Smoke River Bride (20 page)

He groaned. “I wish I could lie to you and say that’s not true, but I can’t. Yeah, I guess I have, um, withdrawn.”

He edged his chair close to hers and laid his hand on her arm. “Leah. Leah, I swear our marriage is important to me. It’s the most important thing in my life, you and Teddy.”

Leah laid down her fork, folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. “But it does not feel so to me.”

A pent-up breath exploded from his lungs. “I love you, dammit. I’ve loved you ever since you stepped off the train.”

Her mouth trembled. “Thad, six months
ago I believed that you cared for me. Now I see a man who sleeps apart from me and does not want to be close.”

“Oh, hell, Leah, you know I care about you.”

“Ah. Do I? It feels to me as if you do not. It is hard for me to say this, Thad, but there is something
you
need to know, as well.”

A cold hand reached in and pinched his vitals. “Yeah? What’s that?” His throat was so tight he could scarcely get the words out.

She twisted to look into his eyes. “I love you, Thad. I will always love you. And,” she continued, her voice still mild, almost detached, “there is something you need to know.”

She halted, drew in a long breath and went on. “I cannot go on this way. It is tearing me apart inside.”

Jumping jacks! He saw it clearly now; the wall he’d constructed to avoid pain was causing exactly what he feared. He was losing Leah.

Right then he knew the thing that had niggled at him all along: protecting himself from loving Leah all these weeks had come full circle. He’d hurt her. Hell, it had driven her away. Only now did he see the cost.

She reached up and smoothed her fingers over his whiskery cheek. “I know you did not mean to hurt me. But…”

“But I
have
hurt you.”

“Yes.”

“Dammit, Leah, I wouldn’t knowingly cause you pain, but—” He broke off and dragged his hands through his hair. “Oh, hell, I can’t believe what I’ve done.”

He shot to his feet and began pacing back and forth in front of her. Suddenly he stopped and bent over her. “I do love you, Leah. And…”

He hesitated so long she repeated the word. “And?”

“And I want to kiss you, but I’m not sure I have the right anymore.” He grasped her shoulders and drew her up to him. “Do I have the right?” he whispered.

She did not answer. Instead, she rested her hands on his chest, looked into his eyes for a long moment and lifted her face. With a groan, he caught her mouth with his.

She tasted of apples and salt, and her cheeks and her eyelids were wet with tears. A surge of hunger roared through him. It had been so long, so damn long. He couldn’t get enough of her.

He tightened his arms around her small, soft frame and held on like a drowning man. “Please,” he murmured. “Please, Leah, for God’s sake, stay with me.”

In answer she reached around his neck and pulled his face down to hers. “I brought a lemon cake from Uncle Charlie for our dessert.”

Then she pressed her mouth against Thad’s chin, his cheek, his closed eyelids, and finally, with a tiny moan, she reached his mouth. Thad lost himself in the feel of her skin, the scent of her hair, the welcoming softness of her lips, and then he heard the upstairs window slide up, followed by Teddy’s piping voice.

“Gosh, you gonna go on kissin’ all night?”

“Maybe,” Thud murmured against her mouth.

“Hurry up!” Teddy yelled. “I wanna tell you ’bout this fellow Hawkeye.”

The window whapped down, leaving Thad and Leah alone except for the crickets and the whispering maple leaves.

“Tomorrow,” Thad murmured when he could breathe steadily. “Tomorrow, come out to the wheat field with me.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Why?”

“I just want you with me when…when I have to plow it under. It’s important, Leah.”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said with a sigh. “I think it is time for me to confront my rival.”

She turned away. “Sit with me, Thad. We do not have to talk, but I think we should be close together.”

Thad lowered his frame to a chair and pulled her onto his lap. They sat quietly together on the porch until the sky turned pink and then flamed crimson and gold with the rising sun.

A
t noon the next day, Wash Halliday brought the plow horse, roped behind his gray stallion. He found Thad and Leah picnicking on sandwiches and lemonade in the shade of the two maple trees in front of the house, and he sent Thad a speculative look. He received only a silent smile.

“Guess I’ll mosey on back to the Double H,” Wash murmured. “Jeanne’s putting up strawberry jam and I said I’d—Oh, horse feathers, strawberry jam doesn’t matter a whit to you two.”

