The Bartered Bride (The Brides Book 3) (16 page)

TWENTY

J
em had grown accustomed to evenings in the parlor after dinner. Ray always seemed to prefer his own company after dinner. Ben seemed to prefer not spending any more time than he needed to in Jem’s presence. So that left Jem in the company of Annie, Mae, and the puppy of an evening.

Some nights he read. Others, like now, he simply sat and enjoyed a moment to relax and do nothing at all. He found he liked the quiet companionship, broken only by Mae’s occasional chatter.

Tonight the quiet of Castle Ranch’s front parlor was interrupted by the sounds of a storm brewing. Lightning crackled in the west over the head of Pikes Peak. A low rumble of thunder shook the foundations of the ranch house beneath Jem’s rocking chair. The tremor traveled up his feet and legs. Sugar darted off, scrabbling first upstairs, then down, trying to find a low place to hide. She finally hunkered down on her haunches under Jem’s legs, not settled, but for the moment holding still enough to pat.

“Easy, girl,” Jem said, stroking the rounded dome of the pup’s head. Her fur was so silky soft there, even softer around her ears. Nearly a month had passed since he’d bought her from Creed, and she already seemed a mite taller. She was going to be a big dog when she was grown, possibly even knee high on him.

Mae was curled up with Annie on the settee. Annie was showing her how to stitch up a hem, not an unusual occurrence of late. Not only had Annie needed to add a couple more serviceable dresses and skirts to her wardrobe, Mae had needed her pinafores and dresses let down. That child was growing like a weed.

As he continued to soothe Sugar’s rattled nerves, Jem caught Annie glancing over at him occasionally. Her approving gaze sparked a disconcerting flare of warmth in his chest, and he wondered what she was thinking. Was she too remembering the day they took Sugar from Major Creed? If he wasn’t mistaken, it was something even simpler and more immediate, for her eyes seemed to say,
You have such a wonderful way with animals.
He’d seen that same look often enough in his life and heard those exact words from other people to recognize her thoughts. Or he thought he did.

It wasn’t like Annie was all that difficult to read—mostly—she simply couldn’t speak through words like other folks did.

What was bothering him of late was seeing her in Lorelei’s clothing. It was a jolt to see this particular dress again: the same one she’d worn the night after he’d brought Lorelei’s trunk down to her, a dress with dark red fabric and yellow flowers. The sight of it had tickled the edges of Jem’s memory. Since then, he’d remembered more. He’d been with Lorelei when she bought that fabric at a general store in Iowa, early on when they’d first moved there and he was building his practice. She’d loved that dress. Called it her buttercup dress.

The thing that bothered him wasn’t so much that Annie looked like she was wearing Lorelei’s dress. It was more the fact that it looked so different on her.

She’d had to cut the dress down to suit her smaller frame, of course. He understood that. But she’d made other more subtle changes that drew his attention to the nip of her waist and the smooth curve of her shoulder where it met her neck. To how graceful her arms were. Things he didn’t particularly desire to notice, but he did. He’d noticed that first night, and he couldn’t seem to stop noticing.

The truth was settling in: Annie was pretty. She wasn’t dingy at all or “simple” as he’d first thought of her.

That had been a layer of sorts. Gathered around her to keep Daniel—the foolish preacher—away. The man had obviously had questionable morals. She’d had to protect herself whatever way she could. That was only natural. And smart-minded.

She’d gone back to braiding her hair again, he noticed. She’d only worn it back in a ribbon that one night. Once had been enough for him to learn it went clear down to her waist. Thankfully, she wasn’t covering half of her face, as she once had. Her braid was pulled more neatly to one side, framing her face in a soft fashion. Her petite figure was womanly.

And to his chagrin, eye-catching.

He quickly turned his attention to Mae. She had her knees drawn up tight to her chin. With each rumble of thunder her expression turned more fearful. She’d never liked storms. She and Sugar had that in common.

He fought for something to say to allay his daughter’s fears.

Before he could form any words, Annie circled one arm around Mae in a loose embrace and cradled her hand over the top of Mae’s head, calming her with a feminine touch. Something he couldn’t ever provide.

He sent Mae what he hoped was a reassuring smile and went back to patting Sugar.

After a while, he rose and stretched.

“Gotta check on the horses,” he said, giving Sugar one last pat.

Annie called Sugar over with a sweeping gesture, her eyes never leaving Jem.

She did that. Watched him.

He cleared his throat and stopped to give Mae’s head a waggle before he went out.

The summer air met him, damp and hot. Heavy with moisture, though the rain had held off until now. He could feel it building. A gust of cooling wind tugged at his shirt, flapping it against his skin.

