by Jillian Hart
His boots came off in the lean-to with a thud. Judging by the rustle of his clothes, he was shuffling off his coat and hanging it up along with his hat. He ambled into the kitchen, bringing with him the scent of a winter's night air and fresh hay from the barn. "Smells good in here."
"I'm a good cook, or I like to think so, but the ladies at the Thurman's sure know how to do it better and so I can't claim credit for the aroma or the tasty food, but I surely do hope it's a treat for you and for Jack."
"A treat? That's about the tastiest aroma I've ever breathed in." He ambled over to the basin to wash his hands. "It smells too fancy to be consumed by the likes of me."
"You look fine and fancy enough to me."
"Is that so?" A smile touched the corners of his mouth, hooking his sculpted lips upward, adding charm to a face that made her heart beat faster. He set the bar of soap back in its saucer and rubbed his hands together, suds building. "Whatever I am, I'm not quality enough to share a meal with you. Thanks for doing me the honor."
Then he reached for the water pitcher, back to her as she returned to the stove to stir the pot. He rinsed with quick efficiency, and she grabbed a fresh hand towel and held it out to him. The curve of his smile lingered on his mouth like the promise of a kiss as he reached out to take it from her, and she felt the cold from being outside radiate off him and seep into the air between them, making her shiver. At least, she thought it was due to the cold and not from her attraction to the man.
She liked him, but she didn't want to be physically desiring him and she couldn't stop it, regardless of how she tried. Just the same way she could not keep from remembering that first night when she'd tended his wound and washed the blood from his side and ribcage. The heat of his skin, the masculine-hot and slightly salty scent of him filled her head and she swayed with the power of the memory. The images reared up, unbidden and unexpected, and she well remembered his partial nakedness and his overwhelming masculinity even now beneath his wool shirt and trousers.
Breathe in and stop staring at him, Saydee, she ordered to herself, but it didn't seem to help. The chowder steamed, rising up in delicious potato-y smelling wafts that bathed her face and she gulped in air, attempting to make her brain and body go back to normal. But she failed, admiring how he'd looked warrior-strong even while drying his hands and hanging up the towel on its hook, unconscious of her heated reaction to him, if only she could stop the awareness flashing through her. Blood coursed through her veins, throughout her body, her heart fluttering hard and refusing to stop. What was she going to do about that?
He looked more handsome and more invincible every time she gazed upon him, and that was her own fault. She should never have let down her guard and her loneliness was the reason, that's what she insisted, and not desire. She didn't want to feel desire for this man. Anyone could see that he was not the staying sort.
"Here, let me finish up here. I'm not one for sitting around doing nothing and being provided for by a lady. You worked all day." He took the hot pad from her hand with what looked like regret carved on his face, softening him, making him more real, a chink in his armor. Her hand trembled as she let go and stepped back, watching as he opened the warmer door.
"My job isn't hard work and something tells me you did a lot of hard work around this place today instead of resting. The barn door didn't look like it had a little sag in it, the way it used to."
"Nope not any more. It wasn't much to do, just to fix the hinge and re-hang it, that's all. Any man worth his salt would find that job not work at all." He set the platter on the nearby trivet and the hot pad she'd quilted right next to it. "If there's anything else you could use help with around here, you just say the word. I don't know how much time I have here before I've got to get heading out to lead Brant away from you."
"Me? You're still looking a bit feverish and with that injury, you should not go anywhere, especially for my sake."
"You have a good sheriff in this town, or so rumor has it." A muscle in his jaw jumped. "But that's not good enough. There is nothing worse than seeing the people around you hurt or killed because they helped you, and I'm a marked man. There's no escaping that and no changing it. Or I would do it, I'd move mountains for Jack's sake. He's not safe if I don't lead them away with me."
"His health is still too frail to move right now. He has to be over the croup completely or it will go into his lungs. Pneumonia can be deadly."
