by Kristin Holt
He closed his hand around hers, brought her fingers to his mouth for a kiss.
His eyes drifted shut and those long, dusky lashes she’d believed wasted on a man, seemed to fit him ideally, somehow.
“I trust you,” she told him, as matter-of-fact as if she’d said yes, she would enjoy a cup of tea.
“Thank you, dearest. I trust you, too.”
He stood, pulled her to her feet, and brought her close.
“You know what I want, don’t you?” The warmth of his lips against her ear made her shiver in a most pleasant way.
“Yes.”
“I hesitate to ask if you’re ready, for fear you’ll tell me no.”
“My answer is yes.”
He pinned her with his gaze. “Do you?” He swallowed. “Trust me?”
Watching her closely, he noted the fine trembling that seemed to have taken over her entire body.
Surely, she meant in general, in whole. A kind word of encouragement that their marriage was on track, that things were progressing the way she needed.
She couldn’t mean—
But she’d been tired enough to fall asleep in the tub. He’d fought to wake her, even now drowsiness crowded at the edges. He wasn’t too tired to love her, not by a long shot, but he’d heard this was far harder on new wives than on men.
He ought to wait. He’d vowed to romance her, to make her fall in love with him first.
He wanted that, didn’t he?
She leaned in, initiated a kiss so sweet he dove in for a second, then a third.
“I never should have demanded a waiting period.”
Her whisper, like Cupid’s arrow, found its mark upon his heart.
“Really?” He almost didn’t dare hope.
She laughed, bright joy lighting her from within. “I’ve regretted my impetuous statement all week. I was just mad you took my sister from me.”
“She’s coming back.”
“I know that, now.” Her smile faded. “I’ve learned a lot about myself in the past week. Much about you, too.”
“Such as?”
Her gaze flitted away. She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I learned my sister and I can be apart and survive.”
“What did you learn about me?”
Something in her expression darkened and he immediately regretted asking.
“Never mind that.” Could he kiss her? Make her forget whatever she’d just remembered she didn’t much like about him?
“I’ve learned,” she whispered, “you are a surprise, Mr. Cannon.”
What was that supposed to mean?
“You’ve surprised me with your preparations. This house, the children’s rooms, your plans with Adam to accommodate wives who would want to be near one another.”
He couldn’t help but smile.
But she wasn’t done. “You surprise me with your readiness to become a husband. I don’t know what I expected when I arrived in Ogden City, but I surely didn’t expect you.”
The tenderness in her tone made it obvious her comment, though elusive, was genuine and affectionate. It pleased him to know he’d surprised her in a good way.
“You’re a very good man.” She regarded him with trust and affection shining in her eyes.
He could make do with affection and trust, couldn’t he? Just until he convinced her to love him?
She winked. “You promised me the wait was over.”
He stole a quick kiss. “If you’re ready.”
Her grin surprised him. “I’m ready.”
“Come to bed, Mrs. Cannon.”
Chapter Sixteen
Morning sunlight streamed through the east-facing kitchen windows. Lessie watched her husband, partially dressed in trousers and shirt, flipping pancakes at the kitchen range.
She couldn’t help but admire his bare feet. Smooth, clean, and masculine.
Somehow, she’d never pictured him as one to go barefoot. He’d certainly not done so at Big Ezra, but here, in the comfort and ease of his home, it seemed to suit.
He tossed the warmest of smiles over his shoulder. “You really don’t know how to cook?” His disbelief was almost comical… and chafed.
“I really don’t. When would I have learned? Where?”
“Lessie, Sweetheart, don’t fret about it.” He wrapped a towel around the coffee pot handle and poured two dainty cups on two matching saucers.
“Your advertisement said nothing about an ability to cook. You realize that, don’t you?”
He set the pot back on the stove then flipped two perfectly golden pancakes onto the stack. He brought the platter to the table. She thought he might brush off the reference to his advertisement as he had so many other points, but he immediately took her in his arms.
The warmth, the contact with his tall, hard body reminded her with a flash of heat how very pleased he’d been with her as a woman.
Her fit of temper faded instantly.
“I wanted a wife, not a cook. If I’d been advertising for a cook, that ad would’ve read completely different.”
She nodded against his chest.
“For the record—” his deep voice rumbled through his chest. His shirt smelled clean— like sunlight and soap and fresh laundering. “I don’t care if you can’t boil water.”
“That can’t be true.” The realization she didn’t know how to do laundry, either, came close behind. How would she learn? They’d had it easy back in Lawrence, with an old woman in their building taking in laundry to support herself. Now, she had a mountain of dirty clothes from the many days in Big Ezra, and no idea where or how to begin.
“It is true.” He released her with a kiss upon her crown and opened the ice box. He pulled out a bottle of milk and set it on the table.
Milk that had to have been in the ice box since before they went to Big Ezra. She opened the bottle, prepared for the unpleasant odor of spoiled milk. Instead, it smelled fresh as if delivered this morning. “Why do you have good milk? Even with new ice every other day, the milk could not have lasted this long.”
