A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel (15 page)

“Who?” Dara Rose asked, simply to make conversation.

“Ezra Maddox,” Peg said. “He's offered me housekeeping work, Mrs. Nolan. The job doesn't pay much, but at least there'll be plenty of good farm food for these kids, and if things work out, Mr. Maddox and me will be married come the spring.” She paused. “You don't mind, do you? Now that you've married the marshal and all?”

Dara Rose smiled. “I don't mind,” she was quick to say. Then, cautiously, afraid Peg O'Reilly might have misunderstood Maddox's offer, she asked, “He didn't object to your bringing the children along?”

“He did,” Peg confided, in a whisper, “but I told him I wouldn't be parted from my little ones for anything or anybody, and he finally agreed to take them in.”

The boys were still busy with their game of marbles, and Edrina was telling Addie that there wasn't going to be a Christmas program over at the schoolhouse this year because that last snowstorm threw everything out of whack. “What about—?”

“My husband?” Peg asked. “Ezra knows about him, of course. Says we'll look into getting me a divorce if it comes to that.”

Dara Rose's heart ached for Peg O'Reilly. “This is what you want to do?” she asked, very quietly.

“It's the answer to a prayer,” Peg replied, looking a little surprised by Dara Rose's question.

Ezra Maddox, the answer to a prayer?

It just went to show, Dara Rose thought, that one woman's idea of hell was
another
woman's idea of heaven.

F
ull of consternation, Dara Rose studied the Closed sign on the door at the mercantile, the handle of the egg basket looped over one wrist, and wondered what on earth could have prompted Mr. Bickham to close his establishment at midmorning. Edrina and Harriet, meanwhile, climbed onto the bench in front of the store and peered in through the display window.

“Mama!” Harriet suddenly cried, so startling Dara Rose that she almost dropped the egg basket. “She's gone!
Florence is gone!
”

Dara Rose caught her breath, the fingers of her free hand splayed across her breastbone to keep her heart from jumping right out of her chest.

Florence?

Harriet let out a despairing wail.

“Hush!” Edrina told her sister, speaking sternly but
slipping an arm around the child's shoulders just the same. The two of them looked so small, standing there on the seat of that bench, like a pair of beautiful urchins.

The doll, Dara Rose realized belatedly.

Of course. Florence was the doll Harriet had been admiring—yearning after—ever since it first appeared in the mercantile window, the day after Thanksgiving. And now the doll was gone.

It would be set out for some other child to find on Christmas morning.

Although Dara Rose had never for one moment believed she could buy that doll for her little girl, Harriet's disappointment grieved her sorely. Like any mother, she longed to give her children nice things, but that was a pleasure she couldn't afford; they needed practical things, and some small measure of security, be it the egg money she squirreled away a penny at a time, or the ten dollars resting between the pages of her Bible.

Hurting as much as her child was—maybe more—and doing her best to hide it, Dara Rose set the egg basket down carefully and gathered Harriet into her arms, lifting her off the bench and holding her tightly. “There, now,” she whispered, her throat so thick she could barely speak. Not that there was a great deal to say at a moment like that, anyway. “There, now.”

“I should have sold my hair!” Harriet sobbed. “Then I would have had the money to buy Florence!”

Once again, Dara Rose thought of Piper's gift, safe at home, and ached.

Edrina jumped down from the bench, tomboylike, and tugged at Harriet's dangling foot. “Stop carrying on, goose,” she commanded, but there was a slight quaver in her voice. “You'll have the whole town staring at us.”

Harriet shuddered and buried her wet face in Dara Rose's neck. “I—really—thought—I—could—have— Florence—for—my—very—own,” she said, punctuating her words with small but violent hiccups.

“Shh,” Dara Rose said gently, still holding the child. “Everything will be all right, sweetheart. We'll go home now. Edrina, bring the egg basket.”

By the time the three of them reached the end of Main Street and turned toward the house, Harriet had settled down to the occasional quivering sniffle.

A buckboard stood near Dara Rose's front gate, with two mules hitched to it.

Philo Bickham sat in the wagon box, reins in hand, beaming at Dara Rose as she approached with the children.

“I was just about to unload all this merchandise and leave it on the porch,” he said. “The marshal said he'd
be here to accept delivery, but there's been no sign of him so far.”

Dara Rose frowned, at once wary and intrigued.

Edrina bolted forward and scrambled right up the side of that buckboard, skillful as a monkey, using the wheel spokes as footholds. “Thunderation!” she whooped.

