by Merry Farmer
Bebe threw her sewing on the table, on the verge of bursting into tears. She was ready to take it all back, everything she’d been thinking just moments before. She was fighting to save a home that felt more like torture than a place to rest. Hubert had betrayed her, and she didn’t trust him as far as she could see him, but Vivian and Melinda made her life a living hell. If only she had the wherewithal to pack her bags and leave town to start a new life, the way Hubert had. She’d even consider a life as a prostitute, or maybe a new life in England, like Bonnie Horner had found for some of her girls years back, if she could just leave this senselessness behind her.
“Will you two please stop fighting?” she shouted, standing and kicking her chair back.
“I will not be spoken to like that.” Vivian jumped to her feet too. “I’m working my fingers to the bone trying to figure out why the ranch is in such dire shape, and you’re no help at all.”
“No help at all?” Bebe balked, her mouth dropping open. “I’m marrying Price to save this pile of dirt.”
“It is not a pile of dirt, it is our home,” Melinda gasped.
“If you care about it so much, why don’t you marry Price?”
“Don’t be absurd,” Melinda squeaked, turning puce and looking as though she might vomit. “I would never debase myself for a man the way—”
“The way I am?”
Melinda snorted. “You said it.” She crossed her arms and tilted her chin up.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Vivian snapped, glaring at Bebe.
“Me? Why?”
“Price is a noble and handsome man. He comes from a good family. He’s gone out of his way to do things for us without any promise of reward.”
“Fine. Then you marry him,” Bebe shouted.
“I asked. He didn’t want me,” Vivian yelled back, then recoiled as though she’d spoken out of turn. Her face went red, and she slapped a hand over her mouth. A moment later, her eyes went glassy. “He said I was too old and used up and that no one wanted a withered thistle when they could have a juicy peach.”
For a second, for the barest hint of a heartbeat, Bebe felt sorry for her older sister. She should have known that Vivian fancied Price on some level. The two of them would have made a much better match than she and Price would. And after the wretched marriage to their cousin Rance that Vivian had endured, maybe she deserved a sliver of happiness.
But before Bebe could voice any of those thoughts, Melinda said, “I can only imagine the kind of juiciness that a little harlot like Bebe would present to a man.”
“Melinda!” Bebe whirled to her sister, hot with rage. “Do you actually think I would stoop so low?”
Melinda tilted her chin up and sniffed. “The way you went after that Strong piece of trash makes me wonder what you’ve already given away to Price to keep him interested.”
“I would never let Price take liberties before we’re married,” Bebe protested, sickened at the thought.
Vivian snorted. Melinda made a face at Bebe. “Once a whore, always a whore.”
“I am not…I never….” She was too angry to finish her protests, and even more furious when Vivian and Melinda both looked at her as though she were either lying or stupid or both.
And that was what she was working so hard to be so loyal to. She was ruining her life for a pair of sisters who thought she was loose. She didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.
“I have to go,” she said, stepping away from the table and marching toward the hall.
“Where do you have to go to?” Vivian called after her.
“Nowhere,” Bebe answered.
The truth stung, but it didn’t stop her from grabbing her coat, hat, and mittens from the peg in the hall and rushing out the front door. It didn’t stop her from heading to the stable and saddling her gelding, Glory. Vivian had balked when she’d learned to saddle a horse by herself, but had stopped complaining when she saw how much money they saved by not having to employ a stable hand. She pulled herself onto Glory’s back and nudged him out of the stable. As soon as she reached the road, she kicked Glory into a run.
By the time she reached town, she wasn’t any less agitated, but her misery had focused. She had to know. She had to be absolutely certain she was doing the right thing.
She pulled Glory to a stop on Main Street, in front of the office that housed The Haskell Times. It was the middle of the afternoon, so she figured Hubert would be working. But when she burst inside the office, only Mr. Ellis was there.
Mr. Ellis glanced up from the printing press where he was working and blinked at the sight of Bebe. “He’s not here,” he said without greeting. “He needed to get out and move around a little.”
