Coming Home to Wyoming (Peaceful Valley Series Book 1) (9 page)

Griff smiled. He learned a long time ago that you didn’t necessarily have to be female to recognize a catty remark when you heard it. For some reason, Elyn O’Malley had arrived here with her claws out, and ready to use them.

“Her name’s Amelia Pomeroy. She’s not my wife, and I doubt that she’s ever scrubbed an outhouse or slopped hogs in her life.”

Elyn smiled. “Yeah, I figured as much. So, what is she? An older cousin, maybe? Visiting from someplace where they don’t have outhouses? Or hogs?”

“She’s a year younger than I am, and she’s not a cousin. She’s just a very nice woman I know, from town. A good friend.”

“That’s funny,” she said with a puzzled look. “She didn’t seem all that friendly. Of course, I’m not a man, so all that powder and lip rouge was kind of wasted on me. Some people say that it does a good job of covering up the wrinkles women get when they’re getting close to fifty, though.”

Griff grinned. “Amelia will be thirty-three on her next birthday.”

Elyn gave him a doubtful look. “Really? I can hardly believe that you’re the same fella who once paddled my behind, just for telling a few little white lies like that one.”

“Did I do that?” he asked cheerfully. “For nothing but a
few little white lies
?”

“Well, I may have done a couple of other things to get your feathers ruffled. I can’t remember.”

He shook his head. “
Damn
! And after I tried my best to be sure you remembered every smack.”

Elyn sighed. “I suppose I cussed too much, didn’t I?”

“Like a Shanghai sailor. When you get to know her, you’ll find that Amelia’s not just nice, she’s a lady, and not the kind to lie—
or
to swear.”

She smiled. “That boring, huh?”

Griff ignored the remark. “Last time I was at Rainbow Water, Abner told me you were out on your own now, and probably not coming back? True?”

“I couldn’t let Abner and Martha go on feeding me for the rest of my life, and have me sleeping in their loft. I figured it was time to see what I could do for myself, for a change.”

“It shouldn’t be too hard for a pretty young lady to find herself a husband to take care of things like that.”

She shrugged. “Not if she’s willing to take the first husband that comes along.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t find the pickings down in Kansas too good,” he observed.

“Most of them smelled like sheep.”

Griff smiled. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you stay here a while—and look over the local inventory? There’re even a couple of good looking young fellas down at the bunkhouse you might like to meet. How do you feel about cowboys?”

“They’re all right—as long as they take a bath once in a while. I’d like one who can read and write, though. And one who can recite the presidents in order, and spell all the states and continents.” She grinned. “That’s what happens when you make a girl go back to school. She starts to want things she never wanted before. If I
did
decide to stick around for a while, you sure I won’t be in the way?”

“You won’t be in the way.”

“You want to ask your woman friend first? The one who already lives here with you?”

With a weary sigh, Griff repeated what he’d said earlier. “Amelia doesn’t live here. She’s just visiting for a few days.”

Elyn wrinkled her nose. “My grandma used to say that visitors are like fish. They both start to smell bad after a couple of days.”

He nodded. “That’s funny. My grandmother always said the same thing. “I guess we’ll just have to give it a try, and see what happens.”

The meeting inside the house got off to a better start than Griff had expected. Amelia was relentlessly polite and pleasant, and Elyn said very little and smiled a lot. They had tea from the dainty china tea service Amelia had given him—with the little yellow roses she had hand-painted on each piece. The trouble began when Amelia asked where Ellen and Griff had first met, and when Elyn explained with a charming smile that he had found her in a tree
“half-naked, with my dress over my head and my damned drawers flapping in the breeze.”
Afterward, she went on, he had spent money on her like there was no tomorrow, and that they had spent “their first night together” in a hotel room in Brewer’s Creek.

“
One
room?” Amelia inquired stiffly.

Elyn giggled girlishly. “Well, naturally, we didn’t
need
two rooms for what Griff had in mind, but I suppose, being a gentleman and all, he was worried that the desk clerk would spread it around town that I was a… well, you probably know what I mean. Which was just silly, of course, because Griff never paid me one single penny, and I wouldn’t have taken money even if he’d offered it. He was a real sweetheart about money. He took me to an absolutely
wonderful
dinner at the finest restaurant in Brewer’s Creek and bought me simply
scads
of the loveliest gifts you can imagine—dresses and shoes, perfume, some ornaments for my hair, and the most charming pair of drawers he picked out by himself—with these tiny little embroidered rosebuds and pink bows in some of the most scandalous places! Oh, and I almost forgot. He bought me a beautiful green velvet valise that I needed for the trip we were taking together.

“He was wonderfully gentle with me, the whole time. I was terribly young, you see—barely sixteen, and…”

Amelia was staring. “
Sixteen
?”

