The Bride of Willow Creek

by Maggie Osborne

  Silky dark hair covered his chest. That was a surprise. As was her sudden longing to run her palms over the strands. The color in her face intensified, annoying her no end, especially since he watched her. She was no longer a romantic, dreamy maiden. She was a no-nonsense adult who could doctor a grown man without swooning. Surely.

  When she realized she was washing the same spot on his throat over and over, she made a sound of disgust and tossed the bloody rag into the sink on her way to the pile of folded laundry awaiting tomorrow’s iron.

  Determined not to respond to bare skin and twitching muscle, she helped him into a clean work shirt, rolled up the sleeves for him, then took two beers from the icebox. Despite her conviction that beer was not a lady’s beverage, she was beginning to enjoy the taste. And right now she needed something to calm her thoughts. She kept seeing Sam in her mind, walking out of the gloaming covered in blood. Her heart had stopped and the world had gone black in front of her eyes. As for taut bare skin and muscles so defined she could have traced them with her fingertip—those disturbing images could wait to be considered later.

  “All right,” she said, sitting down at the table and drawing a deep breath. “What happened?”

  “How long do I have to hold this heat on my eye?”

  “At least twenty minutes. What happened?”

  “A piece of steak works better.”

  “We don’t have a piece of steak. Sam, if you don’t tell me what happened, I’m going to black your other eye!”

  He took a deep pull from the beer bottle and exhaled slowly. “It’s a long story.”

  Angie threw up her hands and glowered. “I’m not going anywhere. We have all night.” Which was another unnerving thought that didn’t bear close examination.

  First he explored his ribs with his fingertips. Then he felt along his jaw. Examined his bruised knuckles. “The trouble started last autumn,” he said finally. “After the court ruled that I had a year to fix Daisy’s foot. That’s when the first fire occurred, at the new Union Hall I was building. The hall was almost complete. My crew and I had it dried in; we were halfway through the finish work. Then one night it burned to the ground. Nothing left standing except the chimney chases.”

  Angie started to protest. What did an event last autumn have to do with a bloody fight tonight? But the word fire flashed her mind backward to his burned jacket. Best to let him tell it in his own way.

  “The cause of the fire was arson.” Sam placed the beer bottle on the table and turned it between his fingers. “While the police and the union people sorted it out, my crew and I moved on to the Whittier job. Mick Kelly was the original contractor and he’d gotten the shell of the house up before his horse fell and crushed him. Whittier hired me and my crew to dry it in before the snow and then to return and finish the house this spring.”

  “ ‘Dry it in’ means getting the roof on, right?”

  He nodded and ran his free hand through his hair. At some point he’d lost the twine that tied his hair back, and waves of dark hair hung over his shoulders. With his hair loose and his collar open, with his nose and eye swollen, he made Angie think of a pirate fresh from battle. Wildly handsome, powerful, and slightly dangerous. A soft breath stuck in her throat.

  “We got the roof on, and then Whittier’s place burned down. Nothing was left standing but the stonework around the foundation. The arsonist didn’t try to make it look like an accident.”

  Angie’s eyes sharpened and her mind focused. At once she understood that Sam had been carrying a heavier burden than she’d guessed.

  “That’s when the talk started. Everyone says the fires aren’t my fault.” His gaze met hers. “But there’s a hint of doubt when they say it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Angie stated flatly. “Why would you burn down a structure you’re being paid to build?”

  He shrugged and winced at the movement. “Maybe I don’t agree with the union’s politics. Maybe I hate Homer Whittier as much as most people do. Maybe I want to extend the job and get paid again to rebuild the place. Maybe I’m just crazy. The one fact that no one disputes is that it’s a strange coincidence that my last two jobs have burned down.”

  Frowning, she let her thoughts jump ahead. “So that’s why you put a night watch on the reverend’s house.” A third fire would not be coincidence. “Your jacket . . .” Her eyes widened. “There was a fire on this job site!”

