Texas Bride: A Bitter Creek Novel

by Joan Johnston

  Who was this seductive siren? Where had his innocent wife gone?

  His heart was pounding, and his body was aroused as he reached for the towel she’d left on the bed. He’d already opened the folded cloth, planning to turn his back when she rose to receive it from him.

  She didn’t wait. She stood before he reached her, so he was treated to the sight of her sleek body, water streaming from every delectable curve. Her legs from the knees down were hidden by the copper tub.

  Jake stood stunned, like a boy seeing a woman for the first time, staring without moving. He didn’t know how long he was frozen in awe, but it was long enough for her cheeks, and then her throat, and finally her upper chest to flush.

  She didn’t lower her eyes. She stared at him boldly. With need. With desire.

  He was a dead duck.

  He enveloped her in the towel, to cover an irresistible body he still hoped to resist.

  But Miranda was having no parts of his retreat. She stepped closer to him as she left the tub, so when he wrapped the towel around her, he also wrapped his arms around her. She looked up at him, then lowered her eyes in what could have been shyness. It was a surrender he found as seductive as if she’d run her small hands over his bare flesh.

  He held onto the towel with one hand, knowing that if he let go, he was going to find himself losing control. He used his other hand to raise her chin. For a while, she still didn’t lift her gaze to his. When she did, he looked into her eyes—fell headlong into those deep blue pools—then lowered his mouth slowly until their lips met.

  He hadn’t realized how much his feelings for her had grown over the four weeks of their marriage until their mouths touched. He felt a swell of tenderness for his wife. Her lips were closed, reminding him that she was untouched. He thought of the joy to be found as they learned to please one another.

  He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, waiting for her to let him in. He felt her body tense beneath the towel and heard her hitch a breath as she opened her mouth to him.

  She tasted sweet, of the peach cobbler she’d made for supper with their last can of peaches, surprising him and the children. He felt a rush of gratitude at her willingness to please him, which fed his desire. His tongue probed her mouth seeking honey. He heard her moan and felt his body throb with need.

  He’d picked her up in his arms before he realized he was doing it. The most logical place to put her down again was the bed. He sat down beside her on the mattress and leaned over to kiss her again. Her hands circled his neck and roved over his hair, gripping it tightly as her tongue slid into his mouth. He felt a surge of sexual craving for his wife and reached down to shove the towel aside and cup her naked breast.

  “Oh.”

  Her surprised voice stopped him. He raised his head and looked into her eyes. He wasn’t ready for the raw desire he saw there. He wasn’t ready to find a need that matched his own.

  He lost his head.

  She lost the towel.

  Jake tore the cloth from her body and threw it aside, then ran his left hand along her body from breast to hip to thigh. He reached down to grab her calf, to wrap it around himself as he came over her, and felt wretchedly pitted and scarred flesh beneath his hand.

  He looked down and felt horror.

  Before he could control his features, she cried, “Don’t look!” and scrambled away from him. She curled herself into a protective ball on the bed, as Jake sat dumbfounded, trying to fathom what could have caused such destruction.

  No wonder she limped! It was amazing she could walk at all, with so much flesh missing from her lower leg.

  “It’s horrible, I know,” she said breathlessly as she hid her leg—and belatedly, her entire body—beneath the sheet.

  “What happened?” he asked in a shocked voice.

  “My skirt caught fire when I went into our burning house to try and find my parents.” Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes suddenly welled with tears. “I managed to rescue Harry.”

  He heard what she hadn’t said, that she hadn’t been able to rescue her parents. He shuddered at the thought of what it must have been like to know your parents were being burned alive.

  Miranda reached out to him, laying a hand on his forearm, but he jerked himself away.

  Too late, he realized she wanted to continue their lovemaking. He was still caught up in the horror of what had happened to her and the thought of how close she’d come to dying. He was thinking how easy it was for a life to be lost. He was reminding himself why he had no business making love to his wife.

  He rose abruptly and said, equally abruptly, “Put some clothes on. I’m going to … I’ve got to go.”

