by Carla Kelly
His eyes burned. “How can you know that? All I did was follow her around and criticize her. Hell, I even bribed a reverend to try to guilt her into coming to church.”
Lydia’s arm slid into the crook of his arm, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. “Because you cared. You cared for her, and I believe she knew it. I believe she was proud of you. Even though she wouldn’t, or possibly couldn’t, change her life, she appreciated your concern.”
Erik exhaled, closing his eyes. How could this woman he had known for only a few weeks see his entire life so clearly? He let her words sink in and soften the hard knot of guilt. Maybe he hadn’t completely failed his sister. Maybe he’d somehow taken care of her after all.
Next to him, Lydia straightened, releasing his arm. “I have been so wrong about you, Erik Dawson, and I must apologize about that.”
He looked down at her. “You have nothing to apologize for. I should have let you know it was my sister living in that brothel instead of letting you think otherwise.”
Her gaze held his, and his heart expanded.
“I should have never thought otherwise,” she said, touching his cheek. “You’re a good man. Many people care for you and respect you.”
“Some might, but I haven’t had much luck with the women in my life. First my mother left, and now my sister is gone.” He couldn’t meet her gaze anymore. Surely there was pity in her eyes, pity he didn’t want to see.
Her hand brushed his, sending fire into his veins, but he didn’t move, didn’t dare touch her in return. It was better that he keep his heart protected. He didn’t want to feel any of the pain and rejection he’d lived with since the age of nine.
“Erik, look at me,” she said in a soft yet commanding voice.
He didn’t know how she managed that— causing a man’s knees to quiver.
He obeyed. Her eyes were a deep gray, matching the twilight of the sky beyond the window.
“I’m not your mother,” she said.
“I know.” He tried to smile, but it wouldn’t come. “You don’t look a thing like her.”
Her hands slid into his, her fingers curling around his fingers. His heart thumped as warmth spread up his arm. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I’m not going to leave you like she did.”
He exhaled, letting the information sink in. Was it possible that Lydia would stay with him? That somehow he wouldn’t drive her away? “You won’t?” he whispered, his voice hoarse now.
Lydia shook her head, her gaze intent on his. “And I’m not your sister, either.”
He could only stare at her.
She moved closer, so that their bodies were nearly touching. She pressed one finger against his chest. “I should have never crossed you off my list. You are the only man I want.”
Fire pulsed through his veins. It was more than he could have ever hoped for— that a woman like Lydia, a woman he realized he loved, could desire him in return. Truly love everything about him. She wasn’t leaving. She wasn’t turning him away. She wasn’t rejecting him.
“I’m not number ten anymore?”
“No,” she said with a small laugh. Her hand released his and moved up to his shoulder. Her fingers brushed the skin of his neck, and he inhaled sharply, knowing he couldn’t not touch her much longer.
“I think you were always the only one on my list.” Her fingers caressed his neck, then threaded into his hair. “And I think you should kiss me now, Mr. Dawson. I’ve confessed an awful lot, you know.”
Erik knew it would take only one small move, and she’d be in his arms. She’d be his. He closed his eyes, breathing her in, feeling her warm touch against his skin— the warmth moving through him until it cocooned his heart.
He opened his eyes to find that she was gazing at him. Those calm, gray eyes so wise and sure. Those eyes that said she loved him and that she wouldn’t leave.
His hands trembled as he lifted them and cradled her face. The edges of her mouth curved into a smile, and her eyelids fluttered shut. Finally, he let his heart take over, and he kissed her, finding her lips soft and warm and eager to receive his.
His pulse raced as she wrapped both of her arms around his neck and tugged him closer, kissing him in return. He moved his hands down her back, and her body molded to his, taking his breath away. Every worry and barrier seemed to fade. The miners, his mother, his father, his sister, twenty years of pain and loss. Lydia’s kisses filled his soul and pushed away his loneliness.
