The heat in her neck went straight to her hairline. "That... that would be unkind. Although I'm sure you meant it as a compliment," she added hastily.
He nodded, his gaze delving deeply into hers. Too deeply for acquaintances.
She ducked her head, her heart skipping a beat. Jesse looked at her that way.
Or rather, he used to.
Swallowing hard at the thought, she pushed away her grief and concentrated on Billy. She helped him stand, her shoulder propping him up, her hip steadying his. Billy threw his arm over her shoulders, hugging her close. When those arresting, sapphire eyes locked with hers once more, there was a hint of wistfulness in the Texican's gaze.
"How far did you say that bed was, angel?"
* * *
When the rain started again, it fell with a vengeance, turning the river into a raging torrent.
Lydia Witherspoon, the orphanage's proprietess, returned from the pancake breakfast just in time. She drove her wagon full of sopping, shivering wards over the only bridge within 50 miles of Thunder Valley Orphanage. Minutes later, the wild, gray-green waters swept the groaning span away, sucking those timbers of pine into frothy oblivion—as if they'd been no sturdier than toothpicks.
At least, that was the story that the children shared with Sera.
Fortunately, nothing flustered Lydia. She'd no sooner started toweling off little heads than word reached her that Miss Sera, Mr. Collie, and "Mr. Somebody" had all been marooned at the orphanage.
Word spread like wild fire that "Mr. Somebody" had been "snake bit." Lydia hastened to the sick ward to inspect her guest's wound. The gray-haired matron had cared for Yankee soldiers as a battlefield nurse—which was one of the reasons the Orphanage Board had appointed her caretaker of the children—and the local folk of Blue Thunder Valley considered her as much of an authority on minor medical complaints as "Doc" Jones.
"You did well, Sera," Lydia assured her after cleansing and bandaging Billy's swollen leg.
"What about me?" Collie demanded. "I had to haul Mr. Somebody's scrawny ass out of a mud hole."
Sera hid her amusement to see Billy scowl at the reminder of his accidental tumble outside the compound's gate.
"Highly commendable, Mr. MacAffee," Lydia said solemnly to the boy who'd fled her orphanage at least three times since his father's death. Lydia always treated Collie with the utmost courtesy—mainly because she wanted him to believe that he wasn't limited to his father's professions of moonshining and livestock rustling. "Your mama must be smiling down from heaven."
Collie blushed.
Now it was Billy's turn to smirk.
"Shut up," Collie snapped.
Billy arched a star-white eyebrow from his nest of feather pillows. "Did I say anything?" he asked in abject innocence.
"Shut up anyway."
Sera smothered a giggle.
Those two have the makings of a real friendship.
"Now you need to stay off that leg a couple of days," Lydia addressed her patient sternly. "No walking, no galloping, and no shenanigans. The last thing you need is an infection. No one wants you to keep that leg more than I do."
Billy's eyes widened. Sera suspected that the possibility of amputation had never occurred to him.
"Yes, ma'am," he said with uncharacteristic meekness.
She patted his shoulder. "That's a good lad."
The minute Lydia left the sick ward to tend to her other duties, the orphanage's more venturesome toddlers crept out of the woodwork to take a peek at "Mr. Somebody." Clutching rag dolls and toy soldiers to their hearts, they ventured into the somber, kerosene-lit chamber where neatly made beds in spotless white linen marched in perfect alignment to the door.
Billy was the only "guest" of the sick ward, but Sera had stationed herself at his bedside to keep him company. When the children spied her, their faces lit up like Christmas Day. They raced for the comfort of her lap and begged her to tell them "fairy stories."
Shortly after the lunch bell sounded, the storm grow worse. As the heavens crashed and sizzled in all their elemental fury, the tumult shook the building's stone foundations. A few of the smaller, more frightened children bolted back down the hall to the sick ward. Soon Sera was sharing her fraying, wingback chair with a stuffed bear, a wooden horse, and two three-year-old boys with chattering teeth.
Some of the other children dared to crawl under the covers with Billy. Apparently, there weren't enough adults in the compound to hug the toddlers or persuade them that the mountain wasn't going to fall down and crush them.