  He wasn’t able to think of a good excuse for leaving her. He just knew that if he didn’t get out of the room, he would end up comforting her in his arms. That would lead to lovemaking, and he’d never be able to pull out in time, not when he wanted to be so deep inside her he ached.

  Sure as God made little green apples, he’d get her pregnant. He couldn’t take that chance.

  He made the mistake of glancing back before he left the room and saw the look of despair on her face. He almost turned around. Almost. He was running by the time he made it to the barn, his stomach churning because of how close he’d come to doing what he’d sworn to himself he would never do.

  He would never endanger another woman’s life. It wasn’t worth it. Not for all the pleasure in the world. Not even for the sake of having another child to love.

  Jake leaned against the wall of the barn and put his head against his arm and fought back tears. This was too hard. Resisting was too hard. He wanted his wife. God, how he wanted her!

  What was he going to do?

  Two weeks had gone by since Miranda’s attempted seduction. Jake had spent every night of those two weeks sleeping in the barn on a pile of scratchy hay, covered by a smelly horse blanket. He’d welcomed the discomfort like a martyr wearing a hair shirt. He’d deeply hurt his wife’s feelings. He deserved to suffer.

  Meanwhile, she’d wrought miracles with the house and yard, smiling brightly the whole time, as though his continued absence in their bed mattered not a whit. Most of the time, she avoided looking at him directly. When she did, her eyes looked wounded.

  He felt awful.

  Jake had racked his brain to think of something he could do, short of making love to his wife, to salvage the situation. When the day dawned hot as Hades, he thought how nice it would be to take a dip in the creek, which gave him a brilliant idea.

  Miranda was working at the sink when Jake pulled out his chair at the breakfast table. “Going to be a scorcher today,” he said.

  “Already hotter’n a burned boot,” Slim said, swiping the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve.

  Jake spoke to Miranda’s back, since she was refusing to look at him. “There’s a bend in Bitter Creek where the water pools deep enough that you can swim. The cottonwoods along the bend should have enough leaves to provide shade. How would you feel about taking the day off and going on a picnic?”

  He held his breath waiting for her answer. He could tell she was going to turn him down by the way her whole body tensed. He figured she was still feeling self-conscious about her failed seduction and didn’t want to spend any more time with him than necessary.

  Fortunately, he’d asked at the breakfast table with everyone present. The horde of children and the crotchety old man never gave her a chance to say yea, nay, or boo.

  “We ain’t got no time for picnickin’,” Slim said.

  “Can we go, Miranda? Can we?” Nick said. “I want to go swimming.”

  “What’s a picnic?” Harry said. “What’s swimming?”

  “Can I go, Daddy?” Anna Mae said. “What’s swimming?”

  Miranda turned slowly, and he watched closely as a shadow crossed her blue eyes. If Nick knew how to swim, it likely meant that the Wentworths-before-the-fire had spent time in Chicago along the shores of Lake Michigan. The fact that Harr
y had no idea what swimming was suggested they hadn’t been near Lake Michigan in the years since Mrs. Catherine O’Leary’s cow had kicked over a lantern in her barn and started the Great Chicago Fire.

  Miranda didn’t look at him when she replied, in a voice so intimately soft it raised the hairs along the back of his neck, “A picnic sounds lovely.”

  “Whoopeee!” Nick threw up his hands in excitement and a bit of flapjack went flying off his fork.

  “Nicholas Jackson—” Miranda began.

  Nick giggled and said, “We’re going on a picnic, Miranda!” He jumped up to retrieve the flapjack but the cat had already stolen it and was scampering away. “Too late,” he said with a cackle of laughter. “Kitty got it!”

  Jake saw the arrested look on Miranda’s face as she stared at Nick’s happy grin. She glanced quickly in Jake’s direction and he saw a look that made his throat ache. It was the first time he’d heard the kid laugh. He wondered how long it had been since Miranda had heard Nick laugh.

  After that, she’d simply gone to work putting together a picnic lunch.

