“How many sausage patties can you eat with a plate of flapjacks?” She selected a mug from the cupboard and poured coffee from a pot on the stove into it. Steam curled up and the aroma of the brew floated across the kitchen. His stomach clenched.
“I don’t think I can eat anything right now.”
“Sure you can.” She sat the cup in front of him. “You want milk or sugar for it?”
“Sugar, please.”
“It’s in that bowl in front of you. Help yourself. Here’s a spoon. I’m fixing you breakfast and you’ll eat it.” She swept the potato peelings into a bucket and took it with her to the kitchen counter. “Something in your belly will make you feel a heap better.”
He glanced around for a clock. “What time is it?”
“A little after ten.”
Zach stirred sugar into the coffee and then took a sip. As the hot liquid filled his mouth and heated his throat, his head began to clear. Thank God it was Saturday and he didn’t have to argue any cases in court today.
“You’re a good woman to let me sleep it off here.”
“Tied one on last night, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I could have made it back to my place, but I guess I escorted Jennie Hastings here and then … I’m not sure what happened after that.”
“Never you mind.”
She had her back to him as she worked at the stove. Zach wondered if she was laughing at him or frowning at his display of drunkenness. “I know you’re busy, Mrs. Philpot. I’m sorry to take up more of your time.”
“Stop it.” She glanced over her shoulder and gave him a motherly scowl. “I don’t think any less of you, Zach Warner. I’m pleased to give you refuge for the night and to feed you a good breakfast this morning. I hear that yesterday was your birthday. How old are you now?”
“Thirty.”
“A man in his prime.”
“I suppose.” He drank the rest of the strong, sweet coffee. Gradually, the pounding in his temples subsided. By the time Mrs. Philpot placed a plate of flapjacks and a saucer of sausage in front of him, the headache was history and his stomach had settled. He tucked into the food, thinking it was some of the best he’d tasted in months. “Ma’am, you sure know how to cook,” he told her when she sat at the table with him.
Mrs. Philpot’s face broke into a big grin and she even blushed a little. “I know my way around a cook stove,” she allowed. “I reckon you don’t get many home-cooked meals.”
“Only when I’m invited to Adam and Bertha’s,” he said.
“You’re not courting Vera Holdridge, the baker’s assistant, anymore? I heard she was a good cook.”
He shook his head while he swallowed a mouthful of flapjacks and blueberry syrup. “No, ma’am. She was in the market for a husband and we parted ways a while back.”
“You’re not interested in being any woman’s husband?”
He shook his head again as he bit into his second sausage patty.
“I guess you see a lot of bad marriages.”
“Guthrie is full of them.”
“And you see good ones, too.”
He glanced at her, then away. She was headed somewhere and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be led there.
“And you see some odd ones,” she continued. “People get hitched for all varieties of reasons. Take Luna Lee and Judge Bishop. They married, each for their own reason. Luna saw a chance to become a respected member of Guthrie’s society. Judge Bishop was lonely and Luna made him feel needed and treasured.”
“Don’t forget that she also makes him feel like a stud horse again.”
Mrs. Philpot covered her laughing mouth with her hand and pinpoints of light danced in her dark eyes. “That, too!” she said between giggles. “Luna knows her way around a man, I reckon.”
“That she does,” he agreed, finishing off the flapjacks and sausage. He sat back and patted his stomach. “Delicious. I feel like a new man.” He glanced down at his wrinkled shirt. “Even if I don’t look like it.”
“So, who are you courting these days, Zachary Warner?”
“Nobody in particular. Why are you so interested in my lady friends? Are you angling for me to ask you out?”
“Me?” Her dark eyes widened until he thought they would pop out of their sockets. “You cheeky devil.” She released another high giggle. “You know better. I’m just thinking it’s time for you to find a wife instead of another woman.”
“Don’t wish me on any good woman,” he said, grinning at her. “It would be no time before I’d be in divorce court as a defendant instead of counsel.”
“It’s a shame that you see the seedy side of marriage so often. It has jaded you. More’s the pity.”
