High Plains Wife

by Jillian Hart

  She had her friends and her social clubs. She was the president of the Ladies’ Aid, the most prestigious group in town. She didn’t need Nicholas Adam Gray, not one bit.

  Liar. She wiped more wetness from her eyes, darn that wind, and squinted in the hazy sunshine. The clouds overhead were gathering in the heat of the day. Like an enormous mesa, the gray clouds rose high up into the sky, ominous and breathtaking. In the distance a gray curtain fell from sky to earth—rain. Lightning forked across the pewter clouds.

  It was a good thing she would reach town soon. She didn’t like the look of the weather. Nick would be keeping an eye out, even though he was probably hard at work and not missing her in the least. If the clouds turned green, then she knew he would make sure Georgie and Joey were safe in the cellar.

  Stop worrying about them. She was the housekeeper, not the wife. She was more like a hired woman. The cruelty of it slapped her in the face like the leaf on the wind, sailing right into her cheekbone.

  The cottonwoods shook with a hard gust and the ox snorted in protest.

  “Just keep going,” she told him. “I’m in no mood to deal with your stubbornness.”

  He must have believed her, because he picked up speed, pulling her into the shelter of her stable in town as the storm hit.

  “Georgie! You answer me right now,” Nick boomed, at the breaking point. He felt as if every bone, every muscle, every organ in his body had been ripped in two by a dull blade. No, he wasn’t feeling terribly patient as he marched through the house, banging open doors. Where had that girl gone? “Pop, you were supposed to be watching her.”

  “I turned my back for a minute. That’s all. She must’ve been waiting for her chance, because I was watching her like a hawk.” Pop hauled the lantern out of the lean-to. “I’ll get Joey down to the cellar and be out to help look for her.”

  “Joey won’t stay down there by himself. When he finds out Georgie’s missing, he’ll go looking for her.” Nick grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. The sight of a young sapling sailing horizontally across the length of the backyard didn’t comfort him any. It was twister weather, for sure. With any luck, the worst of it would hold off until after he’d found his daughter. “Whatever you do, Pop, stay down cellar with Joey. Make sure he’s safe. I couldn’t stand to lose both of them in one day.”

  Pop bowed his head, choked up.

  Damn Mariah. She did this. Fury propelled him down the steps and into the storm where the force of the wind stung. Or maybe it was the bits of dust driving into his skin.

  “I’ve got some tracks.” Dakota rode up on his paint and with a second horse at his side. He tossed Nick the extra reins. “Hard to say, but there’s not much time.” He gazed up at the storm as lightning flickered far overhead. “We gotta find her.”

  “Let’s go.” Nick was in the saddle, pushing to ride point, but Dakota was the better tracker. Thank heavens for his little brother, who set off on his mare, into the lethal wind. A fence board, ripped loose from somewhere, sailed past Dakota’s head, heading right for Nick’s jaw. He ducked and the board, with nails attached, flew by.

  Georgie. Terror filled him, leaving no room for rational thought. She was out here in this, run off for heaven again and, damn it, she couldn’t have chosen a more dangerous time. Between the lightning, the wind-driven debris and those changing clouds, he’d be lucky to find her at all. Ever.

  Dakota dismounted and crouched on the ground. He studied the grass carefully, then shook his head.

  The wind had disturbed the grass. They’d lost Georgie’s tracks.

  The prairie stretched as far as Nick could see, from horizon to horizon in every direction. Lightning streaked from the sky, a giant arrow of light that scorched a tree on a far rise. The sky opened up and hail pounded to the ground, drumming like bullets into the earth, so loud they couldn’t hear Georgie if she were to cry out. So dense, they couldn’t see her. The ice covered the ground, erasing the last of Georgie’s tracks in the broken grass.

  “Maybe I should keep watch,” Betsy said from the kitchen table where she was ironing old man Dayton’s work shirts. “Pour yourself a cup of tea and relax, Mariah. It’s just a storm. If a twister comes, the cellar door is two feet away.”

  “It’s not that.” She couldn’t explain it. Ever since she stepped foot inside this house, she’d felt anxious. As if something were terribly wrong.

  Things were wrong. She’d just left her husband and walked away from the first real home she’d ever had. She’d left her stepchildren…that bothered her. Greatly. She hadn’t explained, she’d been so upset, hurting as if everything inside her was dying. She’d left, thinking that a housekeeper to them would be the same as a stepmother.

  And that wasn’t true. She couldn’t in good conscience stand here safe in her kitchen. What about Georgie? She’d be up from her nap now. She’d want to play dress-up or tea party or cuddle her rag doll. She liked cookies and warm milk after her nap.

  “Here, I poured you a cup of tea. Sit down and relax. I know you’re upset, but this can’t be good for you.” Betsy’s caring was nice.