"True, and I know it." He took a step closer into the reach of the light as he lifted the pot from the stove by the handle, exposing more of his face to her sight. Sorrow was etched in the pinch of his dark eyes and in the rigid line of his mouth, and he looked to be both lawman-hard and gentle-hearted man. "My instinct tells me to get moving and don't stop. Brant might not be working alone, even with Henson down, so there could be more of them. Not tomorrow, maybe not a week from now, but the outlaws hunting me aren't going to stop. Not unless I head for Canada and keep ahead of them to lead them away."
"But you need time to recover, and Jack can't travel in winter weather yet."
"I never said that I'd be leaving with him. I won't endanger him more than I have to." He left the last potion in the pan, leaving Jack's bowl empty, set out on the counter too. Heat curled in fragrant, mouth-watering wisps and he smelled what had to be heavy cream and butter, along with generous cubes of what looked like perfectly seasoned potatoes. He set the pan on a trivet to cool. "Don't think that I haven't been tortured by this. All I can think about is that the bullet meant for me could have hit him instead. I can't live with that. This is my fault, this is because of my job, and I came here for a reason."
He surprised her by taking the bowls to the table, one at her place setting and one at his. He glanced into the parlor where the boy and dog napped, and looked lost for a moment, no longer like a man fighting for justice in a losing battle but more like a father who loved his little son with all his might.
"You came here for a reason?" She asked with a tremble in her voice, grabbing the butter bowl even as his gait padded back to the counter to fetch the steaming bundle of baked rolls. She knew so little about Winn McMurphy, but she knew what he'd endured in that orphanage. Like her, she suspected he'd suffered with enough loneliness to break his heart, with hopeless days knowing no parent was either alive to care for him, or, like her widowed mother, did not care enough. She knew the cost to a child's heart of the wound of needing love when there was no chance of it. And, as a child, he would have been alone without anyone to care, ever, to ever come and get him. Tears stung her eyes and pooled there, shimmering.
"I came looking for you." He pulled back the middle part in the curtain and snow was falling against the dark glass in lazy, waltzing flakes. He let the curtain's edge go and turned towards her. His gaze pierced hers with a heart-felt question. "I need your help, Saydee."
"I knew you were going to say that." She couldn't endure this torture of starting to care and knowing her silly, lonely heart was too vulnerable and feeling what she really shouldn't. Caring, so sharp it hurt, cut through her. She didn't know how to stop her foolish heart from falling a little bit toward him and glanced through the length of the house to the bed nestled a safe distance, but close enough to the fire for the flames to clearly illuminate the sweet little boy nestled up with one arm around her dog.
Of course she was going to help. Of course she was going to care. McMurphy's gaze trailed along her cheek and the side of her face like a tangible touch, both heated and warm-hearted, and from where she stood she could feel his powerful determination to prevail radiating from him like heat from the stove.
A man always wanted something, that was what her mother always said, and those words came back to her now. Whew, it bothered her that she'd changed so much since she'd been married. Becoming a widow had changed her, but so had the hardship of living in her mother's household after having to sell the small farm she'd once bought with her husband with every hope for happiness in the world.
It was a good thing she'd left her mother's unhappy household when she did, because she hated to think that the woman's constant caustic and dim view and belief that people were to be a benefit or tossed away as not useful would always be a wound in her family, in her past and in her life. She didn't want to think that she'd changed so much from the girl full of good intentions that Winn likely remembered and expected her to be.
She'd known the gentleness of love and the comfort of a couple years of marriage, and she had to believe that Winn had that same experience. That he had in him the greatness and the experience of that kind of depth of love. She'd certainly seen clues of that in the way he cared for his son.
"Go ahead and sit down." He pulled out her chair. "Let's eat. I'm not sure I want to wake Jack. Sleep is good for him."