“My thoughts about marriage started way before I obtained my law degree.” He pointed a finger at her. “Why haven’t you married again if you liked it so much?”
“Because I haven’t met a man to measure up to my Hal yet,” she replied with a jerk of her chin and without missing a beat. “I had me a wonderful man and a great marriage. Together, we carved out a happy life for each other. I miss him every single day, but I won’t replace him with someone who isn’t his equal.”
“How long were you married?”
“Thirty-four years. I married him when I was seventeen and he was eighteen. The minute I met Hal, I knew he was mine. We raised four children together. He made sure we always had a roof over our heads and food on our table.” A wistful smile curved her lips. “And he made me laugh. Lordy, how he made me laugh.” She wiped her eyes with the hem of her apron. “When you have a partnership like that and it’s taken away from you, it’s the memories that keep you warm at night and make you glad for what you had. Some people never know the revelation of having someone in your life who knows you better than anyone else, who keeps your secrets safe, who you trust with your very life.” She leveled her dark-eyed gaze on him. “I feel sorry for folks who aren’t lucky in love. They come in and out of here and I see the loneliness and pain in their faces and it ‘bout breaks my heart.”
The truthfulness stamped on her face was too much for him and he had to look away. He swallowed hard and his eyes stung as melancholy stole through him.
“Which is why I don’t mind a bit giving you a helping hand,” Mrs. Philpot said, brightening as she rose from the chair.
He blinked at her, not following her reasoning. “Because you think I’m unlucky in love?”
She laughed at that. “Because you do what you can to help those whose lives are in shambles,” she amended. “I lost count how many people have boarded here who hired you as their attorney and left here feeling better about their situation.”
He gave a quick shrug “I try to earn my wages, that’s all.”
Placing her hands on her hips, she stood near him and shook her head slowly. “You do that more than that, Zach Warner. You fight the good fight and you give them a shoulder to cry on. To some of them, you’re the only champion they got and you never let them down.”
“Never say never,” he recited, getting to his feet and feeling uneasy being the target for such high praise. “I do believe that anyone who stays here has a shoulder to cry on – yours. It’s well known in Guthrie that Gloria Philpot has a heart as big as this whole Territory.” He was pleased to see pink color spread from her neck up to her forehead. On impulse, he leaned forward and pecked her on her rosy cheek. “Thank you kindly, ma’am. I’ll be getting out of your way now. Unless you need me to peel the rest of those potatoes for you.”
“No, no. You go on now.” She shooed him out of the kitchen and waved him out the front door.
As was her custom, Mrs. Carter sat in a rocker on the front porch.
“Good day, Mrs. Carter.”
She turned watery blue eyes toward him. “Is that Zach Warner?”
“It is, ma’am. How are you faring?”
“I’m old,” she said in a voice full of spent tears and years.
He turned to her, resting an elbow on the porch
railing. “So am I. I turned thirty yesterday.”
Her thin, colorless lips twitched. “You’re barely out of boyhood. You have a long row yet to hoe.”
Zach looked toward the street where a buggy that needed oiling creaked past. “Pretty day. Looks like the town is bustling. I suppose you see most of Guthrie pass by here, don’t you?”
“I reckon I do. I see a lot of peculiar things, that’s for sure.” She rocked back and forth and sucked on her teeth for a few seconds. “This here morning I’ve been watching a little, ole girl hiding from a man.”
“Oh?” He looked at her and then back at the street. “Anyone you know?”
“I believe the gal works at one of the saloons in town. The man … I don’t know. I’ve seen him ride into town every so often. He sits astride a pretty pinto pony. Brown and white pony.”
Zach’s interest sharpened, recalling the pinto in the corral on Luna’s ranch. Mel Parks’ ride. “What makes you think the woman was trying to hide from him?”
