by Nan Ryan
“That’s not going to happen,” Anna soothed, but she, too, was afraid the spreading fire would engulf the stately mansion. She had to keep her wits about her in case they needed to flee quickly.
Down at the lead fire, Brit felt a growing sense of frustration and despair. Night had fallen, but the wind continued to blow. His eyes watering, throat raw, he watched helplessly as the strong west wind whipped around and checked its speed, almost stopping at times, like a whirlwind, only to blaze up again, higher and hotter.
Brit’s main concern was for the house. He knew how much that big old white mansion meant to LaDextra. They had to save it for her.
By ten o’clock that night the firefighters were out of cattle carcasses and out of fresh horses. Exhausted, hot and thirsty, the men again took up their dampened feed sacks and saddle blankets. Beating wildly at the flames, Brit and Buck advanced aggressively forward, followed by a half-dozen cowboys.
It was Brit who first realized that they had maneuvered themselves into a dangerous position. Behind them the blaze had caught again. And spread. Ahead there was a wide wall of flames, shooting a hundred feet into the night sky. In every direction was fire. Hot, breath-stealing fire. Racing, deadly fire.
“God almighty,” said Jake, back at the north edge of the fire with his tired remuda, “Brit and his boys are cut off.”
“Looks that way,” said Slim, shaking his head.
“Madre de Dios,” murmured old Cheno, and crossed himself.
“Look, LaDextra.” Anna pointed to the line of fire, which had not moved northward in the past half hour. “The back blaze the men set has stopped the forward march of the main fire. I’m sure the house is safe. You’re not going to lose your beloved mansion.”
“Oh, thank God,” said LaDextra, sagging down onto a chair.
But she was up again in a minute when a young horseman, galloping at full speed in the darkness, approached the house. Out of breath, shaking with excitement and emotion, he hurried toward the gallery and the two worried women waiting there.
“Patrono, señorita,” he said, “it’s—it’s…”
“What? What is it, Ricardo? Calm down and tell us,” ordered LaDextra.
“Is the patrón,” said the young, frightened vaquero. “He and Buck Shanahan and a half-dozen men…Dios…they have been cut off. They’re surrounded by fire!”
Anna automatically took a couple of steps forward, before she caught herself. Her heart pounding fiercely, she had the overwhelming desire to hurry down the steps and rush out to the fire. To Brit. To her darling Brit. To run headlong through the smoke and flames until she found him and knew he was safe.
She checked herself, knew that she had to stay right where she was and watch after LaDextra.
Brit felt the intense heat on his face as the shooting flames raced steadily closer. Anxiously he looked around. He saw no way out. They were trapped. There was nothing to stop the blaze. They were going to perish.
He remembered the telegram in his shirt pocket. If he died in the fire, the telegram might survive. He couldn’t let that happen. If he was gone there was no reason to break LaDextra’s heart. She believed that she had found her long-lost granddaughter. He would let her go on believing it.
Brit stopped beating at the flames long enough to reach inside his shirt pocket. He took out the yellow telegram, tossed it into the flames and watched it quickly catch and burn.
And the fire steadily advanced.
Midnight.
Word came that the fire had finally been brought under control. The house was no longer in any danger. There was no word as to the fate of the men.
LaDextra refused to go to bed until there was news of Brit, Buck and the others. Anna understood and stayed up with her, anxiously looking southward, waiting, hoping, praying.
Anna remained totally mute while LaDextra went on and on about how she couldn’t bear it if anything happened to her boy, to her precious Brit. She talked nonstop about him, laughing about things he had done as a child, bragging about things he had done as a man.
When finally she paused for breath, she looked up and studied Anna’s pale, drawn face. She had never seen such naked misery in a pair of eyes. How foolish, how selfish she had been not to see, not to know.
LaDextra reached for Anna’s hand and said softly, “Oh, Anna, forgive me, I didn’t realize. You love him, too, don’t you? You’re in love with Brit.”
