“How dare you?” Morris snapped, his body quivering with rage.
“I dare because you appeared to be bullying your sister. And that I will not abide.” When Philomena gasped, raising her head and meeting his gaze, he smiled at her. “Good day, miss.” His smile broadened, as he saw her shiver at the tenderness in his voice.
Ignoring Morris and the townsfolk’s curious gazes, Peter sauntered back to his grandmother, lighter in spirit, looking forward to seeing Philomena again. Suddenly he realized there was more to come between them, and anticipation coursed through him.
Chapter 4
Three days after the church incident, Peter had formed a routine of sorts. He rose early, made coffee for his grandparents, and then had a conversation with his grandfather, if he woke before Peter had to go to the café. Soon he was in the café kitchen, stoking the stove’s fire and brewing coffee, so there was plenty when the customers arrived. He welcomed the early delivery of bread from Annabelle or one of her helpers, then chatted with his grandmother, as she prepared a simple, hearty breakfast they shared before the arrival of their customers. Soon he opened the café, serving one meal after another, along with tall tales and a ready smile. By evening, he was worn out.
However, he relished having something to do, where he didn’t fear butting heads with a brother. Although he missed the freedom of riding on the range, he knew that previous life was at an end. Too much of the rangeland was marred by fences, and he had no wish to fight with a landowner as he moved his cattle north. Although he resented the change, he knew Frederick was right to look to the newer technologies and to find a way to raise hay to feed the cattle over the winter.
The café closed, Peter stood, staring at the hills, watching the changing colors as the sun began its slow descent. Every evening was different. Tonight he suspected the sunset would be spectacular, as enough clouds were in the sky to reflect the sun’s last rays as it set. Taking a deep breath of the fresh pine-scented air, he tried to relax, as his life careened in a new direction.
Scratching his head, he attempted to calm the panic that had settled deep into his soul. For as long as he could remember, he had been a cowboy. A man who worked on a ranch. Now he felt adrift. The café was a wonderful place to work, but he wasn’t certain that he wished that to be his lifelong profession. He knew he didn’t want to run it alone or to have to look for a hired cook as his grandmother aged. He wished … With another sigh, he cursed himself for dreaming of the impossible.
He had no right to wish for Philomena. For her to be different than she had proven herself to be.
A twig snapped, and he spun to face the woman who had haunted his dreams for too many months. “Mena,” he breathed. “What are you doing here?”
She stared at him with dismay. “Morris would say I’m a halfwit, who doesn’t have enough pride to not seek you out.” Her gaze filled with betrayal. “Why wouldn’t you come see me?”
“Why would I?” he asked, with furrowed brows. He grunted when she belted him on his shoulder.
“How dare you mock me? Mock what we shared?” She took a calming breath, but her voice still stuttered and shook, as she asked, “It truly meant nothing, didn’t it?”
He glared at her, striding so close they were chest to chest. He bent forward, almost to the point their foreheads touched. “How dare you accuse me of betrayal?”
“Did it bring you joy to abandon me at the altar? To imagine me waiting for you?” she asked, her eyes glistening with tears she wouldn’t allow to fall. “I refuse to cry over you again,” she declared bravely.
“How dare you act as though you are the wronged party?” he rasped, as he took a step closer to her. He closed his eyes against the pull of her intoxicating scent. “How dare you claim to have the right to be hurt?”
She let out a little scream and hit him on his shoulder, before slapping him across his face. “I have every right! You abandoned me! You …” She paused, as she gasped and lost her battle with her tears. “I trusted you. I ignored my brother’s warnings about believing in the smooth-talking wrangler from the north.” She held a hand to her heart. “I believed in you. In us.” She shook her head, as she backed up a step. “I should have known better.”
His jaw ticked, as he met her hurt-filled, derisive gaze. “Don’t act like the injured maiden, Mena. You know what you did.” At her abject confusion, his anger grew. “What’s worse is you have no remorse. How could I ever have thought to bind myself to you?”
