by Howe, Cheryl
He tossed down the hoe and walked to the barn to find a shovel.
***
Lorelei patted the soft earth around her mother’s favorite rosebush. The sky blushed a peach tinted sunset, and she could almost imagine how Corey’s ranch would look when everything bloomed.
Keeping her mother’s cherished shrub alive through the dusty trip west was worth the effort. With the rock border in place around her garden, she could picture the green, heavy stalks of a summer harvest. For the first time in a very long time, she looked forward to life instead of dreading death. Not wanting painful memories to spoil her perfect day, she let her gaze drift to Braddock.
He crawled on his knees, setting rocks in place to create a path to the adobe’s front door. In the fading sun, the well-defined muscles in his shoulders glided under his tanned skin. She didn’t care what he said—it wasn’t hard to imagine him as some woman’s husband. That he was a fine-looking man had never been in dispute. His gallantry had been the surprise.
The entire morning had slipped away before he finished turning the plot to her vegetable garden. To honor such a special patch of earth, she wrapped it in a ring of choice red rocks. With so much else to do, marking an empty patch of dirt seemed silly. But the special touch gave her a feeling of permanence, even if it was only an illusion. When Braddock followed her lead without having to be asked, her fantasy deepened.
Lorelei knew her contentment was based on make believe. But reality hadn’t been nearly as fulfilling. In her mother’s last year, Lorelei’s only hope had been her swift and quiet death.
Maybe that was why pretending Braddock was here for reasons other than taking her brother to jail came so easily. She let her gaze drift to his face, hoping something there would tell her he liked the fantasy as much as she. He stared back at her. She jerked her attention to the ground, wondering how long he’d watched her appreciating his heavily muscled physique.
With her eyes riveted to the task of patting down a mound of earth around the rosebush, she sensed him walking toward her as keenly as if she still studied him.
“What’s that?” He crouched before her.
She raised her head and couldn’t avoid glancing at his mouth. The memory of yesterday’s kiss made her cheeks burn all over again. “A rosebush.”
“It looks dead.”
“Well, it’s not. It’s hibernating.” Tenderly she picked at the end of one of the closely cropped limbs to assure herself it was still green in the middle. “It’ll come back next spring.”
He didn’t say anything, just stood and stretched. The slight pull around his mouth told her he didn’t believe her. The same way he hadn’t believed that any of the seeds she brought from home had a chance of surviving, but he had helped her without complaint. He was a funny man, and she still knew so little about him. She wondered if he truly knew himself.
“What’s your name?”
He studied the distant mountains. “Braddock.”
“I mean your Christian name.”
“Langston’s back. Looks like he’s getting ready for a long night.”
Lorelei followed Braddock’s gaze. The glow of a faraway fire gave her a surprising sense of comfort. Braddock wouldn’t leave. With the deputy marshal keeping a watchful eye and Braddock under her roof, she couldn’t feel alone. Lorelei didn’t think she could bear another string of lonely nights with nothing but the howl of wind and coyotes to keep her company.
The sun sank deeper behind the dark mountains, turning the sky a violent red. Lorelei piled more dirt at the rosebush’s base. Her efforts were unnecessary, but she didn’t want to finish the first thing that felt right since she had stepped off the stage in Arriba. Planting her mother’s rosebush was the only thing that had turned out as she had planned.
“What do your friends call you?”
With his back to the setting sun, his face was covered in shadows. “Braddock.”
She couldn’t tell if he was joking or just being obstinate. “Braddock Braddock?”
“Braddock, sir.”
She picked up a clump of soft dirt and tossed it at him. “What’s the big secret about having a first name?”
He ducked and she swore she heard him laugh. “I think you’ve been in the sun too long, Miss Lorelei. Better get your delicate little self inside.”
“I don’t sound like that.”
“Pretty close.” He reached out his hand.
She took off her muddy gardening gloves and accepted his offer to haul her up. He jerked her to the left before she set her foot down.
“Watch out. Tarantula.”
A spider as big as a kitten reached a hairy arm out to her bare toe. She jumped and squealed at the same time. “Kill it!”
Braddock scooped the monster into his hand. The spider’s body covered Braddock’s palm and its legs stretched across his wrist and fingers. “Tarantulas are your friend. You want them in your garden.”
Lorelei backed up until the adobe wall stopped her. She flung her arm out to ward him off. She wasn’t the squeamish sort, but what he held was a freak of nature. Just when she thought she had grown accustomed to this place, some new strange thing appeared worse than the thing before.
“That beast is not my friend.”
Braddock held the spider up to her face. “He’s harmless to you, but he does eat scorpions. You shouldn’t be barefoot, by the way. A scorpion’s sting will kill you.” Braddock pointed near her left foot and jumped back. “There’s one.”
Lorelei involuntarily shrieked and hopped sideways. Braddock’s laughter stopped her from screeching a second time. The sound bubbled up from his chest like an ancient well that hadn’t been tapped for centuries.
“Very funny."
He laughed harder and doubled over. He sank to his knees, hardly able to catch his breath.
