Enchanted Heart (40 page)

Repeatedly, she wiped angrily at the tears that slipped down her cheeks while her body bobbed in her miserable self-pity. Finally, she gave up trying to keep up with the tears and cupped her hand beneath her cheek and sobbed silently in miserable abandon.

She heard the barn door creak open and Linda’s puppy bounded into the barn to cover her with slobber while he jumped all around her where she sat. She growled at the overexcited dog, “Go away!”

A male voice echoed across the barn as he asked, “Are you sure you want me to go?”

Thinking that she was dreaming and not altogether believing her ears, Marty sat up abruptly and tilted her head, screeching, “Caid?”

She got to her feet before he could answer her and she saw his outline in the streaming light of the open barn door. She ran to throw herself into his arms screaming, “Caid!”

“Well, that’s better,” he chuckled into her hair as he held her close.

She clung to him, mumbling into his chest, “I thought you were dead.”

“I almost was,” he said, which made her pull away from him and give him a questioning look.

Linda’s puppy still bounded between them, demanding attention from either or both of the people who stood within arms’ length of each other. Finally, Caid had enough of its intrusion and he said sternly, yet with love in his voice, “Sit!”

Miraculously, except in Caid’s mind for it was as he’d expected, the young dog sat obediently and waited patiently for the next command. And he sat there, waiting with a wagging black tail that swiped a semicircle in the straw all the way to the dirt floor, until Caid’s order to move was spoken.

“What happened to you?” Marty asked, noticing the bandage on his head.

He drew her to a bench and asked her to sit while he explained the escapade that had taken him so long to get back to her, stepping around the puppy that watched them move away from him, yet he dared not move.

For a few anxious moments, Caid gathered his thoughts before he found the words to explain the ordeal that had kept him from finding his way back to her.

“I was on my way to Fort Concho, along with the boys, when we were passing the Enchanted Rock. Well, I just couldn’t pass it by without climbing up there and telling the whole world that I love you.”

He waited to see her reaction, and grinned at her reminiscent smile before he continued, “So, I told Sunny and Hunter to go on ahead and I would catch up with them. I climbed up to the top and I was standing there, ready to shout out the words that I felt in my heart.”

This time, when he paused, he winked at her before he said, “Then I saw this little tiny rabbit perched on a ledge, shivering and squealing for its mama. I reached down to grab it but I lost my footing. I had the little rabbit in my hand as I slipped down the side of the rock. Somewhere on the way down, I must have hit my head. The last thing I saw was that bunny scurrying into a hole.”

“Caid, I…”

He stopped her with a wave of his hand while he continued, “The gravel that I had been standing on carried me all the way down into a crevasse where I lay until the boys finally realized that I wasn’t going to catch up. They came back and found me and they thought I was dead.”

To this, Marty drew in a breath of distress. And, instinctively, as if sensing distress in the barn, the lanky dog moved his nose toward the bench, sniffing, but still, he waited expectantly.

But, Caid resumed without hesitating, “They hauled me down to the bottom and proceeded to dig me a grave. I must have moved or moaned or something and they realized that I was alive
.
Neither of them knew how to fix the crack in my head, so they decided that the best thing to do was to take me to their village.”

“Why didn’t they bring you here?” Marty asked while she shook her head in disbelief at the hardships that he had endured in order to come home to her and she was silently thankful that he had lived through it.

“I don’t know. I guess they panicked,” he said while raising a hand toward the sky. “Besides, I think the village was closer.”

Caid touched the bandage that still covered his head and said, “Their shaman worked his magic on me and in a few weeks, I was feeling better. But he insisted that I stay there where he could keep an eye on me so I was stuck there for a few more days. But it turned out to be weeks.”

“More than weeks, you’ve been gone for more than three months,” she retorted with less resentment than sorrow in her voice.

He touched her face tenderly before he sighed a melancholy sigh and said, “I’m sorry, my love.”

Marty stared into his deep blue eyes and a tear slipped from her eye while she told him, “It was beyond your control.”