  “It happened on my watch. I caught it early before any real damage occurred.” Removing the pad from his eye, he looked at her. “No one knows about it.”

  But he’d told her. His trust surprised and touched her, and made her want to perform some act to demonstrate that she was worthy. Jumping up, she took the folded rag from his hand and replaced it with another that was hot. It frustrated her that she could think of nothing noble or heroic to prove herself.

  And suddenly it occurred to her that Sam had demonstrated confidence in her from the first. He trusted her with his children and his home. Trusted her with his money. And now he had entrusted a secret to her safekeeping.

  She, on the other hand, had a secret postal box, spent hours seething and brooding about Sam and Laura, and she didn’t entirely believe that Sam would succeed in putting together the funds for Daisy’s operation. Feeling guilty, she lowered her head and chewed at her bottom lip. Suspecting that Sam might be a better person than she was a very new thought and not a comfortable one.

  “You’ve had time to think about it,” she said after a minute. “Who’s setting your job sites on fire, and why?”

  “I’m one hundred percent sure that Herb Govenor is behind the fires. I think he hired some thug to set them.”

  The answer was so unexpected that Angie gasped. “Mr. Govenor would do something like that?”

  Sam nodded and finished his beer. “I believe he wants to destroy my livelihood. If all my projects burn down then no one will hire me. If I can’t work, I can’t set aside money for Daisy’s operation.”

  “You could find gold.”

  “I’ve been searching for gold for a lot of years, Angie.” He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, and she saw how exhausted he was. “All I’ve found are small pockets. Realistically, how probable is it that I’ll hit my jackpot in time to meet the court’s deadline?”

  She leaned forward, staring at him. “It could happen. You can’t give up now, Sam.”

  His eyes snapped open. “I didn’t say I was giving up. Never. I’m saying I can’t depend on finding gold to solve my problems. I have to assume that what I earn on the job is the only money we’re going to have for Daisy.”

  Angie glanced at the row of jars above the stove. At the rate she was adding money to Daisy’s jar, Daisy wouldn’t have her surgery for a year or longer. By then, Daisy and Lucy would be living with the Govenors.

  She rubbed at the headache forming behind her temples. “So you’re paying your crew overtime wages so they’ll watch for someone trying to start a fire on the site.” At least that mystery was now solved. “What if one of them is the arsonist?” she asked, lifting her head.

  “I’ve worked with these men for two years. I trust them.”

  “We can’t save money because of the overtime you’re paying, but if you don’t pay it, there might be another fire, and then no one would hire you because they’d be afraid that their place would burn down, and if there are no new jobs then there isn’t any money at all. Sam, isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “Which brings us to tonight,” he said, carefully touching his nose and grimacing.

  Angie listened as he described the fight with Herb Govenor, getting angrier with every word he spoke. “There must be a way to stop him,” she said when Sam fell silent.

  “Govenor’s right. There’s no proof.”

  Unable to sit still, Angie stood and paced in front of the stove. “These people are unbelievable! What kind of grandparents would go to such lengths to take children away from their own father?” She threw ou
t her hands. “Their focus should be on what makes their grandchildren the happiest. By the way, Winnie Govenor was here when I returned from seeing you at the site.”

  Sam’s shoulders shifted and he gave her a grim smile. “How did that meeting go?”

  “Let’s just say that both of us got beat up by a Govenor today.”

  Sam laughed. “That bad?”

  “You’re an immoral father, and I’m an unfit example for children.”

  Instantly, his expression sobered. “No, you’re not. Through no fault of your own, you’ve been tossed into a situation you didn’t ask for and didn’t want. I know it hasn’t been easy, going from being a rich man’s daughter to a poor man’s wife. But you haven’t complained, you do what you have to do, and you keep trying. And Angie, you’re doing just fine with the girls.”

  Compliments cut the ground out from under her. Especially from Sam, knowing that he blamed her for the collapse of their marriage and for the ruined reputation of a woman he had loved. Yet he found things to admire about her and possessed the generosity to say so.

  “I burned the beans,” she said in a small voice, staring at him.

