Her Colorado Man (10 page)

Wes had a notion to step in and interrupt their conversation, but Louis caught his eye and gave him a reassuring nod. Days like this stretched out in front of them, and Mariah was going to be meeting a lot of men…while dressed in her feminine finery. She was young and beautiful, and this entire event was business. Even if it hadn’t been, he didn’t really have any hold over her.

She wasn’t actually his wife.

The thought put a damper on his day. What was he letting himself in for by caring so much? He led Louis next door for ice cream.

That evening, Wes relaxed under the shade of their canopy while Mariah and her brothers discussed the logic of laying another track for freight cars at the west end of the brewery. Roth had already taken Louis back to the hotel.

Wes had enjoyed a dinner of smoked fish, boiled potatoes and Aunt Clara’s liver cheese. Many of their traditional dishes tasted a lot better if he didn’t ask what was in them.

The women served dinner until after eight o’clock, and then the men washed and stacked dishes and sent the ladies over to Baur’s for desserts and coffee. Those on the last shift would continue to serve free beer and soft pretzels until the grounds closed at eleven.

Wes had washed mugs until his fingertips wrinkled. “I didn’t really know what a huge undertaking this was going to be.”

From her seat across from him, Mary Violet said, “You’ll be exhausted by the time it’s over.” She glanced over at Wilhelm. “So will my husband. He’s a hard worker.”

“There are a lot of hard workers in this family.”

She smoothed the tablecloth. “I’ve never seen Mariah so happy, not since you came, I mean. At first we could all tell it was awkward, and I had my doubts about the two of you. But whatever you’re doing, however you’ve managed to make it up to her, it looks like it’s working.”

The deceit had begun to wear on him. Lying to this many people was a full-time commitment. A lifetime commitment?

He said nothing.

“Have I offended you?”

He shook his head. “Not at all.”

Straightforward. He’d expect nothing less. There wasn’t an indirect or pretentious Spangler in the lot. He regretted he was the one holding back.

Before eleven, he had a buggy waiting on the concourse. Mariah joined him, and the others climbed into their separate wagons.

Mariah removed her hat and took the pins from her hair. It fell down her back in a golden wave. “I’ve been having visions of that big bathtub for the past two hours.”

The image her words created in his mind sent his pulse racing. He changed the subject. “It was a successful day.”

“Very much so. Mr. Simpson and his partner are going to buy a lot of beer from us over the next five years.”

“Congratulations.” After a few minutes, he asked what had been on his mind for days. “Have you thought on what we talked about with your grandfather? About moving to our own place, or…or me moving to my own place?”

She glanced aside, as though interested in the buildings they passed. “I haven’t had much time to think.”

“Which choice are you leaning toward?”

“John James would be heartbroken if you moved out. We both know that.”

“But you feel trapped. That’s what you said.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “I’ve felt trapped for a long time. I don’t know that any kind of a move would change that.”

How was he supposed to understand a comment like that? Or a woman like her for that matter? He turned his gaze to the horse, plodding forward, and questions rose in his mind. Somehow, and for unknown reasons, she’d kept the identity of John James’s father a secret all this time. She must have been only recently out of school when she’d gotten pregnant. She didn’t associate much with the townspeople now, but she had gone to school with them. He recalled their interaction with the Renlow couple on a previous morning after church. Lucas Renlow was a handsome fellow, and apparently he and Mariah once had a fondness for each other.

She had dismissed Arlen’s teasing, but perhaps there’d been more to that story. If there had been, why hadn’t she married him? Why had Lucas married Delia instead? Wes wondered if he’d ever learn all there was to know.

Or maybe John James’s father had been a drifter, passing through the state, temporarily working at the brewery. There had probably been many men hired on over time.

“Where was John James born?”

She shot her gaze to his face. “Why do you ask?”

“The story is that we met in Chicago, right? What were you doing there? Was I supposedly there when he was born?”

“I went there to attend a school for young women, and I met you. We were married and John James was born. You left and I came home.”

“Did you really live in Chicago?”

“Yes. For a time.”

It was possible she’d met a man there. The thought disturbed him. Anyone taking advantage of a young woman away from home was a cad. “Is it customary for the young women of your family to go away for education?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not like the other women in my family.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed.” He reined the horse up before the hotel. This time she wisely waited for him to come around and help her to the ground. Climbing down in all those skirts wasn’t as easy as leaping from the buggy in a pair of trousers. “I’ve noticed plenty. Right along with the fact that you didn’t answer me.”