“She came running down the street, her skirts a flyin’,” Mrs. Carter said, motioning with a crooked finger the direction the woman had been traveling. “Kept looking back over her shoulder. I could see fear in her face even from this far away. She stopped for a few seconds and peered down the street, then she gave a little yelp. She jumped in behind the bushes there beside the grocery store. A few seconds later, here comes the man on the pinto and I could tell he was looking for someone, but he didn’t spy her in the bushes. After he was gone, she crept out, brushing leaves off her, and then ran in the opposite direction of him.” She rocked back and forth, quicker now. “Yep, she was running and hiding from him. Looked like one side of her face was bruised. Wouldn’t be surprised if that man on the pinto was responsible for marking that girl.”
“That’s interesting.” A breeze ruffled his hair and he ran a hand over it. He realized he’d left his hat in the small room off the kitchen. “Will you excuse me, Mrs. Carter? I have to retrieve my hat.”
She nodded. “If I had hair as pretty as yours, I‘d never wear one.”
He chuckled and went back inside, retracing his steps into the kitchen. Mrs. Philpot was no longer there. Crossing to the small hallway, he opened the door to the room he’d slept in.
Jennie stood beside the cot. She looked up, startled. She held the bed pillow in her arms and she dropped it as if it were a hot branding iron. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had not just been holding it – she’d been hugging it, burying her face in it. His blood heated and his heart bumped up against his ribcage, then bucked like a wild bronco.
“I left my hat in here.” He looked at the washstand where he’d hung his hat on a peg.
“Oh. I was just … just …” She moved around the cot and toward the doorway that he blocked.
Zach was mesmerized by the pulse beating in her throat, moving the creamy skin ever so slightly. The scent of soap and violets lifted off her to tantalize him further. She wore a white dress, a lacy thing that hugged her curves, emphasizing the narrowness of her waist and the seductive swell of her breasts, her hips. Her raven hair was loose, falling over her shoulders and down her back. He flexed his hands, wanting to drive his fingers through her hair and tip back her head so that he could capture that pulsing skin on her neck with his lips.
She cleared her throat. “I was just … um … stripping the sheet off the cot and –.”
“The hell you were,” he said, his voice coming out raspy.
“What?” Her dove gray eyes darkened slightly when she looked him squarely in the face. He knew she saw there what raged within him. Longing. Lust.
He didn’t want to talk anymore. There was nothing more to say. Hooking an arm around her waist, he pulled her up flush against him. She came willingly, giving no resistance. Her lips parted and he claimed them with a feverish kiss. She moaned and the sound reverberated in his head. He broke the kiss to find that telltale pulse in her neck. Tasting it with the tip of his tongue, he felt her tremble and she released a mewling sound that made him ache with an exquisite pain.
She raked her fingers through his hair and splayed her hands at the back of his head and neck, holding him tightly to her as he pressed kisses along the column of her neck and then ravaged her mouth again. He stroked her tongue with his and she arched against him. He knew she was aware of his arousal because she sucked in a little breath as if she were surprised. But why she would be didn’t make sense. Couldn’t she tell by the way he was caressing her and kissing her that he wanted her, wanted to be inside her, wanted to plunge deeper and deeper?
He mirrored that motion with his tongue and she clutched at his hair. He felt her sag against him as her knees gave way. He tightened one arm around her waist and reached down with his free hand to capture her knee and lift her leg up along his hip, tucking her closer against him as he kissed her mouth again and again, making her breathless.
“Zach, Zach …” she whispered his name like a prayer.
“I want you,” he whispered back. “I want you now.” He ran his hand up under her skirt and petticoat and felt the soft skin of her inner thigh. He thought he might die then and there.
“Oh, Zach … I … we …”
The sound of heels clicking on the kitchen floor broke through the fog of passion and he lifted his mouth from hers. His breath came out ragged, broken, matching hers. Her eyes were dark gray, searching, pleading, and then they widened and she pressed the heels of her hands against his shoulders.
“It’s Mrs. Philpot,” she whispered.
He dipped his head for a few seconds, reining himself in while his heartbeats thundered like a stampede in his ears. Somehow she slipped from his arms and edged around him, leaving him alone. He looked over his shoulder to see that she was standing just over the threshold, standing as still as a statue. Then she lifted her head, brushed her hands down her skirt, and walked briskly into the hallway.
