Painted by the Sun

by Elizabeth Grayson

  When he finally found the courage to raise his gaze to hers, her eyes were calm, filled with a compassion that was nearly as unnerving as it was seductive.

  But with his responsibilities to Lily and Rand, Cam didn't dare allow himself to be seduced. He wrenched his hand away and shot to his feet. He needed to put some distance between them and snatched at the first thing he could think of to divert her.

  "So which of these boxes need to be sent to New York?"

  Shea hesitated just long enough to let him know she saw through his evasion before she gave her answer. "The two boxes down by the tailgate are ready to go. The three at this end of the wagon stay with me. I've been trying to sort through the rest and divide up the negatives."

  Shea pushed up on her elbows, then eased cautiously into a sitting position. She wavered a bit, and Cameron steadied her.

  "If I get everything ready," she said on a sigh, "perhaps I can convince Owen to venture into Denver—"

  "Venture into Denver? Denver's barely a half hour drive. Rand and I ride into town every day," he told her. "I'll put the boxes on a train myself."

  "You'd do that?" Her expression softened and her words were tinged with amazement and gratitude.

  How long had it been since anyone had done things for her? Cam found himself wondering. How long since she'd allowed anyone in close enough to help?

  "I wouldn't offer unless I meant it," he assured her. "Besides, if I'm ever going to get you and Owen out from underfoot"—he let a smile dawn across his face—"I have to see you have the wherewithal to find other quarters."

  Shea stared at him askance for a moment, then realized he was teasing her. She laughed with surprise and reached across to brush his hand again.

  Even that fleeting touch sent a tingle of sensation rippling across his flesh. Her warmth seeped through the pores of his skin and sank deep. He resisted I urge to rub the spot.

  "Do you want to go through the rest of these now," he asked her, "or would you like to do them when you're feeling stronger?"

  "I'd like to do them now, if we can," she answered.

  They reviewed the plates one by one. Most of the negatives were views Shea had taken with a stereoptic camera. Its double lens produced two small, dense images side by side. When the negative was printed on cards and used in a stereoptic viewer, the scene would jump to life giving the illusion of reality.

  As they held the negatives up to the light, Cam could see how well she'd captured the grandeur of the mountains and recognized several of the landscapes. She'd crept close enough to photograph elk grazing in a meadow ringed by mountains, and caught the pristine details of the alpine wildflowers.

  Even looking at the negatives with darks and lights reversed, Cameron was captivated by Shea's skill. Working in what must have been nearly impossible conditions, she had made magic with the contrasts, the shapes, the poetry of the high country.

  What courage and determination it must have taken to record the places few women had ever seen! Cam was inexpressibly proud of her.

  Shea seemed pleased with the negatives, as well. But by the time they'd gone through all the plates, she was drooping with weariness.

  "If I promise to come back after supper and seal these boxes," he proposed, "will you let me escort you back to the house?"

  "Are you sure it won't be too much trouble for you to send these off for us?" she asked, still fretting about accepting the favor.

  Cam scowled at her. "Now just how much trouble do you think I'll have taking these five boxes to the railroad station?"

  Finally convinced, Shea allowed him to lift her down from the wagon. He steadied her on her feet, then slid an arm around her and drew her against his side. The fluff of those gingery curls barely reached his shoulder, and he was surprised at how small she really was. Somehow the practicality and determination in her made her seem so much more hardy.

  As he matched his footsteps to hers, her warm not-quite-lavender scent rose in his nostrils. Her hand came to rest in the furrow of his spine, and for all that it wasn't a particularly intimate touch, Cam found it strangely unsettling.

  "Shea," he said as they ambled down the lane, "you know if you need help, all you need to do is ask for it, don't you?"

  Her gaze rose to his, and he could see that some of the wariness he'd sensed in her earlier had ebbed away. "I know it now," she answered softly, and together they walked back to the house.

  * * *

  "King me!" Rand whooped as he snapped a black checker down on the game board directly in front of where Shea was sitting.

