by Merry Farmer
She nodded, her anger quickly chilling to numbness. John led the way and they both got down on hands and knees to crawl into the space formed when the trees fell. It was wet and cramped, but drier than the downpour around them. The rain didn’t penetrate through the branches. John tested them one by one, judging which were supporting the whole and which could be broken off. He bent one. It was green and didn’t break easily.
“Did you bring a knife?” Callie asked.
He shook his head. She huffed out an irritated breath. John paused to look at her as if telling her off for being unhelpful. Callie sniffed and grabbed the branch he’d wrenched off and dragged it back out into the rain to throw it on top of the trees.
By the time she’d wrestled it into place and ducked back into the shelter, he’d broken off another branch. She took that one and added it to the top.
They worked for some time. Callie wasn’t sure if time could be measured or if it even mattered anymore. The space under the trees grew somewhat, but not very much. There was only so much John could do without a knife. In the end, it came down to stripping handfuls of leaves and snapping tiny branches and adding that refuse to the top. By the time they hollowed out enough space for the two of them to hunch out of the rain, Callie was exhausted and cranky. And hungry.
“Do we have anything to eat?” She asked, already knowing the answer.
“No,” John said. “There’s a chance that there could be berries or mushrooms nearby, but with the rain….”
Callie’s shoulders sagged and she sighed. Things had been going so well. There had been so much promise in the air. Now here they were, lost in so many ways.
“We can’t be that far off the trail,” John went on. “And I’m certain Pete will send a search party after us. This is only temporary.”
“We shouldn’t have chased after them,” she sighed.
“What else could we have done?”
“Let them go?” She straightened, or at least tried to. Her head scraped against the ceiling of branches, and she slouched down again.
“I am not about to let those thieves make off with your mother’s teapot,” he shook his head.
“Do you still intend to go after them?” She gaped at him.
“Absolutely. As soon as the rain lets up.”
“No. There’s no point. I’m sure they’re all miles ahead of us by now.”
“Then we’ll catch up.” His tone was dry.
“Please, John. It truly doesn’t matter. It’s just a tea set.”
“It matters to me,” he shot back.
Callie stared at him eyes wide. “Do you care so much about things? About things from the past?” Things like Shannon? She turned away.
“It does matter,” he insisted, scooting closer under the canopy. “That teapot is a treasured memento from your mother.”
Callie crossed her arms to fight off the chill of the damp and tilted her chin up, not wanting to hear about her mother.
“It has sentimental value,” he went on regardless. “Look, Callie.” He put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. He sighed and continued. “I know how you feel about your mother. Do you think I haven’t listened to you these last few months? I know how much you loved her, how much it hurt when she and your father died.”
A lump caught in Callie’s throat.
“I wish my parents were as wonderful as yours. I was never good enough for them. Richard was always the good one, always the….” He stopped mid-sentence and sighed.
He scooted closer still. “I can see how precious her things are to you. It pains me to think of you losing something that was special to her. A few small things. That’s all we have of what we’ve left behind.”
He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. This time she didn’t flinch away. She didn’t have the energy anymore. Misery descended once more. She closed her eyes and a tear slipped out.
“I… I know I hurt you by calling you Shannon,” he said.
She snapped her eyes open. He’d been aware of what he was saying? “I may not be a strong, intrepid woman, but I have more self-respect than to spend my life living in the shadow of another woman while you pretend I’m her.”
“What?” He blinked as if she’d grown another head.
Could she have jumped to the wrong conclusion? Her face flushed hot with embarrassment at the thought. She sucked in a breath and launched herself up out of the shelter and back into the rain. She had to get away. Until her thoughts and her heart settled, she had to keep moving. Not knowing where there was to go, she just walked.
The fallen trees rustled behind her.
“I’m sorry, Callie,” John called after her. “I swear to you, it was a slip of the tongue, nothing more. Nothing more!” He jogged to catch up to her.
When she felt his touch on her arm, she whipped around to face him. “Nothing more? You loved her, John.”
“Yes, I loved her. Of course I did. She was my wife.” He wiped the rain out of his face and off his glasses.
Callie started to walk away again. He stopped her.
“Shannon is dead, Callie.”
“Is she?” She spun to face him. “The dead are always with us, aren’t they? And you carry her around in your heart all the time. Anyone can see that. It’s so obvious. You were ready to kill yourself for her. I thought I could live with that, I thought it wouldn’t matter. But… but….” She struggled for the right words. They weren’t coming. She shifted restlessly from one foot to the other before glancing up and saying, “I can never be Shannon, can I?”
He was silent for long, aching seconds. “No, of course not.”
His words stung, sharp and hard like the lightning that had broken the trees. Callie wanted to weep. Her breath came in fitful gasps. “Shannon is the one you really love. You just pretend I’m her.”
“Who told you that?” he scowled.
Her gaze flew up to meet his again. “So it’s true? You miss her so desperately that you pretend I’m her?”
His mouth dropped open and his eyes were wide as moons behind his glasses. “Is that what you think?”
