Lessie: Bride of Utah (American Mail-Order Bride 45) (18 page)

He wanted to laugh— or not. This woman was his wife. No harm in catching a glimpse of leg, bare knee… or more.

“Richard!” Her eyes rounded with something far more aggressive than shock. “What are you doing?”

“You fell asleep. I tried to wake you from the doorway, but you were too sound asleep.”

“Did you knock?”

“I did.”

“Call my name?”

“Five or six times. Loud, too. I even opened and shut the door, but you were out cold.”

“Get me a towel.”

He smiled, turning away. She’d warm up to him eventually, wouldn’t she? He opened a big, fresh towel, held it out like a sheet on the clothesline to block his view.

Water splashed as she stood. It wasn’t too hard to imagine water sluicing off her form. He heard her step out on to the rug at the edge of the tub.

“Any time now, Mr. Cannon.”

He wrapped the toweling around her, finding his arms all twisted up in the cotton and sweet-smelling woman. He pressed a kiss to her cheek.

Her posture slowly relaxed, and he could’ve sworn she nearly melted against him. Might be weariness, but he hoped not.

He needed a bath. Any husband with an ounce of decency wouldn’t press for affection his wife was too tired to give. Love for this little woman, his wife, seemed to overflow whatever container he had. It expanded, growing, made his heart feel like it’d grown two or three sizes in the past week.

“Now what?” she whispered.

“You take yourself off to bed, Mrs. Cannon.” More than he wanted—
needed—
physical affection from his wife, he needed her to fall in love with him. And somehow, he figured marital intimacy and love, to a female’s way of thinking, were not one in the same.

He’d exercise patience. A whole darn lot of it. Because he anticipated the tender expressions of love within their marriage would be a whole lot sweeter, far more rewarding, once she’d come to love him, too.

She sighed. “You’ll hurry?”

His heart tripped, quick to find its rhythm once more. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know if I can sleep without you.”

She clung to the towel, wrapped about her more like a blanket than the sarong-style towel wrap he’d seen her in on their wedding night. She backed out of the bathroom, holding his gaze.

It took far more strength than he thought he had on the tail end of a hard week to keep from reaching for her.

“I’ll hurry.”

Before he so much as heard her feet patter up the stairs to the second floor, he’d stopped the tub, turned the faucet to pour fresh, hot water, and had pulled off his boots.

Chapter Fifteen

Lessie sat at her dressing table, combing through her hair. She would have liked to have washed it. But part of her wasn’t ready to allow her husband the intimacy of seeing her fully.

Thank goodness she’d worn a sunbonnet all week to keep the blowing dust and dirt off her hair. The last long rays of daylight streamed through the sheers at the windows, standing open several inches to allow the heat of the day out.

In this light, her hair didn’t look so bad. Not as shiny, perhaps, as it would if freshly washed and dried, but… she lifted a lock to her nose. Did she smell of mining camp?

Her cheeks flamed at the memory of waking to find him in the bathroom, hand inches from her floating bare toes. Her only thought had been that she was completely naked.

And he’d no doubt glimpsed… everything.

He had to be appalled at her reaction. What married woman flinched when her husband drew near? She supposed those who had good reason, but not she.

He’d shown her time and again that every touch was gentle.

The bedroom door opened and her husband came in, a towel slung low about his hips. He’d washed his hair, finger-combed it, but hadn’t taken time to shave.

“I like your beard.” The words tumbled out before she realized she’d thought them.

His quick smile assured her she hadn’t said the wrong thing. “I might keep it around a while, if you like it.”

“I do.”

He palmed his jaw, his cheek. “It’s long enough not to abrade your tender skin.”

That sentiment gave rise to goose flesh along her arms. Suddenly, her worn, threadbare, yellowed night gown seemed impossibly thin.

He must have sensed her discomfort with his gaze on her nightgown, though it came to neck and wrist and ankle, because he approached from behind and met her gaze in the oval glass. Two big, sturdy hands settled on her shoulders.

“I want to brush your hair.”

Simple enough request. This was easy to allow him. How many times had Josie brushed through Lessie’s hair, and she returned the favor for her sister?

She reached for the intricately carved bone handle brush resting on the vanity— a gift, she assumed, from her husband. It’d been here the day he’d brought her home after the wedding. But his hand slid over hers, claiming the implement.

His warm chest pressed against her back, more than he probably needed to, but she didn’t mind. All those nights sleeping curled up, her back pressed against his chest made incidental touches like this easy to manage. Familiar, even.

Richard lifted the mass of her hair with his left hand and took the brush in his right. Slow, nearly reverent strokes as he started at the ends.

“How do you know how to do this?” she asked, watching his expression in the mirror.

“Brushing? It’s not hard.”

“But you start at the ends. How do you know how to do this? If you grew up with only Adam, I don’t understand…”

He smiled. White, even, strong teeth stood out in stark relief to his more heavily tanned face after days of sunshine outdoors. “I have an aunt. I remember my mother.”

“You’re an observant man, Richard Cannon.”