When he would have stepped around her, she gripped his arm. “No,” she said in a low voice. “We may not have a chance to talk again, and I refuse to continue to doubt. To believe …” She broke off, as a tear cascaded down her cheek.
“To believe?” he asked, the words whispering out against his will, as he gazed deeply into her eyes.
“To believe what was bandied about after you left.” She shook her head, refusing to say anything further. “What do you believe I did?”
He met her gaze and nodded, yielding to the game of her clinging to her innocence in the debacle of their failed relationship. “You were to be my wife. As my wife, your loyalty should always be to me. To my family. And yet you had her over for tea. Did you believe we’d have a tender family reunion?”
Philomena stared at him in confusion. “I don’t understand anything that you are saying, Peter. I always had people over for tea. It’s what I do as the pastor’s sister.” She peered at him. “You knew that and accepted that.”
He waited for her to say more. When she fell silent, he said, “Yes, but you had a Mrs. Katrina Tompkins over for tea. The day before our wedding.”
“Katrina Tompkins?” she whispered. “Your dead mother?” Philomena’s gaze turned distant, as though envisioning that day a few months ago. “No,” she breathed. “That wasn’t her name. She was a Catherine Thomas.” She focused again on Peter. “Yes, a Catherine Thomas and she was looking for …” Her voice broke off, as she stared at him, dumbfounded. “You and Cole. Although I didn’t realize it until now.”
“Yes, she was looking for us.” He bit back a swear, as he turned away to stare at the mountains. “Imagine her delight to take tea with her son’s fiancée. I can only imagine what she would have attempted had we actually married. Thank God I left town before I had the misfortune of speaking with the woman.”
“Peter, I never knew. I swear. I …” Her voice broke off, as she held a hand to her heart, while her opposite arm wrapped around her belly. She backed away a step from him. “You betrayed me too.”
He spun to glare at her. “How do you work that out?”
With a disillusion-filled gaze, she took another step away. “You didn’t trust me. You believed I was disloyal without ever speaking to me.” Her eyes were a stormy gray, filled with pain. “Did you relish in shaming me in front of the entire town? In showing everyone I was the unwanted spinster? In my having to listen as the women of the town commiserated with me because a man like you would never be satisfied with a woman like me? In the thought that men would consider me fair game and that my life would be a living hell, as I tried to do something as simple as go to the mercantile?”
“Mena,” he whispered, reaching toward her with a groan of dismay. He froze, when she jerked back another step, out of his reach. He dropped his hands and stood tall, battling back his display of emotions, when he saw her brother approaching. “This isn’t over.”
“You have no say in my life now. You relinquished any right to have an opinion the moment you rode away from the church.” At her brother calling her name, she turned on her heel and strode away.
Peter stood with his hands fisted at his side, aching to feel her in his arms again.
Three days later, Philomena worked in her brother’s kitchen, silently berating herself because she persisted in looking to the door for his knock. For any sign of him. She refused to say his name, although the memory of him was never far from her thoughts. The gleam in his beautiful blue eyes. The feel of his strong ha
nd as it gripped her arm for a moment. The deep resonance of his voice as he spoke. “Ninny,” she muttered.
A new parishioner was expected for tea, and Philomena needed to finish setting the table in the formal dining area. The front part of the house was only for show, while the eat-in kitchen and the rear living area were where she and her brother spent all of their time. Upstairs were three bedrooms, with one turned into an office for Morris.
Philomena set the plate of scones and cookies on the table, smoothing over a crease in the freshly ironed tablecloth. She had set out the second-best china, as she refused to use her mother’s fine china on everyday events. Morris chided that she shouldn’t be so partial to things, but this was one time she stood firm. Her mother’s pink rose china set was the only thing Philomena had from her, and she refused to risk it with guests, who were too often ham-fisted and clumsy.
At the knock on the door, she knew Morris would greet their guest. So Philomena moved into the kitchen to brew the tea and to extract the milk from the icebox. As she entered the small dining room, she gasped. “You,” she breathed, her hold on the milk pitcher faltering. “How dare you believe you can come here?”