“Is it… is it true?”
He stood there, rain pummeling down on him, best suit drenched and ruined and hanging around him like a tragedy. The drumming of raindrops in the trees and the muddy ground thundered all around them.
“No!” he shouted. “No that’s absolutely not true!”
He strode forward and clasped her arms. “Callie, losing Shannon and our son was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through in my life. I didn’t think I could do it. I wanted to die. I tried to take my own life. Don’t you understand?”
He shook her slightly and she blinked, heart trembling, emotion choking her.
“I tried to kill myself and I failed. It was the only thing I could think about. And I fully intended to work up the courage to try again.”
Callie swallowed and stared at him, hardly noticing the rain that hit her hot face.
“Then your brother died and you were all alone, and you asked me to marry you and take care of you. I didn’t know what I was doing. I figured I would see you safely to Denver City and then finish what I had failed to do in Independence.”
Her eyes went wide and her heart rolled over and over in her chest.
“But then,” he continued, shifting his weight and closing his mouth to choose his words. “When I told you what I’d tried to do, when I told you and you said you were glad I missed….” His eyes were alight with feeling. He slid his hands up to cradle her face. “Callie, you brought me back to life. I didn’t think I would ever feel alive again. I didn’t think I would ever want to feel alive again. But you needed me, you cared for me. You… you showed me what it means to be strong, to carry on. You did.”
His hands dropped from her face and he held his arms wide. “Callie, I love you. You mean everything to me. I am only alive now because of you and I don’t ever want to have to live without you. And I’m sorry that I—”
&nbs
p; “Don’t!” She cut him off, eyes stinging with tears, throat all but closed up. She thought her heart was going to leap right out of her chest. “Don’t say another word.” She swayed forward, rushing to him.
He caught her as she fell against him, squeezing her tight and bringing his mouth crashing down over hers. She held onto him for all she was worth and kissed him back, opening her heart and soul to him. She closed her eyes and sighed as he gave free rein to his passions. He broke away from her mouth, kissed and drank the rain from her cheeks and chin, and when she tipped her head back, he blazed a trail down her neck and then back up to capture her mouth again.
“I love you too,” She heard herself breathe out with a sigh.
John hummed something that might have been a word before sweeping Callie up in his arms and carrying her back to the shelter of the fallen trees. The rain thrummed on the canopy they’d built as he laid her down and kissed her from the bottom of his heart—strong, powerful, unending. His hands held her around the waist, sliding up across wet fabric to her breast and then up to frantically undo the buttons from her collar to her stomach.
“I love you,” he murmured, his voice and body warm in the forbidding world around them. “Let me show you how much I love you, only you.”
“I—” She didn’t know what to say. Her heart caught in her throat and all she could think, all she could say, was, “Yes.”
He sighed with something between relief and triumph and dipped down to kiss her lips again. His lips parted hers with tender insistence. She was his and he was hers. If she had been tempted to doubt it before, the gentle, exploring pressure of his mouth as he kissed her was proof. She needed him. She needed all of him to the fullest, now and forever.
He left her lips as his fingers resumed their work on the buttons of her blouse. There was still too much fabric between them, but soaking wet it was barely an obstacle. He licked the rain from Callie’s neck and chest, tugged her corset and chemise down enough to expose the tip of her breast, which he freed with a possessive scoop. It was exquisite and mad all at the same time and she didn’t want it to stop. She threaded her fingers through his soaking, spiky hair and concentrated on his flickering tongue and suckling mouth.
He paused, and for a moment Callie was bereft. She was ready to curse at him, tell him there was no way he was getting away with stopping this time. But when he straightened it was to take off his wet jacket and bunch it up to slide under her head as a pillow. He took off his vest and shirt while he was at it, tossing them aside into the mud. He also removed his glasses, folding them carefully and placing them neatly on top of the pile of his clothes. Callie had to laugh. She was too giddy not to.
Her laughter stopped with a gasp when he gathered up handfuls of her drenched skirt and reached under to find and tug at the drawstring of her drawers. Fire and electricity jolted through her. He wasn’t going to stop. Not this time. John’s patience had reached its end. Callie’s heart beat in double-time and her breath came in short, shallow gasps. She showed herself to be a willing participant in his lack of patience by lifting her hips so that he could pull her drawers down. There was a moment of pure awkward hilarity as he tried to figure out how to wrench the flimsy garment down over her boots. She heard a rip and it wasn’t a problem anymore.
There was another distant rumble of thunder as he fumbled with the buttons of his trousers. Callie lost the courage to keep watching him and snapped her eyes shut, throwing a hand over her mouth. Moments later, his body was over top of hers. He moved her hand so that he could kiss her once more. He was slow and passionate, no longer frantic but tender, full of love, like nothing she’d ever felt before. It was simply beautiful.
And then came the heady sensation of his hand on her thighs, nudging them apart. She was ready for him. More than ready for him.
