I touched the word ‘marshal’ with my fingertips; I understood that Una Spicer was referring to a lawman from her own century, not my Marshall.
Why then was my heart beating so frantically? Why couldn’t I catch my breath?
Why was I suddenly desperately concerned about this man in the letter, a man I could not possibly know? A man who played his fiddle every evening…
Oh dear God…
“The marshal,” I said inanely, still studying this word on the page, my fingertips burning.
“What about him?” Tish asked.
I looked up at her and our eyes held steady – but then Tish’s expression changed to one of absolute horror. She yelped, “Ruthann!” and caught me in a bear hug so quickly that she almost took the chair over. The dogs were going crazy. I clung to her; at first I had the strangest sense that her arms would continue to pass straight through me, closing around nothing more than empty air. My skull buzzed and the world narrowed to a small pinpoint, then winked completely out.
Chapter Ten
I had never fainted before in my life.
Tish hovered over me, tearful and stricken, her face appearing pale even in the meager light. She gasped, “Oh my God, you scared me. Are you all right? Shit, I practically dragged you to the couch…”
I tried to sit up but I was too dizzy. Even though I wasn’t sure it was true, I managed to say, “I’m all right…”
Tish cupped my face with her hands, which were warm on my icy cheeks. She said, “It was the craziest thing, Ruthie, I could hardly believe my own eyes. I swear you started to…this sounds so insane…I swear you started to disappear…”
I didn’t want to hear this, as I’d had the same horrific sensation. Instead I whispered, “I just want to sleep…”
What I wanted was Marshall, with all of my heart, but I didn’t want to needlessly worry him, especially when I was so overtired that I was imagining impossible things.
He would want to know you’re in distress. You know this.
Tish said, sounding slightly more like herself, “Here, I’ll get you a glass of water.”
Tucked with her in the full-size bed in her room a little later, our backs just touching beneath the covers, she told me quietly, “I’ve missed you so much. It’s been such a long time since we’ve gotten to talk in the evenings. I mean, we always used to back home.”
“Those were good old days,” I agreed. I had sipped two glasses of water and felt a little better. Solid and substantial – my hands kept sweeping over my stomach, my ribs, as though seeking reassurance that I was still actually here.
“How did Liam take everything?” my sister asked softly.
“He’s so hurt,” I said, flinching inadvertently. “I feel so guilty — but I couldn’t be his girlfriend anymore. I just couldn’t.”
“Liam was too much of a softie for you anyway,” Tish murmured. “You would have been bored with him, in the long run. There would always have been something lacking between you, I can tell.”
I whispered, “You’re right. I know that, but he’s always been so good to me, so sweet and loving. I do love Liam in my own way, but I understand now that I’ve never been in love with him. There is a difference. I just never admitted it to myself.”
“And once you know it, you can’t live without it,” Tish whispered. “Or at least, you can’t live with a substitute for it.”
I said, “I know I should have broken up with him a long time ago, shouldn’t have let it drag out this long. I hate hurting him this way.”
Tish said with certainty, “He’ll be all right. It might take a little while, but he will.”
My eyelids felt weighted as I said, “I’m so glad you understand.”
“Of course I understand,” Tish whispered. She giggled a little as she added, “I’m much more romantic than I used to be, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“This just adds to what Marshall and I were talking about tonight,” I said, almost asleep.
“What’s that?” Tish wondered.
“That you really don’t know your family members as well as you think you do.”
The last thing I heard was Tish saying, “But probably well enough.”
Sometime in the night I woke to Una Spicer whispering to me. I lay with eyes closed, hearing Tish’s even breathing beside me, my heart clubbing at the tension that had been so urgent in Una’s voice.
Hurry, she insisted, and my spine jerked. You need to get there before –
Before what? I begged, drifting somewhere between waking and sleeping.
The path bathed in sunset light appeared before me, the twigs and dead leaves under my bare feet; beneath the covers, my legs twitched as though to move forward.
Hurry, Ruthann, there isn’t time…
There isn’t time…
Bender barked once, sharply, from the hallway, and I jolted upright, fully awake now. My feet hit the floor and I ran to the kitchen. Behind me Tish called, “What is it?”
All of the dogs were barking now, crowding the screen door, and I let them free. Common sense should have suggested that I stay inside, but I followed right after them, into the night. Clouds had blotted out the stars, leaving not a hint of natural illumination to aid my vision. The dogs ran hell-for-leather towards the barn, and I ran after them, hearing the screen door bang open as Tish ran after me.
“Ruthie!” she yelled.
Breathless and barefoot, I stopped just inside the barn, smelling the sawdust and the new wood. All four dogs bounded back to me, gathering around my knees, tongues lolling. I stared wildly around the space, searching for the telltale figure of a man trespassing, but there was nothing. Tish caught up to me and put her hands on my back.
“What the hell?” she gasped.
We stood in the absolute silence of the barn, hearing nothing more than the dogs panting.
“It was just a dream,” I said.
