Red Snow Bride

by T. S. Joyce

  Something so sad pooled in Kristina’s expression. “You won’t be having any girls, Lorelei. Dawson’s only have sons. I hope you weren’t wishing for any.”

  Surely she couldn’t be serious. “What do they do with their daughters?”

  “The Dawson family tree is filled with only sons. Not a single daughter has been added, and they know their lineage for centuries. They are a very old name, you see, but boys are the only ones born to them.”

  My forehead strained under my frown. “I wouldn’t mind boys. I’d just want healthy children.”

  Daisy scrunched up her face and climbed the porch stairs. “So peculiar that there are no daughters born to them. No wonder they’ve evolved into such great brutes. They have no competition from the farer sex.”

  Huh. That made sense to me. “Not to mention they are conditioned to live in rough country. I bet that helps them to grow so big.”

  Daisy’s expression looked downright conspiring. “Are they really as muscular as they look under all those clothes?”

  “Yes,” Kristina and I answered in unison before we burst into snickering.

  “We were going to break in the new hearth by making lunch in the big house today. Would you like to stay for a meal?” I asked.

  “Oh, we’d love to! I was dreading turning right back around and traveling all that way back to town. Eugene said he needed to talk to your husbands, you see. He’s very busy lately so I was just sure he’d turn right back around, but now I’ll just tell him I’ve already accepted your lunch invitation.”

  I liked the way she thought. “Do you know what he’s talking to them about?”

  Her blue eyes grew wide and serious. “No. I’ve been trying to get it out of him all morning. He just keeps telling me he needs to talk to the Dawson boys first. This whole thing has left me very curious indeed.”

  Kristina shot a worried look to the barn the men had disappeared into. “Luke will tell me tonight. He tells me everything.”

  I snorted. “Jeremiah probably won’t be telling me because he tells me nothing.”

  Daisy huffed a puff of air and nodded. “He reminds me of Eugene. That man thinks he’s keeping me safe by keeping me in the dark, but sometimes I just don’t know.”

  Kristina said, “I’ll tell you then, ladies. When I know, you’ll know.”

  We made our way to the charred root cellar and in a basket, gathered everything we needed for an oversized meal.

  “Jeremiah said we could fry up chicken for a celebration lunch,” Kristina explained. “We’ll pick two fat hens and I’ll teach you how to pluck them.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I know how to pluck chickens.”

  “No you don’t,” she gasped with an open mouthed stare. “But you’re a high-born lady. When would you have picked up that little talent?”

  At least my days in the poultry house after my denouncement left me with some sort of talent. I smirked. “I bet I could pluck a chicken faster than you.”

  “You want to race?”

  “You’re on.”

  Daisy hefted the basket of vegetables to her hip. “Thank goodness. I thought you were going to try and teach me how to pluck one. No thank you. I just buy mine from the butcher at the edge of town.”

  After we’d dropped the fixings off in the big house we snuck as best we could to the barn where we caught the men talking about absolutely nothing of importance. They stood near Rosy and Beigha’s stalls and Eugene was telling a riveting story about a horse he’d once seen with a completely rotted hoof. Unpleasant.

  My eyes nearly popped out of my head when, as we were walking by to get to the chicken coop on the other side of the barn, Jeremiah slapped my backside like I was a horse. While the others laughed, my husband graced me with a devilish grin.

  “I swear,” I grumbled, rubbing my bum gingerly and trying desperately to hold onto a stern expression. I was failing but that man didn’t need the encouragement.

  “Where’re you ladies headed?” he asked.

  “Chicken plucking contest,” Kristina said nonchalantly.

  He leaned against the wooden railing of Beigha’s stall and scratched his lip with the back of his thumb. “You got your work cut out for you, Kristina. Lorelei’s quick with her fingers.”

  “Jeremiah Cade Dawson! Quit it.” My pursed lips probably weren’t doing a good job of hiding my amusement so I spun and stomped for the coop to the music of mixed-company chuckles.

