollars in his pocket. The crease in his cheek had been flashing when he’d told her that five ladies from town had approached the wagon before he’d turned off Front Street, vowing they would perish if he didn’t sell them the snake oil.
Emma filled a basket with chicken, bread and a piece of peach pie left over from last night. She took a canteen from a peg on the wall and put it in with the food.
She plucked her bonnet from the corner where her clothes hung and took Lucy’s little one, as well. The child didn’t care for her hat, never having been required to wear one before. It was clear that the men who’d raised her doted on the girl. What a shame they’d never thought to protect her fair face from sunburn.
No doubt at this very moment Lucy splashed in the creek like a little boy, heedless of the sun beating down and turning her skin pink.
Emma closed the heavy wood door that Matt had installed on the dugout the first day here. At least it would keep the prairie soot from getting in until she opened the door again.
As always, when Emma stepped outside her heart skipped over itself. Every day the lumber pile in the yard grew smaller. A little more than a cow’s bellow away from the creek, fresh-smelling wood took the shape of a home.
A body would think she’d get used to seeing it. Still, every time she spotted Matt carrying a heavy piece of lumber or driving home a nail, her pulse quickened. She’d always known she’d love her new home.
Five men labored in the early-morning heat. Cousin Billy and Jesse worked on the house, Red on the barn. Except that just now Red was watching Lucy by the creek. Matt stood by the well in the shade of the roof he had built over it. He spoke with a man he had hired, Rusty Cohen, an experienced home builder in Dodge.
Matt and Rusty looked up from their conversation when they spotted her coming toward the well. Rusty tipped his hat. A grin that made her insides weak slid across Matt’s face.
Sometime before summer’s end she would have to learn not to enjoy it so much.
“I left some lunch in the dugout.” Emma took the canteen from the basket. When she reached for the ladle in the bucket Matt took it from her and filled the canteen.
“Are you wearing those new boots?” he asked.
Since Rusty had glanced down at her feet, she raised the hem of her gown only enough for the toe of one leather boot to peek out. When Matt had presented them to her she had yanked her skirt up past her knee, aglow with the impropriety of it.
“I wouldn’t want to meet the snake that could sink its fangs through this leather,” she said.
“All the same,” Matt said and tucked the filled canteen into the basket. “I had Red look the area over when he dropped off your trees. It seemed clear at the time, but you’d better keep an eye out.”
“There’s no need to worry about Lucy and me. We’re on Parker land.”
Rusty arched his heavy brows and tipped his head. Matt took the revolver from his holster and tucked it in with the canteen.
“Don’t shoot at anything unless you have to. Just point the gun out toward the horizon and I’ll come running.”
Emma didn’t like the feel of a loaded weapon in her picnic basket. Wouldn’t a scream get attention as easily as gunfire?
She rose on her toes to kiss Matt’s cheek. She’d only just realized her slip of the tongue in calling her homestead Parker land instead of Suede land. This casual display of wifely affection toward her husband should smooth that over.
“Good day, Mr. Cohen,” Emma said, then headed toward the corral where Pearl nuzzled noses with Thunder.
“Come on, Pearl, we’re going for a walk.”
The horse whinnied and trotted toward the corral gate. Emma didn’t bother with tack equipment, since she wouldn’t be riding the horse. Pearl followed behind Emma swishing her tail while they walked toward the creek to fetch Lucy.
After a moment of disagreement over wearing the bonnet, Lucy allowed Emma to tie up the ribbons under her chin in exchange for riding to the site of the tree-planting on Pearl’s bare back.
Surely too soon for Lucy, Emma lifted her from the horse.
“Here we are. Which tree do you want to plant first?” Lucy raced toward the row of thirty trees that Red had set in a line. “This one!”
“That’s a fine choice. It’s an apple.” Emma picked up the sapling. “Let’s plant it right here in front so we can see it from the house.”
Emma set the picnic basket with the loaded gun well away from the area where they would be working. From what she had learned of youngsters, they seemed to be attracted to the very thing that would cause them grief.
She found a shovel in the pile of tools that Red had left behind with the trees.
“Put it here, Mama.” Lucy jumped up and down on the spot of prairie she had picked for her tree. “I want it right here where Mr. Hoppety can come and get an apple.”
There might not be enough apples for all the Mr. Hoppetys in the creek, but the place looked as good as any to begin.
Emma expected the sod to be hard digging. She’d heard the tales of sodbusters truly being busted over it. To her amazement, the shovel went in as if it was cutting into cake.
She’d have to bake something special for whichever one of Matt’s gang had thought to prepare the ground.
With the hole dug, she knelt beside it and set the tree in. Matt’s big gloves nearly slipped off her hands while she pressed the dirt around the roots, filling the hole.
“What do you say we give your tree a name?”
Lucy plopped down on her knees. She pressed her hands on top of Emma’s firming the dirt. “I want to call it Hoppety.”
“Next thing, you’ll want to turn your name to Hoppety.” Lucy giggled. Childish laughter was one of the things Emma liked most. She reached for Lucy’s middle and tickled. “Hoppety, Hoppety, Hoppety!”
Lucy’s giggles rang out over the land. Pearl quit her grazing to let out a playful snort.
“Hoppety Suede!”
“Mama, I’m Lucy!” she declared with a hiccup.
“Yes, you are. I suppose your papa wouldn’t like it if you turned into a frog.” Lucy shook her head hard. She’d quit laughing when the tickling ended, but her eyes continued to dance with blue sparkles. Healthy children had the most wonderful glow about them. “Lucy, sweetheart, you know that I’m not really your mama, don’t you?”
“You brush my hair like a real ma, and ma
ke me wear a bonnet.”
“I think you’re a fine little girl.” Emma touched Lucy’s chin and peered into a face that had grown suddenly solemn. “Someday you’ll have a real mama and that’s what you’ll want to call her.”
“I want to call you Mama.”
“How about if you call me Mama Emma?”
The sparkle flashed back into Lucy’s eyes. She hugged Emma tightly around the neck.
Hopefully she hadn’t set Lucy up for heartache by giving in to that name.
“We’d better get busy giving the rest of these trees names.”
Lucy let go of her neck and hurried over to the line of trees lying on the ground.
“This one is Lucy.” She pointed to a peach tree and then to a pecan. “This one is Mama Emma.”
Lordy, she’d never allowed a child to call her Mama-anything. She prayed that she wouldn’t have to mend that mistake at summer’s end.
After two hours, Emma and Lucy broke for lunch. Emma took the gun out of the picnic basket and set it beside the tools.
After they’d eaten, Lucy yawned, stretched and fell asleep on the picnic blanket.
“Come on over here, Pearl.” Emma positioned the horse so that her shadow covered Lucy. “That’s a good horse. Now, don’t move. Stay right there.”
Pearl whickered and nuzzled Emma’s chin.
“I’d best get back to work on these trees. In no time at all I’ll be feeding you apples from them.” She kissed Pearl’s velvety muzzle. “You watch over Hoppety there, and I’ll bake you a pie full of apples.”
It took only another hour to get the remaining trees into the ground, thanks to the soil preparation that must have taken such time and sweat.
She firmed the dirt around the last sapling. The bawling of a steer cut the peaceful afternoon. Mercy, if it didn’t seem to be right behind her.
Emma pivoted on her knees. A bull munched Hoppety Tree between his hairy brown jaws. Dirt crumbled from the roots before the huge mouth chomped and swallowed them.
“Shoo!” She jumped up and waved her apron at him. “Go away!”
“I wouldn’t wave your clothing at him, ma’am.”