Eddie’s Prize (22 page)

“I don’t want him around my wife!”

Lisa wiped her hands on the kitchen towel with sharp jerks, ready to say something cutting, but Cory spoke first.

“Eddie, your wife tried to keep away from Dane, but he wouldn’t let her. So lay off. Now that I know how things are, I won’t let him walk with us again. I’ll pass the word to the other guys who usually walk Mrs. Madison around too.”

“Fine. You do that.” Eddie waved in the direction of the door. “You can see yourself out.”

Cory nodded, gave her a quick, sympathetic look, and left.

She opened the oven door and put the meatloaf in with a clang of metal on metal. She set the hot pad aside and stood facing her husband. “Eddie, I didn’t flirt with Dane. I didn’t do anything to encourage him.” A bitter note flattened her voice. “If you won’t believe me, believe your friend, Cory.”

Eddie took a step forward and put his arms around her. Into the hair over her ear, he whispered, “I believe you. Lisa, you’ve never yelled at me before.”

“If I’d have known all it would take to get you to believe me is yelling—”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” Eddie’s arms gave her a little squeeze. “You’ve always been so quiet. My beast … I like it. It shows us that you’re not too afraid of me to stand up for yourself.” He brushed a kiss over her hair. “I wasn’t in control for a bit, but I’m back now.”

Lisa bent her head to rest her forehead on his shoulder. Her arms went around his waist. “Eddie, your temper scares me sometimes. It’s like there’s two of you, one so jealous he’s crazy, and one who’s tender.”

Tension stiffened the back under her palms. “There is,” he groaned.

She lifted her head to stare into his eyes, but he looked away. “Eddie? What do you mean?”

His eyes met hers for a split second of hesitation before sliding away. He pushed back from her. “I have to go.”

“Eddie,” she began, but he was already at the door. “Supper will be ready in an hour.”

“I might be late. Don’t wait for me.” The door was almost closed when he poked his head back in. “I love you.”

As arguments went, that one wasn’t bad. At least it ended with an I-love-you. Eddie didn’t make it back for supper, so Lisa ate hers and carefully put the leftovers away in the cold box. Eddie came in after midnight, cold and tired, but not too tired to make love to her. Lisa enjoyed his lovemaking thoroughly. When they were both sated, she asked what had been bothering her all evening.

“Eddie, before you left, you sounded like…” She hesitated. Spoken out loud it sounded ludicrous, but she pressed on. “You sounded like there was more than one of you. Like… You know, Multiple Personality Disorder or something.”

Her husband’s arm, draped warmly over her waist, jerked slightly. “I don’t even know what that is.”

She squirmed under his arm so she could face him. It was dark, so she couldn’t see his face, but she lifted one hand to trace the edge of his jaw. “You know, when a person develops more than one personality. Like Sybil.”

It was dark, but with her hand against his face she could feel him shake his head.

“Never mind,” she said. “I don’t think that’s the problem, really.”

“No,” he agreed in a whisper. “That’s not the problem.”

“Then what is the problem?”

He took her hand from his cheek to press a kiss to the palm. “I can’t talk about it. No,” he insisted when she made protesting noises. “It’s not something I can explain to anyone, even you.”

“I’m your wife.”

“I know. I love you. Go to sleep, love.”

Disturbed and unhappy, Lisa obeyed, but inwardly she wanted to blacken his other eye. She had to remind herself that they’d been married less than a month. It would take time for them to know each other completely. But she silently vowed someday she would know everything about him. Wouldn’t she?

* * * *

Thanksgiving came and went, and the weather got colder. On washdays the wet clothes hung in crazy lines through the kitchen, and Lisa began learning to bake fancy holiday treats using expensive spices. Things like nutmeg, vanilla, and cinnamon, which she’d always taken for granted, were precious here. They had to travel over half the world by boat and wagon to get to Kearney, and when they did, few people could afford to buy much. The Madison household bought large quantities, Lisa learned, but mostly so they could be generous. It was a Kearney tradition of nearly three decades’ standing that the mayor’s family baked dozens of dozens of cookies to hand out at Christmas. Baking started the day after Thanksgiving. It was a convenient time because, with the leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner, little other cooking was needed.

“You know,” Lisa mentioned while she carefully measured sugar for the sugar cookie dough, “back home, today was called Black Friday.”

