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“And then,” he continued, “I left home. Well, to tell the truth, I ran away from home.”
“Why’d you do that?” Emily queried. “I’d never run away from my mama.”
A long silence fell. Instead of measuring out flour for the cake she was determined to bake, Clarissa found herself listening intently.
“Well, it’s like this, honey,” Gray continued. “My ma and my pa didn’t like each other much. They yelled and screamed at each other every day for fourteen years, and finally I’d had enough.”
“What’d you do?”
Another silence. “Not sure I should tell you, Squirt.”
“Yes, you should tell me!” she persisted. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
Clarissa heard a low chuckle and then his voice continued. “Well, let’s see, what did I do? What do you think I did?”
“I bet you found a horse and a lot of money and you ate lots and lots of strawberry ice cream.”
“You like strawberry ice cream, huh?”
“Uh-huh. I like it better than anything.”
“Better than...scrambled eggs and bacon?”
“Yes!”
“Better than...roast chicken?”
“Way better! Especially when Mama bakes it.”
Clarissa’s lips tightened.
“Better than...Maria’s molasses cookies?”
“Yeah!”
“Guess that settles it, then. Gotta churn some ice cream one of these days.”
“Strawberry!” she shouted. “But first you have to finish my story.”
Clarissa laughed out loud as she mixed the listed ingredients together. Once Emily set her mind to something, she never gave up.
“Ah. Well, let’s see...where were we?”
“Your mama and your papa were screaming and you got a horse.”
“Yeah. Well, I lit out. Uh, you know what that means?”
“It means you...bought a big lamp?”
“That’s right in one way, Emily. I got myself a job and then I bought a lamp. I went to work in a silver mine, way down deep underground.”
“Was it dark?”
“Plenty dark. And cold.”
Clarissa dropped her mixing spoon. At only fourteen years of age he went to work in a silver mine?
“What’dja do?”
“I worked my a—worked really hard. And pretty soon, guess what?”
“You bought some ice cream!”
Gray’s rich laughter washed over Clarissa, but his tale was sending chills up her spine. How awful that must have been, working in a mine. What happened then? she wanted to ask. She slid the cake into the oven, still listening intently.
“No, I didn’t buy ice cream. I bought something else. Something a lot bigger.”
“What was it?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow night, okay?”
“No! Tell me now. Please? Puleeze?
Clarissa snapped Mrs. Beeton’s cookbook shut. “Emily...” she warned. “Time for bed.”
In the next moment her daughter’s light footsteps pattered up the stairs, and Gray appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Hope you don’t mind me tellin’ her these stories.”
She looked up. “They are certainly...educational,” she said carefully.
“Never thought of it that way, but yeah, I guess it was educational. For me, anyway.”
“It would seem you learned a great deal, at a very young age.”
When he didn’t answer, she shot a look at his face. He had a hard time keeping his unruly dark hair out of his eyes, which, she admitted, were quite nice—an odd gray-blue, like the barrel of the revolver he kept in a holster hanging over the front door. She liked his mouth, too, except when it narrowed in disapproval at something one of the ranch hands did. Mostly his lips were firm and usually curved in a smile, especially around Emily.
But tonight it was his eyes that caught at her—steel hard and unblinking. “I guess I shouldn’t be telling her those things,” he said slowly.
“You mean about working in a silver mine?” At his startled look, she added, “I was listening as I made the cake.”
“No. Other things I guess maybe I shouldn’t be telling her, about my ma and pa and why I left home. Bet you never met anybody who ran away from home before.”
Something in his voice changed, and all at once she didn’t know what to say. He pushed past her toward the back door. “Gotta check the barn before I turn in.”
“Gray?”
He stopped and stood unmoving, his back to her. “Yeah?”
“My cake will be done when you get back. I’ll cut a piece for you and leave it on the table.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Clarissa.” He grasped the doorknob, then spoke over his shoulder. “Cut a piece for yourself, too. Maybe heat up the coffee. There’s something I want to say to you.”
When he disappeared through the doorway she found her mouth had gone dry. He wanted to say something to her? What was it? Was it about Emily? About Ramon spending his valuable time showing her daughter how to plant seeds for a kitchen garden?
All at once she was certain she knew what it was. He’s going to fire me.