Mr. Bickham jumped to the ground, nimble for a man of his age and bulk. He strode around to the back of the wagon and lowered the tailgate. “He darned near bought the place out, your new husband,” the store keeper crowed, no doubt pleased to make such a sale. Blue River was not a wealthy community, which meant the owner of the mercantile scraped by like most every one else.

“Mama,” Edrina spouted, “there's a tin of tea…and a big ham…and
peaches
…and all sorts of things wrapped in brown paper—”

“Edrina Nolan,” Dara Rose said, setting Harriet on her feet, “get down from there this instant.”

“Don't go poking around in those packages,” Mr. Bickham said good-naturedly, shaking a finger at Edrina and then Harriet. “The marshal made himself mighty clear on that score. After all, it's almost Christmas, and there's a secret or two afoot.”

Dara Rose was still trying to think what to say when
Clay rode around the corner on Outlaw, Chester trot ting in their wake.

Mr. Bickham hailed him, and Dara Rose sent the girls inside, over their protests.

“Sorry if I held you up any, Philo,” Clay told Mr. Bickham, barely glancing at Dara Rose as he swung down from the saddle. “A telegram came in from Sears, Roebuck and Company. They've shipped the makings of my house out by rail, and the whole works will be arriving here in about ten days.”

“You'd better get that foundation dug and that well put in, then,” Mr. Bickham said, giving Clay a congratulatory slap on one shoulder. “Reckon you can round up some hired help down at the Bitter Gulch, and if this weather holds, since you've got a put-together house coming, you'll be out there on your own place in no time.”

Clay nodded and, once again, his gaze touched on Dara Rose's face.

“What is all this?” she asked evenly, as soon as Mr. Bickham had hoisted the first box from the back of the wagon and started toward the house with it.

Clay gave her a wry look and lifted out a second box. “Chester and I,” he said, with a twinkle, “don't believe in freeloading. We always pay our own way.”

Dara Rose opened her mouth, closed it again. “But all those packages, and the tea, and that enormous ham—”

“You like tea, don't you?” Clay teased, starting toward the house.

Dara Rose scurried to keep up with his long strides.

“Of course I like tea,” she said, flustered, “but it's a luxury, and we don't need it—”

“Sure you do,” Clay replied, climbing the porch steps now. “What do you plan on serving all the ladies of Blue River when they start dropping by to see for themselves just what kind of mischief we're up to over here?”

Harriet and Edrina, huddled in the doorway, scattered to let them through.

Mr. Bickham was coming from the other direction, and Clay sidestepped him.

“Mr. McKettrick,” Dara Rose persisted, when the two of them were alone in the kitchen, “I do have my pride.”

“Yes, Mrs. McKettrick,” Clay agreed. “I have taken note of that fact.” He took a large tin from the box he'd carried in. “Would you mind putting some coffee on to brew while Bickham and I finish unloading that wagon? I've got a hankering for the stuff, and I like it strong and black.”

Dara Rose couldn't seem to untangle her tongue.

“You do own a coffeepot, don't you?” Clay asked offhandedly.

“Yes,” she managed, blushing. “Parnell drank coffee every morning.”

Clay merely nodded, as though she'd confirmed something he already knew, and went out again.

Dara Rose got out Parnell's coffeepot, rinsed it at the sink and pumped fresh water into it. Then she had to ferret out the grinder, with its black wrought-iron handle.

She was wiping the dust out of the contraption with one corner of a flour-sack dish towel when Clay and Mr. Bickham came in again, both of them carrying boxes.

Edrina and Harriet were, of course, consumed with curiosity.

Harriet, though puffy-eyed, had long since stopped crying.

“Sugar,” Edrina cataloged, joyfully examining each item. “And flour. And lard. And
raisins.
Mama, you could bake a pie.”

“Perhaps,” Dara Rose agreed, afraid to say too much because she wasn't sure she could control all the contradictory emotions welling up inside her. Her pride stung like a snakebite, but in some ways, she was as jubilant as the children.

Tea. Sugar. Flour.

A whole ham, big enough to feed half the town of Blue River.

They'd been doing without such things for so long that it was impossible not to rejoice, at least inwardly.

Firmly, Dara Rose brought herself up short. She squared her shoulders and poured coffee beans into the grinder and began turning the handle, enjoying the rich aroma. “Mr. McKettrick has been very generous,” she said, not looking at Edrina and Harriet. “But we mustn't come to expect such things—”

“Why not?” The voice was Clay's.

Dara Rose kept her back to him, spooning freshly ground coffee beans into the well of her dented pot, setting it on to boil. “Because we mustn't, that's all,” she said. She bent and opened the stove door and pitched in more wood. Jabbed at the embers with the poker.