“Black Friday?” Bree paused in whirling the hand crank on the beaters to laugh. “Why on earth for?”

Lisa tried to think of the reason. “I don’t know why, but it was the biggest shopping day of the year.”

Darlene’s pregnancy was beginning to show, and she tired easily, but it didn’t stop her from working as hard, if not harder, than the two younger women. “Shopping? For what?”

“Christmas presents,” Lisa answered. “Lots and lots of Christmas presents.”

Bree’s blue eyes rounded. “People
bought
Christmas presents?”

Lisa blinked at her. Uh-oh. “Yes. Don’t you?”

Bree exchanged a look with her mother. “Not very many. What are you going to make for Eddie?”

Oh, dear. Lisa hadn’t even thought of Christmas. It was only a month away. Careful questioning told her she wouldn’t be expected to give gifts to anyone except Ray, Darlene, Bree, and Eddie. Thank goodness. But what could she make them? She wasn’t crafty. Carla could knit and had offered to teach Lisa, but a month wasn’t enough time to learn to knit and make something for four people.

It was Hannah Martin who helped her decide what to do for Christmas. “Lisa, why don’t you design dresses for Bree and Mrs. Madison? And shirts for the men? I’ll help you sew them.”

Lisa spent every minute she could spare from housework and cooking in Hannah Martin’s house, learning to use a sewing machine operated by a rocker she treadled with her foot. Her fabric choices were limited. She was determined to use the money she’d earned from her partnership with Hannah instead of begging money from Eddie. That gave Lisa enough money to buy fabric since Hannah generously sold it to her at cost.

For the men Lisa chose thick, soft cotton flannel. For her sister-and mother-in-law she picked out lightweight brushed wool as soft as the flannel. Strangely, the cotton cost more than the wool because the wool was produced and woven right in the area, but the cotton had to come from a thousand miles away.

The men’s shirts were plain, button up styles, and Lisa wasn’t sure she’d ever done anything as hard as cut out the fabric and sew the pieces together. Except the buttonholes, which had been a nightmare to sew and cut by hand. When the shirts were done, Lisa cringed at all the mistakes, but Hannah assured her they were fine. Ray’s shirt was chocolate brown cotton with a cowboy-style yoke in darker brown corduroy, and Eddie’s was blue with a cream-colored yoke. Lisa wished she could have found fabric in turquoise to match his eyes, but the fabric was thick and soft.

The dresses followed the button-up cowboy shirt design, but the skirt of Bree’s dark green dress was gathered at the waist and flared out into a bell at the mid-calf hem. Darlene’s dress was straw-gold with tucks over the bust that widened into broad panels. Lisa thought it would work during the pregnancy, and afterward a belt could cinch in the waist.

“They are all beautiful,” Hannah declared as she folded them carefully into boxes.

“I hope they fit okay.” Lisa hadn’t gotten exact measurements, but Hannah had them on file since she’d made clothes for the Madisons in the past.

“They’ll fit just fine,” Hannah said. “They turned out very well. Do you want to wrap them here?”

The gift wrap the Martins sold was nothing like the shiny paper Lisa was used to. The wrap was thin, brown paper stamped with white snowflakes or green wreaths or red gingerbread men. Lisa chose some paper and ribbon, but there was no tape, so Hannah had to show her how to fold the paper so the ends could be tucked inside and the ribbon tied in such a way the wrapping wouldn’t come loose.

Lisa said, “Hannah, I can’t thank you enough for all your help. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“Oh, pshaw,” said Hannah with an exaggerated drawl. “What are friends for?”

Friends. Lisa liked that word. She’d had too few true friends in her life. She gave Hannah a hug to convey her gratitude and affection. She carried the stack of wrapped boxes all the way home, refusing Chas’ offer to carry them. At her small house, she slid them under the bed to hide until Christmas.

This Christmas was unlike any Christmas Lisa had ever experienced. The Christmases during her Minnesota childhood had been a riotous mix of sledding, skating, and watching her mom drink herself into oblivion. Christmas in Los Angeles had been a round of glittering parties held in expensively decorated houses where each party attendee had dressed to outdo the others, and gifts tended toward the elaborate and meaningless.

