Jillian Hart (6 page)

"I do."
Think of the future. Think of what's at stake.
She and Chad needed John, and she had the feeling John needed her. Why else would he insist on marrying her, just as they had planned? Nerves clamped in her stomach, leaving her nauseated and unsteady. "I need to be alone for a few minutes."

"Of course." Blanche stepped back. "I'll be waiting for you. In front of the minister. With your handsome groom. I'll try to keep my hands off him."

"You're a married woman," Lissa teased. "Behave."

"I'm not making any promises." Blanche pranced from the room.

Alone, Lissa studied her reflection in the bureau's beveled mirror. A pale face stared back at her, and she winced. She was not at her best. Exhaustion bruised the skin beneath her eyes. Tension crinkled around her eyes. Goodness, it was a wonder John hadn't taken one look at her and run for Canada.

Lissa turned to study her room—the bureau with half the drawers empty and waiting for her new husband's clothes, the bed made crisp and neat, all ready for tonight, where they would sleep together. Her stomach flip-flopped.

She was ready for this. She was. In a few minutes she would become John Murray's wife. She would have a new name, a new husband, and a new future.

There was only one last thing to do.

She grabbed the bouquet she'd picked from her garden, a collection of white-petaled daisies, purple asters, and yellow-centered sunflowers. The house felt empty as she ambled down the hall. Everyone was outside, anticipating the wedding, and she wanted it that way. She needed to do this alone.

On a sigh, Lissa pushed open the kitchen door and stepped out into the late afternoon sun. Sunlight slanted through the gracefully limbed pines, and she hurried through the dappled shade, past the vegetable garden, to the rising hill beyond.

Michael's headstone faced the sun and the distant peaks of the mountains. Her feet felt heavy as she approached.

She shifted her stiff skirts and knelt before the grave. Like this marriage today, hers and Michael's had been a practical one, but love had grown from it.

She would not make that mistake a second time. Over the years of her life, she'd buried those she had loved one by one: her parents, her brothers, her babies, and her husband—everyone but Chad. After the grief and heartache, Lissa had to face the truth. She had no more pieces of her heart to spare.

"Forgive me." She knew it was time. She had to let go, move forward, but she would not forget.

She laid the flowers on Michael's grave and blew him a kiss. It was the last time she would visit this site, the last time she would let herself ache for what might have been.

Love was unnecessary to survival, but one's heart, that was very important, indeed.

Lissa rose and headed back to the house. Her skirts rustled in the seed-tipped grasses as she walked. Larks and finches and blue jays chirped in the meadow and up high in the trees. As she tried to leave her grief behind, the birdsong felt encouraging, a sign that she was doing the right thing.

She looked up, startled to find John leaning against the side of the house, hands tucked in his trouser pockets, waiting for her. How handsome he looked, how dependable. His shoulders were straight and unbowed, his chin cocked, his mouth looking ready to smile. She blushed, hoping he couldn't guess her thoughts, and lowered her gaze.

"Saying good-bye?" he said, that gentle and low voice beckoning her close.

His understanding touched her, and she could only nod.

"I'm glad to know you loved your husband so much. That's something a man wants in a wife." He held out his hand. "Come, our guests are waiting. Unless you've changed your mind?"

"No. Have you?"

"Not a chance." He knelt down and lifted a bunch of flowers from the ground, a spray of wild roses. "I picked these for you."

"You're thoughtful."

"No, I just want to please my pretty new wife.'' He smiled, and the world seemed brighter. He towered over her, all steely man and might. He pressed the flowers into her nervous hands.

He wanted to please her. He thought her pretty. He wanted to marry her. She feared John Murray wanted something she couldn't give him.

"Marrying me won't be so bad," he said, trying to tease a smile from her. "I don't swear. I don't snore. I don't drool in my sleep."

"Truly admirable qualities in a man."

"I think so, too." He offered his hand, palm up, his big fingers relaxed. She studied his hand, so strong, extended to her in friendship.

Friendship, she could accept. She laid her palm against his.

"Do you, Lissa Banks, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?" Reverend Burrow's baritone drew a hush from the gathered crowd—and from Lissa's chest. She couldn't breathe as she felt all eyes turn to her. Beneath the satin of her only good dress, her knees wobbled. Her hands clutching John's bouquet grew clammy. After these words, there was no going back.