“I love you, Callie,” he repeated, lips warm and whispering near her ear. She felt the tip of him push gently against her, tantalizing and hot against her rain-cooled skin. Then he thrust.
She gasped, eyes coming wide. He gasped as well, letting out the breath with a desperate moan before pulling back and thrusting forward again. An initial burst of stinging was followed swiftly by a deep pulsing sensation of rightness. Callie held him tighter, unable to think of anything but his body joined with hers and how whole, full, and alive that made her feel.
His rhythm grew faster, and as it did, she felt her own body thrill and sing, reaching higher and deeper. It came on quickly, the sensations he’d provoked in her the other night, like a flash of sunlight. She closed her eyes again, holding onto him and greeting it with a strange, strangled cry. Pleasure burst over her—over both of them—and her body soared with joy, so good and so sweet. She couldn’t have known it, not without John, not without his words. I love you.
Before Callie had quite left that feeling of bliss behind, John let out a soft, satisfied growl and relaxed. His weight dropped heavily onto her, but she didn’t mind a bit. It was wonderful. She kept her arms tight around him, lifted her knees to hold him with her legs as well. His arms moved up to curl around either side of her head over his jacket. The rain continued to patter on the leafy canopy above them. She could have stayed there for days.
After some time John shifted, propping himself up on his arms over her.
“Callie,” he whispered.
“Hmm?” Her reply was lazy and distant.
“You can open your eyes now.”
She hadn’t realized they were still closed. When she opened them, the sight of his wet, laughing face greeted her. She beamed up at him in return. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, her nose, and then her lips.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked for an honest answer.
“No.” She shook her head, laying a palm on the side of his face. “Although this stick in my back isn’t doing me any favors.”
He hummed with concern and sat up with her as best he could to clear away the ground under her.
“I’m sorry,” he spoke softly, drawing her into the circle of his arms. He smoothed her hair back and kissed her cheek, her lips.
“Sorry?” A whisper of worry coiled through her.
He took in a breath. “I should have waited until we were in Denver City at least. I should have waited until we had a warm bed and… and a roof over our heads. This was not exactly—”
“Shh,” she stopped him, laying a hand on the side of his face and smiling. “This was perfect.”
He kissed her once more, heavy and spent but full of love. Her heart was so full it warmed her in spite of the chill. The rain was beginning to calm, or else it was just Callie’s contented imagination. Everything around them was still soaked and muddy. John helped her to right herself, then went about the miserable, sticky task of putting his wet clothes back on. She felt bad for him, wished they were back in their wagons at least. Then they could have been comfortable for hours. They could have done everything they’d just done over again, and over and over.
As it was, they were uncomfortable in minutes. As the heat of making love wore off, Callie felt the chill in earnest. John snuggled close against her, which helped, but more than anything they needed the rain to stop.
“I wish we could stay here,” John said, arms tight around her, “but we have a teapot to find.”
“Still?” Callie asked, threading her fingers through his.
John nodded. “I made a promise to you, to love you and to protect you and to fight for you whenever you need me to.”
“Did you?” Her heart leapt in her chest.
“If I didn’t on our wedding day, I’m making that promise to you now.”
“John,” she breathed his name like a blessing. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” he replied and kissed her as well as he could in their awkward position. “That’s why I’m going to get that teapot back.”
Chapter Eighteen
They waited. It was the only thing they could do. The rain lessened, but the light grew dimmer with it. E
vening swooped in. Nights hadn’t been too cold so far on the trail, but after a storm, temperature was anyone’s guess. John kept his arms around Callie as he thought his way through what they would need to do next.
“This is likely to be dangerous,” he concluded with a half sigh. Callie was shivering, so he rubbed her arms to stave off as much of the cold as he could. “In all likelihood, they’ll have weapons, and we don’t.” He should have worn his gun to the tea party. The one time he had assumed he wouldn’t need that kind of protection was the one time he did.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Callie asked, twisting in his arms to face him.
John nodded. “I’m sure. If we play it smart, stay out of sight and make every move carefully, we should be able to find your teapot and run.”
She sent him a doubtful look, but didn’t argue. “We still have to find them, you know.”
“I know.”
They stood and crawled out of the shelter. The rain had stopped, but the evening was cool and soggy. They were both soaked to the core. The horse John had borrowed had strayed several yards off. He jogged to fetch it while Callie rubbed her arms and walked in anxious circles.
“Which way do we go?” she asked when he led the horse to her.
John searched right and left. The terrain around them had enough low hills and scrubby trees to hide the others—if they were still nearby and not halfway to California. He scanned the ground for any sign of hoof prints. There were several sets in the mud, but they could easily have been made by their own horse. One set seemed promising.
“This way,” he said, pointing to the prints and walking.
Callie fell into step beside him as they closed the distance to the next hill and climbed it.
“If we’re lucky, Kyle and Reverend Joseph and Finch will have stopped just like we stopped when the storm intensified.”
Callie nodded. “I don’t think even they would have ridden in that, but I’ve been wrong about things before.”
