A Reluctant Bride (30 page)

He lifted his head and looked at her. “How can I not care?”

She licked her suddenly dry lips. “I know he hit you.”

He looked away, his jaw tensing.

She clutched her knees, squeezing them through the skirt of her dress. “He is a terrible person,” she said, years of resentment rising to the surface. “Cruel, selfish . . .” Anger tightened inside of her as she spoke. “Whatever he did to get put in the
bann
, I'm sure he deserved it.”

Aden gazed at her, his complexion paling, making his freckles stand out. “Oh, Sadie,” he whispered. “How he must have hurt you.”

The compassion in his voice touched the knot of anger in her chest, threatening to unravel it. She steeled herself against it.

Aden shifted on the couch, facing her. He was so close, near enough for her to touch his hand, to wrap her fingers around his and never let go as she started to drown in the past. Her throat tightened. She should be furious with him right now. For years she had clung to her grudge against him, blaming him for what had happened in the cornfield almost as much as she blamed Sol. Yet as he looked at her, and she saw her pain reflected in his eyes, she felt that blame slipping away. “He never told you what happened?” she asked, barely able to say the question out loud.

“
Nee
.” He glanced at his lap. “I never asked.” He looked at her again. “Now I know I should have.”

“Would it have changed anything?”

He pressed his lips together and shook his head.

She turned from him, fighting a losing battle within herself. She'd vowed not to tell her secret, and she had kept that promise.
If Aden wanted to know, he should have asked Sol.

But Aden didn't pry. Didn't push. She knew it wasn't from lack of interest that he kept quiet. It was out of respect. The secret suddenly felt like a boulder sitting on her chest, stifling her until she could barely draw breath.

“He kissed me,” she whispered. “And I let him.” Shame
consumed her, making her face hot and every nerve ending rigid. She couldn't look at Aden, but she felt him tense, as if he were a wire strung tight enough to snap. “He said if I let him kiss me he would let me
geh
.”

“Did he?”

She shook her head. “He wanted more. So . . . I kicked him. Where it hurt the most.” When Aden didn't respond, she finally looked at him.

His eyebrows were lifted, his eyes wide. “You kicked him?”

“
Ya
.”

“That's why he was walking funny when he came home.”

Knowing that didn't give her any satisfaction. Neither did the ghost of a smile teasing Aden's lips.

“He got what he deserved,” Aden said. “I'm glad you defended yourself.”

“I shouldn't have had to. You shouldn't have—”

“Run.” His voice cracked on the word, all traces of humor gone. “I know. And I've lived with being a coward every day since.”

She stood and looked down at him, the mixed emotions he'd displayed earlier changing into something else. Shame, possibly even deeper than her own. But she refused to pity him, not when her admission opened a raw wound. She was the one who was wronged, not him. “Is that why you married me? To put
yer
guilt to rest?”

Aden looked up at her. Never had she seen such sorrow in a person's eyes. “Sadie . . . I married you because I wanted to.”

Her breath caught, his answer stunning her.

He disconnected their gazes and stood. “
Daed
wants Sol's horse and buggy, but I'm not turning them over. Sol still might come back for them.”

“But—”

“Please, Sadie, trust me on this. I know the rules of the
bann
as well as you do. But if Sol returns, I want to make sure he's all right.” He sighed. “I'll take care of Jasper. You won't even know he's here.”

Didn't she have a say in this? It was her barn, after all.
Nee . . . it's our barn
. And Sol was his brother. She had to trust that Aden was making the right decision. Despite anger from the past still clouding her thoughts, she nodded. “All right.”

Then he put his hands on his slim waist, his gaze intent. “There's something else I have to do,” he said. “Something
mei vatter
wants.”

Her teeth clamped down until she felt pain. How much more was the bishop going to demand from her—from them both?

CHAPTER 18

A
den searched through a cardboard box filled with expired brochures, slips of scrap paper, old newspapers, and some broken pencils. Matthew Schrock had put pack rats to shame. No wonder Sadie had been spending so much time in the store—and in the office in particular. When he had told her about the natural gas rights papers, she had been shocked. Her father hadn't said a word about them, and now that she knew they existed, she'd been eager to help him search.

“I don't think they're here,” Sadie said, tossing another stack of old invoices on top of the already over-piled desk.

“Have we looked through everything?” He slid the box to the side.

“Almost. Like I said, I'd already gone through the desk last week, and I've been sorting through all the other stuff. I haven't had a chance to organize any of it yet.”

He heard her sigh and looked up. She was leaning against the desk, exhaustion creating shadows under her beautiful brown eyes. “It's getting late. We should stop.”

She shook her head. “I'm too curious now. And confused.” Sadie glanced around the mess in the office. She gestured to the paperwork nightmare around her. “If there were any documents, I have
nee
idea where he would have put them.”

“He didn't have a filing system?”

“You're looking at it.” She went to a high shelf that was near the ceiling of the office. “There's a small box up here. Can you reach it? Maybe we'll find something in there.”

Aden stood close to her and stretched to reach the box. He ended up having to stand on his tiptoes, and his body wavered a bit as he caught his balance. He brushed up against her. She smelled good, sweet, like a fresh field of flowers, despite the smudges of dust on her face. “Sorry,” he said, grasping the box and pulling it down.

She barely nodded as she took the box from him and set it on the floor. She sat down next to it, folding the skirt of her dress underneath her legs, her focus completely set on the box in front of her.