She untied the apron and paced back and forth across the kitchen floor, waiting for the cake to finish baking and the cold coffee to heat up. Where would she go? What would she do?
She couldn’t think about it. At last she peeked in the oven, tested the cake with a straw from the broom on the back porch, and lifted out the cake pan using her bunched-up apron as a pot holder.
She was learning to cook! But perhaps not well enough to warrant her weekly three-dollar salary. Perhaps he expected his fried eggs not to be too hard or so runny they slid off his fork and the biscuits to be light and fluffy, like Maria’s, not hard enough to bounce, as her first batch had been. She couldn’t even think about attempting another roast chicken; she had to work up her courage for that.
The more she mulled it over, the more unsettled her stomach grew. She picked up a knife, sawed two squares from the cake and set them on two small plates. Before she could find forks, the back door banged open.
“Coffee smells good,” he remarked.
“It’s not fresh, I reheated this morning’s.”
“Still smells good.” He dropped into a chair. She poured him a large mug and slid the plate of cake toward him.
“You havin’ some, too?”
“Yes.”
He took a bite, and Clarissa watched avidly as he chewed and swallowed.
“Tastes kinda...um...flat.”
“Flat?” She took a tentative bite. The cake was nicely browned on top, and it had a fine texture. But he was right—it had no flavor at all. What had she done wrong? She grabbed Mrs. Beeton’s book and thumbed through the pages until she found the recipe. Flour. Sugar. Eggs. Saleratus. And salt. Salt! Good heavens, she’d forgotten to add salt. No wonder it tasted flat!
She snatched Gray’s plate away.
“Hold on a minute, it’s not that bad, honest!”
“Don’t lie to me, Gray. Don’t ever, ever lie to me.”
He blinked and his fork clattered onto the table. “Clarissa, I never lie. I’ve never lied to anyone in my entire life, not even—” He broke off.
Her breath stopped. “Not even who?”
“Not even my pa when I left home, uh, I mean ran away. I wanted to, though. God, I wanted nothin’ more than to tell him the truth, but...well, I couldn’t. But I couldn’t lie, either. So I didn’t say anything at all, I just up and left.”
Clarissa stared at him. “You hate my cake, don’t you? You just don’t want to tell me.”
Gray chuckled. “No, I don’t hate it. It’s true, it’s not a very tasty cake, but maybe you can pour something over the top, like a frosting or something. Maybe Mrs. Beeton can suggest something to rescue it.”
She began idly riffling through the pages.
Gray sipped his coffee and watched her. “You know, there’s lots more important things in life than one flat-tastin’ cake.”
She said nothing, but he could tell by her face that she wasn’t convinced. She’d probably been raised so starchy and proper in her rich brother’s house in Boston that she expected everything she put her hand to to be perfect. Well, he had news for her. Nobody’s life went like that.
For a brief minute he thought about telling her so, but the wary expression in her eyes made him hesitate. There were other emotions in her face, too—some he could read, like tiredness and disappointment and discouragement; other things were a mystery, especially an odd, hungry look she tried to hide that made his breath catch.
“I’m going for a walk,” he announced. He escaped out the back door and again made his way down the path to the barn where he plopped down on a hay bale to think things over. The warm air smelled like straw and horse dung. There was nothing in particular he had to do out here, so after a while he found himself talking to Rowdy.
“Had to get out of the kitchen, fella. Felt kinda closed in, hard to breathe, you know? Don’t understand why, exactly, just felt surrounded. Clarissa feels things, see. Me, I try not to feel things. That’s what’s kept me safe all these years.”
He stood up and nuzzled the gelding’s black nose. “We’ll talk again soon, boy. Next time I’ll bring you an apple.”
Chapter Eight
Some days later, Clarissa finished wiping the last of the supper plates and paused for her nightly stocktaking meditation. She had saved a few dollars already. Precious dollars. But she needed many more for the train ticket back to Boston. Emily was adapting, almost effortlessly, to life on the ranch but Clarissa grew more and more dispirited with every passing day. Or rather every passing breakfast, dinner and supper. It was a wonder Gray had not complained. It was an even greater miracle he had not fired her! Maybe that was what he’d wanted to talk to her about that night.
With a sigh, she hung the damp dish towel on the hook by the stove and drifted out the open front door to the porch where everyone had gathered—the ranch hands, Shorty and Nebraska, and even Erasmus, the old man who took care of the horses and swept out the barn. Maria and Ramon sat on the top step, holding hands.
