by Jo Goodman
Grinning, she kept one arm around his neck and stretched the other to find the narrow ledge made by the frame. “This is a little ridiculous, you know. It’s not as if I don’t know where we are or that I haven’t been here before. Oh, wait. I think . . . yes, got it.” She fisted the skeleton key, but before she gave it to him, she raised her eyelashes just a fraction and regarded him from under their dark fan. “I’m sure there are brides who imagine honeymooning in Europe or New York or San Francisco, but I’m not one of them. This is the most romantic gesture you could have made, and I will always cherish that you did it for me.” She dangled the key in front of him and closed her eyes again.
“I’m hoping you still feel that way once we’re inside—if we get inside.” He pecked her on the lips, rebalanced her in his arms, and fumbled with the key in the lock. When he felt the latch give, he toed the door open and was finally able to carry Phoebe across the threshold. Looking around, he whistled softly. This was something more than he’d expected. “The elves have been busy,” he said. “Very busy.”
“How’s that again? You cannot be cryptic when my eyes are closed, not if you hope to be understood.”
“Go ahead,” he said, lowering her to the floor. “Open them.”
She did and was stunned into silence. While the outside of the cabin was largely the same except for some shoring up of the supporting stone columns, the interior was something altogether different. A patterned carpet in rich plum, cherry, and dark leaf green hues had been rolled out so that it occupied most of the single room’s center space. The stove had been blackened and polished and now had the appearance of new. Someone had whitewashed the rough walls and painted the cupboards cherry red. There was a painted table in the same cheerful color and two matching spindle chairs. The footstool had been padded and covered in damask. An eyelet lace valance hung above a remarkably clean window, and three small tin pails filled with wildflowers, reminiscent of the table settings at their wedding, were lined up on the sill.
Old Man McCauley’s sturdy, square-legged bed was gone. So was the thin, lumpy mattress. In its place was an iron rail bed with a plump mattress, clean sheets, multiple pillows, and two quilts as colorful as the carpets. Best of all, the bed was wide enough for two to sleep comfortably and cozy enough for every other thing.
“Oh, my,” said Phoebe. “You think this is the work of elves?”
“Uh-huh. They go by names like Ralph, Les, Johnny, Arnie, and Scooter. Scooter has pointy ears. You ever notice that?”
She chuckled and leaned into him. “You’re surprised?”
“I am.” His arms circled her. “Thaddeus and I came out once to do some work on the place. That was before the wedding, when Mrs. Fish was at the ranch to do alterations and we were banished. We cleaned up, talked about what could be done to make it ready if not precisely civilized. He thought I was out of my mind for wanting to bring you up here, but I remembered what you said about having a fondness for the place, and it felt right to me.”
“I’m glad. It is right.”
“Old Man McCauley would hate what’s become of it. I think he’d appreciate the bed—my idea, by the way, or at least the mattress was—but all the other touches? He’d object. I’m certain of it.”
“Well, I think it’s charming. All of it.” She found his hand, squeezed it. “Why don’t you see to the horses and then bring in the hamper Mrs. Packer prepared for us? I’ll set the table. I’m thinking the elves probably left dishes for us. Les would think of that.” Phoebe looked to the window and the pretty flowers on the sill. “Does Fiona know we’re here?”
“She didn’t, not at first, but she wheedled it out of Thaddeus when our departure was delayed.” He followed her gaze to the window. “You think those were her contribution?”
“Don’t you? They’re her peace offering.”
“You could be right.”
“I am.” She stepped out of the circle of his arms and gave him a gentle push toward the door. “Go. Horses first. Then food. I’m hungry.” She hovered in the doorway. “Do you still have the key?” When Remington showed it to her, she said, “Good. Keep it.” Then she closed the door behind him and turned the latch.
“Hey!”
“Horses,” she called from the other side. “Then food.” She pressed her ear to the door, heard him step off the stoop, and only then did she begin preparing for his return.