“Perhaps.” Apparently satisfied he’d untangled the ends of her hair, he let it fall, then worked the brush through from the midpoint near her shoulders. Every stroke of the brush down her back seemed to linger. Delicious sensations tickled along her scalp where the brush tugged.

When Josie had brushed Lessie’s hair, it had never felt like this.

Sitting on the low bench as she was, Richard bent at the waist with nearly every stroke of the brush, bringing his nose too near her hair. He paused, lingered, his nose above her ear.

“I should have washed my hair.”

“Nonsense. You smell like sunshine and wildflowers, like my wife.”

He moved her hair aside from her neck, not unlike the way he might lift a velvet curtain back from a window. He pressed his lips to her nape.

The warm, intimate gesture brought a flush of heat straight from the vicinity of her middle, straight up to tinge her cheeks. The blush, visible in the beveled mirror, made her tummy tingle. The sight of her husband’s dark head, bent so near her own, his lips still pressed to her neck in a kiss did odd things to her composure.

She shivered, though far from cold.

As if he hadn’t noticed, he slowly straightened and turned his ministrations to brushing her hair from the root. He began in the center back with slow, even strokes clear to the tips. Each section of hair seemed to receive more than fifteen or twenty passes of the brush before he moved on to the next section.

He lingered over the chore as if he found it pleasing. She watched his expression in the glass, marveling at how very relaxed he was. The tight lines crinkling about his eyes and mouth, ever-present at the mines, had disappeared.

Muscles played beneath the comparatively pale skin of his chest and arms. She’d not seen him working outside without a shirt, so the difference in skin color shouldn’t surprise her, but it did. She’d expected him to be the same golden brown all over.

She pulled her lower lip between her teeth to keep from laughing at her uninformed assumptions. He’d know just how innocent she was.

By the time he worked his way around to her right shoulder, gently working the bristles through, over her ear and shoulder, she’d never felt so relaxed. Not even in the bathtub when she’d fallen asleep so easily.

When he finished twenty lazy strokes on her right side, he hooked a finger in her hair and tucked it behind her ear. He bent and kissed her temple, then picked up at the back again, to slowly make his way toward her left ear.

“You’re most accomplished at brushing a woman’s hair.” She couldn’t help but compliment him. Maybe he’d brush her hair again sometime.

She liked it.

A lot.

“Not bad for a first try, then?”

She heard the smile in his voice and that begged her to look up, watch him closely.

“Not bad. Not at all.”

Sounds from the outside world filtered in through the open window, riding the cooling evening breeze. Birdsong. The barking of a dog. A woman’s voice, apparently calling little ones in from play.

Pedestrian, homey sounds. Music of her idyllic life.

In time, Richard finished with her hair, the most lovely experience and one she hated to see come to an end.

He gathered the entirety of her hair in his hands, smoothed the length, and began braiding.

“You know how to braid, too?” Had this man an unlimited store of surprises?

“It’s not hard. I’ve watched a time or two, and braided ropes together for use when a stouter line is required.”

“You continually amaze me.”

He finished braiding, held the end and offered a palm, apparently seeking a ribbon.

She didn’t have one.

Not even a bit of twine.

She searched the vanity top. Nothing.

“It’ll stay in, mostly.” She turned on the stool, prepared to have him release her, but he didn’t. The heavy braid swept over her shoulder.

To her surprise, he bent to one knee, opened one of the small drawers at her back, and came up with a length of ribbon. He wrapped the center of the sky blue satin around the end of her braid twice before securing it with a bow.

But he didn’t release her hair. Instead, he brought the ends to his lips and teased them over his lips.

She wanted to ask why the vanity was stocked with feminine frippery, but his gaze heated, locked on hers. She sucked in a deep breath and still dizziness threatened.

Such intensity on Richard Cannon’s face was a thing of raw beauty. In this moment, he saw nothing but her, thought of nothing else, worried about nothing else.

To be the sole focus of this man’s attention was quite possibly the most unnerving experience of her life. Far more than the jolt of nervous energy when fleeing a burning factory. Far more than the moment they met and she’d witnessed a sampling of his displeasure.

Perhaps Richard brought this intensity with him into everything he did.

She couldn’t help but revel in the heat of his attention.

And remember what he’d said to her before they left camp. “
Just fair warning, wife.
When we return home to Ogden City, things between us will change. It’s time
.”

Whatever the mysteries that awaited her, she found she trusted her husband. Not sure exactly when that had occurred, or how, she lifted a finger and touched the beard on his jaw. She trailed a finger through the hair that had been bristly just days earlier but now had softened.

He closed his hand around hers, brought her fingers to his mouth for a kiss.

His eyes drifted shut and those long, dusky lashes she’d believed wasted on a man, seemed to fit him ideally, somehow.

“I trust you,” she told him, as matter-of-fact as if she’d said yes, she would enjoy a cup of tea.

“Thank you, dearest. I trust you, too.”

He stood, pulled her to her feet, and brought her close.

“You know what I want, don’t you?” The warmth of his lips against her ear made her shiver in a most pleasant way.

“Yes.”

“I hesitate to ask if you’re ready, for fear you’ll tell me no.”

“My answer is yes.”