Ellen narrowed her eyes. “What kind of surprise?”
“How about I show you on the front porch, where it’s cooler. You go on out and sit in the rocker. I’ll wash up the plates and bring out the surprise.”
“Is it a cake? You baked a cake by yourself?”
He shook his head. “We worked together all day. When did I have a spare hour to mix up a cake?”
She couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her own mouth. “I thought maybe that blue ribbon went to your head.”
“Matter of fact, it did. Soon as we find Dan’s mon—”
Ellen clattered to her feet and jammed the crutch under her arm. “No more talk about Dan,” she snapped. “Or that money.”
Jess lifted both arms as if to ward off a blow, but Ellen just sniffed and plodded past him into the parlor and out onto the front porch.
A breeze had come up. The air felt silky and smelled of honeysuckle, and she settled into the wicker rocker with a sigh of pleasure. Shep flopped down at her feet and laid his black head across his paws. The setting sun colored the sky crimson and purple, and she gazed out across the valley where the wind rippled Cy Gundersen’s wheat field. It was so beautiful her throat tightened and the hollow under her breastbone blossomed into an ache.
What surprise could Jess have? “I thought I’d heard all of it,” she muttered. But she guessed with a man like Jess you’d never hear all of it. There would always be something more hidden behind those determined, assessing eyes.
Her skin prickled. When she wasn’t so mad at him she could spit, she wondered about him. Sometimes he had the wary look of a hunted animal. Sometimes he looked like the hunter. Tonight, she noted as he stepped out onto the porch, he looked like both hunter and hunted.
Her curiosity built until she couldn’t hold back the question. “What is the surprise?”
“Here.” He handed her a plate.
“An orange!” she breathed, staring at the succulent looking sections. “Wherever did you find an orange?”
Jess lowered himself onto the top step, stretching his long legs out in front of him. In his hand he held another orange, this one with the bright, pebbled skin still intact.
“Two oranges!” She slipped a segment into her mouth and bit into it. The rich, sweet flavor flooded the inside of her cheeks. She closed her eyes to savor the juice as it spurted over her tongue and slid down her throat. What heaven!
Without moving, she popped in another section, then smelled the sharp scent of orange peel. She looked down to see Jess sink his teeth into the navel end of the unpeeled fruit, dig his fingernails under the skin and slowly, methodically, strip the covering away from the ripe flesh underneath. His hands were gentle, his motions almost lazy as he worked. Handled that way, the orange looked as if it were being ravished before her eyes.
Her face burned. She shouldn’t think such things! But his hands… Merciful heavens, watching his hands made her feel strange inside. Hot and trembly, like a mare that’s been ridden too hard.
She swallowed. “Did you steal them?”
“I bought them at the mercantile, the day I was in town.” He spoke without looking up. “Thought you’d like them.”
“I do. But oranges are a luxury I usually forgo.”
“That’s what Svensen said. He said you needed them.”
“Needed them? What on earth did he mean?”
Jess ducked his head, concentrating on the fruit in his hands. “Well, to be honest with you, Svensen didn’t exactly say that. I did.”
A hot knife sliced into Ellen’s chest. “How would you know what I needed?”
“Pretty obvious. You work too hard. Got to take time to enjoy more things.”
“That is the very same lecture I get from Gabriel Svensen every single time I buy supplies.”
“It’s true, Ellen. You’re wasting your life out here, holding on to the place for Dan.” Jess spoke without raising his head. “Besides, I wanted to use those oranges to buy my way into your good graces.”
“Bought with my money.”
“With your money, yes. Seemed like a good idea.” He stuffed a piece of fruit into his mouth, chewed appreciatively and swallowed, then twisted toward her and draped one wrist over his raised knees. “Damn good idea, don’t you think?”
A flock of quivering hummingbirds sailed into her belly. Whenever he looked at her with those riveting purple-blue eyes, or worse, when he smiled at her, she felt all upside down. Light-headed.
And that was beyond the pale. She was a married woman! A respectable married woman did not dally with another man.
“Ellen, what is William Turner to you?”
She blinked at the question but was too tired to challenge it. “We grew up together here in Willow Flat. Went to school together. He…stood up for me against my father.”
“He’s in love with you.” Jess said it in such a matter-of-fact tone Ellen wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.
“Surely you are joking?”
“Nope. You have feelings for him?”
“Of course I do. We have been friends for more than twenty years. I am very fond of William.”
Jess grunted.
“I have, however, no feelings for William beyond friendship.”
He grunted again.
“I love my husband.”
“You do.” It wasn’t a question. Jess didn’t intend it to be. “Even after what he’s done? After leaving you alone out here for almost three years?”
“Of course I—” She snapped her mouth shut and Jess could see her mind working, turning over her feelings as she thought about Dan. He didn’t understand exactly why he’d pushed the question at her, just that he wanted to know. Needed to know. In fact, dammit, it mattered to him more than it should.
“My father drank,” she said in a flat tone. “And when he drank he was violent. My mother died after one of his beatings, bearing a child he’d forced on her. The baby died as well.” She stopped, swallowing audibly. “I married Dan to get away from him.”
