Texas Blonde

by Victoria Thompson

  He obeyed, but she could tell from his expression that he wasn't very comfortable with the situation, either. Still being very careful not to touch him any more than necessary, she moved his hand slightly, appalled to note her fingers were trembling again.

  It was only because he was staring at her, she decided. Yes, that had to be it. Felicity stepped back a pace to examine her handiwork. A lock of silver hair had been dislodged when she removed his hat and had fallen over his forehead. With great care, she reached over to smooth it back in place. She was a little surprised that it was so soft. Somehow she had expected his hair to be coarser, the way her father's gray hair had been. She let her fingertips play over it another second.

  She was leaning over so close to him that Josh could, with very little effort, have kissed the tip of her breast. "Ahem." He cleared his throat.

  Felicity jumped back, startled. "That looks fine," she said, scurrying back to focus the camera.

  "Don't look so mean, boss," she heard Bill Grady say. "Looks like you're mad at somebody."

  Josh knew he was mad at somebody, but he didn't like to think about who that somebody was. It would have to be the person who had gotten him mixed up with Miss Felicity Storm in the first place, and he could think of no one to blame for that except himself.

  Felicity came out from under the cape. Mr. Grady was right. Mr. Logan looked mad, and she had a pretty good idea at whom. Still, she wasn't about to let him ruin her picture. "Mr. Logan?" she called sweetly.

  Josh swung his gaze over to where she was standing looking like the picture of innocence. "What?" he asked warily.

  "Would you like some nails?" she inquired.

  Josh frowned in puzzlement. "Nails? What for?"

  "Why, to chew, of course. That's just what you look mad enough to do," she explained.

  A moment of silence followed her announcement, and then the men broke into loud guffaws. Josh needed a minute to realize he had been the butt of a joke. He could not remember the last time anyone had been bold enough to make fun of Joshua Logan. He should have been angry, but the sensation was so novel that he could only marvel at it. Candace was the only person in the world who dared to tease him, and now this tiny slip of a girl was making fun of him.

  He knew she was getting a small measure of vengeance for his desertion this morning, but that no longer seemed to matter. He took her in from the top of her golden head to the toes of her shiny black shoes. Small she might be, but she was all woman. He knew that from the kiss that hadn't happened. How would she kiss him if she weren't frightened? A curious smile twitched at his lips.

  "That's more like it," she decreed. "Now look right up here! Don't move! Ready?"

  Felicity removed the lens cap and recited her little verse, stumbling once she noticed Mr. Logan was looking at her instead of at the camera, but recovering nicely.

  Like a man hypnotized, Josh watched the way her soft pink lips formed around the words of the nonsensical rhyme, remembering how those lips tasted. Candace's suggestive words echoed in his mind. Yes, there were several things a sweet young wife could do for him that his mammy never could.

  Felicity finished the rhyme, her voice trailing off uncertainly. It was funny the way Mr. Logan's eyes could make her feel hot and cold all at the same time, like she wanted to run away from him and toward him, both at once.

  "Better put the cap back on," Cody urged, nudging her slightly.

  Startled, she quickly snapped the cap back in place. What had gotten into her to start daydreaming like that? She might have ruined the picture! Hastily, she turned and instructed Cody to remove the plate holder from the camera, but he was already doing so. Feeling more foolish by the moment, she hurried over to the wagon, grateful when Cody followed her so that she could close the door on what she imagined were many pairs of staring eyes.

  Actually, only two pairs of eyes were staring. One pair belonged to Josh. The other pair of staring eyes belonged to Candace, who had come outside to watch Joshua having his picture made. She hadn't missed a thing that passed between him and Felicity. She grinned to herself. Much as she would like to, when all was said and done, she would not be able to take any credit for getting Josh and Felicity together. No, Mother Nature could do that, or whoever it was who'd made Josh a man and Felicity a woman.

