by Jenna Kernan
Only Charlie Kingman, owner of the Rocking K, kept his tongue from flapping, and maybe that was because of Consuelo’s beef stew. He was shoveling it in as if there wasn’t gonna be a tomorrow.
After the hoorah died down some and the boys were chin deep in Consuelo’s brandy-apple pie, Charlie caught my eye and lifted one silvery eyebrow. I stared right back at him, but inside I was squirming.
Just because I’d started Skip and Jase on breaking the new mustangs Ernesto and his nephew had brought in, everybody thought I must have a girl in town who was more important than a few wild horses. Everybody except Mrs. Kingman. Alice said nothing, just studied the dabs of orange paint on the backs of my hands and sent me a slow smile.
“I visited the dressmaker in town this afternoon,” she said casually to her husband. She sat up straighter so he could admire her new shirtwaist. “Do you like it?”
From the opposite end of the big walnut table Charlie gave her a slow once-over, and I could see he liked it because he grunted and his cheeks turned pink. Old codger was still male, wasn’t he?
I knew then that Alice had figured out where I’d been all day. Nobody, not even an Irish cowboy, has orange freckles all over his arms. They wouldn’t scrub off when I washed up at the pump, even when I used a fingernail brush.
Skip and Jase sure razzed me about breaking those mustangs. “Kinda a five-man job, if you get my drift,” Skip drawled.
“Kinda hard with just us four.”
Charlie leaned back in his chair and gestured to Consuelo for more coffee. “About that string of horses, Gale.”
Jase snorted. “Horses! I’d wager the man’s got his eye on a pretty little—”
“Have some more pie, Jason,” Alice Kingman interrupted.
“Yeah,” I said real low. “Fill your mouth with something other than idle talk.”
Consuelo did her part, too. “More coffee?” She managed to accidentally touch the hot coffeepot to Jase’s meaty hand, and when he jerked it away he knocked over his cup.
“Now look what you make me do!” the plump Mexican woman complained. “All today I spend ironing clean tablecloth, and now must wash all over again. Ay-yi-yi!” She rapped her knuckles on top of Jase’s shaggy blond head. “You behave!”
When he wasn’t looking, she sent me a wink.
“What about those mustangs?” I asked Charlie. “You want ’em green broke or saddle ready?”
“Saddle ready. They’re goin’ to the army at Fort Hall.”
I nodded. That oughta keep me workin’ hard all day and sore all night for weeks. No time to admire my orange fence.
Or anything else. Unless…
“I’m turnin’ in, Charlie.” At his nod, I stood up and tipped my head at his wife. “Mrs. Kingman.”
I fully intended to head straight for the cabin I’d been given as part of my wages as foreman, but halfway across the meadow I changed my mind. The Lord loves a fool, I guess, because nobody saw me saddle up my gelding and leave the ranch.
Chapter Seven
Lilah
I yanked the paper out of the typewriter, crumpled it into a big, crunchy ball and added it to the pile in the wastebasket by my desk. I’d been writing steadily ever since my supper of scrambled eggs and biscuits, but my story just wasn’t coming.
I lifted my head when an odd sound drifted through the open window, an irregular chuff-chuff, followed by a pause. What on earth? I raised the sash and peered out. There was just enough moonlight to see a dark shape hunched over close to the ground by my new front fence.
I slid the sash up, and the figure froze.
I kept a small Colt pistol in my top desk drawer, and now I grabbed it and started down the stairs with the gun in my right hand, clinging to the banister with my left. I eased the front door open, pulled back the hammer on the gun and stepped out onto the porch.
“Hold it right there, whoever you are!” I sounded braver than I felt. At least I hoped I did.
A voice cut through the darkness. “It’s all right, Miss Cornwell. It’s me, Gale McBurney.”
The strength drained from my body. “Could you not have knocked on the door?” I snapped. I hated sounding so waspish, but now I was shaking, and that made me mad. I detest being frightened.
“What on earth are you doing out there?” I winced at my tone.
“Planting nasturtiums.”
