The Reluctant Bride (29 page)

“This place is almost too good to be true,” she said. “How did you find it?”

“I was running away. I did a lot of that when I was a boy. That time I was so angry I decided I was never going back. I followed a stream and discovered this valley. After that, it was my refuge when things got too bad.”

She could imagine a boy, angry and humiliated, would need some place where he felt protected from the scorn and pity of his neighbors.

“Thinking about coming back here is just about all that kept me sane in prison. I talked about it so much, the boys decided to come with me.”

“How did you get started?”

“There was a small herd of wild cows here already. The boys and I combed the hills for mavericks, anything unbranded. We sold the old stuff and bought calves. I’ve put every cent I’ve made back into the herd. I’ll be poor for years to come. Now let’s stop talking business and sample that lunch you brought.”

“I thought cowboys only ate two meals a day.”

“Only when it’s too far to ride back to the cabin. Now stop teasing me. I’m hungry.”

They found a grassy knoll shaded by a grove of cottonwoods. Feeling stiff and a little sore, Tanzy was relieved to be off the horse.

While Russ hobbled the horses, she spread a quilt over the ground. She had made sandwiches of sliced pork and thick pieces of fresh bread and brought some dried apple slices for dessert. They drank from the clear waters of one of several streams that tumbled down the mountainside. They ate in silence. Then, much to her surprise, Russ lay back, put his hat over his face, and went to sleep.

At first she was inclined to take umbrage. She didn’t claim to be a great beauty or a scintillating conversationalist, but no man had ever gone to sleep on her before. Surely she wasn’t that boring. But even as she contemplated throwing a cup of water over him, her feelings reversed themselves. She wondered how long it had been since he’d felt comfortable enough to go to sleep in a woman’s presence. Okay, it wasn’t the greatest compliment in the world, but then they weren’t lovers. She wanted them to be friends, and she supposed this was as much a demonstration of friendship as anything.

She wished he hadn’t covered his face. That forced her to look at his body, which gave rise to a host of thoughts that had the power to destroy her comfort. Having grown up among men who were lean and sinewy, she couldn’t look at Russ without being continually reminded of the breadth of his shoulders, the power of his arms, the imposing size of his chest. But now that they were alone and she wasn’t required to return his gaze, she had leisure to explore the rest of his body.

That was when the afternoon grew considerably warmer.

She liked that he had a flat stomach without having a skinny waist. She liked that he had narrow hips without a flat bottom. But it was his muscled thighs, and the ample evidence of his masculinity nestled between them, that caught and held her attention. She’d never thought of herself as a carnal being so she didn’t understand why looking at Russ should make her uncomfortably hot, too edgy to be able to relax.

But even as she tried to identify the reasons for the feelings that had come over her, they continued to grow and change. Heat coursed slowly through her body, but its effect on her was anything but languid. She felt more restive by the minute. Though she’d never done anything like this before, she found herself trying to imagine what Russ would look like without his clothes.

The image in her mind nearly caused her to lose control. Much to her surprise, her breasts had become very sensitive. She felt as though her nipples were trying to push their way out of her dress. She looked down and was shocked to see they had hardened so much she could see their outlines. Even more shocking, the heat that had settled in her belly had caused the release of moisture between her legs. For the first time in her life her body was in the grip of sexual heat and she didn’t know what to do about it. She sat there paralyzed, unable to take her eyes off Russ, unable to erase the visions from her mind, unable to control her body’s reaction.

She might have sat there until Russ woke and discovered her blatant examination of him if two kingfishers hadn’t started an argument over a tiny fish. Their raucous squawks brought her out of her trance. Tanzy surged to her feet, determined to put some distance between herself and the source of this disquieting reaction.

She forced herself to identify the plants along the steam, bulrushes, cattails, willows, and box elder, in addition to the ever-present cottonwood. She searched for frogs, salamanders, even snakes to drive thoughts of Russ out of her mind. She searched the trees for birds and their nests, the sandy shore for the footprints of muskrats or deer. But it wasn’t until she nearly stepped on a skunk that she shook off the mood that had held her in its grip.

“I never thought I’d be glad to meet a skunk,” she said with a shaky laugh. “You’ve done your duty, now go home to your children.”

She returned to her picnic. She tore up some blades of grass and sprinkled them on Russ. He didn’t move. Next she resorted to tiny clods of dirt. Still no reaction, so she searched for some small stones.

“If you want me to get up, all you have to do is ask.”

She jumped at the sound of his voice. Then blushed furiously. She wondered if he’d been awake the whole time! She told herself to relax. He couldn’t possibly know what she’d been thinking.

“That’s not half as much fun,” she said, trying to sound as normal as possible.

“Just like a woman. You never choose the easiest or most direct method. You always have to complicate things.”

“Sometimes the easiest and most direct methods are also the most boring,” she said, relieved to feel irritation rather than lust.

“Life is interesting enough without trying to make it more difficult.”

“That’s not a very adventurous attitude.”

He removed his hat and sat up. “I’ve had more than enough adventure for a lifetime. Boredom sounds good.”

“Well, I haven’t. Now get up and show me where to find the currants. I’ll never get enough for my pie if you sleep the afternoon away.”

“Everything is always some man’s fault, isn’t it?”

His bad mood surprised her. “What do you mean?”

“Feuds. Women would never do anything like that.”

“They don’t.”

