Intimate Strangers (Eclipse Heat Book 2) (5 page)

In the kitchen, Lucy cut the poultry into frying parts and put it in the skillet. That done, she made a batch of biscuits and turned to Brody, who was sitting on a stool, watching her. “Help me with these, Brody.”

The little girl looked surprised but took the jelly glass and began cutting circles in the dough. The selection of other supper possibilities was woefully thin ’til Brody led Lucy to the root cellar and pointed inside.

“I just can’t do it, Brody. Dark, shut-in places like that scare me,” Lucy admitted her weakness, backing away. “If there’s a vegetable to be had you’ll have to fetch it.”

Heaving a sigh befitting a princess, Brody went inside, bringing back a bucket full of potatoes. Lucy didn’t need that many, but took the bucket with thanks, doubting she’d be here long enough to use them all.

Brody patted Lucy’s arm on the way back to the house. “It’s all right, lady, sometimes I get scared of things too. My mama didn’t like the root cellar either.”

Supper was a respectable showing, but received as a feast. Brody helped set out fried chicken and biscuits, potatoes and gravy, and some apple pie that Lucy’d fashioned at the last minute from winter apples Brody found in the root cellar.

“I made the crust for this pie,” Brody bragged as she set it in on the table in front of her chair. The pie caused a stir of interest among the men. Lucy watched the family, hoping they’d forget about her and act naturally.

Both Quince men patiently waited for Brody and Alex to eat their fill before wolfing down the remaining food.

Pushing away from the table, Ambrose ended the meal with compliments. “Mighty fine cooking, Lucy.” His eyes crinkled at the corners when he told Brody, “Pie crust was delicious.”

Her grin wrinkled the freckles on her face and she looked a far cry from the morning’s child as she glanced back and forth between Lucy and Ambrose. Her smile warmed her young features, making Lucy’s heart melt.

Alex erupted with angry words. “That woman isn’t our real mother. She doesn’t sound a thing like our mother and this meal proves she’s not.”  He pointed at the empty bowls and plates.

Lucy began clearing the table as she answered. “I don’t know about your mama’s domestic abilities but I like baking and such.” Apparently Lucy Quince hadn’t cooked. More puzzling was why she didn’t sound like the former version of herself.

Brody grabbed some platters and followed her, declaring, “I like to cook too.”

Lucy closed the kitchen door and crossed to the ancient sink, filling the dishpan with water. “Your pa needs to put a pump in here. It would make housework a lot easier.”

“No money for that,” Brody said succinctly. “We’ve got better things to spend money on then doodads for the house.”

Lucy could imagine the words coming from Ambrose Quince himself. Instead of commenting, she washed dishes, noticing the limp, grimy curtains hanging at the dirty window.

Brody sat on her stool, idly chattering ’til Lucy threw a cloth at her and said, “Wipe.”

“You’re not my boss.”

Lucy continued to soap and rinse the platters and refrained from arguing. She could feel her daughter’s loneliness.
Who does she talk to on a ranch where she’s the only female?

The men had vacated the table at meal-end, leaving Brody with Lucy.  After no more conversation took place in the kitchen, her daughter picked up the towel and began drying dishes.

Lucy reopened their discussion while she washed the window. It looked out over a motley garden of half-dead flowers and puny vegetables. “Looks like the garden needs tending.” Lucy nodded at the weed-choked display on the other side of the dirty glass pane.

“Oh, that’s just an old patch where my real mama used to grow vegetables. Them plants just volunteered. Nobody planted them.”

“
Those
plants just volunteered, not
them
plants.” Lucy didn’t miss the child’s startled look at the grammar lesson.

She focused on cucumber plants and bean vines instead of the language rules that popped in her mind from nowhere. “Brody, a dab of weeds pulled here and there and the true plants will get their share of the sun. Since they’ve fought so hard to live, I’ll clean the rows tomorrow. You can help if you want.”