  But nothing could stop the strange panic. It shivered through her, taking over, leaving the pit of her stomach hollow and afraid. Something was wrong. She knew it. She’d never felt this before, and as she called out a goodbye to Betsy at the door, she wondered if she was a little touched in the head.

  Probably, but she couldn’t sit in her kitchen. It was as if an unseen hand was pulling her out of the house and into the stable. She borrowed Betsy’s older mare, a gentle creature, snapped the lead rope around on the halter ring in place of reins and climbed onto the animal’s broad back.

  The mare obeyed, heading out into the storm. Hail drove like nails into them. It was only then that Mariah realized she’d forgotten her coat. She wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves. She shivered and urged the mare into a gallop. The clouds overhead were twisted into an angry curl of pewter and green.

  Lightning crashed and thunder boomed. Mariah kept riding.

  “Twister.” Nick spotted it the second it left the clouds. A lethal column of wind, louder than a freight train speeding by on a downhill slope. He was looking death in the face and had to keep walking toward it.

  “She’s following the road.” Dakota hopped onto his paint, shouting to be heard above the deafening storm. “I think she’s heading to town. A guess, because there are no tracks.”

  Where was she? They ought to have found her by now, and it was killing him. Mariah ought to have stayed with Georgie and kept her safe.

  He should have kept her safe. He should have done what it took to keep Mariah in their house. He should have handed over his heart, his soul and his life to her, if that’s what she wanted.

  He thought of her in his bed, how he’d melted into her. She’d left him, and had taken his heart and soul with her. And he still loved her. That made him mad. It made him sad. It made him ashamed.

  She’d driven away, but he’d been the one to let her go. All he’d had to say were three words and she would have stayed.

  But for how long?

  “Watch out!” Dakota’s warning yanked Nick out of his thoughts.

  He dove in time to miss a tree branch, big enough to kill him.

  Georgie. Fear iced the blood in his veins. They rode as fast as they dared as the twister rolled toward them, maybe a half mile away and coming fast. Shingles sailed past like a flock of birds, nails bared.

  Nick took several blows, one to his head, another to his shoulder, another to his thigh. He didn’t feel the pain. Just fear for Georgie.

  He’d ride into that twister, if he had to.

  He wasn’t stopping until he found her.

  Mariah felt her nape tingle. There was something different in the wind. Something high and afraid and human…Georgie.

  With a mother’s instinct, she leaped off the mare and started running through the air dark as night. Every breath sucked in dirt, but she didn’t stop. Bits of broken
boards and trees and fencing rained down on her with the hail. She tasted blood, aware that she was bleeding, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop.

  There! She heard it again, the tortured sound of a terrified child. Mariah only had to follow her heart through the darkness to find the little girl huddled against a rock. It was too dark to see anything but her trembling form.

  She heard her name being called over and over again, and suddenly Georgie was in her arms, sobbing, wet and muddy and bleeding. Shaking from cold and fear.

  “My poor little girl,” Mariah soothed, holding her so tight. Thankful, so incredibly thankful this precious child was safe. “Why aren’t you at home with your grandpop?”

  “’Cuz I didn’t want you to go to heaven, too.” Georgie’s sobs shook her entire body.

  “I love you, Georgie. I told you I would never leave you like that. I was coming back for supper.” She wanted to cradle this child, hold her safe forever, but a bucket landed an inch from Mariah’s elbow. The wind howled, chugging like a train, and an entire side of an intact roof sailed a foot over her head.

  Time to find shelter. The horse had probably run back home to her safe stall, but that didn’t matter. They couldn’t outride the storm. The wind tore her hair from its pins and the collar from her dress. She couldn’t see the twister, but she could feel the suck of it.

  It was too darn close. The world had turned pitch-black and she couldn’t see a foot in front of her. Where could they go?

  The creek bed. It wasn’t the safest place, but it was all they had. Something hard struck her shoulder, something harder crashed into her back. She ran in the dark, stumbling, with Georgie cradled in her arms, protected from the wind.

  Something hit her again, driving deep into her upper back. Pain left her dizzy. Where was the creek?

  She turned her ankle on uneven ground. This had to be it. She lowered Georgie to the ground and they crawled through the clay and into the wetness. She nestled Georgie into the shelter of the dry bank, where the earth could protect her. Water lapped at her knees as she laid over Georgie, covering the child with her body.

  If the twister came this way, they’d be dead. But if it kept away, then they’d be safe from some of the debris.

  “Scared.” Georgie sobbed against Mariah’s throat.

  “I know, but you stay right here, whatever happens, all right?” She stroked the child’s hair in the dark, wincing as an entire tree branch scraped along the ridge of her back, cracked into her head and kept on going.