Wrapped in her arms, he felt like he’d come home after years of following his sister and trying to give her a home. And now, with Lydia… he knew a true home wasn’t found in a wooden or brick house. It was in the heart.
Their kissing slowed, and Lydia nestled against him, her face pressed against his neck so that he could feel her warm breath on his skin. It was like heaven had come to Leadville, Colorado.
“I hope you’re planning on courting me, Erik,” she whispered.
He loved hearing her say his name. He tightened his arms about her. “I don’t think I could let you get away now.”
“Good,” she said. “Because after that, I don’t think I could ever kiss another man ever again. You’ve ruined it for me.”
He chuckled. “Thinking of kissing another man, are you?”
She drew away from him, and he hated the distance. But her gaze was soft, welcoming. “Never.”
“Then let me see that list of yours.”
She smiled as she reached into her bodice.
“You keep it in your…”
“In case I need to make immediate alterations. Which I do.” She unfolded the paper.
He laughed and took it from her. “May I?”
She nodded, and he proceeded to rip it in half, then in half again. Before he could rip it a third time, her arms were around his neck again. The pieces of paper fell to the floor as they kissed, because out of all the names, only one mattered.
Click on the covers to visit the Amazon page:
Heather B. Moore is a USA Today bestselling author. She writes historical thrillers under the pen name H.B. Moore; her latest is Finding Sheba. Under Heather B. Moore she writes romance and women’s fiction. She’s a coauthor of The Newport Ladies Book Club series. Other works include Heart of the Ocean, The Fortune Café, the Aliso Creek series, and the Amazon bestselling Timeless Romance Anthology series.
For book updates, sign up for Heather’s email list: http://hbmoore.com/contact/
Website: www.hbmoore.com
Blog: http://mywriterslair.blogspot.com
Chapter One
Shelley, Idaho—1905
Della stood at the back door, staring with dread at the chicken coop. Cleaning it out had to be one of the smelliest, most disgusting jobs in the world. And it was all hers for the foreseeable future, now that her older brother, Andrew, had gone off to work on the railroad. He wouldn’t back soon, if ever. The moment he had enough money saved up to buy his own land, he’d settle down with Susan Hyde.
Why cleaning the chicken coop today in particular put a bee in her bonnet, she didn’t know. She clomped over to the coop wearing big ugly boots so she wouldn’t spoil her regular shoes. And she wore an ugly apron to protect her dress.
As she unlatched the coop and shooed the birds out, she knew that the object of her disdain changed by the day. Today it was the coop, but tomorrow it could well be milking the cows. Or the eternal laundry days, during which her fingers cracked from the all the scrubbing and water. The bluing alone was reason enough to despise the laundry, considering that time it spilled on her favorite white blouse and ruined it. Or the weeks on end every summer, spent canning all manner of fruits and vegetables in the heat, sweating nigh unto death, so they’d have enough food to eat in the winter.
With a wet slurping sound, her boot sank into a mud puddle. Della yanked it out, but mud splattered everywhere; surely her dress was soiled too.
She shook off the mud as best she could. After cleaning the coop, she’d make
some lemonade and sit down for a break. See, farm life? You can’t get the better of me.
Yet it did. Farm life controlled every aspect of Della Stafford’s life, and she hated that fact more and more each day.
A shovel rested outside the coop, waiting for her. She lifted it, nose crinkling in anticipation of the smell. Surely the women in catalog pictures never had to scoop the messes from chickens. Or kill chickens with an ax— and pluck them. Or a thousand other things that made up the life Della had grown up on.
I’ll leave. I’ll get away from all of this some day. Somehow.
A thousand times, she’d imagined what life would be like in a big city, with trolleys and electric lights and busy people everywhere— and no farm chores to worry about. In the city, she’d see some of those moving pictures people talked about. Visit the theater. See many of the grand sights of America and experience different foods. It would all be tremendously exciting, of course, and in the middle of it all, she’d find the man of her dreams. He’d sweep her away, and her life would be entirely different. Her hands would be soft because they no longer had to work themselves to the bone. She’d have fashionable dresses and hats and shiny new boots. And she’d never, ever have to mend the same dress for the fifth year in a row.
