Wolf Creek Wife

by Penny Richards

  Blythe felt the heat of a blush rising up from her throat. “Oh, no. We’re a very long way from that happening, if it ever happens.”

  “I’ve seen the look I saw on Will’s face on Gabe’s often enough.”

  “Stop it!” Blythe commanded.

  Rachel laughed. “All right. I’ll take pity on you. Now come and kiss this little sweetheart goodbye.” She looked back down at the baby. “Grandma Pip and your auntie Blythe have to go now, sweet baby.”

  Both Libby and Blythe kissed the baby’s forehead and Rachel’s cheek before promising they’d be back soon. Blythe left wondering, like Rachel, what the look on Will’s face meant.

  As usual, Ellie was thrilled to see them. When she heard why Blythe was in town, she smiled. “Well, today is your day. I’m making chicken and dumplings for lunch. The first thing you need to do is boil your chicken, and when it’s done, let it cool and pick the meat off the bone. I give the bones and skin to the dogs.”

  They arrived at the café during a slow time, so while Ellie’s daughter, Bethany, who’d been born with a mental handicap, took care of the customers, Blythe and Libby followed Ellie to the kitchen and watched as she rolled out the dumpling dough. Blythe painstakingly wrote down the recipe and everything Ellie did. She decided she would make the delicious-smelling dish when Will’s mother came.

  “I usually have green beans with them, but you can do whatever vegetable you like. If you do green beans, they’re much better if you cook them a long time with the seasoning you use. And I make fresh bread every day.”

  Homemade bread. The very thought struck terror in Blythe’s heart. When she was a child and loved spending time in the kitchen with the cook, she’d often heard her complaining about “killing the yeast,” which could happen if the water used to dissolve the yeast was too hot. Blythe voiced her concerns to Ellie.

  “Well, if you’re worried about that, you can always make a quick bread using saleratus,” Ellie suggested. “It’s denser than yeast bread, but still very good.”

  “Saleratus? What’s that?” Blythe asked, wide-eyed.

  “Bicarbonate of soda. You just mix everything up and put it in the oven.”

  “I have the recipe for Nita Allen’s Irish soda bread, too,” Libby said. “It’s very good.”

  “Maybe I should start with that, then. Does Gabe carry the saleratus at the mercantile?”

  Ellie smiled. “Of course. Here,” she said, handing Blythe the knife. “You cut the dumplings.”

  Ellie watched while Blythe drew the knife through the rolled-out dough, making squares that would be dropped into the broth. “I have some news,” she said.

  “Something exciting, I hope,” Libby said.

  “Not all that exciting, I’m afraid, but it’s something I should have done long ago.” She looked from one curious face to the other. “I finally took everyone’s advice and contacted a lawyer more than a year ago. I filed papers to have Jake declared legally dead.”

  Blythe looked up from the squares she was making with the knife. Jake was the husband who had abandoned Ellie and his daughter when Bethany was first born. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  “It’s been a lengthy process and I didn’t want to say anything to anyone in case it all fell through. I was afraid to get my hopes up. My attorney had to post the notice in several papers around the country and jump through a lot of legal hoops, but I got my paperwork yesterday. I’m free of him at last.”

  “You deserve to find happiness,” Libby said, taking Ellie into a warm embrace. “I couldn’t be happier for you.”

  “Me, either,” Blythe chimed in, putting the knife aside and following suit. The news would be very welcome among Ellie’s friends who had long wished she could be free of the man who had deserted her. And whether or not he showed it, Win would be ecstatic.

  “There’s no way you can learn to cook in a day, honey,” Libby told Blythe. “In the meantime, Ellie has today’s lesson under control, so I think I’ll get back to the library.”

  She pressed a kiss to Blythe’s cheek. “Stop by before you go to Gabe’s, and I’ll have a list ready for you. I don’t think you need much. Maybe a few spices and the baking soda.”

  Libby left and Ellie showed Blythe how to add a few of the dumplings at a time to the boiling broth. They were getting ready to make a thickening from flour and water when Bethany came through the swinging door to the kitchen.

  The expression on her pretty face said without words that she was near tears.

  “What is it, sweetie?” Ellie asked.

  “That mean woman is out there.”

  Blythe frowned. “Mean woman? Who’s she talking about?”

  “Martha Rafferty,” Ellie told her. “Whenever she comes in, which is daily, she complains about everything. Bethany gets so frustrated.” Ellie huffed a huge sigh. “I’m telling you, it’s all I can do to keep from telling her off.”

  “I can only imagine.” Blythe took a peek out the pass-through window to take a look at the woman who seemed to be everyone’s nemesis. “I don’t believe it! Some people have no sense whatsoever!”

  “What?”

  “Guess who she’s with.”

  Ellie took a quick look and her face drained of color.

  “Ooh!” Blythe fumed, whirling away from the window. “If I didn’t know how smart he really is, I’d think my brother lacked basic intelligence.”

  “When it comes to women like Martha, the thought processes of most men become a bit cloudy.” Ellie’s tone was light enough, but the haunted expression in her eyes told the real story of how she was feeling.

