Marry Me (26 page)

His hands were slick and Jake rubbed them against his thighs. “Yeah.” He closed his eyes briefly against the memories that charged up, clear and raw as the day they’d been born. “It’s not the same, Joe.”

“How do you know?”

“Emily promised.” He said it with forced conviction only to ease Joe’s mind. But it settled his, too; Emily might shade the truth when the situation required it, but she’d been completely confident on this point. He was sure of it.

Another cry rent the air. Joe sat bolt upright, eyes wide with terror. “Jesus, Jake! I can’t—” He looked longingly toward the door, apparently on the verge of bolting through it.

“Oh no, you don’t.” How’d he ever believe Joe would take this lightly? Jake wondered. Another point to Emily. “If you run out now, you’ll be suffering for it till the day you die.”

“I wish it was me. It’s got to be worse…the waitin’ and worryin’, it’s got to be worse than the doin’. Doesn’t it?”

Oh no, it’s not,
Jake thought, but in the interests of keeping Joe here, spared him that answer.

“Now see here.” Jake rose from his chair and his bones creaked, reminding him just how long he’d been hunched there, his muscles so tense they’d practically frozen in place. “I’m the last person to recommend drinking as a solution to anythin’, but where the hell’s that whiskey you make?”

“I—” Dazed, Joe blinked until the question took hold. “Keep it behind the woodbox.”

Jake dove for the bottle, decided not to bother with a cup. He yanked out the cork and shoved it at Joe. When Joe didn’t respond, Jake reached down and forced his fingers around it, then pushed it toward Joe’s mouth.

Joe gulped, then shuddered. “Ahh.” He gulped down a quarter of the bottle, bringing enough color into his cheeks that he no longer looked in danger of fainting at any moment.

“How about you?” Joe asked.

Jake’s mouth went dry. The sharp smell of the alcohol burned his nostrils and he missed it, more sharply than ever, and the black oblivion it promised. He swallowed hard. “No,” he said. “I’m all right.” That might be a lie, he thought, but he sure as hell hadn’t been all right when he’d been drinking, either.

Another cry, long and strained. Joe’s bottle tilted in his slack grip, the pale liquid spilling out and forming a puddle right into the damp spot the coffee had left.

Ten brutally long seconds later, Joe straightened his shoulders like a man who knew there was nothing for it but to charge into battle even though he’d surely be killed. “I’m goin’ in there.”

Jake grabbed his arm. “Em’ll call you if you’re needed. She promised.”

“But—”

And then there was another cry, a new one, wavering, nasal, as beautiful a thing as this earth offered.

“Jake,” Joe said, stunned as a poleaxed steer. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “I heard it,” he said, grabbing Joe’s hand and pumping hard.

“Thanks, I—” He stopped dead, gaze glued over Jake’s shoulder. Jake spun, saw Emily approaching with a smile the size of Montana, a yellow-wrapped bundle tucked carefully in the crook of her arm.

“Is that—” Joe took half a step, couldn’t go any farther.

“Of course it is. What else would it be?” She beamed at him. “Congratulations.”

“May, is she—” Full sentences were beyond him.

“She’s wonderful. She did a beautiful job.” Emily pushed back a corner of the blanket. Jake caught a glimpse of dark, wet hair, plastered against an impossibly tiny skull. “Don’t you want to meet your daughter?”

“That’ll be ten bucks, Blevins,” Jake said, but Joe ignored him.

“My daughter,” Joe whispered, with such reverence that Jake knew any preference Joe might have had for a son had disappeared the instant he’d laid eyes on this girl. Haltingly, Joe stepped closer, tucked his hands behind his back, and peered into the swirl of blanket as if terrified of what he might see. “My—”

He dropped to the floor.

Torn, Emily looked from the patient at her feet to the one in her arms.

“I’ll take her.”

“Jake?”

“You better check on him,” Jake said, and hoped to God he wasn’t going to faint, too. He felt light-headed, the blood roaring in his ears until he could barely hear her response. “I won’t drop her. I promise.”

“You’d better not,” she said, pretending to tease while she studied him worriedly.

Carefully she transferred her precious burden to him. “Jesus. I forgot how light they are.” Eyes closed, mouth open, plump cheeks curved so adorably. “Jesus.”

Emily, who’d bent beside Joe, looked up, her brow knit. “He’s fine. Just fainted.”

“If there’s ever a moment in a man’s life worthy of fainting, this is it.”

“I really should—”

“Attend to May,” he finished when she was reluctant to do so. “Go ahead. We’re fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’ll be just till he wakes up, right?” Oh, the smell of the babe rose to him, that powdery sweetness like nothing else. “Em, if we’re ever going to have one of these of our own, it’s probably about time I test out the idea.”