  She scowled at him across the kitchen table. It was Sunday afternoon. Lily was singing hymns and finishing up the dinner dishes, while Shea was losing her third—or maybe it was her fourth—game of checkers to Rand. She could hear Owen's boot soles scuffling, keeping the battered rocker out on the porch in motion. Cam had gone off to deliver a crock of Lily's chicken broth to someone who'd fallen ill.

  "Aren't you going to king me, Shea?" Rand prodded her.

  "Oh, all right." With an exaggerated sigh she stacked a second checker on Randall's king.

  "Are you sure you've played this game before?" he asked with a sly smile.

  "Of course I've played it," she sniffed. She carefully considered her next move and eased one of the checkers forward. The instant she lifted her finger she knew she'd made a mistake.

  Rand cackled with delight and jumped Shea's last three men. "I won," he announced unnecessarily.

  "I can see that." Shea did her best to scowl at him, but he was such an engaging child with that breezy grin and affable manner. "If you want me to keep playing with you," she muttered peevishly, "don't you think you should let me win just once?"

  "He's just like his father," Lily put in, working the last of the spoons through the folds of her towel. "He likes to win. I think half the reason Cammie went back east to study law was so he could prevail in any argument."

  "Oh, your brother's not so bad as that," Shea offered, thinking how Cam had apologized for locking her up the day of the hanging.

  "Well, Cammie was different before he went off to fight," Lily conceded. "He was brash, full of himself, far more stubborn and argumentative. The war—" Shea glanced up just in time to see Lily rub her withered cheek. "The war changed him."

  Shea fastened her curious gaze on Lily.

  "How did it change him?" Was the war what put the wariness in those night blue eyes? Was the war what created that shadowy second self that no one but her seemed able to see? Was the war why he was more committed to his sister than a husband to a wife?

  But Lily seemed disinclined to discuss how her brother had changed. Instead she hefted the brimming dishpan and headed toward the door. Shea hurried ahead to open it, then trailed Lily into the yard.

  Walking gingerly, Lily carried the sloshing basin toward the double row of rosebushes blooming along the foundation of the house. "Cammie says there's snow in the mountain passes," she said, as she rationed out the soapy water. "I suppose that means I should be cutting my roses back, but I just can't bear to lose the flowers yet."

  Shea knew she should be preparing for winter, too. As soon as they got a bank draft from New York, she'd be able to look for winter accommodations and restock their supplies. Since she'd sold Simon's studio in New York, she and Owen had wintered wherever they were at the season's end. They'd set up a studio in Nebraska City last year and been money ahead come spring. With the month or more they'd lost while Shea was ill, they'd probably be holing up in Denver this winter.

  Once we're settled, I can start writing letters again, Shea found herself thinking. Through the dozens of letters she'd written last year, she'd been able to discover which of the orphan trains had taken Liam west. This year she hoped to learn exactly where that train had stopped and when her son had been adopted. Perhaps, if she was lucky, she might even discover the name of the people who'd taken her child.

  "Shea?" Lily asked, reaching out to touch her arm. "Shea, have you heard
a word I've said?"

  "You said you need to cut the roses back?" she guessed hopefully.

  "I said that a good long while ago," Lily said with a laugh and tucked a deep pink blossom from one of the bushes behind Shea's ear. "That color suits you," she said, seeming pleased with the effort.

  Shea reached up to brush the petals with her fingertips. "I've always liked pink roses," she replied. "Thank you."

  Just then Rand burst out the kitchen door. The bang it made bouncing back on its hinges all but launched Owen out of the rocker.

  "And where do you think you're going, young man?" Lily asked, stopping Rand in his tracks.

  "Down to the corral."

  "Did you put the checkers away?" she asked him.

  "Yes, ma'am, I did."

  "Have you appropriated more of my perfectly good carrots to feed that animal of yours?"

  Rand paused at the gate. "It's Sunday, so I figured Jasper deserved a treat."

  Lily sighed helplessly. "Oh, I suppose he does."

  Rand grinned at her and raced off down the lane, letting the gate slap closed behind him.

  "He loves that horse," Shea murmured watching him.