“Move around a little?” Bebe repeated to herself. Her eyes went wide. “He wasn’t…he hadn't left again, has he?” Fear harsher than anything she’d known swirled down to her gut.
“No,” Mr. Ellis laughed. “He just went for a walk.”
Relief made her knees weak. She nodded to Mr. Ellis, then rushed back outside, mounting Glory in a hurry. A walk could mean any number of things, and after riding up Main Street, then around toward the school and the church, she headed to the south side of town. Hubert was staying at Vernon’s house, after all. He was likely to have gone there.
Luckily for her, she was right. Cold as it was, he had his coat off and his sleeves rolled up as he mucked out his brother’s small stable in back of the house.
“Hubert,” she called to him, walking Glory up to the stable, then dismounting in a flurry of skirts, heart pounding. “Thank God I’ve found you.”
Hubert spun away from the fresh hay he was shoveling into an empty stall. His eyes went wide with alarm. “Bebe? Is everything okay?” He tossed his pitchfork aside and stepped toward her. “Are you all right?”
“I….” Bebe worked to catch her breath after the frantic search, but as Hubert came near, that seemed like an impossibility. There he was, right in front of her. Not in San Francisco or Japan or somewhere far out of her reach. “I….”
“Yes?” He walked right up to her, grabbing her arms to hold her steady and looking into her eyes with deep concern.
He cared about her. Unlike Price or Vivian and Melinda, Hubert actually cared about her, whether he’d run out on her or not. More than her father, more than anyone, he loved her. And he was home.
“I need to know….” Her brain tripped over her words. She needed to know that he would never leave her. She needed to know that he was there to stay, and that he would save her from the misery her life had become. She needed to know that she could trust him. “I need to know what you wrote about in the letters that went missing.”
She blinked, surprised that, after everything, those were the words that popped out.
Hubert’s worry melted into a smile. “What I wrote from Japan?”
Bebe nodded. “What was it like there?”
“Well….” He took a half step back, removing the thick gloves he’d been wearing as he worked, and running a hand through his hair. “Uh, Japan was beautiful.”
He glanced around, then took Bebe’s hand and drew her into the shelter of the stable. Bebe started to go with him, then gasped and went back for Glory. She directed him into the stall that Hubert had just cleaned out as Hubert shut the stable door to block out the cold. Not that the stable was much warmer, but at least the small, potbellied stove in the center of the building lent some warmth.
Hubert settled on a hay bale, gesturing for Bebe to come sit with him. “Tokyo is a thriving city,” he went on. “It’s a blend of old and new. It sits on a river by a bay leading out to the sea, but you can also see a great mountain, Mount Fuji, in the distance. You could say it’s a city balanced between extremes.”
Bebe nodded, watching his mouth as he spoke. His words were beautiful, certainly those of a writer, but she barely heard them. Instead, she felt the heat of his body, followed the line of his neck down to where his shirt was unbuttoned at the collar
.
“I wrote to you about that,” Hubert went on, his voice taking on a warmer tone. “I wrote to you about a trip up the river in a fishing boat. I wrote about the cherry blossoms in spring, and about the music I heard that makes your heartstrings vibrate.”
He reached for her hands, pulling off her gloves, then unbuttoned her coat. His hands slipped to her waist. “I wrote about how much I missed you,” he said in a near whisper. “How I dreamed about you at night and wished you were there with me. I wrote about how the moonlight on the morning glories reminded me of your skin, even though it was nowhere near as radiant.”
He leaned closer to her until she could feel his breath on her lips. Her whole body ached to mold to his. The feeling was exquisite and torturous.
“I wrote about how much I love you,” he said, and closed his lips over hers in a kiss.
It was gentle at first, but as she surged against him, it became more demanding. She opened her mouth on a sigh, and he slipped his tongue along hers. His hands spread across her sides, inching up toward the tender swell of her breasts.
