Open Country (26 page)

“I PUKED UP THE CANDY.”

Startled from a deep sleep, Hank opened his eyes to find Penny looming over him, her wild curls backlit by the muted light coming through the hotel window.

“Jesus!” he choked out, yanking the blanket over his bare chest.

“But I’m not supposed to say that.”

His heart racing in his chest, he looked down to be sure he was fully covered. The kid must be part Apache the way she snuck up on a person. “Say what?” he asked groggily.

“That I puked.”

He squinted up at her, trying to make sense of her words. Conversations with Penny were always a challenge. “Why not?”

“Ladies aren’t allowed to say ‘puked.’ ”

“You’re a lady, are you?” He wondered where Molly was, and what time it was, and how he could get Penny out of his room so he could dress.

She giggled. “Not yet. I’m only a baby lady. I won’t be a real lady until I grow bosoms.” She stretched her flannel gown over her puffed-out chest. “Do you think they’re growing? I think they’re growing, don’t you?”

He embarrassed himself by checking before he realized what he was doing. “Give them time,” he muttered, quickly looking away. “Where’s Molly?”

“Getting dressed. She says it’ll take years.”

“To get dressed?”

“To grow bosoms. She’s been growing hers a long time. That’s why they’re great big.”

He blinked at her. Not
great
big. More like gently rounded. Definitely sufficient. An idea came to his befuddled mind. “Did Molly send you in here?” Be just like her to try to get even for Melanie.

“They’re really soft too.”

“Are they?” Suspicions giving way to pleasant musings, he grinned up at the ceiling. “Remind me to check.”

“And bouncy.”

“Bouncy.” An interesting word. One that conjured interesting images.

“What’s thirty-seven?”

The images faded. He turned his head to find his stepdaughter picking at a scab on her elbow. “Thirty-seven what?”

“I don’t know. When I came in, I thought you were asleep then you said thirty-seven and fifty-nine and leventy-something. What’s that mean?”

“It means I was sleeping.”

She paused in her scab excavations to give him a wondering look. “You talk while you’re sleeping?”

“I work numbers. Or so I’ve been told. Aren’t you hungry? I bet you’re hungry. Why don’t you go see if it’s time for breakfast.”

Having completed her surgery, she wiped her finger on the blanket and grinned at him. “I might get pukey.”

He eyed the smear on his blanket and felt a little pukey himself. “Where’s your dress, Papa-Hank? Last time you were wearing a dress.” She lifted the corner of the blanket.

He quickly pinned it to the mattress with his arm. “It wasn’t a dress. It was a nightshirt. Don’t I hear Molly calling you?”

“Where’s your nightshirt then?” She tugged at the blanket, then froze, her eyes as round as marbles. “You’re not wearing anything, are you? You’re naked!”

Before he could answer, she let loose a high-pitched squeal that would deafen the hounds of hell and fled the room. “AuntMolleee PapaHanksnaked!”

Ten minutes later, he was dressed, shaved, and knocking on Molly’s door, primed for battle. He suspected confrontations with Molly would be almost as much fun as conversations with Penny.

She didn’t disappoint, flinging open the door on the first knock. “Morning, Molly.”

“Please tell me you did not invite my niece in for a visit while you were lying in bed nude.”

He smiled.

“Hank!”

Stepping past her into the room, he closed the door behind him, then turned to face her. “In the first place, I didn’t invite my stepdaughter in, she snuck in. And it wasn’t for a visit, so much as a cozy chat—very informative, your niece. And as you well know, that’s how I sleep—nude. At least I hope you know,” he added with a rakish grin.

She blinked at him.

Amusement faded. “You
do
know, don’t you? Tell me you do.”

“I—ah. . . .” She cleared her throat. “Ch-Chat about what?”

Sweet Molly. So shy.
His confidence happily restored, he attacked hers. “Bosoms.” He sauntered across to the window, speaking as he went. “Yours, mostly. Your great big, really soft, bouncy bosoms. Her words, not mine—that faulty memory, you know.” Pulling aside the lacy curtain, he scanned the sky. No snow yet, but low clouds promised it was on the way. “They sound so . . . perky.” He let the curtain drop and turned to face her. “Brings to mind a French postcard I once saw.”

“Oh, Lord.” She lifted a palm to her flushed forehead. “That child will be the death of me.”

