by Carol Arens
Matt prayed to be well on his way to California before his wife took up with another man.
* * *
Emma sat at a table beside the window of Del Monico’s, grateful for a few moments alone. Matt had escorted her inside, then remembered an errand that couldn’t wait. He’d promised to be back before she finished her wine.
She shouldn’t drink the wine at all. Her head spun like a leaf in the wind as it was. Her heart had flopped over in dizziness some time back.
Her husband had been jealous of Woodrow Vance! The signs of it had been clear as sunrise. Back at Sarah’s house, he’d gripped her hand and all but snarled at Sarah’s poor brother in spite of the tight, surface-friendly words he’d spoken.
Of course, Woodrow had been too smitten to notice. She’d be surprised if he’d even recognized that her name was Mrs. Suede.
But Emma felt the name. It warmed her more thoroughly than the wine on her tongue. It made her insides glow, like lightning bugs partying in her belly.
The front door opened and Billy walked in with Sarah Michaels on his arm. Matt’s cousin claimed that he wasn’t the marrying kind, but Sarah certainly brought a smile to his face. The pair greeted her, then took a table across the room.
She looked out the window. Across the street, a man lit a lamp in the gathering dusk. Someone began to bang out a frisky tune from the saloon next door. Matt came out of Rath and Wright’s, followed by Mr. Wright, who closed and locked the door behind him.
Over the tinny music Emma heard Matt singing while he crossed the street. As usual, the sound of his voice touched her soul, even though he sang the bawdy words that went to the saloon’s music.
When he stepped inside, he took off his hat and shook his hair. He smiled at her and crossed the crowded room with long bold strides.
The click of his boots on the wood floor made women’s heads turn. Their subtle gazes followed him all the way to the table. When he slid into the chair across from her she felt them sigh as deeply as she did.
“Your business didn’t take long,” she said.
Matt called for the waiter to bring him a tall whiskey.
“You look as pretty as sunset tonight, Emma.”
Matt reached across the table and covered her hand. His big calloused fist on her skin made the fireflies in her belly explode. If this tender touching was just for show, what might happen to her if it ever became sincere?
“You’re right handsome yourself, cowboy.” Emma squeezed his hand. It was such a subtle pressure that not a soul would know that it had happened, except Matt. She wanted him to understand that not every display of affection was for the benefit of the marshal. In fact, the lawman wasn’t even here.
The waiter brought Matt’s whiskey. He stood up, brought his chair to her side of the table and slid in beside her, sitting closer than casual friends would.
“It won’t be long until the house is finished.” He twirled his whiskey in the glass without drinking it. He watched it swirl, then put it down.
“It’s a fine house. More than I could ever have dreamed for.” The trouble was, lately her dreams hadn’t been only of the house. They had been of her and Matt together in the house. All alone in the bedroom of the house.
The waiter approached the table and Matt ordered dinner. Even though he claimed to be starved, he looked nervous, as though he were sitting on an anthill instead of a cushion.
He held her hand again, his thumb brushing her knuckles. It was all she could do not to clutch the red gingham tablecloth in wonder at his odd behavior.
“Is there something troubling you, Matt?”
“I wouldn’t call it trouble.” He looked up from their joined fingers. The amber heat of his gaze would have set her spinning if she hadn’t already been doing it. “There’s something I should have done some time back.”
Matt reached into his pocket and drew out a small velvet box.
“This is for you.”
“Mercy, you didn’t have to get me anything.” Lands! No one had ever given her anything in a velvet box. “But I’m pleased that you did.”
He lifted the lid on the box.
A gold band engraved with morning glories lay against the deep blue velvet.
“A wedding ring,” she whispered.
Matt plucked it from the box and slid it over her finger. It couldn’t have fit better if the jeweler had been standing beside her taking a measurement.
“I can’t figure what took me so long to think of it. You should have had it weeks ago.”
What a pretty thing it was, glowing in the light of the candle on the red tablecloth. A lump formed square in the middle of her throat. It ached nearly as much as her heart.
“I’ll make sure the marshal gets a good stare at it.” Words had trouble making their way past that blamed lump. If she could speak her piece without bawling like a baby for things that couldn’t be, she’d bless her stars. “I’ll only wear it to town. It won’t show a bit of wear. You’ll be able to sell it once you get to California.”
“This isn’t a show for the marshal or anyone else. You are my wife. I’d be pleased if you’d wear my ring. You can throw it in the creek tonight or keep it to remember me when we part ways. This is yours, darlin’, and the marshal be damned.”
“It’s lovely, Matt. I’ll be proud to wear it.”
Cream churned to butter couldn’t have melted her insides like his smile. The grin pulling at the crease in his cheek called to be kissed.
Just one kiss from her to him that didn’t have a blessed thing to do with escaping the hangman’s noose.
She would have done it, but Matt leaned toward her first. His lips came down upon hers. His hair brushed her cheek and smelled of grass and leather, new lumber and secret dreams.
Her left breast pressed tight to his shirt when his arm circled around her back. Somewhere out on the prairie on the long ride home, she’d make sure the other one got there, too. It didn’t matter that her marriage would be short, she would have it be true.
