Marry Me (20 page)

A
s Jake had once buried himself in alcohol he now buried himself in work. Over the next month he put out two issues of the
Register
, as he named his fledging newspaper. He finished the lean-to on the house and fashioned a more permanent stable for Reg. And spent an inordinate amount of time trying to convince himself that he’d done absolutely the right thing.

What other choice did he have? Ask her to
stay
with him? The idea was ludicrous. Emily was hardly the sort to live in sin, not to mention that her sister would have his head. No, a clean, swift cut was far better.

He’d cleared a few acres when he’d first had the land, which the prairie had wasted no time in reclaiming. But in a hollow down by a dry wash some of the corn he’d planted must have gone to seed and now studded the grass with stiff, prickly stalks.

It was worth harvesting, he decided. And if he spent one more afternoon hunched over his press, picking through tiny squares of type, he was liable to take a hammer to the whole damn thing. He didn’t mind writing, but throwing type was the most tedious work ever invented, and he had a damnable tendency to spill it
just
when he neared the end.

The land was more gold than green now, the sun weaker. The air, while still warm, didn’t have the potent heat of a month earlier.

A brace of quail rose in protest when he kicked his way into the first stand of corn. Got there just in time, he thought, and quickly stripped a half-dozen stalks of their ears. He moved further into the wash, near where a low, exposed bluff glinted with flecks of mica. As he bent to grab a fat ear low on a stunted stalk, he caught sight of a shape out of the corner of his eye.

He pressed his forefinger and thumb to his eyes. It was a given he would dream of her. Even forgivable; a man could only govern his dreams so much. But seeing her while he was wide awake…it was enough to drive a man back to drink.

But he still saw her, sitting near a low cedar, a basket at her side, frowning at the notepad in her lap.

Then she looked up. And smiled—in his memories, she was ever-smiling—and lifted her hand, the awkward, half-formed wave she’d given him as she rode away in Joe Blevins’s wagon.

Here,
he thought.
She’s here.

He went to her, fighting to keep his steps at an unaffected pace. But his legs kept striding out further until he was damn near running by the time he reached her, which must account for his pounding heart and the labored draw of his breath.

She rose to meet him, and now stood beside the tree, the spiky branches throwing geometric lace shadows across her face, and all he could do was look at her. The sun had kissed a bit of gold in the hair around her face, left an adorable spattering of freckles over her nose.

“This is…” She waved helplessly around her. “Is this your land? I hadn’t realized I’d wandered so far.”

“Near the border,” he told her. “Hard to tell which is mine and which is Blevins’s.”

Emily knew she was staring, helpless and mute. Couldn’t help it. In all the times she’d conjured up his face, remembering it in what she’d thought was considerable and accurate detail, she now discovered she’d vastly underestimated his impact on her. His eyes, that dark rich brown, drew her more now that she could recognize emotion in them. The beautiful curve of his mouth looked all the finer now that she knew the magic it could spin on her body. His hair had grown, low and shaggy against his rumpled collar stained with ink.

“I’ll get out of your way,” she murmured at last, and bent to replace her paper in the basket.

His hand on her wrist froze her, released a dozen memories that danced, naked and hot, in her brain.

“Don’t go,” he said. “Not yet.”

She dropped her pencil and pad into the basket and straightened slowly, giving herself time to prepare. It didn’t help; one glance at his face and she was lost, emotion knotting her stomach.

He flushed and yanked his hand back as if he’d just abruptly realized he’d touched her.

“You didn’t grow your beard back.”

Self-conscious, he scrubbed a hand over his naked chin. “Yeah, well, I think I slept through the itchy stage last time. Couldn’t stand to let it go this time.” He shrugged. “S’pose I’ll miss it in December or so.”

“I’m sorry I forced you to shave it off,” she told him. “I hadn’t really written that to Kate, you know. I was a mite put out with you at the time, though, and couldn’t resist.”

“Yeah, I figured that out about an hour after Kate got here.” She hadn’t thought ever to see that smile again, and her heart damn near burst at the sight of it. “Still, you got the worst of it all told, so I won’t be after revenge.”

