WESTERN ROMANCE: A Settler’s Wife’s Dreams (Contemporary Westerns Historical Romance, Cowboy Romance) (8 page)

“I know we both have strong feelings,” he said, “but I don't know if it's as simple as just acting on them. It might not be a good idea for either of us to act on them. If we did there could be a backlash that would negatively affect my business. People would talk Lisa. Less than a few months ago you were happily married to a man on a homestead on the plain to the south. He suddenly died and then you shack up with the local up and coming businessman? I mean, you and I know it's not like that, but no one else will. Everyone else is going to think that something funny is going on, especially when I'm the person in charge of rounding up the tribe of Indians that doesn't exist and everyone is afraid of. What if people get to talking and decide to think that I somehow was involved in your husband’s death?”

Lisa pushed her face deeper into his neck and listened as he talked, caressing his back with her fingernails.

“Maybe it could work though,” Ted said. “Maybe we could get married and live our lives like everything is normal. The truth is everything is normal. Neither of us had anything to do with some lone savage kicking in your homestead door and killing your husband. There is absolutely nothing either of us could do about that. I'm sicker of hiding what we have than you know. I just want to be able to hold you in public. You have no idea how much I want to hold you in public. I want to shout my feelings about you to the world. But I can't because I have to pretend that we don't have feelings for each other to keep people from talking.”

Lisa tried to hold the tears back but knew that her efforts wouldn't be able to do so for long. The more she tried the more her eyes burned until finally she let herself weep into his arms. She could feel him gently caressing her as she started to calm down, her hysterical sobs slowly shrinking into sharp intakes of breath.

The next day Lisa intentionally didn't go down to breakfast until after she knew Ted had left the shop to run some errands. She had slept in her own room that night and spent most of it thinking about what she wanted to do with her future. More than anything she wanted to be able to live a life she was proud of and she wasn't going to be able to do that here.

She didn't know where she would go to, though, if she could. Ted would most likely give her some money to leave town if she needed it, which she did. Lisa could always go back east and explain to her family the tragedy that had befallen her. Or she could go out west and see if she knew anyone out there. She knew that she had a few family members out there, but she didn't know if they would be able to help her get on her feet or not. She wondered if she told Ted that she planned on leaving if he would change his plans so that he could leave with her.

Ted was a decent man, and Lisa realized that, but he was putting his business before everything else right now. Sure, he had a good thing going, but was it really that great of a thing considering how small the town they lived in was? She could cross the width of the town in no time at all. Sure, the town was growing, but it was still a very small town with very few options. She wondered if he realized this, or if he really wanted to settle in for the long haul. When alive, Frank used to talk about men who opened up shops in small cities hoping they would boom and make them rich. Often times such people spent their whole lives toiling under the assumption that they would someday be rewarded for all of their hard work. However the truth was that they weren't always rewarded, and Lisa knew it. She wondered if Ted knew that though. Many small business owners couldn't accept the fact that even though they worked very hard the return on their labor would be minimal at best.

Would Ted be willing to trade what he considered a huge amount of labor for minimal return for a life with her? Lisa knew that it was a question that she needed to figure out the answer to and very quickly. She already felt like she'd wasted more than enough time sitting around this town. There was more to life than being in a small town and gossiping about your neighbors.

Suddenly the homestead life that she had considered quaint before seemed like something she would give anything for. The homestead had been burned to the ground, she reminded herself. But had it? She had asked Ted to have it burned but that didn't mean that he’d done it. First of all he was extremely busy most of the time. Second of all there were times that Ted would agree with her and change his mind later. Maybe he’d said yes and then thought better of it.

Technically the homestead had her name on it now that Frank was gone, so if it was still standing she could go out there and live as long as she wanted to. If she did, she'd give up on the plowing and the sowing though. She'd just live off the land. The bank couldn't take the land deed from her until she was very delinquent on the payments, and there might even be a way for her to convince the banks to let the entire payment slide considering she had never bugged them about the life insurance policy on her husband. Not that the policy would have yielded much money, it was just one of those things that would look very sordid on their part. It would look bad for them to deny a widow her husband’s life policy and then expect her to keep up the payments on the property her husband had been farming.