  Kristina and I hefted two dead chickens out to the big house and after dunking them in boiling water and then briefly in cold, we sat comfortably in two large, carved out tree stumps that Jeremiah had dragged up to the side of the building.

  Daisy said, “Looks like you and Jeremiah made a love match. I’m glad for it. I knew about the advertisement he put out and I was afraid it would end badly.”

  “How did you know about the ad?” Kristina asked as she slid a wide bucket in between us with the toe of her shoe.

  “Nobody spits in this town without everyone knowing. Jeremiah’s advertisement was the talk of Colorado Springs for some time. Some of the men were even taking bets on how long it would take for an answer and how hideous the new wife would be. You lost a lot of men a lot of money showing up here sophisticated and with a pretty face and figure like you did.”

  “Idiots,” Kristina grumbled.

  “Ready,” Daisy said with a delicate white handkerchief clutched in the air. “Steady. Go!”

  We plucked furiously, and by the time we were using our knives against our thumbs to remove any stragglers, we were neck and neck. I won, but only because when Daisy checked for leftover feathers, Kristina’s chicken had a few she’d missed while mine was smooth.

  “Victory!” I whooped.

  “Rematch,” Kristina declared.

  As I squatted nearest the fire to toss breaded chicken over the hot oil sizzling away in the iron pot, a strong hand ran the length of my back and Jeremiah kissed me lightly on the cheek. Grease popped onto the skin of my forearm again and I yanked it back as the burning subsided.

  “You want me to do this?” he asked, trailing kisses down my neck.

  “Do you know how?”

  Amusement hummed in his voice. “Who do you think gave Kristina this recipe?”

  “Trudy.”

  “Not on this one.” He pulled me back with a gentle hand. “This one’s all mine, passed down from Da to me and my brothers.”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. Never in my life had I seen a man who held any interest in cooking. He set the chicken in the pan and pulled back before the oil hit him. He was so fast it was like watching a snake strike. I sat back into the chair against the wall beside him and ran my fingertips lightly over his knee. Luke and Sheriff Hawkins spoke easily from the front porch while Daisy and Kristina fussed happily over a finished pan of warm yeast rolls across the room.

  “Is there nothing you can’t do?” I asked.

  His face was serious in the flickering light of the fire and he slid those burning, coffee colored eyes to me. “I can’t lose you.”

  I pulled my legs up under me and touched the side of his face. “You won’t.” The smoothness of his jaw was too irresistible not to caress. The angles of his face were sharp and hard like the crags of a mountain and his eyes slanted ever so slightly, which made them look as much animal as man. His dark eyebrows made the perfect ceiling for such consuming windows into his secret self.

  “You’re so damned beautiful, woman,” he said low.

  Had he been reading my mind while I sat there trapped in his gaze? I closed my eyes against the loss when he released me. I’d have stayed happily there for the rest of my days, lost in the reflected flames of his eyes. He forked the chicken from the skillet and onto a cloth covered plate to soak up the excess grease.

  “Dinner’s on,” he called out.

  He hadn’t had an extra moment to make a table or chairs yet, so dinner was served buffet style, then consumed in companionable silence as we dangled ou
r legs from the porch. I leaned against Jeremiah contentedly and when he was finished eating, he draped his arm over my shoulders with a sigh. “We need to talk to you ladies about somethin’.”

  Why did those words make me go cold inside? My flare of earlier worry came back with a vengeance.

  It was Sheriff Hawkins who spoke up. “Deputy McDowell is dead. Dirty Bill’s gang of men shot him through, as you likely know, and I aim to go after the sons of bitches who done him like that. McDowell was young and green but his heart was in the right place when he brought that outlaw into the jailhouse. His death can’t be for nothing.” His stormy eyes were serious over his thick mustache.

  “Eugene!” Daisy cried. “They’ll kill you if you try to bring him in.”

  “Stop,” he said with a warning look. “You knew I was a lawman the day you married me. This is part of the job. I can’t just pick and choose who to enforce justice on, Daisy.”