“I’ll go in while you stable the horse.”

He touched his hat brim and stepped away. “Ma’am.”

Her gaze lingered on his face a moment longer, and then she gathered her skirts and entered the hotel.

He didn’t know why the idea of her with that other man upset him. Maybe it was because he didn’t know anything about him. Her secretiveness aggravated him. At one time, someone, some man had gotten through that shield and taken her heart. Broken it perhaps.

He left the livery and walked along the darkened street at a fast clip. Or more likely she hadn’t raised all
those barricades until after her heart had been broken. It made sense, of course. She’d been young and vulnerable and had fallen for a man who took her affections for granted.

What did it take to earn the trust…to earn the
heart
of a woman like that?

Why did he care?

Wes halted across the street and stared up at the lighted windows in the hotel. Why did his heart hammer in his chest at the thought of her? Why did he feel such anger toward a callous man he’d never met?

Because he’d fallen in love, of course.

P
rickly, stubborn and maddening as she was, he couldn’t get enough of her. Mariah set his heart on fire.

At first it had been the boy. And he couldn’t disregard the appeal of her big, close-knit family. He’d never been a part of anything that compared to these people. He liked being included. He appreciated being asked to perform tasks and expected to pull his weight at the brewery. It pleased him beyond happy when Mariah’s mother recognized the sound of his footsteps and beckoned to him, like a mother summoning a son.

He liked the noisy dinners and the lack of privacy and the constant hubbub. Within the warm circle of the Spangler family he felt as though he belonged.

It felt good.

But that wasn’t all. Mariah…she made him want things he hadn’t known he craved. She drew him like the moon drew the tides. He didn’t know how any man
could have loved her—or merely used her—and not have been completely captivated. Nothing crossed his mind that didn’t lead to a thought of her. Or a daydream.

This morning when she’d appeared in the dining room wearing that dress, her vulnerability had touched him. She’d been as unsure of herself as a colt on wobbly new legs. Oh, she gave tough and haughty a good try, and if he hadn’t stuck around as long as he had, he might have been convinced. But he’d glimpsed her vulnerabilities, and he was convinced Mariah’s shell had been thickened as a preventative measure. Inside, she was tender and naive…and the prospects drove him mad.

He rapped on the door to their room, and she opened it, dressed in her wrapper and slippers. She had brushed and braided her hair, but a few pale tendrils around her face were still damp from her bath.

Wes gathered a change of clothing and headed to the bathing chamber. He soaked away the soreness in his leg and foot, rested his head back against the high rim of the tub and closed his eyes. If he were a drinking man, this would have been a night to get lost in a bottle of whiskey.

When he returned, she opened the door and carefully backed away without looking at him.

“Mariah,” he said. “When you think about what you want from life, when you picture yourself happy…what do you see?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Surely you’ve dreamed of a perfect life.”

She shrugged. Her evasiveness bothered him. “Maybe.”

“What does it involve, your perfect life?”

“John James being happy, I guess. Growing up to be a fine, good man. Me having an important position at the brewery.”

He towel-dried his hair and combed it while she watched him in the mirror.

“How do you picture John James being happy?”

“Taking a job he likes. Marrying a girl he loves. Having children.”

“That’s what you want for him?”

“Yes.”

He turned to face her. “Why doesn’t
your
dream involve love?”

“It does.”

“You just said you see yourself with an important job at the brewery. You said you wanted John James to find love, but you didn’t say anything about yourself.”

She turned away, rolled a silken length of fabric into what he assumed was a bundle for the laundry, and placed it in a drawstring bag. “Not everyone is meant to experience a grand passion. Some of us have enough to do with our everyday lives.”

“So you’re unlovable?”

“Of course not,” she said quickly. “My family loves me.”

“Then you don’t have any love to share with another person,” he suggested.

She straightened and turned to face him. “I have plenty of love to give.” Her tone was indignant. “I love my son. I love my family.”

She did. He’d seen her fierce love. He was pushing, but he had to ask, “Just not enough for a man.”

“I prefer my independence. What are you getting at anyway? It’s late, and we have another long day ahead of us.” She turned down the lamp, leaving the glow from one other remaining, and climbed onto the bed.