Ben’s pregnant mare was a restless creature that had a habit of slipping through whatever gap she could find in the fence line, so Jem checked on her first. While he was crossing the paddock, the rain opened up, soaking his shirt through. The lightning was flashing closer and closer now, not drifting along the far edges of Pikes Peak as he’d hoped. So he led the skittish mare to a stall for the night. He checked on Flora’s hoof too and found her healing nicely.

By the time he got back to the house, Annie had already taken Mae and Sugar up to bed, it looked like. In fact, the first floor was deserted, so he gathered Ray must have retired early as well. He knew Ben was out in the stables with the ranch hands feeding the last of the horses. He’d passed his brother-in-law several times as they worked, but Ben had always somehow managed to stay out of his path.

Jem’s wet shirt clung to his skin. His hair dripped onto the wood floor as he went upstairs and down the hall. He needed to towel off, and he sure hoped Ray had left a pitcher of warm water on his washstand. He usually did.

First, he’d stop to check on Mae.

But Mae wasn’t in her room. Her sheet was hanging off the end of her bed, pooling onto the floor, as if she’d kicked it off in a hurry. Probably some flash of lightning in her window had scared the wits out of her, poor thing. He checked his bed next, thinking she must have snuck in to see him and taken his bed when she found him gone. She wasn’t there either. His bed looked untouched.

Frowning, he turned back to the hall and eyed Annie’s door.

“Annie,” he whispered through the panels of her door, leaning the heel of his hand against her doorframe. “Is Mae in there with you?”

No response. Not even a single thump of her heel against the floor.

Her boots stood in the hall outside her door, propped neatly side by side, with the backs up against the wall. They looked dark with rain and mud, most likely because she’d taken Sugar out earlier. Given that her boots were here by her door, she was most likely in her room right now.

He drummed his fingers against his thigh.

After debating with himself for a matter of moments, he decided he could either knock louder and risk waking them all up, or open the door a crack and peek in.

It could take hours to get Mae back to sleep in a storm like this...

But he didn’t like to just open Annie’s door. It wasn’t something he did. It was her room. Though they were married—on paper, at least—it wasn’t as if he had the right to open her door any time he wished.

Even though Annie didn’t seem as much a stranger to him as she had at first, it wasn’t like they were on door-opening terms. She had a right to her privacy.

Another crack of lightning sounded directly overhead, and the window down at the end of the hallway lit up with a bright blue light.

And he still didn’t know where Mae was.

He eased Annie’s door open.

TWENTY-ONE

A
nnie heard her door creak open and lifted her head from her pillow.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Jem said quietly. He brought with him the subtle scent of rain. A summery smell that reminded her of thunderstorms they’d had back home in Tennessee. “Just checking on Mae,” he added by way of explanation.

She nodded, clutching the sheet up under her chin for modesty’s sake. Not that the fluffy white nightgown she was wearing didn’t cover her from neck to toe already.

It didn’t surprise her much to see Jem standing there, a lantern in his hand. Mae had scampered over to Annie’s room a while ago, with Sugar tagging along. She’d let the little girl crawl into her bed, and they’d snuggled in, both of them burying their faces into their pillows until they fell back asleep. Sugar had jumped onto the bed at some point too, for Annie felt the warm weight of the dog at her feet. Jem must’ve come back from the stable and checked in on Mae. When he’d found her missing, he’d gone looking for her.

Annie would’ve done the same. In fact, she’d half expected his visit and had been dozing in and out, waiting for his knock. She wasn’t sure how she’d missed it, though perhaps the constant dull drumming of rain on the roof above had masked the sound. Also, she’d found her eyelids quite heavy. It was possible she’d simply drifted off to sleep.

Jem stood framed in the doorway, his hair dripping, his shirt plastered to him. For a second, it looked as if he might come around the bed to kiss Mae on her forehead, or at least say something about the storm, but he simply retreated without another word, closing the door with a soft thump behind him.

She lay staring up at the ceiling in the dark.

What a puzzle he was, always running away.

Here she’d thought to win him over by sticking herself into his world so he couldn’t ignore her. She shook her head at her thinking. Jem wasn’t that sort of man. Not that she knew entirely what sort of man he was. But she did know—somehow—that forcing her way into his space would’ve been a mistake.

So how? How did she get through?

Mae loved her. Sugar was a given. Even Ray seemed to have softened toward her. Ben, she couldn’t begin to think about.

But Jem.

Jem who’d spoken to her last night on the porch. Shared his birthday with her. Invited her to sit next to him on the steps. Made her dream impossible dreams.