She watched him with her hands on her hips, fighting her own smile. “It wasn’t that funny, Braddock, sir.”
He started laughing all over again. Finally, with tears seeping into the deep lines around his eyes, his outburst lessened to what sounded suspiciously like giggles.
“I guess that’s the first prank you’ve pulled on anyone in a while.”
He set the spider down and got to his feet. His prolonged amusement might have annoyed Lorelei, since she was the target, except for the fact that his whole face changed when he laughed.
“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten anyone as good as I got you. Except for the time I put a snake in my sister’s bed, but I was whipped for that, so it took some of the fun out of it.”
“I hope that was when you were a child.”
He cocked his head. “Maybe, maybe not—I’d check your bedroll tonight just in case. You might be sharing your bunk with my friend.”
“Does he call you Braddock?”
Before she suspected his intentions, he swept her up into his arms.
“I wasn't kidding about the scorpions. They’re deadly. Don’t walk around barefoot.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck as if being carried by him were as natural as walking. The warmth from his bare skin sank into her as efficiently as the last rays of the setting sun. Stopping herself from leaning into him was useless. Tilting her head to smell his hair was avoided only by sheer will. “What do scorpions look like?”
“They look deadly. They’re a milky white, almost translucent, and they walk backward. You’ll know one when you see it—that is, if you see it before it’s too late.”
“Are you purposely trying to scare me, Braddock?”
“Do you think I could? If I knew you were afraid of bugs I would have told you about tarantulas and scorpions on the first day we met. Would have saved me a lot of trouble if I could have convinced you to go back to Kentucky and leave your brother to me.”
He walked toward the house. She pointed to her shoes near the front porch. “You can set me down here. I’ll put my shoes on.”
He shifted her in his arms and kept walking. “I’ll carry you i
nto the house. Langston’s eyes will probably pop out of his head.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Tricking the deputy marshal.”
He grinned. “Yep.”
She tried not to notice that he carried her over the threshold. It made her fantasy too real, almost painful. No one would really carry her over the threshold of their home, not the way she dreamed, anyway. And she didn’t like to think this was as close as she would ever get. “Aren’t you afraid of anything, Braddock?”
He kicked the door shut on the encroaching purple night. “Just you, sweetheart.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Lorelei filled the second bowl of stew to its glazed rim. Braddock slumped over the table, his head resting on top of his folded arms. A hot day spent mending the corral had left him too exhausted to even eat. For the past two nights he had done little more than gobble down a light supper, then collapse on the floor. Tonight she would make sure he slept in the bed. Where she would sleep churned dangerous ripples in the pit of her stomach.
After he’d carried her inside the night before, he’d done nothing but set her on her feet. She’d leaned against him longer than necessary, giving him ample opportunity to kiss her if he’d had a mind to. He hadn’t. Her disappointment nagged her through a sleepless night and on into the next day. He was a fine man. But he wasn’t hers. Even the fact that he worked like a mule just to please her wouldn’t make it so. The gift of his labor surprised and delighted her, but after so many hard times she knew better than to question good fortune.
She set both crockery bowls on the table. He didn’t move. Without thinking she brushed back his damp hair. He had bathed out by the pump before coming in. After throwing on a shirt and leaving his boots by the door, he’d collapsed into a chair and hadn’t budged since. Maybe he’d fallen asleep. She stroked the length of his dark brown hair. Lighter streaks of burnished red and gold had appeared in the last couple of days.
“Are you hungry?” she said softly, careful not to startle him if he was sleeping.
He sat up slowly and winced. His alert gaze told her he hadn’t been sleeping. “That felt good.” He drew the bowl closer to him and started eating.
She slid into the chair next to him and concentrated on her stew, hiding her pleasure at his response. Her brothers had claimed she had the healing touch, though she suspected it was just so she’d rub out their kinks.
Her gaze shot to Braddock.
The least she could do to repay him for all his hard work was to rub liniment over his tired muscles. That was exactly what she would have done for her brothers. The idea of touching so much of him tightened her stomach and stole her appetite.
She pushed a cloth covered ceramic bowl toward him. “Biscuit?”
“Thanks,” he mumbled in between bites. He dipped his bread in his bowl and went back to focusing on his food.
She stirred her stew. Suddenly giving him a rubdown meant more to her than it ever could to him. She longed for the bits of closeness they’d shared, laughing in the garden, exchanging a satisfied grin when they had completed the rock border leading to the front porch. Those moments were as rare as Braddock’s smiles. But the connection between them slipped away as quickly as it came, leaving Lorelei wondering if it had happened at all. She would wait, tense muscled, trying to find the right thing to say or do to make the closeness return. Maybe she was so lonely that she imagined a bond that wasn’t there.
“I’m going to rub you down with liniment,” she said as casually as possible.
He raised his bowed head, alert and wary, as though he had just smelled danger.
Lorelei returned to stirring her stew. She’d never get a bite past her tight throat. “It’s going to smart a little, but you’ll feel better tomorrow.”
