B000XUBEHA EBOK (17 page)

Despite the drumming of rain on the canvas, he imagined he could hear the steady rise and fall of Della’s breath. Damn it. And long after the fire had settled into dimly glowing embers, he saw her braid in his mind’s eye and wanted to slide the luxuriant weight of it through his hands.

He tossed back the whisky and let the scald burn down his throat. He had no right to these thoughts. No right at all.

Chapter 10

Morning sun lit the range, transforming a sea of grass into glistening golden waves. Rabbits swam in the undercurrents, and a herd of antelope bounded across the surface. Brilliant blue curved overhead, washed clean of haze and clouds.

As the day warmed, the knots dissolved between Della’s shoulders. She deliberately anchored her mind in the present, pleased to discover that finally she could ride all day without aching, could enjoy a day as bright and sunny as yesterday had been cold and damp.

In late afternoon, Cameron circled around and rode up beside her. “Did I hear you whistling?”

“It’s a barroom song called ‘Mary Avaline.’ ” In the end, she was who she was. A former bargirl who whistled. She wouldn’t apologize for enjoying a pursuit that was not considered feminine. But she did sound a little defensive.

“I know that song.” Cameron tilted his head and whistled a few bars. “Can you sing it?”

“Heavens, no. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. But for some reason I can hit the notes true if I whistle.”

“Start again. I’ll come in on harmony.”

She stared at him through her blue lenses. What a surprising man this was, a study in contrasts. Rigid in so many ways, but tolerant in others.

After wetting her lips, she whistled the first notes of the song, waiting for him to join. He tracked perfectly, whistling alto to her soprano.

When the last notes faded, Della twisted on her saddle and blinked in astonishment. “That was wonderful. We created real music!”

He grinned. James Cameron actually grinned. Her heart soared.

“I loved it,” she said enthusiastically. “Let’s do it again. Do you know ‘The Girl I Left at Home’?” The song was slow and melancholy, but well suited to harmony.

“That’s amazing.” A stranger would have believed they had practiced together for years.

“The horses enjoyed the performance.” Leaning, he stroked Bold’s neck. “Bold’s been restless all day. I think the songs calmed him a little.”

“If you want to run him, I’ll take Rebecca’s lead rope.” When he hesitated, she arched an eyebrow. “Yes, it’s a ploy. First, I take over the cooking, then I start leading Rebecca. Next, caring for the animals will be my job. Then, I’ll start digging the fire pit and setting up camp. I figure in a week or two you won’t have anything to do except twiddle your thumbs.”

He pursed his lips as if he half believed her, then he suddenly laughed. “You’ll still need me to carry the saddles and bags.”

“Only until I grow eight inches and put on some weight and muscle. Give me Rebecca’s rope.”

As he galloped ahead, she thought about how good it made her feel when she said something that made him laugh. Since she doubted he laughed easily or often, his laughter made her feel special.

But he’d made her feel special from the beginning by listening and by seeming to genuinely want to know and understand her. At first she had attributed his interest to a natural curiosity about his friend’s wife. However, recently she’d begun to suspect Cameron might be interested in her for her own sake.

The possibility was flattering but also disturbing.

In all these years, she had never seriously considered remarriage. One or two men had let their interest be known, but she’d made it clear their attentions were unwanted. First, the past tied her to Clarence. Second, she’d proven she made a selfish and unworthy wife.

Now Cameron’s attentions confused her thinking. It wasn’t that she looked at him wondering about marriage, she hastily assured herself. He would be the worst possible choice, another husband who placed himself in harm’s way. She couldn’t bear that.

But spending so much time with Cameron reminded her that men and women were meant to be together. Luke Apple had practically said the same thing. Her sense that Luke could be correct warred with her ties to Clarence and her unworthiness.

And there was something else. Having decided she would spend her life alone, she had shut the door on sex. And she had sealed away sexual thoughts and feelings so completely that, until James Cameron rode up her driveway, she could have truthfully said that she seldom, if ever, thought about sex.

That was no longer the case. It was like vowing never to eat another piece of cake, and finding the vow easy to uphold because there was never cake in the house. Then the most tempting, most delectable cake imaginable appeared and suddenly she had a raging hunger for cake. Cake was all she thought about. Imagining the taste and texture, the look and size of it on her plate.

Della swallowed hard and turned her gaze away from the figure far out on the range.

The odd thing about her recent thoughts was that sex had never played an important role. She hadn’t disliked sex, she thought loyally, remembering Clarence, but she hadn’t particularly liked it, either. Sex was an awkward duty one performed to appease one’s husband and to conceive a child. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

But lately, lying in her bedroll, shocking thoughts had crept into her mind. Was sex the same with every man? What would it be like with Cameron? That question and the images provoked by the topic flooded her body with damp heat.

“Your face is pink. Are you all right?” Cameron asked, reining hard beside her in a spiral of dust.

“It’s just the sun. It’s hot today. Hard to believe, isn’t it, that it could be so cold yesterday and hot today?” She was babbling, trying not to look at his muscled thighs or the tanned sureness of his hands.

Feeling the heat in her cheeks and stomach, she turned her head. He was totally unsuitable. She was unworthy. And that was the end of it.

“There’s a place about a mile ahead that would make a good camp.”

Nodding, she glanced at the sinking sun. Every day, as she grew more accustomed to riding, Cameron extended their time in the saddle. Oddly, the hours passed more quickly now than when the days had been shorter.

“If you’re all right by yourself, I’ll go on ahead and bag a rabbit for supper.”

“I’m fine. Rebecca is no trouble.”