He chuckled and stole a kiss.
“Why do you have bananas?” She’d just noticed the bunch on the kitchen table. Golden and perfect. She’d tasted a banana— once.
Her mouth watered.
He opened a cupboard and brought out two glasses. “Our housekeeper comes in several times a week, whether we’re here or not. She does the grocery shopping, stocks the kitchen. I don’t have time.” He pointed to the closet at her back. “Get the syrup, will you?”
It took a few seconds, but she located the tin of maple syrup, mostly by the maple leaf emblazoned on the front. “What will you do now that we’ve married?”
“About the housekeeper?”
“Yes.”
“That’s up to you, dear wife. It’s your kitchen, your home.”
She didn’t need to think about it. “I want her to continue. I’ll be too busy helping you to learn to cook or clean house.”
He raised a brow. “Is that so?”
“Yes. It is.” She leaned closer and kissed him, emboldened by the flare of reaction she witnessed in his gaze. “Does your housekeeper—”
“Our housekeeper.”
That made her smile. Her husband really was a gem. “Does our housekeeper do laundry?”
“No. Why would she?”
“Because I don’t know how.”
“Sweetheart, you needn’t ever learn. I take everything to the best Chinese laundry in town. It’s not far from the post office, and I’m there at least three times a week.”
“Truly?” He’d thought of everything. And apparently had money to pay someone else to do every distasteful chore.
“I’ve a business to run, so the post office is essential.”
“No, no. I mean about the laundry.”
“They do excellent work. My shirts stay white and are perfectly pressed. I see no reason for you to do manual labor.”
“Good. Because I meant it. I’ll be too busy helping
you to cook, clean house, or do laundry, iron, any of those chores.”
He laughed aloud. “What will you do with your time? What do I need help with?”
“I have a plan. A big plan, and it’s important, so I need you to listen, very carefully.”
He pulled out her chair at the table and ushered her into it. He sat, the corner of the table squarely between them. “I’ll listen to anything you have to say, Sweetheart, so long as you’re eating. You’re still too thin.”
“Did you or did you not ask, in your advertisement, for women of slender and pleasing form?” She giggled.
“Yeah, I guess we did.”
She smoothed the linen napkin over her lap. Everything in his home was of quality. The heavy silver fork, the china dishes he might say were for everyday use but all matched.
“Dig in.” He forked three pancakes onto her plate then flipped a china circular dish onto its handle, revealing butter packed inside. The butter dish had been inverted in a bowl of water to keep it fresh and cool.
Richard spread a good bit of butter onto his stack of pancakes, followed by syrup. She followed him, the aromas filling her senses and stoking her hunger.
He filled their glasses with rich, creamy milk. How could she eat this much? Even after nearly a week of generous if not quality meals at Big Ezra and an ample supply of food along their journey, she wasn’t yet accustomed to three meals a day nor the portion sizes Richard insisted she consume.
Three bites of pancakes later, Richard glanced up from his half-eaten stack. “Go ahead. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
With ample time to consider where to begin, how to explain her plan to her husband, how to persuade him to change things, she thought she’d be able to dive right in. But nervousness jumped in her belly and the thoughts jumbled in her head.
So she bought herself a few more seconds to unravel her thoughts by pouring a bit of milk into her steaming coffee, dropping in one lump of sugar— such a luxury!— and stirring it.
“I noticed a good deal about Big Ezra while we were there.”
“Hmm.” He cut another big bite of pancakes from his stack, and leaned over his plate as he brought the fork to his mouth. A long drip of syrup dropped to his plate rather than his shirt front.
“And I focused diligently on the task you gave me, to see how I might bridge your connection with the workers.”
He licked a bit of syrup from his thumb, wiped the digit on his napkin and reached for her. He slipped his fingers into the hair at her nape, hair she’d left down as she’d not had time to tie it up. It had lost its ribbon and braid long ago.
He’d reached for her as if he couldn’t stay away. He picked up his milk glass with the other hand, chugged a good two or three swallows.
“I’ve found the solution, Richard, at least I think I have. The families there need a school for their children. They need solid, comfortable homes.” She thought of the extreme luxury she lived in here and knew the families of Big Ezra would be comfortable with so much less. “They needed roofs that didn’t leak and windows that open to allow in light and fresh air. They need cook stoves. And comfortable beds.”
“I see.” The generic answer could’ve been a reply to anything, anything at all.
“Have you considered that paying them with scrip, requiring them to shop at the company store and there alone, even paying their rent in scrip is an unnecessary burden?”
Tingles erupted along her scalp as he tucked hair behind her ear and his warm breath teased her ear.
“Why is everything in that store terribly overpriced? Why is there only one store? If you invited a competitor to set up shop in Big Ezra, bring prices down to a fair, competitive level…”
The thrill of his touch, that she’d been distraction enough to draw his attention was all utterly delicious… but not now. Not when she needed him to hear her.