He tied the plow horse to one of the trees, reined his mount away and headed back down the road.

By midafternoon Teddy had gone fishing
with Harvey Poletti. Leah and Thad crunched across the dry pasture grass and leaned against the split rail fence around the wheat field. Leah wiped her perspiring hands on her white muslin apron, pushed back her sunbonnet and stared at the field.

The wheat stalks were completely dried up. What should have been tall golden spikes, drooping with heavy heads of grain, was instead three acres of parched, sun-scorched plants.

Beside her, Thad leaned one knee against the fence and put his head in his hands.

“I can’t save it,” he said, his voice thick. “Dammit, a man feels helpless faced with something like this, when there’s nothing he can do. He feels…broken.”

“You are not in charge of the rain, Thad. Or the sun, or the wind, or—”

“Yeah, I know, but I wanted this wheat. I wanted it a lot.”

Leah eyed him out of the corner of her eye. “I think,” she said with a slight hesitation, “that in your mind you have turned your wheat into a magic charm to ward off disaster.”

Thad jerked his head up. “What do you mean, a charm?”

“In China, people put their trust in good omens and lucky charms to ward off evil and bring prosperity.”

Thad snorted. “Or the reverse, I suppose. If it’s a bad omen, something like the northern lights or a shower of stars, it brings bad luck.”

“Exactly. The Chinese are very superstitious.”

Thad raised his eyebrows and looked away, across the stunted brown field. “Guess that’s what I did, all right. I wanted a magic charm.” His voice sounded hoarse. He cleared his throat.

“That is very human,” Leah said quietly. “But it is not rational. You are thinking like a superstitious Chinese man would. And you are not a Chinese man.”

Thad grunted. “I can’t stand to look at it any longer. It’s time to plow it under.”

Leah said nothing. Instead, she stared hard at the brittle wheat stalks nearest the fence. All at once she hiked her denim work skirt up to her knees, set one foot on the bottom fence rail and grabbed on to the top. In the next instant she swung her leg up and over and jumped down on the other side.

Thad watched in disbelief. “What the hell
are you doing? You trying to break your neck?”

“I am trying to break an evil spell,” she retorted. She waded into the field. The stalks were so dry they clicked softly against her skirt.

Thad shook his head. Leah was always surprising when he least expected it, as if she knew something he didn’t. Her uncanny insight had always puzzled him.

She leaned over a bent stalk, wrapped her fingers around the dried-up head and stripped off a handful of brown kernels. She did the same thing to the next stalk, and the next, collecting the bits of refuse in her loopedup apron.

Then she climbed the fence again, onehanded; the other hand grasped the collection of kernels. Once on the ground, she marched up to him with a triumphant grin.

“You are not a broken man, Thad. Just look!” She unfolded her apron. “Seeds! Wheat seeds! For next year’s crop.”

Dumbfounded, he sifted a handful of the dry bits through his fingers. Leah grabbed his hand and pointed to the kernels in his palm.

“They are not dead, Thad. They are dried
out, but they are only sleeping.” She lifted dancing eyes to his. “It is a good omen.”

He caught her about the waist, spun her around and around until she was dizzy, but she still managed to hold on to her apronful of sun-scorched wheat seeds.

“Leah. My darling Leah, I feel like I’ve aged twenty years this summer.”

Her pleased whoop of laughter made him grin. He set her down practically on his boot tops, wrapped his arms around her and untied her sunbonnet. Then he buried his face in her hair. “Hell’s bells,” he whispered. “You smell like lemons.”

Leah reached one arm around his neck, and he brought his lips near her ear. “Leah, I will regret hurting you for the rest of my life.”

A shocking notion poked into her brain. “You could make it up to me… .” She made her voice as silky as she could. “Starting tonight.”

His eyes widened momentarily and then darkened. “Why not now?” he murmured.

“It’s Saturday, Thad. My Ladies’ Knitting Circle meets in town this afternoon.”

“Damn the meeting. You always come home from those damn things wrapped tighter than new barbed wire.”

“Today I will not. I promise.” She kissed him until they were both out of breath, then turned toward the house.

