The son-of-gun whistled as he left her bedroom and her house.
Tess dragged herself from the bed and availed herself of the facilities, then splashed cold water on her face in an effort to wash the haunting remnants of her dream from her system. Returning to her bedroom, she lit a lamp. Pale yellow light chased the darkness from the room, and she glanced at her clock to check the time. Almost dawn. Less than four hours of sleep. A four-hour wagon tide into town ahead of her. It was going to be a very long day.
Wearily, she sighed. Between studying the lights, lying awake in bed worrying about Gabe and their situation, and dreaming these dreams when she did get to sleep, she hadn’t had a good night’s rest in what felt like forever. It was wearing her down. “I’m going to start taking more naps,” she muttered.
She poured herself a cup of water and quenched her thirst, wishing it were coffee. A sensitive man would have woken her with a nice hot steaming cup of the brew. Her husband did it with a swat to the rump. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, she thought.
Knowing she must get a move on, she tugged up her hem and pulled her nightgown up and over her head. Then, unfortunately, she happened to glance toward her vanity table and got a glimpse of her nude self in the mirror.
She froze and stared at herself for a long minute. Dismay hit her first, but anger blew in hard and furious on its heels. She’d been eighteen years old the last time he’d seen her naked. She wasn’t eighteen any longer. Time had changed her body.
Time and childbearing.
“Plague take you, Gabe Cameron. Plague take you for not being here while I was still at my best.” Bracing herself, she turned and fully faced the mirror, attempting to superimpose the memory of her body then, upon the reality of her body now. What would he think if he saw her like this? Would he realize what particular state of nature had brought about most of these physical differences? If so, how would he react?
The changes went beyond the wrinkles beginning to web out from the corners of her eyes, the most obvious contrast being in her bosom. She’d blossomed with the pregnancy, and while some of the plumpness faded when she quit nursing, she still ended up bigger than she’d started out. Bigger, and not as perky, and marred by faint white lines streaking each breast.
She had a few of those same lines across her belly, too. A belly that was thicker than it had been at eighteen. Her whole body was thicker. Look at her legs! All that up and down the mountain the last few years had laid down a layer of muscle.
So much for soft, feminine curves. She was firm as a mattress made of rock. Another wave of anger surged through her as she mentally added, so much for these darned lusty dreams of late, too.
She wouldn’t get naked in front of Gabe on a bet.
Whirling away from the minor, she went to her bureau and snatched up underthings and brooded as she donned them. It would be different if he’d been there to share the changes pregnancy brought to her body. The Gabe she had married would have loved watching her stomach stretch and grow. He would have done handsprings over the increase in her bust.
She’d been self-conscious about the smallness of her breasts when they married. He’d soothed her fears by telling her more than a mouthful was wasted anyway.
She’d known better, however. When she was fourteen and flat as a flapjack, she’d eavesdropped on a conversation between Gabe and Billy where they discussed women’s cleavage. Gabe had been quite vociferous in his fascination with an ample bosom. That obviously had not changed. The first words out of the man’s mouth upon seeing her for the first time in twelve years called attention to the size of her bosom.
“I’m darn sure ample enough now,” she muttered. But ample before pregnancy and ample after nursing a child were two different amples all together.
Moving to her wardrobe, she yanked out a dress and started grumbling. “Why do you even care? This is shallow thinking, and as a scientist, you don’t indulge in such. Think of how backward this world would be if scientists thought no deeper than desert dirt.”
She stepped into the dress, slipped into the sleeves, and pulled it on, arguing to herself all the while. “But I’m a woman, too. Aren’t women supposed to be shallow? Maybe I’m not shallow. Maybe I’m vulnerable, did you ever think about that?”
Her fingers worked her buttons. “No, I didn’t think about being vulnerable and I don’t want to think that now because vulnerable is weak and you swore off being weak the day your father threw you off the Rolling R because you carried Gabe Cameron’s child.”
