Hidden Truths (40 page)

Finally, she paused and leaned on her pitchfork to wipe
sweat from her face. Her gaze swept over the work they had already done and
then to the shrinking pile of hay in the middle of the loft. Then she looked at
Rika, and for a few moments, she forgot the work still to be done.

Beams of sunlight trickled into the loft, bathing Rika in
gold. Her skirt and bodice, damp with sweat, clung to the gentle curves of her
body. She had removed her bonnet, and now stalks of hay dotted the mahogany
hair. A few tendrils had gotten loose from their pins and stuck to the fair
skin of her neck. Her face was flushed with the heat, and Amy watched as a drop
of sweat trailed down her neck.

"What?" Rika set down her pitchfork when she
noticed Amy's staring. Her gloved hands flew up to touch her hair.
"Something wrong with my hair?"

It's beautiful,
Amy wanted to say, but of course she
didn't. "No. It's just covered in hay dust."

"So's yours." Rika reached out but pulled back
before she touched Amy's hair.

Amy cleared her throat. "Let's get something to
drink." She walked to the edge of the hayloft, where she'd left her
canteen. Maybe cooling off with a sip of water would chase away the
inappropriate thoughts swirling through her head. She uncorked the canteen and
handed it to Rika first.

With a nod of thanks, Rika lifted the canteen to her lips
and tilted back her head. Amy couldn't help watching the graceful arch of her
neck as she swallowed.

The urge to press her lips to that fair neck raced through
her, and she fought it down. Usually, she had much better control over those
urges. She took the canteen back and took a swig. The water was warm, but it
still felt good sliding down her parched throat.

A soft hand touched her forearm. Rika had taken off her
gloves and trailed her fingers up to the bend of Amy's arm.

The gulp of water in Amy's mouth shot back out.

"Hey!" Rika jumped back when drops of water
drenched her.

Coughing and wheezing, Amy stared at her, then at her own
arm, which still tingled from Rika's touch. "W-what are you doing?"

"Your arms..."

"What about them?" Amy stared at her arms, halfway
expecting to see burn marks where Rika's touch had heated her skin. Instead,
her forearms were speckled with tiny red marks where hay stalks had pricked
her.

"You should roll down your sleeves," Rika said.
She wiped a few drops of water from her face. "And thanks for the
refreshment."

Dumbfounded, Amy stared at her for a second; then she
discovered the unexpected twinkle in the brown eyes. When Rika had first
arrived at the ranch, she had been earnest and serious all the time. Rarely had
Amy seen her laugh or smile, and the good-natured teasing in the Hamilton
family had clearly been foreign to Rika.

But now a mischievous grin parted Rika's lips, giving Amy a
glance of the charming gap between Rika's front teeth. The sight of Rika's
playfulness filled Amy with a heady feeling. Laughter bubbled up, chasing away
her awkward breathlessness around Rika. "Oh, you! Since I provided you
with a nice cooling bath, how about I help you dry off too?"

Not giving Rika time to answer or flee, she picked up a
handful of hay and threw it at Rika.

Rika sputtered and blew stalks away from her face. Then she
dived for Amy.

They tumbled into the hay, laughing and trying to stuff
handfuls of hay down each other's clothes. Light-headedness gripped Amy, and
she felt drunk on Rika's laughter.

They rolled through a pile of hay, stalks raining down on
them. A warm touch slid up Amy's belly. She froze. Then hay tickled her skin,
and she tried to squirm away. Next to the still open hay door, they rolled to a
stop with Rika coming to rest on top of her.

"Careful," Amy whispered, not just meaning the
open hatch next to them. She felt on the edge of something dangerous, something
she couldn't name. Her breath rattled through her chest, and it wasn't Rika's
weight on top of her that made her breathless.

Rika blinked down at her from mere inches away. They stared
at each other.

Then Rika's eyes widened. "Your ribs!" She
scrambled back.

When Rika's heat moved away, Amy sucked in a cooling breath
— and then almost choked on it when Rika's hands flew over her body.

"Did I hurt you?" Uncoordinated, Rika searched for
any sign of injury. "Lord, I'm so sorry. I didn't think about your
ribs."