Phoebe told herself she should have known he wouldn’t be gone long. The man was nothing if not optimistic, and he would not have missed the sheet she hung in the window to keep him from looking in. That all but telegraphed that she was up to no good, or alternatively, that she was up to something very good.
“Just another moment,” she called out when she heard the key in the lock. She grabbed her thick plait of hair and pulled it forward over her shoulder. She hurriedly plucked at the braid, unwinding it until her hair fell freely in a cascade of waves. The black grosgrain ribbon that had held it together dangled between her fingers. Her moment was up. The latch was turning. She tossed the ribbon into the air. It was still floating to the floor when Remington stepped into the room.
“Mother of God,” he whispered when he saw her standing beside the bed.
“Um, no. Not her.” Phoebe’s attempt at wry humor did not alight with her usual aplomb. She blamed it on the fact that Remington’s eyes were hot enough to melt her ice blue corset, or at least it seemed that way. She swallowed hard. This was, after all, something he had seen her wearing before, but perhaps the threat of being burned alive had made it less provocative at the time. He looked extraordinarily provoked now.
Remington dropped the hamper. It thumped hard on the carpet, proof that it had been packed with enough foodstuffs to survive the apocalypse. In contrast, the key hardly made a sound when it fell.
“Don’t move,” he said. “I’m the one who needs another moment.”
She blushed fiercely, though she wasn’t sure why. The way he looked at her was nothing but flattering. Well, perhaps there was something dangerous there, and yes, she spied a hint of carnal villainy, but mostly it was flattering if she thought of herself as a little iced cake and him as the rascal who was intent on finishing her off in a single bite.
“This isn’t the same corset,” she said by way of making conversation. “The one I meant for our wedding night was scorched.” She raised her left leg a few inches off the floor, turned her foot this way and that to show off the white kid ankle boots. “New stockings, too. But these are the same garters. If you look closely, you can see soot that no amount of scrubbing can remove.”
“Is that right? I’ll be sure to take a closer look.” Remington removed his hat and flung it toward the table. It skittered across the top and stopped short of falling over the far side.
“Um. Maybe I should unpack the hamper.”
“I wouldn’t try it if I were you. I’m still strapped.”
She bit her lip to keep from laughing outright. “Are you threatening me, Mr. Frost?”
“Is it working?”
“I haven’t moved, have I?”
“Then, yes, I’m threatening you.” He dropped his gun belt and made sure she knew it was still in easy reach. He unfastened the fly of his trousers, looked down at his boots, and then at Phoebe. “I’m coming to you.”
Now she did laugh. He sat on the edge of the bed to remove his boots while Phoebe quelled the urge to gather up and fold his discarded clothes. “I could help you,” she said to distract herself from the shirt that draped the hamper.
He shook his head. “I know what you want to do. Go on. Get them. You’ll feel better for it and I will be the beneficiary of all your good works.”
She kicked him lightly in the shin that was no longer protected by a boot.
“Ow. What was that for?”
“For being right.” She stepped over his outstretched legs and picked up
his clothes, folded them, and placed them on one of the chairs. She didn’t return to the bed until he handed over his trousers. Once they were in the same pile as everything else, Remington opened his arms wide and Phoebe fairly flew into them. She pushed Remington backward on the bed and followed him down, grinning as she planted kisses at the corners of his mouth, on his chin, at his temples, everywhere, in fact, except squarely on his lips.
He caught her face in his palms, held her still, and watched the centers of her green eyes darken until the gold flecks all but disappeared. “The first time I saw you in that corset, you were as fierce as an Amazon warrior. I expected the flames to retreat just because you willed them to.”
She smiled. “What a lovely compliment. And what about the second time you saw me in it?”
“Well, that was different. I guess you’d say I had a vision of the Promised Land and was preparing to atone for every sin, real and imagined, just to reach it.”
“I wouldn’t say that. No one would say that. Most likely that vision you had was Sodom and Gomorrah. Really, Remington, the way you looked at me, it’s a wonder you aren’t a pillar of salt.”