“Whaaat?” My knees were feeling quite wobbly.
“And black-eyed Susans. Edith Ness told me that’s what you bought before, so I thought I’d…”
He stepped into the faint lamplight spilling out the front door. In his hand was a trowel, my trowel, if I wasn’t mistaken, and on his face was the ghost of one of those unsettling smiles. But now I was so angry I was immune.
“…replant your flower seeds,” he finished.
“At this time of night? Mr. McBurney, it’s past midnight.”
“Yeah, I know. But it’s the only time I have, so I figured I’d better get it done tonight.”
Chapter Eight
Gale
I straightened up real quick when I saw that little pistol in her hand. She had it aimed straight at me. “That thing loaded?”
“Yes, it most certainly is.”
“Mind pointing it somewhere else?”
She didn’t answer for way too long, and I started to sweat. Then I noticed her bare toes peeking out from under her dark skirt. Part of me went cold and still as I studied them.
The rest of me went as hot as July at noon.
She still hadn’t lowered the gun. “Miss Cornwell?”
She didn’t answer.
“Uh, Miss Cornwell? Lilah?”
She jerked her gun hand down against her skirt and sent me a questioning look. “Did you plant any baby’s breath?”
I was still staring at her bare toes, I guess, because she repeated the question.
“Baby’s breath? What’s that?”
“Gypsophila. It’s a flower. I had planted baby’s breath seeds.”
So, I thought irrationally, there would be more planting to do on some other night. First chance I got between breaking a new bunch of wild mustangs and making another stop at the mercantile.
“Guess I missed that baby’s whatever, Miss…Lilah.” Damn, I loved the flavor of her name in my mouth. “But I got the other seeds planted just fine. Kinda spread them around some. Flowers in straight lines aren’t too interesting.”
“What would you know about flower gardens?” She worked her lower lip between her teeth, and right away things inside my gut moved from July straight into August.
“Look, Miss—Lilah. I’ll make you a wager. If you don’t like your garden when the flowers bloom, I’ll dig it up and start over.”
“No, you won’t,” she said. “It will be too late in the season to start over.”
“Does that mean you’ll leave it planted like it is? Or that you’ll be replacing me?”
“I am quite sure you have your hands full with your ranch job.”
“That’s a fact, ma’am. Lilah. Right now we’re breaking horses.”
“Well, then?”
I couldn’t answer a ‘well, then’ question, so I dropped the trowel I’d found in the shed off her back porch and moved up the walk toward her. When I reached the bottom porch step I stopped and looked up.
“I want to come back.” I said it flat out. I watched her tongue slip out and wet her lower lip and it was all I could do to keep from groaning out loud.
“You have no reason to come back,” she said.
“I know. I want to anyway.”
“Why?”
“I’m not real sure, to be honest. Outside of the obvious.”
Her eyebrows went up. Funny how dark they were, not red, like her hair. Dark like…hawk wings.
“The obvious? What, pray tell, is ‘the obvious’?”
I couldn’t answer that without saying too much and getting myself in a whole passel of trouble. So I just climbed the three steps to
where she stood, lifted the Colt out of her hand and brushed my lips against her cheek.
I stood there for a full minute with my heart bulupping under my breastbone, waiting for I didn’t know what. Then I went right for the passel of trouble—hooked one hand around the back of her neck and tipped her chin up with one finger.
“Lilah?”
She didn’t make a sound, so I kissed her.
She still said nothing, so I backtracked off the porch and turned to go.
Then I made a mistake. I spun back around, and she was still standing there, not moving and not saying a word.
God, in for a penny, in for a…
I tramped back up the steps, pulled her close and let myself enjoy her mouth until my privates ached.
Big mistake. Big, damn mistake.
Oh, hell no, it wasn’t. It was big, damn wonderful.
Chapter Nine
Lilah
Never in my life had I been kissed like that. It went on and on, his mouth questioning, questioning, while my body trembled. I never wanted it to end.
