Maureen McKade (14 page)

As the food was passed around, Jake inspected the china dishes with vining flowers etched around their edges. Matching cups and saucers rested beside each setting except Johnny’s.

Blue lilies: the image struck Jake with the force of a thunderclap. His mother had had a fancy set of dishes with painted lilies that she’d used only when guests ate
with them. She’d taken them back East with her. He hadn’t remembered them until now.

“Jake, did you want some potatoes?” Kit asked.

He forced himself to answer. “Yes, please.”

As he spooned mashed potatoes on to his plate, he pictured his mother setting this very same table with her china. Past and present seemed to merge. Instead of Kit, he saw his mother; and in Johnny he saw himself.

Chapter 10

“J
ake, are you all right?”

Kit’s face came into focus as her concerned voice penetrated his thoughts. He glanced at the curious faces surrounding him.

“I’m fine,” he reassured. “I was just thinking how long it’s been since I’ve eaten a holiday meal in this house.”

Compassion shone in Kit’s eyes. “I’m sure this house holds quite a few memories for you.”

“Some, but I spent most of my time staying with other folks. With my father gone so much…” He shrugged.

Her gentle hand covered his. “You’re welcome here anytime, Jake.”

Kit’s heartfelt offer brought a stab of self-reproach.

After everyone had eaten their fill, Kit supervised clearing the table and getting the leftovers packed away.

“I’ll help wash the dishes,” Jake volunteered.

Kit shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ll take care of those later. We’ve got something much more fun to do.”

As Jake stared at Kit in puzzlement, she grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the kitchen. “Come on, before Johnny finds all the eggs.”

Kit led Jake outside into the warm spring afternoon, to the corral where Pete, Charlie, Ethan, and Johnny stood. Toby danced around their legs.

“Are you ready?” Kit asked her son.

Johnny’s dark eyes lit up. “Yep.”

“All right. There’s twenty-two eggs hidden around the yard,” Kit said.

“Twenty eggs,” Pete corrected.

Kit groaned. “I thought you only ate two.”

He shrugged his thin shoulders. “I’m old. I forget.”

She rolled her eyes. “Make that twenty eggs. Whoever finds the most wins.”

“Wins what?” Jake asked curiously.

“Twenty hard-boiled eggs.”

“Maybe I can sell them to Liam at the Red Bird and he can put them in the pickle jar.”

“You can help me, Mr. Cordell,” Johnny said. “I bet we’ll find all of them.”

“That wouldn’t be fair. It’s everybody for himself,” Charlie stated. “Besides, you already have Toby helpin’ you.”

“Any other rules?” Jake asked.

“No stealing from another person’s cache,” Pete replied. “And since I’m the official overseer, I say the penalty for taking someone else’s eggs is cutting off a couple of fingers.”

Johnny giggled.

Kit’s eyes twinkled. “Sounds fair to me.” She glanced at Jake. “This is serious business.”

“I’m beginning to get that impression.”

“Get ready,” Pete began. “Set. Go.”

Kit hurried away in the direction of the shed. Johnny, with Toby at his heels, trotted away toward the woods. Ethan and Charlie moved with a bit more decorum, but Jake could see the enthusiasm in their faces.

“Why’re you standing here making like a fencepost?”
Pete exclaimed. “Put some of your pa’s tracking skills to good use.”

Jake wondered how his stern father would feel about hunting Easter eggs. He followed after Kit and spotted her around the corner of a barn.

“I found one,” she announced excitedly. She opened her hand and in her palm lay a reddish egg.

“Do you do this every year?” Jake asked.

She tucked her prize into her skirt pocket. “Ever since Johnny was two years old. Pete hides the eggs and the rest of us look for them.”

Kit continued her search, and Jake fell in step beside her.

“Have you ever gone on an Easter egg hunt?” she asked curiously.

“Once or twice when I was around Johnny’s age. It was always while I was staying at someone else’s place, though.”

She stopped and studied Jake with a piercing gaze. “It wasn’t your father’s fault. He had a job to do.”

“Yeah, I know, and that job was more important than me.” He hadn’t meant to sound bitter, but the words left a caustic taste in his mouth.

“Your father would rather have stayed with you than chase down outlaws, but he had a responsibility to the people of Chaney,” Kit said.

“After Ma left us, I was passed around from neighbor to neighbor whenever Pa was out of town. I never felt like I belonged anywhere.”

“At least you had people to talk to.” Kit lifted her gaze to the cloudless sky. “My father was working most of the time, too, but I was left alone. And since I wasn’t the most popular girl in school, I didn’t have any friends to visit. The thing I remember most about my childhood is taking care of sick animals and talking to them like
they could understand me. God knows my own father never did.”