  “Are you sure you won’t come, Slim?” he’d asked his father-in-law when the wagon was all loaded with food and kids and blankets and towels and they were ready to leave.

  “Aw, hell. If you’re all goin’, I ain’t stayin’ here alone.”

  Jake lifted the old man in his arms, noticing how much lighter he’d gotten in the year since his accident. He thought of how much more active Slim had been since the Wentworths arrived, and realized they might have saved the old man’s life—giving him something to fight against every day.

  He set Slim in the back of the wagon with the three kids and scooted the old man’s dead legs in, then went to retrieve the wheelchair, so he’d have something to sit in when they arrived at the pond. Jake wondered if he’d be able to get the old man to go into the water. Slim used to like to take a dip at the end of a hard day’s work to “cool off and clean up,” as he used to say.

  During the half-hour trip to the bend in the creek, the kids and Slim carried on a rowdy conversation in the back. Miranda didn’t say a word.

  “I’m glad to see you’re wearing one of Priss’s bonnets,” he said to break the awful silence between them. Although, really, he was irritated because she’d been using the bonnet brim the whole way to hide her face from him.

  She reached up and touched her nose and said, “I started getting freckles. I thought a bonnet might help.”

  He peered around the edge of the bonnet to check and, sure enough, a spattering of freckles now covered her nose and cheeks. “They make you look … younger somehow.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “And I looked old before?”

  He chuckled. “Of course not. I guess I meant they make you look as young as … you are.”

  She frowned.

  He’d meant it as a compliment. He wondered what she was thinking. In a voice quiet enough that it wouldn’t be heard by the four in the back of the wagon, he said, “I think you look beautiful.”

  She was startled into looking directly at him.

  When he glanced back at her, he felt his heart jump. It had a way of doing that every time he looked into her eyes. He turned and focused his gaze on Brutus’s and Caesar’s rumps.

  He waited for Miranda to say something more, but she didn’t. He wanted her to be happy, the way her brothers now seemed to be. He wanted her to want to be with him.

  Which was stupid, of course. She wanted to be his wife—in every sense of the word. He was the one putting the distance between them in bed at night. He’d hoped he could make up for that by being more cordial to her in the daylight.

  So he said, “When I chose you as my bride, I had an image in my head from the description in your letter of what you would look like with blue eyes and curly blond hair. I’ve always admired blue eyes, maybe because I didn’t have them myself. And blond hair, because hardly anybody I know has blond hair.” He was quiet a few moments, then added, “And curls. I imagined running my hands through your blond curls.”

  Jake realized he was getting into deep water, and they weren’t even at the creek yet. What was he doing, talking about running his hands through her hair? Just talking about it was causing a reaction in his Levi’s that surprised him. Grief had killed desire for a very long time. Over the past six weeks, his body seemed to be coming back to life with a vengeance.

  Still, it was disconcerting to want the woman sitting beside him in a sexual way when all he’d been trying to do was make a friend of her, so they could live together in better harmony.

  He saw her eyeing him askance and felt himself flushing all the way to the roots of his hair. “What I meant to say is that I hoped you’d be pretty, and you are.”

  “Not beautiful anymore? Just pretty?” she said with a rueful smile.

  Jake laughed. “You know what I mean.”

  “I think I do,” she said. “I wondered what you would look like, too. I was afraid you’d be old or skinny or maybe bald.”

  He wasn’t any of those, but he wondered if there were qualities she’d hoped for that he didn’t possess. He wanted to ask what she’d thought when she’d seen him, but he was afraid of the answer he’d get.

  Then she said, “I was surprised you were so tall.”

  When she didn’t say anything more, he said, “Did you want me to be short?”

  She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. “Being with a tall man—with you—makes me feel small and dainty and … protected.”

  That sounded like a good thing.

  A small smile curved her bowed upper lip, and she began to speak again. “When I first saw you at the hotel, you looked exactly like I imagined a cowboy might look, with those leather boots and Levi’s and that flat-crowned black hat and the vest and shirt. I like the way you look even better when you put on your chaps.”

