Cowboy Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #3, Kitty and Lukes story) (8 page)

             
"It sounds like such an adventure," I said.  When the trail team had ridden back onto the ranch my first day, they'd brought with them the dust of the trail, the contentment of men who'd done a job and seen it through from start to finish.  I'd tried to say that to Sarah once and she'd snorted a very unladylike laugh and told me I was confusing contentment with filthiness, dust and exhaustion.

             
Still, the men had been tall in the saddle, the dogs running at their feet, nearly herding them back onto the ranch.  They'd been sunlit and grinning and it had looked quite the adventure to me.  I think Sarah had half eyed me at that point, as if suspecting I might slip away after another adventure when I'd just begun one by escaping to Redding.

             
Now Robert was eyeing me as if I weren't quite sane or, if I was, that sanity wasn't quite to be trusted.  "It's dirty and dangerous work," he said.  "Cattle are unpredictable things and so stupid, they'll die of thirst in the snow if they can't get past the snow to water."

             
I almost laughed but by the look on his face it looked like he meant it. 

             
"There's rattle snakes and there's Indians."  He strolled, hands in his pockets. 

             
"But you get to see the country," I said, wistfully.  It sounded ideal to me, dangerous or not.

             
Robert seemed ideal to me also, and possibly just as dangerous.  Sarah had tried to warn me off him and William had looked askance when she told him, lightly and in passing, that I would not be joining them at supper and why.  Later, I had overheard him asking Sarah whether McLeod wasn't still seeing that little girl from town, what was her name, Abigail?  And Sarah asking what in the world William thought she spent her day doing that she would know such things and anyway, shush, if Mr. McLeod was asking me to step out with him, clearly he wasn't seeing anyone else.  Her voice held a note of threat I thought Robert more than William should be wary of.

             
As the night deepened, Robert took my arm to guide me and my skin felt full of sparks and stars where he touched my arm.  I basked in the attention, listened to his stories of university and San Francisco,

             
When he stopped under a spreading lilac bush on a corner just short of the hotel where the wagon and horses were tethered, I felt breathless and lightheaded rather than light on my feet.  Some of my curls had escaped, tumbling down my back and some of them around my face, and he combed them back gently, then looked into my eyes before tilting my head up with one knuckle under my chin. 

             
The kiss was soft and undemanding, his lips gentle on mine.  He left his knuckle under my chin and his other hand just brushed my shoulder.  I shivered under his touch, my eyes closed, head tilted.  When he drew away, he licked his bottom lip and smiled slightly at me, then collected my arm again and asked if I needed to get back or would I care to see another branch of the river by moonlight.

             
As there was no moon that night it hardly seemed apropos.  My heart beat far too quickly and my thoughts ranged far too sluggishly and I opted for river and moonlight and another kiss.

             
"I'd like to see the river," I said.  "But, perhaps on the way back to the Big Sky?"

             
We had strolled back to the front of the hotel, where a crowd milled, people coming in and going out and the dancing still in full swing.  I watched him as he slipped easily between people in pursuit of fetching the wagon and froze, looking directly at Luke.

             
When he caught my gaze, he turned away abruptly, disappearing into the crowd. 

              The night held its warmth and I'd brought a wrap so it was comfortable beside Mr. McLeod in the wagon.  The river drifted past, dark against darkness, and I could hear sleepy croaks of frogs, the trill of crickets and the occasional rustlings of something larger in the reeds.

             
Robert put one arm around my shoulder and it felt natural to lean into him, my head on his shoulder.  His fingers traced up and down my arm through the sleeve of my dress, hypnotic and exciting all at once.

             
Listening to the frogs, Robert said, "I used to catch tadpoles and keep them in a jar with water and rocks, feed 'em, and wait for them to turn into frogs.  Right up until the time they all turned at once and my mother caught me with a room full of frogs all jumping everywhere and that's the first time I knew she hated frogs."

             
I laughed and didn't mention that something surprisingly similar had happened to me, except that my mother took it in her stride and simply stated our house wasn't big enough for both me and the frogs and something had to go.  I'd been eight or nine years old and chose to move the frogs out.

             
I was distracted from the memory when Robert leaned down and kissed me for the second time, gentle and soft, his breath on my neck as he kissed along the edge of my jaw.  I breathed in the scent of wood and brush, denim and flannel, the woodsy smell of him, and sighed.

              Johnny was the only man I had ever stepped out with regularly and his father's house was nearly a half mile from mine, so it was a strange feeling to have Robert see me home as the night wore on, knowing we were both headed for the same destination.