He shifted on the bench, easing his body closer toward her and enclosing her in his arm while he pressed his lips into her hair and whispered, “I hated being away from you. I hated lying there, wondering if you would think that I had abandoned you and the baby.”

Marty lowered her head in shame, moving away from him as if he would reject her for her actions when she revealed, “I lost the baby.”

He drew her into his arms and pressed his cheek against her forehead while he softly whispered, “Greta told me.”

He wrapped her in his strong and loving arms, holding her, caressing her in an effort to relieve the pain in her breaking heart. His warm body enveloped her, reassured her, healed her. He held her for long, adoring, soothing moments before he kissed her head, kissed her cheeks and then kissed her soundly on the lips. Then, he searched her eyes for a sign that she had forgiven him for leaving her, for inadvertently causing the demise of their child.

Blue Skies, Marty thought as she smiled at him and said, “We can’t change what happened. All we can do is move forward and accept it as a part of life.”

He kissed her head again, saying, “You are a remarkable woman, Marty McAllister!”

Recalling Linda’s words, she said, “I am only me.”

“Ah, but you are more than that, my love,” Caid said with pure love in his eyes. “You are more to me than you will ever know.”

She smiled and kissed him, saying, “You are my heart, Caid. You are my life, my soul, my reason for living. When I thought I’d lost you and then I lost the baby, I gave up. I simply gave up. There was no reason for me to live.”

Again, Caid whispered remorsefully, “I’m so sorry…”

“What matters is that you are back now,” she assured him while she encased his face with her hands. “You are safe. We are together. That is all that matters.”

Caid nodded, moving her hands up and down with his head as he agreed, “That’s all that matters. We are together.”

Marty dropped her hands into her lap and sighed, pulling in a breath before she asked cheerfully, “So, how did you finally escape from the shaman’s loving care?”

“Well, one night, I decided that I’d healed enough and I snuck over to the boys’ pallets and told them that I was going to Fort Concho and they could join me if they wanted to. We waited until just before sunrise to slip out of the village, but not before I whispered a thank-you into the shaman’s ear while he slept.”

He chuckled then when he recalled, “The old man never opened his eyes when he whispered back to me, ‘You are welcome, my son!’”

He took a deep breath before finishing his story, “We met Elsa and her family on the way from Ben Ficklin and I told her that I’d take Seraphina back to her mother and they could go back home, but she said that she wanted to visit her cousins anyway. So, we traveled together back to Fredericksburg. We stopped to pick up a few of your things from your wagon.”

He paused to watch her reaction, which was insignificant, before he continued, “Then, because of my head injury, I lost my balance and almost fell off my horse.”

With that, Marty drew in a breath of concern for his welfare and she immediately felt guilty for expecting him to hurry back to her while he still struggled to heal himself.

But, he waved away her comment to that fact and continued talking, “Elsa made me ride in the wagon with her children the rest of the way, but when we came through town, I got out and rode my horse because I didn’t want you to see me riding in the wagon like a woman.”

Marty scoffed at him for thinking that she would lose any respect or love for him for any reason and she said, “I would never think such a thing.”

Caid ducked his head and said, “I know you wouldn’t. I guess it was my pride that made me do it. But when we started up Main Street, my horse threw a shoe.”

He paused to let Marty ask, “Was it the same shoe that Sven fixed?”

With a chuckle, Caid answered, “Naw. It was another one. Those Texas hill country rocks are hard on the hooves. Anyway, I had to walk him the rest of the way, so I got here a little later than everyone else.”

“I was devastated when I got the telegram from Elsa saying that you never came to get Seraphina,” Marty admitted with tears welling up in her eyes. “And then when they all showed up filled with excitement and joy, I just couldn’t bear…”

She turned away from him to fight back the tears that spilled from her lashes to her blouse. Words stuck in her throat as she began to shudder and sob.

Caid touched her cheek with the back of his fingers before he said, “I’m sorry I made you worry about me. But I’m here now, safe and sound.”