She couldn’t give up on Jem. Something about him tugged at her heart. She thought about him all the time. Caught herself staring at him at dinner. After dinner. Whenever he came near. There was just something about him. His “handsome features” weren’t in question, because his features were mostly hidden behind his beard. He had nice eyes, of course. She knew that very well. He had a striking figure to watch as he worked. Tall. Strong. Masculine. Those broad shoulders. Impressive. All things to appreciate, but...

Bu there was more. Something more elemental.

She wanted
in
. She wanted in his world. Dinners were nice. Evenings in the parlor were nice, but not enough. She wanted more, more, more. She wanted everything. A full life. A complete family. Marriage. Since when did she think she deserved all that?

Annie turned onto her side and pressed her face into her pillow. Since when?

* * *

Jem hesitated in the hall outside Annie’s room, with her door closed tight behind him. He’d been relieved to see Mae tucked in her bed. Sugar hadn’t even lifted her head off the mattress, so she must’ve been exhausted from her terrors earlier. But it was the sight of Annie looking up at him from her bed that stuck with him.

There’d been something so homey and familiar about all of them piled into her room like that. Like a small family huddled against the storm.

Like
family
.

Feeling suddenly restless, he ran a hand through his damp hair. He needed to towel off—that’s what he needed to do. And he also needed to at least try get some good sleep in before morning. He snuffed out the hall sconces first.

As he was about to open his door, his lantern flame flickered weakly, fading, casting the hallway into gloom. He paused to turn the wick up. As he did so, he again saw how damp and muddy Annie’s boots were. She hadn’t left them downstairs by the back door, which told him Sugar had been a handful and had required all of her attention. Either that, or Mae had been demanding her attention. Or both. He could easily see that happening.

She was so good with both of them, taking care of them during the day while he was out working the ranch with the other men. Ray helped too, he knew, but he suspected Annie took over most of the care of his daughter. And all the care of Sugar.

Cleaning her boots might be a nice thank you. He bent to pick them up. The leather was heavy with moisture, streaked with mud. After entering his room and drying himself off as best he could, he carried the boots to his study, where he could more easily clean them. He kept old newspapers, shoe brushes, polish, and a stack of rags on a small chest-high table just for this purpose. In the morning, they’d need a good brisk brushing to get the dried mud off, but for now he could wipe them down.

Once inside, he set the boots on a sheet of newspaper, then turned one boot over in his hands.

The toe end of the sole flapped free of the leather upper. A hole gaped open in the ball of the foot too, big enough to stick three or four fingers into. No protection at all. The mud and water must’ve gone straight through, soaking her feet.

Not fit to give away, let alone keep.

Who
is
she?
he wondered, not for the first time. What was her story?

She must not have come from much. The preacher who had taken her in as a foster child—maybe he and his family had lived threadbare lives. Either that or he hadn’t provided very well for her.

The thought caused Jem to frown.

Whichever it had been, she hadn’t had much of anything. And what she did have was nearly worn through. In stark contrast, he had so much. Was surrounded by more than he could ever use. Stuff he didn’t
need
.

Except for ladies’ shoes, he realized. He’d given all Lorelei’s away to the church, figuring they’d be woefully out of fashion by the time Mae was old enough to wear them. Dresses could be picked apart and reworked—as Annie had proven. Not so easily shoes and boots. And there’d been plenty of poor folks in town who could use them. It had been the right thing to do at the time.

But that meant he didn’t have anything to give Annie now. What he did have here wouldn’t be of any use to her. She needed
shoes
.

He looked around the small room, taking in the bookshelves that lined the walls and the elegant writing desk that had been Lorelei’s. Her typewriter still stood there, as if waiting for her return. Jem couldn’t seem to bring himself to part with it. And though he never used it, it still had an ink ribbon in it. Occasionally, he might pluck out a few sentences. Tonight he didn’t bother to roll in a sheet of paper. He just struck the keys against the roller, making no impression at all. It all seemed so empty. Lorelei had treasured the contraption, a gift from her father to encourage her writing. She’d used it every day. Jem, on the other hand, would never make good use of it, not like she had. She’d tapped out business letters for him, spun her seemingly endless stories...

And that was why he could never give it away. Just looking at it reminded him of her. He could almost see her now, in the early days of their marriage, when he was building his practice in Iowa. Most afternoons, he’d find her perched at her desk, her fingers poised over the keys, turning to look at him. Her bottom lip caught between her teeth. More often than not, he’d interrupt her then, kissing his pretty new wife, teasing her about how lucky he’d been to find such “good help.” Many a time they’d retreated, laughing—so young and without a care—to their rooms above the veterinary offices for a lazy afternoon of lovemaking.

He squeezed his eyes shut briefly. When he opened them again, the memories were still there with him, lingering. He fingered each smooth key before him, pressed one down, then another, making no marks.

What did it all mean anymore?