The curtains she’d stitched with her slender fingers still hung in the kitchen, but their softness looked out of place in a house filled only with men. The room was suddenly too hot. He started to unbutton the cuff of his sleeve to roll it up, when the button popped off. He watched it fly across the table to land with a plop in the pitcher of cream someone, probably Maggie, had placed there in anticipation of breakfast.
“Well,” he said, swallowing the lump of emotion he did not care to acknowledge or name.
“I’m starving,” Flynn announced in the uncomfortable silence. Clever man, Ryan silently admitted.
“Ye poor man.” Maggie sympathetically handed him a warm scone, then picked up a spoon to fish the button out of the cream.
“Yer an angel,” he whispered fervently, popping half the scone into his mouth. Flynn chewed, stopped, then let out a heartfelt sigh. “Light as a feather, with just a touch of sweetness to tease the taste buds.” He sighed again, “ ’Tis a shame ye married the marshal,” he said with a gleam coming into his eyes, “when ye could have married me.”
Flynn’s teasing broke the tension that settled on the group at the mention of Bridget’s absence. No one had suggested they not discuss her and Mick’s leaving, but the group had seemed to come to the same conclusion: that it was wiser not to bring up the touchy subject just yet.
“Now then,” Maggie began, laying thick strips of bacon in the huge, cast-iron skillet. “Why don’t ye fill me in on who is comin’ and what food they’ll be bringin’?”
All through breakfast and everyone’s second cup of coffee, Ryan remained silent, letting either Reilly or Flynn answer his sister’s questions. He let everyone think he was paying attention to their plans for the solid post-and-beam construction of his new barn, when in fact, his mind was conjuring up the image of a chestnut-haired beauty with warm brown eyes dressed in a thin cotton nightgown bathed in moonlight.
Chapter Fifteen
Bridget adjusted the collar of her much-mended gingham dress again. Nerves had her throat tightening to the point that she couldn’t swallow the cool water she so desperately craved. Her mouth was dry as dust. When she promised Maggie she’d help at the barn-raising, she never thought to miss James or his ranch so much that her head ached and her heart hurt.
God help her, she missed him. She and Mick had been accepted and treated as part of James’s extended family. Not one person at the ranch had made her feel as if she was worthless because of her background. Moving back to town was so hard.
In the time she and Mick’d been living in town, she’d been on the receiving end of cold shoulders, glares of contempt, and out-and-out hatred. And all because of one woman’s crusade to keep her own milk toast of a man from stepping foot inside The Ranch. Anyone who sided with Pearl was included in Sarah Burnbaum’s wrath.
While Bridget had become used to the rudeness, the loneliness was another story. Thank goodness she could count on Maggie, Pearl, and now Mrs. Swenson. There were times when a woman needed the instinctive understanding only another woman could offer.
“The men on the south side of the new barn need more lemonade.”
Sarah’s voice grated across Bridget’s frazzled nerves. The woman’s brusque announcement was not directed at any one person in particular, but the way Bridget’s name was conspicuously left out told her she was the one expected to fetch the lemonade for the men.
“Millie, dear,” she heard Sarah say in a much softer tone, “would you kindly go on over to the house and ask Mrs. Turner for more lemons.”
What a difference it must make to be socially acceptable, Bridget mused.
Millie nodded and turned toward the ranch house, but not before sending a glacial glare Bridget’s way. Well, that was subtle. Was that the tenth or eleventh glare the co-chair of the Committee had fired her way? She supposed it really didn’t matter. After all, she had come because she promised to help Maggie.
Well, to be honest, it was not the only reason. If she happened to catch a glimpse of James, while he used those brawny arms of his to lift a hammer and pound nails, or heft another of those immense beams into place, her day would not seem as bleak as it truly was. The brooding Irishman was pure pleasure to look at. If that was all she’d ever have, then she intended to look her fill. Looking never hurt a body.