Her parents still held out hope that she’d pick a local boy and settle down to raise a family right there in Shelley. There was plenty of land yet to develop, and Della was plenty old enough for such things— at twenty-two, she certainly felt the pressure to marry and be in charge of her own house and chores and chickens.
No, thank you. She’d find a way to leave this place and do something else. Maybe she could be a seamstress in the big city. Or one of the women who modeled dresses and hats for the artists who drew the pictures on the fashion pages of the paper. She could find some way to get by, surely, and whatever it was, it had to be better than this sorry place of too much heat and dust in the summer, too much cold and ice in the winter, and too much work all the year round. Perhaps she would have been content if she hadn’t had a glimpse through books, newspapers, and the occasional visitor from far away, of what life was like in the big cities. She remembered all too well a woman from Seattle who came through on her way to teach in a school in Colorado. How elegant she looked. How refined.
She’d spent one night with Della’s family, during which time she regaled them with stories of her life back home, one so different from anything Della had ever imagined. She’d yearned to experience even a portion of what she’d heard about.
Standing before the chicken coop, thinking of the teacher from Seattle, she shook her head. Surely that woman had never cleaned a chicken coop. With one hand on the coop latch, Della inhaled deeply— her last breath of fresh air for now— and plunged inside. She held one sleeve over her nose but knew that couldn’t last, so she quickly went to work, scooping the droppings from the floor and roosts and, it seemed, virtually every other surface. How the chickens managed to mess up everything boggled the mind.
The shovel slipped, and the slime of chicken droppings flew through the air. A blob landed on her cheek. Della tried to not gag entirely and refused to touch it. She knew from painful experience that the droppings would only smear all over her hand if she tried wiping it off now. She’d need a rag, and she wouldn’t have one of those until she got back to the house.
Eventually she emerged from the coop, feeling covered in muck, even though it was mostly the apron’s hem, the boots, and the blob on her cheek. Some pieces of hair had escaped her bun and flew about her face in twenty directions. And she had to smell…
Wearing what she knew must be a look of disgust, she shook her head, walked out of the coop, and marched back to the barn wall, where she’d return the shovel. She had just placed it against the wall when a deep voice spoke to her from the fence.
“Why, Della Stafford, is that you under there?” Joseph Cartwright said with a laugh.
For a moment she froze, mortified, until she realized the voice belonged to Joseph, whom she’d known most of her life. He was one of her dearest friends in the world, so she could laugh at herself along with him.
He was also one of the town’s few eligible bachelors, and one plenty of people hinted that she should bat her eyelashes at. Had he not just bought his own land with plans to start a cattle farm of his own, she might well have given the idea some thought. After all, he was handsome and tall and kind and funny.
“Why, hello, Joseph Cartwright,” she said, mimicking his formal tone but grinning ear to ear. She held out her arms, revealing the disgusting mess of her dress. “Care to dance?” she asked, taking a few steps toward him.
Joseph held out one arm and took several steps back. “Whoa,” he said, backing away from the fence. “Not like that, I don’t.”
“Oh, come now, Mr. Cartwright. You aren’t afraid of a little dirt, are you?” She took another two steps toward him, laughing.
“Dirt? Never.” He swept his cowboy hat off his head, wiped his brow with one sleeve, and replaced the hat on his head with a determined plop. “That’s not dirt. Some may call me finicky, but I prefer my women to smell of lavender, not eau de chicken coop.”
Della reached the fence, but instead of following through on her threat, she set to wiping the mud and muck from her boots onto one of the posts. “If I never see a chicken or an egg again in my entire life, it would be too soon.”
Joseph leaned against the fence, relaxing into their old friendly banter. “You’d likely change your mind next time you ate a cake made with no eggs or had a roasted chicken supper without the chicken.”