“That eases my mind considerably.”

“It should,” he said, lowering his brows in a mock-threatening scowl.

She shivered in appropriately theatrical fear.

But the amusement couldn’t hold out long, and the awkward silence remained.

“Em, I thought you’d gone.”

“I know,” she said gravely, abandoning any attempt at lightening things up. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged off her apology. “Why are you here?”

“I promised May. There’s still no doctor, not in a day’s ride, and I promised her I’d stay through the birth.”

“You’re staying with the Blevinses?”

“Yes.”

She’d been there, a short sprint away, for weeks and he’d not had a clue. He ventured off his land only to mail the
Register
and he wasn’t much given to chat with the postal clerk. It seemed odd to him now that he hadn’t somehow sensed her presence, for right at this second it felt as if every nerve he possessed was on full alert and tuned her way.

God, how much worse would those last weeks have been if he’d known she was so near? His dreams had nearly incinerated him as it was.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, with a pang for the realization she hadn’t wanted him to know she was close.

Color touched her cheeks, and her lids swept down, eyelashes making a lush semicircle above the wash of pink.

“I didn’t want to make it any harder,” she admitted.

“For you or for me?”

She sighed. “I’m not sure. Both of us, I suppose.”

Harder? It was hard to imagine anything harder.

“So you’re staying?”

“Yes,” she said, with relief at rounding to a simpler topic. “Until the child’s born, I’m staying.”

“That must be cozy.”

She laughed. “Now that you mention it, yes, it is. Which is why I’ve taken to tramping about during the day, trying out the lessons I begged from Art, although I’m quite abysmal. May won’t let me lift a finger because she’s so grateful I agreed to stay, but sitting there while she waddles around and Joe pretends not to worry was making me crazy.”

Art knew she was still there, too? Was Jake the only one who hadn’t been privileged with that information? A green-toned, nasty thought about whether Imbert knew snuck in and coiled at the back of his brain like an asp. He resolutely squashed it, knowing that was unfair.

“I can imagine,” he said. “So, who’d I sleep with?”

She jerked in shock. “What?”

“So you had to leave me. What story did you tell them? I’d like to know my sins so I don’t accidentally deny them.”

The pink veered toward crimson. “I suppose you won’t believe this but…I told them the truth.”

“They know we weren’t married?”

She shook her head hard enough that her hair flew, whipping across her face. “They know everything. Well, almost everything,” she added hastily.

They know we’re not married
. That caused an odd little pang, and he filed it away for further examination later.

A strand of hair snagged on her mouth. She reached up, tugged it away, and tucked it behind her ear. “I figured I’d go for a novel approach. The stories were harder to maintain than I expected.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said mildly. “They served their purpose, didn’t they? Or you’ve told Kate, too?”

“No, I didn’t tell her. I’ve got to work up to this, Jake. You can’t expect me to do it all at once.”

That strand of hair was loose again; the breeze caught it and waved it along her jaw. For safety’s sake, he tucked his hands into his pockets. “Have you heard from her?”

“No.” A rare, worried frown flickered over her face. “Not that she’d know where to find me. She hasn’t sent something to your place, has she?”

He shook his head. “I’ll save it if she does. I promise.”

“Thank you.” And then, after another stretch of that pained silence, she reached for her basket. “Well, I’d better—”

“I’m sorry,” he said, because he didn’t know if he’d ever have another chance. “Em, I’m…I’m sorry,” he said again, because he didn’t know what else to tell her without getting all tangled up in the details.

The basket plopped at her feet. She straightened slowly, gathering herself before meeting his eyes.

“That’s not necessary.”

“It seems that it is,” he said, somewhat bemused to discover it so. “I can’t honestly say I never wanted to hurt you, ’cause I guess for a while I did.” But he’d been so furious. So angry that she’d thought she could martyr herself like that, pushing for his pleasure while taking none of her own. “But I’m still sorry—”

“No. I don’t want you to be sorry about it.” Her hands clenched. “If you’re sorry, then I’ll have to be, and I
refuse
to be sorry. It happened. Good and bad, so twisted up together we can probably never sort out which was which. It’s over, it happened, and I’d just as soon let it lie.”