“Then what?” Jess kept his voice low.
“When Pa died, I used what inheritance he left me to make the down payment on this farm.” She fell silent for a long minute. “But I was genuinely fond of Dan. I mean, I still am. Dan was handsome and charming and…and he protected me.”
“And that’s what loving a man is,” Jess said dryly. Again, it wasn’t a question.
Ellen blew out a shaky breath. “I think that love is sometimes very hard to recognize. It’s something that is very rare between people.”
Jess ate the rest of his orange in silence. “Pretty night,” he said after a time. “Reminds me of home.”
“North or south?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Union or Confederate? Where you grew up.”
“Virginia. I fought under General Grant. I really admired Bobby Lee, though. Everybody did, Federal or Reb. His men thought he walked on water.”
“That,” Ellen said softly, “is a kind of love. It makes me cry when I think of it.”
“That’s loyalty, not love.”
“Loyalty and love go hand in hand.” She finished the last segment of her orange and set the plate on the floor, where Shep licked at it halfheartedly and went back to sleep. “You’re sidestepping around something, Jess. What is it you want to know?”
“Don’t know, exactly.” He stood and leaned against the porch post, facing her. “You ever want something so much it hurts?”
“Yes. I want this farm. I want Dan to come home. And yet…” She dropped her face into her hands. “At the same time, I don’t want you to leave.”
Jess straightened and stared at her bent head. Her bun was coming loose again; dark brown curls brushed her neck. “I’ve waited days for you to say that.”
“I don’t understand myself anymore. Ever since I broke my leg, all sorts of wild and foolish things run through my mind.”
“It’s got nothing to do with your leg.”
“Of course it does. It all started then, when I became completely helpless for the first time in my life. Dependent on you. I don’t like it.”
“Last time we talked, you said you hated my guts.”
Her eyes blazed. “Maybe I still do!” she declared.
He took a step toward her. “I don’t think so, Ellen.”
She raised her chin. “No, you’re right. I don’t hate you. But I don’t trust you. I don’t think I even like you very much.”
Jess advanced another step and she fluffed up in the rocker like a little banty rooster. “I think you’re lying to me. Maybe to yourself as well.”
Ellen tipped the rocker back as far as it would go to evade him. “Lying about what?”
“About how you really feel.”
“About what? Dan? You?”
“All of it.” Jess reached down, placed his hands under her shoulders and lifted her to stand in front of him.
“What are you doing?”
“Something I’ll probably regret come morning.” Slowly he moved his hands to her upper arms and held her still. Under his fingers her body trembled.
She took in a quick gasp of air and looked up into his eyes. “Probably? Why probably?”
“Because.” He stepped into her warmth and pulled her close. “Because I don’t have the right.”
Her breath smelled of oranges.
“No,” she murmured, her mouth mere inches from his. “You don’t.”
Chapter Twelve
Jess hesitated a moment, then caught Ellen’s mouth under his. His lips were firm and warm, and after another hesitation he deepened the pressure and began to move his mouth over hers. Ellen couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe until he broke the kiss and whispered against her lips.
“I’ve wanted to do that ever since I walked in your gate.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“I know that.” He kissed her again. Reason fled in the wash of sweet, drowsy sensation that spread through her body. She wanted his mouth on hers, wanted to feel his arms around her, his hands on her skin.
Dear heaven, what was happening to her?
“Jess. Jess, please.”
He lifted his head, breathing unevenly. “Tell me you don’t want this, Ellen. Tell me, and I’ll stop.”
She opened her lips to reply and found she couldn’t speak. The word stop lodged somewhere in her throat and she swallowed it back. She couldn’t say it, because it wasn’t true. She didn’t want him to stop.
His warm breath gusted against her temple. “Tell me,” he murmured.
Ellen closed her eyes and leaned into him, felt her breasts brush against his hard chest. “I can’t.”
His lips touched her cheek, dropped to her throat while his hands moved over her back and shoulders, restless and hungry. She tipped her head up, saw his face twisted with indecision, his eyes black with desire and something else. Pain.
“We have no right to this, Jess.”
“I know. Never figured I did, just wanted it so bad, so deep, I couldn’t let myself think about the rightness of it.”
“We must think. I must. It is wrong, Jess.”
“Sure doesn’t feel like it,” he said against her mouth.
No, it certainly did not. It felt wonderful. It should not feel wonderful, but it did. His hard, muscular body pressed to hers, his mouth, tender and demanding—none of it should feel right.
But it did. Oh, dear God, it did.
The realization whipped the blood in her veins to a hot, desperate longing. All she wanted at this moment was his mouth on hers. It terrified her.
It thrilled her.
She broke away from him. “I cannot do this, Jess. I owe my husband fidelity.”
He nodded and stepped away from her, breathing hard. He held her gaze as he groped for her crutch, steadied her with a hand at her back while he fitted it under her arm. “If you want—”
“No,” she said quickly. “I don’t trust myself.”
Jess chuckled low in his throat. “Ten minutes ago you didn’t trust me. Maybe the wind’s shifting.”
“No, it is not. I still don’t— Oh, I don’t know what I think. My brain is all mixed up.”