“You have the power to provide those things for them.” But the stroke of her husband’s fingers upon her nape and his kiss to her temple distracted her. “Are you listening to me?”
“I am.” He rubbed her shoulders now, causing her to shiver.
“Richard— you’re not hearing a word I’m saying, are you?”
“Every word.”
“But do you know what I’m saying?”
“I do.”
She pushed her plate away, prepared to start at the top, emphasize the important bits.
He sighed. “Sweetheart, there are so many things about business you don’t understand. It’s a lovely idea, really. An idea with merit and shows your compassion.”
“But?”
“But it’s not feasible.”
“More cost-effective than a business rapidly losing money because things aren’t right and the workers are desperate.”
That captured his attention. His expression morphed from tolerant and distracted to irritated, right quick.
“I asked you to help me find out who’s messing with the workings at Big Ezra. You’re supposed to do that by listening to the chatter, making friends with the wives. Not by rearranging my business operations.”
Ouch. That stung. Worse, somehow, than if he’d raised his voice or refused to listen at all.
He was right… to a point. She didn’t know much about business, at least not from the owner’s perspective. “I know a great deal about what it’s like to be an undervalued employee. I know what it’s like to work sixteen, seventeen, eighteen hour days, to never feel sunlight on my face because I’m working inside.”
The haunting, familiar expressions on the workmen’s faces reappeared in her mind’s eye. “I know what it’s like to take home a pittance in wages, to suffer the heat of an oven during the summer and freeze in the winter. I know hunger.”
Anger fueled her words and she fairly shook with passion. “I know thirst. I’ve been ill and had no money to pay a doctor. I’ve been responsible for my sister since we were eleven. Worse— she was ill, at death’s door, and I had no money to pay a doctor.”
Richard slid his chair back from the table, both hands braced on the edge of the heavy, expensive piece. His attention riveted on his hands.
Wouldn’t he look at her?
Had her husband dismissed her?
He’d clamped his hands so tightly the beds of his fingernails blanched white. Those firm, strong, gentle hands had caressed her, the touch of a husband in love.
Yet he’d forgotten all that.
They’d consummated their marriage. No judge would grant an annulment, not even in Utah Territory. She was stuck with Richard Cannon, like it or not.
And right now, she didn’t like it.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. “You’re right. You sent for a bride who understood your workers, who could get close to them, find out what’s really happening.”
Still no response. His jaw clenched, flexed, as if he fought to keep whatever he wanted to say locked inside.
Well, she didn’t have an issue speaking her mind. “I found a solution. A good one. It might cost you money, a lot of money, but in the long run, you’ll have content, happy workers who feel they’re a contributing part of something. You’ll earn their loyalty.”
His lips, so soft and pliant, had thinned with obvious displeasure.
She’d seen enough. She’d said enough. He’d shut her down, without much of an explanation.
Angry enough to start a screaming fight— one he obviously wouldn’t participate in— she controlled the urge and turned with ladylike composure and walked to the stairs.
A bath sounded like a lovely way to enjoy hours of solitude. This time, though, she’d lock the door.
Chapter Seventeen
“Lessie, wait.” Richard caught up to her on the stairs. He closed both hands around her tiny waist, slowly turned her to face him.
Much to his surprise, she allowed it. Both his touch and his intention to look her in the eye.
With the two stairs separating them, they came close to seeing one another
eye-to-eye.
He hadn’t reacted well to her suggestions, not well at all. He’d heard tell of husbands who’d had to beg forgiveness of their wives once a day, every day, just to keep peace in the home, but he figured he begged forgiveness for a different reason altogether. “You’re right.”
She folded her arms. That was a disappointment. He’d thought she’d throw her arms about his neck, kiss him, let him carry her upstairs. Maybe he hadn’t apologized correctly.
“I’m sorry, Sweetheart. Please forgive me for my poor response to your suggestions.”
“You won’t so much as consider my plans, won’t implement them, will you?”
“It’ll take time. You saw the road in and out of camp. Do you know how long it takes to build a school? How much it costs to build cottages?”
She held her ground. And he lost his heart to her a little more, if that were possible.
He squeezed her waist, trailed his thumbs along her lowest rib. She still had so very little softness to her. She did know hunger, deprivation, want.
This woman he’d married, come to respect and admire and love… this woman understood the crux of the problem. “I’ve been patching holes in the roof, haven’t I?”
In context of Lessie’s argument, his business methods seemed shoddy at best. Short-sighted. Why hadn’t Adam and he seen the problems in their operations?
Why had it taken Lessie to show them?
To hear her list things that needed to change, knowing he’d failed his workers… the realization emasculated him. “Instead of cutting my losses, tearing out the poorly constructed roof and starting over.”
To whom else could he admit he’d been so terribly wrong?
Only Lessie.
He meant the leaky roof metaphorically, of course, but he could see understanding in Lessie’s softening expression.
What businessman, with a degree from Harvard, enjoyed learning he’d made serious misjudgments in how to operate the family business? He surely didn’t.
