Smoke River Bride (16 page)

Teddy tramped in, the bottle of dark liniment clutched in his hand. “I put some water to boil, ’n case you wanna, uh, clean him up some.”

Leah expelled a long breath. “Thad, do you have any spirits hidden away somewhere?”

“Yeah. In the pantry, behind the sack of sugar.”

Teddy raced to get the bottle, and while Leah got a basin of hot water ready to wash him, his son helped him pour out and swallow two good slugs of whiskey. Hell, Thad thought, he’d better make it three, and he gulped down another.

Leah shooed Teddy out to tend the horses, then dropped a soft towel into the basin
and began to remove Thad’s blood-streaked clothes.

Oh, may the Lord have mercy on his soul. He was hard before she got to his belt buckle, and when she slid his drawers down over his naked backside, he was swollen and aching. As long as he stayed facedown on the bed, his manhood hidden, he might be able to handle it.

But with her every soft swipe at his bare skin, his control wavered. Finally she picked up the liniment bottle Teddy had brought.

“Dr. Neal’s horse liniment!” she yelped. “
This
is what you used on me?
Horse
liniment?”

His mind warm and mellow after three shots of whiskey, Thad chuckled, then sucked in his breath at the pain it brought. “Worked, didn’t it?”

Leah laughed softly. “Oh, my, yes.”

“Well?”

“I am not sure this medicine will be effective on a man such as you.”

“What’s that mean? Leah, don’t josh me now. I’m not up to it.”

To his surprise, she planted a light kiss on his bruised shoulder. “I am not teasing you,
Thad.” She brushed her lips across the base of his neck.

He groaned. “Oh, no?”

“No,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I am seducing you.”

With a gasp he came straight up off the bed. “Like hell you are.”

“Lie down,” she said quietly. “And hush up.”

“L
eah.” Thad caught at the small hand rubbing his shoulder. “Leah, stop.” Even with him belly-down on the bedsheet, his engorged member had ideas of its own. “I can’t…”

She went on rubbing another palmful of the sagey smelling liquid across his neck. “You cannot what?”

“Well…” he rumbled against the sheet. “It’s like this.”

“Yes?”

“I like being with you, Leah. I like it a lot. Maybe too much.”

Her hand stilled. “I like being with you, too, Thad. I do not believe there can be ‘too much.’”

He trapped her wrist and lifted it away
from his rib cage. “When you touch me…oh, man alive, Leah, I want you. But dammit, right now I can hardly move.”

“Yes,” she breathed. “I know.”

Thad struggled to think clearly. “Liking you is not so much outside as it is…”

“Inside,” she finished, her voice calm. “Yes, I know that, too.”

She disengaged her wrist from his grasp and went on smoothing the aromatic lotion over his skin. Goodness, it felt wonderful. The liniment warmed his muscles and soothed away the pain. Hell’s bells, everything Leah did, or said, or cooked or sewed or read aloud in the evenings was wonderful. He was in love with her up to his eyeballs.

His manhood was alive and eager, but his body hurt like blazes. Must have taken more of a beating from Ike than he’d thought. At any rate, he couldn’t even think about…

Huh! He couldn’t
not
think about it. He hoped Leah understood.

Her hands reached his lower back. “Leah.” Her name came out of his mouth in a hoarse plea.

Her soothing fingers ceased their work on his bruised muscles and then she leaned over him and whispered something into his ear.
It sounded like…Heavens, her voice was as ragged as his. And if that didn’t tie him up in knots, he was made of iron.

The word she had whispered was
tomorrow
.

“Tomorrow, what?”

“Tomorrow perhaps you will be able to move without hurting.”

His mouth went dry. Tomorrow he might be able to walk around with only a twinge or two; it was the day
after
tomorrow that scared him. Or rather, the
night
after. By that time he would be well and strong and half out of his mind with hunger for her.

There was no doubting it; he was in trouble. Focusing on his wheat field had worked up to a point, but it no longer stopped him from thinking about Leah. Wanting her. Sometimes, like right now, He felt he might go crazy.

Hell and damn, he was a coward. He kept edging away from her, protecting himself from another broken heart. At the same time a question nagged at him deep down inside, something he couldn’t even put into words.

Was he losing more than he was gaining? He twisted his head so he could not see her.
He had to think about something other than Leah or his brain would explode.

“Every rancher in Polk County said wheat was risky,” he muttered. “Maybe they were right. With no rain since December, the wheat will be scorched to a crisp before I can harvest it.”

Leah said nothing, just sat quietly on the bed beside him and listened.

“You know I’ve gambled the ranch on that crop. If it fails, next year we might be broke. And hungry.”

“We will not be hungry, Thad.”

“Oh, God, Leah, what I’m trying to tell you is…” He waited until he regained control of his breathing. “I’ve got to keep my mind on the wheat right now. Not on you.”