She startled at the sound of Twinkle’s voice. “You’re not vulnerable or weak, Tess,” her friend declared as she swept into Tess’s bedroom. “Now, you may be well on the way to tetched, talking like that to yourself. What’s this nonsense about vulnerable and weak?”
In that moment, all the troubles and the worries and too few hours of sleep caught up with her and Tess lashed out, passion ringing in her voice while pain twisted her heart. “That’s how I feel, Twinkle. He makes me feel that way. He gives me these long, smoldering I-want-you-naked looks, but I’m afraid that when he gets me that way he’ll throw my clothes back at me and tell me to put them back on!”
Twinkle’s mouth dropped open in shock. “But, honey, why would you say something silly like that? Why, you’re beautiful. You’re the kind of girl men fantasize about. What brought all this on?”
“A dream. A month full of dreams. Oh, Twinkle,” she held out her arms and looked down at her body. “I feel closer to a nightmare than a fantasy.”
The older woman shook her head and clicked her tongue. “I swear, if you’re not acting like a silly schoolgirl.”
A geyser of emotion frothed and churned in her stomach, feelings Tess didn’t understand. “He makes me feel like a silly schoolgirl. That’s who I was when he knew me before. But back then I was a pretty, silly schoolgirl.”
“And now you’re a beautiful woman and your Gabe knows it. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
“That’s ’cause he hasn’t seen me!”
“Why, hush your mouth, Tess Cameron. If you’re not wallowing in a slop of pity today. What’s the matter with you?”
Tess sank down upon her bed with a sigh. “I don’t know. I’m tired. The lights keep me out late, then once I go to bed I don’t sleep well. He bothers me, Twinkle.”
Twinkle folded her arms and projected an air of protectiveness. “Bothers you how?”
“Oh, Twink. He fills up my night dreams and my day dreams and makes me want the things I gave up on having years ago.”
“You mean a husband, home, and family?”
“Yes!” Tess felt the swell of tears in her eyes and got angry all over again. “I hate being weak.”
“Weak? Honey, honey, honey.” Twinkle took her arm and led her over to the bed Both women sat. “You have survived trials that would destroy a weaker person. You’re one of the strongest women I’ve ever known. It’s not weak to want love, to want a family.”
“I have a family. I have you and Will and Doc and the others.”
“Yes, we’re all family of a sorts, and we certainly all love you. But extended family love can’t substitute for the warmth of a loving husband’s arms holding you through the night or the fulfillment of cradling his child to your breast. You should have that, Tess. You deserve to have that.”
“But I had it once and look what happened. I had a husband’s arms to hold me but I lost him. I had his child to nurse, but I lost my baby, too. The experience all but killed me. I couldn’t survive going through that again.”
Twinkle wrapped her arms around Tess in a comforting hug. “You are like a daughter to me, Tess, and it hurts me to see you so upset. Since we are family, I’m going to give you a mother’s advice.” She pulled back and looked deeply into Tess’s eyes. “Remember back when we first met? Remember what a watering can I was, unable and unwilling to put my dear Herbert’s death behind me?”
“I remember,” Tess said, nodding.
“Do
you also remember the advice you offered me? You said that on the scale of life, grief and good memories hung opposite each other. You told me—”
“Minutes are grains of sand added to memories first to balance, and then outweigh the pain,” Tess completed on a sigh. “I got that from Doc. It’s what he said to me after…” She allowed her voice to trail off, still reluctant to say the words out loud.
“Well, Doc was absolutely right.” Twinkle grasped Tess’s hand and squeezed. “Time heals. The pain of loss dims. But if you tend your memories, you can keep them fresh. Do you remember what else you told me, dear?”
“Not to be afraid.”
Twinkle touched the tip of her finger to Tess’s nose. “Exactly. And fear is what I hear coming from your mouth this morning. You said it yourself. But I have a hunch that it’s not the fear of baring your body that has you in a dither. It’s the fear of baring your soul.”
Tess considered the notion a moment, resisting. “I don’t think that’s it. My body has changed in twelve years, Twinkle, and not for the better.”
