The girl stood before him, this female creature who tempted him so mightily. For now she was his responsibility, and even as his hands touched her waist, he was forced to face his own need. It was probably time to go visit the widow lady on the other side of town. It had been long months since he’d made the trip and being in such close proximity with Katie had turned his thoughts to forbidden subjects.
“Katie?” He spoke her name in a whisper and she sighed, stepping back from him.
He allowed it, not wanting to make her watchful of him, willing that she should set whatever limits she chose between them. “I’m hungry, sweetheart. If I wash up quick, can we eat? I swear I can smell ham.”
“It’s just green beans and onions cooked along with the last of the ham we had yesterday. It’s ready whenever you are.” She wiped at her eyes and he realized that she’d shed tears. Tears for him, for his safety. For just a moment, he reached for her again, holding her close to his long body, unwilling to relinquish all contact with the slender form that he recognized fit against him so well.
“John? Don’t be touching me that way. It makes me feel funny, and I don’t like it.” She pushed him away, her questioning look shaming him as he turned her loose. She turned to the stove again, lifting the hot pads from atop the warming oven and opening the door of the wide oven below. Lifting the small kettle of beans out, she let it clang to the stovetop, then bent for the crock of potatoes that awaited her touch.
“There’s applesauce that Berta brought over the other day,” she said, turning with her hands full to begin setting the table. And as he washed up at the sink, she found plates and silverware in the cupboard. Two glasses followed and she opened the window to bring in a Mason jar of milk from the sill.
“I like the milk better when it’s cold,” she said by way of explanation. “And I thought if I could store it in the outside air it would taste better.”
“Sounds good to me,” he agreed, pulling his chair out from beneath the table and settling across from her as she poured their glasses full.
“Berta brought bread over today, and I churned butter this afternoon,” she said, her chatter seemingly intended to cover the fear she’d tried to put into oblivion. She lifted the spoon and gave him a generous helping of meat and beans on his plate and then served herself. “You’ll want potatoes, too, won’t you?” she asked, her hands busy with the food she’d prepared.
“Sweetheart.” He reached out and grasped her fingers, holding her hand in his for a moment until she looked up into his face. “I’m here, Katie, and I’m fine. I’m sorry I didn’t think to send someone in to tell you I’d be late. But, next time I’ll know better. I won’t make you worry about me again.”
“John…I need to tell you something, I think.” As though the words were torn from her, as if she dreaded the telling, yet knew it was something she must do, she sat back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap.
“Whatever it is, it’ll wait till you finish your supper, Katie,” he said, willing her to eat and set loose the tension that gripped her.
“No, I need to say it now. I’ve been thinking bad thoughts and you need to know.”
“You? Bad thoughts? Those two things don’t go together, Katie,” he said with a smile, spooning applesauce onto her plate and reaching to hand her the fork she’d abandoned by her plate.
“But I have,” she insisted. “I’ve been thinking how lucky you are to have a family, people who love you and who you love in return. You’ve talked about your mother and father and the rest of them, and I know it’s important to you—important that you have a family. And I, I have no one, John. And for just a little while, I was envious of you. Jealous that you have people who love you, and I’ve never had anyone to care about me.”
She paused and he felt a pang of remorse that this lovely girl should feel so alone, so unaware that she was worthy of being loved, that there were those who cared about her. Berta, whose sharp tongue had only this morning told him how lucky he was to have found Katie, how wonderful that a girl so young should be so filled with goodness.
And how about you, John Roper? What about the yearning you have for the woman she’s become since she’s moved in?
He was silent for too long and Katie rose, taking her plate to the drainboard and leaving it there before she went to the bedroom. He eyed his food longingly, then rose and followed her.
“Katie. Listen to me.” He caught up with her before she got to the bed and turned her into his arms. “I want you to listen to me, carefully.” And then he inhaled, praying he would say the right words to heal her aching heart.
“You have so much to give to others, Katie girl. I don’t think you know how appealing you are to everyone you meet. You’re pretty…” And at the furious shaking of her head, he laughed aloud.
“Yes, you are,” he insisted. “You have beautiful blue eyes, eyes the very color of a summer sky, and lovely hair, all dark and waving and full of midnight. You make me think of a doe sometimes, all big eyed and frightened. But, above all, I don’t want you to ever be frightened of me or what I might do to you.
“For I have to admit that there are things I’d like to do that you might not like, Katie.” He halted his words, fearful of her stepping out of his embrace, worried that she might not welcome his thoughts.
“I’ll do anything you want me to, John. You know that.”
“Yes, but I want you to feel the way I do, Katie, and you don’t. You’re young and you don’t have any idea of the way things are.”
She looked at him, this mite of a girl who had come very close to making a change in his vows of late, her fragile charm coming nigh unto stealing his heart, and he could not bring himself to obey his body’s demands, his needs that fought to prevail over his good sense. And then she whispered words that almost sealed her fate, words that proclaimed her innocence, for she had no way of knowing the thoughts that had invaded his mind.
“I’ll be whatever you want me to be, John. I know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.”
