Her Colorado Man

by Cheryl St. John

  One of them rapped and opened the door. Several pairs of hands urged Mariah through the opening. At the very last second, the robe was lifted away and out.

  Mariah stood inside her closed door wearing only the sheer nightdress and a look of horror.

  Chapter Five

  An oil lamp glowed from the top of a bureau, and a welcoming fire burned in a brick fireplace. The four-poster bed had been turned down and pillows with white cotton cases piled and fluffed for comfort. Wes stood studying the room, pondering his predicament. The Spangler women believed he was Mariah’s husband…and as Mariah’s husband, he would naturally be expected to sleep in this room with her.

  His gaze traveled again to the bed. Sleep with her. Requesting another room or heading for the stables would drag up uncomfortable questions.

  Behind him the door opened. He turned at the same moment someone entered, a flash of fabric whisked outward, and the door closed with a firm click.

  Six mugs of beer had gone to his head, because he could have sworn a naked woman had joined him in this room. His mouth was suddenly so dry he wished he had another drink.

  He should have turned away immediately, but not looking was impossible. She was real. Wes took in every lush curve and interesting hollow visible through the sheer white garment. He was a red-blooded, more-than-able-bodied man after all. And Mariah was incredibly beautiful.

  She’d been frozen to the spot, but once she got her bearings and moved, she shot toward the bed, grabbed the coverlet and wrapped it around herself. It was too late. He had that creamy-skinned hourglass body and those lush dusky-tipped breasts seared on his brain for eternity. To what fortuitous hand of fate did he owe the privilege of meeting her son and seeing her naked all in the same day?

  “I will never forgive them for this. Never!” She gathered the folds of the bedcover and dragged it behind a bamboo dressing screen with her. “You might have looked away,” she said from the other side.

  “Might have,” he agreed.

  Only then did he hear the soft laughter and the hushed giggles coming from the hallway.

  “A gentleman would have,” she added.

  “Might have,” he said again.

  The rustling sound of fabric told him she was putting something on, a nightdress perhaps. A real nightdress.

  “Forget that happened,” she begged.

  Not if I live to be a hundred. He said nothing. His presence here was lie enough.

  She came out from hiding wearing a printed cotton wrapper that covered her all the way from her throat to her ankles. She draped the coverlet over the bed before going straight to a small table with three hinged mirrors, where she grabbed up a hairbrush. She made a few brisk strokes through her lustrous mane of fair, wavy hair before sectioning it off and braiding it. Her cheeks were still crimson with embarrassment—or anger. Both probably.

  “First,” she said, coming to stand a safe few feet away from him. The thick braid fell over her shoulder and swayed against her breast. “I want to know what you’re doing here.”

  “Didn’t your grandfather share my letter?”

  “You want my son to have a father,” she stated.

  “It’s more than that. I don’t know that I can explain it to you.”

  “Try.” With her hands on her hips, she pursed her glistening lips and waited, her body held stiff. Her flowery, feminine scent played havoc with his restraint. He knew what was beneath that dressing gown.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled. He deserved her suspicion, of course. She didn’t know him. “Can we sit down? I’ve traveled a far piece on foot today.”

  Her accusing gaze faltered, and she frowned as though she regretted having to change her opinion of him from an ogre to a human being. “Yes, of course. Take the chair there by the fire.”

  With his ankle and calf throbbing, he made his way over to the chair and sat. It took him a couple of minutes to get his boots and socks off.

  She appeared to wrestle with herself for a moment, but then darted forward. “Will it help to raise it?” she asked. She dragged a small trunk within reach and placed a needlepoint pillow atop it. “Rest your foot.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Though he didn’t take a shine to showing his weakness, he had no choice but to use both hands to lift his leg and set his foot atop the pillow.

  She leaned over to adjust the cushion, and her braid fell against his bare ankle. She straightened, glanced away and then back. “A bear trap?” she asked.

  “Can’t see ’em in the snow,” he answered. “That’s the idea, of course, but this one was set along a trail.

  “Passed out a couple of times before I got the rusty contraption off. Used my first-aid supplies to clean and bandage it, but I lost a lot of blood. Would’ve died if a band of Haida hadn’t found me. They doctored my leg and took me on to Juneau City ’cause they saw the mail bags.”

  “What’s a Haida?”

  “A native tribe that mostly hunts whales and fish along the coast, but some travel inland. Lucky for me these did. Anyway, infection traveled up my leg, and I was in a bad way for months.”

  Mariah perched on the foot of the bed, then curled her feet up under her wrapper to lean against one of the posts on the footboard as she listened.

  “When I came around, the new station man said my box was full and brought me the stack. All letters from your boy,” he said. “Letters addressed to me. I shared a room right there at the station when I was in the city, so that’s where I spent the next few months, laid up and reading letters. Couldn’t figure out why this young fella was writing to me like he knew me, like I was somebody special.”

  Mariah’s gaze shifted to the hem of her sleeve and she smoothed a finger over it without speaking.

  “It probably doesn’t make much sense to you or to anybody…I’m kind of confused by it myself—but those letters were a connection for me. Something to hang on to. Something to look forward to and see me through another day. I searched old Otto’s room and found the rest, along with several from Louis. Eventually I wrote back to your grandfather.”