Marty nodded and turned back to face him with a tearful smile muttering, “Don’t ever leave me again!”

He wrapped his arms around her trembling shoulders and promised, “Never, my love!”

Chapter Forty-One

Caid kissed her then, kissed her like he’d never felt the softness of her lips, like he’d never tasted the sweetness of her breath, like he’d never smelled the lavender wafting from her hair, like he’d never heard the eager moans rising from her impatient body. Then he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the mound of hay where she had, just moments ago, drenched it with her tears. There, he intended to reclaim the love that he had thought he’d lost while he had stood on death’s door and waited for someone to answer. There, he would relinquish all of his fears, all of his worries to passion’s promise that love endures every adversity.

Cupping her face after releasing her to the billowing straw pillow, Caid kissed her again, his persistent lips undulating against hers, pulling away and then eagerly returning with more hunger than before. Slowly, his lips moved from her face to her chin, down her neck where they lingered ever so slightly as her pulse pounded against them in hastened glory. Then, down to the collar of her gingham dress where his fingers deftly worked to unbutton the long line of exasperating buttons until her creamy skin was revealed. A trail of kisses followed as the fabric was unveiled, down her breastbone, between her breasts, over her ribcage until he realized that her skirt was an equally infuriating barrier. He growled impatiently and reached beneath Marty’s back for the button that held the matching gingham skirt in place. With her help, the skirt was removed but the blouse was tossed aside, still clinging to her shoulders. Thankfully, she had decided not to wear her cotton chemise, which would have caused undue irritation in both of them.

Caid’s lips found their way back to hers while her petticoat met the skirt in the straw beside them. His fervent hands caressed her petal-soft skin, leaving a heated path from her breasts to her thighs and back again.

“God, I missed you,” he breathed into her hair while he nibbled on her earlobe.

“Oh, Caid,” Marty began but his lips prevented any further words from escaping. But the moan that welled up from deep inside her found its way to freedom when he moved his tongue to taste the inner core of her mouth. Gently, he eased his body over hers, pausing to stare lovingly into her eyes. There, in the depths of those light blue pools of love, he saw himself, saw their past, and beheld their rapturous future.

Marty gazed back at him with half-closed lids, silently begging him to continue, to take her to paradise where, for that brief, blessed twinkling of bliss, their bodies would be entwined and their souls become one. She gingerly captured Caid’s bandaged head in her hands and presented him with the reward that he deserved and that she desired while she crushed her fervent body into his. With the thrilling tickle that traveled through her stomach to her very core, she melted into him, writhing in the flying straw while he surrounded her, enveloped her, possessed her and satisfied her.

Lying next to her in the straw, Caid kissed Marty’s forehead, tasting the salty beads of perspiration and feeling her heated breath upon his neck. He felt her lips graze his skin just below his Adam’s apple and he moaned as the aching need to repeat their lovemaking began to rise again. But he refrained, knowing that the family inside the house was probably wondering what had happened to them. He pulled her blouse together and helped her to dress again and then he tugged himself into his trousers.

And, during all of this, Linda’s anxious puppy waited until he was told to move from that spot where Caid had placed him. Laughing as he sat up and threw his shirt back on, Caid said to the young dog, “Where’s Mama?”

Excitedly, the black puppy bounded out of the barn in search of his motherly figure, the ever-loving Linda Blue Sky.

Marty laughed in spite of her obsession to have him release her again from all of the tension that had built up inside her while she had believed that Caid was dead. It was all she could do not to pull him back into the hay instead of returning to her family inside the house.

“I’m sure they think we were up to no good,” he quipped as she reached for her hand to help her to her feet.

She laughed and corrected, “We were up to plenty of good!”

Caid laughed with her and pulled her under his arm as he walked back to the house with her. While they walked, Marty knew that she should discuss their loss with her husband before they went back to the happy family inside. She looked up at him and lay her palm upon his chest as she reiterated, “I’m sorry I lost the baby.”