All cozy and heavy-lidded in his island of bed warmers, Billy flashed his fallen angel's smile at her. She hadn't slept much the night before, thanks to Jesse's insidious petting. Now she was trying to hide her yawn.
Billy patted the mattress in invitation. "The more the merrier," he drawled.
Without a sound, Collie unfolded his long legs, rose from his post by Sera's chair, and plopped down on Billy's bed.
"Don't mind if I do," Collie retorted, barely missing a stroke with his whittling knife.
"I wasn't talking to you, MacAffee!"
"Yeah?" Collie blew a bit of sawdust from the locomotive that he was carving. "Who were you talking to then, Snake Bait?"
"That's Snake Eyes to you, Weasel."
Collie snorted over his shoulder at the Texican, whose sun-bleached hair and clean-shaven mug could have made them pass for brothers. "You ain't so scary."
Sera secretly had to admit, Collie was right. With Billy's trio of girl toddlers cuddled up against his chest, and his torso robed in the red cotton longjohns that Lydia had produced for him, he looked like a youthful Santa Claus.
Except that the twinkle in Billy's eyes was more wicked than merry.
"Shh," she chided the rivals. "You'll wake my boys."
Collie elbowed Billy as if to say, 'See? You got us in trouble.'
Billy winked at her. "Why don't you get some shut-eye, Miss Sera. I'll watch the baby." Billy left little doubt in anyone's mind that he was referring to Collie.
And so the bickering continued.
Gratefully, Sera tugged Lydia's blue and yellow, star-pattern quilt up under her chin. She was careful not to knock the wooden dirk and arrowhead that Collie had already carved from chubby toddler fingers.
As the lightning danced beyond the fogged windows, she worried about Michael and Eden. She hoped they weren't pacing the floor, wondering why she hadn't come home after the pancake breakfast. Surely Michael would remember that she and Gabriel would bolt for the nearest warm fire and cooked meal—which could always be found at the orphanage—whenever a storm caught them berry-picking in the woods.
She worried about Luke, wearing a tin star and making himself a target for a sheriff killer, when his first baby was due any day.
As for Jesse... well, Sera would have worried about him, too. But he'd made it clear that her love could never hold him, that he had more important things to do than settle down in Blue Thunder, make babies, and keep the peace.
Besides, every time she thought about Jesse, her eyes stung and her heart hurt. She'd thought she'd meant something to him. How could she have been so wrong? She'd also thought that she'd meant something to Kit McCoy. She'd been wrong about him too. What was wrong with her, that she fell in love with men who didn't want to marry her?
And yet, she'd had that vision of her dark-haired, three-year-old son. She'd seen proof that her future self was expecting a second baby.
Her wounded heart clung to that vision like a lifeline. Some man in her future would love her and make a family with her. Some man who was apparently connected to Laura Clay.
Jesse Quaid isn't the only man in Kentucky.
Girding her heart with that hopeful thought, she began making plans to write to KERA'S president. She also mentally composed a letter to Rafe. She didn't think she could bear the speculative looks and catty gossip that would follow her around town after word got out—as it was bound to do—that she'd lost yet anothe
r beau: this time, Blue Thunder's new marshal. Sera hoped that Rafe would let her spend the summer Social Season with him and Silver in Aspen.
As Sera's lashes fluttered lower, she heard Billy taunt Collie:
"You call that a locomotive?"
"Hell, yeah."
"Looks like a bullfrog to me."
"That's 'cause your head's as swelled up as your leg..."
Sera smiled a little at their sparring. She tried to picture Billy and Collie as silly little boys who were secretly fast friends—like the dark-haired toddlers who were holding each others' hands and snoozing in her arms. Her mind conjured visions from the old childhood verse: "snips and snails, and puppy dog tails."
When she finally drifted off to sleep, however, she didn't dream of little boys. She dreamed of hungry jungle-cat eyes, as green as a Kentucky pine forest, hunting her through the storm.
Chapter 12
Nine Hours Later
As the sky rumbled, and charcoal-black storm clouds galloped over Blue Thunder Valley, Jesse sat drenched on ever-faithful Kavi. He was staring in dismay at the engorged rush of the river and the place where the bridge to the orphanage road should have been.