She felt his gaze on her but she didn’t dare face him. She forced a sip of the stew’s rich juice past her lips just to pretend everything was normal. If she acted as if rubbing her hands over his body were nothing to be flustered about, maybe he would believe it, too.
“All right,” he said, as if accepting a challenge he’d been expecting.
Lorelei continued to lift her spoon to her lips, then returned it to her bowl almost as full. She play-acted her way through the rest of the meal. Everything had changed, and she was no longer sure how to behave, even how to hold her spoon. She kept up her part until he stood and took his bowl to the dry sink under the window.
She jumped when his arm brushed her sleeve.
“Finished?”
Though she had managed to swallow only a quarter of its contents, neither of them had the stomach to put off the rubdown any longer. She nodded and he took her bowl, dumping the rest of her stew back into the pot on the stove.
She came up behind him and took the bowl from his grasp. “I’ll just set these to soak. You can take off your shirt and lie on the bed.”
He raised an eyebrow at her suggestion. “I’d rather sit at the table.”
She shrugged, admitting only to herself that she was relieved. “Suit yourself.”
She poured water into their dinner bowls, then dried her damp palms on a towel. The moisture sprang from nerves, not the dishwater. Finally, at the cupboard that held the liniment, she had to press her traitorous hands together to keep them from shaking. The plain mason jar she’d seen earlier sat on the top shelf all by itself. The ointment seemed to be the only thing Corey never ran out of. It had been her father’s recipe, and the men in her family swore by it. When she opened the cupboard, the greenish white balm glinted back at her with a conspiratorial wink. She grabbed the jar, convincing herself she was being silly. It was just plain ointment. She’d made it herself hundred times. Of course, she added extra eucalyptus and a touch of lavender. Luckily this jar wasn’t made by her.
Even the thought of that smell tightened her throat. The scent had filled her mother’s room those last months, but no matter how often she had gently tried to massage the congestion from her mother’s chest, Lorelei couldn’t reach her mother’s broken heart.
She carried the jar, which seemed to radiate heat through her palms, to the table. Braddock had removed his shirt and straddled the chair backward. He buried his face in the folded arms he rested on the table.
She removed the lid and winced. Braddock lifted his head. The strong medicinal smell of camphor filled the room. He glanced at her over his shoulder.
“It might not smell good, but it works.” Lorelei struggled to keep a nervous bubble of laughter contained. There was nothing unseemly about rubbing her hands over a good portion of his naked body, even if they weren’t related. The pungent smell burning her nostrils proved there wasn’t anything romantic going on. She just wished the idea of touching him didn’t make her stomach flutter.
He laid his head back down. “Give me your worst.”
She scooped out a large dollop of the ointment and smeared it on his shoulders. He jumped at her touch. “It’s cold,” he mumbled.
“Sorry.” She scraped the liniment off his back and rubbed it between her hands, warming it and making it more pliable. Her hands coated with the thick ointment, she placed her palms flat on his back. His skin was hot. Though he looked golden brown in the lamplight, he must have burned from working much of the time with his shirt off.
He took a deep breath and released it, as if calming himself. She’d done little more than rub her palms lightly across his back, smearing the ointment over his skin.
“Come on, now. I haven’t hurt you yet.”'
“Not yet,” he said into the table.
The way he bent over the chair bunched the muscles along his back. Lorelei started with his shoulders, working around the prominent blades. He didn’t moan or complain as she worked her fingers into his sore muscles. Her second oldest brother, Donnan, would have been jumping at her every touch, screaming abuse, while Corey would have let her do anything to him as long as he was the center of attention. Braddock wasn’t like either of them. If anything he was like Devine, her ol
dest brother—stoic while you did what needed to be done, but grateful you took the time.
She missed Donnan as much as she missed her parents, but sometimes she missed Devine the most. When he was alive, she’d always felt like the baby, the princess of the family. Even when he’d called her Her Highness Lorelei while pulling her hair, she’d felt like royalty visited upon the Sullivan clan. Oh, how the mighty had fallen.
She worked her hands back toward Braddock’s bunched shoulders and up his neck. Tears burned behind her eyes and she sniffed to keep them from falling. Braddock tried to lift his head, but she pushed him back down.
“The camphor’s burning my eyes.”
He didn’t question her.
She slid her hands around his rib cage, using her thumbs to work the muscles on either side of his spine. She could touch him forever. His skin radiated warmth all the way up her arms. The feel of him soothed her, letting her remember without the talons of pain that usually accompanied the images of her family.
She sighed. “Actually, I was thinking of my brothers. I used to rub out their kinks just like this. I miss them.”
His long, uncomfortable silence made Lorelei regret sharing her inner self. What did he know about such things as longings?
Finally he said, “My sister would never do anything like this for me.”
“Well, maybe if you let her call you by your first name and didn’t put snakes in her bed she would have.”
He chuckled low in his throat, and she felt his laughter through her fingertips. “She called me by my first name.”
Lorelei dug her thumb into a knot tucked in between his ribs. “Which is?”
“Ow!” He squirmed, trying to get away from her probing, but she was relentless. “Christopher. Christopher Ellis Braddock.”
