Silver Lining (41 page)

Her eyes widened in surprise, and she gripped her hands tightly in her lap.

"If you hadn't run off when you did, if you'd stayed a few more minutes, you would have heard me tell Philadelphia to go home. You would have heard me tell her that I love you with all my heart and that you're the best thing that ever happened to me and I thank God for you every day of my life."

"You told Philadelphia all that?" She stared. "Well, damn it, Max, I ought to smack you hard. Why'd you tell her all that instead of telling me?"

"I planned to tell you. I was getting around to it." He cleared his throat and wished his hair was combed and wished they weren't sitting on the snowy ground by the side of the road. This wasn't the ideal circumstance in which to commence a long-overdue courtship. "Mrs. McCord, I love you," he said, making a beginning. "I've tried to identify the moment when I first knew you had captured my heart."

She stared at him with such an odd expression that a stab of fear pierced his chest. What if she didn't love him back? What if she'd run away, not because of what she'd seen in the barn, but because she was tired of him and didn't want to be married anymore? Then he would just have to woo her and win her.

"I think I fell in love with you that amazing night on the kitchen floor. Or maybe it was the evening you stepped up and set my arm." Testing things, he reached for her hand, and, to his joy, she glared, but she let him take it. "Or maybe the night I knew I loved you was when I kissed you under the mistletoe on Christmas Eve. It's hard to say because I look at you now and it seems to me there's never been a time when I didn't love you."

He clasped her hands hard. "Don't ride out on me, Louise, I need you. I couldn't stand losing you. I'm laying my heart on the line. I'm saying I love you and no man ever meant those words more. I think we can make a good life together; we've already started. Let's forget about an agreement we made before we knew each other. I want you with me always." A sigh lifted his chest, and he gave her a look of exasperation. "Are you ever going to interrupt this speech and tell me that you love me? Or are you going to torture me by keeping me in suspense?"

"I'm bad tempered and stubborn, Max. I'm never going to be a lady. I doubt I'll ever in my life invite someone to tea or be invited to such an event. I don't have any fashion sense, and I'll never be beautiful."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, frowning. "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

How can you not know that?" When she stood naked before him like a young Venus, he was struck dumb with awe. And when she smiled at him across the bedcovers, the shine in her lovely eyes took his breath away. He told her what he was thinking. "And you have a wonderful mouth just made for kissing and laughing."

She studied him with suspicion, then amazement. "Good Lord. You really mean it! You honestly think …

Oh Max. You're the only person in the whole world who thinks I'm beautiful!" Moisture jumped into her damp eyes. "And I love you for it. I love you so much, more than you could possibly know!"

Lunging forward, she threw her arms around his neck and knocked him flat on his back. Lying on top of him, she smiled down into his face. "I guess I'm not going to leave you after all."

"Good." If anyone rode up on them and saw them carrying on like this, there would be a scandal to end all scandals. He didn't care. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her until she was breathless.

"All my life I dreamed of having someone think I was beautiful," she whispered.

Had he ever thought she wasn't? If so, he didn't remember it. Tenderly, he kissed her again and again.

"Nothing in my life would mean anything if you weren't here to share it. There'd be no reason to get up in the morning without you to light the sun with your smile."

"Oh Max! Oh my. You have such beautiful words inside you." She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her nose against his neck so she could smell him. "Will you write me a letter someday and say all those pretty things?"

"I'll write you a hundred letters."

They kissed and whispered love talk and made a shocking spectacle of themselves if there had been anyone to see. When Max's breath was ragged and he thought he'd go crazy with wanting her, he drew her to her feet and into his arms.

"I've been thinking. I want you to give me your silver spoon," he said gruffly. "I'm going to frame it in a shadow box along with the green marble." He kissed her deeply and deliberately, knowing there was still more to talk about, knowing they would never run out of things to say to each other. Most important, he knew this splendid woman was his. "Someday our grandchildren will ask why we framed an old silver spoon and a scratched marble, and why we display them in a place of honor on our mantel." He caught her face between his hands. "And I will tell them the spoon and the marble are the most valuable and precious items that you and I ever owned."

She gazed at him with luminescent eyes, radiant as if she were lit from within. "I have something to tell you."

"Will it keep until we get home? Right now, all I can think about is taking you to bed and showing you how much I love you."

"My news will keep," she whispered, her gaze loving him.

He swung into the saddle, then pulled her up behind him. Louise wrapped her arms around his waist and held him close, her eyes turned toward the distant mountain peaks.

A light breeze swept down from the snowcaps, across the foothills and onto the plains, bringing the scent of spring and a promise of new beginnings. Louise smiled through a shine of joyful tears. She'd been wrong about so many things. Most of all, she had been wrong about herself.

She wasn't Low Down anymore. She would never be Low Down again. Eyes focused on the mountains, she whispered good-bye to the sad, scruffy, rootless, and lonely woman she had left in Piney Creek.

Then she snuggled close to her husband's back, thought of the precious child she carried, and turned her face toward family and home.

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