Rolling through his memory were the voices of Blue Thunder's residents:
"No doubt about it," Ben Truitt had wheezed, his face as white as the pillows upon which his salt-and-pepper head was resting, "I was lucky. I reckon the sun got in my bushwhacker's eyes. Heard the report of a Winchester and saw its flash up on the ridge. Before the bastard could ride down to finish the job, Luke and Wally found me. Didn't see much else. But Kit McCoy has been sighted in these parts..."
"Dag nab it," Aunt Claudia had groused, slapping away cobwebs as she'd stumped into the marshal's office. Dressed in her habitual coonskin cap and dungarees, she was puffing on her corncob pipe like a fiend. "This place needs a fire hose and a battalion of scrub brushes. Hey, you. Texican. Did you run off that hooligan, MacAffee? Not that I'm complaining, mind you. But ya might've waited 'til the runt finished unloading that wagon full of cider barrels that I paid him to unload..."
"Nag's missing," Michael had growled, his sopping wet hat and dripping broadcloth forming a myriad of rivulets that ran through the dust on the pine floorboards of the marshal's office. "That means Collie didn't run off. If the boy had fleeing on his mind, he would have stolen Tempest. I think Collie holed up somewhere to wait out the storm. Probably in a cave above the river. But the thing is, Sera's missing too..."
"It's nearly suppertime," Eden had said, wringing her hands in her apron as she'd paced her kitchen, a pot of half-peeled potatoes waiting for her attention. "No one has seen Sera since the church breakfast—nor Collie either, for that matter. Do you think they might be riding out the storm together...?"
"Found what could be Miss Sera's tracks," Johnny Dufflemeir had reported, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the storm. "Looks like Miss Sera took up with a rider at the forest's edge. Could've been MacAffee on Nag, but it's hard to say. Especially since Sera was so sweet on McCoy. Looks like the two horses might have gone on toward the orphanage, but the way the rain's been hammering down, the trail has washed away..."
Shivering in the fine drizzle, Jesse struggled with his sense of foreboding. In good conscience, he couldn't force Kavi to swim the river's current; it was much too high and fast. The closest bridge was at least 50 miles away, a journey that would be fraught with flash floods and flash mudslides.
This is my fault. Sera ran away because of me. If something happens to her, I'll never forgive myself...
A sharp whistle punctured the thunder and his thoughts.
"Quaid!"
Jesse craned his neck over his shoulder, expecting to see Johnny Dufflemeir. Johnny had been delighted to accept Jesse's offer to serve as deputy. As it had turned out, Johnny was secretly hoping to marry Puddin' Puddocks within the year, and he'd been a bit worried about accepting the marshal's appointment, because he'd considered himself a bachelor under "false pretenses."
But Johnny wasn't the rider whose gray Morgan was emerging like a wraith from the mists and the hemlock trees. Luke Frothingale sat astride the gelding. The law wrangler didn't look much like a southern gentleman today. With the brim of his slouch hat dripping rain on his nose, and his neck buried up to his chin in a black bandanna for warmth, he looked more like a Mexican highwayman.
Luke was dressed in a long yellow, rubber poncho that covered most of his body as well as the back of his gelding. His fists were cloaked in black riding gauntlets, and his boots were slick with mud. A water-repellant tarp draped the awkwardly shaped protrusions in his saddle boot.
"Thought I might find you here, marshal," Luke drawled, reining in beside Jesse.
Jesse winced at the title. Cass would have played the role of marshal to the hilt, sporting his tin star like a mudsill dandy. But considering who Jesse was, he didn't think that any lawman's title would ever sit right with him.
He nodded curtly to Luke.
The older man tugged off his gauntlets, whistling respectfully at the river below. The virulent, gray-green torrent had leaped its banks by about 20 yards on both sides. Not even a splinter remained of the bridge. The nearest parts of the road had either been turned into a quagmire or engulfed by muddy waters.
"It's a good thing Lydia Witherspoon weathered a war. A flood will seem like a minor nuisance by comparison."
Jesse smiled mirthlessly. He'd met the plump, iron-haired matron at church one Sunday. He'd been impressed by her rosy outlook on life and her firm but loving discipline of Blue Thunder's motherless children. "Is she all alone with those children?"