“Do you need help getting the meal on the table?”
Zach marveled that she could sound so normal when he knew that her blood must be singing in her veins and her lips were swollen from his kisses. He moved woodenly to the washstand and lifted his Stetson off the peg. Slowly, he fit it on his head and glanced at himself at himself in the mirror, running a hand down his wrinkled shirt and pressing a palm against his arousal.
What the hell had just happened? One minute he was in control and the next he would have taken her standing up, sitting down, on the floor, any damn way he could have managed it.
He sat on the cot until the raging feelings inside subsided, then he moved quietly into the hall and listened. When he heard Jennie and Mrs. Philpot leave the kitchen and go into the dining room, he walked on cat feet to the back door and let himself out. He went around the side of the house toward the street. Mrs. Carter wasn’t in the rocker to spy him. She had gone in for the noon meal, he supposed.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he ducked his head and walked stoically toward the law office where there was a fresh shirt and a bottle of brandy waiting for him.
“When do you think it’s suitable for a widowed or divorced woman to be courted by another man?” Jennie asked, trying to sound casual as she rocked back and forth in the porch swing and shelled peas. Her mind kept returned to Zach and the feelings he had stirred in her yesterday. She glanced around at the other women on the Philpot porch. Mrs. Philpot and her mother sat in rockers and Dottie Dandridge sat beside Jennie on the swing.
“Used to have to wait a year,” Mrs. Carter said. “But times have changed.”
“Some say that once a divorce is final, a woman is free to see any man she wants,” Dottie said. “But I don’t know about widowhood.”
“I do,” Mrs. Philpot piped up. “Mama, times haven’t changed that much. Most folks think widow women should wait nigh on a year before they allow for any suitors. Me, myself, I think different.”
“What do you think is suitable?” Dottie asked.
Mrs. Philpot stopped shel
ling the peas for a few moments. “I think that when you can be in the company of a man and feel something for him and you don’t for one second think of your husband, then you are ready to move on.”
Mrs. Carter studied her daughter for a moment and gave a decisive nod. “That’s righteous. If’n you don’t see his face or hear his voice, then he has gone from your head and you can see your way clear. Don’t mean he is gone entirely from your heart. Sometimes they linger there a long spell. In a corner of it. Women tend to hold on to the memories of good times and let go of the bad times. Can’t say that is wise, though.”
Mrs. Philpot chuckled. “You’re right, Mama. Even if men were more trouble than they were worth, we can’t entirely shake them or the memories. They stick like cockleburs to our hearts.”
They fell silent, each one lost in thought as their hands moved routinely, chasing peas from shells and memories from shadowy corners.
“Why did you ask, dearie?” Mrs. Philpot’s tone was webbed with sly suspicion. “Is someone courting you?”
Jennie kept her gaze latched on the pile of pea pods in her lap. “I was just thinking about how society has or hasn’t changed. I never gave any thought to divorced men and women until I came here. In fact, I don’t believe I ever met anyone who was divorced before I arrived in Guthrie.”
“Divorce ain’t natural,” Mrs. Carter said.
“Maybe not, but it is often necessary,” Mrs. Philpot said, earning a frown from her snowy-haired mother. “I didn’t give it a thought either before I opened up my boarding house here. Then I started meeting the ladies and men who came here to break the chains of cruelty, neglect, abandonment, poverty, and all variety of punishment. Marriage should be a healthy partnership. It should be fertile soil from which a family grows, not a field full of glass shards or desert sand.”
“You take a vow for life,” Mrs. Carter pointed out.
“And when one person breaks that vow, the other person should be free to decide whether to stay or go,” Dottie said, her head coming up and her dark blue eyes bright with resolve. “I didn’t break my marriage vows; my husband did. He just took off one day and never came back to us. My brothers asked around and found out he had gone to California. What was I supposed to do? Stay married to a memory?”
Deborah Camp Page 13