“Death of
you
? Try waking up to her looming over you.”

She chuckled.

Enjoying the sound of it, he pressed for more. “The kid would make a fine burglar. Or spy. Remind me not to sleep with my pistol nearby and to get some sturdy door locks.”

“Oh, Hank.” Dropping her hand to her stomach, she let chuckles give way to laughter.

It was an infectious laugh, with a throaty, sexy quality that made him want to tickle her to keep it going. He appreciated that she didn’t even try to stifle it. And appreciated even more the jiggle of motion it set off under her shirt.

Penny was right about the bouncy bosoms.

He waited until she had finally regained control of herself, then walked closer and said, “I like to hear you laugh, Molly. It’s the second-best way to greet the day.” Bending forward, he nuzzled the soft skin below her ear. She smelled like lemons. Why did she always smell like lemons? “At least I think it is,” he added, sliding his lips over her cheek toward her mouth. “You’ll have to refresh my memory. Soon.” He kissed her, felt her lean into him, and kissed her again.

“Morning, wife,” he whispered against her lips. Then in a louder voice, “Morning to you, too, Charlie.”

She jerked back.

Straightening, he smiled over her shoulder. “Had breakfast yet, son?”

“No, sir.”

“Better get to it then. I suspect we’ll be leaving shortly.”

As soon as the door closed behind the boy, he reached for his wife. “Now where were we?”

She sidled away. “I was packing. I don’t know what you were doing.” “Fending off your niece. Where is she, by the way?”

“The Garcia sisters took her down to breakfast a while ago.” Retrieving a garment from a pile on the couch, she carefully folded it and slipped it into the open valise by her feet. “I’m surprised they haven’t quit already.”

“Brady pays them a fortune.” Moving to the upholstered chair beside the window, he sat, crossed his outstretched legs at the ankles, and settled back to watch her. “He’d have to with Ben to tend.”

Having finished with the clothing, she moved to the bureau and began sorting through hairbrushes, bottles with glass stoppers, jars of this and that. “Oh, he’s not that bad.”

“If you like tyrants.”

That throaty chuckle. “Well, he is Brady’s son.”

An odd comment, Hank thought, since in actuality Ben wasn’t Brady’s son and Molly surely knew that. But he lost that thought when she bent over to pick up her medicine basket and the action hiked her skirt up the backs of her calves. The woman did have a nice pair of legs.

She straightened, moved the items on the bureau to the basket, then studied her reflection in the mirror. Apparently, she saw flaws undetectable to the male eye. With a frown, she leaned forward to thumb a smudge from the corner of her mouth, then straightened to pat a few hairs back from her temples and smooth a brow.

The rituals of women. They enthralled him. Having grown up in a predominately male household, he didn’t often get a chance to observe them, and when he did, he was completely captivated. All the little gestures—the stroking, dabbing, patting, smoothing—each movement so alien and feminine and so quick to draw his eye. And when she raised her arms to repin the coil of hair at her nape, lifting for his contemplation those round, bouncy bosoms he and Penny so admired, he was lost.

“What are you staring at?” she asked, her eyes finding his in the mirror.

“Nothing.” He tugged at the knees of his trousers, then recrossed his legs. “I was just thinking I sure miss my memories.”

A shadow crossed her face before she masked it with a wistful smile. “Is it so bad?” she asked, turning to face him. “Having to start over and make new ones?”

He thought about it for a moment then shook his head. “It’s the not knowing. Like I’ve lost something important and I don’t know how to get it back. Makes me feel . . . stupid, I suppose.”

“Oh, Hank.” Her eyes clouded. “I’m so sorry.”

Regretting that he’d upset her, he pasted on a smile. “I’m alive. And I still have you and Penny and Charlie to help me make new memories. I’m a lucky man.”

And he was. Looking at his beautiful wife, he had no doubt of that. But still it bothered him, that last niggling doubt that something more was missing than just a few memories, and things were not exactly as they should be. It was like looking into a flawed mirror and getting back a distorted reflection of himself. He didn’t like distortions. They were almost as bad as lies.