The day had been scorching right up until the sun sank behind the far-off purplish mountains to the north with a last wash of flaming crimson and orange. Out here in the country night fell with a finality she still found unnerving. She gazed out at the unrelieved blackness, then stepped off the porch and looked up at the sky. Back in Boston the stars had never seemed this close, like tiny blobs of silvery dough scattered across the velvet sky.
She remounted the steps, settled herself in the porch swing and breathed in the scent of roses and the honeysuckle vine that twined over the trellis. Nebraska was tuning up his fiddle and soon launched into “Red River Valley.” After one verse Erasmus pulled a battered harmonica from his overalls pocket and joined in. It wasn’t a symphony orchestra or a chamber ensemble, as she had enjoyed back in Boston, but the music sounded lovely, anyway.
Maria brought out a big pitcher of lemonade and a bowl of ripe strawberries, and Clarissa nibbled and let her thoughts drift. What would her life have been like if Anthony and Roseanne had lived? Emily would have had a real mother and a father, and she herself...well, perhaps she would have walked out with an admirer, maybe even married and had a child of her own. As it was, she’d been too absorbed in caring for Emily to entertain many callers, and outside of an occasional concert or visit to the library, she’d spent all her time learning to be a mother. She wouldn’t trade Emily for anything on earth, but sometimes she did wonder about what she had missed in life.
* * *
Emily was quiet this evening. Perched on the porch between Gray’s long legs she wasn’t even clamoring for a story. The music rose and fell, and soon Emily’s head began to droop onto Gray’s knee. After a while, Ramon stood and beckoned Maria into his arms and they began to dance around and around on the porch.
Emily seemed to wake up at this, and jiggled Gray’s knee. “You gonna dance with me?”
“Well, now,” he said in a low voice, “I don’t know. I’m not real good at dancin’.”
The girl jumped to her feet. “I bet I could teach you!” She tugged on his hand. “Come on. You’re not scared, are ya, Gray?”
“Scared?” Gray got to his feet and took both the girl’s hands in his. “I’m not scared of a four-year-old girl with a thousand questions, no.” But he had to admit he was plenty scared about other things, like losing more of his cattle to rustlers or finding more bad water. Or losing his ranch. And he was definitely uneasy about Caleb Arness. He’d expected the man to show up before now, and he couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t. Probably he was in jail. Again. Next time he went into town he’d ask around and stop by the sheriff’s office and inquire.
He had to bend down a bit to dance with Emily, but the ecstatic look on her freckled face made the effort worthwhile. He liked making her smile. She had to take two or three steps to every one of his, so their progress around the porch was slow, but Emily didn’t seem to care. Her red curls bobbed in time with the fiddle music, and she alternately grinned up at him and grinned at her mother where she rocked in the porch swing. It was kinda fun steering the girl around the floor. Maria smile broadly at him, and Ramon sent him a wink.
When they two-stepped in front of the swing, Emily suddenly dropped his hand and darted forward. “Mama, look at me—we’re dancing!” She grabbed Clarissa’s skirt. “Come and dance with us!”
“Oh, no, honey, I couldn’t do that.”
But Emily wasn’t about to be put off. She seized Clarissa’s skirt with both fists and yanked on it until her mother gave up and got to her feet. Emily entwined one of her hands with Gray’s and with the other she glommed onto Clarissa’s. Before he knew it, they had all joined hands to form a threesome.
Clarissa sent him a look that made him chuckle—half apology, half amusement, but her warm hand fit nicely in his, and he had to admit he liked that. The three of them began to circle around the porch in time to “Down in the Valley.” Emily swooped and giggled with such uninhibited verve that Gray laughed out loud, and then he caught Clarissa’s gaze. Suddenly the sounds around him faded until nothing remained but a faint humming in his brain.
What the hell?
In the next instant Emily dropped his hand, gave a happy chirp and twirled off by herself, leaving Gray and Clarissa facing each other.
“Well,” Clarissa said with obvious embarrassment, “I suppose we should—”
“Dance,” he finished.
Without another word Gray pulled her into his arms and began to move in a slow, steady pattern.
Clarissa blinked. Where on earth had he learned to waltz? Certainly not in a silver mine! Perhaps at some place like Serena’s on Willow Street; after all, he was young and virile and...