"I do," she said clearly, and earned her groom's relieved smile.

Late afternoon sun slanted at a long angle through the windows of her garden porch where they stood, casting both shadows and slivers of golden light. The brightness haloed John, set his shoulders and the crown of his blond hair ablaze.

"You may kiss the bride," Reverend Burrows instructed with approval warm in his voice.

Lissa's heart stopped. Kiss him? The ceremony had slipped by so quickly. She wasn't ready. Now, she wet her lips and looked up. John's lopsided grin met her gaze.

"Prepare yourself," he whispered low, so that only she could hear. "I've been told I devastate women with a single kiss."

"How do you know? You still don't have any memory."

His eyes twinkled. "Fine. I was lying. I just wanted to make you laugh. You look nervous."

"That's because I
am
nervous."

"Kiss her, already!" some man shouted from the crowd, and everyone laughed.

She studied his mouth. Thin cut lips, strong to match his rough-hewn face. Would his kiss be overwhelming and powerful like the man, or tender like his smile?

"I won't bite," John promised her. "Well, not this time."

When his lips found hers, she was laughing. The first brush of his mouth to hers felt warm and soft, as if testing her response. Then he broke away ever so slightly and drew in a breath, a whisper against her sensitive mouth. His dark eyes flickered, hinting at his intent. Before she could brace herself his kiss claimed her again, hot and firm, just short of possessive, and demanding enough to make it clear:

They were man and wife.

Chapter Five

"Yes, you really found a good one," Blanche whispered. "Now you can keep your ranch. I say that for selfish reasons, you know." Warmth twinkled in her gaze. "I didn't want my best friend to move far away from me."

"Neither did I." Happiness wrapped around Lissa like a snug wool blanket.

Sounds of the celebration supper filled the air—the laughing ring of children's voices, the drone of men discussing crop prices and the beef market, and the clang of tin dishes as many finished eating at the trestle tables set out in her yard, brushed by the low rays of the setting sun.

It would be dark soon, then time for bed. She remembered John's kiss, remembered the feel of his arms enfolding her, still tasted the heat of his mouth on hers.

"Look at him," Felicity James sighed over her half-eaten slice of wedding cake. "It's so romantic. You have just met, but he sees only you, Lissa."

Sure enough, across the crowded yard John glanced over his shoulder as he walked the reverend the rest of the way to the horse barn. His gaze pinned hers like an arrow finding a target A half-smile graced his lips. He entered the barn and disappeared from sight.

Every woman seated around Lissa's table sighed.

Flustered, she reached for the creamer. "He looks at me because he doesn't know anyone else. Maybe he's shy in crowds. Maybe he feels lonely."

"Or maybe he's falling in love with you." Susan Russell dipped her fork into the creamy white frosting of her untouched sliver of cake. "Felicity is right, Lissa. This is so romantic."

More sighs.

Lissa spilled three dollops of cream before she managed to pour any into her steaming cup of coffee. Romantic? She wasn't looking for romance. Those dreams had been buried along with Michael.

"We all saw how he kissed you," commented Maggie James, Felicity's older sister, as she measured three teaspoons of sugar into her cup of tea.

"We all saw it," the women muttered at once.

Lissa grabbed her spoon and stirred her coffee so hard it slopped over the rim of the cup and into the saucer. "It was a mandatory kiss. Everyone who gets married has to kiss like that."

"Not like that," Blanche argued. "A peck on the cheek—"

"Even on the lips—" Susan interrupted.

"Would suffice," Blanche completed, apparently knowledgeable on the subject "When Jeremiah and I were married he gave me a polite little smooch."

"That's all John did," Lissa assured them.

"Ha!" Four women challenged her.

"That was no polite kiss," Blanche declared. "I was standing right next to you, Lissa, and I saw the way his mouth covered yours with the possessive claim of a man branding his wife. He left you breathless."

"I was nervous."

"You didn't look nervous. You looked eager," Felicity teased.

The women erupted into laughter, and Lissa resisted the urge to give her friend a small kick beneath the table.

