Walking on Air (38 page)

“You’re going to go straight to bed, Gabriel Valance. Don’t bother to argue. Burke Redmond will tell you I’m a woman to be reckoned with when I make up my mind.”

“Huh? Redmond? What did you do to him?” He remembered seeing Redmond on the street just before Raintree shot him. “Hell’s blazes, Nan, you didn’t accidentally shoot him, did you?”

She giggled. “No, but I think he wishes I had. He tried to keep me from entering Doc’s treatment room.” She giggled again, louder this time. “He didn’t succeed.”

“So what happened?”

She told him. Gabe felt his eyes bulge.

“You actually
kneed
him?
You?
”

“Once during a poker game, you told me and Laney how to take a man down, and I followed your advice. At the time, I wore only my nightgown and wrapper, which had come untied, so all my usual concerns about ladylike behavior flew out the window. I must say, I found it rather liberating. So I suggest you obey orders. Bed rest. At least for several hours.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Gabe grinned, deciding on the spot that he absolutely would
not
miss out on what remained of his first real Christmas. “Would it be possible for me to rest on the settee, propped up with pillows, so I can visit with everyone?”

“Champion idea!”

And as they walked together toward home, Gabe smiled. No heavenly mistake had been made. God had guided Gabe’s hand to slip that ivory harmonica into his shirt pocket.

As they stepped onto the boardwalk in front of Nan’s shop, Gabe remembered something important. “Did you ever go out back to find your Santa present?”

Nan looked blank for a moment. Then she laughed. “Good grief, no. I finally had the presence of mind to have Laney bring my clothing and shoes to the doctor’s office, but the
last
thing I thought of was Christmas gifts.”

“We can’t have that. I have it on good authority that Santa left you something extraordinarily special.”

Gabe drew her into the narrow alley that led to the back dooryard. As they closed in on the woodpile, Nan cried,
“
Oh!
”
Then she broke away from Gabriel to fetch the bouquet of hothouse red roses from atop a fence post, where he’d left them for her that morning. A huge pink bow with trailing ribbon held the stems together. “How on
earth
did you slip these past me?”

He chuckled. “I hid them in the alleyway.” Gabe glanced at the long, slender box resting on a lower rung of the woodpile. There was no reason for Nan to read the letter inside now. Gabe would ask Christopher to fetch the container later and toss it on their sitting room fire. “The instructions say to keep them cool until they’re in water. They’ve held up well. I’m surprised they aren’t ruined from being out in the open for so many hours.”

“It’s thirty-eight degrees, a perfect temperature for snow, and flowers as well, I’m guessing.” Nan held the blossoms to her nose and breathed in deeply of their scent. “Oh, Gabriel, roses in December. I can’t believe it.” She fixed him with a bedazzled gaze. “You’ve gone and done it now. I think Santa truly exists, and I shall expect him to bring me roses for Christmas every year for the rest of my life. They’re magical.”

“You’ll have them, and anything else I can get for you, sweetheart.”

Gabe walked closer to smell the unfurling blossoms. He started to bend down to kiss the woman who’d so completely stolen his heart. She saw him wince and stepped up on the pile of logs until their faces were level. He leaned forward, and their lips met in a featherlight kiss that went all through him.

If he could live out the rest of his days trying his damnedest to make her smile, he’d die the second time a very happy man.

Two and a half years later

G
abe glanced sideways at his eighteen-month-old son, who was
helping
to sandpaper the church’s porch railing. The child, named Gabriel after his dad, was far too young to do chores, but he insisted on being Gabe’s assistant nevertheless. Gabe tried to show him the correct way to do things, whether he understood yet or not.

Gabriel had pudgy little hands with dimples over each first knuckle. He also took his sanding assignment very seriously, bending his dark head close to the wood and frowning. It was clear to Gabe that his boy was trying to emulate him, which he found flattering. He just hoped he didn’t scowl quite that fiercely while he worked.

Crouching beside the child, Gabe demonstrated with his piece of sandpaper. “Not real hard, just slowly, lightly, back and forth, back and forth. There you go. That’s a fine job, Gabriel.”

The child grinned up at Gabe, flashing Nan’s dimple in his cheek. He was definitely a kid Gabe could never deny, with pitch-black hair, coffee brown eyes, and a complexion that loved the sun. But there was a lot of his mother in him, too. He had her perfectly bowed upper lip, and though his eyes were dark, they were shaped exactly like Nan’s. Gabe was fond of telling his wife that their boy was a miraculous blend of them both, in possession of all their fine points and none of the bad. Nan always arched her fair brows and said, “Perhaps you have bad points to pass on to our children, Mr. Valance, but they shall get nary a one from me.”

Nan was only teasing, of course, but Gabe completely agreed with the statement; she was as close to perfect as a woman could get. He loved her more than he ever would have believed possible.

