by Jenna Kernan
I reached over and tipped her chin up with my forefinger. “Tell me, dammit.”
“I sold one of my stories. To a lady’s magazine in New York.”
I sure didn’t know what to say about that except congratulations. So I said that.
“It’s a love story,” she said.
“Figured it was, since you told me that’s what you write.”
“It’s a really good love story, Gale. One I am proud of.”
She kicked Lady into a walk and kept talking. “It has lots of visual detail and suspense, just as you suggested, remember?”
Lord, yes, I remembered. I was afraid of what she might remember.
“You have a love scene in this story?”
“Oh, yes. An extremely romantic one.”
I caught Lady’s bridle and brought the mare to a halt. “You didn’t…” I couldn’t finish what I was thinking.
She tipped her face up to mine, and now her eyes looked troubled. “Oh, no, Gale. I could never, never write about that night with you. That is private. It always will be private.”
I released the mare and we rode on side by side. “What happened that night was just between us.”
“Just between us,” she repeated. “I would never share it with anyone.”
I waited for what I thought was coming next, a question about why I hadn’t been to see her all these weeks. But she kept on riding.
And I kept on waiting.
The next thing out of her mouth was an even bigger surprise. “Could we go swimming in the river?”
“Swimming!” Was she nuts? I’d see her naked, or almost, and all my sensible hands-off talk would fly away on the wind.
“Don’t think so,” I managed.
“Why not?”
“Water’s too cold.”
“Isn’t that why one goes swimming? To cool off?”
“Sometimes. Not today.”
She paid no attention. “I think so, after we have our picnic. Over there, under those trees.” She pointed to a stand of maples, rode over and waited for me to help her dismount.
I slid out of Randy’s saddle and she held out her arms. Putting my hands around her waist cut my breath off. She came down way too close to me.
Her hair smelled good, like lemons. God, she had no idea what she was putting me through. I must have let out a groan because she got that little frown between her eyebrows I remembered from the first time I ever laid eyes on her.
She looked up. “Are you hungry?”
That made me laugh. “Hell, yes.”
“Is this a good place for a picnic?” She waved one hand toward the slow-flowing river a few yards away.
“It’ll do, I guess.”
All at once she looked up at me. “You are not glad to see me, are you, Gale?”
Goodness, she could be direct. “Yes and no.”
“Explain.”
I swallowed hard. “Yes, because seeing you makes me damn happy. And no, because I’m trying like hell not to compromise you any more than I already have.”
Without a word she turned away and moved to a grassy spot under a half-grown maple. I grabbed the blanket and the picnic basket tied behind my saddle and tramped after her. My jeans were starting to feel way too tight.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Lilah
I was so elated over the sale of my story I felt I could fly, but I sensed that Gale did not want to come on this picnic with me. Or even talk. We ate Consuelo’s bacon sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs and chocolate cupcakes, but my mood drooped lower and lower as I realized that Gale was foreman out here on the Rocking K ranch and I was a writer who lived in town.
There was no future for us. Gale was strong enough to face it, and he was trying not to hurt me, but I could not accept it. Soon I would have to follow Aunt Carrie’s example and lie to this man. I would have to tell him it did not matter.
But it did. No man had ever mattered to me the way Gale McBurney did. And I knew that no man ever would.
I swallowed the last crumb of my cupcake and stood up. Gale lounged on the picnic blanket, his hat pulled over his face. “Where are you going?”
“Swimming.” I unbuttoned my blue chambray shirt and shed my boots and riding skirt.
“Don’t.” He spoke from under his hat.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t take off any more.”
“You’re watching?”
“Damn right.”
I turned my back, walked to the riverbank and dipped one toe in the water. It was freezing cold! I wanted the man to kiss me, but I couldn’t ask him to. So I settled for a swim instead, no matter how cold it was.
“Watch out for rocks under the surface,” he called. I shot a glance back at him, and he was still lying with his hat over his face.
I splashed into the deep pool closest to the bank and almost screamed as the icy water closed over me. What was I thinking? It was almost Christmas, too wintry for swimming in anything but a bathtub full of hot water. When I surfaced, Gale was stalking back and forth along the edge with a scowl on his face.
“C-come on in,” I called, beginning to shiver. To keep warm I started to tread water.
“Not a chance in hell.”
I splashed water at him, but he didn’t even flinch, so I turned, gritted my teeth and swam to the deepest part of the pool. Gale did not move a single inch.
I gazed up at the specks of brilliant blue sky glimpsed through the tree branches and wondered what Aunt Carrie would do about a man like Gale.
Nothing. I could hear her voice as clearly as if she were floating beside me. Do nothing. Pretend it does not matter. Go home and forget him.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Gale
She came out of the river looking like a frozen water nymph, her hair straggling out of the bun at her neck and her wet skin glistening. I shut my eyes and turned away.
“I’m going to lie in the sun to dry my underclothes,” she called.
“Yeah.” I packed up the picnic basket, folded up the blanket and waited, grinding my jaw to keep from looking at her. How long did it take for a scrap of lacy drawers and a camisole to dry on a winter day? An hour? Two?