He ached for her. His body grew hard, his arousal prominent against his trousers and he pulled back from her lest she feel its presence. Unknowingly, she had given him permission to take her, to blend his body with hers and make her his—his what?
“Well, you’re right there, Katie. I won’t hurt you. I don’t like to see the pain in your eyes that tells me you’re unhappy. But I want you to know that you’re not unloved, sweetheart. I think you’re about the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I appreciate all you do for my comfort.”
She sighed against his chest, her arms creeping around his waist, holding him as close as her strength would allow, and he bent to kiss the fine wisps of hair that curled against her temple.
“Come on back in the kitchen and we’ll eat, sweetheart,” he said, coaxing her as best he could. She smiled up at him, apparently willing to be acquiescent and they went back to the kitchen. She carried the food back to the stove, dumped the beans and ham on their plates back into the kettle, stirred them together with the ones kept hot while they’d spoken in the bedroom, then filled their plates again.
“The potatoes need heating up, too,” she said, eyeing the cooling milk gravy that covered them, and without pause, she gave them the same treatment she’d given the beans and ham. The plates steamed when she returned to the table and placed his in front of him. “Now, eat,” she said, flashing him a smile that was only a bit frayed around the edges.
And so they did, John relishing each bite of the food she’d cooked for him, realizing that it had been a long time since anyone had taken care of him as Katie did, easing his weariness each day with hot meals, keeping his house clean, offering her smiles to brighten his days. Not since he’d left home long years ago had anyone paid him such mind, or spent their time and effort to insure his comfort. Not even Berta, who shared her bounty with six men around her table, unwilling or perhaps unable to allow her finer feelings to be shed on the men whose appetites she
catered to.
The same Berta who had told him in careful, soft tones that his housekeeper was lovely, that she was worthy, that he was a man to be envied for his good sense in bringing Katie home with him, and taking care of her as he’d promised. That he’d do well to keep his hands to himself so far as Katie was concerned, unless he planned on making their situation legal. Unless he planned to observe the amenities.
Unless he had considered marriage.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE KITCHEN IN THE back of the Dogleg Saloon was warm, redolent with the scent of food cooking and the woman before the stove turned as the door leading into the saloon opened, a man passing over the threshold.
He hesitated near the table and his words were hushed when he approached Molly, apparently chosen with care. “I didn’t know, Molly. I’d thought I was doing the right thing for her, and when I saw her the other night…”
“Don’t tell me you had no idea what monsters those folks were. You had to have some idea of what was going on with the girl. She was there for twelve years.”
His shrug was one of male helplessness. “I was wrong. I admit it. But I honestly didn’t know. What was I to do? I didn’t have what it takes to take care of a kid. Not a girl, anyway. And when I heard of the Schraders wanting to adopt children, I thought she’d have a good home.”
“And when you realized differently—why didn’t you do something?”
“Why didn’t you say something to me?”
She sniffed and rolled her sleeves up a notch higher. “Maybe it wasn’t any of my business.”
“You make everything else around here your business, Molly. I can’t swallow that.”
“Maybe I felt guilty that none of us had done anything to help. When Claire died, and the girl was left, I suppose I thought you might…”
“Might what? Buy a house somewhere and raise her myself? Or keep her here in a saloon with a bunch of whores for substitute mothers?” His laugh was harsh. “Not likely.”
“She was abused,” Molly said bitterly. “The girl had bruises all up and down her back when she took off her clothes and put that nightgown on in my room. The ones on her arms were just a drop in the bucket. They’d been beating on her for a long time, layer after layer.”
“Then she’s better off where she is, I’d say. John Roper has a good name. Bill Stanley gives him credit for a lot of intelligence, making him foreman up there at his spread.”
“She still doesn’t know who she is and she certainly doesn’t have any idea that you even live and breathe.”
“And she won’t, Molly. She doesn’t need to know about me.”
“One day, Tom. One day, she’ll need to know.”
“No reason to fill her head with stuff that’s dead and gone. And you’d be smart not to even think about it.”
“No chance of me talking to her, and well you know it. She’s been gone from here for over a week, and I don’t see much chance of John Roper bringing her around this place. He’ll keep her as far from the saloon as he can, if I know anything about it.”
“Just as well.” Tom poured a cup of coffee from the blue enamel pot on the stove and carried it from the kitchen, his face a study, his steps slow.
IT WAS A WEEK LATER, and John had almost ridden from the barn, his horse already saddled, the newborn calf seen to and his routine set in his mind when Bill Stanley left the big house and headed for the barn. Close on his heels was the local law enforcement representative, Sheriff Len Carter, a man John had the utmost respect for. A man whose expression guaranteed he had not come this morning with small talk in mind.
“Morning, Sheriff. Hey there, Bill. What’s going on?” He held the reins of his gelding, turning toward the front of the barn as the two men came through the open doorway.
“Sheriff needs to talk to you, John. Says there’s a problem with your housekeeper.”
“Katie? I just left her in the house. She’s fine.”
Len Carter cleared this throat and pushed his hands into his rear pockets, obviously uncomfortable with whatever he was stewing about.
“Spit it out, Sheriff,” John said bluntly. And then waited while Len Carter looked at Bill and lifted an eyebrow.
