by Kit Morgan
“All right Clayton, you win. I’ll speak no more of it tonight. But it does need to be discussed!” Mrs. Riley stated as her usual happy face transformed into one of disappointment. She looked around the table then grumbled, “land sakes, at the rate you’re moving the two of you will be lucky to be married by Christmas!”
Summer swallowed her food and took in the acute disappointment on Mrs. Riley’s face as she poked at her mashed potatoes. Perhaps the woman was right. Maybe she and Clayton wouldn’t be married until Christmas. She hid a smile. Summer had always hoped, always dreamed she would be married on Christmas day! It was a silly thing really, the fancy of a young child who used to wish such a thing would happen but knew it never would. What were the chances? Christmas was over a month away. Surely her foot would be healed before then and besides, if Mrs. Riley had her way, they’d be married before Thanksgiving! Though she wanted to marry Clayton, (it was why she was there after all) the thought of a Christmas wedding still teased her heart. Summer sighed.
“Is something wrong dear?” Mrs. Riley asked.
Summer looked up. All eyes were upon her. “Oh … why … no, every thing’s wonderful Mrs. Riley. Thank you.”
“Oh I won’t stand for being called Mrs. Riley,” she admonished with a smile.
“Ma…” Clayton began.
“Now you shush, Clayton! Summer is going to be my daughter in law and she might as well get used to calling me ma just as you two boys do!”
Another chill went up Summer’s spine. So, he didn’t want her to call his mother “ma”. Maybe he was planning on sending her back! Tears suddenly stung the back of her eyes but Summer bit the inside of her mouth to keep them at bay.
“Ma!”
“Don’t you ma me young man! There is nothing wrong with Summer calling me that!”
Spencer let go a soft snicker from across the table.
“You shut up.” Clayton warned.
“I wasn’t going to say a thing!” Spencer said in his defense. “Besides, I agree with ma.”
“We’re not married yet.” Clayton said as he stood up and left the table.
Summer trembled as cold seeped into her heart. At this rate she’d be lucky if she got married at all. What was wrong with the man? Why was he tender at times, then so suddenly cranky when their wedding was discussed?
“He’ll be back,” Spencer said. “Don’t worry.”
“Are … are you sure your brother wants to marry me?” Summer couldn’t believe she’d asked it.
“Of course he wants to marry you!” Mrs. Riley quickly said. “He’s just got cold feet like all prospective husbands do. That and Clayton can be a perfectionist. He likes everything his way but I can teach you how to handle him. You just bake him up a pie or cake and he’ll be like putty in your hands!”
“He did have it rough while he was chasing those outlaws,” Spencer told her. “It’s hard to watch your men get shot up like the ones riding with Clayton did. He’s worried about them, that’s all.”
Summer took in his words. How would she feel if some of her fellow orphans had been harmed? How worried would she be? Would nuptials be the foremost thing on her mind? She didn’t think so! She began to understand why Clayton was acting the way he was. Spencer was right. She needed to let Clayton Riley take care of business first and worry about the wedding details later.
Besides, there were more than wedding details on his mind, of that Summer had no doubt, her true origins and what happened in New Orleans being the foremost. How long would it be before he cornered her in her little room and asked … no… demanded to know? Of course the right thing to do would be to tell him the truth. But what if he was disgusted by it? What would he think of a dirty orphan girl who had no choice but to marry him?
“Ma, where’s the pie?” Clayton’s voice yelled from the kitchen.
Spencer laughed and winked at Summer. “He always gets a sweet tooth when he’s nervous or upset.”
“What is he upset about?” She asked as she listened to the sounds of Clayton banging around in the other room.
“Oh now don’t you go thinking you had anything to do with it, dear!” Mrs. Riley told her as she reached across the table and patted her hand. “You didn’t! He’s just not himself at the moment. Spence is right. Clayton has had a rough few days. But as soon as he’s had some dessert he’ll feel much better.”