Eventually he did end it, though I could tell he didn’t want to because his breathing was even more ragged than mine. That made me feel wonderful, knowing that being close to me, touching me with his mouth unsettled him as much as it did me.
I had a fleeting memory of Adrian Borrey back in Philadelphia, how dry and flat his lips had felt, and in a flash I saw both the deceit and the hilarity of writing my love stories when I knew next to nothing about the subject.
When I opened my eyes Mr. McBurney, Gale, was striding through the front gate, and while I watched he pulled himself up onto the horse he’d tethered to the fence post and rode off into the dark.
I must have stood there on my front porch a good ten minutes after the hoofbeats faded away, and all that time I kept asking myself what had just happened. Crickets scraped in the yard. The slight breeze was soft on my skin, and I could smell the heady sweet perfume of the damask rose on the trellis in the side yard. My breasts felt swollen and achy.
My mind felt addled and at the same time dazzlingly clear, as if I had just gulped down a mouthful of stars. I walked back into the house, climbed the stairs and lay down on my bed fully clothed and stared up at the ceiling.
An hour passed, then two. I could still feel the delicious pressure of Gale’s mouth on mine, smell the sweat-spicy scent of his skin.
Dear God in heaven, I have missed so much of life.
Chapter Ten
Gale
I got back to my cabin around three in the morning, feeling like I’d had too many slugs of whiskey. At five o’clock I hauled myself out of bed, pulled on my jeans and stumbled down to the ranch house for breakfast. My head ached like it did that time I cracked it on a tree limb rescuing Mrs. Kingman’s cat, but damned if I could stop grinning.
Jase and Skip were bleary-eyed, hunched over their coffee mugs with their gazes fixed on the basket of biscuits Consuelo set on the table in front of Charlie. Juan was hungover, maybe for the first time in his seventeen years, and he paid no attention to anyone. But Ernesto studied me with his sharp black eyes and pursed his lips.
Charlie reached for a biscuit. “Soon as you finish eatin’, Gale, I’ve got twelve horses waitin’ for you in the corral.”
The boss was in a hurry to deliver the animals to the army post at Fort Hall, and he expected me to hustle because another twenty-five horses were waiting in the holding pen.
Jase and Skip groaned. Ernesto gave me a thumbs-up.
By noon I’d spent more time on the ground in the corral than in the saddle. I was covered with dust and my shoulder hurt where I’d smacked into the fence on one of my unplanned trips off the back of an ornery stallion. When the dinner gong clanged, I staggered over to the horse trough and dunked my head in.
Didn’t help much. When I came up for air, Juan handed me a towel, but he looked at me funny. “You okay, amigo?”
“Mostly.”
“Too much beer?”
Too much something for sure, but it wasn’t beer. And it wasn’t meant for Juan’s ears.
The fried chicken and mashed potatoes Consuelo laid out on the big dining table helped some, but back in the corral that afternoon things went from bad to very bad.
“¿Qué pasa?” Ernesto said after one really spectacular fall. “Not like you.”
I shrugged off his concern and worked the last four mustangs as if there was no tomorrow. Except there would be tomorrow, and another one after that, and on and on until the job was done and all the horses were being trailed east to the army post. Skip and Juan usually drove the herd; that’d give me a breather.
But it didn’t help that I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about Lilah Cornwell’s bare toes and the feel of her soft mouth under mine.
Chapter Eleven
Lilah
For the next two weeks I watched my seedbeds like a hawk eyeing a nest of baby chicks. It was now May, and day by day the air grew more balmy and springlike, but the ground remained just that: flat, dry ground. I could see nothing that hinted of a single leaf or a flower.
Where were my nasturtiums? My black-eyed Susans? All these years I had clamored to be on my own, free to pursue whatever path I wished, and now I was proving inept. Even a weed would be gratifying.
Every morning I dribbled the remains of my wash water onto the dirt under which I prayed a seed or two would be sprouting, and hoped no passerby would judge my mental faculties deficient for watering a sunbaked patch of bare earth.