His laughter shook her, enveloped her, and eventually took her breath away. Her heart stuttered. His dark eyes held her with adoration and amusement, and she was glad for both. “I suppose you could say I love you,” she whispered against his lips.
One corner of his mouth lifted. “No supposing about it,” he told her. “I would always say that.”
Turn the page for a preview of Jo Goodman’s
The Devil You Know
Available now from Berkley Sensation!
Pancake Valley was seventy-five square miles of prime grazing land, fit for raising beef cattle for the Chicago stockyards and smart, surefooted horses for cutting herds, mountain tracking, or outfitting an Army troop. The lay of the land bore no resemblance to any sort of pancake, flapjack, or johnnycake, nor was it properly a valley. But upon claiming the land in 1839, Obadiah Pancake declared its peculiar saddle shape to be a valley and so it was known from that day forward.
Wilhelmina Pancake had known her Grandpa Obie, remembered quite clearly sitting on his lap in the rocker he brought all the way from Philadelphia because he promised Granny that he would. She remembered that Granny complained, mostly good-naturedly, that excepting for the years she was nursing her sons, Obie and Willa got more use out of that rocker than she ever did.
Grandpa Obie was gone almost a score of years now, having taken a spill from a fiercely bucking mare that he was trying to break. Instead, the mare broke him, snapping his neck like a frozen twig. Willa had known he was gone before she reached him, and she had wanted to put the mare down, but Granny had stopped her, taking the gun out of her hands and holding her so tightly that Willa thought she might suffocate in that musky bosom. She hadn’t, though, and was glad for those moments because it was only a few years later that Granny passed.
Some days Willa missed that bosom, missed the comfort of it the way she missed her grandpa’s lap. From time to time, she sat in the rocker, but it wasn’t the same, and unless Annalea crawled into her lap—and really, Annalea was getting too big to be an easy fit—Willa found sitting there to be a bittersweet experience that was best avoided.
Willa lifted her face to the halcyon sky, tipping back her pearl gray Stetson, and let sunlight wash over her. She remained in that posture, one gloved hand resting on the top rail of the corral and the other keeping her hat in place, and waited for sunlight and the cool, gentle breeze to press color into her cheeks and sweep away the melancholy.
“Use your knees!” she called to Cutter Hamill as she pulled herself up to stand on the bottom rail. “Get your hand up! She’s going to throw you!” No sooner had the words left her mouth than the cinnamon mare with the white star on her nose—named Miss Dolly for no reason except that Annalea declared it should be so—changed tactics and crow-hopped hard and high, unseating her rider and forcing him to take a graceless, humiliating fall.
Miss Dolly settled, shaking off the lingering presence of her rider even though she could see his face was planted in the dirt. She nudged him once with her nose as if to prove there were no hard feelings, and then she walked toward Willa, her temperament once again serene.
Willa threw one leg over the top rail, and then the other. She sat perfectly balanced, her boot heels hooked on the middle rail, and braced herself for Miss Dolly’s approach and inevitable nuzzling.
“You all right, Cutter?” she asked as she held the mare’s head steady and stroked her nose. “This little lady has no use for you climbing on her back.”
Cutter lifted himself enough to swivel his head in Willa’s direction. “She’s no lady, no matter what Annalea says.” He laid his cheek flat to the dirt again. “Anyone else see me fall?”
Willa looked around. Except for animals of the four-legged kind, the area was deserted. “Happy’s inside the house, making dinner if you can take him at his word, and Zach must be in the barn, leastways I don’t see him out and about. Seems like I’m the only witness, and you know I don’t carry tales.”
“I don’t know that,” he said. “I don’t know that at all.”
She chuckled. “Go on. Get up and shake it off.” Willa could not repress a sympathetic smile as Cutter groaned softly and pushed to his knees. He rolled his shoulders to test the waters, and upon discovering he was still connected bone to bone, scrambled to his feet.