             
He stopped outside the huge weathered gates that led to the Kennedy's 10,000 acres and gave me a kiss goodnight that left me witless.  And now the tongue-tied, stammering, blushing Kitty tried to take over, because now I wanted to see him again, more than anything. 

             
Exactly the way I hadn't wanted to feel.

              The next morning at breakfast, Luke was distant and short in answers to questions.  He ate fast and left before anyone else was halfway through.

             
"I needed to go over a chore list with him," William said, throwing down his napkin.  He rose to follow.

             
Sarah didn't look up but said, apparently to the coffee mug in her hands, "Finish your breakfast."

             
Tiny, Mike, the Juans, Robert and a handful of hands were finishing up breakfast.  No one looked up or paid any attention.

             
Except Sarah.  She noticed my blush.

              She asked about the evening as we washed the dishes.  I told her a little.  The previous night felt like a dream.  Luke had been strange.  Me, I was half relieved and half in that wonderful, terrible place of wanting to see him again, giddy happiness followed a moment later by certainty that he had found me dull and wouldn't call again.

             
He lived on the same ranch.  I couldn't imagine seeing him daily if he had found me dull.

             
Could he?  I wasn't even certain I was the same Kitty who had to be called down from trees and told not to bring frogs into the house.

             
Sarah went away after a few words about the evening.  I watched her go as I dried the last of the dishes.  She didn't seem herself.

              When Sarah didn't reappear by midmorning, I entertained myself, dusting a little, going out to check on the calves, which no one needed me to do.  I didn't admit to myself I hoped to run into Robert, or dreaded running into Luke for no reason I could name.             

             
I saw Luke leaving the barn out the back as I entered.  I called, but not loudly.  The day was sullen, overcast and hot, and if there was anyone on the ranch who might be convinced to saddle a horse and ride to the lake I'd been told was no more than three miles north of the ranch house, it would be Luke.  We could bathe our feet and skip stones.  There was always work on the ranch but today seemed slow.

             
But Luke slipping away as I entered made me rethink those plans.  I went back inside, looking for Sarah and finding her correspondence instead.

             
It seemed she must have just left the table before I arrived.  The big wood block of the kitchen table held her mug of coffee and a stack of the same stationery she'd brought out when I wrote the missive to our mother, the paper I used when I wrote letters now and that I intended to gift Sarah with more of once I was home.  Her ink was still capped; her pen lay on a blotter, an untidy stack of stationery near the edge of the table.

             
"Sarah?"

             
No answer.  She could have gone out to William's office in the outbuilding, or she could be in her bedroom.  She could have gone looking for me, even, or be in the garden.  Restless, I spun on my heel. I'd go into the garden, pull weeds, viciously perhaps, driving away the extra energy that filled me when I thought about the kiss Robert had given me, about wanting to dance in his arms again and talk about everything from cattle to horses to his family and mine, about The Faro Queen and my uncles, my mother, my sister, my brother at university studying mining engineering and my fear of him spending a life below ground.  I'd been able to talk with him about everything and he had shared his life and I wanted to be with him again, he was the one I wanted to ride to the creek with but doubtless he was with William, the two of them going over accounts William would later go over with David Lord, or discussing the next strategy for freeing up the near eastern pastures from Mr. Getties' water grab or—

             
I spun, took a step, brushed my skirt against the table and sent Sarah's stack of stationery sailing straight down from the table.  The papers landed face up, still in a stack. 

             
"Damn!"  Not ladylike, but the need to get out of the house and back into the fresh air had doubled in the last minute.  Maybe I would see Robert.  He'd still be on the ranch, wouldn't he?  He couldn't dodge me, didn't have any reason to, I just had to catch my breath and stop being silly.

             
I stooped to retrieve the stack of pages from the floor, caught my knee on the table when I started to rise and dropped the pile again.

             
This time, the pages fanned out, the top empty sheet catching the air and sailing under the table out of reach.

             
I didn't chase it.  I didn't look away from the letters lying on the floor.  There were half a dozen of them or more, each starting the same way.

             
Dear Kitty
.

             
My hands stilled and the panicky need to get outside and moving fell away.  I reached for the pages, picked them up gingerly, as if somehow they were dangerous, stood more gracefully than I'd lowered down to the floor and stacked them together as if I had every intention of retrieving that top piece and leaving everything the way I'd found it.

