by Kaki Warner
He was limping out of the water closet when Brady came in, wearing his usual scowl. “Good. You’re up,” he said distractedly. “I need you to take Elena to Val Rosa and take care of the horse sale.”
“When?” Hopefully not today. He might be feeling better, but not well enough to take an eight-hour buggy trip to town and back.
“The horses go this afternoon. You and Elena will meet Langley in Val Rosa tomorrow. As soon as the fellow from the Army hands over the money, hunt up Blake and pay him off. Be warned, he may have Ashford with him.”
“Ashford? The railroader?” Jack remembered him well. A small man with a cold smile and the manners of a schoolmarm. He also remembered that he’d seemed taken with Jessica. Maybe that was the reason for Brady’s scowl.
Brady explained about Ashford and Blake coming out to the house. “Jessica thinks he’s after the ranch, so be sure to get everything signed and marked ‘Paid in Full’ so he’ll have no reason to come after us. If there’s any problem, talk to Lockley at the bank.”
Jack snorted. “The same guy who sold our loan to Blake in the first place?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve spoken to him. He understands he did a wrong thing and he’s anxious to show he’s sorry.” Brady smiled as he said that. It was the kind of smile that made men back up a step. “He’ll cover any shortages.”
Brady started for the door, then stopped and turned back. “How long are you staying?”
“In town?”
“At the ranch.”
Jack blinked, taken aback by the question. He’d expected it would come sooner or later and should have been prepared with an answer, but he wasn’t. That familiar smothered feeling rose in his chest. “I don’t know,” he hedged. “Depends on what Daisy wants, I guess.”
“And if she wants to stay?” Brady pressed.
Stay here? Forever? Surely not.
Suddenly Jack found it hard to breathe. “I don’t know.”
“That’s not much of an answer.”
“It’s all you’re getting. Where is Daisy, by the way?”
Instead of responding, Brady studied him from the doorway, his gaze intense and intrusive. “How’s it going with you two?”
Jack’s guard went up. “Why?” Brady was a meddlesome sonofabitch, and Jack knew better than to freely give out personal information.
“She decide yet if she’s going to marry you or not?”
Jack forced a laugh. “I’ve been sort of busy the last few days.”
“So that would be a ‘no’?”
Jack’s smile faded. He leveled his gaze at his brother. “For now.”
“She’s in the garden.” Turning, Brady left the room.
It took Jack a while to get down the stairs, and he was glad no one was watching because with every step he had to cling to the handrail like an old lady with a bum knee. By the time he made it to the bottom, he was regretting he’d foregone use of the crutch he’d brought all those weeks ago when he’d arrived at the ranch with a busted foot. Pride could be a burdensome thing.
After a brief rest to shore up his waning strength, he worked his way out through the kitchen and into the garden.
No rain today, thank God. In fact, a month without rain would suit him just fine. But the storm had definitely brought on spring. Distant hillsides were tinted yellow with mountain balsam flowers, and the pockets of aspens trailing out of the canyons showed the pale green of new leaves. Spring roundup should be starting soon, always a busy time at the ranch, and even though it involved a solid week of noise and dust and backbreaking work, it had always been one of Jack’s favorite times. There was an excitement about it as the tally mounted and each pair of riders vied with the others to earn the bonus Brady paid for the team who flushed the most cattle out of the canyons. But once the cattle were gathered in huge milling throngs, the real work began—cutting, branding, culling. That wasn’t as much fun, and Jack definitely wasn’t looking forward to the flies and stink and bawling of the calves.
He found Daisy bent over a raised garden plot, thinning something green. Pausing by the gate to watch her, he admired the way her light brown hair shone in the sun, and how that calico dress showed off her round little butt, and how when she bent over, the hem rose and exposed her slim calves. Strong calves, too. He smiled, remembering how they had once felt locked around his waist, pulling him in.
Tonight, he promised himself. Tonight he’d feel that again, by God.
