The Gift-Wrapped Groom (19 page)

* * *

“Y
OU NEED
a dream hoop, Noel.”

“What are you talking about, Lucy?”

“You're jumpy. These last few days, I've begun to see dark circles forming under your eyes. As the Indians say, your dreams are turning dark like the winter. Unless you're going to tell me it's that new husband of yours keeping you up?”

Noel shook her head at the twinkle in Lucy's eyes and refocused her attention on putting the final touches on the high cheekbones of Lucy's image.

“Hmm. Didn't think so. You were fine the first week or so after your marriage to that hunk. The circles have only appeared over these last few days. Noel, is there something you maybe want to talk to me about?”

“No, Lucy.”

“Hmm. Well then, like my Indian grandmother used to say, got to be bad dreams. And for them you need a dream hoop.”

“What is this dream hoop?”

“A wreath, weaved tightly into a circle using cane and a feather from every bird in the valley. You hang it over your bed at night. Good dreams pass through the hole in the center, bad dreams get tangled up in the feathers.”

“You really believe in this stuff, Lucy?”

“Make a fresh one for myself every December. Stays over my bed the whole next year. Wake up every morning with a smile.”

“Are they hard to make?”

“Naw. I'll whip you up one tonight. Surefire cinch to fix up them dreams. If you're sure that's what's ailing you?”

“Jinglebells” rang out as the door to Noel's store rushed open. Doc Mallory came stomping in, perspiration soaking through his faded, red-flannel, long john top.

“Gall-dang, if we ain't having a heat wave today. Must be thirty-five degrees out there.”

Noel shook her head. “Some heat wave.”

Lucy's small frown turned into a grin. “You complainin', Doc? Thought you'd be appreciating some better weather, seeing as how your committee is the one in charge of stringing the lights around Midwater.”

“All in what a body's used to, I suppose. Now, Noel's man been working without a shirt all week, even when it was hovering around zero.”

“Nicholas is working with you? But I thought Tucker—”

“Oh, Tucker's got him sawing and hammering and gluing, all right, Noel. But that don't mean when Tucker sits in his unit talking to the sheriff about business stuff that I can't grab Baranov for a while.”

“There's been sheriff stuff?”

Doc Mallory suddenly put too much concentration on removing his soiled leather gloves, not answering for a moment. Then his voice dropped like a sad note. “A bunch of the Pattersons' cows are losing their calves. I was over at their place a few hours this morning. They've lost six premature ones so far.”

Noel sat forward with an uneasy start. “But you said the state lab determined that the Duncans' cattle didn't have brucellosis.”

“Not sure, but these new fancy computers could've made a mistake. I sent some more blood samples in for duplicate testing. Tucker had a car run them in for me.”

“Doc, you don't really think—”

“No, Noel, I don't really think it's brucellosis, more because of what these old eyes and hands tell me than any of those fancy tests. But I'm stumped at what else could be a causin' it.”

“What about the water?” Lucy asked.

“I've taken some samples of the well water in both spots. Had Tucker send it off to be tested, too, just in case. I also told Tucker that until we know everything there is to know, the people in this here valley better start drinking bottled water. Ginny and Seth have called in for a truck to bring in a big supply.”

“Hell, that means we better start melting snow for the livestock to drink,” Lucy said, a frown creasing her forehead as she sprang from her chair. “Noel, I really should get on over to the ranch to help—”

“Lucy, gal, it's okay. Your folks already know and they're attending to business. Plus, all your neighbors are pitching in. So you just sit down there and let Noel finish you.”

“Yes, Lucy. Please. I just need another few minutes.”

Lucy sat, albeit a bit reluctantly.

“I'll send Noel's man out to help on your spread, too, just as soon as we finish up with these lights.”

“Naw. I don't want to—”

“He's already volunteered, insisted, actually, in that polite way of his, just as neighborly as you please. You'd be a fool to turn him down. He's strong as a grizzly and sits a horse as good as the best of them cowboys riding our range. Hell, most times, I forget he ain't a real Montana man.”