“Philomena,” Morris snapped, his voice sharp and reprimanding. “Anyone who wishes to seek my counsel is welcome here. I will not be seen as another Cruikshanks.” He flushed, as he nodded to the elegant woman sitting in the chair at the table, indicating Philomena should apologize.
“No,” she said, as she set down the teapot and milk. “Don’t you know who she is?” Philomena asked her brother. “She’s their mother. The mother they thought dead. And now she’s followed them here. Why?” she asked, as she spun to face the woman who failed to feign guilt.
“I’m Catherine Thomas,” the older woman protested, although her blue eyes gleamed with mischief. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re implying.”
Holding her hands on her hips, Philomena gave a terse nod. “We’ll see about that. Do you want me to go for Mr. Sutton? Or Mr. Tompkins? I wouldn’t ever summon one of your sons, for I shouldn’t think they’d have to suffer the misfortune of seeing you again. Not unless they chose to.”
“Philomena!” her brother hissed. “You will hold your tongue and be civil.”
Shaking her head, Philomena disobeyed her brother. “No. I will not. She ruined my life and doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed.” When the older woman, a striking woman with blond hair mixed with silver, raised a mocking eyebrow, Philomena flushed a brighter red. “How dare you see my suffering as a form of amusement?”
The woman chuckled. “You have no idea what suffering is. You were stood up at the church.” She shrugged, as though that were of no consequence. “You were saved a miserable existence, bowing and scraping to a husband.” She shivered. “Besides, he would have consigned you to living on that wretched ranch. Nothing is worse than being cut off from town and all society.”
Philomena looked at her with scorn. “Yes, there is,” she said in a low voice. “There’s believing the man you love has no regard for you. Believing that everything you’ve been told was a lie.” She took a deep breath. “Having to live without the man you love.”
The woman rolled her eyes and drummed her fingertips on the table. “Love,” she said in a sarcastic manner. “There’s no such thing. Your brother has allowed you to read too many novels.”
Ignoring her brother’s order to leave the room, Philomena gripped the back of a chair, either for strength or to keep from striking the insolent woman. “How dare you mock me?” She met the woman’s condescending stare. “How dare you mock your sons’ suffering?”
“They had family surrounding them,” she spat and then flushed.
“So you are her. Katrina Tompkins,” Philomena breathed. At the woman’s baleful glare, she smiled in a menacing manner. “You tricked us once but not twice. Why are you here?”
Katrina ran a finger over the pristine white tablecloth, before she played with one of the lace doilies. “It’s time I came home. Time I saw my family.” She raised her chin in a defiant manner. “The pastor is a respected man, and I’m certain he will do his Christian duty and smooth my reentry into my family’s life.”
Philomena saw her brother rub a hand over his jaw and shake his head. He shared a chagrined look with his sister. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what is occurring.”
“This woman is the Tompkins brothers’ mother. She ran off with their uncle years ago, then feigned her death, rather than face the repercussions of her actions. Only the devil knows how many … friends … she’s had since then.” Philomena’s voice dripped with acrimony, as she glared at the older woman, who stared back without expressing an ounce of remorse. “Due to her having tea with us the day before my wedding, Peter refused to come to the church. He thought I knew she was his mother. That I had deceived him.”
“Never!” Morris muttered, staring from the older woman to Philomena. “Is that why you befriended us in Texas?”
“You may be a pastor, but you have a pea-brained intellect,” Katrina snapped. “Of course not. If I was a friend of my son’s fiancée, then I knew I could make inroads with him again. And then his brothers.” She cast a disdainful glance over Philomena, who was dressed in a mint-green linen dress, one of her best dresses. “How was I to know his attachment to you was so feeble that he’d run away with such little provocation?”
Philomena’s fingers gripped the back of the chair so tightly they turned white. “So little? After your treachery, you’d dare blame someone else for acting out of hurt?” She shook her head and spun on her heel, storming from the dining room, through the kitchen, and out the back door.