“You didn’t come here to ask about my letters, did you?” he whispered, touching his forehead to hers.
Sudden tears stung Bebe’s eyes. She shook her head.
“You came here because you want to be with me.”
She nodded, raising a hand to cradle the side of his face. She kissed him, refusing to wait for what she wanted. She’d waited long enough and suffered for it as well. When they were apart, she worked so hard to convince herself that she was doing her duty by sticking with her family, giving her all for the ranch, but when she was with Hubert, it was the easiest thing in the world just to love him.
“Say you’ll forget Price, that you’ll marry me instead.”
Her heart squeezed, but as much as she wanted to shout yes, her head wouldn’t let her make the promise. What if it was too late?
As if sensing her hesitation, Hubert lifted her into his arms, settling her across his lap. She slid her arms over his shoulders, and when he kissed her again she felt as though she were floating in his embrace.
“I love you, Bebe,” he said, reaching for the hem of her skirt, then sliding his hand up over the top of her boot and her knit stockings. She shivered at his touch. “And I know you love me,” he went on. “However hard this is, we can figure it out and get through it together.”
He dipped down to steal a kiss, but it wasn’t his lips that had her blood pumping as though she were on fire. His hand continued up over her knee. The worn fabric of her drawers did little to dull the sensation of his touch as he stroked her thigh. The throbbing sensation between her legs flared as he nudged her knees apart. There wasn’t anywhere for her leg to go, but it didn’t seem to matter, he’d created just enough space to inch his fingers toward the top of her drawers, then further still through the split in the fabric. Her breath came in shallow gasps as his touch brushed dangerously near to her most intimate places.
“Do you trust me?” he whispered, nuzzling the side of her face as his fingers played with her curls.
The question was almost enough to douse the arousal that his teasing had raised in her. She didn’t trust him, as much as she wanted to. She didn’t trust him not to abandon her a second time. She didn’t trust him with her heart. Her body, however, was another matter.
She nodded, cradling his jaw and straining to bring her mouth to his. He kissed her the way she wanted to be kissed, with a fullness that had her whole body singing. He brushed his fingers through the curls between her thighs, delving into the heart of her. And as soon as he touched the part of her that was hot and wet with wanting, not only tracing the tingling folds of her opening but slipping inside, she gasped.
Thoughts zipped through her mind so fast that she couldn’t grab on to a single one of them as his fingers worked their magic. He brushed in and out of her, reaching for something inside that felt just out of reach. His tongue mimicked what his fingers were doing as it slid along hers, but soon she was panting too hard to maintain a kiss. She wanted to sigh his name, but even that was beyond her. Her body coiled tighter and tighter as he gently invaded her, and all the while she waited, waited for what she wanted more than she’d wanted anything in her life. She jerked her hips against him, urging him to do more.
He shifted his hand, and his thumb rubbed up against her clitoris as his fingers continued their exploration. And with a flash, the coil inside of her flew apart, sending throbbing tremors and shards of pleasure through her. She cried out as her inner muscles squeezed around his hand, and he, too, let out a moan of victory.
“Yes, my sweet,” he groaned, kissing her chin, her neck, her lips. “Come for me.”
Her body obeyed his command, throbbing with pleasure for a few seconds more before spinning out into a warm sea of loose muscles and lost inhibitions. She wanted to feel his hand around those intimate parts of her forever, to give that and more of herself to him for all time. That part of her, along with her heart, belonged to Hubert forever. There was no way she could even think of sharing such intimacy with Price. She knew what she had to do next, and she knew that once she did, everything would fall apart.
Chapter 7
If Bebe could have stayed cuddled up with Hubert in the stable for the rest of the day, the rest of her life, she would have. They sat in each other’s arms after the wonderful explosion of sensation that he had given her, stealing kisses and talking about the life they would have. Nothing they said was specific, but it didn’t matter, it filled her with hope.