“Well, then, on those recommendations, guess I can't afford to turn him down. Thanks, Doc.”

“He'll be the one you'll be thanking when you see how much he can accomplish. Which reminds me of the real reason I came in here in the first place.”

“Which is?” Noel asked, trying not to be too affected by all this praise for her husband.

“We've run out of lights. Don't understand how we can be using the same lights every year, and every year we add to them and still the next year we find ourselves short. Noel, can you bring yourself to donating any more?”

“Of course, Doc. I ordered extra this year in preparation. I'm just about finished with Lucy here. Give me a minute or two for the final touches and I'll go into the back room and get them.”

“I'll send your hubby by to collect them after he and I grab a cool one.”

Noel looked up from her work. “A cool one?”

“Not at the Heel, Noel. The Mercantile. Baranov ain't no more a day drinker than I am. Although I do think I'm getting him addicted to Coca Cola. He can knock three of those back without even breathin' in between.”

* * *

N
ICHOLAS HAD JUST
started on his third ice-cold Coke, when he turned to the plump, fiftyish man with the prematurely gray hair and weather-beaten face sitting on the stool next to him. He waited until an unusually quiet Ginny Carson moved out of hearing distance.

“I notice that this news of the Patterson livestock puts a scared look on village faces,” he said.

Doc Mallory's white eyebrows rose. “Scared? You see this cut on my wrist, son? Got it an hour ago and it didn't bleed a drop. Way I figure it, my old heart hasn't really started going again since I was out on the Patterson spread this morning.”

Nicholas smiled at the exaggeration. These Montana stories could be as colorful as Russian ones. But the smile did not stay long on his face. “Ginny tells me the Pattersons are on the other side of the valley from the Duncans.”

Doc nodded as he took a sip of his Coke.

Nicholas leaned slightly closer. “Do you not find it strange that this affliction is found in animals that use water supplies on the opposite ends of the valley?”

“Not strange, Baranov. Plum frightening. It makes me think that something has gotten into the underground water supply and will soon be showing up everywhere. Hell, I hate to contemplate what we find ourselves up against. If all the water supply is tainted...”

“Yes?”

Doc's frown increased with his sigh. “That will do it for the valley, no two ways about it.”

“The ranchers would have to sell out?”

“Without accessible water for their livestock, they'd have no choice.”

“These two ranches affected—the Duncans and the Pattersons—they have not yet sold out to CMC?”

“Nope. Couple of the staunchest holdouts we've had. Particularly the Duncans. Swore they'd never give in. Now...”

Doc's voice faded away into a deep frown. Nicholas finished the last of his Coke thoughtfully, too.

“This other ranching family, the Pattersons, they are the family of Cade Patterson?”

“Yep.”

“I would ask something else, Doc Mallory, something that does not relate to these problems. If you do not mind.”

“Shoot, son.”

“What does it means when an American man says he cannot fulfill the responsibilities of a husband?”

“Well, that sort of depends on the man. You talkin' about anybody in particular?”

“Cade Patterson.”

Doc leaned back on his stool, tucking his thumbs into the belt of his padded middle, chewing on his bottom lip.

“A Montana man, even when he's still a boy, knows that the stock get fed and the chores get done before he cleans himself up for supper. I don't care where Cade was born, he ain't no Montana man. So when it came to committing himself to taking care of a woman's needs, well, he just wasn't man enough to do it.”

“A woman's needs?”

“Physical loving is all well and good, but a woman needs a man she can count on to be beside her when she faces the hard times on this hard land. A real man takes care of his woman, especially during the hard times.”

“The hard times. The possible problem with the water. Where...everything could be lost.”

“Yep. I'd say these are them hard times all right.”

Nicholas stared at the empty can of Coke in his hand, running his thumb across the condensation on its sides, silent for a long moment. He felt Doc Mallory's eyes.

