Wanton Angel (46 page)

But he was alive. Tears streamed down Bonnie’s face and she laughed with joy. Eli was alive! His scowl dissolved into a grin when he reached her, and he lifted her clear of the ground and brazenly kissed her, right there in front of a hundred cheering men. When he set her down again, he gave her a smart slap on the bottom, and that brought even more cheers.

Bonnie was indignant, and her face burned with embarrassment. She drew back one foot, kicked Eli McKutchen hard in the shin. The onlookers howled with laughter and Eli howled with pain.

“I thank the good Lord you’re not dead, Eli McKutchen,” Bonnie screamed, “for now I can kill you myself! Tie me up like a heifer about to be branded, will you?!” She started for him and he backed away from her, holding out both hands and grinning nervously.

“Now, Bonnie, calm down—”

“Calm down? I’ll calm down! As soon as I’ve torn out your gizzard, you execrable no-account!”

Eli shouted with laughter and, to the delight of his men, ran for his life.

Love seemed to be everywhere.

Genoa and Seth were spooning near the ice cream table, and Webb Hutcheson and his Susan were sitting in the grass, laughing and feeding each other from plates heaped with fried chicken and potato salad and sour dill pickles. Lizbeth was standing with her back to the whitewashed wall of the new schoolhouse, gazing up into Forbes’s face. He stood braced against the wall, his palms flush with the wood, Lizbeth willingly trapped between his arms.

And then there was Bonnie’s own father, making a public fool of himself by following a pleased Earline all over the picnic grounds. He brought her lemonade, he brought her ice cream, he even put his suitcoat on the grass so she wouldn’t spoil her new gingham dress when she sat down to watch the foot races.

It was disgusting.

The musicians began tuning their fiddles as twilight fell, talking and laughing beside the enormous wooden dancing platform. Bonnie hadn’t seen Eli since morning, when she’d chased him down Main Street in front of half the town. Leaning back against a birch tree, she sighed. He’d deserved that kick in the shin and every name she’d called him as well, she told herself.

The fiddlers began to play and Bonnie watched sadly as men and women joined in the first lively round of dancing, their laughter mingling with the music. Bonnie felt lonely enough to cry, though she was damned if she would. She’d shed enough tears over Eli McKutchen as it was. He simply wasn’t worth it.

Her throat went tight as the first song ended and the fiddlers began to play a waltz. Oh, yes, her heart argued, Eli was worth that much and more. And now he’d probably left her, boarded the afternoon train for parts unknown.

When a gentle hand took her elbow, she started and looked up to see Eli standing there beside her, grinning. He looked so obnoxiously handsome that Bonnie almost wanted to kick him again.

“Where have you been?” she whispered, as he propelled
her toward the dance floor. The moon was faintly visible in the darkening sky, and so were the first twinkling stars.

“Sleeping,” he answered. “It’s an exhausting job, being married to you.”

Bonnie looked up at Eli, with her heart in her eyes. “Are you thinking of resigning?”

He led her to the middle of the floor and they might have been alone there, with just the stars and the music and the clean evening breeze, for all the attention either of them paid to the people whirling around them.

Eli’s golden eyes glowed with warm laughter as he studied her face and the new lawn dress she’d bought that afternoon. She’d selected the delectable concoction for the express purpose of impressing her husband, should she ever see him again.

“I love you,” she said softly.

Eli acknowledged the words with a bow of his head and a sparkle in his eyes. He drew Bonnie into his arms as the strains of another waltz wafted toward the sky. “Does it still cost a dollar to dance with an Angel?”

Bonnie smiled up at him through a shimmering mist of pure joy. “For you,” she replied crisply, “it’s two dollars.”