  Inside the wagon, Felicity forced her jumping nerves into obedience again. "If you don't mind, Cody, I want to develop this plate myself," she said, hoping Cody wouldn't ask her why. She wasn't really sure why herself, since Cody had already proven that he could do a perfectly adequate job.

  "All right," he said, setting the plate holder down and moving out of her way in the darkness.

  "You're doing a fine job, and you can do the rest of them. I just want to do this one myself," she explained.

  "I understand," Cody said. He sounded as if he really did, too. Felicity wished that she did.

  Because Felicity did both the developing and the preparation of the new plate, the process took a little longer than the routine that she and Cody had established. Josh waited impatiently, resisting with difficulty the urge to bang on the door and demand to know what was keeping them. When they finally did come out, he felt inordinately relieved.

  "You've done got everybody's picture now, Miss Felicity. Do you want us to start packing all this stuff up?" Grady asked.

  "Oh no," Felicity replied, grateful for this distraction. For some reason she was having a very difficult time keeping her eyes from straying over to where Mr. Logan was standing. "I don't have everyone's picture yet. Where's Candace?"

  The men thought this was a terrific idea, and they eagerly dragged her forward and presented her to Felicity. Candace was protesting rather vigorously, but Felicity noticed that she was wearing a gorgeous new calico dress and had her hair wrapped in a matching turban. No woman dressed that carefully just to watch other people get their pictures made. Felicity took great delight in posing her on the same set she had used for Mr. Logan.

  "Now I'm going to take group pictures, and some shots of the ranch buildings," Felicity announced when she and Cody emerged from developing Candace's plate. "Could some of you men fetch a bench and put it over there? Cody, I'll need to have the camera moved to right about here," she instructed, using her heel to draw a mark in the dirt.

  The men leaped to do her bidding. All except Josh, who could not seem to take his eyes off her. Surrendering to a compulsion to be closer, he moved up behind her and asked, "How'd my picture come out?"

  Felicity started and whirled around. "It… it's very nice," she managed, although she felt a trifle breathless.

  Josh studied her face. She looked awfully pretty when her cheeks turned pink like that. "How soon do I get to see it?"

  "I… I don't know; a couple of days or so…" she murmured.

  Josh was so interested in the way the sunlight was gleaming off her golden hair that for a moment her words didn't quite register. "A couple days?" he asked incredulously when they finally had. "Why will it take a couple days?"

  Felicity thought she had already explained the procedure, but then recalled that he had not been present. "It takes another whole day to make the prints. They have to sit in the sun for a few hours, and then…" She let her voice trail off in the face of his scowl.

  Josh felt a slight sense of unease. He had been counting on getting rid of her tomorrow. "You'll be all finished by tomorrow evening, though, won't you?" he asked, calculating that a few hours one way or the other shouldn't make that much difference.

  Felicity's eyes widened in surprise. "I can't do the developing tomorrow," she said.

  "Why not?" Josh demanded, feeling his unease growing. It was all some sly female trick. He knew it. She was making this all up just so she would have an excuse to stay longer.

  "Because tomorrow is the sabbath," she informed him. "I can't work on Sunday!"

  Josh stared at her in disbelief. She was serious! Before he could challenge her statement, however, someone called, "Where did y
ou want this bench, Miss Felicity?" and she strode away to issue some more orders.

  It might very well be a sly female trick, but it was a good one, he acknowledged. How could he fault her for being religious? How could he order her to finish up her work tomorrow when it was against her principles? She had him, and she had him good. She would be here another two days. At least.

  "I want everyone in this picture," she called out when the bench had been positioned to her satisfaction with the ranch house directly behind it. "Mr. Logan, you sit right here in the middle. Mr. Grady and Cookie, you sit on either side of him. The rest of you line up behind…"

  She kept on talking, moving people around so that everyone was lined up by height, and Josh found himself obeying her just the way everyone else did. He had decided it would be foolish to do otherwise.