Matt lifted his lips from hers. He smiled and tapped the tip of her nose. She wanted so much more. For now she gazed down at the ring on her finger, dreaming of a future to go with the promise of the gold, even though it could never be.
A whisper of voices murmured through the dining room but Emma paid no attention.
“Get a lookie-see at the lovebirds,” a sneering voice said from beside the table. Matt’s arm tightened about her back.
“Go on about your business, Bart.”
“This would’ve been my business if you hadn’t gone and butted in.” Bart’s foul smile made Emma’s stomach lurch. Had she really considered wedding him? Praise be that Matt had come along!
“You have no dealings with my wife. You’d better move along before I take offense.”
Bart planted his boots, swaying beside the table.
“Looks like you didn’t hear the news, kissing up to the missus like you are. Hawker’s out. Plans on taking his time getting here to make you sweat, is what I hear. But he’s riding in.”
“You gone deaf, Bart? I told you to get out of here.”
It seemed that every soul in Del Monico’s had lost interest in their meal. Not a single fork clanged against a plate. She heard Hawker’s name whispered from every corner of the dining room.
“Lady, once that man of yours is worming in the grave, I’ve a notion to take his place—”
Lightning couldn’t have moved as fast as her husband. One moment Bart had been working his tongue at a sore on the corner of his lip and the next Matt had scooped him up by the seat of his pants and tossed him out the door of Del Monico’s.
Through the window she saw Bart come to rest in a horse trough, splashing and sputtering. He rolled out of the water but lost his balance and tumbled onto the dusty street. Quiet laughter tittered from one end of the restaurant to the other.
Matt stomped back inside and sat down at the table.
“I reckon old Bart needed a good mouth clean
ing,” he declared.
It looked to Emma as if Matt hadn’t truly minded giving it to him.
Even Billy, coming to stand beside the table, seemed pleased. Sarah stood next to him, fingers lightly on his arm. At least she had the good sense to look concerned.
“Emma,” Billy said. “I was just telling Sarah that we ought to have a party as soon as the house is finished, to show it off to the neighbors. What do you think?”
She thought it was a wonderful idea, but Matt looked as if someone had just added lemon to his whiskey.
Chapter Seven
One, two, three…one, two, three…slow, quick, quick. Emma waltzed about her new bedroom with her arms spread out wide and her head flung back. She closed her eyes to better savor the scent of new wood.
Right now the room was empty, the floor bare and the windows not yet sealed in glass. With her eyes closed, though, she saw it come to life. The rug she had ordered would be a cloud under her feet. The curtains would ride in on the breeze. The bed would be big and soft with a fine feather mattress.
Behind her eyes Matt lay on the mattress. One, two…trip, one, two, three. A lamp with the wick turned low sat on a bedside table. The imagined glow flickered over his bare chest and glimmered gold flames in his hair where it fanned out over a pillow.
He lifted his arm, his muscles flexed, beckoning her to join him.
One, two…stop. Emma lowered her arms, but her heart beat as if she’d danced all night without a break. She didn’t dare open her eyes for fear of losing the vision of Matt nearly nude on her soon-to-be-delivered bed.
A horse’s whinny and a pounding hammer threatened to bring her back to her empty room, but she clamped her eyelids tight and reached for Matt’s outstretched hand.
“Darlin’, you look as pretty as a daydream,” Matt said.
Just when she felt her thighs bunch up for a leap to the bed, the very real voice snapped her back to the here and now.
“Mercy! You ought to give a body warning if you mean to go peering through windows.”
“I’ll remember that.”
The brash grin slashing across his face along with the laughter glinting in his eyes promised that all he would remember is to sneak up more quietly.
With a tip of his hat and a salute with his hammer, Matt strode the length of the front porch.
Lord help her, summer would end long before she got the picture of him inviting her to bed out of her mind. It might plague her the rest of her days unless she did something about it.
Emma shook herself, flinging off the image as a dog would shake water off its fur. There were plenty of dreams in the kitchen that would keep her insides on a steady keel. She’d go in there now and enjoy a few draws on the new pump. She’d ponder the joys of baking biscuits and pies in her new, thoroughly modern oven.
Just like the bedroom, the kitchen smelled of new wood. The space was large and wonderful. The long table she had ordered from Bean’s Carpentry should be nearly finished. In a few more days it would be in the middle of this room ready to seat a dozen hungry people.
Not that she wanted a dozen hungry people at her table. That was far from her dream, and yet once again Matt invited himself right into her imagination. He sat at her table sipping coffee and grinning. And where had his shirt gotten to?
“That would have been a thing to see, Lucy.” Red’s voice rose through the window frame. “Billy says Pa grabbed old Bart by the pants seat and tossed him right in the horse trough.”
“Is Bart bad?”
“Bad and smelly.”
“Fluffy would bite him.”
“If it was me, I’d have shot him through for the thing he said to Emma.”
Mercy, but Matt was right to be worried about the boy. He seemed to think he could set the world to rights by a quick shot from the hip. It was a good thing Matt allowed the boy to carry a weapon only when he was on the homestead doing chores far from the house.