“Sounds like progress to me.” She could tell he was grinning by the sound of his voice.
“Progress? Toward what? Dan will be here soon, and my life will pick up where it left off. You will leave. Dan will stay.”
And she would be happy. If it was the last thing she ever did in her mortal life, she would be happy. She had earned it.
She clumped past him, avoiding his eyes. “Good night, Jess.”
“Ellen.” It was the only word he spoke, but her name on his lips sent a glow of warmth into her midsection. She kept moving, through the parlor and up the stairs one laborious step at a time.
Jess’s gaze followed her until her slight form melted into the shadows on the landing. For one crazy minute he considered going after her, but instantly he realized he couldn’t. He wouldn’t, even if he could. Not yet. Not until she asked.
And he knew right down to his boots she would never do that. She’d wait for that bastard of a husband and go on wasting her youth making excuses for him. That was the problem with a good woman: she didn’t take sin lightly.
“Shep, old boy.” He bent to scratch the one tan ear, then moved to the black one. Part cattle or maybe sheepdog, probably. His quick, intelligent eyes missed nothing. Good watchdog. “Shep, how about you and me makin’ a plan?”
Jess settled himself once more on the top step and snapped his fingers. The dog trotted over, licked at his hand with a wet, warm tongue and curled up at his side.
“Got to decide on some good hiding places, boy. Any suggestions?”
He considered the barn loft. Too obvious. The cow stall might work, especially if Florence was in there as well. Then again, he didn’t want to risk getting Ellen’s only milk cow killed by a stray bullet.
He thought for another ten minutes, then shook his head. “C’mon, Shep. Let’s walk the place again, see what we can find.”
The dog trotted down the steps after him, his claws clicking on the wood. The chicken house, maybe? The high branches of the pepper tree in the side yard? Nope. Ellen couldn’t climb.
Over the next hour Jess tramped the entire farm from the front gate to the spindly apple orchard at the back of the property, from the clothesline to the cornfield across the creek.
The cornfield, that was it. The green stalks were taller than a man. If she made it to the cornfield, she could crawl to safety in the center.
His lips thinned. As a last resort, he would protect Ellen’s body with his own.
“Try again, Ellen. Aim a little lower at first, then bring the barrel up slow.”
Ellen groaned. She had to do it; Jess wouldn’t let her quit until he was certain she could hit something smaller than the henhouse. Her targeted sunflower bobbed insultingly in the breeze as if mocking her. The bullet hole she’d made through the yellow flower yesterday stared back at her like a small black eye.
She lifted the revolver again, then lowered it when her arm started to shake.
“You’re tired,” Jess said. “Try hanging your hand down at your side and flexing your fingers.”
She was hot and sticky and hungry and miserable. Even her clenched teeth were hot. All morning they had spent probing the ground and digging holes in one marked-out section after another. Ever since noon and their lunch of bread and cheese, she had been target practicing.
So numb with fatigue she hadn’t the energy to argue, she did as he directed, re-aimed and squeezed the trigger.
Another dark round eye stared back at her from the sunflower.
“Look what I did, Jess! I hit it exactly where I wanted. Exactly!” she squealed. “I bet even you couldn’t do better.”
He took the Colt from her hand, cracked open the barrel and reloaded all five chambers. Almost casually he raised the weapon and sighted down the barrel. “What are you willing t
o bet?”
“Why, I don’t know. A cake?”
“And a kiss.” He didn’t look at her, just squeezed the trigger five times in rapid succession. A semicircle of small bullet holes etched a smile on the face of the sunflower.
Ellen removed her hands from her ears and stared at the line of black dots. Before her eyes, the flower head flopped over.
“I had no idea you could shoot like that.”
“That makes us even,” he said with a soft laugh. “I had no idea you could kiss like that.”
Ellen clapped her hands to her burning cheeks. “I cannot imagine what you mean.” She put as much ice in her voice as she could manage.
Without speaking, Jess ejected the spent shells and moved toward her. She backed away as fast as she could maneuver her crutch. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Jess grinned at her. “Not now, I wouldn’t. After supper.”
She was so nervous during supper she burned the butter beans and forgot the coffee. She told herself it couldn’t be because of what Jess had said this afternoon, about winning a kiss. That wouldn’t bother her one bit. She felt unsettled because…because Dan would be coming home. Returning to a woman who…who couldn’t stop thinking about someone else.
Jess finished his cornbread and pushed his chair away from the table. “Forget the coffee. We need to talk.”
“Talk! You want to talk? Not…not claim your kiss?” She meant to say “cake,” but baking was the furthest thing from her mind.
“Later.” He unfolded his limbs and stood up. “You feel up to walking some?”
“Now?”
“Not dark yet. Can you make it as far as the creek? Something I need to show you.”
Ellen hesitated, one hand on the apron tie at her back. “What is it?”
“Just trust me, Ellen.”
She huffed out a gust of air. “Don’t be a fool. You know I don’t trust you.”
Jess looked straight into her eyes. “Yeah, I know. Come with me anyway.”
Ellen’s heart thumped and skittered. Why should she?
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