She fumbled for her basket, shoving in the pencils and the two green-tinged apples that had tipped out when she dropped it. “I have to go.”

“Don’t go.”

“But—”

“I mean, really don’t go.” The words spilled out, too fast for him to ponder them, coming from somewhere beyond conscious decision. “You can come back.”

“What?” The last apple dropped and rolled unnoticed into a clump of buckbrush. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m—no, don’t look at me like that, Em. It makes sense. There are three of you over there and the shack is smaller than mine. It can’t be easy living with the Blevinses.”

“I did get an inkling of how Kate felt, yes,” she murmured while her head and heart spun like a tornado-born leaf.

“It wouldn’t be—I’ll sleep in the tent again, Em, I wouldn’t mind a bit. You could have the shack to yourself.” He spoke fast, trying to get it all out before she said no. “I don’t mean anything…well.” He cleared his throat, plunged on. “It’d be an arrangement, just like we had before.”

“Yes, that worked out
so
well last time.”

He paused for a moment and let his gaze linger over her face. “We both upheld our ends of the bargain.”

“I couldn’t put you out like that.”

“You wouldn’t. I’m not offering out of charity, Miss Bright. I could use all the help I can get. I might not have minded my own cooking before, but now that you’ve spoiled me, it seems that I’m not quite as skilled as I remembered.”

“You have lost a little flesh,” she said, sweeping him with an assessing and disapproving gaze. “You’ve been working too hard.”

“Which is why I need you.”
Need you.
Now there was a slip of the tongue that revealed too much. “And I swear, if I have to scrub another pot, I’m going to just skip the cooking entirely.”

“Now, as someone with some medical knowledge, I am compelled to inform you that that is truly not healthful.”

“See?” He spread his hands. “That’s my point precisely.”

“So…you want to hire me?” she said slowly, trying it out.

“Well, yeah, sure,” he said, though right until she’d said it he hadn’t thought of it that way. “I can’t pay you much—”

“You won’t pay me
at all
.” She started to tick off her terms, finger by finger. “This is a trade in kind. Because it’s so convenient, being this near to the Blevinses, and Joe’s snoring is near to driving me mad. Room and board in exchange for housekeeping.”

“I want pie every Friday.”

“Oh you do, do you?”

“Hey, you’re getting the bed.”

Happiness flooded her. A dangerous happiness, given all that had come before. But she had someplace to go, and something worth doing, more than just calming May’s fears. “Pie it is.”

Emily had no more than agreed to come home—
Home? Jesus, what was he thinking?
—before Jake questioned his own sanity. He needed no more evidence of why this was a really bad idea than the heady bubble of…yes, it was something very close to happiness, which he scarcely recognized in himself. And that came with dread, for he, better than anyone, knew what happened when the happiness burst.

And really, what was he planning? He would hire her to keep house for him for the rest of his life? He couldn’t afford it, didn’t need it. Not to mention that having an employee that one regularly had lewd and very naked fantasies about was just asking for trouble. All he’d done was put off the inevitable.

Back to the tent, he thought, as he rapidly cleared out every trace of his habitation from the shack before Emily’s return. She’d refused his offer to bring Reg and the wagon around, saying Joe would drive her over, and he didn’t want her to walk in and find a pile of unwashed drawers on the chair.

He was pouring the used dishwater out the window—how the heck did she have time to wash dishes after
every
meal, anyway?—when the door opened and sunlight sliced across the floor. She hovered in the doorway, suitcase in her hand.

“Oh.” He set the metal washtub on the table. “You’re back.”

“Like a bad penny.” She shifted the suitcase to her other hand. With the sunlight behind her he couldn’t see her face but there was tension in the set of her shoulders, uncertainty in her voice.

“Take care of the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves,” he countered. “Are you coming in?”

“I…” She hesitated briefly. “Of course.”