High Country Bride (9 page)

Concepcion sighed. “I was at the Pelton homestead,” she said. “Phoebe Anne’s baby is due any day now, and her husband’s laid up with some kind of grippe, and he hasn’t been able to work the farm in a long time. I took them a kettle of soup, a few eggs, some canned goods.”

“Squatters,” Rafe said with distaste. He disappeared into the pantry, returned with a bottle of whiskey, and poured a generous dollop into his coffee.

“They have a valid claim on that land,” Concepcion said evenly.

“The hell they do,” Rafe countered. “It’s five miles this side of our eastern boundary. Soon as I have the time, I’m going to move them off.”

Emmeline blinked. “Surely they’re not hurting anyone,” she said.“The Peltons, I mean.”

“They’re on Triple M land,” Rafe said.

“But he’s ailing, and she’s about to have a baby—”
/p>

Rafe was apparently unmoved.“They’d be better off in town, where the doc could look after them.”

“I think I’ll go and lie down for a while,” Concepcion said, sounding weary. She left the room, by way of the rear stairs, and Emmeline found herself alone with Rafe.

He finished his whiskey-laced coffee, then made a great deal of noise getting pots and kettles from the shelves and pumping water into them at the sink. He set them on the stove top, one by one, and began to build up the fire.

Emmeline watched him, sipping her tea and saying nothing. He was an enigma, this man, kind and generous one moment, almost callous the next. He was willing to ride out into a storm to look for Concepcion, but the plight of the Pelton family seemed not to matter to him at all. She wondered how the other McKettrick brothers felt about the homesteaders, not to mention Angus, and made up her mind to find out at the first opportunity.

And the next time Concepcion visited the Peltons, Emmeline meant to go along.

Meanwhile, Rafe dragged a large copper bathtub in from the back porch and set it beside the stove, out of the way of the door. He brought a folding screen from a nearby room, then fetched towels and a bar of soap. The time had definitely come to leave the room, Emmeline decided. She set the teapot in the sink, along with her cup, and retrieved her sewing from the seat of the rocking chair, where she’d abandoned it earlier to join Rafe in the search for Concepcion. She planned to sit in the rarely used parlor, at the front of the house, and watch the storm as she stitched.

“Emmeline,” Rafe said quietly, just as she was about to pass through the doorway.

She stopped, but did not turn around. Her fingers tightened around the already crumpled petticoat.

“This is your bath,” he told her.

She faced him, stunned.“Mine? But—”

“You must have taken a chill out there,” he said. “Your lips are blue, and you’re still shivering a little.”

“I’m fine,” she said, though in point of fact, he was right. She was still cold, despite her dry clothes, the copious amounts of tea she’d consumed, and the comforting warmth of the kitchen stove.

He gripped the back of his father’s chair at the table. Then he took her by surprise by grinning at her. “You’re as stubborn as I am,” he said. “Makes me wonder what our sons and daughters would be like.”

Emmeline’s heart skittered over a beat. Just for a moment, she imagined herself as a true wife and mother, the hub of a happy home, high on a mountaintop, and she was desperate with hope.“I couldn’t bathe here,” she said. “Someone might see.”

Rafe smiled.“The screen will solve that problem,”he said. “Besides, we’ve pretty much got the place to ourselves. Kade and Jeb are playing poker in the bunkhouse—they’ll be at it awhile, since they’re both losing—and Pa’s been on the range all day, so he’s likely to spend the evening in his study, by the fire. Bad weather always makes him melancholy.”

“Why?” she asked. She truly wanted to know, but she was stalling, too. A hot bath would be the purest of luxuries, and she
was
cold, but the prospect of removing her clothesstiitchen, even with a screen to hide behind, was a daunting one. Back home in Kansas City, there had been a room reserved for the purpose, with hot and cold running water, no windows, and a lock on the door.

