In Your Arms (Montana Romance) (20 page)

Christian tightened his grip on Lily’s hand and kicked his way through drifted snow between the buildings.

“Will he keep his word?” Lily asked.

“Who, Michael?” Christian nodded. “If Charlie tells him to, he will.”

They stole down the snowy alley all the way to the road that ran parallel to the train tracks.
By the time they rushed out into the open again, Christian was willing to concede that running into Michael as he opened the store was the best thing that could have happened to them. They’d made it through the heart of Cold Springs without a soul being the wiser and the road that led to Viola Jones’s boarding house was clear of people. His sense of humor about the situation returned.

“Want to stop and make snow angels?” he teased Lily.

She glared at him with all the fury of a thousand angels. “I want to keep my job and my reputation.”

“Come on, now.
It’s not that bad.” He whisked her along the snowy road. “If you lose your teaching job I can think of plenty of other jobs for you. Cooking for me, cleaning for me, keeping my bed warm. I pay well.”

She let go of his hand long enough to punch his s
houlder. “You are an arrogant—”

“Bastard.
I know, I know.” He laughed. He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t felt so light with joy in years.

That joy was dented when they reached the boarding house.

“Oh, no,” Lily whispered, desperate to the point of tears, when they reached the closed gate at the front of Viola’s garden.

Deep protectiveness flared under his light heart.
“What is it?”

“I can’t go in the way I came out.”
Lily placed a hand over her chest, panting with the effort of running and with worry.

Christian faced the house, assessing the problem in front of him.
There was a light on in one of the upstairs windows, but the rest of the house looked quiet. The front garden was untouched and snow had drifted onto the covered porch. The door was most likely locked.

“How did you come out?”
he asked.

“Through the cellar door in the back.”

He barely stifled his laughter in time.

“
You snuck out of the cellar to rendezvous with me?”

She glared at the grin he couldn’t keep off his lips.

“It’s not funny,” she hissed.

“Yes, sweetheart, it is.
I’m flattered.”

She kicked his shin.
The impact hardly tickled with all of her layers of skirts and the snow around them, but he half-yelped, half-laughed anyhow.

“I can’t go back that way because my tracks will be seen,” she explained in a hush that would have been a shout to rattle the roofs if the situation hadn’t been so touchy.
“I can’t walk up the front path either for the same reason.”

Christian attempted to sober up.

“You could walk up the front path but tell them later that you had gone out and back in again.”

She stared up at him with flat doubt.
It quickly melted to hope.

“It might work.”

She thought about it for another second, then nodded. She squeezed his hand and let go.

“Lily, wait!”

He reached out for her wrist, catching her and pulling her back into his arms. He couldn’t help it. The morning sunlight glittered off of the fresh, new snow and the hint of danger hung in the air. He held her close and kissed her one last time. The heat that emanated from her as she returned that kiss, mouth soft and searching, was enough to melt a blizzard’s worth of snow.

“I love you,” he said as he le
t her go.

Chapter Sixteen

Lily staggered back, lips tingling with Christian’s kiss. Her heart didn’t know whether to race or to stand still all together.

He loved her.
It hadn’t all been a wicked exercise in seduction. Everything they had shared the night before—the intimacy of bodies joining and emotion laid bare—hadn’t been for nothing.

“I have to go,” she said, surprised that she remembered what words were.

She stumbled to the gate and pushed it open. Her fears of being caught out, of making tracks in the new snow, were forgotten as she rushed to the porch. Christian loved her. What did that mean?

It meant that she was
vulnerable. It meant her whole life and everything she had worked so hard to build could come crashing down. It meant that her heart was suddenly too big for her chest.

She scurried up the porch stairs then turned
to see if he was still watching her. Of course, he was. He was beautiful in the morning light, surrounded by the promise of new snow. Even hunched with his hands under his arms and no hat, obviously cold, and wearing that wretched, teasing, irresistible smile of his he was beautiful.

She loved him.

Now what?

The click of the front door being unlocked frightened every terrifying, romantic thought out of her mind.
She gasped and turned to face her destruction.

The door opened a crack and Jessica popped her head out into the cold.

“Hurry!” she whispered. “Miss Jones just got up. No one knows you were out yet!”

Relief poured over Lily with such ferocity that her head swam for a moment.
She turned to Christian and smiled. He let out a breath and returned that smile before nodding and heading off.

Lily jumped into the house.
Jessica shut the door behind her with a hair too much force.

“So?” she asked.
“How was it?”

“It was….”

She should keep her mouth shut. She should keep to herself, protect herself, and not say anything.