  "He loves all horses," Lily corrected her. "And he'd feed them a whole field of carrots if I let him. Since Cam's not here, I suppose I ought to keep an eye on him. Do you feel up to walking as far as the corral?"

  Shea had been staying up longer and walking farther every day. She linked her arm through Lily's. "I think I can, but it would be nice to have someone to lean on."

  Together they started off. Though the sun was shining and the sky was china blue, the wind carried the breath of that distant snow. It tugged at their hair, nipped color into their cheeks, and slapped their skirts against their legs. Lily shivered and Shea found herself wishing she'd grabbed their shawls from the peg inside the kitchen door.

  When they got to the corral, Rand was riding bareback on a compact little roan, guiding him with the press of his hands and the shift of his weight. Rand and the horse seemed attuned somehow, moving in perfect accord.

  He rides the way Sean did, Shea found herself thinking. Her brother had always had a way with horses, a gentleness and ease that was as much a part of him as breathing. Rand had that, too.

  "He's a fine horseman," Shea observed, glancing across at where Lily had climbed up onto the first rail of the fence beside her.

  "He is, isn't he?" Lily agreed with more than a bit of pride. As she watched Rand and Jasper lope around the corral, the wind teased several long sable strands from Lily's chignon. They caught on her lips and her eyelashes, and without giving the impulse a second thought, Shea reached across and tucked them back.

  At the brush of Shea's fingertips against her cheek, Lily stiffened. "What are you doing?" she gasped and jerked away. "I never let anyone touch my face!"

  When she'd smoothed back Lily's hair, Shea hadn't even noticed the scars. It was just how Lily was—imperfect in a way folks could see instead of ways they couldn't.

  But before Shea could think what to say, Lily had pushed back from the fence and bolted toward the house.

  Shea was ready to go after her when Rand nudged Jasper up close to the fence. "What happened to Aunt Lily?"

  Shea turned and confronted the child's far-too-curious eyes. "She left something on the stove." She lied instinctively, protecting Lily.

  Rand smiled ruefully, taken in. "She let some eggs boil dry one time when she was practicing piano. And, boy, did they stink!"

  Shea couldn't help being relieved when Rand went on. "Want to see the trick Jasper and I have been working on?"

  She could almost hear her brother Sean shouting, "Watch me! Watch me, Shea!" before he made his father's gelding high-step across the paddock or jump some impossibly high fence.

  Smiling at the memory, she nodded to Rand. "Of course I want to see."

  Easing Jasper to a lope, the boy raised one foot, then the other, and slowly pushed himself into a standing position. Balanced upright in the center of the roan's broad back, he made one circuit of the corral and then another.

  As Shea applauded, Emmet Farley bellied up to the fence beside her. "Don't you fall off that pony, boy," he warned. "I'm planning to have tea with your aunt this afternoon, and I don't want it disrupted to bandage that head of yours!"

  Rand laughed and waved and kept right on circling.

  Shea looked up at the doctor. His long, angled jaw wore a bristly coat of sandy-colored whiskers, and his clothes seemed creased into the joints of his gaunt, long-boned frame.

  "I didn't expect you to come by this afternoon," she said.

  "I just delivered a fat baby boy down the road at Mayhew's," he said around a yawn, "so I thought I'd stop and see you since I was out this way."

  Shea slid him a sidelong glance. "/ think you came to see if there's any of Lily's apple cobbler left over from dinner the other night."

  "I do have a certain fondness for Lily's cobbler," he allowed, then turned to look down at her. "So how are you, Shea?"

  "Stronger than I was yesterday, but not as strong as I'll be tomorrow."

  He nodded, pleased with her answer. "I'd still like to check your bandages. Would you mind if we headed back?"

  Shea waved at Rand then threaded her hand through Emmet's elbow. As they walked, Shea tried to scrape up courage enough to ask the question that had been plaguing her for weeks, the question that had come to a head this afternoon. "What happened to Lily Gallimore's face?" she finally asked.

  Emmet stopped dead in his tracks. "Is that why Lily seemed so upset when I drove in?"