“Because of my mother,” Rafe said. “A storm came up, like this one, and she rode out to help round up some heifers and calves. It was nothing she hadn’t done a hundred times before. This time, though, a clap of thunder scared her horse, and she was thrown into the creek. She came up laughing, and swore she was all right, but she caught a cold, sure enough, and that turned into a fever. She died the next night.”

Emmeline laid a hand to her throat. Now she realized why Rafe had not wanted her to join him on the search for Concepcion. He was trying, in a roundabout way, to explain his behavior, if not to apologize. “I’m sorry,” she said.“That’s terrible.”

“Things were different around here, when she was gone,” Rafe mused, gazing at the rain-darkened window. Then he met Emmeline’s gaze again. “Don’t let that water go cold,” he said. “And don’t worry about being caught naked. I’ll stand guard.”

He stood at the kitchen sink, looking out the window, his broad back to the room.

Emmeline went behind the screen, removed her clothes, slowly and with stop-and-start motions, keeping an eye out for peepers the whole time, and slipped into the bathwater. It was utter bliss; a benediction from the angels. She sighed aloud.

Rafe chuckled. “There’s more hot water on the stove,” he said.“Let me know when you need it.”

She sank deeper into the tub, covering herself with her arms as best she could. “I won’t have you looking,” she said.

“You’re my wife,” he said. She heard him refilling a kettle at the pump.

Emmeline laid a hand to her lower belly. Was there a baby growing there, even now? If so, she was running out of time. Whatever her reservations about a future with Rafe McKettrick, whatever her fears, she needed a husband. A real one.

Rafe rounded the screen, his eyes squinched shut, holding a large kettle by the handles, which were covered with pot holders. He poured the water into the tub, at Emmeline’s feet, causing her to suspect that he’d peeked. Steam surged into the chilly air.

“Thank you,” she said. The room was shadowy; the kerosene lamps had burned low enough to smoke and flicker, and one of them must have guttered out, for, in the space of a moment, the kitchen was cast into near darkness.“You must be cold, too,” she ventured.

He chuckled, and more pots and kettles banged against the sink or the stove top. “I could join you,” he teased. “That would definitely warm me up.”

Emmeline found the idea more appealing than she would have admitted. “Not,” she said, very primly, “in the kitchen.”

“Now if I’d known that was the only problem, Mrs. McKettrick,” he said,“our being in the kitchen, I mean, I’d have set up that tub in our bedroom.”

She blushed, and knew it wasn’t because of the deliciously warm water she was soaking in. Her bones, formerly frozen to the marrow, were beginning to thaw, and there was a peculiar ache in the core of her. Instead of answering, she reached for the soap and began to wash, with a lot of splashing.

“I could scrub your back,” Rafe volunteered.

Emmeline continued to bathe.

“Emmeline,” he prompted.

“All right,” she whispered. It wasn’t Rafe she’d been resisting, she realized, but herself.

Her response must have taken him by surprise, because several moments passed before he came around the screen, this time with his eyes wide open. His glance, sweeping over her as it did, surely raised the temperature of the water, and Emmeline’s breath caught in her throat.

“You’re sure?” he asked. He was talking about more than washing her back, and they both knew it.

She nodded.

He knelt beside the tub, lathered the wash cloth with soap. “Lean forward,” he said gruffly.

Emmeline obeyed, resting her forehead on her raised knees.

“Scared?” Rafe asked.

She nodded without lifting her head.

“Don’t be,” he said. He washed her back, rinsed away the soap, then got to his feet, hauling Emmeline with him. He wrapped her in towels, lifted her into his arms, and carried her around the screen, across the kitchen, and up the back stairs.

In his room, Rafe set Emmeline on her feet, wrapped her in a quilt dragged from the bed, and turned away to open the door of the woodstove and get a fire going.

Emmeline perched on the edge of the mattress, noting, as she hadn’t the night before, that it was thick and soft, probably stuffed with feathers.

Still huddled inside the blanket, she rested a hand on her lower abdomen. She had hoped to be bleeding by now, but she wasn’t, and time was passing. If she waited too long, she would be sent from the Triple M in disgrace, with nowhere to go.