The glittering expectation in Jessica’s eyes touched her.
The woman really wanted to know. As a friend.

“It was wonderful,” Lily whispered, her confession squeezing her throat with emotion.

The truth of it sent a ripple through her. It clashed against the cold that clung to her and she began to tremble.

Jessica must have seen the sudden rush of panic in Lily’s eyes.
“Let’s get you out of those things and up to your room,” she said, reaching for the buttons of Lily’s coat. “Do you have school today? Do they close the school when it snows?”

Lily
shook her head, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering. “I don’t know. I’ll have to report to the school to find out.” She yanked her hat off of her head, her loose hair tangled in waves around her shoulders.

As she was tugging her mittens off a door creaked upstairs.
She and Jessica exchanged wide-eyed looks.

“What do we do?” Jessica whispered.

Lily gripped Jessica’s arm as the two of them waited.

Miss Jones appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Who’s that?” She charged down, already fully dressed with not a hair out of place, scowling as though her home were being invaded. She blinked at the sight of Lily and Jessica. “What on earth are the two of you doing up at such an hour?”

“I…,” Jessica stammered.

“I thought I saw a shadow from my bedroom window.” Lily fumbled to find an excuse. “I was concerned it could be a thief, so I got up and went out to check.” Internally, she winced. In the current climate, even the mention of thieves was like pointing a finger at Sturdy Oak’s people.

Miss Jones continued down the stairs, her eyes narrowed.
“Did you find those pathetic red miscreants lurking in the bushes?”

It was exactly the reaction she expected.
A new emotion of friendship flooded through her. Guilt. What kind of friend was she?

“I did not,” she said, peeling off her coat.
There was still time to salvage things. “And I do not for one second believe the man being held in the jail or any Indian is the culprit.”

She stepped to the row of hooks on the wall and hung her coat
to avoid facing the censure she knew Miss Jones would radiate. Her hands shook so hard she missed the hook on her first attempt.

“What did you do to your bodice?” Miss Jones asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talk—”

The words died on Lily’s lips when she saw the ripped edges o
f her cuffs. The night before. Christian’s arms around her, his mouth over hers, his hands stroking her to sunbursts. Her face went warm at the thought. He loved her.

She covered one ruined cuff, but the other was just as bad.
It had been sweet torture to be constricted as he ravished her.

“I must have pulled the wrong blouse from my bureau.”
She scrambled for an explanation. “This one needs mending.”

Miss Jones’s eyes remained narrow.
“Isn’t that the blouse you wore yesterday?”

Heart beating close to panic, Lily glanced down at her bodice and shook her head.
“No. I have two that are very similar. I should change out of this one before school. If you will excuse me.”

She sent Jessica the briefest of glances before rushing past Miss Jones and up the stairs.

“And what are
you
doing up?” Miss Jones asked Jessica as Lily reached the top of the stairs.

“I heard Lily and thought she might need help.”

Leave it to Jessica to tell the truth and still weave a plausible alibi.

As soon as Lily was safely in her room she locked her door and leaned against it.
What little relief she felt in having made it home was short-lived. Miss Jones suspected something. She squeezed her eyes shut and raised a hand to her forehead. The men shoveling the street could have suspected as well. Lieutenant Wilkins had seen them and was close enough to identify them. Michael West knew the truth outright. How could she face a classroom full of students and not have them suspect?

No, her students were too innocent to know what to
suspect in the first place—innocent in a way she wasn’t anymore.

“What have I done?” she whispered, resting her head against the door.

She had crept out in the middle of the night and gone to a man’s house. She had gone to his bed and felt more alive than ever before. For one amazing night she had felt whole, she had felt safe. She was loved.

She hugged herself, eyes still closed, laughing with joy
and fear. She’d put herself in the most precarious position of her life, and every moment had been worth it.

Christian stood outside the stationhouse in the frigid cold without a hat or gloves for an hour waiting for Lewis Jones to show up. He could hardly feel his fingers or toes. He couldn’t wipe the grin off of his face either. He’d just spent the night of his life with the woman he planned to spend every other night of his life with. Not even a Montana winter could cut through that warmth.

B
y the time Lewis finally did shuffle onto the train platform—stomping his feet to shake the snow off of his trousers—Christian had already planned exactly how things would go.

“It’s about time you rolled out of bed,” he greeted Lewis with a wide smile, thumping him on the back as he reached the stationhouse door.

Lewis stared at him as though he’d sprouted antlers.

“I had to help dig Rev. Andrews out,” he said and took keys out of his coat to unlock the door.
“How long have you been standing here?”