  By the time the sun began to fade, taking with it the last of the necessary light, Felicity was running purely on nervous energy. All day she had felt as she often did during thunderstorms when she and her father were alone on the prairie: scared and fidgety, with every nerve tingling in the electrically charged air. She could have blamed it on the excitement of her first time doing a photography session alone. She could even have blamed it on the heady sensation of being the center of attention for some very attentive cowboys. She knew that neither of those situations was responsible for her state, however. Mr. Logan was responsible.

  Even though she had tried to forget about the kiss, had even succeeded in partially distracting herself with the work, there was something about his presence that shimmered in the air like a tangible glow, brightening Felicity's world and sharpening everything to crystal clarity. The timbre of his voice thrummed through her body, tingling places she didn't even have a name for, and making her feel as if she wanted to jump right out of her skin.

  Or jump right into his arms.

  That was really what made her so nervous, the memory of how wonderful she had felt in his arms, at least until he had frightened her. And the knowledge that she wouldn't mind being there again under the right conditions. Of course, there were no "right conditions." Such behavior was evil and wanton. She would do well to remember that and do what Mr. Logan had commanded and forget it ever happened. Except she couldn't.

  So she was only too happy to announce, "I'm afraid this is the last one. I've lost the light," as she closed the lens cap on what seemed to be the umpteenth portrait that day. Back in the wagon, she stood by silently as she allowed Cody to develop the final negative.

  He had caught on surprisingly quickly, but then, she reminded herself, she had, too, once upon a time. The job wasn't really difficult, just time-consuming. It was making the plates in the first place that required the skill, spreading the collodion evenly so that no bubbles or bumps would appear in the final pictures and so the plate could evenly absorb the exposure. Shooting the pictures themselves also required skill and an eye for what would look good in a photograph. The making of the final prints required yet another level of skill, to judge the length of time required to develop the proper tones.

  "Miss Felicity?" Cody asked.

  "Yes?"

  "Do you think… I mean… could you teach me how to make pictures? How to do the plates and all the rest of it?"

  The wagon was too dark to see his face, but Felicity could imagine the eagerness that would be lighting his eyes. She hated to have to turn him down.

  "I can show you how to make the prints, and I'd be glad to show you the rest of it, too, except…" Her voice trailed off wistfully as she experienced a sharp jab of disappointment.

  "Except what?" he urged.

  Felicity sighed. "Except that I won't be around here much longer to teach you anything." There, she had said it, and it sounded even worse than she could have imagined.

  "Where are you going?" he asked, genuine concern in his voice.

  "I… I don't know," she admitted reluctantly.

  She heard Cody turn to face her in the confines of the wagon. "What do you mean, you don't know?" he asked.

  "I mean, I haven't decided yet," she amended, trying to soften the impact of her words, as much for her own benefit as for Cody's. "Mr. Logan has told me I can't stay here and-"

  "I know. He told me that, too," Cody said. "But surely you'll settle someplace nearby."

  "Like I said, I haven't decided yet," she said, feeling all the hopelessness of her situation.

  "Don't you worry none," Cody comforted her. "Mr. Logan'll see that you're taken care of."

  "Thank you, Cody," she said, grateful for his concern but uncertain whether she was grateful that Mr. Logan would be taking care of her. She found the idea quite disturbing.

  Josh stood outside, leaning up against a live oak tree and smoking a cigarette. He was watching the wagon, waiting for Felicity-and Cody-to come out. The other men were busy carrying the props from the photographs back where they had come from, but Josh was only vaguely aware of their movements at the corner of his range of vision. All his attention was focused on the wagon. All his thoughts were focused on the occupant of the wagon.

  So she was going to be around for a while, he thought, knowing that the fact should disturb him but only mildly surprised to find he was rapidly getting used to the idea. She really was a pretty little thing. And she could cook. And although he hadn't kissed another woman in quite a while, he could not remember ever enjoying it more. Felicity. Even her name had a pleasant sound about it.

  Candace had been watching the direction of Josh's gaze and finally strolled over to where the rancher was standing. "What do you suppose is taking them so long?" she asked casually.