“Honey,” her friend drawled. “I’ve seen you undressed. Take the word of experience. Clothed, you could attract the eyes of every man in West Texas. Naked, you’d start a riot. You won’t disappoint your Gabe.”
“He’s not ‘my Gabe.’ He hasn’t been for years.”
Twinkle stood, then reached for Tess’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “He’s yours. Signed, sealed, and delivered. All you must do is open the door for him. And, I’m not talking about your bodice and corset. I’m talking about your heart. Don’t be afraid. Let him back inside again, child.”
“How can I, Twinkle?” Tess scoffed. “With our past looming and lurking and ready to pounce? With the secrets I’m keeping? Believe me, Gabe is for from ‘delivered.’”
Twinkle’s mouth flattened into a frown. She dropped Tess’s hand and folded her arms. “I’ve been warning you for days now. Tell him. You must.”
“But I don’t want to.” Tess whirled and started pacing. “I have no clue as to how he’ll react. I know this is selfish of me, but it’s been so nice. We’re getting along so well. I’m having fun for the first time in the longest time. He’s fun. I love finding out so much about him, about the man he’s become. I don’t want to ruin that.”
“Every day you wait is a betrayal.”
“But every day I have now might be all I ever have, Twinkle. Doc and Will will come home before long, and I’ll have to take action then.” Tess halted and lifted her hands to her eyes, rubbing them. Thinking. Finally, she looked at her friend and pleaded, “I miss Will so much, I truly do. But is it so wrong for me to steal a little time for myself?”
Twinkle watched her sadly, for once saying nothing.
“I want to love Gabe again, Twinkle. It’s waiting here inside me, building a little every day. But I can’t let it happen. If I made love with him, I wouldn’t be able to hold him out of my heart. And if I let myself love him again and he turns against me…” Tess inhaled a shaky breath and felt the sting of tears at the back of her eyes. Furiously, she blinked them away.
Clicking her tongue, Twinkle said, “All right, honey. I think I understand. I don’t necessarily agree, but I do understand. And, since you’re not ready to surrender the walls of your heart you’d best see about deserting the walls of your home. He sent me in here to get you. He is out there chomping at the bit to head into town. We’d best get moving.”
A few minutes later they walked outside to greet a glorious pink and purple dawn and a man whose flint-colored eyes flashed with impatience. “I swear you women move slow as short-legged turtles in a molasses spill. It’ll be noon before we get to town.”
“Oh, hush,” Tess said, accepting his assistance into the carriage. “And watch what you say from now on. If you’ll notice, we are still waiting on a male member of our party.” She glanced toward Twinkle. “Where is Andrew, anyway?”
“Fetching Rosie.”
Gabe’s head whipped around toward Twinkle. “Doing what?”
“He’s going after Rosie.”
“That ham is not coming with us. I’m not driving that ham into town. It’s strange enough you people own your own personal stagecoach, but taking a pig along as a passenger? I’m telling you, folks will think you’re crazy.”
“So what else is new?” Tess observed “Fine, then. Let Colonel Jasper drive the stagecoach. It’s ordinarily his job, anyway. You can drive the supply wagon.”
A little over three and a half hours later, the Aurora Springs stage approached the town of Eagle Gulch. Tess had managed to sleep two hours of the time, and as a result felt more rested than when she awoke that morning. Andrew and Jack had spelled Gabe and Colonel Jasper with the driving chore about twenty minutes earlier, and while they were stopped, her husband had watched as Tess removed Rosie’s best red grosgrain ribbon from her pocketbook and tied a go- to-town bow around the pig’s neck.
“Darlin’?” Gabe asked with a roll of his eyes, “haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘like putting a silk purse on a sow’s ear?’ Well, bows are just as bad.”
Tess shot him a chiding look. “You have the saying wrong. It’s ‘can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’”
“Whatever. All I’m saying is…” His sentence trailed off when something else grabbed his attention. Sitting up straighter, he pointed east and asked, “Is that a train or a brush fire?”