Unfolding to his full height, he shook himself out with the unconscious ease and energy of a wet, playful pup. At nineteen, Cutter still had a lot of pup in him, though Willa knew he thought of himself as full grown into manhood. She had suspected for a time that he favored her in a moony, romantic sort of way in spite of the fact she was five years his senior and his boss, at least in practice, and she was careful to treat him as fairly as she did the other hand and not encourage any nonsense.
Annalea, though, did encourage nonsense, and took every opportunity to make faces behind Cutter’s back but with Willa in her open line of sight. Annalea would pucker her lips and make a parody of kissing. She also liked to hug herself and pretend to engage in what she imagined to be a passionate embrace. In the first instance, she looked like a fish trying to capture a wriggling worm; in the second, she looked like the wriggling worm. Thus far, Cutter had not caught her out, but odds were that he would eventually, so Willa saved the scold that Annalea was certainly due and waited for the more enduring lesson of natural consequence.
Cutter removed his sweat-banded hat and ran one hand through a thatch of wheat-colored hair before he settled it on his head again. He grinned at Willa. “You want me to give it another try?” he asked.
“Give what another try? Getting thrown?”
He flushed but held his ground. “I thought I’d—”
“I know what you meant. Lead her around, let her walk off the jitters, and then take her to the barn and wipe her down. And talk to her while you’re doing it. You don’t talk to the animals nearly enough, Cutter. Miss Dolly will respond to your voice if you sweeten it a bit.”
Cutter regarded her skeptically but kept his questions to himself. He dusted off his pants and shirt and dutifully started walking toward Miss Dolly.
Willa chuckled under her breath when the mare sidled just outside of Cutter’s reach as he approached. “Sweet talk, Cutter,” she called to him.
“Is that what you want, girl? Sweet talk?”
At the sound of the smooth, tenor tones of her father’s voice at her back, Willa shifted so sharply on the fence rail that she nearly unseated herself. “I thought you were making supper.”
“I am making supper. Just stirred the pot. No harm leaving it alone for a minute. I saw Cutter take a fall and thought maybe I should check on the boy myself.”
“He’s fine, Happy.”
Simultaneous to Willa’s pronouncement, Cutter yelled over. “
I’m fine, Happy.”
Willa returned her attention to Cutter but spoke to her father. “See? You have it twice over. Better go check on that pot because it won’t stir itself.”
Happy shrugged, and except to reach for a flask inside his scarred leather vest, he didn’t move. “Feeling a chill,” he said by way of explanation, although Willa had given no indication she knew he had his flask in his hand. “So what about that sweet talk? You lookin’ for some of that from Mr. Cutter Hamill?”
Willa pretended she hadn’t heard him.
He’d been christened Shadrach Ebenezer Pancake at birth, but family lore had it that he carried on with so much chortling gusto that it was only right and natural that he should be called Happy. Since he had answered to the name all of his life, most folks did not know he had another, which suited Shadrach Ebenezer just fine when he was a youngster, and later, when he was a husband and then a father. But now that he was a widower, barely a father, and usually a drunk, he wore the name like a hair shirt, and that, too, suited him in a dark, humorless fashion.
Happy sipped from the flask, capped it, and returned it to his vest. He folded his arms and set them on the top rail a short distance from where Willa sat.
“You should have a hat on,” said Willa without glancing down. “Wind’s picking up.”
He nodded. “Going back in directly.” Still, he didn’t move.
Willa sighed. “You already burned supper, didn’t you?”
“I might’ve scorched the biscuits.”
“Stew?”
“I expect most of it will be good if we don’t draw the ladle from the bottom of the pot.”
Willa said nothing.
Happy grimaced in response to her silence. “I swear no one speaks as loudly as you do when you hold your tongue. Wouldn’t hurt at all for you to let it out. Might even feel good uncorking that bottle of mad dog temper once in a while.”
“I doubt it,” she said, and her words were carried away on the wind. She called to Cutter before he disappeared into the barn. “Take your time. Supper’s going to be—”