Brody shrugged at the invitation. “Maybe, but right now I’m going to bed.” Before she went through the kitchen door she said, “You don’t talk funny anymore.” Lucy was left puzzling over her unexpected expertise in grammar and reminded for the second time that her former speech differed from now.

Before she quit working for the night, she emptied out the dirty water, refilling the pan with clean. This time she pulled down the kitchen curtains and put them in to soak. She didn’t stop ’til the kitchen was swept and a batch of bread set to rise. The stove was a fancy model with two ovens and a cooktop. The kitchen table and chairs were made of solid oak but the cupboards, counter and built-in fixtures were old and needed attention.

Lucy finished what she could do for the moment and retreated to the bedroom she’d claimed, shutting the door and wishing she had a key for the lock.

Everywhere in the bedroom was evidence of money. In her other life, it seemed certain she hadn’t stinted on her own comfort. And yet the men downstairs wore threadbare clothes and the children’s attire had appeared just the same. The house had an air of neglect and the yard was no longer tended, although obviously it once had been. It seemed as though when Ambrose Quince lost his wife, she’d taken the good times with her.

It appeared the only one shouldering any of the domestic work was a child of eight. Lucy looked forward to changing that. Cleaning and setting it all to rights would give her an excuse for talking to Brody.

She waited inside the room staring at the door, unsurprised when a solid knock interrupted her thoughts. Patting the smaller gun now riding in her pocket, she swung the door open before he could wake the children by pounding louder. She already knew he was the kind of man who wouldn’t leave ’til she answered.

“Come downstairs,” he ordered her.

She stepped into the hall and followed him.

Lucy avoided the men, making coffee as an excuse to stay on her feet and across the room when Ambrose joined Hamilton at the now-clean kitchen table. Once the coffee heated, she filled two mugs and set them down on the table, returning to the sink to pour herself a cup too.

Ambrose studied his wife. She was backed against the counter holding a hot mug of coffee as a barrier between them as though she faced a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike—and maybe he
was
ready to lash out. Anger simmered in his gut as he looked at her. Goddammit, life had been hard, but they’d had a family together and she’d run from it.

He could sense her fear but she held herself steady, her head tilted, measuring him with her gaze as if she were a queen looking down at her servant. He recognized the regal pose as pure Lucy, just as he’d known her earlier in the day, even before she’d nudged her horse forward, threatening the sheriff with her gun.

The way she said her words was oddly different, delivered in the cadence of the West. In the past she’d spoken her complaints in Eastern tones—making an endless string of comparisons between Boston and Texas, always reducing the discussion to civilization versus savage wilderness.

His missing wife was returned, but changed so much it seemed as though it couldn’t be her. In eight years, Lucy Quince had never made a pot of coffee, let alone cooked a meal such as she’d fixed for supper. Hell, she hadn’t known how. She’d hired a housekeeper to take care of her ranch chores.

Hamilton said Lucy had been cooking for a restaurant, but that made no sense. Nevertheless, the woman facing him was Lucy. He didn’t need proof—his body told him so. And that graveled him too. How could his cock get hard for a woman who’d run away from him?

To distract himself, he rubbed his neck where the rope had burned it, aiming his words at her. “Thanks for saving me. I thought I was a goner standing up there on the scaffold next to the deputy sheriff.”

Hamilton answered before Lucy could. “Parnell Stokes seemed real eager to help you meet your maker.”

Ambrose couldn’t repress a shudder. He’d heard the crack of the rifle just as Stokes opened the trapdoor, sending him plummeting .. Not wanting his young’uns to see him do the hangman’s dance, he’d hoped the shot found him before the noose pulled taut. When, instead, he’d fallen in the dirt unscathed and still breathing, he’d been as stunned as everyone who’d come to watch him die.

But his focus had been on Lucy from the moment she’d ridden into town. Sheriff Bailey had made a lot of noise questioning her genuineness, but she’d just looked at him steadily out of Lucy’s eyes and answered his questions with Lucy’s husky voice, all the time resting that Winchester so the barrel pointed at Bailey’s heart.

