Harlequin Historical November 2015, Box Set 2 of 2

by Lynna Banning

  That he was still young and strong and could recover from a head trauma. That he didn’t give up without a fight. That he’d be damned if he’d be cooped up in a hospital room for one more hour on this glorious fall morning.

  He moved slowly forward. The air smelled of burning leaves and fresh bread from Uncle Charlie’s bakery. He dragged in a deep breath and sent up a quiet prayer of thanks that he was alive and well. Relatively well, anyway. At least he would be in a day or two.

  That thought stopped him cold a scant three yards from his front porch steps. When Doc Graham assured her Zane was well, Winifred would return to St. Louis. His chest ached at the knowledge.

  It was pure hell saying goodbye to her after each visit to Smoke River. After she climbed on that train and rolled away from him he couldn’t sleep for days afterward. Or eat. Or stop thinking about her.

  He forced his legs to carry him up the six steps, and sank his shaking frame onto the porch swing. His pulse pounded, but at least his head didn’t ache.

  Samuel told him he was lucky he hadn’t woken up blind or unable to talk or impaired in some other way from a brain injury. He wondered if he could still make love.

  Might be too soon to explore that possibility.

  He leaned his head back against the cushion and thought about it. Under the freshly laundered and ironed shirt he’d borrowed from Samuel he could feel sweat rolling down his chest. Elvira confessed she had burned his own shirt after the accident. He wore his own trousers; at least they hadn’t been blood-soaked. The knee was ripped, though. Wing Sam could mend it.

  The smell of coffee drifted to his nostrils and suddenly he was hungry for anything as long as it wasn’t hospital oatmeal. Maybe Yan Li would make those little flavorful pancakes. He’d try standing up in another minute; if he could make it through the front door, he could feed Rosemarie her breakfast.

  A smile tugged at his mouth. He slipped inside the house and dropped quietly into his chair at the head of the dining table. From the kitchen came the soft chatter of Sam and Yan Li, punctuated by the clank of pots and the hiss of the teakettle on the woodstove.

  Dear God in heaven, thank You for my life.

  Sam stepped in to lay out plates and napkins and swallowed a cry of surprise. “Boss! What you doing here?”

  “Waiting for breakfast,” Zane said as calmly as he could.

  Yan Li appeared behind Sam and gave a yelp. “Oh! Oh!” she cried. She clapped her small hand over her mouth and tears sparkled in her dark eyes.

  “Missy upstairs with daughter,” Sam volunteered. “You want coffee?”

  “I want coffee all right. Lots of it.”

  Sam disappeared into the kitchen and after a moment Yan Li stepped forward and set a plate and a cup and saucer before him. “Very glad to see you,” she said softly. “I make pancakes?”

  Zane could only nod. Damn but it was wonderful to be home, hearing his daughter’s prattle from upstairs, and Winifred’s quiet responses. One of these days maybe he’d understand more of Rosemarie’s rapid-fire sentences. Winifred’s were clear enough, but he wondered how on earth she knew what Rose was chattering about.

  And then there she was in the doorway, radiant in a yellow shirtwaist and a dark skirt. “Zane!”

  He tried to rise to his feet but gave up. His legs were still trembling after the climb up the hill. “I’d get up, Winifred, but I don’t think I can.”

  “Are you crazy? However did you get here?”

  “Walked. I’ve been practicing. Every time Samuel left the hospital I walked up and down the halls.”

  Rosemarie squealed and wanted to crawl into his lap, so he bent to lift her up. She twined her tiny hands into the overlong hair at his neck and he laughed with pleasure despite his burgeoning headache.

  Sam brought coffee, filled their cups and disappeared into the kitchen. They drank in silence, listening to the baby’s stream of unintelligible syllables.

  “Oh, Zane, it is so good to hear you laugh.”

  “It’s good to be able to laugh without my head feeling like a rocket’s gone off inside. I’ve never been more aware of the blessings in my life.”