"The soup will keep until he's hungry. It shouldn't be much longer. He needs sleep to heal." Saydee's gaze lingered on the child, sleeping in the next room and the look was so feminine and caring, it set Winn's heart to beating off rhythm. She waltzed closer, her blue eyes full of devotion, and his feelings tightened on the back rung of the chair he'd drawn out and held as she stepped closer and then in front of him, allowing him to help her. As she sat down, so dear and sweet, it hit him hard how much he could come to care for her and the difficulty of what he had to do.
He might as well just up and say it. "I want to leave Jack with you, Saydee."
"What? What did you say?"
"You heard me right." He released his hold on her chair, after giving it a little scoot and circled over to his own chair. One glance told him the boy still slept. That was good and for the best, especially now that snow was falling. He settled down into his chair. "He needs a real home and someone to truly care for him, if I can't do it. I have no one else. Only you, Saydee."
"That isn't right. You just can't leave him. He needs his father." And even as the words left her lips, the truth of the situation darkened her dream-blue eyes and made the tears pooled in them shimmer. "I don't know why I'm saying that to you. You've been left in an orphanage. You know what I meant."
"And then you must know why I came to you." He watched her chin wobble, and her hand gripping her spoon tremble, unsteady with emotion that changed the air between them. He breathed in the warmth of the baked potato soup, realized that she'd slipped a plate of sliced ham and the butter bowl on the table, which had escaped his notice, and reached for the butter. He was glad his hands were as steady as his voice and he was able to hide his longing for her, his wish to change the situation and the regret that hung on him like despair. "I need you to take Jack for me and keep him well."
She didn't look up from buttering her dinner roll, but she put down her knife and her pretty bow-shaped mouth drew tight and tears sparkled in her eyes, hovering there, as if refusing to fall. She set down the roll, too, and she fisted her small hands, taking a moment to hold back her feelings, as if holding back her whole heart.
As she sat there, he wanted to reach across the table and brush the soft, rosy curve of her cheek, where those tears had not yet fallen, yearning to feel the peach satin of her skin and know the way it felt to touch her, to run his fingertips across the silk of her cheek and then the delicate cut of her jawline to her softly sculpted chin.
Would she say no? He had to wonder, heart hammering like a drum, as she let out a soft, pent-up breath and yet she looked as if every muscle was tensed and held tight. Pain shadowed her eyes as she opened her pearl-pink mouth. "I know why you are asking and what you need. You don't think you'll be able to come back for him."
"True."
She bowed her head, golden blond curls cascading over her shoulders. The soup steamed, the fire in the grate popped and the clock ticked as a full minute went by. She remained immobile, caught in sorrow for him, unable to say more.
Finally, he broke the silence. "I need you to say yes. Please say that you'll do it."
Her eyes shadowed with what looked like memories, and those glimmering tears began to fall. Maybe she remembered the orphanage, he wondered, and didn't know how to tell her about that lost heart-dying boy he'd been so long ago. The sound of boots stomping snow off the treads on the steps outside the back door made Winn's heart catch and adrenaline fire into his bloodstream. He heard the thump of boots drumming across the porch and he bolted out of his chair.
I don't need more trouble. He unsnapped his holster and headed for the window. Between the ruffled edges of muslin he saw a slight woman's shadow stop in front of the back door. A hood draped her head, disguising any characteristics of her face that might reveal her identity. He felt Saydee's presence like a whisper beside him, music that matched his heart's beat, and he breathed in lilac and his own trepidation.
"Oh, no." Her breath caught. "It's my cousin."
16
How was she going to explain this? She had a man and his son in her house unchaperoned! Saydee marched toward the door with a panicked knell. Nola couldn't have come unannounced at a worse time. Then again, that was just her luck and her cousin's advantage!
Dread filled her, wondering just how likely it was that word would get out about Winn staying here because if it did, her reputation here would be destroyed. Entirely and totally, never to be resurrected beyond ruined. She rolled her eyes, heart tap-tap-tapping, doing her best not to see the doom that could come, like getting fired from her job, a job she needed like life itself. She had no one else to depend on, only herself.