  “Hell, I like burned beans,” he said, smiling.

  “You don’t know this yet, but some of your underwear has a pinkish cast. Daisy’s red sash fell into the rinse tub.” She’d scrubbed like a demon to get his underwear from rose to light pink. Left the items soaking in bluing until she’d started to worry the strong solution would eat through the material.

  “I won’t claim I like pink underwear,” he said, tilting his head back, “but I guess I can think of worse mistakes.”

  “And Lucy hates me.”

  His head came down and he fixed her with a level gaze. “Lucy was the lady of the house before you came, a seven-year-old trying to be a grown woman. Give her time to realize that now she can be a child again.”

  Just like that, she understood. She had displaced Lucy and had become Lucy’s rival. Angie blinked. Lucy and Sam had been the grown-ups. At least that’s how it must have seemed to Lucy. Now it was Sam and Angie. Lucy had been responsible for the care of the house; now the house was Angie’s obligation. Lucy had tried to mother Daisy; now Angie did. Sam had belonged solely to the girls; now they shared him with Angie.

  She covered her eyes and shook her head. “Sometimes I feel so inadequate.”

  Sam’s arms came around her, startling her because she hadn’t heard him rise or walk toward her. “So do I,” he said in a tired voice, speaking against her hair.

  Leaning backward, she rested against his chest, lightly so she wouldn’t put pressure on his bruised ribs. And she placed her hands over his at her waist.

  The window over the sink reflected something Angie had never expected to see. She and Sam leaning on each other, depending on each other, finding comfort in touching. A moment ago she had felt as if the world were closing around her, as if the mountain of problems rearing before them was insurmountable. But with Sam’s arms around her, she felt protected and hopeful that together they could chew a few pieces out of that mountain.

  All she had to do was turn in his arms and his mouth would be mere inches from hers.

  Her breath accelerated and a spreading warmth flowed down her limbs.

  “Angie?”

  Wetting her lips, she answered in a husky voice. “Yes?”

  “If I don’t lie down, I’m going to fall down.” His arms dropped away from her waist, and he rested his weight against the edge of the sink. “I hope that son of a bitch is as bruised and aching as I am.”

  What a silly idiotic creature I am, she thought before she turned around. He was bruised, battered, and reeling with fatigue. Kissing was the last thing on his mind. On hers either, she hastily assured herself.

  She dusted her hands together and tried to look brisk and efficient, like a person one could entrust with secrets, money, and children. Tried to look like a woman who had never entertained a single thought about kissing.

  “I think you should sleep inside tonight, in your own bed. You’ll rest better.” When Sam’s gaze flickered, she added quickly, “I’ll sleep in the girls’ bed.”

  “Of course.”

  Blushing was a trait that she hated, hated, hated. “It wasn’t necessary for me to mention that,” she said, angry that she had.

  “No.”

  “I mean about me sleeping in the girls’ bed.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know why . . . it’s just . . .” To occupy her hands, which dangled uselessly by her sides, she stepped to the sink, edged Sam aside, and started scrubbing furiously at the bloody rags. “I know you aren’t thinking about . . .” She was digging herself deeper into a hole. “About dishonorable things.”

  “Like sleeping in a bed recently occupied by a beautiful and desirable woman? Like the scent of your hair and how good you feel in my arms? Are those the dishonorable things you mean?” When her head snapped up, he was staring at her with his good eye. “Don’t give me too much credit, Angie,” he said softly. His gaze dropped to her throat and the soft beat of her pulse.

  She froze with her hands deep in soapy water and her breath hot in her chest. If he had taken a single step in her direction, she would have disgraced herself by flying into his arms.

  “I accept your invitation to sleep in a bed tonight,” he said instead, turning away from her and walking toward the bedroom. At the door, he looked back and his expression suggested he wanted to say more, but he wouldn’t. “Goodnight.”