  “It is unfortunate one has to get himself almost killed to gain such a perspective,” she said drily. “Now that you are well, or almost well, I can allow myself to feel all the anger and fear I’ve stuffed down over the past seven days.”

  Zane set his coffee cup carefully onto the matching saucer. “Anger about what, Winifred? I am well aware the new term must have started at your conservatory.”

  “Yes, it has. A week ago.”

  “And you are missing it.” He couldn’t look at her, afraid of what he would see in her face.

  “I...I sent the director a telegram.”

  Zane lifted his cup, cradled it in both hands and waited. He didn’t think he could stand letting her go back to St. Louis, at least not until he was stronger.

  Maybe never. What the hell kind of life was this with Winifred in St. Louis and him here in Smoke River?

  No life at all.

  “I can’t ask you what you said in that telegram. Don’t tell me now. Let me have just a bit more time with you without knowing when it has to—”

  Winifred sent him an oddly naked look and his breath stopped.

  “Rooney Cloudman mentioned the Jensens’ harvest dance, this Saturday, Zane. Do you think you will feel up to going?”

  “What day is today?”

  “Tuesday.”

  Four days. He’d give anything to dance with Winifred again, hold her close in his arms and feel her warmth against his body. “I’ll be there.”

  A deeper, unspoken question lay between them and Zane knew she wondered about that, too. He wondered about it, as well. But by God if he could dance in four days, he might be able to...

  There was no way to practice for what he had in mind, he acknowledged with a wry smile. He’d just have to wait and see.

  * * *

  Winifred watched Zane stagger in with a double load of firewood and dump it in the kitchen wood box with a thump. She tried to tamp down her fury at his pushing himself. At this rate he would be back in the hospital by Saturday, not at the Jensens’ barn social.

  The man was maddening. He refused to listen when she urged him to rest, avoided any mention of the headaches she knew still plagued him and resolutely shut his ears at her cautionary remarks.

  Sam took her aside after breakfast, his face worried.

  “Boss do too much, missy.”

  “I know, Sam. But just try and stop him. Zane is more stubborn than...than...”

  “Bull ox,” the Chinese man supplied.

  “Two bull oxen,” she added in exasperation.

  Sam lifted his hands in a gesture of resignation and headed back to the kitchen. Winifred stepped into the library, opened the volume of Sir Walter Scott and pretended to read.

  Rosemarie was napping. Zane, too, should be resting, but instead he plopped down in his favorite wingback chair opposite her and waited until she glanced up.

  “I’m going swimming.”

  “Whaaat?”

  “I said I’m going swimming. Alone.”

  She stared at him. “Why?”

  “Why am I going swimming or why am I going alone?”

  She clapped the book closed. “Both,” she retorted.

  “Because I need to swim laps to build up my strength and because I won’t want you nagging at me to stop.”

  “When have I ever nagged at you?” Her voice, she noted, had gone up an octave.

  “It’s true you don’t nag, Winifred. But you would this time, and I don’t have the energy to both swim and argue with you.”

  Fury swamped her reason. “You are the most unreasonable, difficult, pigheaded—”

>   He stood up suddenly, seized her by the shoulders and pulled her out of her chair. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I intend to dance with you. All night.” He caught her face in his hands and kissed her, hard.

  “At least take the buggy, Zane,” she said when she could breathe again.

  “Nope. I’m taking the horse. Need the exercise.” He kissed her again, more slowly. “Go ahead and nag, Winifred. I’m getting to like it.”

  Out at the swimming hole he swam twenty laps, rested an hour, then swam another twenty. He was dead tired afterward, but he wasn’t sorry. If Winifred had come with him he would have spent all his time looking at her and forgotten why he needed to do this.

  Tomorrow night at Jensens’ dance he would look his fill.

  Chapter Twenty

  Zane drove the buggy out to the Jensen place on Saturday evening. The balmy evening air smelled of some kind of spicy roses and Winifred looked so enticing in the low-necked pale blue gown it made his heart hurt.