***
By the next evening, I was established in my new apartment. It smelled a little like bacon grease throughout the whole tiny place, a little like fried fish from the diner below, but I had grown up at the Shore Leave Café, so these smells were second nature to me, not bothersome at all. Tish had driven back to Bozeman to collect Case, who was being discharged. The menfolk arrived early to work on the barn, a final flurry of effort, to make it as complete as possible before they arrived back home.
Wy and Becky helped me all day, Wy driving the work truck this time, and the three of us unloaded the household things that had been obtained for me. It wasn’t much, but enough that I had a twin-sized mattress and box spring (if not an actual bed), a cardboard box of kitchen supplies, an armchair (which Trudy’s short-order cook Dave helped us cart up the narrow back steps), and a framed picture of two wild horses running against an orange sunset. Wy had painted it with watercolors in the seventh grade and presented it to me as a house-warming present, with a great deal of heartfelt sincerity.
I couldn’t have loved it more.
I treated Becky and Wy to a late lunch at Trudy’s, and we sat in the peaceful afternoon sunlight, the diner empty, as lunch rush was over and dinner not yet begun. We ate cheeseburgers and Wy had a piece of strawberry pie for dessert.
“Ruthann, I swear you always put me in a better mood,” Becky said, leaning over the table on her elbows. Because she was pregnant, we hadn’t let her carry anything up to the apartment but the extra hair dryer she had brought for me.
Wy, who was bent over his pie and with mouth full, nodded vigorous agreement.
“Thank you,” I said, embarrassed and pleased.
“All of us,” she insisted. “Marshall is just glowing like a firefly.”
Wy laughed and said around a bite of pie, “I’m telling him you said that.”
I smiled at their words, thinking of earlier today, when Marshall had arrived at Tish’s just before all the other men, coming to knock on the door of the trailer to wish me good morning, freshly shaved, his hair damp and his eyes s
o gorgeous and warm.
“Come in,” I told him, smiley and joyous, my heart in wild disarray at just the sight of him. Now that we were practicing a little restraint, it was pretty torturous to think of the morning we’d woken in the guest room together, and how incredibly beautiful that had been. I wanted to tell him about what had happened the night before, about both the letter and my strange nighttime flight to the barn, but I didn’t know how to begin. I would explain later – when we had more time to talk alone.
“Morning,” he responded softly, and once inside the dogs crowded his legs. Marshall bent to pet them, patting their heads and stroking their floppy ears with his long fingers, saying, “Thanks, guys, I can tell you took good care of Ruthann.”
“They sure did,” I said, my voice a little wobbly, I was so delighted to be near him. He smelled good and my fingers were tingling to touch him. I said, “They protected me all night.” I heard the shower clunk as Tish turned off the water, sure to emerge within a minute, and my heart throbbed as I asked, “Can I hug you?”
Without a word, Marshall caught me close and I shuddered with the pleasure of being held to him. I tucked my face against his shoulder, just where it would be when we made love, and heard the sounds of our lovemaking in my memory. He said into my left ear, his lips brushing gently, “You never have to ask, angel, just hug me.”
I clung even more tightly. I whispered, “I love how you call me your angel.”
“You are my angel,” he said, and his lips were still touching my ear, not quite a kiss but close enough. Just as it had the first morning I’d hugged him in the hospital parking lot, my chin lifted towards his mouth, instinctively.
“You aren’t making this very easy, you know,” he whispered, rocking us side to side a little. He didn’t give in and kiss my mouth, but he did kiss my temple, soft and sweet.
“You’re right,” I said, drawing back with reluctance weighting my movements. I acknowledged, “We haven’t even had our first date yet.”
“Tonight,” he promised. “First date equals at least one good-night kiss. Don’t you think?”
Now, hours later in the diner, Becky brought me from my daydreams as she said, “My sister Cammy has that old Buick that I’m pretty sure you can drive. It just needs a once-over and probably an oil change. We’ll swing over to my brother-in-law’s shop to have him check it out.”
And so it was approaching five-thirty in the evening when I got back to my apartment, driving a new-to-me Buick with a good engine and very comfortable leather seats despite its overall rundown appearance. As it was in Landon, people here in Jalesville were chatty, openly curious to know more about me and just as quick to offer help. I couldn’t believe the generosity heaped upon me just today. I had not heard a word from Liam, even though Mom had left me a message that I should probably call him.
“Clint and I talked to him for hours last night,” Mom said in her voicemail message, which I had listened to this morning. “He doesn’t understand this, honey, and you need to explain what’s going on. I didn’t tell him about you and…” and here she paused, as though uncertain if it was all right to acknowledge, before finishing, “Marshall. But I do think you should.”
I knew it would only hurt Liam a thousand times more to tell him about Marshall. Liam already despised Marshall from that summer three years ago, and Liam never disliked people. Typically he gave them the benefit of the doubt, and yet Marshall had effectively provoked Liam into wanting to kick his ass, even back then, when I had done my best to avoid Marshall’s attention.
Besides, I reflected somewhat bitterly, Clint would probably take it upon himself to tell Liam everything anyway.
Still sitting in the driver’s seat, the afternoon sun hot on my left arm, I sent my former boyfriend a text, writing, Mom said you guys talked. I know this is a shock for you and I am so sorry. Please believe me. I should have talked about this with you a long time ago.