“Ma!” She heard Mick call out to her as she made her way over to the barn. Taking a moment to admire the workmanship, she smiled up at her son. He was steadying the ladder James stood on, while the object of her musings set another bit of the structure into place.
He turned abruptly and stared down at her, the ladder bowing under the weight of his large frame. “When did you get here?”
“Hours ago.”
The deep timbre of his voice flowed over her sleep-deprived muscles. Her arms ached from fetching and carrying large trays of food back and forth from the ranch house to the tables set up under the oak trees in the side yard. Now that she thought about it, not too many other women had been sent to fetch and carry. No wonder she was so tired! Just another not-too-subtle way the Committee had of reminding her she was not their social equal.
As he stared down at the glass she offered up to him, she bobbled the tray balanced in her other hand. “Have a care, or you’ll drop that tray.”
A flush bloomed on her cheeks, hot enough that she knew he could see it too. “I’ll not drop it.”
“Mick!” he called out. “Brace the ladder for me.”
Bridget watched her son react to James’s words and brace himself against the bottom of the ladder, while James backed down the length of it.
Why was it he seemed so much bigger when he was standing right in front of her? She tilted her head back and decided he was at least a head and half taller than her husband had been, and twice as broad through the chest and shoulders. Working a ranch depended upon brute strength, and from the looks of things, James Ryan had it to spare.
An uncontrollable shiver wracked her slight frame, as she thought about being held in those strong arms again. Though it had been a few weeks, Bridget could still remember how her stomach fluttered when he held her against his broad chest. Her heart stuttered in her breast when she recalled waking to find his face a breath away from hers. His touch had been beyond gentle, soothing her when she wakened from a nightmare.
She watched, mesmerized by the way his throat worked. As the tangy lemonade slowly disappeared, the fluttering in her stomach intensified. When he came up for air, he swiped the back of his arm across his forehead, smearing a line of dirt, mingling it with his sweat. He caught her staring at him and flashed a grin. The lopsided tilt of it wormed its way right into her heart. Drawing in a steadying breath, she took a mental step back from the charm oozing out the man’s pores. Looking over her shoulders, she checked to make certain none of the other ladies were watching her. She couldn’t afford to be seen fawning over James Ryan while the prim-faced, starch-drawered Committee members watched, ready to pounce on any wrong move she made.
“Have you spoken to Maggie yet?”
Bridget smiled. “I have, and the proud father-to-be, too.”
James’s smile mirrored hers. “They deserve to be happy.”
Bridget thought she heard a trace of wistfulness in his voice. Did he want children of his own? The skin on the back of her neck tingled. Sarah must be at it again. She imagined the woman’s hard-eyed stare drilling a dozen tiny holes into her back.
“I’d best be getting back—” Loud voices distracted her train of thought. A ruckus must be in the making.
“And I’m sayin’ yer nailin’ the wrong side of the board to the framin’!” a voice said hotly.
“Is that Mr. Flynn?” She wasn’t sure how to react to the heated argument brewing between one of the Burnbaum’s young know-it-all sons and Flynn.
“Aye.” Ryan turned on his heel and stalked over to where the ranch hand stood, hands fisted at his sides, face flushed, and his red hair standing on end. Flynn must have raked his
hands through it repeatedly to get it to stand up like that.
“Maybe I’d better—”
“Heads up!” a deep male voice barked out.
Before she could react to the shouted command, or the ominous shifting and creaking overhead, James swept both her and Mick out of harm’s way. A heartbeat later, she looked down through the billowing cloud of sawdust at the rough-hewn beam inches away from their feet.
Bridget brushed the hair out of her eyes with shaking hands. Mick stood hunched over staring down at the huge piece of wood, as if expecting it to get up and walk about on its own.
“Samuel!”
The tone of James’s voice brooked no arguments, or delays in responding.
“Mr. Ryan. I thought I had it . . . that is—”
Bridget watched the eldest of the Burnbaum brothers. The young man stood in front of James, red-faced and stammering, a far cry from the overconfident young man who’d been arguing with Flynn.