While their searching hadn't revealed the paperwork his father demanded, it did tell him something else: Sadie's father had owed a lot of money, and now he had a clearer picture of why Sadie had gone to his father that night. She'd been desperate, and he couldn't blame her. The debt fell on both of them now. However, if the natural gas rights were worth as much as Timothy said, then they needed to find those papers, not for his father's sake but for their own.

She lifted the lid off the box. Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh!”

“What is it? Did you find something?”

She shook her head. “Sorry.” She lifted up a piece of paper covered with basic addition problems. At the top was an A+
written in bright red. Schoolwork, it looked like. “I had
nee
idea he kept these.”

Aden crouched next to her as she continued to remove several drawings and school papers. All three of the Schrock girls had been good students in school, but Sadie had been exceptional. She also had a special talent for art. He picked up a pencil drawing of a horse standing under a large oak tree. “I remember this one,” he said, looking at it with admiration. “Fifth grade.
Frau
Yutzy pinned it on the board in front of the room so everyone could see how terrific it was.”

“She pinned a lot of pictures on the board,” Sadie said, not looking at him. But in the meager light of the office lamp, he could see she was blushing.

“She never pinned mine.” He carefully set the paper aside. “Of course, my drawings were always terrible.”

“I'm sure they weren't.”

He looked at her and smirked. “Trust me, they were.”

She didn't say anything for a moment. “I'm surprised you remembered the drawing,” she said softly.

“I remember a lot of things about you.” The words slipped out, but he didn't care. He was tired of hiding how he felt about her. He wanted to be free—free to be himself, free of fear, and free to express what was in his heart. Now wasn't the time for any of that, but he wasn't about to apologize for the truth.

If his words bothered her, she didn't let on. They continued to rummage through the box, finding more papers her father had saved from school but nothing relating to natural gas rights.

He glanced at Sadie occasionally as she spent a few minutes lingering over several of the papers. Were the memories affecting her? Concerned, he asked, “Are you okay?”

She looked up, her eyes dry, her tone brittle. “
Ya
.” She
started to put the papers back in the box. “This is all just a bunch of junk.”

He put his hand on hers, stilling her movements. “They're memories, Sadie. Not junk.”

She pulled out of his grasp, shoved the rest of the papers in the box, and placed the lid on it. “
Daed
never could get rid of anything.” She stood and picked up the box, then tilted her head in the direction of the drawing of the horse. “Can you hand me that?”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Put it in the burn pile with the rest of this stuff.”

Her voice sounded hard, like chipped ice. The memories had quickly triggered not only her temper but also affected her demeanor. A few moments ago she'd been singularly focused on finding the papers. Now she looked on the verge of fleeing. He'd rescue the box later, not wanting her to do something she would regret.

“Can I keep this?” he said, picking up the picture.

She shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She walked away from him and dropped the box on the large pile of trash they would burn later.

Aden noticed the stoniness of her profile, the stiff way she moved. His stomach suddenly growled and he cringed.

She turned to him. “I take it you didn't eat supper at your parents'?”

He shook his head. “Lost
mei
appetite while I was there.”

She grimaced. “
Kumme.
I'll make you a snack.”

Figuring she was also using his hunger as an excuse to get out of the office, he nodded. After locking up the store, they walked back to the house together. Aden put the picture on the counter and washed his hands while Sadie went to the pantry.

After he dried his hands he saw what she had set out—a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter . . . and something else that surprised him. He moved to the table and picked up the small jar of honey, seeing the homemade label. He remembered the hours he'd spent carefully handwriting his last name and the type of honey that would be in each jar. The effort was crude, and after seeing the neatly labeled products the Schrocks sold, he was a little embarrassed.

Sadie finished washing her hands and stood next to him. “Honey with peanut butter is my favorite snack,” she said. “Do you want something else?”

He shook his head and set the jar down. “I've never had honey and peanut butter together.”

“Really? It's delicious. Especially with
yer
honey. It's so much better than what we sell in the store.”

She'd relaxed since they'd come into the kitchen, and he couldn't help but smile as he pointed to the jar. “The label is the worst, though.”

Sadie picked up the jar. “It's not that bad. Maybe if you had a drawing of a bee, or a beehive, or some honeycomb on it, it would look better.”

“I can't draw, remember?” Looking at his horrible penmanship, he saw he couldn't write either.

She shook her head. “You're too hard on yourself.” She picked up the sandwich fixings and went to the counter. While she prepared the snack, he retrieved two glasses from the cabinet and filled both of them with tea. They sat down and Aden looked at the sandwich, which was sliced in fourths. He picked one up and took a bite. Not bad, but it wouldn't fill him up.

Sadie picked at the crust of her sandwich. “What made you decide to grow bees?” she asked.

Aden swallowed. “You don't grow bees, you raise them.”

“Oh.” She lifted her shoulders in a noncommittal shrug.

“I raise them because I like them. Did you know there are twenty thousand known species of bees in the world? And some bees don't sting at all.”

She tore a small portion of crust off her bread. “I wouldn't mind those bees.”

He grinned. “Too bad they don't produce honey.”

“You never did tell me why you didn't bring
yer
hives over,” Sadie said.

His smile faded. “Something happened to them.” He didn't want to tell her that Sol had destroyed them. But if she asked, he wouldn't lie.