I knew I’d never make it.
All of a sudden I saw the humor in the situation. Didn’t exactly make me laugh, but my tight jaw began to relax and my aroused body settled down a bit.
Or it would eventually. Before it did I worked up a pretty good ache in my groin, and Lilah sure wasn’t helping matters. I couldn’t let myself get close to her.
I couldn’t live without her.
Dammit, I wish I’d stayed in Idaho.
While I paced up and down with my eyes focused anywhere but on her, she dried off and put her clothes back on, pulled on her boots and mounted her horse.
Hallelujah. Maybe I could heave my swollen privates into the saddle and make it back to the ranch before I hauled her off into the trees and did what I was aching to do.
I focused on the trail, the grass, the spindly little trilliums fighting for life in the shade, anything to keep from watching Lilah’s body move with the motion of her horse. I kept thinking that underneath that riding skirt was just a single layer of white muslin. One single layer.
God help me. I tried not to think about it. Right before we emerged from the trees I lost it, dragged her off the mare onto my lap and kissed her like tomorrow was a century away. She tasted of chocolate, and her skin smelled so sweet it made my mouth water.
“When we get back to the ranch,” I said against her lips, “get Juan to drive you home. I don’t trust myself.”
She mmm-hmmed, but her voice was drowsy. I prayed to God she heard me. I set her back in Lady’s saddle and we just looked at each other. What I saw in her eyes was understanding and quietness, and underneath that was banked passion. What she saw in mine, I don’t know. Desperation, maybe. Raw hunger.
It turned out she wasn’t going back to town. She was staying overnight at the ranch. I kept
my jaw clenched all through supper and the front-porch antics of Jase and Skip after dessert, but finally I couldn’t take anymore. I set off across the meadow for the safety of my cabin.
Fat lot of good that did me, with Lilah’s portrait staring me in the face and no whiskey left in the bottle.
By midnight I’d had all I could stand.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lilah
Gale was quiet all through supper, through Consuelo’s cherry pie and coffee and then brandy on the porch while my body sang with wanting him. I knew I wouldn’t sleep, so I stayed up as late as possible. Even after Gale went off to his cabin and Charlie and Alice went upstairs to their bedroom, I sat and rocked back and forth in the porch swing and tried and tried to stop thinking about him.
A fat silvery moon rose and set, and at last I climbed up to my third-floor guest room and crawled under the sheet.
My eyelids simply would not stay closed. After an hour I gave up and lay awake, staring up at the wallpapered ceiling in the darkness.
I must have drifted off to sleep, but I jolted awake when the door to my room silently opened and a shadow moved to the bed.
“Move over,” Gale whispered. I heard his heavy leather belt drop to the rug, and then he slid his body next to mine and reached for me.
“Don’t say anything,” he murmured. “I make a hundred and thirty-five dollars a month as ranch foreman, and that’s not enough to support a wife. Just let me love you.”
We were quiet after that. He touched me all over and kissed me everywhere, even places I had only imagined in my dreams, and it went on and on until we were both breathing hard and nothing mattered any longer.
At the end he whispered in my ear. “I love you, Lilah. And I can’t do a damn thing about it.”
“It doesn’t matter. This is all I want.”
“It’s not enough.”
I had plenty of money, even more now that my stories were starting to sell. But I knew Gale would never, never accept help from me. I couldn’t offer him a single penny because he would be too proud to take it. Why are men so pigheaded?
Toward morning he said something else. “The hardest thing I’ve ever done is to be in love with you and walk away.” That just plain made me cry.
Juan drove me back to town before breakfast. Nothing was the same. Nothing would ever be the same.
* * *
To keep my mind off Gale I baked Christmas cookies, dozens of them—white-winged angels and fat Santas with a dot of red-current jelly for a nose. I baked and cried and baked some more, and in between batches I wrote.
I sold two more stories, and I stopped Charlie on his way into town one morning and sent word to Alice, hoping she would tell Gale about my success.
I thought a lot about Aunt Carrie. I couldn’t bring myself to lie to Gale, so when my courses came I stopped Alice on her way out of town one day and sent a short note to him.
Mama wrote, asking me to come back to Philadelphia for Christmas. I wrote back and said no, and I lied about the reason. She would never understand wanting to live near a man who could not marry me.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Gale
“Ya know what, Gale? Sure seems funny that Lilah’s never visited all these weeks, don’t it?”
We were mending the corral fence, and as usual Jase couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Maybe she’s busy, Jase.”
“Thought she liked us. You anyway.”
I pounded in a nail. “Guess you thought wrong.” I shut my mind down as best I could, and eventually Jase drifted back to the barn and let me finish the fence alone.
I’d just stretched the last section of barbwire when Alice drove up in the buggy.
“Gale, I want you to take something into town for me.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lilah
From my upstairs bedroom window I heard Gale’s voice on the front porch, calling my name. “Lilah? Lilah, answer me!”
