A Restless Wind (16 page)

     At the squeak of the back door, Hetty looked up from the book she was reading.  She stared at the man framed in the doorway.  There was a hard look to Jesse tonight.  A hard, hungry look.  His hair and clothes were damp from the rain.  The dark beard shadow accentuated the strong masculine lines of his jaw.

     He hesitated in the doorway then pulled his hat off slowly.  After hanging the hat on an empty peg on the wall, he walked into the kitchen.

     “You missed supper tonight,”  she said softly.  And breakfast and lunch, she thought.  “Would you like something to eat?”

     “No.  Rachel brought me something to eat earlier.”

     Hetty nodded, closing the book she’d been reading.

     This was not one of his better ideas.  Quite possibly it was one of the worst.  The last thing he needed was to spend time alone with her.  And yet here he was, sitting down at the table across from her.

     She had on some kind of soft-looking, pale blue dress.  Her hair was loosely tied with a ribbon, the shimmering, waist-length tumble of curls falling over one shoulder.  A dangerous combination no matter how much he tried to ignore it.

     “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”  A lie.  He’d seen the light.  He knew damned well he’d been hoping she’d be awake.

     “You’re not disturbing me.  I was too restless to fall asleep right away.  I thought reading might make me sleepy.  I found this book in the parlor.  I hope you don’t mind me reading it.”

     He picked up the small black book.  Hetty watched his fingers trace the intricate leather design.  He opened the book and turned over the first few pages.

     “Is it good reading?”  he asked.

     “Yes.  I’m enjoying it.  Very much.”

     “It belonged to my mother.  She liked to read poetry.  She liked to write it, too, when she could.”

     A change came over his face as he leafed through the book.  He came to the daguerreotype that he didn’t know Hetty had been looking at earlier.  It was a picture of Jesse taken some years ago. 

     Suddenly he closed the cover.  Just like the book, his face closed and became unreadable once more.  He slid the book back across the table.

     “Reading and writing were important to my mother.  She wanted them to be important to me, too.  She was a patient woman,”  he said, a faint smile curving one corner of his mouth.  “But she definitely had her hands full teaching me to read.  I didn’t always make things easy for her.”

     Hetty longed to ask questions about his past, but she bit her lip, not wanting to pry.  She could imagine Jesse as a boy, wild and rebellious and reckless.  Those were words she had heard to describe him years ago.  Even now she could sense a kind of restless energy in him just beneath the surface.

     Jesse’s gaze swept across the table to hers, seeing the interest in her eyes.

     “I expect she wrote in part,”  he said quietly.  “Because she never had another woman to talk to.  Women need that.”

     “It must have been lonely for her,”  Hetty said softly.  “It can be lonely for women out here.”

     Leaning back in his chair with one hand resting on the table, he said,  “I reckon she was lonely.”

     Hetty wondered if it had been lonely for the son, too.  She knew what it was like to be an only child.  There had been times when Hetty had yearned for a sibling, a brother or sister to play with.  But then Pierce had come along and he had become like a brother to her. 

     “Where was your mother originally from?”

     “Virginia,”  Jesse replied.  “Her family was well off.  My mother fell in love with a man that they didn’t approve of.  My father.  They felt that he didn’t have the means to take care of her in the way that she was accustomed to living.
But she was young and  . . .  ” His voice trailed off as he left the rest unspoken.

     “That sounds very sad.  Very romantic, but sad.”

     “She never regretted her decision,”  he went on.  “Hard as it was for her.  My father died shortly after I was born.  I don’t think she ever really got over it.  That’s why she insisted I have the daguerreotype taken.  She never had a picture of my father.  She always said I looked like him.”

     Jesse was surprised to find himself talking about his mother with Hetty.  He had never spoken to another living soul about her or about his past.

     “What about your stepfather?”

     “Silas?  I reckon he cried from the moment he came into the world and that he kept on crying and complaining till he breathed his last.”

    Hetty stared at him for a moment before she said,  “There are some freshly-baked pies on the back porch.  Would you like some?”

     “As a matter of fact, yeah, I’d like some pie.”

     It wasn’t the only thing he’d like to be tasting, he thought as his gaze dropped to her mouth 

     “But you don’t have to wait on me,”  he said as she got up from her chair.

     “I don’t mind,”  she said over her shoulder before she disappeared on the back porch.

     He stood up and got two plates from the cupboard, one for himself and one for her.  They had been his mother’s rose-patterned plates.  When Hetty returned with the pie, he watched her covertly as she moved around the room.  She set silverware before him and cut a generous wedge out of the pie for him.  She cut a smaller piece for herself and then, with a faint drift of perfume and a soft rustle of clothing, she sat down across from him again.

     At that moment the rain poured down with a renewed fury on the roof.  Thunder rumbled softly.

     “I like when it storms at night,”  she commented with a sigh.

     Yeah, he did, too.  But at the moment the rain held too many memories.  Like taking shelter in old barns and kissing young ladies who happened to take shelter there, too.  He looked at her face, his gaze roaming to her hand where it toyed with the curls falling over her shoulder.

     “The house looks good,”  he said because he needed to say something to distract himself from thinking how she looked even more beautiful by candlelight.  “Everyone settling in all right?”

     He stilled as she licked a sticky remnant of pie from her fingertip.  He stared at her mouth, thinking that she’d be a passionate lover.  Yeah, he decided, she definitely would.  The compelling notion forming in his mind despite his efforts to shake it.  He’d had a taste of that passion before.

     “Yes,”  she replied as he tried to remember what he’d just asked her.

