A Marriage of the Heart (5 page)

R
OSE SIGHED AS SHE LOOPED THE REINS OF THE HORSE
over the post outside the woodworking shop and glanced at the car parked there. The vehicle shone with discreet elegance in the filtered sunlight of the row of brightly colored oak trees that lined the Lantzes’ lane. She hesitated, thinking maybe a wealthy client might be occupying Luke’s time, but she had promised to stop.

She entered the side door, breathing in the pungent smells of many woods—butternut, sassafras, black walnut. The accompanying sounds of hammers and shavers echoed with familiar comfort as she turned to the office. The door to the small room was half closed, and she lifted her hand to knock when a burst of pleased feminine laughter made her jump.

“Oh, Mr. Lantz—tell me another, please. You’ve got a wonderful sense of humor.”

“Call me Luke.”

Call him Luke?
Rose felt an unfamiliar pang in her chest as she stared at the wooden door.

“Go on in, Rosie,” Joshua bellowed as he crossed behind her carrying a brace of two-by-fours. “He’s been in there forever.”

Forever?
Rose frowned and eased the door open.

A blond-haired woman in faded blue jeans, fancy boots, and a becoming pink sweater sat on the edge of Luke’s desk. Her betrothed had his hat off and leaned back in his chair. The deep smile on his face revealed a dimple in his cheek that Rose had forgotten even existed.

He turned easily in the chair while the woman looked up.
“Rose,
hiya
. I forgot you were coming. I don’t know where the time’s gone.”

He made to rise, and Rose waved him back down with a quick swipe of her hand. Feelings of irritation and jealousy mingled in her mind like the dust motes in the shaft of sunlight from the small window.

“Um . . . I’ll just see you later since you’re busy.”

But the other woman slid down from the desk, a pile of neatly organized receipts falling after her. “Oh, I’m so silly!”

The woman bent her slender form to pick at the papers, and somehow Luke bent forward at the same time so that they knocked heads, his black hair touching the blond strands—and causing a red haze to temporarily mar Rose’s vision.

“Do you need some help?” she heard herself ask sweetly. But something in her tone must have conveyed itself to Luke, because he made haste to get up.

“Uh, Rose—don’t go. Mrs. Matthews and I . . .”

“Barbara,” the woman interjected with a purr. “Don’t forget.”

“Right. Barbara and I are finished, really. I was just tallying her bill and telling her some of the odd things people want carved in wood sometimes. Uh . . . Barbara, this is my betrothed, Rose Bender.”

Rose forced herself to shake the hand the other woman extended and resisted the urge to squeeze like she was working a hard milking cow. She was amazed at her own temper. Luke had done nothing but laugh, and after all, he had to be polite to the customers. She felt herself begin to calm down and silently prayed for forgiveness for the way she was feeling.

She cast her eyes quickly over the receipt Luke held and calculated the total with an easy computation in her head. She murmured the figure to him.

“How’d you do that so fast?” Luke smiled his thanks, but Mrs. Matthews was giggling.

“Oh, a wedding. I love weddings. You’ve got to let me congratulate you both!” She stretched to brush the air near Rose’s cheek with a kiss, then wound her slender arms up around Luke’s neck.

Not as long as I have breath in my body
, Rose thought as she took a step forward and gave a soft cry. She let herself fall with dead weight against the other woman, knocking her clean from Luke to land sideways on the desk, with Rose grimly atop her. Silently asking forgiveness for the second time in as many minutes, she took her time letting Luke help her up and couldn’t resist a well-placed elbow in the design of the pink sweater.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, hauling Mrs. Matthews upright. “I must have tripped. You are all right,
ya
?”

The
Englisch
woman looked faintly bewildered, as though she’d been sidelined by some strange forest creature. She grabbed up her purse and nodded to both of them.

“I’ll call you when we have your order complete, Barbara,” Luke said.

Rose thought she detected the slightest hint of humor in his voice—but she couldn’t be sure. In truth, she was appalled at her reaction and hoped that it wouldn’t cost the Lantz family a customer. But Barbara nodded vaguely and headed out the door. When she’d gone, Rose raised guilty eyes to Luke, but he just looked at her with a calm gaze.

“Got to get that board fixed,” he commented.

“Board?”

“The one you tripped over. Might be bad for future customers.” Speechless, Rose could only nod in agreement.

Chapter Seven

R
OSE HADN’T SEEN THE “THIEF” AGAIN SINCE THEIR
encounter the night of the storm, but for the third night in a row she set a trap for him. She snuggled beneath the quilt she’d dragged out onto a chair on the back porch and listened to the forlorn sound of occasional raindrops hitting the tightly sealed tinfoil on two apple pies on the rail.

She was a fool to long after another meeting with Luke in disguise.

She thought back again to the image of him laughing with the woman in the office that afternoon and tried to sort out her feelings. She’d watched Luke at singings and youth outings all through the years, and never had she thought to be jealous of his interactions with other girls. Not that he wasn’t attractive and well-spoken; he was simply too faithful a friend and follower to ever be doubted. But now . . . now, he was something else, something more. She was too curious by nature to resist another
taste of his disguise. And she had to admit that as the thief he had stirred her senses in a new way. She sighed and wondered what kind of person she was to be attracted to the unknown in someone.

