Alma's Mail Order Husband (Texas Brides Book 1) (8 page)

Alma patted her bed until she found the upper
lip of her quilt. She pulled it down and tucked her legs
underneath. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s get in bed.”

“Are you sure there’s enough room in there
for both of us?” he asked.

“We’ll just have to lie very close together,”
Alma remarked.

“Very close together doesn’t even begin to
describe it,” Jude muttered. “We’ll be on top of each other.”

Alma didn’t answer. Jude groped around until
he felt her leg. His hand squeezed something soft, and then he
realized he was massaging her thigh. He yanked his hand back, but
he had to feel around until he found it again so he could orient
himself to the top of the bed.

In the end, the only way he could find his
way under the blankets was to feel and pat and follow the contours
of her body up, past her hips and shoulders and arms to the head
sticking out of the top.

Alma giggled.

“What’s so funny?” Jude whispered.

“You’re tickling me,” Alma twittered.

“It isn’t funny,” Jude hissed, but he
chuckled under his breath anyway.

“Yes, it is,” she replied. “It’s
hilarious.”

Jude settled down next to her. He had to
press his body tight up against hers to avoid falling off the side
of the bed onto the floor. She pressed herself back against him.
The comic necessity of the situation prevented either of them from
realizing how close they really were.

“Don’t you want to take some of your clothes
off?” Alma asked. “You’re not going to sleep in those hard pants,
are you?”

“I don’t have anything else to sleep in,”
Jude told her. “I don’t have any pyjamas, if that’s what you
mean.”

“Maybe I can find or make some for you?” Alma
replied. “We have some linen trousers from Turkey in that trunk
over by Allegra’s bed. I have to get into the trunk tomorrow to put
the wedding dress away. I might find something that would work as
bedclothes for you.”

“Don’t bust yourself on my behalf,” Jude told
her. “I can sleep in these. I’ve done it many times before.”

“You aren’t on the cattle drive now, you
know,” Alma pointed out. “This is your wedding night. You shouldn’t
be wearing the same clothes to sleep with your wife that you wear
around the campfire. We’ll find something more suitable for you to
wear.”

“Thanks,” Jude snapped.

All of a sudden, Alma felt a burning streak
of fire shoot through her. It made her want to jump out of her own
bed and run for the hills, but instead she shuddered against Jude’s
wiry body. It made her jump closer toward him and cling to him for
all she was worth

Her reaction startled him, too, so he jumped
first away from her and then straight back to get away from the
edge of the bed. He held her more tightly than ever to avoid
falling backward, and the tighter he held her, the more their two
bodies shuddered and shivered. They cleaved to each other for
shelter against the very shock of being together.

The convulsions rocked them both without
diminishing, until Alma thought she’d go mad. She couldn’t pull
back and she couldn’t come any closer to him than she already was.
Jude wrapped his arms around her and she nestled her face under the
blankets against his cotton shirt.

Her breath warmed both his chest and her
face. She rested her cheek against his heartbeat, and he crushed
her head against his ribs. One of his hands cupped the back of her
neck and the other rubbed down her back. With each stroke, icy
sparks cascaded down her sides and along the backs of her arms,
sending fresh spasms of shock and awe through her body.

Could her sisters hear the thundering of her
heart or the panting of her breath under the quilt? Would she ever
be able to sleep again with this lightning bolt in her bed? Their
clothes, which seemed so thin a minute ago, now felt many miles too
thick, keeping them apart against overwhelming gravitational
forces. Nothing could stop them from coming together in the
end.

Jude sensed the same thing at the same
moment, and they both relaxed into one another. Their breathing
lengthened and synchronized. Jude rested his cheek against the top
of Alma’s head and took a long inhalation of her earthy scent.
Through his shirt, she smelled the salty spice of his sweat as well
as something much more primal. It reminded her of the black soil
under the trees down by the river, moist and fecund and
mysterious.