Eventually, they were forced to come back to reality. Hubert had his job at the newspaper to go back to, and Bebe was eager to get back to the ranch. The sooner she put her foot down and told Vivian that she wouldn’t marry Price, that she was going to marry Hubert no matter what any of them said, the better.
Thoughts of Hubert and everything they’d shared, everything they would share, spurred her on. The ride back home seemed to fly by. She settled Glory in his stall, then practically bounced into the house, ready to take on her entire family and battle until she got what she wanted. It was a slight disappointment that Vivian wasn’t waiting in the dining room, ready to hear everything Bebe had to say. Bebe had to search the house, looking through every room downstairs and half of the bedrooms upstairs.
In the end, much to Bebe’s surprise, she found Vivian in the kitchen, attempting to relight the fire in the stove.
“What are you doing?” she asked, frowning at Vivian on her hands and knees, up to her elbows in soot.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Vivian answered more of a sigh than a snap in her voice.
Bebe couldn’t think of anything else but to reply with, “It looks like you’re lighting the stove.”
Vivian huffed out a breath and straightened. “Very good,” she said, dripping with sarcasm.
Bebe hesitated before asking, “Why?”
“Because the fire went out,” Vivian answered, her voice and her stare flat. “And if we want to eat supper tonight, we need a fire to cook it.”
“Isn’t that Maria’s job?”
A flash of pure hatred filled Vivian’s eyes before she bent down to fiddle with the stove again. “Maria left.”
Bebe blinked. “Maria left?”
“That’s what I said.” Again, there was more defeat than fury in Vivian’s voice.
“But Maria has been with the family for ten years.”
Vivian let out a wry snort. “Apparently loyalty doesn’t count for anything these days.”
Bebe swallowed hard. Her heart raced and she shifted anxiously on her spot. “Vivian, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“It’d better be that you know how to cook,” Vivian said shoving a log into the stove’s firebox. “Because if it’s not, you’re either going to be stuck eating raw meat or you’re going to have to learn.”
It felt as though snakes were writhing in Bebe’s gut. “No, what I have to say to you is…is….” She licked her l
ips. Never in her life would she have imagined she’d be declaring her independence to Vivian when her sister was on her knees on the kitchen floor.
Vivian seemed to ignore her. She reached for the box of matches that sat on top of the stove and struck one, tossing it into the firebox. It withered and died. Vivian huffed out a breath, struck another match, and did the same thing. That one burnt itself out too.
“Vivian,” Bebe said.
“What?” her sister huffed.
“What I’m trying to say is….”
Vivian struck yet another match and threw it into the firebox so fast that it went out mid-flight. She growled in frustration.
“You need kindling if you’re going to start a fire properly,” Bebe burst at last. “Here.” She marched over to the bucket of splinters, old newspaper, and straw that Maria kept in the corner.
“What’s that mess?”
“Stick it in between the logs and then light it. Like this.” Bebe crouched opposite Vivian and stuffed a few bits of rolled up newspaper into the firebox. “Now try.”
Vivian struck a match, then held it to the newspaper. The newspaper caught and burned down, igniting the other kindling with it. Bebe and Vivian watched for a moment, and when it was apparent that the fire had caught and would burn enough to heat the stove, Vivian smiled.
It was the first genuine smile Bebe had seen from her sister in years.
“That wasn’t so hard,” Vivian said, pushing herself to her feet. Bebe rose with her. “Now, what did you want to tell me?”
Bebe’s mouth went dry, and the snakes in her gut ran riot. She loved Hubert, loved him passionately, desperately. She reminded herself that her only chance for a happy life lay with Hubert, that Vivian would ultimately get by without her.
“Vivian,” she said, her voice cracking. In her imagination, her declaration had been easy and empowering. In reality, Bebe began to shake. “I’m…I’m not going to marry Price,” she said. “H-Hubert still wants to marry me, and I still want to marry him. I’m marrying Hubert.”
Vivian blinked. Then her eyes went wide with anger. Her jaw tensed, and red splotches spread across her cheeks. But worst of all, underneath the anger lay fear and hurt.