  Her lip trembled and she looked away with a pained expression, but held her tongue.

  Luke hung his hat on his knee and looked at Kristina. “I’m going with him.”

  “What? But why? You ain’t no lawman, Luke, and this ain’t your fight.”

  “It is,” he argued. “In exchange for the sheriff’s help when those Hell Hunters came to hang and burn us, I promised him a favor. I swore I’d help him someday when he needed someone with my talents, and that day has come.”

  Kristina’s eyes rimmed with moisture. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “So you could worry yourself to death every time the sheriff walked our way?”

  “I’d be right to worry, now wouldn’t I?” She was nearly yelling and he jerked his head like it hurt him. “You didn’t see those monsters riding through town, tippin’ their hats at the ladies they passed before they put bullets into the deputy and half the damned town to boot!” She jabbed a finger at the sheriff. “You are one man,” she jabbed a finger at Luke, “and you are one man. They have at least four of them left, if not more, and at the head of that lot of murderers and rapists is Dirty Bill himself. He’s probably killed more people than the entire population of Colorado Springs. He’s a professional at pain, Luke, and you’re riding off to track that rattlesnake down.” She wiped her eyes with the backs of furiously shaking hands. “You’ll go anyway. It doesn’t matter what I say. Honor above everything, right? Even above me? Jeremiah, go with him.”

  My heart was already breaking for Kristina and now it crumbled. There was nothing worse than what was being asked of them.

  “You two are stronger together,” she beseeched my husband. “I know he’ll come back if you’re there. I saw you in the woods the day I was tortured at the hands of those vile men Evelynn French sent after me. You stood in the shadows, holding the horses, but don’t pretend you didn’t keep him sane and able to track me. Don’t pretend you didn’t help every step of the way for a woman you hardly knew. You did it for him. You risked your life for him.” She turned a bright-eyed gaze to Luke. “Avenge the deputy, keep your promise to the sheriff, keep your honor, but Jeremiah goes with you.”

  The silence in the clearing was heavy, like some weighted stone upon my chest.

  “She’s right,” Jeremiah said softly.

  “No,” I breathed. I bit my trembling lip and lowered my tear-filled eyes.

  “He’s my brother,” he said. “And we both owe the sheriff a debt. If he wasn’t there that night, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.” He stroked my downturned cheek. “I wouldn’t have met you.”

  I understood and that was the worst part. A desperate anger churned at him for leaving, for the situation, for that damned Dirty Bill Burton, for the risk he and his gang posed to the one thing on earth I couldn’t live without. Daisy sniffled quietly in the corner and her crying made it harder to control the tremor in my voice, so I nodded my understanding instead.

  “Where are they?” Jeremiah asked.

  “An informant told me they’re hiding out up in the mountains not too far from here. Got witnesses saying they’ve seen them all along the trail they would’ve taken.”

  Luke’s voice sounded odd and distant. “One week. We can’t leave Kristina and Lorelei unprotected for more than a week.”

  “That should be enough time,” Hawkins said. “Kristina, I watched you shoot Luke’s hanging rope with your Derringer. Can you shoot a pistol as well?”

  She nodded miserably and her voice cracked like she hadn’t used it in a long time. “Almost as well.”

  “Good. Daisy I want you staying here until we get back. Everyone knows where we live and if something goes south, that’s the first place they’ll go. Don’t go back to town. Don’t let anyone know where you are and if anyone visits here, don’t tell anyone what we’re doing.”

  Daisy refused to look at him but nodded.

  “All three of you need to be staying together,” Luke said. “In the big house or the barn, either one, but stay together.”

  Jeremiah stood. “The faster we go, the faster we can get back here.”

  “Wait.” I shielded my eyes from the bright sunlight to better see his face. “You don’t mean to go now, do you?”

  Sheriff stood and dusted off his pants. “We need to go now before they move again.”

  Kristina stormed from the porch, followed by Luke, and Sheriff Hawkins pulled Daisy into his arms and whispered into her ear. I left them to their tender goodbye and escaped into the house.