She gripped the knob and tugged open the door, just as her cousin was giving the knob a turn. Nola tumbled through the doorway, across the threshold and into the little entryway dusted with snow and bringing little dancing white flakes in with her.
"My sweet Saydee, you look completely exhausted." Her cousin swept to a stop and pushed her hood off her head, her fine black wool cloak flowing around her. She lowered a snowy basket to the floor before pulling off her wool mittens. "I'm glad I followed my gut instincts and came to check up on you. Aside from the fact that Ma went out of control in the kitchen baking up angel food cakes, of all things, and we had two extra, so you are the recipient of that and half the ham she had cured and baked for extra. You know how we worry about you eating well enough to keep in good health, when it's just you to cook for on the weekends. Oh, it's cold out there. Pardon me for just barging in."
Saydee was used to not getting a word in edgewise and accepted the snowy cloak her cousin shrugged out of and then whipped off her scarf and wool cardigan on underneath They busily hung up the outerwear on the wall pegs, listening to the tick of the mantle clock, the snap and pop of the fire in the grate and Nola's cheerful conversation. "I can see you're doing just fine, but you know how Ma worries about you living all alone out here, and in truth this gives me a reason to get out of the house and steal a little privacy. Oh, it's barely just starting to snow harder again, but Pa says we might be in for another big storm, but no blizzard, he was clear about that."
"Is your horse standing outside?"
"No, I tucked him in the stable for a quick stay. Oh, it smells like potato chowder in here, and uh, goodness, who is that handsome man?"
"Cousin Nola, I would like you to come into the kitchen and meet my guest, just someone I met long ago. He knew my brother well."
"Edwin?"
"Yes. In the orphanage. Of course, the boys lived in a separate half of the dormitory and I hardly saw him and barely ever talked to him, we both were so shy and he was years older." Saydee saw the sympathy and caring change and deepen on her older cousin's face and light her eyes. Maybe Nola would understand about her desire and her need to help McMurphy, and not just because she was a softy at heart but because someone finally needed her. And she knew what it felt like to have no one to help in this sometimes difficult, lonely world. "I'd like you to meet Winn McMurphy."
His step knelled with authority and masculine power as he moseyed a few paces closer with his big, brawny fists loosely balled at his sides, wide shoulders squared and his tousled dark locks of
hair tumbling down over his forehead like a western dream of a man. A faint smile touched his mouth, softening the line of his iron jaw, his whiskery stubble making him look deliciously handsome. He nodded in greeting and held out his hand. "Good to meet you, Saydee's cousin."
"Call me Nola." The newcomer gave a ladylike bob of a her head in greeting. "Saydee, you didn't tell me that you have a beau! Why not? I'm your best cousin, practically the best one you could ever have for as long as you live. How could you keep this from me?"
"I didn't keep it from you, as much as I didn't get much of a chance to explain." She felt a little helpless and relieved that no judgement and nothing less than pure delight sparkled in Nola's eyes.
"You can call me Winn." He stepped back to draw out a third chair from the table for Nola to settle into. "It's a pleasure to meet you, why don't you sit right on down here and you two women can chat. I'll take my meal into the parlor. Can I get you something to eat?"
"My, I don't know what to say, but I've already eaten, thank you, and if I need something to eat I'll just cut myself a piece of the cake I brought." Nola slipped onto the cushion and peered up at the man appraisingly. "I don't know you, and I know everyone in town. Every single soul." Nola smiled, flushed with pleasure at the prospect of all this exciting news she had just stumbled on. "Tell me what you do for a living."
"Right now, I'm just visiting, and that's all I feel comfortable saying."
Saydee set the basket on the nearby counter. "Jack still looks sound asleep."
"I'll go check on him. Excuse me, ladies." He grabbed his bowl, plate and spoon and moseyed away, leaving her more than embarrassed, blushing and full up with pleasure.