I sent this and then chewed my thumbnail, staring out the windshield. Next I added, I need something different from life. You and I would not have been happy in the long run. I started to realize this a while ago. But I am so sorry to hurt you. I should have said something right away when I started to feel like this.
How patronizing. I felt shallow and small as I sent this final message. But then I thought about what Marshall had said the other night, when he’d asked me what I thought I owed Liam. I owed him the courtesy of an explanation, but Marshall was ultimately right – I did not owe Liam myself.
I didn’t expect Liam to write back, and he did not. For a little longer I sat without moving in the driver’s seat, the sun baking my arm, listening with half an ear to the sounds of dinner rush beginning inside Trudy’s; all of the diner windows were open to the beauty of the sunny summer evening, and laughter and chatter, the clink of coffee cups and forks against plates met my ears, as familiar as anything I had ever known. I studied the tall, jewel-toned wildflowers growing rampantly at the edge of the parking lot, flowers I could not name, but instead simply appreciated.
And in that instant a rush of thrilling excitement, keen in my blood, completely overtook my senses. My fingers flew across the surface of my phone as I scrolled to a new number and texted Marshall.
See you soon!!!
I cannot wait, he texted back immediately, and my stomach danced. He had probably just left Tish and Case’s place. I hadn’t seen him since this morning, but we’d been writing to each other intermittently all day, flirty, wonderful, sometimes sweet and sometimes suggestive texts, all of which made my nerves dance with the delight of anticipation. He was just as fond of endearments as I was, using a variety that made my whole body pulse with warmth.
O and then XXX, I wrote, giggling as I pictured his expression.
Hell YES, my sweet darlin angel baby, he wrote back. Then, seconds later, he wrote, Is this entrapment?
I laughed aloud at this and wrote back, First date = one kiss.
Marshall responded, Can I choose placement and duration of kiss?
I was hot and fluttering, my fingertips trembling as I texted, Hurry.
I’m coming darlin, he wrote right back.
I raced up into my apartment and proceeded to take the fastest shower in the west (which wasn’t easy, given the crappy water pressure combined with my long hair), then flew to my tiny bedroom and slipped into a soft, creamy-white sundress with a short skirt and pretty lace edging, one that Tish had lent me. I brushed my teeth, did a quick mascara job on my eyelashes and had just applied lip balm when I heard someone hurrying up the steps outside. My heart absolutely exploded, firecracker-like. Seconds later I flung open the door to find Marshall standing with his right hand poised as though to knock. He grinned hugely at me, though I barely caught a glimpse of it because I threw myself into his arms.
“You’re here,” I said breathlessly; fortunately he compensated for my weight and we didn’t go tumbling backward down the flight of stairs.
Marshall held me in the crush of his strong arms; I clung back just as fiercely, and he tipped his face against my hair. He said softly, “Of course I am.”
“I loved texting you all day,” I told him, running my hands all over his back. “I’m so glad to see you.”
“I must be dreaming,” he whispered. He cupped my face and studied my eyes. He said, “You know how many times I’ve imagined taking you on a date? And here you are in my arms.”
“If you were dreaming, then I wouldn’t do this,” I teased, licking his nose, and he snorted a surprised laugh. I shrieked and giggled, trying to evade his tongue as he went for my ear. He got me just as good and I was weak with laughter.
“More?” he demanded, clutching me close.
“Yes, more,” I begged, and he gently bit my earlobe, making me squeak.
“I am doing my best to obey the no-touching rule,” Marshall implored. “You have to believe me.”
“I do,” I assured him. “It’s my fault that we’re touching right now.”
&n
bsp; His eyes drove straight into my already-besotted heart. He stroked my hair with both hands and whispered, “It’s not your fault. It’s impossible for me not to touch you. Look at you. You’re so beautiful I can hardly believe that you’re real.”
I pulled him closer and reminded, “One kiss.”
His eyes caught fire as instantly as a struck match, lashes lowering. He said, his voice a little hoarse, “Shouldn’t that be at the end of the first date?”
Breathless and shivery, I curled my hands into his hair and shook my head.
“I don’t want to be accused of disappointing a woman who looks like an angel,” he said softly, sliding his hands down to my waist and wrapping his fingers possessively and intently around the material of my sundress. “Especially my angel. But I don’t know that I should give in so easily…”
“Kiss me right now,” I whispered, delighted at the proximity of his mouth, less than a breath away. He tipped his forehead to mine.
“How much do you want it?” he teased, his lips brushing me with these words.
“So much,” I whispered, trembling openly now, hot little shivers flowing along the nerves in my face, tingling down my neck.
“How much?” he whispered, licking my bottom lip just a little.
“With all my heart much,” I insisted sincerely.
“Say my name, just like that,” he whispered intensely.
“Kiss me first,” I demanded, hardly able to remain standing I was so fluttery and aroused. My heart thrust repeatedly against him. His lips curved into a smile and he shook his head slowly. I thumped my fists against his ribs and begged, “Please, Marshall…”
Before I could blink, he parted my lips with his and I moaned in pleasure as he kissed me.
Until Tomorrow Page 21