Leah’s hands stilled. “Even at night?”

Thad made an odd sound in his throat. “Mostly at night. Can you understand that?”

“No, I don’t,” she said quietly. “I think that is an excuse for something else, something you are not telling me.”

Leah recorked the bottle of liniment with slow, deliberate motions and spent a long minute composing her thoughts. “There are many things about you I do not understand, Thad.”

He made a sound in his throat, but when he
said nothing, she went on. “You are building a barrier between us. And often you still ignore Teddy, who needs you very much.”

He did not speak, just looked at her. The pain in his eyes made her tighten her resolve. It was time to get some things out in the open. With every single visit to town, she grew further from acceptance in Smoke River. She was beginning to understand why. Verena Forester.

Heaven help her, Leah had come to love this man. If he could not love her back, she would wither up inside and die. She eyed the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the night table.

“Leah, stop.”

“Stop what?” Surely she had not spoken aloud?

“Stop rubbing my back,” he said in a low growl. “And stop talking. I can’t take any more.”

Hot tears of fury rose in her eyes. “I cannot take any more, either.” She snapped the sheet up over his body.

“What are you talking about?”

Leah took a deep breath and kept her focus on the whiskey bottle. “Things are not right between us, Thad.”

He closed his hands into fists. “Yeah, I guess not.”

“Is it Verena?” The words just slipped out, but when she heard them hanging in the silence she wasn’t sorry.

“Huh? What’s Verena got to do with it?”

“I thought…” Leah worked to control the trembling in her voice. “I think perhaps it was Verena you wanted. Not me.”

He rolled over and tried to sit up. “Are you crazy?” Inexplicably he gave a harsh laugh. “It’s you I married, Leah. It’s you I want. And it’s you who’s driving me crazy.”

“I do not believe you.”

Thad stared at her, the astounded expression in his blue eyes slowly shifting into anger. “Well, gosh darn it.” He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she pulled back.

He closed his eyes. “This’d be funny if it wasn’t so damn…so damn gut-wrenching.”

“I will not mention it again, Thad. But I am not sorry I spoke to you about it.”

Without a word he rolled off the bed and stalked to the bedroom door. Then, remembering he hadn’t a stitch on, he backtracked, threw on jeans and a shirt, pulled on his boots, and tramped out. Leah heard his steps pound across the porch and then fade into the yard.

Numb, she curled up into the warm spot his body had left, stuffed her fist against her mouth and choked down her sobs.

In the morning she went through the motions of cooking breakfast, sweeping the house and feeding the chickens, but her mind was on Thad. What could she do if he did not care for her as she cared for him?

That afternoon she could not face the Ladies’ Knitting Circle. Instead, she rambled listlessly about the ranch, letting her feet carry her across meadows and pastures that were brown and parched from the relentless sun. She ended up at the fence bordering Thad’s precious wheat field.

The spindly stalks looked half-dead already. The top growth was stunted, and the drooping wheat heads were beginning to dry up.
Dear God, his wheat venture is going to fail!
Her eyes stung.

If he would only let her be close to him, she might ease his anguish. But their conversation last night had resulted in a cool stiffness at breakfast that had never been there before. In a way she wished she could take all her words back.

But if she did, the barrier between them would never be resolved.

She mopped her eyes with the hem of her apron and tried to face things as they were. Thad’s battered body had healed, but he was still preoccupied, and now she knew why. Verena Forester.

Thad was withdrawing from her more each day and Leah knew that at some point it could cease to matter. She gave a strangled laugh. Her mother would say she had married a pigheaded man.

A pigheaded man who wanted someone else.

That night she made Thad’s favorite chicken and dumplings. After supper he passed her in the kitchen on his way toward the back door and patted her shoulder. She turned toward him, but he stepped away. He gave her a long look, then cleared his throat.

“I’ll sleep in the barn tonight.”

“The
barn!”
He was burying his head in the sand, and her heart along with it.

She went to bed alone and wept until her pillow was soggy. She could not stand being set aside much longer.

The week dragged by. Each day the merciless sun beat down, scorching her roses and the struggling vegetables in her kitchen garden. The freshly washed shirts and jeans and
drawers she laundered were dry as soon as she clipped them on the clothesline.

The knitting circle was to meet again at Verena’s on Saturday. Leah swallowed her distress and decided that yes, she must join them; she needed the companionship and the distraction of the ladies’ talk—at least as much of it as she could stomach.

And the plan she had adopted called for her not only to remain strong, but if at all possible, to keep a serene face.

Besides, she needed a packet of needles and another bottle of Thad’s whiskey from the mercantile. Her breath hitched in at the thought of dealing with Carl Ness, especially after he and Thad had come to blows, but she could not avoid it. Her throat ached as if she had swallowed a lumpy rock, but she vowed to go into town, do what she had to do and smile no matter what.