Wes turned out the last lamp before rolling down the covers on the cot and removing his trousers. He lay down and stacked his hands beneath his head. “What about a real husband, Mariah?”

He didn’t think she was going to answer, but finally she said softly, “If you’re asking if I can love you, there is a lot you don’t know about me.”

“You can tell me.”

“No. No, I can’t.”

“What would change if you told me?”

“Everything.”

The word hung suspended in the darkness.

Mariah turned on her side facing away from him. She was good at living within the boundaries she’d set for herself and seeing only what she wanted to see. Her strength had grown from taking control over every aspect and living day by day to the letter of the life she’d created.

Vulnerability was a weakness she couldn’t afford. Ever since Wes had arrived, her armor had been grow
ing heavier and more burdensome, until it was all she could do to hold it in place.

She recognized her weakness where he was concerned. He pointed out the things that were lost to her—the things she’d never dreamed she’d miss. Or rather, her reactions to him were what made those losses painfully clear.

But she didn’t need him. She’d done just fine before he got here. But John James. Now there was where her feelings had first been twisted. She’d been forced to look squarely at the gaping cavity in his young life. Pride had kept her from admitting he needed a father. Pride and fear.

But he did. He adored the man. At first that had angered her, and later his fondness became frightening. But as hard as she had tried to find fault with Wes’s behavior, she’d seen nothing but devotion on his part. A future that held them as father and son wasn’t difficult to see.

She’d watched them together, so she could easily picture the two of them as John James got older.

A husband? Now that was another thing entirely. A husband was a partner. A lover.

Wes’s tenderness appealed to her on a level she didn’t want to look into. Her grandfather, her father and all of her brothers were respectful and considerate, but Wes’s treatment was more than kind. There was almost a reverence about the way he looked at her…the way he said her name…and how he kissed her.

She’d never made an effort to enhance her femininity or make herself more attractive. In fact drawing attention to her appearance made her uncomfortable.

Wes’s attention made her uncomfortable, but in an entirely different way. Her uneasiness was about being drawn to him in return. Every time she thought about that kiss they’d shared in the shadowy doorway the other night, she remembered the sensation of being held against his solid chest, his strong arms wrapped around her. His embrace awakened feelings of security and anticipation at the same time. She’d never expected to feel that way.

He didn’t seem to need or demand much. He’d arrived with very little, and gauging by his interests so far, he only placed value on the people he respected and his dogs. His clothing was serviceable and well made, but not fancy. He appreciated ordinary things like good meals and dinner conversation and…peppermint ice cream.

Back to that kiss again.

His questions tonight had been invasive, but she figured his curiosity was normal. He hadn’t pressured her. He never asked for more than she wanted to give.

If she stopped deluding herself for twenty seconds, she would admit she liked everything about the man, from his appearance and his work ethic to his stories
and
his kisses.

Each time she’d expected one thing from him, she discovered just the opposite was true. The same went for her feelings about him and her reactions. She should
have wanted to run the opposite way, but what she really wanted—in this brief moment of honesty with herself—what she needed was more of him. Enough of him to make her forget everything and everyone else and simply enjoy the moments they had together.

Ordinarily Mariah focused on the here and now, not the past or the future. The future was too uncertain to imagine, and the past was better forgotten. But Wes challenged her to think honestly for a moment. And a moment of honesty was all she could afford. “Are you asleep?” she asked.

“No.”

Her heart stammered with nervousness. “Have you ever done something so bad that there’s no way to fix it? Something that will hurt the people you love…something that, if you let yourself think about it, would eat at you every waking minute?”

“I never had anybody to love, but I don’t guess that’s what you’re asking.” Several minutes passed. “Nothing can be so bad that you can’t tell me, Mariah. Whatever it is, I can help you. You can trust me.”

Telling him would take more trust than she possessed. Not even her grandfather knew all of it. “No. You couldn’t help.”

The Spanglers had reserved several tables in the hotel dining room for the following evening. Hildy and Philo were seated across from Wes and Mariah, and John James shared stories about their trip to Denver. “Faye got sick,” he told Mariah.

Mariah and Hildy exchanged a sympathetic look. The summer heat and Faye’s condition had likely been factors. “I trust she’s feeling better,” Mariah said.

“She’s been resting in their room,” Hildy replied.