  Mariah looked up and sighed. “And he told you it wouldn’t hurt if you picked up where Otto left off.”

  “That’s the gist of it, yes.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t disagree with him. I never did. I just let him create this whole fantasy and played right along with it because it was convenient.”

  Wes heard the concern in her voice. Her next words proved it.

  “What are you going to do with this information now?”

  He appreciated her freshly scrubbed face, shiny hair and pink lips. She was the prettiest woman he’d laid eyes on in a month of Sundays. “What do you mean, ma’am?”

  “We used your name and your mailbox, and it was wrong of us. Have you told anyone?”

  “No, of course not. I don’t care that you used my mailbox. Or my name for that matter. As it turned out John James’s letters might have saved my life.” He’d been alone for so long, that those letters had been a life connection for him. “That probably sounds a little dramatic, but it’s not much of an exaggeration.”

  “What do you want from him? From me?”

  “I don’t want anything, Mariah. I want to give something to him. I want to make a difference.”

  She slid her feet to the floor to stand again, and he noted they were slender and bare. Like the rest of her beneath that plain cotton dressing gown.

  “What does that mean exactly?” she asked. “How do you plan to make a difference? How is playing out this lie going to do anything except make things worse?”

  “How will I make it worse?”

  “By disappointing him,” she said hastily and then lowered her voice. “By lying to him.”

  “You’re already lying to him. I’m making it real. I’m bringing him the father he wants.”

  She pressed her palm to her forehead and closed her eyes for a moment before raising her head to glare at him. “How dare you presume? You
are not real. And you are not the father he wants. I don’t even know you!” She caught herself raising her voice again and lowered it to say, “He doesn’t know you.”

  “I’m here to fix that.”

  She stepped closer. “To what end, Mr. Burrows? How do you plan to step into the imaginary role of his father and not disappoint him? Someday he’s going to learn the truth.”

  “How?”

  She stared at him.

  “How will he learn the truth? According to you, only three of us in the entire world know. Is that a fact?”

  “It is.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “No one.”

  “Do you think your grandfather will tell him?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I haven’t pried into your business, but now that you’ve brought it up, what is the truth? Is his real father going to show up?”

  She looked away. “No.”

  “Then how will he find out? Do you plan to enlighten him when he’s older?”

  The lantern light picked up the sheen of tears in her eyes. “Why are you really here?” she asked. “What do you want from us?”

  She blinked and turned her back to him, gripping the bedpost so tightly, her knuckles turned white.

  It didn’t matter how much his leg complained, Wes had to get up and go to her. Her feelings were justified. Her fears were real. He stood behind her, close enough to detect the trembling in her body. He reached out to place his hand on her shoulder and reassure her of his intent.

  The moment his fingers touched her wrapper, she flinched and spun to face him, her eyes wide with mistrust.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  She raised her chin a notch. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  She was a lovely creature, with skin as pale and satiny-looking as fresh cream. Her vivid blue eyes conveyed her wariness, wounding him unexplainably. He didn’t want to hurt her or the boy. How could he make her understand?

  He took a few steps back.

  “You haven’t thought this out,” she said. “You want to be a part of my son’s life, but what about me? What if I don’t want you in my life?”

  “Look, I know there’s a lot to think about, a lot we have to talk about. But be honest. Don’t you think it would be best for him to have a father?”

  Her exasperation was plain in the way she opened her mouth but said nothing, as though she didn’t even have a reply.

  “You’ll leave,” she said finally, and he thought the words must have hurt the way she hesitated over them. “One day you’ll tire of the charade and move on. And what will happen to him then?”

  “I don’t have any intention of leaving.” His voice was soft, but filled with rigid determination. “Not now and not later. I’ve come to stay. For good.”

  Mariah wanted to throw something at him. The man was presumptuous and delusional and…oh my goodness, but he smelled incredible. Like a warm night breeze in the mountains.

  There was no escaping the effect he had on her. When he lowered his voice and spoke so intently, goose bumps raised along her skin. He didn’t have to touch her for her to know how disturbingly close he stood. From the beginning, she’d sensed every time he looked at her, knew the moment he moved closer. What was she going to do about him?

  “What are you doing to us?” she asked, hating that a fat tear escaped her rigid composure and slid down her cheek.

  “I understand that you don’t trust me.” He spoke so calmly that it angered her all the more. He was calm, rational…unless one actually listened to the foolish words he spouted. “You haven’t had time to learn I can be trusted,” he added.

  “You’re crazy.” She scrambled away from him to the opposite side of the bed where she folded down the sheet.

  “Do you want me to go somewhere else?”

  She confronted him across the mattress. “Where? Where would you go that my family wouldn’t see you and question why I’d kicked my newly returned husband from my room?”

  “I don’t know. I could—”

  “No, you’ve butted your way in here and made everybody like you. Everyone thinks you’re—you’re—who you say you are.”

  “I am who I said I am. I’m Wes Burrows.”

  “But you’re not my husband.”

  “I never said I was, ma’am. You did.”