 

 

THEY WERE AN HOUR OUT OF VAL ROSA WHEN THE FIRST flake fell. And by the time they rounded Blue Mesa, there was enough accumulation that they had to stop and bolt on the sled runners. After switching horses twice with the outriders to relieve the flagging wagon teams, they rode under the arched gate ahead of a howling wind that sent snowflakes into such a swirling frenzy, visibility was reduced to mere feet. They covered the last half-mile at a crawl, nearly blind in a world gone eerily white, and finally reached the house ten hours after leaving Val Rosa.

The Wilkins brothers thought it a grand adventure, Jessica was pale with exhaustion, and Molly near ill from worry. The children slept through most of it.

The snowstorm lasted three days, and when they awakened to clear skies on the fourth morning, the landscape had been redrawn into a rolling white vista that sparkled in the sun. “Oooh,” Penny breathed, pressing her face to the frosty window by the grand fireplace. “It looks like sugar. Or fairy dust.”

“Hellfire,” Ben seconded, earning a look from Dougal that sent him scurrying from the room.

Muttering something in a language Molly didn’t know, Dougal hiked his jacket to toast his backside at the roaring fire. “And I gave up Scotland for this?”

He may have given up Scotland, Molly noted from her place on the couch, but not his kilt, under which, in deference to his rheumatism, he now wore jaunty red unions and high-topped woolly boots. An eye-catching ensemble.

“Looks like we’re snowed in for a while,” Brady announced, entering from the porch with an armload of firewood. “Buck says there’s another storm on the way. Dougal, if you want roasted nuts,” he said, elbowing the Scotsman aside so he could drop the wood on the stone hearth, “there’s store-bought in the pantry. No need to cook your own.”

While Dougal and Brady traded barbs, Molly looked past Penny at the unbroken white landscape beyond the porch railing. Maybe by spring Fletcher would give up and call in his trackers. Maybe by spring this deception would be over and all would be forgiven and they would never have to leave.

The couch groaned as Hank eased down beside her, favoring his sore ribs. “Don’t suppose you play poker,” he asked with a hopeful grin.

“Sorry. But if you’re bored, stop by my room later”—she leaned toward him to whisper into his ear—“and I’ll teach you how to knit.”

When she drew back, she found him studying her in amused speculation.

Dusting his hands, Brady rose from the hearth. “Charlie,” he called toward the library end of the room, where the boy sat reading. “Get your coat. There’s something I want to show you.”

“Can I come?” Penny shouted.

“Not this time, imp.”

“Why not?”

Brady gently thumped her head. “Don’t be so nosy. It’s Christmas.”

Dejected, Penny watched them leave then crawled onto Hank’s lap. She thrashed around, making Hank flinch and groan, before finally settling down against his chest. “What’s an imp, Papa-Hank?” she asked, idly plucking at a few dark chest hairs showing at the vee of his shirt collar.

“A squirmy little kid with sharp knees and elbows who likes to sneak into people’s rooms when they’re sleeping. That tickles.”

“I’m not little. Aunt Molly, am I little?”

“Certainly not.”

“See, Papa-Hank? I’m not little.”

He reared back to study her. “You’re right,” he finally said. “You’re very big for your size. And heavy.”

“Maybe pretty soon I’ll be too big to sit on your lap.”

“One can only hope,” Hank muttered, deflecting a knee from his groin. “Hadn’t you better go see how the hot chocolate’s coming along?”

“Hot chocolate,” Penny shouted, bounding off Hank’s chest and charging toward the kitchen. “AuntJessicaismyhotchocolateready?”

Dougal grimaced and rubbed his ear. “That lass could wake the dead.”

“She does have a gift,” Hank allowed. He sent Molly a scolding look. “And some pretty disgusting habits you might want to work on.”

“Oh, dear. Not of a digestive nature, I hope.”

“Not yet.”

“Be grateful.”

After lunch, the brothers, Dougal, and Charlie left on the Christmas Tree Hunt, another all-male affair, which had Penny in a pout until Jessica herded her and Ben and Abigail into the kitchen, where they joined several of the younger ranch children to make Christmas treats—drop cookies, gingerbread men, cut-out cookies, taffy, and little cakes with sugar and butter frosting. Even with Iantha, the Garcias, and several other mothers on hand, it was chaos. Molly hadn’t had so much fun in years.

But Jessica didn’t seem to be enjoying herself, Molly noted. Her face was pale and a frown of worry—or pain—furrowed her brow.