The air in Verena Forester’s small upstairs apartment was hotter and more oppressive than it was outside. To Leah’s relief, a large pitcher of cool lemonade sat on the refreshment table, along with a plate of what must be Uncle Charlie’s cookies, with coconut flakes sprinkled on top.

Coconut?
Where would Uncle Charlie get coconut? Surely not from Carl Ness’s mercantile. Perhaps Uncle had sent away for it.

“It is too hot to knit,” Verena announced as she filled glasses with lemonade. Instead, the assembled ladies nibbled on cookies, sipped their lemonade and talked. Gossiped, really, Leah decided after listening for ten minutes. But at least the talk wasn’t about
her
.

But then Thad’s name came up, and Leah snapped to attention.

“Has to plow it under, I hear,” someone remarked in a subdued voice.

“Oh, what a shame.” This from Jeanne Halliday.
“C’est terrible.”

“That dratted man. Always a dreamer,” Verena sniffed. “His head’s been in the clouds
ever since—” She broke off and rose to replenish the cookie plate.

“Why, it’s enough to break a man’s spirit,” Darla Weatherby said in an acid tone. “My Henry would never risk growing wheat, of all things.”

Leah swallowed a gulp of lemonade and tried to focus on something other than the remarks swirling around her. Verena’s wallpaper, for example. Tiny pink roses on a sky-blue background. How oddly feminine for such a…well, soldierlike woman.

Had Thad really wanted Verena?

The answer came like a bolt of lightning.
Thad had never wanted Verena!

Leah wanted to laugh with relief. It was Hattie who had liked Verena, not Thad.

Not Thad
.

Leah’s attention shifted to the sound of young Noralee Ness’s shoes swinging back and forth against her wooden chair rung.

“My father says Mr. MacAllister is a renegade.” The girl looked up at Verena. “What’s a renegade?”

“Someone who purposely does something unusual, dear,” Verena instructed. “Something different.”

“Like planting wheat,” Lucy Nichols murmured,
straightening her ruffled yellow muslin for the fourth time.

Darla Weatherby leaned forward. “Like marrying a—” Ellie Johnson jabbed her elbow into the young woman’s rib cage and she sucked in her breath.

“A renegade is a rebel,” Verena finished.

With a quiet groan, Leah went back to studying Verena’s wallpaper. The longer she stared at it, the more she understood the stiffnecked dressmaker. Her outer armor might be hard and prickly, but the woman had a soft underbelly.

Then Verena said something that made Leah choke on her lemonade.

“I feel sorry for Thad MacAllister. It cuts a man down to size to be proved wrong.”

Leah stifled an impulse to leap to her feet and scream at the woman. But inside her head, she heard her mother’s voice.
Wake not the sleeping tiger
.

Her mother had been wise. Leah could fight this battle with a whisper.

“You are mistaken,” she stated, her voice quiet. “All of you. Thad has not been proved wrong, and even if he were, his size is not relevant.”

“What’s ‘relevant’ mean?” Noralee whispered to Verena.

“Hush, girl.”

Leah dug in her skirt pocket. “What is relevant is Thad’s wheat field. It is true the sun has burned it almost black. But look.”

She held out a scant palmful of wheat kernels. “For next year’s crop. The seeds are undamaged; we will simply strip the heads and gather the—”

“How do you know this?” Verena’s eyes blazed. “What could you possibly know about wheat farming?”

A pregnant silence descended. Except for the clink of lemonade glasses and Verena’s agitated breathing, there wasn’t a sound in the room.

“I know this,” Leah said calmly, “because I have walked through wheat fields before. We grow wheat in China, too.”

She folded her hands in her lap. “Now, Noralee, to answer your question, ‘relevant’ means ‘related.’ Pertinent. Which—” she glanced around the circle “—many of our remarks this afternoon have not been.”

No one had anything more to say after that, and the gathering broke up early. In awkward silence the ladies replaced their lemonade
glasses on the table, thanked Verena and departed.

Ellie caught up with Leah at the bottom of the staircase and squeezed her arm. Jeanne appeared on her other side and hugged her, hard.

“Thank you both,” Leah choked out. Her throat was so tight she could not speak another word.