  Pain made her dizzy, even in the darkness. The force of the wind felt as if it was sucking the skin off her limbs and the hair from her scalp. The roaring was worse. Lightning flashed across the prairie for one brief moment, and in that second Mariah realized the tree on the bank above them was struck. Fire snapped down the trunk to the ground where they were. Her and Georgie.

  She covered the child the best she could as the tree exploded and thunder shook the earth. Pain shot like a lightning bolt through her head. The roaring faded. The darkness claimed her. Then there was nothing, nothing at all.

  A riderless horse dashed close, shied from a falling shovel and disappeared in the dark. Nick knew who’d been riding that horse.

  “Mariah!” Nick swung off his horse, even though Dakota was telling him they had to find shelter. The twister was closing in and the winds were too strong. He hit the ground and the wind knocked him over. Good thing, too, because an uprooted cottonwood flew by, right where he would have been standing.

  Lightning seared overhead, so close, the hair on his head stood up. His nape prickled. The light burned his eyes and for one moment he could see the prairie spread out in front of him, the lethal funnel heading in a northeast path toward them and a splash of yellow against the shadowed grasses.

  “That’s Mariah.” Dakota saw her first, bolting into action.

  Side by side they went, into the hail of debris. Nick didn’t feel the strikes against his face, his chest and his torso. Not even the twister could stop him. Nothing could.

  Mariah. It was all he could think about, lying face-down in the creek. Face down…alive or dead? Determination steeled him, and he found her, trapped by a fallen branch. Motionless in the dark storm.

  For one brief second he thought she was dead, and he died, too. For a moment everything inside him stilled. And then he touched her warm hand and felt the flutter of her pulse at her wrist.

  “Papa,” came a tiny whisper.

  “Why, howdy, princess.”

  Her fingers curled around his and held on tight. Mariah was hurt and was unconscious, and there was nowhere to go. The twister was coming too close for comfort.

  “The debris still falling.” Dakota’s hand pressed on Nick’s shoulder, easing him down over his wife. Side by side they covered woman and child, protecting them as the onslaught continued.

  He felt Mariah move beneath him. Just a little bit, she turned toward him, seeking his comfort. This woman who had protected his child with her life.

  As he was protecting hers.

  If he needed any more proof of her love, and of his, this was it.

  “I shouldn’t have left you,” she choked.

  He could hear the regret and pain in her words. What had Pop said? That Mariah had an unbreakable heart. That if her heart broke, she would still love him with the pieces of it and with the places in between.

  Nick finally understood it, because that’s how he loved her. He couldn’t hold it back anymore. The steel walls melted and the defenses tumbled down, leaving his heart exposed. He wasn’t perfect, he was as wounded as anyone was in this life, because life left its marks on a person. But it was the broken places that made him strong. And his love stronger. Like a fractured bone when mended, it was harder to break.

  He curled his hand around Mariah’s nape, leaning to protect her with his body, with his heart, with his soul. He said the words that made him whole, that brought him into the light. “I should never have let you go, my love, because that’s what you are, my one true love.”

  Epilogue

  Mariah gazed around at the Harvest Day festivities. This might be their most successful fund-raiser yet. Old man Dayton’s fiddle began the first sweet strain of a waltz.

  “Ma’am, may I have this dance?”

  She shivered at the brush of Nick’s lips against her neck. She leaned back into the steely arms that banded her. His iron chest was unyielding. His hold on her was both gentle and strong.

  “I suppose I might permit you to dance with me,” she teased, laughing when he blew a raspberry against the curve of her neck. “Since you’ve done a bit more than merely waltz with me.”

  His hands curved over the curve of her belly where their baby grew, nestled safe beneath her heart. Her fingers laced through his and held on. Love renewed in her heart, born again as it was every time they touched.

  Nick turned her gently in his arms and tugged her tenderly against his chest. They came together like the earth and the sky. She placed her hand on his shoulder, as strong as steel. He kissed her brow as he led them in a slow, sweet waltz.

  “Mariah! Papa!” Georgie giggled as Jeb swept close, teaching his granddaughter to dance. “Look at me.”

  “Are you sure you want another one of those?” Nick teased, his words a kiss along the hollow of her throat.

  “Absolutely.” Joey was somewhere, playing baseball with his friends, no doubt. Georgie sparkled as Jeb swept her up onto his shoulders.

  I’m happy. Finally. She was loved with a family of her own and a husband who cherished her. What a man. Mariah buried her face in Nick’s shoulder, holding him tight, letting him whirl her to the rise and fall of the music. Together they moved like poetry, like the night. Two lovers and one heart. Their love would burn forever bright.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-8385-9

  HIGH PLAINS WIFE

  Copyright © 2003 by Jill Strickler

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