Anna bowed her head, but did not deny it. She squeezed the older woman’s hand and fought back the tears that were threatening to fall.
The women stayed there on the shadowy gallery as another long, nerve-racking hour dragged slowly by.
The clock inside the mansion was striking one o’clock when, at long last, Brit appeared. Dirty. Sweaty. Exhausted. His face was blackened and scorched by the flames.
But he was unhurt.
To both women, he had never looked better.
“Brit, Brit,” cried LaDextra as he came up the front walk, “you made it, you escaped! Thank God. Thank God!”
“We all made it.” Brit called out. “There was a brief lull in the wind and the boys were able to beat out a narrow corridor through the flames and pull us to safety.”
When he came up onto the gallery, LaDextra threw her brittle arms around his neck and began to cry happy tears of relief.
Over her head Brit glanced at Anna. He could see the sweetness of her lips as they turned up into a smile and the way her expressive eyes clung adoringly to him. And he knew, all over again, that what he had been trying hard to deny within himself could never be denied.
Brit smiled warmly at Anna, reached for her hand and held it firmly in his own. He gazed at her with a look in his eyes that he knew mirrored the telling expression in hers. No words were needed. The message that passed between them was unmistakable.
Brit gave Anna’s soft hand one last squeeze and released it.
“Now, now, darlin’.” Brit turned his full attention to the weeping LaDextra, soothing her. He lifted her up in his powerful arms and carried her inside. Anna followed, but stopped in the entryway, turned and went into the lamplit parlor.
To wait.
Brit carried LaDextra straight down the hall to her room, all the while assuring her, in a low, gentle voice, that he was fine and so were the rest of the boys. At her door, he stepped inside and nodded to her waiting maid, Connie. Brit gently laid the tired woman on her bed and turned her over to Connie.
“Rest easy, dear,” he said to LaDextra. “Everything’s fine. Just fine.”
Thirty-Three
In the parlor, Anna waited nervously.
At first she sat down on one of the plush velvet sofas and very carefully arranged the skirts of her blue summer dress. She wanted to look just right when Brit came in.
In seconds she was up pacing, her heart beating erratically. She crossed anxiously to the white marble fireplace to peer into the gold-framed mirror that hung above. She pinched her cheeks and bit her lips. She smoothed her hair, arranging the golden locks to fall appealingly on her shoulders, taking care, as she did so, to make sure a shiny curl concealed the ugly black tattoo below her right ear.
She turned away from the mirror.
She glanced at the clock and shook her head. What was keeping him? Why hadn’t he come?
Brit quietly closed LaDextra’s door, but he didn’t go straight to the parlor. He turned and rushed down the dim corridor to the back stairs. He anxiously climbed the steps, taking them two at a time. When he reached the second floor and the door to his room, he’d already removed his badly scorched shirt.
Inside, he wasted no time in stripping down to the skin, leaving his soiled, smoke-blackened clothes where he dropped them. Naked, he made a beeline for the bath. Nervous as a schoolboy, Brit rushed to bathe, wash his hair and get his clothes changed so he could hurry down to the waiting Anna.
In the big marble tub, he washed away the soot and sweat and grime from his lean body. He soaped his hair and scrub
bed his scalp with nimble fingers.
Out of the bath, toweling himself dry, he studied his face in the mirror and frowned. He needed a shave, but there was no time. It would take too long. She might not wait.
Brit tossed the towel aside, stepped into clean underwear and reached for a freshly laundered shirt. Not bothering to button it, he drew on a pair of black, neatly pressed trousers, hastily buttoned them, then hopped on one foot, then the other as he put on his shoes and socks.
With the minutes ticking away, Anna kept glancing at the clock, so tense she felt she was going to jump out of her skin. She couldn’t sit still. She paced restlessly before the cold marble fireplace, wondering what was keeping him.
