Jake Walker's Wife (22 page)

Sunshine, slanting in through the window beside the door,
inched up the ladder and slid into the loft. And there, in the center of its bright, golden light, stood Jake.

Had he been there all along? she wondered. Had he seen her looking at her shadow? If the expression on his face was any indication, he
’d read the fanciful thoughts had danced in her head.

"Somehow, when that door opened,
” he said softly, “I knew it'd be you."

He looked like
an angel, all aglow in the translucent yellow beams. Sunlight gleamed from his hair and his lashes and the buttons of his shirt. And it sparkled in his eyes, in those untamed, wolfish eyes....

Bess pressed a hand to her chest, hoping to still the furious beating of her heart.
She opened her mouth to ask how he’d know it would be her, but no sound issued forth.

"It's good you're home."

She cleared her throat. "It's good to
be
home."

The silence that followed their exchange fell slowly, heavily, the way darkness drifts
in and spreads over the earth at day's end. Bess heard a cricket, chanting merrily in the corner stall, its song harmonizing with the hungry mews of newborn barn cats. Outside, birds competed with locusts. Horses whinnied, as though this were any ordinary afternoon, as though she hadn’t come here to slap him with that awful question....

She shoul
d have stayed in her room, come up with a sensible way to broach the subject. But she’d gone off half-cocked, as usual. Jumped into the pot without testing the water. It would serve her right if she was scalded in the process.

"Your pa showed me the telegram," he said
, gazing down at her.

If anything burned her,
she realized, it would be his smoldering gaze. "What telegram?"

"Did you send more than one while you were
gone?"

The teasing sarcasm of his tone stunned her out of her daze. "As a matter of fact, I wired Pa twice."

Jake chuckled. "Then I'm referring to the one about your meeting with Shelby." He hunkered down into a squat and grinned. "Micah says you cut a better deal with that farmer than he could've on his best day."

Though it was cool in the semi-darkened barn, she felt
warm from her toes to her scalp. Bess unbuttoned her top collar button. "If I did well, it's because I learned at the feet of a master."

He shook his head. "I do declare...I've never met anyone like you."

The heat in her cheeks increased, and she undid the buttons of her shirtsleeves and rolled them up. "I'm getting a crick in my neck standing here looking up at you."

"So stop standing there."

Bess hoped Jake couldn't see that the heat of his challenge, together with his intense scrutiny, had reddened her cheeks. “If you don’t come down here and talk to me, I’ll have no choice but to come up there."

He didn't move, save the
slight narrowing of his eyes. "If that's supposed to be a threat," he said, his grating drawl deepening, "you'd better try again."

That does it!
Bess thought, setting her jaw. Hitching up her skirts, she marched toward the ladder. She paused a moment to tuck the hem of her dress into her belt, then started up, rung by rough-hewn rung.

He stepped closer when she reached the top. "Took you long enough," he said, leaning his pitchfork against the loft's back wall.

She only had to swing her foot over the rail to be on solid ground again. But she made the move a bit too quickly. If he hadn’t grabbed biceps, Bess would have tumbled right back down again.

He waited until she’d steadied herself to say, “You ought to be more careful.”

"I'd like to see how careful you’d be, climbing a rickety old ladder...in a skirt! Why, I've a mind to...
ouch!
" Wincing, Bess stuck her fingertip into her mouth.

The mocking grin disappeared from his face, immediately replaced by an expression of concern. "Bess
, darlin’,” he said, helping her climb over the top rung, “are you all right?"

"Ith only a thmall
thplinter. I think I'll thurvive."

Ignoring the lisp,
Jake grabbed her wrist and examined her injury. "The way you downplay everything, you might have a log in there, but you’d never admit it," he said, frowning.

"I don't downplay
things. I just don't believe in making mountains out of molehills."

Bess tried to retrieve her wounded hand, but
Jake held tight. "More like molehills out of mountains. Now hold still. We've got to get that sliver out of there."

Giggling nervously, she tried again to free herself. "Why,
you behave as though I’m about to swoon from this little injury, the way you go on."

Her lighthearted attitude was not infectious, she realized as his left brow lifted. Well, she had reasons of her own to behave like a stern parent! She'd come here to shove that wanted poster under his nose
.

Bess was about to insist that he turn her loose when she saw him slip a small knife from
the leather sheath strapped to his belt. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped when sunlight sparked from its well honed blade. Suddenly, it seemed sword like in length and width. "Wh-what do you think you're going to do with
that
!"

Calm as you please,
Jake raised both brows. "I'm going to cut out that splinter, that's what."

And before she could protest, he'd removed the offending chip.

"There." Jake examined the flake that now rested on his own fingertip. "That's got it," he said, re-sheathing the knife.

A tiny blood droplet formed where the splinter had been. Instinct made her move to stuff the fingertip into her mouth.

But Jake was quicker. In an eyeblink, he'd slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her near. One tender touch of his lips to her fingertip, and the puncture was forgotten. They stood so close that she could feel his warm breath against her cheeks, so close that the wanted poster crinkled in her apron pocket.

"
Oh, how I've missed you," he said, his lips nearly touching hers.

She'd been embraced
before, dancing at church socials, while enduring the gentlemanly end-of-evening farewells of young beaus. Pleasant enough experiences, she'd thought at the time, but not like this. Not even close. Bess searched for the courage to do what she'd come here to do, but couldn’t find it. Couldn’t find her voice, either.

"Seemed you were gone forever," he said, voice thick with emotion.
Gently, he pressed his palms to her cheeks. "Did you miss me, too?"

