Texas Moon TH4 (24 page)

"Can you and Betsy swim?" he asked, not gripping her arms hard but running his fingers up and down her sleeve. "Do you know anything about poling boats?"

He'd heard. Janice shrugged. "The Hardings taught Betsy to swim a little. I'd hoped I could find somebody who knew something about boats. I just couldn't see any reason the girls had to be stuck in the house all day if the boys didn't have to."

"I rather thought that was what girls were supposed to do," he said wryly. "I thought they liked sitting inside in their ribbons and bows, sipping tea and playing with dolls."

She would have liked to have done that once upon a time. But then, she would have done anything just to have the ribbons and bows when she was a child, up to and including drinking tea. That was no reason Betsy should be confined to such a role. Janice met her husband's gaze squarely. "Girls can do almost anything boys can do. They can ride bicycles or play tennis or go fishing, if that's what they want. These are modern times, sir."

Peter glanced to the open window where the sound of excited chatter began to dissipate. He had the suspicion that their argument had an audience. Out of sheer devilment, he whispered in her ear, "What will you give me if I take you boating?"

He had pulled her so close that Janice had to rest her hands on his chest to keep a space between them. He was a tall man, and his height and breadth made her feel small and vulnerable. At the same time, she felt protected rather than threatened. It was an extremely odd feeling, and one she didn't want to investigate too closely. She held him where he was and considered his question.

"I don't have anything to give you," she finally decided.

Peter kissed the tip of her nose. "Yes, you do. But I'll let you decide if my efforts are worth your favors. I'll go check with Tyler about the boat." He said the last sentence loud enough to bring cheers from their unabashed listeners.

Janice felt herself grow warm, but when Peter went off to see about the boat, she regained her schoolteacher image and ordered the girls to don suitable clothing. They scampered off immediately.

By the time the girls returned in old skirts too short for them, simple shirtwaists, and broad hats that tied under their chins, Peter had located the boat and an additional poleman, the eldest Rodriguez male, Manuel. And Jasmine had practically pleaded with them to drag Ben along to get him out of the house and from underfoot. He just wasn't allowed to stand on his injured leg.

"You can put the wiggly worms on the hooks," Betsy assured Ben when he complained at being made to sit in the back of the wagon like an invalid.

"We don't have worms!" Maria cried out in dismay as she helped Becky into the wagon bed.

"Biscuit dough works just fine," Ben assured her, holding out a hand to help Betsy and Melissa in beside him. "We got us a whole basket of goodies here. You just got to leave some for the fish."

They laughed and giggled all the way to the river. Janice sat between Peter and Manuel on the wagon seat, and the two of them teased her with horror stories of fish leaping out of the water to wriggle in the laps of ladies, but she didn't mind their laughter. She could hear Betsy's laughter intertwining with it, and her heart soared joyfully. If she had learned nothing else in this lifetime, she had learned to grab the few moments of joy God gave her and make the most of them. This was one of those moments.

The July sun was merciless, but the breeze off the river was refreshing. Childish laughter mixed with the wild notes of a mockingbird, and the aroma of fried chicken from their lunch basket competed with the earthy smells of mud and river as they found a place to stop the wagon. Even the strong male presence of Peter at her side was a source of pleasure. Janice took his arm after he tied off the reins, and when he looked down at her questioningly, she smiled. She felt it deep in the pit of her stomach when he smiled back.

That feeling didn't go away as they pulled the boat into the water and managed to guide the excited girls onto it without dumping anyone into the idle current. Every time Janice looked at her husband, she somehow felt him. Was that what happened between husband and wife? Was that physical joining also a permanent tie that bound her to him forever? It felt that way. The hollow inside her deepened and ached when he discarded his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves. As if he knew what she was thinking, Peter looked up at her and held out his hand to help her onto the boat. The touch of his bare palm against hers sent a tremor rippling through her.

The girls didn't leave Janice much time to worry over this new awareness of her husband's presence. They had to be made to sit still while Ben attached strings and hooks to their poles and baited them with wadded-up biscuit dough. The older ones attempted to do it themselves, under his direction while Janice helped the younger ones to lower their hooks over the boat's side. Manuel and Peter kept the simple flatboat near the river's edge, poling it just to keep it out of cypress knees or partially submerged cottonwood trunks.

Alicia spotted the boys on the riverbank at the same time as Maria saw the low-lying island ahead.

"There they are, the skunks! Look, they're not even fishing. They're just jumping in the water and chasing the fish away."

Mildly alarmed at that announcement, Janice hastily attempted to distract their attention by pointing out Maria's discovery. "Do you think we could row over to that island? There's a tree on it that would give adequate shade for a picnic." Firmly she directed Betsy's attention away from the riverbank. She didn't have any illusions about what the boys were doing while "jumping in the water and chasing the fish." And she didn't think they were wearing anything particularly appropriate while doing it. The muggy heat made skinny-dipping almost essential.

The boys shouted when they discovered the boat, and the girls smugly agreed that the island would be just fine. The boys wouldn't be able to reach it without a boat of their own.

Behind Janice, Manuel chuckled as he pushed the boat into deeper currents. "This won't work, you know. Jose isn't going to let Maria and Alicia get the better of him. He may have just finished that fancy college, but old habits die hard."