“Can't imagine husband requirements being all that different in the country you come from. Are they, Baranov?”

Nicholas crushed the can within his palm, until it was as thin as paper. “No, Doc Mallory. In the country I come from, they are no different.”

* * *

N
OEL WALKED
into her living room, flipped on the switch to the overhead light and groaned.

“Oh, great. The electricity's off. The one night I get home early enough to make a hot dinner and now there's no power to cook it with. Oh, well, at least it's still in the thirties, Mistletoe. If I can get a fire going, we won't freeze.”

Noel shut the door, trying to keep some of the lingering heat inside the house. She walked over to the stone fireplace, bent down and opened the heavy glass door of the wood-stove insert, preparing to build a fire. She was surprised to find the kindling for one already laid.

Nicholas.

A sigh full of longing and regret emptied from her lungs. She had hardly seen him these last couple of days. Since the evening he had told her of his dead fiancée, she had purposely avoided him. But at night he appeared to her in dreams that always ended when the beautiful Dotnara came to waltz him away.

“I need Lucy's dream hoop,” she told Mistletoe. “I need to get that man out of my head.”

Yet it wasn't her head that told her when the house emptied of his presence and then filled again when he entered. He made no sound as he left on those early-morning runs in the snow. But something she couldn't explain—a change or disturbance in the magnetic forces of this house—told her when he wasn't a part of it. It was that same sense that assured her the moment she stepped inside tonight that he was not here.

Her home was empty. Very, very empty. Like a part of her now felt. A part she never knew existed before Nicholas Baranov.

She shivered in the dark house that was getting colder by the second. She had better get this fire started.

She reached for a match, lit the kindling and watched as it quickly caught. The light from the fire and its licks of immediate heat felt good. She watched the burning for a few moments. The amber heart of the larch snapped and crackled, giving off a luscious heat. Nothing warmed better than burning larch.

Mistletoe nudged her knee. She patted his head and raised herself. “I've got candles in the hall closet. But I'm going to need a flashlight to find them. The one in the truck has fresh batteries. Let's go get it.”

Outside, a faint silent twilight persisted, like that thick purple glow she had noticed on that night ten days before when she had answered her grandfather's summons.

A week and a half? Was that all it had been? It seemed impossible to think that she had only known this man she thought about all day, and tossed and turned over all night, such a short time.

Noel made her way to the truck to fetch the flashlight as Mistletoe barked and tore out across the pond after a large, beautiful buck that he hadn't a prayer of catching and wouldn't have known what to do with if he did.

She shook her head in amusement as she turned away from her dog. Then, something caught the corner of her eye. She raised her head and suddenly found herself looking at the object of all her recent musings.

He was riding toward her on the wings of that strange purple twilight, a powerful centaur, the man-half of enormous bare shoulders and flying black hair, the horse-half a row of chest muscles rippling with steam, his hooves pounding the last of the powdery snow.

Noel stood stock-still and stared, mesmerized by the mythical imagery filling her senses. Her breath labored through her lungs as her heart hammered against her rib cage. He was just so much man, so much magnificent man. She could not tear her eyes away.

Until she heard the ominous crack of the ice over the pond.

Noel instantly swung toward the pond, her heart squeezing through her ribs. The beautiful buck leapt across the far bank with effortless ease and speed. Noel's eyes searched frantically for the little white dog that had been so happily scooting across the pond's surface on the buck's heels only a second before.

But the once-smooth ice surface of the pond was now only a dark zigzag of ugly cracks, and the little white dog was gone.

The cry wrenched from out of her soul. “Mistletoe!”

Suddenly, Nicholas dismounted and was bounding onto the pond in great leaps, jumping into the freezing icy water. Disappearing instantly beneath its surface.

Noel froze, her breath, her body, her brain. For years after her parents' deaths, she had had nightmares of seeing them skating on the thin ice to the waltz her father had loved so much, hearing the awful crack, watching them disappear into the icy waters beneath, just as she had this very second watched Nicholas disappear.