“Barely, and until that night, I had no experience at all with men.” At this point in the story, Elyn blushed, also charmingly. “Griff was the first man I’d ever
been
with, you see. Of course, he
did
snore, but then, what man doesn’t?”

Finally, with Amelia beginning to turn pale, Griff decided it was time to step in and correct a few of Elyn’s little white exaggerations. But one moment before he could open his mouth and say what needed to be said, Elyn seized the moment, and offered an olive branch—of sorts.

“When I arrived in Mill City, there was a sign posted at the stage office. About a dance,” she announced breathlessly. “Tomorrow night, at the Cattlemen’s Association Hall, in town. I thought it might be nice if we all went, together, so I bought two pairs of tickets, in case Amelia wants to invite her beau—if she has one.”

Later, of course, when it was
too
late, Griff recognized the peril to be faced in escorting two women who detested one another to a dance where breakable objects were going to be in abundance.

* * *

The
pleasant
side of escorting two beautiful women to one dance was the envious glances he got when the three of them walked in together. Single women of any age or description were in short supply in Mill City, which meant that most of the town’s social events were crowded with gossiping farm and ranch wives, grateful for an evening away from a hot stove and squalling children. The woman were usually outfitted in their Sunday best, which ranged from frumpy to almost—but not
quite—
what had been
in fashion two or three years earlier.

Amelia, as Griff had expected, had outdone herself, to the point of drawing hostile stares from some of the ranch and farm ladies, and openly lascivious sidelong looks from most of the male attendees, married or not.

In a dangerously low-cut emerald satin gown with a bodice studded with tiny pearls, she looked a lot like visiting royalty might, while being entertained at the White House by President and Mrs. Grant. Not content with that, she had draped herself in gold and emerald jewelry, which Griff knew was nothing but paste and plate, but when she walked through a pool of gaslight, it all still sparkled like the real thing.

Fifteen minutes after they arrived, the trouble he’d been expecting began—when Elyn sidled up to him with a cup of punch in one hand, and a dainty fistful of stings and barbs in the other. The first barb compared Amelia to Marie Antoinette—except for the missing wig.

“In the history book we had in school, it said that a bunch of townspeople got together and chopped off Marie Antoinette’s head—just because she was so vain,” Elyn confided. “They had to bury the poor woman in two pieces—one really big box for her head in that wig, and… ”

Griff groaned. “Would you please shut up and go get something to eat? It doesn’t look like we’ll be staying long. Coming to this damned circus was your idea, so you might just as well get something out of it.”

“Aren’t you going to at least dance with me, before we leave?” she pouted, pulling a tiny white folder from her skirt pocket. “They gave me this dance card at the door, and there’s not a single gentleman’s name on it. I suppose you’ll have to dance every dance with me.”

“And what about Amelia?”

Elyn smiled. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about her,” she said sweetly. “That’s one honey of a dress she’s wearing. She’ll be drawing flies all night. And I helped out just a bit by making out a dance card for her.”

Two hours later, while Griff was dancing the last of three waltzes with Elyn, Amelia was sharing the same three waltzes with three different men—all of whom were several inches shorter than she was, one of whom was hugely overweight and sweating heavily, and one of them the balding, eighty-four year old minister of the Mill City Methodist Church. She sat out the evening’s lone polka in the company of a skinny cowhand with a broken foot named Floyd Muckle, whose missing front teeth made chatting difficult for him, and incomprehensible for Amelia.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it, what they can do with hair dye, these days,” Elyn remarked, as Amelia swirled by once again, in the arms of another of her new “beaus.”

Griff groaned. “All right, what’s wrong with her
hair?
And don’t try telling me it’s a wig, because I know damned well it’s not.”

“Well, I have no way of knowing about the poor woman’s
hair
,” Elyn conceded. “Although the curls do seem awfully rigid to be natural, but I understand that the color—twenty-five cents a bottle at the drugstore—can cause blindness, not to mention making a person bald as a billiard ball. She does have quite a nice, plump figure, of course, and I understand that broad hips and heavy thighs can actually be a blessing in bearing children. Still, I suppose there are many other women, like Amelia, who get down on their knees every night, and thank heaven for corsets and full skirts.”

“Amelia isn’t fat,” he said sharply.

“I don’t believe I said fat. Maybe… Yes, I believe the word I was looking for is
buxom
—like those women that famous artist… Rembrandt, yes, that’s it—the women Mr.
Rembrandt
painted, with just a bit too much bosom, and all those rolls of pink flesh. Still, your lady
does
have the loveliest little eyes. Very dark, almost black—like a snake.”

In spite of how annoyed he was, Griff grinned. “And here I was, thinking you wouldn’t like the woman.”

* * *

Before leaving town that night, Amelia asked to be dropped off at her house instead of returning to the ranch with them, and Griff complied—not happily, but hoping to avoid the trouble he knew was on the way.