She looked up and considered his point. “Very well. Someone else can handle the chickens. I’m happy to enjoy the fruits of their labors, but I hope to one day be permanently far from any chicken coop.”
With the worst of the mess off her boots, she gave one heel a final swipe on some tall grass then studied her appearance. “Oh, I do hope Mother doesn’t expect me to do much else today; I’ll barely have time to clean up for the dance as it is.”
“That’s what I came over for,” Joseph said. “To see if you were planning on going to the dance.”
“Oh, yes. I’ll be there,” Della said. “That is, assuming Mother doesn’t saddle me with a hundred other chores to complete before then.”
“Feeling a bit like Cinderella, are we?”
“So what if I do?” Della folded her arms and leaned against the fence too, happy to forget about her smell and appearance for the moment.
“So long as you aren’t expecting a prince to come rescue you and give you a different life.” Joseph chuckled, but when Della didn’t laugh back, his brow furrowed. “You don’t expect that, do you?”
How could she answer such a question? Of course life wasn’t a fairy tale existence. No prince would sweep her away and take her to a life of bliss and rest. But yes, she did plan to leave this place and leave it behind for good.
Their eyes met for several seconds as Della tried to come up with a response. Joseph looked genuinely concerned. She wanted to reach up and smooth the worried crease between his eyebrows.
Instead of answering his question, she returned to an earlier topic. She smiled broadly and tilted her head. “I’ll be expecting to have you as my partner for several dances tonight.”
Joseph blinked twice and lowered his head for just a second. Della couldn’t see his face, only the top of his hat. He stayed that way for a moment, as if he needed the time to change directions. As she waited for him to speak, Della’s heart sped up. He needed to play along, to say that of course he’d be her dance partner tonight, as he often was. And to not ask about her hopes of leaving town.
She couldn’t tell him about that, in part because he wouldn’t understand. He loved Shelley and the Idaho frontier like a child adored a parent; he wouldn’t understand why she’d want to leave.
Another reason was that when she did finally leave, she’d miss Joseph, and she didn’t want to think about that farewell any soone
r than she had to. Aside from her family, he was the only part of Shelley she’d miss terribly. Whenever she came home to visit her family, she’d certainly bump into him in town, but the time would come, likely sooner than later, when he’d find a wife. That’s when the friendly banter they’d shared for years would be a thing of the past. She hoped to find a friend in the city who could fill that spot in her heart.
Though she denied the truth even to herself, a little voice whispered in her mind that no one would ever be this dear to her again. Certainly another girl could never be the friend Joseph had been to her, especially over the last couple of years. And she most certainly couldn’t imagine another man ever being so kind and funny and attentive… and handsome. Yes, she had to admit the facts. Joseph Cartwright was a fine-looking man.
Her dreams of a different life remained, however. Apollo himself couldn’t convince her to stay here and muck out chicken coops for the rest of her life. The idea of leaving Joseph behind too made her throat go dry. The silence between them seemed to stretch thinner than taffy pulled into threads.
“You will be there, Joseph, won’t you?” She put on a smile and tilted her head at a flirty angle. “You didn’t come to see if I was going to the dance, only to stay home tonight yourself, did you?”
He finally raised his face and met her gaze. “I’ll be there tonight, Della,” he said. “I always am.”
His warm voice had something more in it, an emotion she couldn’t quite name. Something intent and serious. Something that sent a warm, tingly feeling up and down her spine.
“See you tonight.” With that, Joseph’s mouth curved into a slight smile. He tipped his hat then turned on his heel and walked away down the lane, then turned toward State Street.
Della watched his every step until he was out of sight. Too bad Joseph had no aspirations for a grander life, which was really a shame, because if he did…
She shook her head quickly to chase away the thought. No more of that. She had chores to do— detestable chores— before the dance tonight. And she was bound and determined to bathe before she dressed up. No one would know she’d spent her afternoon covered in chicken waste. Not if she had any say about it.