She felt a bit sorry for the boy, even thought he’d nearly created a disaster. He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than her son. So tall and broad through the chest and shoulders for a young man, while still so much a boy in head and heart.
Ryan waited for the boy to finish trying to speak before clearing his throat. “Do you understand the need for working as a team now?”
“Mr. Ryan, I’m so sorr—”
“What’s all the ruckus, Ryan?”
Bridget nearly swallowed her tongue when the boy’s father strode over. The man was nearly the same height as James, though a bit thinner. But it was his demeanor that had her sidestepping away from him and closer to the doorway and freedom. She’d heard him verbally slice his sons to ribbons once before, and she braced herself, not sure if she should interfere.
“Everyone is fine now.” She could hear the soothing sound of James’s voice.
Mr. Burnbaum didn’t listen. “Samuel!”
“Yes, father?”
“Did you have anything to do with this?”
Bridget hesitated at the doorway and looked over her shoulder. Jake Burnbaum had his son by the shirtfront and was attempting to shake the answer from him. Her need not to become involved was outweighed by the need to stand up for the poor young man being publicly humiliated by his father.
She turned back, “I’m certain that whatever part Samuel had in all of this was purely coincidental.” She hoped that would be the end of it, but she didn’t think it would be.
“This doesn’t concern you.”
“Your son made a mistake,” Bridget continued. “Can’t you—”
“This doesn’t concern you. Stay out of it!”
Her simmering temper shot to full boil, “It most certainly is my business. ’Twas my skull and my son’s that your boy nearly bashed in with that oak beam!”
Her words had the older man turning abruptly and stalking over to where she stood, just outside the gathered group of men. His jaw was clenched, and his brows knitted together. Bridget was swept back in time. He reminded her of Richard. Fear curdled in her stomach.
Nausea snapped her back to the present. She wanted to step back from his obvious anger, unsure if she would become a target for his temper as she’d been for Richard’s. One look at the dejected boy standing to the left of them, and she knew she couldn’t let anyone hurt or threaten him. Samuel needed her.
“You’ll want to rein in that mad of yours, Burnbaum.” James’s voice was deadly soft.
His voice echoed in the stillness that followed his command.
“My temper and my son are my business,” the other man spat out. “Stay out of it!”
As if expecting it, James dodged the first punch, coming back with a quick jab, followed by a wicked right cross.
The older man stood for a moment, dazed, before crumbling into a heap on the barn’s earthen floor.
“Flynn! Take him outside and cool him off.”
“Me pleasure,” Flynn answered, bending down to lift the fallen man by hooking his hands under Burnbaum’s armpits.
Bridget still couldn’t find her voice as she watched Burnbaum being dragged outside. James gently placed a hand to her elbow and led her back over to the ranch house.
“Why don’t you go up to the house and see how Maggie is. I’ve a feeling she’s doing too much when she should be resting.”
Bridget looked up into his impossibly blue eyes, surprised by the turmoil in them. He wasn’t angry, exactly. But, then again, he wasn’t sad. She perceived a mix of the two emotions in the clear blue depths.
“Thank you.”
He misstepped and Bridget heard him mumbling under his breath about someone having the brains God gave a goat.
“I’m glad you didn’t let Mr. Burnbaum handle things.”
“Burnbaum doesn’t spend enough time with his sons. He wouldn’t know when the poor kid’s struggling with following orders, simply not up to the task, or when he’s just ignoring orders deliberately.”
“But you did.” Her heart softened, opening just a bit more to this man who suddenly seemed so lonely. “You didn’t have to take the time or care about someone else’s son.”
Their eyes met, and she knew she owed him at least that much where her own son was concerned. “After what Mick did, stealing from you like that—”
“He never actually stole from me.”
She trembled and wasn’t sure her voice would work properly, but she owed him a special thanks for what he’d done for Mick. “You’re doing it again. You didn’t have to take him in, and you didn’t have to take on his desperately ill mother either.”