  What perfectly rotten timing! Blythe thought. Win had been playing a subtle game of flirtation with the sweet café owner since the first time he’d set eyes on her, and everyone, including his family, thought that eventually, if Ellie ever rid herself of her no-account husband, the two of them would become a couple. What was he thinking? Surely he was smarter than to fall for someone like Martha Rafferty!

  Blythe would love to go out there and give him what for, but she was a Granville, and Granvilles didn’t cause scenes. The first time she got her brother by himself, though, she’d let him have it. In the meantime she could be an unofficial chaperone. As much as she disliked the woman, she would march out there, sit herself down at their table and insinuate herself smack-dab in the middle of their little tête-à-tête.

  Whipping off her apron, she proceeded to do just that.

  “Where are you going?” Ellie asked.

  “Out there to break up this unholy alliance!”

  “Oh, Blythe! If you’re worried that he’s hurting me, don’t be. I already know I could never be the right woman for someone like your brother.”

  “Well, neither is that hussy!”

  Blythe pushed through the swinging door, a wide, false smile on her face. There was no denying that her brother was a handsome man or that Martha was a beautiful woman, or that, together, they made a stunning couple.

  “Hello, Win! What are you doing here in the middle of the morning?” Without waiting to be asked, she sat down in the chair between her brother and Will’s former wife.

  “Hello, Blythe. Won’t you please join us?” Though his voice dripped sarcasm, he was nothing if not courteous. Win never got ruffled about anything.

  Blythe knew she’d caught him off guard, since being so pushy was definitely not her style. He had that wary look in his eyes that said he knew she was up to something but he wasn’t sure what that might be at the moment.

  Little did he know that she’d learned some hard lessons from Devon. One of them was to not lie down and let someone walk all over her.

  “Hello, Martha. I must say that I’m surprised to see you’re still here.”

  Both Martha and Win sucked in sharp breaths at her il
l-mannered behavior. To her surprise, Win kept silent. Martha was regarding her in a calculating manner, as if she were trying to figure out what had happened to the diffident, spineless woman she’d encountered the day before.

  “I thought I’d stay around for a few days. There’s nothing pressing at home, and I thought I might find some entertainment here for a while.” She cast a playful glance at Win.

  Blythe could well imagine the kind of entertainment the other woman had in mind. “Well, the old guys at the store are having a checkers tournament this Friday, and Win is a whiz at chess if you’re up to taking him on,” she said, pretending to deliberately misunderstand.

  The glint in Win’s eyes told her that he’d caught on to what she was up to, and that he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead of doing either, he looked Blythe straight in the eye, cleared his throat and said, “If you ladies will excuse me, I saw Caleb go by. I need to talk to him for a moment.”

  Without waiting for a go-ahead from either of them, he stood and began to weave his way around the tables to the door. Knowing she was now facing her enemy one-on-one, Blythe felt her bravado slip.

  Sensing her sudden vulnerability, Martha relaxed against the ladder-back of the chair. “My, my, the little kitten has grown claws overnight. I wonder what brought that about. I told you Will—”

  Her meaning was obvious. “Don’t say a word about my husband,” Blythe interrupted, suddenly finding her voice and her backbone.

  All pretense aside, Martha leaned closer, her attractive features twisted in an ugly sneer. “I wouldn’t get too full of myself if I were you, missy. Will Slade may have married you to save your precious reputation, but maybe you should ask him if your brother’s offer had anything to do with his willingness to go to the altar.”

  Win’s offer? What was Martha talking about? Blythe felt her confidence ebb once more. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What offer? What does my brother have to do with Will agreeing to marry me?”

  “Plenty,” Martha said bluntly. “I heard him talking to Will the other day.”

  “Oh,” she said with a lift of her eyebrows. “Eavesdropping. Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Blythe felt compelled to make the accusation in an effort to delay whatever it was Martha was determined to tell her.

  Martha gave a throaty trill of laughter. “When I can, Mrs. Slade,” she confessed boldly. “Eavesdropping is one of the best possible ways to learn little tidbits that might come in handy at a later date.”

  “And what did you learn when you listened in on their conversation?” Blythe asked, her heart in her throat.

  “That Will is only marrying you because of your money.”

  After what she’d been through with Devon, the accusation cut to the bone. It was one thing to marry someone to save her reputation, but for them to want her for her money was something else altogether. It was Devon’s modus operandi all over again.

  Blythe refused to give the horrid woman sitting next to her the satisfaction of knowing how much her words hurt. Instead she laughed. “Then the joke is on him. I have no money. My first husband saw to that.”

  Martha smiled. “Your brother has plenty.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning your brother offered Will money to marry you.”

  “You should take your lies somewhere else, Martha,” she said, even though the assertion robbed her of a portion of the peace and security she had begun to feel with Will. “Win would never do something like that, just as he would never let me influence him on anything to do with his business decisions.”