When twenty long minutes had passed, Anna stopped pacing, shook her head sadly and told herself she was once again behaving like a fool.
Brit was not coming to the parlor.
He was not coming to her. She had imagined everything. She had let herself read a meaning into his look on the gallery that was never really there. The way he had gazed at her, the way he held her hand so tightly in his, had meant nothing.
Nothing at all.
How could she have believed that, just because he had smiled at her and squeezed her hand, he’d meant her to know that he would come to her? He wasn’t about to. Now or ever.
Her face immediately grew hot with embarrassment and shame. Dear Lord, what if he learned that she was waiting here for him like a lovestruck girl? What if he casually wandered into the parlor and found her here? How could she ever explain?
Eager to get away before he could catch her, Anna quickly crossed the spacious room, stepped out into the foyer and hurried to the front door. She slipped quietly outside, crossed the broad gallery and went down the front steps.
Raking his hands through his still-damp hair and buttoning his shirt as he came, Brit skipped down the back stairs and rushed toward the parlor. His heartbeat quickening, he stepped, smiling, into the arched doorway of the lamplit parlor and looked eagerly around.
The room was empty.
Brit’s smile instantly fled. Confused, disappointed, he frowned and shook his head. His wide shoulders slumped wearily.
She wasn’t here. She wasn’t waiting. Had he really expected her to be here waiting for him? Just because she had smiled so sweetly at him and gripped his hand as if she would never let it go? That was no reason to suppose she’d be here where he’d left her, eagerly anticipating his return.
All at once exhaustion settled over him, consumed him. The long, hard day of fighting the raging blaze had left him with absolutely no energy. He was tired to the bone. The thing to do was to go right back upstairs and go to bed.
But Brit wasn’t sleepy, despite his weariness.
He was restless. Disillusioned. Edgy.
He exhaled heavily and headed for the front door, feeling as he had felt while fighting the fire, as if he were suffocating. Like he couldn’t get a breath. Outside on the front gallery, he glanced at the hammock, considered stretching out in it.
It was no use. He couldn’t lie still. He lit a cigar. The late-rising moon was up fully now, brightly illuminating the sprawling grounds and the vast valley below the house. And revealing the hundreds of blackened, still smoking acres of land that had burned in the fire.
Cigar in his mouth, Brit went down the front steps and out onto the manicured lawn. With no particular destination in mind, he circled the big house, choosing—he didn’t know why—the east side. He unhurriedly rounded the eastern corner of the mansion and stopped dead in his tracks.
His lethargy instantly departed.
Anna stood at the old wishing well, her long golden hair gleaming silver in the moonlight, the skirts of her blue summer dress lifting in the night breezes.
For a long moment Brit stood there unmoving, staring, awed, wondering if he could trust his eyes. Was she actually there or was she only an illusion brought forth by his yearning heart?
Anna moved slightly.
She was real.
She was there.
Brit dropped his cigar, crushed it out under his heel and started toward her.
Anna sensed his presence, turned and watched him approach, her pulse quickening at the sight of him so tall, so dark, so devastatingly handsome, coming toward her in the bright moonlight.
Brit reached Anna, smiled down at her and asked softly, “Were you making a wish?”
“Yes,” she said truthfully, gazing up at him, “and I got my wish. You have come to me.” She took a half step closer and asked, “Haven’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice a warm caress, “I have. I have come to you, Anna.”
“Brit!” She murmured his name on a sigh.
“Sweetheart,” he responded huskily.
Then, slowly lifting a hand to brush back a windblown lock of golden hair from her ivory cheek, he said, letting her know his intent in case he might still be misreading her, “I am going to kiss you.”
She smiled a dazzling smile and replied, “And I am going to let you.”
Brit quickly closed the gap between them and took Anna in his arms. He looked into her eyes for several seconds, a muscle dancing in his lean jaw, then lowered his head and kissed her. It was the sweetest, most tender of kisses. His warm, smooth lips settled on hers in a soft caress so caring, so unthreatening, she melted with bliss.