  The flames in the hearth licked at the stones. Red, yellow, blue—their roiling colors matched what was happening in my heart. Jeremiah would leave and it wouldn’t end well. Everything in my gut told me so.

  His hands were feather soft against the tops of my shoulders and he leaned into my back. “I’m sorry, Lorelei. It just don’t feel right letting him go alone.”

  I spun and threw my arms around his neck. “I know. I know you have to go. I’m just so scared for what’s going to happen out there.”

  I closed my eyes against the pain of the coming separation as he kissed me with the violence of a tornado. I gasped as his teeth grazed my neck and with barely any effort, he carried me into the back room and slammed the door with his boot.

  He set me down on a crude chest of drawers.

  “Lorelei,” he growled against the paper thin skin of my throat. “I’ll come back to you. I swear it.”

  I groaned at the sensation of his mouth against my neck and he pulled my hair until it stretched farther for him. Pain and pleasure collided as he slid my skirts to my hips and gripped onto my thighs with rough hands. His warmth disappeared as he dropped to his knees and pushed my skirts up farther.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, panic flaring in my chest.

  “I’m not leaving without knowing how you taste.”

  I opened my mouth to protest whatever he had in mind that would bring his face so close to my tender bits, but he yanked my knees forward, spread them wide, and then kissed my sex.

  I’d never been a part of something so scandalous in all my life, but oh! His tongue dipped inside of me and my legs went soft as dough. About three strokes in, and I didn’t care how wanton this made me. I liked this. I needed this. The oncoming separation had me scared and desperate for a connection, and apparently Jeremiah felt the same. And he was so, so good at this. He circled the sensitive spot he was always careful to pay attention to with his tongue, and I groaned and arched back.

  I shouldn’t like this, but I did. And Kristina had been telling me to own my body more and be proud of the physical relationship I’d been growing with Jeremiah, so hang it all. I ran my hands through his hair and a vibrating growl rumbled against the wetness between my legs. His strokes became faster, and Jeremiah’s hands disappeared from my legs. The jangling sound of his holster being removed filled the room. The first waves of my release crashed through me and I cried out as my toes curled. He sucked on my sensitive nub one more time, bowing me forward, then stood and slid his cock into me in one fluid
motion.

  He wasn’t reserved or tender, but I didn’t want him to be. He didn’t ask permission or take his time. He took me like he owned the deed to my soul. My second round of pleasure became a consuming wave that lapped at the shores of the deepest pieces of me. When his seed spilled into me in hot, throbbing streams, he closed his eyes tightly and rested his forehead against mine.

  “One week,” he whispered.

  And then there was nothing left but the creaking leather of his holster in his hand and his fading boot steps across the home he’d built for us.

  I slid to the floor as if I were boneless, then curled up like a child and wept.

  For one week, I would cease to exist.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jeremiah

  Easily, that had been the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, next to burying Anna. Nothing in me wanted to leave Lorelei. It was our moving day into the big house, a day we’d been looking forward to for the better part of a week. And instead of helping her set up, I was off on some suicide mission.

  There was no point in giving Luke hell about it. He’d been stuck between a rock and a hard place and if it were me, I’d have done the same thing. His shoulders drooped on the back of his mount and he’d pulled the brim of his hat low over his shadowed eyes. If utter misery had a smell, Luke would’ve been bathed in it.

  “Kristina rough you up pretty good?” I asked with sympathy.

  “She’s pissed.”

  “No, she’s scared. Same way we felt when we heard those gunshots in town and couldn’t get to the girls soon enough. She doesn’t have any control over your fate now. She won’t be there with her little pea shooter to help you this time. It doesn’t matter that you are werewolf and plenty capable. She just wants to make sure you’re safe.”

  He gave a noncommittal grunt. “What about Lorelei. Was she mad?”

  I thought about her hands in my hair as I tasted her and all the needy noises she’d made for me. Through a private grin, I said, “Not after I got done with her.”