  His body was strong enough for anything tonight; the question that nagged him was whether he was strong enough to let her go back to St. Louis afterward.

  He’d been careful not to ask about her leaving, not to press her on the matter for fear he would hear something he wasn’t ready to hear. But he couldn’t stand not knowing much longer. He had to have an answer soon.

  Tin can lanterns lit the path to the barn door. Inside it was a jumble of noise and potluck supper aromas and the raucous sound of the musicians—two fiddles, a guitar and a banjo, and the familiar washtub bass plucked by a shiny-faced Whitey Poletti. Children raced around the perimeter of the polished plank floor and young mothers sat on the sidelines nursing babies and gossiping.

  A very pregnant Nellie Bruhn, Ike’s wife, clung to the plaster cast protecting her husband’s broken arm. Zane said a silent prayer that she would not go into labor tonight. He had other things to do besides help a new life into the world.

  “Cider, Doc?” Rooney Cloudman stood behind the plank bar.

  “Sure.”

  “Hard or soft?”

  Zane glanced across the room where Winifred stood surrounded by Leah MacAllister, Sarah Cloudman and Ellie Johnson. Winifred outshone every woman in the room.

  “Hard, Rooney. Make it a double.” Suddenly he remembered that first Christmas dance, when he’d first begun to realize he had feelings for Winifred. Feelings, hell. He’d wanted her so much his groin had ached.

  As it did now.

  Rooney’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows rose, but he poured four fingers of dark amber liquor into a glass and handed it over. Zane sipped and circled the room. Sooner or later Winifred would look at him, and then he’d pull her away from her circle of admirers and hold her in his arms.

  Sheriff Jericho Silver sat on the sidelines with his wife and their handsome twin boys. Zane saluted her with his glass. Lucky man, Jericho. Or Johnny, as the townspeople called him. Running for judge in next summer’s election. Life moved on.

  By next summer Sam and Yan Li would have a new baby and...

  And what? Where would Winifred be? Here, with him? Or back East at the conservatory with a dozen piano students and a concert series?

  He found himself gravitating toward her, and all at once she looked up and saw him. She’d done her hair differently tonight, longer, with more waves at her neck. He wanted to lace his fingers through it.

  He cut through the gaggle of people around her and drew her away. “Come with me.” Halfway across the room he swung her into his arms.

  “Thank you,” she breathed. “I was drowning.” She reached for the glass of cider he still held in one hand, tipped it up and drained it. Tears came to her eyes.

  Zane chuckled.

  “I always do that,” she gasped. “I forget it isn’t lemonade.”

  “I can get some lemonade for you if you like.”

  “No. I would rather dance with you.”

  His breath stopped. “Thank God,” he murmured near her ear.

  Suddenly the air between them was charged. And just as suddenly Zane found himself terrified that this—tonight—would not go as he hoped.

  He lifted the cider glass out of her hand, set it on a bench at the edge of the dance floor and folded Winifred into his arms. Doubtless she could feel his heart thumping under his white linen shirt, but she said nothing, just glanced up at him with a mysterious smile in her eyes.

  He wanted to stop right there and kiss her senseless. And then take her straight home to his bed.

  She must have heard his groan because she halted abruptly and looked up again. “Zane? What is wrong?”

  Everything was wrong. He loved her. Wanted her. And he knew that as soon as he could dance a whole evening of reels and waltzes, as soon as he was strong enough after getting smacked in the head by a log twice the thickness of any man in this room, as soon as he was fully recovered, she would get on the train back to St. Louis. When she thought he didn’t need her any longer, she would leave him.

  “What is it?” she repeated.

  He couldn’t answer. “Nothing is wrong,” he lied. “Just dance with me.”

  She lifted her arms. He caught both her hands and pressed them to his chest, curling the fingers of one hand over them to hold them against his thudding heart. He curved his left arm around her back and breathed in the scent of her hair. Lilacs and something sweet, honeysuckle? He moved his hand to press her face into his neck, then slid his fingers up her spine.

  “Zane,” she whispered. “People are watching us.”