When she reached the campsite, Cameron had dug the fire pit and skinned two rabbits, enough for tonight and tomorrow’s supper. He came forward and pulled the saddlebags off Bob’s rump.

“I’ll get you set up, but the cooking is your job.”

“Look. If it truly makes you uncomfortable . . .”

“I’ve thought about it. I’ll establish a new routine.”

There were many things she could have said, but she restrained herself. “What an excellent idea.” And then she busied herself untying her bedroll and dropping it to the ground. Even the smartest men occasionally had skulls as thick as posts.

She reminded herself of this as Cameron hung over her shoulder while she set up the coffee.

“I like to start with a few of the leftover grounds. Gives the coffee a stronger flavor,” he said.

“I did that.” She’d never known a man to be so damned particular about his coffee.

“Did you find the bag of egg shells? A few egg shells give the coffee . . .”

Straightening, she placed her fists on her hips and narrowed her eyes. “Do you want to do this?”

Raising his palms, he stepped back. “No. You’re doing fine.”

“Here. Fill the stew pot with water. Please.”

It felt good to have chores of her own. Her mother would have been pleased. One of her mother’s concerns about sending her to Atlanta at an impressionable age had been that becoming part of a household with servants and slaves would spoil her. And it had.

She paused in peeling potatoes and thought about the years she had missed with her mother. When she departed for Atlanta, she’d been at the age when she was just beginning to see her mother as a person.

“The rain brought up the water level. There’s plenty of water if you need to wash out anything.” Cameron put the pot next to the coffeepot. “You look pensive.”

“I was thinking about my mother.”

“Tell me about her,” he said after they’d finished setting up camp and were drinking coffee while they waited for the stew.

“My mother? She was widowed when I was four. I don’t remember much about my father.” He’d been a tall man with an accountant’s hands who smelled like peppermint drops. “What I remember about my mother is that she was always busy. Cleaning, sewing, polishing. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to while away an afternoon reading, like my cousin in Atlanta, or to spend an entire day at the park with me.” Frowning, she tried to remember. “Proper behavior was important to her. I never saw her cry or raise her voice. I had a feeling that she didn’t care much for children, that she and I would get on better when I was an adult.”

“Did you?”

“I didn’t see her again after I left for Atlanta. By the time Clarence and I married, travel was out of the question as the war was underway, and then she died shortly before Clarence did. So I never knew her on a woman-to-woman basis. I wish I had. What about your family?”

“I think I mentioned that my father was a judge. My mother was involved with temperance societies and groups lobbying for women’s rights. My sister and I were expected to read the newspapers and be prepared to discuss the headlines at dinner.”

“I think I might have enjoyed a family like that.”

“The judge held high expectations for everyone around him. Both Celia and I were a disappointment. He wanted Celia to attend the university and pulled strings to make it happen, but she married instead. He strongly objected to me going to war.”

“How did your parents die?” she asked curiously, keeping an eye on the stew.

“The judge was shot by the wife of a man he sentenced to prison. A year earlier, my mother had been exposed to measles at a temperance meeting. She died within a week.”

“And Celia died in childbirth?” she asked softly.

“Yes.”

Like herself, Cameron had suffered much loss and was the last of his family. “Well,” she said after a minute. “I believe supper is ready.”

The hours after supper were the hardest of the day. That’s when Della became acutely aware of being alone with him. On a night like this, when distant stars spangled an inky sky and the range seemed empty and silent, she could almost believe they were the only two people left in the universe.

What did the last two people in the universe say to each other? Especially when one of those people was increasingly consumed by secret speculation and thoughts that dared not be spoken aloud.

This was the time when firelight defined his lips and the hard angle of his jaw. When she wanted to comb her fingers through his hair and smooth out the unruly tangles of the day. These were the oddly tense moments when she wondered if one man’s kiss was the same as another’s. And when she remembered the hard muscle of his chest and the way his arms had come around her that evening on the porch.

Della cleared her throat and made herself stop twisting her hands in her lap. “Would you like to whistle?” Anything to chase away the embarrassing questions circling her mind.

“If you like.”

Shy at first, then with greater confidence, they alternated choosing songs to try, stopping with laughter when one of them missed a note.

“We’re good at this,” Della said, when they finally halted because her lips were tired of puckering. Tilting her head, she gave him a teasing glance. “If the legend business doesn’t work out for you, we could join a theatrical company.”

For a moment he looked startled, then he laughed. “You can be a saucy creature.”

The comment pleased her, mostly because it had been years since she’d considered herself saucy. Or flirtatious, which, perhaps, was another word for the same thing. That possibility shocked her and she stood abruptly, making a gesture toward her bedroll.

“It’s gotten late. I’ll just . . .” This part of the journey wasn’t easy, either. Saying the word “bed” in front of a man would have scandalized her mother, her mother-in-law, and just about every woman she’d ever known. She liked to think that she’d become a no-nonsense woman who was above such silliness, but in this instance she wasn’t.

“Thank you for an enjoyable evening.”

“I enjoyed it, too.” And she’d learned something, watching him. The pucker for whistling was not the same as a pucker for kissing. A whistle pucker could be amusing, but she didn’t recall ever thinking a kissing pucker was funny.

She didn’t know if Cameron observed her crawling into her bedroll, but it felt as if he did, which made her awkward and clumsy. The difficulties with hair followed.

It felt unseemly to brush out her hair with a man watching, but if she didn’t plait it, her hair would be a mass of tangles in the morning, plus loose hair got in the way of sleeping comfortably.

When she glanced toward the fire, sure enough Cameron quickly turned his head. Knowing she’d guessed correctly, and that he had been watching, made her feel strange inside, and oddly pleased. Which wouldn’t do.