Early Dawn (39 page)

Eden struggled to explain. As the words came pouring out, she knew she was making a mess of it, talking in fits and starts and never really completing a thought. She finally gave up on making any sense and just plunged into it.

“It’s just this feeling I have.” She fisted her hand and pressed it over her heart. “Love is a miracle, Matthew, a precious gift from God. When we receive that gift, even if it’s for only a short time, as happened to you and Livvy, it’s no less wonderful and precious. If I encourage you to toss it away or hide it—well, if I were instrumental in causing you to do that, I’d feel as if I’d committed a terrible sin, not murder, exactly, but almost as bad. You
loved
her. With all your heart. She was carrying your child when she died, so a part of you died with her, and a part of you lies with her in that grave. I think it’s important that we
both
remember Livvy.”

“Both of us? You never met her.”

“No, but I feel a connection with her because now I love you the same way she does.”

“She’s dead. You talk about her as if she isn’t.”

“Dead, yes, but none of us ceases to exist when we die. At least, I don’t believe we do. Livvy still loves you, and now so do I. Love that ends isn’t really love. Maybe I’m all confused in my head, but it seems to me that everything we now have between us will somehow be less if I allow you to forget her. I never want you to forget me, that’s for certain. Does that make any sense?”

He took off his hat to run his fingers through his glossy dark hair. “Honey, I will
never
forget you. If you died today, and all God gave me was the little bit of time we’ve had together, I’d still never forget you. How could I ever?”

“Then don’t pretend to forget Livvy and the child you lost, Matthew. I’m uncomfortable with that.”

He rubbed a fist over his scarred cheek. “I’ve always wondered if it was a girl or a boy. We tried for so long, almost five years, and I had started to think one of us had something wrong. I wanted kids—I wanted them really bad—but if we hadn’t been able to have them, I would have loved Livvy anyway. I figured, coming from such a big family, that my brothers and sisters would eventually give us plenty of nieces and nephews to love. But she would have none of that. She wanted to give me my own child, and she was in a constant dither about it. Every time she got her curse, I’d come in from work to find her face all puffy from crying.”

Eden swallowed hard. She could sympathize with how Livvy must have felt. It was up to her to make Matthew happy now. He wasn’t a hard man to please. Livvy must have felt so miserably inadequate when she had failed, month after month for so many years, to get with child.

“I’d tell her it didn’t matter, that I didn’t want my own child that much, that we needed to focus on all our blessings, but having a baby was really important to her. That day, right before she died . . .” His voice trailed away. “Well, she was so damned happy. She kept her pregnancy a secret from me, telling only her mother, and she planned the picnic at our special place so it would be a memorable moment when she told me. I have to admit I was just as excited as she was, and we couldn’t wait to get home to tell my parents that they would soon have a grandchild.”

“And then the Sebastians came.” Eden had long been able to picture that horrible moment. “Oh, Matthew. If it had been a girl, what would you have named her?”

“Hattie, after my mother, and Marie, after hers.”

“And if it had been a boy?”

“We weren’t sure. We already had two Matthews in my family, so we were leaning toward naming him after her father.” He shrugged and released a deep breath. “On the headstone, it just says, ‘Olivia Coulter, beloved wife of Matthew Coulter Junior, and Baby Coulter.’ Our folks couldn’t think how else to mark the stone.”

Eden would never regret that Matthew had been free to love her when she met him, but there was also a place within her that would always ache with sadness when she thought of Livvy and Matthew’s child that had died.

“I’ll give you children, Matthew. I come from good breeding stock.”

He slanted her a glance. “I’ll hold you to it. But if it doesn’t happen that way, don’t be silly about it like Livvy was. Okay? If you don’t get pregnant, there are a lot of orphans who need solid, loving homes.”

Eden laughed softly. “There you go! But not all boys, Matthew. I’ll need at least one girl, and whether she’s born to me or plucked out of an orphanage, we’ll name her Olivia. We’ll call her that in memory of the first Livvy.”