Janice threw a look over her shoulder. Sure enough, Jose was striking out toward the island on his own. And the younger boys seemed prepared to do the same. She glanced worriedly at Peter. "How dangerous is that current?"

Peter frowned and kept a close eye on the race. Ben was the one to answer. "Current changes from day to day. It ain't been raining, so it should be gentle if they don't fool 'round none."

The girls yelled and screamed and scared off any fish they might have caught as they realized the boys were racing toward the island ahead of them. Nine-year-old Melissa Harding jumped up and down and hurled childish curses at her younger brother while Alicia Monteigne scowled and watched her brothers divert their course and head for the boat.

"Manuel!" Peter's shout jarred the carnival atmosphere. "Catch that log!"

Janice glanced to where Peter was looking and saw the rotted log riding the current just beneath the water. She knew very little about rivers and swimming, but she could see that there would be unexpected dangers like this one. She glanced worriedly toward the smaller boys still struggling to swim toward the boat.

Manuel couldn't stop the log with just a slender pole. It bumped the pole, floated around it, and kept on going, straight for the young boys. The older girls realized something was amiss, and their screams silenced as they looked from the boys swimming toward the boat to Peter, whose face was set and grim. On the island, even Jose sensed something was wrong. He stood on the bank, straining to see what the others saw.

"Them boys don't see it coming. Give me the pole and I'll hold the boat," Ben said quietly.

Peter nodded, handed over his pole, and began to strip off his shirt and shoes. Janice held her breath. It had never occurred to her to ask if Peter could swim. She had never seen him in anything less than a suit back in Cutlerville. Surely, somewhere along the way he had learned to swim as she never had.

He dived into the water and reached the log in a few powerful strokes. She breathed again, but only until she realized he was riding the log to steer it from the boys. He could be washed out into the middle of the river at any moment. It didn't seem to concern anyone else. They were cheering and shouting and jumping up and down, and Janice could only watch her husband's dripping hair and wide shoulders float further away.

Manuel and Ben tried to pole the boat closer to the boys. The youngest was growing weary, and Janice leaned over the edge in an effort to reach him. Her arms weren't quite long enough.

Sending the log past the boat, Peter let it go and began the swim back against the current. Janice's cries as one small head bobbed beneath the water caught his ear faster than all the other yells. She was nearly half out of the boat and reaching for the Monteigne boy struggling up for air. With a curse of his own, he struck out faster.

He grabbed the boy's hair just before he could go down again. Hauling him up, he shoved him toward Janice's waiting arms. She caught the boy and with the help of all the others managed to haul him into the boat.

He glanced around to make certain the other two boys pulled themselves up, then grabbed the side and climbed back in.

Janice immediately left the boy to Alicia and kneeled beside Peter, using her handkerchief to mop the water from his eyes. "I was afraid you couldn't swim," she murmured.

Peter sprawled on his elbows against the boards to catch his breath. The sun's rays heated his skin and turned the drops of moisture on his chest to steam, but the concern behind his wife's voice made his insides boil. It was all he could do to keep from pulling her down on top of him.

"I'm not an idiot. I wouldn't jump into a river if I couldn't swim."

"Or grab a half-broke horse unless you could ride. I know." She mopped his face with the damp cambric. "But I'm used to worrying."

"And I'm giving you just one more person to worry about." Peter added another layer to his understanding of this complex woman he called wife. "I don't suppose it will help to tell you not to worry anymore, that I'll take care of everything?"

"Our ideas on what constitutes 'taking care of' tend to differ, I'm afraid. It's too late to change my ways," she admitted.

Peter pulled her head down until their lips met. Janice only resisted briefly, then kissed him back to the cheers of their audience. When he released her, he whispered, "It's never too late, Mrs. Mulloney," in a voice that only she could hear.

Janice blushed and moved away to scold the adventurous trio.

Chapter 20

The day progressed with much hilarity after that. Janice was unaccustomed to spending even one day—and certainly not several—doing nothing but enjoying herself. She packed and unpacked picnic baskets, took off her shoes and waded out into the water to help pull in fish caught by small hands, and did her best to keep her unruly charges clean and dry. But it was still more like play than work, and she found herself just sitting at the river's edge, laughing at the antics of the children.

During one of those moments, Peter dropped down on a rock beside her. "I love hearing you laugh," he murmured, adjusting her broad-brimmed hat to better shade her nose. "You ought to do it more often."

"Ho! Listen to the pot calling the kettle black." She turned an impish grin up to him. She had never grinned at a man in her life, or at least not in the last ten years, but something about the way Peter looked at her made it easy.

These idle days were corrupting her. Or maybe it was her husband. She had actually giggled at him last night when Tyler had caught them kissing on the porch. And she had actually been kissing him. She had been contemplating a lot more than kissing him until she remembered herself. She would do well to remember herself now, but it didn't seem necessary on this tiny island filled with children. She was safe here.

"I laugh," he demurred. "I laugh all the time."

"You most certainly do not, Peter Aloysius Mulloney. That's a whopper of a fib. You hardly even smiled when we first met. And I can only remember you laughing once since then."

"Hmmm." He propped his chin on his fist while he pondered that thought. "That makes me sound like a proper stuffed shirt."