Summer was about to comment when Clayton came back into the dining parlor with a pie in one hand, plates and knife in the other. He laid everything out on the table, cut the pie and dished each of them up a slice. Mrs. Riley fetched a pot of coffee as he sat and began to dig in.
The food in the Riley household was incredible, from the cookie she had that afternoon to the pot roast, apple pie and coffee that evening. Summer certainly hoped she would be as good a cook as Mrs. Riley one day! Clayton had his dessert and settled right down as if he’d been given some miracle elixir! If he ate Summer’s cooking he’d likely go to the barn, saddle up his horse and head for the hills!
“Miss James, would you like to go out on the porch with me?”
Summer lifted her head. She’d been staring at her hands in her lap since she finished her pie and was just about to tell them all good night. She needed to be alone and think but that wasn’t about to happen. She needed to get this over with. “Of course.”
Clayton got up from the table, scooped her up and left the dining parlor. He stopped near the front door where his coat hung on a peg in the wall next to several others. “Here,” he began as he managed to grab a shawl. “It’s cold outside and ma won’t mind if you wear this.”
She took it from him, grateful. It was of course much colder here than New Orleans and she’d not brought a decent coat with her. For one, she’d never owned a decent coat!
She clutched the shawl to her as he carefully opened the door with her in his arms and carried her outside. He nodded to a swing that hung at one end of the porch. It was a pretty thing, though functional and sturdy looking. He sat her down and she immediately wrapped the shawl around her shoulders. It was colder than she thought it might be. She started when he lowered himself down beside her, his weight making the swing sway this way and that as he did so.
“Don’t worry, it’ll hold our weight. Built it myself.”
“You did? It’s very nice.”
“Thank you.” He then cleared his throat but said nothing.
Summer wrapped the shawl more tightly about herself before she looked at him. He stared straight ahead, his eyes and face unmoving. But he wasn’t looking at anything. No, he simply stared.
Summer glanced at her surroundings. She hadn’t had much time to take them in when she first arrived. A large barn sat opposite the white washed farmhouse. Several other outbuildings were also nearby. The moon was bright and the clear sky lit with stars. It was beautiful. Summer had never seen such stars before.
“They’re pretty, aren’t they?” Clayton asked her. “I love these clear, cold nights.”
She nodded as she looked at the stars beyond the barn. “Beautiful,” she whispered.
“Yes, beautiful,” he whispered in return.
She sensed his eyes on her but didn’t look at him. Her heart began to thunder in her chest and she couldn’t figure out why. She finally concluded it was because he was going to question her about her past at any moment. But that’s not what Clayton Riley did.
“I’m sorry, Miss James. I’m sorry for everything.”
“What?”
“I shot you! No sooner than you got off the stage and I shot you! Then I left you at Doc and Milly’s and let you think the worst of me. I should’ve made myself clearer on what I was doing. I should’ve sent word when I had to leave town with the posse, heck I should’ve come and told you myself!”
“You’ve already apologized, Mr. Riley.”
“Let me finish,” he said as he put a finger against her lips to quiet her.
His finger was warm despite the crisp chill in the air. F
or a scant second she wanted to kiss it as it lingered there, but he removed it when he spoke again.
“I’m a suspicious man by nature. I guess that’s one of the reasons I’ve survived being a lawman. You don’t stay alive by trusting folks. You stay alive by listening to what your gut tells you.”
She stiffened. Here it comes …
“Miss James, what I’m trying to say is … well …”
“Mr. Riley, please … I can’t go back.”
He looked at her, his brow raised, his mouth half opened. His eyes darted about a bit before they settled on her once more. “Why?”
She swallowed hard. “Bad things will happen if I do. I’ve no where to go.”
“What about your family?”
“I don’t have any family.”
He puckered his brow at her remark. “No family? Where are they?”
She shook her head and almost laughed. “I don’t know.”