My heart all but stopped. I had never before heard him use that tone of voice. What was wrong? Was it Alice? Charlie?
“Gale? I’m coming.” I rushed down the stairs in my dressing gown, still hearing his shouts.
“Hurry up!”
He stood there with a bushy, fragrant fir tree balanced on one shoulder. Snow dusted his hat and the collar of his sheepskin jacket.
“Christmas tree,” he announced. “Where d’ya want it?”
“In the front parlor,” I said, gasping. “Right in front of the window.”
“Gonna decorate it?”
“Oh, I left all the tinsel and ornaments back in Philadelphia.”
“Out here we use popcorn balls and strings of cranberries, stuff like that. Even paper cutouts to look like snowflakes.”
He set the tree down where I pointed and snaked off his hat with a puff of snow dust. “I’ll help with the popcorn balls. Alice has a good recipe.”
Then he made a hasty retreat. I opened my mouth to ask about the popcorn balls, but he was already riding off.
I spent all the next day stringing cranberries and making lacy paper snowflakes. The whole house smelled like a Christmas tree, and I smiled and smiled when Gale came that evening to help me make popcorn balls.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Gale
After we rolled the popcorn balls and hung them up on the branches, we walked out to the front porch to admire the decorated tree. “Look!” Lilah shouted. “It’s snowing!”
The white flakes sifted down, frosting her hair. Before I could stop her she skedaddled off the porch and spun in a circle like a kid, opening her mouth wide to catch snowflakes on her tongue. I wanted to kiss her so bad I fought to keep my hands jammed in my pockets.
The whole world felt peaceful as everything turned white and silent. “You had snow in Philadelphia, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yes, but it was nothing like this. The trees are so beautiful with their branches all white and sparkly, and look! The road looks like a wide path of soft white silk.”
“And your flowers are getting covered up,” I said. “All lumpy like little fat dolls dancing across your front yard.”
All at once she froze. “Gale, listen!” She rushed to the front fence and cocked her head. “Carolers!”
Faint voices floated on the snowy air. “God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay…”
“Oh,” she breathed. “How lovely.”
“Yeah.” But I was looking at her, not at the crowd of singers moving along the road.
She dashed into the kitchen, where I heard a clatter of dishes. When I got there she was loading up a platter with some of the Christmas cookies she’d baked.
“Schoolkids,” I explained. “They do it every Christmas.”
She turned toward me and I saw tears in her eyes. She gave me a shaky smile. “Christmas always makes me cry.”
The singers drew closer. “O, come, all ye faithful…”
Lilah grabbed the platter of cookies and scooted out the front door. I heard oohs and aahs and a lot of laughter, and then the voices resumed singing and moved on down the road. “We three kings of Orient are…”
The music drifted off until there was nothing left but the sound of our breathing, and I knew I had to get out of there. I was coming undone. I left her without even kissing her, and I regretted it all the way back to the ranch.
* * *
Alice kept sending me into town on errands—pick up some needles from the mercantile and bring more raisins and another ten-pound bag of brown sugar. All the store windows had rows of little kids gazing at displays of toy trains and dolls and bows and arrows. I waded through them, made my purchases and carefully avoided slowing down when I came to Lilah’s orange fence on my way out of town.
Consuelo outdid herself baking apple and mince pies, but I wasn’t hungry. Skip and Jase and Juan ate like starving Indians, laughing and joking and telling tall tales like they always did. I didn’t say much, just wasn’t in the mood to celebrate.
By Christmas Eve I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I left the dining table and headed across the frosty meadow to my cabin. Before I’d gone ten yards, Alice flagged me down.
Oh, no, not another damned errand in town.
“Gale, a letter came for you. I picked it up at the mercantile when I was in town.”
“Not from Texas, I hope.”
“No. From…” She peered at the envelope. “Chicago.”
I studied the envelope. The return address read “Strellan Gallery, Chicago.”
I ripped it open so fast it tore off one corner and unfolded the single sheet of heavy bond.
“Dear Mr. McBurney, we are pleased…”
A bank draft fluttered to the ground. I scooped it up and read the amount. Twelve thousand dollars? God, twelve thousand dollars?
I kissed Alice, raced for the barn where I threw a saddle up on Randy and headed straight for town.
Chapter Forty
Lilah
I was just admiring my beautiful popcorn-ball-and-cranberry-strung Christmas tree in the front parlor when I heard Gale’s voice.
“Lilah! Lilah!”
His horse clattered up outside the gate, and the next thing I knew he had burst onto the front porch, breathing hard, and dragged me into his arms.
“Gale! What is it?”
He just stared at me for a moment. “I’ve gotta ask you something.”
“Yes? Whatever is the matter?”
He lifted me off my feet and swung me twice around in a circle. Out in her front yard covering up her roses next door, old Mrs. Hinckley gasped and dropped her spectacles.
He set me on my feet, sucked in a big breath and blew it out. “How’d you like to sell this house?”
“Sell it? To whom?”
“To me.”
“Gale, you have a cabin out at the ranch. What do you need with this house?”