At dusk Teddy came home with a string of brook trout for supper, then scooted back up to his loft for more of Hawkeye.

Thad tried his damnedest to keep his eyes off Leah, who seemed to be having trouble swallowing.

“More coffee?” he offered.

“N-no, thank you. Any more coffee and I won’t sleep at all tonight.”

He chuckled. “Coffee or no coffee, what makes you think you’re going to get any sleep, anyway?”

Her cheeks turned strawberry colored. Amazing. Married almost a year and he could still make her blush. Somehow that made him real happy inside.

He studied every little thing about her—the way her black hair fell forward across her
cheek when she bent over the oven; the small pink shell of her ear and the pale skin just behind it where he wanted to put his mouth. The throb of her pulse in the vein that ran down her neck.

As he watched, her heartbeat, visible under her light shirtwaist, began to thump faster. Maybe because she knew he was watching her.

Did she want him? He knew she loved him, but a woman could feel that way and not want a man’s body.

Did
she want him?

It was agony not knowing. He rose, gathered up the supper plates and mugs, and plunked them in the sink. Working the pump hard, he managed to draw a scant half kettle of water, which he set on the stove to heat.

She hadn’t moved from her chair, but he could feel her eyes on him. Heavens above, this was like their wedding night, when he had been so nervous he hadn’t been able to touch her.

The coffeepot beckoned, but he’d put his empty mug in the sink. He grabbed it, anyway, and poured it full. Figured he wouldn’t sleep much tonight, either.

“Leah?”

She turned her head toward him. “Leah,” he said again, his voice unsteady. He wanted to touch her. Wanted to feel her softness, her warmth. Her strength.

She stood up, untied her apron and walked toward him. His breathing stopped, started, stopped again. She reached around him to hang the apron on the hook over the wood box, and he caught the scent of her hair. Lemon and something musky.

He closed his eyes. Then, with a low groan, he pulled her close enough to feel her breasts press against his chest. She gave a little cry and buried her nose in his shirt front.

“Leah, do you want—”

She lifted her head. “You know that I do,” she whispered. How, Thad wondered, could this extraordinary woman be sensible and hardworking one minute, and playful and seductive the next?

The instant his lips met hers, he forgot the question, drugged by her scent. The feel of her body trembling against his made him hard. He lifted her into his arms, puffed out the single lamp and made his way down the hall to the bedroom.

He would always remember how crisp and
clean the bedsheets were, how cool they felt against his bare skin.

They made love all night, devoured slices of Uncle Charlie’s lemon cake in bed and then made love again. Thad knew he would never forget it.

At dawn, Thad woke to the sound of laughter. And voices. He sat up, then climbed out of bed to peek through the curtained window. He could see nothing but the blush of sunrise.

“What is it?” Leah said in a sleep-fuzzed voice.

“Dunno. Sounds like people.”

“People?” She jerked upright, pulling the sheet over her naked body. Thad, too, was naked, and in spite of herself, she giggled. They had slept,
when
they’d slept, skin to skin.

But people? At this hour?

She was dressed before Thad could button his jeans. On the porch she tripped over Teddy, still in his pajamas and popeyed with curiosity.

“What’re all those people doin’ in our pasture? We havin’ a picnic or somethin’?”

Thad banged through the front screen door. “How many people?”

“I dunno, Pa. They’re all ridin’ horses.”

“Horses! Well, let’s go and see, son.”

Thad and Leah tramped across the pasture, followed by Teddy, hastily dressed in jeans and his pajama top. When they came within sight of the wheat field, a shiver went down Thad’s back.

“Would you look at that,” he breathed.

Wash and Jeanne Halliday stood at the fence. Little Manette and her grandfather, Rooney Cloudman, were just dismounting. Next to them, Ike Bruhn came swaggering up to the gate, and—

Thad could scarcely believe his eyes. A trim little black buggy rolled up with Verena Forester, a crocheted lap robe spread across her knees, and Uncle Charlie in the driver’s seat!

Thad blinked, then blinked again.

“Heard you had some wheat that needed gleaning,” Wash called out. He gestured to the gathering behind him. “We brought bags for the seed. We plan to work straight through this field, strip it right down to the nubs.”