by Bush, Holly
Mary complied sullenly as the doctor led her into the house. Jacob’s eyes were dry and sandy when the doctor emerged again.
“She’s fine, Jacob. I’m going over to Beth and Jack’s and fetch some help for you.” He ignored Jacob’s shaking head and climbed into his buggy. “I think Olive’s coming around. Better go see to her.”
Jacob sat down beside Olive on his bed and saw through the curtain, Mary fast asleep.
“Olive?” he said.
* * *
Her eyes opened slowly and she smiled at him. He was here. Here beside her. Steadfast. And exhausted. “Jacob, lay down. I don’t remember how I got home but I know you had something to do with it.”
“Doc Burns went for Beth,” Jacob said and sat elbows on his knees, holding Olive’s hands.
“Lay down, then. Beth will be here.”
Jacob’s head came up slowly and he met Olive’s gaze. “Never again, Olive.”
She remembered his words as he lifted her from the field and she smiled. “I don’t think I have other enemies of Jeb Davis’ caliber. I’ll be fine.”
“How could you have enemies, Olive,” Jacob said and ran his hands through his hair. “Not a sweeter, kinder more wonderful woman on the face of this earth.”
“Thank you,” Olive whispered.
Minutes passed quietly and Jacob clung to her hand. “I’ve been a fool.”
Olive’s head tilted. “A fool, Jacob? No.”
“Yeah. A fool. I thought, well, I thought, that if I didn’t say the words they wouldn’t be true. I was scared of losing you, like Margaret and . . .”
Olive shook her head and smiled. “We were scared today. All of us. Don’t say something you don’t want to, Jacob.”
Jacob knelt down beside Olive’s bed and clutched her hand to his chest and spoke quickly. “Margaret came to me, Olive. She came to me as I was running for you and Mary. She said, ‘love her,’ and it was you she was talking about. And when I, well, Olive, I know I love you. Not saying the words don’t make a bit of difference.”
Tears formed in Olive’s eyes and her lip trembled.
Jacob stared at her intensely. “I don’t love you ‘cause Margaret told me to, Olive. I love you because you’re a wonderful mother and brave and beautiful. I will love you forever.”
Olive inched over on the mattress. “Lay down, Jacob.”
He smiled tentatively and stretched out beside her. She snuggled under his arm and laid her head on his shoulder. “I love you, Jacob,” she said softly as her eyes closed.
One month later
What a strange dream she had awoken from. She was to be a bride today. At thirty-six, feeling the years creep up on her mind as those same years pulled her body downward. She was to marry a handsome, young man, a prince who saved her from evil and they would live out the years God gave her, together.
But this was no dream. Peg and Mary helped her dress and fixed her long hair in a crown. She had lovingly sewed a cream, brocade gown. The one of her dreams as a girl, altered to fit and cover a woman near forty. Olive stood in front of the oval mirror, turning sideways; hoping the corset Beth had strung her into didn’t fray. She turned slowly around the room, seeing the furniture from her parent’s home and hoping they could see her this day and be proud. Proud of the path she had chosen and the man at the end of this road.
Peg and Mary had hunched secretively over the sewing machine days ago and now presented her with a lace edged blue hanky for her to carry. The girl’s stitches hadn’t picked up all of the lace and some hung on precariously but Olive had plopped down, bleary eyed on the bed when they gave it to her. They stood and smiled at her and each other and told of their travels for the fabrics. She looked up to them, her daughters, and thanked them. Olive told them she needed nothing new, for her dress was just finished and for the old part, well, she would serve that purpose.
He stood, awaiting her with Luke and John by his side, in the November light that streamed through the window that warm winter day. Jacob was nervous, she could tell. Oddly, she was not. Nothing felt more natural, more right, more meant to be, than walking towards him at the altar. Their eyes had met, when she turned the corner from the vestibule of the church, and held true as he reached his hand out to hers. She watched his lip tremble and smiled calmly at him.
* * *
She was now Mrs. Jacob Butler and the mother of five children, Olive thought as Jacob swung her around for a dance. She stared at him as he smiled proudly and nodded to those who watched. Would she bear the load of being a wife? A mother? Would she be the one he craved and talked to? Was she up to the task of filling those shoes? Would he always want her?
But the deed was done, Olive said calmly to herself. She was that mother, that wife and if love, real love, was the yeast to this bread of marriage than she would rise to the demands. Because loving Jacob was what she knew she was intended to do. By design, from a God of wisdom and mercy, brought together to love.
* * *
“Why do you have the lights all out?” Jacob asked as he stuck his head in her bedroom door. “I’m going to trip and you’ll be a widow before your wedding night.”
Olive stared at him in the shadows of the moon from over the edge of her blanket just under her nose. She watched him pad around her room, their room now, and hang his suit in the chiffarobe. The shadow of his body turned to her and he came to sit on the bed.
“Olive, why are you hiding?” Jacob asked. “ Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid.”
Jacob chuckled. “Then why are you hiding?”
Olive’s head tilted and she looked out the window to the full moon. “I’m not hiding from you, Jacob. I’m not afraid of you.”
“Then what?” he asked and turned her face gently.
Her lashes dropped. “I’m not eighteen, Jacob.”
“Thank God.”
Olive pulled her face from his hand. “Don’t tease me. Please.”
Jacob knelt on the bed, over her. “Look at me, Olive. I want you. No one else.”
Olive looked up at him as he loomed over her and saw the truth in his eyes.
“You are more beautiful with each passing day and never more so than when you said, ‘I do.’ And I want you now, more than ever.”
“I want you as well, Jacob. I love you.”
He stretched out beside her and pulled her into his arms. He kissed her softly and whispered into her ear. “Let me love you, then and show you. This isn’t about our bodies, Olive. It’s about our hearts.”
She closed her eyes and sunk into his words and his touch. He worshipped every inch of her as she slowly revealed herself to him. And as he loomed above her, poised and impatient, she let the sensations reel her away.
This man was meant to be inside her, he designed for her, she for him. What in her imagination, had been unnatural and odd, felt right. Was wonderful. Olive pulled Jacob further into her and her head reeled with power on the ache of his sigh.
And he brought her slowly to pleasure. When Jacob’s back arched, Olive watched his eyes flutter as he gave into the demands of his body and his dead weight upon her, heaved for breath, sweat glistened in the moonlight. His love words in her hair brought her hands to his face.
Olive’s limbs were lazy and her eyes barely open. Their passion sated, she voiced in a half breath the sum of her thoughts.
“Fiddle-dee-dee.”
Table of Contents
Title page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
on Archive.