Tess’s gaze followed the path he indicated. A line of hazy white smoke floated against the horizon. “It’s the train. With the land as flat as it is, you can see it coming for a long way.”
“I see it coming in my nightmares,” Colonel Wilhoit commented, his tone bitter and his face screwed up in a scowl.
“Now, let’s not get into that, Jasper,” Twinkle said, patting his knee. “It’ll just get us all worked up and that’s not the kind of attitude we need to be taking to town. Not after what happened a couple months ago.”
Gabe asked, “What happened?”
“The colonel indulged in fisticuffs with the owner of the barbershop, that’s what.” Amy sniffed with disdain. “Mr. Wilson is a good twenty years younger than he is.”
“I held my own, though, you must admit.”
Andrew nodded. “You dusted his knuckles, Colonel. I was right proud for you. But Twinkle is right. We don’t need any trouble this trip to town. Probably would have been better if some of us stayed home this time, but I know we all have business in town today. Now, I like a good fight as much as the next man, but we should keep in mind that we’re pressing our luck with the law in Eagle Gulch.”
“Why did you fight?” Gabe asked, eyeing the colonel’s scowl with interest. “I take it had something to do with the railroad?”
“You know how T&NO wants to build a spur across the flats near Aurora Springs?” Tess asked him softly. In order to avoid an escalating scene, she considered it best to deal with this topic quickly and quietly. “There is some question about whether the coming of the railroad might drive the stars away. Tempers have run a little hot in the past over the subject.”
Gabe glanced toward the east where the puffs of locomotive smoke grew closer every minute. “That’s why your Doc is a suspect in this sabotage they talked about. What are they—”
Tess interrupted when she saw Colonel Wilhoit cock an ear their direction. “Please, can we put this off until the trip home? I promise I’ll explain everything then.”
Gabe twisted his lips and considered. “Only if y’all stop and let me out on the edge of Eagle Gulch. It would ruin my reputation to be seen driving into town with a pork chop in my lap.”
Tess offered him a smile as sweet as sugar on the cane. “Her name is Rosie and she’s riding in the supply wagon. I think on the trip home, you and she should switch places.”
Gabe playfully narrowed his gaze. “Is that a roundabout way of calling me a pig, woman?”
“If the snout fits, Gabe.”
The Aurorians riding i
nside the stagecoach then commenced making snorting sounds.
WHEN THE coach paused on the outskirts of town, Gabe bid the Aurorians a “See you later” and hopped over the side intending to go the rest of the way afoot. He’d used Pork Ribs Rosie as an excuse, but in truth he hoped to ask around about the railroad vandalism before townsfolks connected him to Aurora Springs.
First off however, his agenda included a stop at the bath house for a soak and a shave, then a visit to the café for a platter full of bacon and sausage to go with his fried eggs. “Might even get a slice of ham or two,” he mused aloud. After that he intended to look up the sheriff here in town and dip his boot into this railroad trouble, test the waters a bit.
An hour later he was halfway through a stack of bacon and pondering the piece of sausage on the end of his fork, wondering why it didn’t taste as good as he’d expected, when he overheard a woman seated at the table behind him mention Aurora Springs.
“…folks cause nothing but trouble when they come to town.”
“At least Doc isn’t with them this time,” a male voice replied. “They’re all half a bubble off plumb, but the doctor is the one who truly gets violent. Why, I’ve never seen such an overprotective male. All a man had to do was look crossways at that pretty little Mrs. Cameron and the fella was ready to fight.”
“I know. He did two hundred dollars damage in the mercantile when he dusted the floor with Johnny Wainwright last spring. I hear Sheriff Marston and the Texas Rangers are looking for him. I hear he’s the one who started that fire up along the Aurora spur last month.”
“That’s Lizard Johnson talking. Do you believe him? I was with my Nellie over to the livery right before I came in here. She up and asked Mrs. Cameron if Doc was guilty. The woman denied it, and I’m inclined to take her word over Lizard’s any day.”
The Kissing Stars Page 12