Kate squatted beside her, talking up a riddle and digging in the dirt with a bent spoon. They were a pair, his ladies. And so beautiful they took his breath away. Smiling, he limped toward them.
He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but they’d both moved right into his heart. He had thought he would never feel about another woman the way he’d felt about Elena. But with Daisy, it was ... different. Stronger. More comfortable. And he wanted her in a way he had never wanted Elena.
Stopping beside her, he waited for her to notice him and look up. When she did, he smiled and said, “Stand up.”
Hesitantly, she did.
Capturing her face in his hands, he leaned down and kissed her. Kissed her like he’d been wanting to since he’d come home the evening before last, so relieved to see them safe and unharmed he’d almost unmanned himself. Like he’d wanted to when she’d looked at him over their sleeping daughter last night. And like he planned to tonight after the house was quiet and he laid her out like a feast across his big four-poster bed. He’d give her a kiss then like none she’d ever had before. Because this time he wasn’t drunk, and this time he knew what he was doing and who he was doing it with, and because this time it would mean a whole lot more to him than it ever had before.
“Good morning,” he said when he finally stopped for air.
She blinked up at him, her eyes round and slightly out of focus, her lips parted and pink and plump as berries. “You’re up,” she said.
He had to grin. “Oh, I’m definitely up.”
“Me, too, up,” Kate demanded, lifting her arms. Grinning, Jack picked her up and held her in one arm while he wrapped the other around Daisy so he could hug them both.
“Well, pretty ladies. Tomorrow I have to go into Val Rosa, but today we have all to ourselves. What shall we do?”
“Horsy!” Kate cried.
“No hikes,” Daisy added.
Jack laughed and kissed them both once more because it felt so good.
It was definitely going to be a grand day.
And an even better night.
IT WAS LONG AFTER SUPPER. MOLLY AND JESSICA HAD SAID their goodnights and ushered their children up to bed several hours ago, and the brothers had retired to Brady’s office to discuss the sale of the horses tomorrow. The house was quiet except for the scratching of the pen across the paper as Daisy sat at the small secretary in her bedroom trying desperately to form her scattered thoughts into written words.
Muttering under her breath, she tore another sheet of paper from the tablet, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it into the small fire crackling in the fireplace. Words had deserted her. Everything she wrote read like a bumbling list of excuses. Good-bye letters were so coldly impersonal.
Sighing, she rose and walked to the window.
The moon was full and bright, painting the world below in such stark shades of gray and cloudy white she could make out the horses in the paddocks, rocks in the yard, the individual boards on the side of the barn.
Leaning her forehead against the cool glass of the window, she sighed again.
Maybe she should just talk to him. Explain about the tour and her chance to train with Madame Scarlatti and sing on a real stage. Jack would understand.
Wouldn’t he?
She let her thoughts drift back through the lovely day—their last full day together. After Kate’s riding lesson and a visit with the barn kitty, they had spent the rest of the morning in the nursery with Kate and the twins and little Abigail. They read, they painted, they sang. The two little girl
s danced while Daisy played the piano and Jack accompanied her on the tom-tom drums and the twins shrieked out a song. It was chaos. After the noon meal, exhaustion had claimed Kate, and Daisy had left her napping in the care of one of the nursery girls, and had gone on a buggy tour with Jack. He seemed so carefree and happy, showing her all his favorite haunts and relating stories of pranks and scrapes he’d gotten into with his brothers. It was almost like he was reacquainting himself with his childhood ... or else telling his special places good-bye. But Daisy would let no melancholy thoughts intrude on the lovely day—the last day. She enjoyed every moment.