She ignored the townsfolk calling out greetings, the bright summer day, the brilliant blue sky. All she saw was the gloating in that woman’s eyes and the pain in Peter’s. Rather than march into the café through the front door, she knocked on the back door of the café. When Mrs. Tompkins answered with a perplexed frown, Philomena burst into tears.
“Oh, my dear, what’s the matter?” Irene asked, as she tugged Philomena up the few steps and into the overwarm room. Even with the back door and the windows open, it felt like an oven on a hot summer day. Irene had acted as mother and grandmother to her grandsons and now had a menagerie of younger friends in the MacKinnons, who were like family. She always made time to listen, console, and encourage, and she proudly proclaimed there wasn’t a burden her shoulders couldn’t bear. Swiping at her gray hair, she encouraged Philomena to sit at the table, setting a cup of water in front of her.
“She’s back, and she’ll ruin his life after ruining mine,” Philomena gasped. She took a stuttering breath and tamped down her deep rage. “Forgive me for my unladylike display of emotion. That was uncalled for.”
Irene tapped her spoon on the stove, while she held her other hand on her hip, her blue calico dress covered in a well-worn much-washed apron. “Who, dear?”
“Their mother,” Philomena said in a dull voice. “She’s having tea with Morris now.”
The spoon rattled to the floor, as Irene gaped at her in dread. “She’s here? In Bear Grass Springs?” Her gaze flew to the main room of the café, where she heard Peter laughing with one of the customers. “How do you know it’s her?”
“She admitted as much, but, if you want to come and confirm, you’re more than welcome.” By this time, Philomena had calmed, and the only evidence of her panic and excess of emotions was a slight hitch in her breath. “I swear we didn’t invite her. We never told her where we were going.”
Irene sat with a thud on the bench across from Philomena. “After all this time, she’s come back.”
“Grandma,” Peter called out, as he approached the kitchen door, “your stew and corn bread are popular today.” He stilled when he saw Philomena sitting at the table. Whatever he was about to sputter out froze, as he looked at his ashen Grandmother. “Grandma? Are you ill? Should I go for the doctor? For Helen?” He knelt in front of her, taking her hand.
“Please, whatever you need.”
She raised a hand, cupping his cheek, as her chin quivered. “I only wanted to protect you, Peter. You and your brothers. You’d suffered so much,” she whispered. “Why should you suffer more?”
“I don’t understand,” he said, as he cast a worried look in Philomena’s direction.
“Your mother is back in town. I imagine she believes our edict banishing her has expired. Heaven knows why.” Irene closed her eyes. “If only we’d had an honorable, competent lawyer in town when she abandoned the family, we could have ensured she had to remain forever away from us.”
“Grandma,” Peter whispered. “Why is she back?” He jerked at the calls for service from the café. When Philomena rose, pulling on an apron, he focused again on his grandmother.
“Only she knows why, my darling boy,” Irene said. “If I know Katrina, and I knew her well, it’s for some form of mischief-making.” She took a long breath. “Speak with Slims. I know you believe he betrayed you too.” She shook her head, as she gazed deeply into his eyes. “He never did. Everything he did was to protect you and your brothers. Speak with him. And then pray he’ll forgive you.”
Peter rose, bumping into Philomena, as she entered the kitchen. “I beg your pardon,” he whispered, his arms instinctively gripping her waist to keep her from falling. He leaned forward, breathing in her beguiling scent. His eyes closed for a moment, as the fleeting memories of holding her in his arms washed over him. When she squirmed, he released her and backed up a step. “I beg your pardon,” he murmured again.
“I need more stew and more corn bread,” she said. Tendrils of her brown hair clung to the side of her neck, and her eyes appeared more green than gray, as she stared at him.
“Of course,” he said. “Thank you for tending the café.”
She nodded, accepting two bowls from Irene and slipping from the room. He watched her leave, listening to the soft lilt of her voice, as she charmed the men in the dining room.
Runaway Montana Groom: Bear Grass Springs Book 12 Page 6