  “Oh!” She picked up a pillow and threw it at him. He caught it easily. Then she bunched up the coverlet she’d held around her earlier and tossed it toward him. “Sleep on the window seat. Or the floor. I don’t care where. I have to get up early in the morning.”

  “Should we compare stories?” he asked. “So I don’t make any mistakes?”

  She reached for the lamp that sat on a table at the side of the bed. “Be gone from this room by the time I wake in the morning.” She turned down the wick, plunging the room into darkness. “When we’re alone, you stay as far away from me as possible.”

  A satisfying thump like that of his knee or foot hitting wood was followed by a barely audible groan. She climbed into the bed and pulled the sheet up over her head.

  This had been the worst night of her life.

  That hasty thought unleashed a torrent of chilling memories—the night before Hildy’s wedding, a night she tried never to think of. Tonight had been far from the worst night of her life. But it rated right up there.

  She hugged her pillow, curled up in a ball and used every ounce of her grit not to wail like a baby. She had to keep her wits about her and her chin held high. Her troubles had only just begun.

  Wes had slept in a lot worse places. A plush rug in a warm room with a snapping fire was no hardship compared to a smelly fishing ship being tossed on the sea or subzero winter nights in a tent. He woke at first light and crept from the house.

  Yuri met him when he exited the back door. If the twigs in his fur were any indication, the dog had been hunting. Wes sat on the step to pet the animal and pick out sticks and leaves. Yuri licked his stubbled chin.

  So maybe he hadn’t thought this move all the way through. He’d considered the part about being a father to a fatherless boy, but he hadn’t thought about being a husband to a woman who wanted no part of him.

  After several minutes, Wes found a pump and basin in an outbuilding behind the house, where he washed and shaved.

  He was just finishing up when Mariah’s cousin Marc entered. He lit the old stove and set a kettle of water on top. “First one out starts a fire,” Marc told him.

  “Guess I forgot about hot water,” Wes answered. “I was tickled there was no ice on top of the barrel. I’ll remember tomorrow.” Yuri, who’d waited outside the wash building, followed him back to the house.

  “Breakfast isn’t formal,” Henrietta said from where she stood cutting and wrapping a mountain of sandwiches. “Food’s set out on the sideboard in the dining room. Bring your dirty plate in here when you’re finished.”

  “Thanks, ma’am.”

  Wes joined the Spanglers vying for a spot in line and prepared himself a plate. Enjoying this many hot meals in a row, meals that he hadn’t searched for firewood to cook, was a treat.

  “What will you do after you ride with me to school?” John James asked. He had saved a chair next to him at the table.

  Wes had figured he could find a job in town, but if he was going to be living here, it seemed he should be working where all the family members worked. “I guess I’ll be looking for a job.”

  John James chuckled. “You don’t hafta look. There’s lot of jobs at the brewery. Right, Mama?”

  Wes glanced up to find Mariah holding a plate and a mug of coffee while she waited for one of the children to finish eating. Her attire drew his attention. She wore a brown pair of men’s trousers that outlined the shape of her hips and thighs and cinched her narrow waist. Immediately the vision of her shapely limbs and ivory skin entered his thoughts. The sight of her nakedness would never stop taunting him.

  “I don’t do the hiring,”
she said as though relieved about the fact.

  John James’s cousin left and she slid onto a chair across from her son. She was as fresh and pretty as ever, with her skin glowing and her shiny hair knotted on top of her head. He couldn’t help remembering the sight of the wavy tresses flowing across her shoulders, her breasts peeking through filmy fabric.

  The ivory skin across her cheekbones took on a pink hue, as though she suspected where his thoughts had traveled.

  “Who does the hiring?” Wes asked.

  “My father,” she replied. Was that a hint of pleasure he detected in her voice?

  She had barely finished her eggs and toast when a bell rang from outside.

  “That’s the wagon headed for the brewery.” She took a man’s cap from her hip pocket and settled it over her hair at a jaunty angle. “Your books are beside the front door, John James.”

  “Bye, Mama.” He hugged her, then turned to Wes. “We ride to school in the other wagon that’s out front.”

  Wes joined the children, who were driven to school by Sylvia.

  As they entered the small white schoolhouse, John James introduced him to each youngster they passed. “This is Wesley Burrows, my papa,” he told them proudly.

  “Miss Saxton, this is my papa,” he told the woman greeting all the children.

  The pleasant-faced woman offered her hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Margaret Saxton.”

  “Wes Burrows, miss.”

  “We’ve heard all about you. John James has been bursting with excitement, awaiting your arrival.”

  “I was pretty eager to get here, myself.” He turned to John James. “Be on your best behavior today.”

  “Yes, sir.” The boy beamed a smile as he waved goodbye.

  Wes exited the schoolhouse and settled his hat on his head. Still on the seat of the wagon, holding the reins, Sylvia waited for him. “Want a ride to the brewery?”

  “That where you’re headed?”

  “No, I do the shopping for Mama and help Hildy with laundry and chores. But it’s easy enough to drop you off.”

  He climbed up. “Seems everybody in the family pretty much has their place, taking care of the house and running the brewery.”