As if his thoughts had conjured her up, he heard her calling his name. He glanced around to see her walking toward him from the house, which lay about two hundred yards away, built well back from the road where Tyke Baden’s home had stood before Gabe tore it down. As it had turned out, the old man had owned an entire section of land, which stretched from Second Street, at the edge of town, into an immense acreage of rolling grassland. Pop—even Gabe called Tyke that now—had signed over the deed to Gabe and Nan two years ago, enabling Gabe to build the house he’d dreamed of during the first month of his marriage. Pop still lived with them and loved being a grandfather to Laney, Christopher, and little Gabriel. In another three months, he’d have a fourth grandchild to fuss over. Gabe had grown to think of the older man as the only father he’d ever had, and he felt certain Nan felt the same way.

Gabe swung off the porch. He didn’t know how Nan pulled it off, but even large with child, she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever clapped eyes on. Since marrying him, she’d taken to wearing dresses with modestly scooped necklines. Today she was a picture in a gown with a blue-and-white-checked bodice and sleeves trimmed with white lace, and solid blue skirts that started just below her breasts and sported a split top layer that swept gracefully back over her hips to form a stylish bustle. The garment didn’t hide her pregnancy, but lent her elegance in spite of it.

“Sweetheart, why didn’t you just bang on the tripod? In your condition, you shouldn’t walk all the way to the church on a hot afternoon.”

Glancing at the porch, Nan laid a protective hand over her swollen belly. “Gabriel, don’t leave him alone up there. He may fall down the steps.”

Gabe leaned back around the railing to collect little Gabriel and set him safely on the grass before walking out to meet his wife. She smiled up at him. Not for the first time, Gabe thought that he could live on Nan’s smiles alone. Fortunately, she was such a fabulous cook that he’d never had to put it to a test.

“
Why
did you walk out here in the midday heat?” July in Colorado didn’t bring on scorchers like Gabe had experienced in other parts of the country, but to those who’d grown accustomed to the climate, summer afternoons felt hot. He touched his hand to her moist forehead. “What was so important it couldn’t wait?”

“I missed you,” she said simply. “Pop is having a nap, and that big house feels empty with the kids gone.”

Laney and Christopher had taken the wagon, stopped to pick up friends, and were picnicking along Random Creek, which ran through the west forty of their land. Jasper, who always shadowed the kids, was also gone and probably feasting on the fried-chicken lunch that Nan had fixed and stowed in a basket. “Let me get little Gabe, and we’ll go back with you. I can’t have you feeling lonely.”

Nan reached up to wipe wood dust from the silver star Gabe now wore pinned to his shirt. During the last election, the townspeople had written his name in on the ballot, and Gabe had become the marshal even though he hadn’t wanted the job. So far, it had worked out well. Gabe had so many people watching his back that he no longer needed to worry about upstart gunslingers calling him out into the street for a shooting contest. Pete Raintree had blabbed far and wide that Gabriel Valance now had the equivalent of an armed battalion under his command, and only a fool would dare to challenge him.

“Let’s just sit on the porch in the shade for a bit,” Nan suggested. “Then you can go back to sanding. Preacher Hayes will be sorely disappointed if the railing isn’t painted for next Sunday’s services.”

Gabe had built this church with very special worshipers in mind, so the sign at the edge of the yard read,
A CHURCH FOR SINNERS ONLY
, welcoming people of all faiths, persuasions, and walks of life. Because of that, the recent Sunday services had become a huge sore point for him. He’d originally hoped this building, erected on
his
land, would be a place where people who didn’t feel welcome at the other church could come to pray. Then, before he knew it, Preacher Hayes offered to do a weekly Sunday service here, and his town flock soon followed. Instead of welcoming the saloon owner, prostitutes in residence at the brothel, and the occasional stray Cheyenne Indian who had escaped being herded off to a reservation, Gabe had to endure couples like Simon and Geneva White.

“They’ve got their own damn church!” Gabe had complained to Nan a few weeks ago. “Let them pretend to be better than everyone else in
that
church and leave mine alone.”

In her ever-gentle way, Nan had pointed out that those who believed they were better than everyone else were the worst sinners of all.

“I’ll get the porch painted,” Gabe assured his wife as they sat together on the shady steps to watch their son toddle across the grass. “Geneva won’t snag her fancy white gloves on
my
porch rail.” He waited a beat. “But she might accidentally sit on a nail poking up through that pew she and Simon have staked claim to.”

Nan giggled. “Did you
see
that dress she wore last Sunday? I can’t believe I made it. Purple sequins on carnation pink! And the décolletage is cut so low, men’s eyes pop from their sockets when she walks.”

“Mine don’t.” Gabe nudged her with his shoulder. He’d been worrying about his wife for more than a month, and he felt that this was a perfect opportunity to talk with her about it. Since being direct was his way, he didn’t prevaricate. “You’re not enjoying all your absences from the shop, are you?”

Nan sighed, and Gabe knew she was considering all that they had done so she could have the time off. A year ago, she had decided that she wanted to spend more days at home, being a wife and mother. So she and Gabe had approached the young prostitute that Gabe had once consorted with at the brothel, offering her a proposal she couldn’t refuse. Nan had spent the next six months training the girl in millinery and dressmaking. Now Mary—Gabe still couldn’t quite credit that a woman whose services he’d once rented bore his mother’s name—ran the shop by herself much of the time. Nan went in to work only on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings from eight until noon. The arrangement had given Mary a much-needed chance to improve her lot. She made better money now than she’d ever earned in that shabby upstairs room, and she loved living in the apartment above the shop.