He sat up straight and looked down at her like a horn just sprouted out of her head. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Mr. Riley, I don’t know where my family is because I never had one to begin with.”
She would not cry! To admit no one wanted her, that no one thought she was worth keeping, even adopting! She’d been rejected her whole life and now he was going to do the same! He was going to ask it. She just knew he was going to ask the question she hated most of all!
“Why don’t you have a family? What happened?”
She looked him right in the eye. “Because, Mr. Riley. I’m an orphan.”
Seven
“An orphan?” Clayton asked, his voice coming out an entire octave higher than normal. Summer James was an orphan? Well, that explained a lot. He on the other hand, was about to admit he hadn’t been the one to answer the advertisement for a mail order bride. That his brother Spencer (not to mention his accomplice their mother) had sent in the request to the Ridgley Mail Order Bride Company. But now this?
He caught the glistening shine of a single tear in the moonlight as it ran down one side of her face. He put a finger under her chin and pulled her face up to his. What he saw made his gut twist and his heart wrench.
Shame. She was horribly ashamed to tell him she was an orphan. “How long have you been an orphan?” Perhaps it was a stupid question, but he wanted to know.
She sniffed back her tears as more began to fall. “All my life, for as long as I can remember.”
“You never knew your parents? That’s plumb awful! I can’t imagine what that must have been like. So are you telling me you spent your entire life in an orphanage … until you turned eighteen?” He knew the law, of course she would have to leave once she turned eighteen. But to spend her whole life in an orphanage, to never have been adopted… His gut twisted up another notch or two with the thought.
“Yes, but there was no work to be found, and … and …”
“And so you sought out the help of a mail order bride service?”
She shook her head. “No, actually, they sought me out.”
“What?”
She nodded, “Yes, that’s exactly what happened. They contacted the orphanage. Mrs. Teeters the headmistress sent me there with a letter of recommendation that basically said I can read and write, knew my numbers, and do at least a few things decently.”
She burst into tears at the admission.
Clayton’s jaw clenched. Noooo, not the tears!
But then something stirred from deep within Clayton Riley in that moment. Instead of running from the crying woman with his hackles up which usually happened in the company of a sobbing female, he instead sat ramrod straight. In fact the action was pronounced enough to make the swing move. His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed as a fierce protectiveness washed over him. How did this happen? How could a beautiful woman such as this go unnoticed as a child? So much so that she went her entire life without being adopted by a set of loving parents? It was one of life’s many cruelties and he hated it. As a lawman he’d seen his fair share of cruelty to people, especially women.
His hands balled into fists for a moment before he suddenly took her in his arms and held her close. “I’m sorry Miss James. I’m sorry you’ve never had any one to belong to. I can’t imagine, can’t begin to fathom …”
She trembled in his arms and cried. He now understood her panicked display in town, what caused her to fall into such hysterics. It was like the icing on the proverbial cake of rejection. To finally think that for once in your life you were going to belong somewhere and to someone, only to be sent back …
Clayton shut his eyes tight against the realization he’d caused the woman in his arms such anguish. Worse, he didn’t realize he had until he and Spencer were bringing her back to the farm.
“There now, you don’t need to cry. You’re safe here, understand?” And Clayton suddenly realized she was. How could he possibly think of sending her back when he knew what she’d endured? Of course he would marry her and one day, (he hoped) they would come to love each other. But that could take time, Sarah’s death had left a hole in his heart the size of Texas and he wasn’t sure if anyone could fill it. But at least the woman in his arms would provide him with some company and fill the lonely nights in his bed.
“I … I … I’m sorry I’m being such a ninny. I don’t usually cry so much, it’s just that…”
“You don’t need to explain yourself, honey. You’ve been through more than anyone should. I’m glad you told me. It helps me make more sense of things.” He held her away from him and looked down at her. Even with tear filled eyes and a nose red from cold and crying she looked adorable in the moonlight. “Tomorrow you and ma can talk wedding details while I’m working. I’ll give her some money and when you’re up to it, the two of you can go into town and get what you need.”