  He wore the leather chaps over his Levi’s when he was working cattle to protect his jeans from tearing on mesquite thorns and other rough brush. The chaps were cut out in the front so he could make use of the buttoned fly in his jeans. Priss had pointed out that the cutout in front emphasized a man’s private parts. Jake wondered if that was what Miranda meant when she said she especially liked the way he looked in chaps.

  Just thinking about her thinking about his private parts made them swell a little more. Jake shifted to try to get more comfortable, but his Levi’s were fitting less and less well.

  “I thought your eyes were … fascinating,” she said.

  And that was all she said. He glanced over and saw her cheeks were pink along the edges of her bonnet. She didn’t explain herself and he couldn’t make himself ask for an explanation, even though he wanted one. She thought his plain old dark brown eyes were fascinating?

  It was a damned good thing they were headed for the creek. He felt hot all over.

  “Is that it? Are we there?” Nick asked, leaning forward between Jake and Miranda and pointing to a spot along the creek where cottonwoods created a haven of shade.

  “That’s it,” Jake said.

  “Be sure to leave your clothes somewhere they won’t get soaked,” Miranda warned her brother.

  “Don’t worry, I will!”

  Jake had barely pulled the wagon to a stop and set the brake before Nick shoved open the tailgate and lowered Harry onto the ground. Then Nick jumped down, lifted Anna Mae out of the wagon, and set her on the ground. He ignored Slim and ran with the two younger kids toward the water.

  “Nicholas Jackson Wentworth!” Miranda called after him. “Don’t you dare let those babies go in that water before I get there.”

  “I’m not a baby!” Harry yelled back at her.

  Jake lifted Miranda off the wagon, feeling how thin she still was. She needed to eat more. He was careful to hold her away from his body, but just the feel of her hands on his bare forearms, where he’d rolled up his sleeves, was enough to send a shiver rolling down his spine.

  “You okay?” he asked, once he had
her feet on the ground.

  She grabbed her bonnet and straightened it, though it looked okay to him, and said, a little breathlessly, “Fine.” Then she turned and hurried toward the water. “Nick, do you hear me? I said wait!”

  “Where do you want your chair?” Jake asked Slim as he lifted the wheelchair from the wagon.

  “Right near that rock, where it’s good and shady,” the old man replied, pointing to a flat stone near the pond.

  “I’ll be right back to get you,” Jake said heading off to put the chair in place.

  By the time Jake had set down Slim’s chair, the boys had already stripped to their smalls, and Miranda had taken everything off Anna Mae except her diaper. Jake quickly returned to retrieve Slim, and as he placed the old man down in his chair, he saw Miranda had the three children sitting in a row at the edge of the water.

  “Nick, I want to watch you swim, to make sure you remember how. Go ahead now,” she said.

  Nick stuck a toe in the creek and yelled, “It’s coooollldd!” Then he grinned and splashed his way in, shouting and laughing, until he was in water up to his neck. He paddled around and said, “See? I can swim!”

  “I want to go in, Miranda,” Harry said.

  “We need to wait for Jake,” she replied.

  “I’m here,” Jake said. “Are you going in like that?” he asked Miranda.

  “No. I’m going to strip down behind those bushes over there. I’ve just been waiting for you to get here.”

  Jake unbuttoned his shirt and reached for the snap on his jeans. “I’m not planning on wearing much, so you can stand and watch or head for the bushes.”

  He saw Miranda’s cheeks turn pink before she thrust Anna Mae into his arms and ran for the bushes. Jake set Anna Mae down so he could finish undressing, but she ran straight for the edge of the water. He picked her up and dropped her in Slim’s lap and said, “Hang on to her until Miranda gets back. Then you can let her go.”

  “I want to swim!” Anna Mae cried.

  “Miranda!” Jake called. “Are you about ready?”

  Jake stopped in his tracks when Miranda came out of the bushes. She was wearing a pair of bloomers that went all the way to her ankles and a chemise that revealed two shadows that had to be her nipples. His imagination filled in the rest of her breasts, and the damned cotton wasn’t even wet yet.