She struggled to hide her concern. “All right,” she said over her riotous worry and slipped behind the curtain.

She delivered the placenta, pleased to discover that May had torn only a bit—not bad for a first baby, she thought, especially one of such a healthy size for all that she’d arrived early. Despite her reassurances, Emily could now admit to herself that she’d been anxious. She had little doubt of the quality of her training but it would take her a while to get used to working so completely alone and without the comforting presence of a hospital only blocks away.

After promising an exhausted but proud May she’d return momentarily with her daughter and her husband—she hadn’t mentioned Joe’s little nap—she pushed aside the draped blanket.

It was a picture that would live in her mind until the day she died: Jake, crooning softly to the child, so absurdly tiny in his big arms, his face such a mixture of awe and terror that, if he hadn’t owned her heart already, she’d have handed it over in that moment.

She came to stand beside him; he was too lost in his rapt fascination to notice her approach.

“Jake,” she said, and put a hand on his arm.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” he said, hushed as if in a cathedral.

“Beautiful,” she agreed. And then, reluctantly, “May is asking for her.”

“Oh. Of course.” He looked up, eyes glistening. He blinked hard. “I have to go get her, Emily. I have to go get my daughter.”

Gently she touched his hair and peered over his shoulder, admiring the squawking, red-faced infant. “I know.”

W
inter’s early incursion faded as quickly as it had arrived, making way for a long, golden, fertile autumn filled with crisp days and blue skies and a hefty harvest for Joe Blevins…when the besotted father could tear himself away from staring into the cradle long enough to go to the fields.

The last week in October Emily returned from McGyre with the mail, and upon finding the shack empty, hurried to where the new house was rising steadily, sticks of clean, raw yellow wood blocking out the boundaries of a home to come.

It’d been a bit of a trick to convince Jake that she should be the one to take the
Register
in for distribution and pick up the mail. Part of the printer’s duties, she’d informed him, but finding the little white lies that had once tripped so easily off her tongue came harder now, even though she said the words to spare him.

Hammer in hand he came to meet her, his smile uncomplicated, unfettered, and her heart swelled. Yes, there was much to be settled between them, but she could be patient. It would all work out in the end. She’d never been so sure of anything in her life.

He kissed her until the letters fluttered from her hands to the ground and she surely would have followed them if his arms hadn’t held her up.

“Come on,” he said. “Let me show you what I’ve done.”

“Now?”

He grinned, thoroughly pleased with the reaction he’d drawn. “It won’t take long. And then I’ll be able to give you my full attention.”

He took her by the hand and drew her into the center of the structure. “What do you think?”

“I—” It took her a moment to sort it out, translate the maze of lumber into future rooms. He’d expanded the kitchen, moved the staircase, nudged the wall of the dining room farther into the parlor. “You changed the framing.”

“Yeah. Once, when we were talking about houses, you said…you mentioned you liked a big kitchen, and that you thought it would be clever to put it in front where you could see the comings and goings. And that you hated having to squeeze into a dining room.”

“But I—” She’d always hoped. Her whole life had been fueled by it. But this…this was bigger than hope, all encompassing, a joyful lifting that left her light-headed, ready to float right up to the pretty blue sky. “You changed Julia’s plans.”

“Yeah.” She looked for signs of regret. There was a shadow of sadness, yes; she knew there would always be. One could not love and lose without having the loss mark you permanently. She wouldn’t even want it to disappear. It was the sum of life, loss and joy, and if you were very lucky, the balance came up bigger on the joy side.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know I didn’t have to. But I want this to be our house.” He reached for her and cradled her face in his palms as if he held an object of infinite preciousness, as carefully as he’d held Joe and May’s new daughter. “Julia’s house still lives, in my dreams, just as it always did. But this one…this one is ours,” he said with absolute conviction.

“Oh.” She kissed him again, because sometimes words just wouldn’t do.

“So,” he murmured when he lifted his head. “How was town?”

“Town? It was…” She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten. Or perhaps, deep down inside, she’d been too afraid of what was in that letter and allowed herself to “forget.”

She pawed frantically through the brittle brown grass. “There!” she said and pounced on the flash of white. And then she slowed, clutching the envelope in her hand.

He stared at the white square before slowly lifting his gaze to her face. “It’s from Mr. Jensen.”

He put out his hand, sucked in a breath.

“Jake…”

“It’s okay, Em. I’ve got to read it sooner or later, and waiting doesn’t change what’s inside.”