  Josh frowned. He had been wondering the same thing himself. He threw down his cigarette and ground it out with his boot heel. Then he strode purposefully over to the wagon.

  Just as he reached it, though, the door came open, and Felicity stepped out. "All we have left to do is put the camera away…" She completely forgot what she was saying when her gaze met Mr. Logan's. "Is something wrong?" she asked, certain that there must be from the look on his face.

  Cody ducked out the wagon door behind her and reared back at the sight of Mr. Logan's expression.

  Josh looked at her and then at Cody and then back at her again, comforted by how innocent they both looked. If Cody had designs on the girl, he was moving very slowly. Josh forced his tensed muscles to relax and managed a reassuring smile. "No, nothing's wrong. I was just coming over to see if you were about finished."

  "Almost," Felicity murmured, a little nonplussed by the sight of his smile. "We just have to…" His eyes narrowed, making her lose her train of thought again.

  Cody watched the exchange in fascination, knowing that neither of them was even aware of his continued presence. "I'll get the camera," he offered, but they paid him no mind.

  "Hey, Cody," Gus called from across the yard. "We're all going into town tonight. You coming?"

  It was Saturday night. They always went to town on Saturday night. Cody considered his options. "No," he called back. "I'm broke. I'll just stay here." And see what happens, he added silently.

  Josh thought it surely must be time for bed. He was certain the four of them had been sitting in the parlor for hours. Unfortunately, when he glanced at the clock on the mantel, he saw that barely an hour had passed since supper.

  He looked around the room. Candace was sitting off in the corner, quietly sewing and looking very smug about something. Josh shifted in his chair, the same chair that Felicity had photographed him in earlier that day. He let his gaze wander over to where Felicity and Cody were sitting on the settee.

  The two of them were deep in conversation, Cody's brown head bent over her golden one, an expression of intense interest on his boyish face. Of course there would be, Josh thought acidly. The boy had every reason to be intensely interested. But he doubted that Cody was really all that concerned about photography, which was ostensibly the topic under discussion. Nobody was that interested in photography. The boy had Felicity fo
oled, though. She was explaining it all to him with an earnestness that indicated she was afraid he might just keel over and die if he didn't fully understand the process.

  Felicity tried not to notice that Mr. Logan was staring at her. Again. He'd been watching her on and off all evening, as if he expected her to do something untoward. Earlier, after she and Cody had packed everything away for the night, she had gone into the house and washed up in preparation for supper. When she got to the dining room, the two men were there waiting, and she experienced the oddest sensation that they were waiting there for something special to happen. Nothing did, however, or at least nothing that she was aware of, and the meal passed in strained silence. With all the other men except Cody gone to town, she had nothing to distract her from the fact that Mr. Logan kept glancing up at her throughout the entire meal. It was very unsettling.

  After she had helped Candace clean up the few dishes, she discovered Mr. Logan and Cody sitting in the parlor, looking every bit like two dogs about to quarrel over the same bone. But as soon as she entered the room, the two of them suddenly cheered right up and started acting as if they'd always been the best of friends. Mr. Logan even teased Cody a little about becoming a photographer himself. That was what had gotten the conversation started, and Felicity had been only too happy to begin his instruction. Talking to Cody kept her mind off the fact that Mr. Logan kept watching her.

  Josh knew it was crazy, but he couldn't seem to help himself. He kept remembering what Candace had said about a wife. A sweet young wife. He could not seem to get the idea out of his head. Almost unconsciously, he compared Felicity to the other women who had been thrown in his way through the years. None were even half as pretty as Felicity. And none of them kissed like her, either. No wonder he had never seriously considered marriage before.

  A vision of Felicity the way she had looked that first morning, wearing only his shirt and standing silhouetted in front of the window, flickered across his memory with tantalizing clarity. For one long moment he imagined what might have happened if he had come up behind her and slipped his arms around her. He vividly remembered how she felt in his arms, soft and warm and round in all the right places. Josh shifted in his chair again, wondering why the room had suddenly grown so warm.