             
Of course, I didn't.  These were the letters I'd seen my first day at Big Sky Ranch.  The ones I hadn't found a way to ask Sarah about.  With one hand, I spread the letters out, taking a look.  There were seven of them, all of them addressed to me, and none of them went farther than the first page.

             
They all started brightly: Dear Kitty.  Sometimes, Dear Kitty with an exclamation.  One started My Dear Sister.  The ink was smeared on that one, but I didn't think that's why she had abandoned them. 

             
Dear Kitty: I apologize for not writing sooner, as I promised to do.  We are simply so busy!

             
Dear Kitty: I am remiss in my correspondence and pray you'll forgive me.  So much happens every day, I set out to put it down on paper and I find…

             
Dear Kit: You must be wondering why I haven't written…

             
I had been wondering. It was part of what had brought me here.  I stood looking for a long time at the letters she'd never sent me; that she hadn't even been able to finish.  They were my letters, meant for me, but reading them felt like spying on her.  There was something unsaid in those letters.  She'd been stopped every time by something private that she still hadn't shared with me.

             
I was still staring at them when she reentered the kitchen and stopped short at the sight of me.  "Kitty?"

             
"Came looking for you."  I didn't move away from the letters, or comment on them.  Her gaze moved rapidly back and forth between me and the letters; she didn't ask.

             
"Did you need something?"

             
"To do!" I said with all the pent up feeling I actually possessed.

             
That made her smile.  "There's not many days like this on a ranch.  You should take advantage of it."

             
"I haven't been here long enough to need to," I said, and added promptly, "Besides, I will if you will."

             
Her protest was automatic.  Too much to do, food to prepare, cleaning to do, weeding, the calves needed tending…

             
"I tended the calves," I said.  "Your dishes are clean and one meal the hands are forced to find for themselves from cold repast will not kill them."

             
"What would you have me do in place of my duties, Miss Kathryn?"

             
So, I told her about my idea for the lake.

              Of all my wild ideas, this one was one of my best.  The lake was close.  We were able to reach it easily, carrying a lunch that contained much of the same cold repast the cowboys would find for themselves for midday meal.

             
This time of day, the shoreline was mostly empty.  A young couple with one small child walked some distance away from us in the trees at the edge of the undergrowth and forest.  A few men fished from the shore and a few more from rowboats. 

             
Left to our own devices, Sarah and I were able to remove our shoes and pad through the sand to the water's edge, bathing our feet and shivering at the touch of the cold water.  The lake water lapped at the shore, a slow, quiet sound.  My frantic thoughts began to slow. 

             
I didn't ask Sarah about the letters.  She didn't ask me any more about Luke's behavior of the morning or about Robert.

             
We didn't stay long and we didn't talk much, just perched on a fallen pine, the bottom branches of which had worn away, and watched the current in the lake and listened to the birds around the lake echoing calls to one another.  At last, Sarah said, tentatively, "Kitty?"

             
"Mmm?"  I was dreamy with sunshine.

             
"He really hurt you, didn't he?"

             
For a second, I thought she meant Robert and didn't know how to respond, if I should say not yet or offer up that I was thrilled at the advent of him, delighted beyond measure that he had asked me to step out but that I was treading so carefully, so aware of Johnny that he couldn't possibly hurt me, and then I fastened on the name Johnny and knew she meant him.

             
"I thought we were going to get married," I said.  I'd said it before.

             
Sarah stared out at the water, not looking at me. "Was that all of it?"

             
I turned to look at her.  "What do you mean?"

             
She turned, looking serious, and said, "Did Johnny break your heart or ruin your plans?" and then waited for me to answer.

             
If he had broken my heart, that seemed a hard way to approach it.  Everything she'd said was true.  He'd broken my heart, changed my plans and, therefore, my life.  He'd shattered my illusions of who I thought myself to be—bright Kitty, who plays and runs and races horses and has to be called home for supper, careless Kitty who loves lightly and won't get hurt, not since she lost her father and learned to protect herself—and it had hurt because, yes, I'd really loved him, and it had hurt because, in losing the man I loved, I lost my closest friend.

             
All of which I'd told her before.

             
"Sarah?"

             
She didn't answer.

             
"What's wrong?"

             
But already she stood, making certain her skirt fell all the way down, covering the boots she'd already put back on, smoothing sand from her lap.  "Nothing's wrong, Kitty; I don’t know what you're talking about."

             
"Then why are we leaving?"  The afternoon was still bright, no clouds, hot, no one near us at the lake.  The horses grazed nearby, tied to a low tree branch.

             
"I'm worried," she said, and that didn't sound like subterfuge, it sounded real.