She tried to mouth her usual faith in the future but the words wouldn’t come. This mattered too much.

She watched his face carefully while he ripped open the envelope. The torn bits fluttered down to the ground as he scanned the two sheets of paper inside. His mouth firmed, and the rich, new life in his eyes—which she hoped she’d had something to do with—went flat and dull.

“We’ll get a different lawyer,” she said quickly. “Jensen, he’s just one man, he doesn’t know—”

“He’s the best I can hire in Chicago.” He crumpled the letter in his fist. “It’s not that bad, Em. He said it would be hard. We knew that going in.”

“But she’s your
daughter
.” Emily refused to believe that the courts wouldn’t acknowledge the right of his claim. A child deserved to know her father, and Jake deserved his chance to be one.

“Jensen said there’s no getting around the fact that I left.”

“You had no choice in the matter.”

“Didn’t I?” he said hoarsely. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. All right, I didn’t have a choice. But it’s my word against theirs, and Barnett Bates’s word means a helluva lot more in Chicago than mine.”

“There’s no one there who’d vouch for your story?”

“No. No, not anymore, not with their livelihoods on the line.”

“So what can we do?”

He walked over to her. “He said it’d be better if we proved up first. Finished the house. So I can show that I can offer her a real home, a stable future.” He drew a line down her jaw and she trembled at the touch. “And you’ll help, too. Show that I’m a responsible, happily married man.”

Happily?
Any other time, in any other circumstances, the word would have meant the world to her. “We’ll do it, Jake. We’ll get her back. I promise.”

“So.” He visibly boxed the subject away. “What else do you have there?”

“It’s just a letter from my sister.”

“Read it to me, will you?”

“Jake…” She didn’t want to drop the subject, but he’d shut down completely, in a way he hadn’t in months. She hated the barrier he put up between them. She thought she’d found her way inside.

“Your sister does entertain me,” he said. “So where’s Kate?”

She shook her head. “It’s from Anthea.”

“Ah, another one weighs in. Let’s hear it.”

My dearest Emily:

I bet you’re all braced for the worst, aren’t you? Certain you’re going to get a lecture from me? But I expect that Kate has already filled that function for the both of us, and quite expertly at that.

Not to mention that I am hardly the one to talk about quick marriages to a man your sisters haven’t had time to approve, am I? I can only hope that it turns out as well for you as it did for me. I have every faith that you’ve chosen well.

No, I’m writing to you about Kate. I’m just the slightest bit concerned about her, you see. She sent me the oddest letter, something about treasures and adventures and…Emily, can you think of a person less suited to an adventure than Kate? She posted it from New York, but I wired the hotel and received no answer. I’m sure she must be tucked away at some posh resort, soaking her toes, too busy fending off admirers to write to either one of us, but I’d feel more comfortable if I knew exactly where. I must have a sister to worry over, you know. Did she happen to mention her plans to you?

I’m sure it’s nothing for you to fuss over, though. Fuss over that handsome man of yours instead (he simply must be handsome, I insist upon it) and be happy, my dear. Be happy.

Awaiting details and, hopefully, a visit—

Your devoted sister,
Anthea

December 23

The snow fell fast and thick, revenge for the mild autumn. Inside the house three pies—two mince, one dried peach—cooled on the table, while beside them three bowls of yeast dough rose high and white beneath cloths. Emily pulled a batch of nutmeg cookies from the oven, the warm, rich spice scenting the air.

She poked at the puffy dough. Needed another fifteen minutes or so, she judged. Which meant she could drink a cup of coffee and stare out at the storm without guilt.

The world swirled with white. Here and there a long piece of dried grass pierced the snow, like the few sparse, stiff hairs on Mr. Biskup’s head.

Jake came out of the half-finished office where he’d been, under protest, setting type. But given a choice between throwing the next edition of the
Register
or Emily having the time to bake one more pie, he’d immediately picked the type.

“Jeez, it smells good in here.” He wandered over to join her, slipping his arms around her waist, a gesture that had become utterly natural to them both. He nuzzled her neck. “Smells even better right here.”

“It’s really coming down. I can hardly see the stables.” Smiling, she leaned back into his embrace. “If this keeps up, the Blevinses and Art won’t make it here for Christmas dinner.”

“You mean I’d have to eat it all?” He
tsk
ed. “Such a shame.”

“You’ll just have to force yourself.”

“The things I do for you.” He kissed her neck, her cheek, and let the simmer of desire, the promise of more to come, warm them both. “Too bad I couldn’t get the house all done in time for Christmas.”