“But they can cause more damage with their tongues than a man can with a rifle. And their victims are left alive to suffer for a lifetime.”

“Not all women are like that.”

“It’s all our fault that we don’t show women proper respect even though the woman makes a whore of herself, uses her beauty to destroy men, uses her physical weakness to tyrannize her family.”

“I don’t know what kind of dream you had, but if this is an example of your mood after one of them, I would strongly suggest you avoid naps.”

He appeared to struggle with himself for a moment. “It was a bad one,” he said finally. “Sorry I took it out on you.”

She started to say it didn’t matter, but it did. She didn’t like knowing that his past could still exercise such a hold over him. Neither did she like admitting there was a kernel of truth in what he said. Men weren’t perfect. Women weren’t perfect, either.

“Let’s get those berries,” he said. “If the boys find we went looking and didn’t bring any back, they’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

He collected the horses, helped her into the saddle.

“The berries grow mostly under the trees,” he said. “Bears like to eat them for storing up winter fat.”

“Will they get mad if we steal their food?”

“I think they can be persuaded to share. You’re awfully quiet,” Russ said after they’d ridden in silence for a while.

“I was thinking.”

“About what you’re going to do when you leave here?”

“I was wondering what kind of woman you’d ask to marry you. I’m not upset that you don’t want to marry me. I was just curious. Even with the isolation, I could imagine many women being eager to build a home here.”

“It’s not the isolation that bothers them. It’s me.
If
I was to get married, I’d want a woman who could look at me with her own eyes, see what I do, learn what I think and feel, make up her own mind about me.”

“I can do that.”

“You don’t want to marry me.”

“That’s not the point. If I can do it, so can other women. You’ve got to give them a chance to get to know you, to see the person I see.”

“I have.”

“I doubt it. You don’t go into town more often than necessary. You stay only as long as you must and speak to as few people as you can. You frown at everybody you meet and fight with Stocker. None of your men come to town, so silly stories about them can go unchecked.”

“I talk to just about everybody sooner of later.”

“I mean
really
talk. I wouldn’t know half of what I do about you if I hadn’t read the things you write.”

“It would just make them think I was weak-minded.”

“If they met your men, knew their stories, knew what you’d done for them and they for you, folks would change their minds.”

Russ jerked his horse to a stop and turned to face Tanzy. “That’s not how things work out here. You show any kind of weakness and people will be standing in line to take advantage of it. You back away from a fight just once and you’re forever branded a coward. You let somebody take one of your cows and your herd will be plundered before the month’s up. Nobody out here cares about what’s inside me.

“I’m not feuding with Stocker, just defending what I’ve got. There are no laws out here to protect you, no police to call when you need help. We fight when our property is threatened. We fight for our women, too. I’d consider it an honor to fight for a woman like you. So would the boys, but I can’t marry you because you don’t understand any of what I just said. Living out here would break your heart and your spirit. I could never let that happen to you. I like you too much.”

Tanzy was so surprised by his outburst—for Russ, that many words at once could only be called an outburst—she didn’t know what to say. She wanted to protest that people here weren’t very different from people everywhere else in the world, but she wasn’t sure she was right. She wanted to protest that people did care about character. She wanted to say she understood the need to fight to defend property and family. There hadn’t been any police in Kentucky either, but all that seemed unimportant just now.

Instead, she asked, “Why did you kiss me?”

Chapter Nineteen

“Because I wanted to.”

“Is that all?”

“Do I need any other reason?”

“You can’t go around kissing a woman without a reason unless you’re falling down drunk.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I know. So you’ve got to have other reasons.”

“Like what?”

“Like you like her a lot.”

“I do like you a lot.”

“That’s not enough. She has to be special to you. You’d have to spend a lot of time thinking about her, wanting to be with her.”

“I do.”

This conversation wasn’t going the way Tanzy had expected. She was supposed to make Russ believe he could trust women in general, not her specifically. “If you’re not careful, a woman will think the kiss means more than you’re offering.”

“How do you mean?”

“She’ll think she’s someone special, the
only
one who’s special to you.”

“It’s clear you’re not a man.”

Tanzy laughed. “I’m glad you noticed.”

It was Russ’s turn to laugh. “I mean you don’t understand how men think, why they do things.”

“Please explain, since I’ve never been around men and have no notion of the strange ideas that go through their heads,” she said, her exaggerated tone saying just the opposite.

“Men can kiss women just for fun,” Russ explained, ignoring her sarcasm.

“I’m talking about respectable women.”

“Me, too. They can kiss just because it’s a pleasant experience, because they had a nice time, because the moon was up or the supper was good.”

“Good Lord, you
are
a man.”

“I’m glad
you
noticed.”

“I mean you act just like the rest of them.”

“How did you think I was going to act?”

“I thought you were serious and responsible.”

“I am.”

“Not if you go around kissing me whenever the moon is up or supper is good.”

“I wouldn’t kiss any other woman like that.”

“Why not?”

“They might start getting those expectations you mentioned just a minute ago.”

“But I won’t.”

“You’ve already said you wouldn’t marry me no matter what. You practically swore it on a stack of Bibles.”

“So it’s safe to entertain yourself with me?”

“I wouldn’t put it like that.”

“How would you put it?”

“I’d say you’re a beautiful woman I like. I enjoy your company. I appreciate the fact that you haven’t believed everything people say about me. You’ve been kind enough to help me learn to read and write without making me feel stupid.”