     “Did you make the pie?”  he asked, concentrating on the question this time.

     “I did.”

     “It’s very good.”

     “Thank you,”  she said softly, warming to the complement in a way that surprised her.

     When he was finished with the pie, he got up and took both dishes to the sink.  “I’m getting spoiled with all this home cooking,”  he said as he settled back in his chair, chiding himself for not walking out then and there.

     “Eminence must seem pretty tame after Boston,”  he asked.  He was curious about her life there.

     “Tame?”  she echoed.  “With cattle rustlers and outlaws and shootings?  I’d hardly call it tame.”

     He smiled.  “I guess when you put it that way, it doesn’t seem all that tame.”  He ran his hand across the rough whiskers on his chin.  “Will isn’t sleeping with that snake, is he?”

     “Well, yes, he is,”  she replied, her gaze caught for a moment by the movement of his hand.

     A lazy smile curved Jesse’s mouth.  “When I was about Will’s age, I kept a bullfrog in my room.  Hid it under my bed.  I had to put it out, though, when it got to croaking.”

     She smiled, unaware of what her smiles could do to him.  He caught himself staring and looked away.

     “There should be time to get a late garden in when It dries out from this rain,”  he said.  “Maybe a flower garden, too.  I don’t know what kind of flowers Rachel might like, but I thought I’d find some seeds for her and Emma.”  All right.  So now he had committed himself to finding some flower seeds.

     “Sara Cade liked flowers, too,”  Hetty said.

     “She did.”

     Hetty hesitated before she spoke again.  “I have been wondering if you know anything about what happened to her and her daughter.”

     “No, I don’t,”  he said with a sigh.  “I wish I did, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions.”

     “I had hoped Sara left something behind that would explain what happened.  I confess I have been curious about that envelope, but I haven’t wanted to pry.”

     “You’re not prying.”

     “The letter had me hoping,”  she said.

     “It had me hoping, too.”

     “Do you think outlaws were responsible?”  she asked.

     He frowned.  “It’s not one that I want to believe, but I’d say it’s a likely explanation.”

     “It’s hard to imagine that men could be capable of such things.”  She shook her head.  “I can’t help but wonder what causes some men to become so evil.”

     “Bad influence, maybe.”

     “But there is always a
choice
to do good or evil,”  she said.  “A man can choose decency. Everyone comes to a point in their life when they make choices and those choices can be honorable ones.”

     The back of Jesse’s forefinger rubbed slowly across the whiskers on his chin as he sat there silent and thoughtful, listening to her talk about things like decency and honor.  Her words got him to thinking about his own thoughts which, no doubt, she would not think were completely decent, or honorable, at the moment.  He shook his head slightly to dislodge the wayward thoughts.

     “It’s very generous of you to let the Forbes live here,”  he heard her say.

     “It isn’t putting me out any.”

     “Still, it’s very kind of you.”

     He heard the soft, almost wistful quality in her voice and knew she was pleased with him.  He felt something like regret deep inside.  Before this was over, she wasn’t going to think he was kind or generous.  Decency?  Forget it.  And honor?  She’d never use that word in the same sentence with his name.

     “I know that it took a lot of work to get this place fit to live in,”  he said.

     “I haven’t minded at all,”  she said.  “I enjoy spending time with the Forbes.”

     She talked about what they’d accomplished in the house, about a tea part with Emma that afternoon and how Will was starting to take his chores very seriously.  He talked about repairs to the barn and the fences, the supply of wood he’d chopped and split to get the Forbes through the winter and how a cow would be a welcome source of milk for the family since there was enough pasture and room in the barn.

     It was intimate.  Comfortable.  Like a conversation between a husband and wife at the end of the day.  Hetty got up from her chair and came back with a large glass jar which she set on the table. 

     “I baked molasses cookies with Emma this morning for her tea party,”  she said.  “She has been waiting to give you some.”

     He didn’t immediately reply to her offer.  As she passed close to him, her skirt brushed his leg.  Awareness made his gut clench.  He swallowed, knowing he needed to put distance between them.

     “You’re supposed to say,  ‘Yes, I’d love some molasses cookies’,”  she teased.  “Because Emma baked them not only for her tea party, but to thank you for the birthday presents.”

     When he finally found his voice, he told her that the pie was enough for now, but that he would take some cookies with him for later.

     Talking with Jesse like this, discussing the day with him while the rain was falling outside felt surprisingly cozy.  Was this how married people felt?  Hetty wondered.  She didn’t know where that thought had come from except that it must have been because of Will and his questions earlier about marrying Jesse.

     Next came the completely unbidden thought that if they were married, they would be going upstairs to one of the bedrooms.  Together.  And then  . . .

     Then, she had some idea of what it would be like to be held by Jesse McLaren, to have those strong arms wrapped around her, to have his body pressed intimately against hers.  And she definitely knew what it was like to be kissed by him.  But what if it wasn’t just one kiss.  What if he kept on kissing her?  She knew what Jesse’s masculine hunger could be like.  She’d had a taste of that before.

     She didn’t know where the next wanton image came from, but it was a startlingly clear image of Jesse on his bed.  In his room.  With her.

     The kitchen suddenly felt too warm.  Flustered, she turned from the table and put the jar of cookies away.

     “Can I get anything else for you?”  she asked as she turned.  And then she busied herself wiping crumbs from the table.

     He couldn’t help it.  Her innocent words brought a few suggestions to mind.  His hunger wasn’t for food, however.  But for something else entirely.