His eyes shot daggers at her. “Were you doing that well on your own?”
For the life of her she couldn’t understand why he was getting riled. “It takes a special person”—she stumbled over the words—“man to care about others. Especially when everyone else has decided they aren’t worth worrying over.”
She couldn’t look at the compassion in his eyes without wanting to wrap her arms around his waist, lay her head on his chest, and just hold on. Tight. God, she needed to hold him. Fussing with her skirts helped her to regain the composure she’d lost when he turned the full power of his gaze on her.
“My da always gave me the chance to learn, to make my own mistakes. On the one or two occasions where someone would have been hurt by a mistake I’d made, he’d step in just in time to prevent it. Then he’d let me know where I’d gone wrong in no uncertain terms.”
She watched his gaze slide over to take in the father and son a short distance away, then swing back to her. “But the rest of the time, he had the patience of a saint.”
She’d never met James’s father, but she could imagine he was a very special man, too. She fell into step beside him as they made their way over to the house.
“You were lucky to have a father to look up to.” Bridget couldn’t help the tug of wishful thinking that pulled at her. Mick had only recently had someone to look up to, someone to emulate. Her stomach tightened again as she wondered if she’d made a huge mistake by taking Mick away from that someone.
“Maggie,” James called out, stepping onto the bottom porch step.
“Are ye bleedin’ then, brother mine?”
Bridget couldn’t help but smile at Maggie’s words, “Does she always talk to you like that?”
“Demanding that I’d better have a good reason for disturbing her while she was hard at work in my own kitchen?” The nod of agreement and look on James’s face had laughter bubbling up inside her.
“I’d say the answer was yes.” Bridget envied the close relationship James and Maggie had. She didn’t have any brothers or sisters. Watching the way he and his sister interacted made her realize how important family must be when a child was growing up. Mick had missed so much.
He pulled her up the steps and into the kitchen, where Maggie was removing a tin of heavenly smelling butter cake from the oven.
Maggie frowned at the both of them, but spoke to her brothe
r. “You’ll be wantin’ to wipe yer boots and wash yer hands before ye can come into the kitchen, boy-o.”
Ryan backed up, wiped his feet, then leaned forward to brush the hair out of his sister’s eyes.
Watching their closeness had envy curling with something close to despair inside of Bridget. She’d never had the chance to offer Mick that closeness. Michael had never even known they’d had a son together. She hoped he was looking down on them, watching over them. Content for the moment, she set aside her growing sorrow about not being able to provide Mick with a younger brother or sister to play with and fight with.
“Bridget.” Maggie sounded concerned. “Have a care. Ye look all done in.”
“I’m fine,” she lied.
“She looks like she might keel over,” Maggie insisted. “Take her into the parlor and make her lie down.”
Bridget shook her head, nearly laughing out loud. “We came up here to make sure you were the one resting, Maggie.”
At Maggie’s narrow-eyed glare, Ryan added, “Bridget’s fine. We just had a bit of a close call down at the barn.”
Ryan’s careful evasion of the near accident and emotional turmoil didn’t surprise Bridget. She knew he didn’t want to upset his sister in her delicate condition.
She did her best to compose her features so Maggie wouldn’t guess just how upset she still was. No one had been hurt—well, except for Burnbaum, but he’d deserved it. The rush of air that had followed the beam’s decent had told her just how close she’d been to a nasty accident. But thanks to James, she and Mick had escaped unscathed. She turned to look at him, wondering for the first time if he’d been grazed by the beam.
Maggie stood staring at the two of them as if she were their mother and they had been caught filching fresh-baked berry tarts. Bridget knew they both owed it to the woman and her condition to be honest with her.
“There was a mishap at the barn,” Bridget said slowly, “but your brother handled it. No one got hurt.”
Bridget filled Maggie in on what happened, and as was her habit with her son, brushed a soothing hand across James’s back. He flinched, then stiffened.
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