She distracted herself by thinking about the apple pies she’d made. She was becoming adept at the task and yielding a deft hand to the formation of the latticework top crusts. She’d kept her brothers from asking for their fair share by baking while they were in the fields and had apparently satisfied her
mamm
’s curiosity with her explanation that she was trying to be a better cook. She didn’t like the deception, but she rationalized that her doings were certainly harmless enough. She was going to marry Luke, after all, so she might as well give him another opportunity to tell her the truth.

She was half asleep, somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness, when she heard the sound of foil rattling. She popped open her eyes and clicked on her flashlight. The pies were gone, and someone was moving across the yard.

“Hey!” she hissed, arcing the light into the yard. The beam caught against a pair of blue-jean clad legs, and she dropped the quilt and stood. “Wait!” she called. “Please.”

“Put down the light and I’ll wait.”

She heard the hoarse yet familiar voice, and her hands grew damp with perspiration as she snapped off the light and put it where she had been sitting. She crept to the porch rail and then down into the yard.

“They’re apple—the pies, I mean.” She toyed with her fingers.

“They’ll be appreciated.”

“
Ach
. . . do you . . . take for your family? Because we have plenty to give . . . I mean . . .”

“What do you want?” His question was harsh but penetrating.

“I don’t—know what you mean.” Rose’s heart began to pound, wondering if he’d figured out that she recognized him.

“Yes, you do. A good Amish girl chasing after an
Englisch
thief. Why? What do you want?”

The rain seemed to be melting her sensibilities, her defenses, the very excuses she’d sustained herself on the past months when she thought of a lifetime with Luke. Suddenly he’d become the center of something she desired with all her heart.

“I want you,” she said baldly.

There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the falling of the rain.

“Me?” He laughed. “What do you know about me?”

“I want your way of being, your freedom . . . .”
Who you are
right now .
. .

“If it’s your engagement that you want out of, why not tell your—best friend?”

“I don’t want out of it,” she cried, amazed at his perception. But then, he’d known her forever . . .

“Tell him. Tell him you’re so hungry to be free that you’d stand in the dark and the rain and long for a stranger’s touch—his kiss.”

She almost spun away from the deep voice, the mockery, and the powerful allure.
His kiss
.

She heard the shift of the foil, the damp footsteps, and then he swooped so close that she could feel his breath against her cheek, the press of the pie pans against her stomach. He smelled of the forest and something else that was tantalizingly familiar. But then his mouth was on hers, once, twice, two angry kisses, and then a
yielding, a softening, and she was kissing him back with all of the withheld passion in her young soul. He broke away with a rasp in his breath, and Rose stood shivering, gasping for breath as the rain increased in tenor.

“Go inside,” he ordered, moving away.

She couldn’t obey, couldn’t think, as she raised a shaking hand to her lips.

“Don’t leave,” she gasped.

She heard him inhale. “I must.”

And then he was gone, running, the rain making an uneven and fading tattoo on the foil as she listened to some part of her dreams move far and away.

Chapter Eight

L
UKE STARED OUT AT THE GRAY MORNING THROUGH THE
kitchen window and wondered if the sun would break through. Rose had promised to come and help with the cider making. He took a deep swallow of the bitter coffee his brother had brewed and tried to suppress his mixed feelings about kissing Rose the night before. To be sure, he could still imagine his mouth stinging with the contact, but he’d been furious too. He’d risked a second encounter with her partially because he’d wondered how far her interest extended to some strange
Englischer
. He also wanted to see her again as he had the night of the storm, so striking in her beauty and so much as one with the wild darkness. He wondered idly whether she’d understand if he tried to explain . . .

Joshua entered through the back kitchen door. “Saw Abram Bender out this morning.”

Luke blinked as he sipped his coffee and turned to his
bruder
. “Mending fence?”

Joshua laughed.
“Ya.”

It was a gentle joke among the Lantz and Bender families how much time Abram spent mending fence. It was almost as if the man could sense a weakening in the stone or wire even before the cows could.

Luke moved from the sink basin to give his brother room to wash.

“Nervous about becoming a married man, Luke?” There was enough curiosity in Josh’s voice for Luke to know he wasn’t just joking.

“Maybe,” he admitted, thinking of Rose kissing a supposed stranger.

“Wish
Mamm
could be here to see it?”

Luke tightened his grip on his cup. “Surely.”

Joshua toweled his arms, whistling through his teeth for a moment. “Well, you still going to that
Englisch
homeless shelter to help out like
Mamm
did?”

“
Nee
. . . I haven’t had the time of late.”

Joshua nodded. “Just as well. You’ve enough of your own to care for without chasing after the
Englisch
, no matter how fitting the cause.”

“Wouldn’t
Mamm
say that helping another is always worth the doing?” Luke’s voice was level.

Joshua clapped him on the shoulder. “
Ya
, she would. But not everybody’s like she was.”

“And that’s the truth to be heard,” Luke muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”