"It's all right. It's fine." Accidentally, Rika
brushed the outer edge of her breast, and Amy gasped. Panic warred with the
heat in her belly and finally won. She crawled backward, trying to escape
Rika's touch.

"Amy!" Rika lunged forward and threw her arms
around Amy. The tight embrace prevented her from tumbling through the hay door.
"Amy, Amy, what are you doing? You almost fell!"

The heated whisper brushed Amy's ear. Her heart thumped so
loudly that she was sure Rika could hear it.
What am I doing? What am I
doing?

She had no answer.

"Are you all right?" Rika touched her cheek.

Amy nodded shakily even though she felt anything but all
right. "You?"

"I'm fine," Rika said. Her face was flushed from
their roughhousing and from uncontrolled laughter. Dark eyes probed Amy's.

Amy slipped out of Rika's arms, careful not to come too
close to the hay door again. "We should finish stowing away the hay before
Hank returns with the next load."

A shower of hay rained down from Rika when she got to her
feet and shook herself. She looked around at the scattered piles of hay. Her
full lips crooked into a half smile. "Oh, we really made a mess of
things."

Yeah.
That was exactly how Amy's formerly
well-ordered life felt.
A complete and utter mess.
Sighing, she shook
bits of hay from her shirt and picked up her pitchfork.

"
B
OY,
I'VE NEVER been so damn glad to see a town in my life," Charlie said as
they followed the last bend in the river and the houses of The Dalles appeared
before them.

Luke halted Dancer next to Charlie's gelding and gave the
young man a pat on the shoulder. The last two weeks had been hard on him. His
boot and the stirrup leather rubbed against his injured leg with every step his
horse took. Every morning, Luke wrapped a new bandage and thick padding around
his calf, but the wound still hadn't closed. It would heal once Charlie stayed
out of the saddle for a while, and as soon as they got home, Luke would make
sure he did.

"We'll stay overnight," Luke said. It would give
Charlie a chance to rest his leg and her an opportunity for a bath. While
taking care of Charlie and making sure Phin was all right, she hadn't been able
to slip away for a quick dip in the creek. "Phin, take one of the double
eagles. Go to the bank and get silver dollars for it. Board your horses, then
buy yourself and Charlie a juicy steak and a drink. Book rooms in the hotel for
tonight."

The prospect of a good meal and a soft bed put a smile on
Phin's face for the first time in days. By the time they dismounted on The
Dalles's main street with its false fronts, he was joking around with Charlie.

Exhaustion overcame Luke when she led Dancer and Bill
Walters's two geldings to the livery stable. Even the trail dust on her clothes
seemed to weigh her down.
You're not a young man anymore,
she told
herself with a wry grin, then chuckled when she noticed she had used
"man," not "woman." After living in close quarters with two
of her ranch hands for every minute of the last six weeks, the differences
between who she was and who she pretended to be began to blur.

She longed to go home and rediscover the closely guarded
parts of herself in Nora's gentle embrace.

Soon.
Two more weeks and she would be home. If they
hurried, they might make it in ten or eleven days. On the lonely mountain
roads, Luke knew she would count the hours.

She put Dancer up in a stall at the livery stable and took
her time brushing his coat until it gleamed. For a few cents extra, the stable
owner would do it for her, but Luke preferred to do it herself. It gave her
time to bond with Dancer, and she could check him over for little injuries that
might have happened on the trail.

When she left the livery stable, two men walked around in
the corral, looking at a horse.

"Twenty dollars?" One of the men laughed. "I
won't pay you a dime for that misbehaving devil! Show me another horse."

The harsh words caught Luke's attention. After living with
horses for all her life, she knew most misbehaving horses were the owner's
fault. She looked at the horse in the corral.
Ah. A Percheron
mare.
She was on the lookout for a horse just like that one. With
railroads being built in the West, there was money to be made in breeding draft
horses, and Luke liked the gentle giants.

Her gaze slid up and down the horse, trying to figure out
what was wrong with her. Strong muscles played beneath the shining black coat.
At seventeen hands, the mare dwarfed Luke's Appaloosas. She took in the deep,
wide chest, the broad forehead, and the gracefully arched neck. Luke knew the
breed to be willing workers, ideal for logging and hard farm work.