Blinking with surprise at the primal gleam in his eyes, she licked her lips. She could see in the glittering blue orbs that he
wanted her to admit she'd missed him, wanted her to admit that their time apart had seemed like years instead of days. So in a hoarse whisper, she admitted it: "Yes...."

Her quiet confession became the key that unlocked
sentiments he'd hidden away all those years on the road. But Jake needed to be sure. His thumbs drew tiny circles on her jaw as he probed for the lies he'd read in every other woman's face. He studied the lovely, angelic features, convinced that upon closer examination, he'd find deceit hiding somewhere,
some
where behind the finely-pored skin, or on her full, pink lips, or in her dreamy, dusky eyes. Soon, it became clear that he could spend a lifetime inspecting every inch of her face without finding a trace of dishonesty. Jake's pulse quickened when he realized that for the first time in his life, he was looking straight into the honest eyes of love.

It pleased him that Bess didn't bristle under his examination. Instead, she smiled, and gently traced the backs of her fingers across his jaw, letting the fingertip he'd repaired linger on his lower lip. "Yes," she said again,
brown eyes blazing with trust and love, and with that simple word, loosed the floodgates of his lonely soul.

But he
didn’t deserve the devotion of one so fine, so pure, so innocent. Didn't deserve the loyalty of a woman so good that even the animals in the forest sensed they were safe with her.

Even the animals in the forest....

He'd 
been like an animal these ten years, like a mole, always seeking shadows as he moved from place to place in search of another place to hide for days, a month, another year…. Survival of the fittest, he'd heard, was the law of the land. Well, he'd survived, but to what end? To find solace in Bess's arms, only to leave it? Yearning, he understood now, was an emotion borne of having experienced perfection; yearning, he understood, would be his friend, his traveling companion, his bunkmate for the rest of his days.

He wished he’
d never begun this dangerous game, this flirtation-turned-fondness-turned-love. Suddenly, that despair made him wrap both arms around her, holding tight this fragile flower who had sowed love deep in his heart, just as the wild rose vine plants its seed in the craggiest outcropping of a snow-covered mountaintop. He would hold tight to perfection for as long as he could, so that he'd have this moment to remember when the powers that be ordered him to let her go.

A sob ached in his throat, and he buried his face in the crook of her neck
. Jake couldn't bear to have her remember him this way when he was gone...and all too soon, he would be long gone.

But, like the angel she was, Bess read his heart. Placing one tiny hand on either side of his face, she brought him out of hiding. Tears shimmered in her eyes and glistened on her long, lush lashes when she said, for the last time, "Yes,
Jake. Yes."

She pressed her lips to his,
combing delicate fingers through his hair. Oh, how he wanted this woman. Wanted her with every echo of his solitary soul, with every beat of his lonely heart.

But he dared not want....

He'd been in southern Illinois years ago when a levy collapsed and the muddy Mississippi threatened to devour every building and barn, every mortal and mammal for miles. The awesome power of the surging river humbled him as it sluiced through the streets, hissing like a giant turbid snake. What emanated from Bess, who felt so small and helpless in his arms, was far more powerful than the river's rage. And though she couldn't have known it—and certainly wouldn't have intended it—she stirred more fear and apprehension in him than the roiling waterway had.

Jake
had survived numerous near-fatal experiences, but with nothing to live for or look forward to, death had no authority over him. Even the hangman's noose didn't terrify him as much as this tiny woman he held in his arms, waiting to hear his truth.

For the thousandth time, he vowed never to s
ubject her to a lifetime of waiting and wanting, of yearning for what could never be. His life belonged to those who hunted him. The only way to loose those ties that bound him was to prove himself innocent of the murder in Lubbock. Impossible!

If he t
old her everything, right now, and asked her to run off with him, she'd do it.

But
he wouldn't ask. Bess deserved a normal, complete life. A home. Children. And a husband who loved her more than life itself. Oh, loved her that much and more! So Jake looked inside himself for the strength to turn away, right now. He wrapped his hands around her waist, intent upon gently pushing her away, forever.

They were strong hands. Hands that had hammered nail and tightened barbed wire, hands that had turned almost as tough and leathery as the rawhide tethers he'd used to rein in the snorting thunder of many a wild appaloosa. Those hands had not wavered, no matter how strenuous the task. And yet, when he put those work-hardened hands on this tiny woman to put time and space between them, they trembled, as a crisp autumn leaf shivers at winter's first icy blast. He knew he must let her go, must
make
her go, for his sake as well as hers.

He looked into her eyes then, and read the love there.

All right....he'd let her go. Soon. But not yet. Not just yet....

Hesitantly, he ran his hand down her back, and when he did, a rough callous caught on the finely woven fabric of her housedress. He stopped, pulling abruptly away, embarrassed that his big clumsy hand had damaged the pretty frock.

Yet again, Bess read his heart. "It's all right," she whispered.

But it wasn't all right. Nothing would ever be all right a
bout his miserable life.

Because he loved her like he'd never loved anyone, like he'd never known it was
possible
to love, and the moment he admitted it, Jake knew he was doomed.

Before Bess, he could easily outrun and outwit
every lawman bent on capturing him. Now, memory of her, of loving her and knowing that she loved him, would haunt him all the days of his life. The memories of what was, of what might have been, would distract him, and—

She pressed the offending hand to her
throat. "See? I'm afraid, too."

Jake
felt the wild thrum of her pulse, felt it vibrate through his palm, past his wrist and elbow, straight to the core of him. They were connected, for the moment, by hard-beating hearts, by love that coursed from her into him and back again.