Supper had been more boisterous than usual. With Jack able to join them again and Elena leaving the next day, it was a lively celebration with a great deal of laughter over Jack’s ordeal and fond remembrances of Elena as a child. No sad thoughts or regrets intruded, and even though Daisy sensed an underlying poignancy about Elena’s departure, the family seemed to have accepted her decision to devote her life to the church. Brady was the only one who knew Daisy and Kate would be leaving the next day, too, although headed in the opposite direction, but other than a few thoughtful glances cast her way, he gave no indication. It was a lovely gathering and a perfect ending to a perfect day.
But now it was over. And here she sat in her lonely room, with a letter to write and a night of regrets and “what-ifs” to get through, and with every breath she took, she felt herself weaken a little more.
At the creak of the door behind her, she turned to see the very person she had been fretting over limp into the room.
She raised a brow. “I didn’t hear your knock.”
“That’s because I didn’t.” Grabbing her coat off a peg behind the door, he held it out. “Here, put this on.”
“Why do I need a coat?”
“Because it’s cool outside.” After she slipped on her worn gabardine, he took her hand and pulled her toward the door. “Come on. It’s a full moon and there’s something I want to show you.”
“What if Kate wakes up?”
“I sent one of the Ortegas to sit with her. Come on.”
“It’s dark,” she protested, even though she offered no other resistance as he led her out into the hall. “What do you expect to see in the middle of the night?”
He grinned back at her. “The inland ocean.”
“The what?”
“You’ll see.”
They left the house and crossed through the barn and out the other side, where two saddled horses stood tied to a rail by the double back doors.
“You do ride, don’t you?” he asked, stopping before a small mare with a blaze running down her face that looked almost silver in the moonlight.
“Yes, but not frequently. And you shouldn’t be riding at all with that leg.”
“We’re not going far.” After helping her into the saddle, he untied the mare and handed up the reins. “She’ll follow. Just keep a light hand on the leathers.”
Luckily Jack’s injured leg was his right one, and he was able to swing into the saddle without putting a strain on it. Still, she could see it bothered him until he slipped the toe of his boot into the stirrup and let his knee take most of the weight. Without a word, he reined his big gelding toward the valley and kicked it into a mile-eating lope. Daisy’s mare followed smoothly behind.
They rode for less than a quarter hour before Jack pulled his horse to a stop on a small treeless knoll that rose out of the flats. Daisy reined in beside him. For a moment they sat quietly, looking out at the moon-gilded vista.
“Look,” Jack finally said. He stuck out a hand, palm down, and drew it in a slow, sweeping arc, mimicking the roll of the landscape. “Squint your eyes and feel the wind and let your mind drift.”
Daisy did, and there it was. The inland sea. The combination of rain and warm sunshine had sent the spring grass shooting up, and with every gentle gust, the tall blades bobbed and shimmered and rippled like waves on a rolling sea. The sense of movement was uncanny, and with the rhythmic shushing of wind through the grass, it truly sounded like water lapping against the shore.
On either side of the valley, pine-covered hills rose out of the silvered plain like dark islands stretching high into the sky to where the last patches of snow on the peaks gleamed white in the frosted light. Somewhere in a far canyon, a cow bawled, but to Daisy it sounded like it could have been the muffled blast of a distant foghorn. Other than that, and the soughing of the wind, and her own pulse beat in her ears, the silence was complete and eerie and magical. It was like being transported to another world of wind and water and endless stars.
He turned toward her. “Do you see it?”
He was smiling, his teeth a white slash against his darker face. The angles and planes of his strong features were so perfectly sculpted by moonlight she wanted to reach out and touch him and feel the warmth of his skin to assure herself he was real.
“Yes,” she said. “I see it.”
Jack’s ocean in the mountains.
Still smiling, he closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sky. His lips parted. She watched his chest rise and fall on a deep breath and could almost feel renewed energy flowing through him.
He needs this, she realized. He needs this openness and space around him. Without it, he’s like a caged bird.
And with that realization came another.