  After the door closed, Angie gazed at her blurred reflection in the window panes above the sink. Confusion tossed her thoughts like bits of paper before a spring gust. In the span of two hours, she had raced from a debilitating fear that something terrible had befallen Sam, to the secret thrill of touching his skin, then to feelings of pleasure and unworthiness that he trusted her, and on to fury at the Govenors, followed by the comfort of Sam’s arms around her, and finally to longing for his kiss.

  The emotional tide left her exhausted and bewildered.

  After she tidied the kitchen, she entered the girls’ bedroom and took down her hair. Sitting before the mirror, she used Lucy’s brush for the requisite one hundred strokes before she braided her hair for sleeping.

  Today’s events offered much to think about and ponder. But her mind stuck on what was surely the least important item of all. Her growing cognizance of Sam as a virile, exciting man.

  In a few short weeks Angie had changed from an adult woman who never thought of sexuality at all into an adolescent whose mind and body were awakening into an intense awareness of deep restless longings and previously unknown desires.

  Not a day passed that she didn’t recall every sensation of Sam’s kiss, reliving that moment until her face burned and her heart pounded.

  Everything he did fascinated her. From the shaving ritual in the morning to the way he held his knife and fork. She found it intensely interesting that he flipped his hammer before he dropped it through the loop on his denims. And that he was right-handed but drank beer and coffee with his left hand. He always sat closest to the aisle in their Sunday pew.

  The deep baritone of his voice could send shivers down her spine. Sometimes he looked at her in a certain way and her mouth went dry. The night before last, she’d seen him standing in the back yard smoking a cigar, hip-shot, preoccupied, his face bronzed by a setting sun, and her hands had trembled.

  Ten years ago Angie had been too young, too innocent of the world to understand why she went weak and shaky inside when Sam stood close. And then came the lonely years during which she had shut a door between herself and any hint of sexual awareness. Now that door was edging open.

  Disturbed, she threw down the hairbrush and covered her face with her hands. She absolutely did not want to respond to Sam as a man. She wanted a divorce.

  Desperate to push the memory of his naked chest out of her mind, she tried to think about Peter De Groot. Peter, whom she admired and respected.
Her friend, Peter. Peter, her future. Peter was the man who would unveil for her the mysterious acts between men and women. It was Peter who would eventually satisfy her strange new longings.

  But it was Sam Holland who slept in the bed she had vacated this morning. Sam, who would not leave her thoughts no matter how hard she tried to shove him away. Sam, whose mouth and hands inflamed her dreams.

  Near dawn Sam awoke and couldn’t fall back asleep. Mounding the pillows behind him, he sat in the darkness, surrounded by Angie’s scent. Eventually he closed his mind to arousing thoughts and concentrated on the fight with Herb Govenor.

  He’d gone to the Miners’ Bar intending to pound Govenor into pulp and he’d done his damnedest to carry through. There was satisfaction in that.

  But whatever damage he’d inflicted wouldn’t change anything. Anyone who hired Sam was in danger of watching his new house go up in flames.

  Frowning, he edged toward the only conclusion possible. No man with a conscience would expose his clients to the possibility, maybe the probability, of financial loss.

  Next week, after he handed Reverend Dryfus the key to his new home, Sam Holland would be out of business.

  Which meant that Govenor had accomplished what he set out to do: deprive Sam of his livelihood.

  Brooding, he got out of bed and stood before the window, watching the lights wink out along Bennet Street as the sky turned pale and opalescent. And he asked himself if Herb Govenor would burn down a schoolhouse. Despite his opinion of the Govenors, he didn’t think Herb was the kind of man who would punish children to get what he wanted. But then, he would have said that Herb wasn’t the kind of man to burn down a preacher’s house either.

  When the sky had brightened to a milky blue, he entered the kitchen, intending to start the coffee and heat water for shaving. But first, he paused outside the door of his daughters’ bedroom.

  Even from here he imagined he could smell the same seductive rosy scent that he’d inhaled on Angie’s pillow. He pictured her sleeping, curled on her side, her lips slightly parted, her lashes long on her cheeks. And his stomach tightened.