There had been hell to pay at first, of course. All the fine folks of Random had boycotted the shop for more than three months, the
ladies
refusing to set foot in a place where a “woman of ill repute” was employed. Fortunately Preacher Hayes had finally swayed public attitudes with several consecutive sermons about those times when Jesus had forgiven sinners, sought them out, and even broken bread with them. According to Hayes, Christ had set an example for everyone to emulate, and the good people of Random seemed to be missing the whole point, behaving toward others in ways that Christ would not condone.

“At first, I loved having so much more time at home,” Nan finally said.

Gabe heard a big
but
hanging at the end of that sentence. He’d come to realize that Nan was a person who seldom spoke without thinking it to death first, so instead of pressing her, he remained quiet.

“Do you want the truth?” she asked out of the blue.

Gabe chuckled. “No, I’d love to hear lies instead.”

She smiled. “The
truth
is, my forward protrusion is becoming quite large and is making me ungainly. Sometimes all the chores I
thought
would be so rewarding are
exhausting
instead.” She studied her palms, reminding Gabe of the time she’d asked him if he thought she’d been born with a serious line. “I think of all the thousands of women who have worked far harder than I do while they were even heavier with child, and I feel—” She broke off and sent him a stricken look. “I feel like a lesser person, I suppose. And it’s very difficult for me to admit that, even to myself, let alone to you.”

“Ah, sweetheart.” Gabe curled an arm around her shoulders. “You’re
not
a lesser person. You’re an
increasing
person.”

She laughed and turned her face against his shirt, a blue one that she’d made for him. It was one of Gabe’s favorites. “This is a
deep
concern, sir. I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t make jest.”

“I’m not jesting. You’re
definitely
increasing.” Gabe’s heart clenched at the thought of her pushing herself too hard, trying to measure up to imaginary women who’d been able to do it
all
without a single complaint. “Why haven’t you said something to me? I’ll pitch in. You don’t have to do the heavy work, Nan. Make me a list, and I’ll make short work of everything.”

“You’re already too busy tending to our livestock and crops, overseeing the construction of the new town library, being the marshal, and going to council meetings. How can you possibly find time to help me as well?” She straightened and stared toward town. “Besides, you’re missing the whole point. I want to manage on my own, just as other women have done for centuries.”

“That is such a load of bullshit that your wagon axle’s going to break.”

“Gabriel!”

“Well, excuse my language, but sometimes polite words don’t get my message across. Other women don’t have to clean homes with eight bedchambers and three water closets. A lot of the paragons you’re comparing yourself to live in one-room shacks with dirt floors. Every member of the family owns, at most, two changes of clothing, so wash day is much easier, and they sure as hell don’t stand over a hot iron for hours in July, pressing ruffled dresses, several shirts, and their own gowns, and also cook three large meals a day. That isn’t to mention that you work at the shop three days a week and often drop in on Mary at other times to make sure all is going well.”

Nan placed a fingertip over his lips, her eyes shimmering up at him.

Unable to speak clearly, Gabe said, “I’m nod finithed yet.”

She laughed and dropped her hand. “You
are
finished, because, as always, you’ve made me feel immensely better.” She slanted him a sideways glance. “So what is the answer to my problem?”

“Me!”

Nan shook her head. “This is your day off, and instead of relaxing, you’ve been working since sunup.”

“I can resign from the school board and let the guys building the library do the job without my input. It’s enough that I’m footing the bill. As for the livestock and crops, I’m not even sure I
want
to be a farmer. I’ll be happy to raise a few steers, a milk cow, a couple of pigs, and some chickens. I can be highly successful at that, be the marshal, and
still
help clean, do the wash, iron clothes, and cook. Well, I’m pretty much a lousy cook, and you’ll have to teach me how to do our wash and use an iron, but I can clean as good as anybody.”

Her dimple flashed. “Gabriel, please don’t take offense, but when you sweep, you send dirt flying three feet into the air.”

“I what?”

“You sweep with all your strength. Afterward I have to dust everything in the room.”

“Oh.” Gabe had never considered that he might get overly enthusiastic with a broom. “Well, I’ll work on it. And there’s not a reason on earth why Laney and Christopher can’t help more.”

“They both have daily chores, and they never complain about doing them,” Nan reminded him. “During summer holiday, I don’t mind asking more of them, but during the school year, they need to focus on family time and their studies. And I don’t want you to resign from the school board. You’ve brought about changes in the classroom that should have been in place years ago, and I know you want to make even more improvements. Without you pushing, none of those things will happen, and the children will suffer for it.”

Gabe was a huge proponent of education, so he couldn’t argue that point. “You need help around the house, though. If I’m going to keep the marshal job and remain active in the community, we have to come up with a solution. Maybe we could hire some woman to come in and lend you a hand.”

Gabe jumped up to collect their son, who had decided rocks looked good to eat. He was tickling the child to distract him when he noticed a woman cutting across the back of Lizzy’s lot and coming toward their place.

Returning to the porch, Gabe observed, “Some woman’s coming this way. I don’t know her. Do you?”