They locked gazes for a time, and then Matthew nodded. “I’d like that. And if we ever visit my folks in Oregon, we’ll go to the grave together, have our time with them, and pull away all the weeds.”

“You understand how I feel?”

He nodded. “I do. Talking about it has helped me understand the business about the watch. If you’d lost your husband and still loved your memories of him, I wouldn’t get my tail tied in a knot about it. Just understand this. If I ever get wind that you love a man who’s still drawing breath, I’ll make him a memory right fast.”

Eden laughed. “I love no one but you, Matthew, alive or otherwise. You don’t need to worry.”

“It’s a good thing, because he’d be a dead man.”

Eden smiled and reined the bay in closer to Smoky. “And if you
ever
so much as look at another woman, I will commit violence.”

He grinned. “Will you now? Finally, you’re talking halfway normal. Seems to me that a woman who truly loves a man ought to feel just a little green at times.”

“Oh, not green, never that.” She pushed at a stray tangle of curls that lay over her cheek. “I’m far too hot-tempered. I’ll just see red. And it won’t be your lady fair that I’ll go after.”

“It won’t?”

“No, I’ll go after you.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “I consider myself warned.”

He took out his watch again and gave it to her. Eden accepted the thick sphere of gold with reverence. When she read the inscription on the back, her eyes stung. She knew that Livvy had once held this watch and then had slipped it into Matthew’s hand with limitless love. As she returned it to him, she smiled.

“Forever. I was right on target, Matthew. Forever is a very long time. It is only right that you always carry that watch.”

He nodded as he tucked the timepiece back into his pocket, then sighed and tossed her another grin. “Now that I’ve met you, forever doesn’t sound quite long enough.”

“Oh, forever will do us,” she assured him. “Even a month will do us, Matthew. It’s not about quantity but quality, and last night was very fine.”

He looked ahead and narrowed his gaze. “I feel pretty confident that I lost those bastards. When I find a secluded spot for lunch, would you consider dallying with me in broad daylight, Miss Paxton?”

Eden felt no sense of shyness with him. He was the other half of her heart. “Is there anyplace out here that
isn’t
secluded?”

“Does that mean yes?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

They made love along a creek bank, which was glorious, but also ended with Matthew cursing the sand because they hadn’t thought to lie on the blanket. The granules found their way into her private places and clung to his. When the abrasion interfered with their pleasure, Eden caught his face between her hands, smoothed away his fierce scowl, and said, “You’ve always said I’ve got more sand than any woman you’ve ever met. I guess I just proved it.”

He was still laughing when they waded out into the creek buck naked to wash away all of the grit. Seeing his sculpted, muscular body shimmering with droplets of water made Eden want him again, and she waded slowly toward him, her gaze never leaving his.

“What about lunch?” he asked with a knowing twinkle in his eye.

“I don’t care if I eat.”

Eden reached him, looped her arms around his strong neck, and pressed herself against him. He groaned, the sound a low rumble coming up from his broad chest. She smiled with feminine satisfaction as they lost themselves in a deep, mind-numbing kiss.

 

Late that afternoon, after watching for the tracks of other horses for several hours, Eden heaved a frustrated sigh and called to Matthew, “I know my brothers are out here, so why has it taken them so infernally long to find us?”

“We’ve been covering our tracks,” Matthew hollered back, his voice ringing with confidence. “If Ace Keegan is half the man he’s made out to be in those dime novels, he’ll find us. Just give him time.”

Eden no longer felt frantic to see her brothers, but they would still be a welcome sight. When they finally showed up, she wouldn’t pretend that nothing had happened between her and Matthew. It would be too difficult to hide, anyway. She’d thought long and hard about that all day, and it simply wasn’t her way. She’d tell them straight out that Matthew was the love of her life, and she would not be ashamed of where that had taken her.

That night, after a simple supper and a bath that ended with them making love in the stream, Matthew settled beside her at the fire, pulled out his harmonica, and began playing “Beautiful Dreamer.”

“You haven’t played that for me in
ages
,” she complained.