  Martha gave a delicate shrug. “All I know is that he told Will that marrying you could be very good for his business. I’ll let you ask him what he meant by that. I thought it was important that you know the offer just might have had the teeniest bit of influence on Will’s decision.” With a smirk, she measured a scant half inch of space between her fingers. Chin high, she pushed away from the table, picked up her reticule and headed toward the front door.

  Blythe sat where she was, her self-esteem once more trampled and bleeding in the dust of betrayal. Intellectually she knew Martha was no good and certainly not above lying to cause trouble. Blythe also knew Win was hard-nosed when it came to his business dealings, but she could not fathom him paying someone to take his sister off his hands. He might be ruthless, but he was scrupulously honest. A hard negotiator, but a fair one. And he loved his family dearly. Even her, his bratty little sister.

  Still, the joy had gone from her day and she left the café with a heavy heart.

  Chapter Twelve

  Will thought about Blythe all the way from town back to the mill. He admitted to being surprised at how easily they’d talked about their pasts the evening before. The qualities he saw in her were not what he’d expected and he’d been impressed with the things she’d said.

  Martha had never asked what he liked to eat, never asked when he would be home, how things were going at the mill or anything to show she had an interest in him and who he was as a person. Blythe might have been brought up with money, but she seemed to have her priorities in order.

  Even though he’d known she was headed to town, he hadn’t expected to run into her at Rachel’s. Seeing her with baby Jude in her arms had been a revelation. They’d both said they wanted a child at some time in the future, but seeing her with the Gentry baby made the possibility more real. Real and very desirable.

  He knew it took time to get to know someone, but he felt that he’d gained a fair amount of knowledge about his new wife in a relatively short time, and despite feeling that he would never love anyone again, he believed the two of them could deal with each other with respect and friendliness.

  As he worked through the day he found his thoughts wandering to Blythe again and again. How had her day gone? Had she spent all day in town or come back to work on putting her stamp on the house? She’d said she didn’t know much about cooking, so, naturally, he was curious about what she would have for supper. He recalled the welcoming light shining from the windows the evening before. At least he wouldn’t be going home to an empty house. For the first time in a long time he wasn’t dreading walking through the front door. Whatever she fixed would be fine.

  When he reached the house, he pulled his boots off on the porch and went inside, Banjo trailing behind him. The first thing that greeted him was a cloud of smoke. His gaze flew to where Blythe stood, stirring something on the stove. It was hard to tell what it was with the acrid odor of burned...something filling his nostrils.

  She looked at him and he thought he saw her chin quiver before she pressed her lips together and turned away.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, hoping the question was neutral enough. He’d learned a few things during his marriage to Martha. One of them was to leave a cranky woman alone. When she was ready to talk, she’d talk.

  “Fine.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  Unfazed by the tension, Banjo went over and plopped down in front of the fireplace. Will sighed and glanced at the table, which was once again set with the pretty china. A plate holding what he suspected was corn bread sat in the center of the table, but it was charred so badly it was hard to say. It had been baked in a skillet, so there was a chance it was cake of some sort, but he was pretty sure it was corn bread. No wonder Blythe looked as if she was about to burst into tears.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “No.”

  His mellow mood and tentative hopes for the future vanished. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he’d done something to make her mad, but that was impossible, since he hadn’t even seen her since that morning. Hoping to air out some of the smoke and maybe clear a little of the tension, Will left the door ajar and took off his jacket. Without saying anything else, he went to his be
droom to wash up for supper.

  When he returned a few minutes later, she was ladling whatever was in the kettle into a tureen. Soup, maybe. Not his favorite, but he didn’t mind it every now and again. She finished and placed the ladle in the tureen. She was about to pick it up when he saw the cloth wrapped around her palm.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “Just a little burn.”

  “How’d you do that?” He crossed to her and took the soup or whatever it was out of her hands.

  She glanced up at him, irritation clouding her brown eyes. Mockery laced her voice. “Perhaps you noticed that I burned the corn bread.”

  Smoke still hovered over the room and he was pretty sure the stench had burned all the hair from inside his nostrils. He set the covered bowl on the table, placed his hands on his hips and nodded. “I did notice that.”

  “I burned my hand taking it out of the oven.”

  “Let me see.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, tucking the hand behind her.

  “Okay,” he said as if her attitude was of no consequence. “So what’s for supper?” Besides burned corn bread.

  “Beans and corn bread,” she said.

  “They smell good,” Will said, trying once more to establish a better footing. It wasn’t a fib. Now that the room had cleared somewhat of smoke, he could actually smell the beans. He sat down next to her, and when she held out her hand for him to take so they could give thanks for the food, his questioning gaze met hers. It seemed she was going to pray, even though she was barely speaking to him. He refrained from heaving a deep breath. Lord knew they needed prayer. He took her hand in his.

  “Why don’t you say it tonight?” she suggested, and he thought he saw a hint of challenge in her eyes.

  Will shook his head. “No.”

  Blythe looked taken aback, but, without a word, she began to pray. When she finished, he cut them each a pie-shaped wedge of the corn bread and proceeded to cut off the burned crust. Then he slathered it with butter as if it was something he did every day.