She missed a step. He held her gently, his hand at her back pressing just close enough that her breasts brushed the front of his chambray shirt. Heavens, could he feel that? The contact made them tingle in a decidedly pleasant way.
Emily settled herself near Ramon and Maria and snuggled her head against the woman’s arm. Ramon began singing along with “Clementine,” and Maria was sitting with her head on his shoulder. They looked so happy together her throat ached.
Gray danced her to the edge of the porch, then to the far end where the honeysuckle twined up to the rooftop. What an odd sensation, being this close him. She hadn’t danced with anyone since she was ten years old, but this was decidedly different. She felt light and floaty inside. Never in her life had she been so intensely aware of another human being, not even when she had first held baby Emily in her arms.
* * *
Gray forgot everything but the feel of the woman he held in his arms. Something smelled real sweet, maybe her hair. It was dark and shiny, and she wore it gathered in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. Kinda old-maidish, but she sure didn’t seem like one. Clarissa Seaforth might be an overly proper Boston lady, but in his arms she just felt like a woman—soft and alive.
Surprisingly alive. Surprisingly arousing, if he were honest with himself. He’d never felt such an undercurrent of can’t-ignore-it desire. He decided to ignore it anyway and hope it would go away.
But it didn’t go away. It just kept building and building like a summer storm. He tried to keep his mind on the fiddle music, the painted boards of the porch under his boots, the look on Ramon’s face as he sat beside his wife. That didn’t help much. Kinda made him feel hungry and lonely at the same time.
He closed his eyes and tried to think. He didn’t have time for a woman—any woman, and especially not a proper lady. He only had time to brand cattle and mend fences and dig wells and keep his ranch together.
All he had to do was pay Clarissa the three dollars she earned each week as his cook and pretty soon she would climb on the eastbound train and be gone. Then he could stop tossing and turning half the night thinking about her sleeping just one floor above him.
The top of Clarissa’s head brushed against his chin. Hot damn, her hair was soft! It took a lot to get his mind off his struggling ranch, but the fleeting touch of any part of her could sure do it in a hurry. Hell and damn, anyway. I don’t need this. He needed to focus on his ranch and forget that Clarissa Seaforth smelled good and felt so good in his arms it made him crazy.
* * *
The next night after supper, while Gray lounged in the parlor with Emily, he was surprised to hear Caleb Arness’s voice.
“Harris?” the man bawled. Sounded as though he was just outside on the porch. Quickly he set Emily on her feet.
“Go into the kitchen, Squirt. Tell your mama to take you to the pantry and stay there.”
When the girl scampered off, he puffed out the lantern and retrieved his revolver from over the door. “You’re trespassing, Arness. Whaddya want?”
“My fiancée, Clarissa Seaforth. Come to take her back to town.”
“You’re wasting your time, Arness. She’s not your fiancée. She works for me.”
“Huh! Doin’ what?”
“She’s my cook.”
“An’ what else?” Arness boomed. “You got no claim on her. I do.”
“No, you don’t. Now get off my land.”
“Oh, yeah? What if I don’t?”
Gray put a bullet through the screen door that kicked up the dust at Arness’s feet. “Don’t tempt me, Arness.”
The stocky man jumped back, then shook his fist at Gray. “You ain’t heard the last of this, Harris. That girl belongs to me!”
Arness shuffled off, and a few moments later Gray heard the sound of receding hoofbeats. He shut the front door, locked it and moved into the kitchen. Halfway across the floor to the pantry he stumbled into Clarissa, with a heavy iron skillet gripped in one hand.
“Where’s Emily?” he barked.
“In—in the pantry.”
“How come you aren’t?”
“Well, I—I thought...”
He lifted the skillet out of her hand. “You thought I might need some help, is that it?”
“I th-thought you might want—”
He was trying hard to be angry at her, but the truth was he was touched. Darn fool woman. “Get Emily and go upstairs,” he said more brusquely than he intended.
She snapped to attention. “Yes, sir, Mister Harris, sir. I was only trying to—”
“Get yourself kidnapped or killed,” he grumbled. She said nothing, but he could hear her ragged breathing in the dark.
“Sorry, Clarissa. Go on to bed now. You know you’re safe here.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “I know. Thank you.”