It had surprised him even more when he’d witnessed the setdown she’d given Stephen Pauley with Eclipse citizens gawking on. The man had been one of her staunch admirers and Ambrose’s jealousy of the banker had caused more than one argument. He rubbed his whisker-covered jaw, contemplating the mysteries of this new Lucy.

Without much effort on her part, she’d enthralled the vultures, giving Ambrose time to mount and get the hell out of Eclipse before anyone thought to stop him. He’d been hard put not to laugh out loud, filled with exultation and rage—
life, liberty and Lucy
.

Silently asking for more coffee and interested to see if she’d wait on him, Ambrose held his cup up with one hand, cutting a piece of apple pie with the other. She set her mug aside and wrapped her apron around the handle of the coffeepot, carrying it to the table, where she filled his cup and topped off Hamilton’s.

The whole time she served the coffee, Lucy kept her other hand in her pocket. According to Hamilton, Lucy was armed and ready to shoot anyone disagreeable. He tried to look harmless, forking in the dessert, measuring it against others he’d had.

“Pie’s as good as Ma’s, wouldn’t you say, Ham?” He watched to see if Lucy responded to the rare praise, since Cordelia Quince had been an acclaimed cook. The woman facing him ignored the compliment.

There was a fierceness in her now, acquired since she’d left him. He clenched his back teeth, trying to stifle the snarls of rage simmering in his chest, studying her for more differences.

She was tougher, smaller and stronger. Luce had been plumply delicate, covered in silks and satins at afternoon soirées, riding sidesaddle in fancy hunt costumes and speaking in refined Boston words. But Lucy’s will had been forged in iron and he recognized it in this woman.

She’d come to town wearing a dress she wouldn’t have used for rags in former days, carrying herself like royalty, her skirts hitched high, riding astride with her rifle unsheathed like a warrior-queen. And by God, she hadn’t hesitated—taking aim and, steady as a rock, shooting the executioner’s rope.

He’d expected to die, taken one last look at his children and almost closed his eyes. When Ham reached the edge of the crowd, Ambrose had been glad he’d kept them open long enough for one last glimpse of his brother but his gaze had been drawn to the woman already aiming her rifle at him.

He was ashamed to admit instead of final prayers to his maker, his last muttered word before he’d plummeted through the trapdoor had been “
Lucy.
”

He looked her over now. She’d replaced her worn clothes with Lucy’s old fineries, which only emphasized how different she’d become. The skirt of the dress dragged the floor even though she had it bunched at the waist above the old apron she’d tied around her.

Ambrose hadn’t noticed the scar earlier ‘’til the sun hit it just right. It almost looked like a streak of white in her hair, as if she’d aged in one spot. Now his gaze trailed down its length to where it disappeared beneath the neck of her dress.

His anger, banked and building, was temporarily directed at another—whoever had stolen and marked his wife. He wondered what had happened to the man she’d run off with. When she confessed his name, Ambrose intended to hunt him down and kill him.

Now he spoke the question he’d waited three years to ask. “Who’d you leave with?”

Her eyes narrowed, her chin went up and her nose elevated in supercilious disdain. Ambrose had seen that expression too often in the eight years they’d shared. Now that the town had seen Lucy Quince alive, she could go back to wherever she’d been hiding. “You going to tell me where you’ve been?”

“I’ve been surviving,” she said coldly.

He flushed, jarred by the harsh tone and all it implied.
She said I was a devil to live with but it sounds like she found the real deal when she left me.
He didn’t have any sympathy to waste.

She’d chosen. She’d have to live with what she’d done. But she could sure as hell do better than slinging hash for hire. “You’ll be pleased to know that your money is still in the Eclipse Bank. We made do without it. Your lover must have left you high and dry for you to be cooking in a dive. I’m surprised you didn’t come back for the money to help you
survive
.”

She ignored his jibe. His heart ached, burning painfully as the bleak cloak of understanding settled over him. The old Lucy would have sassed him—or cried. The girl that he’d married was gone. This woman wasn’t
his
Lucy anymore. His tone was gruff when he said, “We need to talk.”