“There's some stuff for the Christmas tree in the box I left on the settee,” Clay said quietly, sending the girls scampering with chimelike hurrahs into the front room.

Dara Rose, thinking Mr. Bickham must be within earshot, taking it all in, turned to look for him. He was as big a gossip as Heliotrope Ponder and, running the only general store in town, he got plenty of chances to tell everything he knew and then some.

But there was only Clay, filling the doorway, watching her. Philo Bickham must have been outside, fetching another box from the buckboard.

“It's almost Christmas,” Clay said gruffly. “Just this once, Dara Rose, let yourself be happy. Let your
daughters
be happy.”

Her face burned, and she couldn't help remembering all the times Parnell had splurged on some little treat for the girls, running up an account at the mercantile that had taken her months to pay off.

“Did you go into debt for all this?” she asked, keeping her voice down so the girls and Mr. Bickham wouldn't hear. Nobody knew better than she did how little the marshal of Blue River actually earned.

Clay smiled, though his eyes remained solemn, and then he shook his head, not in reply, but in disbelief. “I paid cash money,” he said, turning to walk away.

By the time the coffee was ready, the kitchen and part of the front room were jammed with boxes and crates and brown parcels, tied shut with twine.

“Where's Mr. Bickham?” Dara Rose asked, when Clay returned to the kitchen, squeezed past her to wash his hands at the sink pump. “I thought he'd stay for coffee.”

“He has a store to run,” Clay said quietly.

In the next room, the girls giggled and Chester barked and the noise was pleasant to hear, even though Dara Rose was uncommon jittery.

She put away the cup she'd set out for Mr. Bickham
and filled the remaining one, returned the pot to the stove.

“Mr. McKettrick?”

“What, Mrs. McKettrick?” Clay countered wearily, as he drew back a chair, sat down and reached for the steaming cup of coffee.

Dara Rose brought out the sugar bowl, long unused, filled it from the newly purchased bag and set it on the table, along with a teaspoon.

“Thank you,” she said meekly, not looking at him. “For all these groceries, I mean—”

That was when he pulled her onto his lap. His thighs felt hard as a wagon seat under her backside, and
that
realization started all sorts of untoward things rioting inside her.

“You're welcome,” he said, in a throaty drawl.

Dara Rose's heart pounded, and she felt dizzy. “Clay—the
children—
”

He sighed. “They're busy squeezing parcels,” he said.

Dara Rose sat very still, afraid to move.

Clay watched her mouth for a few moments, and managed to leave Dara Rose as breathless as if he'd actually kissed her, and soundly. Then he said, very quietly, “Just so we understand each other, Mrs. McKettrick, I do mean to bed you, right and proper, one day soon.”

Dara Rose gulped, knowing she ought to pull free
and get back on her own two feet but strangely unable to do so. “But you said—”

He rested an index finger on her mouth, and a hot shiver went through her. “I know what I said, Dara Rose, and I'll keep my word. But it's only fair to tell you that I'm fixing to do everything I can to bring you around to my way of thinking.”

Dara Rose absolutely could not speak. She was full of indignation and longing and searing heat.

That was when he kissed her—softly at first, and then in a deep way that made everything inside her melt, including her very bones.

When their mouths finally parted, it was Clay's doing, not Dara Rose's.

She'd have been content to let that kiss go on forever, it felt so good.

“I believe I'm making progress,” he said, with a certain satisfaction.

He was indeed, Dara Rose thought. If Edrina and Harriet hadn't been in the house, never mind the very next room, she might have taken Marshal Clay McKettrick by the hand and led him straight to her bed. She sighed wistfully.

It had been so long since she'd been held in a strong man's arms, reveled in the sweet responses lovemaking roused in her.

She glanced at the doorway, but her children were still in the front room, playing some game with the dog, filling that little house with barks and giggles. “Parnell and I—we weren't…we didn't…”

Clay simply listened, looking thoughtful.

“What I mean is, we were never…
intimate,
” Dara Rose confessed. Even saying that much—telling such a small part of her story—was a tremendous relief. “He married me to give my children a name.”

“Go on,” Clay said.

Dara Rose checked the doorway again. “I was married—or I
thought
I was married—to Parnell's younger brother, Luke.” She swallowed hard. “Edrina was born, and then Harriet, and then—”

Clay didn't prompt her. He was a patient man.

“And then Luke was thrown from a horse and killed, and I learned—I learned that he'd had another wife all along. A
real
wife, and several children. I'd been a—a kept woman from the first, without even knowing it, and our—
my
—children had been born out of wedlock.”