Lisa didn't want to farm because it took so much time compared to a very small outcome of gain. She had once tried to tell Frank this but he'd grown angry at her, telling her that it was the only way that he could make money. While Lisa understood his frustration she also knew that for the most part he was wasting his time out plowing, weeding, or sowing. It just didn't make any sense to do it when so much of the crop was lost due to the weather being bad and then, even with what did grow would fall short of even breaking even when taken to the market.

Lisa decided that she would try to find different kinds of nuts and rare herbs to sell at the market to make money. Maybe she could hunt and trap to collect pelts to sell in town. This would all be a temporary solution until she figured out what she wanted out of life.

She thought about it for a while and then decided she had no idea what she wanted and that was fine. There was plenty of time to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. Today didn't necessarily have to be the day to lay all the plans at once. She drew a hot bath as she thought and slipped into it to bathe. The shop was lucky to be one of the very few houses in town to have indoor plumbing. Lisa didn't want to leave that behind. She sometimes missed bathing in the streams out by the homestead but it was always nice to be able to run hot water and slip into it a little bit at a time.

Completely submerged up to her neck in water Lisa fell asleep.

Lisa woke up back at the old homestead. She knew she was dreaming right away. It wasn't one of those dreams where you aren't sure, when you have to wonder around and pick things up and drop them to see what they do, and if they don't follow the laws of physics than you know that you are in a dream. She got out of bed and walked outside of the homestead. It was a clear and sunny day with no clouds in the sky. Something seemed off though. Something she really couldn't put a finger on but she knew it was there more than she had known anything in her life before.

She turned around and surveyed the land behind her. Frank was alive again, on a horse, thundering toward her. He had a pensive look on his face, like something terrible was happening far away and he was coming to bear news to her.

“Frank,” She said. “How are you?”

He gave her a funny look as he dismounted the horse. “I think something bad is going to happen,”

He turned to get back on the horse and an arrow struck him in the chest. Before Lisa could scream an Indian road out of the woods and jumped off his horse mid stride. When the Indian hit the ground it was Ted, who offered out his hand.

“Business first, young lady,” Ted said as he took her hand. “We must hide our feelings to make a few dollars.”

Lisa was about to open her mouth and say out loud in her dream that she didn't want to do that but the whole world started to dissolve and suddenly she couldn't breathe. She sputtered and gasped for air.

Lisa pushed as hard as she could with her feet against the far end of the tub. Her body slid up and her head shot out of the water. She gasped for breath, sputtering and coughing. At once she got out of the tub, her mood ruined. She got dressed and headed down to the first floor of the shop. There stood Ted talking to a customer about a dress she wanted made, and a table she wanted made as well. Lisa waited patiently until the woman left.

“Ted we need to get out of here,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“I'm leaving. You can come with me if you want to. Or not.” She turned to head back upstairs to pack her things.

“Wait, please,” Ted said grabbing her arm to keep her from moving. “I don't know what you want me to do.”

“Yes you do,” Lisa shook his hand off. “You know exactly what I want you to do.”

With that she turned and stormed up to her room.

The sun hung high over the west coast. Lisa and Ted were in California. Ted had sold the shops after all and chosen a life with Lisa over business. After she'd stormed upstairs on that fateful day he'd followed her and told her he loved her more than anything. Now Lisa was expecting a child. She worked the front counter at a thriving diner that Ted managed. Life was good.

There were times that Lisa thought about Frank and the homestead, thought about the Indian that could have killed her, thought about many things that could have been or that were. But her mind always came back to how lucky she was to have Ted. How lucky she was that, after all of what happened, he’d chosen her over business. Over everything.

Lisa smiled as she looked up at the sun, felt her baby kick, and turned to go back into the diner to finish the night out. She was a lucky woman. She was glad she didn't settle for anything but her dream.

The End

Copyright © 2015 by Melodie Grace

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