Chapter Nine
Gray reined Rowdy around to face the tall, skinny ranch hand they all called Shorty. “Shorty, grab that roll of barbwire, will ya?”
“Sure, boss. Done rounded up all those cows that got out yesterday. Any idea what happened?”
“Same as last month. Arness and his crew of rustlers is what happened.”
“They cut the fence and try to take cows,” Ramon said. “But we see them.”
“We run ’em off,” Gray’s newest hand, Nebraska, chimed in. “And then we took out after the cattle.”
“Thanks, fellas,” Gray said. The new kid might be wet behind the ears, but he could sure ride. “Glad you work for me and not Arness.”
“I’m glad, too, boss. Don’t like cheaters or people who steal. Back in Nebraska we string ’em up.”
Shorty scratched his head. “Boss, how come Arness keeps doin’ us dirt? What’s he got against you?”
Gray spit off to one side. “He wants my ranch to fail. Wants me to go under.”
“Some reason?” the tall man queried.
“Guess maybe because I beat him out of buyin’ the place for himself when it came up for auction some years ago. Arness wanted it, but I’d saved up more money.”
“And now,” Ramon interjected, “he wants the señorita who lives here.”
Nebraska pricked up his big ears. “Might be that women are more important than cows, huh?”
“Way more important,” Shorty answered.
“Knock it off!” Gray snapped. “Got fences to mend.”
All four riders spurred their mounts and moved off into the meadow. Shaking his head, Nebraska followed with the wagonload of barbwire. Gray rode on ahead. Losing the number of cows he had this past year was making him plenty nervous. On the drive to Abilene, rustlers had made off with close to seventy head; he couldn’t afford to lose any more.
* * *
That evening the hands were lounging around the bunkhouse after the chores were done when Maria accosted Gray on the front porch.
“Señor Gray, Sunday is May first. We go to picnic, no?”
“No.” Ranch work was more important than picnics.
Maria peered at him. “The girl, Emily, she would like it.”
“Yeah, she probably would, Maria, but we’ve got calves to brand and—”
Maria propped her hands on her hips.
“Señor, is no work on Sunday. Is May Day.”
“Yeah, I know. So what? A ranch doesn’t care what day it is.”
“Señor, you think too much about ranch work. Think of Emily! She knows nothing of ranch work. She is a small child only. She deserves to have fun, is true?”
Gray sighed. In the five years he’d owned the Bar H, he’d never won a single argument with Maria. You’d think he’d have learned that by now. He threw up his hands. “Okay, okay. Make that chocolate cake you’re so famous for, huh?”
“Oh, si, Señor Gray. Gracias.”
* * *
“A picnic!” Emily squealed. “A real picnic with potato salad and everything?”
Gray set his coffee mug down on the supper table. “Yeah, ‘and everything.’ Would you like that?”
“And ice cream?”
Gray had to laugh. “Maybe.”
Clarissa sent him a pensive look. “I don’t have a recipe for potato salad.”
“Nobody has a recipe for potato salad,” he said. “You just boil up some eggs and some potatoes and mix ’em up together with some onion and a chopped pickle or two. And some salt,” he added. He was relieved when she laughed.
Emily patted his arm. “Are you gonna tell me a story tonight?”
“Maybe. Have you been a good girl today?”
“Not ’xactly, but I want a story, anyway.”
“How ’bout if your mama tells you a story tonight?”
“No!” the girl sang. “Mama’s stories aren’t exciting, like yours.”
That caught his interest. “Not exciting?” He caught Clarissa’s gaze. “Living in a big city like Boston isn’t exciting?”
“Not exciting the way things are out here in Smoke River,” Clarissa said. “Life in Boston is more...well, civilized. You know, with libraries and concerts and museums.”
“Man, I never thought of libraries and museums as bein’ exciting!”
Clarissa’s voice rose. “But they are!”
“Can’t wait to get back there, huh?”
Clarissa opened her mouth to reply, but Emily cut her off. “I can wait! I like it out here lots better.”
Gray stuffed down a chuckle. “Clarissa, looks like you’ve been outvoted.”
“About the picnic, yes. About going home to Boston—never. All I need is enough money for a train ticket.”
Gray said nothing. It wasn’t surprising that she wanted to go back to Boston; what was surprising was his reaction. He didn’t want to think about the stab of disappointment that knifed through his chest.