She didn’t recognize that smell. It must be
something uniquely male. The only man she ever really knew was her
father, and she never got this close to him. He never embraced her.
The most affection he ever showed her was to tussle her hair every
now and then.

Her heart cried out in her chest for the
things she and her sisters missed from living so far away from
other people. They missed the society of other children to grow up
with, and now that they were adults, they missed the most basic
companionship of their peers, even of other women. Alma couldn’t
remember the sound of her own mother’s voice, much less her unique
smell.

And the most amazing part was that none of
them even knew what they were missing. If Amelia and Allegra
remained unmarried, they would never smell this male scent or feel
the heat of lying next to him. How poor their lives would be for
the loss, but they wouldn’t know they were poor. They would think
they’d gotten everything they needed from their sisters.

Could a woman starve to death from the
absence of a man in her life? Could she shrivel and blow away in
the wind, without the essence of a man to breathe life into the
tissues of her body? Alma didn’t intend to find out. She clutched
Jude tighter than ever, drinking him into herself.

The elixir of his essence would drive the
cattle puncher out of her. He would wash away the stiffened leather
from her arms and legs and the gunpowder from her fingers. His very
presence would strip the range away and leave the woman in its
place.

“I’m tired,” he whispered into her ear.

“Don’t go to sleep now,” Alma told him. “It
will be time to get up soon.”

He pulled back, but they still couldn’t see
each other in the darkness. “What time do you think it is?”

“Look over there,” she replied. “You can see
light coming through the crack under the door.”

“Don’t tell me we’ve been lying here awake
all night,” he growled.

“What do you think we’ve been doing all this
time?” she asked.

“Do you think anyone heard us?” Jude
whispered.

“No,” she answered. “We didn’t make nearly as
much noise as Papa snoring. You heard him in his chair, and then we
heard him come over to bed and he started up again. It’s the same
every night. Amelia and Allegra usually sleep right through it. If
they didn’t, he surely drowned out any noise we made. But we didn’t
make any.”

“I hope not,” Jude returned. “I wouldn’t be
able to look them in the eye, if they had heard us.”

“Why not?” she asked. “We’re married. What do
they think we’re doing in bed together? Telling stories?”

“You know what I mean,” he shot back. “It
would be better if we had our own house.”

“And where are you going to build this
house?” she asked. “And who are you going to get to help you build
it? And where are you going to get the money to pay them? This is
the way people live around here. Every family I know for a hundred
miles in every direction has four or five generations living in one
room under one roof.”

“I know,” Jude replied. “It’s just so…..”

“Poor?” she offered.

“I was going to say rustic,” he returned.

“What alternative do you suggest?” Alma
asked.

“I guess I can’t suggest one,” he replied.
“Because I don’t have one to suggest.  I have a couple dollars
in my wallet and the clothes on my back. I guess we’re stuck
here.”

“Is it really so bad?” Alma asked.

Jude sighed “I guess I’ll become used to it
in time. I guess I won’t be staying up all night with you forever.
After today, I’ll be too tired. I’ll be used to sleeping with you
in this tiny bed, and I’ll be more interested in rolling over and
going to sleep than anything else. We’ll just have to figure out a
way of sleeping here together without kicking each other out of
bed.”

Alma giggled under the blanket. “I have to
get up now. It wouldn’t do for the others to wake up first and find
us still in bed together. I’ll get dressed and get the fire going
and get breakfast made. Do you want to relax here for a while?”

“I’ll get up with you,” Jude told her.
“There’s no sense layin’ around, wasting good daylight.”

Alma brought her face up out of the blankets.
Jude stroked the hair away from her face, and they kissed long and
leisurely. Alma drank the dew from his lips, the heady liquor of a
man.

Some little noise outside the house put an
end to it. Maybe it was a drop of moisture falling from the roof.
Alma jumped a little when she heard it. Then she gave Jude one last
peck on the cheek and hopped out of bed.

She changed into her work clothes in the
closet. By the time she came out, Jude was standing in the middle
of the room with his boots and hat and gun belt on. He smiled when
he saw her.