Kit’s confession pierced Jake’s self-pity with an arrow of guilt. He’d been so wrapped up in his own misery, he’d forgotten how alone she’d been.

“But now you have Johnny,” Jake said.

She smiled, the gesture lighting her features like the sun’s rays after a thunderstorm. “Yes, I have Johnny, and Charlie, Ethan, and Pete, too. I knew your father, Jake, and he wouldn’t have wanted you to stay so embittered. He loved you. He just didn’t know how to show it.”

“You must’ve known him a lot better than me.”

“Only because I made the time to get to know him. Something you never did.”

Jake pinned her with a sharp gaze, but he found no condemnation in her expression. The knowledge that she’d known his father better than he did bothered and bewildered Jake. “Why did you get the ranch?”

“Your father gave me first buyer rights in his will,” she replied defensively.

“But why did he have that stipulation in there at all? Why didn’t he just leave it to me free and clear?”

“Your father knew I wanted to raise horses, and he didn’t think you wanted the place. You never came home to visit after you left for college, and your letters were few and far between.”

“He didn’t even bother to write and ask me what I wanted.”

“Would you have written back?” Kit asked.

Jake thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Probably not. I was more interested in drinking with my fellow classmates and meeting women.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

A rueful grin tugged at Jake’s lips. “Sometimes I think you don’t have a very high opinion of me.”

“Sometimes you might be right.”

A breeze kicked up, blowing some of Kit’s hair across her cheek. Jake leaned forward and smoothed the stray strands back. She trembled beneath his touch.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he said softly.

Her eyes wide and luminous, she shook her head. “I’m not. You’d never hurt me.”

“Maybe I’m not the man you think I am.”

“It’s true that I was disappointed in you when I first saw you in the jail cell, and later in the saloon. You weren’t like the hero in the books. But the more I learn about you, the more I’ve come to admire the man rather than the hero.”

The naked honesty in her face twisted the knife deeper into his conscience. He didn’t deserve the adoration in her eyes. He didn’t deserve the trust in her voice. He didn’t deserve this strong, compassionate woman.

The only problem was, he wanted her with an intensity that frightened him.

He turned his face, kissed her palm, then curved his hand around the back of her slender neck. Drawing her close, he feathered a caress across her parted lips. Her heart thundered against his chest.

He tasted the sweetness of her mouth. Shyly she reciprocated, sweeping her tongue across his, dancing and retreating like an inexperienced lover. Jake wrapped his hands around her hips, drawing her flush against his rigid desire.

“Ma!”

Johnny’s scream ripped through passion’s ensnaring web.

Kit’s face drained of color. “
Johnny
.”

Her frightened voice was a mere whisper, and Jake grabbed her hand, pulling her in the direction of the boy’s cry. His blood pounded through his veins, fearful of what condition they’d find Johnny in.

He crashed through the underbrush, thorns tugging at his shirt and arms. Before he even spotted the boy, Jake stumbled into him. He instinctively put out a hand to steady the boy, whose mouth and nose were covered with his palm.

Then the stench struck Jake, nearly knocking him over with its potency.

“A skunk sprayed me,” Johnny managed to spit out, nearly gagging from the odor.

Kit reached down to hug Johnny, then drew back, coughing. “I thought something terrible had happened to you!”

“It did!” Johnny exclaimed, pinching his nose. “I think I’m gonna die.”

Color seeped back into Kit’s pale face, and she looked at Jake with relief. “I kind of doubt that.”

A moment later Ethan and Charlie burst into the clearing, fear clouding their expressions.

The burly black man seemed to grasp the situation immediately. “Whew heee! Smells stronger’n a ten-hole privy.”

Kit put her hand over her mouth and nose. “I thought Toby was with you.”

“He ran after a rabbit,” Johnny said in disgust. “If he’d been with me, this wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t see him until it was too late, then the stupid thing sprayed me.”

Jake tried to breathe in shallow spurts. Some of the skunk’s stink had been transferred to him when he’d run into Johnny. “He was only protecting his home,” Jake managed to say, in between miserly breaths. “Besides, I’m sure he was more afraid of you than you were of him.”

Johnny held up his arms, wrinkled his nose, and looked down at his damp clothes. “Do you think you can get them clean?”

Kit shrugged helplessly. “I’m not even sure I can get
you
clean.”

Johnny scowled. “I woulda won the egg hunt, too.” He pulled a couple of cracked eggs from each of his two front pockets. “See?”