Eddie was playfully secretive about his activities in the days before Christmas. Lisa resolutely refused to pry, just as he had asked only the most basic questions about why she’d spent so much time with Hannah. They would spend Christmas Day with his family, but Christmas Eve was going to be their private time.

It was almost supper time when Eddie came in after making his rounds of his patients. He shook the snow off his hair and coat in the mud room and joined Lisa in the kitchen. She shuddered at the cold touch of his lips against her temple.

“Brr, Eddie! It must be cold out there.”

“It’s getting cold,” he agreed, leaning over to sniff the pot of chili she stirred. “You’re using some of the dried chilies we traded for last summer?”

“Yes. The cornbread is almost done. Go wash up.”

They ate in companionable silence. As always, Eddie concentrated on his food. She wondered if there had ever been such a poor harvest he’d had to go hungry. That would explain his devotion to eating. The Madisons were well off, but if the rest of the town was hungry, Ray would probably share everything he had, even if his own son went to bed without supper. Ray wasn’t as much of a greedy brute as she’d thought when she’d first met him.

Eddie washed dishes as she tidied up the kitchen. Through the kitchen window Lisa could see snow falling through the dark night. It was a scene out of an old-fashioned Christmas card.

“It’s pretty,” she said. At Eddie’s raised brow, she elaborated. “The snow. We didn’t get snow in California. It makes it seem a little more like Christmas.”

He hung up the dish towel to dry. “It’s Christmas Eve. Our first Christmas together.” His kiss was gentle. “I know you were a little disappointed to not be able to go see your friend, but I wanted you to myself this time.”

Lisa’s hands framed his face. “Carla is a good friend, but Christmas is for families. You’re my family.”

“Come to bed,” he breathed.

She giggled when he swept her up and carried her to their bed. “I should brush my teeth before bed,” she mock protested.

“Tomorrow.” He peeled her clothes off her with careful haste.

She kicked her feet to rid her legs of the jeans still clinging. “I should wash my face,” she teased.

He made short work of his own clothing. “Tomorrow,” he repeated.

They’d been together not quite two months, but Eddie knew how to arouse her. The distant light from the kitchen lamp sputtered and died. The dark made his erotic touches all the more exciting. His hands parting her legs for his slow, sweet glide into her made her breath catch in surrender.

“Eddie,” she moaned as he filled her. “I love what you do to me.”

He seated himself fully inside her. “I love you.” Even in the dark, his hands found her face to hold her still for his kiss. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s dark, silly.”

“In the light or in the dark, I see you, Lisa-love. Always.”

All other words fled from Lisa’s mind, swept away by the simple force of his voice. Her fingers trembled when she raised a hand to brush over his arm, following the bulge of his biceps to his shoulder, his throat, his lips. In the past she’d imagined herself in love. All her life she had fallen in and out of love too easily. She had wondered for two months whether she loved Eddie or just cared for him. Now she knew. Even with his stupid jealousy, her feelings were deeper than anything she’d felt for any other man.

“I love you, Eddie.”

He stilled in mid-thrust. “You love me? You love me! I’ve waited for those words, Lisa.”

“I didn’t want to say them until I knew they were true.”

“I love you.” He kissed her. His thrusts picked up, even stronger than before, as if he were expressing joy through his body. Lisa lost herself in the physical act of love, still a little surprised she had actually said the words. But they were true. If Eddie would lose his jealousy altogether, their marriage would be perfect.

* * * *

Christmas morning, she and Eddie slept late before gathering their gifts and carrying them across the snowy yard to the big house. Bree and Darlene had a large brunch spread out buffet style. Lisa and Eddie added their gifts to the rustically decorated Christmas tree in the living room. Lisa stood back for a minute to admire the picture the pine tree made, decorated with strings of popcorn, small glass balls, woven wheat stars, and painted wooden ornaments. In past years she had attended holiday parties whose decorations had tried to achieve this primitive look, but none of them had gotten it quite right.

After brunch, the entire Madison family walked together to the homes of each of Ray’s employees who lived inside the mayor’s compound to hand out plates of the cookies Darlene, Bree, and Lisa had baked. Eddie pulled a little sled with the cookies stacked on it with one hand and held Lisa’s hand with the other. It was a bright day, with the sky brightly blue above and the snow packing the ground glittery white below. Her boots crunched through the snow as she walked beside Eddie behind the other three.