Wes glanced at Philo. Wes hadn’t interacted much with the man, other than working under him in the mash house, so he hoped more social time would change his opinion. Philo attended family functions, but more often than not he and Hildy left early. There was something odd about the two of them, and though he was fairly intuitive about people, he couldn’t put his finger on anything specific. While Mariah related with her cousin in a friendly way, she was reserved toward Hildy’s husband.

“We visited the pavilion today,” Hildy told them. “There are mountains of minerals on display.”

“Did you see gold?” John James looked to his mother. “When can we go see the exhibits?”

“We’ll go tomorrow,” she promised him.

Hildy smiled. “We did see gold. There are fruits and flowers from California, too.”

“Can you eat the fruit?” John James asked.

Hildy assured him he would get to taste.

Aunt Clara leaned around Hildy. “I’m taking tomorrow evening off from cooking to attend the Wells Fargo Theater.” She looked at her daughter. “Your father is coming, too. Would you like to join us?”

Hildy glanced at Philo. He rubbed his thumb along the handle of his dinner knife in silence. His mother-in-law looked from his face to her daughter’s.

Wes turned to Mariah. “Would you like to go?”

“I would, but we’ll have to check the schedule to make sure we have a full crew working our building.”

“Wouldn’t it be grand if we could go at the same time?” Hildy asked.

Philo’s gaze slid to Wes, and he responded to his wife. “If that’s what you want, we’ll go tomorrow night.”

They made their plans, and after they had eaten, Mariah hurried upstairs to check on Faye. Her cousin’s wife was feeling much better. In fact, she offered for John James to stay and play with Emma and Paul the next night while Mariah attended the theater.

Mariah rejoined Wes and John James, and their after-dinner party moved to the Exhibition grounds. They gathered under the canopies, and the family members on duty brought them tall mugs of beer.

“Here they are!” As the sun set over the bustling grounds, a group of townspeople from Ruby Creek waved and joined them. Among them were the liveryman Turner Price, his wife, Gabby, their four-year-old twins, Marcus and Jack, and their infant daughter. The baby already had curly dark gold hair like her mother.

“She’s the spitting image of you.” Mariah reached to take her from Gabby. “Hi there, pretty girl.”

The baby gurgled and smiled, then pointed to John James. John James allowed her to touch his cheek with a damp finger.

Wes surprised Mariah by reaching for the baby.
Holding her as though she was made of spun glass, his smile revealed his fascination with the tiny person.

“You’re John James’s papa?” one of the twins asked.

Wes sat, so he was on a level with the boy, and propped the baby on his thigh. “That I am.”

His reply caught Mariah off guard. His answers were usually evasive enough so that he didn’t lie. He had just told the Price boys he was John James’s father. She was careful not to shift her attention. Hearing him reply like that should have been the most normal thing in the world.

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t usual at all for a man to claim parental responsibility for her boy. Her throat got tight, but she didn’t flicker an eyelash.

“Is it true you came from Alaska?”

“I lived in Alaska and thereabouts for a good many years.”

“And was you on a whaling ship?” The look-alike brother moved to stand at Wes’s knee.

“Yes, sir.”

Mariah slid her gaze to catch Hildy’s forlorn expression. No doubt it seemed unfair that everyone else produced so many healthy children, while she had yet to bear one that lived. Mariah’s heart ached for her sweet, deserving cousin.

Mariah directed her attention to Philo. After glancing at Wes, where he sat talking to the boys, her cousin’s husband grimaced. He got up to go converse with one of the other men from town. Mariah eased her way
toward Hildy and rested a hand on her shoulder. Hildy reached up and grasped her fingers.

Turner enjoyed a beer, the other men talked among themselves and Wes told the boys a tale of a storm at sea. Before long, the adults had ended their separate conversations and turned to hear Wes’s story of the salt-encrusted schooner tossed about on the waves. “The wooden casks of whale oil and blubber broke loose from their moorings, and skidded about, threatening to crush any man who got in the way. That oil was the result of six months’ backbreaking work, so every last deckhand worked to tie down those casks before they washed overboard.”

The man was full of tales and never failed to capture an audience with his telling. It was a gift he had, this ability to bring a story to life and have his listeners waiting for the outcome.

He’d lived an exciting life before he’d come here. Mariah couldn’t help but wonder how the day-to-day tasks at the brewery compared. A flutter of fear moved front and center in her chest at the thought of him becoming bored with the work or her family. Bored with her.