“There’s a problem with Katie. Her folks are looking for her and they’re madder than a nest of hornets,” Bill said shortly. “They’ve put it about that you took advantage of her and you’ve got her out here acting like a slave for you.”
John laughed, shaking his head as though he’d heard the most absurd thing he could have dreamed of. And then he sobered, thinking of the girl he’d left in his kitchen, the girl who had curled on his sofa for the past week, and had lifted her face to kiss him of her own free will this morning when he left the house.
“Do you want to talk to her yourself, Sheriff?” he asked, knowing that Katie would be frightened almost out of her mind if she knew that the Schrader family was on her trail.
“Judge Henry wants her in court today. This afternoon, in fact, Roper. He sent me out here to get her.”
“What’s she charged with? I wasn’t aware that you could treat someone like a criminal who hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“You’re the one the judge wants to see, Roper. In fact, you’re under arrest as of right now.”
“What are the charges, sir?” John answered with all the respect he could dredge up, knowing that without his presence, Katie would not be able to handle this.
“Rape, for one,” the sheriff said.
“I haven’t touched her, at least not that way,” John countered. “Katie’s my cook and my housekeeper, Sheriff.”
“I know that. I talked to Shandy Peterson over at the general store and he said you’d been in there with her, buying her clothes and shoes. The Schraders are sayin’ you stole their girl away and they want her back.”
“Well, why don’t you ask Katie if she’s here under…what’s the word? Duress?”
“I’ll ask her.” The sheriff shot a long look at Bill Stanley. “What do you think, Bill? Do they have a case against Roper, here?”
“Not up to me to say, but I’d bet my money on my foreman. He’s as honest as the day is long.”
“Then you won’t mind coming along and sitting in on this?”
Bill shook his head. “Not a bit. I’d like to bring my housekeeper, too. Berta has taken to Katie in a big way, and the girl will need another woman to stick close.”
Without hesitation, the sheriff nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me.” And then to John he issued an order he was obviously uncomfortable with. “Go get the girl, John. We need to be on our way inside of fifteen minutes.”
“It’ll take that long to let her know what’s going on,” John said, his anger rising as he thought of what Katie’s reaction would be. “She’s gonna be scared half out of her wits, Sheriff. She’s terrified of the Schrader bunch, and with good reason. She can tell you that herself.”
“She’d do better to save it for the judge.” And with that the lawman turned on his heel and mounted his horse. “I’ll give both of you fifteen minutes to be ready to ride.”
John nodded and headed back to the cabin, his horse ground-tied behind him. Bill went toward the house and John watched him walk away, then called out words he meant with his whole heart.
“Thanks, Bill. I appreciate you going along.”
The big rancher only waved a hand and leaped over the two steps onto the porch, pushing open the door into his kitchen.
Inside the cabin, John found that Katie had been standing at the window and when he entered the kitchen, she turned to him with fright painting her features. “What happened, John? What does that man want? Is he the law?”
“That’s what the silver star on his chest says, honey. He tells me we have to head for town to see the judge. It must be his week to hear cases in Eden, and the Schraders have laid claim to you. They’re saying I stole you from them and I’m keeping you out here against your will.”
“That’s a lie, John. How
can they say such a thing?”
“Anyone can say anything he pleases, honey. The problem rises when they speak falsehoods in court. Don’t worry about it. We’ll get this straightened out in no time. Now get yourself dressed in one of your new dresses and put on your new shoes. I want them to see how pretty you are when you get a chance to get all shined up.”
“I’m afraid, John.” The words were simple, from a girl who could not tell a lie if her life depended on it, and John knew she spoke God’s truth this time.
COURT WAS CALLED TO order in the sheriff’s office, with his deputy at the door to keep out the curious townsfolk who had gathered in the street. Having the Circuit Judge come to town was a bimonthly affair, but usually his visit was uneventful, consisting of men who’d fought in the saloon or worse. Only on occasion did something happen that stirred the citizens of Eden, something like a horse being stolen or cattle rustling on an outlying ranch.
John walked into the Sheriff’s office on his own hook, obviously not a prisoner, and the ladies who watched and were only too aware of the reputation of the family Katie had spent most of her life seemed relieved. Some of them appeared shamefaced, as if silently acknowledging their own guilt in not having interfered with the upbringing of the girl who existed in the Schraders’ house outside of town. She’d not been allowed to attend school or church or spend time off the farm where she’d been kept since an early age.
Everyone was apparently aware that the Schrader family were an odd bunch, but if they were right in claiming that Katie had been hurt by John Roper, if their claim held true that the man had taken her to his home and kept her there against her will, John knew he would face the full penalty of the law.
Inside, Judge Homer Henry waited for the principals in this case, and from the look on his face, John knew he was not looking forward to his job today. When Mr. and Mrs. Schrader came in the door, their eyes swept across the room to where Katie stood between Bill Stanley and his housekeeper, Berta. John stood directly behind the girl and when she caught her breath and a small cry left her lips at the sight of the Schraders, he touched her shoulder and she looked back quickly to meet his gaze.
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