He drew the instrument from his mouth and gave her a smoldering look. “I couldn’t. The first time I realized I was starting to fall in love with you was when you sang that song.”

“And?”

“It scared the ever-loving hell out of me.”

Eden giggled and playfully slugged his arm. “Coward.”

He only grinned.

“What about the song made you realize your feelings?” she asked.

His larynx bobbed as he swallowed. “Because
you
are so damned beautiful. I looked across the fire at you, and I wanted you to awake unto me.”

Tears stung Eden’s eyes. “Oh, Matthew, I’ve awakened unto you now.”

“Thank God. You have no idea what it’s like for a man to lie in bed with a woman, wanting her so bad. I can’t count the times I hightailed it to the creek after you went to sleep.”

Eden frowned. “What on earth did you do at the creek?”

“I stripped off and stood in the ice-cold water. It was the only way I could keep my hands off you.”

Eden hugged his arm and rested her cheek against his shoulder as he played her favorite song. At the appropriate spot in the lyrics, she tipped her head to gaze at him and softly whispered, “Awake unto me.”

He broke off, tucked the harmonica in his pocket, and gathered her into his arms. The kiss that followed made Eden’s senses spin. The next thing she knew, Matthew was carrying her to bed. As he peeled her clothing away, he whispered huskily, “I’m thinking of a word that describes how I feel when we make love. Eight letters.”

While he nibbled his way up from her toes to the bend of her knee, driving her half-mad with longing, several words swam through her mind, but none of them had the right number of letters. She thought of
bliss
,
perfect
,
sublime
,
unforgettable
,
indescribable
, and then Matthew was inside her, and she forgot everything but him. As he hammered home and brought her close to climax, the word finally shot into her brain, making her wonder what had taken her so long to think of it.

Paradise
. That was it. If they’d been playing hangman, she would have trounced him. Only she was very glad that they weren’t. If she never played hangman with him again, it would be too soon. She preferred to show him how much she loved him, only she was too breathless to say the words out loud and too lost in passion to care about anything except bringing Matthew with her into a realm of pure ecstasy.

Over the next three days, as Eden and Matthew rode toward Denver, he kept his promise to make love to her in many different places, and he made each spot memorable. Though they spent most daylight hours in the saddle, they still stopped to rest the horses, and during those breaks he always took her into his arms, and she went willingly. One afternoon, they came upon a gorgeous waterfall, and Matthew drew her behind the foamy curtain of cascading water. The thunderous noise made it impossible to talk. Matthew compensated by mouthing the words,
I love you
, as he entered her. Another time, he spread their pallet over sun-warmed rocks and took her with craggy mountain peaks and eagles soaring above them. Not even inclement weather deterred him. On an unforgettable morning that would be forever etched in Eden’s memory, he stripped her naked as clouds gathered in the Colorado sky, and then tantalized all her senses in a warm mist of gentle rain.

The wondrous sweetness of their lovemaking filled Eden’s mind, dimming her memories of the Sebastians. She had never been so happy.

They fell into the habit of riding side by side and talking whenever they came to open areas. Matthew told her more about his parents, family, and Oregon. Eden, eager to learn everything she could, soaked up the information like moss did water.

“Will we go there someday for a visit?” she asked one morning.

He took a moment to reply. “How would you feel about living there?”

Eden’s heart caught. She sent him an incredulous look. “Are you serious? I didn’t think you wanted to.”

He smiled slightly. “My memories of home aren’t so sad anymore.”

It was a warm morning, so they’d both removed their jackets. Fearing that his watch might fall from his coat pocket, Matthew had slipped the timepiece into the left breast pocket of his shirt. Eden was pleased that he had decided to carry it.

“For a long time,” he went on, “I thought only about the attack, never about the good times in Oregon. Knowing you . . . Well, you’ve helped me to get beyond that.” He recounted a few stories about Livvy that made Eden laugh. “Anyway, I think I could go back now. The question is, would you be happy there? I know you love your mother and brothers. Crystal Falls is a long way from Colorado.”