This mare didn't seem very obedient, though.

The owner directed the mare around the corral with a rope in
an attempt to show her off. But it wasn't working. Instead of following every
tug on the rope and presenting smooth gaits, the mare pranced around the corral
and tried to circle to the right even though her owner wanted her to go in the
other direction.

On first glance, not a horse worth buying. But Luke had
learned to look beneath the surface. She stepped to the corral. "Twenty
dollars?" she asked.

The owner's head snapped around. His eyes lit up when he saw
Luke watching the mare. "Yes. She's worth more. She's young, strong, and
has many good years left."

"Don't let him talk you into it. The mare isn't worth
it," the other man said. "You'd have to break her first. When he
tried to put a saddle on her earlier, she bucked like crazy."

The mare's owner shot him a glare.

Luke ducked beneath the corral rails and walked up to the
mare. Murmuring reassurances, she checked the mare's teeth and slid her hand
over the muscular neck, back, and hip. The horse shied away with a violent
swish of her tail. "Easy, easy." She waited until the mare calmed,
then turned to the owner. "I'll take her."

"Fool." With a snort, the second man walked away.

Luke didn't look at him. She had learned decades ago not to
react to stupid provocations.

"You won't regret it," the owner said. He tried
with little success to hide his grin.

"I know."

The young mare wasn't a misbehaving devil that needed to be
broken with violence. Luke was fairly sure she had a sore back, probably caused
by tack that didn't fit her broad back and rubbed against her day in and day
out. But instead of looking for the cause of her sudden disobedience, her owner
had concluded that she was misbehaving and needed to be sold.

What the mare needed was enough rest and an owner with some
horse sense.

Luke vowed that she would get both. She flipped a double
eagle into the air and watched as the stable's owner clasped his greedy hand
around it. "I'll pick her up before I leave tomorrow. When you bring her
in tonight, make sure you put the feeding trough to her right."

"To her right?"

"Yeah. She's got a sore back, and it's uncomfortable for
her to bend her neck to the left." Luke walked away without looking back.

"
M
MM,
NICE." RIKA leaned back on the wagon seat and enjoyed the sunshine and
Amy's warmth against her side. Sunlight danced over the path in front of them
and made Old Jack's coat gleam. A light breeze carried the scent of wild roses,
apple blossoms, and freshly mowed grass. At the clip-clop of Old Jack's hooves,
a robin fluttered from one tree to the other.

Rika's gaze wandered over the valley. By now, the hills and
the flatland along the river didn't feel like a foreign land anymore. On days
like this, she felt stirrings of the love for the land that she saw shining in
Amy's eyes.

Reins loosely held in one hand, Amy stretched like a
contented cat and reached up to remove her bonnet. Her red locks shone like
polished copper in the sun.

After a second's hesitation, Rika took off her own bonnet.

Amy turned her head, and they shared a conspiratorial grin.
"Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to sit in church on a beautiful day
like this?" Amy tugged at her bodice. "We could admire the Lord's
creations much better out here than in a stuffy building."

What a daring thought. If Rika had uttered such a thing at
home, her father would have beaten her for her insolence. But she was an adult
now, and she was learning not to care what her father would have done. "It
would be nice, but your mother and Nattie would worry if we don't show up for
church." The two other Hamilton women had ridden ahead to meet the
Garfields before church.

"Maybe we could stop on the way back and pick a few
strawberries." A grin chased away Amy's frown. "I know a hidden
meadow where the best ones grow."

Strawberries.
Rika could almost sense the ripe,
sun-warmed taste on her tongue. Her mouth watered. Only once in her life had
she gotten to try strawberries. The thought of sharing the juicy treats with
Amy sent a shiver of delight up and down her spine. "I'd love that."

On the path ahead of them, a horse neighed.

Amy slowed the wagon, making their approach as silent and
cautious as possible. She reached for her rifle. As she had promised Rika, she
was more careful not to charge into potentially dangerous situations without
being prepared.