On Saturday the air hung hot and heavy in the small bedroom, so stifling it was hard to breathe. She stood in her muslin camisole and pantalets, staring down at the long flounced skirt and petticoat and high-necked red calico shirtwaist laid out on the bed. Any breeze on this oppressively warm afternoon would never reach her skin through all those buttoned-up
layers; it was simply too hot and sticky to be wrapped up like a Chinese steamed bun.

Her Chinese silk tunic beckoned from the armoire. That and the loose trousers would let the air circulate and cool her skin. Why, she wondered, did not every woman in Smoke River wear similar comfortable garments during the hot summer days?

When she was dressed, she saddled up Lady and slowly rode into town, keeping her fears under control by focusing her tearblurred eyes on the horse beneath her. The afternoon sun beat down on her wide-brimmed straw hat, and by the time she’d finished her business at the mercantile, calmed her nerves after Carl Ness’s rudeness and climbed the rickety wooden stairs to the dressmaker’s shop, her temples were pounding.

A familiar voice stopped her halfway up the stairs.

“Leah!” Ellie called from the landing. “My goodness, you’re wearing Chinese—” Her friend broke off as Leah panted up the last few steps.

“Leah, are you all right? You look pale and your eyes—” Again she broke off.

She knew what her eyes looked like; they were swollen and puffy from crying. She
could not explain, because Ellie, so in love with her devoted husband, would never understand.

“Come in, Leah. Verena has made lemonade. It will help you feel better.”

At the doorway, Leah hesitated, pinched her cheeks to bring some color to her face and marched into the lion’s den.

Everyone was present, even young Noralee Ness, whose lap robe for her mother was half-finished. Jeanne Halliday patted the chair next to her, and Leah sank onto it. How she wished she had brought Uncle Charlie’s Chinese fan! Instead, she snatched off her sun hat and waved it back and forth in front of her face.

“How come you’re wearing those Chinese clothes?” Noralee inquired with typical directness.

Leah took a deep breath. “Because they are cooler in hot weather.” She looked at the flushed faces in the circle. “If I might suggest,” she began with trepidation, “these loose-fitting garments are simple to make. I will donate an old tunic you could use for a patt—”

“Never!” Verena spit the word in Leah’s
face. “What an outrageous suggestion. Thad would never—”

Leah stopped her fanning. Outrageous, was it? What was outrageous were Verena’s constant veiled hints about Thad.

“What an insane idea!” Darla blurted. “Are you suffering from sunstroke?”

Ellie shoved a tall glass of lemonade into Darla’s hand and followed with a plate of cookies. Chewy ones, with raisins, Leah noted. They must have come from Uncle Charlie’s bakery, and she wondered who had brought them.

“Didja all hear ’bout the town meeting tonight?” Noralee asked excitedly. “My father is organizing it.”

Leah’s spine stiffened. “Town meeting? No, I had not heard. What is the meeting about?”

A silence descended in the stifling room, so thick Leah could hear the beating of her own heart. At last, Jeanne raised her head and cleared her throat.

“Alors, the meeting was called by Monsieur Ness and Monsieur Poletti, the barber. It is about the new bakery in town. Uncle Charlie’s bakery.”

“My Uncle Charlie?” Verena gave an undignified half laugh,
half snort. “Well, Leah, no one else in Smoke River has a Chinese uncle, now, do they? The town meeting is to decide what to do about it.”

Ice water pooled in the center of her belly. “What do you mean, ‘do about it’?”

Verena looked away. After an awkward moment, Darla spoke up. “It means deciding whether the people of Smoke River are going to stand for a Celestial moving into our town and starting his own business.”

Ellie caught Leah’s eye and leaned sideways toward her. “Leah,” she said in an undertone, “you must come to the meeting. You must. The whole town is taking sides.”

“Meeting!” Thad shouted at supper that night. “More likely a tar-and-feather party. Carl Ness ought to be behind bars.”

“Who’s gonna get tar and feathers, Pa?”

“They’re gunning for Uncle Charlie, son.”

Teddy’s brow wrinkled. “What’s he done?”

“Nothing,” Leah and Thad said in unison. “Eat your supper, Teddy.”

“But I wanna know about the meeting.”

“So do we, son.” Thad pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “I’m going on into town early, Leah.”

“But Thad…”

“I’ve got to go,” he said, his voice quiet. “You know that sometimes people can get some crazy notions.” He touched her shoulder. “I’ve got to keep Charlie safe.”

She met her husband’s steady gaze; the determined look on his face sent a shiver of fear up her backbone.

“Be careful.”

He reached for her, pulled her out of the dining chair and folded her into his arms. “You are one sensible woman, Leah.”