Three weeks ago they’d moved into bare rooms and unfinished walls, the air sharp with the smells of sawdust and fresh paint. Emily loved every inch of it.

She turned in his arms, and her heart caught and sang. Would the day ever come, she wondered, that she would see him and not feel this? The lift, the warmth, the giddy joy? “Some things,” she said softly, “are worth waiting for.”

“I—” He looked over her shoulder, squinted. “What the hell’s that?”

“What?” She spun, following his gaze. A dark shape, bulky and big, took form out of the snow. “A coach?”

Yes, a coach, the likes of which had never been seen in that territory, bigger than their old claim shack, glossy black sides glinting through a thick dusting of white.

“Who could possibly be out in this?” she asked.

“Must have gotten lost,” he murmured. “Followed the first light they saw.”

The vehicle had been mounted on skids and slid right into the yard. Four perfectly matched gray horses, their blankets a deep royal blue, pulled it, huge hooves churning the snow.

The coachman, swaddled in scarves and buffalo robes, climbed down and opened the side door. He reached inside and handed down a tiny, cloaked figure that shook off the assistance and leaped down with alacrity.

“What—” Jake’s hold on her loosened and she felt his sudden, sharp alertness. And as the figure turned, took one step toward the shack, he burst into motion, sprinting out the door and into the snow.

“Mom?” Four fast steps, and then he stopped cold. “Mom?”

Emily saw the woman lift her head, and then Jake scooped her up, hugging her so her toes dangled off the ground, brushing the top of the layer of snow. Emily, who’d been a few seconds behind, finally caught up.

“Em! Em, look who’s here.” He set her down, but kept her hand. “This is my—”

“I know. This is your mother.” Emily extended her hands in welcome and was pleased when Mrs. Sullivan took them both. She was tiny, smaller than Emily, who came up to Jake’s chest on a tall day. She peered out from between a low, fuzzy cap and a big swath of fuzzy blue scarf, wrinkled and bright-eyed as a storybook elf, but her grip on Emily’s hands was strong. “I’m so delighted you’re here.”

“As am I.” Mrs. Sullivan beamed, sunshine through the swirling snow. “Though I suspect the very best Christmas present I’ve ever had, my dear, is you.”

“But how did you—?” Flakes melted on Jake’s dark cheeks, glistening droplets, and caught on his lashes. “What are you—?” He couldn’t seem to get the questions out, as if there were too many to settle on any one.

“The Bateses invited me, of course.”

“But—” He frowned. “They fired you. Right after Julia and I—”

“Yes,” she said serenely. “But things change.” She touched his cheek. “You’ve no coat, and there’s much to talk about. Let’s get inside.”

“I’m not cold.” Irrevocably drawn, his gaze arrowed to the massive black coach. “Emily, go ahead. I’m going to—” The words stuck in his throat when another figure, larger, wearing a huge dark great-coat, lumbered down from the coach.

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere.”

Jake didn’t move. Emily thought he probably didn’t even breathe.

The man, slow-moving, impressively distinguished even with snowflakes catching in his gray-streaked beard, went to Emily first.

He stabbed his beautiful mahogany cane into six inches of snow and leaned upon it. “You must be Emily,” he said, and extended a broad hand. “I’m Barnett Bates.”

“I’m pleased you’re here.”

He patted her hand and scowled. “Not sure I can say the same.”

“Wait. Wait, wait,
wait
!” Jake came out of his stunned silence with a roar. “What the hell’s going on?”

“We’ve come for…” He looked back at Emily. “You mean you didn’t tell him? Oh, that’s rich.” His laugh boomed as he bent over with it, so deep only the support of his cane kept him from tumbling into a drift. “That’s the best fun I’ve had in…” He sobered. “Two years or so.” He was just as Jake had described him. Proud, intimidating, confident in his own opinion. But he’d come this far, Emily thought. It was enough. “Wilomene’s had some trouble with a cough. Her lungs—” For a man like Barnett Bates that slight, potent pause said more than an anguished cry from another. “The doctor suggested that the Western climates might be more beneficial for her. And when we began receiving letters from your wi—” It was more than he could bring himself to do, call another woman Jake’s wife. “When Emily wrote to us—”

“She
wrote
to you?” Jake broke in.

“Yes. Several times. Charming letters.”

“Oh, she’s charming, all right,” Jake said flatly.

“She invited us to visit. Very prettily, I might add, which is more than you ever did.” Snowflakes coated the black fur collar of his coat, sparkling like sugar. “When Emily mentioned that there might be several plots available here, and that in her considered opinion the air might be helpful, Wilomene and I decided the time had come to inspect it.”