Wes followed Mariah to their room, where they each lit a lamp. He’d missed her so much and had counted the days and the hours until he was back here with her. She looked so pretty, her skin flushed from the warm night and her chores. Around her face, little tendrils of her shiny pale hair glowed in the lamplight once she had it lit.
He locked the door.
She didn’t meet his eyes.
“Are you angry that I let Yuri sleep in the house?” she asked.
“No.” He grinned. “I just didn’t want him sleeping with us. We’re newlyweds.”
She hurried to the bureau and took out a folded nightdress, then carried it behind the dressing screen.
Disappointment carved a notch in his plans. He hadn’t imagined her undressing herself behind that cussed screen. “Are you angry with me about something?”
“No.”
He used the jack to remove his boots and stood them beside the bureau. Water splashed and he pictured her washing. All right, she probably needed privacy for her nighttime ablutions.
He removed his shirt and tossed it into the woven basket beside a chest. “Is it all right with you that I got the promotion in the mash house?”
She stepped from behind the screen dressed in the white cotton nightdress. “Of course,” she said. “I trust their judgment. And you deserved the job.”
Something didn’t feel right. This wasn’t the same easy conversation they’d shared in Denver. He had a sorry feeling that he was the only one who’d been looking forward to being alone tonight. “What’s bothering you?”
She sat at her dressing table and took the pins from her hair. “What makes you think something’s bothering me?”
“Because you haven’t looked at me since we came into this room.”
She raised her hairbrush. “It’s nothing.”
Wesley stepped up behind her and took the brush from her hand. “If it’s a concern to you, it’s something to me. Has something happened that I don’t know about? Have I made a mistake or overlooked anything?”
Mariah shook her head, but she didn’t meet his eyes in the mirror.
He stood studying her reflection. He loved everything about this woman, except her stubborn refusal to open up. Glancing at the hairbrush in his hand, he applied it to her hair and ran the bristles through the golden waves from her scalp to the ends. He repeated the action.
He remembered the day he’d washed her hair and bathed her. He recalled the night they’d made love in the hotel room, and the morning he’d awakened beside her. His need for this woman was an ache he was learning to enjoy, and one that would never be easily appeased. He wasn’t going to let anything spoil what he knew they could have.
Setting down the brush, he lowered his face to inhale the scent of her fragrant hair. He nuzzled her jaw and caressed her neck and shoulders.
Her eyelids fluttered down.
When she raised them again, he met and held her blue gaze in the mirror. “I love you, Mariah.”
The swift sheen of tears caught him by surprise, but she answered, “I love you.”
She turned and looked up, and he bent at the waist to cover her lips in a gentle hello. I’ve missed you, the kiss whispered. I’ve thought of this moment every day and every night.
She rested her fingers against his jaw, and that innocent touch shot a torrent of desire throughout his body. He groaned against her mouth and kissed her more deeply.
Mariah twisted on the bench until she faced him and raised her arms to circle his neck. Wes slid his palm across her shoulder and down to the swell of her breast, where he caressed her nipple into a tight bud. She inched away from the kiss and her breath came in short gasps. With her eyes closed, she trembled under his touch.
He raised his left hand to her other breast, and she let her head fall back.
“Come lie with me,” he urged, taking her hand to guide her from the seat. She helped him gather the fabric of her garment and pull it over her head, exposing the enticing sight of her curves and hollows. “You are more beautiful than I remembered.”
“Truly?”
“Without a doubt.” He leaned on one elbow so he could admire her in the lamplight. She returned his kisses, but there was a sadness about her passion he wished he could identify and abolish. “What pleases you, Mariah?” he asked against her mouth.
“Everything about this pleases me,” she replied.
“You like it when I touch you here?”
“Ye-es.”
“And here?”
Her soft gasp was his response.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“Wes?” His softly spoken name was a question.
He looked into her beseeching blue eyes. “What?”
“Would you still be happy if we got a place of our own?” she asked. “Like my grandfather suggested?”
His reaction took longer than it would have had he not been focused on the pleasure he got from her reactions to his caresses. He moved his weight to his elbow again. “He suggested that so we could have separate rooms.” He frowned. “You want to sleep in separate rooms?”
She clutched his shoulder tightly. “No, of course not.”
“Well.” He focused on a reply to her question. “Then I suppose I’d like to live in our own home.”
“And what if I cooked for you?”
He frowned at her this time. “Is this a warning of some sort?”
“I’m actually an adequate cook.”
“Remember I survived entire winters on hardtack and fish,” he told her and lowered his lips for another kiss.
She interrupted it a minute later. “It would be just us then. Just the three of us. We might only come here for holidays.”
Wes dropped his head until his chin touched his chest. Her questions were frustrating.
“Would you still be happy?” she asked. “Would you still want to stay?”
Like a jagged streak of lightning illuminating a midnight sky, her questions awakened a perfectly clear realization. He sat up and looked down at her, with golden hair spread across the bedclothes and doubt shading uncertain eyes. “What is it you’re really asking me, Mariah? What fear is keeping you so distant? It wasn’t between us like this the last time we were together. Have I done something to make you question my sincerity? Why are you doubting my love for you?”
Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over. Reaching for the sheet, she sat and covered herself, tucking the sheet under her arms.
“Say it,” he said, rather sternly this time. “You’re my wife now, Mariah. I’ve pledged to love you and care for you. You can’t keep all your thoughts and concerns to yourself any longer. Not like you’ve always done. Like you did for years. It’s unfair.”
And it was unfair, Mariah thought, as a sweeping realization rocked her thinking once again. He had promised to love her and care for her. He’d made those vows of his own accord. “I’m afraid,” she whispered. “Afraid I’m not what you want or need. Afraid you’ll grow bored with me and this simple life and move on to somewhere more exciting.”
He raised a hand in exasperation. “And what have I ever done to make you question me?”
She shook her head, because he’d done nothing. Her fears were all in her own mind. “From the first, I was afraid you’d make John James love you and then leave. I didn’t know I would come to rely on you. I never expected to depend on you. I didn’t know I was going to love you so much that the thought of losing you would be a cavernous ache inside.”
She brought a balled fist to her breast.
“I have nothing more than my word to offer you,” he said. “And my devotion.” He reached for her hand, uncurling her fingers and raising them to his lips, where he kissed the backs. He tucked back an unruly tress of her hair. “No one has ever cared whether I stayed or left.” His voice was uncommonly gruff, and she suspected emotion had changed its timbre.
“I’ve never had a home or a family, never been a son or a brother, let alone a husba
nd. You’re the one who’s going to find me tedious, because I love being here. I love being with you and spending my days and nights with you and John James, and that’s not going to change. You’ll be begging me to take my leave so you can spend a few hours in privacy.”
She shook her head. “I’ve been alone,” she said. “Right in the middle of this big, loud family, I was alone with my fear and shame…until you came.”
“I’ll live anywhere as long as you and John James are there,” he assured her. “I love your family, Mariah. They are the parents and brothers and sisters I never had. But I’m in love with you. And I’ll be content wherever you want to be. As long as you always tell me what you’re thinking and feeling. And as long as you let me love you.”
Mariah lunged forward to wrap her arms around his neck and hug him hard. His arms curled around her back, with one hand splayed against her spine, pressing her to him.
“I never thanked you for understanding,” she said against his warm neck. “Thank you for sticking with me, even when I was awful.”
“You were never awful. You were afraid. And hurting. You didn’t know me or what I could do to you and John James. I bullied my way into your life. You were like a mother bear looking out for her cub. I’m glad I didn’t think it all through before I came barging in here, because I wouldn’t have found you if I had.”
He cupped her head between his hands and pulled her away so he could look into her face. “Promise you won’t doubt me again. You won’t doubt my love or my commitment. Our commitment.”
Mariah couldn’t help the tears that blurred her vision and spilled over. “You stuck with me through the woorst.” The last word broke, but she composed herself because she needed to assure him. The love and concern and respect she saw in his eyes settled all the misgivings that had tried to assail her. “I was awful, but you loved me anyway. How can you resist me if I’m kind and generous?”
She smiled despite the ache, because she loved him so fiercely and reassuring him meant everything.
“I can’t resist you. And I don’t want to.”
She raised her lips to his and his kiss promised more than even his words. When she was breathless from the beauty and wonder of his caresses, once he’d lowered her back to the mattress and they lay facing each other, she skimmed his jaw and placed her fingers on his warm, damp lips. “Thank you for loving me.”
He grinned. “You should be thanking John James. He wrote the letters that got me here.”
“I’ll thank him tomorrow. Tonight is all ours.”
“Peculiar, really,” he said. “How old Otto died but a few months before I got my leg busted up in that trap. Those letters were waiting for me when I got to Juneau City. The new postmaster brought them to me while I was lying in my bunk and left the wrapped bundle on the crate beside me. I didn’t look at them for weeks, but once I read one, I read them all.
“I’d been feeling pretty sorry for myself. Pretty lonesome. Wondering if it wouldn’t’ve been better if the infection hadn’t just run its course and left me dead.”
Mariah kissed his chin. “Thank God it didn’t.”
“John James’s letters dredged up feelings I’d buried years before. Questions about why my parents hadn’t wanted me or found a decent home for me. When I read how much he needed his father to want him, I couldn’t think of anything else but making that happen. It was purely selfish.”
“It was purely unselfish,” she disagreed. She pushed up then, away from him, and stood. He gazed upon her loveliness, and she smiled, knowing the effect she had on him and enjoying it.
She moved away and lowered the wicks in both the lamps before returning to kneel on the bed beside him. “Do you think we might finish our conversation another time?”
“We have a lifetime,” he promised and reached to draw her down beside him.
The only words that followed were softly murmured endearments. Wes was no longer her make-believe husband, but her husband in spirit and body for the rest of their lives.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4478-2
HER COLORADO MAN
Copyright © 2009 by Cheryl Ludwigs.
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