Trips to the mercantile for soap or potatoes or thread were an agony. With each visit little Edith Ness looked at me expectantly, and I had to shake my head. No sprouts yet. No seedlings. No flowers.
I had not confessed to Edith that it was not I who had replanted the garden but Gale McBurney. Perhaps it didn’t matter whether saint or sinner poked a shriveled seed into the dry ground. What mattered was that I was now the faithful custodian of God’s promised bounty.
Eventually anyway.
One morning as I slopped my scant cupful of water onto the bare flower bed, a trim little horse and buggy pulled to a stop in front of the fence and a well-dressed woman in a bright calico skirt and matching shirtwaist leaned out.
“That fence of yours is a most unusual color.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
“Did you intend for it to be orange?”
“Um…well, no. It just happened.” I couldn’t admit that it was Gale McBurney who had painted it orange.
She bobbed her graying head. “My name is Alice Kingman. My husband, Charlie, owns the Rocking K ranch.” She rested the buggy whip at her side.
Heavens! Mrs. Kingman was well-known in town. She would surely say something to the townspeople about my outlandish fence, and then the whole story about who had painted it and why would come tumbling out.
I managed to smile. “How do you do, Mrs. Kingman. I am Lilah Cornwell.”
“New in town, aren’t you? I haven’t seen you around before.”
“I traveled from Philadelphia a few months ago.”
“I’ve often wondered about this old place,” she said. “It must have needed some work.”
“And some furniture,” I added with a laugh. “My aunt left the house to me, but I don’t think she ever lived here. It needed everything.”
“Ah.”
“For the first month I ate off tin plates and slept on the floor.”
“Ah,” she said again. She looked me over with intelligent gray-blue eyes. “You must come out to the ranch for Sunday dinner.”
My heart almost stopped. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. Thank you, but—”
“Why couldn’t you?”
There were a thousand reasons why I couldn’t. For one, Gale McBurney was foreman at the Kingman ranch, and he had kissed me so thoroughly I hadn’t slept soundly for two weeks. I simply couldn’t face him again. That memory took care of excuses two and three and four as to why I could not appear at the Kingman ranch.
“Nonsense.” She picked up her whip. “I’ll send one of the ranch hands with the buggy to drive you out. Four o’clock Sunday. And mind you plan to stay over.”
For the rest of the day I was in a nervous flutter. Did Alice Kingman know about Gale? What should I wear to dinner at a ranch? I had brought exactly three dresses suitable for church or a social, but I hadn’t attended church since I was twelve, and the thought of a social of any kind made me physically ill. Perhaps that was why Aunt Carrie had willed me this house far off in the West; she had always known how shy I was.
I would much rather talk to flowers than people. And there were people at the Rocking K ranch. Especially Gale McBurney.
Chapter Twelve
Gale
It was a good two weeks before I got most of the wild mustangs saddle broke. By the last day, I ached all over and thought maybe I’d cracked a rib. As we washed up for supper, Jase started to tease me.
“You goin’ into town tonight, Gale?”
“Nope. Don’t want to even look at a saddle. Hurt too much.”
“Hell, it’s Saturday night! Oughta be dancin’ at the Golden Partridge. I hear there’s a new girl in town, Lilah something.”
My fists clenched of their own accord. Keep your damn hands off her.
“I don’t think she’s the kind to be hangin’ out at the Golden Partridge,” I managed to say.
But I realized I really didn’t know the first thing about Lilah Cornwell except that I’d swear she didn’t wear a corset, and when I kissed her she tasted so sweet I got hard.
I knew she hung her own wallpaper and had painted her parlor by herself and that she liked flowers, but that was all. The thought of Skip or Jase or anybody else laying a hand on her made my gut knot up.
After supper I limped across the meadow to my cabin, heated water and scrubbed off three layers of dirt and sweat, then saddled my gelding and hauled my aching ass up onto his back. All the way into town I kept thinking what a fool a man could be.
An hour later I stumbled into the saloon and found Jase and Skip sprawled at a table, nursing what looked like one beer too many.