She smiled at him like a child who’d just been given the best Christmas present in the world. “Oh thank you, Mr. Riley! Thank you!”
He gathered her into his arms again and held her close. He was going to have to get her out of the cold and into the house but couldn’t resist holding her a few minutes more. She fit into his embrace like a glove and he liked the feel of her small body wrapped in his strong arms. How he missed this! What had he been thinking all these years denying himself the company of a woman? Sarah had been gone for six years, six! Waiting for so long had done nothing but make him even lonelier, more bitter. But the woman in his arms was beginning to melt the winter in his heart. How aptly named she was! Summer. Summer to his cold, barren, wasteland of a life.
Of course, none of it meant Spencer was going to get out of the licking of his life! Clayton still wanted to kill him! If only for his pride’s sake! He inwardly chuckled at the thought before giving the woman in his arms a healthy squeeze.
“There now sugar, you just let me take care of everything and before you know it, you’ll be up and around and we’ll be married.”
“Thank you again, Mr. Riley!” She mumbled into his chest.
He smiled. “Don’t you think it’s time you started calling me Clayton?”
She sniffed back more tears and looked up at him. “Thank you, Clayton.”
He smiled again as he looked down at her and wiped some of her tears away with a finger. “What was I thinking all these years?”
“I beg your pardon?” She said between little hiccups.
He shook his head. “Nothing to concern yourself with, honey. Suffice to say I can be stubborn at times, not to mention stupid. You might as well know that about me.”
She wiped at what tears remained with the back of her hand. “I’m sure there’s a lot for us to learn about each other, especially since we never got the chance to write one another before hand.”
He stiffened slightly. “Ah, yes. Very true.” He took a deep breath. “I’d best get you back inside before you freeze to death.” He glanced to the sky beyond the porch and noticed the clouds rolling in. “I bet it snows later tonight.”
“Do yo
u get much snow here?”
“Depends, every year is a little different.”
“Do … do you get snow at Christmas time?”
Her voice was hopeful, childlike. It made the protectiveness within him double. He had to take another deep breath to steady himself. “Sometimes. I bet it does this year.”
“I’ve always wanted to see a white Christmas. To decorate a beautiful tree … to have presents to wrap and give.”
Good God! How much had she gone without by growing up an orphan? Clayton Riley made a vow right then and there. He was going to make sure he gave Summer James the best Christmas she ever had! How many other things had she been made to go without because of growing up the way she did? “You concentrate on healing up and I’ll see about the rest, alright?”
She looked up into his eyes, her face locked in shock. He knew then she’d never had the things he did growing up. Oh sure, the orphanage would have had some kind of Christmas holiday. But a poor orphanage might only have a little extra food at Christmas and nothing more. Had that been the type of place she’d been raised in?
He cupped her face with one large hand. “I’ll see to everything ya hear? Don’t you worry your pretty little head about any thing. This is going to be the best Christmas you’ve ever had.”
She burst into tears again, tears that for once made Clayton Riley smile. For these tears, were tears of relief and pure joy.
And it felt good, Clayton realized. Real good.
* * *
Summer relaxed against him as he picked her from the swing and carried her into the warm embrace of the house. The smell of apple pie and coffee hung in the air and she’d never thought she’d ever smelled anything so wonderful! In fact Summer felt so relieved she had trouble keeping her tears of joy at bay. Every time she thought about the words Clayton spoke, that they would be married soon enough and she needn’t worry about a thing, well … it was almost too good to be true! At last she would belong somewhere! Have a family to call her own, even a mother! And though she had yet to really get to know the Riley’s, Summer was sure she would come to love them all very quickly. Especially Clayton. She could fall in love with him quite easily, especially now that there was no doubt in her mind they were to be married! How wonderful! How blissful her life had suddenly become! She never dreamed anything like it could possibly ever happen to her!