  A hot flush flooded up Shea's neck as she explained what had happened.

  When she was done, the doctor shook his head. "I keep hoping she'll find a way to make peace with those scars. I keep trying to find something that will get her off this farm. I'm not sure she's been farther than the end of the lane since Cam brought her out here."

  "Is she afraid that people will stare at her?"

  "Or worse yet, offer pity."

  Shea nodded thoughtfully. "Yet she's curious about Denver. She reads the newspapers and asks you and Cam all sorts of things about town. And she sends notes and gifts—"

  "—to people she's never seen and doesn't know. It doesn't make sense, does it?"

  Shea shook her head. "Maybe one day she'll just get curious enough to pick up and go into town."

  "Maybe pigs'll sprout wings and fly," Emmet all but growled at her.

  "Can you tell me what happened?"

  Emmet slid a thin, dark cheroot from the pocket of his jacket. "I'm not sure I know the whole of it," he said, striking a match and exhaling a long plume of smoke. "She and Cam don't say much. Just that Anderson's Confederate guerrillas raided the town where Lily and her mother were living during the war. And that after the raiders ransacked the house, they set it ablaze. Apparently Lily's clothes caught fire while they were escaping."

  Shea shivered at the thought and raised her hand to her own smooth cheek. What would it be like to feel those withered striations where smooth, soft flesh had been?

  "Lily couldn't have been more than a girl," Shea breathed.

  "She was just sixteen." Emmet's voice caught and she could hear sadness in him, regret that ran deep, and compassion that ate at him for Lily's sake. "Just sixteen."

  Instinctively Shea reached for the doctor's hand. "And Cam wasn't there to protect them?"

  "He must have come home not long after. I think he's always blamed himself for not being home when they needed him. His mother died the following spring and he's devoted himself to Lily and Rand ever since."

  Emmet threw down his half-smoked cheroot and ground it to powder beneath his boot. "I hate that Lily has sacrificed so much of her life to those damned scars. I keep thinking that when they put her in the ground all she'll ever have been is Cameron's sister and Randall's aunt, when there's so much more she could have had and been."

  "But would it be so terrible—if she was happy?"

/>   The stiffness went out of Emmet's back. "No, it wouldn't be terrible if she was happy." He drew a suddenly shaky breath. "But the loss would be a goddamn shame for the rest of us."

  The sound of the dinner bell clanging startled them both. Lily was standing on the back porch waving at them. In the last half hour she seemed to have regained her composure. "I've put the tea on to steep," she called out. "Won't you come in and have a cup?"

  As he turned to her, Emmet Farley's face softened and warmth supplanted the regret in his eyes. "We'll be right there, my dear," he shouted back.

  Chapter 7

  Shea stood on the kitchen porch ringing the bell to call the men in to breakfast. It was the season's first truly wintry day, and as she watched Cameron, Rand, and Owen tramp down the frozen lane puffing clouds of breath, she realized she couldn't expect Owen to sleep in the unheated tack room for very much longer. It was time she accepted her responsibilities and got the two of them settled somewhere for the winter.

  Not that they hadn't liked being here at the farm. Owen had settled in better than Shea had ever dreamed he would. She and Lily had become fast friends. Rand was bright-eyed and inquisitive, headstrong and rambunctious, funny and dear—everything she hoped her own lost boy would be like when she finally found him.

  Then there was Cameron, whose deep, rough voice she liked far too much. Who smelled too good. Who lit a strange, unexpected warmth inside her. She admired his intelligence, his wit, and his rare rich laughter. She liked that he took her ambitions seriously.

  As Cam ushered Rand and Owen through the gate and up toward the house, Shea felt his protectiveness enfold her, too. Cam made her feel so safe. They all made her feel safe. It had been a very long time since she'd been safe. But if she meant for Owen and her to earn their keep, if she meant to find her son, Shea couldn't be seduced by that semblance of safety.

  As the men stomped up onto the porch to wash, Shea went back into the kitchen to help Lily finish dishing up breakfast.