  “Let them watch.”

  He didn’t speak again until the fiddles struck up a reel and couples lined up opposite each other. He hated to let her go, but he enjoyed watching her from across the expanse of plank floor separating the line of dancers. Her cheeks were flushed and she was smiling across into his eyes. If he lived to be a hundred, he would remember this moment and the look on her face.

  The lines advanced toward each other, bowed to their partners and then retreated. He and Winifred were the head couple. They met again in the center of the floor and he grasped her tight and swung her around and around, then released her. It was the last thing he wanted to do.

  And when she danced again into the center and Thad MacAllister swung her, Zane shut his eyes. He wanted no man to lay his hands on her, not even his very married friend Thad. Primal male jealousy, he guessed. He might laugh at himself if he didn’t feel so possessive of the treasure that Winifred was. If he could be sure she was truly his and not the coveted darling of some music professor back East.

  He wondered why he’d never been like this about Celeste. He knew he had loved her, but it had been a young love, one born of enchantment and losing his head. What he felt for Winifred was different. More gradual. More real.

  And deeper.

  That was why it was so important.

  He lasted through the reel, four or five two-steps and another reel before he had to call it quits. It wasn’t his strength that was giving out, it was his capacity for torturing himself. She was so close, held in his arms, smiling up at him, her eyes soft, but still it wasn’t close enough.

  One more slow waltz, he decided. Just one.

  He very nearly didn’t make it to the end. His pulse wouldn’t calm down to a manageable rate; his groin ached so much he fought against dancing her outside and pressing her hard against his swollen member.

  She rested her forehead against his shoulder, humming along with the fiddles as they sobbed their way through “Red River Valley.”

  He jerked them to a stop. “Let’s go. I’m taking you home.”

  Without a word, she nodded and went to gather up her lacy blue shawl. She stopped to speak to Sarah Cloudman and Leah MacAllister, then to admire Jericho and Maddie Silver’s one-year-old twins. Finally, finally, she returne
d to where Zane waited by the barn entrance. With a final smile and a wave, she took his arm and then they were outside in the soft autumn night.

  The moon rose high, washing the road with silvery light and illuminating Winifred’s face. After a mile or so she scooted closer and laid her head on his shoulder.

  He reined the horse to a halt and pulled her into his arms.

  “Kiss me,” she whispered. She lifted her face.

  They shared two of the most shattering kisses he’d ever experienced. He couldn’t tell who was trembling harder, Winifred or himself.

  He lowered his mouth to the bare skin above the neckline of her dress and breathed in her scent. She moaned softly and he tore himself away and lifted the reins. It was time for everything he’d planned all these long weeks.

  He drove the buggy around to the back of the house, unhitched the horse and fed it a handful of oats while Winifred lingered on the back stoop. Praying that Rosemarie was asleep in Sam and Yan Li’s room, he tiptoed in the back kitchen door, holding Winifred’s hand tight in his. He said nothing until they reached the top of the stairs, then he gently turned her to face him.

  “I want you to stay with me tonight.”

  She reached both arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “Oh, Zane, I thought you would never ask.”

  She slipped his top shirt button free, and with a stifled sound he scooped her up and kneed open his bedroom door. Setting her on her feet he reached behind her to turn the lock.

  “Were we as scandalous at the dance tonight as I felt?” she murmured.

  “Probably, yes. Do you care?”

  “No. I felt idiotically happy all evening, dancing with you.”

  He began undoing the buttons of her dress. They ran all down the front to her hemline, but when he reached those below her waist she skimmed the gown over her hips and let it drop to the floor.

  “Scandalous,” she whispered. “Such a wonderful feeling.”

  He pressed his lips to her temple, behind her ear, to the soft, fine skin of her neck, and her breathing stuttered. “Scanda—”

  Zane laughed gently and caught Winifred’s mouth under his. Oh, mercy, she thought. He had never kissed her like this before. He urged her lips open and she suddenly felt hot all over, as if thousands of stars were dancing on her skin.