Emma leaned out the window. Red and Lucy sat on the deck just below the sill, each holding a puppy. She grabbed a handful of crimson hair and gave it a tug.
“You come inside this minute, young man. I can think of better things to fill your mind than making little wrongs into big ones.”
“Aw, Emma…” Red grunted, but he set his pup in Lucy’s lap and got up, stretching his young lanky body as he rose. “Matt never should have let him get away with it.”
“Matt’s had a lot more years of learning what to let folks get away with than you have.” Red didn’t walk around to the kitchen door—he curled his gangly body up and squeezed through the window. “Since you’ve got so much idle time, we’ll just put that mind of yours to work on something useful. Follow me around while I get supper ready. Recite your times tables.”
“I finished with school last year!”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have plenty to learn.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He followed her about like a paddling duckling while she did her chores. “Four times four is twenty-five. Six times six is thirty…four, or six.”
Emma sent up a silent prayer that the boy would learn self-control better than sums.
* * *
She’d had a week and a half to get Matt’s shirt back on him, but her mind had turned tail on her. Tonight and every night since, when she closed her eyes there he was, gleaming, bare chested and calling to her.
It didn’t help that she had now moved into her new house and was spending the first night in her new bed. This piece of furniture seemed to be haunted by the ghost of one not even departed. Indeed, the living man slept in sight of her bedroom window in the dugout with Billy and Red.
The curtains weren’t up yet, so she had a clear view of her old dirt home. The place hadn’t been as bad as one might have imagined, as long as one wasn’t fainthearted about bugs.
Nights in the soddie had been cozy with Lucy curled up against her heart, knowing that Matt was just on the other side of the door.
The new house was cleaner and larger, with a kitchen, parlor and two bedrooms. There was another room between the kitchen and her bedroom. She’d asked Matt what it was for, but he told her it was a surprise. She would find out when the time was right.
The time would have to be right soon. The house was finished. After the big celebration they had planned, he would have no reason to stay and every reason to leave. Each time they went to town someone had some speculation as to where Hawker might be. Some folks figured he was still as far away as Tombstone; others suspected he was here already, hiding out and biding his time.
If Matt was nervous about that possibility he didn’t show it. His smile rarely faltered and his song as he went about his daily chores was seldom blue.
Lying on her side, Emma gazed at the vast prairie beyond her window. She saw well beyond Pearl and Thunder’s corral and red barn all the way to her new trees. Matt had been right about the first ones—they hadn’t survived.
But these would. With the moonlight bright upon the land she might be able to see if Pendragon’s men cut her fences in the night. They’d done it once or twice already, but Billy and Matt had tied them up again before the cattle had had a chance to do any damage.
A figure stepped out of the dugout. Moonshine struck him with bright planes and deep shadows.
Matt went into the outhouse and came out a moment later. Instead of heading back toward the dugout, he sauntered toward the corral. He glanced back at the house once or twice before he climbed up on the fence rail to sit.
Because of the moon, the land was as light as if it had been lit by a lamp, but speckled with cold shadows that might be hiding secrets.
Did he imagine Hawker concealed in them, as she did?
Emma pushed herself up on her elbow. She ought to go to him, to hold him so that he knew…
Knew what? That she would stand by him through it? That he didn’t need to face his fears alone? She could imagine herself out there now, telling him to come to bed. What wife wouldn’t comfort her man
with her body?
She sat up. Her feet touched the cool wood on her floor. She reached for her robe spread over the foot of the bed.
Her bedroom door eased open inch by inch. Lucy’s curly blond head peered around it level with the doorknob.
“Mama Emma, I can’t sleep in my new bed. It’s scary.”
Emma opened her arms and Lucy dashed across the floor. They tumbled together in the center of the big feather mattress.
With a long sigh, Lucy snuggled into her arms and fell asleep.
From his perch on the fence, Matt had turned to look at the house. She held his gaze, although he wouldn’t know it.
But would he feel her? Would he guess what might have happened had Lucy not come in? Would his heart feel how hers melted away in her chest just watching him sitting in the summer moonlight?
Would he know that she’d made up her mind to be a real wife for the days they had left?
* * *
“When’s Papa coming home?”
Emma hoped it would be before the biscuits finished baking, but the timeliness of a trip to town couldn’t always be predicted.
“Go to the parlor window and look out.”
Lucy padded across the floor, with her slippers kissing whispers against the wood.
Emma opened the oven door to check on the stew baking alongside the biscuits. It wasn’t the finest of baking skills, to open and close the door so often, but she couldn’t get enough of feeling the weight of her own oven door in her hand.
“I still don’t see him and it’s getting dark!” Lucy called from the parlor.
Not only was it getting dark, but rain was coming.
Murky clouds built one on top of another until the sky to the north resembled great heaps of dirty laundry.
By the looks of the storm, it meant to be a vicious one. If Matt didn’t get home before it broke, it would delay him for hours. Wagon wheels and mud had a way of sucking at each other.
Emma took the stew from the oven and set it on the stovetop to keep warm. She removed the pan of biscuits and set it on top of the pot. Matt would need a warm meal when he came in.