But suppose he knew he wasn’t the first? Suppose he rejected her, out of hand?

She decided not to think just then about the choices that would be left to her, should Rafe turn his back on her. She must take things as they came, moment by moment and step by step, or she would surely go mad.

The scent of sun-dried linens, starched and pressed, teased her nose as she shed the quilt and lay down, pulling the remaining covers over her. She kept carefully to the side she’d occupied the night before, nearest the wall, the blankets drawn up to her chin. She stared upward, into the gloom, her eyes wide, her whole being poised on the edge of a precipice.

And she waited.

Rafe went out, and she dozed, then awakened with a start when the bedroom door creaked open, then closed. When she heard the key turn in the lock, she felt a sweet shiver pass through her. She had no idea how long Rafe had been gone, though the room was quite dark.

“Emmeline?” Rafe asked. He carried a lamp in one hand, and set it on the bureau. He was wearing trousers but nothing else, he smelled of soap, and his dark hair, still damp, lay in ridges left by his fingers.

“Yes,” she said. That one word was all she could summon the breath for.

He came and stood beside the bed, looking 5%">

She did not know what she’d expected of him, not brutishness or cruelty, surely, but not tenderness, either. “All—all right,” she agreed, and squeezed her eyes shut when she realized that he was unbuttoning his trousers.

The feather mattress dipped as he got in beside her, bringing a rush of cold air with him, followed immediately by a sense of contained heat. Gently, he stroked the side of her face, the length of her neck.

He drew her against his side, held her loosely in the hard circle of his embrace. She felt his moist hair against her temple, the firm flesh of his shoulder beneath her cheek. The length of his body seemed to shelter her, like a range of mountains shielding a meadow from all but the mildest elements, and he smelled pleasantly of mint and soap, and of the outdoors, the wild, wide countryside that was as much a part of him as his skin and the low timbre of his voice. “Emmeline,” he said. Just her name, but with a whole world of meaning.

“What?” she asked unsteadily.

“Let out your breath and loosen up a little. You’re stiff as a plank.”

She tried to comply, truly she did, but met with small success. She was at a crossroads, and the direction she took was all-important. How could she relax?

He rolled onto his side, still holding her, and brushed his mouth lightly across her temple. “Maybe you need a little help,” he said.

Emmeline’s heart pounded. If he thought talk like that was going to soothe her, he was sorely mistaken.

His right hand had found its way under her bottom, somehow, and his left came to rest lightly against her hip, bunching the fabric of her nightgown a little as he slid it slowly upward, along her waist and rib cage, to her breast. She gasped when he reached his destination, surprised by pleasure, and he kissed her, deeply and then more deeply still, caressing her all the while.

Emmeline was breathless when he released her mouth, only to nibble at her earlobe and then the length of her neck. The nightgown kept creeping up, at a steady but nearly imperceptible pace, and then suddenly it was off over her head, gone.

The lantern had snuffed itself out, and the storm was still lashing at the house and the land. Rafe was a shadow lover, exploring her with his hands and his lips, and when he took her nipple in his mouth, she was utterly lost. She made a soft sobbing sound and plunged her fingers into his hair, and he moaned as he savored her, cupping her breast in his hand, squeezing gently, tonguing her until the pleasure was nearly past bearing.

Presently, he moved to her other breast, and gave it equal attention. He was an exquisitely thorough man, and Emmeline soon learned that he would not be hurried, no matter how desperate her responses. Indeed, by the time he kissed his way down over her belly, and found her woman-place with his tongue, taking that small nubbin as boldly as he’d taken her nipples, she was perspiring, feverish with need, flailing and tossing on the sheets, instinctively seeking a solace that would be granted only after being denied for a long, long time.

His name was a soft, frantic litany on her lips as he continue his scandalous ministrations, adding to her need by putting a finger inside her, finding the most sensitive place, teasing her there.