“What?” she asked.

His eyes scanned her up and down. “You’re
wearing your disguise.”

Alma gave him a kiss. “Don’t forget me.”

“I won’t forget,” Jude told her.

Alma smiled. “Then I can do what I have to
do. As long as I know that you remember, I’ll be okay.”

She braided her hair and went to poke up the
fire in the fireplace. The flames leapt up around the tinder as she
mixed and patted out the dough for tortillas. Allegra woke up when
Jude opened the door to go outside, and the next moment, the whole
family burst into activity.

Allegra took a sip of water from a bucket in
the corner, ran some of the water through her hair with her
fingers, and stuck her hat on her head. She never did anything more
to prepare herself for the day’s work, and she never changed her
clothes. Alma didn’t even notice anymore. She gave up nagging her
about it a long time ago.

Amelia changed her clothes behind the curtain
and combed and braided her hair. She washed her face and rinsed out
her mouth. Then she went outside and examined the sky. She followed
the same routine every day, even in the height of summer, when the
weather didn’t change and everyone knew it would be blasting hot
and dry for months.

Their father went straight from his bed to
his chair by the fire. Alma finished making the tortillas, and by
the time she set them on the table, her sisters came back and sat
down at the table.

Alma watched Allegra take a tortilla off the
stack and stuff it into her mouth. She saw the meal unfolding as if
for the first time. “Where’s Jude?” she asked.

Allegra glanced over her shoulder toward the
door and balled her tortilla up inside her cheek. “I don’t
know.”

“He just went out to the barn,” Amelia told
her. “I just saw him go in there.”

“Someone should tell him we’re eating,” Alma
suggested.

No one moved from the table.

She stared at them a moment longer. Then she
left the house and went out to the barn. She found Jude brushing
down his horse. “Breakfast is ready.”

“I’ll be right there,” he called over his
shoulder.

“You better come now,” she told him. “There
won’t be anything left in a minute or two.”

He turned around and stared at her. Then he
dropped his brush and accompanied her back to the house.

When they got inside, Alma sat down at the
table with her family and started eating the warm tortillas. Jude
stopped halfway between the door and the table and observed them
eating. He glanced at the stack of tortillas on the plate, then at
his new in-laws eating them one after the other.

He looked at Alma sitting with them. Then he
turned on his heel and strode out of the house.

They found him about halfway between the barn
and the river.

“Where have you been?” Alma asked.

“Just riding around,” he told them. “I was
having a look around.”

“We were waiting for you up by the barn,” she
told him. “We didn’t know where you were, and we were waiting for
you before we went out to the herd.”

“Didn’t you notice my horse was gone?” he
asked. “You should have realized I was already gone.”

“We saw your horse gone,” she replied. “But
we didn’t know if you were planning on coming back and meeting up
with us or if you’d gone off on your own.”

“What difference does it make?” Jude
grumbled.

“Just that we’ve been standing around waiting
for you when we could have been out to work already,” Alma told
him. “You should let me know if you’re going off by yourself so I
don’t wonder where you’re going and what your plans are.”

“I’m not going to check with you before I go
somewhere,” he shot back. “I won’t be tied to your apron strings
all the time. I’m used to coming and going as I please, and I won’t
change now, just because I’m married.”

Alma bristled. “I didn’t say I wanted you
tied to my apron strings. As you can see, I don’t even have any
apron strings. You can come and go as you please and I don’t give a
rip. I just said you should tell us what your plans are so we
aren’t standing there waiting for you when we have work of our own
to do. If you want to ride from here all the way to Mexico City,
it’s fine with me. Just tell me so I know what you’re doing.”

“No man in his right mind would stoop so low
as to inform a woman about his plans and movements,” Jude snapped.
“If you’re gonna be my wife, you better get this into your head
now.
You
tell
me
your plans and movements, so I know
what you’re doing, not the other way around. You’re a woman. That’s
your place.”