"Naw. Sam and Sammy Junior take care of the grounds. And then there's a handful of nuns and nurses who reside on the property—mostly to feed and school the orphans. Still, the next few weeks aren't going to be easy. I reckon Lydia will have to drive the 30 miles to Weymouth for supplies, at least until the river gets safe enough to ferry. In the meantime, we're going to have to drum up engineers and loggers to build a new bridge."
When Jesse said nothing, Luke slid a speculative glance his way. "Anyone who grows up in Blue Thunder knows they're welcome at the orphanage if they get caught in a storm."
Jesse released a long, winding breath. Doc Jones had told Eden the same thing. Still, there was no guarantee that Sera was a guest of Lydia Witherspoon—or that Collie was, either. By Michael's own admission, Collie hated the orphanage. The boy had run away from it three times in two years. If Collie had led Sera to a dry place to wait out the storm, he could just as easily have chosen a cave in the limestone cliff over the river. If that was the case, then Sera and Collie were trapped by the flood, cut off from civilization without food, warm clothes, or dry firewood.
"Doesn't Lydia have any way of communicating with Blue Thunder? To let folks know their children are safe?"
"Sure," Luke said. "And if that oak limb hadn't crashed through the telegraph lines, Ebeneezer would have received Lydia's wire by now, letting us know who was riding out the storm at her place."
Jesse muttered an oath. Kavi stomped restlessly beneath him.
"So that's it, then," he announced grimly. "I'm riding to Mercerville."
"Whoa, Jess. What's that going to accomplish? Aside from giving you pneumonia, I mean?"
Jesse glared at Luke. "I'm responsible—"
"Being marshal, you mean," Luke interrupted softly.
Jesse bit his tongue on another oath. How could he have forgotten that Luke had seen him kissing the daylights out of Sera?
"Sera's got her head on straight," Luke said. "Straighter than most young women in Blue Thunder. And she's no stranger to these woods. Quit worrying. Doc isn't. At least, not half as much as you."
That's because Doc doesn't know Sera ran away because I refused to give her the marriage offer she was expecting.
Grimly, Jesse tugged off his marshal's badge. "I need to know Sera's safe, in that orphanage. I need to ride to the Mercerville bridge."
Luke
hiked a blue-black eyebrow at the silver star dripping from Jesse's riding gauntlet, but he didn't reach for the badge.
"That's a minimum of three days in the saddle. And in this weather?" Luke shook his head. "You might get swallowed by a bog. This isn't a joke, Jess. You're mortal, too. I know you're worried about Sera. But if you're half the man I think you are, you can play hero another way."
"What does that mean?"
"When's the last time you fired a bow?"
Jesse sucked in his breath. He hadn't been prepared for that particular change in topic.
"Why?" he growled lamely.
Luke shrugged, staring toward the river and the tendril of smoke that struggled valiantly to rise against the drizzle. The orphanage chimney could barely be seen through the trees that crowded around the compound, which sprawled a good quarter mile beyond the river's flooded banks.
"Bow hunting's a family tradition of mine," Luke said.
Flipping back the tarp that covered his saddle boot, he revealed a deerhide quiver full of arrows with turkey-feather fletching. Beside it was stashed a short bow. The weapon had been crafted by someone who clearly understood the complexities of hunting on horseback. The stave appeared to be a composite of ash, oak, and elk antler, while the string was some sort of tendon or sinew. The grip had been fitted with a well-worn piece of hide—most likely shaved doeskin.
Luke's eyes twinkled as he withdrew an arrow from the quiver.
"Where'd you get that bow?" Jesse demanded.
"What, you think you can buy a hand-crafted beauty like this?" Luke snorted. Now he was tugging a razor thin slice of deerhide from a pocket under his poncho.
Jesse's heart was beating so hard, it rivaled the sounds of thunder. "That's... a mighty fine-looking bow."
"Shoots as straight as a bullet too. Handy for sneaking up on a bear or an elk at 50 paces. I even do some bow fishing now and again."
Incredulous, Jesse slanted Luke a wary look. "So you carved that piece of ashwood?"
"Chickasaws pride themselves on their bow craft," Luke said dryly.
Seduced by an Angel (Velvet Lies, Book 3) Page 18