As he lifted Amelia from the wagon, with his hands circling her waist, Elyn made a small noise that sounded like a grunt. When Griff shot her a warning look, she turned her head, and pretended not to have seen it.

Inside the house, Amelia finally voiced a complaint. “I understand that she’s young, Griffin, but that certainly doesn’t excuse her behavior, tonight. At her age, I knew better than to…”

“She does know better,” he said wearily. “She was trying to get your goat, and she obviously did. What you should have done, since you’re too much of a lady to just kick her in the butt—was to just walk away, and ignore her.”

“Are you actually trying to blame
me
for what happened, tonight? And that childish episode at the ranch, for that matter?”

“All I’m saying is that you could have handled it differently.”

“What I want to know is what
you’re
going to do about it.”

He shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Nothing!”
she cried.

“She’s a grown woman, Amelia, not a six-year old brat I can put across my knee and spank. And I can’t send her to bed without her supper, or wash her mouth out with soap, either. I can’t tell her to leave, because she’s sort of my responsibility. If nothing else, I owe it to Abner and Martha to look out for her. Yeah, she behaved badly, tonight, but what happened at the dance was between you and her, and I’m not about to get dragged into it and make things worse by taking sides.”

“Why on earth not? What happened tonight was entirely about
you
.”

“
Me?
”

“You surely can’t be that naïve, Griffin—or that blind. The girl is clearly in love with you.”

He chuckled. “Try to remember that this is the same girl who threatened to cut out my gizzard with a rusty fork. And I got the feeling she knew exactly how to go about it.”

“Be that as it may, her feelings for you have obviously changed,” she said smugly. “And you either can’t, or
won’t
see it. It’s quite possible that you may have feelings for her as well—deeply hidden feelings, perhaps, that you’re not aware of, yet.”

“That’s ridiculous. I haven’t seen her in four years, and didn’t even recognize her when she showed up. Until two days ago, I hadn’t laid eyes on Elyn O’Malley since she was in pigtails, with a face full of freckles. What you don’t understand is that a lot of bad things happened to her while she was growing up, and I think maybe she’s started looking around for someone she can try out her new female wiles on. And she’s trying it first with me, because I’m the safest man she knows.”

“And are you, Griff? Safe?”

“What the hell does that mean?”

She paused, and began toying with her gloves. “I think it’s possible that the feelings you have for her are not the kind you’re able to admit to yourself, for some reason. And if that’s true, it means that your feelings for me are… are not what I had hoped.”

“That’s not true,” he argued. “Any of it. It’s just that…”

“Then tell me this, Griffin. Are we going to be married someday, or not?”

The hesitation before Griff answered wasn’t long—perhaps three or four seconds—but that was around two seconds
too
long.

“I see,” Amelia said softly. She sat down on a small velvet bench, took a lace handkerchief from her matching green satin evening purse, and began to weep quietly.

He stayed with Amelia until she stopped crying and went to bed, but as he walked back out to where Elyn was waiting, Griff Harper felt like a coward for the first time in his life He hadn’t handled Amelia’s unhappiness any better than he’d handled Elyn’s spiteful performance at the dance—which more or less proved what he’d been worrying about since Elyn reappeared in his life.

He’d handled going off to war and being badly wounded. He’d handled the death of his father and the loss of the home he’d loved and expected to grow old on. He could handle cattle, and hard, backbreaking work. He could handle bad weather, crop failure, sick animals and every other problem life handed him. But it was pretty clear now, that he couldn’t handle women—and sure as hell not two women at a time.

* * *

He and Elyn drove home without much conversation, other than one or two comments about the condition of the road, and how cold it had gotten, this early in the fall. When they arrived back at the ranch, Griff unhooked the wagon and put the team away, then came back to the house, where he found Elyn sitting at the kitchen table, with an expression of pure misery on her face.

“I was a bitch tonight, wasn’t I?” she moaned.

He yawned. “You were a bitch.”

“Do you hate me now?”

“No, but I sometimes wish you weren’t too old to spank.”

“That never bothered you, before.”

“You were just a kid then. But it still bothered me.”

“It bothered me, too,” Elyn said, her voice low with remorse, “because I loved you, and I wanted you to love me.”

Griff chuckled. “You had a damned peculiar way of showing it, if you don’t mind my saying so. And besides, I
did
love you—in a way.”

“You had a damned peculiar way of showing
that,
” Elyn shot back.
“You may not believe this,
but
after you left me with Martha and Abner, I used to daydream about you. Even that was hard for me, though, because I didn’t have a lot of romantic moments to daydream
about.
After a while, I figured out why you left me there, instead of taking me with you. You just didn’t love me.” She laughed. “I wasn’t surprised that you didn’t love me. The big surprise is you didn’t
drown
me. I was awful back then. So, there I was, only sixteen years old, dumb as dirt about men, and already a failure with them.”