She didn’t want to be another bar in the walls of that cage. She didn’t want to be the one who held him back from his soaring dreams. And she could do it, she knew. If she stayed and bound him to her side with marriage, she could clip his wings forever. Jack would always be torn between her and Kate and the beckoning beyond. But since he couldn’t be two men at the same time, he would end up being neither. And the Jack she loved would be lost forever.
She couldn’t do that.
She had to let him go. God, give me the strength.
His voice broke the long silence. “I used to come here as a kid.”
Braced against the searing emptiness, she turned toward him, praying for the courage to say what she must. “Jack.”
But his attention was turned toward the valley, his face softened by moonlight and memories. “On full moon nights, I’d sneak out and come here. I’d run the whole way. I would stand right here on this little hilltop and pretend I was on the bow of my own ship on my way to some other place, some other adventure.” He fell silent for a moment.
She watched him take in another deep breath and let it go in a rush.
“I could breathe here. I could be someone other than Brady and Hank’s little brother. I could be someone different. Someone grand.” Turning his head, he looked directly into her eyes. “I still can. If you and Kate stay with me.”
To watch you wither away?
“Jack,” she began, still not sure what she was going to say.
Again, he cut her off. “Or we can go adventuring together. The three of us. Go anywhere in the world we want.”
And give up singing forever.
“It would be an adventure, Daisy.”
She could hear the laughter in his voice. The joy and yearning.
“There’s a river in South America. It’s called the Amazon and it’s so big some have named it the River Sea. It can even handle steam-boats. Huge Anaconda snakes live there and man-eating piranha fish and a species of river dolphin called a Boto that the natives say can turn into a man. Kate would love it. You too. I’ve got enough money to take us anywhere we want, so why not see it all?”
“Jack, I—”
“First we’ll go north, all the way to the Yukon, another great river. Did you know they train dogs to pull sleds across the ice up there and they have mountains that are so tall the snow on top never melts? They call them glaciers. And the rainbows in the night sky”—he waved a hand toward the moonlit dome overhead—“hell, you won’t believe the colors, Daisy. They say they’re almost alive. The natives call it the ‘dance of the spirits’. It’s magical.”
He laughed, his teeth wh
ite in the moonlight. “I want to show it all to you. And what I haven’t seen, we can see together. The world’s a wondrous and astounding place, Daisy, and I want our daughter to know there’s more to it than just this valley.”
Our daughter. But what of me? Could she live a life without music? The breeze gusted and Daisy trembled as a cold draft cut through her thin coat like the blade of a knife. “I wish ...” What?
To stay? To go? To hear him say he loves me? Would that be enough to give up the dream?
“You’re cold,” he said, frowning over at her. “I didn’t mean to keep you out in the wind so long. I just wanted you to see it.” He reined his gelding toward the house, Daisy’s mare trailing behind.
“Want to race?” he called over his shoulder, and before she could answer, he kicked his horse into a gallop. Her mare lunged after him.
Laughing like carefree children, they raced across Jack’s inland sea, while the waving grass shimmered around them, and the moon lit their way, and the breeze tugged Daisy’s hair from her braid and stung her eyes. And if Jack had looked back and noticed her tears, she would have laughed and told him it was just the wind.
But he didn’t look back.
JACK FELT THE SHIVER OF HER BODY WHEN HE LIFTED DAISY down outside the barn, and berated himself for not getting her a better jacket. But he wasn’t sorry they’d gone. It was the first time he’d ever told anyone about his “mountain sea,” and even though he knew it was just a child’s fantasy, he was glad he’d shared it with her. It had always been easy to talk to Daisy. She never mocked or judged, and when he was around her, he felt he could let the masks drop for a while.
“You go on in and warm up,” he said. “I’ll take care of the horses.”
He watched her walk through the darkened barn and out again into the moonlight. Her hair had come loose and lifted in the breeze, fanning around her shoulders like a silver veil. She looked smaller to him. Diminished somehow. And Jack had a sudden odd premonition that she would keep walking away from him until she disappeared altogether. But that was probably just a trick of the moonlight.