When the brief buss ended, Brit lifted his head and drew Anna closer against his tall, lean frame. Anna sighed with happiness and laid her forehead against Brit’s chest. They stood like that for several peaceful moments, their arms around each other, their hearts beating together, their bodies taut with longing.
Holding her, wanting her, Brit cautioned himself to let her set the pace. He was not going to rush her. He was, if need be, willing to take all night to win and woo her completely. She meant too much to him. More, much more than any woman ever had.
At last Anna raised her head, tipped it back and looked up at Brit. She said, “Kiss me again?”
“Ah, baby,” he murmured, and kissed her.
This time what began as that same kind of sweet, gentle brushing of lips swiftly escalated into a fiery kiss of budding passion. Both were breathless when the long, penetrating kiss ended, but they hastily changed positions and kissed again.
For the next half hour the two of them stood there in the brilliant September moonlight at the wishing well, kissing, touching, straining against each other, pressing their sensitized bodies together through the increasingly vexing barrier of their clothes.
Brit stood with his back braced against the wishing well, his feet apart. His hands at Anna’s small waist, he held her close against him, his knees on either side of her legs. Their lips combined in probing, prolonged kisses, and Brit could feel her passion-hardened nipples rubbing against his chest, her pelvis pressing temptingly against his own.
He wondered if she knew what she was doing to him. Already she had him so aroused he wished that he didn’t have to wait, wished that he could just take her right now, right here where they stood. He had to fight the strong temptation to swiftly turn her about, press her up against the well, rip away her underwear, open his trousers and quickly bury himself inside her.
He didn’t do it.
He was not going to behave like an animal this night. He loved this woman, no matter who she was or was not, and he meant to give her so much patient pleasure she would never want to be in any arms but his.
Brit kept kissing Anna, and kissing her, until she was sighing and clinging to him in unquestioned surrender. Wordlessly he swept her up into his arms and carried her back inside the big, silent house.
He climbed the shadowy stairs and took her directly to the privacy of his room.
Thirty-Four
Once inside the spacious, masculine room, where a lone lamp burned beside the bed, Brit pressed Anna up against the closed door and began kissing her once more. Again and again they kissed, and soon they were so weak and excited they sagged to their
knees on the carpet, continuing to kiss anxiously, as if they could never get enough of each other.
And as they kissed, Brit began to undress Anna. Lost in him, loving the feel of his fiery mouth searing her lips, his warm hands on her tingling flesh, Anna made no move to stop him when he dexterously opened her dress down the back.
She helpfully lifted her shoulders when he began to ease the short puffy sleeves down her arms, the bodice past her breasts. When the dress was lowered and lay bunched around her hips, Brit took his lips from hers, looked into her eyes and relieved her of her lace-trimmed camisole, peeling it up her ribs and over her head.
Naked to the waist now, Anna shivered when Brit cupped her left breast in his hand and, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the nipple, said, “God, you are so beautiful, so incredibly perfect. I could look at you forever.”
Her hands clutching his hard biceps, she said, “I’m not perfect, Brit.” And she tried to turn her head away when he pushed her heavy golden hair back from her face on the right side. “No,” she said, “don’t.”
“Sweetheart, you don’t have to hide anything from me,” he told her. He leaned down and placed a kiss on the disfiguring black tattoo that was her only flaw. Leaving his lips there, he said, “You’re as beautiful here as anywhere. This may become my favorite place to kiss.”
Relieved, she said, “You don’t mean that.”
He raised his head, smiled and said, “I’m not sure. I haven’t kissed every other place yet, have I?”
“N-no,” she managed to reply.
“But I will,” he promised, “If you’ll let me.”
Then his lips were back on hers, coaxing, persuasive, arousing. During one long, heated kiss Anna felt herself being slowly lifted up off her knees. She tore her lips from Brit’s and gave him a questioning look.