The scathing smell seemed to intensify, bringing tears to Jake’s eyes. “Anyone have any ideas how to get this odor off him and me?”

“When I was a young’un, a friend of mine got sprayed by a polecat. They scrubbed him with tomatoes,” Charlie suggested.

“Do they have to be fresh?” Kit asked.

Charlie shook his head. “I think canned ones’ll do.”

“You and Ethan go bring up all the jars of tomatoes from the root cellar. It’s a little cool to bathe out here, so we’ll have to put the tub in the kitchen. I’ll get the water started heating up for the bath.” She glanced at Jake, a twinkle in her eyes. “Baths.”

He shot her a pointed glare.

Jake and Johnny walked side by side, following in the wake of the others who’d gone ahead to begin their tasks. Toby the traitor had returned, but retreated with a yelp after getting a whiff.

“Are you mad at me, Mr. Cordell?” Johnny asked in a low voice.

“For what?”

“For getting you all stinky.”

Jake laid a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. In the spring all the critters are a little more excitable.”

Including people, Jake thought as he remembered his interrupted dalliance with Kit. Hell, maybe it was for the best.

They passed the corrals, and the horses snorted in annoyance at the sharp odor. At the house, Kit made Jake and Johnny stay outside until she had everything organized.
After twenty minutes, Kit opened the kitchen door and allowed them inside. A round wooden barrel stood empty in the center of the kitchen, with opened jars of tomatoes sitting beside it. A tin tub a few feet away was filled with steaming water.

“Strip first, then wash with the tomatoes in the barrel. After that, rinse off in the water,” Kit explained. She wiped the moisture from her tearing eyes. “Take off your clothes, Johnny.”

“In front of Mr. Cordell?”

Jake grinned. “Don’t worry, Johnny, I used to be a boy, too.”

Humor twinkled in Kit’s eyes as she gazed at Jake. “So what are you now?”

“Odiferous,” Jake shot back.

Kit laughed, then coughed and waved a hand in front of her nose. “That’s for sure.”

“I ain’t takin’ off my drawers,” Johnny said stubbornly.

“I suppose giving them a tomato bath wouldn’t be a bad idea, anyhow,” Kit said with a helpless shrug.

Johnny removed his shoes, then his shirt and trousers, leaving on his lightweight woolen drawers. Kit used a wooden stick to pick up his clothing.

“Could you help him?” Kit asked, as she moved toward the back door.

“Where are you going?” Jake asked desperately. He wasn’t averse to sharing a hot sudsy tub with a willing woman, but he’d never given a child a bath before.

“Pete says he knows a way to get the smell out of clothes. I’ll be back in a little while.”

She disappeared, leaving him with a near-naked kid and ten jars of squashed tomatoes. Sighing, Jake removed his own shirt, and rolled up the sleeves of his undershirt.

“Step right up,” Jake said with a dramatic flourish.

With a boyish grimace, Johnny got into the barrel and stood with his arms crossed. “Now what?”

Jake lifted one of the jars and held it up. “Here goes, kid.”

Jake poured the gloppy substance over Johnny’s head, and the boy yelped. “That’s cold!”

“Start rubbing it around like it’s soap,” Jake ordered.

Johnny complied as Jake continued to pour more jars of tomatoes over him. The reddish juice cascaded down his face, leaving pulp and seeds in his hair and on his shoulders.

The boy grimaced. “It feels kinda like a wet frog.”

It’d been a long time since Jake had caught frogs, but he didn’t have any trouble recalling the slimy texture. It wasn’t one of his favorite memories.

Once the boy was saturated, Jake grabbed a cloth and began to scrub Johnny. Tomato droplets got onto Jake’s trousers, and he cursed aloud.

Johnny giggled at the profanity. “Ma’d wash your mouth out with soap if she heard you.”

“It’d be better than tomatoes.” Muttering under his breath, Jake stripped down to his drawers. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Move over, kid.”

The barrel barely accommodated both of them, and when Jake emptied a few more jars over himself, Johnny was splattered, too. A gleam in his eyes, the boy leaned over, cupped his hands, and filled them with juicy tomatoes. He tossed them at Jake, who sputtered under the onslaught.

“So you want to play tough? All right, you got it.” Jake smushed a tomato against Johnny’s neck, and the boy laughed and counterattacked.

Kit paused outside the kitchen, listening to them hoot and holler.

Jake Cordell had always been a clean man, favoring a bath more than once a month, as was customary
among his colleagues. Arriving in Holyoke, Kansas, he found the nearest bathhouse and entered its clean, steamy interior. A pretty, plump-cheeked girl worked at the counter and quickly led him to an open copper tub filled with hot water
.