Awareness skidded over her like rainwater. She looked up and saw John emerge from the barn, walking beside Reverend Burrows and his old white mare. The minister mounted up. John rubbed his brow, trying to hide a grimace as he turned away.

Her heart beat with concern for him. He wasn't well. He might walk with the power of a hero, with the strength of a giant, but he was ashen with pain.

When John ducked into the shadows of the barn, disappearing from her sight, Lissa stood. "Excuse me please. I need to check on my husband."

"What do you suppose they are going to do in that barn?" Maggie speculated.

"You heard her. She's going to check on her man."

Blushing, Lissa didn't know what to say. She turned, trying not to think in the same direction her friends' thoughts were already heading—to the marriage bed and her first night as John Murray's wife.

She stepped into the dim interior of the barn. The scents of warm horseflesh and sweet hay greeted her. A calf mooed from her pen, joined by a dozen other plaintive cries. A pink tongue darted out between the slots of wood and she laughed, hurrying to catch the calf before his strong teeth could clamp around the hem of her dress.

"You have a gentle touch with them." John's voice rose out of the dimness, accompanied by the sound of his uneven gait.

"They're just babies." She ran her hand over the calf's velvet warm nose. "You look a little pale."

He stopped near enough for her to see the slant of his mouth, upturned in one corner, and the hint of a dimple etched into his cheek.

Up close, his complexion looked gray against the crisp white of the bandage at his brow and the shirt's snowy collar. He shrugged, a single lift of one dependable shoulder. "I'm still standing. I think that's a good sign."

She laughed; she couldn't help it. This sense of humor hadn't come through in John's letters. She was surprised by it, and immensely pleased. "Before you collapse in a heap, I think I ought to take you to bed."

"Already? The guests are still here. What will they think?" Then he winked.

She knew darn well why he was winking. Heat crept across her face. "They will assume you need your
rest."

"Ah, but a newly married man doesn't need rest." His chuckle was as rich and deep as a waterfall. He rubbed a hand over another eager little calf's head. "Are these orphans?"

"Unfortunately for them."

"Fortunately." John watched her slim hands pet the animals with tender affection. He didn't miss the gleam of love in the calves' eyes. "They think you're their mother."

"They do." She extricated the hem of her gown from between a set of determined bovine teeth. "I raise the gentlest milk cows around. And every year I pick a bull calf to raise."

"Let me guess. You have the gentlest bulls, too."

"Yep. I've made some good money that way over the years. My bulls are in great demand."

That surprised him, and didn't. He suspected few women enjoyed barn work—much less handling big dangerous animals—but when Lissa smiled he could see the size of her heart, the gentleness she held toward all living things.

"You said you always wanted your own land." She gazed up at him, a worry settling around her eyes.

"I have." He knew it, deep in his heart. It was the only thing since he had opened his eyes in the doctor's clinic that felt right, in place, as if it belonged to him.

"I thought you didn't remember anything." Her voice was so hopeful. She must want him to remember.

That's what he wanted, too. "I don't. I just know it. I can feel it."

That satisfied her. Her soft, blue gaze radiated light, and it captivated him, made him want to do anything to ease the worry around her eyes, to tease a smile from her lips.

Her lips—his gaze arrowed there. He had not forgotten the supple heat of her mouth. Their kiss had been all too brief, but it haunted him. He wanted more.

"There's something I need to tell you." He gestured toward the back of the barn, where green pasture beckoned through wide double doors.

She fell in stride beside him. "Good or bad?"

He shrugged. "Not so bad. It's just—" He sighed. "None of this feels right. Maybe because I'm lost. I don't even know who I am."

She looked stricken. "I shouldn't have let you marry me. I tried not to pressure you. Now I see I should have insisted—"

"No. I don't regret our marriage."

"You should have waited until you recovered." Worry thinned her voice. "I thought—"

"We did the right thing, Lissa." He laid a hand on hers. Her skin felt cool, and he sensed the fears she kept hidden from him—fears to which she had every right "What else could I have done? Leave a woman unprotected from dangerous rustlers? I spoke with some of the men today. I know what's going on around here. And how close you are to losing your entire herd."
And her ranch.