“Not long at all,” Christian lied.
“I need to send a telegram.”

“All right,” Lewis sighed.
“Come on in.”

He opened the door and gestured for Christian to follow him into the freezing front office.
Lewis headed straight for the stove.

“That fire can wait,” Christian stopped him.
“This one can’t. Telegram.”

He strolled to the desk and tapped on it with his numb fingers.
Lewis heaved a longer sigh and slouched his way to the telegraph machine.

“What do you want to send?” he asked as if the world were gloomy instead of brilliant.

“To my father, Judge John Hampton Avery, Baltimore, Maryland.”

Lewis nodded and wrote the words on a pad of paper with his gloves still on.

As soon as Lewis finished, Christian went on. “Send Grandma’s ring.”

Lewis glanced up at him.
His dour expression soared to a smile. “Well it’s about time! Who’s the lucky girl?”

Christian replied with a grin and a wink.
He tapped the pad of paper. “The sooner you send that telegram, the sooner you’ll find out.”

Lewis’s delight lasted for all of five more seconds before dropping.
“It’s not that Miss Singer, is it? That Injun woman?”

If his hands hadn’t been numb, Christian would have reached across the desk, taken Lewis by his shirt, and beat a little respect into him.

“Just send the telegram.”

Lewis’s expression flattened into wary acceptance.
“Are you sure you want to act all hasty like this? You know them Injuns is a bunch of thieves. Why, Samuel Kuhn says—”

“A lot of things that are nonsense,” Christian finished his sentence.
“Send the telegram.”

“That’ll be fifteen cents,” Lewis mumbled.

“I’ll bring it by later.” He pushed away from the desk and turned to go. “Send it now.”

“Yessir.”

Christian shook his head and marched across the office and back out into the cold. He was losing patience with the hysteria Samuel had stirred up. The longer it went on, the more trouble it would cause. He wasn’t in the mood for trouble.

Cold though his hands and feet were, instead of heading home to thaw in a warm tub he took a detour to the jail.
If Lewis was still having fits over Samuel’s accusations then other people were, and if even one person dared to entertain thoughts that would lead to Lily being uncomfortable, he would damn well do something about it.

“Kent!” he called as he opened the door.
“We need to talk.”

He stopped two steps inside of the jail.
Kent wasn’t there. In his place, seated at the desk eating a heaping plate of bacon and eggs, was Wilkins.

“What are you doing here?” Christian asked.
Two seconds later he remembered that Wilkins had been there earlier.

“Finished with your savage lady friend already?”
Wilkins smirked, confirming Christian’s suspicion. He had seen them.

A flash of heat filled him while at the same time his hands and feet went even more numb.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he bluffed. Face set in a scowl, he swaggered deeper into the room. “Where’s Kent?”

Wilkins’s smarmy grin stayed firmly in place.
“He left in a panic last night when it started to snow. I was already here questioning the prisoner,” he nodded to the unknown Indian man sitting cross-legged in his cell, eyes closed, “so I offered to stay so he could go home to his wife.”

“How noble of you,” Christian growled.
He nodded to the plate as Wilkins scooped in another mouthful of eggs. “That’s for the prisoner, you know.”

Wilkins shrugged.
“He wouldn’t eat it.”

“Yeah, I bet he wouldn’t,” Christian drawled.
He ignored Wilkins and strode to the cell to check on the prisoner. The familiar frustration of wanting to help someone who refused to be helped crawled down his back. “Are you comfortable? Anything you need?”

The man opened his eyes and stared at Christian, expressionless.
It was far too close to the look Lily gave him when she thought he was in danger of doing something stupid.

“I appreciate your stoicism, friend, but the sooner you let us know what you were doing at the pharmacy, the sooner I can get you out of here.”

“He was robbing the pharmacy, that’s what he was doing,” Wilkins said without looking at them. “That’s why he won’t say anything.”

Christian hissed in impatience.
“You have legal recourse,” he reminded the man in the cell. “You weren’t doing anything wrong. Speak up and we can get you home.”

Wilkins snorted.
Christian twisted to scowl at him. “And just what right do you have to be here anyhow? Kent is the sheriff, not you.”

“I am a soldier in the United States army,” Wilkins said, sitting straighter.
“I was asked to come investigate, and that’s what I’m doing.”

“Then get out there and investigate instead of eating other people’s breakfast!”

Wilkins sat back in his chair, a self-satisfied smile on his face. “All right, you want me to investigate? That’s what I’ll do. What was the town justice of the peace doing sneaking around in the extreme early morning hours with the town’s unmarried Indian teacher?”